A World on Fire: Secret Apocalypse Book 6 (Secret Apocalypse Series)

by James Harden

  “We do trust you,” Daniel says. “And I will get you out of here. I promise.”

  Again, I want to say ‘don’t make promises you can’t possibly keep’. Because we don’t know what’s waiting for us in the commercial sector, or the residential sector.

  We don’t know what these people, these survivors who have taken our friends, are capable of.

  We don’t know what the airborne strain will do to us.

  We don’t know how many infected people are hiding. Waiting.

  We know so little.

  And yet Daniel is making promises.

  How?

  Why?

  It’s so we don’t lose hope, I think to myself. It’s so we stay strong.

  Because if we lose hope, we’re done for. We’re dead.

  I tell myself this. I repeat it, over and over. My own little voice of reason. It is a loud voice. It is clear and concise. This voice is so very sure. So very confident. And for a second I feel like the voice belongs to someone else.

  Because I am not sure.

  I am not sure about anything.

  I am not confident.

  I am not hopeful.

  We continue following Sarah. She leads us up the stairs to the shopping mall. She only pauses briefly, checking for the infected. This part of the mall is still empty. We take the same route we took earlier on our scavenger mission, moving through the giant shopping mall, moving past the sporting goods store.

  We approach the entertainment district. She tells us to put our gas masks on and she quickly goes over the procedure. She tells us to make sure that the mask is sealed against our faces. She tells the guys to make sure the filter is secured and twisted into place properly. She tells them again to make sure that when they put their mask on, to make double sure the mask is secure. Because if it’s not secure, if it’s not perfectly fitted on your face, it won’t work.

  “If you have a watch,” she says. “Sync it. If you don’t, tough luck. Someone else will have to watch the timer for you. All these filters have five minutes of fresh air left. The spare filters are in Rebecca’s backpack.”

  She tells the guys how to switch them over.

  Twist. Unplug. Throw away.

  Get a fresh filter. Insert. Twist. Secure.

  Breathe in.

  Breathe out.

  Nice and slow.

  “So we just throw away the used filters?” Jack asks.

  “Yeah,” Sarah answers. “Once the filter is used up, it can’t be used again.”

  She tells Daniel to set his watch. Everyone is to monitor and keep a close eye on everyone else’s air levels. “And whatever you do, do not remove your mask. Better to pass out. Better to suffocate.”

  We move through the shopping mall, through the maintenance passageway.

  Sneaking by thousands of poor infected people.

  Former civilians.

  Research scientists.

  Engineers.

  Maintenance crew.

  Programmers.

  IT staff.

  Shop assistants.

  Deep fry cooks.

  I shake my head. I need to stop thinking about what these people were. I know it’s hard. I know it’s almost impossible. But I can’t think of them as dead people. I can’t feel sorry for them. Because the reality is they are infected. They are living and yet dead at the same time. They want to eat me. They want to infect me.

  We continue walking through the maintenance passageway. We move past the food district, and into another subway station. We cross the tracks and head towards Apartment Complex A. These are the closest apartments to the commercial district.

  We make our way through the subway station, walking up a set of stairs. And for a split second I feel like we are about to emerge on to a normal city street.

  But we don’t.

  We have entered a lobby. There are multiple elevators. At least twelve.

  Sarah leads us out of the lobby, down a hallway. She leads us into another stairwell.

  She points up. “The higher levels are the only safe levels.”

  Again, Sarah is talking extremely quietly. It is hard to hear her.

  She waves us forward. No one says a word.

  I look up between the railings. It is a long way up. I’m not sure how many floors.

  How big is this place?

  How many people lived here?

  How many people died here?

  We end up walking thirty flights of stairs. We stop about halfway to change over our air filters. We exit the stairwell and Sarah points to a door, an apartment.

  Room 3001.

  Sarah checks her watch. She takes her gas mask off. We all do.

  Sarah points up ahead. “This is the first place they would’ve taken them. It’s the closest apartment to the commercial areas. So it’s the first safe haven. But it’s also the most exposed. So if they came here, they probably wouldn’t have stayed for long.”

  “Let’s go,” I say, growing impatient.

  Daniel grabs me by the shoulder. “Slow down. We need to be careful. Walking in there unprepared will get us killed.” He turns to Sarah. “What are they armed with?”

  “Guns,” She says. “Lots of guns. But they won’t use them. They only use them in life or death situations. And I mean, life or death. If you have no other option.”

  “So they won’t shoot us?” I ask.

  “No. Not at first. Talking comes first. They will talk you down. Disarm you. They’ll pretend to be your friend. They’ll pretend that they’re so glad to see you, that they haven’t seen another survivor in months and all that stuff. They will lie to you so you drop your guard.”

  Sarah stares at the door as she tells us how they operate. She fixates on it. She has seen these people do this, she has seen the lies, she has seen the aftermath of what happens when someone stumbles upon them and drops their guard.

  “And then what happens?” Jack says, absent mindedly.

  Sarah gives him a look.

  “No. I mean, like… how…” he trails off.

  Jack looks pale. He is struggling to talk. I don’t say this out loud. I keep these observations to myself.

  Is he starting to turn? Is he infected?

  “What weapons do they use?” Daniel says. “What are we up against?”

  Daniel wants specifics. He wants the details. This is because he is a Special Forces soldier. A super soldier. Maybe we should untie Jack from him. We will need him free to move, and run, and fight.

  “Knives,” Sarah says. “Homemade spears. Baseball bats. Cricket bats. Hammers. Stuff they could find in the shopping district. They will use these improvised weapons first. They will use them until they have no other option.”

  We had two knives. A collapsible baton. A few EMP Grenades.

  One super soldier.

  “You should untie yourself from Jack,” I say to Daniel. “I’ll look after him.”

  “No,” Sarah says. “I’ll take him.”

  “It’s OK,” I say. “I’ve got this.”

  “Do you?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t hesitate if he turns?”

  I look at Jack. Again, his head is lowered. He is looking at the ground, or his bloodied leg. I can’t tell. His jeans are an absolute mess. They are ripped and torn. Bloody and dirty. And he is looking worse. He is pale and sweaty. I tell myself that he looks bad because of the pain, because he has lost a lot of blood, because being shot in the leg with an arrow is just plain awful.

  I tell myself he is not infected. He can’t be.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Sarah says. “I won’t hesitate when the time comes. If he turns, and believe me, he will, I’ll take care of him.” She looks at Jack. “Nothing personal.”

  “It’s fine,” Jack says. “And I’m fine. I’m not gonna turn.”

  Daniel unties the rope and then ties Jack to Sarah. And now Sarah is Jack’s crutch. She slumps over with the weight but she doesn’t complain. />
  “You guys ready?” she asks.

  “Ready as we’ll ever be,” Daniel answers. “Let’s do it.”

  “Follow me,” she whispers.

  Chapter 25

  There is blood leading up to the door, to room 3001. Lots of blood.

  They’re dead, I think. They’re all dead. We’re too late.

  A welcome mat out the front reads, ‘bless this mess’. A human touch to an inhuman living condition.

  The door is shut but it’s not locked. We open it. More blood. A trail. Drag marks.

  We move further into the house. The apartment.

  Living quarters.

  A prison cell.

  And apart from the blood, there is no sign of life.

  Or death.

  No one is home.

  Living.

  Dead.

  Infected.

  The place is empty. Abandoned. And it’s weird how normal the place looks.

  It looks just like a normal apartment. Like someone had left for a few days.

  A long weekend.

  A work conference.

  The kitchen is clean. The tables are empty. No plates or bowls are left out. There are no dirty dishes in the sink.

  The living room is right next to the kitchen. On the coffee table is a laptop. A computer tablet. Another laptop. A watch.

  I pick up the tablet and the laptops one by one. None of the devices have any battery power left.

  There are two couches and they are facing a blank television screen. We can almost make out our reflection in the screen. We stand there. Still. Silent. Like we’re posing for a photograph. The screen frames us.

  I sit down on the couch. I notice the watch has a splatter of blood on the band. The watch is black. It is covered in dirt. And dust. Covered in the smell of sweat.

  I pick it up.

  And I can’t believe it.

  It is Kenji’s watch.

  “What is that?” Sarah asks.

  “Is that Kenji’s?” Jack says. Stepping towards me, dragging Sarah with him.

  I nod, unable to speak. Unable to move.

  “This doesn’t mean anything,” Daniel says.

  I run my finger along the reinforced glass on the face. It’s a fairly large watch. Issued to him by the military. Then again, maybe it was given to him by his father. It is built tough, designed to last, designed to cope with any and all conditions.

  Water.

  Dirt.

  Mud.

  Sand.

  Snow.

  Blood.

  “Did he leave it here?” Jack asks. “That means they were definitely here, right?”

  I turn the watch over.

  There’s a single letter written in blood.

  It is the letter ‘b’.

  “Wait,” I say. “There’s something written here.”

  “What does it say?” Sarah asks.

  “I think it’s the letter ‘b’.”

  “Let me see that.” She has a look and nods her head in agreement. “Yeah.”

  “This is fresh,” I say. “This is new. There’s no way this has been here more than a few minutes.” I rub my finger across the letter. The blood smudges. “See?”

  “Kenji is hurt,” Jack says.

  “What do you think it means?” Daniel asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But I do know that Kenji only just wrote this letter. Probably with his own blood.”

  I think about what this means.

  He’s hurt.

  He’s bleeding.

  He’s desperate.

  “Do you think it’s a message?” Jack says. “Like, do you think Kenji left this here for us?”

  “No way,” Sarah says. “He didn’t even know we would come here.”

  “Maybe he did know,” I say. “Maybe he realized there’s only a few places these people can go. You told us, remember?”

  Sarah starts thinking it over.

  “So he takes his watch off,” I continue. “And he writes the letter ‘b’ on the back, and he leaves it here for us to find.”

  “But what does it mean?” Daniel asks again.

  Sarah shakes her head. “It’s not good.”

  “What’s not good?” I ask. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “If it means what I think it means,” she explains. “It means they’ve taken him and your friends to apartment complex B. It’s heavily infested. And it’s completely contaminated with the airborne strain. Except for the uppermost level. The penthouse level.”

  “Penthouse?” I ask. “Down here?”

  “I don’t know if that’s what it’s actually called. But there’s a huge apartment building in Area B. It’s one of the nicer areas. Reserved for the high level engineers and technicians. Anyway, the whole area is contaminated. But the upper floor is unaffected by the airborne strain.”

  “How is that possible?” Daniel asks.

  “I don’t know,” Sarah answers. “I think the toxic air, it’s so thick, it can’t reach the higher levels. Anyway, this particular building, it was designed for some of the higher ranking engineers and technicians. The really smart guys. The highly specialized guys. It’s almost like a fancy hotel. In the atrium, you can see from the ground floor lobby all the way to the top floor. Twenty stories straight up.”

  “I’m not following,” Daniel says. “Why is it a bad thing? Why have they taken our friends there?”

  “If your friends don’t cooperate, if they put up any sort of a fight, they’ll choose one, probably Kenji. Maybe Kim. They’ll release them, down there, into the lower levels. They’ll force your other friends to watch from the top floor. They’ll watch Kenji either choke on the airborne strain, or he’ll be attacked by the infected. Or both. Either way, they’ll watch him die. They’ll watch him turn.”

  “Why the hell would they do that?” Jack says. “Why infect people? Why add to the problem?”

  “And why would they choose Kenji?” I ask.

  “It’s a form of punishment,” Sarah answers. “A method of torture. It’s designed to make the rest of your friends follow orders. But if they don’t believe your people will behave, if they can’t condition them at all, they’ll just kill them. Not right away. But eventually. Like I said, they will use torture, both physical and mental, to make people behave like they want them to behave. It’s classical conditioning. And the reason they’ll choose Kenji first, is because they do not like soldiers. Not one bit. I mean, would you, if you’d just seen everyone you know and love, if you’d just seen innocent people, innocent survivors massacred by the Death Squad?”

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “How can they make people behave if they kill everyone?”

  “Like I said, they won’t kill everyone,” Sarah explains. “That’s only a worst case scenario. First, they’ll make an example of someone. And then fear will keep the others in line.”

  “We need to go,” I say. “We need to go right now. We need to save them.”

  We need to go right now because we are running out of time. Our friends are being tortured. Our friends are being killed.

  Chapter 26

  Sarah tells us to put our gas masks on. “Make sure they are secure against your face,” she repeats.

  We have to move quickly. We’re running out of time, out of air filters.

  My friends are being tortured.

  Kenji.

  Maria.

  Kim.

  Kenji is a soldier.

  They do not like soldiers.

  Sarah leads us to Apartment Complex B. To do this we have to make our way down a few levels, and then enter a long maintenance corridor that connects Apartment Complex A, to Apartment Complex B.

  Again, about half way there, we are forced to change our air filters. After Sarah is sure we are ready, we begin moving through Apartment Complex B. It does not take long until we get to the VIP area that Sarah described to us.

  At the moment we’re on the tenth floor. Sarah moves over to the railing and look
s down. We follow. All the way down on the ground floor are the infected. They are reaching up to the sky. Sarah points to the heavens, to the top floor. It is a long way up. Another ten stories at least. Maybe more.

  In a way it reminds me of the military prison. Except of course, there are no cells. No iron bars. No plastic furniture bolted into the concrete floor. And of course, everything is a lot nicer.

  But then again, what’s the difference?

  What’s the difference between this residential sector and a prison?

  Room after room.

  Endless corridor after endless corridor.

  Cell after cell.

  We are underground.

  We are trapped.

  In a tomb.

  As I am looking up, I can almost see where the air begins to thin out.

  Jack can’t figure it out. “What are the infected doing down there?”

  “Someone’s been through here,” Sarah says. “That’s why they’re agitated. That’s why they’re in attack mode. They heard the others come through here.”

  The infected were bunched together, in the middle of the ground floor atrium. All of them were reaching up. All of them were howling and moaning. Their jaws wide open. Their eyes glazed over. Ultimately they are unable to do anything. Luckily, they are completely trapped on the ground floor.

  I scan the group of infected people for Kenji. For Kim. I don’t see them.

  “They’ve put people in here before,” Sarah says. “On these lower levels. Without masks. We need to be careful. Stay alert.”

  She has her knife in hand. She has it ready and gripped tight. She leads us into the stairwell and again we make the climb to the top floor.

  We walk quickly, and as a result, our breathing gets heavier, more rapid. And we use up our air filters quicker. We’ve only climbed up about five floors when Sarah’s watch beeps. It is time to change our air filters again.

  Twist. Release. Discard.

  New filter.

  Insert. Twist. Secure.

  Breathe normally.

  Breathe in.

  Breathe out.

  Slowly.

  Don’t ever take your gas mask off.

  Better to pass out. Better to suffocate.

  Sarah only has two air filters left in her bag. I’ve only got three. That’s only one more each. We can’t afford to spend much more time in the contaminated areas. We need to find our friends and get the hell out of here.