by James Harden
The General stood in the doorway. He knew we could not run. He knew we were too weak to run. We had no strength. None.
We had been broken.
He walked into the shipping container. He walked right over Maria and me. He stepped over Doctor Hunter. He moved to the rear. He knelt down next to the Evo Agent. “You were sent here to kill me,” he said. “You were sent here by the company. You are an assassin. Do you know the fate of an assassin?”
The Evo Agent did not respond. He was barely alive. His lips were cracked and covered in black vomit. His skin was pale.
“Your fate is death,” the General said.
“Do it,” the Evo Agent whispered. “Please.”
“You were sent by the company,” the General repeated. “You are the company. And all of you are weak. Incompetent. You should’ve burned the cities. You should’ve burned this nation. You have the power. You have more than enough power.”
“How can you say that?” he asked.
“Because I know. I now have the strength to do things that normal humans can’t do. I have the ability to go above and beyond the call of duty. That’s what it means to wear a uniform. To hold rank. To lead men. If you can’t order the necessary deaths of the few to save the many, if you can’t make that call, then you do not deserve freedom. You are not fit for duty. You cannot be allowed to live as a soldier. You need to be punished. And the only punishment is death.”
He retrieved a gun from the waist of his pants.
He gave the gun to Doctor Hunter. “Shoot him,” the General instructed the doctor.
“What?”
“Shoot him.”
“And… and you’ll let me live?”
General Spears did not respond.
Doctor Hunter looked at the gun in his hand. He realized this was his one chance. He raised the weapon, aimed it at the General. But before he could squeeze the trigger, the General reached out and grabbed the barrel. He moved faster than the eye could see. He twisted the gun, snapping Doctor Hunter’s wrist.
The doctor screamed in pain.
“You have survived against all odds,” the General said. “Yes. You are a survivor. And I admire that.”
Doctor Hunter was doubled over, holding his broken wrist. “What the hell are you going to do to me?”
“You have caused death on a massive scale. And you are now useless. A surgeon with one broken hand. You have failed to contain this virus. To control this weapon. To control power. You have failed. You should be dead. You should have died a long time ago. Now you must earn your life again.”
The General dragged Doctor Hunter out of the shipping container.
“Take him,” he said to his soldiers, his personal body guards. “Throw him in the labyrinth. Let's see if you can survive down there,” he said to Doctor Hunter, taunting him. “Then, I will truly be impressed.”
“No!” I shouted. “You can’t take him away. We need him. You need him.”
“He is just a surgeon,” the General said. “A butcher. He is replaceable. We have other resources. He is not as important as he thinks he is.”
Doctor Hunter screamed as he was taken away.
General Spears came back into the shipping container and I fully expected to be killed at this point.
But we weren’t.
He dragged the Evo Agent out by his hair, and I never saw that man again.
Chapter 40
Hours went by. Days. I’m not sure how long. I’d had completely lost track of time.
The General eventually returned. He opened the door and left it open. He tied our hands behind our back. And then he stood over us for what felt like an eternity.
At that point we were at his mercy. He could’ve killed us so easily. The only reason we were alive, is because he wanted us alive.
For what reason? I had no idea.
As he stood over us he looked like a beast. Or some sort of ancient, mythological god. And I’m pretty sure he had convinced himself he was a god.
One of the soldiers handed him a metallic briefcase. He placed the briefcase on the floor in front of us.
“I want to better understand my enemy,” he said. “Know your enemy as you know yourself. This is the first step.”
He opened the briefcase. Inside were four glass vials. Two vials of clear fluid. And two vials of black fluid. There was also a row of hypodermic needles.
And a gun. A dart gun.
He took up the gun and then threw it away. He picked up one of the glass vials of clear fluid. “This is the Oz virus. Concentrated. And pure. It has caused untold horror and death. It has destroyed this nation. Within months. Weeks. It is a weapon, a biological, evolving weapon of mass destruction.”
He snapped the glass vial in half. The glass cut his hands up. He spilt some of the fluid and it ran down his hands and his arms, and mixed in with the blood.
I backed away.
He drank the rest of fluid in the vial and wiped the blood on his bare chest.
“You… you just drank the virus?” Maria said. “Are you mad? You’re a dead man.”
“No. I will not die. This is how I become immortal. This is how I become invincible. Know yourself. Know your enemy. In one thousand battles I will not know defeat. I will survive. You are not the only one, little girl. You are not the only one who is immune.”
He held his gut and grimaced in pain.
“My rank. My power. I have ordered the deaths of many people. I have killed more people with the stroke of a pen, the push of a button, the nod of the head. Confirm access code. Launch code. Every time I turned a key. I massacred thousands of people in a heartbeat. This will test you. The fear and the weight of the dead will test you. Abraham Lincoln once said if you want to test the character of a man, give him power. You must embrace the fear of death, the power to kill. Embrace it. Or it will break you, it will destroy you.”
Beads of sweat had formed on his head. He began to shiver.
“Do you believe me when I say I acted for the greater good of mankind? Will anyone believe me? I ordered the nuclear strikes. Me. I had the power of God. And I used that power. But how could anyone ever understand. I killed thousands, to save millions. I killed millions, to save billions. How could anyone without true power understand that?”
He threw the broken glass vial away. It smashed against the far wall of the shipping container.
“The doctors tell me that infection spreads quickly. Sometimes it spreads within minutes, sometimes hours. I have consumed the Oz virus. Soon, I will know my enemy. And then I will know immortality.”
He stood. He was about to leave but then he paused in the doorway. “You will know your fate soon.”
Chapter 41
After the General left, the soldiers blindfolded us again, placing black hoods over our heads. We were inmates on death row, awaiting execution. We were alone in the dark. We were miles below the earth’s surface. We were in a prison within a prison.
Doctor Hunter and Ben had been taken away. They had been thrown into some sort of labyrinth.
Kim had disappeared. We hadn’t seen or heard from her in days.
We had no idea where Jack was.
Or Kenji.
I think I had convinced myself that Kenji was dead. And I had convinced myself that Maria and I would join him in the afterlife very soon. We were basically waiting in the dark for the General, or one of his men, to come back and finish us off.
We were waiting to die.
The worst part was not having the strength to do anything about it. We were so unbelievably weak. There was no point in trying to escape. We were trapped in the deepest, darkest part of hell. Our only option was to try and bargain our way to freedom. Or at the very least convince them that Maria was worth living for. Worth saving.
We spent one last night in that shipping container.
All throughout the night we heard screams.
And gunshots. Rapid machine gun fire.
More screaming.
; The howling moan of the infected.
We had no idea what was going on.
How did the infected get in? How did they get through the blast doors?
Did the General turn? Was he now an infected undead monster? Why the hell would he drink a vial of the Oz virus? Was he really that delusional? Did he bite and infect his bodyguards?
The noises, the gunshots and the screaming lasted for a few hours.
And then there was silence. The only noise we could hear was our own ragged breathing.
Suddenly the doors to our makeshift prison cell opened. I tried to make a move. I tried to grab Maria. Tried to run. I failed. I was too weak. I couldn’t even stand.
Maria was crying.
I tried to bargain for her life. “She is immune! Don’t you people get that? We could fix this! We have to!”
A voice spoke. It was threatening. Almost mechanical. “There is no way to fix this world. We must start over.”
“Who… who are you?” I asked. “Where is the General? Where is Kim?”
“The General is dead,” the man answered. “Victim of his own hubris.”
The man dragged us out of the shipping container. Forced us to our feet. “The General and his men became infected,” he said. “The General had deliberately infected himself with the Oz virus. He believed that he was God. He believed he would become immortal. He believed he was immune. No one is immune.”
“I am,” Maria whispered.
“Are we sure about that? The virus changes. Maybe you are no longer immune. Maybe we should find out.”
“Who are you?” I asked. “What the hell are you going to do to us?”
“I am going to give you a choice,” he said. “I am going to give you freedom.”
Epilogue
My blindfold, the black hood is removed from my head.
I can see that I am in a room. An interrogation room.
I can’t see Maria. We have been separated.
I am sitting at a table. There is a large one way mirror to the left of me, and in front of me is a man. He is wearing a gas mask that has been stitched into his scalp. The goggles of the mask are tinted. I can’t see his face or his eyes. He looks like a monster. An alien. Something inhuman.
His shirtless body is scarred and mutilated. His right shoulder is pockmarked with shrapnel wounds from where I shot him.
He pulls out a gun. It was strapped to a holster that was strapped to his chest.
He aims the gun at me.
I close my eyes and he fires the gun.
There is no gunshot. Nothing loud. No bang. No boom. There is a noise but it was weird. It was muffled and soft. I can’t describe it.
And there was no bullet.
I look at my right shoulder. There is a syringe, a dart.
He has shot me with a dart gun. A tranquilizer or something. Although I have a bad feeling it is not a tranquilizer.
I have a bad feeling it is something much, much worse.
I didn’t feel the dart pierce my skin because earlier he injected me with a sedative.
The man in the gas mask places a paper crane on the table.
What is this? What did you shoot me with?
I say this in my head.
And the room spins.
“What is this? What did you shoot me with?”
“This is a paper crane. It is a symbol of hope. In World War Two, U.S. forces dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. In an instant, one hundred and forty thousand people were killed. More than just killed, they were vaporized. They ceased to exist. Ten years later, a young girl was dying of cancer caused by the radiation from the bomb. But she believed that if she folded one thousand paper cranes, the gods would save her.”
The tiny paper crane has been folded with amazing skill and care. The crane looks as though it will come to life at any second and fly away.
There is only one person in the world who could’ve made something so goddamn amazing.
Kenji Yoshida.
“The girl,” he continues. “She never accepted her fate. She was dying. Nothing was going to change that. You have been shot with a time release virus. A nano-virus. It will remain dormant in your body for three days. Seventy-two hours. After seventy-two hours, the virus will become active. It will kill you. There is no stopping it.”
I remove the dart from my shoulder. I stare at it. I am dying. “Why are you doing this?”
The man takes a deep breath. “I told you. I am giving you freedom.”
I look at the paper crane. “Where is Kenji?”
“You may not know this, but some people do not want to preserve this way of life. Our civilization. Some people want to burn it. Destroy it. I am one of those people. Once I destroy this world, we will be free to start a new life. A new world. Yes. Finally, we will be free.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No. I am a savior.”
“Where is Kenji?”
“The Japanese fellow? He was strong. He was a warrior.”
Was?
The man in the gas mask stood and then left the room.
“Wait. Where is Maria? Where are you keeping her!?”
He does not answer me.
I try and follow him. I reach out for him. I try and stop him. But I can’t. I can’t move.
I fall off my chair. I lay slumped on the cold, concrete floor. At some point the sedative takes over and I pass out.
I wake up in a panic.
I am dizzy and disorientated.
The man in the gas mask has disappeared.
I am alone.
A watch is strapped to my wrist. It is counting down.
It reads: Sixty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes.
Eight hours.
I’ve been asleep for eight hours.
The paper crane is sitting next to me.
Written on the wing, is a message.
It says, “Open me.”
I unfold the crane.
Inside is another message. A note. A sick poem. A haiku of horror.
Or maybe it’s a prophecy.
The whole world will look
for a girl to save their souls.
They will watch hope die.
I hold the note tightly in my hand. I slowly get to my feet.
The man in the gas mask is a psychopath. He is going to execute Maria on camera. He is going to show the world. I can’t let that happen.
I have a choice.
I can curl up into a ball and die. Or I can live. I can fight. I can fight for Maria. I can fight for my friends.
I’m pretty sure I’m dying. I’m pretty sure I have three days to live. Sixty-three hours. Fifty-five minutes. But I choose to fight.
OUT NOW
SALVATION
Book 5 in the Secret Apocalypse series
A World on Fire
Book 6 in the Secret Apocalypse series
OUT NOW
The Lost Journal
A Secret Apocalypse Story
The Lost Journal Part 2
Villains of the Apocalypse
A Short Story
OTHER WORKS BY JAMES HARDEN
Ninja Vs Samurai
For more info visit
http://jamesharden.blogspot.com/
The following is an excerpt from Salvation - Book 2 in the Secret Apocalypse series.
Three days to live.
Three days to die.
I wake slowly and I open my eyes and I realize I must’ve passed out again.
“I choose to fight.”
I say this out loud. Like a mantra. Like a goddamn war cry.
I stand up, using the table and chairs for support.
And I am ready to fight. I am ready for the fight.
But…
But…
I am alone.
I am locked and trapped in an interrogation room. And this room is a box made out of concrete. And the room spins. Faster and faster. The whole world spins.
My legs are weak and I
fall to my knees and I close my eyes. I shut them as tight as I can.
I know I need to make a move. I need to do something with my last days on earth, but right now, I am trapped inside a concrete box. I am miles below the earth’s surface in a military installation known as the ‘Fortress’.
I am trapped inside a prison within a prison.
I pass out.
And when I wake, I can’t move. I stay curled up on the floor. I stare at the ceiling.
Hours pass.
I haven’t moved from the floor of the interrogation room since I woke. I haven’t moved because I can’t move. The man in the gas mask pumped me full of powerful sedatives.
Chemical handcuffs.
My limbs feel like lead. It feels like earth’s gravity has increased exponentially. I can barely breathe. I read somewhere this is how a lot of heroin addicts die. They overdose; the opiate subdues and depresses their airways, their lungs. They stop breathing. They suffocate.
I have been passing in and out of consciousness for nine hours now.
Nine hours and forty-four minutes and thirty-two seconds.
I know the exact time because strapped to my wrist is a digital watch.
A timer has been set. A countdown.
The watch was given to me by a man wearing a gas mask that he has stitched into his scalp. The watch was given to me not as a present. Not as a gift. More as a sick reminder of how long I have left. And I am watching the hours disappear. I am watching my life disappear.
Along with the sedatives, I have also been injected with a time release nano-virus. And when the countdown reaches zero, the virus will be activated. When the countdown reaches zero, I am screwed. I am dead.
