Getting Out

28

When Jeremy woke up, the pain was even worse, if that was possible, than the moment that he’d been shot.

He immediately thought: there’s no way I’m going to survive this. He figured there was simply no way he could go on with the pain, and medical treatment, well, he didn’t think that was going to happen.

But maybe… maybe it would. After all, just because the power was out, it wasn’t as if the doctors had disappeared, right?

The soldiers had been harsh with him, sure. They had dragged him off. But they had, after all, treated him somewhat. They had stopped the bleeding, and he was alive, whereas if they’d left him there he would be dead.

Maybe they’d just been following orders. Maybe they’d been under orders to get food at whatever cost. The military needed to be fed just like the citizens. And if peace, law, and order were going to continue to reign supreme, then feeding the military and police could be considered of the utmost importance.

Jeremy was vaguely aware of his surroundings. He knew he was somewhere with a lot of other people. His vision was blurry as he looked around, and something had happened to his glasses. He saw just a blurry mass of people. It might have been the same day, or maybe the next. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t know how to tell.

But without his vision being as good as it should have been, he still knew there were many, many people. He could hear them, their cries of pain and their moans of hunger. He could smell them, the pungent human smell of many, many unwashed bodies.

Jeremy sat up despite the pain. He pulled up his khaki pant leg that was stained with dried blood. He looked at his wound. As he’d suspected, the soldiers had put some kind of field-treatment military medical supply on it. It looked like a white patch, a large bandage, that stuck to his skin with some kind of glue. It was completely soaked through with a rich red blood, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

Jeremy didn’t dare try to stand up. He knew that he would never be able to. His leg hurt too much. Simply too much. He had to grit his teeth just to stand as he sat there in a crouched position.

“Hey,” said Jeremy. It seemed to take all of his strength to speak. His stomach rumbled horribly at him. His leg ached. His whole body ached.

The woman next to him, who he could see fairly well, ignored him.

“Excuse me,” said Jeremy. He reached out and tugged at her sleeve.

“Get away from me!” she cried at him, pulling her arm violently away from him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Jeremy. “But can you tell me where we are? What’s going on?”

“What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on. And it’s not good.”

She paused and didn’t say anything.

“Tell me,” said Jeremy desperately. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold this “conversation” that he was having. His mouth and throat were parched, and each word seemed to only cause him more pain. “Tell me what’s happening. Where are we? I don’t seem to have my glasses.”

“Your glasses?” laughed the woman. “You’re not going to get them back. You’re not going to get anything back.”

She was a woman in her early forties, only a few years older than Jeremy himself. But she looked much older. Maybe it was that the makeup she’d been wearing had smeared and run. It looked as if she had been crying intensely. And where there was no makeup, her skin looked like that of a much older woman.

The sight of her face close up scared Jeremy. Maybe he was starting to hallucinate, he thought. Maybe he was seeing things. Maybe he was going crazy. Maybe this was all just a dream.

Wouldn’t that have been a relief? If this horrible situation, with all these moaning people around him—if it was all just the fantasy of a man gone insane, a man whose brain could no longer support the rigors of modern culture.

Someone was approaching with heavy footsteps.

It was a soldier.

“Identify yourself,” he said, stopping right in front of Jeremy.

When Jeremy didn’t immediately answer, the man pointed his gun right at Jeremy’s chest.

Jeremy almost didn’t answer. If he could just get shot now, that would be a relief. If he could just end it now… That was all he wanted, for this nightmare to end. He no longer cared how it ended. He just wanted it to be over. He would have liked it to end, and to be back at the comfortable air conditioned office. But death… that didn’t sound too bad right now. It was an end, after all. At least it was that.

“Your name!” screamed the soldier, leaning down a little to scream directly into Jeremy’s face. Jeremy saw the face and it looked horrible. It was a normal face, but it was marred by fear and a thousand ugly emotions all competing for space. The soldier shoved the muzzle of his gun into Jeremy’s chest. It hurt terribly, and Jeremy fell down onto his back.

“Jeremy Gibbons,” said Jeremy, speaking with pain.

“Empty your pockets,” said the solider.

Jeremy didn’t act immediately. He was a little dazed, very confused, and didn’t seem to understand the directions well.

“The woman at his side started cackling. “He wants your money,” she said. “But he knows it won’t do him any good. Not now. Not ever…”

“Shut up,” shouted the solider at her, pointing his gun at her instead of Jeremy.

“You know you can’t do anything with that money,” said the woman, speaking unnecessarily loudly. Her words seemed to echo inside of Jeremy’s head, hurting his brain, his eardrums, his whole body. Her voice had a shrill tone to it that seemed to reverberate against Jeremy’s bones.

“Shut up,” yelled the soldier. His voice was a mixture of anger and fear.

Without another word, his finger gripped the trigger, and he unleashed a hail of bullets that splattered against the woman’s chest.

Blood spurted out, and Jeremy watched in horror as the woman fell down on the ground, lifeless. Her chest was ripped open by a dozen bullets.

Jeremy was frozen. The solider pointed his gun directly at Jeremy. Jeremy knew what he wanted, but he couldn’t seem to make his arms move. He was paralyzed with fear. No matter how much he wanted to give the solider his wallet, give him everything in his pockets, his arms simply wouldn’t obey his brain. And, honestly, part of him wanted to die. Part of him wanted to die right then and there. It would be easier.

But before the soldier could shoot him, heavy footsteps were coming. Jeremy could feel the vibrations on the earth. For the first time, his tired brain registered that he was lying on damp earth. He was on some kind of football field. Maybe he was at the high school football stadium? Had he and all these other people been brought here to form some kind of detention center?

The man approached from the side, flanked by six soldiers, three on each side.

He was a huge man, towering above everyone else, with a wide face and close-cropped hair. He looked like a soldier, but he wore civilian clothes. He was armed with only a handgun worn openly on a holster. His muscles bulged in his tight t-shirt. He must have been some kind of military commander.

The soldier froze as he saw the men approach.

“Johnson!” called the big man with the wide face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Nothing,” replied Johnson the soldier.

“He was robbing another one of them,” shouted one of the commander’s sidekicks.

“I wasn’t,” said Johnson, but his voice betrayed him, showing his fear and his guilt.

“Spoils go to the commander, Johnson,” said the commander. “You know that, don’t you? I suppose you’re going to say that you were going to bring them to me, weren’t you?”

Jeremy thought that this couldn’t possibly be true. It had only been a couple days, right? Or else he’d been passed out for longer than he’d thought. After all, he had no way of knowing what day it was. Or even week… although he supposed that there was no way he could have survived over a week without food or water.

But had society really already come to this, to some horrible nightmarish version of a free for all, where the mighty ruled? It simply couldn’t be true.

Before Johnson could answer, the commander shouted.

The soldiers who flanked him moved out and grabbed Johnson savagely. One of them took his gun, and another hit Johnson in the stomach with a vicious uppercut. Johnson doubled over in pain as two men dragged him off.

Jeremy lay frozen in fear, hoping no one would notice him.

But that turned out to be too much to wish for.

The commander himself grabbed Jeremy and dragged him. He was strong and Jeremy didn’t weigh that much. He was dragged easily by his shirt collar through the field that had become mud.

What Jeremy saw horrified him. The field was completely full of men, women, and children, in various states of disrepair and distress. Jeremy couldn’t see far, but the field was packed full of people, and as he was dragged along, he got a blurry yet close up view of many of them.

What would happen to these people? There didn’t seem to be any water or food. Would they simply all starve or die of thirst?

After being dragged across the width of the field, Jeremy was thrown roughly to the ground. This area was muddier than the rest.

Jeremy was right next to a pile of bodies lying face down in the mud. They were stacked one on top of another. Blood seeped out of some of them. The smell was horrible, and Jeremy’s body tried to vomit instinctively. But he couldn’t do it. Only some yellow bile came up, leaving a horrible taste in his mouth, and dribbling down his chin onto his shirt.

Jeremy was next to the soldier who’d tried to rob him. Both were lying in the mud. The solider made no move to get up. Jeremy was too fatigued to even try, and in too much pain. He knew the end was near, and he wasn’t going to fight it. He didn’t have the will to live, the burning desire required to make things work.

There was nothing to say. There was nothing read to them. There was no explanation of why they were being executed. But it was clear what was happening, what was going to happen. It was as clear as the day.

Jeremy vaguely knew that the day would continue without him, that the world would still exist without him. But he didn’t care. He didn’t have the energy for complicated thought. He just wanted an end. It was a selfish end, but then again, he’d lived a thoroughly selfish life. A lazy life, the life of a coward, hiding behind his machines and his money and his good credit.

The soldiers were in front of them. They raised their guns and Jeremy saw in slow motion as they pulled their triggers.

A hail of bullets exploded out of them. The body of the soldier named Johnson danced in the mud as the bullets riddled him with violent holes.

Jeremy was next, and he made no protest. He simply waited for his turn.