When there were only about fifty feet between the guards and Gabriel’s group, one of the guards shouted, “Please hold right there.”
“Are we in the wrong place?” Gabriel said. “Isn’t this the survival station?”
“Yes, sir, it is, but we need you and the others to stop so we can talk with you.”
“Oh, sure. Everyone, it’s okay.”
The group came to a staggered halt, while the guards continued forward until they were only a few yards away.
The guard who’d spoken said something softly into a mic attached to his jacket. When he looked back at Gabriel, he said, “You’re a pretty big group.”
“Picked up people here and there on the way,” Gabriel said.
“What about the others?”
“What others?” Gabriel asked, feigning confusion.
“Got a couple other groups about the same size as yours coming in on the other side of the stadium.”
Gabriel made a big show of sighing in relief. “I’m so glad to hear that. I thought we’d lost them.”
“They’re with you?”
“Yes. We got separated once we reached the city. I’m glad to hear they’re okay.” Gabriel stuck his hand out and stepped forward. “I’m Gabriel.”
The move took the man off guard. He hesitated, then removed his hand from the stock of his rifle and shook Gabriel’s.
Gabriel had the man’s rifle before the guy had a chance to react. The main guard grabbed for his radio, but Gabriel smashed the butt of the gun into his hand, batting it away and breaking bones in the process. He looked over and saw the rest of his team, led by Resistance security members, had disarmed the other guards.
“Ramon,” he said. “Please take possession of this man’s radio.”
As Ramon removed the device, the guard said, “What the fuck? This is not the way to get our help.”
“That’s funny,” Gabriel told him. “I hadn’t realized Project Eden was in the business of helping.”
The guard stiffened. “Who are you?”
As tempted as Gabriel was to answer with another thrust of the rifle butt, he motioned to the others that it was time to move. Keeping the guards between them, they hurried the rest of the way to the stadium.
Gabriel took a quick look around, and then pointed at a metal pipe railing meant to protect the public from a sunken drainage intake. “That should do nicely,” he said.
They secured the guards to the railing with zip ties.
“Whatever you’re planning,” the main guard said, “do you really think you’re going to get away with it?”
Gabriel plucked his own radio off his belt and clicked the SEND button. “Team B?”
The delay was barely a second. “Team B secure.”
“Team C?”
Again, a brief pause. “Team C secure.”
“Anyone have any problems?”
“Negative.”
“None here.”
“Stand by,” Gabriel said. He looked at the guard. “Actually, I think we’ve already gotten away with it.”
Hypodermics were produced, and before the guards realized what was going on, they were each injected with enough sedative to knock them out for at least twelve hours.
Gabriel raised the radio again. “Phase two.”
33
The reassignment room was back in order — the chairs in straight rows, the body fluids cleaned up, and the smell of sweat and fear filtered from the air.
Terrell had felt like a robot as he helped Diaz and the others get things ready for the next group. When he and Diaz had hauled the bodies out of town, Terrell had considered slipping away and disappearing forever. But that would have been the cowardly choice, a selfish act no better than if he were pushing the button to activate the gas.
So he had returned and done what he had done so many times before.
“Better be the last group today,” Diaz whispered to him as they waited outside the room for the guard detail to return with the next batch of survivors. “By the time we get back from the dump, it’ll be almost three a.m., and if I don’t get some sleep I might start bashing in heads myself.”
Terrell knew he should respond with some witty comeback — that kind of banter made up most of their communication — but all he could manage was a small nod and barely audible “yeah.”
Diaz frowned. “What’s wrong with you? You’ve been acting weird all day.”
“Sorry. Just…tired,” Terrell said, seizing on to Diaz’s own admission.
“Lightweight,” Diaz said.
Terrell forced a smile. “Better a lightweight than a dumb shit like you.”
If Diaz noticed Terrell’s less than smooth delivery, he made no mention of it. Instead, he seemed to take Terrell’s jab as a sign that everything was okay. He grunted a laugh and said nothing more.
I have been trying to sleep for the last two hours, but the buzzing in my head refuses to go away. So I’ve decided to write a bit and hope that getting some of my thoughts down will clear my mind.
The doctors and their soldiers came a total of three times today, taking more of us with them each time. Our holding area is no longer crowded. No one needs to share a bed anymore. In fact, there are several empties around.
No one who had been taken away has come back. Not a single person. But the things they arrived here with, the things they’d been allowed to bring with them into the holding area, are all still here. Someone, I’m not sure who, has moved all the missing people’s possessions to the back of the room. Why? I don’t know. I just know that I don’t like it. When the others do come back, they are going to wonder why someone touched their things.
All right, all right, I know. Maybe the others aren’t coming back. It still doesn’t mean we have the right to displace their things so quickly.
I think I’m going crazy. I think I’m focusing on things that aren’t important, but what else can I do? Where have the others gone? Why won’t the doctors tell us what’s happening? Why are they—
I hear the gate opening.
They’re calling for us to come out again.
More later.
Terrell heard the footsteps long before the procession came into view. As usual, Drs. Harvell, Wilhelm, and Yang were in front, followed by the survivors — twenty-one this go-around — and then the guards.
The first few groups that had been escorted in had been full of hope and excitement, while those that followed were progressively less so. The new group looked as if nearly everyone’s hope was gone.
Terrell tried not to glance at any of their faces for more than a second, but then a girl near the middle of the pack locked eyes with him and he could not look away. She was maybe twenty, with an intelligence in her gaze that reminded him of a girl back in high school. Lindsey, two years ahead of him. She had always been kind, even helped him study on occasion.
The girl being led to her death continued to stare at him all the way into the room, and for a moment he thought, She knows. She knows what we’re about to do to them. But that was impossible. She was just tired like the others, he told himself, done in by the ordeal of survival and the wait for the promised vaccine.
“Please, everyone, move all the way to the end of the rows and take a seat,” Dr. Wilhelm said as the survivors entered.
Terrell and Diaz followed the last of the guards in, stopping next to the door as they’d done at the start of each previous session.
After everyone was seated, Wilhelm said, “Let me be the first to say congratulations. You have all cleared the quarantine period, and in a few minutes you will be administered the Sage Flu vaccine.”