It Only Takes One Bullet Part 2

(Warning

This Chapter is rated Mature and may contain material unsuitable for readers under 18.)

Jack stood beside the man who has been with him for many years now as the steel box they were in dropped into the earth. Lieutenant Holiday stood there like a statue staring ahead not saying a word hating the idea of being trapped in a box a mile under the world. The whole base felt more like a tomb than anything else. They were already dead; they just hadn’t sealed the doors yet.

            “You have any family coming, Thomas?” Jack asked leaning against the overly clean wall.

            “No, sir,” he said calmly. “The only family I had left was a brother, but he was in New York City when it went dark.”

            “I’m sorry to hear that,” Jack said trying not to frown. They both knew what happens when a city went dark; mostly everyone in it was dead. At first, they would have nuked the whole damn place, but after a while, the government realized they didn’t want to nuke the whole world. The Beast was laughing his way across the land killing enough people already, no point in helping him at anymore.

            Odd, Jack thought, when we come face to face with our end, we grow a heart for each other.

            The box stopped, and the door opened. There was no dig or bell, but no matter how many times Jack saw the doors open without the sound, he thought he heard it. He didn’t get but a step out of the elevator when a thin, green-eyed woman, with long dirty blonde hair, stole his lips away from him.

Emily kissed him hard and long happy to see he was alive and most of all eating well. Jack never had a problem when it came to eating even under stress, not like her. She pulled back from him hiding a smile, and he stared into her lovely face. She had a long nose, not too long, but long enough to work on her face. He found it cute and it was why he married her.

The smile dashed away from her lips, and she said, “You’re smoking again.”

“Just the one,” he said looking past her and down a little to see if he could find his daughter. She wasn’t anywhere in the hall or in sight. His heart dropped to his feet, and the thought raced in his mind.

God no, please, was all he could think for a moment before looking back at Emily. She wasn’t crying or sad, and if Jessica were sick or dying, then his wife would have been in a vastly different state of mind.

He sides step the fear with all three of them started to head down the hallway. “Where is Jessica?” Jack asked.

“Talking to Felix,” Emily said, and the fear reached back up grabbing Jack’s hand trailing beside him.

“Why?” He hissed at Lieutenant Holiday.

The man didn’t seem to notice the vile leaking from the three-letter word, and if he did, he didn’t care. He seemed not to care much these days. The world was dying, but most of all his men were dying. There were already two dead in the base, and a third was sick. “General Eerie was hoping Jessica could convince Felix to help.”

“I’m working on it,” Jack said.

“And you are failing, sir,” Holiday said back even in tone. “We don’t have time to play games here, sir.”

Jack was about to protest some more, but Emily pulled on him stopping his words altogether. “She’s safe,” Emily said, “safer with Felix than anywhere else in the world right now.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Jack agreed, but he didn’t like the idea. He wanted Jessica as far away from that egotistical cartoon cat had she could get and what’s the first thing his boss does? March his little girl right up to talk to him. He shook his head. He wasn’t so much mad at Felix, he didn’t know better, but was furious at General John Smith Eerie. He didn’t even allow the man some time to see his child before using her in his war.

A war to save humanity, Jack quickly reminded himself. He couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done the same if he was Eerie’s shoes.

In fact, he knew he would have done the very same thing Eerie did and maybe worse. For all the faults of Eerie he was a good man at the core, a hard man, a man of action, but a good one deep down. Almost everyone at the base was a good moral person.

Hell, Eerie was the one who sent the team out to get Jack’s family and the family of most the people at the base. If their family was still kicking or a place which wasn’t completely dark, he got them. Too many times the helicopter came back empty, or missing people and the team at the base slowly started to see the scale of the Beast.

One man, Jack couldn’t recall his name; he didn’t know him that well, took his own life after he found out his wife and four children died. He put a gun into his mouth blowing out the back of his head. No one thought any less of him, many of them thought about doing the same thing. A lot of the people around here didn’t want to add another win to the Beast’s game of tag. It was best to add the death count to yourself.

  He shouldn’t have been thinking about all this while his wife lay naked beside him. They saw their chance to have some alone time together and pushed everything else to the side for a little game of rolling around in bed. Her head resting on his chest after the hard hour of making love. They both smelled of the lust and sweat in the room, a change to the endless smell of death around them. He petted her hair as she listened to the hum of his chest. It was his idea of spending some time together alone in his room, and Emily didn’t protest at the idea.

Making love to Emily was the only thing to ever shut Jack’s mind off for a while. He had been with a few other women back in the day but even in the middle of the thrusting his mind was off somewhere else working on some problem. He knew the only woman he would ever marry was the one who could shut his brain for a while and it was Emily.

Was it wrong to be making love in the middle of a dying planet? Jack questioned himself. Or was the only real way to fight death? Either way, he needed a few moments where he didn’t have the weight of all the dead on his shoulders.

“Jack,” she asked still trying to find her breath, “how bad is it?”