Chapter Five

After facing a trauma Gin Moreno will never forget, he begins to wonder what value his life really has to offer. Well, now it's his time to prove it. Will it be him or them?

All sounds made in the cramped area bounced from the metal and echoed like a tunnel, causing the group to cower behind the nearest corner like rats. Based on the sound, it seemed like they were close even though they heard no footsteps until now.

The steps were still quiet. What they mostly heard instead was a high pitch beeping that seemed to be getting faster as they got closer. “There’s four over there,” they heard a male voice echo but could not pinpoint which direction of the corridor it came from.

Natalie quickly gasped and tapped on Gray’s arm to get his attention. When he looked, she pointed down to his bracelet. The light was now blinking red, matching the beeping that approached them. In fact, all of their bracelets were blinking.

“What the f**k?” Gray said under his breath. “These are trackers.” Once again, Gin’s lack of a monitor was brought to everyone’s attention.

“You have to do something, Giovanni,” Ezra pleaded.

The pressure crashed over Gin like an avalanche and froze him completely solid. They were relying on him but would surely be disappointed. Their lives were in his hands and he had no choice but to stand there and tremble. He could feel all the tension burning through him, but it must have all been in his head. While it felt like an eternity, only seconds had passed and Gray already had an idea.

Everyone was crouched down and huddled together when Gin regained his composure. Luckily, he was invisible and his delayed reaction went unnoticed.

“They have to be following us and not him for a reason,” Gray whispered. “So, sending him in a different direction for a distraction probably won’t work.”

“Maybe they don’t want to hurt him,” Natalie suggested. “he can just go up to them as ask them for help.”

Gray turned to Gin. “Are you brave enough for that?” He asked, but Gin shook his head profusely.

“We don’t even know if they’re trying to hurt us,” said Ezra. “They could be a rescue team.”

“They’re tracking us like rabbits,” Gray stated. “I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on. I read about this all the time.”

“Read about it in the news or in comic books?” Natalie asked, but before she could get an answer, the muffled footsteps had gotten much closer so they scattered once more.

“They’re moving,” said a young, almost prepubescent, voice along with gentle and careful steps. “They’re around that corner.”

“Shh,” said another young voice, possibly female. “Shut up. They’ll hear you.”

This time, it was Natalie who gathered the team together for a huddle. “They’re just kids. We can totally jump them if they’re a threat.”

“I’m young but I’m with you guys,” Anna stated.

“She’s right,” Gray agreed. “We were probably put in groups on purpose. Our best choice might be to out run them.”

Natalie shook her head. “No way. We don’t know this place. There could be dead ends.”

Gray stepped from the group and looked down the nearest corner. When the coast was clear, he readied his stance before breaking out into a full sprint towards the other end of the corridor. The door of the unit got indented as his feet made contact as he gave himself a boost to grab onto the roof and pull himself up. “Come on,” he shouted. With the amount of noise his feet made running, there was no longer any point in trying to be silent.

With the amount of heat that bared down on the units, it was no surprise to see Gray waving his red palms as he waited for the others. One by one, he got down on his knees and gave them his hand to pull each person up, ladies first.

With their view expanded, they realized that they would be truly trapped in a large and seemingly endless maze if it weren’t for Gray.  Under their feet was a two-acer cage of pure metal.

“They’re up there!” One of the voices shouted. They looked down to where it came from to see four young kids, ranging in ages, with one of them pointing his finger to the sky. That was when Gin noticed the watch around each of their wrists, watches identical to his. He had no chance to tell the others, not that he intended to, before they all started running and jumping between units to make an escape.

All the twists and corners caused trouble for the ones tracking them and were quickly out of sight as they ran. When they reached the end of the metal cage, there was a thin opening between the units and a large ten-foot chain fence. Before jumping down into the cramped corridor, they scanned the fence for an opening and ran as close to it as they could.

The gate was shut when they approached it and the lock showed no sign of budging. Ezra pulled the keys from his pocket one more time and checked each individual one until the lock gave and the gate could be pushed open.

“What the hell?” Was on everyone’s mind, but Natalie was the first to say it. “Was there an apocalypse?”

The world around them seemed even more deserted and destroyed than where they had been trapped. Society had once existed, but was now in shambles. The roads under their feet had cracks and potholes the size of boulders, making entire sections completely missing. The buildings around them were all commercial with chipping paint and destroyed windows. The walls all appeared to be flimsy as cardboard and they could see through the many holes punched through that they were also as thin as cardboard, as if the whole town around them was nothing but a model. The town seemed fake but there was no denying the authenticity of the metal from the storage units.

“Those kids didn’t seem like zombies,” Anna commented.

“Not all apocalypses come with zombies.”

“Don’t you read The Walking Dead?” Gray asked. “The humans are always worse than the zombies.”

Natalie grabbed the collar of the closest person towards her, who happened to be Gin, and pulled him inside one of the buildings. The others followed. Glass was shattered across the building. Aside from a few bare counters and tipped over metal shelves, the place was empty. “Okay, comic books. Speak,” Natalie said to Gray. “What’s going on?”

Gray shrugged. “I don’t know. This place doesn’t look like an island and I certainly didn’t see fireworks.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Someone is probably trying to make us disappear. We need to get the hell out of here before we’re blown up or shot down by a horse mask with a machine gun.”

Horse mask repeated through Gin’s mind. The last thing he remembered seeing before being captured was a woman wearing the mask of an owl, could Gray have seen someone wearing a horse mask or was it pure nonsense.

“If we see rabbit masks I’m killing myself right there,” he continued. “I’m not going through that s**t.”

“What are you talking about?” Natalie asked once more. “Nobody saw any animals.”

But someone did. Would saying that he did bring unnecessary attention to him? They may not have noticed it, but he was obviously different from them. Something told him that he was not supposed to have joined them, but to be against them, possibly because he had already taken the life of another. Like Gray said, they were being trapped like rabbits and Gin needed to hunt them. But how? These people were not like Abraham, as far as he knew. But they probably thought the same about him and they could not be more wrong. If he ever wants to see his mother again, he might have to slaughter the very people who just saved his life.

“Gray, I think you read too much,” Ezra commented. “If somebody wanted us dead, we would have been killed by now.”

Gray shook his head. “No way man. They don’t want us dead. They want us to kill other people. Like, elimination.”

Anna raised her hand. “I vote that we no longer listen to anything this dude says.” Natalie and Ezra raised their hands as well.

“Alright, fine. But when we gotta separate the wolf from the rabbits, your votes won’t mean s**t.”

Wolf from the rabbits. Was Gin that wolf?