Chapter Four:
Rendezvous
Location: Watts High School, Colorado
Medical Isolation Room 3 (formerly a small art classroom)
Time: 14:00
Date: 11th of October, 2147
David awoke with a start and took a deep inward breath. His lungs felt... normal. In fact, his body generally felt pretty normal. Didn’t he remember getting crushed by a building? Weren’t his ribs broken or something? Was that a dream?
He was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. It seemed kind of decayed, but most everything outside of SafeHaven had at least some level of wear and tear.
So, he wasn’t at SafeHaven. He knew that much.
He sat up. His vision was fuzzy around the edges.
He reached up to rub his eyes but found that he could not. His head started swimming as a wave of a nausea hit him like a truck, and he lie back down slowly while breathing out.
His arms and legs were restrained by steel handcuffs.
They may have once belonged to police officers, or perhaps they were originally purchased for more nefarious means, but either way, they were very strong.
David was too weak to even attempt to break them anyways. Another vague wave of nausea washed over him, and he felt his vision wane once again. He was content to lay motionless on the table for the moment.
Clinton was sitting in a corner of the room, in a chair that seemed to be the most comfortable thing around. Certainly more comfortable than David’s spot.
He quietly observed as David stirred.
David’s vision slowly restored as he lay still and blinked his eyes. He could sense someone’s presence in the room with him.
“He-Hello?”
Clinton stood up and walked to the door. His fuzzy white recliner was right next to it.
David was restrained directly across from the door, on the opposite wall. He was over ten feet away. He caught a glimpse of Clinton as he left and closed the door behind him.
David lay his head back down onto the thin cushion, as his vision began to fade again. His eyes felt like they were rolling loosely around in his skull. His limbs felt like they might float off the table, had the restraints not been in place.
David started to become aware of his body. He recognized that an IV was in his arm. The fluid was mostly transparent, but had a hint of a pale yellow color. He couldn’t identify the contents, but he couldn’t take out the IV either. He was stuck with it in, at least for now. Hopefully it wasn’t anything his body couldn’t handle.
“Who was that guy?” He wondered to himself as he slowly took in his surroundings.
The interior walls were painted a pale pastel blue. They were solid, with no windows or cracks. There were various posters on the walls, but the walls were largely bare. The posters depicted the color wheel, and had representations of famous artists throughout history, such as Van Gogh and Picasso.
Inside the room David could see the seat Clinton rose from and what seemed to be a steel tray of some sort to the far right of the padded table he was strapped to. There were some other empty chairs that looked different from the white chair Clinton sat in. They looked much smaller and made of some sort of plastic polymer. Oddly enough, they were stacked neatly against the wall.
David was having difficulty focusing. He felt his eyelids begin to flutter and his thoughts slur. His mind was typically sharper than this, he didn’t know what was going on. Everything felt sluggish.
Clinton reentered the room accompanied by another man wearing a surgical mask. They were both looking at David the second they entered the room.
The surgical mask man walked into the room first and gave David a polite nod while Clinton closed the door behind them.
Clinton pulled his comfortable white chair up next to the table David was strapped to, and stared at him directly in the eyes. David’s dark green eyes revealed no emotion, which was reflected by Clinton’s icy blue gaze.
David didn’t say a word.
He flicked his eyes quickly between subjects. He wished to make his eyes appear frantic, like he might be panicking, but was attempting to hide it. He started to breathe more heavily, but remained wordless.
Clinton raised his eyebrows, taking note of David’s behavior. He looked towards the man with the surgical mask.
“So what do you think?” Clinton asked.
“I think he needs to calm down.” the man replied.
Clinton sighed.
“He seems calm enough to me. Just proceed.”
The man looked back at Clinton and nodded tersely.
He came in closer to David and studied his face intently before speaking.
“Uh, hello there.”
David looked at him, then at Clinton, then back at him.
“I think I’d rather speak with that guy, thanks. He’s obviously your boss.” He looked back at Clinton.
David ignored the man and shout over at Clinton.
“What do you people want from me? Why am I restrained? What have you done to me?”
David rattled the chains around his wrist. His head rocked against the cushioned table.
The man with the mask spoke, “I know your situation isn’t ideal, but we-”
David looked back at him.
“Yo, what did I JUST say? I don’t want to talk to you. I can’t see your face. I got no answers for you, pal. Let me talk to your boss over there.”
Clinton chuckled to himself.
David heard it and looked back at him. He had already fallen into character.
“Oh, so now you’re laughing?! This shit is funny to you?! Who do you think you are? You’re gonna need to start giving me some answers if you want anything outta me. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where my family is. I was just in the shit one minute, and now I’m here?”
David let his voice catch in his throat. “There was … that horde… What happened to them? Did you see them when you found me? What happened to my family?”
The man with the mask’s eyes softened.
Clinton’s eyebrows raised, again, but he sat in his chair with his arms folded. He remained silent.
The man with the mask spoke.
“Look, if you’re gonna talk to anyone, it’s gonna have to be me. I’m sorry. I’m just part of the medical staff here. I don’t know about your family, okay? But if you have a family out there we can help you find them, I promise. We want to help you. We’re good people. We just need to know who you are, exactly, before we can tell you anything. This is our facility. We have families right here that we have to protect. You have to understand that, surely. Now. I’ve given you some answers, how about you return the favor? Where did you come from?”
David rest his head back against the table. They were already buying it, he almost wanted to smirk. Handcuffed, but he had the upper hand now. He made sure his voice was shaky when he spoke, which wasn’t hard considering how awful he felt at the moment.
“I’m from… The Ruins. My family and I had been staying in a cathedral to the southwest of, um, SafeHaven. But… When the horde came they…Well, they got in, and we had to retreat to the upper levels... But… that night…”
David gulped and tapped into a sadness inside of himself. His eyes started to tear up. His therapist said he would have made a great actor back when that was a thing.
“I think there was an explosion, or something. We were staying in the prayer tower and... Things just went crazy...”
David took a second to pause for dramatic effect while he quivered his voice and looked away from them dramatically. He took a few gasping breaths, just to really sell it. He stared only at the ceiling as tears welled up in his eyes and ran down his face.
“That building must have stood there forever… I just…It fell, and… and I don’t know where they are…”
David looked at Clinton again with tears now streaming down his face.
“Please… help me…” He begged.
Clinton’s face was unreadable, especially through David’s teary-eyes. He opened his mouth to speak when the door opened up.
A red-haired woman wearing blood-covered fatigues walked in. She smelled like literal death. David was quite acquainted with the scent.
Clinton turned around to face the door and quickly got out of his chair to approach her. The man in the mask also seemed to recognize her, but remained with David.
“Alex! What are you doing in here? Are you okay?” He asked her urgently in a hushed tone that wasn’t actually very hushed.
She whispered something below David’s hearing threshold. Whatever it was, it was long and emphatic. He caught a few words here and there, like “you” and “seriously?” which definitely was being used in a rhetorical question. She used one hand to block her mouth from David being able to read her lips, which he probably would have been able to do were his vision not so blurry, and she used the other to make small hand gestures to illustrate points to Clinton. For a minute it kind of looked like she might have been playing rock paper scissors, but that might have been the drugs.
Clinton looked over at David, then back at her, then back to David, then back to her.
“Alex… I just don’t think that’s a good idea…”
Alex looked at him angrily. Her voice was raised.
“Look! You-“
Clinton stopped her by raising his hand up with only his pointer finger, and shouting loudly and tersely,
“Hey!”
Alex glared at him but remained silent.
David was awestruck. He had no clue what was going on, but he seldom witnessed escalated tensions like this without some kind of violence ensuing afterwards. This guy was definitely in charge. He briefly wondered if the man would have been violent had David not been there. The other guy did say they were good people, it could be part of their act.
Clinton motioned his finger over to the man in the surgical mask and he nodded.
David watched in horror as the man with the mask picked up a syringe filled with a clear liquid that resembled hand sanitizer off of the metal tray nearby.
David shouted as the man approached with the needle.
“Woah! No! No! No no no no no… please… Please. PLEASE! No! I was just trying to act tough! Don’t hurt me! Please! What is that? Don’t put that in me! No more needles! No more, please!”
David’s face portray abject horror. He looked at Clinton, Alex, and the man with the mask pleadingly. He tried as hard as humanly possible to elicit an empathetic response from at least one of them. He didn’t have to pretend to be scared though, he hated needles.
The man with the mask ignored his pleas and wrapped a piece of rubber around the lower part of David’s bicep. He pat the interior of David’s elbow and rubbed it firmly with the exterior of his glove.
David screamed “please” over and over. He thrash against the cushioned table he was strapped to and tried to make it as difficult as possible for someone to stab a needle into his arm.
“Gage, stop!” Alex yelled.
The man with the mask looked back at her.
David stopped screaming but continued to breathe frantically. He whispered out a small “Gage, please.”
The man in the mask stopped but looked back at her. He groaned.
“Alex. You should stay out of this. Listen to Clinton. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Yeah, I know what he’s doing too, and it’s wrong. You know that shit could kill him.”
Upon hearing that David let out a shrill howl.
“Kill me? You want to kill me? Why? PLEASE! Just let me go please!!! I didn’t do anything! I don’t even want to be here!”
Gage let out a groan.
“It’s not supposed to kill him. It just can kill him, you’re being an alarmist.”
Alex tilt her head to the side slightly and looked at Gage.
“Really?!” she scoffed, whipping her palms into upturned frustration.
Gage threw his hands in the air, “Yes, really Alex, I-“
Clinton interjected.
“Hey! Look. If you wanted to be involved in this, Alex, congratulations, you just got yourself involved in this. I can’t say I’m surprised, but I am a bit disappointed. You’re obviously being manipulative and you know it. You’ve not only ruined any anonymity we have in this interrogation, but you’re obviously trying to force my hand as well as his. But you need to listen very carefully, for all we know he’s the one that killed our men.”
“Our men?” David thought to himself. So these were the people behind the SafeHaven attack.
“Oh yeah. I’m sure it was him. Not the horde of zombies y’all brought with you, or the giant mounted machine guns, or the security forces, or SafeHaven’s fucking military, but this guy. This one person who is barely alive, obviously terrified, and now strapped to an uncomfortable table drugged out of his mind. This is the singular dude that killed everyone.”
Alex’s face was getting red, so she took a breath to relax. Her cheeks returned to a slightly more neutral rosy color.
“Look Clinton, I’m just as upset about them dying as you. You know that. But, listen, you can’t just take it out on innocent people like this.”
She walked up to him and stared intensely at him. This was the first time David saw Clinton seem to soften. He took note of that.
“Clinton…” She pleaded.
He turned away, and scratched his chin as he stared at the pale blue walls around him.
“For God’s sake Clint! You just rescued him! For what? Maybe some false intel you torture out of him?! If you just treat him like a human being, maybe he’d tell you what you wanted to know! Did you really need to shoot him up with roofies?”
Clinton was silent, still staring at the wall, his hand now motionless against his chin.
“Just talk to him. Or better yet, let me talk to him. You’re both needed elsewhere anyways.”
Clinton looked at her and shook his head, lowering his voice again, but not quite enough that David couldn’t hear.
“I’ll admit, the news you brought does require my immediate attention, and Gage should probably attend as well. But don’t get it twisted. That man is not to be freed until I say so. There are elements at play here you aren’t aware of.”
Alex’s face seemed mildly excited, and David sighed in relief. Clinton took a step closer to David and narrowed his eyes.
“Also, you BOTH better remember that we DID save him and we’re just being cautious because there are other lives at risk. He wouldn’t have woken up at all if we didn’t give him some of our very limited supply of drugs. We just gave him a few extras to pacify him. Don’t make this into a thing just because…”
He refocused his eyes at her and cocked his head at Alex.
She scoffed and turned away from him while crossing her arms.
“I GET IT, okay, you didn’t only roofie him, you did it in addition to saving his life, what a hero. Just go already. Both of you need to bounce. I have a radio, I’ll be right here and he will be right there. No longer drugged, and more prepared to answer your questions. I promise.”
Gage looked at her, then took off his latex gloves. He lay them back on the metal tray with the syringe. He pulled down his surgical mask with his bare hands and touched Alex on the shoulder.
David silently observed, trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible.
Alex recoiled from Gage’s touch.
“Alex, if you don’t want me to do this, I won’t. I just… You know, I want to do what’s right.”
Alex turned back to him. Her eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms.
“Did this feel right to you, Gage?”
Gage looked down. His mousey brown hair hung down like stalactites.
“I mean… It did…”
Alex looked over at Clinton, who was waiting impatiently, then back at Gage who was already inching towards him, and sighed.
Gage spoke again.
“Alex, just… don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
Alex grimaced at him.
“I’d say the same to you, but I doubt you’d listen… Now GO already!”
Gage seemed pretty intensely upset by Alex’s words, but said nothing. He exit the room quickly.
At the door, Clinton motioned for Alex to approach and whispered something to her before leaving the room. Gage waited in the hall. No one could hear what Clinton said but Alex.
“Look, Alex… Gage is just lost. Don’t blame him for my actions, he does what he’s told, you know that. That doesn’t make you magically right either, kiddo. You have to understand, I still think this is the best course of action, and if we come back and he still won’t give us any answers we will follow through with Randy’s suggestion. I promise you that. What Gage said was right. Don’t do anything stupid, you know, like you did charging in here half-cocked with some scheme. I think that guy is a trained killer and he may have lived in or even worked for SafeHaven. You know how those people are. You know what they do. Things already don’t add up. His clothes don’t make sense. They’re pretty fresh nanofiber, but no SafeHaven insignias anywhere. No identifiable markings at all. No brands, nothing.”
Alex’s face showed a mild look of concern, she nodded slightly as Clinton spoke.
“He said he was hiding at the cathedral to the south of SafeHaven with his family. The same one we holed up in, until it got freakishly overrun. Remember that? With the two really big ones?”
Alex did remember that. Marcus died that day. His brother hasn’t been the same since.
“That’s no coincidence, Alex. Something big is going on, and he is at the center of it. I already don’t trust him and neither should you. I think he’s been acting this whole time. He could be a spy, or a mercenary, or something worse I haven’t thought of yet. He could be harmless too –maybe– but he could also be a hypothetical Pandora’s Box. Yeah, I saved him but… I just don’t know.”
Alex pat him on the shoulder and whispered quietly.
“You’ve already taught me not to trust anyone who doesn’t deserve it Clint. You saved me all those years ago, and I turned out alright, yeah? But remember, I didn’t want to be saved until people treated me with compassion. You and Johnathan showed me that. Sometimes things get so dark, you need someone else to shine a bit of light for you. Let me try compassion with our new guest. Maybe he’s alright. I don’t trust anybody and I think you’re being a bit harsh with the guy. If he sucks, then he sucks, ya know? Then maybe go ahead with your truth serum interrogation or whatever. First though, I think we should try being nice. I know that isn’t your strong suit, so how about you just let me do it? Now go. They need you out there.”
Clinton reluctantly smiled.
“Okay Alex. I’m proud of you. I’ve loved watching you grow up wiser than me.”
Alex smiled back at him.
“Don’t get all sappy on me now, you were all tough guy just a second ago.”
He gingerly touched the side of her face with his hand, whispered “Just be safe, Alex.” Then left.
Alex was now alone in the room with David.
She silently walked back over to him and sat down in the comfortable chair Clinton was sitting in, pulling it close to David’s position on the table.
For a moment there was no sound save for the buzzing fluorescent lights up above.
David’s stomach groaned, breaking the silence.
“Whoa, I can’t believe how loud that was! You must be super hungry, when did you last eat?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know.” said David, looking away from her.
“Pft, what do you mean you don’t know? Your stomach knows!” Alex teased.
David shrugged. His stomach growled again, this time even louder.
“Your stomach is growling because you need to eat, dude... I get it, I promise it won’t have anything except food in it. What do you like?”
“What do I like, what? Last time I ate?” David was confused.
“Jesus dude, how much have they already drugged you up? Fucking ridiculous... and they were giving you more! Ugh, fucking Gage… Yeah… what do you like… to eat?”
Alex pretends to eat a big bite out of something, with a bit of a ~howp~ sound.
“What do I like to eat?” David said, at first like a question, then as a statement.
“What do I like to eat…”
David was silent for a moment and stared intensely at Alex.
“Um… what is… to like… to eat?”
“What is…? W-What? You don’t know... eating? Like… eating… like…”
Alex made a motion like she had a spoon or fork in her hand and was shoveling food quickly from a plate into her mouth. She gobbled up the ghost food, which she accompanied with a pretend crunching sound.
David looked at her with abject confusion, and a little bit of horror.
“You mean, like, a zombie? Do you guys think I’m a zombie?! Look at me, I’m not a zombie, okay.”
Alex threw her hands up in the air in frustration.
“OH my god are you kidding me? Is this some sort of reverse interrogation tactic? Just pretend to be as stupid as possible? Because if that’s what you’re doing, that’s a new one for me. You’re doing a great job though… Or, are you like, that high? I mean, honestly, how the fuck could you have gotten into your twenties without ever eating something? Doesn’t make any sense.”
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David shook his head and his stomach gurgled again.
The IV was currently sustaining him. He had been given a concoction of medicines, liquids, and nutrients that made him feel awake and kind of giddy, but also made him pretty docile.
“Okay well, whatever game you’re playing, it can’t even fool your stomach so, you’re definitely not gonna fool me. I promise I’m not poisoning or drugging you, okay? I’m gonna get you some carrots. We have a surplus of them at the moment. Does that sound good to you? You want some carrots, or do you wanna keep being weird while your stomach digests itself?”
David didn’t think he was being weird, he truly did not know what eating was. He only ever drank things or took K pills, eating just wasn’t something he had ever remembered doing or hearing about. He had seen the things zombies did with humans, but that seemed… different and wrong. That wasn’t eating… was it?
He muttered weakly.
“Okay, I guess I’ll do carrots, whatever that is.”
“Okay, you’re still gonna go with that I-don’t-know-how-to-eat bit then… sure… well, I suppose you do have to commit once you start… Alright, well, whatever I’ll be back… Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone, I’ll be back in a flash.”
Then just like that, Alex darted out of the room.
David soaked in what had just happened.
He thinks that girl just attempted to save his life? Was she being nice? Was this part of some larger scheme?
All of these people and their behaviors were wildly foreign to David. They didn’t seem to have any of the protocols SafeHaven relied on. Their manner of speaking to each other, and the ways they carried themselves. He hadn’t seen anything like it before.
Whatever drug they were going to inject him with wouldn’t have killed him by itself, probably. All death angels class 3 or higher had been trained to sustain their bodies through poisons and chemicals that might kill other weaker humans or those without nanites in their system.
He was a natural during that training. His natural tolerance was exponentially higher than nearly all of the other Death Angels, he didn’t really even need the training.
David seldom did any drugs recreationally, other than smoking marijuana, and when he did, he would always become sober before anybody else. His metabolism was absolutely insane.
David recovered from being put under or poisoned much faster than the average person. Anesthesiologists in his youth often remarked about how difficult of a patient he was for them. No anesthesiologist felt comfortable giving a seven year old David as much anesthetic as a three hundred pound man, but of course, they still did it.
David had been to the various different doctors of SafeHaven many times, and he vaguely remembered seeing the Grandmaster’s own personal doctor a few times when he was very young.
Too young to even remember using years to distinguish his age.
Every time they would always find something to remark about on his charts.
He was such a marvelous specimen, they would say.
The systems they were familiar with were all different, but they seemed to unanimously agree; his nanites were truly something special.
Just because David was able to tolerate some basic toxins didn’t mean Clinton and Gage wouldn’t find something stronger, or give him more when their first attempt didn’t work. They also could’ve used more traditional torturing techniques to achieve the same dead-end result. David had no idea who these people were. He didn’t know how interrogations usually ended here, but he knew most of them ended in slow painful deaths at SafeHaven.
The girl though, Alex. David felt something about her.
It was foreign to him, but the best way he could describe it was like he had known her for a long time.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Alex returned to the room with an opened can of carrots. She lifted a small sliced carrot disc on the end of a fork and put it into her mouth.
David watched her with intrigue. He watched the wrinkles around her lips and nose move as she chewed on the carrot. He had never seen a carrot before. He had never seen food before, or a living person chewing.
“You see this? What I’m doing right now?”
She took another carrot disc and put it in her mouth.
David nodded. His neck was getting strained from craning his head to look around while laying horizontal.
“This is called eating you cheeky fuck. Now do you want some or not? No skin off my back if you starve to death. That’s your own doing.”
David was cautious. Alex got closer to the table and his eyes flicked towards hers. They made eye contact for a moment and she registered David’s fear. He was exploding with anxiety, but was trying to remain calm and in control.
He had no idea what to expect. He wanted to ask her a lot of questions like, what is a carrot? But couldn’t voice any of them.
“Woah, dude, you’re shaking like a wet dog. I’m just kidding around. Trying to lighten the mood. I really didn’t poison it or drug it or anything if that’s what you’re worried about. Obviously. I mean… I’m eating from this jar as we speak.”
She took another bite and crushed the orange bits between her teeth. David couldn’t take his eyes off her teeth. Chewing. Chewing.
“Look I’ll feed it to you, you just gotta sit there, chew, then swallow. Think you can do that? No answering questions and stuff until after you’re not obviously suffering and terrified. Okay?”
David tentatively nodded and reluctantly opened his mouth. He felt like he understood what eating was, now that he saw it, he just didn’t remember actually ever doing it. He didn’t remember the last time he had even seen someone do it, either. He was still scared, for a reason he didn’t quite grasp. He didn’t feel like Alex wanted to kill him...
Alex lowered the carrot slice into David’s mouth and made a ~bweooooop~ sound effect while she did.
David gave her a concerned look when she made the sound to which she furrowed her eyebrows.
“Chill out dude.” Her look said.
David’s mouth was experiencing something it hadn’t since he was an extremely young child. Memories, in the form of fragments of taste and scent came bursting into his mind.
The flavor soaking his mouth immediately filled his brain with flashbacks abstracted into just vague emotions.
David was tasting something, for possibly the first time. But it felt like he had done this before?
Alex giggled. She could see David’s face light up when he started to register the flavor of the carrot. His eyes were wide, and his face seemed genuinely bewildered.
He was registering that there was such a thing as flavor at all. He noticed her expression.
“What?”
David asked with his mouth full.
“You’re just not very good at hiding that you love carrots, buddy.”
“Don’t call me buddy. Call me David, please, um, Alex.”
Alex smiled. Her smile filled David with an unfamiliar warmth and made him want to smile back.
“Oh, so I feed you one carrot and suddenly we’re on a first name basis, huh? You sure do move quickly David.”
David smiled. It was the first time he hadn’t forced himself to smile in a long time.
“I mean… maybe you could, like, eat me a bit more?”
Alex rolled her eyes but laughed. She speared another carrot with her fork and fed it to David, who was now eagerly awaiting.
“I’m feeding you, not eating you.” She joked. David was too preoccupied with eating to reply, so Alex continued.
“So listen, David, now that we’re on a first name basis and I’ve gotten some food in you, how about you tell me where you’re really from? This is supposed to be an interrogation after all.”
David looked up at her, his smile quickly fading. Right. An interrogation.
“Clinton knows you weren’t really holed up in that cathedral. At least, not as long as you said you were. We had a few recon units stationed there until a couple of big ass zombies came by with a whole pack of regular ones and just straight up invaded the place. It was crazy. Like something out of a horror movie, I’m told. Most of the guys got out alright, but they did lose one. A guy named Marcus. His brother is still pretty shaken up about it. He helped us lock those zombies in the cathedral. The only way left in and out was the backdoor we left unlocked.”
“There was a fucking back door you left unlocked?” David asked, unable to control himself.
“Is that not how you got in? The place was overrun. No one could’ve gotten in or out of there in one piece, and we cleared that building top to bottom before that.”
“Okay, well I’d tell you, but you won’t believe me.”
“Well, don’t lie to me and I’ll start to believe you.”
“I uh… jumped in through a third story window.”
Alex pondered for a second, then burst into laughter.
“What!? You gotta be joking! You’d be dead if you did that!”
David stopped and looked away from Alex. He sighed.
“Look Alex… You need to let me go. Give me some supplies for a few days, point me in the direction of The Ruins and I can handle the rest myself, I promise. Please. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. If my people find me here and see you holding me hostage…”
Alex put the can of carrots down on the metal tray and plopped back down on the comfortable chair, still fidgeting with the fork.
“Wow, I know you’ve said a lot of stupid drugged-up stuff here, but uh… you’re in kind of a shitty position to be making demands, aren’t you? Also, relax, we’re more than capable of taking care of ourselves, thank you very much. What are you making these indirect threats for? Are you wearing a tracker? Who exactly are your people?”
David shook his head.
“No, I’m not wearing a tracker. At least, I don’t think so, although with nano-tech you can’t ever really know for sure, right? No one knows where I am, probably. At least not yet. But if they don’t know where I am, they WILL come looking. If they find out you took me, or find a way to track me here… You’re… probably all going to die.”
“Well that’s depressing. Who will be killing us exactly? And why?”
“You’ll die to the people I work with. And why? Just because the man I work for said so. Or because they’ll just want to kill you. Or maybe a bit of both.”
Alex clattered the fork back into the carrot can.
“Oh… So you work for them don’t you? SafeHaven? Is your boss the GrandMaster?”
David didn’t say anything, he avert his gaze from Alex. He didn’t even know this girl, yet lying to her suddenly felt impossible. He felt so exposed in front of her.
“Your silence is very telling David.” Alex said.
“I…”
David looked back at her, a grimace spread across his face.
“It’s best if I just don’t tell you. If I go back and tell them none of you knew who I was and I escaped before anyone noticed they might just let everything go back to business as usual.”
Alex scoffed.
“Uh, I don’t think they’re gonna be going back to business as usual any time soon. Not after an attack like the one we just pulled.”
The attack was definitely the biggest and most coordinated David had ever personally seen at SafeHaven, and he had lived there for as long as he could remember.
“So you attacked us? What? Why would you do that? There are innocent people there who need protection! Besides, nothing can get through the walls! You just sent your troops to die!”
Alex shrugged. “Look dude. We can go down that path if you want, but If we’re gonna list atrocities of my group versus the atrocities of yours, you’re going to have a much longer list than us.”
“Okay… So if you recognize how dangerous my people are, then you see what I’m saying! What if they’re tracking me and I don’t know? Honestly, the people at SafeHaven are mostly nice people. You just have to leave the GrandMaster alone. Let him do what he wants and go on with your business. Things go more smoothly, for everybody, that way. The longer I’m here the more I put everyone here at risk. If you really care about the people here, just let me go back and work things out. I have some leeway.”
Alex sighed.
“You make a good point. They could already be searching for you. Hell, they could be coming here at this very moment… But you yourself don’t know where you are, so I doubt they’re going to know where you are. Plus, this definitely won’t be the first place they check. We are FAR from SafeHaven. The Ruins are the first place, and believe me, they’re only going to find danger there. Now, why would they care so much? Why were you outside the walls? What do you mean you have leeway?”
David gulped. His voice was shaky. He looked off to the right side of Alex’s face.
“I… was… a, um, scout. I was in The Ruins looking for any hostile entities that might be trying to attack SafeHaven. I communicate where enemies might be coming from, how many, what kind of weapons they have…”
“Yeah, David, I know what a scout does.” Alex said.
David chuckled.
“Okay well then you know how things can go south when thousands of zombies get involved. You might just end up jumping into third floor windows. I was just trying to survive. That’s all anyone wants.”
Alex stared intensely at the wall.
“Nah, that’s not all everyone wants. Lots of people want more. Some people want power, like your GrandMaster. Some people want an escape. A lot of people want to reproduce too. Some more… desperately than others.”
She looked down at the ground, a confusing mixture of emotion contorting her face.
“Some just want to live peaceful fulfilling lives too… but I guess this isn’t really a world for those people anymore.”
David was pretty confused. Alex seemed to be troubled somehow.
“Ooookay… well… If they don’t find me in The Ruins, they’ll search for me and you just don’t want to be the person they decide to blame it on. This place, wherever we are, will be absolutely glassed. You will all be killed, plain and simple. I can go back and specifically report there’s nothing to find over here. If they do send a party here I can join and keep them steered away from you.”
Alex looked back at David. He could see a gentle mist of tears in her eyes.
“So now you’re bargaining? Why should I trust you now when I caught you in a lie literally minutes ago?”
“Because…shit, I don’t know. That weird feeling?”
Alex was silent and continued to stare at him.
“I mean, you can feel that too right? I mean, I’m not the most in touch with my emotions but… you, like… you know I don’t want to hurt you, right? You don’t want to hurt me either. You can feel it. I can feel it. I don’t know what it is, but we both just… seem to understand that, ya know?”
Alex continued to stare at him. She did feel what he was talking about, but she didn’t know why and she sure as hell wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction.
“Okay, yeah, wow, you are on so many drugs right now. Suppose I did trust you for some stupid reason, and I mean, I’d have to be stupid as shit to trust you, what could I even do? I can’t let you go without Clinton’s permission. We don’t want to leave SafeHaven under the control of a tyrannical dictator either. The attack we planned was intentional. SafeHaven controls nearly all of the resources in the country, and hordes anything of value for themselves. We had to regroup, for now, but this war is far from over.”
“War?” David grimaced.
“War!? You want to go to war?” His voice started to get louder.
“WAR should stay in the old world. Why can’t you just allow peace? Don’t attack SafeHaven again. Please. It’s just senseless death and killing.”
Alex snapped a harsh look at David.
“Why can’t we allow peace? Your military slaughters innocents and takes their possessions, every day! You horde medical facilities and supplies that could help hundreds of thousands of living healthy humans that die needlessly outside your walls. You run supply gauntlets that are worse than any crime bosses in the old world. And, UGH, not to mention the sex trafficking. SafeHaven brings death and misery and fucking bullshit to everything it touches. Its very existence makes it less safe for anyone outside its walls. We only seek to liberate it from tyrannical rule and make it accessible to the people. We have a network of survivors, and SafeHaven would make a perfect central hub. We want the killing to stop too. We want to rebuild.”
David was silent. They both sat quietly for a long time. It was difficult to tell who was right. They were both born in a world that was beyond repair, told the only solution was following their leader unquestioningly. They both grew up in a world bathed in blood, and neither had clean hands despite their youth.
Alex looked over at David. Their eyes met and they held each other’s gaze for a few moments before Alex spoke.
“Have you killed people before David?”
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“I… couldn’t tell you”
“Well… could you give me an estimate?”
“No I could not.”
Alex sighed.
“You scared to share?”
“No. I honestly don’t think I can count that high.”
Alex sat in silence for a few moments, then David continued.
“I don’t know what number you’re thinking of, but it’s probably more than whatever that number is. And then, whatever you’re thinking after that, it’s more than that too. Where I go, death inherently follows. That’s the kind of… scout… that I am. You understand? Like you said... SafeHaven practically runs the globe, and I am extremely effective at what I do. That’s why I have leeway, and that’s why I have to get out of here.”
“Wow” Alex said. She looked down at the tile floor below them.
She paused and pondered for a few seconds before replying, cracking a smirk.
“Did you write that beforehand? It sounds almost like a really edgy poem.”
Alex laughed at herself. David looked her in the eyes again. He had an empty look on his face. Alex looked back at him, smiling. At first, David’s face seemed to be blank. He seemed to be nearly emotionless.
Her smile faded as she looked at David more deeply.
“Oh.” She said, as she began to register that David just admit to killing potentially… thousands? Tens of thousands? More?
She could see a deep fire within his eyes. Behind his thin veil, she could see the gaping maw of death. His eyes somehow communicated they had seen more people strangled to death than people hugging each other. His skin was tan and smooth, but his flesh had been bathed in blood so many times it never felt washed out. His teeth would sooner tear your throat out than smile in your direction.
It deeply unsettled her, yet she did not sense maliciousness or evil inside of him. It was intriguing and weirdly paradoxical.
“It’s… okay, David. We’ve all killed.”
She empathized with David. She felt a similar pain, but knew nothing of his true deeds. She knew she only glimpsed the reflections of memories on his face. She knew she would never truly understand how awful the things he had seen were, just as he would never know of the awful things she had experienced, but she still wasn’t afraid. She had seen plenty of horror throughout her lifel, and David, regardless of his deeds, could not be the worst of it.
David could feel her register what he meant. She really recognized him, and the weight he was forced to carry. He felt recognized by her in a way he hadn’t before.
She didn’t see a monster, or a weapon, she saw a human being forced into the shape of one.
David broke eye contact with her as his eyes darted skittishly to her right. He felt himself blush slightly.
“Yeah… so… Believe me. You want me out of here, pronto. I will do everything I can to prevent SafeHaven from coming and finding you here if you just tell me where here is. I don’t want the people here to die. I try to only kill those who need to die.”
“You kill those who need dying?”
“Yes.”
“As… a scout.”
“Er, I mean, okay that part was maybe a little bit of a lie.”
“Why have you done so much killing?”
“Because the GrandMaster has decided that a lot of people have needed to die.”
“My people who attacked the South Wall didn’t need to die. Did you kill them?”
David was silent. He avert his eyes again. What was this power she had over him? Was it the drugs?
“David. I’m serious. Look me in the eyes.”
He looked at her.
“I… don’t know”
“You don’t know?? How do you not know?”
Alex’s cheeks began flush with anger.
“It’s hard to explain… I just… I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember if you partook in the deaths of dozens of fully armed men with vehicles and heavy weaponry.”
David looked her in the eyes.
“I think I may have killed at least one. I don’t know about the rest. I really don’t remember. I’m telling the truth. Please, I have these… blackouts.”
Alex sort of believed him, and David was being honest, but Alex still remained reasonably suspicious.
“Which one do you remember killing? How’d you kill him? Why is he the one you’re certain of?”
“I don’t remember killing him, but I think I stabbed him. I only remember pulling the knife out of his throat. I kind of ‘lose track of time’ sometimes. He was just some guy. I think he had a goatee. He was firing the RPG.”
Alex looked weirdly relieved.
“Okay David. You’re not leaving me a lot of options here, but… I believe you. I don’t know how it makes sense, but I can tell those were some of the most honest words you’ve said in this room. I’ve been thinking about all of this…
All of what you said and…
I’m going to help you, against my better judgement.”
David was flabbergasted.
“You better go back and prevent them from finding us, like you said. We aren’t staying here, but I don’t want them coming anywhere near this location either. Do you understand that? Hopefully we never see each other again, and we both go on living. My only other option, if you’re as much of a liability as you claim, is killing you right here and now and making sure no one could ever find your body. I don’t want to do that, but Clinton might, after hearing everything you told me. But, listen, if any SafeHaven troops come by this location, I’ll know. Then I’ll personally hunt you down to the ends of the earth and kill you myself. I don’t care what you are, a scout, a soldier, a fucking wendigo. Doesn’t change a god damn thing, I will end you if you hurt the people I love. Now, do you understand what I’m saying?”
David nodded. He wasn’t afraid of her, but he could tell this girl was tough. She read him better than anyone else he had ever run into. She didn’t even have to interrogate him, he just willingly told her everything she wanted to know.
“Alex. You have my word that I will not let any harm come to you or your people. Please just let me go.”
Alex looked at him and laughed.
“I can’t just let you go David. Clinton would kill me. You’re going to escape yourself. Here, I’ll just put this paperclip on this tray. You can figure it out yourself from there. I’m gonna go, because I’m just a young immature girl. I got bored of you and went off to do something else. I have no idea how you got out. Thanks for answering my questions. I’ll only tell Clinton as much as I think he can handle.”
David looked at her in astonishment. This girl was full of surprises. He assumed Clinton was in charge before, but now seeing this girl handle herself… he wasn’t so sure.
“Bye David, it was almost nice talking to you!” Alex said in a sweet sarcastic tone as she waltzed towards the door.
She left the room and closed the door quietly behind her.
David was in awe.
He was trained to be interrogated. He was trained to be tortured and not share a single shred of truth, but Alex simply talked information out of him. Perhaps somehow the drugs in his IV made him susceptible, he thought to himself.
And carrots? David had to get some more of those.
He looked over at the tray Alex left the paperclip and carrots on.
The can of carrots was just out of reach. All David could see was the fork peeking out of the top of the can.
David struggled to move his arms. There was no way he could reach the tray from here. Alex knew that from the beginning.
David sighed heavily and stared at the ceiling.
Alex just played with him. She knew the table was out of reach. She knew he couldn’t move.
He slammed his arms down against the cushioned table heavily in frustration. The handcuffs limit the range of his swing, but he still was able to slam the table with considerable force.
David felt his body shift slightly. It appeared the cushioned table was on wheels.
David uttered a hushed sound of excitement and relief that came out as a squeak.
He started heaving his body towards the tray in small jerking motions. The table was difficult to maneuver intentionally, but it was sturdy, and seemed unlikely to topple over. David eventually got close enough to the tray to touch it with the fingertips of his cuffed hands.
He gingerly felt around the top of the tray until he located the paperclip. He was careful not to accidentally prick himself with the needle Gage almost inject him with earlier.
David gently picked up the paperclip with his right hand and pulled it into his palm. He began to undo the intentional bends of the metal, leaving only the single smallest U shape at the end. This created a little rod with a hook at the end.
David’s palms were becoming increasingly sweaty as he fiddled with the paperclip and anxiously watched the door.
There was no telling when Clinton or Gage would come back.
He had no idea what they were off doing to begin with.
David fished the end of the hook around, trying to locate the small keyhole near his wrist.
Eventually he felt the paperclip tool catch and slide into a small hole in the handcuffs.
David was still very tired, so he had closed his eyes long ago. Keeping them shut helped him visualize the internal components of the handcuffs. They were simple to understand when laid out in front of you, just some tumblers and pins. He could visualize them so clearly in his mind’s eye.
He was feeling good about his chances of picking the lock successfully because of the amount he was sweating. In training they had told David that sweat was his friend and his ally. He felt luckier when he was sweating. He was unaware of the nanites in his sweat, invisibly helping him with his endeavors, casting the image of the interior of the lock into his mind in a way he uniquely understood.
David fiddled with the paperclip until he finally felt the handcuffs loosen with a click.
He let out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding in, as his right hand was freed from capture. He quickly sat up and went to work on the handcuffs restraining his other three limbs.
He freed himself from the others significantly faster than the first. David was still exhausted, but felt renewed vigor at the thought of his escape. He had no idea what was beyond the door.
David sat on the table rubbing his wrists and ankles and listened.
There were no background noises other than the faint buzz of the fluorescent lights.
Not an air conditioner. Not a motor. Not a voice. Not distant footsteps.
Nothing.
David could very clearly hear the chafe of his palms rubbing against his skin while he massaged his recently handcuffed limbs.
He looked himself over and pulled out the IV in his arm. He then rolled down his sleeve and began to stretch.
David was still wearing the same clothes he remembered having on last, his black SafeHaven combat fatigues, so that was a good sign. He didn’t remember when he put them on, but he was grateful to have them. They provided pretty serious protection, and a sense of comfort.
He had no weapons though, and no idea where he was… those signs weren’t quite as good.
David also wasn’t truly sure Alex actually left him to free himself. She may have gone back to report what she learned to Clinton, but David didn’t really think that to be the case. Surely she didn’t truly expect him to be able to break free with a paperclip though. Perhaps it was some sort of test. Maybe she was watching him right now somehow.
David scanned the room for cameras, but he saw none. At least, no obvious ones.
There were very few places to hide a hidden camera, there were only the posters on the walls, the table, lights, and chairs.
David still didn’t want to take any chances. He needed to get out before anyone figured out he escaped.
He looked down at the tray and grabbed the injection needle Gage was attempting to use on him. If he ran into him, he planned to give him a taste of his own medicine.
If he didn’t see Gage he thought maybe it would help him escape. It was the closest thing he had to a weapon.
He put it in a pocket on his belt made to hold flares or explosives. The diameter of the tube attached to the needle protuberance was similar to that of a flare. It made the needle sit firmly in the holster without running a huge risk of accidentally injecting himself or squirting its contents away uselessly.
David expectantly picked up the can of carrots off of the tray and looked inside. To his dismay, the bottom of the can only contained liquid with little orange bits floating around. He groaned.
He really wanted more carrots.
Eating was a new experience for David, but he was pretty sure he loved it. It made him feel better pretty quickly as well, and he could tell. He would likely need to find more food and some water before he would be able to leave the compound. It seemed unlikely they would have K-pills™ here.
David walked towards the door to exit the room expectantly. Someone could be behind right the door that very second, waiting for the perfect moment to enter and pounce.
The anxiety rose in David’s stomach as he reached towards the door handle.
He pulled it open slowly and peeked his head through the crack created.
The door opened to a hallway continuing to David’s right and left. The tiled floor made a checkered pattern of purple and white. The walls were white and decorated with posters as well as various mysterious smears.
This place was obviously overrun at one point and was never truly cleaned. The messes may have even been made at the very beginning of the outbreak. They inferred a panic, with lots of people running into each other. David was not an expert at analyzing blood splatter patterns, but it was a skill he began to pick up from “working with blood” for so long.
Faint voices began to echo down the hall. David could make out three distinctive ones. It didn’t sound like Clinton, Gage, or Alex, but he wasn’t completely positive.
David closed the door and took a step back out of the doors swing range.
He listened closely for the sounds of footsteps. He assumed the voices would continue down the hall and pass, but if they decided to come into his room... well… David let his hand creep down to the syringe… He would be ready.
David wait at attention for a few moments. Then moments began to turn into minutes.
He heard no footsteps down the hall. No one passed the door.
David tentatively opened the door again and once again checked the hall.
He saw nothing changed from his initial check, and could no longer hear the voices.
They must have gone somewhere else.
He closed the door one last time, but kept his hand on the door handle.
He closed his eyes and thought for a second. What was his plan? He still felt extremely weak, he was in a completely unknown location with no real weapons, no back-up… What was he going to do?
He smirked slightly to himself as he realized, his plan boiled down to the same basic plan as always… survive.
At this moment, he wanted to get more carrots and he didn’t want to be interrogated. The obvious next step was to leave this room and go figure out where carrots were. So, David supposed that was as good of a plan as any.
He looked back; a bent up paperclip with a hooked end was the only thing left on the cushioned table David was formerly handcuffed to. The handcuffs hung from the table. The IV was nearly empty and the needle lay uselessly on the ground.
Clinton was definitely not going to be happy when he found this.