Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (7 page)

“Oh my god,” I whisper. “How?”

Jack is leaning
against the wall. I can’t see his face. But I can see his shaggy hair. His
broad shoulders. His worn and faded jeans.

“What the hell is he doing here?” I ask.

“The General must’ve moved him here,” George answers. “Before he got a
chance to throw him in the prison.”

“And you didn’t know about it?”

“No. I had no idea. I swear.”

I do not believe him. Not for a second.

“We have to get him out of there,” I say. “Open the door. Open his cell.
Release him.”

“I can’t. If I open that holding cell, they all open.”

“They all open?”

“Yes. It’s a master switch.”

“Then we’ll have to break down the door,” I suggest. “Break the hinges.
We have to do something. We can’t just leave him there.”

“We open the doors and hope for the best.”

“What? No. That’s crazy. That’s suicide. The infected will swarm.
They’ll get to Jack before we can.”

And I know George wants to kill us. He wants to kill all of us.

Me.

Kim.

Jack.

I know. But I don’t know what to do about it.

I don’t know when to call him on it.

I’m going to have to lunge at him. Wrestle him to the ground.

With a cut up hand.

While I am drugged up. While I am lethargic and weak.

This will not be a fair fight.

I am no match for a fully grown reptile of a man.

I am no match for a snake.

“You’ll kill us,” I say. “Not just Jack. Not just me. All of us. You
included. You don’t want that, do you?”

Suddenly Kim coughs and splutters, and this sound, this proof of life
startles me and scares me and I actually jump.

“Kill?” she whispers. “What are you talking about?”

Kim slowly gets to her knees, taking deep breaths.

“Are you all right?” I ask. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. A lot better.”

The NVX had worked extremely quickly. Within minutes.

“What are you guys talking about?” Kim asks. “What’s going on?”

“Jack is in one of the holding cells,” I say.

George swivels the monitor around so she can see her brother. Kim is
silent for a few moments and shakes her head slightly. She knows she put her
brother there. She knows that his predicament is her fault. But I guess maybe
it could’ve been worse. Much worse.

“Oh my god,” she finally says. “He’s so close. When? How? I thought he was
locked up in the prison. What the hell is Jack doing here?”

“We don’t know,” George answers. “The General’s men must’ve moved him
here a few days ago. Or maybe he never made it to the prison.”

“Bastards,” Kim says. “I knew I couldn’t trust them.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“When I convinced them to let Jack into the Fortress, when I convinced
them to let him live, they swore to me that they would provide him with a place
in the barracks. Under their protection and care. They swore to me that he
would be looked after.” She lowers her head. “They lied. I should’ve known.”

“Protection?”

“Yeah. The Fortress was already starting to fall apart. There were
containment issues all over.”

“So how did you know Jack was in that town?” I ask. “How did you know he
was hiding in the Post Office?”

“General Spears had surveillance drones all over the desert. All over
the country. From coast to coast. I was helping him with his search for Maria.
When we found Jack, I told him that we should save him, bring him in. Use him to
lure Maria to us. I thought it was the right thing to do. I had no idea it was
going to end so badly.”

Kim is breaking down. She begins to cry.

“You have to believe me,” she says. “I thought it was the right thing to
do. I thought I was saving Jack. I thought we would find Maria and make a
vaccine. I didn’t know it would end like this.”

I hug her and tell her that it’s going to be all right and that we can
still fix this. We can save Maria and we can rescue her brother. We can release
him from his cell. He is just down the other end of the corridor. We are so
close.

“They were going to throw him in the prison,” Kim says. “They were going
to let him rot. They must’ve run into trouble before they got the chance.”

“I know this seems like a good thing,” George says. “But I can’t open
his cell without opening all of the cells. And as you can see, the rest of the
cells are full of infected people.”

Kim gets to her feet and studies the CCTV images. “Wait. Why can’t you
unlock his holding cell?”

George hesitates. He doesn’t want to answer Kim. “I can’t open them,” he
explains. “If I open one cell, they all open.”

He doesn’t want to answer Kim, because Kim is not going to buy that
bullshit answer. Neither am I.

I slowly catch on.

He is lying about the cells.

And he tried to kill me.

And he probably wants to kill Kim, and I have no idea what his
motivation is.

Something is wrong.

Something is messed up beyond comprehension.

I can’t figure it out.

What’s his motivation?

Why is he doing this?

Why is he lying? Why did he try and kill me?

I can’t figure it out.

And I can’t see the gun.

I need the gun.

I can’t trust him with it.

I don’t trust him with it.

It.

A deadly weapon. A means to an end.

A means to our death.

“That’s bullshit,” Kim answers. “I was a cop before the world ended.
That’s not how this shit works. Well, not at our precinct. It doesn’t make any
sense.”

George is starting to sweat. “It’s because the General shut down the
servers. It screwed the system up. Normally, I would be able to open one cell
at a time. But since the shutdown and the reset, nothing works. Trust me. If I
open his cell, they all open.”

I look at the security camera images of the holding cells.

The infected.

Jack.

Suddenly the man in the gas mask reappears again. He is somewhere out in
the hall. And again he points towards the holding cells. I finally realize this
is a message for George. I didn’t pick up on it last time. But I do now.

I’ll do it, he said. I just need time, he said.

Time to get the system back online.

George is going to open the holding cells. He is going to release the
infected.

Why?

Why did he try and kill me?

The man in the
gas mask is slowly walking backwards. Down the hallway. Out of sight. There is
something unnerving about the way he walks, the way he moves, the way he
disappears.

“Find him,” I
say to George.

“I'm trying!”

“Where did he
go?”

“He’s gone. He
just disappeared.”

George types a
few more commands into the computer.

A big red button
appears on the screen. A big red rectangle. It is flashing.

George moves the
mouse cursor over the button.

The button
reads:

UNLOCK HOLDING
CELLS

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “What the hell happened?”

George has his hand on the button. His hand on the trigger. “I don’t
have a choice.”

He is about to seal our fate. He is about to kill us all.

And I can’t figure it out.

“Don’t do it,” Kim says. “Let’s just think this through. Let’s all take a deep
breath and think this through.”

The warden wants
to unlock the remaining holding cells. Kim and I can’t let that happen.

“I don’t have a
choice,” George repeats.

“You do have a
choice,” I say. “We can figure this out.”

“I have to open
them,” George continues. “There is no other way. I need to open them.”

“Why? Why the
hell would you want to do that?”

He takes a deep
breath. Hand on the button.

The flashing red
button.

Unlock
Holding Cells.

“Why are you so
afraid?” I ask.

He shakes his
head. He does not want to answer.

“What are you so
afraid of?
Who
are you so afraid of?”

Beads of sweat
form on his forehead.

“He can’t get
you,” I say. “He can’t. We will help you. We will protect you.”

And as I say
this, I feel like I’m lying and I don’t even believe myself. The truth is, the
man in the gasmask is a ghost and a god and he can disappear and reappear at
will. He can cheat death. He can cause death. He is one step ahead of everyone.
One step ahead of the infected. One step ahead of General Spears and his death
squad.

He is everywhere
and nowhere.

And I tell
George we can protect him but I am lying.

And George says,
“You’re kidding me, right? How the hell are you going to protect me?”

I think to
myself, I am a survivor. I am strong. One of the strongest.

“Besides,” he
continues. “It’s the only way we get out of here. We have to leave. We have to
unlock the security doors. General Spears reset the system. So I have to open
the doors. But they will all open. The security blast doors, the holding cells.
Everything.”

He was talking
fast now. He was trying to conceal the lie.

And it was
almost working.

Was he telling
the truth? Did General Spears shut down the system?

Was it screwed
up?

“You can’t
unlock the holding cells,” I say. “They’re full of infected people.
We will have to get Jack out some other way.”

“There is no other way,” he answers.

“Just relax,” Kim repeats. “Come on. We
need to think this through. We need to play it careful.”

George’s eyes are wide, and they are
darting back and forth between all the different images on the computer screen.
He would then look over at the door. He wasn’t afraid of the infected. He
wasn’t afraid of the virus.

He was afraid of the man in the gas
mask.

And I can’t blame him.

“Why do you want
to open the holding cells so bad?” I ask.

“I don’t want
to,” he says. “But I have to. I need to do this.”

“Why?”

George takes a
deep breath and he finally speaks the truth. “Because he said he would save
me.”

“You can’t open
the holding cells,” Kim says. “It’s the only thing keeping Jack safe. You open
the cells, you kill him. And you kill us.”

“No. He is
coming back for me. As long as I open the cells. That was the deal.”

“Who? Who is
coming back for you?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

“The man in the
gas mask. He’s the one who can fix all of this. He’s the only one.”

“Don’t do it,”
Kim says. “There’s too many of them. We won’t make it. We won’t last five
minutes in here. They’ll find us. They always find us. We’ll be trapped.”

I check the CCTV
footage of Jack. He has no idea that his life is hanging in the balance. I
wonder how long he has been locked in that room for.

Jack was an easy
going kind of guy before the world went to hell. Before his girlfriend turned
out to be immune to the Oz virus. The pressure had slowly gotten to him. It
took a while but eventually he began to crack. Not that I can blame him. A
lesser man would’ve cracked a long time ago. A lesser man would’ve given up
completely. It’s funny to think of him as a man. A few months ago we were kids.
We were teenagers dealing with school and homework and graduation and college
applications.

Not anymore.

We had to grow
up real quick. The alternative was to give up, wait to be rescued. Wait for
something that was never going to happen.

So we grew up
and we got on with the job. And we cannot give up on Jack because he would not
give up on us. He will never give up on his friends. Or his family. He will
fight to the end. The very end. And if we don’t stop George, if we don’t get
him to calm down and think this through, the end will be coming very soon.

“Just slow
down,” Kim says to George.

Her hands are
up, her palms facing out. She is trying to convince George to stop what he is
about to do.

“We can figure
this out,” she continues. “Let’s just wait for the system to fully reboot.”

George shakes
his head. He sheds a tear. “I’m sorry.”

He presses the
button.

And he seals our
fate.