You Can't Survive Alone

Part 13

The next morning
"Ethan's awake," Nick says as he comes in my room.
"Don't you ever, you know, knock before you walk into someone's room?"
"Ethan's awake and he wants to see you. And no, I don't knock."
"Ughhfhh."
"Come on."
"Fineeeee." He walks out, and I get up. I'm still wearing my clothes from yesterday, but I don't really care.
When I walk out the door, Nick is standing there. He leads me downstairs to another room, and takes out a key. He unlocks it and walks inside.
Inside the room is Ethan, sitting in a chair. One pair of handcuffs connects his hands; another attaches one of his ankles to the chair. The chair is nailed to the floor.
We didn't notice as we came down the stairs, but Kat followed us. She stands in the doorway, a look of utter disgust on her face.
"This is the guy who started everything?" She asks.
"Yeah," I say, not knowing what to expect.
She walks up to Ethan and back-hand slaps him across the face. His cheek reddens and begins to swell.
She walks back out without a word.
Nick starts laughing, and I find myself laughing too.
"Yes, very amusing. Now, Ash. It is your fault that Jake is dead." Our laughter is cut off abruptly.
"Yes, Ash. Your fault. You see, if you hadn't gone meddling the day I disappeared, your friend might still be alive. When I came back into my room and discovered my papers were disturbed, I knew that you had discovered why I was truly there; it was all an experiment. I had to make my escape, and that is why your friend is dead."
Nick looks murderous. "How dare you accuse her of something that was completely your fault! You don't believe him, do you, Ash? Are you okay?"
I wasn't okay. I had gone weeks without an attack, but one was happening right then. I was angry, angrier than I had ever been. I wanted to tackle Ethan, to kill him. "It's your fault, Ethan. Everything that has happened since the apocalypse began leads directly back to you." I was shaking. I didn't even believe my own words. I had been the one that had gone through his papers...
"C'mon, Ash. Let's leave the psycho to himself." Nick led me out of the room. "Don't listen to him, okay? It isn't your fault, what happened to Jake. Remember, we all agreed that it is not a single person in this group's fault."
"Okay." I feel slightly better now. I want to talk to Zack. I feel like I haven't seen him in ages, and I usually confide in him when I feel like this. "I'm going to go find Zack."
"Okay. Have fun," he says. He turns around to lock the door as I go up the stairs.
Zack is sitting in his room, reading a book. I walk in without knocking, and he sees the look on my face. I don't know when I started crying; just that I did while I was walking here.
"Ash, what's wrong?"
"Ethan told me something, and I realized that he was correct. It's my fault that Jake died. If I hadn't gone through his papers... and Ethan hadn't realized that someone had gone through them he might still be alive," I whisper as I sit down on the bed. It's a relief to tell someone how I actually feel.
"That doesn't sound like your fault to me. It sounds like Ethan put his papers in the wrong place, and you happened to stumble on them. It isn't your fault, okay?" He closes his book and slides over to sit next to me, his glasses slightly crooked on his nose.
"I feel like it is though. And everything that's been happening lately... I feel like everything that has happened since I got here was my fault. I'm the one who keeps getting injured, I'm the one who killed Jake, I'm the one who brought Ethan here."
"Ashley. It is not your fault, okay? Nobody here blames you for any of those things. Ethan started everything; not you. He's found some way to make you feel like crap, and you have to fight against it. You can't give him the satisfaction of seeing you break," he says. I don't know where he comes up with this stuff, but I'm glad I came here. Zack knows me, and knows how to comfort me.
"Thanks. Sorry about..." I gesture to the tears on my face.
"Not your fault. Everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes."
"Thank you. I'm tired. I think I'm going to go take a nap."
"Have a good nap, see you later."
I feel like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Nobody blames me for what has happened. Nobody, except for me.

Around lunchtime-ish
I wake up to somebody pounding on my door.
"Come in," I yell. My head throbs.
Aaron walks in, looking like he just ran a 5k. "Ethan's gone."
These two words send a shiver of fear throughout my body. Knowing that he's still in the city, but not knowing where. Knowing that he could be practically anywhere...
I get up and rush past him to Ethan's room. I don't even stop to strap on my sword.
"I swear to god, he hasn't come out of this door! It's impossible," Jess is saying. Apparently she had been on guard duty when he mysteriously escaped.
I walk inside the room without saying anything. The furniture in the room is minimal. There are a few bookshelves in the corner. The chair is still on the floor, with the handcuffs undone on top of it. The key is balanced on top of the handcuffs.
I wonder... I walk over to the bookshelves and knock over all of the books. I tear them off of the shelf, and that's when I see it.
On the bottom shelf, there is a trapdoor, big enough for a person to fit inside.
Nick walks in, and sees where I'm sitting. "oh," is all he says.
"Can I borrow your knife? I'm going psychopath hunting," I say. He hands me the knife, and I plunge into the darkness.
This is one of the times that I'm glad I'm not afraid of much. I'm afraid of spiders, but that's pretty much it. However, even I was having some trouble with the darkness inside the tunnel. My imagination was way to active.
I clutched the knife in my left hand, and with my right felt the roof. It had moved several feet up, and the walls were getting wider. There were real secret passageways inside of the White House.
My geeky side was just screaming, "cool!" while the rest of me was focusing on the task at hand.
I hear footsteps up ahead. I slow, then stop, as the footsteps approach me.
"Ash?" It's Aaron.
"What are you doing here? How did you get in?"
"Nick and I scoped this place out when we first got here. We found some entrances to the tunnels; we hadn't found the one Ethan used though."
"What if Ethan hears us?"
"Nick and Jess are also searching. The tunnel system isn't big, so it's likely that if he's here, we'll find him quickly." I feel a rush of fear for Zack and Kat. Do they know what's happening?
"What about Zack and Kat? Do they know he got out? Are they safe?"
"They're in Zack's room. I ran up and told them myself." I relaxed. I'm even worried for Kat, not just Zack.
"Thanks. Should we start looking?"
"Actually, Ash, I came here to ask if you would stop looking."
"Why? Why don't you want me to look?"
"I'm worried that he'll be able to control you. With just one remark earlier, he tormented you. Yes, I heard it; I was outside the door. He also tricked you when you were being a double agent. I don't want him to trick you again, just in case someone gets hurt."
"But Aaron-"
"Ash, please. Ethan is smart. Even when we're in the middle of tricking him, when we have him locked in a room and tied to a chair, he can escape. Please, just be safe."
"Okay. Fine. I won't look. I'll go look after Zack and Kat. I have the most experience with this kind of thing."
"Just, be careful, okay?"
"I will be. You be careful too."
And with that, we parted ways.
As I made my way back to the entrance, I start to think about what just happened. Aaron just went into a dark tunnel to find me, and ask me to not go looking for the bad guy. Sounds like every horror movie ever. If the movies are correct, as soon as I step out of the tunnel, Ethan will appear. I hope that the movies aren't.
I hoped correctly. There's nobody in sight as I make my way to my room. I grab my sword, then head to Zack's room. I knock softly on the door, then open it.
Kat stands there holding her AK-47. She relaxes when she sees it is only me, but is still very tense. "Hi," she says.
"Hey. They told me to come wait with you guys," I say in response to her unasked question.
"Why aren't you allowed to search?"
"They're afraid he'll trick me again."
She frowns, looking annoyed. "That's not very fair, seeing as he tricked all of them first. You were the one who didn't fall for it."
I hadn't even thought of that. "That's a pretty good point."
"Thanks. But if they asked that you'd wait with us, you'd better come in."
I walk inside as she holds the door for me. Zack sits on the bed, which is the only clean thing in the room, except for a chair. Clothes are strewn across the floor, desk, and the other chair. I swipe the dirty clothes off of the second chair and sit down.
"Hey, Ash. I heard they sent you back here. That's annoying," Zack says.
"Yeah, it's pretty annoying." There's a long silence and I notice that he isn't looking at the desk at all. He looks at everything-me, Kat, the ceiling- but not the desk. "You're looking around but you're not looking at the desk. You trying to tell me something?"
He looks startled that I noticed. "Oh... Um."
I walk over to the desk and look under it. There's a bit of wall that's slightly indented. I press on it, and a section of the wall springs open.
"Thanks," I say.
"You're welcome?" It comes out sounding like a question. It's obvious that he did not expect me to see him not looking at something. I know him too well.
"You guys gonna wait here, or you coming with me?"
"Ash. Don't come in here! I can hear your conversation!" Aaron says. Ugh. Why does he actually have to be smart?
"But I can't just sit back and do nothing!"
"You can, and you will." He's just as stubborn as me!
"Fine." I slam the trapdoor shut, and it closes with a loud thud.
Both Zack and Kat are looking at me funny, and I ask, "What?"
"I've never, in all my life, heard you give into anybody. You always fought, even with me, until you won."
"People change, Zack. Get with the times."
They look at each other, speaking without words- the way Zack and I used to. It looks like Kat wins the silent argument.
We sit in silence until someone knocks on the trapdoor. We all jump, and Kat picks up her gun. I clutch Nick's knife in my hand- I haven't gotten a chance to give it back- and open the door.
Jess is there, on her hands and knees, a smudge of dirt on her face. She climbs out, and says, "He wasn't in there, anywhere. He escaped."
"I'm sorry Jess. Don't feel like you need to take responsibility; it wasn't your fault," I say. It really wasn't. It wasn't like he walked right past her. She guarded the door, because we didn't know about the extra exit.
"But it IS my fault! I should have noticed something was up, I should have noticed he wasn't there!" She looks like she might start crying.
I put my hand on her shoulder and say, "Nobody blames you. Okay? I blame myself for Jake's death, but it wasn't my fault. Don't do this to yourself; it isn't fun."
She looks a little bit better. "Nobody blames me?"
Finally I get a little bit of assistance from Zack and Kat.
"No, we don't blame you!" Zack says at the same time Kat says, "No way! Who would blame you for that?"
She looks a lot better after that. "Thank you guys."
"Of course," I say. "C'mon, let's go get the others."
We walk down to the game room for a meeting. Aaron and Nick are already there.
They both look exhausted. "I hate Ethan," Nick says tiredly.
"Don't we all?" I reply. It's only afternoon, yet it's already been a long day.
I look at the wall, and see that someone drew a rough caricature of Ethan and pinned it onto the dart board. I almost laugh out loud. I walk over, grab a few darts, go back a few steps, and commence throwing darts at Ethan's head.
Everyone pulls up chairs and sits around the foosball table, and I sit down also.
"What's the plan?" I ask Nick.
"That's what we're trying to figure out," he replies. "What do we need to do next?"
"We should go after him. This time, we shouldn't bother trying to keep him alive- just kill him. Get him out of here," Kat says.
"What if he has information though? Something we might need to know... Possibly about ending the apocalypse," Zack says. "We should try to negotiate instead."
They argue it out for a few minutes, and the rest of us remain silent, until Aaron interrupts. "How about we do a little of both...?" He says in a musing sort of voice. "We tell him we want to negotiate, and we do for a while, and then we kill him." Zack and Kat look at each other, and then nod their heads slowly.
"That's... Actually a pretty good plan," Nick agrees. "Jess? Ash? What's your input on this?"
"I think it's a pretty good plan," says Jess.
"How will we communicate with him? Tell him we won't kill him? We need to somehow get the message to him that we just want negotiations," I say.
"What about the old note system?"
I nod, seeing how this could work. Everyone takes my nod as a sign of approval for the plan, and start to celebrate.
We have a plan; now to furnish out the finer details.