by Perrin Briar
Max screamed.
“Max!” Dana said. “Don’t worry! I’ll get us out of this! Don’t worry!”
The crowd watched as Dana and Max were carried toward the military trucks. Dana tried to hook her feet around the fender, around anything, but the man holding her was too strong.
He tossed Dana into the back of the truck. The doors slammed into place, locking Dana inside. She spun and ran at it, banging on it with her fists and feet. It made a God awful racket. Dana was exhausted before long, and leaned against the wall.
What had she gotten them into now? They were on the home straight. They had food, water, a car… And now they didn’t even have each other. Dana threw her head back and slammed it into the wall.
“Shit!” she said.
“…ana!” a voice shouted. “Dana!”
It was Max’s voice, hollow and tinny, like she was talking through a tube.
Dana quietened and listened to where it was coming from. She ran to her truck’s sidewall and pressed her eye to the holes that had been punctured in it. Air holes. There was a truck next to her own.
“Max!” Dana said.
She reached through one of the holes to touch Max’s outstretched hand. Dana could feel her sister’s fingertips. Dana went up on tiptoe and peered through another air hole. Max was looking back at her.
“Dana,” Max said, sobbing. “Dana where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Dana said. “I don’t know where we’re going, but wherever you are, I’ll find you!”
The truck bed shook, rumbling as the engine turned over. Smoke puffed from Max’s truck. It was on the move too. Dana’s truck lurched forward as the driver put it into gear.
Max’s truck filed in behind Dana’s. Dana watched it through the slit in the door. It was following her truck. That was good. It meant they were going to the same location.
Wherever they were going, Dana would grab Max and escape with her somehow. Dana had plenty of practice escaping prisons. No one could keep her trapped if she didn’t want to be.
The trucks slowed down as they approached a junction. Max’s truck pulled alongside her own. The blood fell from Dana’s face as she realized what was about to happen.
Dana stuck her hand through an air hole again. Max did likewise. They hooked their pinky fingers together. A pinky promise.
“Dana,” Max said. “I’m so scared.”
“I’m scared too, honey,” Dana said. “Be brave. I’ll come find you. I promise. Stay wherever they take you and I’ll come get you.”
The trucks jolted forward as they began to move again. Dana let go of Max’s fingers for fear she might accidentally dislocate them.
“No!” Max screamed as her truck pulled in the opposite direction. “No!”
Dana ran to the front of the truck and beat on the wall with her fist. The drivers would be able to hear her.
“Don’t do this!” Dana said. “Please! Let me out! I swear I won’t do anything! Please! Just let me and my sister go!”
But they weren’t listening. They didn’t care. They were just order followers.
Dana ran to the back of the truck and peered through a slit as her sister was taken away from her. She didn’t stop watching until the truck had disappeared from sight.
Dana collapsed to the floor. She sobbed. Her darling Max. She’d had her in her possession, and now they had taken her away. They had taken everything from her. All for nothing.
And then Dana stopped crying, stopped feeling sorry for herself.
She opened herself up to the rage she’d felt upon learning of Max’s apparent death. It filled her every fiber, an unrelenting anger she had never experienced before. It consumed her, filling her until she thought she could no longer contain it, until she thought it was going to destroy her.
Someone was responsible for this. Someone had commanded those soldiers, had given them their orders to take her sister away from her. Dana would find them, find them and destroy them. She would get Max back. No matter what it took, no matter how many people she had to kill.
She would get her back. She’d made a pinky promise. And those were unbreakable.
Chapter Twenty
DANA SAT with her knees tucked into her chest. She swayed gently as the truck made left after right, until Dana had no idea where she was.
She busied herself with running through every scrap of information she could recall, everything she knew about Max and her predicament. But none of it held the answer she was so desperate for. The guards might know. Perhaps if she could get her hands on one of them…
She couldn’t trust herself not to wring their necks when she had them within range. She would do whatever it took. She needed to know where they had taken Max.
Uhhhhhhhh.
Dana was up on her feet in an instant, facing the truck’s dark corners. Light filtered through the many air holes, casting beams of silver across the space, like a high tech security defense system. Illuminated at regular intervals were men and women, sitting in curled up positions similar to Dana.
They had distant, faraway expressions, thinking of better times, times when they didn’t have to worry about their lives and future.
None of them seemed fearful of the groaning sound that had stirred Dana to action. Dana began to think perhaps she had just imagined it, or it was caused by the truck’s undulating movements. She sat back down and continued to think on Max.
Uhhhhhhhh.
Dana was back up on her feet again in an instant. She hadn’t imagined it. There was no mistaking the mournful soullessness of it, uttered only by those at the very end of their lives, in their darkest, deepest, most private moments of despair.
The shadow in the furthermost corner began to move and a shape stepped out from it. He was limping, his skin closer to grey than the pink of natural flesh.
“Uhhhhhh God…” the man said. “Somebody help me, please.”
Dana’s eyes bulged. He was infected!
Dana took a step back. Why on Earth would they put an infected in a confined space with other people like this? Did they have no sense?
And then she noticed something. Each of the passengers sported a nasty glaring injury, mostly on their arms. They’d have tried to defend themselves, Dana knew, but failed, coming away with these souvenirs that would be with them until their dying breath, and beyond.
They were all infected! What the hell was she doing in a truckful of the undead? Had she been planted here as a quick snack for them? In case they got peckish along the way to wherever they were going? Well, she wouldn’t go down without a fight, that was for sure.
And then she looked at the dirty bandage around her own arm. You’re infected, the nurse at the hospital had said. How long ago were you bitten?
The military thought all the inhabitants of this truck were infected. All of them. Including Dana. She had been bitten, and she supposed she was infected, but she showed none of the other effects.
She backed away, pressing herself against the hard steel, and sank into the shadows. She crouched down, assuming a smaller shape. She withdrew her pistol. She wouldn’t fire it, but she could use it as a cudgel.
She turned wary eyes on the infected around her. At any moment they could turn and rip her apart.
What the hell am I doing in here? Dana thought. What do they do with the infected? Why put them all together like this? And where were they taking them?
Unfortunately, she suspected she would get her answer before long.
Her legs turned numb and she had to shift position to keep the blood flowing. The other figures swayed with the motions of the truck. Dana was astonished at how fast their condition worsened. Their skin turned grey, their eyes whitened. It was like watching the human body age in fast motion.
Then there was noise, loud along either side of the road. Revving engines and raised voices. Keeping her head facing forward, Dana risked leaning over and peered out through one of the air holes.
Soldiers scurried back
and forth armed with weapons, hauling metal supply crates onto flatbed trucks. A helicopter roared overhead, its propellers thudding into the distance. There was a large building, grayscale, with barbed wire installed on the roof alongside powerful sentry guns.
Hoo-ra.
The truck braked hard. Dana’s back was already pressed to the wall and felt her stomach lurch. The others flew forward, toward the wall at Dana’s back, striking it hard.
A woman around the age of twenty-five fell sprawled at Dana’s feet. Dana’s instant reaction was to help her up, but she pulled her hand back. There was no place for kindness now. The woman would have to take care of herself.
The truck had come to a stop. This was it. Dana’s chance to break free.
She would grab one of the soldiers and make him tell her Max’s location. Then she would borrow a jeep and get the hell out of there. She gripped the pistol tight.
The bolt locks were removed one by one in quick succession, and then the doors were thrown open wide, first one side, and then the other. There it was. Freedom in all its glory. Dana let herself smile.
A whirring sound. From behind her. A mechanical engine. The metal container they were inside vibrated, sending pulses up Dana’s back.
“Nice and easy,” someone outside said.
The box jolted, lifting up from the back, from where Dana was hiding. Those who weren’t already off their feet were now, including Dana. What was going on here?
The whirring grew louder in intensity. Then the box began to lift, but only the back, tilting up at a sharper and sharper angle. Dana realized what was happening a fraction of a second too late.
She reach up for a handhold, to grab something solid and immovable. There was nothing on the back wall. But there were the air holes, and Dana reached for the closest to hand. She sliced the top of her finger as she slid across the floor and onto the ground outside.
She landed amongst the other infected and their bent and twisted arms and legs. The impact made her lose her grip on her pistol. It hit the ground and slid to the booted feet of the soldiers.
A middle-aged man with a thick head of grey hair and bushy mustache bent down to pick the pistol up. He looked at it like it had personally offended him.
“God dammit!” he said. “These people were meant to be searched before they were loaded up. What if one of them got it into their heads to attack us?”
“I’ll radio ahead and tell them to search these people more thoroughly,” another soldier said.
“Don’t waste your breath,” the mustached soldier said. “They didn’t listen last time. What makes you think they’ll listen this time? Let’s get these critters moving. On the double!”
Gloved hands reached down, grabbed the infected, and pulled them to their feet.
“Come on, get up now,” the soldiers said.
Dana was given the same treatment. A soldier aggressively pushed her forward, trailing her with his gun muzzle. At least two dozen other rifles bore down on them from a number of angles. They were taking no chances.
“Follow the path to the end!” a soldier shouted. “Stay on the path and follow the directions given to you.”
Dana ignored him and approached the mustached soldier. Half a dozen rifles shifted target and aimed at her.
“That’s close enough,” a soldier said.
Dana came to a stop. She didn’t want to get filled with holes.
“Hello there,” Dana said, addressing the man with the grey mustache.
No reply came back.
“My name’s Danielle Ward. I’m a student—or was until I graduated—from Kentridge High School. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I think there’s been some mistake. I’m not infected.”
“You were in the infected truck,” the mustached soldier said, not looking up from the papers he was reading.
“So?” Dana said. “If you got in the truck now, would you be infected?”
The mustached soldier smiled at that.
“Nice to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” he said. “Yet.”
How was Dana going to get through to this man? No doubt he’d spent his career in the armed forces, learned to take orders from someone else. Why would he listen to her?
The mustached soldier took a torch out of his pocket and flashed it at Dana. The bright lights hurt her eyes and made them sting. She put a hand over them to block out the worst of the glare.
The mustached soldier smiled.
“Your body’s response gives you away,” he said.
“What response?” Dana said.
“These lights,” the mustached soldier said, gesturing to the huge stadium lights above them. “They’re not just here for decoration. You see, someone not infected wouldn’t see them as particularly bright. You know why? Because our pupils dilate to counteract them. The fact you need to shield your eyes tells me you’re sensitive to light. Your eyes aren’t dilating. Like one of the infected.
“Is it a foolproof system? No. But that, along with your general complexion, as well as that nasty little scar on your shoulder, tells me everything I need to know. Get back in line and follow the path.”
His tone brokered no argument. He wasn’t going to change his mind. Dana had met plenty of people like him before in juvie. Bullheaded, obstinate. Inflexible. But maybe he might tell her one thing.
“Then just answer me one question,” Dana said. “Where do you take the people you find who aren’t infected?”
“Not infected?” the mustached soldier said. “We let them go.”
“And if they were hustled onto a truck and taken away?” Dana said. “Where might they get taken?”
The mustached soldier pursed his lips.
“I’d say it doesn’t concern you and your current predicament,” he said. “Move along.”
“STOP!” a voice over the tannoy system shouted.
A thousand heads all turned as one, the infected somewhat slower than the others. They all located the same figure, rushing through the crowd and running at the wire link fence at the other end of the compound.
He leapt at it and clawed his way to the top. The fence rattled. He seized the top bar, making no indication he felt the barbs of the protective wire along the top, and shifted his weight to vault over the side.
“CEASE OR WE WILL SHOOT!” the voice over the tannoy system shouted, crackling with the harsh tones. “STOP IMMEDIATELY!”
The voice was firm and clear in its demand, but the man, motivated by the fact he was so close to freedom, didn’t stop.
The soldiers rallied to climb into their trucks and run the man down.
“That won’t be necessary,” the mustached soldier said.
He glanced in the direction of the tallest building and nodded.
Dana followed his gaze to see a small shape, what was a man with a high power rifle, lean down into position. It was silent a moment. Then a single Pop! that reverberated across the vast expanse.
Another moment later, and the man who’d made a break for it, now halfway to the horizon, hit the deck. He didn’t move again.
The man on the rooftop stood up. Job done.
An innocent man had just been murdered. Dana couldn’t have asked for a clearer message about the soldiers’ purpose in his place. Clean up. Control. Not rescue.
“Colonel?” a soldier with a clipboard said to the mustached soldier.
The colonel turned away, and as he did, Dana met his eyes.
There was a joviality in them, she thought, a sense of duty outweighing the horror he had just committed. He listened intently to what the soldier with the clipboard was saying. It washed over Dana, something about supply lines. They were preparing for war. War against their own people.
This isn’t over, Colonel, Dana promised herself. This man was in charge here, and he would be the first man she would hunt down and kill if he didn’t give her what she wanted.
This isn’t over by a long shot.
Chapter Twenty-One
THERE WAS A darkening sense of foreboding in their movements now. They knew they were infected, that their days were numbered, but they had never considered themselves cattle before. To be shot down like dogs, with no one there to mutter concern or even lift a finger in protest.
“Please continue down the path,” a calm voice over the tannoy system said. “Do not deviate. Do not stop. Keep going.”
But in those sultry tones Dana heard the underlying threat. Do as we say, or you will be shot.
The doorway leading to the entrance of the building was arched, tall and gothic. Great. They were talking through the gates of hell. There was something somehow familiar about them, but Dana couldn’t quite put her finger on where she’d seen them before. Probably Biblical imagery of Satan’s realm.
Dana reached a bottleneck. The infected were crushed, pushing in on one another. Her nose found someone’s armpit. Running for your life produced a great deal of stink, and now it was right in Dana’s face. Then the press released and the people spread out, having reached a large room on the other side.
Dana gulped the relatively fresh air, blinking at the harsh lights at regular intervals around her. It was night now, but they gave the impression it was still day, bathing the milling mass in fluorescent light.
Dana squinted and peered through her slitted vision at her new world. Hunched bodies and torn skin shuffled in unregimented lines. The world was bleached white and it was difficult to see more than a few yards in front of her face. She might have been on a beautiful white sandy beach.
The floor had once been glossy and wooden, but was now covered with torn clothing, dirt and scuff marks. She could make out a white line, faded and worn by the passing of thousands of wandering feet.
Dana decided to follow it, for no other reason than at least then she had some purpose, some direction. She had a white line. It had a purpose too once.
This is hell, Dana thought. How had she ended up here? Worse, was she ever going to get out? All the time she wasted here meant Max was being taken farther and farther from her. She didn’t even know where.
Dana’s head struck something hard. She leaned back and saw she had walked into a thick square pole. Looking up, she could see there was something perched on top of it.
