“Why keep me here then!” I whispered with absolute rage. This could have been over a long time ago.
“Because you needed this!” Joey hissed. “If I let you go, then that was it, it was over.” Joey squinted down the hallway. “But things have changed, haven’t they?”
“What does that mean?” I opened the door to my cage.
“It means you have focus now. You need to figure this out. No one should be locked in to this fate, not you, not me, not anyone,” Joey said and pointed at the mutilated body.
“What makes you think I could do anything? Are you even seeing this? She was...”
“Exactly. She was. She. Human. Not this. Whatever Eve became, this shouldn’t be the way she’s remembered.” Joey kneeled down, twisting Eve’s face toward the floor her hair falling and concealing her features. “You want to understand this, don’t you?”
“Well…” I stumbled.
“Of course you do,” Joey answered for me. “Look, I know it hurts. We remember Olivia too. But listen, we never found a body. She might still be out there.”
“Stop.” I didn’t need to be reminded. I didn’t need hope.
“Fine. But there are more still out there worth saving. Trust me; these people need this.”
“These people chased after me just weeks ago. Why should I try to fix their broken lives?” I hated all of them. Hated all of this.
“Because you want to, always wanted to.”
Joey’s words stung.
“That shouldn’t matter,” I said and moved around the fallen body.
“But it does, Jackson. And even if you don’t believe in it anymore, or in yourself, others do. No one wants to die in a cage, even those who still call you those names. They deserve attention, deserve a life better than this. Especially for those who are still innocent in all of this.”
Another scream erupted from down the hallway. Joey’s gun swung up instinctively. He flashed the light down, but nothing stalked the hallways just yet.
“Get moving,” Joey said and pushed forward, rushing into the twilight halls without a look back.
I just stood there, consumed with my own rage, anger, and sadness. I hated the way I was being pulled where I didn’t want to go. I just wanted to end this miserable life. But Joey had made an unbreakable point, one that tugged at my heartstrings. There were people who still deserved to be saved.
Glasses believed in me. Eve was nice to me, with the limited time given her. Joey wanted to protect me from myself, and all he ever wanted was to shield others from harm. These people needed hope. And if Olivia was here she would say the same thing.
So be it.
I progressed down the hallway in the opposite direction Joey had gone, the flickering candlelight casting shadows of my passing. The light twisted. I waited for creatures to pop out at me around every corner. Soon I reached a door that was wedged slightly open, ‘EVIDENCE’ stenciled on the glass. I paused and listened. When nothing stirred from within, I slowly entered the room.
It was empty. A candle’s light came from the corner near the opposite side of the door. But something else flickered inside with a dull blue roar.
Slowly and silently, I closed the door behind me and moved further towards the blue, pulsating light. The familiar sphere was very much alive and glowing, somehow functioning even on this side of the barrier. I picked up the device. It felt no different than before. The blue light escaped from the etched surface, and it was warm to the touch. I didn’t have time to figure out this new twist, and instead started looking for a weapon or anything that might help. There didn’t appear to be a stash in here, or an ammo cabinet.
Click clicckkkkkk click click click… the sound came from down the hallway, only a short distance away. I blew out the candle and put the sphere underneath my shirt, trying to hide the light. Squatting down, I scuttled close to the door, hiding along the wall.
Claws dragged along the concrete outside the door. A soft, slurping drew in from outside, and a high-pitched scream lingered in the silence, echoing down the tight hallway. The illumination from the candles out in the hall signaled that something was passing by. The glass of the door wasn’t exactly see-through, more rippled, so it contorted the monster’s form.
It was scouring the hallways, looking for who knows what. The creature passed without a notion of entering this room. Trailing off into another corridor down the prison, the clicking faded away until I could no longer hear it.
I waited.
Slowly, I touched the doorknob and turned it. The door swung open with a small squeak that sounded like thunder in the stillness. Sinking back into the room, I gritted my teeth, stopping to listen. I heard nothing, so I hesitantly passed through the opening.
Squatting in the middle of the hallway made me feel like I was alone in the center of the city again. The dank illumination was not nearly enough to ease my torn concentration. Bringing the sphere forward, it at least gave off a blue glow. I stood up slowly and tip-toed down the concrete, wishing I had a gun.
The prison was rather small, if I remembered correctly; only ten cells and a few sparse rooms. Nothing could really hide in such small quarters, so when I reached the exit in a few seconds I made sure to open it slowly and look out into the world before taking the leap. Outside the prison, everything was calm. It was late after all, and the world should be asleep, though I doubted it was. Monsters were running amuck in the city.
I stepped out into the openness. The sweet sense of freedom didn’t escape me. But I had a lingering feeling that this was all wrong, that my taste of freedom would be short-lived. One of those monsters could come screaming out of the prison, or someone who wasn’t so into me living outside a cage would see me and bury a bullet in my head.
Scampering over to the rocks and trees over to my left, I hid behind them for the moment. Neither man nor creature sought open space. My eyes turned to Downtown, and lights caught my attention.
The Timer.
The timer was flickering again, as if it was struggling to come back to life. The numbers continued to roll backwards in between the power outages. I looked at the sphere and realized that it too flickered with the timer, the flashing completely synchronized. The sudden and violent occurrence of the creatures from the center were linked. I just didn’t know how.
As if answering my question, the timer Downtown shined bright and vivid, remaining steadily lit. As it did, the sphere’s light died. They were surely linked.
Shouts drew me back to the outside world. Near the entrance of the prison, several deputies and civilians had gathered around the open door. I saw Joey, still alive and well. He seemed to be talking and helping those who were injured or scared. I couldn’t understand what they were saying from where I was, but there was a very noticeable panic in the crowd.
There was a lot of crying, shouting, and questions being slung around. I assumed that the creatures had gone away, possibly back into the center, but these people wouldn’t know that. They would still be looking for them, and if I stayed here, they might eventually find me too.
Joey filed the group of alarmed individuals back into the prison, guns still drawn. When the last entered, Joey looked around the landscape, searching for someone, or something. For a second I swore he saw me, as his eyes lingered in my direction for a second too long. But he disappeared in the building with the rest after another few seconds.
“Sherriff,” I sighed. Joey had told me what I needed to hear.
My mind raced back to Kyle, thinking about his remaining moments, his wounds that covered his body. Susan with the markings around her neck, turning black and purple as I watched. Thought of Olivia and the bag of hair with blood still on the scalp. It was utter torture, and it was beyond my control. Yet for all the pain, and all the hate, there was something else to think about.