Free Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) by James Harden

open
the holding cells,” Kim says. “It’s the only thing keeping Jack safe. You open
the cells, you kill him. And you kill us.”
    “No. He is
coming back for me. As long as I open the cells. That was the deal.”
    “Who? Who is
coming back for you?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.
    “The man in the
gas mask. He’s the one who can fix all of this. He’s the only one.”
    “Don’t do it,”
Kim says. “There’s too many of them. We won’t make it. We won’t last five
minutes in here. They’ll find us. They always find us. We’ll be trapped.”
    I check the CCTV
footage of Jack. He has no idea that his life is hanging in the balance. I
wonder how long he has been locked in that room for.
    Jack was an easy
going kind of guy before the world went to hell. Before his girlfriend turned
out to be immune to the Oz virus. The pressure had slowly gotten to him. It
took a while but eventually he began to crack. Not that I can blame him. A
lesser man would’ve cracked a long time ago. A lesser man would’ve given up
completely. It’s funny to think of him as a man. A few months ago we were kids.
We were teenagers dealing with school and homework and graduation and college
applications.
    Not anymore.
    We had to grow
up real quick. The alternative was to give up, wait to be rescued. Wait for
something that was never going to happen.
    So we grew up
and we got on with the job. And we cannot give up on Jack because he would not
give up on us. He will never give up on his friends. Or his family. He will
fight to the end. The very end. And if we don’t stop George, if we don’t get
him to calm down and think this through, the end will be coming very soon.
    “Just slow
down,” Kim says to George.
    Her hands are
up, her palms facing out. She is trying to convince George to stop what he is
about to do.
    “We can figure
this out,” she continues. “Let’s just wait for the system to fully reboot.”
    George shakes
his head. He sheds a tear. “I’m sorry.”
    He presses the
button.
    And he seals our
fate.

 

Chapter 13
    How
long do we have? How long does Jack have?
    Seconds.
Minutes.
    How long would
the door to this room hold?
    Seconds.
Minutes.
    The door is made
of wood. I am reminded of the story of the three little pigs. The big bad wolf
made short work of the house made of sticks.
    But how long did
Jack have? The door to his holding cell is now wide open. He is completely
exposed. Completely screwed.
    We watch him
through the security camera. He stands up and moves to the door. He peers out.
He looks up and down the corridor. But then he hears it. He hears it at the
exact same time as we hear it.
    It is a noise
that I will never forget as long as I live. Which, now that I think about it,
is only a few more hours. It is a noise that has come to mean trouble and death
and running and hiding. It is the howling, screaming, moan of the infected. It
is a noise that begins somewhere in their stomach and chest, the back of their
throat.
    Jack ducks back
inside his room. He slides underneath the single bed in his holding cell.
    He has nowhere
else to hide. Nowhere else to run.
    We are his only
hope.
    “Why the hell
did you do that?” Kim whispers.
    Kim crouches
down in the corner of the room, away from the door. She grabs me and pulls me
down with her.
    Stealth is now
our only option.
    “He said he
would save me,” George answers.
    “Who?” Kim asks.
“Who the hell is the man in the gas mask?”
    “He injected me,”
George says. “He said he had given me a choice. He said he had given me
freedom.”
    My eyes had been
focused on the door. On the gap between the frame and the floor. Looking and
watching for shadows. But then the warden said, he injected me , and I suddenly forget all about the door and the
things on the other side.
    “He injected
you?” I ask.
    “Yes. He
injected me with a time release nano-virus. He said he would give me the cure,
the anti-virus, if I unlocked the