Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
LARKE
Although I was once a federal employee, I had very little trust and faith in government, whether local, state, or higher. It was why, no matter how often the overhead speakers repeated the words “safe zone,” I didn’t put any stock in them.
Prior to departing, all the train windows were covered with black paint.
Roughly half of the soldiers guarding the doors entered the compartment while the remaining half continued their slaughter on the other side.
The small box smelled like sweat-stained bodies, urine, and vomit, the scent emphasized by the lack of air circulation.
The pungent, industrial odor of fresh paint only added to the oppressive stench, leaving behind an almost gasoline-like aftertaste.
No one spoke.
Gazes connected and shared expressions of fright and uncertainty were exchanged, but no one said a peep. Not even the single toddler in our group uttered a babble, his mother clutching his denim jumper until it pulled taut at his hip.
There was the occasional cough, which drew everyone’s sharp attention, and the uneven cadence of shallow, panicked breaths.
The soldiers remained on their feet, weapons drawn and a few covered in streaks and splotches of black.
Their eyes darted in Dez’s direction every so often as if expecting him to unload Bethany’s clip at any given moment.
However, none of the soldiers tried to confiscate the gun.
We went from the Red Line to the Green Line.
Dez and I sat next to one another on the floor, and like the soldiers who kept an eye on him, he rarely took his eyes off them. One in particular only looked in Dez’s direction when Dez looked away. Something in my gut told me either he knew Dez or he was afraid that Dez might know who he was.
The train continued on its usual route.
With each stop, screams and gunfire filtered in, followed by the ominous sound of a door opening and closing before the train started off again.
What was normally a fifteen-minute ride felt like hours, and the longer it lasted, the more sure I became that there would be nothing safe about our destination.
“Please remain calm.
Soon arriving at Fort Totten.”
I frowned.
Dez’s expression mirrored mine.
There were two Fort Totten locations that I was aware of: a neighborhood in D.C.
and an army installation in New York. However, there were no metro trains that could take us to New York in such a short span of time.
Still, with everything else that had happened, I was ready to believe in the implausible.
The rules had changed. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that while Dez and I had assumed we were escaping, the Reaper drone had actually funneled us toward our capture.
The train slowed, brakes shrieking.
The soldiers remained motionless until we came to a complete stop.
Next, they used a crowbar to jimmy the door open, and it was the same crowbar they’d used to break the handrail barrier to enter the compartment.
A blast of light burst through the open doors.
Then, like a line of carpenter ants, the soldiers filed out onto a concrete platform.
“Single line exit,” the overhead voice commanded.
Dez grabbed my hand.
We were welcomed by giant cement walls topped with barbed wire, the blast of light courtesy of floodlights mounted on towering poles and affixed to tactical vehicles.
The words Fort Trotten, Safe Zone 7 were haphazardly scrawled on the cement walls in what appeared to be the same black paint from the train windows, the dark liquid dripping from the edge of every consonant.
It was another sign that something was amiss.
Fort Totten was named after General Joseph Gilbert Totten, who served during the War of 1812. One would assume that people who’d come from the military-industrial complex would have spelled the name of one of their historical brethren correctly.
I squeezed Dez’s hand.
When he looked down, I motioned to the sign. He studied it for a moment, squeezed my hand in return, and then faced forward again.
The soldiers’ procession split into groups. Four uniformed men stopped in front of a covered tent and held out their hands, signaling for us to stop as well. Their expressions remained impassive, their legs shoulder-width apart.
The number of people in line far exceeded those who’d taken refuge in our train compartment, which explained the additional stops. They all looked as fearful and downtrodden as I was sure I did. Dez, on the other hand, looked like he was waiting for a bomb to go off at any moment.
Engines rumbled low and deep from nearby idling trucks, spewing diesel perfume into the air.
Wooden crates and barrels being loaded and unloaded added a steady crash and thump.
Muffled commands came through radios, and armed personnel walked in repetitive patterns in towers that loomed above the walls.
One of the soldiers pointed. “Men, you go to this tent,” he ordered.“Women, you come with me. Your tent is further down.”
My hand went from secure in Dez’s grip to being choked by it, and a different kind of panic unfurled in my stomach.
Dez was skilled.
He was also outnumbered.
Roughly ninety percent of the group followed the soldier’s command. Even if I’d wanted to move, I wouldn’t have been able to go far with Dez’s hand wrapped around mine like a jammed pair of pliers.
“Two is one, and one is none,” he said, under his breath. “That means we stick together, Tapley. You’re not going anywhere without me.”
“I don’t want to,” I reassured him. “But the odds of us getting what we want are slim right now.”
“Teams don’t split up. This isn’t fucking Scooby-Doo. It’s textbook divide and conquer. If this is supposed to be a safe space, why split us up?”
“Maybe we get to see each other again later?”
I didn’t believe it myself, but I needed him to see logic.
Concession wasn’t in my blood, either, but I preferred to concede and strategize later rather than watch him be gunned down in front of me.
There was no way he knew just how much I cared about him.
If he did, he wouldn’t have considered his death to be an option or possibility.
“If they split us up,” his eyes bore into mine, “we won’t see each other again.”
“Same thing happens if you die,” I countered. “I don’t want that.”
“It’s not about what you want. It’s about what’s safest for you.”
“If you get killed in front of me, what do you think will happen to me? How do you think that would affect me with all the shit that’s already going on? I care about you, Dez. I care about you a lot.”
He searched my eyes.
A soldier walked up to us. “Excuse me,” he said, his voice gentler than I’d been anticipating. “Men stay here. Women will be screened at a different tent.”
“Screened for what?” Dez asked.
“Infection.”
Dez’s jaw ticked.
I attempted to recall the only military code of conduct I was familiar with: the SERE principles—survival, escape, resisting, and evasion, and never surrendering based on free will.
This was more than likely how Dez’s mind operated; however, this wouldn’t be a surrender based on free will, and I needed to find a way to get him to comprehend that before we were both gunned down.
“You’ll be reunited once you’re cleared,” the soldier added.
Dez looked skeptical.
I was skeptical.
Yet, we had no choice. Surrender was how we would live to fight another day. In order to have a leg up in that fight, we first had to know what we were facing.
I eased my hand out of Dez’s, his hold gradually slackening until I was free.
The soldier gestured. “Right this way, miss. If you’ll follow me.”
I followed, taking a breath deeper than I had the lung capacity for. Then, the sound of my name brought my sneakers to a halt, and I looked back, waiting.
Dez groaned. “Tapley, I…”
I didn’t know what I wanted him to say, but I knew I wanted him to say something.
I would have even accepted a “Tapley, I think I kinda might like you a little bit…maybe,” considering the dire straits of our circumstances.
If it was the last bit of affection I would ever know in this life, it didn’t have to be grand or spectacular.
All I needed was for it to come from someone I trusted, cared for, and respected.
“I’ll see you inside,” he finished.
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you inside.”
“Wait for me.”
“Always.”
I continued until I came to a long line that stopped at a green tent, the flap raised and two soldiers posted outside on guard.
A sign affixed to the fabric with duct tape read: Females, which rubbed me the wrong way.
The tent was longer than it looked from the outside, with multiple tables stationed along the interior and haggard-looking women, some with children, positioned at each one.
The workers were also women, wearing white T-shirts, red jackets, and blue pants.
Their heads bobbed as they scribbled on clipboards and handed over bags, all with medical insignia printed on the front in different colors.
“Next!” A stout, tanned arm waved in my direction. “You, with the head scarf. You’re next.”
I walked up to her table.
She looked up at me from over a pair of plastic-framed glasses. “Name.”
“Larke Tapley,” I said.
“Age.”
“Thirty-something.”
She rolled her eyes. “Occupation.”
“Hostage.”
“How about you answer my questions instead of being a smart ass?”
“I graduated at the top of my law school class from Howard University, ma’am. I don’t know how to be any other type of ass.”
She scribbled “lawyer-NE” on one of the lines on her clipboard.
“I’m told you came with a man,” she continued.
“I did.”
“You were already together before all this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How long you two been married?”
“Oh…Dez and I aren’t…we’re not…”
“Sudden speech impediment, Mizz Law School?”
“He’s a friend,” I explained. “We worked together.”
“Your husband know you work so closely with another man?”
“I’m not married, but,” I leaned closer, “if this is in reference to any sort of housing or residency arrangement, I’d like to stay with Dez.”
She “hmphed.”
I leaned back.
“Any known medical conditions, Ms. Tapley?”
I shrugged. “I used to be chubbier, and my lipid panel wasn’t the best back then. High-normal cholesterol. But I’m sure it’s probably fine now.”
“Current medications?”
“An occasional allergy pill, but that’s about it. Oh, and fish oil because, you know, that lipid panel.”
My mind drifted, and I thought about my family.
I thought about Wren ending up in a similar situation and having to explain something that most laypeople wouldn’t understand.
In a world like this, there would be no treatment for her condition.
The world was barely set up for her to thrive when it “worked,” never mind now.
The woman asked me several more questions—whether I was traveling with anyone else, if I had kids, if I’d been in contact with anyone who might have been infected, and whether I had experience with firearms. Then she asked if I intended to comply with the rules of the camp.
When I answered, “It depends,” she stood, aggressively swabbed my throat, and flicked her wrist to send me to a metal bench to wait.
The swab came back negative.
A different woman shoved a bag into my chest.
Yet another soldier escorted me through the tent, out the back and inside the tall walls via a massive metal door. We walked side by side down a covered gravel walkway that, minus the rock pellets on the ground, reminded me of my cousin’s middle school in Louisiana.
I looked down at my bag, the fabric dark green with a blue Caduceus symbol printed on the front. “What does the blue mean?” I asked.
The soldier barely offered me a glance. “What does what mean?”
“The meaning behind the symbol colors on the front. So far, I’ve seen blue, red, black, and white.”
“You’re…observant.”
“What do they mean?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am.”
“Please don’t call me ma’am. It’s already the end of the world as we knew it. Don’t make things worse than they already are.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “All right, then. What do I call you?”
“Larke,” I said. “Larke’s fine.”
“Well, Larke, what if you give me an answer for an answer?”
“An agreement like that is contingent upon the nature of the question. Your information must be useful.”
“And it is. Now, the man you arrived with, is his name Dez?”
I gave my uniform-clad companion a more thorough once-over. “You’re the guy from the train. The one who wouldn’t stop looking at us. You know him, don’t you?”
“So, his name is Dez?”
“Do you know him?” I reiterated.
“We enlisted together.”
“What does that mean, that you’ll bring him extra pudding or something?”
“No, no.” He rotated his right shoulder. “It’s just that here, there are rules. Everybody has to be useful. He might get put on guard duty or something. That’s what I’m hoping for, anyhow. He’d be a helpful addition to our operation. Not every job is…right for everyone.”
I didn’t appreciate his ominous tone, but my question remained unanswered.
“The colors,” I prodded.
“White means quarantine—inconclusive results on the swab,” he explained.
“Red means medical isolation for conditions unrelated to the infection. Blue means you’re uninfected and can be transported to one of the long-term facilities.
Black is for the ones we can’t save, and that’s for everyone’s safety.
We still don’t understand this thing that’s going around, so our best bet is to control the spread. ”
Dez wasn’t infected. There’d been no opportunity for him to get infected. Still, tests weren’t always accurate, and the thought of him receiving a false-positive made me want to vomit all over the gravel.
“You’re married to Dez, so you’ll be fine,” the soldier said.
I shook my head. “We’re not married.”
“What?” The soldier’s eyes opened wide. “You’re not married? Did you…did you tell them that?”
The nausea morphed into dread.
They’d repeatedly asked me about or hinted at my relationship status. Why did they keep asking about my relationship status? And, now that I was thinking a bit more clearly, what the hell did lawyer-NE mean?
A woman appeared at the end of the corridor, flanked by six armed men dressed in gray camouflage. A linen dress brushed her shins, both the hem and the apron that covered the dress soiled and stained. A plain scarf partially concealed her dark, glossy hair.
“Mira.” She motioned with an index finger. “Come with me. Your shift starts in ten minutes. And don’t worry—I’ll take good care of you, mama.”