Apartment 905 by Sahin, Ned (readnow .TXT) 📕

Our steps get slower and more disoriented. I still don’t see anything human-made. The land in this area is not in our favor. As we go farther, we see fewer trees and plants.

Not even a single vehicle has passed by. The few stalled vehicles are nothing but a bulk of plastic and metal. There is nothing to scavenge around. We have to keep walking.

Toshi is walking a few steps in front of me and Kathleen. We walk behind to keep an eye on him at all times.

He starts swinging and loses his balance.

“Hey.” I catch his arm before he falls. Kathleen comes to his help too. We gently lie him on the road.

“A little bit more, buddy,” I say. His eyes are half-open. His lips are dry and pale. The virus must be conquering his body. I give him the rest of my water and offer him the snacks I got from the bunker’s cafeteria. He drinks the water, but he doesn’t have an appetite to eat.

We sit in the middle of the road hopelessly. Toshi’s head is on my leg. His face is turned to the road ahead of us. Kathleen holds his hand. Neither of us knows what to do to help him.

“Look…” Toshi murmurs.

“What?” I lean closer to his face. I hope this isn’t what I’ve been fearing.

Toshi slightly raises his arm and points his index finger somewhere ahead in the road. There is a driveway leading to a two-story building with satellite and antennas on top of it. I would think I am hallucinating if it were only me seeing this, but it looks like Toshi and Kathleen see it as well.

With Kathleen’s help, I help him get back on his feet. We need one last push to get to that structure.

There is a stone perimeter around the building, but it was crumbled. Metal wrecks and plastic containers are randomly spread out in the area. It looks like a war zone.

As we get closer, I see a military Humvee in front of the building. One of its doors is open. The building has only a few small windows. Other than those, it looks like a concrete hangar. There is an iron door near where the Humvee is left.

We help Toshi sit behind the destroyed stone perimeter near the gate.

“Kathleen, watch for him please,” I say, and she nods. I leave the shotgun with them. It’s useless without bullets anyway. I leave my backpack there too.

I walk toward the Humvee and glance through the window. There is nobody inside the truck. There are communication devices and an empty mount for 50 calibers. It looks like a military vehicle with standard equipment, and I am pretty sure it’s out of gas. I don’t see anything that may help our survival.

I walk to the hangar door and try to open it, but it’s locked. I knock on the door.

“Hello! Anyone in here?” I ask. There is a camera at the top corner of the door, but it doesn’t have any signal around it. I am not sure if it’s even functional.

I knock again and wait for a few more seconds. I don’t hear anything from inside. I think about alternative ways of entering the hangar, but this door seems to be the only one. The windows I can see from here are too high to reach. Even if we do reach them, I don’t think they are big enough for any of us to sneak through.

I look back at Kathleen and shake my head. This building created false hope for us.

She comes to the door and pushes the handle too. She looks around to find something useful to hit it with, but we both know that we don’t have a chance of forcing our way in through this thick-looking door.

We share a look of desperation. She leans back to the door and places her hands behind her head. She closes her eyes.

“Next time…” I say while turning back. There must be more buildings on the way. The buildings that can actually help us stay alive and keep going.

An electric buzz startles both of us. It’s the sound of the door being unlocked. We look at each other in surprise and smile. Maybe this day hasn’t been that bad after all.

We both pull out our knives. I grab the doorknob and push it down. Then I pull the door. The lights are on inside. It’s a good sign. Kathleen steps in.

“Drop your knives,” a guy who is a few times bigger than us says. His balding hair and weeks-long beard combined with his rounded belly in a military camouflage confuse me on how to react to his command-like sentence. Weirdly enough, there is upbeat music coming from inside.

Despite his threatening voice, he doesn’t have any kind of weapons in his hands. It doesn’t mean he can’t reach his handgun holster in a flash, though.

I glance at Kathleen. She is staring up at the hulk-shape guy with her lips pressed together.

“Take it easy. Just wanted to ask if you have some water to spare,” I ask loudly. I decide to ignore his bossy introduction and play his own game.

He looks down at me without moving even a bit. Through his dull eyes, I can see that he is dead inside.

“Drop your fucking knives.” He raises his jaw and shrinks his eyes. His hand slowly goes to his holster. I can’t believe how hard it is to come across normal people these days. We came from a bunker where children are abused to a military hangar where who knows what’s going on.

We can still run away from this place. I don’t think he would bother coming after us, but I am not sure how far we can go with our limited supplies and Toshi’s current situation.

I throw my knife on the floor halfway between us. Kathleen does the same.

“Hands in the air. Face toward the wall,” he