by Jeff Olah
“CUT … FOR … SAV … YOURS …”
This was happening and it was happening right now. Dalton would have to improvise. Goodwin had decided his path, and without a weapon, Dalton’s choices had been cut in half. He was ready to make the sacrifice, but now the opportunity may have slipped away.
Sliding along the seat, he moved in behind Nicholas and tapped him on the shoulder. Waiting for his friend to remove his headphones and turn to face him, he looked back through the door and watched as Richard Daniels and Marcus Goodwin came face to face.
“Hey, how fast can you get this thing back in the air?”
Nicholas quickly shook his head. “I don’t think so man, I mean I want it as bad as you do, but he’d have them light up this bird before we even reached the treeline.”
“No,” Dalton said, “I’m thinking of something else. How quick can you make that happen?”
“Not as fast as I’d like, trust me. We’re almost out of fuel.”
“Well, get ready.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Just be ready, it needs to be quick. Daniels has men out in the trees, at least two or three of them. And when this goes down, I have a feeling their focus is going to be right here.”
Nicholas nodded. “Take care of yourself back there, strap in.”
Back to the door, Dalton watched as Daniels and Goodwin continued their back and forth. Standing with his back to the chopper, Goodwin appeared to be mostly listening as his head moved only slightly every few seconds.
Now standing only a few feet from Goodwin and inching closer by the second, the older man looked much worse than Dalton had anticipated. Richard Daniels’ face was heavily bruised and his once pristine oxford button-down was covered in so much blood and soil that only its collar remained an off-white. His words were still lost in the distance; however, his intensity made it clear that he had no idea what was coming.
Returning to his seat behind the door, Dalton powered back on his tablet and began working his way through the interior cameras of the other five buildings. He’d known of the Feeders that were locked inside Building Six, although as he moved the video feed to full screen mode, he felt a chill run up his spine.
“That can’t be right.”
Closing his eyes, he fought to control his breathing. The rabbit hole that controlled his sanity was there, he just didn’t have the time to jump into it at the moment. There were more important things to do, and crawling into his safe space would undo everything he had already set in motion.
Dalton switched back to the exterior infrared cameras and noticed that the shape near the rear wall had split again. There were in fact three other individuals positioned in the trees, two of which were making their way toward the chopper.
The first was following the path that Daniels had taken, only fifty feet behind and hidden just inside the treeline. The vague silhouette stopped less than ten feet from where two of Goodwin’s men were positioned and appeared to have gone unnoticed. A second later, three quick shots were fired and it appeared that just as quickly, two of the men in black and grey had been eliminated.
Over his left shoulder, Dalton again watched as the two men at the center of the courtyard continued their discussion. With the winds having shifted, he was able to catch some of the back and forth.
Major Daniels pointed toward the chopper. “Have your men come out of the trees and I will let them live. You can fly back to the city and we’ll call this a draw. You can fight for your survival from your own fortress and we’ll continue doing the same from ours. Now, GET OFF MY MOUNTAIN!”
Goodwin began to laugh. His body shook as he turned back toward the helicopter. “Your mountain? You have no idea.” Motioning for Dalton, he shouted. “OPEN IT UP.”
Quickly returning his attention to Daniels, Goodwin said, “That’s as far as you and I go. I only brought you out here so you could watch your family die at the hands of those things … it’s going to be brilliant.”
“What did you do?” Daniels asked before he lunged forward, taking a swing at his nemesis and squarely making contact with the larger man’s jaw.
Goodwin stepped back, rubbed his hand along his chin, and again laughed. “Did you think I would just hand you the keys to this place and not have a way back in? I’ve had control from the moment we dropped concrete. Just watch.”
Dalton could feel the cold black hole growing inside his mind. It was pulling him closer. As he ran his index finger over the screen, his hand began to shake. He was about to unleash hell, and although this was happening exactly how he planned, the actual task of opening the doors had him nearly paralyzed.
“Three … two … one.” Dalton breathed in deep, turned to face the rear courtyard, and executed the command, unlocking every door within the six building complex.
Nicholas shouted something from the cockpit, although Dalton was lost in the process. He flinched as a thunderous boom shook the ground below and almost instantly, the first few Feeders ran out into the damp, overgrown grass.
To his left and right, Goodwin’s men appeared from beyond the treeline. They moved swiftly and without hesitation. From opposite sides of the chopper, they started toward Goodwin with their weapons shouldered and their focus trained on anything that stepped to within fifty feet of the two men at the center of the action.
For the moment, Dalton’s nerves were steady. He reminded himself to stay in the present and only focus on the things he could absolutely control. He also quietly voiced the words that were repeating on the inside his head.
“Another ninety seconds.”
As the rear courtyard erupted in chaos and Feeders raced from one building to the next, Dalton spotted five women exiting Building One. Two of the women moved away and looked to be headed for the front gates. His hastily thrown together plan may just work after all.
“Please, just keep going.”
Three rapid shots tore his attention away from the women as the mystery men hidden in the trees finally came into full view. They were unfamiliar, although he figured the taller of the two had to be Daniel’s son-in-law. At slightly over six feet tall, he raced across the damp grass with ease. He started toward the women who’d just exited Building One and in the process took down four Feeders who had stumbled into his line of sight.
Through the intermittent gunfire erupting from every corner of the facility, Dalton turned back to the center of the courtyard. Goodwin repeatedly struck the man ten years his senior until Daniels finally dropped to his knees.
A woman’s voice rang out from the sidewalk near Building Six. “RICHARD!”
Goodwin turned and smiled as Richard Daniels rose to his feet and spat a mouthful of blood into his old friend’s face. He took another swing at Goodwin. This time, he came up six inches short.
Sidestepping the blow, Goodwin twisted back and struck Daniels with a solid right hook just below his left ear. Daniels dropped to his knees, now unable to get his footing and stared off into the night with glossed-over eyes.
One of the men from Goodwin’s security team emerged from the forest. He was motioning back toward the trees and shouting something about an ambush. Moving in and out of the incensed beasts, he handed Goodwin a pistol as he eliminated a few additional Feeders. The man dressed in the black and grey fatigues took two steps back, and dropped to a kneeling stance as he continued to fire on the slowly dwindling crowd.
Another quick burst of gunfire came from the opposite side of the chopper. Dalton counted no less than eight shots as another yet unknown individual ran from the trees. Obviously, one of the few who had accompanied Daniels up the backside of the mountain, this man looked vaguely familiar. He moved by in a quick flash, briefly eyeing the cockpit as he turned and also headed toward the women near Building Six.
Swinging around to face Dalton, Goodwin grinned as he took one final swing, knocking Major Daniels to the dirt. He then turned to the man over his right shoulder—still on one knee—and ordered him back to the ch
opper.
Dalton’s slid away from the door, but continued to watch Goodwin as the world around him began to slow. The beasts pouring out of Building Six were now focused elsewhere. They moved away from the rear courtyard and appeared to be headed toward the main gate.
Goodwin slowly scanned the area, nodding in approval as he returned his attention to his former friend and business partner. “Richard, your family will never make it out of that courtyard alive. I want you to know that they will suffer because of you and only you. Say goodbye to your wife and your daughter.”
As the man with the familiar face and Daniels’ son-in-law occupied themselves with what remained of the Feeders from Building Six, the two women—less than thirty yards away—now appeared to be pleading with Goodwin. Their voices broke and fell away as they sobbed uncontrollably into one another.
Goodwin defiantly turned to the women and shouted above the intermittent gunfire. “HE DID THIS, YOUR FATHER … YOUR HUSBAND. HE IS TO BLAME. SAY GOODBYE!”
Marcus Goodwin then pressed the cold steel of his forty-five caliber pistol into Richard Daniels temple and squeezed the trigger. He immediately turned to the screaming women and smiled.
Daniels dropped face-first into a pool of his own blood as his daughter pulled away from her mother and started toward Goodwin. She was quickly grabbed from behind by her husband and dragged back in the direction of Building One.
The man with the familiar face eliminated an additional three Feeders before sliding under the arm of Daniels wife and following his friends away from the action. The group of four disappeared behind Building Six as Goodwin finally approached the chopper.
With his hand on the door, Goodwin paused a moment. He slowly shook his head and stepped aside as the only other remaining member of his security team dove head-first into the rear cabin. “Glad you could join us.”
With his pulse beginning to race, Dalton quickly tucked the tablet under his right arm and moved back to his original seat. He avoided eye contact with the others and instead stared out into the sea of downed Feeders. Under his breath, he again spoke to himself.
“Please, do not close that door.”
Before Dalton could collect himself, Goodwin—who only moments before had executed a man in cold blood—leaned into the open space and shouted toward the two remaining men in black and grey fatigues. “GET YOURSELVES TOGETHER, THIS IS FAR FROM OVER!”
175
As Goodwin and the two remaining security officers stepped back out of the chopper, Dalton turned his attention to the device under his right arm. He quickly backed out of Blackmore’s internal network, releasing control of the video feeds, as well as the exterior security system. They would no longer be of any use and without the ability to see what was coming, his unintentional oversight would appear to be legitimate.
While intermittently checking the conversation outside the door, Dalton’s eyes drifted away from the three men. He stared over Goodwin’s right shoulder and swallowed hard as a silhouetted figure moved away from the corner of Building Six and sprinted toward the rifle laying at the center of the courtyard. Goodwin was correct, this wasn’t over.
As the man passed through a wide swatch of moonlight, Dalton was able to see his face. It was the familiar man from earlier. And in a flash of realization, he knew this man. It was Subject Four, an individual he’d never forget. If he remembered correctly, his name was Randy Stiig, one of the first half-dozen test subjects for Project Ares, also the first and only man to make it out alive.
What was he doing here? Why with the family of Richard Daniels? And was the timing of Goodwin’s attack on Blackmore simply a massive coincidence? Before Dalton could calculate the odds, the man to his right noticed the change in his expression and turned to see Randy nearly collide with another man coming out of the trees on the opposite side of the courtyard.
The man in the black and grey fatigues raised his rifle, tracking the two men just outside Building Six. As Goodwin swung around to see what had interrupted his last thought, he also spotted the two men now running in the opposite direction.
“Is that Travis?” Goodwin paused, “Is that Travis Sims?”
Dalton shifted in his seat to gain a better vantage. He saw what the others saw, but he also knew why. He knew why one of their own would have risked their life to help a complete stranger, even if that meant facing Marcus Goodwin. Dalton understood because he was about to do the same thing.
Before Dalton could respond to the obviously rhetorical question, Goodwin twisted back toward the courtyard and barked out another command. “TAKE THEM OUT, ALL OF THEM THIS TIME. AND MAKE SURE THE LITTLE MAN SUFFERS!”
Without another word, the two men shouldered their rifles and started across the field. They moved as a unit, stepping carefully through the sea of downed Feeders. They fired in quick bursts, with the intermittent muzzle flash lighting the rear of the facility.
As Dalton continued to watch over Goodwin’s left shoulder, the much larger man, Randy, dove behind the three-foot retaining wall to avoid the gunfire. Travis, only a few paces behind, wasn’t so lucky. He was struck in the right shoulder and thrown violently to the ground.
Goodwin howled with delight as the small man rolled to a stop and again shouted into the night. “THAT’S RIGHT BOYS, FINISH THEM!”
Moving to the door, Dalton turned his attention back to Goodwin. “Sir, were you aware that they had a young boy inside Building One who’d been bitten, but hadn’t yet changed? It appears they were trying to bring him back.”
“That is of no concern to me, also not even remotely possible without the antigen. With Lockwood gone, this generation will never see a cure. If it were possible, I would have been the one to bring it into the world.”
“Mr. Goodwin Sir, the video I saw shows that—”
“Dalton, remember your place here, boy. Everything you need to know I’ll tell you. Now, those men may need your assistance. Get over there and do what you can to help.”
“Mr. Goodwin, I don’t have a weapon or the proper training to even begin to help. I’ll just be in the way. You hired me to—”
For a moment, Dalton was concerned that his ability to read Marcus Goodwin had led him down the wrong path, and he wasn’t going to be able to finish what he’d started. However, true to form, the man responsible for ending the world felt the need to emphasize his dominance.
“The world has changed and so have our needs. If you think you can survive in this hell without learning to be a man, you’ve got more than a few problems ahead of you.” Handing Dalton the pistol he’d used to execute his former business partner, Goodwin motioned out toward Building Six. “Go, prove to me that I shouldn’t shoot you where you stand.”
Feigning confusion, Dalton took a slow measured breath and turned to Goodwin. He blinked rapidly and then quickly looked away. Sliding the tablet into his coat, he pushed away from his seat, held out his right hand, and accepted the weapon.
Before stepping out the door and following the others, Dalton clamped down on the pistol and tried not to think about what came next. He reminded himself that killing Goodwin before he was finished wouldn’t help any of the people inside Building One. He needed to do this for them. “I won’t let you down.”
Not waiting for a response, Dalton leapt out of the rear cabin. Trotting off across the damp grass, he turned slightly and nodded to his friend sitting in the cockpit. Neither man had told the other exactly what they had planned; however, if his assumption was correct, Nicholas Jefferson would finish what he couldn’t.
As Dalton came to within fifty feet of Building Six, he recoiled and covered his head as gunfire again erupted. Then a moment of silence was followed by a voice echoing from behind the three-foot retaining wall. “TRAVIS, GET UP NOW! THEY’RE COMING!”
Dalton spotted Travis lying on his side at the center of the courtyard. Through the infinite darkness, the only movement came from steam rising from his motionless body. His face rested against the ground and his low
er body sat at an awkward angle to the rest if his body, almost as if he was wound like a spring.
Slowing to a walk, Dalton stepped over a Feeder who had the top portion of his head blown off, just as the area was flooded with light. Goodwin must have had Nicholas turn on the chopper’s flood lamps in an effort to get a better view of the action.
The two former security officers now stood over Travis’ body, attempting to locate the second man. They swept their rifles across the property, focusing on Building Four, where they assumed he had ran off and was now hiding.
As Dalton came from behind, he eyed each of the men separately and then stared down at Travis. As they began shouting obscenities at him, the larger of the two turned to Dalton and shoved him to the ground. “Stay there, that’s where you belong.”
Quickly getting to his knees, Dalton flinched as the small man lying face-first on the ground rolled onto his back. To the surprise of all three men, Travis pulled a weapon from his waist and squeezed off nine rounds, wincing in pain as the weapon bucked with each shot.
With the weapon now empty, Travis dug his heels into the soft grass and pushed backward, sliding away from the two men he’d emptied his nine-millimeter into. He attempted to roll onto his left side, but breathed out heavily and looked at his right shoulder as he addressed Dalton.
“Aren’t you … going to … kill me? Isn’t that …” The small man’s voice trailed off as he coughed up a mouthful of blood and fought to take his next breath.
Dalton scrambled to his feet and started toward Travis. He twisted right as something moved from behind the three-foot retaining wall. Randy hadn’t retreated back into the building. He moved quickly into the light, accelerating as he sprinted across the damp grass. From ten feet away, the much larger man launched himself into the air, driving his shoulder into Dalton’s midsection and sending both men to the ground in a crumpled mess.
As Dalton shook off the collision, Randy rolled to his left and retrieved his weapon. He quickly moved in, pulled Dalton up to his feet, and motioned back toward the chopper. He was spitting as he spoke. “WHO ARE YOU? WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?”
