The Last Plague

Chapter Thirty-Three: Survivors

A shudder went down my spine. I could see the faintest outline of an arm covering the fire. After the long silence, he asked who we were again. Fear overcame me and I couldn't speak. I wanted to roll up the window more than anything.

"We have plenty of guns!" he shouted at us. "Don't make us use them. Now tell me, who are you?" he continued shouting.

"We're just passing through!" I shouted back at him, hoping he didn't have guns.

"Nobody just passes through here," he said, mocking my voice. "Now tell me, who are you? Don't keep me waiting," he shouted through the dark abyss.

Raymond started talking before I could stop him. "My name is Raymond Ausberry. We thought these tunnels were abandoned. We were just using them for personal reasons," he shouted at them, his tone started to actually change; it started to change to worry.

"Oh yeah, what kind of personal reasons?" he asked, mocking Raymond this time. "And we thought this place was abandoned too, and it is." The statement brought horror to me.

"We are just trying to get to a friend of ours, he lives near a hole here." Raymond lied, he went back to sounding robotic.

"Do you have any food?" he shouted at us.

It was then I realized how hungry I was, we hadn't eaten any food the entire ride.

"Not much," Raymond yelled back to him. He was lying though. I looked back and could see all five packs of supplies filled with food.

"We need food. You have some food. We'll let you pass without getting shot if you give us food. Do we have a deal?" He yelled at us, seemingly hungry.

Raymond seemed like he wanted to talk with us, which I was satisfied with. "How did you survive this long?" Raymond yelled at them. I doubted he knew how long they'd been down here, but he was stalling.

"We'll tell you what you want after we get the food," he shouted, "Just drive up here slowly. Don't try anything, we'll kill you in seconds."

Raymond rolled up the windows and started driving forward. When the windows were up we decided we would pretend we only had one pack of food. If he fell for it, we would get out of there slowly, then drive as quick as we could to get out of there. We didn't know who these people were, or if they were trustworthy. We weren't going to take any risks.

We pulled forward with the eerie crunch of the tires. Everything around seemed haunting. The fire was towards the side of the tunnel, there were five people gathered around it. They all had tattered clothing and seemed hungry. I could see several bones around them licked clean. A chill went down my spine when I realized what they were eating. A couple of people were cooking human arms over the fire they had somehow started. One of them was eating a leg; skin and all. There was a final man with his back turned to the fire rocking back and forth. He seemed to be the most scared.

When we got close enough to the fire there was a man staring up against the window. He motioned for Raymond to roll it down. He started rolling down the window.

"Now, where is the food?" The man asked, blood all over his mouth. The blood didn't belong to him though, his face was unscathed.

Raymond was holding the bag they had. "This is all we've got. We're almost to our destination. We should only be here for about a day or so more. You can take it all if you want." Raymond stared at him, fear showing in his eyes.

"Well then, you're very generous, I'll take it all. What do you have in here?" he asked, snatching the bag and searching through it. "Flashlight, flare signal, matches, here it is," he said mumbling. "Thanks for the food. Now out of the car."

I looked around and noticed there were men and women pointing guns through the windows. They were all staring us down, grins on their faces. I suddenly felt stupid and gullible. We have guns, we just want food. The words repeated in my mind. How could we have fallen into such an obvious trap?

"Don't make me wait, remember, we can just kill you right now," he spoke coldly.

Raymond opened up his door and walked out. I followed him, Trina moving out too. All the people were holding guns up to us.

"Okay, I'm in a good mood today. Since you gave me this free car, I'll let you live," he said chuckling to himself. "Enjoy the fire!" he shouted sarcastically as he hopped into the front seat.

Everyone got into the car and they drove away laughing like maniacs. "Thanks for the car!" Someone shouted at us while they were driving away.

I was stunned. The stench of the bodies haunted me. Everything gave me nausea and I wanted the truck back more than anything. I looked over at Trina and Raymond, they seemed just as stunned as I was. I felt stupid though, falling into the trap. If we had driven away at full speed we would have at least had a chance.

"What do we do now?" Trina asked, fear inside her voice.

"Look around. Most of the people down here had guns with them. We should go ahead and grab those just in case. Then we'll try to get to PS as quickly as we can. Without a truck, it'll be more difficult, but we got most of the way," Raymond said, droning on. Something was different about his voice though; it seemed to raise in pitch a little bit.

We walked back from where we were driving. I grabbed a few guns and was horrified by the scattered amount of bodies. When I grabbed them I made my way back to the fire. Trina walked back shortly after with two pistols in her hands. Raymond was gone for a while longer.

"Raymond," Trina shouted, "Where are you?"

"I'm right here," he shouted back. "I'm grabbing some guns, give me a second."

After a few more minutes he walked back with a shotgun. It looked large and heavy. Raymond wore a large smile with his shotgun. He seemed very pleased with himself.

"It's funny they wouldn't have the same type of gun," I told them, wondering the very thing I thought. How many sides were in the war?

"Maybe they had different levels of training or ranks, I don't know," Trina said, examining her pistols. "I found a few belts with extra bullets. What kind of bullets does your gun use?" she asked me.

"I don't really know," I told her. I started looking at my gun.

It was a rifle built for longer ranged shots. It had a scope on the top that worked fairly well, except for a small crack in the top right corner. The gun was loaded with bullets, it seemed to have enough bullets to last a while.

Hunger was overwhelming me. I felt stupid not eating any of the food we had brought. Now it all belonged to people who'd probably die before eating it.

Raymond seemed to feel the same way. "We need to eat."

"What are we supposed to eat, wait, you don't really mean that, right?" Trina asked, obviously disgusted.

"What other choice do we have?" I chimed in. "Eat now, or risk starving to death while we travel to PS. What do you want to do?" I asked her, almost rhetorically.

We sat down by the fire and cooked. The food tasted awful, the stench filled my mouth, and I couldn't remove the thought that I was cannibalizing. I ate as quickly as I could, hoping I would never have to eat any meat again.

Trina gave in and ate with us. When we finished it we grabbed our guns. Thankfully, no one said a word about what we were doing.

Raymond walked up to me, breaking the silence, "You ready?"

I nodded back to him while he talked to Trina. We started walking down the darkness. I had grabbed one of the logs from the fire and used it as a torch. Where did they get wood? I wondered, still creeped out. I didn't know where they had gone or what they were doing with our truck. The torch didn't last long and died in about five minutes.

We started walking through blackness which terrified me. I could hear Raymond's and Trina's footsteps beside me. We started jogging through the darkness.

A loud tire screech followed by several screams echoed through the air. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. The screams sounded familiar, and I realized it was the man who stole our truck in the first place. An explosion radiated through the air. I could hear a large fire going, but I couldn't tell from where. There was only one place to go through: the truck.