We Are The Few

by Miranda Stork

  Harris followed her line of sight, giving a rough nod. “I think so. It looks similar to the one back at the headquarters.”

  They marched across to the large, semi-circular metal structure set into the ground with rivets. A few pipes ran from it into the wall and presumably outside, and it stood at least a foot over their heads. A single circuit board was on the wall behind it, filled with complicated-looked switches and dials. “I have no idea how these work,” Freda admitted, widening her eyes as she gazed over to the switches. “Any of you?”

  Only Toby came forward. “I do. We’ve got a smaller one back at the guesthouse. I think there should be a switch that turns off the connection to the grid and…ah! There it is.” Shining his torch closely over the circuit board, he flicked something, and the large metal half-cylinder gave a rumble, something inside it grinding as it came to life. Toby leapt out of the way, nervously striding over to the far end of the basement as he watched, the others moving back only a few metres to stare at the mechanical marvel. Something inside the generator gave another thump, and then a buzzing could be heard, as though something was speeding up and turning quickly. A ‘ding’ went off somewhere at the top of the stairs as a light came on for the entrance to the basement, but unfortunately, nothing in the basement itself.

  Reilly clapped her hands together, her shotgun tucked under one arm, laughing delightedly. “Excellent! Now we can get upstairs and find the records. Toby, we couldn’t have…” She frowned as she turned around to thank Toby for his assistance, watching him as he backed away from the group towards the stairs. At her sudden pause, Freda and Harris both twisted around sharply.

  Toby held his hands up as he took another step backwards, his round face pinched and white as he fixed everyone with a guilt-ridden expression. “I’m sorry,” was all he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I tried to stop Reilly. But I had to do it.”

  “Do what? What did you—” As Harris stepped forwards, his words were cut off by something slamming into the ground around them, so close that it gave off a cold breeze strong enough to whip their hair from their faces.

  Freda put a hand out to feel around them, frantically sliding her fingers over the cool, solid surface she found beneath her touch. They were trapped in what felt like a large glass box. She swayed her torchlight around wildly, meeting only more glass and a solid metal roof. It was twice now that she had been trapped in a cage of some kind, and it was starting to piss her off. Slamming her fist into the wall, she focussed on Toby, screaming, “Toby! What have you done? What have you done?!”

  “I’ve done it!” Toby cried out from his perch near the stairs, speaking to the shadows of the basement and ignoring Freda’s impassioned cries. “I’ve brought the girl with the Illness. Now give me my sister back!”

  Struck dumb, Freda and the others watched as something clicked in the darkness, like a door being opened, and a young girl ran towards Toby. Her long hair, the same sandy colour as his, bounced over her shoulders in greasy strands. She couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, her dress dirty and torn at the hem, her arms outstretched as she barrelled into Toby, sobbing hard. He snatched her up into his embrace, hugging her tightly as though he would never let go again, before turning to face the others trapped in the box. His lower lip trembled as he called out, “I’m so sorry! He had my sister, and he said he would kill her. I had to save my sister. Forgive me.”

  A pang of empathy went through Freda, and the shouts and screams from Reilly and Harris beside her faded into nothing as she nodded back at Toby. He paused, holding her gaze for a moment, before taking his sister’s hand and pulling her up towards the stairs. She couldn’t forgive him, but she understood why he had done it. If she had been in his place, and Gareth had been trapped by someone who threatened to kill him, she would have got every person she could find and stuffed them into a cage. A shot ricocheted off the glass walls as Toby and his little sister sprinted up the stairs of the basement to freedom, and Freda slammed her hands over her ears. She twisted sharply to see Harris pointing the end of his shotgun towards the glass, his face tight as he aimed and shot again. It did nothing more than make a scratch on the unyielding surface.

  “I wouldn’t waste your time, young man. It’s bullet-proof. And shatter-proof. And proof against anything, really. Even the Big Hit.”

  The three of them fell silent as an old man stepped out from the shadows confidently, his arms casually held behind his back, his dark brown eyes glowing with glee. Freda narrowed her eyes as she realised she had heard breathing earlier, cursing herself for not listening to her gut. It was always right. The old man was dressed in a dirty Brit Bunker overall, his grey beard neatly trimmed around his square jaw.

  “Who are you? Let us out, now.” Harris’ command was quiet, filled with the kind of authority that suggested others usually did as he asked.

  The old man simply laughed, and Harris’ face turned red at the insult. “Oh, you’re not going anywhere. I’ve been looking for someone like your friend here,” he pointed a revoltingly long-nailed finger towards Reilly, “for a very long time. You see,” he added, turning back towards the shadows and flicking a switch loudly to turn on the basement lights, “I was a scientist for Brit Bunker.”

  Gazing out at the myriad of long tables and test tubes that appeared in the bright lighting, Freda felt sick as she looked over to one corner. A hospital bed was set up, with leather straps to hold someone in place casually draped over it. Evidence of earlier patients was present with stains and daubs of blood. Trying to retain some of the bravado she could feel slipping away, Freda jutted her chin towards him. “And? What of it?”

  The old man sauntered back towards the glass cage, his eyes filled with a dreamy, half-away look. “To understand what I am, you would have to understand the true nature of Brit Bunker.” His voice filled with pride at the mention of the company. “You see, the Illness was spread by a terrorist organisation who wanted to decrease the world’s population.”

  “Everyone knows that. It was all over the media. We had clips of it in the bunkers.”

  “But what you don’t know is that Brit Bunker saw an opportunity. The Illness was an incredibly well-designed virus. It was, of course, originally only meant to kill every one in a hundred-thousand people. But once it was out, it evolved, killing every one in a hundred, instead.” The old man shook his head as he eased himself down into a rickety black-leather office chair, sending up a puff of dust as he grunted his way into the seat. “They had no control over it, and so a vaccine was quickly made—by us, of course.”

  Reilly’s eyes lit up despite her predicament. “So…you made a cure, as well? To cure people who already had it?”

  The old man gave a hacking laugh. “No, of course not. No cure was ever made. It evolved too quickly, changed from person to person, like a cold.” Reilly’s face fell, and Freda could see the last light of hope draining from her eyes. “But we saw a way to do more.” He stabbed a finger into the air, his mouth curled into a wide and vicious grin. It reminded Freda of the way a shark might have smiled. “We saw that we could take the Illness and not only prevent others catching it, but perhaps also use it for other more…interesting purposes. We wanted to create a biological weapon that could be used against those who had created it first.”

  “You sick bastards,” Harris spat, his eyes burning as he coiled his fingers so tightly they turned white and pink. “You wanted to fight war with war.”

  The old man studied him wearily, stroking at his beard. “What else could we do? We never made it in time, and you saw what happened. Countries blaming each other. Security forces unable to secure facts in time. And then someone pushed the button, too afraid and too bold to do anything else. And then there were the tests.”

  “Tests?” Reilly’s voice shook, and she sagged against the closest wall. Freda glanced over, her heart squeezing as she saw how bloodshot her friend’s eyes had become.

  “Oh, yes. We needed to know what the extent of th
e Illness could be. Whether people could survive large doses of it. We advertised that we needed those who had contracted it to come in, to make a vaccine—we had, of course, made it already by that time. But not publicly. Some of them died, but that is the nature of progress. Others became ill in different ways. But it allowed us to see what strain would be put on people when we created our bunkers. The bunkers were the natural follow-on, if we were going to release our own weapon created from the Illness.”

  Ice ran through Freda at his words, and she clawed desperately at the glass, her limbs turning to jelly. Her mind was a jumble as she tried to think of a way out, of convincing the old man to let them go. She didn’t know what he wanted with them—specifically Reilly—but he wasn’t getting it. “The bunkers, the spread of the Illness…it was all you fuckers, wasn’t it? Just a marketing ploy. A way to sell bunkers and make money. By killing people.” She almost whispered the words. “I bet you even had a hand in who pushed the button for the Big Hit.”

  “Oh, none of that is important now,” the old man replied cheerfully, as though they were simply having a pleasant conversation over dinner. He waved a hand to brush away her accusation. Folding his arms over his chest, he leaned back and nodded over at Reilly with a greedy smile. “What’s important now is that I can continue with my tests. You see, your friend here is unique. A product of the Illness that was present in her bunker, she managed to contract what we termed the SuperIllness. A highly evolved strain. It’s adapted remarkably well to its environment, selecting only certain members of the population. Imagine what I could do with this new strain!” He rubbed his hands together like a child receiving a present.

  “You’re not getting Reilly. You’re not getting any of us,” Harris spoke up loudly, placing an arm around Reilly’s shoulders and pulling her closer. She grunted as she sagged against him, her legs trembling as though she couldn’t stand upright. Freda came and stood by his other side, raising her chin in the air defiantly in a show of solidarity.

  The same sinister, wheezing laugh from before rang around the basement. “It’s a pain for me that there are three of you, but it’s not a problem. If you leave your friend here, I’ll let you go.” The old man snapped his fingers, directing their attention to the roof of their glass cage as he pointed. “I can always find another with the evolved Illness. If you won’t let her go, I’ll kill you all. You’re in the Brit Bunker labs. Do you really think I’d allow you in here and not have a way to dispose of you? The roof of your holding cell is lined with plates that can emit lethal doses of radiation. Over time, of course. It’s not instant.” He frowned, as though the thought disappointed him. Freda had no doubt it probably did.

  “Bullshit,” she snapped, giving the roof a wary look. It was lined with several rusted-over plates, but there was no sign that they were anything other than old metal.

  “It’s not, I assure you. We used that cell to test various stages of radiation poisoning in order to perfect the build of our bunkers.”

  Freda’s stomach turned as she tried not to think about the many people trapped in this glass box, screaming for mercy while slowly being poisoned, and she clutched at Harris’ shoulder wildly. “What the hell do we do?”

  Chewing his lip for a moment, shifting his arm to hold Reilly upright—her lids were half-closed, and she looked faint—Harris shook his head. “Nothing. That crazy old bastard’s lying. Nothing works in here. Look at the place. It’s covered in dust and dirt. Nothing’s worked here for years. He’s just trying to scare us.” Loudly, he shouted in the old man’s direction, “Fuck you! We’re not leaving without Reilly.”

  The first crack in the ex-scientist’s demeanour finally showed as he bared his teeth in a growl of anger, rising from his seat with incredible grace for his age. He stomped over to the glass box on thin legs, stabbing a finger into the cold side as he snarled at Harris, “Then you’ll all die. I gave you a chance to leave. Now none of you will.”

  Before they could say anything further to him, he strode over to a set of buttons, set on a high metal desk at one side of the room. He twisted one of the dials, and something beeped, a small red light flashing beside it. The bearded man gave one last ugly look over his shoulder before pressing a large blue button with such vehemence that Freda could hear his finger crack.

  Nothing happened for a long second, and Freda held her breath as she dared to believe what Harris had said was true. That it didn’t really work, and the crazy old man watching them was as broken as the controls on his desk. But then a low buzzing emitted above their heads, and she glanced up, her heart thudding into a fever-pitch in her ears. So faintly at first that it could hardly be seen, the rusted panels above their heads began to glow with a soft, red resonance. The air within the box heated sharply, and Freda could feel her face heating up in response, her cheeks glowing as red as the panels above.

  The old man twisted the dial next to him with a cold stare, and almost on cue, Reilly bent over and vomited onto the concrete floor below. She swayed for a moment, looking over at the others weakly. “I don’t…feel…so well.”

  Harris caught her before she collapsed into the puddle of acidic mess, and Freda gave a cry, snatching her friend’s other arm up and tucking it over her shoulders. Even she could feel her stomach twisting, but she wasn’t sure if it was the radiation seeping in or simply fear. She clawed at Harris’ jacket. “Harris, we have to get out of here!”

  “I know, I know!” He quickly made sure she was able to prop up Reilly’s bodyweight, before twisting around and running his hands over every inch of the glass prison. He occasionally smashed his fists into it, feeling for any crack or line to show where a door might be. Freda noticed that tiny blisters formed on the back of his hands as he brought them closer to the panels above, and she swallowed hard as she realised the old man must have told the truth.

  We’re going to die in a tiny glass box filled with radiation, and I will never find Gareth. Reilly will never find out the truth about her bunker. And my corpse is going to look gross. She fisted her hand, biting back the angry tears that prickled behind her eyes, slamming her hand into the glass. “Let us out! You fucking arsehole, let us out!” She leaned against the glass for a moment, closing her eyes as she gasped for breath. Whether it was the heat or something else, she didn’t want to know, but the air was getting thin and hard to take in. She felt like she was being cooked from the inside out.

  Someone cried out, and somewhere in the fuzziness of her racing mind, she registered that it came from outside the box. Lifting her head, Freda placed her palm against the glass and let her mouth drop open.

  Toby was stood over the old man, smacking something heavy and metal—it looked like a chair leg—into his skull. The scientist had cried out once, but now he was unmoving except for the jerks his body made as Toby slammed the hand-made weapon into him. His gun rocked gently on the ground beside him, as though he had chosen purposely to do something far more violent and personal. He straightened up, covered in blood, staring with wide eyes at the others.

  “The button! Press the large blue button!” Freda shouted frantically, pointing towards it. Her pulse raced as she watched him nod and run over to the desk. Toby took a second to scan the buttons and dials, before spotting the one she gestured to, slamming his hand onto it.

  Both Harris and herself sank to the ground with Reilly between them, gasping for air as the panels cooled to nothing, and the glass prison steadily rose around them to disappear back into the ceiling above. The basement around them was sharply cold after the irradiated heat, and Freda placed the back of her hand to her cheek, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she sucked in more life-giving air. Reilly gave a cough, sitting up against Freda and leaning forwards. She rested her head in her hands. “Oh, thank god. That really wasn’t how I wanted to go.”

  “Me either,” Harris answered hoarsely. He looked over at Freda worriedly, his face and hands covered in tiny angry-looking blisters. Turning his head, he caught sight of Toby,
who was watching them nervously in silence. Staggering unsteadily to his feet, Harris marched over and raised his fist in the air. Freda followed his movements without saying a word. Toby had to allow it, at least once. To his credit, he didn’t flinch as Harris brought his fist down again, smacking him squarely on the jaw and sending him hard against one of the desks. The table rattled, scattering vials and papers. “That,” Harris rasped, “is for leaving us to die here. Sister or no sister. And thanks.” He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as he closed his eyes for a second, as though it was strained. “For saving us.”

  Toby rubbed at his jaw as he carefully stood upright again, giving a sheepish nod as he lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry.” A fat tear wound its way down his cheek. “I’m so sorry. I…I didn’t know what else to do. That bastard,” he paused and spat on the prone body of the old man lying near his feet, “had my sister locked in here for three weeks. My brother tried to get her back, but the old fucker said he’d kill her if we tried to get her away without giving him what he wanted. He wanted someone with the Illness, and I had to bring them here. Then I’d get Emily back. When you all said you wanted to come out here, I tried to stop Reilly coming. I thought maybe you guys could help me get Emily back without giving him what he wanted, but when Reilly said she was coming…I thought I could do it. I couldn’t though, not really.” His eyes brimmed again with salt-water, but he held his chin firm. “Please forgive me. Once I had her upstairs, I knew I couldn’t just leave you here. Or him alive. Not when he might do this to other people. To Reilly. I’m sorry.”

  Reilly reached out a hand for Freda to help her up, brushing off her dress as she slowly turned around to face Toby. She heaved a sigh, dragging her hand over her face as though to wake herself up. Her pale blue eyes seemed diluted somehow, as though the colour in them reflected the life left in her. “Toby,” she croaked, “I forgive you. She’s your sister. I’d have done the same. And you did come back and save us.”