The soldier lowered his hand like he didn’t have the strength to keep it up. He took a deep breath, wincing in pain.

“One of them?” Jack asked. “What the hell does that mean?”

Daniel knelt down beside the soldier. “What happened here?” he asked. “Who have you got locked up in there?”

“Is he bitten?” Kenji asked. “Is he infected?”

“Don’t let him out,” the soldier repeated. “Don’t untie him. You can’t.”

The guy locked in the room became more desperate. “Hey!” he shouted louder, more urgently. “Hey, you have to let me out!”

“He brought them here,” the soldier said. “He did this.”

“Brought who here? What did he do?”

“Do you mean the infected people outside?” I asked. “Did he bring them here?”

There was another loud bang, like someone was kicking the wall. “Do not listen to him!” the guy in the room said, referring to the wounded soldier. “He is crazy!”

“What happened to you?” Daniel asked. “What happened to your arm?”

“Mistakes were made. We thought we could make it.”

Ben picked up a blowtorch that had been lying on the ground next to the soldier. “You know, if you had used this, sealed the wound, you might have had a better chance.”

The man laughed. “Yeah, I thought about that, just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I could cut off my arm. But I couldn’t bring myself to use a blowtorch, burn my wound. Crazy, huh?”

“Ah, why did you cut off your arm?” Maria asked.

“Why do you think?” he asked as he held his bloodied forearm up. “I was bitten on the hand. Son of a bitch took a huge chunk out of me. I thought maybe if I cut my arm off, maybe the infection wouldn’t spread.”

“Did the infected get inside?” I asked.

The soldier’s eyes glazed over, his head dipped forward, like he was fighting off sleep. The big sleep, I thought.

Daniel held his shoulder, shook him gently. “Hey, stay with us buddy. You can make it.”

He opened his eyes, but his head remained lowered. “The proximity alarm was tripped,” he whispered. “We went outside to turn the EMP field on. We thought we could outrun them. Turn each EMP emitter back on before they got to us.”

Ben looked worried. “Why did you have to go outside to turn it on? Shouldn’t you be able to do that from in here?”

“System crashed. We started having all kinds of problems. Stuff started going wrong when he showed up,” he said, referring to the guy in the infirmary.

More banging. “Please, let me out of here!”

“How long has he been locked up?” I asked.

“Don’t believe a word he says,” the soldier warned. “Don’t let him out.”

“Why the hell not?” Daniel asked. “What happened here? Where is everyone?”

There was no response. He was gone.

“How long before he turns?” Maria asked.

She looked uneasy.

“Maybe he wasn’t infected,” I offered. “Maybe he cut his arm off in time before the infection spread to the rest of his body.”

Kenji shook his head. “We can’t take that risk.”

I guess I knew it was only a matter of time before he came back to life, before the virus took control. With stuff like this, I looked to Kenji or Daniel to do the dirty work. I think when something awful like this had to be done; we all looked to these guys. Probably because they were soldiers. I think Maria, Jack and I assumed they were trained for this kind of thing, or at the very least, better prepared than we were. But of course, they weren’t. Who could ever prepare themselves for something like this? Putting a bullet in the brain of someone who was already dead, just so they didn’t come back to life as a violent host for a killer virus?

No one can ever be prepared for that.

“No point in waiting around for the inevitable,” Ben whispered.

“Hey!” the man on the other side of the door said. “You guys better be careful. That soldier was infected. You need to get rid of him. Or take him outside. I can help.”

“What do we do about the guy locked up in there?” I asked.

“Let me talk to him,” Ben said. “I’ll find out if he’s lying or not.”

Ben was looking even worse than before. His forehead was sweaty. His eyes were barely open. Despite this, he was the one who did what needed to be done.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“But first,” he said as he grabbed the hatchet off the floor. He then raised it high above his head and drove it into the skull of the dead soldier.

“Anyone… anyone wanna say a few words?” Ben whispered.

“Damn, you don’t look so good,” Jack said. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’ve never been better.”

Ben swallowed hard and pulled the axe out of the soldier’s head. A few seconds later his eyes rolled up into the back of his skull.

He dropped the hatchet and collapsed in a heap on the floor.

***

It took the combined strength of Kenji, Jack and Daniel to pick up Ben and get him on to one of the tables in the mess hall. Maria and I cleared the table, throwing trays of food on the floor.

The guys laid the big man on his back.

“Damn, he’s heavy,” Jack said.

Daniel ripped open Ben’s shirt.

“Has he been bitten?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

We couldn’t see any bite wounds but we could see a lot of cuts and grazes.

And a gunshot wound.

He had been shot in the chest. The bullet wound was close to the heart. Really close.

“What do we do?” Maria asked.

“I… I don’t know,” Daniel replied.

“Do we cut it out?” I asked.

“Yeah, in the movies, they’re always cutting the bullet out,” Jack said. “That seems to work pretty good, right?”

Daniel shook his head. “If the bullet has clipped an artery or a major blood vessel he’s gonna bleed to death. Won’t matter if we get the bullet out or not.”

“We have to try,” Kenji said. “We owe it to him.”

More banging from the infirmary. “Hello? Are you still there? Please help!”

“Can you shut up for a second?!” Jack said.

This was a nightmare scenario. None of us were doctors. And we couldn’t just rush him off to the nearest hospital.

“We clean the wound, cut the bullet out,” Kenji said. “And if we need to, we plug any arteries.”

Daniel shook his head again. “It’s a one in a million chance,” he said as he started backing away. He didn’t want to do it. He knew it was hopeless.

“Look at me,” Kenji said. “One in a million is all this guy has got. We’re it. There is no hospital. There is no ambulance coming. One in a million is the best odds we’re gonna get right now. We have to try. He’s dead if we don’t.”

Daniel took a deep breath. “OK. But we have a problem.”

“What?”

“We need to get into the infirmary for supplies.”

“What do we do with the mystery man in there?” I asked.

“Exactly,” Daniel said.

“We leave him for now,” Kenji answered. “At least until we get Ben patched up.”

“But if we open that door,” Jack said. “I mean, he could be infected.”

“I am not infected!” the man shouted through the door. “My name is Tariq Sayid. I am here to help. I am not infected!”

“We need to get in there,” Daniel said.

“But what about what the soldier said,” Jack pointed out. “He said not to trust him. Called him a liar. Said he was one of ‘them’, whatever that means.”

“He’d lost a lot of blood,” Kenji suggested. “He wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.”

“I don’t know about this you guys,” Maria said.

“Look, if it’s an infected zombie person in there, we have to kill it anyway,” I said. “And if the person isn’t infected then we need to talk to him. Find out what happened here. We can’t just leave him in there to die. Besides, we need the supplies. I don’t think my blunt pocket knife is going to be much help.”

“All right,” Kenji said. “Jack, I need you to keep pressure on the wound, try and staunch the blood flow.”

“Gross,” Jack said. “Ben better not be infected.”

We entered the infirmary. As usual Kenji and Daniel were out in front. Kenji held the shotgun at the ready. There was a man sitting in the corner with a black hood over his head. His hands were tied behind his back, which were tied to the supply shelves.

“Thank God,” he said. “You have to get me out of here.”

Kenji moved forward with the shotgun pointed directly at the stranger. Daniel had his back. Kenji reached out and removed the hood.

The man blinked a couple of times as his eyes adjusted to the light. The man had dark skin, a trimmed black beard. Scars on both sides of his face. He was wearing glasses.

He looked at each of us, before his eyes settled on me. He gave me a look of what could’ve been recognition. His eyes narrowed. “What a surprise to see you,” he said. “All of you. I am so relieved. I thought I was never getting out of this room. These people, the soldiers, they have all lost their minds.”

“That’s not what he was saying,” Kenji said.

“Please, my name is Tariq Sayid. I am a research scientist. I volunteered to come here. To help with the outbreak.”

“Why the hell did they tie you up?” Kenji asked. “What happened here?”

“I told you. The soldiers, they went mad. There was an issue a couple of days ago. One of the men was bitten. He had to be euthanized. This pushed the soldiers over the edge. We were sent out here to investigate.”

As Kenji asked the questions with a gun pointed at the man’s head, Daniel looked for the necessary supplies. He handed me a few bandages and then a few more.

“What are you looking for?” Tariq asked.

“Nothing,” Daniel replied.

The man looked out into the mess hall. He saw Ben lying on the table and Jack trying to stop the bleeding. “You are going to need gauze,” he said. “And Quick Clot. Top shelf. Up there, near the bandages.”

Daniel stopped looking for supplies. “How do you know that?”

“I can help. I am a trained field surgeon. I have worked for the Red Cross for many years. I have had a lot of experience with gunshot wounds. I can stop the bleeding. Just untie me.”

We all paused. The look on Kenji’s face said it all. Could we trust this guy?

“Look, no offense,” Kenji said. “But you see that soldier. He didn’t exactly give you a glowing character reference.”

“I told you,” Tariq said calmly. “They had gone mad. They were all crazy. They had been cut off. Isolated. It was textbook cabin fever. Every little emotion is magnified. Exaggerated.”

“Why did they tie you up?” I asked.

“They tied me up because they thought I had brought the infected here. Me. By myself. Can you believe that? They were not making sense. None of them were eating, none of them were drinking. They were not sleeping.”

There’s no way I could tell if this guy was telling the truth. I would have to trust the other’s judgment.

“How could I have brought them here?” he continued. “There are hundreds of infected outside.”

“I think we should let him help,” Maria said from out in the mess hall. “We can’t just let Ben bleed to death. He saved our lives. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t even be here. We would never have made it this far.”

“I can patch him up,” Daniel said. “I’ve had training.”

“Training?” I asked. “How much? What kind? A second ago you didn’t even want to do this!”

“We’re trained to deal with this kind stuff, in case something happens in the field. I can do this.”

“No offense,” Tariq said. “But if the bullet is lodged in his chest, you could have fragments or shrapnel near his major arteries. You need a surgeon. I can do it.”

We looked at each other. Once again, it came down to risk and reward. The warning of the dying soldier was loud and clear in my head.

Don’t untie him.

What was the risk? What was the reward?

Life and death.

Constantly weighing up these two opposing forces was draining and exhausting.

“At least untie my hands,” Tariq said. “You can keep my legs tied. You can keep me tied up to the table or whatever. But I need my hands.”

“OK,” Kenji said. “Just your hands.”