13 Escaping The Complex

All that was left was to cross over to the hallway that leads to the elevator, which was easier said than done.

The thing was that since both sides had a limited amount of people, at some point, both were bound to run out before that happened, though both sides seemed to have stopped, creating a sort of temporary non-aggression pact.

Of course, this 'pact' was made not because either side wanted to stop but because both sides were afraid of what would happen if they were to continue.

That wouldn't do, though, as we needed there to be chaos for Josue and me to be able to get to the elevator, plus, reinforcements from other places could potentially be on the way, meaning that if we waited, there was a chance that the guards would receive reinforcements and kill us all.

The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Still, it wasn't as though it couldn't break, causing both sides to fire at each other again; in fact, it should be as easy as shooting a gun at the floor. The sound would cause all those who don't see the person shooting at the ground to assume that fire was resumed.

That didn't mean it was the time to do so, though, as it had only been 20 minutes since we heard the announcement of transportation teams coming here, meaning that we still had 30 minutes to spare (excluding the time needed to leave the building. Of course, I didn't expect the ceasefire to last for that long, but the shorter it took, the better.

After 15 minutes, somebody gave in to pressure and shot, after that, all hell broke loose, there weren't many people on both sides, mainly because after the US army encircled and eliminated the direct threat to the base, most residents and guards were taken away, leaving 100 of us here, mainly so that if anything happened, for example, an attack against the base we could be used to buy time for the guards.

The new arrangements made it so that there were two guards per 'resident' that way; no revolts would happen.

The thing was that when the revolt broke out and some 'residents' got their hands on weapons because the guards sent forces from both the resident elevator and the guard elevator (cafeteria and the end of the hallway connected to the library).

So, the second the doors of the cafeteria elevator opened, the reinforcements were taken out with no casualties, mainly because the 'residents' could use the tables as cover.

That was important because by camping the elevator, the 'residents' were able to get supplies.

As for the entrance to the other elevator, it had been at a stalemate, with more guards dying than 'residents' because they could only send a single group of reinforcements at a time; this was because if they decided to hold out in the hallway to the elevator.

At the same time, they would be able to send bigger groups of reinforcements; with a lack of immediate reinforcements in the hallway to the elevator, the 'residents' would be able to push forward and take control more of the second floor.

This made it so that more guards died than 'residents.' By now, it had reached the point where there were only 50-ish 'residents', and based on how things have been going, 50-40-ish guards left. This meant that neither Josue an I no longer had any real reason to try to escape the complex by blending in with the guards,

In the end, after little consideration, both Josue and I discarded the almost impossible infiltration plan.

We decided to join the 'residents,' of course, changing into our normal uniforms. All in all, despite the massive loss of life and the bodies lying all over the floor, we were able to push the guards back to the halfway point of the hallway, where basically all that was left of both forces was around 20 on our side and 13 on the other side.

By now, though, it was only 20 minutes until the transportation units arrived.

The situation had returned to what it was before, a ceasefire, this time though, they tried to negotiate our surrender, saying that we would only get life in prison if we gave up now, which of course was all a lie, I mean, come on, so many nukes were fired and exploded that the atmosphere and ozone layer were done for, there was a zero percent chance that we would make it all the way to old age.

Needless to say, we were all able to see through how unbelievably stupid their offer was and decided to launch one last attack.

Things went better than before though, now that they were significantly outnumbered, some of the guards subconsciously ran towards the elevator in the hopes of surviving, making the difference in number even bigger.

It was like a vicious cycle. At first, 3 ran, leaving only 10 to fight the 20 of us. Then, after 2 of the ones that stayed died, another 3 began to run, making the number still fighting back shrink to 5; needless to say, the 'residents' eliminated all of them, the first three to run away, however, were able to make it to the elevator.

Too bad for them before they could escape, the man I bumped into on my first day had already shot the ID scanner multiple times; as for why it wasn't bulletproof, I suppose the US didn't invest too much into a temporary base.

Still, we had 15 minutes until the transport units got here, so I called everyone's attention, which wasn't too difficult to get since the fight left only 14 of us. After that, I explained the situation if some hadn't been caught up yet and explained that the transport units were our only hope since otherwise we would die here.

Thankfully everybody was able to understand and cooperate. The plan was to gather as many ID's as we could pick up in 5 minutes and take the ones that resembled us the most before putting on the cleanest uniforms we could get our hands on before making it to the exit of the complex, from there, our success was all up to chance.

Once that was settled, we had to use the ventilation system to get to the first floor, since, you know, both elevators weren't working. But, all in all, we were able to get everyone to the Guard staffroom two minutes before the transportation was set to arrive, which allowed us to clean the place up a little while also allowing me to throw up in the staff bathroom.

Although a little late, the trucks did arrive, with people in hazmat suits coming over to us with syringes and other contraptions in hand. They ended up setting up everything needed for a blood extraction while checking our IDs, afterward getting us to sit down and get our arms ready for the extraction.

When it was my turn, I asked what the blood extraction was for. The person taking my blood said that it was so that the blood biomarker test could be conducted to see whether I had been affected by radiation and although I had absolutely no idea what that meant, I felt slightly calmer as the person extracting my blood seemed not to mind my question at all.

Something else I found to be nice about them was that they asked if I had hemophilia, which although probably normal procedure, was a nice change of pace from just being ordered around every day.

Once the results from the test were processed, all of us were moved to one of the trucks, with the driver telling us that the top would close so that we didn't breathe any more contaminated air.

After that, everything was silent, and the truck began to move. We didn't have much to do, but we did have a TV in front of us that we were free to use.

Although I was very suspicious of how well everything was going, I slowly lowered my guard when nothing happened for hours on end, eventually though, I began to smell something weird in the air, I couldn't describe it, my eyes began to get heavy, and I started fading into and out of consciousness until eventually, everything went black.