by Mike Staton
Roy Joy stood in what looked like a boxer’s fighting stance, one arm still extended in a jab. Ronald was sprawled out on the floor, groaning softly.
“Karl, gun.” Percival took a moment to pull his sledgehammer out of his duffel bag before closing the distance to the women’s cubicle.
He rounded the opening to the cubicle. There was a shuffle. Before him was Jacobs with Andrina in a rear naked choke and a pistol to her head. The former teacher was in a state of undress.
A woman Percival hadn’t met yet was off to the side with Sarah. Both of them were dressed.
“Sir, increased aggression is a sign of infection. You should put down the sledgehammer and let us settle this peacefully,” Jacobs said.
“Why are you trying to separate us?” Percival hefted the sledgehammer higher. He wasn’t entirely sure he could swing the weapon and not hit Andrina. Apparently the gesture was threatening enough to illicit a response from Jacobs.
Percival saw the gun swing from Andrina’s head and toward him. There was a puff of air and the action cycled back. Half a moment later, Percival felt the sting in his thigh. He looked down. A dart stuck out of his leg. He grimaced and took a step forward.
His leg felt as though it never hit the ground, and he followed it down. The world turned black before he thudded into the ground.
Chapter 8
The dreams of Percival’s drug induced slumber were unpleasant at best and terrifying at worse. He was chased through a maze by a faceless Evan only to face a military firing squad with Roy Joy chanting ‘The military’s bad!’ in the background. He dreamt of being hunted by stalkers with razors for fingers, who carried tranquilizer guns as well.
When he woke, he was sure he was in another bad dream. He was on a cold concrete floor in a pitch dark room, his back to a rough wall. He sat up and strained his eyes in the darkness to no avail.
“Hello?” he called out. His voice echoed slightly. It gave the space a cavernous feel. He felt the floor around him. It felt like a smooth concrete with the occasional divot where someone had dropped something or struck the floor.
“Percival?” Sarah’s voice drifted out of the darkness toward him.
“Sarah?” He felt the wall behind him and slowly pushed himself up. He felt around. There was a wall behind him and empty space in front of him. “Where are you?”
“Over here. Where’re we?” Sarah asked.
Percival turned in her direction and slowly slid along the wall. He didn’t want to leave the physical barrier for empty space.
“I don’t know. Am I dreaming?” Percival’s fingers brushed up against a corner. He continued to slide until his back was against the corner.
“Must be a really damned lucid dream to get into my head as well.” Sarah sounded closer than before.
“Are you against a wall?” Percival twisted his head back and forth, straining to see something, anything, in the darkness.
“No. I didn’t know there were walls here.” Sarah’s voice was followed by shuffling footsteps.
Percival turned his head to follow the sounds and prepared to move as well. “When you get to the wall, say something and I’ll come to you.”
“Alright. Found the wall. Why is it so rough?” Sarah asked. “Something, something, something.”
Percival started a slow move along the wall. After what felt like a lifetime of shuffling blindly along the wall he reached a warm soft body. “Sarah?”
“Something,” she said with a giggle. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. The last thing, before horrid dreams, I remember was coming to rescue you and the other girls from the doctor and getting shot.”
“My hero.” Sarah rested her head against his shoulder. “Jacobs demanded to know if either of us were ‘engaged’ with you romantically, then shot me as well.”
“He thinks we’re both infected ‘cause I’ve got busted knuckles. If I had to guess, we’re in some sort of quarantine. Assuming that the colonel wasn’t telling us a lie about how they handle infected individuals.” Percival was fairly certain, at least on that note, the commander of the depot had been level with them.
“Right,” Sarah muttered.
“What? We’re not dead. They could have just as easily shot us in the head while we were both out cold.” He pecked her forehead. “Do you have anything you normally carry? My pockets are empty and they took my watch.”
Sarah separated herself for a moment. In the darkness Percival could hear the soft rustling of clothing as she dug through her pockets.
“Knife’s gone, as is my flashlight. I’ve still got my watch though.” Her face jumped out of the darkness in the soft blue illumination of the watch face.
“You’re still beautiful.” Percival smiled at her. “What time is it?”
“Eight after six.” Sarah smiled back at him. “Thanks. We’ve not been here more than a handful of hours then.”
The light slowly died as the watch face faded back to black.
“I’m sure we’ll be presented options and asked before long. Hell, maybe they even have someone monitoring us.” Percival didn’t think the latter was something too terribly much to hope for. He put his back to the wall and slid down. “’Least you can’t hear the moans in here.”
“Couldn’t hear the moans at the apartment. At least not the moans of the undead.” Sarah slid down the wall and pressed herself against him.
He slipped his arm around her. “Got to enjoy the little things. Maybe we should make rules for surviving.”
Sarah let out a little bark of a laugh. “That’s just silly. There should be only one rule then: do whatever you need to to survive.”
“Somethings make that rule easier to follow, like having friends,” Percival countered.
Sarah didn’t seem to have much of a response to that, and fell into silence.
*
A click and buzz preceded the overhead lights. The fluorescent lights flickered for a moment before breaking the darkness with blinding rays of white, harsh light.
Percival lifted his hand to shade his eyes and let out a soft groan. After being in the solid, black, and total darkness for several hours, the light from the fluorescent lights was almost painful.
Sarah echoed Percival’s groan, and followed it with, “What the fuck man? Turn those down.”
“I’m going to have to concur,” Percival said. He looked around, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the new light level.
The room was unremarkable and fashioned from what looked like reinforced cubicle sections. Some of the walls had dried blood still splattered on them and the wall opposite of Percival had a row of Plexiglas windows at chest height. The room was otherwise empty. Percival wasn’t even entirely sure how to get in and out of the closed in space, as there didn’t seem to be any obvious doors.
He fixed his gaze on the windows as he climbed to his feet and helped Sarah up as well.
Footsteps preceded the appearance of Colonel Saunders at the windows. He wore his normal military garb with the hazmat helmet.
“We’re not infected.” Percival crossed the room. His eyes no longer stung from the bright lights. “You can let us out of here now.”
“Standard quarantine is two weeks. If you’re still not showing signs, we’ll consider it. This room is also our brig.” Pete settled into an at-ease stance.
“Brig? You’re imprisoning us?” Sarah sounded pissed off. “Fuck you. What right do you have?”
“You were going to brain our good doctor with a weapon you snuck in here.” The man on the other side of the glass directed the statement toward Percival. Apparently he was ignoring Sarah. “We can’t have that going on here. But as I told you when you first arrived, we’re not murderers. We’re just doing our best to do our duty.”
“Where are the rest of our friends?” Percival asked.
Sarah turned with a huff. She raised her hand and flipped Pete the bird over her shoulder.
“Not
necessary, Miss Josephewitz.” Pete looked back to Percival. “They’re still here, and under watch. They’re being good citizens for the time being.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Percival was getting frustrated. “Are we going to be allowed to leave after ‘quarantine’?”
Pete tilted his head to the side, and Percival got the impression that the man was sizing him up. Percival’d seen cats do the same thing to potential meals, or things they found particularly interesting. It left him feeling disquieted.
“Well?” Sarah asked. She had crossed the room and sat down against the wall again.
“Given that civilians are incapable of protecting themselves,” Pete said, a cruel smile spread across his face. “And there is the greater thought of humankind to keep in mind, I don’t think so.”
It took a moment for what the man was implying to sink in. Once it had, anger boiled up from the gut of Percival. He slammed his hand against the plexiglass window, causing it to shudder slightly.
“You touch my friends in any way that’s inappropriate and…”
“And what?” The colonel turned around and walked away. “You’re stuck in there. Mealtime is in an hour.”
“Fuck you!” Percival shouted after the colonel.
Pete rounded a corner and the retreating footsteps faded away until the bang of a door closing marked his exit from the building. He had left the lights on.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Percival turned to Sarah. “Andrina, and that Nero lady’re in danger.”
“Right. So, just how’re we going to do that?” Sarah looked up at him.
Percival walked to the middle of the room and looked up at the top edges of the double stacked cubicle dividers. “They had to get us in here somehow. And these have to be braced on the other side by something, or else we’d just be able to knock them over by running into them hard.”
The cubicles in the student newsroom had been made of the same sort of pre-made cubicles. More than once a clumsy person had knocked over one of the cubicle walls. They needed to be anchored or braced to work effectively. Given that these were two stacked atop one another, they had to be braced somehow.
“Have you tried running into them hard?” Sarah asked.
Percival gave her a look that he hoped said ‘that’s just crazy.’
“Do it.” Her tone said ‘don’t give me that look.’
He walked to the closest wall and gave it a solid kick. It shuddered, but didn’t move. He backed up a few paces and took a few quick steps toward the wall and slammed his foot against it again. The second kick had the same effect as the first. He turned to Sarah.
“Satisfied?” Percival asked.
She shrugged. “Means it’s solidly in place. One of these sections has to move. I doubt they went through the effort of lifting us over the top and lowering us into here.”
“Do you think if I gave you a hand up you could climb over the top?”
“Pull-ups were never my strong point,” Sarah said.
“Come here and try anyways. I imagine that they didn’t keep many healthy survivors here.” Percival crouched and laced his fingers together.
Sarah got up and walked over to him. “You want me to just climb up on top of you?”
“Yup.”
“There are so many more ways this could be more enjoyable,” she muttered and placed her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. She then carefully stepped into his hands and climbed up.
“You steady? I’m going to stand slowly, then you climb up onto my shoulders, okay?” Percival’s arms were already beginning to burn from supporting her.
“Yeah, just don’t go too fast or I’ll lose my balance.” Sarah took her foot off of his thigh and balanced just in his hand.
“We wouldn’t want that.” Percival slowly stood with a gentle grunt of effort as he lifted his hands to his midsection.
Sarah slowly climbed up onto his shoulders.
“Can you reach the top?” Percival held Sarah’s ankles and steadied himself. He didn’t want to cause her to fall because he stumbled.
“Almost.” Sarah pressed up onto her tiptoes.
It caused her feet to dig into Percival’s shoulders. He groaned softly in protest. “How about now?”
“Stop complaining,” Sarah muttered. “I can get my fingers over the edge. Push me up some.”
“Pull-ups aren’t your strong suit, shoulder presses aren’t mine.”
“Weakling.”
“Whatever.” Percival adjusted his hands from steadying Sarah by holding her ankles to pressing underneath her feet. He grunted and pushed her up. As he did, she suddenly became lighter.
“Alrighty, got it.” Sarah pulled herself completely off of his hands and with a kicking scrabble, was over the wall.
Percival heard her drop down on the other side with a soft thud and an ‘oof’ out of her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Just fine. They’ve got this thing braced with metal beams pushing inward. They’re bolted to the floor,” Sarah said.
“Do you see anything that might be described as a door?” Percival backed away from the wall, wondering just where the door would end up being.
Silence answered him as Sarah walked around the perimeter of the cubicle room.
“They’ve got what looks like a forklift over here. It’s pressed up against a portion of the wall,” Sarah said.
“It’s probably the section that’ll pull back from the wall in here.” Percival moved toward where it sounded like Sarah’s voice had come from. “What else do you see?”
“Looks like it might be anchored to the wall itself. Like, the forks are anchored to the base of that section and braced too,” Sarah answered.
“Think you could pop the forklift into neutral and push it away?”
“Who do you think I am, Supergirl?”
“Sometimes. I’d just prefer making less noise in our escape rather than more. Turning the for… Are the keys in the forklift at all?”
“One sec,” Sarah said. She was silent for a moment before speaking again. “Yeah, they are. These military guys are sloppy, ain’t they?”
“Yeah, they are.” Percival watched the wall, trying to will it to move away. “As I was saying, I’d like to avoid turning the forklift on. It’ll probably be noisy, and noisy isn’t something we want as it’ll cause our escape to be noticed.”
“Great tactical decision. Which one of these levers puts it in neutral, do you think?” Sarah asked.
“How should I know? I can’t even see the damned thing.” Percival shouted back. “Check for a gearshift or something like that. Something labeled ‘drive, park, reverse’ or whatever.”
Sarah was quiet again for a few moments. There was metallic clang that echoed in the room.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know. I found a switch, looked kind of like the gear-shift for a car, and pulled it and ‘clang,’” Sarah said. “It’s in the ‘N’ position. I’ll try pushing it away. You should push too.”
“Sure.” Percival moved up against the wall he thought Sarah was behind and pressed his shoulder to it. “On three. One, two, three!”
Percival grunted pushed with all his might. His shoes slid back on the concrete. He could hear something giving way and grinding against the concrete as it moved. He closed his eyes and pushed harder. Something was happening, even if it didn’t seem like he was going anywhere.
He pushed and shoved against the wall for what felt like minutes, listening to grinding and scraping noises the entire time. It was only when the noises ceased that he opened his eyes once more and looked to see just how much progress had been made. It surprised him a little to see that the section of the wall he’d been pushing on hadn’t moved at all. He’d left a couple scuff marks on the concrete floor, but the wall itself was unmoved.
He’d been one section off. Just to his right, the wall had slid back half a foot or so. He moved to the gap and tried to squeeze through
and found that he couldn’t fit.
“It’s not wide enough.”
“What do you mean it’s not wide enough?” Sarah’s sweat streaked face appeared in the gap. “You need to lose weight.”
“I thought you liked the way I look.” Percival put his shoulder to the wall and shoved. His effort resulted in the sound of metal scraping against concrete.
“I like the way you feel, there’s a difference.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
“You’re so full of shit sometimes,” Percival said. He followed the words with a grunt and a shove that moved the wall back a little more.
“You know you like me all the more for it.” Sarah’s face disappeared from the growing gap. “Push on three again. One, two, three!”
Percival pressed his shoulder to the wall and shoved with as much of his strength as he could muster. The wall slid back a few more inches with a screech. He looked to the gap and squeezed through.
“Perfect.”
“Not entirely the silent escape that you wanted though,” Sarah said.
Percival moved over next to her and gave her a full on kiss. “Who cares to the specifics. Let’s go find an exit and get the hell out of this place with the others.”
Sarah nodded. She took his hand and led him among rows of empty metal shelves. It wasn’t a far walk to the front of the building and to find the pair of cubicle inspection rooms.
Percival made the assumption that the military had cleaned out this building for the specific use of inspections and quarantine. It made sense to him to have both in the same place. The quarantine room was out of sight behind rows of metal shelving.
Percival squeezed Sarah’s hand and she stopped just before the women’s inspection room.
“They probably have someone posted outside the door to keep our friends from coming in and freeing us. Wait here.” Percival let go of her hand.
“I’m the stealthier of us,” Sarah said. “Let me go.”
“I’ve put you in enough danger for one day.” Percival wasn’t taking any other answers. “Stay here and remain quiet, okay?”
Sarah opened her mouth to protest again and Percival silenced her with another kiss.
