End Days Super Boxset (109 page)

Jordan covered her mouth with her hands and gasped. "Did he shoot her?" She then looked down at the three girls. "Please, go back to the corner and stay there. You're not in trouble. We just want you to be safe." The girls reluctantly walked to the corner, mumbling to themselves. Jordan feared that after everything they had been through, the girls would never be the same.

"No," Joel said. "But they got Greg anyway. I had no choice but to run."

"You did the right thing," Pat interjected.

Joel turned to him. "Thanks for letting us hide in here. Thanks for taking the risk."

"Things gotta change up soon enough," Pat said. "We're all on the same side here."

Joel's face turned to worry. "It won't be long until they trace the death of the two guards to me. People talk around here, and they know that we're friends."

"I admit, it's going to take some work, but we can do it. We tell the people what's going on. Tell them that the resistance is going forward."

"Is there anyone in the resistance still left?" Dolores asked.

"That's what we're going to have to find out. We need to send a scout, find out who we can trust."

Their eyes went around the room. Joel's face was busted, and he was still a hot commodity. Jordan, as his wife, would prove a risk, as anyone wanting Joel's whereabouts would come at her.

"All right," Pat said. "Guess that person will be me."

***

Greg woke up on a hard surface in a nearly pitch-black room. The bones in his face and ribs throbbed, and one of his eyes could barely open. He thought of Joel and wondered if he had managed to make it back to his family. His greater concern, however, was Veronica. He burned with rage the moment he thought of the physical abuse she had endured, evident in her bruises and swollen face. Joel had warned Greg of the man who ran the base—a former Senator turned psychotic, someone mad with power. His name was Bill Hodder, and he was the same man who had put a gun to Veronica's head.

Greg vowed that if he were to accomplish anything else in whatever time he had left, it would be to return the favor to Hodder. He pulled at his hands and realized that they were held together at the wrists by zip-ties. The same for his ankles. Rather than panicking, Greg took a deep breath and strategized.

There had to be a way out. There was still hope. He wasn't going to allow Hodder to win. The tide had to turn, one way or the other, and he would make it happen. In order for anything to work, Greg would have to plan every step he made and every word he spoke carefully from that moment forward.

It was just when that thought crossed his mind that the door into the room unlocked and swung open, letting in a bright light from the outside hallway. A figure entered the holding cell and flicked on a light switch. Overhead lights came on, nearly blinding Greg. He squeezed his eyes shut and heard the door close followed by footsteps drawing nearer. Flat on his back, he slowly opened his eyes and turned to try to see who was approaching. His eyes slowly opened and he saw a blurry figure standing only few feet from where he lay. The hard surface was, in fact, a wooden slab connected to the wall by two chains; supports underneath it elevated the slab a few inches above the floor.

"And here our terrorist lies," the figure said. Once Greg's eyes focused, he could see the man in front of him—his number-one adversary: Bill Hodder.

Greg said nothing as Hodder continued. "I know most of what you've done. You've killed some of my men for sure, but I don't know how many others you've killed beyond that. I've since given up hope for the search party to return. What was that, five men? Plus the two guards, which makes seven."

Hodder paused, almost as if in awe.

"Seven of my men. Good, loyal men who did everything that I asked. I'm curious to know what kind of punishment you think is fit for the killing of seven men."

Hodder paused and pulled a large hunting knife from a holster on his waist. He held the knife up and touched the tip with one finger while not making any eye contact.

Greg knew sometimes that it was better to say nothing than anything at all. Hodder was toying with him, trying to push his buttons, and Greg was prepared.

"No response?" Hodder asked. He stepped away from Greg and turned his back, walking away. His boots clicked on the tile floor with each step.

"Oh, I get it, you're not sure about what would be a proper punishment. I mean, logically, the only thing that could even the score would be to kill
you
seven times. Or take seven of your friends, your girlfriend included, and kill them all. That's really the fairest thing I can think of. Any thoughts?"

Hodder stopped and waited. He then put the knife back in its holster as Greg said nothing.

"You may not have realized this, but I need you. The fear that your presence has caused goes right to the hearts of these people. It terrifies them. But me, on the other hand, I'm not afraid of you at all. Hell, I haven't even had you examined for Ebola, like I normally would, so confident am I that we live in post-Ebola times. The disease has passed, and now all these people can pack up and go home, right?"

Hodder leaned in closer for a response. Greg apathetically nodded.

"Wrong! It's far too dangerous a world to send them struggling out there. I don't see us leaving anytime soon. But how, you may ask, do we keep them here? Well, we use people like you—outside threats hell-bent on their destruction, that’s how."

Greg finally spoke, but quietly. "Ebola hasn't passed."

"What?" Hodder said, urging him to speak louder.

"I said that Ebola has not passed. It's still out there and it's spreading."

Hodder held his arms out. "It's not spreading here. Imagine that? The very place where Ebola was once rampant. Once we took over, we ended that."

Greg could resist no further. He decided to probe Hodder. "I heard that there were once more than a thousand people here. Now the numbers are somewhere between one fifty to two hundred. It doesn't sound to me like you ended anything. In fact, with the absence of Ebola, it seems to me that you've been systematically killing your own people. Why?"

Hodder stopped, surprised by the question. The long fluorescent lights in the ceiling hummed like bug zappers. "Greg, Greg, Greg. You may someday grasp the complexities of running a place like this. Certain factions must be removed for the good of the whole."

"Like those who disagree with you," Greg said.

Rather than respond in anger, Hodder seemed to embrace the comment. "Exactly! See, you're getting it. Base 42 is anything but a democracy, as you can clearly realize."

"What do you want from me?" Greg asked. "You want to take me out in front of the mob and put a bullet in my head? Fine. Let's do it and get it over with."

"Oh, your time will come soon enough. No need to rush the process."

"I would only suggest that you watch your back."

Hodder didn't seem to know what to do with the comment. He asked Greg to elaborate.

"Your focus in controlling the base has been on the civilian population. You've failed to see, like most tyrants, that the conflict is really coming from your inner circle."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Hodder walked closer to Greg in noticeable agitation. He was the one most used to playing games with people, and he wanted to understand Greg's ploy, if he had one.

"You sent five men after me the other day. They seemed competent enough. They covered a wide terrain looking for me, but I had already found a spot. They never had a chance. Before I tracked them down, I heard each one of them discuss you. You were the subject of disdain. They loathed you. And they talked of turning against you and putting up one of their own."

"I don't believe you," Hodder said with contempt. "You'd say anything to distract me right now."

"Sure, I understand. Why believe a word I say?" Greg said, moving his bound arms up in the air. "And I'm sure you don't want to hear what your two guards said in the alleyway."

"Nice try," Hodder snapped. "Let's talk a little about what's in store for you. You and your girlfriend will be tried and a swift sentence will be carried out. You'll be made an example of, to quell any further talk of this rebellion." Hodder stopped and waited for Greg to respond, then continued.

"Oh, you didn't think I knew about
that
, did you? I know all about the resistance, and I've got a list of names we'll be rounding up, starting with Joel Carson and his entire family. I know you intervened and saved him, but it looks like it was all for naught."

Greg went back to being unresponsive as Hodder continued. "You lost, Greg. But you can't say that you didn't try." Realizing that Greg was done talking, Hodder began to walk out of the room. Once he got to the door, however, he stopped. His back was to Greg and he looked at the floor while still keeping his hand on the door handle. "What did they say?" he asked.

"Your men? As I approached them, the big one with all the tattoos said that you didn't know what you were doing. The skinny one said that they should throw your Ivy-league ass over the wall."

Hodder remained at the door, his heart racing.

"That was it," Greg continued. "Then I drove a knife through their throats."

Hodder turned the door handle quickly and rushed out of the room. He forgot to turn off the light. Greg stared at the ceiling, thinking of a plan. They could bind his hands and ankles, but they couldn't bind his thoughts. He believed that Base 42 was at a tipping point. All he needed to do was find a way to exploit it.

An Underground Secret

It didn’t take long for the purge to begin. Rooms were searched and ransacked by Hodder’s men with a desperate kind of fervor. They were on the hunt for Joel’s family, and when they didn’t find them in their assigned living space, they searched all eighty rooms of the adjacent buildings. Anyone showing even a hint of subversive behavior was brought out into the public square and lined up to be read their charges.

Some fifty people in all fell under suspicion, which had more to do with finger-pointing by other residents who were scared and only trying to protect themselves. It was a modern-day witch hunt, and Hodder was clearly displaying the extent of his paranoid delusions and insanity. According to him, however, he wasn’t the one who was insane—everyone else was.

Despite all their searches, the Freemans and Joel’s family, the Carsons, were nowhere to be found. Their absence baffled and infuriated Hodder’s men. An even more extensive search of the entire base was conducted, but they still came up empty-handed. There were forces at play that Bill Hodder couldn’t understand. He felt his power slipping away, especially since the arrival of Greg, the outsider, when in fact it should have been quite the opposite.

Before ordering the purge of the base, Hodder had a heated private meeting with all of his men. With the exception of two trusted guards left to keep watch in the towers, they gathered in the operations center to listen to him speak.

The room was packed, and Hodder stood in front of them, arms crossed. Behind him was a large television, its LED screen smashed. All outside communications had been destroyed on the day of the initial mutiny. Their leader did not look pleased, and it was strange that a group of ex-convicts who could easily overpower him stood in fear of his retribution. It was the essence of group-think at work. Most of the men assumed that the others supported Hodder when in fact, most of them didn’t. But they had gotten too invested in Hodder’s sweeping vision to turn back.

Most of them had already committed murderous acts on his behalf and still needed Hodder to make sense of what they were doing. If anyone was going to provide leadership to the group or justification for the atrocities they had committed under his watch, it was Hodder.

Their leader seemed to be studying their faces, one by one, as his eyes swept from one end of the room to the other, and no one, not even his closest circle, knew why they had been summoned there.

Hodder stepped closer to the microphone. “We’ve reached a crucial moment where every action we take from here on out determines our fate. There is talk of a rebellion, and we must stamp it out immediately.” He paused, listening for the sharp intake of breath. “All of this has just reached my ears, coinciding with rumors of inflammatory talk among my most trusted men.”

They were noticeably baffled by his words, as some thought he was bordering on incoherence.

“That’s right,” Hodder said, as if reaffirming their thoughts. “It’s come to my attention that some of you believe that I’m unfit to be in charge of this base. After all of my steadfast leadership and determination, it comes as a surprise that you would see fit to question me.” Again, Hodder paused, as if studying each man’s demeanor.

“Pardon me,” Marcus said, interrupting and holding a hand up. Hodder stopped and immediately looked over to him, eyes wild with fury. Marcus asked, “Where is this talk coming from? Who is saying what?”

“That’s irrelevant,” Hodder continued. “What’s important is that your loyalty to the cause has come under suspicion.” He flew forward and kicked a nearby table over. “And I won’t stand for it!”

The room reacted with silence. Hodder regained his composure and pointed at the men, as if accusing them all. “You just remember, if the day ever comes where we are standing before others following the aftermath of this terrible time, we’re all in this together. What we’ve done here falls on all of us equally.”

The men knew it but couldn’t give voice to it. They said no words, but everyone felt the same. Who would protect them? They felt betrayed. Hodder had spoken in the past of ushering in a “new age” in which they shared power over the masses. Now he was talking as if the world they had once known still had considerable meaning. Worst of all, it sounded like he was trying to absolve himself of blame should the base be re-taken by the military.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Hodder said, sensing unrest and making a hasty retreat. “It’s very unlikely that we’ll ever see the world beyond these walls, but should that day come, we have to remember why we did the things that we did. It was to ensure the survival of our species. The Ebola epidemic changed everything. Have any of you men ever considered that your own government would simply abandon you and allow you to perish from a deadly plague?”

Falling back on a bit of practiced charm, he told them, “Hell, being in politics, I thought anything possible, but not this. We were betrayed, gentlemen, we were betrayed by the very institution we’ve been taught to believe in our entire lives. We were betrayed by our elected leaders; we were betrayed by our fellow man, and we were betrayed by our God.” A collective gasp. “That is why we had to fight back!”

Hodder looked out into the group. Their eyes were uneasy, and he could tell that he was losing them. For him, it was all so simple: hold onto everything they had achieved through the most extreme measures. Base 42 was theirs. They had fought for it, lost men because of it, and he’d be damned before he ever let it go. Hodder pointed at a man standing near the front of the room.

“You, step forward,” he said. It wasn’t clear where Holder was pointing, and two men looked at each other, confused. “You’re Eric, right?”

A short, stocky man with an orange handlebar mustache and freckled skin pointed at himself. He wore a skull cap and a muscle T-shirt, exposing several tattoos that advertised his affiliation with a California biker gang. He had a pistol holster slung over his shoulder with a Magnum .45 seated in the pocket.

“Me?” he asked.

“Yes, please come here,” Hodder said.

The man reluctantly walked out from the crowd and approached Hodder. As Eric stopped in front of him, Hodder asked for his gun. “I want to see what you’re packing,” he said.

Eric looked around the room, and no one said anything in response. He dug into the holster, pulled out the handgun, and handed it to Hodder.

“This thing’s a real beaut,” Hodder said, taking the pistol and holding it up in the air. “Where did you get this? I mean, it’s not standard military issue. This is an outside weapon.”

Eric stiffened and asked quietly, “Well, where did you get your revolver?” He looked at the piece in Hodder’s pistol belt.

“Oh, this old thing? I bought it from a man who smuggled it inside the base. A man who’s in this room right now.” The man he was referring to was Marcus, whom he glanced at. Hodder held up Eric’s Magnum in admiration. “This is a really nice gun, I’ll tell you that.”

As Eric nodded, Hodder swiftly brought the piece down on his face, clubbing his cheek. With one strike, Eric fell to the ground. Some men in the audience began to step forward, but Marcus held up his arms and held them back. Hodder was relentless. He beat Eric over the head again and again, cracking his skull open, as Eric folded his arms over his head, trying to defend himself. The men stared ahead, shocked, even given what they had seen over the past several months. It made no sense to them. Hodder continued to mercilessly beat the man with the handle of the Magnum as he lay at his feet, stone-cold and unconscious. Blood was everywhere. It was all over the green carpet of the operations room, all over the pistol, and all over Hodder himself. He rose from his frenzied crouched position and looked at the men, breathing heavily with spittle running down his mouth.

“I won’t stand for any more of this talk behind my back. Do you hear me? Now all of you get your senses together and get control of this base before we lose everything. Do it now!”

There wasn’t a single objection in the group. Startled and shaken, the men shuffled out of the room in an orderly file. Only Marcus remained.

“What the hell was that all about?” he asked.

Hodder tossed the Magnum to the floor next to Eric’s fractured and bloodied skull. “Sometimes, you have to put the fear of God in your subordinates.”

“But—”

“Get out of here and do your job!” Hodder shouted.

Marcus narrowed his eyes while displaying a hint of resistance. “You need to get your shit together.” And with that, he walked out of the room, leaving Hodder with a fresh corpse at his feet.

***

All hope was lost, Veronica thought. Her “trial” was pending, Greg had been captured, and her spirit had been broken. All she could do was lay on the mattress in her cell with her hand cuffed to a railing and try to keep her mind off the inevitable. She thought of her family and friends and how much she wanted to see them, to talk to them again and feel their touch—even that of her estranged parents.

She still had faith in Greg but little assurance that they could escape their fate. No matter where they went, death seemed to follow. Ebola was a fitting match for the other kinds of violence they had constantly encountered since the epidemic began.

If ever she had a chance to redeem herself in her final hours, she thought the time was then. Never particularly religious, she prayed quietly to herself, asking for an end to the horrors surrounding her. She prayed for life, for another chance, and for an end to the plague. For a moment, she felt at peace, when suddenly the door to her cell opened and a man she had never seen before stepped in. He entered her cell armed with a pistol and holding a file in his hands.

“Hello, Veronica, I’m Douglas. I’ve been assigned to look over you until your trial.”

Veronica was confused. Douglas was a large man, over six feet, but his bottle-cap glasses and geeky demeanor made him look less intimidating. He had short, grayish-hair parted to one side with a cowlick in the middle. He wore green hospital scrubs, and she couldn’t tell if he was one of Hodder’s men or one of the occupants of the base. However, the pistol belt around his waist was a clear giveaway that he was one of the bad guys. He was clean-shaven and friendly, but there was something off-kilter about him that sparked her distrust.

“What do you want?” she asked. “I don’t want to be bothered right now.” She turned away from him and looked at the wall next to her. She felt helpless cuffed to a railing and wanted to be left alone to her thoughts. Besides, he seemed scary.

He stepped closer. “Well, I have some nice information for you that I think will make you happy.” He flipped open the file and read from it. “You’ve tested negative and have been declared completely Ebola-free.”

Veronica shook her head in amazement, not saying a word. Douglas took a step backward and closed the cell door, instantly making her feel fearful.

“I think it’s pretty great news, how about you?” he asked.

Veronica paused, trying to think of how to respond. She held her free hand out and spoke. “Douglas, it’s the best news I’ve heard all day. Thank you. Now please leave.”

“Sure, sure, I can leave,” he began. Instead of turning to the door, however, he began to walk closer to her bed. “It’s just, I was hoping that we could talk. You know, maybe get to know each other.”

She was ready to lash out at him when suddenly, she noticed a ring of keys around one of his belt loops. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked.

Douglas nervously came nearer to her bed, still with the file in his hand. “I don’t know. Maybe you could tell me a little about yourself. Where you came from. What you like to do. Those kinds of things. Don’t see too many prisoners around here as pretty as you.”

Douglas looked down at the floor nervously, as if regretting the comment. “I mean. Well, you know what I mean.”

Veronica tried to keep her composure and turn the situation to her advantage. The strange man’s unexpected visit afforded her an opportunity. “That’s quite all right, and thank you.”

Douglas looked at her and smiled. “Do you mind if I sit?”

“Um. OK,” Veronica said. “But you have to take these cuffs off first. It would make me much more comfortable.”

His eyes followed her pale arm up to her bruised wrist, circled with handcuffs linked to the railing. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Please, Douglas. Just for a moment. Then we can talk.”

He appeared to be struggling with the decision and side-stepped near to the railing, his sneakers squeaking on the floor. “I guess. As long as you promise not to do anything.”

Veronica laughed and then covered her mouth. “What am I going to do, run amok in this cell?”

Douglas hesitated for a moment, then unfastened the key ring around his belt loop. Veronica felt elated. She had won the first battle. Now all she had to do was convince Douglas to let her go. He flipped through the many keys on the ring, finally coming to a series of much smaller keys, most likely for handcuffs. He leaned over the railing against the wall with a small key between his fingers.

“I’m not sure which one it is. This might take a while.” He placed it in the handcuff keyhole and turned it. It didn’t work. Veronica waited patiently as he tried key after key to no avail. She grew more apprehensive by the minute, and just when she was about to lose hope, the next key clicked and unlocked the handcuffs.