Two halves of apocalypse
"Mark? Is that you?" asked Jane aloud, not recognizing her friend, it had been months since they saw each other for the last time, and the man in front of her was muscular, had green eyes, and scars all over the naked chest.
"Jane?" shouted Mark, already walking in her direction, "What are you..." but then, Jane rushed forward and suddenly hugged him and Mark became lost for a moment.
The apocalypse had changed how people dealt with emotions, and how they attached to each other, some like Mark, closed themselves to not suffer. While others, like Jane, expressed their feelings exaggeratedly, because they feared to not see that person again.
Two opposites, like fire and water, and yet, the apocalypse made them two halves of the same thing, two broken persons, two people who lost too much, two halves of the apocalypse.
The hug barely lasted a few seconds, but it was enough to make Mark forget about his personal vendetta for the time being. Sometimes, a hug is all that a broken man needs to feel himself again.
"Jane, what are you doing here?" asked Mark, carefully pushing the girl away from his chest.
Jane was almost crying by now, as tears flooded her eyes but didn't come out, her moistened eyes looked up, to the eyes of the man she loved, yes, she admitted now, to herself only, she loved that stupid kid that was always acting rashly.
She saw his green eyes, his concerned face, but no words came out, and she softly punched Mark in the chest.
"Your..." and punched him again, a bit more strong now, but no more words came. She didn't know what to tell him. He had been tortured, used as an experiment. Jane had no words that would make him heal, if that was even possible.
Both stood there looking each other in the eyes without knowing what to say, as the seconds seemed to stretch in hours, but it was only an illusion and soon reality hit them.
"Did you find him?" asked Frank, coming from the inside of the laboratory building, while slowly running in Mark's direction.
Mark brows furrowed when remembering who he was after, and how things went, and said, "No, Hess probably escaped when the mess started, they must have some escape route or some hidden room in the building, because I didn't find him nor the other important researchers"
Frank was not sure how to react to that, the entire mission was only justified because they had the opportunity to find out what the army was researching, not only that, but if they could not take an important researcher as hostage their chances of escaping went to almost zero.
Feeling that Mark was somewhat more calm now, Frank said, "We need to find a way to leave the base. My plan was to use Hess as hostage, but now...."
Frank was not sure how to proceed because it was extremely hard to leave the base without using its gates, because the base had a wall of five meters high all around the base and small patrols walked over the walls from time to time.
The base only had two gates, the north gate and the south gate, not only that, but the army would be strongly guarding the two gates now, and without someone important that they could use as hostage it was better to just dig a hole and try to hide inside it, thought Frank to himself but refrained to show his pessimistic side to everyone.
Everyone knew they were in a bad situation now. They were barely ten in total, and the army had hundreds of soldiers. It was just a matter of time before they started sending small units to search for them.
Mark looked at everyone, and seeing their depressed faces and the turmoil in their eyes, quickly understood what was happening. They didn't know what he was capable of. They thought of him as a guinea pig only.
'They don't know what I went through, and how that changed me,' concluded Mark in his thoughts, and seeing that no one was giving any ideas on how to leave the base, he said, "Who said we should be escaping? They are the ones that need to flee this base."
"What are you talking about, Mark? The army has hundreds of soldiers!" shouted aloud Frank
"Soldiers.... They are only people like me and you. Do you really think they will throw away their lives? This is the apocalypse. People only care about their lives, and the moment they heard that the army is holding them back, not telling them about mutations, not sharing food, they will stop protecting them, only the high-ranking officers will try to hold what they have, the rest, they will gladly see them burn"
Frank looked at Mark but he didn't see the same naive kid as before, the one that thought the union was a good thing, the one who believed that the rebels were just a bunch of traitors, and asked, "What do you have in mind?"
"What else? We are going to take this base."
After talking about the situation on the base to Mark and planning what to do, John and Frank went to the radio station, and Mark went toward the north gate, the closest to the barracks, and the one where he thought that most soldiers will be.
...
"Colonel, we already secured the researchers. They are on the barracks now, and I let an entire squad with them. What are the orders?" asked the captain of the north gate.
"Send a squad to the radio station and secure the place, and send two squads to disperse the riot, kill if needed. We don't have time to lose with that and a few rebels may be among them" said Malcom, looking below, to the streets, the barracks were not the highest building but it granted a clean view to the main street from the second floor, and from there, Malcom could see the riot almost reaching the soldier line of dozens of soldiers that stood in front of the building, protecting it.
Barely Malcom said that, and he heard static noise coming from the captain's radio. It means that someone was broadcasting directly from the radio tower. It was the only channel that always stood open, an emergency channel.