by Sean Platt
Ana screamed, barely managing to dodge out of his way as the man fell to the ground. Ana tripped, landed hard beside him, and lost her blaster. It slipped from her hand and skidded across the floor.
She reached out to grab it but was too slow.
The man yanked it from the floor, turned it on Ana, and barked, “Get over there!”
The man was wearing nothing but a thin white shirt and only slightly thicker white cotton pants. He looked maybe 30, thin, gaunt even, with medium-dark, curly brown hair and a short beard. His eyes were brown, but the whites were red, like his swollen lids.
“Get over there!” he yelled again aiming the blaster between them, and moving it ever so slightly side to side so she’d stand next to Calla, making them easier to keep an eye on.
Ana stood up slowly, putting herself between Calla and the gunman. “It’s OK,” she said. “We’re not going to do anything.”
The man looked back at the door and pressed the green button on the wall beside it.
“Why won’t it open?” he shouted, turning back to them, gun shaking.
“We’re locked in,” Ana said, “to protect us from the zombie.”
The man laughed, shaking his head without explanation. He seemed crazed, as if on drugs. On TV, she’d seen people in The Dark Quarters acting weird like this guy. They’d been described as extremely dangerous and to be avoided at all costs. Vermin, just as likely to slit your throat as rape you. Beware and report.
The man asked, “Is there a way out of here?”
“Not that I know of. Like I said, we’re locked in.”
Clearly the man was either messed up or stupid.
“Not this room,” he hissed, glaring at her. “Of this place. Wherever the hell we are.”
“Wait,” Ana said. “You’re not from here?”
He laughed that bitter laugh again, “No! They brought me here!”
Calla asked, “What are you talking about, mister?”
Ana looked back at Calla, trying to give her a look that said: Do not attract attention to yourself. Let me deal with this.
“They fucking kidnapped me. They’ve been doing experiments or something.”
Ana’s heart pounded faster as she realized that the man must be the infected subject that Oswald said they found in The Barrens—the zombie she’d been sensing nearby, the one that had made the siren start to scream.
Only he didn’t seem to know he was infected.
As she looked closer at the man, Ana tried to see how near he was to turning. His eyes were red and reminded her of Duncan’s. He was shaking and sweating, but she couldn’t tell if he was about to turn now, with her and Calla in a locked room, or if he was merely frightened.
She had to calm him before his frazzled nerves caused him to change—or shoot them.
“I can help you get out of here,” Ana said.
“How?” the man asked.
“If you go back up into the air vent, you can crawl a bit farther, 20 feet or so that way, and drop down into the room next to this one. Then you can open the door and I can sneak you out of here.”
The man looked at Ana as if considering her offer. He seemed like he was about to accept but instead shook his head. “No. The girl goes up.”
“What?”
“Send her up. She can unlock the door from the other side.”
Ana was about to argue but realized she liked the idea. Get Calla out of the room, away from danger.
“OK,” Ana said. “Calla, can you go up there, crawl into the next room, and open the door?”
“Yes,” Calla almost whispered, her chin trembling, looking more afraid than Ana had seen her before.
“OK,” Ana said, explaining every move to the man so as not to startle him into shooting them both. “I’m going to move the desk under the air duct, then climb up with Calla and lift her to the vent, OK?”
“Yeah, yeah,” the guy said irritated, running a hand through his sweaty hair and squeezing it tight as if doing so would allow him to regain control of the situation.
Ana pushed the desk over, climbed up, then waited for Calla to scramble up onto the desk. As she did, Ana noticed how much the small girl was sweating and shaking.
“It’s going to be OK.” Ana turned to the man, “After she lets us out, you let her go, OK? I’ll take you to the exit. Nobody needs to get hurt.”
The man chewed his lip, hand still shaking, and tugged at his hair in thought.
“All right?” Ana repeated forcefully.
“Yeah,” he snapped.
Ana lifted Calla and, as she did, whispered, “Don’t open the door. Go get help.”
The girl nodded but said nothing as Ana lifted her up. She watched as Calla crawled into the duct, listening as the sound of banging metal faded away from their room.
The banging stopped a moment later, when Ana assumed Calla had dropped into the other room on her way to find help. Ana had to stall and keep the guy from what Calla was up to.
“So, what do you mean they took you and experimented on you? What happened?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know.”
“I’m not from here. I only arrived a couple of days ago. They took me in after I got sick.” Ana lied, trying to make it seem like the people holding him weren’t as bad as he thought—that they weren’t experimenting on him but rather were trying to cure him. “They helped me get better. Are you sick, too?”
“I wasn’t!” he said, still glaring at Ana as if she’d personally taken him. “They grabbed me in the middle of the night, stole me and another two from our camp. We didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
“Two others?”
“Yes, I was with Johan and Filner, two longtime mates. We have, or had, a camp near Yath River. Not a big place, but we managed. They came in the middle of the night and grabbed us all. I’m the only one left.”
“What happened to the others?”
“They turned them into zombies,” the man said, “and killed them.”
Ana shook her head. “No, they’re trying to help. Are you sure you weren’t infected before?”
“Hell no,” the man said, moving closer, spittle flying from his mouth through his anguished, angry cry. “They injected us with something! They turned my friends into monsters!”
Ana stared at his gun, now only aimed in her general direction. If she could inch closer, she might be able to snag the weapon from him. Ana was about to say something calming as she moved in, when the door suddenly opened behind the man.
Calla stood there, alone.
Ana stared in disbelief. Why hadn’t she run off and gotten someone?
Ana was shocked enough that she missed her chance to disarm the man. He aimed the gun at her again. “OK, girl, now you get me out of here.”
He waved his blaster, instructing Ana to move ahead.
She did as instructed, feeling him behind her, then looked down at Calla leaning against the exam table, holding her stomach.
Calla groaned, “I don’t feel good. I’m so cold.”
The color had completely left her face. She was sweating, her body shivering uncontrollably.
“What’s wrong?” Ana asked, reaching out to touch the girl. Calla was burning up, even though she said she was cold.
“I don’t know,” Calla said, swallowing and looking up at Ana, scared.
Ana realized that the infected man, by either proximity or by filling them with fear, might be causing Calla to change.
Oh no, no, no, no.
“I think it’s happening,” Calla said, voicing Ana’s fears aloud.
CHAPTER 29—SUTHERLAND
Sutherland had been palming his shiv for hours, waiting for the moment when one of the two cowards—or any of their followers—opened his door. There would be no waiting or waffling.
His hands were still bound, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t need them to free himself. He would end his captors and storm from the cell.
No one would stop him…
For hours Sutherland expected the door to open, and for hours stayed tense, ready to spring into action the moment the door dragged against the floor.
But nothing happened. The door didn’t open and no one came in.
It must be morning, or close. And something must be wrong with him. He was usually good at accounting for the passage of time, but minutes and hours had jumbled their meanings.
He may have lost a day.
Eventually, Sutherland fell asleep, still imagining the shard of plate dragging across a freshly made seam to spill a bucket of blood to the floor, laughing because his captors were too stupid to see the missing piece from the shattered refuse.
He woke as the door opened, instantly angry that he’d been caught off-guard despite his best intentions. He palmed the shard tighter, feeling it bite into flesh, like it would soon be biting into theirs.
He turned toward the intruders: Horrance and two others. Sutherland knew their names, Finch and Wormwood. Good men, if not turned. If they had been, their blood would spill as thick as the rest. Wormwood and Finch were both older, and had nobly fought in The Battle of ’32. Sutherland wanted to believe that older meant wiser, and that the pair of battle tested soldiers—along with the giant—could easily see Gallus’s folly.
“My men!” Sutherland greeted them, hoping that they were that.
“Sutherland,” Horrance nodded at his leader with understanding eyes. The other men joined him and swelled Sutherland’s hope.
“Good to see you,” he said, but continued to palm his homemade weapon, just in case.
“And you,” Horrance said.
Boldly, Sutherland asked, “Are you here to free me?” After a too long pause he added, “We can go now, arrest the traitors. Everything will be back to normal by morning.”
Finch stepped in front of Horrance, between him and Sutherland’s cot. “We can’t. It will never work.”
“Why not?”
Of course it would work, unless you’re all cowards.
“Because,” Wormwood cut in. “There aren’t enough people who … there aren’t enough supporters left in Hydrangea.”
“Impossible.” Sutherland refused to believe.
“Gallus has turned everyone,” Horrance said.
“That’s impossible,” Sutherland repeated. “How could he turn everyone? Surely, the world hasn’t gone stupid?”
“If you go out there, they’ll kill you.” Finch nodded toward the closed cell door. “Right now you’ve got 1,600 pissed off people, all of them think that you’re the problem--and have been for a long time.”
“That’s absurd.”
Finch kept going. “They think that Jeffries can help. They think he’ll be able to fix what they see as broken.”
Sutherland couldn’t speak. The weight of the possible truth was too much. He swallowed, searching for words, then stood from the bed and found Horrance’s eyes.
Finally, he asked, “Is it true, Horrance? Is Gallus right? Am I so out of touch? Have I truly lost it?”
“No.” Wormwood, the strongest—and smartest—of the three stepped to the front and vigorously shook his head. “Gallus is wrong like a zombie. You’re the one in Hydrangea with the balls to do what must be done. Most of the folks here are babes still on the tit, they can’t fathom doing what’s right when it’s hard. Sure, they’ll nod when talking, but when it’s time to wet their brow with the sweat of what’s necessary, like you’ve said, they’ll turn and run. They can’t do what you done to City 1, but what you done to City 1 was right as one moon a month.”
Horrance came up to Sutherland, gestured for him to hold up his hands—it was only then that he dropped the shard—then fumbled with several keys until he found one that worked. The shackles came off and Sutherland rubbed his wrists, soothing their burn.
“Well then, gentlemen, what in the hell am I supposed to do?”
Wormwood said, “We can help you escape. We have another five guys still sworn to do what’s right. That means serving you, and right now helping you escape. We’ll get you out of here for sure.”
“Then what? Where would I go?”
“The train station,” Horrance said. “Where Ana is.”
Sutherland brightened, for the first time since lowering the lid on his tools of torture, which seemed like an eternity ago. “Think we can take it?”
“Sure thing,” Finch nodded. “Easiest thing in the world, so long as we did what we done to City 1. Can you still get your hands on more of the zombie gas?”
“Can you get me to the science lab?”
Horrance nodded. “I think so.”
“Then what’s right,” Sutherland smiled wider, “can still be done.”
* * *
Horrance and Sutherland walked down the hallway on their way to the science lab. After allowing Sutherland to rub the burn from his wrists, Horrance apologized and said he had to replace them, for appearances’ sake. But they weren’t locked, so as Sutherland walked with both hands clasped and dangled before him, he kept imagining the moment when he would shake them off, grab the shiv that was now in his pocket, and end whoever stood in his way.
They descended two floors, then turned three corners down one long hallway until they were on the final approach to the lab. There, two men stood guard, one on either side of the door.
The first guard stepped forward and held up a hand. “What is he doing here?”
Horrance said, “Gallus asked me to bring him to the lab for a test.”
“Test? I didn’t hear anything about that.” The guard looked them up and down. “What sort of test? It’s the middle of the night.”
The guard turned and called to his partner, “Hey, you hear anything about—”
The man’s words were cut short by the shiv in his back. Sutherland started to laugh as he shoved up and twisted.
Horrance fired his blaster at the other guard, dropping the man before he could signal for help.
Then together, the two men rushed into the lab.
* * *
Sutherland and Horrance hefted the four black bags onto the service elevator where Finch was waiting.
“Good lord,” Finch said. “I suspected you may have held back some, but not this much.”
“Just because the other camps stopped fighting doesn’t mean the war is over. There are still six Cities standing, last time I looked. The State barely skipped a beat. It’s time to take them down, once and for all.”
Finch smiled. He’d lost his brother and sister in a State raid when they were escaping City 3. He knew exactly what they were fighting for. “And what about the antidote? Do you have enough?”
“Enough to spare those that deserve to be spared. Enough to start over and do things right.”
“Good,” Finch said.
They stepped into the elevator. Wormwood was about to press the button marked Garage, when Sutherland told him to wait.
“Are our people out?”
“Yes, they’re waiting on the surface. They’ve taken out the guards in the garage and are ready to take us away.”
“Good. Go to Level 7.”
“Civilian Living quarters? Why?” Wormwood asked, even as he pressed the button marked 7.
“Hydrangea is now as complicit as The State. I made the mistake of leniency, and ignoring the cancer as it spread under my roof. I can’t allow it to go any further.”
“What are you going to do?” Wormwood asked.
Sutherland watched as the elevator approached the seventh floor, then slammed his thumb on the Stop button, reached into one of the bags, and withdrew four gas masks.
“I suggest you put these on.”
“Are you sure about this?” Horrance asked. “I mean, aren’t there kids and stuff?”
“Are we at war, gentlemen? Besides, I’ve never known a child to stop growing.”
Finch nodded as he fastened the mask to his face.
Horrance looked uncertain. If Wormwood wore a smile
or grimace, he was too ugly to tell.
Sutherland said, “If we don’t wipe them out now, they’ll hunt us like animals. You’re heroes, but they’ll see you as traitors for helping. We strike now. It’s our only chance.”
“I don’t know,” Horrance said.
Sutherland grabbed the man’s mask and pulled him closer. “You think these people are worth saving? You’ve heard the names these people … the kids too … have called you, right? Freak. Misfit. Mutant. Do you really want to spare their lives?”
“Okay.” Horrance looked down, as if ashamed. “Let’s do it.”
“No, you don’t need to help. I’ve got this.”
Sutherland withdrew a canister of the gas, and pushed the button to continue his trip to the seventh floor.
The doors dinged, then opened.
The immediate hallway was empty, dimly lit by orange lights along the rounded ceiling. Everyone was asleep in their rooms: 315 people on this level alone. The virus would spread to most within minutes.
Hydrangea would fall by morning.
He walked to the end of the hall, opened the canister, and began walking back toward the elevator. As Sutherland passed rooms on either side, he noticed that many curtains were open. He peeked inside at the sleeping traitors, and their treasonous children, then continued his march to the elevator.
He reached the elevator, tossed the canister back to the end of the hall, then stepped inside. Both Finch and Wormwood’s expressions were blank—soldiers who knew what had to be done.
Horrance, on the other hand, was sobbing.
“Don’t worry,” Sutherland said. “It gets easier each time. You’ll do the next floor.”
The elevator doors dinged, then closed.
* * *
After unleashing the gas on another three levels, they met the others in the garage where a liberated City transport truck waited.
A man named Clinch stood at the back of the truck’s open doors. Inside were four men and several crates of weapons.
“We’re ready, sir.”
“Good,” Sutherland said. “Let’s finish this battle.
“First stop: taking that damned train station.”
