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Episode 10: Consequences

Episode 10

"Consequences"

We were ready, it was all happening right now. We all got into position. We sat casually at the table, and Julie got up. She looked over at the guards, and darted up the stairs to the roof. The soldiers followed her up there.

"Hey stop!" they yelled, "What are you doing?"

She got to the roof successfully, and we followed the soldiers to act like we didn't know what she was doing. We played along.

"Julie get down!" Jess yelled, "Please don't do this!"

"I'm gonna jump!" she yelled.

Patrick acted like he bumped into me, I fell into a guard and swiped the key off of him.

"Sorry, my bad." I said.

I handed the key to Patrick behind me, he then passed it around and the key finally reached Ned. It was his job to open the storage room up. He ran to the other side of the room, and shoved the key in the padlock. There was a click, and he took the lock off of the door. He opened the doors, and we all made a run for it. Julie was still making a scene, but this distraction wasn't going to last forever. Once we got there, Ned grabbed guns and tossed one to everyone. Jess got her dual wields back. Today, we were breaking out. I got my shotgun back, and I loaded it. The soldiers finally noticed, but it was too late. We all pointed our guns at them, they backed away and reached for their guns. Everyone was about to open fire, but I stopped them.

"No!" I said, "Nobody has to die. All we want to do is leave. We all have respect for you, because you are soldiers. I know that you are still good people, we are not killing anybody today. Nobody has to die. Just let us leave, and we will all live happily ever after."

The soldiers stopped, and brought their hands away from their guns. They were listening! They realized I was right, and nobody had to die.

"Now," I began, "We are going to walk out of here slowly, don't do anything. We are leaving, and that's final."

"Okay." a soldier agreed.

We slowly backed up to the door, we still had our guns trained on the soldiers, I knew they wouldn't do anything, but we had to be sure they wouldn't. Just before we were about to get to the food court doors, one soldier made a sudden reach for his gun, I panicked and shot him. The bullet hit him in the chest and he fell to the ground. All the soldiers stared at me.

"He reached for his gun!" I yelled.

Everyone just stood in shock, then a few seconds later, the food court doors flung open and Gus walked in with a machine gun. He fired it at us, and a stray bullet hit me in the ear, it took off a chunk of my earlobe. Another bullet hit Sabrina in the leg. He kept firing, he aimed at the ground to scare us.

"What are you guys doing?" he yelled at his soldiers, "Take their weapons away."

I was hoping for the soldiers to turn on Gus, but they didn't. They listened, Gus was intimidating, and they listened to him. They ran over to us and took our weapons, they loaded them back into the storage room and Gus ordered them to handcuff us to the food court tables. We were so close. We almost had it. We were all handcuffed to the tables, and there was nothing we could do. They locked the door again, and the soldiers got Julie down. They locked her up too. The soldiers lined up by the wall, and Gus walked back and forth, with a knife in his hand.

"You little shits had safety," he began, "We are helping you. We let you stay, you should be lucky we didn't kick you out of the damn mall. You don't see that we are the good guys here, not you. You've screwed that up though, now you are going to see my bad side."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked him, "What are you getting out of locking us up? Why can't you let us leave, we want to leave!"

"My mission is to help people. The apocalypse is a nasty place, and this is where to world needs us the most! We wanted to help you, I wanted to help you. Yeah, the apocalypse may have messed me up a little bit, but it messed us all up hasn't it? So my bad if you people feel prisoner here." he explained.

"So what are you going to do then?" I asked him.

He smiled, and looked at the blade of his knife.

"My mission is to help as many people as I can, but you pushed me Jeff. I'm sorry it has to go this way."

"What are you doing?" Patrick asked him.

"Someone is going to die. I know exactly who."

He must mean me, I have been on Gus's bad side ever since he got here. He beat me up, and now he is going to kill me. I am willing to take one for the team though, I know the rest of the group will figure some other way to escape here after I'm gone.

"Make it quick." I closed my eyes.

He started laughing, I opened my eyes again. Why was he laughing? He couldn't stop laughing, he was laughing uncontrollably.

"You're cute," he said, "You actually think I was going to kill you? No, that would be too easy. I don't want you to take the easy way out. You are going to suffer Jeff."

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"Bring his girlfriend up." he ordered.

The soldiers wouldn't do it though, they just looked guilty. Gus sighed, and walked over to Sabrina himself.

"I'll do it then, damn."

"No, what are you doing?" I asked him.

He un cuffed her and dragged her away from us, in the middle of the food court.

"No!" I yelled, "You can't do this! You can't kill her!"

"I'm sorry Jeff," he began, "You did this."

"Kill me! Kill me! She doesn't deserve this!" I begged.

Sabrina looked me in the eye, tears were streaming down her face, she smiled at me.

"It's okay, it will all be okay." she said.

"No!" I screamed.

Gus placed the knife on her throat, and looked me directly in the eye.

"No, it will not be okay." he said.

He quickly slit her throat, blood poured from her throat. She slowly closed her eyes, and dropped to the ground. A puddle of blood formed on the ground from her neck. She was dead, Sabrina was dead. I was shocked, I couldn't say anything. I just stared, my face was in pure shock. Kayla started screaming.

"No! You can't do this! You asshole! You're not a real army General! The army wouldn't do this! You sick bastard!" Kayla yelled.

I saw the soldiers, they were looking away, some of them were tearing up. Why wouldn't they stop this? Gus is one man, they could have ended it. One shot, and it would have been all over. All they had to do was shoot him, and everyone would be happy. Sabrina wouldn't be dead.

"Actions have consequences Jeff." Gus said, he then walked to the food court doors.

"Clean this up. When you're done, send them to the basement. Show them what a real prison it like." he said to his soldiers, then he opened the doors and headed out.

A tear fell from my left eye, then more started streaming from my eyes uncontrollably. I laid down on the ground, my hand still handcuffed to the table. I started crying on the floor, I can't believe this just happened. The soldiers picked up Sabrina and rested her on a table. They put both her arms over her chest, like how they lay people out at funerals.

"I'm sorry," a soldier said to me, "Gus was once a good man."

I didn't want to hear it though, I just wanted to be alone. It was nice that they were having a funeral for Sabrina, but they could have stopped it. That's the part that destroyed me. The soldiers un cuffed us all from the tables, and all brought us out of the food court. Gus ordered them to put us in the basement storage room. I kept my head down, tears dropping from my eyes and onto the mall floor. I wasn't the only one crying either, I heard Kayla screaming behind me, Jess was crying, Mark was crying, Brandy was crying, Patrick was trying to be strong, but I could tell he wanted to cry too. The soldiers brought us down the stairs and to a storage room in the basement. They opened the door and we walked in, I didn't even care anymore. They could do anything now, I don't care anymore. It's my fault she is dead, I was the one who thought of the idea to have a rebellion. Now Sabrina is dead and we are all locked away to rot in some basement storage room. It was pretty small, and we were cramming inside of it.

(This Part of the Story is From Julie's Point of View)

I was shocked, but I was used to this. We all watched Gus execute Sabrina in front of us all. I know exactly how Jeff feels, the pain is unbearable. Watching your loved one being killed right in front of you? He's never going to be the same again. We can all say goodbye to the friendly Jeff now. That's gone. There is no coming back from that. When my mother died, I almost came back from it, but then my father went crazy and almost killed me. Then he died in front of me, now I am wrecked. There is no coming back from it. I remember this basement though, I was in this storage room when I was cutting myself. Sabrina came down to help me, she took the knife from me and patched me up. I'll never forget that, I almost felt unwanted at this mall, I thought I was useless. Sabrina showed me otherwise, she helped me. I want to feel sadness for her, but I can't. I can't feel anymore, and it is destroying me. I was depressed before the apocalypse too, but this new world had made it all worse. I was a fool for thinking things would get better after my mother died. Nothing gets better in this world, things only get worse.

Nobody really said much for a good hour or two. We just sat in here, waiting for Gus to kill the rest of us. We had no hope left. None. After one or two hours of silence, Mark broke it.

"We need to find a way out of here." Mark said.

"Do you know how that went last time?" Patrick asked, "Escaping is out of discussion."

"I'm not staying in here, that's for damn sure."

"I've been in here before," I said, "I know a possible way out."

"What is it?" Mark asked me.

When I first came here to cut, I saw an air vent at the back wall of this room. I don't know where it leads, but it is big enough to fit all of us in. I wasn't too enthusiastic about leaving this place anymore. I just wanted to give up, but I might as well give the people who want to leave an escape plan. That's the least I can do.

"That air vent," I pointed to it at the back wall, "You go through it and hope it leads somewhere out of this mall."

Mark walked up to it and tried prying it open, it was screwed shut. He smacked the air vent in frustration. I looked up at a shelf and saw the same knife I used to cut myself earlier, we could use that. I walked up to it and handed it to Mark.

"Thank you." he said.

Mark started unscrewing bolts on the air vent, once he got four screws out, the vent dropped to the ground. He was really doing this. He saw something on the shelf, it looked like a tiny mirror, he picked it up and placed it in his pocket. I wasn't sure why he wanted that.

"Who's coming?" he asked.

Nobody said anything, we all just sat in pain. Mark was always trying to keep people together, he was the one in the group that wanted to make everything right. Jeff was like that too, I doubt he will be like that anymore though.

"Come on people!" Mark yelled, "Are you just gonna sit here and wait for death? I know for a fact that Sabrina wouldn't want this. She would want everyone to take this chance, and save themselves. It's all we got left."

"We took a chance last time," Ned said, "And people died."

"More people will die if we don't try this. Will this be unsuccessful? Maybe. It might also work though. I know for damn sure if we stay here, we are all guaranteed death. I'm not leaving until you all come with me."

"Then I guess you're not leaving." Jeff said.

Mark was right, the thing holding people back was sadness and loss. None of us had any motivation to move any further now. Part of me wanted to listen to Mark though, so I let that part of me take over. I walked up and stood beside Mark.

"We are a team," I said, "We've been through so much shit together. We didn't make it this far to just die in a basement. Is that how you all want to be remembered? We are strong, stronger than most groups. It's true that none of us will ever be the same after Sabrina's death, but the least we can do is survive. I'm going with Mark, I'd rather die escaping this place, than die waiting in here."

More people started standing up, Jess, Patrick, Brandy and Ned all stood up. They walked beside us, they were coming. The only people that weren't coming were Jeff and Kayla. They were the closest to Sabrina, so it makes sense. I walked over to Jeff, who was sitting by a wall helplessly looking down at the ground.

"Jeff," I said, "You have gone through so much, it's not quitting time yet. Sabrina wouldn't want this. Please."

"Kayla," Jeff said, "Go with them."

"Aren't you coming dad?" she asked him.

"No, now do as you're told and go with Julie and the rest of them. You're too young to die in here."

"Dad no!" she cried.

"Now Julie! Go!"

She hugged him, and backed away, then she held my hand.

"No more questions," he said, "I'm staying and that's final. The rest of you go."

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