Chapter 5

Back to Reality

"NO!" I began thrashing around and a pair of hands locked onto my arms. "YOU BASTARDS!" I don't know what's going on. The pair of arms drags me to the floor and a great weight holds me to the floor. I open my eyes for the first time, and I can see them. Blood is leaking from their eyes and ears as they stare down at me and a voice seems to boom from the heavens.

"Sedate him Archer. He's having another episode." I can't let them do it, the needle brings them back and I can't face them alone.

"I can't keep hold of him boss!" One draws his fist back and slams it into my face and pain shoots through me. I stop thrashing but I keep screaming because now I can feel them. They are close, I need to run, I need to get out of here. Something punctures my neck and my struggles renew even though it's hopeless. I try my hardest to keep my eyes from shutting but I can't. My eyes slide shut and I can hear the screams and see the flames before oblivion takes me. I hear the voice again, fading into the distance and eventually lost among the chaos of my own mind. "Take him back to his cell. We shall resume in the morning…"

"What the hell was that?"

"I assure you Agent, "Smith", was it? I assure you that that was a completely normal occurrence. Mr. Callahan has a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and can easily confuse reality with his own little world. His mind is in shambles after what he saw out there."

"Smith" crossed his arms and walked out of the interrogation room going to meet the doctor on the other side of the intercom. He took his sunglasses off and placed them on the table before leaving and waited until the orderlies had escorted Cal out of the room. The young veteran's words struck a chord with him, he thought, as he walked down the hallway to meet the doctor. He was no stranger to violence as he had been in the middle of the Fall of Kansas City, as it was called. His covert mission there had brought his mind and body to the limits of human endurance and while he had managed to pull back from the edge, he witnessed many who couldn't. The memories sent shivers through him and he leaned against the wall, suddenly out of breath. It was in the past, he told himself, they couldn't get to him through the Rocky Mountains. But that's what they said about the Mississippi River to…

"Need any help agent?" The doctor was beside him, a steaming cup of coffee in his hands and an unnatural smile plastered to his face. "Here we deal specifically with troubled veterans from the war. Would you like to sit down with me?" The smile never left his face as he sipped his drink and followed Smith down the hall.

"No."

"You're not a very talkative one, are you Smith?"

"No." He kept walking, not looking back. Something about the doctor was wrong, very wrong, but he just couldn't place it. "So when is Cal going to be ready for another interview?"

"In the morning, like I said. Is this really important, that you find out what happened to that base?" A brief look of worry crossed the doctor's face as he said it, but disappeared as Smith finally turned to face him.

"Yes."

"But the entire East Coast was overrun in a month and all bases were lost. Even the Echo Safe Zone up in Pennsylvania was lost by the end of the fourth week, and they were prepared to fight World War 3 up there." Smith grimaced as the doctor stated this factually, no remorse or grief or sadness over the tens of millions of lives lost in on the east coast, now turned into shambling, bloodthirsty demons.

"That doesn't matter. We needed as much information as we could on those damn carriers! Maybe there could be a cure or something else that would have prevented this!"

"Agent," the doctor said in a low and foreboding voice, "you have the cure in your holster." Smith reached into his coat and felt the holster containing his weapon within. Fully loaded, cleaned, ready to be fired. If only he could fire it right now and wipe that look off his counterpart's face. He hadn't done what he'd done, gone through what he'd gone through. This college professor probably didn't know any more about the infection than Smith himself knew about leading a normal, pre-outbreak life. Images of his first sanctioned assassination flashed through his mind, and he realized that he could well be next if he was discovered here by his superiors.

"I'll be back tomorrow, 8 A.M. sharp. He better be ready by then."

The old doctor merely smiled again. "He'll be ready by then agent."

Smith threw him a final, questioning, glance as he walked out the front doors of the clinic into the cool nighttime breeze of the Colorado night. Sticking to the shadows and alleyways of the once bustling city he left the vicinity of the mental clinic, passing a few military check points along the way. Finally reaching a safe location he pulled out his cell phone, a luxury that few people had nowadays. One of the more ancient models, quite different from the ones of pre-outbreak fashion, it would have been an ugly thing to look at back then. Checking his watch, not the clock on the phone in order to conserve the battery, he dialed one of the three numbers he had been provided with at the beginning of his mission, each one leading to the same source, but signaling his distress level, depending on which number he dialed. Dialing the standard one a gruff voice came from the other side. "Smith? Sitrep, now."

"Sir? What? I can't hear you." The reception on these ancient things was shit, and that was a complement compared to the other things he was thinking of saying about it. He remembered when the CIA had some of the most advanced surveillance and communication equipment in the world, back before almost all of the modern technology had fallen flat on its ass during the outbreak and the retreat back west. The only things that maintained any value were guns and fuel, both of which had now skyrocketed from two years ago. If you had one or the other you were a god, but if you were one of the people who had both, and enough of each, you could do whatever the hell you wanted and the only people who could do anything about that, being what was left of the government, could be bent to your will if you played your cards right. The only people left in perimeter towns, like Denver, were the soldiers assigned to keep the infected from spilling into the last concentrated pocket of humanity left in North America and those who had neither one.

Moving into another area, slightly more open and slightly less compromising than the one he had just left, he tried again. The signal faded in and out but it was enough to serve his needs. "Sir? The city guards report less infected activity outside the perimeter." Gunshots echoed through the streets for a few brief seconds, followed by soldiers shouting that the attackers were dead. "Clearance to pass through is on the way, but slow coming."

The gruff voice on the other end grunted in dissatisfaction. "We can't afford to wait any longer son. Do I need to remind you of what was on that chopper?"

"No sir, sorry sir."

"Anything else to report agent?"

"No sir." Smith held his breath for a split second in anticipation. If the chief found out about where he had been today…

"You've been staying away from that clinic, right son?"

Shit. "Yes sir."

"Good. We'll have a team out there in 6 days time, and if there's no clearance by then threaten to quarantine the city. That usually gets results. We have a contact for you as well to aid in our efforts. Meet him here." He looked at the address that was sent to the phone via text. It was only 15 minutes away if he walked.

"Alright chief." He turned off the phone then shut it. "That was close." He walked out onto the street, long vacant of functioning cars and slipped into the crowd gathering around for the nightly roll call. Each citizen was assigned to a district in the city and given a corresponding number. At. 7 A.M. and 7 P.M. every day they went to the indicated meeting point of their district for a roll call. This was done in order to tally civilian losses in attacks by infected as any citizen not present was considered dead. Any citizen found skipping roll would be severely punished.

Such was the way with towns along the perimeter these days. Urban sites in California and Oregon and the like didn't have to worry about this, but thankfully neither did Smith. He was here on a government sanctioned mission that would take him outside the "safety" of this rundown refugee camp of a city and into "Indian Country" as the higher ups had designated it. His mission was a vital one, but after he found out who was in the Augustus Mental Clinic he couldn't resist a visit to get the conviction he needed.

He approached the address he was given by the chief, a large motel in its former life and now civilian quarters 2B for district Blue in the former city of Denver, Colorado. Walking up to the second floor he located the room he was looking for and stepped inside. On the floor were bedrolls made from curtains and blankets with the bed being used only for the infirm or young, such as it was throughout most of the poorer districts like this. He saw people nearly starved, sick, tired, and defeated. He only noticed the man in the corner because he looked alive compared to these people, but that wasn't saying much. His hair had grown down past his shoulders and was a dirty mess with dirt and bits of trash in it. His beard looked as if he had attempted to shave it with only middling results, but no one cared about appearances these days as long as they were alive. Upon hearing the door open the man in the corner looked up revealing long symmetrical scars on his face running from his lower right side to his left eye.

"Son of a bitch…" Smith stammered as his contact walked over to meet him. The man grumbled in a deep voice.

"Looks like we got some catching up to do Jerry." He led Smith back outside and they disappeared into the cold night.

"Cal…" The voices, they won't stop and I can't make them stop, oh god why is this happening to me, what have I done? For the millionth time I stand in front of the store as gunfire explodes from the inside. I stand there and back away and begin to shake until I hear her scream from inside, and then I run to save her. Bodies are strewn over the floor, some still twitching when she screams again. I break the door down and see three of the bastards on her with blood spurting from the pile of matter that used to be a human being. I raise my weapon to shoot them, to try and save her but when I pull the trigger it only clicks. They can hear it and they turn around, aware. Instead of attacking me they walk past into the night, their demonic laughing blocking the rest of the world out. I go to her side as she gasps and wheezes in pain but I can't do anything about it. They left me here instead of killing me because they knew that this would do more damage than anything they could physically inflict upon me.

A voice fills my head and the laughter dies. It's all your fault. No it isn't! You let me die. You hate me. No I don't! You let me down. There was nothing I could do! You let your friends down. It wasn't my fault! You're a failure and this is your punishment. What did I do? Why do I deserve this?

The bleeding girl in front of me breaths her last with blood pooling all around her. I turn to the door and the evil laughter returns as the woman's blood slides up the walls covering them like a fresh coat of crimson paint. I turn to the door and pull out my pistol, pointing it at me head. Click.

I drop the empty pistol to the floor as her voice enters my head again. There is no escape from yourself. I turn back to her and she is standing right behind me, close enough for me to feel her breath if she were breathing. Her eyes are completely white and blood runs from her mouth and nose as she grins malevolently and lunges.

"Son of a bitch!" I fly up from the floor and look around seeing only my padded cell. The familiar screaming of the other patients slowly fills in the quiet void as my mind begins to slip back into reality. It was the dream again, the dream I always have when they sedate me. I drag myself into the corner and my eyes grow heavy. I can't go back to sleep because I know what is waiting for me inside my own head.

"I gotta get out of this fucking place."

Author's Note: So yeah, Chapter 5. I'm trying this new way of writing with this story so I can more easily let on what is happening with the country at large by this point. This same format was used in Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry, a really awesome book about stopping a (you guessed it) zombie outbreak! I'm going to try this from now on, go through one of the campaigns then have one chapter in the present time. If it got hard to follow near the end, or when it switches perspectives, let me know so I can try to make it better in the future, or just scrap the whole thing and have Cal just tell his story non-stop from here on out. Please review because I want to know how I can make this story better!