by Morris, SJ
“So, I’m dressed. What now, dickhead?” I asked barely holding myself up with the help of the wall.
“You can be as mad at me as you want, Abby, as long as we get the hell out of here and now,” Jack replied, grabbing my arm at my bicep leading me out of the door behind him.
We slowly made it down the bright hallway illuminated by awful blue light that glowed harshly from overhead. Jack stopped at every corner checking for guards or anyone else we might come across. He had the gun in his right hand and me in his left, dragging me along.
Now we were moving fairly quickly until we came to a pair of massive steel doors exclaiming in bright red lettering, ”Quarantine Area One Exit - Authorized Personnel Only.” Jack swiped a key card, and the door beeped back red. He tried it once more, and again it blinked red.
“Damn it! They must know I’m here and revoked my access.” Jack said looking around for anything that might help him get through the doors.
Just as he looked back at me and was about to say something, the bright blue hallway lights flashed to red, and a siren blared. “Breach in quarantine area one, lockdown protocol in effect. Please remain in your stations.” Blasted from speakers embedded in the ceiling above us. I guess we were now trapped.
I don’t know if it was the drugs in my system, or learning that most of my adult life was sham but, I felt defeated, and I was ready to give up. I slid down the wall I was leaning against, down to the cold hard tile floor.
“Abby, I need you to get behind that corner over there, duck down, and cover your ears,” Jack said pulling me by my arm again.
“Why? We’re stuck here until Doctor Death shows up with her henchmen to kill you and take me back to my room where she can experiment on my genetically perfect Z-Strain, Perdition virus or whatever the fuck you call it, infected body. We’re screwed, so why bother?” I said refusing to get up.
Jack grabbed me by both of my arms now and picked me up, so we were face to face. His nose was less than an inch from mine, and he stared hard into my eyes.
“You are going to get up and do as I say because I’m going to get us out of here. I’m going to get you back to our children. I’m going to make this right,” he said sternly.
I had never seen Jack so furious before. His beautiful ocean blue eyes were now dark with anger, and the veins in his neck looked as if they were going to explode. He just stared at me like that for a few, long seconds to let his anger set in and then he practically threw me to the corner.
“Cover your ears!” He demanded as he reached to his belt taking out what could only be a grenade, pulling the pin and tossing it at the steel doors.
As soon as I heard the little metal ball of explosives hit the tile floor and bounce, I felt Jack’s huge arms surround me, pulling me to the ground as I held my breath. I felt like this moment was going to be the end of everything. There was a massive explosion, and I felt the sound wave before I heard the enormous blast rocking the very air surrounding us. The walls and the floor quaked while pieces of concrete fell all around us. A good minute passed before Jack released his all-encompassing grasp around my body and he looked around for any threats. Once he was satisfied we were relatively safe, he again grabbed me by the arm, yanked me to my feet and then pushed us both through the now bent and broken steel doors.
We ran down the debris-covered hall to another set of doors where Jack was able to shoot out the locks, and we were amazingly led outside to the dimming light of sunset. The doors closed behind us as Jack looked around for anyone. I turned to see the doors we had just exited now looked like a ramshackle barn. If you came across this place without knowing what was actually there, you wouldn’t give the building a second glance. I was reminded once again that appearances could be incredibly deceiving.
Chapter 7
Jack had an ATV waiting in the tree line for us. I guessed the explosion kept any guards busy, so they weren’t following us just yet. We ran, well it was more like he ran dragging me along with him, but we made it to the ATV without incident. It was amazing how few infected we saw on our ride back to whatever safe house Jack was going to set me up at. If I had to guess it was due to the horde we had at the cabin a few days ago. Hopefully, the lower numbers of dead milling about meant that most of the infected in the area went over the edge of Lovers Pass and were finally no more.
Then, I remembered the closest black site was over two hours away from the cabin which made me question if the infected from up here had migrated south to the cabin. Was it like what I had seen at Chuck’s where there were hundreds of thousands of them? Or were the people at the black site doing something to keep the number of infected in the immediate area scarce?
I let my mind wander whenever pain wasn’t the only thing I could think of. The ATV ride was agonizing even with the meds I was given earlier still in my system. Jack tried to take pavement whenever possible, and he went slowly over bumpy areas, but it still felt like my bones were made of glass that was shattering with every jolt. After a while, I just closed my eyes and focused on my kids. I didn't want to think about Jack being in my life only because of Doctor Constance Brigantine and her bullshit master plan. Why were people such asshats? I understood the need to make the world a better place, but there was a line you just didn’t cross, and I thought killing millions of men, women, and children was more than just a little bit over that line.
At one point, we hit a long stretch of pavement, and I started to doze off. As soon as I closed my eyes, I immediately began dreaming of the horde I drove away from on the ATV just before getting myself into this most recent mess. I could still smell the stench of death and rotten flesh; it was singed into my nostrils. I could practically feel the infecteds’ hands grasping at my clothes.
Then my dream changed to a little girl in purple unicorn pajamas. It was the same infected girl from my trip to save Jake, my daughter’s boyfriend. In my dream, the little girl wasn’t infected, and she was running around her living room playing with a man I assumed was her father. They were tagging each other and then running away, and in my dream, everything seemed to be in slow motion, giving it an eerie horror movie feel.
The sun shone brightly through a large picture window, and fresh cut flowers were on the coffee table as the little girl ran from her father laughing. She jumped to the couch and put her hands up triumphantly as if she made it to base and had won the game. Her father grabbed her in a huge hug, and they both laughed together as he tickled her. As they laughed the sunlight coming through the window went dark, and another figure appeared in the background. At first, the figure was a black silhouette that shuffled closer to the happy father and daughter as they unknowingly played. Then it came clearly into view. It was a woman in her pajamas covered in dark black blood with half of her face torn from an obvious bite wound.
I wanted to scream at the father and daughter, but in my dream, I was just an onlooker. No matter how much I screamed in my head, the girl and her father did not look up from their game. They continued to laugh as what I assumed was the mother in this small family of three loomed over the two and began tearing and ravaging both of their bodies. The father tried to shield the girl from the jagged teeth and tearing hands of the infected, but his efforts were useless. They were both torn to shreds in seconds before my eyes, and I was powerless to stop the massacre.
The little girl in the purple unicorn pajamas reanimated, and she looked like my exact memory from that fateful day on the road when I was kidnapped by Liam and his men. She still had her stuffed purple unicorn clutched in her dead hand covered in black gore. The little girl stood and looked directly at me. Within an instant, she was running at me with rage in her now lifeless white eyes. In my dream, I was powerless to move, and she was on me quickly. I felt her teeth hit my throat, and I awoke suddenly, almost falling off of the ATV.
“Are you okay back there? Don’t go to sleep on me and fall off, all right? You have enough injuries already,” Jack said over the wind.
“I’m
okay. I just dozed off and had a bad dream. I should be used to the nightmares by now, but this one was particularly heart wrenching. It’s the drugs I guess,” I said into Jack’s back as we drove along.
“Okay, but try not to fall asleep, please. We’re almost there, so hang on for a little while longer, and I’ll get you in a warm bed with some pain meds.” Jack slowed down and pulled off the paved road onto a dirt trail.
His sentiment was almost heartwarming except for the feeling in my gut that it was a lie, just like everything else in our relationship had been. Unfortunately, the remainder of the ride was the worst. It was the most prolonged and most painful thirty minutes of the entire journey. Jack went slowly, but every bump was like being stabbed in the chest. I can’t explain my relief when he stopped at a small shed and told me we were here.
I was elated to finally be getting off of the ATV until I tried to move my legs. I had been sitting in that position for so long I could barely move them. Jack had to get off first and carry me like a baby, which in our current awkward relationship status, was a bit uncomfortable. I hated him, but at the same time, I still loved him. Relying on him for anything after what I had learned recently was truly difficult.
Jack carried me to the side of the shed and put me down softly on the ground. He moved an old barrel that seemed like it was filled with concrete from the strained look on his face. When he moved it, it revealed a trap door that opened to a hatch.
“I'm not going to lie to you, this is not going to be easy in your current physical condition. Unfortunately, this is the closest place I know of where we can hide that no one knows about. There are medical supplies inside that we both need too. Are you okay to climb down the ladder? It’s about 40 feet down, so it is pretty far. If you need me to carry you, I can figure a way to strap you to my back,” he said quietly as he now rolled the ATV into the shed.
“Not going to lie to me, huh. That’s rich coming from you. No, I’ll be fine. I just need to rest here for a few minutes to catch my breath and stretch my legs. I’ll make it down myself.” I replied, refusing to look at him.
“Well, you’re going to have to get limbered up pretty quick because we’re going to have company soon.” Jack pointed at the tree line where ten or more infected lumbered through the brush, moaning and reaching for Jack.
“You’d better get going. I’m zombie proof remember? Go, I’ll hang out until they leave, and by then, I should be ready to go.”
“Zombie proof or not, I’m not leaving you up here with them,” he said grabbing his rifle from his back and taking aim.
He steadied his shoulder against the shed and with thirteen shots he had eleven infected slumped on the ground in oozing heaps.
“Are you hurt? You leaned on the shed to shoot.” I asked quietly.
“I think I took some shrapnel during the explosion. Nothing I can’t fix though,” he said with his signature crooked smile.
At that moment, I hated him for that dumb smile. I wanted to slap it off of his face, but I saw we had more infected coming from behind us. I guess the sound of the ATV was like ringing the dinner bell. I stretched my legs to stand and reached my hand out for his help. I hated him touching me, but if we were going to get down to the bunker I needed his help, and with more infected coming, I was going to have to swallow my pride for the moment. I could hate him later when we were both safe in the underground tunnel, ugh. This was not going to be fun.
“Let’s go, Jack. Help me up, and you go down first. If I fall, you can catch me, but we need to move. We have more dinner guests arriving shortly,” I said motioning behind him.
The infected were still fairly far away, and they weren’t as fast as the last group, so Jack grabbed my hand and helped me up slowly. He opened the hatch and was gone in an instant. I, on the other hand, was taking my time getting down. As soon as I was about to clear the top, I had a good look around and saw nothing other than the few infected coming in our general direction slowly. I reached up to grab the hatch door, but I didn’t have the strength to pull it closed, it wouldn’t even budge.
“Ugh, Jack...I can’t get the hatch door closed, and they’re going to be on top of us in a few minutes,” I yelled down to him.
I heard him climbing back up the ladder, and when he was to my feet, he rolled sideways to climb the side of the ladder over me. He grabbed the hatch door, pulled it shut quickly, and yanked on a cord that I assumed moved the heavy barrel back into place over the hatch. He winced, and a tear rolled down his cheek in the dimming light, so I knew he was in a decent amount of pain. Of all the years I had known Jack, I had only seen him cry once, and that was at the birth of our first child.
He said he cried because he saw how much pain I was in, and he couldn’t do anything to relieve that pain. Knowing what I do now, I couldn’t help but think he was only crying because the birth of our baby cemented the reality of this made up life he and Brigantine had created. There was now a child intertwined in his lie, and he couldn’t do anything to take back the mirage that they had built. I bet he didn’t actually care about me at all. He was with me only because of Dr. Brigantine’s orders. Just the thought made me sick to my stomach, and with him so close to me I had to make a conscious effort to stop myself from punching him in the face. If I had more strength to hold onto the ladder, I would have hit him in that moment for sure.
“Here, let me help you down.” He hooked his good arm around the ladder rung and reached out to me with his injured arm.
“No thank you. I’ve got it,” I replied curtly as I started climbing down faster than I probably should have.
I made it to the bottom with no additional injuries. Jack was waiting at another hatch; this one looked like a submarine door. The immense, oval, metal door was rusted and dingy in the low light of Jack’s flashlight, but as soon as he opened it, lights came on and revealed an apartment of sorts. The dwelling was a studio style, with a kitchen, an area with a table and chairs, and a small open bedroom. In the corner of the room was a bathroom. Well, kind of. There was a floor to ceiling medicine cabinet and a makeshift toilet that made me wish I didn’t have to pee so bad.
Jack walked through the small space filling it up with his size as he asked me to lie down. He opened the large medicine cabinet. It was a doctor’s dream inside. There were vials of medicine at the top, gauze, tape, and other various bandages in the middle, and a multitude of other machines, such as a defibrillator and heart monitor, stacked neatly at the bottom.
“I’m going to need you to lift your shirt. I have to check your incision where your chest tube was to make sure it didn’t rip open, and I should probably wrap your ribs again,” he ordered.
“Sure, Dr. Douche. Let me get right on that,” I replied snarkily lying down on the bed slowly.
“You know what, Abby? You don’t have all the facts. You only know what that manipulative bitch Brigantine told you. I promise everything she told you was her version of the truth that was probably stretched pretty Goddamn thin, so you can stop treating me like I’m some asshole off the street. I’m still your husband, we still have three kids together, and I still love you!” Tears welled in his eyes yet again.
Not knowing what to say, I lay there quietly. Either he was right, and I was a cold-hearted witch, or he was putting on one hell of a show to make me feel like an asshole for something I had no wiling part of. Either way, I was just going to get through the next few days without speaking to him. We needed to have a conversation at some point, but right now, I was not in the right mindset to talk about anything with him.
I lifted my shirt slowly and just sat there as he bandaged me back up. After he was finished with mine, I offered to have a look at his shoulder, but he refused. So, I lay down with my new pain medication and slept.
Chapter 8
We spent the next week in virtual silence. Only quick, necessary questions and one-word answers passed between us. Jack spent as much time as possible topside leaving me alone with my thoughts. I expected him
not speaking to me would make me even angrier, but it was actually refreshing. I didn’t want to hear him, and he didn’t push me to talk. A win-win in my book. All I wanted to do was get well enough to travel back to the cabin. Not knowing if everyone there was safe or not was driving me insane.
I was getting something to eat when the hatch door opened quickly, and Jack ran in gathering supplies, tossing them in his pack quickly, and telling me to do the same.
Starting to panic as I watched him rushing about, I asked, “What’s going on? Why are we leaving?”
“It’s Brigantine’s men. They’re getting close, and I want to be out of here before they get any closer. We need to get a head start to the next safe house. Let’s go!” he demanded coldly.
“You said no one has any idea this place exists, so why are we not just hunkering down here for the next few days until they wander off looking for us somewhere else? This place is hidden pretty well, so I doubt they’ll find us.”
Jack’s bright blue eyes turned dark with anger and he yelled at me louder, “They might not know where it is, Abby, but they have thermal imaging, and they’re searching every square inch of the forest. They might or might not find us, but I’m not willing to risk it! There’s only one way in here, which happens to be the same way out. Now pack!”
I did not like this new side of Jack in the least, but he was right. If they have thermal imaging cameras, they were going to find the ATV and eventually the hatch. I shoveled the canned peaches into my mouth quickly and began packing as many medical supplies and as much food as possible. Everything else I could find on the road if needed.
