The Last Plague

Chapter Thirty: Meet The Team

"Here we are," Raymond told me.

We had walked down a small hallway and stopped at a door. Raymond opened it and about a dozen men and women were sitting there. They all seemed to stop talking and looked up at me. A few of them looked disgusted.

"We don't need any more children to take care of!" a woman shouted from the back of the room.

"Charlene, calm down. I know we are running low on food, but we won't run out of water, ever. I also think he will be useful to us. Who knows, maybe he'll even decide to help us." He glanced at me. He seemed to hope I would say something.

I just nodded, hoping they would see me instead of waiting for an audible response. They all seemed like they didn't want me here, but they accepted the nod. Raymond gestured to a seat for me. The seat was right next to a man with highly bulked shoulders. He was insanely tall for a man; he couldn't have been less than seven feet. He was also large. He looked tight and cramped in the chair. The chair I was sitting in was large and comfy, and everyone seemed to have the same chairs as I did. Raymond sat down at the head of the table. I assumed he was in charge.

"As you all know, the PS has scattered to many locations in America. We soon think they will be able to go global. If we don't start destroying what they've built, they'll gather enough people to start a revolution against us and we'll be destroyed. Do I have any ideas on what we should do?" Raymond drilled on in his monotonous tone. Everyone around me seemed annoyed by his voice, I couldn't blame them.

This is the point where I would question everyone's sanity. An operation consisting of a dozen people, and trying to take down an already-destroyed group, is crazy. It doesn't make sense. Of course, I don't think there's a way to get out—and I love his next thought—but that doesn't change the fact that they have a dumb group.

~Trina

The room started to fill with chatter. Everyone was chatting with the person next to them. Raymond walked up to me, "Do you have any ideas?" he asked.

I had an idea, but I kept it to myself. You should tell them to just give up, My mind mocked. I refused to say it out loud, but I considered it. I finally shook my head. "Do you have other locations?" I finally asked him.

Raymond looked at me sadly. "No," he stated. "This is our only location and these are all the people we had. Of course, there was Oran Mocha, but well, he disappeared a long time ago. I have no idea what happened to him." Raymond said, seemingly worried.

These people are crazy. They want to take down an entire string of bases and this is all they have. They have only about a dozen people. What is that against? If every base the PS had was as large as the one I was in, they would be outnumbered drastically. Wait a second, how did these people take down the other base? How did they release and capture zombies? The man in the other room they said they were watching, who was he? The way Raymond said everything, aside from his drilling tone, had seemed crazy. He made it sound like they had an entire operation going on. Of course, he could be lying to me about this being the only location. If he wasn't lying about that, I was almost certain he was lying about destroying the PS base on the hill. It would be impossible to kill an entire hill of people with only a dozen others. Especially if they were at the bottom chagrin up, they'd die in seconds.

After the long chatter, a woman in the back stood up. "We could build another bomb," she stated. "Just like the last one, we could build enough to blow up every PS base across the world. It'd be easy," she said, it sounded like a straining exhausted whisper though.

"Yes, it would be easy, but it'd take way too long. They would have scattered throughout the globe by the time we built the first one." Raymond responded to her, rejecting her offer. "It was a good idea though, Ashley."

Ashley sat back down with her arms crossed. She looks like a little girl. My mind told me, and I couldn't argue. Everyone in the room seemed to be insane. The fact alone that they thought they could destroy PS with only a dozen people proved they were crazy. Why they were crazy, I didn't know. The only thing I knew was I needed to get out of there before they decided to turn on me, or that I wasn't valuable.

After sitting in the room for another thirty minutes the meeting ended. You should have just told them to surrender. It seemed like the thing a logical person would do. Crazy people didn't seem like they'd enjoy any logical ideas though.

Raymond walked out with me, everyone in the room just sat in there quietly. The quiet gave an uneasy, eerie silence about the place. I wanted to leave before they got any ideas. Raymond walked up to the door again. He looked at me, he seemed to ask me if I'd run. I looked at him reassuringly, and I walked out. I stood right out of the door, waiting for his arm to grab me. I felt the familiar tug of his arm and I ran with him.

The cold wind whipped me and numbed my ears again. We ran for several minutes before I was even wondering what was happening. The cold seemed to make me think slower. The first time we ran we only were only running for about twenty seconds. It had been almost five minutes since I felt any heat. Where is he taking me, is he trying to kill me? My mind finally came to this realization. His arm was still pulling on my shoulder. I didn't dare open my eyes. I knew the cold would freeze them in seconds. My nose became numb quickly after my ears. I could have sworn my mouth was starting to freeze itself shut. Everything was becoming a blur. We paused for a moment, then I heard a faint voice; I couldn't tell if the voice was drowned out by the wind or if my ears were going deaf.

I was shoved into a dark room and felt the sensation of heat come over me. I felt someone bump into me in the dark room, followed by the sound of squeaky door hinges shutting closed.

"Where is it, where is it?" Raymond's voice pierced the air and caught me off-guard. "Here it is!" he exclaimed.

Light started filling the room, and I realized my eyes had been open the entire time. We were in a small room, there weren't any doors inside it. I felt like I was defrosting. The warmth was heavenly and warmed me after a few minutes of silence.

"I bet you're wondering why I took you here instead of your room," Raymond said, but continued talking before I could respond to what he had said. "I need to talk to you. Nobody else knows about this place, there aren't any cameras that'll record us either. I was giving the people in there a test, and they didn't even realize it. You probably thought we were all crazy saying we could take down several forts with only a dozen of us. Also, I want you to know, we didn't destroy the hill. It wouldn't be possible for us to destroy it. They thought they'd built a bomb, but it didn't explode or go anywhere. I don't want to work with RADD anymore.

They have taken things too far for me. The last place on earth that has RADD associates is here, but we need to end this once and for all. Without RADD, we may survive this. Let's get a good sleep and get out of here." Raymond droned on.

"How do we get out of here? Have you seen the weather out there?" I asked, somewhat sarcastically. I was legitimately concerned though, I wanted to get out.

"I have an underground tunnel we can travel through. It goes on for a few miles, then there is a small hidden truck we can ride in. It has plenty of gas and dozens of extra gallons to refill with. We'll be able to get back to the PS and maybe save what's left of humanity."

Wait, do you want to go back to the PS? The thought reminded me of Henry and Rachel. It reminded me of the entire hill that seemed to be attacking me relentlessly. I didn't think I would want to go back there, not if I was imprisoned and tested on. Then my words were repeated in my head, we are done with the tests, and I think we found a cure. The worries of me being tested on disappeared. It was a very small and highly unconvincing reason, but I believed it. The only fear I had was the fear of life in prison. I had shot two men in the leg, and I was charged with attempted homicide. I doubted I wouldn't go to jail.

"You've been really quiet over there." Raymond's voice brought me back. "I had packed several bags a while back. I have enough for about five people, but the rest have gone crazy. We're just going to take all of them. I'll take you to the underground area and we can find the truck. From there, we'll be with the PS and we can survive. Let's go."