Somewhere In The Middle

by Lucas Coon

  "Dad will you please just stop!" Kayla stood up from the group and confronted him. Her dad walked over to where the group was staring at him in awe.

  "Excuse me? Did you just say something?" Kayla averted her gaze. The moment of courage she had faded immediately. Her father put his hand on her face and turned it towards him forcefully. "Look at me. Look at me!" She kept trying to turn her head away from him and he kept jerking her head forward. She started to cry out of fear and embarrassment. She met eyes with several of her friends as this all unfolded, and she recalled the shock in each one of their faces. "You want to act like an adult? Huh? You want to act all grown up and be a big bad person? Huh? Then I'll treat you like you're all grown up!" He pulled his hand away and slapped her hard across her face. She burst into tears at the echoing sound of flesh against flesh. She looked past the man in front of her at her mother who offered no comfort. She looked further into the room for her older brother. At some point, he must have gotten up and left the room, because he was nowhere to be seen.

  "Was that enough for you? Do you feel like a grown up now?" He slapped her again. He looked around and realized that all of the preteen girls were staring straight at him with their jaws open wide in shock. This turned moment to embarrassment, which quickly turned to rage. "Oh, I get it. You're trying to show off to your little friends here, huh? Trying to act like a big woman, standing up to your old man because all of these little girls are here." He stepped back a little from the scene to distance himself. "I'm surprised you have any friends with how worthless you are." He looked the group over. "They don't get how it really is! I'm the victim here, not you people. None of you deal with half the sh--"

  "Hey, jackass!" Kevin was standing behind him. He turned to look at his son with the expectation of backhanding him to the floor. When he turned and looked at Kevin, he was met with the barrel of his own revolver. Kevin had gone up to his bedroom and grabbed the gun. The object that they all feared would end their lives if he got angry enough, was now threatening that of its owner.

  "What are you doing with my gun Kevin?" He inquired aggressively. Kevin didn't answer. He kept his eyes looking down the sight of the powerful device. After a few moments of silence, the older man's confidence got the best of him. "I bet you don't even know how to use that damn thi--" His cocky thought was cut short by a burst and the bullet flying out of the chamber. The round met its mark in his forehead, killing him instantly. He spun from the force of the shot and fell to the floor. The room was immediately filled with the screeching of preteen girls. Kayla wasn't screaming. Her eyes were wide and her mouth firmly shut. She looked up and met eyes with Kevin. He dropped the gun and stood staring at what he had just done. His eyes filled with tears and he sat down on the couch.

  It had been a long time since this all happened, but it was a defining point of her life. She may have witnessed her own father die, but she never felt as if she had lost much because of it. She viewed Kevin as a hero. The police, however, viewed him as a murderer. Despite his mother's and sister's pleas, they charged him as an adult, and sent him to serve a life sentence. She only visited him one time while he was in. He told her to never come back to see him. He said it was all over, and that she should go on with her life, abandon any thoughts of him and just live. She did just that.

  -----

  She walked back over towards Lilly to see what the little girl was doing. She was sitting on the floor, with her back against the wall of the cubicle, coloring on a picture of a turtle.

  "Mommy, are turtles fish?" She looked at Kayla with her innocent eyes.

  "No sweet heart, they're actually reptiles, like snakes and lizards." She smiled at her curious thought.

  "Then why do they live in water?" She kept coloring through her questions.

  "Well, actually, they don't all live in water. Some of them live on land too, and some do both."

  "That's weird." She finished coloring her turtle. His fins and head were a pretty blue, but his shell was green with pink spots, and his eyes were orange.

  "That's quite a colorful turtle you've got there." Kayla smiled.

  "Yeah! His name is flower." She looked at Kayla and smiled. "When are we going to go home? I want to see if Kit-Kit is OK!"

  "He's a smart cat, baby. I'm sure he'll be fine." She avoided the question entirely. "Do you want to help mommy see if we can find something on the radio?"

  "OK! What are we looking for?" She smiled and clicked the power button on the radio. She turned the volume up to the maximum volume level and started to move the tuning dial as the static grew louder and louder.

  Chapter 6 – Who We Are

  The second floor was only a single story down, so neither of the two men expected much trouble in the stairwell. They decided to just go for the prize instead of making their small talk. With how terribly their last mission ended, this was one they couldn't fail. They could not come back empty handed again, and if they did fail, they may as well not come back at all. Both of them knew they would have to go back regardless, but Darren didn't want to face the disappointment of his family, and Mitchell didn't want to bear the responsibility for messing up the plan a second time. They stepped rhythmically down the first ten stairs, then the second set, and got to the entrance of the second floor. The steel door was identical to the one upstairs, with the exception of the window not being blacked out, and the window containing a white label that stated "Conference Rooms".

  Darren peered into the window. It didn't appear that there was anyone there, or anything going on behind the door. He turned the handle and verified that the door was, in fact, unlocked. Right as he was about to pull the door, Mitchell interrupted him.

  "Wait, Darren." Mitchell stayed his hand. "I know this should be an easy task to complete, but I think we need a plan. You know, just in case?" Mitchell looked Darren over. He seemed to agree with him. "I know we're here for the water, but I'm going to recommend that we look around some. We're strapped for time, so I'm not thinking anything excessive, but maybe just to see if there's anything that we can use." Darren seemed reluctant to accept this plan.

  "That seems like we'd be wasting time though Mitchell. Isn't it better if we just get in and get out?" This question was both Darren's way of asking and probing for more information.

  "You're probably right. How about this; we get in, make sure the coast is clear, and while you're filling all you can in to those bags, I'll do a quick walk through and see if there's anything we could use. Will that work?" Mitchell didn't really know what he was looking for, but anything that he could use to redeem himself would be great.

  "Alright. I guess that'll work." Darren agreed. He opened the door and let Mitchell take the lead. He walked in with the gun ready just in case. While there was some light coming in, the windows on this floor weren't nearly as big as the others, so it was significantly darker. He flipped the switch. The humming of several fluorescent bulbs started up and the shadows were quickly replaced with beams of artificial light. Mitchell looked around and quickly noted that it was essentially a straight hallway with doors on either side.

  "If we're going to get attacked, it won't be in here. There's no room for anything to hide." He spotted the fridge against the wall to the left. "There's the water.” It was just as Kayla had stated, completely full, with the exception of the bottom level. "You start loading up and I'll look in these rooms."

  Darren went straight to it. He opened the door and noticed an absence of cool air. He grabbed one of the bottles. "Well, they're room temperature, but I guess they'll do." He began to load the bottles into one of the bags.

  Mitchell looked down the hallway. There were three doors, meaning three separate conference rooms. He walked towards the farthest one and cracked the door open. With how dark the room was, his vision was limited. He reached his hand in and felt around the wall for a light switch. This was a risky maneuver as, if the room was inhabited by infected, they may very well be watching him. He felt the switch and clicked it on. He
then held the door and listened. No screeching, no screaming, no noise at all. The room was empty. He pushed the door open all the way and looked around. The area was situated comfortably with a large wooden table surrounded by chairs that were identical to the one he had up in the office he was sleeping in. The table was clean with nothing but a conference speaker setting in the center. He looked up and saw a high dollar projector facing the wall. Nothing in this room was out of the ordinary, which was disappointing to him. He was hoping for something that could be helpful on their travels, or just to their survival in general.

  He backed out and shut the door. He looked to his left and thought about the second room. Would there be something in there that would justify his decision to look around? Or would there be an infected in there waiting to jump at the first chance it got. He opted that it was worth the risk. Once again he cracked the door open to look in. This time, however, he noticed that the lights were already on. This indicated the room was clear, so he pushed the door in and decided to check room number two. He took a step in and was taken aback. There were food wrappers and empty bottles laying all over the room. 'Someone was camping out in this room.' He thought to himself. 'Are they still here?'

  While the room was definitely full of a fresh garbage collection, there wasn't anyone currently residing in it.

  "Hey Mitchell, I'm ready when you are." Darren called out.

  "Darren. Come here." Darren walked over to where Mitchell was standing, and was just as surprised as he was.

  "It's all trash, and it all looks fresh." Darren thought about this for a moment. "That means there are other survivors here. Or, at least, there were other survivors. We got here pretty much on day one and we haven't seen anyone since."

  "I'm guessing they left." Mitchell felt this was a good segue over to the next necessary conversation. "Which brings up a good point; we need to discuss our next steps of survival. You know as well as I do that we can't stay holed up in this building for much longer. We have to either consider leaving and finding shelter elsewhere, or going out and gathering food and coming back. Regardless, we are going to have to go to the outside world. We are going to have to leave our safe-zone." Mitchell knew that this was something that Darren didn't want to think about and that his words were going to be hard hitting.

  "I know Mitchell. I've actually been thinking about that pretty extensively. I was so confident that I would be able to take care of Kayla and Lilly until help showed up, but now it doesn't seem like help is going to show up at all and I don't know what to do. As you can probably tell, I'm not very good with shooting people. I'm certified in computer drafting for crying out loud! I never, in a million years, would have ever considered the possibility that I would have to pull the trigger on that gun. I hate those things. I look at that thing as nothing more than a killing device. Do you want to know why I have that damn thing? My father gave it to me for my twenty-fifth birthday. He was an avid gun collector, and he always tried to get me interested. He literally gave that to me to 'start my collection' as he would put it. I guess he wanted to hand all his guns down to me when he passed away, since I was his only son. I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it because it was a gift, and I was always taught to cherish things given to you by the ones you love. Hell, I still have old gift cards in my wallet to stores that don't even exist anymore, because friends or family gave them to me!" He cringed for a moment at this thought. Mitchell wasn't sure if it was a cringe from realizing that this was an odd fact, or if he realized he would probably never see those loved ones again. He continued. "Seriously, how did this all happen? One day I'm at work drafting the design plans for a client's house. The next day it floods and I'm home with my daughter. The next, all hell breaks loose. Within minutes everyone's life changed, and now we're lying here waiting to die on the third floor of an office building near downtown. Everything I worked my entire life for, gone. The only thing that I can be grateful for is the fact that I still have my wife and daughter." Darren realized what he had just said to Mitchell. His feeling of frustration quickly turned to embarrassment and sorrow. "I'm really sorry Mitchell, I didn't mean to say that. Wow, I feel terrible."

  "I know you didn’t mean anything by it Darren. It's alright. Trust me though, I feel your frustration. The only reason I left my house was to go and find my wife. You don't have to feel bad for expressing your gratitude of still having them. I wish I still had her with me right now, but being around you guys has been great for me. Seeing you three happily together, even through these impossible trials, you guys remain optimistic when you're together." Mitchell patted Darren's shoulder. "You have a great family Darren. I'm glad you guys all have each other. Like I said though, I feel your pain. Every day I would get up in the morning and would head to the high school and would talk through various aspects of World History with thirty different kids every hour for six hours a day. I would stand at the front of the room looking over a total of about a hundred and eighty different kids yapping about what major world event took place when and who was involved." He laughed. "I taught the freshman class up until the last hour of the day, then I taught the seniors. It was great to watch the youngest class enter my room on the first day. They always looked like they were lost in the middle of a war-zone. Then to see the difference in attitude when my senior class walked in. It was like leading ducklings then leading lions. The youngest would follow your every word and movement, and the seniors would just do their own thing. I never had trouble with any of them. I miss them all though, to be honest. They were decent kids." Mitchell wondered if any of them were even still alive. Would they have all gotten out to the extraction areas in time? Did any of them live near his neighborhood? He didn't want to think too much on it, in fear that it may depress him further.

  "Anyways, the topic at hand here is leaving. When we get back up I think that we need to--" He stopped for a second. He started to feel uneasy. It wasn't uneasy like 'something is in the room with us' more like, 'something is going to happen.' He stood still for a moment and listened. Did he subconsciously hear something? See something? Nothing was out of the ordinary. He cleared his throat, shook his head and continued. "We need to have a serious discussion about our next steps. It may be best that we go ahead and loop Kayla into this so she can give us her input." He paused again. He kept feeling incredibly uneasy. It was almost as if the floor of the room was shifting slightly, like small parts of the floor were being raised and lowered randomly. He shook his head again.

  "Are you alright Mitchell?" Darren pulled a bottle of the water out of one of the bags and handed it to him. "Here man. You look pale." Mitchell grabbed the water and downed the entire bottle. He stood straight, took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly to regain his composure. He once again cleared his throat.

  "I'll be OK now. We should probably get back upstairs though, based on what I see out that window it's getting dark outside." He pointed to the small window on the end of the hallway. The night had placed all of its weight on the sun, and the sun was about to give in.

  "Oh hell! Yeah, let’s go." He shut the now almost empty fridge and they both headed for the door. It slammed behind them and they both walked quickly up the stairs. Mitchell stopped at the platform halfway. He had the feeling again. 'What the hell is wrong with me?' He hunched over and looked at the floor.

  "Hey Mitchell, come on man." Darren called back to him. Mitchell felt like he was paralyzed. The floor began to spin in front of him. He tried to step forward, but his legs weren't going in the direction that he was wanting. "Mitchell?"

  "Darren, I think I'm..." He stopped mid-sentence and looked up at Darren. His vision went blurry and the next thing he felt was his consciousness slipping out from under him. He hit the ground at full force, completely unconscious.

  Within his head he could see white in all directions, it was all he could see. In every direction and at every distance he could only see the brightest of white, essentially an empty void, removed of all darkness or color. It was blind
ing, but he couldn't not see it. 'Where am I?' he tried to look around, but couldn't move. He tried to close his eyes, but they were paralyzed as well. 'Am I dead? What the hell happened?' He didn't attempt motion again, he knew it wouldn't work. He remained entirely still and silent, with the only noise he could discern from the silence being the voice in his head. 'I passed out. Why did I pass out? What happened to knock me out? I remember walking and feeling uneasy, then seeing Darren and that's all.' He thought it over a little more. 'This is the same feeling when I was leaning back in the office. The only difference between then and now is that, then, I was seeing Aria, and now, I'm seeing nothing. Am I infected? Is this what it's like to be infected? Alive within your own mind, but dead to the outside world? Do the people that are infected know that they are infected? Ugh, that would be horrible. To be able to think to yourself inside your own head, but only being able to outwardly express what the disgusting parasite wants you to do. I can't imagine the hosts die, otherwise the parasites wouldn't be able to live on. So, this must be what it's like. Are they all blind and deaf and only able to think? Do they all see this white void, or a dark void at all times, completely and totally unaware of what they're doing until they die? Is... is this what it's like to be dead?' He shook his thoughts off for a moment. He continued his mental traversing through the empty world inside his mind. 'Maybe I'm not dead. Maybe I did just pass out due to exhaustion or dehydration. It's never happened to me before, so maybe this is what it's like.' He pondered on this for a moment. 'Who am I kidding? I'm dead and I know it. This is purgatory, this is the endless void after death. I died on the stairwell right in front of a man I barely know, holding his gun. Through all of this, and I'm just going to fall over dead? I couldn't even be killed in a bloody mess trying to be a hero? Really? This would happen to me.' He smiled in his mind. While he couldn't move he found it amusing that he was able to portray emotions to himself within his own mind. He then dismissed doing this, because it was completely worthless. 'How long does it take to pass on? How long until I'm actually dead and my brain stops its thinking? How long has it been?' He pondered the fact that time had absolutely no meaning at all in this frame of mind. He could have been staring at the eternal void for minutes, hours, or even years. 'For all I know, this infected apocalypse is over. Aria went on and married some other man and now has the happiest life she ever could. Darren and Kayla probably had another child by now. Maybe they'll name it after me. Mitchell if it's a boy, or Michelle if it's another girl. And I bet that Lilly is in her early teens breaking the hearts of the high school boys.' He caught himself thinking about smiling again. 'No, surely it couldn't have been that long.' He decided to not think for a minute or two.