The Last Plague

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Sides

I woke the next morning to Raymond sitting in the same chair he was in when I first woke up. He was wearing the exact same thing as he was the day before. He looked at me with the same anger and hatred in his eyes that he had the first time I met him. Everything else seemed calm about him.

"I trust you slept well. The beds here are quite comfy," he said in his monotonous voice. I hated the fact that he sounded like a robot, I don't know why though. "I hope you have come to realize that RADD is good, not the evil the PS claims."

He said it so monotonously I didn't realize it was a question. He was asking me if I believed RADD, if I trusted them. I decided not to take any risks, "I'll bite. You aren't testing me the PS was, you don't seem threatening. I've been fed and taken care of. I guess RADD ain't bad." I almost laughed at the rhyme I made, RADD ain't bad. I repeated to myself. "But tell me, what happened to the hill that PS was on." I tried to sound as convincing as I could.

"It ceases to exist," Raymond said proudly. He seemed to believe what I was saying to him."To rescue you we had to destroy everything and make sure no one was following us. We are in a secret location. We flew miles to try to get you here," he said joyfully; his eyes were still filled with hatred. He suddenly paused for a moment, then looked at me. "Pardon us with the whole attempted homicide though, we didn't mean it to happen like that. We tried releasing zombies around the base and recapturing them quickly to make people scared. I was hoping they would freak out and their hill would either fall apart or be taken over by zombies. One of the times we did it only you saw. You know the rest of what happened though."

I was slightly intrigued, but mostly upset. When I was charged with attempted homicide it was just an accident from RADD. That didn't seem right, but it was all I could believe. I wasn't sure what to believe about RADD and PS.

Raymond walked out of the room. I wondered when I would be allowed to be out. Everything I knew seemed to be fake, yet it all seemed real. I decided to keep up my act of believing what RADD told me. I'd keep on pretending to trust them until I knew what was really happening. When I found out what was happening, I'd either try to get away from here or stay with them.

I stayed in the room for another day. I was brought food at normal meal times. I lay down staring at the clock. For the first time in what seemed forever, my head was cleared. I was able to silence myself and sit still. I woke the second day with the satisfaction of knowing I'd be able to leave the room if Raymond kept his word.

Raymond walked into the room and spoke to me in his evergoing monotonous tone. "Are you ready to get out of this room and see where you are?" he asked me.

"Yes," I told him, trying not to sound overly excited. "I would gladly like to see around."

"Alright then," he said walking out of the room. "I left your clothes on my chair."

I looked at the chair and saw a suit, just like Raymond. I got out of my bed and changed from my hospital clothing into the suit. It was tight but made me feel important. There was a comb sitting on top of the clothes, so I combed my hair. I felt civilized, I felt normal, more than I could say about the past few months. At the same time, I felt strange, like I was betraying someone. The feeling wouldn't go away, something about the suit made me feel that way. I walked out of the door and saw Raymond standing there.

I looked down the hall and saw several lights inside the roof. There were multiple hospital rooms stretching to my left; I was in the room on the far right. I looked around at the hospital rooms around me. The one in front of me I heard a commotion from; the banging of chairs, the shouting of a man; the pounding on a door. The man in there seemed crazy, he was shouting untranslatable words, and the door was muffling it even more. I could just barely hear him.

"It's one of our worst cases," Raymond said, obviously referencing the man behind the door. "Before people become a zombie they start to lose their mind. Very few people I know have stayed sane after their legs started boiling off." He shuddered as if scared by the thought. "His name was George. The moment he realized he was bit he began to freak out. We locked him in the room to make sure he didn't hurt anyone. We had a camera in the corner of the room to make sure he stayed in the room. He destroyed the camera on the first day of being locked in there. I don't think we'll be able to use that room for a while. George is going to become a zombie within days now." He drilled on in his painfully monotonous tone. It drove me crazy.

Raymond took in a deep, slow breath. He started walking forward quickly down the hall. "I'll show you around the area." He walked to the end of the hall to a door. He paused, "I need you to prepare for this. We're going to run from one building to the next. The next building is about twenty feet away. Are you ready to run?" he asked me, still barely sounding like a question.

"I guess so. Why do we need to run?" I asked him, starting to worry.

"You'll see once we're out there," he responded.

Raymond opened the door and ran out. He quickly disappeared into a white opaque wall; vanishing in seconds. A hand reached in and his head came into my view. "Come on, I have to shut this door!" he shouted.

I've been trying to track down where they were at with this weather. I assumed that they were close, but I can't even think of any place on Earth with that weather. Even the North and South Pole doesn't have that severe of weather. And the tunnels also tell that they were somewhat close. No solution I've ever come up with has made complete sense. And when I reached this part of the journal, I started questioning his honesty.

~Trina

I barely realized what I was doing when I ran out there. I couldn't see a thing. I felt a hand grab me in the shoulder and tug me to my left. I ran with it, it didn't let go of me. I tried straining my eyes to see what was going on around me, nothing was visible. I couldn't see what was in front of me, I couldn't even see my hands. I ran along blindly with the hand. When I finally felt it pause, I was shoved inside. I was in a room and looked behind me, the solid white wall was still there.

It was cold. I had never been in a blizzard before, but I was pretty sure that was one. I couldn't see anything around me there. I had felt the cold frosty wind blowing against my ears. They were already numb from the few moments I had out there. My eyes felt frozen, I was blinking to try to get water back into them. I didn't dare open my mouth when I walked out there, I could have sworn my mouth would be frozen. Everything about the outside didn't seem natural.

"How did you know where we were going?" I asked Raymond, slightly panicked.

"Why didn't you run like I asked you to?" he said back. It didn't sound sharp, it didn't sound angry, it only sounded the same tone he always used.

"I was startled by the white thing blocking the door," I told him simply.

"I knew where I was going because I had done it a thousand times. Next time though, I think I'll just hold your hand," he told me. I expected it to sound smug, maybe even sarcastic, but he still drilled on.

"Where are we?" I asked him, trying to ignore the fact I had just run through an icebox.

"You're going to meet the team. We don't have many working at RADD, but we have enough, and the ones we are the best and the brightest. They're top of their class, they've been doctors and nurses for years. I've been working with them to try to raise the dead, without causing the end of the world, of course," he told me.

I began to get worried. Then I realized how stupid this whole thing was. I've been working with them to try to raise the dead, without causing the end of the world, of course. He sounded stupid when he said it, despite his unending tone. They had already caused the entire world to start to end. I remembered near the beginning when everything started. News reporters and social media, not long after the CDC, were all talking about it. I didn't even realize RADD still wanted to raise the dead.

"Follow me," Raymond said. He almost startled me, I was deep in thought.

I had decided RADD was my enemy. No matter what they did, they were bad. They were, and are, responsible for billions of lives across the planet and they aren't remorseful. They aren't even willing to stop their plans, they still wanted to raise the dead. I had decided to try to escape RADD, try to find another one of the PS's bases. I wanted to destroy RADD if it was the last thing I did.