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Stealing from a Body Exhibit II |
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(Josh)
Besides the incredibly creepy dead bodies on display, seemingly watching my every move, there appeared to be nothing really alive, or even half alive, other than the three of us in the dimly lit corridors of the Exhibit.
All of our guns were cocked, which should have been enough to reveal exactly how damn scared we were, despite how we may have looked on the outside.
When we reached the door, I was hesitant, unsure if I really wanted to do this, however, all thoughts of turning back and leaving was abandoned when I heard the smallest of growls near the entrance from where we came.
"Let's go guys, what the ******** hell are we waiting for!" I yelped as I walked up as fast as I could and wrenched open the inconspicuous, black door.
There were a pair of stairs leading down into more darkness, but it was silent down there, while there were some man-eating monsters moaning for our flesh behind us.
The three of us rushed in and I heard Joyce suck in a sharp breath as James shut the door and the stairwell was enveloped in darkness.
~
"Keep moving." urged Joyce.
"I'm the one that's gonna meet what's down there headfirst so I think I deserve dibs on how fast we do it." I couldn't help but snap back.
"Then maybe considering the probability that they will eventually sniff us out and break down that door can give you some better motivation." James said wryly.
I stayed quiet, biting my tongue so that I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of a retort, which was equivalent to admitting he was right. As I descended with a considerably faster pace down the stair well, I flipped him off in the dark over my shoulder, though I doubted if he could even see past his own nose.
Complete silence reigned over us as we continued down the seemingly never-ending staircase. Flashlights were precious and batteries hard to come by so we refrained from using them as much as possible.
Suddenly there was a low hum and we all halted in our tracks. I swallowed nervously again.
Florescent lights on the ceiling blinked to life and I hissed as my eyes were violently assaulted by the unexpected brightness.
I suddenly felt Joyce step out and hold up her gun from behind me. I blinked and, as my eyes focused, I saw a short but slim middle-aged man in a white lab coat standing frozen at the bottom of the stairs, decked out in goggles and white surgical gloves, which were stained with a familiar black substance. He had Asian features like the rest of us, though his eyes, from what little I could see through his goggles, were a light blue. It looked like he was still recovering from his initial shock at the sight of three armed teenagers and was close to regaining his ability to speak, though James beat him to it.
"Are you one of the head scientists behind the messed up hell outside?" He had his gun aimed directly at the man's forehead, as did Joyce and I couldn't help but feel minutely sorry for the man, before I aimed my gun at his crotch. Maybe I could feel a little more remorse for him after I shot his balls off with one hit.
"Yes. I am." The man had no accent to account for, but that wasn't what threw me off a little. It was the fact that this man had no emotion whatsoever in his voice, not a single tremor to show that something was amiss in the world and that he'd royally ******** up. "I won't blame you if you shoot me. Go ahead." Somehow I knew this kind of response was coming.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joyce lower her gun and I turned my head to look at her. She had an expression of fierce anger touched laced with an edge of helplessness, as she found she couldn't shoot another living, breathing person as easily as she could shoot someone who was already dead.
I mimicked her, my gut telling me that if we shot this man, he would win whatever sick little game we were playing. I heard movement from behind me to prove that James had done the same.
"I thought not," said the man and this time he did show some emotion, but it wasn't an emotion I was expecting. He smiled, but it was seriously the world's most depressing smile I'd ever seen, like the kind people gave before they walked in front of a moving train or stepped into an electrically charged bathtub. "Come." He turned sharply around and began walking off at such a brisk pace that even I had to jog slightly to keep up. "The door back there should hold, unlike popular belief. That's how I managed to stay alive so far."
I stayed silent and observant as we walked through the long, white corridor. It wasn't ominous, more like we were on a tour...of some wedding aisle. The only word I could use to describe the place was white. There were white marble floor tiles and white wallpaper. The only things not white were the people walking down the corridor. I was surprised I hadn't been blinded by all the whiteness.
The passageway was clean like the Exhibit had been, though whether that place still retained its cleanliness was questionable as there were certain unwanted visitors upstairs.
From the sure way that James and Joyce were walking, I remembered that they'd seen this corridor before. Had they seen this professor guy before? Apparently not, otherwise they would've been retained and questioned as to the extent of how much they'd seen. It was a pity, however, that the two of them couldn't identify the visible threat to mankind when they saw it with their own eyes, though I supposed that even if they did know, how could they have destroyed it?
"I recognize two of you," The man broke the silence. "Your faces were caught on our security cameras."
"How many of you are there?" James asked quietly, though it sounded like he was speaking in a moderately loud voice because of the expanse of emptiness surrounding us.
The man stopped before the single door at the end of the corridor. "Six."
"Are they all dead?" Joyce squeaked, her voice a little unsure now.
"No. There are two others. The rest have either gone outside or we have them contained."
"You can't mean-" I choked before I could finish my sentence, sickened as I was. He couldn't mean that they...
The man opened the door and two other people joined him. One was a plain, thick-set woman with incredibly pale skin, wearing the same goggles as the blue-eyed, Asian man. The other was a slightly overweight, old man with glasses that looked like they were more for show than for actual aid in his sight.
"These are my colleagues, Anna and Joseph," He smiled that sad smile of his again. "They helped me create this poison and we continue to have orders to refine it."
I could only stare at the man as he proceeded to tell the ultimate truth that I honestly never expected or wanted to hear.
"Our orders come from those working within the government and they have asked us to create a disease or sickness that can be planted efficiently within enemy territory to subdue and decrease their population. Hawaii was chosen as the testing zone as its isolation would keep the majority of the United States safe. The President himself has given permission to close off all airports on the islands and forbid any aircraft to come within visible distance of them, however, he doesn't know of our orders. All he does know is that Hawaii has become the new hell on Earth and the safety of the people in the rest of his country will be jeopardized if he doesn't take action. What he doesn't know is that the very thing we were ordered to create can jeopardize the entire human race." The man finally fell silent. His other colleagues did nothing but look at us with their pitying gazes as our shock was evident on all our faces.
Joyce began to sob softly and for a while that was the only sound in that long, cold corridor .
"Why?" I finally rasped, my voice nearly gone from the mind-numbing news. "Why did you do it? Why did you agree?"
"Because we were doomed from the beginning anyway. Hawaii was already chosen as the testing zone even before the orders for creating the substance were given. It was best that we did it, otherwise not a single person would survive."
"So you did this to save your own skins, is that it?" James began to raise his voice.
"No one really survived anyway..." I growled, attempting to quell James from his oncoming outburst of pure rage. "Except us. And even if we aren't the only ones, they'll be hunted down, unless we do something about it. Do you have an antidote?" I got to the point as quickly as possible.
The man made as if to shake his head, but the woman spoke quickly.
"Yes. We do." She didn't react as the man gave her an exasperated look. "Though I'm not sure what you could do with such a small amount."
"Then make more of it." said Joyce, finally recovering from her breakdown. She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, which it was.
"That will take time." said the old man who'd been silent up until now.
"Which you apparently have." I finished for him.
"And what do you plan to do once we finish making more of the antidote? Force feed it to them?" asked the blue-eyed man cynically.
"No. Honolulu Board of Water Supplies. Ever heard of it?" explained James as if to a person several years his junior instead a man old enough to be his father.
There was a considerable pause as the man contemplated the plan James had proposed to him. "I see...It will take at least one week to complete create the amount of antidote you need to accomplish this. I suggest that in the mean time you find more food to sustain all of us."
The three of us nodded. Then Joyce huffed and said, "And we need a ride, a big one. How else are we going to carry a whole island's worth of antidote to the Board?"
"Josh." I looked back to see James with a grin on his face that matched mine appropriately.
"Yeah I know."
"Remember that abandoned transport truck right outside on Kapiolani Boulevard..."
"The one labeled KFC?" My grin grew wider.
"Two birds with one stone." A fiery spark appeared in James' eye.
"God I'm gonna go fat!"Joyce wailed.
And we all laughed together at that.
 shoyou100 · Wed Aug 18, 2010 @ 03:10pm · 0 Comments |
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