by James Harden
And I think, damn. That is a very good question. How the hell do we get through the security doors?
How the hell do we get through two sets of large, reinforced doors that are designed to keep criminals from escaping a prison?
I feel like cursing myself. I feel like slapping myself in the face for being so stupid. Of course those security doors would be locked up. It separates this whole section from the goddamn prison. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the guts. I feel downright stupid. I open my mouth to answer Jack, to say something, to say anything. Something like, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll totally be all right. We’re fine. We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
But I don’t get a chance to say this pathetic excuse, this pathetic sentence, because standing a few doors down from us, to our right, towards the horde, is George Walters.
Prison administrator.
The warden.
He has the gun pointed at us. At me. Directly at my chest.
He has a look of absolute desperation on his face.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he says.
And I believe him.
Chapter 18
George is standing a good fifteen feet away from us. A few holding cells away from us. He looks like a demon in the red glow of the emergency lights. For a second I think about running, or jumping into one of the holding cells so I’m out of the line of fire. But as soon as that thought enters my exhausted mind I push it out. There is nowhere to run to.
Nowhere to hide.
The holding cells are a dead end.
They are nothing but potential tombs.
This whole corridor is a dead end.
“You can’t shoot us,” I whisper. “You’ll draw their attention. They’ll hunt you down.”
“You wanna take that risk?” he fires back. “You wanna play Russian roulette?”
The gun is in his hand; his finger is on the trigger. His hands are shaking. If he squeezes too hard he’ll fire the gun. He’ll probably hit one of us. But that will be beside the point. The main point being, if he fires that gun, the infected will hear the shot. And then they will come running.
“You,” George says. “All of you are staying here. One way or the other. All of you. I am leaving.”
One way or the other means dead or infected. These are our two options at this point in time.
“You’re leaving?” I ask. “Where are you going to go? You’re trapped. Just like us. Just like everybody else down here.”
“No. He is coming back for me. I opened the cells just like he wanted. He is coming back.”
I shake my head. “He is not coming back. Not for you. Not for anyone. He has left you for dead. The only way we get out of this, is if we work together.”
George clutches his name tag. “He didn’t leave me. He needs me. I am the warden of this prison. He needs me.”
As he tells us how much he is needed he is clutching his name tag.
George Walters. Prison Administrator. The name tag has a little passport sized ID photo. Below this is a barcode.
He is clutching the name tag because it represents who he is. It is a part of him.
People like to think that their job, their profession, their occupation, does not define them. But sometimes it does. And to other people, your job definitely defines you. People define you, they judge you, they put you in a box.
You are a student.
A soldier.
A police officer.
A nurse.
A doctor.
A prison administrator.
And sometimes you begin to believe it, to accept it, to let this actually define you. And you become the job.
Somewhere along the line, George had become his job. He was the warden through and through. He was the boss. He was in charge. He was in charge of the guards and of the prisoners.
Everyone had to do what he declared.
The problem is, that right now he thinks his job title gives him control in this arena, in this messed up situation. But he is not in control. He hasn’t been in control for a long time.
The game has changed.
The rules have changed.
Society has crumbled.
The world has ended.
And he is no longer in control.
There is a man in a gas mask stalking these hallways and these tunnels. He is stalking us and hunting us. He is controlling us and manipulating us and he has pushed George over the edge.
From way down the other end of the dark hallway, we can hear the moaning howls of the infected.
George looks over his shoulder and I think about charging him and so does Kim. Kim actually takes a slight step forward. Not even a step. She tenses up and leans forward, ready to pounce.
I hold her back. We would never reach him in time.
George turns around and waves us into the nearest holding cell. “Get inside. Face the wall. On your knees.”
And I’m thinking, maybe we should’ve charged at him. Maybe we should’ve gone out with a fight.
I have the feeling this room is about to become our tomb.
“He’s not coming back,” I say. “You can’t trust him. You can’t!”
“He is coming for me. I don’t have much time.”
His watch. The countdown.
When George first showed us his watch he had less than ten minutes.
How long does he have now?
Minutes. Seconds.
When the watch, when the countdown reaches zero, the nano-virus will be released. It will be activated.
It will eat you from the inside. It will kill you. There is no stopping it.
“He is not coming back,” Kim says. “You have to realize that.”
George points the gun at Kim. “Shut up. No more talking.”
I think about yelling out. But I don’t.
“You think the infected will hear us?” I ask. “Are you really worried about them right now? You’ve only got a couple of minutes. And then you’re dead. I’ve got just over two days and then I’m dead as well. I’ve come to terms with this. I have accepted my fate.”
I tell him I have accepted my fate. But I am lying.
Jack says, “What the hell are you talking about?”
But there is no time to explain to Jack.
“I’ll be long gone by the time the infected get here,” George says. “And he will know what to do. He will save me. He has bought my trust. And I trust him.”
“Where the hell are you going to go?” I ask.
“We’re getting out. He told me that we will be the first ones of a new society, a new world. A stronger, better world. He told me that we are going to watch it burn. Burn the old Empires. Start over.”
These are the words, the teachings, the ramblings of the man in the gas mask.
The pressure has destroyed George’s ability to think rationally. He is so far gone. It is terrifying to watch and terrifying to think that I might turn into something like this in just a couple of days’ time.
“Please,” Kim says. “You can’t just kill us like this. It’s wrong. It’s so goddamn wrong.”
“We can’t take you,” George says. “More mouths to feed. Everything is limited. Everything. We can’t take you.”
“You are not special,” I say. “You are not the chosen one.”
I show him my watch again. “See? I am screwed as well. I am a dead man walking. Dead girl walking.”
He shakes his head and I get the feeling that maybe he knows that he is screwed. Somewhere deep down, he knows. But he can’t admit it. And he’s angry. He’s angry and mad because he has been taken advantage of and manipulated and tortured and he has been sentenced to death.
His freedom has been taken away and he is no longer in control of anything.
Not this prison.
Not his life.
“No more talking,” he says. “It is time to die.”
And as soon as he says time to die, his watch beeps.
And beeps.
>
And continues to beep.
It beeps continuously and incessantly and the infected horde that is all the way down the other end of the dark corridor has definitely heard this.
And George’s eyes go wide.
His time is up.
Suddenly, little cuts begin to appear on George’s skin. His face. His neck.
And his nose bleeds.
And his ears. And his eyes.
The time release nano-virus has been activated.
And he begins to choke and cough up blood. And more and more cuts appear on his skin and his face and blood begins to stain his white shirt.
He is being eaten by a nano-swarm from the inside.
“No,” he whispers as he looks at the blood dripping from his hands. “God, no.”
He is still speaking and choking and gurgling. He hasn’t screamed in pain because maybe he can’t feel it. Maybe each cut is so tiny, so microscopic and so precise that he can’t feel it. But then this theory is trashed, when all of a sudden he starts screaming.
And now I can see the nano-virus. The nano-swarm.
Slowly but surely it has eaten its way through his flesh and skin. It looks like he is surrounded by fruit flies or gnats or mosquitoes or some kind of swarm of tiny insects. And then the swarm gets larger and darker and he continues to scream.
Jack, Kim and I are frozen in shock.
George screams louder and I know the infected are on their way to us.
The swarm is bigger now. It continues to grow and grow. It continues to eat George. It has almost engulfed him completely. It is swarming around him, like a tornado, a tornado that is alive.
I hear the familiar hissing sound of the swarm.
Like a snake.
George is bleeding profusely. He is standing in a pool of blood. And I’m not sure if he slips in the blood, or if the nano-swarm trips his legs, but all of a sudden he hits the floor and now he is on his back, writhing in pain and agony.
And choking.
And then he stops screaming and choking.
George’s face and head are completely covered in blood, and I can’t tell if he has eyes anymore.
He stops breathing.
And then his body is disassembled and taken apart, like soldier ants swarming and eating a larger prey. A memory of a time lapse video from some other documentary I watched once upon a time, when people were able to sit back and watch documentaries, flashes across my mind. A time lapse video of a swarm of ants eating a large scorpion. The scorpion’s arms and legs are removed and taken away. Its tail. Its head. Its body.
Everything.
What’s left of George’s body is dragged out of the room by the swarm and I think he is already dead but he’s not. As his body is dragged out of the room, his one remaining arm, and his one remaining hand, and his last remaining fingers latch onto the door frame.
And he holds on for dear life.
But then the swarm intensifies and his fingers disintegrate and fall apart and disappear. And then what’s left of his body finally goes limp.
And then George is finally dead and gone, and the swarm is gone.
Chapter 19
There is a trail of blood that leads out of the holding cell into the corridor.
There are bits of clothes here and there. Bits of George’s tie.
Why the hell was he still wearing a tie?
I see the gun.
Nothing else.
From somewhere down the other end of the corridor we can hear the infected. We can hear their howling, moaning screams. We can hear their running footsteps.
Jack is staring at the pieces of George’s clothes and the trail of blood that leads out of the room and off into the dark and he says, “What the hell was that? What the hell just happened? Was that a nano-swarm?”
“Yeah,” I whisper, feeling numb and sick at the same time.
“It was inside him?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“It was put there. By a psychopath.”
“What?”
I lean down and pick up George’s name tag. The name tag he was clutching as he stood in front of us, as he stood dying and threatening to kill us.
In the passport sized photo he is not smiling because I don’t think you’re allowed to smile in ID photos anymore. Something to do with facial recognition computers.
“Let’s go,” Kim says. “Into the prison. Come on. It’s our only chance.”
Kim picks up the gun. She wipes the blood on her pants.
And I know it’s the right thing to do. I know we need to move. If we don’t move we are dead. But I am absolutely paralyzed. I have just witnessed my own death. I look at my watch. In exactly fifty hours and twenty-six minutes, I am going to suffer the same fate as George Walters, prison administrator. The warden.
I feel like throwing up.
But Jack grabs me by the hand and gets me moving. “Come on!”
I slide George’s name tag into my pocket. I do this because I fear that when it’s my time, I might need a physical reminder to not become like the warden.
I must not lose myself.
We step out into the corridor. More blood. But no George. Nothing. Not a damn thing. The nano-swarm is also gone. More shredded bits of clothes. Another bit of his tie. Not much though. I’m guessing the swarm ate everything else.
And we can hear the infected. We can’t see them yet. They are still too far away, hidden by the darkness. The glowing red emergency lights are not strong enough to illuminate them. But their screams are getting louder. And I am constantly reminded that the Oz virus is designed to find life.
Kim is backing away and making sure the gun is loaded. “Let’s go!”
We run down the corridor. It is a short distance to the security doors that separate the holding cells from the actual prison. And in this section of the corridor there are no more holding cells. No more offices. No more rooms of any kind. It is just a concrete corridor. A concrete trap. A concrete tomb.
We arrive at the security doors. There is a keypad next to the doors, built into the wall.
“What’s the code?” Jack says.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “We didn’t think this part through.”
And I want to curse myself and slap myself for being so stupid.
Kim presses some buttons on the keypad at random. It does not work.
Invalid code. Try again.
She tries again.
Invalid code.
“This is no use,” I say. “You’ll never guess the code.”
“I’m not guessing. General Spears gave me codes to access certain areas. But they’re not working. They must’ve been changed.”
Next to the keypad is a barcode scanner.
“Break it,” Jack says. “We have to break the door down.”
We start kicking the door because we are starting to panic and we are scared out of our minds. But just like trying to guess the code, kicking the door is absolutely pointless. It was designed to withstand this kind of abuse.
“Try the gun,” Jack says.
Kim flicks the safety off and raises the gun. “Stand back. Cover your eyes.”
I stand back and turn away and Kim fires two point blank rounds into the lock of the door. But nothing happens.
The door is bullet proof.
I look over my shoulder. I still can’t see the infected but the noises are getting louder. The darkness seems to intensify. It’s almost as if the darkness is pressing against us, trying to hold us down. I am fully expecting the infected to appear, illuminated by the red glow of the emergency lighting.
But there is nothing. Not yet.
No movement.
No shadows cast on the cold concrete walls.
I place my hand against the wall and for some reason I start thinking about the weather outside. And since we’re in the middle of the Australian Outback, the odds are that outside, it’s unbearably sunny and unbearably hot, with hardly any clouds in the sk
y.
I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun.
It feels like a lifetime ago.
It was the day Maria and I were following the tank tracks.
The day the tracks disappeared.
We thought we had messed up. We thought we had wandered off into the desert for no goddamn reason. I didn’t tell Maria at the time, but I honestly thought we were going to die of thirst. Or heat stroke.
We would go mad first.
And then we would probably kill each other.
A mercy killing.
A suicide pact.
This entire scenario played through my mind in an instant when those tank tracks disappeared.
We’d thought the tracks would lead us somewhere. To a base. A military installation. But they had led us to a ditch of severed hands. Severed hands tattooed with barcodes. They had led us to a metal pole that was actually a barcode reader. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that someone had cut off all those hands and forearms, just to try and gain access to the Fortress. It sounds desperate and ruthless. Psychotic.
The whole thing reeked of the man in the gas mask. It was sick and twisted and insane. These are his trademarks. Insanity is his modus operandi.
We didn’t realize it right away, but we had found the Fortress. The metal pole was a barcode reader. It was the entrance.
And from there we entered the Fortress. We descended down into hell. And I haven’t seen the sun or the sky or the moon since that day, and I probably won’t see the sky ever again.
I can’t get the memory of the severed hands out of my head. Fingers clawed in rigor mortis and covered in dried dark blood that was mixed in with red dust. Each hand, each forearm had a tattoo of a barcode just above the palm, on the inside of the wrist. This was the person’s key to the kingdom. Their ticket to asylum, to safety from the Oz virus. But ultimately, the barcode on the wrist sealed their fate and guaranteed their death.
The barcode on the wrist.
Maybe George had a barcode tattooed on his wrist.
Everyone down here had one. Even Ben had one. Civilians. Scavengers.
But George is no more. He is gone. Completely gone.
Kim.
Kim throws her weight into the door and then realizes that the door is not going to budge. She doubles over, breathing hard.
