Ran (Book 1): Apocalyptica

by Joshua Guess

  I heard muffled conversation through the floor above, then heavy footfalls. Someone opened a door behind me and walked down a set of squeaky old steps. You know the kind; warped from years of traffic, bending slightly in the middle from wear and age.

  Whoever it was grabbed a chair and did the old ‘drag the chair behind them so it scrapes around the floor and unnerves the person tied to the other chair’ routine. It was super effective.

  A man came into view. He sat his chair in front of mine and sat. My first impression? This wasn’t a man any longer. It was a zombie. The body language practically screamed it. His muscles were bunched, his movements stiff and jerky. He sat with an abruptness that could only be caused by a lack of coordination.

  But it was a man. A living, breathing person. Especially the breathing part—his chest rose and fell in sharp, rapid stutters.

  He wasn’t remarkably large or particularly small. A white man of early middle years, with a thick shock of salt and pepper hair and a plain farmer’s face. Other than his mannerisms, a single thing told me something about this guy was off.

  Thick, dark lines overlaid the veins in his neck. I risked a look at his eyes and saw nothing out of the ordinary there, nor on his wrists. Whatever crept up from his chest, it only showed in the workhorse blood vessels leading up to his brain.

  The common misconception that mental illness equates to violent behavior is a bad one, but that being said, I’ve seen a few aggressive and violent people with personality disorders. That’s what this guy reminded me of. Specifically I recalled the short time I’d lived in New Orleans, when a crazed junkie tried to rob me. This guy looked like every artist’s rendering of a pleasant rancher, but with a monkey on his back angry for a fix.

  I had a sneaking suspicion drugs had no part in it.

  The man stared at me, tendons in the sides of his jaw twitching as he clenched his teeth over and over.

  “Where are the rest of your people?” he asked suddenly, as if he could surprise the information from me.

  “No idea,” I said.

  He grimaced, wide, clenched teeth showing. I got the sense he was trying hard to hold something back. “Yeah, right. You don’t tell me, I’m gonna have to knock it out of you.”

  Though my heart tripped over a few beats at the words, I nodded calmly.

  “You’re welcome to try,” I said. “Won’t be my first rodeo.”

  12

  “What’s your name?” I asked as the farmer slowly worked himself up to tearing my head off. He’d moved the chair out of the way and was rolling his sleeves up. My assumption was that whatever had killed people with injuries and brought them back to life had infected him in some way I didn’t understand.

  There was clearly a fight going on in him between the person he was and the urge to harm his sickness pushed through his brain. While he might want to hit me, the rational part of him had to throttle up slowly. Otherwise he risked killing me through a loss of control.

  Man, did I know what that was like.

  “What’s yours?” he asked.

  I just barely smiled. “If I tell you that, you might figure out where my friends are.”

  It was his turn to smile. “So, they’re at your place.”

  Damn. I outsmarted myself.

  “I’m Len,” he said, standing before me in a twitchy, ready-to-fight stance. “I don’t want to hurt you, lady, but we need food.”

  My curiosity was piqued. “We all need food, man, but it’s only been a day. You can’t be that hungry yet.”

  Len crouched down in front of me, angling his jaw sharply and jamming a finger against the dark lines in his neck. “See this? Whatever the fuck is in our veins, it makes us burn hot.” In a surprisingly gentle movement that still induced an involuntary shudder, he placed the back of his hand against my face. It was hot enough to draw a surprised gasp from me.

  “Yeah,” Len said. “I’m averaging about a hundred and four.”

  I shook my head. “That’s impossible. You’d be on the floor, sweating yourself to death.”

  Len shrugged. “I been sick before. I know how it feels. This is different. Point is, it makes us hungry. We eat and feel like we’re starving an hour later.” He belted out a humorless chuckle. “Like all we eat is Chinese food or something.”

  I was beginning to regret leaving the house today.

  Look, I’m a pretty capable person, but I know my limits and my flaws. Evidence was pretty strong that I overextended myself, maybe let my cockiness overwhelm my caution. Being tied to a chair while being threatened by a sick, violent dude is solid proof things didn’t go my way.

  “I’m gonna be honest with you, Len. I’m scared shitless right now. I don’t know if that matters to you at all, but it’s the truth. I have a feeling I’m not going to leave this basement.” I paused, took a calming breath against the vise tightening around my entire rib cage. “Most people make it until the end of their lives before feeling the certainty of death. It’s not something you can really describe, that sense of crushing, inevitable finality. I’ve been there before. I’m there right now.”

  I fought back the tears trying their damnedest to brim over my eyelids. “You’re going to have to beat me, and you’re probably going to kill me, because I’m not giving up my friends easy. I saw what you did to that apartment complex.” I meant to keep going, to spew any number of words if it meant delaying the end of my life, but my throat chose that moment to seize up on me.

  Len, however, flinched. “That wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Things got...complicated. Messy.”

  “Yeah, I saw how messy it was.”

  He stood, backed away from me. His breathing went from the irregular, ragged inhalations to a deliberate and thoughtful rhythm. “You have supplies. Your Jeep looked packed with them. Give me what you have, and you can all walk away.”

  “I really want to believe you, but I don’t.”

  Len’s whole body tightened in a rolling spasm across his middling frame. It was the reaction of the bull when confronted with a waving flag. For a fleeting moment I expected him to fly at me in a rage, knock my chair backward, and turn my face into an example of abstract expressionism with his fists.

  Instead he took those measured breaths again.

  “Sign of good faith, then,” Len said, as if he’d forgotten his threats against me. “I’m gonna go upstairs and take a bath. Still have power and hot water for now. Might as well enjoy it. When I’m done I’m gonna come back down here and ask you again. I’ll have one of the others bring you some water if you want it.”

  I carefully maintained a neutral expression and tone. “Your sign of good faith is postponing a beating?”

  “Yeah,” Len said, his voice dry as dead leaves. “It’s the best you’ll get.”

  I sat quietly as he left, and paid attention to the muffled words he shared with someone at the top of the steps. Whoever it was wasn’t in the room, but standing guard outside it. I filed the fact away with the countless others sitting in the neat stacks of my memory.

  I surveyed the basement, looking for ideas.

  A twitchy woman brought me water in an old mason jar, which I drank judiciously. I was thirsty bordering on desperation, but I didn’t want to have to go to the bathroom. She said nothing as she tipped the jar to my lips and even wiped a drip from my chin, then went back to guarding the door.

  From the outside.

  I took stock of my situation and found it better than appearances would imply. My hands were tied behind me, but my ankles were only loosely bound to the chair. Enough to prevent me from getting any leverage with them, but not so tight I couldn’t work the chair out of the bonds if I could stand.

  Not that I could stand, because of how my hands were bound.

  So I worked on that. My gloves were gone, no idea where, and while it pissed me off to lose them, it turned out to be a blessing. Whoever took them probably did so to make sure I didn’t have any weapons tucked away inside them or my sleeves. I
totally did—the right glove has a tiny slot for a tiny blade. Having found it, the people rifling through my unconscious body probably hadn’t been thorough. I was packing a fair number of obvious weapons, after all.

  I pulled myself as far back in the chair as possible and arched my fingers through the wooden slats in the back. I fumbled blindly at my belt, managing to slide fingers into it after several painful seconds. I slowly worked the pads of my fingers along the inside of the belt until I found what I was looking for: a thin leather strap wrapped around my belt. Attached to it, on the inner face tucked next to my body, was a small clip.

  It started life as a key chain, but I kept cutting my fingers on the damn thing every time I picked up my keys. It was a gift from Jeff, a single-piece multi-tool made to look like a hair barrette.

  I removed it slowly, with infinite care. If I dropped it, I was boned. I left the tool attached to the leather cord, which I wrapped around two fingers, and twisted my wrists into a painful configuration that allowed me to reach the ropes binding them.

  As I sawed with the sharp edge, I fervently thanked every god and spirit I could think of. The belt wasn’t one I usually wore, and I’d left it on my riot suit by sheer chance. Before realizing I had the tool, my plan had been much less neat and clean. I’m not sure if I’d have been able to snap off a piece of the plastic making up my armor, but I’d have tried. And if it wouldn’t cut the rope, it would definitely cut me. Lubricating my skin with blood might have let me slip the ropes.

  But that would have made twice in my life I’d escaped a cell by cutting my wrists, and I’ve always considered myself a trailblazer. Great artists don’t reuse old works.

  My heart hammered as I cut through my bonds. I became hyper aware of every small sound, though central to my attention was the low slosh of water coming from a tub above me. The run of pipes gave me a pretty good idea where it was. I followed them with my eyes, a little like reading a map of the house. The bathroom was about fifteen feet away from me, diagonally and to the left. The hot water heater sat below it.

  My brain spun through all the errata accumulated about houses and plumbing. It was only when I noted the wires when everything locked into place.

  Fact: water pipes coming into a house are generally grounded. Pipes carrying hot water from the water heater sometimes aren’t. I wasn’t sure about the drains, but in a house this old I felt moderately confident nothing was up to any sort of modern code.

  The plan blossomed in my head fully formed within seconds. There were a lot of unknowns, but you know what? Fuck it. When one of the known factors is a brutal assault and probable death, you throw the dice.

  The ropes parted, freeing my hands. I had to suppress the urge to bolt to my feet. The last thing I wanted was to make noise and draw attention. Instead I stood with care and reached down to pull the chair up through the coiled bonds around my ankles. It wasn’t as easy as I thought; the chair had curved feet that required a lot of wiggling to pull free. After thirty seconds I almost gave up and pulled my feet free of the boots, but got the damn thing free before it became necessary.

  After shaking the loose rope off my feet, I stepped silently over to the water heater. Not needing to worry about anything but function, whoever installed it had chosen to put it directly below the bathroom. The tub drain pipe was right there.

  I put the chair down and stood on it. It took me a few very careful swipes with the blade of my tool to peel away the insulation around the wire leading to the water heater. I didn’t get all the way down to copper, leaving a paper-thin layer of plastic in place. I didn’t have gloves on, after all. Electrocution was bottom of my list of things to do today.

  Well, electrocuting myself, at any rate.

  Shoulders burning with the effort of working with my arms raised straight up—short people problems—I carefully flexed the wire, stretching the thin film of remaining plastic. I worked some slack into it, too stretched to flatten back out, and with a quiet sense of joy I snagged the little pocket of plastic and pulled.

  Glorious red metal peeked through. I jammed it against the tub drain.

  The muted flash of a spark coincided with a shout of pain and a lot of splashing. I heard my guard yell something unintelligible from her post, then rapid footsteps away from the basement door.

  I jumped down and hauled ass. I’m 90% sure I did a Barry Allen and momentarily became The Flash.

  I’m an only child, but I grew up around a lot of kids. Anyone who has ever played kid games has been chased. As I darted up the steps, memories flooded through me, no less vivid for being twenty years old. Before it had become a prison for malcontents, the basement of the giant house I grew up in was a place where children played. I’d been chased up those steps a hundred times.

  The sense of being hit by a slice of slowed time was exactly the same. You know what I’m talking about; the weird loss of momentum you feel when going from running forward to running up. Like your legs are rusted pistons and your body weighs ten tons.

  I pushed through it, though. The door grew large and suddenly I was there, praying to whatever old god looked out for wayward ladies confronted with potentially locked doors.

  I turned the handle. It opened.

  Fuck yeah.

  I stepped onto a landing. I’m sure the right side of it went into the house itself, obvious since my guard ran off that way, but I didn’t even glance that direction. All my attention was for the left, which contained another door with a square window, through which I saw the prettiest sight imaginable: open sky.

  I yanked it open and booked it, letting my legs stretch out into the longest lope I could manage. It was a rare thing for me to be in a situation where I couldn’t plan or think through the possibilities. On one hand, it was terrifying. I had no resources, no idea where I was, and no way to plan for anything past this run until I was somewhere safe.

  On the other, all I had to concern myself with was getting away. I wasn’t in a crazy guy’s basement anymore, and that seemed like a pretty good place to start.

  13

  I’m not a survival expert by any stretch of the imagination. I know the basics better than your average person, but I can’t make medicine out of plants I find or, like, MacGyver a shelter out of a roll of tape and some old boxes. I’m smart enough to know what I need to survive, have enough ingenuity to make it happen, and enough of a realist to know when I’m beat.

  I was beat.

  I ran for what felt like miles across the open fields near the farmhouse. It was a stroke of luck that my pursuers, when they realized what happened, went for vehicles rather than chase me on foot or just shoot at me from a distance. The fields I ran through were thick with shaggy yellow grass and pocked with irregular features. One of them was a small creek I jumped. About five feet wide and cutting deep into the side of a gently rolling hill, it would have meant a nosedive into the water for the car following me.

  Sure, my captors probably knew that and had thought of a way around. But it bought me enough time to make it into the woods at the edge of the property.

  I barely slowed as I weaved my way through the trees. The land here was rocky enough that my boots only touched dirt about half the time, and since I pushed toward the thickest part of the wood, I had a lot of cover. Only a panicked reminder to myself, repeated like a mantra, kept me from slamming into branches constantly. I didn’t want to leave an easy trail to follow.

  I slipped through a particularly dense stand of evergreens, so thick there was no way I could be seen from the other side, and took a break. I crouched beside the trunk of a pine and listened.

  The sound of loud, angry voices echoed in the distance. Branches snapped. I dug my hands in the dirt near the base of the trunk and rubbed it on my face. Not much I could do about my clothes, but they were already dark. If I could make until night, they’d blend. My light brown skin would be easier to see, and the key to any good camouflage is breaking up regular shapes like faces.

  I had no i
dea if the thick, random dollops of earth running across my face would do the trick, but I fervently hoped so.

  Rather than risk being heard, I just waited.

  That’s the part Tolkien and his spiritual successors rarely touched on: adventuring is scary, hungry, and often boring. There’s a lot of sitting around. You don’t get into or out of Mordor in a day. There are endless slogs and long nights in between all the action-packed bits.

  I listened as the sound of snapping twigs moved and faded. I didn’t relax, but the seemingly endless increase in my stress levels finally topped off and remained steady. The fact that I couldn’t hear anyone approaching me was excellent. It also poked the irrational part of my brain, which demanded that the absence of a threat was in itself terrifying, with a stick.

  Minutes stretched, feeling like hours. I shifted my weight as well as I could without making noise. Crouching for a long time was uncomfortable, and the last thing I wanted if I had to dash off again was a cramp.

  Forcing myself to be hyper-vigilant for any indication my pursuers were close also made me keenly aware of my own body. My stomach rumbled with hunger, and whatever slaking effect my drink of water back at the house had was long gone. I was prepared to go days or weeks without eating—not a stranger to the experience—but I’d been exerting myself pretty hard. Dehydration kills in days, and I was already running a deficit.

  “Not the priority,” I muttered under my breath.

  Live first, that was the top of the list. I would have plenty of time to suffer the perils of dehydration and hunger if I didn’t get caught or killed.

  After a quarter hour there was a change in the quality of sounds coming from the people looking for me. I’ll give them credit; they were thorough. They stayed close enough to where they had last seen me that I had to assume they possessed some degree of tracking skills. The light conspired against them, however, as the setting sun brought deep and heavy shadows to the woods.