Torn Apart (7 page)

“
So where does this entrance lead?”
I asked as we continued to go deeper, as the sky continued to
shrink.

“
Vehicle storage hangar. It’s
connected to the rest of the facility via a subway tunnel. It
should lead directly to the military head quarters.”

“
We have to get into that tunnel. We
have to get Maria.”

“
You still hell bent on saving the
world?”

“
Yeah. If you had a chance to help,
wouldn’t you?”

“
You still think you have a
chance?”

“
Yeah. I do. Well, sort of. What are
you even doing back here if you’re not going to help?”

He looked at his wrist again. It was red and
inflamed. “Like I said, they took something from me, a part of me.
They took my freedom. They took it without asking. I want my
revenge.”

“
Who did that to you?” I asked
again.

“
I don’t know. Someone who
knew.”

“
We found someone at the outpost,” I
said. “Apparently he works for the Red Cross. Or maybe he was
working for the military. I can’t remember what he said. But he
performed surgery on you. He cut a bullet out of your chest and
stitched you up.”

Ben felt the wound that was just to the left of
his heart.

“
He was pretty amazing,” I
continued.” He…”

Ben held his hand up, cutting me off, as the
platform came to a stop. We had arrived. Ben had a look of
concentration on his face.

“
Quiet,” he whispered. “We don’t
know who or what is down here.”

We had been lowered into what looked like a
giant underground airplane hangar. Military vehicles were parked
everywhere. There were Humvees. Tanks. Transport vehicles.
Aircraft. Jets. A10 Warthogs. Smaller planes that had to be the
unmanned drones. The Predator drones. Choppers as well. Weirdly,
there was also a row of X-wings. The experimental hypersonic jet
that Daniel had flown out here. Their distinctive black arrow head
shape looked out of place amongst the more robust designs of the
other vehicles.

The row of tanks closest to us were covered in
red dust from the desert. Their tracks were caked with red
dirt.

“
At least we know where the tanks
went,” I said.

“
Something is wrong,” Ben
whispered.

“
What is it?”

Ben pointed to a large circular door. It was
half open.

“
In there. The doorway. Leads into
the tunnels.”

“
That’s a good thing, right? That’s
where we’ll find Maria. The trapdoor, the ladder she climbed down,
that’s where it leads, right?”

“
If there was a Code Black issued,
if there was a Lockdown, they would’ve sealed that entry
point.”

“
So why is it open?” I
asked.

“
I don’t know.”

A voice, calm and soothing said, "Please
disembark platform.”

We moved into the hangar. Dust from the desert
covered the smooth concrete floor. The tanks that we had been
following were all parked neatly side by side.

“
So, if we move into that tunnel,” I
said. “We should be able to find Maria. She couldn’t be too
far.”

Ben shook his head. “Something is wrong,” he
repeated.

“
But that’s where we’ll find her,
right? In the tunnel?”

“
Yeah.”

We moved closer to the tanks. It was then we
noticed they were not only covered in red dust from the desert, but
black dust as well.

I looked at Ben. He was looking at the circular
doorway, but his eyes were barely open. He was slouched over. His
left arm was close to his body, like he had it in a
sling.

"Nano-swarm?” I asked him, referring to the
black dust.

He nodded.

Some of the tanks had holes in their armor.
Ditto for the choppers and the Humvees. Again, I got the impression
that the armor, the metal had been eaten by moths or caterpillars
or something.

"The metal looks like Swiss cheese,” I
said.

Again, Ben nodded.

“
What did this? What’s going
on?"

“
They're feeding,” he
answered.

“
What?”

“
The nano-swarms. They feed on
metal. Break it down at the molecular level. Use it to build and
grow. Fuel for their manufacturing process.” Ben shook his head.
“This is bad. You should turn back now. You should run. It’s not
safe here.”

“
What?”

“
Turn back. Go. Get out of
here.”

“
I’m not leaving. Not without Maria.
Not without my friends.”

“
Your friends?”

I caught Ben up on what had happened, on Jack
running away, looking for his sister. “We saw Kim, back in a small
country town about one hundred miles south of here. She was with
Doctor Hunter. Working with Doctor Hunter. They had found Jack. And
they took him prisoner. I think.”

“
Who is Kim?” Ben asked.

“
Jack’s sister.”

“
I don’t see the problem
here.”

“
It’s hard to explain. But that man
she was with. Doctor Hunter. He’s bad news. He’s one of the people
responsible for the outbreak. For everything. And he will stop at
nothing to fix what he’s done. Back in Sydney, at the hospital, he
tied us up. He took us down to the morgue. He was about to put us
under and harvest our organs. Turn us into a science experiment for
his research. We tried to tell him that we weren’t infected. But he
wouldn’t listen. We were nearly butchered, murdered by this
guy.”

“
So why was he with Jack’s sister?”
Ben asked. “What the hell is going on? Why did they take Jack? It
sounds like Kim found her brother. Took him in. Saved him from a
lonely death in the desert.”

I shook my head. “No. Something is wrong. I
don’t know what. But I’m going to find out.”

“
You prepared to risk your life for
your friend’s life?” he asked, pointing to the subway tunnel, to
the massive circular door. “You see that tunnel? It descends miles
below the earth’s surface. Deep underground. You prepared to go
down there? In the dark? You prepared to die?”

“
Yeah. I am.”

I was talking tough because there wasn’t much
else I could do at that point except fake it.

The truth? I was terrified. I had no idea at
the time, but the crazy soldier; he was just a preview of the
madness and the horror that was waiting for me, and for us, waiting
down there in the dark of the Fortress. If I had known that, I
might have turned around. Might have turned a gun on
myself.

Would my friends have blamed me?

I doubt it.

But of course there was no way I was turning
back.

I was a girl on a mission.

I had come this far.

So I was going down into the
Fortress.

Down into hell.

I pointed to the tunnel, to the circular
doorway. “If that’s where we’ll find Maria, then that’s where we
need to go. Right now. Is this the only entry point? Is that the
only tunnel in this area?”

“
Slow down,” Ben said. “We need to
be careful. You go running off into the dark and you will get
yourself killed. This place is bigger than Manhattan. Bigger than
most major cities. And General Spears is not someone you want to
mess with. I've only met the General a couple of times, but believe
me; you would not want to make an enemy of him. He was determined
to win this thing. To right the ship. Right every wrong. He took
the losses of life, the outbreaks, and all the containment failures
as his own personal failures. Some were saying the pressure was
starting to get to him. Some say he was starting to lose it. About
a month ago, civilians were banned from all military areas. The
paranoia hit. Civilians were separated. We were isolated. People
were getting scared. More rumors about death squads. And massacres.
You know, in World War Two, in Auschwitz, in the concentration
camps, the extermination camps, the prisoners, they didn’t know
they were being led into gas chambers. Not at first. And those that
did, those who had that cold, sinking, awful feeling in their gut,
they ignored it. They were in denial. The truth, the reality was
too horrifying. When the General isolated the civilians, kept them
locked up in the residential area, I knew something was wrong. I
could feel it. That's why I took that last job. I got my team
together. The four of us. I wanted to take more. But I couldn’t. A
few of my regular team didn't want to go. The scavenger hunts were
becoming more and more dangerous. There were more infected. Less
things to scavenge. But I managed to convince them. When we finally
got outside, when we were clear of the Fortress and the
surveillance drones, I told them what I thought was going on. I
told them I thought the General was becoming paranoid. A threat. I
told them we shouldn't go back. They agreed. That's why we were
raiding the town of Hunter. We knew it might’ve been compromised.
But we needed extra supplies if we wanted to get away clean. To get
away from the Fortress and the teams of Special Forces soldiers the
General has at his disposal. We gambled. We knew the risk. We
lost.”

I had to keep reminding myself that Ben had
been through just as much adversity as we’d been through. It was a
miracle that either one of us had survived this long.

“
But remember,” he continued. “We
are on his turf now. This is his domain. So we have to be
careful.”

“
All right,” I said. “We’ll be
careful. But the ladder that Maria climbed down, it’s gotta be
close by, right?”

“
I think it was a maintenance access
point,” Ben answered. “It should lead into the subway
tunnel.”

“
Where the hell is that?”

Again, he pointed towards the massive circular
door. “Through there. Subway tunnel leads all the way to the
inner-sanctum. To the military and residential and research
facilities.”

“
OK, let’s go.”

“
Hold on there. We need weapons.
Guns. EMP weapons.”

“
EMP weapons? Don’t tell me there
are goddamn nano-swarms down here?”

“
Don’t know. But we have to be
prepared for the worst. We don’t want to be trapped down here, face
to face with a nano-swarm with no way of defending ourselves. You
saw what it did to the priest’s men.”

Yeah, I did. It took their feet out from under
them and strangled them and choked them to death. It filled their
lungs with black nano-particles or whatever. I remember the feeling
and the pain after I ran right through the middle of a swarm. It
was like razor blades on my skin. My throat was on fire.

Ben had a good point about being
prepared.

“
So what now?” I asked.

“
We need supplies. We need weapons.
Ammo.”

There had to be some guns down here somewhere,
I thought. But in the dark, even with the light from above, from
the desert, we couldn’t see very far. The hangar was huge. We
couldn’t see where it started or where it ended.

“
Maybe we should look for some
medical supplies as well,” I suggested. “Get you patched
up.”

“
No point. I need an ICU. Not a
patch up. Let’s just get some guns, maybe a few EMP grenades, and
get the hell out of here.”

Ben put his hand against the hood of an armored
transport.

“
What is it?”

“
Still warm.”

“
What?”

“
Tank is still warm. Means it’s been
outside recently.”

“
Is that a good thing?”

“
Should be loaded up.”

He moved to the rear of the tank and opened the
hatch slightly. The hatch made a loud squeaking noise. The screech
pierced through the air and echoed throughout the
hangar.

He stopped and we listened to see if the noise
had attracted any attention.

Nothing. Silence.

The hangar appeared to be abandoned.

Ben was about to try and open the hatch again,
when suddenly we heard something moaning. Something howling. A
thump. It sounded like it was coming from inside the armored
transport.

We heard a moan of pain.

And then another moan.

It was the unmistakable sound of the
infected.

Ben raised his shotgun. “Get behind
me.”

“
Where are they?” I asked. “Are they
in the tank?”

I had my rifle raised up to my shoulder, ready
for the onslaught. I was searching the massive hangar. There were a
million hiding places. Behind each tank or Humvee. Under them. Or
inside them.

We heard another thump. More moaning. It had to
be coming from the tank, I thought.

“
Are they in the tank?” I asked
again.

“
Yeah,” Ben answered. “They’re in
there,” he said, pointing with the shotgun. “In that tank. It’s a
troop transport. Holds maybe a dozen or so soldiers.”