Free Torn Apart by James Harden Page B

I
crouched down and I waited a few seconds, keeping perfectly still.
Then I prepared myself, and I looked again.
    “ Please!” Maria begged. “Please,
don’t hurt me. Please.”
    The man in the gas mask ignored Maria. He
continued unloading the ammo magazines, flicking each individual
bullet onto the floor of the carriage.
    “ I am immune,” Maria said. “I'm
special. Look. I was bitten. See? I didn’t turn. I didn't turn into
a monster.”
    “ Special?” the man said. “You are
not special. You are just a vessel. Your body.”
    The man’s voice sounded weird as he spoke
through the air filters of the gas mask. It sounded unnerving,
almost mechanical, like he had artificial lungs or
something.
    “ I swear to you,” Maria continued.
“I'm telling the truth. I swear! Please! Please don't kill me. I am
immune. They can make a cure, a vaccine from my blood.”
    The man looked up at Maria. “A cure? For what?
Tell me, what do you want to cure?”
    “ This plague. The Oz
virus.”
    “ You think you can save people? You
think you can save the human race?”
    “ I...I don't know. Just please... I
have to try.”
    The man shook his head slowly. “You do not want
to save anyone.”
    “ What?”
    “ You do not want to save anyone. You
just want to save yourself.”
    “ No. No. I want to help. I can
help.”
    “ No,” he repeated slowly. “You do
not want to save the human race. Nor should you. It is better this
way. The world is on fire. The world is burning. And it is
glorious.”
    “ What? What the hell are you talking
about?”
    “ I am talking about a purging fire.
I am talking about starting over. I am talking about creating
history. For too long we have fought the old wars. For too long we
have wasted lives. Our children. Our sons. Our daughters. Our
families. So many families have been wasted. But if we create a new
history…”
    The man in the gas mask trailed off. He was
nodding his head like he was agreeing with himself and everything
that he was saying.
    “ This is how we become legendary,”
he continued. “Do you think your blood can save us? Do you think
your blood can cure the world of this sickness? No. You are wrong.
The only way to have our freedom, the only way to have our
salvation, is to burn everything to the ground. Burn the old
empires. Burn the old memories and the old ways. We purge. We start
over. We start a fire. And we watch the world burn. And then and
only then will we be free. Only then, will we have our
salvation.”
    Maria was shaking her head. She was crying
heavily. I think she had given up on trying to bargain with him.
And so had I.
    I decided right then and there that I would
need to kill this man. I would need to kill him to save Maria. Take
a life to save a life.
    But I would need a weapon.
    “ Look at these weapons!” The man in
the gas mask shouted.
    And for a split second, I thought he had read
my mind, or maybe I was accidentally thinking out loud or
something. For a split second, I thought that he was standing over
me.
    But he wasn’t.
    He was walking slowly towards Maria. He was
holding a hunting knife.
    “ This is what I am talking about,”
he said as he waved the knife back and forth. “I am talking about
weapons. Instruments of evil. Instruments of ill omen. We are
taught to use weapons only when necessary. They can take life. They
can destroy it.”
    He held up the knife in front of Maria. “The
blade. The knife. The sword. Folded metal for strength. It was
forged in a fire. Under immense heat. The serrations of the blade
increase the damage and severity of the wound. The ripping and
tearing of flesh. A messy wound is a deadly wound.”
    He was getting closer to Maria. I would need to
make my move soon.
    He took out a handgun and pointed it to all the
other guns he had lined up. The guns he had taken from the dead
soldiers.
    “ A gun is even more efficient.
Deadly and lethal. A bullet is fired at such high velocity that it
completely destroys