by Thomas, Jack
I was grabbed by the ankle and fell to my side. My head slammed against the ground. “NO!” I heard Jason’s voice for a split second before everything went dark.
Day 3
Jason
This hell was much more than any of us could have predicted. If I would have stood alongside my brother on the way to the base he would not have been caught by the runner and he would not have lost consciousness. He rested at the infirmary while he recovered. The rest of us went right to the development stages of our plan for survival.
Every survivor that made it to the military base was kept in the infirmary. The infirmary was one of the first structures in the base large enough to house everyone. We did not want to risk anyone’s life because of the strong possibility of infected roaming the base. Because of this, we decided to wait the daylight out in the infirmary.
While waiting for the sunlight to shine above us, I couldn’t help but replay all the events that already occurred on the way to the base. I waited at the gate for my brother but I wasn’t out there with him. The runner grabbed a hold of his ankle and they both toppled over to their side. The damage he took to the head was due to the sudden impact when he hit the group and immediately caused him to lose consciousness.
Marcus and I went back out of the base to assist. We shot and killed any of the infected near my brother until it was clear enough to pick him up. I lifted him up by the shoulder and rested his whole weight on my back. Marcus stood on the defensive and protected me on the way back to the other side of the gate. The infected closed in on us from all directions but Marcus kept them at arm’s length with his excellent display of marksmanship. The path he cut led us back to the base again and the soldiers rushed the gates closed when we arrived.
If I remained next to him then we would have been together in that moment and it wouldn’t have occurred, but I went to someone else’s aid and the result was as expected, a disaster.
Farpoint Army Base
Idon’t remember having felt tired. I was too worried whether or not my brother was going to regain consciousness, but I caught myself waking up next to his infirmary bed, so it was a given that I did fall asleep at some point. All the other infirmary beds were being used for rest and relaxation.
Marcus and his cronies chose to wait for the light to scout for life, food and weapons. I was more worried of the possibility that everyone on the base before us was already infected and just waiting for an opportunity to show themselves.
The infirmary was just the first floor in a three story medical building. I walked outside to the sun already lighting the sky up. I must have slept on that chair a few hours before I woke up again. Based on the position of the sun it recently came up so the day just begun. Many people were gathered outside, in the front, talking and relieved they were in a ‘safe’ place, although there was no such thing as coexistence between safety and the infected. Marcus and some of the other soldiers handed out food they scavenged from the nearby facilities and some they managed to bring with them. There were still a large number of soldiers unaccounted for that did not make the trip to the base with us, but no one addressed that particular issue, so I chalked it off as just another ‘mission’ they went on.
“Hey, you, what’s your name?” Marcus said. He nodded his head when I looked over so that I would know he called me. “What’s your name?” he repeated now in front of me.
“Jason…” I couldn’t remember whether I forgot to tell him my name, or if he forgot to remember my name.
“Jason. Right... Thanks for all the help yesterday. I know it was rough out there, but I’m glad your brother is at least somewhere safe to recover. I wanted to thank you earlier but I was a bit busy.” He was a lot less serious than he was the day before. The same cloud of relaxation that overtook everyone else took him over too.
“It’s fine. I was forced to help by the circumstances. Didn’t plan to let anyone be left behind because one person couldn’t do things right. I did the best I could, you know?” I attempted to humble myself although I did have a sense of accomplishment to have stood so well by actual freedom fighters.
“Well I appreciate the help. Some of the guys and I are going to secure all the facilities we didn’t get to reach when we searched for food. The storage has to be near and we need to locate it.” He pointed his finger to a table on the side of the infirmary building. “I left a gun over there for you in case you want to come along. Don’t worry about your brother. We left our expert medic with him. I will understand if you choose not to tag along.” He gave me a pat on the back and walked off to speak with some of the soldiers he was going to leave with.
At the table there was one gun left. It was a fully automatic assault rifle, similar to the one I used the day before. I picked it up and walked over to Marcus and the other soldiers.
Before they noticed I was headed their way, they were having the same conversation the survivors were about the soldiers that were missing. Somewhere between when we left the building and reached the base something occurred to the other half of the soldiers that Marcus gathered. They shortened the conversation and dropped the topic when I went over. They wanted to keep the soldier talk away from the ‘common’ survivor.
“Alright, let’s go,” Marcus said. He led the way and we followed.
There were four of us, me included. The goal was to find the food storage building and clear the base of any infected. Although the lack of life in the base was a bit eerie, I was curious to know what happened to everyone.
The base was huge. Although I didn’t know precisely how huge, I did know that we spend the first half of the search walking to buildings they didn’t already search when I was asleep. We walked a few minutes before we reached a building they did not searched yet.
Marcus opened the front door and stepped inside first. He stopped a few feet into the building. “Clear!” he said.
The next soldier went in. He walked in further than Marcus did. “Clear!” he said.
I stood there for a second and the one soldier left outside nudged me. I was being treated like one of the soldiers rather than just some random guy who wanted to help out. I moved in and went a bit further than the second soldier. I scanned the area and kept the pattern up. “Clear!”
The final soldier entered and walked the furthest in.
The rooms in the building were limited, all of which had no door with exception for one that did. From the outside, the building looked like it was several stories tall but from the inside it was just one floor with a tall ceiling. Chairs were laid out in rows; they all faced a stage with a small podium in the center. It was some kind of conference or briefing room.
At the far end of the main room the only other door rested. We made sure nothing was in between the chairs on the way to the door and we gathered behind the door.
Marcus opened it and went inside. He looked around for a moment and came right back out. “Let’s get to the next building, this place is empty,” Marcus said.
We left the conference building.
We searched a few more buildings the same way. One of those buildings even included the private rooms of the highest rank officers of the base, but they were insignificant.
On our search for the food storage facilities we came across the armory. The name was written on the door, large, in bold black words. Everyone smiled in excitement and looked around at each other. Once again Marcus led and opened the door. The smile on Marcus’s face as well as my face and that of the other two soldiers all faded instantly when we found no guns and no ammunition on the other side. It was cleaned out.
“This makes no sense. There are always extras. It’s impossible to assign every soldier one weapon and have none left,” Marcus said. His eyebrows arched surprised at the fact that the impossibility of a base dry of weaponry was no longer an impossibility but rather the current predicament.
We all questioned where the guns went, but I took it a step further. My brother had a bad habit of explaining things to
himself to know whether he understood them or not. Many times he applied this to figure out the odds and probabilities of situations. Sometimes he would even do it out loud, louder than anyone would want him to. Consider it an annoying character trait. I took a page from his book and applied it to the situation. He questioned everything and guessed the answer for anything he didn’t know, so I questioned everything and guessed the answers I didn’t know.
Rather than where the guns went, I asked why the guns went. If the number of soldiers is always less than the number of guns, maybe they weren’t taken for the sake of the soldiers but for the sake of the guns.
What if the guns were moved to a different part of the base for the convenience of a smaller group of soldiers, still alive in the base? That means they would still be present in the base, but in a location unknown to us. It would take us longer to track them down but we would find life along with the weapons.
What if the base was evacuated due to a threat we were not yet aware of, and that is why they were gone? If this was true then it served true that we brought a large group of survivors to their pending danger or starvation.
Marcus was infuriated that the plans weren’t going the way we all expected. He was incredibly bothered that there weren’t any weapons and that the possibility that there wasn’t food for the same reasons was the same. He was genuinely worried for everyone else rather than himself. “Let’s keep moving. We will search all these buildings later. We need to locate the food storage, which is more times than not, directly next to the Dining Hall,” he told us and took off with no regard to whether we followed or not, although we obviously did.
We read the names on all the doors as we walked by them and found nothing relatively important. We still made our way through some of the larger structures such as the vehicle hangers but they were emptied out too. Since nothing electrical worked, the vehicles must have been moved prior to the blackout which could have served as a sign that the virus struck first in the town, and the blackout came after.
The bunkers were where the sleeping quarters for the general military population existed. A great sign for the future; the extensive fortification that came with bunker designs would allow a safe location for the survivors to sleep and exist without worry of outside invasion while they slept. And even if there was outside invasion at any other time of the day, they could just retreat to the bunkers and use it as a defensive shield and strategic advantage on the invaders. Two words; bomb proof!
Finally, down several buildings we could see ‘Dining Area’ written on a building, similar to the font to the ones on the doors, just much larger and on the building itself rather than the door.
Excitement once again rushed through all our bodies and joy overcame us. One of the soldiers ran off ahead. He raced to the Dining Hall but before he could get close enough a loud pop toppled his lifeless body to the floor.
“TAKE COVER!” Marcus yelled.
We all took cover on the side of the nearest building.
“Sniper…” he said under his breath in a bothered and angry tone. He knew something related to this that he didn’t immediately share. His face scrunched up while he pieced what he didn’t already know into the overall picture he built in his mind.
The rest of us were confused as you’d expect.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’ll explain later. We need to get closer to that building,” Marcus said. “Someone check around the other corner and tell me if it’s clear on that side.”
The other soldier did as Marcus said and walked to the other end of the wall to check.
Marcus attempted to peek around the corner of the wall he leaned against. Another loud pop followed a split second after he looked round the corner and the bullet that was fired barely missed Marcus and hit the ground further back from where he was. He pulled back and leaned against the wall again to avoid getting shot. “There are probably more of them in the building. We need to act quickly. Is it clear?”
“I believe so. It doesn’t look like this side is covered,” the soldier responded after he returned from the other end.
“Alright, follow my lead, be careful and quiet. We will need to be as invisible as possible. I am under the impression that whoever took the shot isn’t alone, and they might know exactly how to keep us away if we aren’t careful.”
Marcus turned the corner and kept close to the building as he led in the direction of the Dining Hall. He became more aware of our surroundings the closer we came to our destination.
I became paranoid. Now, we faced people with guns rather than just mindless infected. I didn’t like this turn of events. I was getting use to being attacked at close range which made defense as easy as ‘Keep Away’, but now I risked getting shot if I kept away.
The change of route led us past storage buildings. All flat one floor buildings with the entrance chained shut.
We were close to the Dining Hall when a soldier that was originally with Marcus at Morristown walked by a few yards ahead. Marcus reached to grab his weapon and was knocked over the head by the nameless soldier that was with us. I tried to reach for my gun when this happened and the moment I did a gun was put to the back of my head.
“Either your gun or your body is about to hit the ground. Make a choice,” the voice of yet another soldier that was with us at Morristown said.
With that, it all made sense to me. They separated from us when they weren’t noticed and made their way to the base first. The reason I thought of for this was that they planned to confiscate the supplies and keep them for themselves.
Our guns were taken from us.
“Walk with me,” the man with the gun to my head said. He was presumably the leader. He gave the gun to another guy I didn’t even realize was behind me and the one in charged walked by and led the way. Marcus and I followed at gun point. He led us into the Dining Hall where it was basically a high school lunchroom. Tables and chairs all over with a small area to pick up the food.
My first time in a military base’s Dining Hall and all I could think of was that too many places looked identical to it. Other soldiers were being held against their will, tied up against a wall to a handrail. But these soldiers weren’t with us at Morristown. These were other people, people who were already at the base when the traitors arrived. This meant the base wasn’t originally empty. It was being emptied out while we arrived.
“Tie them up with the others,” the man in charge said.
“Richard, what the hell are you doing? Why are you doing this?” Marcus asked angrily. The question was rhetorical. He already pieced everything together.
“I am assuring my survival, Marcus, as well as the survival of these valiant men,” Richard answered. His men wrapped zip ties around our wrists and the handrail against a wall, and we sat there with the rest of the captives.
“Why do you have to take things to the extreme? Why do you behave so irrationally! I trusted your judgment,” Marcus said. His tone and appearance flushed.
“Irrationally? I operate on only the most judicious deductions for my survival and that of the human race. You’re undertaking is considerate and honorable, but this present plight the world faces isn’t a moment that calls for honor. It calls for survival. And we cannot survive long if we are obligated to sustain such a large number of people. The food will deplete. The ammunition will run dry just attempting to teach most of those people how the weapons function. We can’t jeopardize survival in exchange for number. I’m assuring that humanity can stand against this infectious plague.” Richard’s dark soulless eyes stared straight through Marcus while he said this. No remorse or emotion accompanied any of his words. “But I never betrayed your trust, old friend. I did exactly what you knew in your heart of hearts I would do, survive.”
“What do you plan to do with everyone?” Marcus insisted on further answers.
Richard walked over to us and took a knee in front of Marcus. “I sent one of my men to remove the chains from the st
orage rooms.” He smiled at Marcus. “These brave men here,” Richard spoke of the other captives. “They placed their infected soldiers into those storage rooms. The plague will be release and it will cleanse the base of all weakness and filter out the strong that can stand alone. I will bring those that still stand along with the rest of my men and together we will rid the base of all infection.”
“That’s messed up,” I thought out loud.
“Who is this insect you brought with you, Marcus? He is a child still. Is the bottom of the barrel so deep?”
I eagerly waited for my brother to walk through the door and point out how the “typical villain” always reveals his plan to the good guys. How expected.
Richard stood up and walked away. “I’d love to stay and chat, but duty calls.” He signaled one of his men to keep an eye on us while the rest of his men followed him out.
Marcus focused on Richard as he left the Dining Area. He was going to get everyone killed, everyone Marcus fought so hard to protect. My brother was one of these people and to make things worse, he did not even have the consciousness to defend himself.
“I should have known he would sink this low. This is my fault,” Marcus said. He threw a small tantrum and slammed his shoulders against the wall in anger.
“How could this possibly be your fault? People have random reactions in bad situations. I’m sure this isn’t an exception to that rule. There was no way for you to know.” I tried to understand how Marcus felt but I honestly did not know what was going through his mind.
“I did know. I knew this would be his exact reaction and I allowed myself to have faith in a person that no longer exists inside him.” Marcus lowered his gaze to the floor. The fury in his eyes died out.
