Running Red

by Jack Bates

  Guard Floyd smiles, thinking it’s her I’m longing for. “Move,” she says. She adds a wink.

  Clearly there are some real soldiers here at Camp G, but Guard Floyd isn’t one of them. The people who flew the helicopters and stormed the Velodrome were actual soldiers—at least most of them. They moved too well, knew what to do. New recruits wouldn’t have been that polished. Still others were no doubt training the civilians when we first arrived. These armies have been rounding up recruits by raiding the wandering tribes. It would explain why Shannon was surprised to find her husband was one of the soldiers who rescued her from Freedom House.

  I can’t quite figure out all that is going on. I know from my meeting with the Superiors that a great battle is brewing, at least here at Camp G. I’m pretty sure it’s with the paramilitary group that is controlling the Safety Zone, where I think my sister is being held. I get the feeling the warring factions have been waiting for the right opportunity to seize control and create a world that best suits them. One day allies, the next day enemies.

  And people like me are caught in the middle.

  All I wanted that day in Kawkawlin was to replenish my supplies. It’s pointless to wonder what would have happened if I’d trekked the 16 miles to Larkin.

  This is how it is now.

  This is the world where I have to live.

  Twenty-One

  The quiet is unnerving.

  It seems like it has been dark forever. Even without clocks, I know we are inching closer to morning. If something is going to happen, it has to happen soon. In the meantime, I try to occupy myself by fashioning a rucksack out of the small pillowcase and strips of my sheet.

  The pillow is more like a throw pillow. It’s a small, narrow, puffy rectangle. I think they may have made them small on purpose to prevent a bunkmate or a guard from smothering anyone while he or she slept. I cut two holes in the open end of the case and feed a strip of the sheet through it. I tie the two ends of the belt together. The bag hangs low on my hips. The stones weigh it down, but I’ve lost significant weight in the last two weeks. My clothes hang on me like the tattered clothes of a skeletal zombie.

  I pace around the cell holding the slingshot. I am too anxious. I go to my bed and sit on the edge. I think about lying down when the lights automatically dim in the hall. The light above my door snaps off. I’m in my twilight zone now. The world outside my wall window is dark, but the world inside the penitentiary never fully gets there.

  It’s impossible to sleep. I get up again and move up to the window in the door. There is no one moving along the catwalk. I shoot a look across the canyon to Aubrey’s room, but I don’t see any movement in there, either. Has he been warned? Does he know to be ready?

  The world goes completely dark. I mean pitch-black. Machinery grinds to a halt. Through the walls I hear the tired groan of rusty mechanisms. A heavy chain sounds like it is being dragged through the walls. Someone slaps a hand on my door. There is a click and the door swings outward. I don’t hesitate. I push it all the way open and step out into the hall. As my eyes adjust to the murkiness of the corridor, I see several people dressed in black unlocking doors.

  The silence is eerie. I must have grown used to the steady hum of the overhead lights and the rooftop generators. With neither working, the quiet is frightening.

  “Aubrey!” I yell. His door swings out.

  “Robbie?”

  We both lean over the partition railing. Below us I see people running towards the exit into the yard. I want to tell them the yard is a dead end. Aubrey distracts me.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Leslie dropped me a note telling me to be ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “This, I guess. Come on, meet me at the end.” I run to the end of the corridor that is connected to the circular foyer we passed through two weeks ago. Aubrey keeps pace with me on his side of the catwalk. Other people start coming out of the cells. There are about a dozen of us gathered by the door that opens into the circular foyer outside of the cellblock. Four more people wearing black huddle with us.

  “Everyone back in their cells!” Jenetta Floyd shines a flashlight up at us from below. When no one moves, she yells again. Her heavy footfalls echo through the cavernous space.

  “She’s coming up the ladder,” a girl says. She is panicked and runs back to her cell. She slams the door closed, but it bounces open under its own weight.

  “You all better be back in your cells when I get up there,” Guard Floyd says.

  “What do we do?” Aubrey asks.

  The four people in black lift their ski masks. It’s then that I realize everyone is staring at me. I don’t know what to tell him, or any of them. A skinny guy from the group in black says something. He’s been leaning over the partition of the catwalk looking below.

  “There’s a bunch of people going out down there,” he says.

  “Dammit,” Guard Floyd says. She’s arrived at the top of the ladder. She fumbles for her walkie-talkie. “This is Jenetta. I’m in the prison block. Prisoners are escaping.”

  A big guy grabs her walkie-talkie and throws it over the partition. It smashes below. Jenetta backs up against the wall. She pulls out her nightstick and points it at the big guy.

  “You stay back,” she says.

  The big guy grabs the end of the nightstick. He raises it over his head and brings it down in the space between her neck and shoulder. Jenetta drops to the floor. She sits with her back against the wall, her hands up in front of her. She’s trying to deflect the blows, but this giant young man continues to beat her.

  “Stop it!” I scream.

  I don’t know what transgression has passed between the big guy and Jenetta, or if any has passed at all. Maybe he is just an evil soul. His beating of Jenetta is savage, and I think he is enjoying it judging from the giggles coming from him. He strikes her one last time. Jenetta moans but lies motionless. He picks her up and carries her over his head to the partition on the outside edge of the catwalk.

  He is a Goliath to my David. I raise the slingshot and pull back on the rubber bands. There is the slightest give of the metal rods in their housing; it could be enough to change the trajectory of the shot. I’ll have to chance it. The narrow end of the rock I’ve chosen from my rucksack is pinched between my fingers.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  Goliath turns around. A wicked grin is on his face. “If you strike me,” that evil grin says, “you’ll be next.”

  Aubrey’s hand comes down on my wrist. “This isn’t the fight,” he says.

  I jerk my arm away from him. I aim the shot once more.

  Goliath turns away from me and throws Jenetta over the short, glass wall. There is a sickening splat from below. One of the escapees in the canyon screams.

  My shot bounces off his shoulder like a rubber ball against a concrete wall. Goliath whips the nightstick at us. The club strikes the metal door with a clang. Goliath uses the distraction to run down the metal stairs two at a time. He disappears out the yard door. He has gone Rambo on us; he’ll be fighting only for himself.

  The skinny guy in the black ski mask points repeatedly at the vast window on the far end of the catwalk. “They’re going out there!”

  I remind him the yard is fenced in. When someone else suggests we climb it, I tell them it’s pretty high and there is razor wire coiled along the top. It’s a pretty good deterrent.

  “Then what do we do?” the skinny guy asks again.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I was warned to be ready. I wasn’t told to take charge.”

  “What’s in your hand?” a girl asks.

  I hold up the slingshot. Everyone stares at it.

  “Whoever warned you is expecting you to do something,” the first guy says. “What’s it going to be?”

  I look at Aubrey. He shakes his head. I turn to the green, metal door that has sealed us off from the outside world for the last two weeks. I pull on the hand
le and the door slides to the right. A blast of spoiled air reaches us. It’s as if we are standing downwind of a field of spoiled potatoes.

  “Runners,” the girl says. She starts to move away from us. “Out there is full of runners.”

  “Impossible,” I say. Then I remember the other large, green metal door. The one that had the warning triangle affixed to it. The one that told us it was off limits except to authorized personnel.

  “Come back,” the guy says.

  “No,” the girl says. She races to the catwalk by the down ladders.

  “Hey!” the guy yells again.

  “Everyone quiet,” I say. The guy in the black ski mask is about to argue with me when Aubrey punches him in the mouth. Two other guys hold him down. “Listen,” I say.

  The abyss on the other side of the door is filled with clicking. Not like the doors opening and closing, not like a light switch being thrown over and over. This is the kind of clicking made by the opening and closing of mandibles. Hundreds of mandibles.

  It’s pretty clear what was on the other side of the “Authorized Personnel Only” door.

  “What is that?” a second girl asks.

  “Runners,” I say. The clicking grows closer. I pull on the door to slide it closed, but now that it is in the open position, it apparently has jammed. “Go,” I tell everyone.

  “Where?” the first guy asks. He spits blood onto the floor

  “To the yard.”

  “I thought you said that was a dead end?”

  I’m not sticking around to argue with him. Aubrey and I are leading the others along one side of the catwalk. Behind us, the skinny guy laughs and tells us we’re crazy for trying the yard.

  “Come back,” he yells at us. “We’re supposed to wait here for the troops.” He is leaning over the partition. “There aren’t any runners in there. It’s just electric relays snapping in and out of position.”

  It’s pretty much the last coherent thing he says. I hear him scream as we go down the metal stairs. There are several shots fired, but by the time the last of our group reaches the ground floor, the only sound above us is the hurried shuffling of the runners and their incessant clicking.

  A girl who was part of the rescue mission covers her hears. “Why are they doing that? What is going on?”

  I grab her hand, pull her to the yard door. “They’ve mutated,” I tell her. I’m shouting over the clicks. It’s as if a cloud of locusts is descending on a cornfield.

  Dark shadows begin striking the floor. Some of the shadows crawl; others try to rise. It’s the runners. They are jumping over the sides of the catwalk to get at us. One of them stands and clamps its hands onto a young woman. She screams and tries to wriggle free. A guy pulls on her, but the latching is too strong and he can’t break her away. She turns her head in one last desperate plea when the runner’s insect-like jaws pop out and snap around her thin neck. It nearly takes her head off. It might have been better for her if it had.

  The three remaining rescuers have drawn their weapons. They fire into the dark shadows racing towards us.

  One of the male rescuers kicks violently at the head of a runner that has caught him by the ankle. He fires down at the runner, but it’s too late. The rescuer suddenly freezes in place and slumps forward. A runner has latched onto his back, its jaws around his spinal cord. Other runners swarm him and I lose him in the dark.

  Aubrey pulls me out the door. We’re in the yard with the others. Most people have run to the fence. Some are trying to pull up on it. Others are climbing the fence. Still others have gone on top of the scaffolding and just stayed there.

  One of the black-outfitted rescuers goes back to the door and closes it. It does no good. The runners push it open and file into the yard. The rescuer goes up the stairs to the scaffolding. Several runners follow her. She turns and fires both of her pistols at the attackers. People begin jumping off the platform. One guy falls wrong on his ankle. He tries to run, but he’s overpowered by a runner. Then another. And another. The woman with the guns empties her pistols.

  Gunfire erupts across the hills. A helicopter goes flying overhead. It fires a missile on the right arm of the prison where the runners were housed. A great fireball erupts behind us. For a moment the runners and survivors back at the scaffolding are cartoonish silhouettes drawn in a comic book, before they are erased in an orange and white sphere.

  It’s carnage in the yard. Whoever planned this did a piss poor job of it. We’re being slaughtered. I look at the slingshot still in my hand and I throw it into the yard. The weapon is useless. It would only stun them, not incapacitate them.

  “Aubrey, what are we going to do?” I ask. Even in the dark I can feel his crystal blue eyes meet mine. He wraps his arms around me and he holds me against him. All around us I can hear the screams of the escapees as they are overtaken by runners.

  I also hear barking. It’s coming from the tree line. I look over Aubrey’s shoulder and I see flashlights. There are about twenty of them. Then I see the green dots. There are more of these. They are appearing on the runners. Something goes whizzing by us. A runner’s face suddenly explodes inward. It drops. Something similar happens to a runner off to our right.

  “Everybody down,” one of the rescuers yells.”

  I pull Aubrey to the dirt. The grass is wet. “They’re shooting at the runners.” The fence rattles as bullets strike it. I look at the girl dressed in black.

  “Who planned this?” I asked.

  She covers her head with her arms.

  The barking is growing closer. Flashlight beams light up the ground on the other side of the fence. When I look up, there is a line of soldiers at the fence. They wear night-vision goggles. The soldiers fire over our heads, picking off the runners.

  “Hey guys,” a familiar voice says. I look at the speaker. It’s Matt. He’s using a pair of wire snips to cut away the fence.

  And then it hits me: Matt is using a pair of wire snips and he’s cutting open the fence.

  He opens a hole big enough for us to crawl through without snagging our backs on the burrs. A couple of soldiers kneel down and help guide us and some of the others through the opening. Yuki is there licking my face and barking. No sooner do I get past the fence then I stand up and hug Matt. I can feel his hands on my back and they are full hands. I step back and hold them in my hands. It’s then that I realize they aren’t real fingers, but mechanical prosthetics.

  We don’t have time to talk about it. The soldiers are ordering us back to the trees. I’m running full tilt when I notice Yuki is running just as hard at my side. The tree line isn’t as thick as I thought it was when I was looking at it from inside the yard. There’s a slope once we’re through, and down below there are several trucks. We are directed into the back of one. Inside sits Leslie and Dirks, as well as Guard 13.

  I slide in next to Leslie. I throw my arms around her and hug her. I don’t know if it’s because the truck rolls forward or if she’s glad I made it, but her arms go around me. When I sit back, Matt and Aubrey are across from us.

  “Somebody want to tell me what’s going on?” I ask.

  Guard 13 speaks. “Camp G has become toxic,” he says.

  “Are you in charge?”

  “No, miss,” Guard 13 says.

  “LC Allison?” I ask.

  “Lieutenant Commander Allison has been terminated,” he says. It strikes me as odd for a moment, but then I let it go. I am learning to let go of a lot.

  “So who is in charge?” I ask.

  “Right now our only concern is getting to a safer location.”

  “Where is that going to be?”

  “They’re taking us to the Safety Zone,” Leslie says.

  “But I thought—” I stop myself from saying any more. Maybe the Safety Zone is a haven after all. To be honest, my meeting with the Superiors the first night I arrived really never made me feel all that secure. If there was insurrection here at Camp G, it was possible that wherever those other camps
were, more rebellions were taking place.

  I lean down and bury my face into Yuki’s neck. She puts a paw on my arm.

  Twenty-Two

  For as much as he is trying to deny it, it is becoming apparent that Guard 13 is leading this modern day wagon train. His name is Clark Danielson. He keeps in touch with the other trucks by using handheld walkie-talkies. Occasionally, when we stop, he moves to a different truck.

  There are five trucks and two tanks. Yes, tanks. Each truck holds about twenty people in the back. The front cab holds four. Do the math and that makes about a 120 people, give or take a few.

  Camp G was about as far away from a clean path to the Safety Zone as it could be. Up near the northwestern side of the state, Lake Michigan made a natural barrier to the zone. We either had to go south and up once we rounded the bottom of the lake, or we had to go north, cross the bridge, proceed west, and head south.

  There’s a full moon over the straits. From where I sit in the bed of the second truck, I can see the moon reflecting off of Lake Huron. It’s high in the sky, and its reflection shimmers like an illuminated crystal rippling on the calm body of water. The moon itself is surrounded by a universe full of blinking and static points of light. I wonder what the ancient people thought when they saw that great white ball rising up out of the water? Yellow when it was day, white when it was night.

  A single, flashing dot slides along an invisible track. A remnant from who we were: a satellite sending back signals no longer being received. Once upon a time we looked to the stars with wonder, then decided we would never need them.

  The wind blows against the truck. For as big as it is, the bed stills rocks a bit. We can’t be going more than fifteen miles an hour. The trucks have to maneuver around abandoned vehicles. Someone has formed barriers with cars, trying to prevent people from either end from crossing to the other. The barrier lines are spaced about a mile apart. It makes the going a bit more precarious as the tanks need to push the cars out of the way. When the last truck passes through the gap, the tanks move the cars back into place. They race past us to open the next barrier.