Land of Dust and Bones: The Secret Apocalypse Book 7 (14 page)

We exit the car, initially unsure of where to go. Unsure of whether or not we
were doing the right thing.

Marko and Billy are still nowhere to be
seen.

I take a quick look around. It’s difficult
to see, but we must be near the center of the Boneyard.

The three airplane hangars in front of us
are absolutely huge. They remind me of the hangars at Sydney airport.

I really hope these ones are not full of
infected people.

We enter the hangar through the same
doorway we saw Marko and Billy disappear through.

Once inside, we are confronted with two
giant aircraft. They appear to be military cargo planes. There’s also more work
trucks parked near the entrance. There’s even a couple of Humvees.

At the very back of the hangar is another
small doorway.

This door is open.

A dim orange light spills out into the
otherwise dark hangar.

It is the only source of light. And we are
drawn to it.

“What do you think?” I ask.

Kenji shrugs his shoulders. He is about to
say something, when suddenly, we hear screaming.

It is a scream of pain and anguish. It is
unbelievably high pitched. And the only thing more shocking than how loud and
piercing it is, is how quickly and abruptly the screaming stops.

We all freeze.

I hold my breath and my mouth goes dry.
“What the hell is going on?”

“Don’t know,” Kenji says. “But we need to
find out.”

He waves us forward. Towards the door. We
walk between the two huge aircraft, making our way slowly towards the light.

We enter a room.

The first thing I see is a body. It is
hanging up. It takes me a few seconds to realize the body is wrapped up in a
kind of plastic cling wrap. It takes me another few seconds to realize it is
the girl in the white dress.

The Evo Agent is in the middle of the room.
He is lying on his side. He is hog tied. He has been beaten.

Tortured
.

Marko is standing over him, breathing hard.
Billy is watching from a safe distance, smiling, laughing. There is a single
kerosene lamp hanging from the middle of the room. And this lamp acts like a
spot light, like this gruesome scene is happening on a stage.

“What the hell are you doing?” Kenji asks.

Billy and Marko turn around at exactly the
same time. Billy takes a step back. He keeps backing away into the shadows.

“I thought we told you to stay in the car,”
Marko says. “I thought we told you to wait.”

Kenji has his rifle raised. It’s not aimed
at anyone yet. “You left us there for hours,” he says. “We were worried
something had happened. Are you torturing that man?”

“Had to find out what he knew. Had to ask
him the hard way.”

The
hard way…

I remember Big Ben saying these exact words
once upon a time.

And I can’t tell from where I’m standing,
but it looks like the Evo Agent is dying.

“Remember what I told you about these
guys,” Marko says. “They’re killers. He was about to kill you down in the
oasis. He would’ve executed you and left you there to rot. He would’ve
succeeded if I hadn’t shown up. This is what they do. You know this.”

“No one deserves this,” I say. “And what
the hell are you doing with the girl. You said you were going to bury her. What
the hell are you doing?”

Sarah begins backing away, towards the
exit.

Kenji’s rifle is now aimed at Marko.

Billy is shaking his head. “You’re going to
regret this. You don’t come into our house. You don’t…”

Marko looks at us, stares at us. He sizes
Kenji up. “Who the hell are you people?”

The question takes Kenji by surprise.
“What?”

“I’ve been speaking with the super soldier
here. He’s got quite a story. Do you want to verify any of it?”

“Can we all just calm down?” I say,
pleading.

“We’ve got nothing to hide,” Kenji answers.
“What did he say?”

“He said, among other things, that you’ve
been… how shall I put this… harboring a fugitive.”

“A fugitive?” I ask. “Marko, you’ve lost us.
We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb with me. Don’t you even
think about
it.
You need to tell me exactly what you
know. And you need to tell me exactly where she is.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Maria goddamn Marsh. Who’d you think I was
talking about? This guy says Maria Marsh is immune to the Oz virus. He says
they’ve been looking for her for months. He told me that they had her in
custody. In North Sydney. Can you believe that? North goddamn Sydney. At the
start of the outbreak. And you… you stole her. You abducted her.”

I shake my head. “Abducted her? No, that’s
not what happened. That’s not right at all. What the hell did he tell you?”

“He told me the truth.”

“He’s lying. Well, maybe he’s not lying.
But he’s not telling you the right story. He doesn’t know. He wasn’t there.”

“And you were there, right? You were there.
You could’ve saved the bloody day.”

“It was already too late,” Kenji says. “The
Oz virus had spread. There were containment failures all over the country. It was
the work of…”

“I don’t want to hear your lies,” Marko
says.

“We’re not lying.”

Sarah grabs my arm. “Come on. We need to
go.”

And I know she is right.

My eyes automatically search for a weapon.
I have nothing. Marko has a sidearm, a pistol. Kenji has a rifle with one
magazine of bullets.

Marko sees me looking at his gun. “You want
this?”

“You shouldn’t have used all your bullets,”
Billy says.

I hold my hands up. “I don’t know what’s
going on. I don’t know what the Evo Agent told you…”

“He told me the truth,” Marko says. “You
want to know how I
know?
”

I shake my head instinctively. I don’t want
to know. I don’t want to hear it.

“I asked him the hard way,” Marko explains.
“I wanted to know everything he knew. People don’t lie when they’re all alone.
When they have nothing to lose. When they have no hope. You see, people only
lie when they feel like they have something to gain. The same goes for
cheating. Stealing. When he knew he had nothing to gain, when he knew it was
over, when he realized he was dying, he told the truth.”

And I realize the Evo Agent is already
dead. I realize the scream we heard was his dying scream, his last breath.

I realize they tortured him to death.

And they’re not going to bury the girl.

And they’re not going to help us.

Marko and Billy don’t care about Maria
Marsh. They don’t care about creating an anti-virus. They don’t care about what
the Evo Agent had to say. Marko said this to stall us, to once again disarm us,
to throw us off.

Billy has a rifle pointed at Kenji. Marko
has a gun. And this room is too small to get into a fire fight. Kenji can’t
possibly kill both of them before we are gunned down.

I don’t know what to do.

I… just… don’t… know.

Suddenly Kenji raises the barrel of his
rifle towards the ceiling and shoots out the kerosene lamp. The room is plunged
into darkness, giving us just enough time to make our escape.

We turn and run.

Kenji pushes Sarah and me out the door,
back towards the Landcruiser. We run through the dark hangar. We need to get
back to the Landcruiser, I think to myself. It’s our only hope.

But did Marko leave the keys in the
ignition?

Again, I don’t know. I can’t remember.

If we can’t get the Landcruiser working,
we’ll need to find another car. A work truck. A Humvee.

We’ll need to find something. Because right
now, we need to get as far away from here as possible. Far away from the
Boneyard. Far away from these people.

“Follow me,” Kenji says.

“One of those trucks or Humvees has to be
working,” I say.

But we’re not even half way across the
floor of the hangar when something big moves in front of us. It takes me a few
seconds to realize that this big thing… is a man.

And in his hands is the biggest
sledgehammer I have ever seen.

The
Hammer… The rest of us deal with meat.

He swings the sledgehammer and it connects
with the side of Kenji’s head. Kenji immediately falls awkwardly to his knees.
He tries to stand, he tries to get up and run, but he can’t. He falls over,
dropping his rifle. It skids along the concrete ground, disappearing into the
darkness.

The big man stands over Kenji. He is
wearing a bloodied apron. Thick rubber gloves. Thick rubber boots. He has long
black hair that obscures his face.

He raises the sledgehammer.

It
only takes one hit… Boom!

I am paralyzed with fear. “No!”

Luckily, Sarah is not paralyzed. She raises
her gun and shoots the big man in the back. The gunshot is unbelievably loud
and it seems to be amplified by the metal walls and the metal roof of the
hangar.

But the big man doesn’t seem to notice he’s
been shot.

He reacts as though he’s just been bitten
by a mosquito. And this reaction… this lack of reaction… shocks us. It scares
us to our core. And I don’t know about Sarah, but I immediately start to think
of this man, this thing, as something supernatural. And we don’t stand a chance
against this dark magic.

The big man, he swings his sledgehammer and
it connects with Sarah’s hand. I hear a crack.

A crunch.

Her hand is definitely broken. Even more so
than it already was. She drops the gun immediately and it disappears. And now
we are completely unarmed.

The big man comes for us.

But somehow Kenji manages to crawl forward,
onto his hands and knees. He grabs the big man’s leg. “Go! Run! Get out of
here.”

“Ivan!” Marko yells from the dark. “Put the
hammer down. Remember what I told you about fresh meat.”

Ivan does exactly as he is told. He drops
the hammer and the solid metal clangs loudly on the smooth concrete floor of
the hangar.

Marko walks towards us. Again, there is no
sign of Billy. I get the sense he is running around in the dark, watching us,
stalking us. Sarah grabs me by the arm and pulls me towards the small entry
door. I walk backwards. I keep my eyes on Marko as we slowly make our way
outside.

Marko keeps walking towards us. The big man
picks up Kenji with one hand. He drags him across the floor. Drags him off into
the darkness, back towards the room of torture.

“What the hell are you?” I ask. “What are
you going to do to him!?”

Sarah pulls me outside.

Marko doesn’t answer me.

He fires the gun at our feet. The bullets
hit the red dirt. He wasn’t trying to shoot us. He just wanted to scare us.

Mission accomplished.

The fear of death is the only thing on my
mind.

The noise of the gunshots momentarily
causes me to go deaf.

Sarah begins to drag me along. “Come on,”
she whispers. Or maybe she yells it. “We have to go.”

I know she is right. I know there is
nothing we can do for Kenji right now.

But I can’t just leave him. I won’t.

Sarah sees me hesitate. “We can’t help him
if we’re dead. Come on!”

Sarah drags me away. Forces me to move. We
turn and run blindly into the Boneyard. And the Boneyard turns into a maze. We
are instantly lost. It’s hard to recognize the planes. The jets. The bombers
and fighters.

Where are we? Where is Marko’s car? Where
are they taking Kenji? How the hell do we get out of here?

What the hell have we gotten ourselves
into?

Sarah starts running faster. I struggle to
keep up. And the faster I run, the more I panic.

Eventually, Sarah begins to slow down. She
is holding her broken hand, her broken wrist. I think the initial shock of the
attack is starting to wear off. I think she is starting to realize that her
hand is absolutely shattered. But we can’t afford to stop. We can’t afford to
rest. I won’t let her slow down and I won’t leave her behind.

And now all of a sudden I’m the one pulling
her along with me, dragging her along. She stumbles, struggling to stay
upright. She is holding her hand. Her wrist. Her fingers are all bent and
broken. They are all twisted.

Her hand is shaking. Her whole body is
shaking.

“Who… who the hell was that guy?” Sarah
asks, her voice trembling.