The Bloodless Page 7

  Justice had to wonder where his family was but since he was ostensibly alone, his brain automatically assumed the worst. Whether they survived the crash or not, he did not know, all he knew was that they weren’t where they were supposed to be. That was one of the worst feelings in his life, if not THE worst. Knowing his family might be dead was one thing, but not being able to figure that out and at the same time knowing that he would probably never be able to see their faces again made him sicker than any super antigen could.

  Life suddenly carried very little value for him. There was no reason for him to go on, he didn’t even care he was captured. Basically, every fiber inside of Justice was screaming out for death to come and lay him in the cocoon of eternal rest so the pain would ebb. He sat back down on the cold, pulverized concrete and cried until he passed out. His dreams were filled with the faces of his family, laughing and happy. His wife actually came to him in one of his dreams.

  “I can see the despair in your heart,” she said to him as she caressed his face. Her voice was ethereal and far away but transmitted every emotion possible. “We are gone from your world, but you of all people know that we are not truly gone from the universe. We exist out there somewhere. Our pain, fears, and worries all gone now. I regret that we have left you in such turmoil but that is why I am here now, to remind you that you can’t give up. You have to keep fighting, for the sake of everyone who is left and the world that will suffer terribly if the balance is thrown off.”

  He was not able to respond. Any speech ability he may have held in the dream realm was incapacitated by the sight and presence of his wife.

  “You cannot give up Justice, the world is depending on you.”

  At this, he somehow found his voice, “Me? Why me?”

  “You are the only one. You must not give up.”

  “I-I, I have no reason to go on. I have no reason to live. Giving up is all I have left.”

  She looked deep into his eyes, the way she did on their wedding day as they lovingly spoke their vows. Justice was transfixed by her gaze and he could feel her lifting him up to his feet without touching him. His heart felt lighter, his soul brighter. “We’re still here. If you fight for no one, fight for me. Fight for Adam.” She kissed his forehead and he felt a white hot searing pain where her “lips” touched his skin. He jerked awake.

  Suddenly, realization came flooding over him like a tidal wave. He could bring them back, he could retrieve them from that other plane. All he had to do was get into that laboratory. The plan was simple enough, but executing it was going to be a big challenge and probably a series of challenges. Escaping from bondage being the first. He was definitely going to need some help.

  That’s when they came back in, the same men from earlier. “Get up,” the skinny one said to Justice as they stalked towards him. Justice didn’t immediately respond or move. Instead he stared up at the men, calculating, scheming. When he continued to remain seated, the larger man grabbed him around his armpit and hoisted him to his feet. The man then dragged Justice towards the entrance they used and outside. Next thing he knew he was being forced into a utility van.

  “Boy you’re a lucky one tonight,” the skinny one said as he climbed into the passenger’s seat.

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” he wasn’t normally cheeky like that but he figured he was about to die anyway, fuck it.

  “This location has been compromised and there are extraction teams coming after you,” he said with a little chuckle.

  “So, you can dish it out but you can’t handle it, huh? You fuckin’ hippies are all the same.”

  “Look,” The skinny man said as he turned around in his seat at the front of the van. Justice noticed a gun dangling down by the man’s side. “I’d kill you right here and now if it were up to me, however…”

  “Let me guess, you’re just following orders. Like a good little bitch. I mean activist.” Why he was talking to them in a way that was very unlike himself, not even Justice knew. Maybe it was his resolute acceptance of death or maybe it was the visual of his wife lifting him to his feet, but there was no fear in his body. The skinny man just looked at Justice, flashed him a contemptuous smirk, and turned back around in his seat.

  They drove for quite some time that day. There were no windows in the van so he could not see where they were going, but judging by the terrain, they definitely were travelling to a remote location. When the truck stopped it was on the verge of day, the sun yawning sheepishly on the horizon. The two men exited the van and opened the sliding door. Justice was yanked out by the larger man, clearly the heavy lifter, and thrown to the ground.

  Once the pain subsided and he regained his sight, he was able to see where he had been taken. It was a remote trailer park/RV camping ground. Basically, it was a kind of hippie commune. It had clearly been long abandoned as all the campers and trailers were showing early stages of dilapidation. Large pine trees infested every opening that wasn’t being used by homes and towered into the sky.

  They had stopped at a particularly run down trailer. The screen door was nearly off, it hung by a single hinge and was one sneeze away from coming all the way off. The windows were busted, some of them had blood on the broken panes, signs that desperate junkies had been there to loot anything they could to feed their addictions. It was not a very pleasant place to be. An appropriate place to die, sure, but resoundingly uninhabitable. Justice was ushered unceremoniously into the trailer. He was then shoved to the ground and fell with a crash that rocked the entire trailer.

  The inside was dark despite the early morning time of day. The sky had been strangely blacked out by what Justice assumed to be storm clouds. They were unlike any storm clouds he had seen before, however, and there was not a single crack in them which cast their ominous shadows all across the earth. As he lay face down he heard the men’s footsteps move back towards the trailer’s door. “Thanks a lot assholes,” he shouted at them.

  “Justice??”

  Well THAT voice sounded familiar. “Jack?” Justice said as he rolled over and turned towards the voice. It was Jack, just Jack. He was barely visible through the darkness but Justice could never mistake that wild hair for anyone else. Jack’s hands were bound and he sat on the ground, ostensibly alone. They got him too and his family probably met the same fate as Justice’s.

  “Damnit! Not you!” Jack was bloody from head to toe, his left eye swollen shut. He had obviously been beaten severely by those pricks.

  “It’s okay Jack. Everything’s going to be okay.” That’s what people say in situations like that, right? It’s all he could think to say to him. Justice didn’t exactly have a plan, but he did not want Jack to be completely devoid of hope.

  Their captors walked back over to them, “Well, you two just keep getting luckier,” the skinny one, who at this point appeared to be the brains of this duo, said. “Seems as though you are worthy enough of a special visit from Mendel himself.”

  Justice and Jack looked at each other and had no idea who he was talking about. Their captors could see they didn’t have clue and just laughed. The skinny one planted his foot right into Justice’s gut and said, “You’d better watch your tone around Mendel, he’s not quite as forgiving as I am.” The two men then made their way out of the trailer, locking the door after they exited. Outside the van they came in roared to life but no sound of a driving off which lead Justice to assume they were staying there to keep watch.

  “Do you have any idea what they were talking about?” Jack asked as he sat up off the moldy stained floor.

  “None at all. Then again, I have no idea what’s going on in general. How did you get here?”

  “They assaulted the compound, Justice,” Jack said, ignoring Justice’s question. He could see the pain in Jack’s eyes, that pain that only comes with losing everything you ever cared about. He was sure Jack could see it in his as well.

  “Who assaulted the compound? Activists?”

  “I don’t think so and if I had to take a gues
s I’d side more on the line of militants, possibly a well formed militia.”

  “How the hell did they break through all of the defenses?” Justice asked beside himself. It didn’t make sense. Who the hell had the weaponry and man power to pull off what was thought to be impossible?

  “By the sounds of things, sheer force of numbers. The guys who picked me up and brought me here were talking about it.”

  “You mean the guys who dropped me off?”

  “No, a couple other guys. Justice, I recognized one of them.”

  “What? Who was it?” he asked, curiosity flowing from his face. Or perhaps that was blood, Justice could never tell.

  “Robert Jericho,” he looked Justice dead in the eyes as if expecting some sort of reaction.

  “Who?” he had no idea who Jack was talking about.

  Jack let out a bemused sigh, an odd sound in a hopeless situation such as theirs. “You never were good with the names,” he said as he rubbed the sides of his face. “Subject 07212102-206.” Justice knew what he was referring to instantly and a slight ringing erupted in his ear as the gravity of the situation came collapsing down on his head. Jack finally got the reaction he was looking for, “Yeah exactly.”

  “Are you suggesting…?”

  “I don’t know, that’s the thing, it could just be a coincidence,” he said but didn’t look convinced that it was.

  “Come on Jack, we’re scientists, we don’t believe in coincidences,” Justice reminded him. He knew without a doubt that GoD Laboratories was attacked by a large horde of reanimated humans. Jack realized it too and they were both forced into stunned silence. They remained that way for a long time, Justice doesn’t remember exactly how long anymore, he just remembers coming back to his wife and son and then Jack’s family. How Jack was holding it together was beyond him. It was all he could do to keep from breaking down but the thought of the visit from his wife burned hard in his mind.

  It was near impossible for Justice to fathom that their own creations would come back and take over GoD. He said that they had no way of knowing something like that would or could happen. That’s what he said publicly at least, but he knew. All of GoD Labs’ employees knew like the US government of the early 21st century knew of 9/11 before it happened. Every report that was available about the amassing of a group of reanimated bodies came directly to Justice’s desk. There were no indications that they had plans of storming the labs and the whole compound.

  Of course, Justice and his colleagues had no idea what those beings were actually capable of. All they knew was that they harnessed the ability to bring people back from the dead with fully functioning motor skills and brain function. Every law of nature imaginable was defied and they were damn proud of that. It seems as though their egos and sense of self-importance caused them to abandon rational thought. Those scientists were nestled securely under the blanket of an over-protected fortress. They paid little attention to the ramifications their experiments wrought on the outside world.

  “What are they planning to do with us?” Justice asked after a very long pause. The sun had nearly risen now, but that had very little impact on the light cast into the trailer.

  “Kill us,” Jack said idly.

  “No,” Justice said, a foreign feeling bubbled inside his chest. He had no intentions of dying in this spot, bound and helpless.

  “What?” Jack asked.

  “I’m not dying, not here.” Justice got up to his feet without a clue as to what he was going to do. By then he was just acting on instinct and improvising every move.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Justice didn’t respond he just shook his head and looked around the trailer. He looked over at the door and couldn’t help but notice how flimsy it was. That’s when adrenaline started thinking for him. He reared back and planted a foot hard into the middle of the door but simply bounced off. He did put a dent in the door but it didn’t open. Justice got back to his feet and marched right back towards the door.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jack asked getting to his feet as well.

  “Getting the hell outta here! Come on!” This time he kicked the door right next to the handle and it exploded open and stuck into the side of the trailer. An influx of foul air stampeded into the trailer causing both men to gag slightly. After Justice regained his composure he jumped out through the entrance. The doors to the van swung open and the men jumped out to head him off. He knew he had no chance against them even if he his hands weren’t bound so he took off in the opposite direction. Clearly they never imagined they would attempt to make a break for it as there were no other devices around to prevent their escape.

  Justice didn’t get ten feet from them before he was tackled from behind by the fatter man who had a lot more speed than he would have ever thought. It hurt, bad. All the air was forced from his body and he struggled to breathe as the fat man smashed his face against the ground with his forearm. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing,” he screamed in Justice’s ear. He got to his feet and a lungful of sweet breath rushed back into Justice’s body. He received a hard punch in the face for good measure as he was pulled to his feet.

  “You think that was clever do you,” Justice heard the thin man yell as he came over to their location. He heard two pairs of feet shuffling across the ground. Justice looked around and saw that Jack had been dragged out alongside the thin man. “Stand him up.” Justice was lifted onto his feet. “Why would you try and run?” The thin man said angrily. “Where would you go? We’re out in the middle of fucking nowhere and you try to make a run for it? From two guys with guns and a truck? I thought you were supposed to be smart. Get over there with your friend.”

  Jack was shoved over and lined up next to Justice. The captors then stood in front of their captives. The thin man removed his gun from its holster and looked it over to make sure it was loaded. “What you did was very dumb. Mendel wanted to meet you real bad too, but he also said if you did anything stupid to kill you on the spot. So,” he pointed the gun at Jack and discharged a round into his head. Jack fell to the ground, blood flowing from his skull.

  Justice didn’t have time to process anything because in no time the gun was shoved against his forehead. His eyes squeezed shut involuntarily but nothing happened. He heard something that sounded like a quick but forceful breath rush by his ear. When he continued to live he slowly opened his eyes and saw the two men on the ground. The fat one had a large chunk of his head blown off and the thin one was crumpled over with his face in the ground. Justice looked around but didn’t find any sign of his apparent savior.

  When no one made their presence known he quickly ran towards the van and got inside. He swung his bound hands under his feet and placed them on the steering wheel. Since the van was already running, Justice threw it into gear and got out of there as quickly as he could. There wasn’t any point in sticking around to see if someone showed up, not when more of those bastards were on their way. A sharp pang stabbed Justice in the chest as he remembered Jack dead because of his stupidity. He didn’t think it out, he didn’t have a plan. His ill-preparedness was the reason Jack died. Had he thought it through, maybe he’d still be alive.

  From then on he had a clearer understanding of what he had to do. It wasn’t just about his family, these people obviously had to be stopped and he was the only person who could stop them. Well, maybe not the only person who knew how, but probably the only person idiotic enough to do anything about it. Obviously at that time Justice had no idea what he was really getting myself into, he wasn’t prepared for the long road ahead of him. What he was prepared for was the first step. He knew he couldn’t do it alone, he was going to need some help. However, things only got worse before they got any better.

  *****

  He drove the van in the opposite direction of Abiyah until it ran out of gas, then he was forced to walk to wherever he had to go. He hadn’t seen any sign of civilization for a long time but he knew if he was going to surviv
e he would have to find it. He had driven far enough to get out of The Cloud’s shadow and the sight of the sun was somewhat of a tonic for him and gave him strength. Enough strength to keep walking until what appeared to be a remote suburban development appeared on the horizon.

  The houses in this neighborhood were very structured and planned, especially the layout as they were all white and ordered in a tight line. The front row were town houses, the rest regular single family homes. It was a large neighborhood and it looked to be a touch more affluent than most in that area.

  People were all over the place. Some were running aimlessly, trying to find a lost loved one, or just attempting to get out of town as quickly as possible. Law enforcement officers were present and were attempting to keep everyone calm as they carried out their obvious evacuation orders. How much do they know, he thought to himself as he approached the first row of houses. He could feel the tension bully its way through the air, people were scared.

  Justice watched as officers arrested people who had become too unruly and were inciting more panic around them. They were clearly given loose rules as how to treat these people and from what he saw it was fairly obvious that some form of martial law had been implemented. Officers were quick to use force. One young, dark haired girl ran from the cops who were trying to keep her from screaming hysterically that everyone was going to die. She ran up to a house and started banging on the door. Soon a large, muscular bald man threw open the door and didn’t even hesitate as he buried a twelve gauge slug in her chest.

  The man was quickly taken down by an armada of Tasers and stun guns. Another loud scream tore through the neighborhood and everyone looked around. The Cloud was on the move again and rapidly approaching. Justice’s heart sank and he nearly gave up on the spot under the crushing weight of everything that he had gone through at that point. But he knew stopping wasn’t an option, he couldn’t let any more people down. He waited until the coast was clear and hurried into the now unoccupied home and locked the door behind him. He wandered into one of the upstairs bed rooms and collapsed onto what must’ve been the most comfortable bed he had ever been on in his entire life. Soon he passed out despite the fact The Cloud was bearing down.