by Greg Dragon
“It’s been two days,” said the mother. She stared at Tracy for a time with a half-finished chip hanging out of her mouth and then looked at her daughter and motioned for her to stop eating. She stood there for a moment, looking at Tracy. “I’m so sorry, where are my manners?” she said, the chip falling down onto her lap. “Thank you so much for your help. My name is Angelica and this is Maria.”
Tracy smiled at Maria, brushed her hair gently out of her face, and then touched Angelica on her shoulder to let her know that it was okay. She was happy to have the company of people and it felt good to help others even though she knew that the smart thing to do would have been to hoard the food for as long as she could.
“You’re wounded and hurt,” Angelica said as she saw a bit of blood peeking out of Tracy shirt.
“Yes, these are bullet wounds,” said Tracy. “I’m a police officer but I didn’t get shot from doing my job. These wounds actually came from men looking to take advantage of me when I was in my apartment. They came when the monsters were everywhere and tried to rob me and my friend; that’s when they shot me.”
“We have had our share of bad men during this whole thing, too,” said Angelica.
“The ones out there?” Tracy asked.
“No, others, when Maria’s father was with us.”
“What happened to—” Tracy stopped the question when Angelica shook her head quickly. It was obvious that it was a secret being hidden from little Maria so she decided she would ask later.
~ * ~ * ~
The alarm sounded like a hundred cars blowing their horns all at the same time. It was deafening and when it stopped Alysia could still hear the ringing in her ears.
“Attention, citizens of the United States,” the voice of the President said, loud and commanding as if he spoke from the heavens. “It is with great regret that I must ask you to abandon your homes and find the closest military base to evacuate. The bases will have a pillar of red smoke ascending into the air so that you can have an easy time finding them. You have 24 hours to evacuate to the bases. Once there, our soldiers will direct you to the underground bunkers where you will be safe.”
Alysia saw that the soldiers were forming lines to keep them back as they pulled a large lid open from the ground. The people began to question one another loudly, but the President continued with his speech.
“As most of you have experienced and witnessed, we are currently under attack. Not by a foreign force but by strange animals that have managed to overrun our cities. The combined forces of law enforcement and our armed forces have been fighting them for three weeks now. The risk is growing and with the need to protect our American people from danger, we ask that you move underground for a few days to allow us to remove the enemy. Regretfully, our efforts so far have been a hard fight; most of this stems from our inability to use certain weapons within our own cities. The enemy seems to know this, so they go into homes, parks, and cities. All of the places that people are known to be.
“After fighting against these things and losing with conventional weapons, our military has asked permission to utilize a more effective weapon. We do not want to harm any of our citizens so I ask that you take the next two days to get into one of our bunkers.
“Some of you are asking, is it only North America under attack by these things? The answer so far is that it seems that way. The attack started on the eastern shores of New Jersey, spread across the country—even into Canada, and continues at a rapid rate. We are now responsible for what happens with this and since our friends to the north are now affected, we feel it absolutely necessary to stop the attack immediately.
“So please, find a barracks and get inside of the bunker. We built these facilities in the interest of keeping our citizens safe if ever we come under threat by an invader. They are numerous, connected, and roomy. You will find that while it is not home, it should have the space, supplies, and facilities needed to keep you and your family safe until all of this is over. We are doing everything we can to get these creatures off our land so that we can return to our lives. There will be busses coming around to collect you if you are unable to drive or walk to your bunker. God bless America.”
As the President said his goodbye over the intercom, Alysia, Jaime, and Dan walked over to the bunker’s entrance and peered down. There were stairs that descended deep down into a well-lit hallway, and from the look of the lid, they’d built the bunkers out of a heavy, reinforced metal. Alysia turned to the boys and brought them in close.
“I think this so-called weapon is a bomb,” she said, looking around to make sure that none of the soldiers were within earshot.
“Of course they’re gonna bomb,” Jaime said.
“The question is, what kind of bomb,” Dan said as he looked up into the air, trying to imagine the jets flying by, delivering their payload.
“I don’t think it’s the kind we are used to,” Alysia said. “We want to preserve our way of life, monuments, etc. It will be chemical, and they are going to drop it everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if our allies don’t have carriers off the coast ready to light this place up and then fly elsewhere while it settles in and kills the creatures.”
“I wonder how they know that would work, though,” Jaime said. “How do they know that the zombie demons breathe air, or are vulnerable to whatever chemical they are dropping? I think that they are going to seal up the border to Canada. Quarantine certain areas here, bomb the hell out of the woods and the shoreline, and force the creatures back into the cities where the soldiers can kill them all.
“Right now, the problem is that everything is so open. You fight them and they can run off into the woods and regroup. Not to mention some of them fly, so bombing will not be the magical fix. We’re going to be in the bunker for a long time. You notice he never said anything about time. He should have said ‘you can expect to be in there for a week tops’ or something like that, but he didn’t touch it. That makes me think that they want us out of the way so they can take their sweet time building walls and whatnot.”
Alysia thought about Jaime’s words. The thought of being stuck in an underground facility with a bunch of strangers made her anxious. She thought about what her chances would be in the wilderness if she ran away now, but if Jaime were right, she would be a victim of the bombing.
“What if the President’s voice wasn’t really his? What if that was the crazy person who built the creatures, looking for a way to gather the humans in one place?” Dan asked.
They both looked at him as if he was unto something.
“I think we’re all in agreement that nothing at this point can be taken at face value,” Jaime said as he put out his cigarette and looked down. A number of people had begun to descend into the bunker and they were close enough to hear him so he stopped talking. Alysia wished they had more time to make a decision, but they didn’t, so she tapped them both on the arm and led them to the back of the compound near one of the electric fences.
“We have to make a decision fast, guys. It’s not like we have all the time in the world, and it needs to be the right decision or we are going to be killed by our own people. My dad is on the way here to meet up with me so I need time to tell him what I’m doing.”
Dan nodded at her but then turned to Jaime, excited. “You know, I bet they have phone chargers and electricity down in those bunkers. You heard what President Hill said. He said that we will have all the facilities down there. I’m thinking underground city with air conditioning, food, electricity, everything. CeeCee, you could call your dad. Hell, if we stay he’ll be down there with us. It doesn’t have to be terrible, plus we’ll know they are up here, killing those things. I say we go claim our bunker rooms. That way, we can make sure that we’re all neighbors, and we can pick out the best spots!”
“You do make it sound enticing,” Alysia said after some pause.
“Alright, let’s do it,” Jaime said. “It’s not like I have anything to counter. We don’t even have a plane if I were to sug
gest we leave the country. If you’re right about them tricking us into gathering to get eaten, Alysia, we at least can fight back. I didn’t see the soldiers confiscating weapons from the people going down there.”
“I guess you weren’t looking hard enough, Jaime. There was a guard near the door at the bottom of the bunker, tagging and collecting weapons. Do you truly think the government would trust us to be in a closed-in environment together with deadly weapons?”
Jaime looked as if Alysia punched him in the stomach with her words, but shrugged it off. What choice did they have in the matter? They had 24 hours to get underground, and even if they were to run and find somewhere else, they would be susceptible to the same weapons used against the monsters.
The trio gathered their things and then descended the long stairs down into the barracks. Neither they nor the people walking alongside them said anything as they reached the large metal door. They walked beneath the metal detector and gave up all of their guns to the soldier at the door, who tagged them with their names and then placed them into a large vault.
When the soldier gave Alysia the green light to enter, she stepped through the large doors into what looked like a long metallic street that had tiny square houses running along it.
She thought of it as a street because it had signs to indicate the block and name of the person’s address. The ceiling was tall and well lit, and there were gigantic television screens jutting out of it that angled down so you could watch them from the street easily. She assumed that in the future they would show the more important announcements on them.
“This place is so Science Fiction,” Debdan said, unable to hide the smile that came to his face as he walked ahead of them, looking at every detail.
They walked for ten minutes and turned a corner to a cul-de-sac where three of the block homes stood close to one another.
“This looks like us,” he said and smiled, then ran to the central house and jabbed his hand on the panel to claim it.
Alysia and Jaime glanced at one another and shook their heads as they went to the bordering houses and placed their palms on the panel. It was an older technology (the palm-reading lock) but it was secure, so Alysia felt a little more reassured of her safety.
When she stepped inside, she was quite pleased. It looked like a dorm room but was no bigger than her bedroom back home. She saw a shower in one corner, a tiny kitchen in the next, and a segmented off area, which held a twin bed, a washer and dryer, and what appeared to be a safe. On the wall was an embedded television, along with a number of outlets and a platform for charging phones.
Alysia made herself at home immediately, but once she settled in, she went next door to Jaime’s house and pressed the chime to get him to come to the door.
“This place is awesome,” were the first words out of his mouth when he came to the door, and then he invited Alysia in. “Let me guess: you’re freaked out by how good this seems and you expect that any minute now they’re gonna let loose a million dinosaur things to run into these homes and bite us up?”
She rolled her eyes at him and smiled. “I know you think I’m paranoid but come on now. I came in here to borrow your phone; I need to let my dad know where I am so that when he comes in, he can find me. Have you seen how dense the houses are down here? It’s like a shiny, metallic version of the Favelas in Brazil. The last thing I want him doing is to get here, only to start on a new quest of going door to door.”
She got his phone, dialed her father’s number and sent him the message. She went back to her own room, where she took a long hot shower and tried on one of the robes that came with it.
The luxury of water, soap and clean clothes was something Alysia could not imagine appreciating as much as she did now. For days her hair had held the oils the demons had put into it. Now with it washed, it blew out into a curly mess. She sat on her bed and dried it before twisting and pulling it back into a stylish ponytail.
She thought about the journey leading up to where she was and she wondered at the future of America and how long it would take for her world to revert to normal. She didn’t wonder long, as it had been a mentally exhausting couple of hours leading to this. Before long, she was fast asleep.
6
When James Knight returned to the hotel where he had left Tracy, a number of people were running towards him.
“Stop, you don’t want to go that way!” he yelled at them, but they weren’t listening; the panic of the President’s announcement had them in a frenzy.
When the kreples that were chasing James saw the crowd, they charged and as he pushed on towards the building where Tracy was, he heard gunshots from behind him. He smiled as he pushed on, not knowing why he thought they would be helpless. As he rounded the corner to the hotel, he stopped short at a scene that had him perplexed.
Tracy was in a faceoff with a crowd of men and women in front of the hotel’s lobby. She had a pistol in her hand and leveled it at the crowd. Cowering behind her was a woman and a little girl; the girl seemed hurt and the woman was taking care of her.
When he approached them, the little girl screamed and Tracy shot him a glance before returning to the standoff.
“I left you to heal, woman, not take on the world. What are you doing out here, and who are these people?” he asked as he came up next to her and looked them over.
“These aren’t ‘people’ Jimmy, these are rats! Rats that do anything to survive, like attacking a little girl to steal our supplies!”
James looked at the group and counted about fifteen people. He noticed one of the men had a gun. He raised his rifle to eye-level and aimed it at the man, who saw the laser pointed at his head and shrank away into the hotel.
“Come out, all of you, and take a knee on the curb,” James commanded. When they didn’t comply he shot the wall and they ran out and took a knee. “You, come here.” He motioned to the man with the gun, and when the tall, dark-haired man walked up to him, he quickly disarmed him, pocketed the gun and sent him back to the others. “Please don’t move, folks. The only thing I want to kill today is monsters, not civilians.”
Tracy walked over to check on Maria, then came back to where James was standing. She looked ready to shoot them but he was ready to stop her if she tried.
“What did they do to the baby?” he asked her.
“ANIMALES INCIVILIZADOS!” Angelica screamed at them as she picked up her daughter, who hugged her tightly with her legs wrapped around her body.
“Those two are the ringleaders,” Tracy said as she pointed to a man and woman that kept their heads bowed as they knelt on the sidewalk. “They lured little Maria out and hit her, all to take the bag of snacks and water.”
“Where were you two?” James asked, trying to remain diplomatic in the situation.
“She was helping me with my bandages when it happened. We thought Maria was asleep, but when we heard her scream, we ran out and there they were, assaulting her for the food.” Tracy’s anger seemed to be building when she said this and James looked around to make sure they were alone.
“That sounds like two people, Tracy. Why do we have everyone out here being punished for it?”
“Because they all watched it happen! All of them stood there, letting it happen. Not one of them tried to fight for this poor child.”
James was not surprised by what he was hearing. He had seen family members sell one another out in the war, along with a number of other atrocities that made him question the good of humanity. When placed into a corner, some people would look out for themselves and themselves only.
What he was used to was looking out for his brothers and sister in arms, keeping them safe, and worrying about himself last. But assault or no assault, a collective of cowards did not need to be executed. Tracy, as injured and tiny as she was, was letting her anger take it to another level. He pulled her in and whispered something to her. She pushed him off, frustrated, but then brushed her hair back and sighed.
“Okay, fine. We’ll do it y
our way,” she said.
James didn’t appreciate the shove, but he looked at the people and relaxed his grip on the pulse rifle.
“Here’s how it’s gonna work. Emotions are running high right now on both sides but we need to focus. They’re asking for everybody to get into the bunkers and I would suggest we do it as soon as possible. If you want to live, you will go to the bunker at Wharton. That’s northeast of here – just follow the red smoke. As you travel, I would think about what happened here and know that most people would have killed you all for what you did. Now get up and get moving, and get out of my sight.”
When he said this, they stood up and began to walk quickly towards the street. Some of them stopped briefly to apologize and plead their case with Angelica, but the mother was not hearing any of it. When the two that had attacked Maria made to follow, James motioned for them to stay and then turned towards the rest and told them to keep walking.
“Mom, Tracy, this is your call. What do you want to do with these two?” he asked, and as they went to plead their case, Tracy pistol-whipped the woman to the ground, the momentum causing her to fall as she did it. When the man made to retaliate, James picked him up into an arm lock, then switched it to a wristlock and held him steady as Tracy worked him over with a series of punches. When she had worn herself out on the pair of them, James checked them for weapons and then left them retching on the ground.
As he made to check on Maria, Tracy ran to him and hugged him tightly. It was strange and unexpected, but he stood for a moment as she did this before moving an arm to return the hug. “We need to get going,” he said finally and Tracy released him and went over to hug Angelica. “Anything left upstairs?” He asked them, and little Maria lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder to look at him.
“No, the bad people took it away from me,” she said, her voice tiny and cute. It made him think of Alysia when she was just a child.
“The bad people are gone now, big girl; you don’t have to worry. We won’t let them hurt you again, I promise. Are you okay?” he asked, and she nodded at him with tears welling up in her big brown eyes. She reached out to him and he took her from Angelica, shifting her around to sit on his shoulders so that he could continue to use the pulse rifle. “Listen up, Maria, you’re gonna be my little soldier, okay?”
