Overrun Read online

  Kastoric groggily kept pace behind Hartinson. Holding his assault weapon in one hand, he still rubbed at the back of his neck trying to clear the daze from behind his eyes.

  They jogged through the corridor still hearing the sound of footsteps ahead of them clambering periodically against the metal grates along the floor. Finally, Hartinson stopped and dropped down to his knees.

  Kastoric halted just behind him and raised his weapon. He leveled it out just over the top of Hartinson’s head. Hartinson raised his arms and locked his elbows bringing his own weapon to bear.

  “What do ya got?” Kastoric whispered.

  “Straight up ahead. Right ahead. Something in his arms. Can’t tell what.”

  Kastoric pressed the back of his raised weapon firmly against his cheek and fired two shots down the empty passageway.

  The report from the assault weapon blast echoed thunderously through the dark.

  * * *

  The assault rifle fired and then fired again both times making her body lurch. The soldiers still stood directly in front of her.

  “Oh, my god,” she heard one of them whisper.

  The soldier standing stepped cautiously around the one still crouched on his heels. He kept his weapon raised and moved slowly away down the corridor.

  Mel’s arms and legs began to shake uncontrollably as the panic started to overtake her. Tears rushed from her eyes making it impossible to see. She swallowed hard against the whimpers and sad quiet cries that tried to push past her lips.

  She pressed her hands against her ears trying to make the world go away. She pulled her arms and legs together into a ball. She rested her head down on the cavern floor and stayed there without moving until the sound of their voices again reached her ears.

  * * *

  Still crouched down on his knees, Hartinson held his assault weapon against his shoulder with his left hand and reached into his pack for a flashlight with his right. He clicked it on and pointed it down the passageway. The beam centered across Kastoric’s back then moved toward what was lying across the floor.

  Kastoric moved closer. Hartinson followed him with the beam. Kastoric took another two steps and then slowly lowered his weapon and set it across the ground. Hartinson ran the beam across what lay in the gloom.

  “Fuck,” Hartinson said quietly lowering his head.

  He clicked off the light leaving Kastoric alone ahead in the dark.

  Hartinson raised his hand and did the sign of the cross like he had been taught a long time ago in church. He hadn’t done that in years. He had never felt the need. At least not until now.

  * * *

  Mel felt a seizing horrific pain which she thought was death finally coming for her heart. The soldier in front of her lowered his head and rested his weapon down at his side.

  “What should we do?” the one further ahead whispered back.

  “Bring him back,” the other answered quietly. “Bring them both. We’ll leave him with the others.”

  The first soldier returned silently back into the passage Mel hid within. Faint light from the distant flames lit his frame slightly in the darkness. He walked slowly and carried something carefully in his arms.

  Mel slid her back further against the wall and pulled her knees up tighter against her chest. The soldier walked directly past her. His eyes not did not pick her from the dark.

  “I couldn’t bring them both,” he said to the soldier still crouched on his heels.

  “I’ll get him,” the other said slowly getting up.

  The second soldier stood in front of both of them and gently lowered what he carried at their feet.

  It was all Mel could do to stifle her screams.

  * * *

  “Can’t be more than eight,” Kastoric said so softly his voice could almost not be heard.

  The young boy lay between them.

  “Probably,” Hartinson said clicking on his light. The boy’s body was on its side between the tips of their boots. “Mine’s about that size.”

  “Look at him,” Kastoric spoke again. “He was sick like the rest of them. I don’t think he had much time left.”

  Hartinson didn’t respond.

  "His time would have been real short. Probably wouldn’t have lived out the year."

  "I know,” Hartinson answered softly. “Probably not…probably the same for most of them down here…but I don’t know if that makes it alright.”

  He ran his fingers down across the boy's eyes and closed them to the night.

  * * *

  Mel rolled over on her hands and knees and began to crawl away from them down the corridor. When she was far enough away, she slowly stood. Her tears and sadness were suddenly gone.

  She felt a cold emptiness sweep into her soul like a damp wind. Her body shook with an icy shudder. Within that emptiness, she dug into an even deeper void. And it was something there, something deep within, that awoke in her body and forced it to act.

  She stood up and started to run. The voices of the two soldiers fell quickly behind. She could hear her own soft footsteps echo through the halls.

  Her body ran for safety while her mind and soul drifted away looking for her young companion. Trying to find him. Wanting to help him. To guide him. To be with him when he made his trip into an even deeper unknown.

  She hoped he would wait for her. When her own exit from this world was complete.

  Mel sprinted down the corridors until there was no breath left inside her lungs. When her body was completely spent and there was no more energy to make her legs continue to run, she stopped and leaned against a wall to rest.

  After a few moments of standing motionless in the dark, she tilted her head back to see a small light coming from the gloom overhead. She walked beneath the sewer opening and gazed up.

  Scaling an old access ladder bolted to the side of the wall, she made her way to the top and maneuvered her tiny frame through the opening and out into the street. The sandy ground burned her face when she rolled out into the outside world once again.

  She glanced hurriedly around and ran from the center of the street. She ducked beneath a nearby car when a large group of soldiers walked quickly by.

  Soldiers marched from every direction. They lined every section of the street and poured into every building along its sides. Some huddled behind large maps while others spoke and pointed at some of the city’s citizens they had found.

  Mel jumped from where she hid and darted up the block towards what she hoped was the outside of town. After a brief distance, she ducked beneath another decaying car to catch her breath and waited for another group of soldiers to pass.

  When they were gone, she sucked in a deep lungful of air and jogged into a nearby alley.

  Rain began to fall burning lightly against her skin.

  She pulled the lid from a garbage dumpster and quickly hopped inside. She wrapped her arms around her knees and lowered her head. Hoping sleep would rescue her from this dream, she rocked nervously back and forth and prayed with all her heart.

  She prayed to see the faces of her father and brother once again. And she prayed that the boy, whose name she had never even come to know, would wait for her. Wait before he embarked on the journey that would take him forever away from the world she was now trapped within alone.

  The rain fell harder outside and sizzled against the metal lid. While she listened, she prayed to make the journey with him. To hold his hand. To stand there with him when he finally reached its end.

  Chapter 19

  After receiving the driver's clearance authorization, the watchtower sentry opened the front gates. Through the reference points of his rifle sight, he watched the fifth bus of prisoners to arrive that day as it pulled into the facility.

  Eight similar watchtowers surrounded what was once a prosperous farming home. Almost four square acres had been sectioned off and enclosed by barbed wire, land explosives and heavily armed J.G.U. security troops.

  It was one of fifteen interro
gation facilities in New England alone and one of more than ten thousand total in the area once controlled by the United States.

  The bus crawled slowly through the front gates to the center of the property. The farmhouse that had long since been at the property’s center had been replaced by a single tall steel building. Large communication towers jutted into the sky throughout and cluttered its terrain.

  Two mammoth steel doors cracked open slightly in front of the bus. The driver held his hands over his eyes against the sharp glare of the sun from their metallic surfaces. He pressed the brake and brought the vehicle to a halt in a light swirl of warm sand.

  Three figures stepped through the doors to the narrow set of stairs leading down towards the front of the vehicle.

  The director of the camp stood thoughtfully just outside the doors at the top of the staircase. His two personal guards stood next to him, one on each side. Their faces were hidden by the same assault shields worn by the soldiers in active combat.

  The director's face was uncovered and unprotected from the burn of the weather. He refused to wear the face shield in the presence of prisoners. It was just too damn hot. And he wanted them to see him. He wanted them to actually feel what it was he had to say.

  More guards appeared from the surrounding buildings and took positions around the bus. The director stepped down the narrow stairwell followed closely by his personal guards.

  Weapons were raised to shoulders when the bus door cracked open allowing the artificial atmosphere inside to escape with a loud swoosh. The driver yelled behind him into the rear of the bus and then stepped hurriedly out.

  Two soldiers rushed past him and disappeared into the back. A few seconds later, its passengers made their way meagerly from the vehicle. Their eyes blinked furiously beneath the blazing onslaught of the sun overhead.

  "This way," the director ordered and walked away from the vehicle toward an open section of the courtyard centered within rifle shot of all eight of the towers. “I want them over this way.”

  His guards followed just behind him matching his pace step for step.

  Prodded by the sharp jabs of the guards, the prisoners followed after him in silence. Their heads faced the ground, and the chains around their ankles made clinking sounds when they walked.

  A soldier leading the group raised his hand and motioned them to stop when they reached the center of the courtyard.

  The camp director faced his newest batch of prisoners for a long quiet moment and carefully scrutinized their bent faces.

  He wiped his head with a cloth sticking from his sleeve before giving a loud sigh and walking towards the front of the group. With a sharp motion of his hand, he signaled his personal guards to wait behind.

  The prisoners took careful steps back away when he started to step among them.

  "My dear men and women of the United States, I would like to welcome you to my war prisoner processing facility," he said to them in English. "As you know, we are patriots of Japan's Great Union. We are in your country today fulfilling a divine and sovereign mission. We are here to save the world…"

  He paused for a moment to let his words settle over them. The guards surrounding them pressed in closer while he ventured deeper into the group. After a short silence, he lowered his head and resumed his speech.

  "You have my deepest condolences for all you have lost. As well as my personal apology for not being able to keep you here at great length. But we are all standing here at a time of war. And our men are needed elsewhere to help ensure the completion of our mission.

  “Though, I will make you a promise. I will make sure that when your time comes, it will be quick, dignified and humane. I will remove as much of the tragedy as I possibly can from what must occur. Provided you are able to provide to me what it is that I need to know."

  Many in the group started to cry. Others only continued to stare at the ground.

  "We are here to rescue the entire world from the selfish tyranny of the United States," the director continued. "We all know the dangers of the sun, and we all know that the United States possesses great knowledge and technology in terms of dome construction. What you might not know is that your government has discovered a means by which all people may live. The entire world can and will be saved when we have helped your selfish country complete its selfish technological ambitions.

  “What many of you do not know is that, protection, the domes, they do exist. Technology to protect. It all exists right now. But your scientists and your government, they will not share it."

  The director paused again. A few prisoners looked up from where they stared across the ground.

  “They will not share it with the J.G.U. They will not share it with the other dying countries in the world today. And, they will not even share it with its own people. The United States Administration has decided that it would rather hide this new technology. Hoard this wisdom.

  “Never in a time before has a world been put in more danger. These selfish few have decided to allow their own citizenry, their own flesh and blood, to rot and die rather than share this survival technology with the rest of the sick countries of the world. We find this to be abhorrent and intolerable. And, we, the people of the J.G.U., cannot and will not stand for this. The sun is not getting any less dangerous, and the population of this planet is as sick as it has ever been. The Earth and everything on it is dying."

  The director walked slowly through the prisoners to the rear of the group. His guards followed after him walking outside the crowd on either side. They stood next to him again when they reached the back.

  The director turned and addressed the prisoner group from behind.

  "Our armed forces are here to save the world. We will stop at nothing until the secrets of the mysterious domes and the great medical discoveries shamefully kept secret by your country there have been shared."

  The director moved back again into the quiet crowd. The guards in the towers overhead kept their weapons pointed down at its center. Hot yellow dust blew from the ground. The air was stiflingly hot and still. The director dabbed absently with his cloth at a line of sweat that broke out continuously across his forehead.

  "The people running your country have deemed you a necessary sacrifice. They have begun to bomb your homes…, and they are killing your children. We feel they know not what they give up. And they sacrifice too much.

  “There is knowledge out there,” the director said pointing to the blowing sands outside the barbed wire walls of the camp. “There is knowledge in here. In you. Way too much to just be discarded.”

  The director stopped again momentarily and cast his eyes around the captives. Only a few now dared to look up.

  "What we need to know is where they are. In these, the early days of conflict, we have not yet been able to find their locations. And the massive barbaric bombings your government is using to mount its defense is costing us too much. Too much knowledge is being lost out there…along with too many of our men.

  “We are here today to bring this to an end. We want to know what you’ve seen in your lives on the outside. Some…many of you do know the domes exist. Deep in my heart I know this to be true. You’ve heard. You may have seen. We want to know it all. Share with us what you can. Anything. Anything that might help us locate the domes. In the end, you will help save many lives by bringing conclusion to this conflict now being waged on your mother soil.

  “And if you know nothing,” the director wrung his hands together and turned his back to the group. “Then, unfortunately, there is not much more here we can do. We do not have the resources to keep you here for long. Surely not until the final outcome of this conflict.

  “It’s just not possible. For this I can only apologize. I am a soldier doing his best with what he has been given in this, a time of war."

  The director turned around again to face the front of the crowd. The guards in the towers and on the ground at the sides of the group tightened their grips across their weapons.r />
  The director set his jaw and with two quick steps approached one of the men at the front of the crowd. With a quick jabbing motion, he pulled his sidearm from its holster and pressed it to his skull. With a flash and the sound of a thunderbolt, a gaping red hole opened in the middle of the man’s forehead.

  The soldiers quickly pressed in.

  The director took a step back and wiped at the spray that covered his eyes. The man’s body slumped to the ground at his feet. Blood poured from his head. It formed a small pool of red sludge in the sand.

  The sound of the shot echoed in the air. Many of the prisoners took shocked steps back. Others dropped their shoulders and began to retch.

  The director walked back into the crowd and stepped carefully over the body. This time his personal guards followed him in.

  "As I've said, it is unfortunate that I can’t offer you life, despite our best intentions,” he continued calmly amongst the numerous panicked shrieks and cries that now filled the air. “But we have something different to propose to you. It’s of deep merit and should be strongly considered.

  “We’re offering to fill the deep void of abandonment you will feel when your end is about to come. We offer a chance of retribution against those that have forsaken you. And a dignified means of leaving this world. We offer a way to make your deaths not a total waste.

  “I feel I offer a great lot."

  When he said these words, some of the cries coming from the group abruptly stopped.

  The director reached the far end of the crowd and walked out. He took several steps away from the group and pressed in closer to his men.

  He raised his hand to the side of his head, held up two fingers, then balled his fist and quickly dropped his arm.

  In a single motion, a few of the surrounding troops raised their weapons to their shoulders and fired short bursts into the assembly.

  Five more bodies collapsed limply to the sandy ground. Blood flowed freely from their freshly opened wounds. Their eyes stared blankly towards the hot sky and were quickly blackened by the onslaught of the sun.