by Joshua Guess
What? Of course I loaded the one piece of clothing unlikely to be taken with a bunch of hidden stuff. Being prepared is as close to religion as I get.
“We’re taking it easier today,” Red said as he ushered me through an unfamiliar door. “Just me for now. Doctor Pickles will be here in about an hour.”
“Cool,” I said. “What are we doing?”
He smiled, which made him look about fourteen. “We want to take a look at your brain.”
I recoiled in horror, and he put up his hands in a placating gesture.
“Sorry, sorry, nothing like that!” he said quickly. “Just some electrodes and tests on the computer. Just like the other stuff you’ve been doing, with a baseline for normal and then after you’ve triggered. It’ll be like playing video games.” He paused, considered. “Actually, you will be playing video games for part of it. Nothing invasive about it.”
“Oh,” I responded breathily. “Okay. That’s good. I was a little worried you wanted to drill a hole in my skull or something.”
It was Red’s turn to recoil, though his reaction was much less pronounced. “Not at all. I’m actually a neurologist, but I’m more interested in cognitive neuroscience than digging around in anyone’s head. I want to see how your fine motor control works under the influence, so to speak.”
“Gotta say, I’m a little surprised. That doesn’t sound bad at all. I was sure John would use this free time to do something more, uh, risky.”
Red grimaced faintly. “I requested to get you this morning. I don’t know what he has on the schedule after, but I insisted I get the chance to see what you can do first.”
Two thoughts struck me at once. The first was intuition and mostly a guess, but I had a hunch it was right.
Red had asked to test me because he was worried John would do something that would damage me and wanted to delay it if possible. It was in the set of his shoulders and the tone of his voice. Nearly every element of his body language screamed it at me.
The other was that the physician and researcher in him, the bundle of learned behaviors that partitioned itself off from things like emotional attachments, recognized that if John might do something to cause permanent damage, this might be his only chance to get untainted information by testing me.
I respected the layers to the situation even if one of them was cold and clinical.
I opened my mouth to say as much, but before I could say a word, a distant clanging could be heard.
“What is that?” I asked. “Never heard it before.”
Red looked toward the open door as if expecting an enemy to appear there. “That’s the intruder alert. It’s what they use when living people are spotted approaching. You’ve seen it; it’s an old bell attached to the right guard post at the main gate.
“Huh. I always thought that was just for show. Something left over from the militia who used to own this place.”
Red nodded. “It’s left over, but it works. We should get you out of here. They’re going to come make sure we’re secure. It’s protocol. Don’t want any of us to get in trouble for unauthorized testing.”
Fortunately, the trip was short and no one was paying the slightest bit of attention to the walkway. Red and I even stopped in the middle of it to watch for a second, but all we could see were the backs of soldiers rushing toward the gate.
“Go on in,” he told me, holding the door open. “You’ll probably be able to see better from a higher window.”
“Thanks,” I shot back at him over my shoulder, then beat my feet up to the third floor.
The view from up high was better, that much was true. The other prisoners joined me—my stomping boots were hard to miss—and we watched the drama unfold. Not that there was a lot of it to be found. The main gate opened, a dozen armored forms aiming rifles at the small gap as a limping figure stepped through. Even from this distance, his sorry state was obvious. Rips in his clothes exposed patches of dark skin, mud and blood splattered across his body. And the limp was serious, almost toppling him several times as he made his slow way across the courtyard with his hands up.
Something tickled in the back of my head.
Oh. Shit.
I knew that limp. Even before he got close enough to see, I was sure.
It was Ellis.
15
My heart skipped a couple beats when I saw him, and not in a romantic way.
A small part of me was worried about his appearance since he looked like steamrolled shit, but the overwhelming majority of my reaction was to wonder just what in the hell he was doing here.
“Who do you think he is?” Anthony asked, squished close to me. “Must be a badass to have made it here on foot.”
“Or just lucky,” I said. “Look at the state of him. He’s barely able to stand.”
It was obvious from the way the soldiers reacted that they didn’t see Ellis as much of a threat. He wasn’t armed—they patted him down and didn’t find so much as a knife—and wavered on his feet. The space between us wasn’t enough to hide the sharp edges to his features. He looked starved and a little dehydrated.
Frustration like nothing I had ever felt before welled up in me. A friend of mine was in plain view and there was nothing I could do to go to him. My feelings toward my captors and situation had fluctuated from righteous fury to something close to Stockholm syndrome levels of sympathy, but I felt more like a prisoner in that moment than any time since being taken from my home.
It was Oscar-level acting and nothing else that kept me cool when Ellis was led off to the clinic.
“That’s probably not good,” Julia said. “What do you think they’ll do to him?”
I shook my head. “God only knows. Red was pretty nice to me, but…”
She looked at me quizzically. “Red? Do you mean Doctor Barnes?”
“If he’s the dude with hilariously red hair, then yeah,” I replied. “He seems like a decent guy. If he’s still there, I’m pretty sure they’ll just check this new guy over and make sure he’s not dying or whatever.”
“Oh, he’ll be there. They all will, unless they have business outside the lab. You do know they all live there, right? On the third floor. That’s why we never go up there when they test us.”
I filed the information away like I did with virtually all data I encountered, but couldn’t bring myself to care right then. I didn’t want to give anything away to the others, so with torturous effort I put on a mildly bored expression and went about my day.
Obviously, testing was right out. There were too many soldiers coming and going from the clinic as they checked to make sure their new arrival wasn’t going on any killing sprees.
Speaking of killing sprees, we played Monopoly. It was hours later, in the middle of our second game and well after lunch, when the buzzer signaling someone wanting our attention at the door downstairs echoed through the halls.
The five of us went as a unit and found Ellis standing with Red—er, Doctor Barnes. The redhead had a hand on Ellis’s shoulder and gestured to us with the other.
I fervently hoped the kid would be smart enough not to let on that he knew me.
“These are our other patients,” Barnes said. “Everyone, this is Ellis. He’s been on his own for months. Saw our boys heading out this morning and dragged himself here, so please give him the same consideration you give each other.”
“Of course we will,” Julia said reprovingly. “We’re not monsters.”
“Not all of us, anyway,” Samantha said. “Hi, Ellis. You can call me Sam.”
Barnes gave Ellis a gentle pat and a light push toward us. “If you begin feeling ill or need anything, buzz us. Otherwise we’ll see you in the morning.” He let himself out.
We all waited like antelope at the watering hole, frozen in place as the potential danger passed. When the clinic door closed behind Barnes, I stepped to the side and put a finger to my lips emphatically, making sure everyone present saw it. I pointed up. The other prisoners got my meaning, that we should be quiet
until we reached the safe room, though Ellis raised a sardonic eyebrow and nodded. The need for silence, at least, was obvious.
He walked without much trouble, the stairs causing him to slow only a little. When we reached the safe room and shut the door, I turned and engulfed him in bear hug. He made my ribs creak in return, and the deep ache I’d feel in them later was more than worth it. Everyone else in the room expressed surprise to one degree or another.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked in a fierce whisper after we broke apart. “That was never part of the plan.”
“Things changed after we got here,” Ellis replied in the same tone. He eyed the other four in the room. “Can I talk in front of them?”
“Hang on, you two know each other?” Davis asked. “That seems…convenient.”
The suspicion in his voice was hard to miss.
“It’s really not,” I told him. “I’m surprised Ellis is here. Like, in the fort. I’m not at all shocked he’s in the area.”
Davis frowned. “Why not?”
“Because we always knew I might be taken,” I said. “So we planned ahead.”
I explained it to them as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“My dog tracked me here,” I told them. “We heard early on that people were being taken. People like me. So we worked out a couple different ideas on how to keep track of me. Obviously stuff like GPS wasn’t an option, so we went old school. We figured since Nikola was already obedience and attack trained, spending a few months teaching him to track a particular scent wouldn’t be that hard.”
I sat on the floor and tugged off one of my boots, showing them the sole and pointed to an imperfection that could have just been a spot where something poked into it. “See that? It’s a hole. Took a few tries to get the shape right, but when I push down with my foot right on it, it flexes and opens up just a little.” I demonstrated by pushing the inside with my hand, and a nearly invisible puff of dust emerged. “That’s what Nik tracked to find me. No idea how well it would work, but it apparently did.”
Ellis seesawed his hand. “Yes and no. Lost the trail a few times. Had to do some guesswork. Luckily those trucks leave a pretty recognizable set of tracks.”
Davis tilted his head at my boot. “What is it?”
“In the boot? Mostly cocaine.”
Samantha cackled with delight, Julia seemed fascinated. Anthony grinned and shook his head, and Davis frowned as he spoke. “You’re telling me your dog followed you across a couple hundred miles because you set up a cocaine delivery system in your shoe?”
I tilted my head at him curiously. “Well, yeah. We added in a couple other powders that have a strong smell for dogs to make it unique. Plenty of houses to search through, but we got the coke from a police lockup. I made sure to wipe my boots on the truck and along the road every chance I got. We knew it wasn’t guaranteed to work.”
I gave Ellis a meaningful look. “Which brings me to why you thought it would be a good idea to show up here. You were supposed to keep a distance if you found the place and work on getting us out.”
Ellis barked a laugh. “You know, only you could look at a goddamn walled fort full of armed soldiers and think, hey, this will be an easy job. We ran into problems. That’s why we sent the zombies after you. Had to draw people away from here somehow.”
I’d suspected it as soon as I saw him, but the confirmation was nice. “Thought I recognized that handwriting. How many people came with you?”
Ellis glanced at the four prisoners in the room, eyebrow twitching a question at me.
“Talk in front of them, dude,” I said. “If one of them is funneling information to the doctors, I haven’t seen any evidence of it.”
Ellis nodded agreement but still seemed uneasy. “Counting me, there are fifteen of us. Jem and the others are back at the camp. Well, not by now. They were supposed to move out as soon as I was on my way, and that was two days ago.”
“Fifteen people,” Davis said, his voice flat. “You think you can outfight a force ten times your size on open ground when they have every possible advantage?”
“God, no,” Ellis said. “That was never the plan. We’re drawing them away. Using extra campfires and every other trick in the book to make them think there are way more of us.”
Anthony put up a hand. “How does that help us, though? It’s not like we can get away from fifty of them any easier than two hundred. They’ll cut us down just as easily.”
Ellis shook his head. “Not if they aren’t here. That’s why I showed up. I needed to let you know what we’re doing so we can get you all free. We have a plan. If it works, it should draw out most of the remaining soldiers, at least for a little while.”
“Don’t leave us in suspense, man,” Anthony said. “You’re all foreplay and no action.”
Julia smiled at this. “How can we help?”
“By being ready to move,” Ellis told them. “We found this place a day and a half after Ran got here. We spent the rest of that time getting ready, mostly by herding zombies. The ones we aimed at your front door weren’t even ten percent of the swarm we gathered. If Jem and the others can draw those soldiers into our trap, they’ll be stuck twenty miles or more from here with busted rides and an ocean of zombies around them.”
I nodded in understanding. “You think they’ll call for help.”
Surprisingly, Ellis shook his head. “That would be great, but we’re not counting on it. The idea is for our folks to take out the engines of those trucks and haul ass this way. They’ll assault the main gate here and try to pull the remaining soldiers into another chase. There will be a big gap before Jem shows up, so if the main force does call for help, we can capitalize on that instead. I know I’d much rather that happen than Jem start a big fight.”
Davis put up a hand. “Wait, so how exactly are we getting out, then? I’m hearing a lot about everything but that part. In case you haven’t noticed, they can lock the doors on this building any time they want.”
I had been wondering that myself. With no way of knowing what sort of fortifications or security I might be held behind, we had to come up with a number of loose ideas that could be altered on the fly to fit a situation. In all the dozens of hours of work, I had never once mentioned my plan to go willingly to save trouble for the rest of my friends, but I think some of them suspected when I began arguing against risky attempts to get me back.
Just what had already happened put many more lives at stake, and I fucking hated it. I knew there was no way to stop Jem or the others once I was gone. Telling them not to bother would be wasted breath.
I met Ellis’s eyes. “Please tell me they’re not going to ram the gate.”
“No, that’s the last-ditch option,” he said reassuringly. “We spent a few days watching the sentries on the wall. We know how they tend to react. Once they’re distracted, we have someone ready to capitalize on that and scale the wall. If it works, he’ll be able to slip in during the assault and let everyone out of here. Then all we have to do is climb the rope over and out.”
I tried to settle on just one way that plan was prone to failure and decided I couldn’t. So I just said the first one that came to mind. “So how are you going to deal with the lockdown when it comes? I mean, a frontal assault will definitely make them shut this building tighter than Fort Knox. No access from the outside without a door code.”
Ellis, who had been looking more like his confident self by the minute, froze. “Oh. Yeah. I have no idea.”
Perfect.
16
Perspective is the greatest advantage and disadvantage of the human condition. Our ability to experience the same events and know the same facts but take different lessons and form utterly divergent opinions creates a vibrant harmony of thought. It gives us multiple alternate views to consider. It also means that all too often, we have a hard time altering our own reasoning to accommodate those views. Like anything else worth doing, it takes time and effort.
I, for example, saw the treatment of the members of the cult I grew up in as abusive and terrible. Some others did as well, though the majority did not. Even years later they made this disagreement clear to me.
I tend to waver based on new information. I didn’t see the soldiers or even the doctors as mustache-twirling villains. Oh, sure, at first I was furious and willing to do anything to keep my freedom. And I sure as hell was not okay with some of the things John was doing. I will absolutely kill if needed and not feel too awful about the necessity afterward, but life was too precious nowadays to waste without good cause.
So when it came down to deciding on a plan, the six of us fell into two camps. Ellis, Samantha, and Davis on one side with me, Julia, and Anthony on the other.
“We can’t risk leaving them alive, Ran,” Samantha said. “You have to know that. They’ll raise the alarm as soon as they’re able.”
Julia shook her head violently, especially for a woman of her age. “Not if we tie them up. I understand that we may have to kill if they give us no other option. I am not okay with us deciding to commit murder in cold blood as a first choice solution.”
Samantha scoffed, staring at Julia in disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me? You think the others are any better than John? They’re collaborators, Julia. They might not do the horrible things he does, but they let him.”
Julia raised her bandaged arm, careful to show the bloodstain seeping through. “You think I don’t know? They’ve hurt all of us. What I’m asking is for you to stop and look at their position.” Samantha opened her mouth in a snarl, but Julia silenced her with the sort of commanding body language all grandmothers seem able to draw upon at will. “No, I’m serious. These people lived through the same nightmare we did after Zero. They saw the dead walk, saw Reavers kill and maim and eat people alive. They live in the same ruined world we do. They’re just as scared about the future as we are about the present.”
Her eyes swept the room. “And look at what they have here. Safety, food, and a mission. One they think, however right or wrong they might be, will save the world. I don’t ask myself how they could let these things happen to us. I wonder how they could make any other choice. Do you not understand how terrified they must be of rocking the boat? That doesn’t make it right, but can you honestly say you’d do any different in their shoes?”
