by Ned Sahin
I look around above the stairs. Everyone seems to be enjoying their rest upstairs.
I slowly push the door handle of the white door. It’s open. The door hinges creak. I look around again. I don’t hear anybody around. I open the door wide enough to squeeze in. I go down the stairs that end up in a medium-size basement.
There are old chairs, desks, and containers with a thick layer of dust on them. There is a bike possibly from the 90s, several drawers that look damaged, toolboxes, and shelves with a variety of stuff on them.
I extend the candle and have a better look at the shelves. Among everything that looks disorganized and dusty, a huge amount of tiny white boxes grabs my attention in the corner of the lower shelf. I get closer to read the labels on them. As soon as I read one of them, a shockwave travels through my veins. I almost drop the candle.
Oxyrica.
There are maybe a hundred boxes of this drug that created those extremely aggressive human beings, Ricas. This would explain why they don’t get sick even though they don’t use masks. Oxyrica is protecting their bodies against the virus. Then how come they are not aggressive like the Ricas?
I look at the upper shelves with a similar stockpile of little boxes. Unlike the Oxyrica boxes, they are in blue. There is a gray fish image on each of them. I reach to the shelf to take one of them. It looks like some kind of medicine for fish. Why do they have many of them? They don’t have any pets.
I turn the other side of the box to see the Drug Facts table. The top ingredient in this drug brings old memories back.
Fluoxetine.
I remember this hard to read chemical. I had difficulty spelling it at a pharmacy when I went there to get an antidepressant for a close friend years ago.
Since the pharmacies got hoarded quickly, they must have stocked on pet medicine that has the same ingredient used in human antidepressants.
They are using these antidepressants to suppress the side effects of Oxyrica.
In other words, they are Ricas.
But they are the happy ones.
I have to go back to our room and wake Kathleen and Toshi up. We have to get out of here right now.
I can’t find the energy to move even an inch. I can’t even continue standing. My legs give up on me. I fall to the floor. My vision gets blurry. The candle drops on its side. The light slowly goes off. I see Harold standing next to me and Bernice behind him as my eyelids get heavier and it becomes dark.
Chapter 19
I can’t move my right arm. My right hand is chained to the red pipe of the fire sprinkler system attached to the wall.
I look around. Toshi and Kathleen are lying down, chained to the same pipeline a few yards away from me.
A weight drops in my stomach. We failed. I don’t know what they are planning to do with us, but I assume it’s nothing in our favor. I faced life and death situations a few times in the last two weeks, but this is a whole new level.
I see that none of us has a mask on our faces. I am not sure which one would be worse. Getting tortured by them or getting infected by the virus.
I unconsciously close my nose and mouth with my pajama’s sleeve even though I know that this won’t protect me at all. I wish I had my jacket at least. I am in the pajamas I found in the guest room just like Toshi and Kathleen.
I hear metal dropping onto the floor. I see a guy doing something around a table about 50 yards away. He is extremely skinny, and his face and arms are full of red bumps. His neck is chained to one leg of the table.
We are at some kind of a warehouse with a bunch of machines and tables surrounding us. The door is closed. There are only two small windows at the top of the high wall on both sides. It’s daylight.
Several light bulbs are dangling from the ceiling, but only two of them are working. It’s half-dark inside. I narrow my eyes and try to focus to see the far side of the warehouse. I can see two more men. From the iron clinks I hear when they move, I can tell they are chained as well.
“Kathleen! Toshi! Wake up!” I whisper to them. They don’t give a reaction. The guy closest to us hears my whisper. He looks at me with his dimmed eyes. He seems exhausted. I first thought he had red spots because he is a Rica, but he looks different. The red spots on his skin are a lot smaller and they are closer to each other. He doesn’t look like a Rica.
A few years ago, I saw a teenager in the news who was kept in a basement by his abusive parents for a long time. His skin became whiter and it got covered by acne. I think these three men in the warehouse are suffering from the same symptoms. They probably haven’t had sunlight for a long time. Maybe they have abusive parents as well. Another possibility is that they were some young folks living in the town or they took a break here during their road trip. It sounds very much like us.
He moves his eyes away from me. It seems like he felt bad for us.
“Guys! Wake up!” I say louder this time knowing that the guy doesn’t care about us. Toshi finally opens his eyes.
“What! What is this!” Toshi tries to straighten up. He notices the chain and tries to get rid of it by pulling and pushing.
“Shhh! Be quiet,” I tell him.
“We are in a warehouse. There are at least three men chained like us… I think… Harold and Bernice drugged us last night” I say.
“What the…” Toshi says. He gently slaps Kathleen’s arm to wake her up. She opens her eyes and immediately screams after feeling the coldness of the floor. Toshi tries to close her mouth. All three men look at us now.
“They won’t break,” the man nearest us says.
“Where are we?” I ask him.
“Welcome to Weldon Spring,” he says with a pouty face. It reminds me of Harold’s friendly greeting yesterday. My memory fast forwards from that moment to the last thing I remember before I woke up here—he and Bernice were looking at me as I pass out in their basement.
It was all a trap, and we jumped right into it.
I have no idea why they are keeping us hostage. They might be straightforward psychos who enjoy hurting people. Or they may have another plan for us. We might be the next slaves who will do whatever these three exhausted men are doing.
My train of thought ends with the door rattling.
Harold appears with two armed elderly men behind him. The mayor follows them. As soon as the mayor gets inside, he looks through the machinery. It looks like he is searching for something.
“You son of a bitch!” Kathleen yells at him as she tries to get rid of her chain.
Harold ignores her and walks toward me. He takes a piece of paper from his pocket.
“What is this?” he asks. The chained men around the table watch us while working on their tables.
I look at the paper. I recognize it immediately.
“December 7th, 2019”
“C19 DEPLOYMENT PLAN”
This is the part of a document I found at the National Park ranger house in North Carolina. I completely forgot that I had this note in my pocket all this time.
I stay quiet. I am not very enthusiastic to tell him the story.
He walks to Kathleen and grabs her hair. He pulls it while taking a few steps in the opposite direction. She follows him on her knees unintentionally, but the chain on her right wrist stops her. She screams with the pain as he keeps pulling her hair out coldheartedly.
“Okay, okay! Leave her alone!” I yell. I can’t stand seeing her in pain.
“Look, we lied to you... We are not going to the West Coast to see our families. We are... on a mission… We found some documents at a ranger’s house in North Carolina. This is planned... This whole virus thing is part of a plan. I don’t know who is behind it or what they want, but all I know is there is a bunker here with a stockpile of antivirus and vaccine,” I say. I am amazed at my speed of story creation.
I look at his eyes to find out if he bought my story. It’s hard to understand what he is thinking behind those gray dead eyes.
> “Where is this bunker?” he asks.
“Unchain us. We will take you there,” I say. He grabs Kathleen’s hair and pulls it again.
“Don’t tell them, Matt!” Kathleen says, trying to punch him with her left hand and save her hair. I know that she is half improvising, but she is also in pain. I can’t stand hearing her screams and seeing tears in her eyes.
“Stop it! It’s under the ranger house… in Mark Twain!” I say. I am glad I remember the Mark Twain National Park sign a few miles back before coming to this town.
“Tell Reed to gather boys. We will check that out,” Harold instructs the two armed elders. They run back and disappear at the door.
“Bring some food to these hipsters. I need them alive until we confirm that stockpile,” Harold tells the mayor. The mayor glances at one of the guys chained around the table.
Harold leaves the warehouse. The mayor follows him, but still turns around to check on the guy. With the light coming out of the open door, I see the similarity between them now. The same bushy eyebrows and sharp jawlines.
“Are you okay?” I ask Kathleen and try to get closer to her. My chain stops me halfway. She looks at her dragged out hair in her hands. She can’t stop crying.
Toshi crawls and hugs her. He then turns his head to me. “That was a hell of a story, Matt. I wish they had let us go with them. What is the plan?” he asks while trying to comb her tousled hair with his hand. Every touch hurts Kathleen more.
“I don’t know yet, but I think we can get help from the mayor,” I say.
The mayor comes back with snacks and water. He leaves them between us. I try to read his thoughts from his face. All I see is a sad man in deep pain.
He goes to the chained guy next to the table closer to us. The other two guys stop what they are doing and watch him.
“Mr. Burke, I know you are a good person. Please help us…and save your son!” I say. I hope that man is really his son.
He glances at the man. Then he looks at me.
“They would kill me,” he says.
“You can come with us. We can protect you!” I say. He gets quiet while thinking about my offer. I know he is a logical person. I hope he figures that this is an opportunity for him to take his revenge on Harold and the elderly gang.
“I don’t have the keys. Harold has them...” he says.
“There is a bolt cutter in our truck. If you bring it, we can break the chains,” I say.
“They are taking the truck with them,” he says. Our beautiful Centaur is being stolen.
As much as I like the concise information he gives, I wish he could be a little bit more creative to get us and his son out of this situation.
“There must be a hammer or something we could use,” I say. I remember my days at the university dorm. A few bullies made it a habit to break the locker padlocks with hammers. Cheap padlocks like the ones holding the metal surrounding our wrists can open up after a few hard hammer hits.
“Dad, there must be a toolkit in the storage room,” his son says. His voice is weak, but it’s loud enough to urge the mayor to act quickly. He runs to the storage room fast for a person his age.
He comes back with a black metal box. He puts it on the table. They dig in the box together.
“I think we can try this,” his son says, pulling up a tool. It looks like a small hammer to use for nailing a screw on the wall.
His son is too weak to lift the hammer. The mayor takes it from his hand. Before making the first hit, he runs to the door and closes it. Smart move. We don’t need to be heard by wandering elderly outside.
It takes several hits, but they finally unlock the padlock. He gets under his son’s arm and helps him to walk.
“Mr. Burke?” I say. The other two guys also look at him. He walks to me and leaves the hammer near me.
“Get out of here as fast as you can,” he says.
We break our padlocks one by one. Toshi helps two guys to break theirs as well while Kathleen eats some snacks. I walk to her and look at her scalp closely. I see blood in some hair roots. We need a first-aid kit to clean the wound and ease her pain.
I go to the table the mayor’s son is working on. There are several bags with white powder. I have no idea what these are. They might be making heroin or something similar.
I keep looking through the mess on the table. I see pillboxes on one edge of the table. I recognize the fish image. This is the image I saw on the shelf in Harold’s basement.
These poor men are making antidepressants for the elderly. In other words, Harold is using these young guys as slaves so the elderly can have their medicine to stay human.
“We can’t thank you enough… We owe you,” one of the guys says after getting rid of the chain. He looks very weak, but he manages to walk slowly.
“Do you know if there is anything we can use here to start a fire?” I ask him.
Toshi smiles at me. He knows what I am about to do.
“Yes, sir, there is an oven we use to burn chemical waste.” The man points to the corner of the warehouse. I find a lighter and two bottles of lighter fluid near the oven.
We put all the powder and pillboxes together and fire them up. By the time someone notices the fire, the entire warehouse should be burned down. There are no firefighters they can call to save the building.
We leave the warehouse taking the snacks and water the mayor brought in. Toshi has the hammer. I have the lighter and the remaining bottle of the fluid.
“Let’s get out of this fricking town!” Kathleen says in front of the burning warehouse.
“We need to make a stop before we leave,” I say.
We go to the restaurant where we ate yesterday. There doesn’t seem to be anybody around this morning. Some of the elderly must be on their way to the ranger house with Harold. The rest of them are probably sleeping.
We walk to Harold’s house. There is nobody around. Toshi breaks the front window and unlocks the door.
We find Bernice curled up in the corner of the living room.
“Please… Please don’t hurt me. It was Harold making me doing things!” she says while whimpering and sniffing.
“I treated you like my own grandma! You trapped us! Shame on you!” Kathleen yells at her. She walks toward her but Toshi gets in between. Kathleen places her hands in her hair to calm herself down.
“You guys wait for me here,” I tell her and Toshi.
I walk down to the basement and pour the liquid on all over the shelves with Oxyrica and antidepressants on them. I stare at them for a second.
My inner voice that loves archiving talks to me. I decide to take a box of Oxyrica and antidepressants before lighting them up. I go back up to the living room. The smoke from the basement follows me.
“They will get what they deserve soon,” I say. Kathleen continues to yell at Bernice.
Toshi finds a few grocery bags and fills them with canned food in the kitchen. I take the 12-gauge shotgun and shells hanging on the wall. We then leave the house.
“Fuck you!” Kathleen yells back at the house.
I look around on the main street to see any cars we can use. We check them, but they are all locked. We may need to walk for a while until we find a car we can use.
I see the warehouse on flames a few blocks away.
It feels good to help the mayor, his son, and two other guys escape this town. I hope I see them again one day.
Goodbye Weldon Springs.
Chapter 20
“How much longer should we walk, Matt?” Kathleen asks. We have been walking for at least twelve hours a day since we escaped from Weldon Springs two days ago.
“Um… Probably three more months,” I say with a sarcastic voice. Toshi chuckles while wiping sweat from his forehead. The bright and hot sunlight is making our hike harder. It’s not the best time of the day to be walking.
Kathleen briefly smiles but then focuses on moving her legs again. Parts o
f her t-shirt is wet.
“We should have taken a car before we left,” she says.
“Well, we tried… We shouldn’t have accepted their dinner offer in the first place,” I say.
She glances at me. “We shouldn’t have left North Carolina.”
“You prefer serving food to Saviors than being free?” I ask.
“You mean the Saviors who caught me because of you?” She has a point.
“Ah… Guys, why don’t we give a lunch break? The view looks nice here,” Toshi says. I wouldn’t ask for a better best friend. He is a true lifesaver.
We are walking through farms to avoid the dangers of the road, but we still keep our eyes on the highway to ensure we are in the right direction. Without a map or compass, it’s hard to stay on the same route. We don’t want to end up in Mexico or Canada.
There is a small lake between us and the highway. We pass the tree line and sit near the lake where there are a few houses with piers around the area. I don’t see any human beings or animals.
We haven’t seen any cars passing by on the highway either. There are only some stalled cars. Even if we manage to shortcut one of them, their gas has probably been siphoned. Once the oil transport stopped worldwide, gas shortage caused people to hoard gas stations and unattended cars.
We open the gourmet canned ravioli we took from Harold’s house. I wonder how he and his friends are feeling after realizing they were tricked with the bogus information about the ranger’s house in the Mark Twain National Park. Seeing the warehouse and Harold’s home in flames must have been a second shock. I am sure they are looking for us everywhere now.
I have no regrets about what we did back there, though. They deserved it.
While shoving the rest of the beans into my mouth, I hear the bushes rustling behind us. I drop the can and turn back to see if there is someone in the tree line. Toshi and Kathleen scan the bushes as well.
I raise my shotgun and place my index finger on the trigger.