Torn Apart (8 page)

“
So there could be twelve infected
people in there?”

“
Maybe more.”

Ben moved back towards the tank and reached out
to the door handle.

“
Wait. What the hell are you
doing?”

“
Taking care of them.”

“
What? Why don’t we just leave them
in there?”

“
No. The door closes and locks from
the inside. I don’t think it’s locked. Won’t be safe if these
bastards are running around down here. We gotta take care of
them.”

I gripped my rifle, made sure it was loaded.
Made sure the safety was off. I wanted nothing more than to leave
those poor infected soldiers to rot inside that tank, but Ben was
right.

We had to take care of them. It was too
dangerous to leave them in there.

“
Get back,” Ben said.

Another thump.

The hatch moved.

The infected moaned. Louder. More desperate.
They were inside all right, and they were now trying to break out.
They knew we were there.

Before Ben could open the hatch and move back
to a safe distance, they pushed it open. The infected are
relentless and once they know there is food, fresh meat, fresh
hosts on offer, they don’t stop.

The infected barged through the armored door,
knocking the hatch open, knocking me on my back.

I raised my rifle.

Ben aimed his shotgun at the infected, the
torch on the barrel shone into the tank. The torch lit up the eyes
of the infected.

The eyes of demons.

A tank full.

I scrambled to my feet and opened fire in a panic. I began shooting
and shuffling backwards.

“
Get behind me!” Ben
shouted.

He calmly unloaded with the shotgun. He took
out two or three infected with one shot, knocking them clean off
their feet.

Suddenly more infected piled out from the next
tank over. I turned and unleashed with my rifle. I emptied an
entire magazine within seconds.

I reloaded.

Kept firing.

Empty.

“
Ben! Help!”

He turned and raised his shotgun in one swift
movement. “Get down!”

He continued to unload. Methodical and almost
rhythmic. He would take a shot, and then pump the shotgun, ejecting
the spent cartridge. Then he would take another shot. And another.
He continued to take out two or three infected at the one
time.

When he ran out of shells, he used the gun as a
baseball bat and completely caved in the skulls of the last
remaining infected. When it was over, the infected lay in a pile.
We were safe for the moment. Although Ben had busted the torch on
the shotgun.

“
Why?” I asked, between deep
breaths. “Why did they bring them back here?”

“
I don’t know,” Ben answered. “Maybe
one of the soldiers was infected. Maybe they didn’t
realize.”

I shook my head. “No. We’re passed that point.
These people, the soldiers, they know. They know the symptoms. They
know all the tell-tale signs. They wouldn’t let anyone who was
infected into their tank. Unless they wanted to. They were herding
them. They were bringing them back here. And they messed up.” I
pointed to the pile of dead. “Look. There are only four soldiers
here. The rest are civilians. They were rounding them up. They were
bringing them back here on purpose. Why?”

“
Don’t know,” Ben answered.
“Research, maybe?”

I stepped forward cautiously. I was about to
check the inside of the tank. Maybe there were orders or documents
or something that would give us a clue as to exactly what the hell
they were trying to do. But just then we heard another noise. It
wasn’t a moan or howl of an infected person. The noise was
mechanical. Gears whirring into action.

The calm and soothing pre-recorded female voice
said, “Proximity alarm has been tripped. Vehicle Access Point has
been locked for security purposes.”

Two huge security blast doors were closing,
high above the platform. The blast doors were two solid steel
slabs. I guess it was sort of like an airlock.

“
What the hell is going on?” I
asked.

“
The proximity alarm,” Ben said.
“Something is up there. Something is coming.”

I suddenly realized that the only source of
light in this underground hangar was coming from the
desert.

We were about to be locked inside this hangar.
It was about to get real dark, real soon.

Ben grabbed me by the shoulder. “Get in the
tank.”

“
What? Why?”

“
Something tripped the proximity
alarm. Something bad.”

“
What?”

“
Look,” he said, pointing to the
blast doors.

Just as they were about to close together,
something slid inside. Something dark. Black smoke.

It was a nano-swarm.

The blast doors closed completely, slamming
shut.

It was now pitch black.

But we could hear it. The familiar snake hiss
of the swarm moving through the air.

Ben grabbed me by the shoulder again and
whispered in my ear. “Get in the tank. Now. We need to hide. Don’t
make a sound.”

We carefully and quickly stepped over the bodies of the infected,
feeling our way into the armored transport vehicle. Ben slowly and
quietly shut the hatch. We knelt inside the tank, in the darkness
for a few seconds that felt like a few hours.

We listened for the familiar hissing sound of
the nano-swarm. But we couldn’t hear anything.

“
Maybe it was a false alarm?” I
whispered.

“
Maybe. Do you have a torch on your
rifle?” Ben asked.

I felt around on the barrel of my rifle,
looking, searching for the torch. I was convinced I had one. I
hadn’t used it yet. But I was pretty sure there was one attached to
the underside of the barrel.

I finally found it. I switched it on and
breathed a sigh of relief.

We peered out one of the portal style windows
of the tank.

Outside, everything was still and
silent.

“
What do you think?” I
asked.

“
I think the nano-swarm tripped the
proximity alarm. And now it’s inside. Then again, maybe someone at
the control center flicked the switch. I just don’t
know.”

Suddenly, orange flashing lights lit up the
entire hangar. Emergency lights. The calm, soothing, female voice
spoke to us again. “Security failsafe has been activated. Purge
will commence in three minutes. All personnel must evacuate.
Repeat. Security failsafe has been activated. Purge will commence
in three minutes. All personnel must evacuate. Repeat…”

“
Purge? What the hell is that?” I
asked.

“
It's a failsafe,” Ben
answered.

“
What?”

“
It’s like a self cleaning oven. A
pyrolytic oven. This room will heat up to a thousand degrees. Maybe
hotter. Every living thing will burn. Everything will be turned to
ashes. It’s a failsafe. A security measure.”

“
Purge will commence in three
minutes,” the female voice said.

“
Oh great,” I said. “What the hell
do we do?”

“
We have to get to the
tunnel.”

“
But if there’s a swarm out there
we’ll never make it.”

“
We’ve got no choice. We stay here.
We burn.”

“
What about this tank? Can we hide
in here? Is it fire proof?”

Ben thought it over. “It might be enough to
protect us. But we don’t know how long the purge will last. We
don’t know how hot the blast will be. We don’t know how much oxygen
we will need.”

We then heard the hissing noise of the swarm.
Louder. Closer.

There was a nano-swarm in here all right. It
had tripped the proximity alarm and caused the hangar’s blast doors
to close, caused the failsafe to commence. It had waited though. It
had kept to the shadows. The darkness. It had watched us. It was
studying us. Watching and learning. Adapting and evolving. It was
hunting.

And now it was ready to strike.

We continued to hide in the tank from the nano- swarm. But we were
running out of time. We had two minutes before the hangar turned
into a pyrolytic oven. A self contained inferno that would burn at
over a thousand degrees. We could not afford to be stuck inside
this tank when that happened.

We would either burn or suffocate.

Or both.

Ben moved back over to the small portal window
of the tank so he could watch the nano-swarm. It was currently
searching the hangar. It slithered in and around the other
vehicles. The Humvees and the choppers. It would circle them and
surround them and engulf them. And then it would tear them apart.
Flip them over, throw them around like rag dolls from one end of
the hangar to the other. And the noise. It was enough to make your
skin crawl. It was the noise of metal being twisted and bent and
smashed into the concrete.

“
Purge will commence in two
minutes.”

I turned to Ben. “What the hell do we do? I
don’t want to burn. I don’t want to suffocate. Not now. Not yet. I
can’t die. Not until I know Maria is safe.”

“
I don’t know,” Ben answered. “I
don’t have any EMP weapons. No EMP gun. We might just have to run
for the tunnel.”

“
Wait. I have an EMP
grenade.”

I felt for my backpack. But it was no longer
over my shoulders. I must’ve dropped it outside the tank when we
were attacked by the infected.

“
You do?” Ben asked. “Only
one?”

“
Yeah. We found someone. A
scavenger, I think. He was dying. He gave us his last EMP
grenade.”

Ben shook his head. “One EMP grenade is not
enough to stop the nano-swarm. But it might be enough to slow the
swarm down. Give us a few seconds to get through the blast door,
get inside the tunnel.”

I looked over to the circular doorway to judge
the distance we would have to run. It was almost on the other side
of the hangar. We would have to sprint as fast as we could to make
it. And then we’d have to get lucky. Hopefully the swarm wouldn’t
see us. Hopefully nothing else jumped out of the shadows and
attacked us. If anything like that happened, we were
dead.

“
If we sprint as fast as we can, we
should be able to make it,” I said.

But then the doorway began to close. Moving and
rotating slowly.

“
Oh no,” I whispered.

“
What is it?”

“
Look. The tunnel, the doorway. It’s
starting to close.”

“
Purge will commence in one minute,
thirty seconds,” the female voice said.

“
That’s OK,” Ben said. “The door
needs to be closed. If it remained open, the flame, the heat wave
would race through the tunnels. We can’t have that.”

Ben was able to remain calm and level headed.
He reminded me of Kenji in that regard.

He was still watching the nano-swarm. It had
moved over to the Predator drones. The swarm then paused and spread
out in front of the drones. Then it seemed to take on its shape,
like it was mimicking the design of it.

“
Strange,” Ben whispered. “It
must’ve seen the drones flying around in the area. It appears to be
very interested in them.”

“
Maybe it thinks it can mimic its
shape,” I said. “Use it as a camouflage technique. Like the car
headlights.”

“
The what?”

“
Back at the outpost,” I said. “We
were attacked by a swarm while you were unconscious. It took on the
shape of a car. Even had headlights. It was a camouflage technique.
So it could sneak up on us.”

Ben shook his head in disbelief. He then moved
away from the window. “We have to make a run for it,” he said.
“Into the tunnel. The tunnel will lead us to the control center.
It’s basically one long subway system.”

“
But the swarm? We’ll never make
it.”

I remembered how fast they could move. If it
saw us and decided to chase, it would catch up to us in no
time.

“
We don’t have a choice,” Ben said.
“We stay here, we die.”

“
Purge will commence in one
minute.”

The entry to the subway tunnel felt so far
away. It was on the other side of the hangar. It was a huge
circular doorway. It continued to slowly close. Once that doorway
was shut, the purge would commence.

“
We go now,” Ben continued. “While
the nano-swarm is busy studying the Predator drones. If it attacks
us, throw the EMP grenade. That will slow it down. Give us a chance
to get away. We can’t let it get inside the tunnel.”

“
OK,” I said. “But wait. There’s a
problem. The EMP grenade. It’s in my backpack.”