LOCKED (11 page)

Once they were some distance
behind us, I could sigh in relief. At the same time though, Tank was trapped
there, unable to protect us. My confidence in our survival seemed to plummet
and rise at the same time in a sickening flurry.

Finally having a chance to
think, I realized that I hadn’t yet had a moment to reflect on what happened in
the dilapidated basement of the hospital. For the past few weeks, I had been
following the orders that U.S.P.L. had given me simply because they gave me
refuge, and I accepted what I heard and already knew about Miller’s reign. My
first-hand experiences of how Miller ruled his contracted dominions was one
thing, but to see others face far more mortifying torture, subject to fates
worse than death…that brought a new sort of rage and fear that burned deep down
in the pit of my stomach. I saw the conflict in a whole new light: knowing that
a man who had the will and power to perform such cruelty was still at large was
macabre, but also knowing that I was, in a way, in league with two of the
factions that would love nothing more than to see his downfall was slightly
relieving. 

From here on, Danni and I
were now inescapably part of a war. Looking at the way she now carried herself,
and the loyalty she felt for the city she called home, I’m not sure that she could
think twice about fighting for it...and neither could I.

The mechanized bandits
disappeared from our sights long ago, and the comatose, gray buildings rose up
around us again. This area seemed to be just as desolate, devoid of life as
most other parts of the city, but showed its scars of combat much more clearly
than those that Danni and I traveled through earlier. Under a slate sky, the
decaying remnants of bodies littered the streets, their carcasses nearly picked
clean by birds of death. Blood painted various streets, buildings, and windows.
Broken tools of war laid around to rust and serve as the city’s new inhabitants
without a home.

“Look familiar?” Danni
rhetorically asked. I snapped out of my stupor, looking around. We were in a
part of the city that laid between the business district and the apartments
that we used to call home. It was never a particular favorite in terms of
places to just hang out, but we certainly did see it often. I could just barely
remember being able to walk through this square and smell all sorts of food
being served by vendors. Now, I wouldn’t dare take too deep a breath out of
fear of inhaling ashes. A good chunk of the town’s official buildings were
here. The charred remains of the fire department stood tensely. The police
station was nearly leveled. And the library...teemed with life?

Danni must have seen it at
the same time I did. A quick, almost insect-like stirring of movement was seen
through one of the cracked windows. It was a blur of motion. She arched her
brow, and looked back to me. I hesitated, then nodded, signaling that we should
at least investigate it.

Our footsteps echoed quietly
upon the broken pavement. As we ascended the staircase into the library, bits
of stone chipped off of the steps; Danni and I both had to catch each other a
few times when a stair would crumble at an inconvenient point. Each time was
accompanied by a worried glanced. She had to be just as nervous as I would that
we would attract the attention of... whatever we saw moving around inside
before we could have a good look at it. If we had to make an escape, it would
be best to at least get a good idea of what resided here now.

When we reached the top of
the staircase, we expected to find the familiar, wide open floor of the
library. It was unrealistic to expect it to be unharmed, hiding its tattered
skin and light bones, but we vaguely assumed to find the spacious vestibule, a
study area just twenty or so feet in front of us, the desk and staircase to the
second floor off to our left... While the foundations of the building were
still intact, a new display resided in plain view... we found the guerilla.

His iron suit was battered
nearly beyond recognition. Pieces were scattered all over the floor, crimson
stained the entire hull, bite and scratch marks adorned the metal husk, and the
little that remained of the pilot was tossed carelessly about. Bullet holes and
demolished architecture marked the broken, open space, showing his fierce
resistance before his death.

Danni and I were frozen to
the spot for a second. I involuntarily yanked Danni’s shoulder to turn her
towards me. She inhaled sharply, and her horrified gaze met my own. We both
understood fully that our job here was done... it was time to get the hell out.

We turned to run back
outside, but the blur was back. It flew over the staircase before us. All I
could make out was a black and white figure that crawled like a mite, and its
shrill cry was comparable to the layered sounds one would imagine that locusts
and maggots fighting for a meal would create. Our short but intense screams
couldn’t be contained, and we instinctively retreated back inside. We sprinted
for the closest room that was in immediate site, a small storage room to our
right.

That was a poor choice.

One of the walls was
entirely dismantled, and in its place was a cancerous growth. It looked like
scarred flesh, covered in red welts and bumps. The surface was reflective,
covered in a translucent liquid or gel, eating up whatever light it could grab
from the dim space. It was covered in cavities, deep enough so that their
insides were entirely black. From within these repugnant craters, more of the
parasitic bustling could be heard, and several more of the creatures began to
crawl out. Their figures seemed to be the mangled remnants of men who lost
their lives long ago. Their skin was pale as the smoke that rises from tragedy,
and their bodies were slathered in a black substance that appeared to be oil.
Their faces were stuck in a permanent grimace that expressed the frustration of
failure and the rage of being ridiculed. Before Danni and I turned to escape, I
had that good look at them, even though I now wish that I hadn’t.

Our next intuition was to
race up the staircase to the second floor; Danni’s thought process and my own
were perfectly in-sync. The town hall was connected to the library by a
skywalk... maybe we’d be able to find refuge there. The logic wasn’t sound at
all, but could we be blamed in such a situation?

The skywalk was shielded by
glass and several metal rings. In the brief moments that I looked outside as I
passed, I could see several of the monstrosities raging on the pavement. No
clear goals, no intentions... simply wailing their possessed lungs out.
Glancing upward, I even saw one laying on the glass and staring off into the
distance. Unfortunately, the ones that pursued us weren’t so laid back. Halfway
across the bridge, we could feel the vibrations that their clambering behind us
made.

Danni was in front of me,
and made it past the threshold into the town hall without a scratch. Just as
one of my own feet made it over, I felt a slick, gaunt hand grasp my ankle!
Without a second thought, I jolted my leg backwards as hard as I could, and
felt brittle bone shatter. The creature cried out its hideous shriek; I must
have hit its jaw. With the rest of the swarm only a few feet behind it, Danni
slammed the door closed once I was safely inside. I pressed my back to the door
as the rest anemically though stubbornly banged on it. If you ever told me that
Danni could have moved furniture in front of the door as fast as she did then,
I wouldn’t believe you.

After a few tense minutes,
they went away one by one. It was around fifteen minutes by the time that all
we could hear was our own breathing. Even though we found a temporary safe
spot, panic still resided. What if they burst through the weakened walls or
floors? Such paranoia was unavoidable until we were back at the U.S.P.L. HQ...
or at least behind a weapon. Suddenly, the guerrillas didn’t seem so bad.

“At least there are no
windows.” Danni remarked in her characteristic smartass tone. She was right; at
least their forced entry wouldn’t be
too
easy. There were no windows
here, and no other doors besides the one we came in through. Particles of dust
indifferently drifted from the ceiling onto the wooden floor. The oxygen was
thin, and breathing was a labor. Looking around for a moment longer, it seemed
that my anxious half wasn’t very difficult to feed; windows weren’t the only
thing that this room lacked. Food. Water. Means of communication. Hell, even a door
to another room. All that was here were crates upon crates full of dusty,
fatigued, old records.

She wandered around them and
rifled through them carelessly in a manner so casual that it made me a little
bit suspicious. She carefully pulled a folder from a shelf, and held it up
under the fading light, the only one in the room.

“I bet a certain someone
wouldn’t want us getting our hands on this…” Danni motioned me over. It was immediately
apparent what she meant by that: confidential files signed by none other than
Miller! She impatiently flipped through its contents, presumably searching both
out of a desire to know what the man who was responsible for the decimation of
our home was planning to do next, and out of need for something that might end
up helping us. The documents within generally detailed layouts of new buildings
and future plans. Even someone who had as little architectural education as I
did could clearly tell by these schematics that Miller wanted to rule a kingdom
unbothered by logic. Museums that would be dozens of times larger than they
needed to be, hotels with no rooms, even a town square comprised of several
layers of land that would rise and fall periodically through a hydraulics
system.

Moving past the haphazard
blueprints, several gruesome images met our eyes: a few of the creatures that
had hunted us earlier were pictured alongside genetic horrors not unlike the
ones I saw in the hospital earlier. They were in a controlled environment,
bulletproof glass and machinery surrounding them in darkness illuminated only
by the machinery that bound them. A short technical description accompanied the
photos, and they were annotated in several places. From what I gathered, the
nightmares were in the basements of hospitals that Miller owned. Obviously
enough, they were very well guarded for the few weeks that he was in power
here. There was seemingly no intention of them being unleashed; they were
manufactured in a madman’s mind only to see what was possible. I put one and
one together, and found the gut-wrenching truth: the disease wasn’t brought to
the U.S. by mistake. Miller had all sorts of men of science experimenting with
it in secret, and a single slip-up in the West resulted in the doom of a
nation. Before that fatal error, he must have been smuggling it all over the
country, from this lab to that. The blame for such an accident would be easy to
shift to a boat or plane that landed in the wrong place at the wrong time, and
that’s exactly what had been done. Miller’s influence was so much greater than
I ever realized…

I looked up to find Danni
turning page after page with a much greater focus than before. She soaked up
the information in there expressionlessly. It was as though she wanted to steal
the flames that a madman used to raze a superpower and recast them to serve as
a torch, a beacon. All she wanted was a flare to lead her onward, to fuel a
devotion that she hadn’t yet wavered from, and certainly had no intention of
backing down from now.

Turning another page, we
found a sketch of a contraption that looked like an electric generator dotted
with wind turbine blades. While the schematic was detailed, it still wasn’t
very easy to visualize. As we read the description, we couldn’t hold back a
sickening sort of black laughter.

 
Unit
D-122672:
Burybury
Unit, delivered to 28 Foster Rd.
on 9/2/2043

WARNING!
THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL. FAILURE TO PROVIDE PROPER
IDENTIFICATION IF THIS INFORMATION IS FOUND ON YOUR PERSON CAN RESULT IN A
$100,000 FINE AND/OR UP TO THIRTY YEARS IN PRISON.

This
equipment is designed to regulate specimens of batch D, commissioned by Devon
Miller on 8/25/2043. This unit is effective
only
for batch D specimens
within a thirty mile radius. The regulation equipment inside this unit is both
highly customizable and accessible. The professional user will appreciate the
variety of functions that can be tweaked, such as heart rate or the release of
endorphins. In addition, the newcomer can also effectively handle this
machinery. This user would likely have his attention drawn to the most visible
alterable function: brain activity. PLEASE NOTE: Reducing brain activity to
near-zero
or
maximum levels for any length of time is HAZARDOUS. Both of
these states may result in specimens becoming agitated, violent, and
potentially difficult to control. All novices should be accompanied by more
advanced users at all times until they have proper experience and training.