Chapter Six
Hours had passed since Nicolas had left Zack and Hector in the nurse’s office. Whenever Zack would make the smallest bit of movement, Hector would attentively stare at him. When Zack first asked if he could use the restroom, Hector pointed to a broken toilet that was in the corner of the room. After having a bit of a struggle when it came to toilet paper, Zack figured it would be better for him to try to find a way out.
Of course, that much wouldn’t matter in less than a week. The sun had set over the mountain side, the world now completely covered in blackness. If they hadn’t gone into that Wal-Mart on that particular time on this particular day, the two of them may have probably found a nice condo just outside of the city, watch some random movie of Anna’s choice, and Zack would be able to breathe easy as he took his medication, knowing that he would have plenty more to spare.
There was nothing left for him to take though; all of the medication, including his back up stock for emergencies was now a part of the Los Angeles sewage system. Without certain medications, his suppressed immune system would begin to awaken and notice that the heart in his body wasn’t his and it would begin to fight the heart off. Zack remembered that his doctors said that the first day wouldn’t feel too bad, but by the fourth day, he would be in unbearable pain. There was very little chance that he would last after the fifth day, let alone a full week. It was amazing how something that kept you alive could kill you so quickly and mercilessly.
All of that being said though, Zack didn’t want to spend the last five days of his life waiting to just die. Nicolas made it clear that he was dead anyway, so what was the harm in him at least trying to get Anna out of the compound safely. His attention again moved to Hector. This was the first time that Zack noticed how young Hector was; he didn’t seem to be more than fourteen years old. Even with that, Hector was holding a handgun in what seemed to be like the proper fashion. This didn’t look like a toy to him like the axe was for Anna. It reminded Zack on how he used his Katana: it was a weapon for survival, so it must be treated with dignity.
“Hector, was it,” Zack began, trying to fill the empty air.
Hector didn’t respond. It seemed that there was a lot of Nicolas’s influence that resided in him.
“How did you come to be a part of Nicolas’s group,” Zack asked.
Again, silence from Hector. Zack seemed to be nothing to him.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters that are here,” Zack tried again.
There wasn’t even a flinch at that question, which seemed to frighten Zack. In Hector’s mind, none of Zack’s words made any sense. He had known of mind games that people use to get their freedom, and he believed he was too smart to fall for them. Hector just sat there, holding onto the handgun, but not pointing it at him.
“Fine, if you won’t respond to me, could you at least get me some water,” Zack asked.
“Why can’t you get it yourself,” Hector asked. Finally, a reaction.
“I’m kind of tied up,” Zack said, pointing his head to the zip-tie handcuff that kept his hands behind his back.
“Right,” Hector laughed, getting up.
Zack sat still as he watched the young teenager dig through one of the cabinets, finally finding a set of paper cups that seemed to be shipped to every school across the United States. Hector quickly ran it under the sink. Zack almost made a motion to say that his doctors told him he couldn’t have tap water—that he could only have purified water—but this didn’t seem like the time to bring something like that up at that moment. And, when you’re thirsty, it didn’t really matter where it came from.
Hector quickly moved to where Zack was sitting, not caring that some of the water swished out of the cup. Hector bent the cup over to where it splashed onto Zack’s upper lip. That was the physical signal for Zack to know that Hector was in reasonable distance to where he needed him and that his guard was down. The gun was in Hector’s other hand, but it wasn’t at attention, like it had been for hours before. In one quick motion, Zack used as much force that he could muster into springing forward, head first.
WHAM!
SPLASH!
SQUEEK!
THUD!
Initially, Zack had tried to hit Hector right under his chin, making for a decent improvised upper cut. However, he had overestimated the distance, and instead head-butt himself right between Hector’s eyes, right on the nose in fact. Hector had released a terrible grunt as he dropped the cup of water on the floor. As any normal person would, Hector moved backwards as he was reacting to the pain. Hector moved backwards and he pushed back on his heel, which was right on a puddle of water he had dropped only seconds earlier. Hector had let out a scream of panic as he fell backwards, hitting his head on the counter behind him.
Hector’s slid against the wall, blood from his nose dripping from his gaping mouth. While Zack’s initial intention was to knock Hector unconscious (which he had successfully done), he didn’t want it to be this violent. Now he feared that he had knocked the kid into a coma, or something much worse. He did notice however that Hector no longer had a grip on the gun in his hand. Thinking quickly, Zack kicked the gun away from Hector’s body.
The next part of Zack’s plan was to look for something that would cut through the zip-ties and free his hands. Again, thinking quickly, Zack grabbed onto the handle of a drawer and swiftly move forward until it was released from its compartment and fell onto the floor. Zack did his best to look through the contents of the drawer, hoping to find something like a scalpel, or at the very least, scissors.
Zack did this process three more times until he found what looked to be what would be classified as “kitchen scissors”. Not wanting to waste any time, Zack sat down on the bed, holding tightly to the heavy duty scissors. It took about a minute for him to get focused on how to cut through his restraints; he didn’t have a good grip on the holes that one would normally put their fingers through. Simply trying to carve through with one blade would be pointless. Finally, everything seemed to align just right to where he made one swift motion and was able to cut through the zip-tie, freeing his hands.
Zack then turned to Hector’s body. He touched the young man’s head, and then felt his neck. Although he was still warm, he couldn’t feel a pulse coming from the boy. Panicking, Zack laid the body flat, trying to feel any kind of pulse. He pressed his head the boy’s chest, but there was nothing.
Zack began to shake; while he may not have liked the kid, that didn’t mean he had to kill him. This kid wasn’t like one of the zombies out there; he still had his consciousness and was full of possibilities and potential. But now, that was all gone. That’s what this world has come down to, young people hiding out for survival, killing each other in the process. Civilization had been so cut off, the idea of isolation for survival became instinctive, and they had to be protect themselves at all cost.
Zack decided to tear off the curtain that hung that separated the beds in the nurse’s office and placed it over the body. He wished to give the boy a proper burial, but he knew there would be no way to get out alive if he did. Zack closed his eyes for a minute and silently prayed. He had no idea who he was praying to—Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Odin—Zack just hoped for peace to come to Hector’s soul and that he was sorry for what he had done to the child.
As soon as he finished praying, there was a commotion at the door. There was soft knocking and then a frantic turning of the doorknob. Zack grabbed tightly to the gun that he had in his hand. He knew that it was time to leave, to go and rescue Anna. The only way to get to her was to pass through whoever was at the door, let them be another child or Nicolas himself. Zack quickly reached for the latch, turning it, and the door was now unlocked. The knocking stopped and the knob was turning to open the door.
It opened slowly, almost cautiously. Zack hid behind the door, although the hiding space was becoming thinner and thinner. Tiny steps were taken, almost as if the floor was as delicate as glass. Then, a feminine face with
short brown hair and brown eyes innocently made their way in Zack’s view, but she could not see him hiding behind the door. He lowered his gun.
“Zack, are you in here,” Anna whispered, looking around the room. She turned to see that there was a body on the floor, covered in a sheet. She gasped, assuming that her last friend in this world had indeed died, just as Nicolas had promised her. Tears were coming from her eyes when she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder.
“Anna,” Zack said, unable to keep a low tone in his voice.
The two friends embraced each other, almost as if the two of them hadn’t seen each other for a number of years. There were tiny scratches on Anna’s skin, with small bits of blood staining her clothes. While holding onto Anna, his head against her shoulder, Zack allowed himself to cry.
“Zack, what’s wrong,” Anna asked, trying to comfort him by rubbing his back as he clutched her tightly.
Everything had become very real in his mind; embracing Anna had brought all of the past events into some kind of realization for him. Being separated from the only companion in a world where he believed he couldn’t trust anybody; watching his lifeline being washed down the drain; escaping from his restraints, but accidentally ending the life of another in the process. There were very few times that Zack had felt so overwhelmed in his life. The only other time that could pop into his mind was the period after his heart transplant two years ago, when his world changed.
Becoming so aware of his mortality and how alone he was in the world. It was that thought that was on his mind every day, and it eventually numbed him. The numbness melted when he met Anna though, allowing himself to be more open with another person. He didn’t feel cold to the world anymore; he was honestly feeling the grief that came with knowing that in the world he lived in, he could die at any moment, whatever reason that may be.
Zack didn’t want to hold back his feelings anymore, but he whipped his tears, giving himself a bit of time to focus. There’s time to let everything out later, Zack thought to himself as he released Anna from his bear hug. As soon as we get out of here.
“How did you escape,” Zack asked Anna.
“I was coming to save you,” Anna said, carefully shutting the door with her leg, and making sure that nobody had seen the two of them. “That guy, Nicolas, said that he was going to kill you if I didn’t do exactly as he said. He told me that all of you medications had been washed down the drain, and I got worried.” As she said that, she noticed the orange bottles near the sink, all of which were completely empty. “He came onto me, too heavily for my taste, and I kicked him as hard as I could. As you could probably guess, he didn’t take that too well. He had these two kids watching me. I got so worried though, so I came up with a plan. First, I tricked the two kids into fighting each other. As soon as one of them knocked the other out, I made my move by dropping a bookshelf onto him. Both of them are fine; they’re just not going to remember a lot of things that happened today.
“Then, I had to come up with a way to get out of the library. The doors were locked from the outside, so I had to improve. Right next to the door that lead inside was a glass window. I ran as fast as I could, hoping that it wasn’t shatterproof, and ran straight through. I’m sure that there were a couple of the kids who heard the crash I had made, so I didn’t even think of grabbing a piece of glass to defend myself, let alone untie my hands.”
Zack looked behind Anna and noticed that her two hands were still tied together with the zip-ties. His eyes widened in astonishment that she had accomplished so much with no use of her hands. Quickly, he grabbed the scissors to free her from the constraints. She continued to tell how she snuck around many of the rooms which held the kids. Zack then went on with what had happened here in the nurse’s office. He had a rough time saying out loud that he had killed Hector, even if it was by accident, but Anna seemed to show no judgment.
“So, what do we do now,” Zack asked when he finished up his side of the story.
“Well, we get out of here and get you some more medicine of course,” Anna said.
“And where do you suggest that we go, let alone find a way to get out of here.”
“What about the hospital that’s a few blocks from here,” Anna suggested.
Zack looked at Anna with a puzzling look. The two of them had been blindfolded on their way to the school, so there was no way that they could tell where they were.
“I came to school here as a kid,” Anna told Zack, reading his face. “That’s how I was able to find you after leaving the library. I remembered when my mother used to drop me off her as a kid in the mornings. We always passed by some hospital. It wasn’t a huge place, but it was much more significant than any other building in the area.”
“Still, how do we get out of here, even if we’re able to leave the school?”
“We just steal the car that they brought us in with,” Anna replied. “I overheard from one of the kids that Nicolas hides out in what used to be the principal’s office. That’s our best bet at finding car keys and other stuff that could help us out.”
The plan was made, and the two of them were ready to set it in motion. The principal’s office was a bit of a distance away, having to cross many halls, and the two of them hoping they wouldn’t be caught by a kid who was carrying some sort of firearm. They definitely stood out like sore thumbs when the oldest person there, besides Nicolas, looked no older than fourteen.
Zack and Anna hung low and hunchbacked as they passed through the halls. It was well into the night, so they at least had the cover of darkness on their side. What seemed to be instilled in everyone’s mind was to preserve whatever electricity there was left. While the hallway lights weren’t on, there were few classrooms that were lit, which contained groups of children conversing with each other. It was shocking to see that these kids, who were currently laughing and playing games, could just as quickly turn into hunters for their leader.
Anna had already gone through this, so this was simple enough for her. Zack had her lead the way, following each step she took, every single muscle movement, hoping that mirroring her actions would keep the two of them alive and out of sight. There was a few times where there was a child soldier going through the halls, usually having to use the restroom or to go converse with some other child. It was very easy to sneak into a dark, open room, where the two of them would hide in the shadows. What definitely made things easier for them was that none of the kids seemed to venture close enough to the library or the nurse’s office.
“We made it,” Anna said as the two of them were mere meters away from the principal’s office.
From outside of the door, it looked like the light was off and the door was locked. The two of them inferred that Nicolas wasn’t in the room, which was a sigh of relief. It didn’t take them long to figure out how to open the door. It wasn’t as if they were going to stay long; they just needed to find some keys, grab a handful of things, and get out of there as quickly as they could. In synchronization, the two of them kicked at the door, making quite a racket through the halls. As the door burst open, there was a very audible SLAM that echoed like thunder through the halls. As the two of them ran inside, the door looked clearly too broken to even close properly; they knew that they had to hurry. They could already hear kids making a commotion as they started preparing themselves.
Zack hit the lights the second that he walked in. Although his objective was to look for the keys, his sight caught something just as useful. Sitting in a far corner against a few (empty) bookshelves, was his katana and Anna’s axe. He tried to seem interested in finding the keys, but it was obvious what his real focus was as he made his way towards their weapons. Anna well enough made up for his lack of focus by frantically looking through the office drawers. She pulled them out, throwing everything on the floor, discarding anything that didn’t even look tiny or metallic. It was finally in the last drawer that she found a small loop of keys, several of them looking as if they were car keys.
; “I think I found it,” Anna announced as Zack was sifting through the stuff that was in the room. “At least we have a few options, but we don’t have time to waste.”
“Yeah, let’s get out as fast as we can,” Zack said, tossing Anna her axe.
As Zack turned to the door, there was a blast coming through the other side. The gun was several feet from his face. It was a jerk reaction, but his neck was quick enough to move him away from the bullet, causing him to collapse in the process. The bullet continued to zoom across the room, piercing through the window, shattering it before disappearing into the night. Zack looked up and saw the familiar smug face of Nicolas.
“Well, you certainly are one lucky sonova bitch,” Nicolas smirked, pointing his gun to the fallen Zack. “I happened to pass by your handy work on my way to see what was going on. Hector didn’t seem to have put up much of a fight.”
“Shut up,” Zack immediately yelled.
Zack thought quickly. He swept the katana, still in its sheath, at Nicolas’s legs, but he jumped out of the way in a matter of milliseconds. In that same motion, Nicolas shot at Zack again, but his balance was off this time around, causing him to shoot at the porcelain floor instead of who was lying right in front of him. Zack was now on his feet, his katana now fully out of its sheath and raised at Nicolas.
“Now I see that it really was pure luck on how you were able to take out Hector,” Nicolas laughed, pointing his gun directly at his enemy.
“I never meant to kill the kid,” Zack said out of frustration.
“Still, he died by your hand,” Nicolas returned.
“It was an accident,” Zack returned! While it was indirect, he could not deny that Hector’s death was indeed his own fault.
“Well, if that runt was actually something useful, he wouldn’t have died as easily as you claim,” Nicolas said, his expression unchanged.
Zack’s eyes widened. From the small amount of interaction that he saw between Nicolas and Hector, the kid seemed devoted to him, as if he were some kind of big brother. All the kids seemed that way; Nicolas was their guardian and protector, and so they owed everything to him. Zack and Anna wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for his influence over them. Now, knowing that one of his most faithful followers was dead and he didn’t even bat an eye, it literally made Zack sick.
What no one seemed to notice was Anna’s reaction to all of this. She too had noticed the kind of loyalty that the kids had towards Nicolas. When she knocked out the two kids in the library, she felt very remorseful of her actions, which was why she avoided any kind of confrontation in the halls. When Zack had told her about Hector, she began to cry, unaware of how much the situation seemed to impact her. And now, this person who not only doomed another by destroying the very thing that keeps them alive, but was uncaring towards a death of an ally as if they were some kind of pawn or rook. She was furious!
Anna screamed, running straight across the room, headed towards Zack and Nicolas. Her arms were holding the axe, raising just above her right shoulder. Nicolas tried to shoot, but he hit the blade and it ricochet into one of the book shelves. As soon as Nicolas was in striking range, he shot two more times, both of them zooming right passed her. With as much force as she could muster, Anna swung her axe, chopping right into his right shoulder.
“You bitch!” Nicolas exclaimed!
His screams were very similar to a child’s. The screams only got worse as Anna dug the blade from his shoulder free. A gusher of blood came flowing out from the wound. Nicolas dropped his gun, using his left hand to try to cover it up. Doing so wouldn’t help him though. With all of his panicking, it only caused his heart to beat faster, and causing more blood to spill out. Anna wasn’t going to allow for him to die bleeding out though; she wanted to be the central cause of it. Not something like with Hector and Zack where it was a chain of events, but something that was by her own hands. He was no different from the zombies that now infested their daily lives. He was a monster in her eyes.
She swung her blade up, again over her right shoulder, with furious anger in her eyes. Nicolas didn’t seem to even notice her actions as he laid on the floor, now hyperventilating and sobbing. This was Nicolas’s true nature. Zack was a spectator in the action. While he too had the passion to kill Nicolas where he laid, he couldn’t bring himself to allow Anna to do it. Anna was ready to swing her blade at the bleeding boy, Zack placed his hand against Anna’s right arm, holding her back from the finishing blow.
“What are you doing,” Anna demanded, still trying to swing.
“Leave him,” Zack said to her, his voice somewhat stern. “We don’t need this on our hands. We have what we want. He’s never going to bother us again. Let’s just leave before things get even more out of hand.”
“But he deserves this,” Anna cried out, her grip starting to weaken.
“Yes, ten times over,” Zack said, nodding his head. “But he’s going to have to live with that. His time will come soon, but it can’t be like this. Unfortunately, he’s still human.”
Anna’s grip on the axe fluctuated as Nicolas’s fate dangled in her mind. She knew that Zack was right, and she was strong enough to admit that, but she wanted this thing to die. He was like a zombie to her: cold, unfeeling, and blind to everything around him. Still, she looked at his eyes, which were filled with tears of pain. Even if it was slight, there was a sense of emotion, a sense of humanity within Nicolas. Finally, her arms fell to her side, the axe slowly slipping through her loosely gripped hand. Blood was dripping from the blade, the only sound left in the room besides Nicolas’s quiet, raspy sobs.
“Thank you, Anna,” Zack said, patting her on the back.
“Like you said,” Anna responded, her voice flat. “We don’t need. There is already so much wrong here, nothing’s going to change.”