Nation 27

CH 35: Where Is Everyone?

[Jared]

The facility’s alarms started blaring, and his room was suddenly plunged into pitch darkness.

Seconds later, distant shouts and screams could be heard.

“What is happeni-”

The light in the room was abruptly switched on but the room was now bathed in an eerie, bloodied-red hue.

‘The backup generator must have kicked in,’ Jared thought as uneasiness began to grow from within his core, ‘But if it was simply a blackout, I shouldn’t be hearing all the shouting and screams outside…’

The emergency light in the room started to flicker, and Jared looked up.

‘I should check out what’s happening… It’s definitely not normal to have the alarms on as well,’ Jared looked around the room for anything that could be used as a weapon but there was nothing, he resignedly grabbed a couple of pens that were nearby.

Jared started walking toward the door when he spotted a few potatoes that were on the bedside table.

‘Hm… I may need this if I do have to escape from this place,’ he then shoved the potatoes into his long trousers.

Taking a deep breath, Jared willed his heart to slow down as he pressed his ear close to the door. It took a while with all the shrilling of the alarms, but upon making certain that there was not a single soul outside his room, Jared cautiously opened the door.

Although he was all alone, it was still unnerving to look along the long, empty hallway. Similar to his room, the hallway was bathed in red. However, the hallway was dimly lit and the emergency lights flickered in unison, which cast eerie shadows that danced along the walls. Despite the blaring of alarms, each step Jared took reverberated with silent tension.

‘This isn’t good. Why have the screams and yells stopped? Where is everyone?’ Jared thought as he neared a staircase, ‘Or was the noise carried away as they ran? After all, this is the 5th floor, and I’m the only one who sleeps up here…’

Jared had silently descended the staircase when he could hear faint chatter. He leaned forward slightly, hoping to make out what was said, but he was apparently quite a distance from those individuals as the words were inaudible, and Jared was unable to even distinguish if the voices were male or female.

He followed the faint chatter, but instead of feeling relief at the idea of reuniting with the others, his heart grew heavier with concern. As he approached the door of level three, the sound of people talking and shuffling grew louder. It was as if they were right on the other of the door. Jared, who was initially eager to see someone get to the bottom of the abrupt security activation and also to have some sort of confirmation that this was indeed reality, stopped cold in his tracks.

Although the stairway door had a small window that would allow Jared to see who was on the other side of the door by simply standing on tiptoe, Jared already knew having his face placed close to the window would be a terrible idea.

‘No way…’ Jared swallowed nervously and cautiously backed away.

There were zombies inside the main building of the facility.

The chatter of people Jared could vaguely make out of the blaring alarms were actually the moanings of the undead as they shuffled listlessly on the third floor.

‘Wait… Then where are the others? Could the yells and screams I’d heard earlier be them or-’

There were zombies crawling slowly up the staircase from the lower level.

Jared clamped his mouth shut as he silently ran upstairs. The zombies on the staircase may have noticed him, but he was not going to alert more zombies to rush towards him by screaming.

Wanting to have a view outside the facility to check out the situation, Jared decided to enter the fourth floor. After making sure that the door of the stairway was fully closed, he started to half-jog and half-walk along the long hallway as he checked if every room opened room was genuinely clear of zombies.

‘From what I’ve seen so far, zombies are unable to open any doors- especially doorknobs which require a person to twist the rather narrow handle. So, as long as I don’t do anything that would draw their attention, they’re unlikely to group up and lean heavily against the door,’ Jared briefly glanced at the stairway door behind him that was now a good dozen feet away.

Immediately, Jared was reminded of a scene from a zombie movie he had watched in the past. He felt a chill go up his spine.

‘Thank goodness this world isn’t like World War Undead… Otherwise, I’d have been dead a long time ago… That means that the others would have plenty of time to escape, right?’

At this point, it was simply hopeful thinking because deep down, Jared had a sinking feeling that for the first time ever, he was truly alone in this dangerous and strange world.

‘Ah, where is it? I remember hearing from Louis that there was a huge balcony somewhere along this hallway. Could it be-’

Almost instantly, both the alarm and emergency lighting were shut down. Jared was plunged into a pitch darkness.

‘The silence is so deafening that I could hear the zombies moaning and shuffling all around the building… But it’s not as if they’re in the same hallway as I am. So, it should be okay, right…?’

Jared then started to walk horizontally toward the left.

‘I just need to run my hand alongside the wall, and I’ll eventually be able to find my way. Since the balcony is supposed to be a communal sort of viewing area, I should be able to find it if the moonlight were to shine through the window.’

Groping blindly in the dark, it took a couple of minutes before Jared’s hand finally touched the wall. 

‘The balcony can’t be that far away, right? I should be about halfway down this hallway already, but why don’t I see anything?’ Jared impulsively rubbed at his eyes as if to check if he had truly been walking in the dark with his eyes wide open.

‘Whoa… So, this is how it feels to be in total pitch darkness. My eyes are opened yet it feels like they’ve been shut the entire time. It shouldn’t be a Moonless night, right? I did see the crescent Moon just a few days a… Oh… I may be remembering wrong… Huh… I wonder what’s the date… Is it really November 2nd or-’

The sound of someone shuffling somewhere in front of Jared was heard.

‘That… Err… That was just me, right? Or is my hearing that good that I can hear the zombies from the stairway?’

Another shuffle of footsteps echoed in the empty hallway.

Jared started frantically moving forward while running his hand on the wall, making sure to also stick as closely as possible to the wall since the shuffling seemed to be coming from the right side up front.

‘No, no, no… Please tell me that it’s not a zom-’

Jared bumped into a table that was placed against the wall. A vase fell and subsequently shattered. The crash was so loud that Jared was sure that the sound carried throughout the entire property.

Just then, there was a soft glow that was emitted just a foot away from Jared.

‘It’s the balcony! I’ve found it!!!’

Jared ran toward the balcony and attempted to open the large glass doors that led to it.

‘It’s locked! How am I going to-’

GROWL

The sound of clumsy shuffling was heard.

Jared looked toward the source of the sound.

There were two zombies, and they were moving quickly in his direction.

“Shit.”