Young Writers Society

Silence.

Yes, the rain pounded against the ground.

The rubber in our shoes squeaked upon connecting with the drenched grass underneath our feet.

The leaves on the trees around us rustled under the control of the wind; but I couldn’t hear any of it.

I could only hear the silence – the melodic cloak over us.

Thirty days – seven hundred and twenty hours since the bliss took over.

Four weeks later, we stood in the same place again – our prairie – but, even after one month, I still couldn’t believe all of it was real.

I felt weightless dancing with him under the teeming raindrops; the fire his fingers on mine ignited still blazing through my veins.

Time merely slowed when I closed my eyes and twirled – my soaked sable hair rising above my head, releasing tiny droplets of water back into the air, and then curling heavily back around my damp pale skin, concealing fragments of my face as it did so – but it was entirely frozen when my eyes opened again.

Two beaming lights, resembling the hungry eyes of a predator after its prey, flashed through the rain; and they were heading directly towards me.

Alarm – my gut screamed for me to move; yet my body wouldn’t respond.

Then a fierce shove thrust me towards the ground away from the approaching vehicle.

Adrenaline surged through me. The power of my instincts intensified.

Without warning, I could hear everything – tires squealing to a stop, a motor roaring beside us, the beating rain, and the blustering wind; but, most of all, the pulsation of my racing heart hammering violently inside of my chest.

I turned my head to find Kayden breathing heavily above me; our eyes locked as instinct, his telling mine we had to move; and, in reaction, we both scurried to get back on our feet. He encircled my entire frame with one protective arm and pressed me close to his chest, my hands instantly clutching his dripping black shirt for security.

That’s when the entire atmosphere around us seemed to change. The sky that had moments ago been a friendly silver – softly freeing gentle drops on us – was now this glowering gray, thrusting gelid needles down at us that relentlessly pierced our skin upon arrival. The wind itself strengthened and cooled, seemingly binding us with an icy rope, determined not to let us slip away.

Shadows sprung from the front of the van and started to run in our direction. Kayden’s hold tightened around my body, and every muscle of ours stiffened as if to be planted on the ground and not allow us to be moved at all; but they effortlessly separated us, despite our resolve not to budge. The rain gushing down from above didn’t help, either – it clouded our vision, froze our bodies to the core, and made the ground slippery to the point that standing firm was virtually impossible.

Everything happened so fast – neither of us had any time to react. I was dazed, unblinking, paralyzed as they painlessly dragged me forward towards the metal beast. I couldn’t speak – it was almost as if I had completely forgotten words. My voice for a moment altogether lost in a place I did not know and could not hope to find.

The doors to the van were swung open, and as Kayden was forced up and inside, the hands constraining my arms moved down to my waist and in one brisk movement lifted me, handing me to another who flung me inside not a second after I arrived into his arms. I was saved from colliding with the metal by Kayden’s favorable position – my hands landing on his chest instead, causing him to grunt and instinctively clasp my shoulder with his hand. We both sat up, wordlessly clinging to each other. In a moment, the doors were slammed shut and the van began to move.

Time eventually slowed again, and only then did I become aware of our surroundings. At least a dozen of terrified faces and shivering bodies, hardly perceptible through the darkness, lay in this van with us; all of them familiar, all of them somehow part of our daily lives.

Nobody spoke – our ability to do so held no relevance. Every face itself said not one of the captives knew why we had been taken – hence we couldn’t hope to give or receive an explanation – and any argument or snivel seemed pointless. Absurd.

Time went astray – all everyone seemed to unheedingly focus on was the tepid aluminum we sat on. Until, the vehicle eventually drew to a halt, and, without warning, panic and hysteria diffused to every soul in the van. The spell was broken, the stupor vanished – our senses sharpened and cried we were in terrible danger.

That cognizance increased when the doors were unlatched – biting, wintry air seethed inside, and the sight of the abandoned, once terribly feared, Wilhelm Prison was revealed to us.

“Alright, everybody down!” A hard, authoritative voice plus a burly build and elevated height – impossible to defy. Immediately, we all scrambled to our feet and began to jump off the edge of the van, one by one, towards the decaying floor. Kayden and I leaped together last, our hands entwining as we did; but not even thirty seconds after we landed did two of the men separate us and push us towards opposite hallways.

“Men that way,” he pointed to the left hallway. “And women that way.”

I turned alarmed to Kayden, now meters away from me, feeling as though I’d been torn from the most vital part of my body. He bit his lip and threw me a perturbed look; but just as my dark, violet eyes began to drown with his delicious caramel orbs, a cold, overpowering wall disrupted our focus, and we lost sight of each other completely as we marched forward towards our divergent ends.

The shady prison block we were led into was already cramped with people; but in contrast to the group I walked in with, none of them were familiar, and they were all clutching clipboards in their hands.

Just as soon as our presence was noted, they all swarmed towards us, their surrounding hostile aura approaching with them.

One tall woman came directly towards me. Her blond hair, pulled back into a tight bun, left her hard, inscrutable face wholly exposed. Her presence alone was oppressing, but my grit dwindled even further at the sound of her laconic voice,

“Name?” She didn’t even bother to look at me.

“Chloe Rivers,” I folded my trembling arms across my chest attempting to maintain my nerve as she scrawled across her clipboard. “Co-.” I attempted to dig for explanations.

She cut me off, “Age?”

“Seventeen… co… could you please explain what’s going on here?” The aim was to make my voice sound emphatic, but it was clearly petrified once out of my mouth, making me nothing but a scared, little victim.

“Not my job.” She lifted her right hand and flicked it backwards. Another young woman promptly appeared from behind me and, without a word, clasped a metallic armlet around my right wrist.

“What the-?” I moved up my hand to analyze it, noticing the black numbers embedded on it – 01738125.

“Starting today, your ‘name’ is the numbers on that band – you will answer to those, and to those only, understood?” She eyed me imperiously.

“I… why? You-” Words spoken through compulsion – I didn’t know what it was I wanted to say; and, either way, she pressed a finger against my mouth before I could continue,

“That was not a suggestion, and I don’t have time for this.”

The resounding noise of her high-heels striking the ground disoriented me, and I couldn’t keep my gaze from following her slender figure glide away to question another.

The men that had taken us returned; and that resonant voice, so clearly etched in my mind even after just one encounter, impatiently suppressed every other inferior sound in the room, “Are they ready yet?”

All heads turned to face him. All eyes focused intently on him. All bodies quavered under his apparent command.

My interrogator’s head moved slightly down in a nod, and the robust man acknowledged her by returning the gesture.

He scrutinized every face in the room that had come in the van and yelled, “It’s time to go – everyone follow us.”

Somehow, as if the power of his voice were dragging us forward, we all found ourselves acting according to his words.

The apprehension in my gut was unbearable. A million questions floated through my head. Immeasurable worry was the only thing I knew in those abiding moments.

All the hallways we were pushed through looked the same – humidity oozed down the already stained and musty, once plain gray, walls. Grime had seemingly come to be part of the floors, and the cracks in the ceiling forewarned its imminent collapse.

The door we ultimately stopped in front of didn’t look much better – age and neglect had corroded the metal, and the tarnish stains spewed out a foul acerbic fetor that pervaded our air.

The evident leader of our captors stepped forward and pushed open the door.

Relief. Ecstasy.

“Kayden.” I breathed, pushing myself past the rugged man and towards my love. He immediately wrapped his arms around my waist when I got to him, and my natural reaction was to bury my face and rest my clenched fists against his chest for protection, feeling the warmth and solace of his body seep through his still humid clothing. My heart started throbbing again from the pleasure of being in his arms, all while the nostalgia and fear that had poisoned me just minutes prior steadily began to dissipate.

“What’s going on?” I murmured agitated into his chest, biting my lip anxiously.

“The Carlson family...”

I drew my eyebrows together, my eyes still shutting all our surroundings out, “What have we got to do with that?”

His mouth leaned closer to my ear, whispering, “I overheard them say something about an… epidemic.”

My head rose up from his chest, my eyes focusing on his, “Epidemic?”

He nodded.

The terror returned to flood my veins, “Does that mean we…?” Refusing to even utter the word seemed to keep the threat at bay somehow.

He shook his head, “I don’t know.”

How could something such as that be uncertain? With my stomach in knots, I couldn’t help but tuck my face back in his chest, biting my lip and tightly closing my eyes as I did so.

* * *

Simply four walls – four thick, concrete, moss-covered barriers confined this chamber – every corner of it imbued with the revolting stench of rotting flesh. Segments of the dark gray floors were forever stained with blood – yet, no matter how long ago it had been spilled, the acidic redolence lingered.

I was in a prison, yet I was no criminal. I was simply a forlorn victim of chance.

The government saw the threat of an epidemic in Crestmore, and suddenly everyone was sent away. It didn’t matter where; the only essential was that they’d be caged someplace where they could not escape – someplace where they’d no longer pose a threat against humanity.

No explanation was given; and, so far, not even an effort to determine whether we were infected or not had been made.

It was as if we weren’t even human anymore – not even worthy of names. To them, our identity lied entirely in the numbers printed on the metal bands around our wrists.

Noise was inexistent in our vicinity, and darkness so black coated everything throughout.

Kayden and I both sat on the grimy cement floor, my head rested on his shoulder, his head on mine, and the bitter December cold cloaking us both.

Usually when we were together, it was always as if our surroundings vanished, and nothing held the ability to harm us; but this time it was different – the threat against us seemed so large; ignoring it proved to be impossible.

“What do you think happens now?” I whispered, my voice cracked and throaty.

“I’m not sure.” He rubbed his head against mine, soft threads of his dangling dark brown hair stroking my forehead, and I could feel his nose moved to inhale my slowly fading raspberry scent.

“What are you doing?” I removed my head from underneath his and focused my eyes on what little of his I could make out.

“Nothing, I-“

The big metal door on the corner across from us bolted open, interrupting Kayden midsentence.

A few people jumped, others yelped, and some didn’t even wake from their slumber. I lost count of how many men made their way in, and it took a moment for me to grasp what was going on; but as soon as I caught up, I pushed myself even closer to Kayden, pressing my entire frame against him as hard as I possibly could.

Through the dim light let in from the hallway I watched as the others were forced to stand and then taken outside. Their cries of desperation, their sobbing, their pleas for mercy all drilled at my brain, making my head throb; but all I did was press myself harder against him, my fists numb from clutching his shirt.

“Chloe,” He whispered directly into my ear, distress hinted in his voice. “Whatever happens next, if we’re separated again, I promise you that I will find you; but you need to be strong. Nothing ends here.” He kissed me then, his lips anxious on mine, and for a moment everything around did manage to vanish.

He pulled back saying, “I love you.”

Our eyes found each other and immediately locked together – our faces mere inches apart; his warm breath stroking my face. Every other thing was finally inexistent. Every other sound apart from that of our beating hearts and slow breathing muffled behind us into nothingness.

Kayden unexpectedly dug his hand into the pocket of his pants, gripped something inside, and cautiously pulled it back out. He undid the fist and revealed a bronzed silver chain with a shiny flower pendant hanging on its end. I didn’t even know what kind of flower it was; but it was magnificently aesthetic. It had six petals; every other one of them with a dark purple stone fixed on the metal, and a small diamond in the heart of the flower. Two stalks stemmed from the lower petal, joining in the bottom with a slightly larger diamond – forming something of a heart shape. One of the stalks had yet another diamond – resembling a leaf – stem from it, and both stalks had metal vines circling around them.

He placed the choker on my delicate hand and closed it with both of his.

“So you don’t forget.” He leaned in and whispered alluringly into my ear, his hands still hugging mine.

Everything after that went by in a blur. Two men grabbed me from behind – one on each of my arms – and mercilessly yanked me away from Kayden.

“No! Let me go!”

Pointless struggling; yet, it wasn’t only against the men who seized me, but also the ear-splitting voice inside my head that screamed this was the end. I couldn’t bear that idea. That thought scared me the most; and it was that thought that fed my strength and pushed me to fight.

“Chloe!” Two other men apprehended him, causing panic to suddenly take over his expression.

“Please, no!” For the first time since our imprisonment I was crying, tears flowing freely down my cheeks; burning my chilled skin as they did.

“Chloe!”

I closed my eyes and tried to contain the tears, making myself promise I would be strong. I had to be – for him. For us.

“I love you, too, Kayden!” I tried to yell, but my voice was gone. A pathetic whisper – that’s what managed to come out.

Then there was a puncture.

“Ah!” The substance blazed through my body. Control over my legs was lost; and then I was sinking – plummeting towards the ground, seeing nothing but the darkness behind my eyelids.

“Chloe, don’t forget…!” His unfinished, but yet stimulating words – the last thing I heard before falling into unconsciousness.

»Sam.