Land of Dust and Bones: The Secret Apocalypse Book 7 (20 page)

We move out into the dark hallway. And I can’t help but explain to the others
what happened in the room at the end, when the man in the gas mask escaped. How
he was hiding above the door frame, like a spider. How he attacked Billy. I
need to tell them because I still don’t fully believe what I saw.

The way he lowered himself to the ground.

The way he moved.

It was surreal. It was like something from
a nightmare.

The door at the very other end of the
hallway leads to the butcher shop, the torture room. Its door frame is still
illuminated with candlelight.

I point to the door. “Sarah is being kept
in that room.”

The only question is, how the hell are we
going to get her out?

I can see a shadow moving underneath the
door frame. Ivan is still in there.

“So, are we going to just rush this guy?”
Kim asks.

“He barricaded the door,” I answer. “We’re
going to have to find another way in. Or maybe we can chop the door down.”

“There’s no actual door on the other
entrance to that room,” Kenji points out. “It’s just a doorway. It leads
directly into the hangar. If we can get back to the hangar, we can sneak up on
him. We might be able to surprise him.”

Kim doesn’t like this idea at all. “There’s
no way we’re going to be able to surprise him. These rooms are too small.”

“And how do we get back to the hangar?”
Maria asks. “How do we get out of this hallway?”

“This is a huge military building,” Kenji
says. “Trust me, there’ll be another exit point.

He’s right. There is an exit. Billy had
left it open. I wonder if it is still unlocked. I guess there’s only one way to
find out. And even if it is locked, I will have no trouble chopping it down.

“Follow me,” I whisper, leading the way.

We move quickly. Further away from Ivan.
Further away from Sarah. We move past the room where the man in the gas mask
was being held. The corridor leads around a corner, disappearing into darkness.
I can’t quite see the exit door, but we have no choice but to keep going.

And I am aware that I still haven’t
answered Kim’s question. I have no idea how we are going to deal with Ivan.

Ivan
the Terrible.

Marko said people started calling him ‘Ivan
the Terrible’ because they didn’t know him.

And I guess he’s right.

Ivan is not just terrible.

He’s worse.

Worse than terrible.

And right now, this terror, this beast, he
is watching over Sarah, he is guarding the room, protecting the food. And if we
want any hope of saving Sarah, we would need to deal with him…

The corridor eventually leads to the exit
door. This door leads us back to the outside world. It takes us a few seconds
to get our bearings, but I’m pretty sure we are now between two of the hangars.

I have no idea where to go next, so Kenji
takes over and leads us around to the front of the hangar. We finally see a
familiar sight. We can now see Marko’s Landcruiser. We can see the other work
trucks lined up in a neat row.

In the distance we can hear gunshots, we
can see the flash from the gun barrel in the night, reflecting off the
aircraft. We can also hear the sound of an engine, loud and angry. It sounds
like a motorbike.

I get the feeling that Marko is maybe
leading the infected away, deeper into the Boneyard. He is herding them like
cattle.

There are three hangars situated right in
the middle of the Boneyard. We had been kept prisoner in the middle hangar. The
other hangars, both of their main doors had been opened.

“What do you think is going on?” Maria
asks.

I point to the other hangars. To the open
doors. “I think the infected were being kept in those hangars. And the man in
the gas mask freed them. He set them loose.”

Jack looks at one hangar, and then the
other. “Why the hell would he do that?”

“It’s what he does.”

“What is that noise?” Maria asks.

“I think he’s on a motorbike,” Jack answers.
“A dirt bike by the sounds of it.”

“He’s herding the infected people away,” I
explain.

Another gunshot cracks through the night.

“This guy is out of his mind,” Kim says.

Kenji doubles over, leaning against the
wall of the hangar for support. Again, I help him stand, but he pushes me away.

Jack points ahead. “Look. There’s a whole
row of cars parked out the front of the main hangar.”

Some of the trucks appear to be work
trucks. Probably collected by Marko and his brothers from various mine sites in
the area. Other trucks had the Australian Air Force logo printed on the doors.

“I say we take one,” Kim says. “We sabotage
and disable the other cars. Slash the tires so they can’t come after us. And
then we get the hell out of here. We drive as fast as we can. We drive as far
as we can.”

“We have to get Sarah first,” I say. “We’re
not leaving without her.”

“We don’t even know if she’s still alive.
That thing in there, he’s probably already killed her, butchered her.”

“No. He hasn’t killed her. I just saw her.
She’s in bad shape, but she’s alive.”

“We’re all in bad shape,” Kim says. “We
don’t have time for this, we’re in no condition to fight the big one. You said
it yourself, he’s too strong,
he’s
too powerful.”

Kim still doesn’t trust Sarah. And she is
in no way prepared to risk her life for her.

So I tell her this is not about Sarah. This
is about us.

This is about our future.

Our lives.

This is about finding a home.

I tell her I am sick of running.

Sick of playing the prisoner.

I grab Kim by the shirt collar, I pull her
close to me. I have never done anything like this towards Kim. I have never
acted this way.

She is taller than me. Older than me.
Stronger. She was a cop before the world ended.

But I need her to listen.

I need her …

We
need her.

And we need Sarah.

My act of aggression surprises her. It
catchers her off guard.

“We need her,” I whisper through clenched
teeth. “We all need her. This isn’t just about saving Sarah’s life. It’s about
saving all of our lives.”

I let go of Kim, pushing her away at the same
time.

Everyone is silent. Tense.

Eventually Jack says, “She’s right, Kim.
Sarah is the only one who can get us inside the walls of that town. This is our
best chance of surviving. This is all we’ve got right now.”

And what he doesn’t say, and what he doesn’t
need to say is… this is the only thing keeping us alive.

She is hope.

The power of hope constantly amazes me. It
amazes me because I never realized how powerful a thing like hope is, not until
the world ended, not until I was faced with my own death, my own mortality on a
daily basis. Not until I was confronted with losing my friends, watching my
friends die, watching my friends being tortured.

Kim puts her hands up to let me know she
agrees, that she’s not going to cause any trouble. “Fine. But we still need to
find a working vehicle. And I still think we should sabotage the other cars.”

“We find a working car first,” Kenji adds
quietly. “That’s the primary objective. Once we’ve found a car, then we can
worry about sabotaging the rest.”

Strange and yet familiar noises fill the
night. The screams of the infected. The noise of a motorbike. The engine is
being pushed to the absolute limit. Every now and then, a gunshot explodes,
louder than anything else. My eyes search the darkness. I zero in on where the
noises are coming from. Way off in the distance, I see what appears to be a red
emergency flare come to life. From this distance, it looks like a strange red
ghost floating and flying in mid-air. The red flare moves further away as the
sound of the dirt bike fades.

The screams of the infected fade.

“What the hell is he going to do?” Maria
asks.

“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s leading
the infected on a wild goose chase around the Boneyard. And then eventually,
he’ll bring them all back here, back inside one of these hangars.”

“How long do you think we have?”

“Not long. We need to move. We need to do
this right now.”

We were cutting this way too close for comfort. And I
still
haven’t answered Kim’s question…

How the hell are we going to get past Ivan?
How are we going to deal with him? My only weapon, our only weapon, is a
miniature axe. One hatchet between five people. This is pathetic.

This is laughable.

We slowly make our way towards the row of
work trucks.

And then Jack says, “We could all just jump
on top of him at once. And then we can bury that axe in his face.”

I picture this plan in my mind. But all I
can see is Ivan throwing us around the room. All I can see is Ivan swinging his
sledgehammer. All I can see is my friends dead. Broken bones. Shattered skulls.

I tell Jack that simply jumping on top of
Ivan won’t work. He’s too strong.

So I picture the room of torture. I try and
plan and think rationally. Logically.

We need to figure this out.

There’s the work bench, the chopping block.

There’s the broken kerosene lamp that Kenji
shot out.

There’s a whole bunch of candles.

There’s the knives. The cleavers.

There’s Ivan’s supplies.

The room is really not that big. So
whatever we do, we will need to be quick. We will need to be precise. We will
need to execute whatever plan we come up with flawlessly.

Maybe we could somehow blow out all the
candles. Make the room dark. Completely dark. That might catch Ivan off guard.
But then how the hell would we see? We’d be just as blind. And how would we even
blow all the candles out. There’s too many.

“Wish we had more firepower,” Jack says.
“Or any firepower. Then we could just shoot the place up.”

Firepower.

Guns.

Fire…

See?
He’s afraid of a little candle. Took us weeks to get him comfortable working in
this room.

“Firepower,” I whisper. “That’s how we do
it.”

Jack is not following. “Huh?”

“We don’t have any guns,” Kim says.

“We don’t need guns,” I say. “We burn the
place down.”

There is excitement in my voice.

There is hope.

And I know this idea, this plan is
dangerous. It is unbelievably dangerous. And there’s a good chance that we’ll
end up burning ourselves. But it could work.

It
will work.

Maria looks at me sideways like I’ve lost
my mind. “What do you mean, burn the place down?”

“I mean, we burn the place down. We find
some gasoline, we douse the place and we set it on fire. Ivan, he’s afraid of
fire. He’s terrified of it.”

“How do you know that?” Kim asks.

“Because Marko showed me. He held a candle
up to Ivan’s face and Ivan turned away, he hid in the corner like a lost little
puppy dog. It was bizarre.”

“Are you sure about this?” Kenji says.

I nod my head. “I’m sure. Ivan’s face is
burnt. He must’ve had an accident. And whatever happened, it’s scarred him
physically and mentally.
He’s afraid of
fire.”

“If we do this,” Maria says. “We risk
burning ourselves. We risk killing Sarah.”

“It’s a risk we’re going to have to take.”

Kim is still not convinced. “OK, so let’s
say we actually find some gasoline,” she says. “How do we start the fire?
Anyone got a light?”

“The room is full of candles,” I answer.
“All we have to do is pour some fuel around the door and under the door. Then
we rush inside and we use one of the candles to set the place on fire.”

The more I picture this plan in my mind,
the more I like it.

“Wait,” Jack says. “So, if we set the
doorway on fire and then set the room on fire, how the hell are we supposed to
get Sarah out of there? How are we supposed to get inside?”

“There’s two doors, two entrances to the
room,” I say. “One leads out into the actual airplane hangar. And the other
door leads into the corridor with all the rooms.”

“Yeah? So?”

“So I guess what I’m saying is, we’ll need
to split up.”

And as soon I say the word ‘split’…
everyone is up in arms. And no one wants anything to do with this plan.

But I need them to trust me. And we need to
move fast. Marko could be back any second now. And when he comes back, he’ll
have an entire horde of infected people following him. Chasing him. We need to
be gone by the time he gets back. We need to be long gone.

I start walking towards Marko’s Landcruiser
and the others have no choice but to follow me. “I know this sucks. I know
nothing good ever happens when we split up. But we need to do this. We need to
start taking control of our lives. And that means we need to go on the attack.
No more running and hiding. No more trusting anyone. We get on the front foot.
We attack. We fight.”

“What do you want us to do?” Kenji says.

Strike
from the shadows. Strike hard. Strike fast.

“We need two teams,” I say. “Team fire.
Team fuel.”

We arrive at Marko’s Landcruiser. I open
the work tray, the rear cabin where Marko kept the Evo Agent and the girl in
the white dress.

And my friends.

I shake my head in disbelief. I can’t
believe he had captured my friends. I can’t believe he held them prisoner right
under my nose. I push the thought from my mind. I search the work tray and I
quickly find what I’m looking for.

An empty fuel container.

A funnel and a length of hose.

Marko is a psychopath. But thank god he
likes to be prepared.

“Anyone know how to suck fuel out of a
car?” I ask.

“I got this,” Kenji says.

I hand Kenji the empty fuel container and
the hose. He doesn’t need the funnel.

Kim moves towards the driver’s seat. She
opens the door and has a quick look inside. “The key is in the ignition. This
is our getaway car.”

“Careful,” Jack says to Kenji. “Don’t suck
all the fuel out.”

“Should we check the other trucks?” Maria
asks.

“We don’t have time,” I answer. “We know
the Landcruiser is fueled up and ready to go.”

Kenji feeds the hose into the fuel tank and
starts sucking away. A few moments later he spits out a mouthful of fuel,
gagging and coughing. He then puts the hose into the fuel container and begins
filling it up.

“How much do we need?” Kenji asks.

“Enough to burn that room down,” I say.
“Enough to scare Ivan.”

Enough
to kill him.

The gasoline pumps steadily into the
container.

Maria holds her hands up telling us to be
quiet. “Guys, listen.”

We all immediately fall silent. Kenji
pinches the hose and the flow of fuel stops. But I can’t hear anything.

“What is it?” Kim asks.

“The noises,” Maria says. “The motorbike.
The infected. They’ve stopped.”

She’s right. We can no longer hear the
motorbike. We can no longer hear the infected.

Jack is looking, scanning through the
Boneyard. “What’s happening out there? What’s going on?”

“He’s lured the infected far enough away
that we can no longer hear them,” I say.

“But that means he might be back soon,
right? It means he could be on his way back right now.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“OK, that’s enough fuel,” Kim says to
Kenji. “We need to hurry this up.”

Kenji takes the hose out of the fuel tank
and screws the cap back on. He throws the hose back into the work tray.

“How much do we have?” Maria asks.

“Enough,” he answers, holding the container
up.

We have maybe a gallon.

“Let’s go,” I say.

I begin moving towards the hangar, but Jack
holds me back.

“Wait,” he says, “Slow down. What’s the
plan here? We don’t even know what we’re supposed to be doing.”

He’s right. I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’m too caught up in the moment.

Too excited.

For fire.

For blood.

No… I tell myself that’s not why I’m doing
this. I’m doing it for freedom. For control. Or am I? Maybe I just want
revenge. Maybe I just want to burn them to death. Maybe I just want these
bastards to suffer.

I picture the plan in my mind. I picture
what we need to do. “Well, like I said, we need to split up.”

“Are you sure we need to split up?” Maria
asks.

“Yeah. I’m sure. There’s two doors, right?
So we need to set one on fire. And we need to use the other door to get in and
get out.”

“Which door do we set on fire?”

“It’ll have to be the door that he’s
barricaded. And we’ll need to use the other door to enter through, get Sarah,
and then escape back out into the hangar. We meet back here at the Landcruiser.
And then we get the hell out of this Boneyard.”

“So who does what?” Kim asks. “Who’s on
team fire? Who’s on team fuel?”

“Kenji, Jack, Maria. You guys are team
fuel. You guys will need to go back the way we came. Move to the end of the corridor.
Make your way to the door, and pour all the fuel out. Pour it all over the
door, pour it onto the floor. Make a trail, a puddle, so I can grab one of the
candles and throw it. This will start the fire. This will scare Ivan.”

“What are you going to do?” Kenji asks.

“Kim and I will be team fire,” I answer.
“We’ll make our way to the other door, the one that leads out into the hangar.”

And this was the dangerous part…

And I’m not really sure how this will play
out.

I don’t tell them my fears. Instead I
simply say, “We’ll need to grab a candle and throw it in the fuel before he can
stop us.”

Maria is not a fan of this idea. “That is
madness.”

“It’s the only way. And once we’ve set fire
to the place, he should…” I trail off because I’m not exactly sure what Ivan
will do.”

“He should do what?” Maria asks.

“He should retreat… he should… I don’t
know. But when Marko held a candle up to his face he was afraid. He was
terrified. Trust me, this will work. We set fire to the place. We get Sarah and
we make our escape in the chaos.”

We create chaos in order to achieve our
objective, in order to escape, to live. Survive.

In the distance we hear three gunshots in
quick succession. We hear the engine of the motorbike. We are running out of
time.