Authors: Bryan James
She was totally unprepared when the large hand clasped her arm and dragged her into the darkness.
***
Within twelve hours of the first infection, cities across the nation were burning.
Millions had been infected, and millions more were dead.
Power outages and fires complicated what few relief efforts and counter attacks could be organized and arranged, and national guard units, already overwhelmingly short-staffed due to the constant rotations overseas, were hastily deployed from safe holds outside major urban centers. In some cases, the personnel carriers rolled into empty, burning neighborhoods.
In other cases, they rolled into terror. Bodies crushed against one another, teeming in the streets, hands outstretched, blood running in rivers.
They couldn’t respond to this.
No one could respond to this.
***
“There has to be an auxiliary power source in here, right? These security booths are set up for power failures and contingencies. They have to have a way to watch the cameras when the power is cut. It’s a bank for God’s sake.”
The sound of incessant pounding on the thick doors was loud in the small space, and Antonio’s voice reflected the increasing fear of those inside.
Louis ran his hand over the door latch, registering that it was locked but wondering again at the need. It would only need to be locked if the guard thought that there was something inside that needed to be protected or secured. Or, it occurred to Louis, if the guard was trying to protect them from themselves.
“The bank couldn’t possibly have a security system that locked its employees in automatically, could it? I mean, that’s a damn lawsuit waiting to happen.”
He hadn’t intended to speak out loud, but he was glad he had done so when Antonio nodded and picked up the thought.
“So someone locked us in on purpose, then left? That doesn’t make sense. I buy that we were locked in, but where is the guard? Where’s Voj for that matter? This shit doesn’t make sense.”
As Antonio spoke, the others filtered out from behind the security booth, defeated in their search for an auxiliary power switch or a way in to the locked booth.
“Okay, that leaves the basement.” Antonio’s sentence was met with silence. From Louis’ perspective, it was a silence of disbelief and abject fear. Possibly mixed with a “this dude is crazy” vibe.
“And…what does that get us exactly?”
Antonio spoke loudly to be heard over the incessant pounding, which seemed to punctuate the question asked by the other man from customer service, whose large frame was now showing signs of nervous sweat soaking through his cheap, no-iron shirt.
“The only way to reset the main power is the breaker, and the breaker is in the basement,” he said confidently, as if the aggressive pounding outside didn’t exist
“Yeah, but…” Louis drew out the vowel in ‘but’ for emphasis, “Doesn’t the power control the magnetic locks on the doors? If the power is reset, how do we know it won’t shoot these doors open and let whoever is outside in?”
Antonio frowned before responding, tempering his voice with the patience he learned in the Army after two tours in Iraq.
“I don’t think resetting the power will open the doors. The most it could do is release the magnetic locks, and those locks aren’t on now—and Stan, if we ever want to option of leaving this place, we are going to need to open the doors.”
He looked pointedly at the older man, eyes hard. Louis swallowed the objection he was going to make and let Stan take the lead.
“Well I’m not hanging out here so that whoever is on the other side of that door can come in and find me with a welcome banner stapled to my pasty white ass. I’ll wait with the others while you scout the basement with your friend,” as he finished, he nodded toward Louis, who did a double take as he realized Stan was talking about him and that he had just been fingered to descend into the building’s large, dark basement with Antonio.
Louis cursed under his breath, feeling an unbidden shiver of fear ripple up his spine. Not cool, Stan.
Before Antonio could answer, Stan turned on his heel and into the darkness of the cubicles, where the red emergency lights were starting to dim. The other men from the section drifted along, like flotsam caught in the wake of a boat, following the older man.
The pounding from outside had grown more insistent, and Louis shivered involuntarily as he imagined the repeated blows of hands and fists and feet, the sickness and dementia with which the individuals had to be infected to be acting in such a manner. Beside him, Antonio’s gaze drifted into space momentarily, and he wondered what the larger man was thinking.
“You don’t have to go with me,” Antonio said in a soft whisper, as if uttering an afterthought to a conversation he had been having with himself.
Louis knew this. And Louis didn’t want to go.
The rational part of his brain told him that the basement was just as safe as the main building—that the bank was locked down and impenetrable from outside. That the basement was simply one more floor in a large, windowless building, and that it would have no more or less light than the rest of this absurd place.
The irrational part of his brain said that the basement was full of evil clowns, scorpions, monsters that only ate human testicles, and a mariachi band playing a looped version of the Macarena. In other words, a scary damn place.
“I know, but …”
But what?
He had no reason to go. Other than the fact that Stan had singled him out, and he’d look like a huge dick if he bailed. But other than that, no reason at all. After all, he wasn’t that guy. Yet a part of him wanted to find the answer, and be a part of the solution. He respected that part of himself. He was afraid; he was a coward, but today, he was going to go to the basement because he felt like it. Not because he had to, or because anyone else thought he should.
“…you shouldn’t go alone, and I’m curious. I want to see what’s happening here, and we can’t do that without power. Besides, we’re not going to last long in here without food.”
Louis’ voice was soft under the powerful echoes of the doors shaking in their housings, and Antonio barely caught the acknowledgement. When he had processed Louis’ halting response, he looked up, breaking his thousand yard stare and locking eyes with a man he had too quickly dismissed as cowardly. He was happy to have the company, although unconvinced of the value of the man in case of conflict. Either way, he smiled widely at Louis as he turned away from the shuddering doors.
“Okay then, let’s do it. I think I saw a small flashlight on someone’s desk when we were walking up here. Let’s grab it and get this shit over with.” He clapped Louis on the shoulder and strode past with purpose.
Louis followed, glad that Antonio couldn’t see his legs shaking in the dim light.
***
The rural areas fared somewhat better. With the advantage of distance from urban centers, and lower populations, combined with a much lower pass-through rate of individuals from outside their geographic areas, towns and smaller cities had a much higher success rate in quelling infection.
Trauma units had warnings, and barricades could be effective. Roadblocks and quarantine measures could be implemented and enforced. Citizens could arm themselves. Rules could be formulated and security maintained.
But none were safe for long.
In a society as transient and fluid as America, there were always connections.
There were always methods for an infection to spread.
And spread it did.
***
Bridget struggled briefly before a soft whisper brought her up short.
“Shhh! Quiet! There’s something over there, against the wall near the back cubes.”
It was Ty, and his cold hand shook slightly with a clammy palsy. She grimaced at the thought of him touching her and tore her head away, rubbing her neck and staring in the direction he had pointed. What the hell was he doing up here, anyway?
Inside the office, Cam lowered his voice to a frantic whisper.
“Bridget? What the hell? Where’d you go?” He sounded young and afraid.
She waved her hand in front of the door and gestured to him and Beverly, who had fearfully crept from behind the large secretary’s desk and now huddled behind Cam’s slender, skinny-jean wearing form. Bridget considered guffawing at the irony—if Cam was the only remaining paragon of manly heroics left to cling to, the world was truly in trouble.
“Come out,” she whispered without turning her head. From the corner of her eye, she saw him peer out, his head protruding from the office doorway, making a dark blotch against the backlight of the emergency lamps.
“Look!” said Ty, voice creeping up several panicked octaves. Bridget could feel him slinking back against the wall. “What the hell is that? Is that a person?”
Bridget’s eyes moved to where his shaking hand pointed, focusing on the object of his fear and squinting hard.
Suddenly, everything happened at once. An ear-splitting scream erupted from the Volkswagen-driving debutante cowering behind the techie nerd, and, as the techie nerd grunted and cursed once, the small woman nearly plowing him down in a fright-induced tumble searching for the stairwell. As she tried to run past Bridget, her foot caught in the cheap carpet, and she tumbled forward, her outstretched hands catching Bridget in the chest and forcing her back against the wall and against Ty, whose own feet tangled with Bridget’s. The three tumbled to the floor in a cacophony of bodies and curses and flailing limbs.
As they fell, she heard Cam’s startled exclamation.
“What the hell …? Is that …?”
Then, the quickening steps of the scrawny man as he leapt over the tangled bodies and toward the stairs. She heard him stumble once before disappearing down the wide stairs.
Bridget thrashed underneath the pile as Beverly screamed again, panicked now more than ever as she imagined the form across the room bearing down on them. Beverly’s eyes were wild and her brain was racing as she pushed herself off the pile and sprinted down the hallway between the cubicles and the wall, right hand staying in contact with the wall, left held anxiously in front of her. She heard the movement of the others behind her, and an urgent whisper—just short of an actual yell—came from Bridget. Ignoring them, she pressed forward, eager to find the stairwell.
She should never have come upstairs. It was foolish, really. Just an attempt at impressing Ty, and convincing him to finally make their relationship public. Tossing her short hair in irritation, she wiped a tear from her face, knowing that as she did so, she was streaking her makeup. The bastard, she though, suppressing a sniffle and squinting into the dark—the stairwell should be here somewhere—he thought he could screw her and ignore her. Four times in the utility closet, and he thought he was a fucking god. She got more excited and angry as she thought about it, her breath starting to slow as she focused on Ty.
Suddenly, she stopped moving, freezing in place. One hand rested on a fire extinguisher fastened to the wall on her right side; the other hovered in mid-air next to her.
Something was moving in front of her.
Beverly looked around frantically, searching for the stairs in frustration. She should have reached them by now. They weren’t that far away! Her hand clenched on the red metal and she shivered, listening for sounds of approach.
Wait, she thought. Her right hand was on the wall.
Shit.
She had run the wrong way.
In her confusion, she had run toward the sound, not away. The stairs were behind her.
Merely feet away, a long scraping sound—as if a chair had been dragged on a linoleum floor.
Her eyes scanned the murky darkness. The red lights provided enough illumination to outline shapes but too much to allow night vision to adapt. Everything was blurry and tinged in red from the slowly dying security lights. Their dull gleam was slowly fading as their batteries were depleted, never having been intended for prolonged use.