The Last Plague

Chapter Twenty-Eight: RADD

"We found him unconscious on one of PS's forts. He seemed to be running away, we also found a bullet in his leg. He seems fine now, but I don't know if he will be able to walk for a while." I heard a distant woman's voice as I slowly regained consciousness. "We hacked into their cameras and saw they had been testing on him. I'm pretty sure he's the one that's special."

The word struck me. I had been told I was special too many times to count. The tests Henry and Rachel were doing on me had proved I was special. But why was I special? I wanted to know more than anything why I was special. Was I born that way? That didn't seem true, but it was the only option that seemed logical. Could I have been given a shot that made me immune? That option didn't make sense to me; anyone who gave me the shot wouldn't have known everything would be destroyed and people would morph into brain-numb creatures. I didn't know what to think.

The woman's voice continued. "What do you think we should do with him?" she asked.

I heard another voice, barely sounding human, start speaking, "It shouldn't be long until he wakes up. Just tell him, see how he takes it." The voice sounded robotic. I couldn't tell if it was male or female, the only thing I noticed was his monotony.

I was wondering what he had meant by how I would take it. Take what though? I asked myself. I wanted to wake up; I wanted to know. I was barely conscious when I had heard what they were saying. I strained to remember what they said, I wanted to remember every word. When I had decided I knew enough, I focused on waking up. I wanted to show them I was awake so I could know what they were talking about.

My eyes strained and I barely felt living. Everything in me was weak, but it didn't feel natural. I remembered the woman's voice saying they had hacked into the cameras. She might have seen what you did, what you did to Henry before you escaped. My mind suddenly replayed everything I had done. Shooting two men, luckily not killing them, but shooting their legs. Then I remembered what had happened to my leg when Mark had shot me, then I remembered at the facility. Both of my legs had been shot; Henry had been shot in his leg; Mark had been shot in his leg. When I realized this pattern I almost laughed.

A woman walked into the room. She seemed to be taking notes in the corner. I wanted to wake up, I wanted to be conscious. I felt nothing, I seemed awake while sleeping; the only way I could describe it. She looked over at me, "You'll wake up soon," she said, then walked out of the room quietly. It was the same voice that was talking outside my room earlier.

I wanted to wake up so badly. I'd give many things just to open my eyes. They are open though, my mind told me. I realized they were, yet I wanted them to open. Nothing made sense to me right then. I felt like I was going crazy. I started struggling to wake up, forcing myself to sit up. I felt like I woke from a nightmare, I sat straight up in seconds.

There was a man that I hadn't noticed before staring at me. He seemed pleased when I woke up. He smiled at me. "You woke up," he said in the monotonous voice I heard earlier. His voice didn't seem like it didn't belong to him. His appearance was a tall, skinny man. He was wearing a black suit with a white undershirt. He had a black tie, black pants. He seemed overly dressed and fancy for what was happening during the age. He was smiling, but something was off in his eyes. They seemed angry; filled with hatred. While he stared at me he seemed pleasant, but his eyes still worried me. He was sitting in a low chair near my bed.

I sat there as he said nothing. He looked at me like he expected me to say the next thing. I remained quiet. I just sat there, staring at the man. There was a long pause before anything was said; about ten minutes went by.

He finally seemed to realize I wasn't going to say anything. "How do you feel?" was all he croaked out. His voice worried me and caught me off-guard after the long silence.

I wanted to say I felt horrible. I wanted to be free from the exhaustion I felt. "Who are you?" I asked him, completely disregarding his question.

"My name is Raymond; you will call me Mr. Ausberry. The reason you are alive right now is because of us. We rescued you from the Prevention Squad." Raymond started mumbling under his breath, "Sounds like a child made the name every time I say it." He started speaking up again, "Like I said, if we hadn't rescued you from PS you'd be dead." He seemed to be stalling. I knew he wanted to tell me something. "I remember you were kidnapped from one of RADD's underground facilities by a man named Oran. Is this correct?"

"My name is Raymond; you will call me Mr. Ausberry." Not once does he call him that—or write down "Mr. Ausberry" in the journal. He always refers to him as Raymond. Even before and after RADD, Raymond doesn't mention that again. It's dumb, I know, but still kinda funny.

~Trina

I felt a shock. The underground facility belongs to RADD, I remembered. "How did you know where I was?" I asked him, straining my voice to sound tense and threatening.

"We had received a call from a friend named Joseph Loittermain. He told us you were down there, so we came to pick you up. Of course, we couldn't let you know who we were yet. We had someone named Oran Mocha come to pick you up and make it seem like a rescue mission. It was easy to make you believe you were being rescued because you hated Joseph. You thought the entire place was evil. They placed you in a cell near the tunnels and you were taken by Oran to the tunnels." He paused and took a deep breath. He seemed to be angry.

"A man named Xavier shot Oran in the back!" he shouted angrily. He then calmed down and breathed more calmly. "He took you, he stole you from us, he killed many people. If you have escaped properly you would have been with us a while ago. We are working on using the zombies' slime to our advantage." He stood up, and dusted his shirt off, even though it was crisp and had absolutely no dirt on it. "I will leave you here for a day, let you regain your strength. You'll be brought food soon, it's almost dinner. Until then, think over what I told you. We are RADD, we are the good guys. The prevention squad, they aren't your friends. They want to find a cure, they want to find a way out of this mess. Here at RADD, we want to use it to our advantage. We want to make people stronger because of the zombies' slime. You don't want to have a cure for something that makes you weaker," he finished. His voice stayed monotonous the entire time, but aside from that, he sounded like a commercial trying to get you to buy their product.

He left before I could say anything, but I doubted I'd be able to say anything even if he had stayed. I lay there thinking, Was the PS my friend, or is RADD my friend? Who is the enemy? The cage they locked me in, was Hannah supposed to be in there? Was she supposed to say Joseph was the enemy? Did Joseph work with RADD? If so, is that a good thing? My mind raced around all the possibilities of who was good or bad. As far as I could tell, there wasn't a way to clarify everything that had been going on.

Good, evil, neutral, who was what? PS and RADD obviously were against each other. That was the only thing I knew for certain. I was staying neutral, I wasn't going to join sides with anyone until I had all the details.

I was brought food thirty minutes past five. There was a clock above the door, the only thing I could tell time with. The fact alone that I knew what time it was kept me calm. Not having any information on what time it was or where I was made me go crazy in the past. I ate the food given to me. It was a burger with fries, nothing too fancy, but it tasted good, and it was filling.

I went to sleep that night calmer than I had been in a while. My mind was at rest, it wasn't even thinking about anything in the world happening. I started to doze off, I started to feel tired. I let sleep come in, I was happy for it too. For several days I hadn't been comfortable enough to sleep well, but now I was comfy. It reminded me of home. It reminded me of the place I would undoubtedly never see again, the place where I felt secure, the place where I had been happy. Until everything had been taken from my life.