Torn Apart

TORN APART

Book 4 in the Secret Apocalypse
series

By James Harden

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 by James Harden

This book is a work of fiction. The names,
characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s
imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be
construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead,
actual events locales or organizations is entirely
coincidental.

All rights are reserved. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the
written permission of the author.

I am alone. I have been separated from Maria. From everyone. I am
blindfolded and my hands are tied behind my back.

I am in a room. I think.

I’m not sure. I don’t really know where I
am.

But I know it is Hell. A place of
suffering.

Someone pushes me into a chair. They free my
hands, cutting my ties with a knife.

My arms hang at my side and I slowly roll my
shoulders, moving the pain and stiffness away.

I reach forward. I am sitting at a table. The
ground under my feet is smooth concrete. I am about to remove the
black hood over my head. But I am stopped.

A voice speaks. A man. His voice sounds weird.
“Do not move. Do. Not.”

I freeze.

“
Give me your hand.”

“
No.”

“
It was not a question.”

He grabs my wrist. Yanks it forward. Slams my
hand on the table. “What would you do if you had a day to live?
What would you do if you had two days to live? Three? Imagine your
last day on earth. What would you do?”

“
I… I don’t know.”

I say I don’t know because I genuinely don’t
know. I don’t want to think about it. No one wants to think about
it.

Death.

Life.

Mortality.

We know that one day we will die. We know that
in a sense, we are all dying.

Living and dying.

But we don’t think about it. We
can’t.

“
When faced with death, some people
get depressed,” he says. “A deep depression. They die this way.
Feeling this way.”

I try and pull my wrist back. But I can’t. His
grip is iron tight. His voice sounds like it is being
altered.

“
Have you heard of the five stages
of grieving?” he asks.

I shake my head. “No.”

“
Denial,” he says. “Bargaining.
Anger. Depression. Acceptance.”

Suddenly my arm is jabbed with a pin. Or a
needle. The sharp pain shocks me and scares me. I instinctively try
and pull my arm away. But I can’t. He is too strong.

I immediately feel weak. Lethargic and
sleepy.

“
Some people,” he continues. “Most
people, never ever get to acceptance. They never reach this final
stage.”

My eyes are heavy and getting heavier. “What’s
your point? What did you just stick me with? What are you
doing?”

“
It is a sedative. It is for your
own good.”

“
Where is Maria?” I ask. “What have
you done with her?”

He ignores my questions. “As you know, the
military, the company, tried to cover up this disaster. They tried
to keep the entire outbreak a secret. They tried to cover up the
death toll. They cut off Australia and shut down communication
networks. They isolated the entire country. Like it was sick. They
kept the world in the dark. They kept the world in
denial.”

“
Who are you?”

“
I am no one. I am nothing. You are
the star. You told everyone the truth. You are the hero. And now
everyone knows. Everyone. And now the whole world is looking for
Maria Marsh.”

“
Where is she? Where?”

Again, he ignores my question. “Do you know why
they are looking for Maria?”

“
Yes. Because she is immune. With
her blood they can make an anti-virus. Stop the spread of
infection. Stop the death toll.”

“
No. You are wrong. The whole world
is looking because the whole world is scared. They are afraid. Fear
is what motivates them. They do not care if the death toll rises,
as long as they are safe. As long as they are inoculated.
Vaccinated. They do not care if the outbreak continues. As long as
it does not continue near them. Fear is the reason they are looking
for Maria.”

“
Of course people are scared,” I
say. “They should be scared.”

“
Fear is like a spark. Fear will
ignite a fire.”

I feel dizzy. I am struggling to process what
he is saying. I am struggling to understand.

“
The world has not seen the Oz
virus,” he says. “Not like you and I have. No. They have been
protected by their governments. They have been betrayed by their
governments. But I will show them. I will show them the Oz virus.
The mutations. I will show them Project Salvation. I will feed them
fear. I will show them Maria. I will give them hope. And then I
will take that hope away. I will destroy it right in front of their
eyes.”

I am exhausted and weak, possibly
hallucinating, possibly dying. It’s hard to focus. Hard to process
what he just said. But as far as I could tell, he was going to
execute Maria on camera. Record it for the world to see.

I cannot let that happen. I have to do
something.

But what?

What the hell am I supposed to do?

“
When I destroy hope,” he continues.
“The world will no longer be in denial. They will finally accept
their fate. They will be free.”

I am alone. I have been starved and tortured
and broken. But I need to stop this madman. I need to save
Maria.

We promised each other, at the start of our
journey. We promised that we would protect Maria at all costs.
Everything else came second. Including our own survival.

We promised.

And as I renew this promise to myself and as
the sedative continues to work its magic and I slip in and out of
consciousness, I realize I have two choices.

I can curl up into a ball and die.

Or I can live. I can fight. I can fight for
Maria. I can fight for my friends.

I’m pretty sure I’m dying. But I choose to
fight.

Denial.

This is where I’m at. I’ve been in this stage
for a while now. Months.

I was daydreaming. I had been doing this a lot
lately. I dreamt I was sitting on a couch, in a therapist’s office.
The person interviewing me and judging me was a Sigmund Freud
inspired figment of my imagination.

I told him, “I’m in denial. I’ve been in denial
for a long time. Our goal, our mission was to evacuate Maria. Save
her. Because she is immune to the Oz virus. We failed. Our group
has been torn apart. We have no idea where Kenji is. He just
disappeared. Ben, the big guy who saved our lives has disappeared
as well. Kim and Jack. We don’t know where they are either. There’s
a chance Kim is now working with the military. We just don’t know.
And Daniel? Daniel had become sick. Violently ill. We left him at
his camp.”

The Sigmund Freud look alike scribbled
something in a notepad.

“
So now Maria and I are walking
through the Australian outback,” I continued. “We are trying to
find our friends. We have no idea where they are. We don’t even
know if they are alive. We are following a set of tank tracks that
we think might lead somewhere. But we really don’t know. We have
hardly any water. Our food is all but gone.”

I looked at the therapist, waiting for some
advice, waiting for some magical answer that would make me feel
better about our current situation. But he didn’t say anything. He
just shook his head and checked his watch.

Our time was up.

Maria handed me a bottle of water, snapping me
out of my daydream, bringing me back to reality, back to the
desert. It was night time. The moon hung low in the sky. The stars
were bright.

“
Lunch time,” she said. “Today we
have hot water. A delicacy in some parts of the world.”

It was an attempt at humor.

We had been walking through the desert for
three days now. We had been walking at night. Sleeping during the
day. As a result, we had totally reversed our body
clocks.

The section of desert we were walking through
was largely featureless. It offered no shelter. There were no large
rocks or caves, or dried up river beds. No trees, no shrubs. When
we slept, we had to make our own shelter. We did this by digging
ditches to sleep in. A ‘fox hole’ is what Kenji had once called
them. The first one we had to dig with our hands and our shoes. We
loosened the dirt with our shoes, and then dug the hole with our
hands.

It was awful. And hard work. Especially since
we had to dig the ditch deep enough so that one side would provide
shade. In the middle of the day, when the sun shone directly down
on us, we would just cover ourselves with a t-shirt. It was hot and
uncomfortable but it was better than walking around in the heat.
Walking around during the middle of the day was a one-way ticket to
heat stroke and dehydration.

A deadly combination in the Australian
desert.

Anyway, the second night, we found an abandoned
car. It had broken down. It was out of fuel.

The good thing was, in the trunk, we found a
small garden shovel.

After digging a ditch with your hands, digging
a ditch with a shovel was an absolute luxury.

It’s the little victories, the little things
that keep you going. We just had to ignore the fact that each time
we dug a fox hole to sleep in; it felt like we were digging our own
graves.

We had to stay positive.

“
How’s your head?” Maria
asked.

“
It’s getting better. I
think.”

I had suffered a pretty bad head wound back at
the military outpost when we were attacked. Since then, I’d been
getting headaches and I’d get dizzy and have trouble with my
vision. Although it could’ve been worse. Luckily, I was able to
bandage it up and it eventually stopped bleeding. I think it was
finally starting to heal.

I had a few mouthfuls of water and handed the
bottle back to Maria. She placed it inside her backpack.

And we kept walking.

The sky was beginning to gray. The sun was
beginning to rise.

It was time to dig ourselves a bed.

“
You know that saying?” Maria
said.

“
What saying?”

“
It’s always darkest before the
dawn.”

“
Yeah.”

“
It’s completely not true,” she
said, pointing to the eastern horizon. “Look. If anything, the
night is brightest just before dawn. The darkest part is the middle
of the night.”

She had a point.

Because we were out in the open, and it was
just the two of us, we took turns keeping watch while the other
slept. We were each other’s guardians.

Maria still had the protection of the NBC suit.
She complained constantly that it was too hot to wear. It was
getting uncomfortable and annoying. But I made her wear it. The
suit was bullet proof and bite proof. It was essential.

Although I eventually agreed to let her take it
off in the middle of the day, since we’d be able to see any dangers
coming from a distance.

But at night, or when she was asleep, she had
to wear it.

Today, it was my turn to sleep first. But I had
only slept for a few hours before Maria woke me up. She’d noticed
it wasn't sunny.

The sky was covered in dense gray
clouds.

It was the first cloudy day we had seen in
weeks. We decided it would be best if we kept walking. It was a
hard decision to make. We needed rest, but we also needed to cover
ground.