by Jack Hunt
THIS IS IT, we are going to die.
I truly thought they were going to execute us there on the spot.
“On your knees.” That was the first thing we heard as we made our way past the opening in the wall. Strobe lights blinded us. We didn’t know what hit us. They had obviously heard the gunfire and were ready. All of us were tossed to the ground and dirty cotton bags were pushed over our heads, sending everything into complete darkness.
I’m not sure how long we were on our knees but it felt like an eternity. In that time, we heard gunfire. Short bursts followed by an explosion. Through the bag I could make out the silhouette of figures. How many were there? Maybe ten?
They yanked us to our feet and pushed us forward. I stumbled, not able to see where the hell we were going.
“Please tell me this is not part of some weird satanic sex ritual. As I want to give you forewarning. I have a seriously bad case of the crabs,” Baja said. “You do not want to come near me.”
“Shut the hell up and keep moving.”
We must have walked for two miles. They led us down a series of tunnels as I could see the tracks just below the bag.
When they finally lifted the bags from our heads I found myself squinting hard. A bright light was being flashed in front of my face.
“Thought you were going to take some more, didn’t you?”
“You have this all wrong.”
“Really? Put him in the chair.”
I was shoved back into a seat, unable to see my captors. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the world around me because of the damn light they were flashing in my eyes. I could feel the heat coming off it, warming my face. Then, I was pulled back. A wet rag went over my face. I could barely breathe as it was but things were about to get a lot worse. They began pouring water over the top. The assholes were waterboarding me.
There is no way to explain what it’s like except that you are slowly drowning. Every time I would catch my breath, more water would rush over my face. I was coughing and spluttering as they brought me back up and ripped the wet rag off me. I blinked hard, trying to catch a breath so I could tell them that I wasn’t the enemy, but it was useless. The clothes weren’t exactly working in my favor.
They tipped me three times. All the while I could hear them doing the same to Jess, Izzy, and no doubt the others. I wasn’t going to die at the hands of someone who I didn’t even know. I held my breath on the next rotation and when I came back I shouted one name.
“Wren.”
They paused.
“What did you say?”
“I want to speak to Wren.”
Now if you thought that was my ticket out of this hellish Guantánamo Bay nightmare, it wasn’t. That’s when the fists started. Thankfully it didn’t last long. Finally they stopped but only when commanded to.
“That’s enough.”
I spat a big glob of blood onto the floor and they pulled back the light so I could finally see who was giving me a smackdown.
“How do you know Wren?”
“I knew Birdy.”
“Knew?”
I cast a glance to my right and to my astonishment I noticed that Tanner and his three men weren’t anywhere to be seen. The only ones besides me were Ben, Baja, Elijah, and the two girls.
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“Who? There’s more of you?” one of them asked.
I shook my head, trying my hardest to figure out what that smell was. It smelled like cigar smoke and fries.
“How do you know Birdy?” a female voice asked but I couldn’t see her.
I was given another smack on the side of the face. “Answer her!”
“Rowan, that’s enough.” The muscular guy who was enjoying giving me a good licking was tall, strong, with cropped hair and the one smoking the cigar. I peered past him to see a girl step out of the darkness. She was wearing a black leather jacket, tight black jeans, combat boots and had long light hair.
“You were saying…” she began.
“He told me to find someone by the name of Wren, is that you?”
She didn’t confirm or deny.
“Did he have a message?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
My eyes dropped.
She looked at the man they called Rowan.
“I say we kill them now,” Rowan brought up a Glock. His finger shifted near the trigger.
“Look, we are not like them. We were brought in a few days ago. Birdy showed me what they’re doing.”
“So let me guess, you are here to let us know that everything is dandy now? Please, let me end him now.”
“Stand down,” the girl said. Rowan scowled and then walked away.
“I don’t expect you to believe me. If I was in your shoes, I would probably put a bullet in us too but I’m telling the truth.”
“You said there were others with you, where are they?”
I scanned the room. “I don’t know. There were three others in our group and another nine.”
“We took care of the other nine.”
I swallowed hard.
“Put the rags back over them.”
“No. Hey.” We tried to stop them but she had made up her mind. Thrown back into darkness we were dragged to our feet and led out. I tried to figure out where we were being taken but all I could see was the ground. I was pretty sure they led us around in circles a bit to disorient us before we were thrown into the back of a truck and driven away.
When they finally tossed us out, we heard them drive away. It was silent except for the rustling of one of us.
“Baja?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Ben.”
One by one we let the others know we were still there. The skin around my wrists ached from the zip ties. I didn’t waste any time getting out of them. I pushed my hands underneath my feet and stood up. Then tugging on the ties until they were as tight as they could go, I slammed my fists against my body. In a matter of seconds they snapped. Off came the rags and I could now see where we were. We were at the top of a large multi-story parking garage. Once the others were out of their restraints I went over to the edge.
Baja tossed his broken restrains in a moment of frustration. “They just dumped us off in the middle of nowhere. Those bastards.”
“Well, you certainly can’t blame them. Would you have trusted us?” I replied.
“At least they let us live,” Jess said, getting back to her feet.
“Live?” Baja stammered. “News flash. We don’t have our weapons and we are in the middle of New York surrounded by whatever the fuck those creepy ass things were… and it’s pissing with rain. Which reminds me, what the hell were they?”
I shook my head. “No idea, but we need to find something to arm ourselves with.”
A large full moon lit up the darkened streets. Smoke from fires spiraled up. There were no vehicles on the roof. A ramp went down to the next level but without a weapon we were likely to wind up dead long before we found anything.
“You think they’ve mutated?” Izzy asked.
“It’s possible. It was a biological weapon that started this shitfest,” I replied.
“Well, what now?”
Ben headed down the ramp, not paying any attention to what we were saying.
“You are kidding me?” Baja said, following behind him.
“We are going to settle in for the night and get out of this rain. Find a car, a van, anything and get inside. There’s no use prowling around the streets. We have no idea of where we are or what’s out there. And after seeing those spider freaks, I for one, would prefer to keep my limbs intact.”
Down on the second level there were six vehicles. A collection of small sedans. We checked each of them to see if the doors would open. None of them did. I was about to smash one of the windows when Ben continued down to the next level. The sound of snarling could be heard nearby. We knew we didn’t have long. It was hard to know if these thing
s could see us or if they were the same as the other Z’s we had encountered.
“Over here,” Jess called out toward a white van.
“Oh yeah, cause I always wanted to get into a creepy ass serial killer van.”
“What the hell are you on about?” Elijah said.
“You know. White vans.”
Right then I turned at the sound of shattering glass. Ben had launched a large chunk of rubble through the back window of a dark blue Chevy Suburban SUV. “This will do.”
He cracked it open and we all bundled inside. There was no safe way to do it. Of course we could have spent the next hour checking all the vehicles to find one that was open but the chances of that were pretty slim. The sound of those freaks was getting even closer. We filled the open window with pieces of material that we ripped off the seats. We would rotate shifts. It wasn’t an ideal situation but we had our first weapon, a tire iron.
The bones in my neck made a cracking noise as I rolled my head around trying to work out the tension. As we tried to get sleep that night I found myself waking up every few minutes. Panic clawed away at my insides. I couldn’t get the sight of those biters out of my mind. I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Garret on the library roof in Salt Lake City.
The infection had been created. A biological weapon but for what purpose? I wished I had asked him more questions. To think that our own government had created this was a tough pill to swallow. But the realization that they would withhold the cure seemed even more outrageous. Would people really do that? Long before the world fell apart, I remembered hearing about treatments for cancer. Natural plants that could administer pain relief, and talk of cures. But like anything, if pharmaceutical companies couldn’t make money from it, it would never see the light of day. Then there were those who said that free energy was available but large corporations would never allow it to happen.
The truth was, humanity didn’t need an apocalypse to demonstrate their selfish need to gain and control others. It existed long before the infected showed up.
Birdy’s words echoed in my mind. They want to develop and sell the cure.
As I drifted back into a slumber I could hear Elijah and Ben talking.
“You think you’ll ever return to Salt Lake City?” Elijah asked.
“I have no reason to go back.”
The thought of returning to Castle Rock hadn’t crossed my mind. Even if we could return, the place was devastated. The only reason it felt like home was because of the people around me. Beyond that it was just another town in the middle of nowhere. My eyes fluttered and I saw Izzy looking at me.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Some days I’m not sure.”
“How did he die?”
She was referring to Dax. I let out a sigh and told her. Her eyes welled with tears which made me choke up.
“Do you miss him?” she asked.
“Every day. Him, Specs. So much has changed since this began.”
Izzy leaned her head back against the window and banged it ever so softly. “I wished I’d told him what I felt when he was still around. You know, I just couldn’t seem to find the right time or words.”
“Is there ever a right time?”
“Do you have any regrets?” she asked.
I thought back to Danielle, then cast a glance over at Jess who was asleep.
I was about to respond when the window behind Izzy shattered. Shards of glass shot in every direction. The entire van began rocking as she started fighting for her life against a Z. It dragged her out through the window, trying to bite into her. I was still processing what the hell was happening when Elijah leapt out of the back wielding the tire iron and began beating on that thing. It screeched like an injured animal as he turned its head into mush.
“We need to move. There’ll be more coming.”
When Elijah hauled Izzy up, she was bleeding at the neck.
“Have you been bitten?”
Ben pushed her into the light coming from the moon without a moment’s hesitation. We didn’t know if the bite of these new mutations would speed up the process of changing.
“It’s okay, it’s just glass.”
Glass had embedded in her neck and for a few brief seconds we all feared the worst. Elijah didn’t waste any time. He went to the next vehicle and smashed the back window, unlocked the door, and fumbled around in the back. When he rose up he tossed Baja a tire iron then moved on to the next. Five minutes later all of us were packing. It didn’t make us feel any safer but at least we had something. And right now that was better than nothing.
We ventured down to the third level, searching for a stairwell to get out of there. That’s when Ben spotted an elevator.
“Give me a hand.”
“There’s no power, Ben,” Izzy said.
“Just help.”
They shimmed open the elevator and we peered up and down the long dark shaft. Thick wire and iron rungs went down into what we could only imagine was where the elevator was.
“I’m not going in there,” Jess said.
“It’s just for tonight.”
I didn’t know she was scared of enclosed places but the alternative wasn’t any better. We squeezed through the envelope-thick gap and climbed down the sides until we found ourselves on top of it. That’s where we slept that night. Hidden away inside an elevator shaft. The smell of piss and metal permeated the air. It was cold and damp inside but it was better than being awoken by the screams of the undead. Without knowing where we were in the city it was the best option we had.
That night I didn’t sleep much. I maybe got an hour tops. I thought about Specs back at the fortress, and how far we had traveled up to that point. There was so much we didn’t know about what our government had planned for the cure. Up to this point we were going on the words of someone who belonged to an unknown group called the Coalition. If they were the same people we had encountered earlier that evening, who knew if they were to be trusted. Time would tell.
I heard a rustle above us. My eyes flicked up along with everyone else’s. None of us were prepared to risk closing our eyes for the remainder of the night. I gripped the tire iron and kept my gaze fixed on the door above.
SHOOTERS
IT WAS early morning when we rolled out of the elevator. We were cold, hungry, and thirsty but alive. Had we not sought shelter inside the elevator shaft or had tire irons for protection, it was very likely we wouldn’t have survived. Over the course of the next hour we carefully navigated our way through what remained of the streets of the Big Apple. It was a hellish amble through disorder and chaos.
The twisted ruins of skyscrapers protruded upwards out of a cloud of smoke.
While the idea of returning to the Coalition, the same people who less than twenty-four hours ago had held guns to our heads and tossed us out into the middle of Z land, might have seemed insane, we had few options. We wouldn’t return to the Hive. Each of us was at our breaking point; tired of running from Z’s and lunatics.
As for me, after the loss of Dax, I could barely see my way through the next hour. Every waking moment felt as meaningless as the next. Meaning? Was it now found in those around us?
The only thing that seemed to make sense now was finding out about the cure. What was keeping these people alive when others were dying? Who were the Coalition?
“Damn, I would kill for a beef burger around about now.”
“Oh, don’t you go there.”
“The smell of onions frying in a pan, melted cheese,” Baja continued.
Elijah picked up a half-chewed leg off the floor. “You’ll have to settle for this.”
Everyone groaned. So how do you navigate your way through a city of the undead? I would like to think it was as easy as blasting Bieber tunes and hoping that Z’s would run for their lives. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. We spent a whole lot of time ducking and diving, hiding behind dumpsters, slipping under vehicles, and climbing up fire escape ladders.
<
br /> It was exhausting. The only thing we were grateful for, was that we hadn’t seen any more of those Z’s that could do freestyle parkour. Whatever the hell they were, they weren’t your typical Z. Ben said that if some people were immune to the infection, perhaps that’s why some of the Z’s had evolved. It all came back to what was the purpose of the biological weapon? Was it simply meant to kill? Mutate? All I knew was I didn’t fancy going up against one of those with a piddling little tire iron. I was beginning to miss my assault rifle.
The only one of us who had visited New York was Ben. He had come here five years ago with his wife. It was meant to be a romantic getaway.
“Okay, so run that by me again. You brought your wife here to wine, dine, and well…” Jess paused to frown. “You decided it would be romantic to take her to a gun shop?”
We all chuckled.
“What can I say, I love me some guns.”
“Amen to that, brother,” Elijah added.
“Maybe the apocalypse did her a favor,” Izzy said.
Ben stopped in his tracks and stared at her in disbelief before continuing on. None of us could believe she’d said that. He shook his head and walked on.
“What? Oh come on, Ben, I’m sorry. Geez, some people.”
Elijah came up alongside Izzy. “Ah, don’t worry about him. He’ll get over it.”
The trek to find this infamous gun shop took us in the direction of downtown Manhattan. Ben told us that not only was it the oldest gun store in New York but that included the United States. It was a place that was hard to miss. It stuck out like a sore thumb, literally. A large silver revolver protruded from the red brick store. It was called Shooters. Of course, Baja heard him wrong and thought he said Hooters. So he was disappointed upon arrival when he was unable to find the scantily clad women in tight tops.
“Shit, and there was me thinking I was going to get my dick wet.”
“In what lifetime, numbnuts?” Izzy said, gazing up at the three-story building. The store itself was on the ground level.
“Sweet cheeks, there is still hope for you and me.”
“Please. I would rather hook up with an Oscar Meyer Wiener.”
“Oh say it isn’t so.”
She pushed past him and he burst into a cackle.
