TAGGED: THE APOCALYPSE (17 page)

Just then, the power switched on in the rest of the plant. They could hear the screams of the infected
, where they had been hibernating in the darkened rooms, that were now suddenly flooded with artificial light. They heard screams, snarls and glass breaking as the bulbs were hastily shattered. “Come on. I know a place.”

Dennis ran for the cooling tower. “We have to hurry
, before they come looking for us.” Thompson lagged behind. They probably didn’t want to kill him. Rusty had raped Candy, but she was a whore. She had sex with men for a living, and she was a porn star. How can that be rape? He had sex with Alexis. She didn’t seem to like it very much, but that’s just because he didn’t pay her anything. It was more like petty theft in Thompson’s mind, but it wasn’t rape. He didn’t need to rape a woman to get what he wanted. He could get it for free. They wouldn’t kill him, would they? Candy might. That bitch was crazy. He saw what she did to Rusty, and no one did anything to stop her. She could do whatever she wanted.

Dennis led them into the cooling tower, left, right, left, right, right. He led them to a small control room
and slammed the door shut behind them. There were large pipes with handles and written warnings. Luckily there were no infected there. “This is the safest place. No one comes back here.” Dennis was red faced and sweating. He was panting heavily as he sat down on the largest pipe. The lights went out again. Apparently, they had turned the power back on in the control tower and then turned it off again immediately to prevent them from going into the buildings. “They turned the power off. The badges don’t work. We can get out but they can’t get in unless they turn the power back on.”

Thompson was also panting heavily
, and his shirt was soaked with sweat. His feet felt like lead. He found himself hyperventilating a little from the fear. No, he would have to stick with Dennis. There was a good chance they would just kill him if he went back. “That was fucked up! Can you believe that shit? The bitch just shot his face off! Nobody did anything to stop her.”

“Keep your voice down.” Dennis was calm
, trying to slow his breathing. His eyes were half closed and he seemed deep in thought, or meditating, or maybe about to nod off for a nap. “There’s some pry bars over there,” he pointed toward a corner with some tools. “We can’t use our guns unless absolutely necessary. They will give away our position.”

“I say we get the fuck out of here. We can’t stay. We’re going to have to take our chances out there.” Thompson pointed
in the general direction of the front gate. “We can’t travel at night. We have to leave now.” Thompson jumped up.

“Sit down. We can’t go outside. They’re looking for us out there right now.” Dennis got up himself and picked up two pry bars and two large screw drivers. He handed one pry bar and screw driver to Thompson.

Thompson sat down, his adrenaline slowly ebbing. “How come there’s no infected in here?”

Dennis shrugged, “Luck maybe. They’re in all the other buildings except the
control tower. Or maybe the infected are drawn to the smell of humans and no one has been in here since this all started. I came into the cooling towers once in the very beginning, then haven’t been back since.”

“So you stayed away on purpose?” Thompson asked. Maybe Dennis was thinking ahead.

“Something like that. I wanted there to be a safe place in case I had to get away for a few hours; besides, there’s nothing in here but the water pipes and the backup generators to cool the reactor. As long as the pumps keep working and the water keeps flowing into the reactor, there’s really no reason to come in here.”

“So what do we do now
?” Thompson asked.

“When they turned off the power to the other buildings
, they turned off the pumps…which would cause the reactor to overheat. However, these pumps are so important that they are all hooked up to a bank of backup batteries and generators that automatically kick in when the charge on the batteries dips down below a certain level.” The loud sound of generators turning on shook the building. Dennis got up.

“Where are you going?” Thompson asked.

“To take a look at the backup generators.” Thompson followed him. Dennis seemed to have forgotten that he was there. He was engrossed in tracing the wiring from the backup generators to the batteries.

“What are we doing? We need to get out of here.” Thompson was
eager to make a run for it.

“We
sit tight for a few hours, to let things cool down,” Dennis smiled at his own pun. “Then we take off and we get as far away from here as we can.”

“Some of us are getting out of here.” Portland Frank had cornered Eve, out of sight of the tower, on the way to Building 3 during daylight. He stood very close and whispered conspiratorially. “We want you to come with us.”

Eve looked up at Frank. He carried the
fresh smell of the outdoors and chickens on him, but kept his hair longer. He looked nervous.

“They’re not going to be able to keep this place running without Dennis and Brit. It’s time
to bug out.” Eve found herself looking down, staring at his thick, strong hands. Frank grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to look into his eyes. “The land is empty. It’s ours for the taking. Three hundred million Americans are down to a few million, maybe less. We’re going to find some cattle, chickens, stake out a big piece of good farm land in the California valley.”

“What about the infected?” Eve asked. “You won’t get a mile from here without the lights.”

“We don’t need the electric lights. That’s over anyway. You live in the open. The fire keeps them away. That’s what the other survivors are telling us.”

“I don’t know
,” Eve said. “We have everything here. It’s going pretty good.”

“It’s
over
. The writing is on the wall. This place is going into meltdown. We’re leaving.”

Eve just looked at him
, trying to process Frank’s words. Frank came closer, invading her personal space. He spoke into her face, even more intensely. “I’m not sure that you’re understanding me. I want
you
to come with me. We are four families. There’s nobody left. We’re starting the world all over.”

Eve stared into his eyes
, shock and surprise fading into realization, “What…what are you asking me?”

“I want you to be my wife
.” Frank looked down, the sound of his words dropping of at the last word. It was out in the open. He was suddenly an insecure teenage boy asking a pretty girl to the school dance, no longer a strong and capable man.

“Am I interrupting something?” Alexis came around the corner. She stood there smirking,
eyes narrowed and calculating, one hand on her hip.

“No. Nothing.” Frank jumped away from Eve
, who was resting her back against the wall.

“Looked like something from here.” Alexis pressed her lips together. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” Frank turned to walk away but Alexis grabbed his arm.

Eve put her head down
and began inching away.

“What are you not telling me?” Alexis held firmly onto Frank’s arm. “Maybe this is something that Candy needs to know about.”

Frank nodded at Eve, signaling her opportunity to escape. Eve walked quickly away with her head down.

Eve’s head was spinning. Her stomach was in her throat
, and there were butterflies in her stomach. Did Frank just propose marriage?

She admired him as a leader, but s
he had never really looked at him that way.

Something was definitely up, and Frank wasn’t going anywhere until she got to the bottom of it. Alexis pulled him closer, smiled, and rubbed her large natural breasts against him, realizing with consternation those beauties were bound up in a bra. “Come on Frank, you can tell me.”

“It’s nothing. We were just talking.” Frank was blinking
rapidly, trying to backpedal and get away.

Alexis leaned into him,
grabbed his collar and pulled him closer. “Come on Frank, you can trust me.” She pressed her body against him, grinding her pelvis against his to simultaneously block his escape and create friction.

“We were just talking about Dennis and Brit. It’s going to be hard to run the power plant with
just Brit left.” Frank smiled nervously, hoping the half truth would satisfy her.

Alexis pulled him in and kissed
him on each cheek in turn, “True, true.” She took her other hand and squeezed his ass through his pants and then moved around to the front until she found his cock and began rubbing it, still holding onto his collar so he couldn’t escape. “That seemed like an intimate moment that I interrupted. Are you sweet on Eve? That’s Sven’s girl. He might like to know about that.”

“Alexis, please.” Frank pushed her hand away from his
pants, but she immediately went right back to work. He squirmed uncomfortably trying to get his face away from hers. She kissed him again on the cheek, and then went for his lips, giving him an unwelcome wet French kiss, her hand rhythmically rubbing him over his pants. “What do you want from me?”

“I just want the truth.” She kissed him again on the mouth
, deeply. She could feel him hardening in her hand as she continued rubbing and squeezing. Men were so weak, she thought. She looked him in the eye, then dramatically down at the pronounced bulge she held in her hand via the front of his pants. She arched her eyebrows into a question. Frank nodded defeat.

Alexis
, holding firmly onto his balls with one hand, pulled him toward her until her back was against the wall, then knelt down and unbuttoned his pants. He was fully erect when she put him into her mouth. She made quick, expert work of it.

“How much?” He said, when it was done.

“
Just the truth. What do you want with Eve?”

“Nothing.”

Alexis had played all of the sex cards available at that moment. “Then I’ll just have to talk to Sven,” she threatened.

“If I tell
, you have to keep it a secret.” Frank felt that there was simply no escape.

“
You know you can trust me.”

“I’m serious. Some of us are planning to leave soon. You can’t tell anyone.”

“And you weren’t going to tell me?” Alexis was genuinely upset. “I want to come with you.”

“There’s just a few of us and no one else can find out.
I’m serious, Alexis.”

“Take me with you. You know how much I love you
,” Alexis said, reaching for him again, not believing it herself, even as he evaded her touch. But this was a great opportunity.

“The group is small, a few families only. It’s better that way.”

“Oh,” Alexis suddenly had a realization, “then Eve is for you, like a family. She’s just a girl. She can’t do for you what I can do.”

“She’s young and strong. It’s not going to be easy.”

“You’re planning to have children then.”

“Eventually, yes.”

“No one can compete with me in the bedroom.”

“How many men have you been with Alexis? How do you even know you can still have children?” Frank looked up and saw that he had wounded her with his honesty
. “I mean, I asked Eve. It’s her choice. You are a beautiful woman and very smart. You would be a great asset.”

Alexis felt stabbed in the heart. Frank didn’t want her. He didn’t respect her as a woman. He couldn’t see her as a mother to his children. How had this happened to her
, she wondered? When had she ceased to be a beautiful, powerful woman, aggressively mastering her world, and become a prostitute prowling the street?

Upon leaving,
Eve wondered if she could see Frank and Alexis if she went all the way up to the upper tower and stood on the catwalk facing the fence and leaned out a bit. She could and she did. They looked like a freaky Barbie and a Ken doll from there. Why did Frank allow Alexis to do that to him? It was disgusting.

Today was the day Sven would talk to Eve about Brit. Even if something had gone on between Eve and Brit, there was no denying Eve’s reaction when Sven had touched her hair on the chicken run. There was also no denying how he had felt at that moment. There was definitely chemistry between them. Today’s pot harvest would be a perfect opportunity. There would be a party to celebrate the harvest; a little celebration with food, music, drink and, of course, pot. Everyone would be in high spirits, and when the time was right, he would simply pull her aside to chat privately.

A tiny yellow chick stood valiantly on top of
Dixon’s head, peep-peeping as Sven lay there on his mattress, surrounded by the plants. Dixon furrowed his brow and looked at Sven, but didn’t move. All around him were a mother and seven more chicks. When they arrived, Dixon chased the chickens. Sven only had to reprimand him a few times, then he came to understand that it was his job to protect the chickens the same way that he protected Sven.