by James Harden
And Thomas takes a step back.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he says. “I don’t have to justify myself to you. You’re just a kid. What the hell do you know!?”
We have both been yelling. We are both being way too loud. And Thomas has been firing the shotgun. He has been wasting ammo and drawing attention.
High above us, the massive chandelier moves slightly and swings gently back and forth.
Something moves upstairs, and this in turn causes the chandelier to move and twinkle. As a reflex, Thomas points the shotgun up at the chandelier, and the torch on the underside of the barrel is reflected in all those shards of crystal.
An infected man emerges from somewhere upstairs. It is running fast. It practically launches itself off the top of the stairs, towards us.
Thomas shoots the infected man, causing its head to explode, like he just took a shot at a ripe watermelon. The infected man falls down the stairs and then Thomas turns the gun back on me.
And then he pulls the trigger.
But he is out of ammo.
And I say, “You’re a goddamn monster.”
And I want to kill him.
I imagine myself killing him with my bare hands. Strangling him. Choking him.
But none of these fantasies come to fruition.
Another infected person runs down the stairs. It always surprises me how fast they can move. They look like death, they look like corpses. Yet they can move so freakishly fast.
Thomas does not have a chance to react. He is looking at the shotgun. He is wondering why he has run out of ammo. He doesn’t even see the infected man coming for him, and I don’t warn him.
Thomas is tackled to the ground. He is bitten. He is being eaten alive.
And I watch.
Thomas tries to fight it off, but he can’t. He is helpless.
His neck has been ripped open and then he reaches out for me. “Help me! Oh God, help!”
On the ground, near my feet, I find a metal stake that had previously been used to secure a dead body to the floor.
I pick up the metal stake and I drive it through the skull of the infected person.
I kick the now lifeless corpse off of Thomas.
And Thomas is now holding his throat. He is trying desperately to stop the bleeding but it is utterly hopeless, and I think that maybe this is some kind of sick poetic justice.
I think about putting the metal stake through his head. But I don’t. I watch him bleed to death.
I watch him take his last breath. I watch him choke on his own blood.
And I start to believe in some of the things the man in the gas mask said to me. I realize that we can never go back to the way things were. I realize that I will never go back.
We have to go forward.
We have to create a new world. A better world. A stronger world.
Eventually, I raise the metal stake and jam it through Thomas’s skull just to make sure he doesn’t turn.
Chapter 37
I leave the metal stake in Thomas’s head and I run out of the room and out of the house. I run right into Kenji.
He grabs me and holds me tight.
I bury my head into his chest and I want it to be over.
“Get behind me,” Kenji says. “This place is not safe.”
I see a horde of infected from across the arena, pouring up and out of the catacombs, coming towards the house.
Ben and Jack are chaining the front gates of the compound shut. Hopefully this will buy us some time.
Jack makes his way over to us and makes sure I’m all right. “Damn it, Rebecca. You can’t just run off like that. What the hell were you thinking?”
The truth is, I wasn’t thinking. I was angry and I’m still angry and I wanted revenge.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I was so angry. He had no right to do what he did. No right.”
“We need to move through the house,” Kenji says. “Go out the rear. The main corridor that leads out of the arena and out of the labyrinth is just beyond this compound.”
“Where’s Thomas?” Ben asks.
“He’s dead,” I say.
“You killed him?”
I shake my head.
We move back inside the mansion.
Jack inhales sharply at the smell and at the sight of all the dead bodies. “What is this place?”
“Target practice,” Kenji says.
“What?”
Kenji points at a corpse nailed to the wall. “See that yellow sticky note?”
Sure enough, on the chest of the corpse, is a sticky note. A blank, yellow sticky note.
In the middle of the sticky note is a bullet hole. Sometimes two bullet holes. Other corpses had playing cards stuck to their chests.
Ace of Spades. Ace of Hearts.
The bullet holes are right through the picture.
“They use the sticky notes and the playing cards as target practice,” Kenji explains. “You hit the card, it’s a kill shot. If you miss too many times, you’re off the team.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jack says. “This is madness.”
We move past Thomas’s body and no one sees him amongst all the other dead bodies and I don’t point him out because I don’t know why.
The further we move through the house I begin to realize that the sticky notes and playing cards are mostly located on the forehead of the corpses.
A headshot is the only way.
“We need to be careful,” I say. “There were infected people on the upper floors.”
“Yeah,” Ben says, as he removes his cowboy style revolver from his holster. “We know. We heard and saw the gunshots.”
We make our way towards the back of the house. We climb the back wall of the compound, taking care to avoid the razor wire. Ben doesn’t even need to use his revolver. We enter the main corridor that will lead us out of the arena and into the research labs.
We are so close.
“This corridor leads to the research lab,” Kenji says. “We’re almost there.”
We start running and I can’t believe it. We have reached the express lane that leads out of the labyrinth.
Kenji leads the way as we navigate each fork in the corridor. Making sure we alternate. Right then left. Ignoring every little side passage.
Eventually, we can see the bright spot of the exit. We run towards it.
Chapter 38
We step through the exit, leaving the dark world of the labyrinth behind us. We enter the research facility.
Or so we think.
We are in a room.
A plain room.
On the other side of the room, about fifteen feet away, directly opposite where we are standing, is what appears to be an electronic door. The electronic door is made of glass, but the glass is really, really thick. So I’m guessing it’s not regular glass. I’m guessing it’s reinforced.
Apart from the ultra-thick glass, it’s the kind of door you find at the entrance to a supermarket. But there is no one standing on the other side, waiting to greet us.
The sign above the electronic door reads:
Quarantine and Decontamination Facility.
We look through the glass doors into the next room. The next room contains a few bunk beds. A few desks. A few computers. A small kitchen. A bookshelf. A television.
The room almost looks like a small apartment.
This is in stark contrast to the room we find ourselves in now. The room we find ourselves in now is completely bare. Completely empty.
Plain white tiles on the floor.
The walls on the side of the room contain large, one-way mirrors. Behind us is the entrance to the labyrinth. And this is now sliding shut.
And now it is closed.
And now we are locked in a room that is called the ‘Quarantine and Decontamination Facility’.
In the next room over, I can see the television through the glass door. The television turns on all by itself. The screen flickers and comes
to life. It appears to be hooked into the security cameras. And the security camera is showing a live feed.
And on this live feed, I can see Maria.
She is tied to a chair. Her mouth is gagged.
And there she is.
Alone.
Alive.
I don’t see the man in the gas mask, but I know he is near.
I call out to Maria but she can’t hear me.
She is sitting in the middle of the Control Center. In front of what looks like a massive cinematic screen. She has a front row seat. But the roles have been reversed because she is not part of the audience. She is the star. She is sitting on the stage. Center stage.
All she needs now is a spotlight.
A close up.
All she needs now is for someone to say, “Camera rolling.”
And then for someone to yell, “Action.”
I can’t let that happen.
“Where is that?” Jack says. “Where is she?”
“The Control Center,” I say. “We have to get her. We have to cut her loose. Find a place to hide.”
Jack is smiling. And I suddenly realize he hasn’t seen Maria in over two weeks.
“Let’s go,” Kenji says. “Quietly.”
Ben moves up to the electronic doors and tries to open them with brute force but they don’t budge. He takes out his revolver and points it at the glass and stands back. But before he can fire a shot, he is interrupted by a recorded message.
A soothing female voice says, “Quarantine and decontamination procedure initiated.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I ask.
Kenji and Jack are looking around the room, trying to figure out where the recorded message is coming from.
“Quarantine and decontamination procedure will commence in five seconds,” the female voice says.
Ben kicks the electronic door but again it does not budge.
Jack moves over to the one-way mirror and kicks it. But the glass does not break.
“Four seconds.”
Ben points his revolver at the mirror. “Stand back, kid.”
He fires the gun.
Nothing happens. It doesn’t even crack. There’s hardly a mark.
The mirrors are also reinforced.
They are designed to withstand abuse.
This whole room is designed to withstand abuse.
“Three seconds.”
Ben slides the gun back in its holster.
On the ceiling we notice small holes opening up. They are spaced evenly apart. Like a grid.
“Two seconds.”
“What do we do?” I ask.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Kenji says.
“One second.”
Water is sprayed from the holes in the ceiling. It is high pressured. It stings my skin. I shut my eyes tight and I hold my breath. After about a minute the water cuts out.
But then the room begins filling with gas.
I continue to hold my breath, but eventually I need to breathe. Eventually I start sucking in the gas uncontrollably.
And my throat tickles and I start to cough and it is hard to swallow.
Is the gas poisonous?
Is it lethal?
Is this a gas chamber? A death chamber?
The guys are all doubled over, coughing and choking and dying, just like me.
I can’t believe we walked right into a gas chamber.
Suddenly my arms feel heavy.
My eyes feel heavy.
But I can still breathe.
And maybe this gas is not lethal.
No. It’s not. We’d be dead by now if it was.
I realize the gas is a kind of knock out gas.
An anesthetic.
A sedative.
Suddenly, the electronic door opens and a dark figure is standing at the entrance. I can’t see their face. Or their eyes. This someone grabs me. I can’t see who it is through all the gas but their grip is iron tight. And there is no point in struggling.
It is the man in the gas mask.
He pulls me into the next room and throws me on the ground.
He closes the door, locking Ben and Kenji and Jack inside the gas chamber. We are separated and they are trapped and I am alone. I am face to face with the man in the gas mask.
A monster.
The devil.
“Do not fight it,” he says. “You will not win. Give yourself into it.”
I ignore him and I fight.
I fight the gas, the anesthetic, the sedative. But it is no use. It is utterly pointless.
As I begin to pass out, I hear the watch beep. It tells me that I am dying and that I do not have long. And neither does Maria.
The suffering will soon end.
And maybe it’s for the best.
All of a sudden, I am so unbelievably sleepy and I can no longer fight.
You will not win.
He’s right. I am no match for this man, this psychopath, this reptile, this snake, this monster.
I am no match for the devil.
Chapter 39
I wake to the sounds of a man choking. I wake to the sounds of a man dying.
He is dying painfully.
I open my eyes. My vision is blurry and unfocused but this is what I see…
I see the man in the gas mask standing over a soldier. One of the men from the death squad. There’s two other dead soldiers close by. The man in the gas mask raises his machete and decapitates the death squad member easily. Quickly. The machete sliced through, like a hot knife through butter.
I have no idea where I am. I have no idea where this psychopath has taken me.
Did he leave the others in the decontamination room?
What about Maria?
How long have I been asleep for?
I look around, trying to take in my surroundings. Each time I move my head, each time I move my eyes, it takes a lifetime for my vision to come back into focus.
But when my eyes finally do focus, I wish they hadn’t.
I appear to be in a morgue.
To my left is the freezer where they store the bodies. To my right are the stainless steel beds they use to conduct autopsies on. Above me are the blindingly bright fluorescent lights. In front of me is the man in the gas mask.
At his feet are three dead soldiers.
And me.
I scurry back on my hands and ass. I move against the wall.
Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
The man in the gas mask stands tall. He is breathing hard, his scar covered chest is heaving.
I am reminded once again that killing is hard work.
My watch beeps at me and I have only one hour left.
One hour.
I try and figure out how long I’ve been asleep for, but it is hard to think. My mind is slow and sluggish, and simple arithmetic is the hardest thing in the world right now.
This is my brain on sedatives. This is my brain on general anesthetic.
The man in the gas mask looks over at me and sees that I’m awake. “It is almost time,” he says.
I open my mouth to speak but my throat is unbelievably dry.
Blood drips from the blade of the machete and is swallowed by the pools of blood on the floor.
“Time for what?” I finally say. “Where am I?”
“Time to educate the world,” he answers. “To set the people free. To release them from purgatory. To create a new future.”
I am looking at his machete and at the blood dripping rhythmically from the blade. I am looking at the three dead soldiers. Three dead Special Forces soldiers. Members of the General’s death squad. “You know how to fight,” I say. “You’ve had weapons training. And combat training. Where did you learn that?”
He raises the blade of the machete and he appears to study it. I say that he appears to be studying the blade because I can’t be certain, because I can’t see his eyes. He then runs two fingers down the blade. His left forefinger and his left middle fing
er. He does this to wipe the blood away. He does this on both sides.
“And you know about the nano-virus,” I add. “You know that Kim was named Test Subject Zero. You know everything. Who the hell are you?”
He kneels down next to me. His breathing is amplified through the air filters of the gas mask. It is calm and steady.
“I was taught by the best,” he says. “Better men than I. Stronger men. I was taught by the best and my life depended on it. So I learnt quickly.”
In my mind’s eye, I see a school. A university. For psychopaths. Taught by psychopaths.
“Do you know the difference between two warriors?” he asks. “Two soldiers? Soldiers that are essentially the same. The same height. The same weight. The same strength. They carry the same rifles. And the rifles use the same bullets, made to the same exact specifications. What is the difference? Who wins the fight? Who wins the battle? Who wins the war? Who survives?”
I shake my head because it sounds pointless. It is pointless. I don’t have time for this. I need to get out of here and I need to find Maria.
The man in the gas mask slams his fist into the wall above my head, and he cracks the tiles. “Answer me!”
The force of the blow makes me flinch. “No one wins,” I say. “There are no winners. War is pointless.”
“Who survives?”
The man in the gas mask is challenging me. I don’t know why. And I don’t know why this matters. I don’t know why I am still alive. I can’t figure it out. I can’t put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
“What are they fighting for?” I ask.
“Their lives,” he answers. “Their homes. Their future. They fight for justice. They fight because their lives depend on it. And in doing so, they fight with every fiber of their being and every ounce of their strength. This is how I learnt to fight. This is why I learnt to fight.”
He is telling me that he fights for:
My life.
My future.
My home.
My family.
My long lost friends.
“And this is why you are fighting now,” he says. “For your life. Your future. Your home. Your family. Your friends.”
And I think to myself that maybe he has a point.
“So what is the difference between two warriors?” he asks again.
