Infected (Book 1): The First Ten Days (10 page)

“This makes no sense. There are always extras. It’s impossible to assign every soldier one weapon and have none left,” Marcus said. His eyebrows arched surprised at the fact that the impossibility of a base dry of weaponry was no longer an impossibility but rather the current predicament.

We all questioned where the guns went, but I took it a step further. My brother had a bad habit of explaining things to himself to know whether he understood them or not. Many times he applied this to figure out the odds and probabilities of situations. Sometimes he would even do it out loud, louder than anyone would want him to. Consider it an annoying character trait. I took a page from his book and applied it to the situation. He questioned everything and guessed the answer for anything he didn’t know, so I questioned everything and guessed the answers I didn’t know.

Rather than where the guns went, I asked why the guns went. If the number of soldiers is always less than the number of guns, maybe they weren’t taken for the sake of the soldiers but for the sake of the guns.

What if the guns were moved to a different part of the base for the convenience of a smaller group of soldiers, still alive in the base? That means they would still be present in the base, but in a location unknown to us. It would take us longer to track them down but we would find life along with the weapons.

What if the base was evacuated due to a threat we were not yet aware of, and that is why they were gone? If this was true then it served true that we brought a large group of survivors to their pending danger or starvation.

Marcus was infuriated that the plans weren’t going the way we all expected. He was incredibly bothered that there weren’t any weapons and that the possibility that there wasn’t food for the same reasons was the same. He was genuinely worried for everyone else rather than himself. “Let’s keep moving. We will search all these buildings later. We need to locate the food storage, which is more times than not, directly next to the Dining Hall,” he told us and took off with no regard to whether we followed or not, although we obviously did.

We read the names on all the doors as we walked by them and found nothing relatively important. We still made our way through some of the larger structures such as the vehicle hangers but they were emptied out too. Since nothing electrical worked, the vehicles must have been moved prior to the blackout which could have served as a sign that the virus struck first in the town, and the blackout came after.

The bunkers were where the sleeping quarters for the general military population existed. A great sign for the future; the extensive fortification that came with bunker designs would allow a safe location for the survivors to sleep and exist without worry of outside invasion while they slept. And even if there was outside invasion at any other time of the day, they could just retreat to the bunkers and use it as a defensive shield and strategic advantage on the invaders. Two words; bomb proof!

Finally, down several buildings we could see ‘Dining Area’ written on a building, similar to the font to the ones on the doors, just much larger and on the building itself rather than the door.

Excitement once again rushed through all our bodies and joy overcame us. One of the soldiers ran off ahead. He raced to the Dining Hall but before he could get close enough a loud pop toppled his lifeless body to the floor.

“TAKE COVER!” Marcus yelled.

We all took cover on the side of the nearest building.

“Sniper…” he said under his breath in a bothered and angry tone. He knew something related to this that he didn’t immediately share. His face scrunched up while he pieced what he didn’t already know into the overall picture he built in his mind.

The rest of us were confused as you’d expect.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’ll explain later. We need to get closer to that building,” Marcus said. “Someone check around the other corner and tell me if it’s clear on that side.”

The other soldier did as Marcus said and walked to the other end of the wall to check.

Marcus attempted to peek around the corner of the wall he leaned against. Another loud pop followed a split second after he looked round the corner and the bullet that was fired barely missed Marcus and hit the ground further back from where he was. He pulled back and leaned against the wall again to avoid getting shot. “There are probably more of them in the building. We need to act quickly. Is it clear?”

“I believe so. It doesn’t look like this side is covered,” the soldier responded after he returned from the other end.

“Alright, follow my lead, be careful and quiet. We will need to be as invisible as possible. I am under the impression that whoever took the shot isn’t alone, and they might know exactly how to keep us away if we aren’t careful.”

Marcus turned the corner and kept close to the building as he led in the direction of the Dining Hall. He became more aware of our surroundings the closer we came to our destination.

I became paranoid. Now, we faced people with guns rather than just mindless infected. I didn’t like this turn of events. I was getting use to being attacked at close range which made defense as easy as ‘Keep Away’, but now I risked getting shot if I kept away.

The change of route led us past storage buildings. All flat one floor buildings with the entrance chained shut.

We were close to the Dining Hall when a soldier that was originally with Marcus at Morristown walked by a few yards ahead. Marcus reached to grab his weapon and was knocked over the head by the nameless soldier that was with us. I tried to reach for my gun when this happened and the moment I did a gun was put to the back of my head.

“Either your gun or your body is about to hit the ground. Make a choice,” the voice of yet another soldier that was with us at Morristown said.

With that, it all made sense to me. They separated from us when they weren’t noticed and made their way to the base first. The reason I thought of for this was that they planned to confiscate the supplies and keep them for themselves.

Our guns were taken from us.

“Walk with me,” the man with the gun to my head said. He was presumably the leader. He gave the gun to another guy I didn’t even realize was behind me and the one in charged walked by and led the way. Marcus and I followed at gun point. He led us into the Dining Hall where it was basically a high school lunchroom. Tables and chairs all over with a small area to pick up the food.

My first time in a military base’s Dining Hall and all I could think of was that too many places looked identical to it. Other soldiers were being held against their will, tied up against a wall to a handrail. But these soldiers weren’t with us at Morristown. These were other people, people who were already at the base when the traitors arrived. This meant the base wasn’t originally empty. It was being emptied out while we arrived.

“Tie them up with the others,” the man in charge said.

“Richard, what the hell are you doing? Why are you doing this?” Marcus asked angrily. The question was rhetorical. He already pieced everything together.

“I am assuring my survival, Marcus, as well as the survival of these valiant men,” Richard answered. His men wrapped zip ties around our wrists and the handrail against a wall, and we sat there with the rest of the captives.

“Why do you have to take things to the extreme? Why do you behave so irrationally! I trusted your judgment,” Marcus said. His tone and appearance flushed.

“Irrationally? I operate on only the most judicious deductions for my survival and that of the human race. You’re undertaking is considerate and honorable, but this present plight the world faces isn’t a moment that calls for honor. It calls for survival. And we cannot survive long if we are obligated to sustain such a large number of people. The food will deplete. The ammunition will run dry just attempting to teach most of those people how the weapons function. We can’t jeopardize survival in exchange for number. I’m assuring that humanity can stand against this infectious plague.” Richard’s dark soulless eyes stared straight through Marcus while he said this. No remorse or emotion accompanied any of his words. “But I never betrayed your trust, old friend. I did exactly what you knew in your heart of hearts I would do, survive.”

“What do you plan to do with everyone?” Marcus insisted on further answers.

Richard walked over to us and took a knee in front of Marcus. “I sent one of my men to remove the chains from the storage rooms.” He smiled at Marcus. “These brave men here,” Richard spoke of the other captives. “They placed their infected soldiers into those storage rooms. The plague will be release and it will cleanse the base of all weakness and filter out the strong that can stand alone. I will bring those that still stand along with the rest of my men and together we will rid the base of all infection.”

“That’s messed up,” I thought out loud.

“Who is this insect you brought with you, Marcus? He is a child still. Is the bottom of the barrel so deep?”

I eagerly waited for my brother to walk through the door and point out how the “typical villain” always reveals his plan to the good guys. How expected.

Richard stood up and walked away. “I’d love to stay and chat, but duty calls.” He signaled one of his men to keep an eye on us while the rest of his men followed him out.

Marcus focused on Richard as he left the Dining Area. He was going to get everyone killed, everyone Marcus fought so hard to protect. My brother was one of these people and to make things worse, he did not even have the consciousness to defend himself.

“I should have known he would sink this low. This is my fault,” Marcus said. He threw a small tantrum and slammed his shoulders against the wall in anger.

“How could this possibly be your fault? People have random reactions in bad situations. I’m sure this isn’t an exception to that rule. There was no way for you to know.” I tried to understand how Marcus felt but I honestly did not know what was going through his mind.

“I did know. I knew this would be his exact reaction and I allowed myself to have faith in a person that no longer exists inside him.” Marcus lowered his gaze to the floor. The fury in his eyes died out.

“What do you mean? How well do you know this guy?” I asked. My interest grew. A story would be a great way to kill the time while Richard took the time to realize that he would rather kill us.

“Richard and I, we go way back, pre-military kind of way back. We enlisted together and demanded to be part of the same unit until they gave us what we wanted. We ranked up together in the military to command our own units and work side by side,” Marcus explained.

“How exactly does this tie into his current mental breakdown?” I continued to ask to deepen my knowledge of the situation.

“He reacted the same way once before.”

“Well are you going to tell the story? It’s not like we have a large number of distractions at the time.”

“Alright, I suppose.

Years ago, Richard and I were given a recon assignment. The mission was simple. We were to work our way into an enemy outpost by the desert and recover some Intel stolen from a fallen chopper. We made it in successfully and retrieved the Intel but on our way out we were captured and the Intel was taken by the enemy, again. We were held as prisoners along with some rebels that made a stand against their government and failed.

Two weeks captive. Within that time, the daily food supply given to us wasn’t enough for everyone held captive. We were barely given rations.

Imprisoned with us was a young girl, nine years old. The customs of the country dictated that women were worthless compared to men. This included the little girl.”

“Children were imprisoned too?”

“Yes. It didn’t matter to that government. A traitor was a traitor regardless of age. Her family was of rebels and to their government it meant she was too.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Tell me about it. The rebels, who were all men, believed the girl did not have rights to her rations and they would starve her out. With the arrival of Richard and I, this all changed. We would share our food on a daily basis with the girl, but this did not sit well with the rebels. They felt that if the food was going to be shared, it should be with them because they still thought the girl was unworthy of something they could have.

Over the days, the rebels became more hostile because we continued to share our food with the child. Eventually the hostility became physical and we were forced to defend ourselves numerous times. On a random day, with no warning, one of the rebels pulled out a rock they managed to sharpen and turn into a makeshift knife. He tried to use it against us.

Richard and I both saw that knife as an opportunity to escape and so we fought the man for it and took it from him. During the encounter the other rebels became more violent and Richard escalated to take one of the rebel’s lives as a way to strike fear into the rest of them. It worked and they left us and the girl alone.

That same night, we used the sharpness of knife to break around the wall in which the cell doors were held up and we reached outside to capture and subdue the prison guard in charge of food distribution. From him we took the keys to the prison and we made our escape.

The escape was meant to be simple. We were going to take the most isolated routes out of the enemy grounds and enter more populated areas to blend in to the general population on our way back to the base with the girl, but the events that took place in the prison changed something inside Richard. He felt the rebel soldiers and the government soldiers were all equals in brutality and this interpretation continued to develop into a more negative view of living things in general. How ‘humanity’ is the problem instead of those specific people.