Adrian Smith - The Rule of Three

Jack was about to look away when a shadow to one side caught his attention.

A short, overweight man with a red trucker’s cap loomed into the light. He scratched his butt and looked over towards Jack. He spat on the floor next to a red-haired woman and reached up and groped her breasts.

“Pity. This one’s pretty,” Trucker-cap said, his voice bouncing off the walls.

He kissed the woman and shuffled off after the creatures.

A man was walking around in this place of horrors, unscathed?

Jack’s foggy mind struggled to comprehend it. He inhaled to call out to him for help, but some innate sense stopped him. He just stared as the man walked away down the corridor. The whole thing felt wrong to Jack. Very, very wrong. He wanted answers. Needed answers.

Where am I?

How long have I been here?

What is this place?

Why is that creep walking around when the rest of us are stuck to the walls?

With renewed determination, Jack redoubled his efforts to get free. He wanted to see Dee again. To see those beautiful, smiling eyes. To feel her reassuring touch. He needed her. When Dee was around, everything seemed right.

He wondered what was happening to her. She must surely be really worried about him by now.

With both arms now free, he started working on liberating his legs. Pulling, tearing, twisting. Jack tried biting it with his teeth but the membrane tasted foul, like rotten lemons. It burned his lips and the roof of his mouth. He tried to ignore the taste but the more he bit into it, the more it burned.

Finally, he got one leg free and was able to twist his body. With one last shove, Jack wrenched the rest of his body free and landed on the floor with a thud. Cringing, he glanced down the corridor in the direction the creatures had gone, followed by Trucker-cap. Seeing nothing and, more importantly, hearing nothing, he gingerly got to his feet. As soon as he put weight on his right leg, he winced in pain. He quickly adjusted his weight off the leg. A blood-stained bandage was wrapped around it. Removing the bandage, Jack found a gash that ran twenty centimetres up his thigh from his knee, cutting deep into the skin. Congealed blood had crusted around the wound but plasma was beginning to seep, thanks to his recent activity.

Jack looked left and right before quietly removing his pack. He opened the bottom compartment, pulling out the outdoorman’s best friend: a roll of duct tape. Tearing off a segment, he closed the wound as best he could and wrapped the bandage back around his leg. Happy with his field dressing, he tested his weight on the injured leg. It still throbbed, but with the new strapping it felt marginally better.

Time to leave.

Warm air flowed over him as he made his way down the long corridor. With no other plan coming to mind, Jack had decided to head towards the humming sound. Treading carefully down the centre of the corridor, he kept his focus straight ahead. He dared not look to either side, at the other victims strung up like slaughtered cattle. Waiting to be butchered and fed upon.

Jack didn’t want to put any faces into his memory, traumatised as it was. What if he saw someone he knew? Could he deal with that? What if he saw Dee? This last thought made him pause and crouch down. Forcing himself to breathe slow and deep, Jack looked farther down the corridor. About halfway down was a door with a big red sign on it, but the text was unintelligible. With something to focus on, he was about to rise when something moved at the edge of his vision. Half stumbling, he fell back on his arse. Staring into his eyes was a young red-haired boy, his ice blue eyes piercing. Jack knew him, and as he stared back, his tired, traumatised mind cleared.

Shivering in the river, half floating, half swimming, Jack could see the creatures on the banks. There seemed to be packs of them. Never entering the water. They weren’t afraid, just unsure…

Following him, they gathered into larger packs. Screeching. Howling. Spitting.

Occasionally their heads would lift, sniffing the air, and they would tear off with excited howls, gone for a time. Jack enjoyed these interludes. He didn’t feel so on edge, waiting for one of them to pluck up the courage and dive in for him. But they returned… always. And in greater numbers.

He laughed to himself; they were like the sandpeople! If Dee was here, she would be telling Jack to be serious, but this was his superpower. His coping mechanism. Always finding the silly side of something, or finding a movie or TV reference in anything. He had once been on the wrong side of an armed robbery and had had a gun pointed at his head. This was how he’d got through the trauma.

He remembered meeting Emma, the two of them floating down the river and onto Lake Arapuni. Their search for a boat, the run in with Duke and his men. His escape.

Finding Sarah and George in the school. Cambridge and the evac centre. Rescuing Emma. The creatures ambushing them. The big leader and the darkness.

Jack remembered it all.

Right in front of him, the same boy held out his arm to Jack, his ice blue eyes pleading. Jack shook his head. Fate was strange. Rising to his knees, he remembered he had a little Swiss Army Knife in his first aid kit. Praying the creatures wouldn’t hear him, he searched his pack, hurrying. Pulling out the knife, he made quick work of the strange muck holding George to the wall.

George collapsed into his arms, whimpering. He eased the boy down to the ground and gave him the water valve. Seeing the liquid move along the tube, he searched around for Sarah.

Jack jogged a few metres up the corridor, now looking at each face. Searching. Blonde hair? No. Move on. He saw kids, adults, elderly, Maori, European, Asian, Pacific. It really didn’t matter. Everyone was here. The population. Food. Not seeing Sarah, Jack knew he and George needed to keep moving. Lingering any longer increased risk of discovery.

Jack lifted George into his arms and made his way towards the door with the red sign, continuing to search faces as he went. Not seeing Sarah, he hurried on, eager to get out of sight. Eager to eat something. Eager to leave this cursed place.

He could see the sign on the door now: SWITCH ROOM. The walls on either side looked new, with fresh green paint.

Jack tried the handle. Grinning as it turned, he hurried through. As he put George down, the boy whimpered. He crouched down till he was at eye level. George stared at him vacantly. In that fleeting moment, he realised all the horror the poor kid had seen in the last few days. Grasping his shoulder, Jack comforted him.

“You’re safe now, George.”

George blinked his eyes rapidly but remained silent.

Jack frowned and let out a breath as he took in the layout of the large room. On either side of the door were storage lockers. On the left- and right-hand walls stood rows of metal cupboards. In the far-right corner were more storage lockers. A small hand basin stood in the far-left corner, while a small window was set centrally in the wall opposite. Bright sunlight shone onto the floor of the room. Opening one of the cupboards revealed panels of switches similar to those on a household meter board, but industrial-scale. Jack read the labels: UTILITY ROOM; TURBINE ROOM; GATE HOUSE and smiled. He knew what these were. They controlled power to the various rooms of whatever building he was in. Jack scanned the labels again. Turbine Room stood out. You normally only found turbines in power stations.

Moving to the small window set in the opposite wall, he looked out. Below him surged a river.

And then all the clues added up. The switch labels, the north-facing dam, the large river below it… The mighty Waikato River.