The 0714 Files: File #1 Inferno (Remake 2)

Chapter 7

It wasn't better than nothing.

By the time the vans came back, boarded the second group, and left it was much too late. The sun had risen for the city, the streetlamps shut off one by one, and the National Guard had fully arrived. Except they weren't here to help civilians make it out safely. They were setting up barricades around Raccoon's perimeter that nobody was allowed through. Ramirez reported through the radio again how they'd sent the vans, and all the people inside, back to the station to wait.

At his words, and looking at the officers faces who'd all heard it. I could see the optimism drain from them, because just like that. It seemed to many that the situation is hopeless, and our lives are officially cut short.

I didn't know what to think when I first heard the call, mind not registering the situation. I'd crashed not long after the vans returned. The people inside crying, some inconsolable that their own military was turning their backs on them when they knew what was happening in this city. Rita came to me in the parking garage as we helped lead people back to the main hall. I only made it up the stairs to the watchmen's hallway though before she made me lie down on a bed in the backroom. I lied down reluctantly, staring up at the top bunk for all of five seconds until I fell asleep. It was sometime mid-afternoon upon reopening my eyes hours later.

I'd sat up in the bed, hair a wild mess, boots off so I could sleep comfortably for once under the scratchy blanket each bunk bed used. As I put my boots back on, a thought in my head appeared abruptly. What am I going to do with us blockaded in?

The shred of hope I had at making it out of the city to the airport is lost. We're trapped until the military takes the blockades down. But who knows how long that will take?

Once it processed in my head, once the block of sleep deprivation was removed and allowed me to think right. The finality of missing my flight tonight and escaping this place set in. I began to cry uncontrollably, for what would probably be the first time of many in this nightmare. I honestly didn't know what made me feel worse either as I sat there and bawled. The fact I wasn't going to escape, or the selfish fact that if I had been able to. It meant leaving all these people here to their fate, just like I had realized days ago. But now I was trapped here to see it for myself while living through it with them.

It was when the tears stopped running that I washed my swollen face in the room's sink. Remembering how outside this room I am still an officer, and these people are relying on me for the stability I chided Rita over last night when she nearly had the same breakdown.

I wiped the sleep and sand from my exhausted eyes, and the salt from my cheeks before heading to the main hall again. John was there, greeting my puffy eyes and solemn attitude with rations that were being handed out. His cheeks and eyes black and blue, and incredibly swollen. He'd handed me my share, taking a minute to thank me for helping him with his broken nose. I told him I didn't do much, that it was another who patched it in the end, but he insisted on his thanks anyways.

Being outside the academy taught me another lesson, overwriting what they'd ingrained. People aren't always selfish, aren't always caring only for themselves. Sometimes, even if you didn't do much, just the act of offering sincere support was enough to gain thanks and friendship from people.

I ate without a second thought, sitting in the lonely desk chair that no one claimed in my time away. My stomach was growling and hurting from having last eaten so early the night before. Only to puke it back up moments later after Beanie...

The rest of the afternoon somehow passed with little happening. I'd stepped away once more, to the women's locker room this time when the pressure on my bladder unexpectedly made itself known since the last time I went was this morning. I'd grabbed my toothbrush from my duffle and figured while I was up there, I'd at least brush my teeth too. Officers made their rounds in the station, making sure the building is secure and zombies didn't find a way in from the outside. Marvin made another plan to have us go onto the street and set up another blockade.