Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (16 page)

The prison has fallen completely silent.

In our cell, there is only one
bunk bed. A top bunk and a bottom bunk. Someone is going to have to share. At
the moment, Kim and I are both sitting on the bottom bunk. Jack is sitting on
the floor, leaning against the back wall.

I can’t help but think about our
night in the North Sydney police station. Jack, Maria and I. We spent almost
two days in that cell. It felt like a lot longer. We even shared it with a guy
who turned out to be infected with the Oz virus. I think back to that night and
I realize that we could’ve died right then and there. Our journey could’ve
ended and our lives could’ve ended along with millions of other innocent
people.

I close my eyes and I try and
forget that night. But instead of thinking about how I nearly died, I start
thinking about food. And about how hungry I am. We only had the chance to eat a
few mouthfuls of dried cereal in the prison cafeteria.

Jack clicks his fingers and snaps
me out of my daydream. He waves Kim and me over to the far wall of the cell. He
obviously wants to talk.

Kim and I both move over.

“What do we do?” Jack whispers.
“We can’t stay here forever.”

Jack is ready to go and find
Maria. To save Maria. He wants to do this right now.

“Do we try and move through the
labyrinth?” Kim asks.

“I don’t think that’s a good
idea,” Jack says. “You heard what they said. It’s full of infected. I think
we’re better off going back the way we came.”

“We can’t go back the way we
came,” I say. “That whole area is also swarming with infected.”

“Yeah, but at least it’s not a
maze.”

“It’s kind of a maze,” I point
out. “All those long hallways. All those office rooms and subway tunnels. This
whole facility is a giant underground maze.”

Jack nods along to what I say. He
knows that both options are full of danger. He knows both options will require
a lot of running and hiding. And luck. “I know this whole place is messed up,”
he says. “But I’m getting the impression that the maze is designed to kill
people. It’s designed as a death trap.”

“We can beat it,” I say. “We can
make it. We use the maps and the info that Kenji has written on the walls of
his cell. If we use that info, we can make it through.”

Kim is shaking
her head. “No. No way. There's no way we're going in there. It's a suicide
mission. No one survives.”

“Kenji did.”

“Yeah. For a while.
But you heard what they said. He's been gone five days now.”

I look at my watch. Forty three
hours left. “Guys, I’m running out of time. I’m not going to be around for much
longer.”

“Don’t say that,” Kim says.

“I have to say it. To not say it,
is to lie to myself. I have to come to terms with this. And that’s why I’m going.
As soon as I get the chance, I’m going into the labyrinth.”

“Well, I’m coming with you,” Jack
says.

“I appreciate the thought, but I
can’t let you do that. I happen to agree with Kim and Thomas and everyone else
here. The labyrinth is just too dangerous.”

“I don’t care,” Jack says. “I
can’t sit here and do nothing. I’m coming with you. And we’re going to find
Maria.”

Kim lowers her head. “This is a
bad idea, you guys.”

“I know,” I whisper.

We stop talking. Everyone knows
the stakes. Everyone knows what we have to do.

And no one likes it.

I climb into the top bunk and Kim
takes the bottom bunk.

Jack stays on the floor.

I stare at the concrete ceiling
of the cell for a few hours. I try not to scare myself with everything that
could go wrong. I stare at my watch, and I know that even while I sleep, it
will not stop. I’m down to forty hours. Just under two days. Is that enough
time to do what I need to do? I don’t know.

Sleep eventually comes at some
point. It comes on quickly. And unfortunately, it is over all too soon. I wake
to the sound of my watch beeping and the cell doors sliding open.

I check the countdown. I have
twenty-seven hours left. I can’t believe it.

I’ve been asleep for over
thirteen hours!

Too long.

Way too long.

And even though I obviously
needed the rest, I can’t afford to waste my last days on earth sleeping.

Jack and Kim are both awake as
well. They wake slowly. We can hear people whispering throughout the prison.

Hushed, urgent whispers.

Something is wrong.

A shadow moves across the bed
sheet, our makeshift curtain. A large shadow. It is Ben. “Open up guys.”

I pull the bed sheet down and it
falls to the floor.

Ben is dressed and ready for war.
He is armed with his shotgun and his revolver. “Thomas wants to speak with
you,” Ben informs us. “He wants to see your blueprints. And that access card
you been bragging about.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why has he changed
his mind all of a sudden?”

“Something is wrong,” Ben says as
he points over his shoulder. “The door to the labyrinth is still open.”

We step out of our cell and Thomas confronts us immediately.

“Show me those blue prints,” he
demands.

Kim retrieves the blue prints
from her back pocket and hands them over.

Thomas quickly unfolds them and
scans through the designs. “This is useless,” he says. “Completely useless.”

“What do you mean?” Kim asks. “It
shows the entire layout for both prisons.”

“It doesn’t show the layout of
the labyrinth. That whole section is blacked out. We can’t use this. We can’t
leave. We have to stay.”

“No,” Kim says. “We have to make
a move. We have to go. It's not safe here.”

“But no one has ever survived in
that place,” Harry says. “No one lives. It's a death trap.”

Thomas throws the blue prints
back at Kim. “It was you. You guys came here. You screwed everything up!”

The messed up thing is; I kind of
believe him.

“Tom, settle down,” Anna says.
“We need to think this through.”

“And keep your voice down,” Ben
adds.

“We have to get down to the
cafeteria,” Harry says. “We have to stock up on food and water. We’re going to
have to risk it.”

“With the door open?” Thomas
asks. “Are you crazy?”

“What else are we supposed to do?
We’ll starve to death.”

“We can survive for a few days
without water,” Doctor Hunter says. “A few more without food.”

“Any infected down there?” Ben
asks.

We lean over the railing and look
down to the ground floor.

It appears to be empty. The
prison is still and silent.

“OK, let’s think about this,”
Jack says. “The door to the labyrinth opened early and it hasn’t closed.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “It usually
opens and closes in twelve hour cycles. At six and six. But it’s still open.”

“But there doesn’t seem to be any
infected in the area,” Jack continues. “Maybe the labyrinth has been cleared
out. Maybe the experiment is over. Maybe we’re free to leave.”

Jack is right. There doesn’t seem
to be any sign of the infected. No noises. No screams. No howling moans. Not
yet.

“Do you really think the infected
have been cleared out?” Doctor Hunter asks. “Do you really think we are safe?”

Anna points to the entrance of
the labyrinth. “Oh my God. Look!”

Someone, a man, stumbles through
the doorway to the labyrinth, they make their way over to one of the plastic
tables that are bolted into the floor. They lean against the table for support.
And then a few seconds later, they collapse.

The person is wearing military
fatigues and boots.

And I can’t believe it.

It’s Kenji.

Isn’t it?

I look closer. “Kenji!’

“Keep your voice down!” Thomas
snaps at me.

“We have to get down there,” I
say. “We have to help him.”

Thomas shakes his head. “No way.
No goddamn way. He could be infected. He could’ve led a whole horde of them
right to us.”

“I don’t care. I’m not
gonna
leave him there to die.”

I make a move for the fire escape
ladder but Thomas pushes me back. “Grab her,” he says to Harry.

Harry moves up behind me and puts
me in a bear hug.

Kim and Jack are about to leap
into action but they don’t need to. Ben punches Harry in the side of the face.
Actually, Ben almost punches his fist right
through
Harry’s face. And as a result, Harry is knocked clear off his feet and he
releases me immediately.

Thomas aims his rifle right at my
chest and I freeze. This is sheer stupidity on Thomas’s behalf because Ben is
armed with a shotgun.

Ben points the shotgun directly
at Thomas’s head. “Don’t even think about it.”

But Thomas is undeterred. “Lower
your weapon, Ben. We can’t go down there. You know how dangerous it is. You
know.”

“We
can
go down there,” Ben replies. “And we
will
go down there.”

“What the hell is your problem?”
Thomas asks. “Why are you doing this? Yesterday you wanted out. You were
leaving. And now all of a sudden these people show up and you’re staying? Now
all of a sudden you’re prepared to risk your life and everyone else’s life?”

“I told you,” Ben says calmly.
“They saved my life. I owe them.”

“I don’t care. It’s not worth the
risk. You can’t go down there. No one is going down there.”

“Why not?” Jack says. “It’s not
like we’re risking your life. Stay up here. Lock yourself in your cell.”

“Oh, I’m staying up here, don’t
you worry about that. But if you go down there, you’re going to attract them.
You’re going to rile them up. We can’t have that. I won’t allow it.”

Harry is slowly getting to his
feet. “You’re going to ruin everything.”

Ben steps forward, finger on the
trigger. “Get out of the way, Tom.”

As Ben steps forward, Thomas
takes a step back and he bumps into the hand railing and very nearly falls
over. He very nearly falls ten stories to his death.

But he doesn’t. He regains his
balance. He makes sure he has a firm grip on his rifle and he makes sure his
feet are firmly planted.

Thomas is becoming frantic and
paranoid. He is showing us the worst of humanity. He is turning his back on a
person in need.

This is cold blooded and
methodical.

The sad thing is; I can see his
point. And it is an excellent point. If we go down there, we are risking our
lives and we are risking the lives of the group.

It is a huge risk.

But Kenji is down there. He is
sprawled on the concrete floor. He is defenseless and exposed and exhausted.

He could be dying. He could be
dead. He could be infected. But I don’t care. To hell with the risk and the
danger. I need to get down there.

I reach over to the holster
strapped to Ben’s leg. I pull out the old cowboy style revolver. I point it at
Thomas’s chest. I think about shooting him. I think long and hard.

But I don’t.

I point the gun at the ceiling
and I pull the trigger.

The noise causes Thomas to
flinch, and in the split second where he takes his eyes off Ben, he loses his
weapon and his position of authority. Ben snatches the weapon out of his hand
and gives it to Jack. He then grabs Thomas by his collar and lifts him off his
feet and slams him into the bars of the nearest cell. The wind is knocked from
Thomas’s lungs and he collapses to the floor in a heap.

“Come on,” Ben says. “We don’t
have long.”

Thomas is breathing hard, trying
to suck in as much air as he can. He makes eye contact with me. “You’ve killed
us all,” he says between breaths. “You’ve ruined our one shot at survival.”

And I agree with him.

We climb down the fire escape as fast as we can. This is not very fast. It
feels like we are climbing forever. And it feels like the longer we take; the
less chance we have of saving Kenji before it’s too late.

We finally make it to the ground
floor, and we quickly move over to Kenji. We stand around him in a circle, at
the entrance to the labyrinth. I am hesitating and keeping my distance, not
believing that Kenji is alive.

Not believing that he is alive
and breathing and sweating.

He is covered in dirt and grime
and blood.

He looks like he is fresh from
the battlefield.

Jack and Kim are both silent.
They are in shock.

No one else says a word.

Not Ben.

Not Harry. Not Doctor Hunter. Not
Anna.

No one.

Thomas finally climbs down as
well and runs off to the cafeteria. He is probably on his way to get supplies
so he can stock up and stay in his cell for as long as it takes.

We continue standing around Kenji
in a circle and no one does or says anything. No one knows what to do and I am
too scared to get any closer.

Kim finally acts. She leans down
and rolls Kenji on to his back. “He’s breathing,” she says.

And we can see that he is
breathing hard.

“Is he infected?” Harry asks.

“I... I don’t know,” Kim answers.

“Can you see any bite marks?”

“No.”

“We should stand back,” Harry
says. “He could be infected. He could be about to turn. We should take care of
him.”

Kenji opens his eyes. They appear
to be unfocused.

“He’s awake,” Kim says.

Kenji tries to sit up. “Water.”

Anna steps forward with a
canteen.

Kenji is finally able to sit up.
He takes the water and gulps it down. “I’m not infected,” Kenji whispers. “I’m
fine.”

He slowly gets to his feet.

And now I am in shock as well.

Kenji looks at me and makes eye
contact. And I want to hug him. I want to hold on to him and never let go. But
his look, his stare, his eyes are cold.

He is so cold.

He has changed.

I see this immediately. This
place has changed him.

Flashes of writing appear in my
mind. The writing on the walls. The words appear right behind my eyeballs, like
a weird heads up display.

The writing is on the walls. The walls
of his cell.

Everyone
is in danger.

“Kenji, what happened?” I ask.
“Where have you been? What did they do to you?”

“Nothing,” he answers. “I’m fine.
But we need to move. We can’t stay here anymore.”

He steps forward and hugs me. But
it’s weird. It doesn’t feel right. It feels wooden, almost robotic, almost
forced.

He shakes hands with Jack. And
then hugs him, and then he hugs Kim. Everyone is smiling. Even Ben is smiling.
But Kenji is not. I can’t explain it. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know
what has happened to him.

“Where is Maria,” he asks.

I shake my head and he knows
immediately that she is in danger.

“She’s in trouble,” I finally
say. “We have to go and get her.”

Kenji nods. He is not surprised
that Maria is in danger.

“What happened?” I repeat. “What
were you doing in the labyrinth?”

“The labyrinth is the key,” he
says quietly. “We solve the labyrinth, we earn our freedom. That’s the way it
works.”

The dark entrance to the
labyrinth towers over us.

“Should we be standing down here
with that thing wide open?” Harry asks. “I mean, the damn zombies could run out
and ambush us at any second.”

This is not a comforting thought.
Harry is right. We should not be standing here.

“Are they nearby?” Harry asks.
“Are they close?”

“They are always close,” Kenji
says. “The only way to survive is to keep moving. Once we enter the labyrinth,
we have to move. We have to run. You stop, you die. The Oz virus is designed to
find life.”

“What do you mean, once we enter
the labyrinth?” Anna asks. “You’re not suggesting we actually go in there?”

Kenji nods. “It’s the only way.”

I hadn’t seen Kenji since the
military outpost. I thought he was dead. “I thought you were dead,” I whisper.
“I thought I had lost you. I... I...”

I am speechless.

When Kenji first disappeared, I
tried desperately to convince myself that he was alive. That he had escaped
from the outpost in time. That he had made it to a safe distance. That he was
nowhere near the blast zone, nowhere near the massive thermo baric explosion.
That he had not been vaporized.

I tried to convince myself that
he was alive, but I had failed. I knew he was dead. Deep down. That place in
your heart, that place in your soul where it is impossible to lie to yourself.
In that place, I knew he was dead. And yesterday, a few hours ago, my fears had
been confirmed. Thomas and everyone here in this prison had told me that Kenji
had run off into the labyrinth and died. So less than twenty-four hours ago, I
thought he had died in this very labyrinth. I thought he had been chased down
and cornered by the infected. By a bunch of goddamn zombies.

But he is not dead. He is right
here.

He is
standing
right here.

He just gave me a hug.

And I want to jump on top of him
and hug him back. I want to break down and cry with joy.

But I don’t. I can’t move. I am
paralyzed.

My heart and my head are all over
the place. They are being torn in a million different directions. I can barely
cope. But I have to. I have to keep going.

I swallow my feelings and I tell
myself that we need to get Maria. We need to save her from a madman. This is
all that matters.

“How did you get out?” I ask
Kenji. “How did you get here? What the hell happened at the outpost?”

From the darkness of the
labyrinth we hear a noise. A howling, moaning scream.

“I was taken,” Kenji whispers.

“Taken?”

“Yeah.”

“By who?”

Another scream. Another howl.

“We have to go,” he says.

“Right now?” I ask.

“Yes. Right now. We stay here, we
die. We’ll get trapped.”

Thomas returns from the cafeteria
and he has a bag full of food. “I vote we stay. Well, I’m staying. Don’t care
what you idiots are doing. But if you want my advice, I say we grab as much
food as we can carry from the cafeteria. We reinforce the barricades and we
lock ourselves in our cells. We wait it out.”

Kenji shakes his head. “No. That
won’t work. There’s too many of them. If you stay here you will die. Simple as
that.”

“The infected can’t get through
the barricades,” Thomas says. “They can’t get through our cells. We are safe.”

“Do you really want to live like
that?” Jack says. “Huddled in your cells with the infected snapping their jaws
and reaching through the bars? You’re crazy.”

“You can’t stay in your cells,”
Kenji repeats. “You can’t survive. You won’t survive. It’s not just the
infected. It’s not just the zombies. There are monsters in there. Giant
mutations. Big, bad things. They will rip those barricades apart. They will rip
the bars of your cells apart. And then they will rip you apart.”

Thomas hesitates at the mention
of the monsters. In his mind, he is second guessing himself.

“Aww no,” Jack says. “Not those
goddamn monster mutation things. I hate those things.”

“What mutations?” Thomas asks.
“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about monsters,”
Kenji says. “Things that have mutated and grown. They will climb up those
stairways. They will reduce those barricades to rubble. They will destroy the
bars of your cell. And then they will eat you alive.”

Thomas does not want to believe
in monsters and he does not want to leave his cell. “What’s the alternative?
Running blindly through a maze? A maze that is swarming with the infected and
monsters and God knows what else?”

“It’s the only option,” Kenji
says, pointing to the labyrinth. “In there, we can outsmart them. We can outrun
them. It’s your only chance of survival.”

“Survival?” Thomas says. “Are you
kidding me? We’re not going to survive in there! We’re not going to last five
minutes in there!”

Kenji is fed up. “Look, I’m not
guaranteeing your survival. Far from it. It is a dangerous place. It is
designed to kill. It is designed to confuse and disorientate. It is a death
trap. But we can beat it.”

“Yeah, but you can’t guarantee
it. You’ve been running around in there by yourself. Now we’re a group.” Thomas
does a quick head count. “Nine people. They’ll find us in no time.”

“I can’t guarantee you’ll live,”
Kenji says. “But I can guarantee that if you stay here, you will die.”

Should we stay or should we go?

They were both terrible options.

“We’re dead if we go in there!”
Thomas says. “It’s dark. It’s a maze. And it’s full of zombies. Why the hell
would you want to go in there?”

Should we stay or should we go?

I have already made up my mind. I
am going.

“It’s the only way out,” I say.
“It’s the only way.”

This is how we find Maria. We
make our way through the labyrinth. We find the research labs. We find the main
control room. The main communication room. The nerve center. And then we find
Maria.

We kill anyone or anything that
gets in our way.

This is what I am going to do.

I am about to tell Kenji that we
should go now, and that we should forget Thomas because he is a lost cause. I
am about to suggest that maybe we should load up with food and ammo and weapons
and essential survival tools. A torch maybe.

But I don’t get the chance.

Suddenly an infected man falls
through the air and lands on the hard concrete floor. He fell all the way from
the top level, throwing himself over the railing. His virus riddled body is
splattered and squashed and completely flattened, and it’s a miracle that it
didn’t land on top of one of us.

We all jump back and crane our
necks to see where the damn thing fell from.

We see more infected up there.
Lots more. They are piling in through the entrance to the prison. They are
being funneled through the narrow corridor that leads into the main cylinder.

“How the hell
did they get in?” Thomas yells.

The man in the
gas mask, I think to myself. This is his work. It has to be. It is a not so
subtle hint. He is sending a message.

Hurry
up.

He was forcing
us into the labyrinth.

Why?

More and more infected spill out
on to the top level. It will not take them long to stumble their way down the
stairs, through the barricades. But then we realize they didn’t have to do
that. They simply threw themselves over the balcony. Like the first guy.

Like a bunch of lemmings.

Ten floors.

One falls right on top of
Thomas’s bag of food. Another one hits the concrete ground. And another one.
Luckily most of them don’t survive the fall. They splatter on impact. They are
flattened on impact. And the few that did survive were severely crippled.

We begin backing away, closer to
the labyrinth.

“We have to go,” Kenji says.

I am ready and so is Jack and so
is Kim and so is Ben.

Thomas and Harry are still
hesitating. I’m not sure what Anna and Doctor Hunter are going to do. But they
are wisely standing behind big Ben.

The infected keep coming, they
keep falling. And eventually because there are so many, they begin to pile up.
And this pile of zombies, this pile of undead flesh, softens the landing for
the next infected body, and the next.

And the next.

Eventually they begin surviving
the fall.

Eventually they begin getting
back up.

The time for hesitating is over.

“Let’s go!” I yell. “We can’t
stay here any longer. There’s too many of them!”

Thomas makes a lunge for his gym
bag that he has packed with food. This is such an unbelievably stupid thing to
do. I mean, I can kind of see the temptation. But come on, man. The bag is
practically underneath a mountain of infected people.

Thomas is unable to retrieve his
bag of food. Harry grabs him and pulls him away. And we all start backing away,
closer to the one and only exit.

The
labyrinth.