“No. Just play along for now. My daughter has been through enough already.”
The right door opened up suddenly and two armed soldiers looked in at us. “Gentlemen, if you would follow us, please.”
What little chance we had of escaping was now gone, although with hundreds of soldiers in every direction, the odds of escaping at any time since arriving was futile. It started the moment we jumped into the HUMMV at my house, as Johnny had said only moments ago. I knew better and cursed myself under my breath as I grabbed Kember and we exited. Johnny walked alongside me and we scanned the area all around us, seeing the happenings of the military and silently wondered what they were doing out here in the middle of nowhere.
At the rear of a large semi-truck with a folding gate, the soldiers lead us up the ramp and into the unknown. They stopped us unexpectedly and took a threatening posture. “You’re going to have to give up those weapons,” One of them said.
“Like hell we will!” Johnny stated.
“Drop the weapons!” They commanded.
“No,” I said shaking my head and gripping the pistol grip of the SBR. The safety was off and my finger was more than ready to slip onto the trigger and gun these two men down before they could hurt Kember.
“Stand down!” A voice called out from behind. I looked over my shoulder to see Captain Andrews approaching us. He slid up beside me, ejected the magazine and live round from the chamber, and inserted it into my magazine which he handed to me.
“They keep their weapons, but they must remain unloaded,” Andrews said. The two soldiers offered a quick salute and then disappeared. He led us through the rear of the semi down a narrow hallway lit only by two small lights. The floor was made of metal and echoed every step he took with a thunderous boom. At the very end of the hallway he slid a small card into a card reader near a metal door and it swiftly opened. A motion detector above the door kept it open as he explained things to us.
“I know it’s not much, but you do have two nice beds, a wall locker to store your gear, and air conditioning,” he told us. “The room next to you is the latrine and it has hot showers. There are towels in the small cabinets under the sink.”
“What if we get hungry?” Johnny asked.
“Far room at the end is a small mess hall. It might not be what you are used to, but it does have things for sandwiches and such.” As his words faded a single question arose, although he extinguished it instantly by handing me the small card. “The doors can only be opened with this card, so don’t lose it.”
I took the card and held it tight in my left hand, which was beginning to throb. Andrews could see that it had been bandaged and he pointed to it. “I can have a medic come out and take a look at that for you.”
“I’m fine, it’s just a scratch anyway,” I lied. “Besides, I have some meds for it in my daughter’s bag, but I appreciate it.”
“I’m sure you are all tired, so I will leave you for the night,” he stated and turned to walk away.
“Captain Andrews,” I said. He stopped and looked at me. “Thank you, for all of this.” I thought about telling him what had happened with the innocent people, although I’m sure he was more than aware of it. If anything was to be done about it, it would be left up to him, not me.
“You saved my life… it’s the least I can do,” he stated and left.
We moved into the small room and the door shut behind us.
Abruptly though, it slid open again and Captain Andrews was standing there. “One more thing,” he announced looking directly at me. “I let you keep your weapons because of what you did at your house and the courage you showed in the face of overwhelming danger. This place is heavily guarded and the guards have orders to shoot first instead of asking questions, so I wouldn’t suggest a midnight stroll. Also, you are not obligated to do so, but reveille is at zero six hundred hours and breakfast will follow at zero seven hundred hours. It’s a military tradition, but it would be nice to see you there, both of you.”
After the door had slid shut and we had stowed all our gear, and with Kember still fast asleep, but now on my small bed, Johnny and I began a very detailed plan of how we would escape and when.
“You heard what he said, there are guards all over the place who will not hesitate to shoot us on sight,” Johnny said. “So that leaves a night time escape out of the question and daytime sure as hell isn’t any better.”
The armed guards would definitely make things harder for us and given the way the world was now, I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that the guards would shoot us rather than ask question about who we were or what we were up too.
They were the first and last line of defense the base had, which meant they could not take any chances. I wouldn’t either. “That’s why we’ll borrow a truck in the process, because I’m not walking or running anywhere out there in the dark, or day for that matter.”
Johnny began to smile once he realized that I wasn’t as stupid as I looked. He could see that I had potential in leading people, although it’s not the job I was looking for. I felt it was my civic duty to put my two cents in and try to come up with something that had an actual chance of getting off the ground and staying aloft for some time. Not crashing and burning almost immediately.
“One of those hummers would be perfect,” Johnny said.
My eyes caught something I hadn’t noticed until then and I quickly put a finger to my lips and then pointed toward the door, drawing Johnny’s attention to a small round device just above the door. It could easily be nothing more than a sensor that opened the door, yet at the same time it could serve dual roles and also have a hidden video camera within it. Either way, I wasn’t about to take any more chances. I grabbed some paper from the small table under the air conditioner, a pencil and jotted something down.
We have no idea who’s listening, if they are even listening at all, but I’d much rather be safe than sorry.
He quickly read it and nodded his head, took the same sheet of paper and replied.
How? When?
I sat on the bed where Kember was sound asleep and thought about how we could get our plan from my head, onto paper, and then into action. A thought was easy. Turning it into a reality was a whole other ballgame.
Starting the hummer would not only be a challenge, considering I never saw a set of keys, plus it would make unwanted noise, as well as draw an awful lot of attention, which we didn’t need so early in the plan. Yes it was armed with a machinegun, but I didn’t want to kill any of these young men who were simply doing what they had signed up to do. I could not live with myself if innocent people were killed so I had to make absolutely certain that
no one
was harmed before, during, or after the plan had been set into motion. On top of that, if we were really going to go through with this, then fitting in and looking like everyone else could possibly lower our chances of getting caught greatly.
NO ONE can die in this plan! We have to get away quickly and without killing any of these young men… is that clear? Plus, and I’m not sure how this is going to happen, but if we look like them then we shouldn’t draw any attention.
I brought the paper up where he could see it and pointed to the first two words. Johnny eyed those words like I had written something dirty about a family member of his. He looked from the words to me, and then back to the words. “That’s going to be impossible if shit goes south rather quickly.”
“Then we make damn sure and certain that it doesn’t go south!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, sure…whatever you say,” Johnny said.
I then pointed to the part about us fitting in and got a thumbs up from him. This was an acting military base after all, and with our clothes being worn for almost a week at a time, it would be very plausible for them to give us some fatigues, which we could use to fit in. We could study how they operated, carried themselves, as well as their routines until we were sure we could mimic them. It’s not like we had much else to do.
We will need a diversion of some sort, that way while everyone is looking into that, we can get away safely and without any shot’s fired.
Johnny took the paper, thought for a few long moments about what he was going to say and then began writing them down. I watched him from across the room and read as he wrote
.
They will have alarms set up around the perimeter. If we can set one of them off, then we should be able to slip out for the most part unnoticed.
I nodded my head in agreement and pointed to him, then back to myself, silently asking him which one of us would be responsible for the diversion. He thought for a few more moments as his eyes shot to Kember. He pointed toward her, and then me making a motion of two legs walking off into the distance. I took it as him saying that he would create the diversion while Kember and I got into the HUMMV and readied ourselves to leave. I nodded.
Johnny pointed to his watch. I made both hands of mine lay flat and placed them beside my face, telling him that we needed to sleep on it. I nodded again and crawled into my small bed next to Kember.
Pulling this off was going to take a miracle for sure, and pulling it off tired as hell would make it eve harder, swiftly spelling disaster without any doubt. He agreed and crawled into his small bed. I had looked for a light switch, yet was unable to find one anywhere. Most of the time I could not go to sleep with any lights on or without a fan, however, at this point in time I was lucky to have a warm bed, my Daughter by my side and a safe location in which to sleep soundly, like I had earlier in the HUMMV.
We both fell asleep to the tranquil sounds of rain hitting the metal roof that had started almost ten minutes ago. Faint thunder could be heard, drowning out the noise from the military machinery, helping me to drift off into another world.
Captain Andrews entered the small command center, manned by five other soldiers. They stood at his presence, although he quickly told them to carry on, to which they sat down and continued with their task. Computer monitors filled the room with a man-made eerie glow. The hum of cooling fans sucking air into the towers, keeping the powerful CPU’s at a constant temperature, buzzed like faint bees. He crossed the small confines and stopped at a monitor. Brandon, Johnny and Kember could be seen in full high definition and he watched them closely.
“Anything?” he asked.
“No, sir. After you left they had a small conversation and then suddenly became silent and began writing notes to each other,” the Operator explained.
Andrews forehead crunched. “Writing notes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What kind of notes,” he asked. “Could you see what they said?”
“Yes, sir I could,” he stated and quickly whizzed through a few key strokes, which allowed them all to see what had been recorded without losing the current feed. Andrew had the Operator play the video slowly, having him pause every few second so that he could see what had been written on the paper. When the video had given him all that he needed to see, he tapped the Operator on the shoulder and the live stream filed the large monitor once more.
“Should I have security run over and detain them, sir?” A voice from behind asked. Andrews spun to see his XO or executive officer standing a few feet away. Andrew’s shook his head and deliberated a few moments.
“No. Leave them be for the moment, but keep a close eye on them,” he stated.
The epidemic, as it was known, had seemingly come out of nowhere. There was no known cure; the symptoms had no baseline to follow in order to help determine who was infected and who wasn’t, and when symptoms were spotted it was already too late to do anything. Whatever this was, it gave no warning of its presence and was irreversibly permanent. It could start as a simple cold or even a headache and explode from there, traversing the person from a somewhat normal life to deaths door in a matter of hours. Only after they were dead would the virus, if that’s what it was, rear its ugly head. From there the violence would take hold and expand quickly if not put down.
Captain Andrews wasn’t positive if these three people were infected or normal, yet at the same time there was no way to determine with one hundred percent certainty that they themselves were not infected either. Anyone could act normal, and he had seen cases where the infected knew what was wrong with them, but never said a word about it. He had lost several men under his command and was in no hurry to allow the empathetic person within him to get the best of his men or himself once more. He had to be steadfast and know without a shadow of a doubt if those he deemed worthy to live amongst them, were in fact not sick. Everyone’s life was dependent upon that!
“May I speak to you, sir?” The XO asked as he approached.
“Speak,” Andrews said. The XO glanced around at the other men in the small command center, to which Andrews simply spiraled his hand for the man to get on with whatever he had to say. “We are all on the same team here, so whatever it is you have to say, you can say it in front of my men.”
“I understand the situation you were in and how you chose to bring them along for helping to save you and the team, but we know nothing about them. No background, no experience, where they came from… hell, we barely know their names, given the ones they gave us were even real, which could be false by any means.” The XO took a deep breath and carefully considered his next words. “We know absolutely nothing about, whatever this is. We have no idea how anyone catches it, or if we are all infected and the moment we die we become one. For our safety and the safety of everyone on this base, I say we let them go… or silence them before anything happens.”