by James Harden
I can’t blame him.
I turn away from all the military vehicles and look for my friends. My family.
As I walk over to them, the Evo Agents finally close the blast doors high above us. We are now locked inside. We are now protected from the nuclear fallout. But we are also now trapped.
And I can’t stop thinking about what the man in the gas mask said.
No nuclear fallout. The warheads were detonated in the upper atmosphere.
Was he lying?
The emergency lighting is still active, but this light is extremely faint. The entire Vehicle Access Point just got a whole lot darker. A whole lot creepier. And I fight my imagination as it shows me things in the dark that aren’t really there. The Evo Agents have also scattered glow sticks and flares around the hangar, but because the area is so big, they have little to no effect.
I finally see my friends. They are over by the express elevator that leads down into the control center. The place where I was supposed to die. The place where Maria was supposed to die and the world was supposed to watch.
Now that the blast doors to the outside world have been closed, the Evo Agents get to work on closing the blast doors that lead into the eastern and western subway tunnels. If I was the one making the decisions, I probably would’ve tried to close these doors first, since the tunnels are full of infected people.
I wonder if we should try and help them out. I wonder if I have the strength to help.
Would we just get in the way?
I finally make it to my friends. And as soon as I come into their presence, I feel safer. I feel stronger. Kim has just woken up. Kenji and Jack have filled her in on what has just happened.
The explosion.
The nuclear warheads.
The crash landing.
The fireball.
They tell her that we are waiting for an extraction.
I half expect them to lie and say that we are safe and that everything is going to be all right. But they don’t. Both Kenji and Jack know all too well how quickly things can go bad. So they don’t lie. They don’t say that we are safe, because we are not safe. Not as long as those blast doors are open. Not as long as the infected are lurking in those dark subway tunnels, not at as long as a rogue nano-swarm is on the loose.
Kim’s face is blank, completely expressionless. She lowers her head and buries her face in her hands.
Maria is still sound asleep. I’m getting worried. What kind of sedatives did the man in the gas mask give her? Is she overdosing? Is she falling into a sleep that she will never wake from?
The weird thing is, I’m kind of jealous that she is sound asleep.
“How is Maria doing?” I ask Jack.
“Daniel and Doctor Hunter say that the sedatives should wear off in about four to six hours,” he answers.
“That’s not too bad,” I say.
“Yeah, but until then, she’s just dead weight,” he says, pausing. “Doctor Hunter’s words. Not mine. And those doors are still open. If we get attacked by the infected right now, we’re in big trouble.”
Kenji puts a reassuring hand on Jack’s shoulder. “At the first sign of trouble, we move her into one of those Humvees, all right? We lock the doors and then we distract anyone or anything. We won’t just sit here. We won’t give up. We won’t leave Maria, or you, or anyone behind.”
We won’t just sit here, waiting to die, I think to myself. Even though that feels exactly like what we are doing right now.
But Kenji has already thought this terrible scenario through. He’s one step ahead. He is calm under pressure. Calm under fire.
I wish I had this gift.
I sit down next to the guys and lean up against the wall. We are all looking out over the Vehicle Access Point. We are all completely exhausted. We all need rest. We all need a good night’s sleep. But we all know that we can’t afford to rest now. We can’t stop. Not yet.
I can’t get over how big this Vehicle Access Point is. Even though it’s smaller than the other Vehicle Access Point I entered the Fortress through, it’s still big enough that it looks like an underground airplane hangar.
It’s still big enough that it contained over a dozen Humvees and a few other vehicles. A few choppers. Most of which were destroyed in the crash and the fire.
“Where is Ben?” I ask.
Kenji points to the far end of the hangar. Ben is over by the Humvees. He appears to be checking their engines. Maybe checking for fuel. Every now and then he’ll take a container and slide under the Humvee. He’ll leave the container underneath and slide back out. I have no idea what he is doing. I think he is collecting fuel or oil.
I take a deep breath. “Jack. Kenji. I have to tell you guys something.”
“What is it?” Kenji asks.
“It’s about Maria,” I say. “And about the man in the gas mask.”
Jack’s eyes go wide. His head snaps up.
“The man in the gas mask,” I continue. “He’s a doctor. He’s one of the research doctors responsible for the outbreak. He’s one of the creators of the Oz virus. He’s one of the ‘holy trinity’.”
Jack looks over at a row of Humvees. I follow his gaze.
And I finally see him. The man in the gas mask. He is sitting in a Humvee. He is locked up. He is tied up. He is a prisoner. And yet he is still so unbelievably calm.
I can’t see Doctor Hunter. He must be locked up in a separate Humvee.
Kenji nods his head because he knows. He figured this all out a long time ago. When he was taken. When he was tortured.
“Yeah, so?” Jack says. “What’s your point?”
“He was the guy at the outpost,” Kenji answers for me. “The one that was locked up in the medical supply closet. The one that we freed.”
“No,” Jack whispers. “No way. That’s…” Jack pauses as he struggles to remember his name. “Tariq?”
“Yeah,” Kenji says.
“The guy who saved Ben’s life?” Jack asks.
“Yeah.”
Both Kenji and I fill Jack in on what had happened. And Kim is silent the whole time, her eyes glassy. Her face expressionless.
We tell Jack how the man in the gas mask tried to shoot Maria, tried to kill her. When that failed, he kidnapped Kenji.
Then we both list the terrible things this man had done.
He had tied Maria up, tried to kill her for the second time.
He injected me with a time release nano-swarm.
He tried to execute Maria on camera, tried to broadcast it to the world. A public execution.
He had tortured all of us.
He had manipulated us and controlled us.
He is a sick, twisted, evil puppet master.
“That guy,” Jack says. “That guy in there, wearing the gas mask, that guy is Tariq?”
I nod my head. “Yeah. Although I’m not even sure that’s his real name. I don’t think anyone knows his real name. But yeah, he orchestrated everything. He caused the outbreaks, the containment failures. He is behind everything. He tried to kill Maria because she was the only one who could stop him. Was…”
Jack looks at me like he doesn’t understand. “Was?”
“He took some blood samples from Maria,” I explain. “Because he needed to be sure. He ran some tests.”
“Did he hurt her?”
“No. Well, not apart from kidnapping her, drugging her and tying her up.”
“So what’s this got to do with Maria?”
“According to the tests he ran, Maria is no longer immune to the Oz virus.”
Jack shakes his head. He doesn’t believe it. Doesn’t want to believe it. “No longer immune?”
This is also news to Kenji.
And I’m worried. I’m worried that it might cause them to lose hope, to lose direction. To lose strength. Maria had represented what they were fighting for. She was a daily reminder, a physical reminder of what we were fighting for, of why we were risking our lives day and night. She was what
made us think that we could fix this, that we could save everybody, that we could save the world. She made us think that things could go back to the way they were. And because of her, we had a duty, a responsibility to the rest of the world to get her to safety. And I think sometimes this made it easier for us to risk our lives. Because we were risking our lives for an anti-virus, we were risking our lives to save the goddamn world.
And right now I am afraid, I am terrified that this news will make them lose hope, like it is making me lose hope.
“What do you mean?” Kenji asks. “I… I don’t understand.”
“I don’t really understand either,” I say. “Doctor Hunter says it’s because the virus mutates. Because it mutates quickly. And now Maria is no longer immune to any recent strain of the Oz virus.”
I tell my friends the news, I tell my family. And I wait for their responses.
Kenji knows what this means. It means we are no longer close to creating an anti-virus or a vaccine. It means we are back to square one. It means we might never stop the plague, the Oz virus.
It means life as we knew it, will never return.
Jack on the hand is smiling. Not at first, because he is still thinking about how we freed the man in the gas mask. How he then kidnapped Kenji and shot Maria, tried to kill Maria.
Multiple times.
But eventually he smiles. And he smiles because to him, this means that the military and the company will stop fighting over Maria, they’ll no longer want to experiment on her. To Jack, it means there’s no longer the risk of losing her. No longer the risk of having her cut up, of having her organs harvested. Jack is happy because of this. He is so happy. He is so relieved.
I see him physically relax, like the weight, the burden has been removed from his shoulders.
But I don’t share Jack’s relief and optimism. I think the military or the company, whoever the hell the company is, will still want Maria. They will want to be absolutely one hundred percent sure she’s not immune. They will need to be completely, totally, absolutely sure.
About everything.
This will involve tests.
This will involve experiments.
I don’t even want to think about what kind.
The bad kind probably.
So even though Jack is smiling and happy and relieved, I am still afraid for Maria’s future, for her safety.
We sit in silence for a while and I start day dreaming. I have this vivid day dream. I am sitting in the middle of the desert in a sun recliner, in one of those chairs you see by the pool at a hotel. I’m sitting in one of these recliners and I’m watching three nuclear warheads detonate high in the atmosphere.
Suddenly Maria wakes up. She is coughing and breathing heavily.
She is confused.
Really confused.
It takes a few minutes to calm her down. It takes a lot longer to explain to her what had happened.
Explain to her that we are waiting for another rescue.
Waiting in the dark.
We explain to her very clearly that we have to be quiet, that there are infected in the tunnels.
She slowly comes around. She understands.
And when she realizes that we’re all together, she hugs Jack. And they don’t stop hugging.
Kim finally shows signs of life. “Can we make a promise?” she says. “No one leaves, OK? No one quits. We stick together. No more splitting up. We survived in Sydney. We’ve survived this long. We’ve come so far. We can survive anything.”
We all promise. We all swear an oath. Even though this is an impossible thing. We can never be together all the time.
Sooner or later we will need to split up.
Sooner or later…
Jack takes a deep breath and brushes a blonde strand of hair out of Maria’s face. He says we need to be brave. He says, “We need to be strong. For just a little bit longer. Because we can do this. We can get out of here. And we can get out of here together. Kim is right, if we stick together, if we stay strong, we can survive anything.”
Jack has renewed strength because Jack has been given new life. He has been given new energy. He set out to save Maria and to save his sister. And he had achieved both of these impossible missions, against all odds. His bravery and courage is endless. And I am in awe. I am in awe of his strength. He has constantly been there for us and for me. And I’ll never forget that he saved me from drowning in Sydney Harbor. The weird thing is, I don’t know if I’ve ever actually thanked him. I don’t know if I’ve actually ever said those words.
Thank you for saving my life.
I’m sure he knows how grateful I am. And if I had to guess, I’d say he doesn’t care that I never thanked him. Because Jack is amazing. He has held himself together through all of this. He almost lost his sister, the last of his family. He almost lost Maria. The love of his life.
Yeah, I am in awe of his strength. He is so understated. He never boasts. He never talks up his achievements. He never brags. He just does whatever needs to be done.
And I love him for it.
Kenji is the same.
Maria.
Kim.
I can’t believe how lucky I am. I can’t believe how good we are. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but we have been good. Very good. And we’re getting better.
At surviving.
At fighting.
Hiding.
Running.
I remind myself that my friends are my source of strength.
I remind myself that we are strong as a group.
I try not to think about the promise we just made, a promise that we can’t possibly keep.
I try not to imagine everyone dying. One by one.
In front of me.
In my arms.
“So what now?” Maria asks.
“We have to get out of here,” Kim answers.
“But how? We’re trapped in here. And we can't go outside. If what you said is true about the nuclear missiles, then there’ll be a whole lot of nuclear fallout.”
“Yeah,” Jack says. “I do not want to die of radiation poisoning. I hear it’s slow and painful. I’d rather get bit.”
Maria punches Jack on the arm. “Don’t say that.”
“The Evo Agents will rescue us,” I say, extremely unconvincingly. “We just have to be patient. We just have to wait.”
“For how long?” Kim asks.
“Just for one more day. We can make it through one more day, right?”
No one answers me. This is because a lot can happen in a day.
A lot can happen in an hour.
A minute.
A second.
We are constantly on edge.
So no one answers me.
“What if they don't rescue us?” Jack asks.
“What do you mean?”
“What if they're only interested in Maria and Kim? What if they leave the rest of us behind?”
Again, Maria hits Jack on the arm. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think like that.”
“I have to think like that. We have to be prepared. We have to consider the possibility that these guys, these Evo agents want nothing to do with the rest of us. Why would they?”
“Because we’re innocent people,” Maria answers. “We’re survivors.”
What Maria said made sense, in a time long ago, a time before the end of the world. Before the Oz virus.
People would go out of their way to rescue innocent civilians.
Not anymore.
But Jack had a good point, a terrifying and depressingly good point.
We needed to make a plan. We need to consider the possibility that we would be left behind.
So what do we do?
Where do we go?
How do we live? How do we survive?
Whatever the answer, whatever the outcome, we would need to do it together.
“We’re getting rescued,” I say. “We’re getting out of here.”
Maria frowns at this because
maybe she doesn’t believe it. “It sounds so easy,” she says. “So simple.”
Too simple, I think. And too good to be true.
You have been lucky.
But sooner or later your luck will run out.
Sooner or later you will lose someone close to you…
Daniel’s warning made me think that they, the company, or whoever the hell they are, they won’t take us in, they won’t rescue us. At least not all of us.
The rest of us are expendable.
We are dead weight.
Was Daniel preparing me for that reality?
Was our group about to be split up again?
Would we have any say in the matter?
I think about getting rescued. I think about a refuge, a safe haven. I think about escaping from this nightmare and finding a new life, a place to live. Some place isolated, far away from the Oz virus.
A place to call home.
Do we dare dream? Do we dare plan for the future?
I shake my head.
No.
Chapter 3
We continue to sit and wait and hope. But I have played this game before. It does not end well.
Daniel comes over and takes blood samples from Maria and Kim. And I can tell Daniel is struggling. They can’t close the blast doors to the tunnels. The manual override system is completely rusted over. It is completely frozen in place.
And they still can’t find Miller. Like Parker had said, he’s just gone.
He has disappeared without a trace.
No blood.
No nothing.
He has vanished.
I’m starting to get anxious about just sitting here in the open like this. We are sitting ducks. We are exposed. We are so screwed.
And right then, as if to confirm every fear I currently have, Parker comes running over again. “Sir, we need to talk.”
He is out of breath, sweat is dripping off his face.
“Go ahead,” Daniel says.
“In private.”
“Parker, we’re all in this together. You got something to say, say it.”
He takes a deep breath, slowing his heart rate. “Fine. We have hostiles in the area. They’re in the eastern tunnels.”
“Infected?”
“Yes.”
“How far away?”
