by Q J Martin
“That’s a brave thing you did, boy,” Skylar said. “Saving some complete strangers in a situation like that. When we get through with all this, I’m going to see to it that you get yourself a nice, shiny metal for bravery and heroism. Does that sound good to you?”
Luke shook his head. He seemed less excited about the prospect than Logan would have expected.
“If you’d follow me inside, I can see to it that you all get a warm shower, a fresh change of clothes, something to eat, and then,” Skylar pointed to Logan’s injured foot, “we’ll take care of that wound for you.”
“Thank you,” Jane said.
“That all sounds amazing,” Logan smiled. “I don’t think any of us have had warm showers in quite a while.”
“Or warm food, for that matter,” Jane smiled.
Logan nodded, and the three of them followed Skylar into the factory.
⌬
It took a moment for Logan’s eyes to adjust to the lights in the factory. Outside, it was the middle of the day. Inside, everything was much dimmer. No doubt they were doing their best to conserve power.
When Logan had fully adjusted, he was able to see the large, open factory all around him. There were dozens of Marines scattered throughout. Most of them were working without their filtration masks, although a few chose to continue wearing them even inside.
The majority of the Marines were working on equipment and weapons, although a handful were positioned as security guards. There was an office to the left stockpiled with supplies.
“We have some spare clothes in this room over here,” Skylar said. “Just go ahead and look through the stack to see if you can find something in your size.”
The three of them did as he suggested, and when they had all found new outfits to wear, they were escorted to the locker rooms to shower and get changed.
“Wait here,” Skylar said as he walked into the women’s room.
Logan could hear some commotion, some talking in aggressively hushed tones. Then Skylar came walking out with two of his men. “Sorry about that, ladies and gents. We only have one woman on our team and she’s not exactly self-conscious, so we’ve been using the locker rooms as unisex. It’s all cleared out for you now, though.” Skylar smiled at Jane.
Jane looked uneasily at Logan, but he nodded, and she nodded back in response. Then she slipped through the door and was gone.
Logan walked to the men’s room. He showered himself off. It felt so good to be clean again, and without sacrificing his body heat. He got dressed into his Marine casual-wear, and left the locker room.
Jane was standing outside. She wore the same grey uniform. She folded her arms uncomfortably in front of her, and Logan couldn’t help but realize how thin the shirts were.
“They didn’t have any…” Jane trailed off.
“Any what?” Logan asked. “Oh,” he said, connecting the dots before Jane had time to answer. “Well, I guess with there being only one woman on the team, they don’t have much need for…” Logan furrowed his eyebrows out of sympathy as his eyes slowly and unintentionally drifted downward.
“Uh huh,” Jane said, leaning over until she met Logan’s eyes. “Well, it feels like there are a hundred men eyeing me up and down, a little bit like you just did, sizing me up like a slab of meat.”
Logan looked around at some of the Marines. They each quickly looked away in turn as he met their gaze. He walked up right in front of Jane and grabbed her arms.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s the end of the world. Don’t feel embarrassed if your modesty wavers a little bit. And…” he sighed. “If any of these guys mess with you, just remind them you’re with me.”
“And you’ll hobble over to my defense.” Jane smiled and wrapped her arms around his waist. She leaned up and kissed him on the lips.
Not that I can stop a hundred men with machine guns, Logan thought, grimacing. But I’ll damn well try.
⌬
The Marines had set up a couple dozen tables in the far back corner of the factory. Once Logan, Jane, and Luke were ready, they were led back and invited to sit around the one that Skylar was at. They enjoyed a large meal, larger than any that they had managed to scrounge up since the Infection, and Logan reflected on how Randell would have been in heaven if he had made it here, to eat his alcoholic little heart out.
That wasn’t Randell, Logan sighed. That was the Infection. The Infection was why he was so hungry.
The thought of his friend made him feel melancholy, and he withdrew himself from the conversation at the table. He was vaguely aware of the Marines all telling their unique tales about their battles with the Infected, and how they had managed to stay alive for so long in the midst of the Infection, and how they thanked God every day for inventing firehouses.
Jane sat next to Logan. She barely touched her dinner. Finally, the rest of them had finished eating.
“Another day down,” Logan whispered to himself in a sigh.
“Hey. We’re going in the right direction,” Jane assured him. “We’re almost there.”
“I know I just—I feel like at this point, after so long, what’s the point of even trying to look for them?” Logan’s eyes settled on the table, but his thoughts remained elsewhere. “They’ll be long gone.”
“We have help now,” Jane said. “We have the Marines. They have the numbers. They have an arsenal. They promised to help us. They’ll be able to find your children.”
Logan looked around at the group. They were unkempt compared to soldiers he had seen in the past. They didn’t seem to have the same discipline, and Logan wondered how much help they would really be. He knew that he should hope for the best, yet he felt like the worst was imminent. He had no idea how he would respond if the time came when he found out that his children were dead, or even worse, Infected.
“Yeah, let’s go ahead and take care of that,” Skylar said, rising to his feet. He stood in front of Logan, waiting for him to respond.
Logan looked up at him. He blinked. He hadn’t heard what Skylar had said, and he didn’t know how to respond. “I’m sorry,” he said apologetically. “I was somewhere else. What was it you were saying?”
“I was saying,” Skylar said, an uneasy look on his face, “let’s get our doctor to look at your foot. We can patch you up and have you good to go in no time.” He smiled as he finished speaking.
“Thank you.” Logan got up from his chair.
Jane came over and offered him her support.
“We really appreciate all you’ve done for us,” Logan said between groans.
“It’s no problem at all,” Skylar said, escorting them to their doctor.
“We mean it,” Logan added. “It’s really great to know there are still people that we can depend on in this crazy world.”
Logan limped along behind Skylar as they walked across the building. Finally they came to the office where the doctor had set up shop. Logan sat in one of the desk chairs. Skylar flipped around one of the other chairs in front of him.
“Go ahead and lift your foot up, would you, Logan?” Skylar asked. He patted Logan on the back. “You’re in good hands, sir. I’ll see you as soon as you’re done here.” He smiled and walked out of the room.
Logan lifted his foot up. The wound smelled terrible. It still reeked of river water and muck, even after his shower. It looked disgusting. It was deeper than Logan had imagined it would be, then he could tell when he took his shower, and it hurt worse than ever now that the doctor was poking and prodding it.
Logan looked up at the doctor as he stood over his foot, and between waves of pain, noticed that there was a bullet hole in his bio-suit.
“Did you take a hit?” he asked him.
The doctor gave him a quizzical look over his glasses. “What’s that?”
“That hole in your suit,” Logan pointed, wincing as the doctor released his foot. “Were you shot?”
“Oh,” the doctor said, looking down at the suit. “Yes. I was shot by…” he si
ghed, “by an Infected civilian who was still cognizant enough to aim and pull a trigger. Luckily, she didn’t hit anything vital.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Pretty early on. Um… the day after the rollout, I believe.”
Logan examined the hole more closely, and saw fresh skin underneath it before the doctor stood up and straightened out his clothing, obscuring it from view.
“I’m surprised you’re even walking right now, let alone working.”
The doctor chuckled awkwardly. “That’s just the way things are now-a-days. Keep moving or die.” He turned to his assistant. “Ray, get me some alcohol and the stitching kit.”
Logan watched as the soldier walked across the room and recovered the items the doctor had requested. He was a tall, lanky man. Logan couldn’t help but feel a vague familiarity with him. He knew him from somewhere. He just couldn’t place it, not when they were so far removed from whatever previous setting he had seen him in.
The soldier walked back to the doctor with a tray of items in tow. The lights of the room reflected on his greasy blonde hair. Logan wondered how sanitary those materials could be with someone like him carrying them around.
“Thank you, Ray,” the doctor said, accepting the tray from him.
Ray, Logan thought, Ray. Ray. “Ray Pierce!” He exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “You’re Brotherhood!” he said through gritted teeth as he shifted his weight off of his wounded foot.
Ray pulled out his gun and trained it right on Logan’s chest. Logan heard a tray clang to the ground, and when he looked for the source of the sound, he saw the doctor had his gun directed at him as well.
“Skylar!” Ray called out.
A moment later, their commander came running into the room. He saw the scene before him, and a look of disappointment crossed his face. “What the hell happened?” he cursed.
“He recognized Ray,” the doctor cried out.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Skylar motioned to his men, and they grabbed Logan by the arms and held him back as Skylar walked up, taking his revolver off his belt.
“It’s such a shame,” he said, flipping the gun over in his hand and knocking Logan over the side of the head with it.
Chapter XIX
Click. Click. Click. Click.
Logan was vaguely aware of something, the passage of time. His head throbbed, and he groaned. He tried to open his eyes, but all he could see was a light shining down on him. It was so bright, it made his head feel a hundred times worse.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
Finally, Logan made a renewed effort to open his eyes. In front of him stood Skylar, holding a gun in his hand, pulling back the hammer, then gently releasing it, over and over and over again.
To the left of him stood a Marine, the woman he had seen earlier with the sniper rifle. Luke stood behind them, and to their right were two more Marines. They were holding Jane captive.
“Jane!” he moaned. He tried to move, but his hands were tied to the chair he was sitting on.
“She’s ok. Well,” Skylar paused, considering, “as long as you do what I say, at least.”
“What do you want?” Logan spat.
“This,” Skylar said, holding up the revolver in his hand.
“My gun? You have it!” Logan said, frantically trying to pull against his restraints. “So why don’t you let us go?”
“Well, yes. I have your gun. It’s a beautiful piece. Classic Smith & Wesson six-shooter with a few modern enhancements. Gold inlay. Hand carved. It’s old, but it’s so well taken care of. Turner family heirloom, based on the engraving.”
“Tell me what you want with us already,” Logan grumbled.
“I want supplies. I want food, weapons, and tools. I’m not sure if you noticed, but the world is going to hell, and we just happen to be alive. I want to keep it that way.”
“You have my gun. You have my backpack. What else could I possibly give you?”
“You want to act like you’re so helpless, like you have nothing but the clothes on your back and the bag you came in with. But personally, I think that’s a bunch of crap. I think you actually have a great deal to offer me.”
“Like what?”
“Well, for one thing, Luke told us how he saw your girlfriend forcing Infected to obey her with nothing but her mind.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “That’s absolutely ridiculous. He had to have been hallucinating. When was the last time he ate a decent meal before today?”
“I don’t think you get how this game we’re playing works,” Skylar said flatly.
“I’m not playing a game.”
“We’re all playing a game,” Skylar said, spreading his hands to encompass everyone around him. Luke flinched as the revolver passed by him. “Ever since the rollout of the Cure, we’ve been playing a game. The only thing is, there are only two possibilities. Either you win, or you die. And if you aren’t going to help us win, then that means you’re playing for the opposing team.”
“You have everything I own. I don’t know what that kid think he saw, or what he told you, but it wasn’t true.”
“Well,” Skylar sighed, taking a step back and walking around Luke, “that’s very doubtful. You see, he’s never led us astray before. He was the one who told us about the Infecteds’ aversion to water. It helped us succeed where six branched of the US Armed Forces have failed.”
“You were working for him the whole time!” Logan shouted. “You son of a—!”
One of the guards hit him in the stomach at his outburst. Luke winced at the accusatory tone behind Logan’s words, then backed up and hid his face behind the Marine woman he was standing by.
“I promised him things he could never get on his own,” Skylar smiled. “Like his grandmother, for one. Why? Because that’s the type of person I am. I’m a fair player. You help me, and I’ll help you.”
“You mean you’ll use me, like you’re using Luke, huh? How many people have you had him rope up for you, bringing them to you on a nice, silver platter?”
“Not as many as you might imagine,” Skylar sighed. “Although he did make it much easier to kill that first Marine. We just walked up with a gun pointed to the boy’s head, and he was so distracted worrying about Luke’s life that he lost his own.”
Logan clenched his fists behind his back as Skylar told him the story.
“Turns out they’ve since initiated a shoot-to-kill order on all civilians in the quarantine zone. Seems things turned out far more dangerous than they were expecting. Infected, humans that might be Infected, humans that are taking advantage of the Infection… They sure didn’t have much going for them.”
“You’re sick.”
“Actually, I’m perfectly healthy. And I plan on staying that way. So you’ll tell me everything you can possibly think of that has the slightest chance of helping me and my men find supplies, or some type of advantage in this war, and I’ll let you live. In fact, if you’re good enough, I might even let you join my team on the side of the living.”
“Screw you!” Logan shouted, spitting at his feet.
“Or, if you don’t help me, I’ll pin you to the wall and have one of my men remove a few less-than-necessary body parts, while you watch the rest of them do things to your little girlfriend that you’d never wish on your worst enemies.”
Skylar walked over to Jane and ran the end of the revolver over her face. She flinched, clenching her eyes tight. Then he placed the gun in the holster on his belt and walked up to Logan.
“I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give you the night to think things over. I’m going to put you together with a few other buddies of mine that Luke helped us find. The thing is, they’re more valuable to me alive than dead. You, on the other hand, could go either way at this point. If you don’t make the right decision by morning time, well, there’s no need to make the same threat twice, now is there? It all gets rather repetitive at this point.”
Skylar gestured for a coupl
e of his men to come and undo Logan’s restraints. They picked Logan off the chair and drug him along to the back of the warehouse. There was a room in front of them with the shutters closed and the door shut. One man was standing guard outside the door with a machine gun. They opened it and threw Logan inside. He came down hard on his head, and as he rose to his knees, he could feel blood trickle down his face.
Logan looked around and saw a horrible sight. There were four people tied up in the room, a middle aged man and woman, and two children, a girl that appeared to be a little older than Glenn, and a boy of about ten years. They looked to be in terrible shape.
There were puddles of blood scattered around the room. Logan’s heart ached as he saw the blood around the two women. It made him furious to his core, and he wanted nothing more than to rip Skylar to pieces for whatever hurts he and his men had caused this family.
“Ah, I see you’ve met the Marlows,” Skylar said, walking into the room behind him. “Luke was kind enough to help them survive a horrific death about three days ago, much like he helped you and Jane today.”
“It was a good thing, too,” one of the guards spoke up. “We were getting so desperate, even Abigail was starting to look appealing.”
“If you had tried it,” the female ‘Marine’ whom Logan identified as Abigail said, flipping a knife out, seemingly from nowhere, “I would have cut your balls off and fed them to you.” She paused, spinning the knife around and making it disappear in her uniform again. “Right before I killed you.”
“Ladies, ladies, please,” Skylar said, motioning for them to bring down the hostilities. “Justin, that’s the last time I put you on patrol with Abigail. You guys just don’t get along, do you? Abigail, you’re going to be guarding our guests tonight, inside the room. I don’t want any more of that funny business like last night. Hugh, you’ll be guarding the outside door. Justin, go patrol the perimeter, and if you let a single Infected get past you, save us all some trouble and shoot yourself.”
He paused, considering. “And let’s go ahead and put Luke in here for the night. It’s too dark for him to go out again today anyway. I want him ready and roaring to go first thing in the morning.”
