Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Eighth Entry: Blocked

July 16

Fuck!

I went to Alex today about Sharon, and he already knew.

“She sent me an e-mail too, and I’m all for rescuing her, and Jimmy, but we have a problem.” He explained to me.

“Worse than the walking dead?” I asked.

“Much worse; Hashmir. I don’t know if she e-mailed him too, or if he is monitoring e-mails, but he seemed to find out about it right about the same time I did, and he has forbidden sending a rescue.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. Why would he not allow us to rescue one of our own people?”

“He says that we cannot ‘waste’ the manpower, that we need to focus on gathering supplies, not on picking up the slack for people who can’t take care of themselves.”

“They were attacked-“

“By bikers, yes, I know. I’ve heard some shit about that too, from both Sara and Jimmy before that run. He says the bikers are another reason, ‘we cannot risk losing more people to those murderers’” Alex mocked Hashmir’s accent almost perfectly.

“Aren’t we risking a run-in with them every time we go out?” I asked

“Of course we are, but Hashmir seems to think there’s a difference.

“So you’re going to just leave them out there.”

“We don’t have a choice right now. Hashmir is going to be watching us. I suspect he is monitoring my e-mail, and he is probably going to be watching yours as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is monitoring my office too.”

“We need to talk to him then.”

“No! He’s dangerous. If he had his way, we would not be accepting anymore survivors, we would be training everyone in here to be soldiers, and we would expel or shoot anyone who defies him. I have my suspicions about some other things that have occurred too. You don’t want to cross him.”

I’ve never heard of Alex Sigler being afraid of anything, so this has me kind of worried. Still, this is Sharon we’re talking about here, and I’m not going to abandon her… again.

After leaving Alex’s office I headed over to Mitchell Malloy’s apartment. As soon as he saw it was me at his door he said,” So she e-mailed you too?”

I think she may have e-mailed everyone in Mallville; she probably did e-mail Hashmir. I know I’m being petty and jealous here. It’s not as if I have the image of being a knight in shining armor or anything, but it’s nice to feel special.

Mitchell stepped aside, allowing me to enter his sparsely decorated living room. The whole place looks like it came from Ikea, but then Mitchell did move into Mallville after getting a divorce.

“So how are we going to rescue them?” I asked him.

“You haven’t talked to Hashmir yet, have you?” he asked in reply.

“I wasn’t planning on asking Hashmir.”

“You ought to have. He says no.”

“And you’re okay with that?“ I asked, anger flaring inside me.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m okay with it. I’m not in the one who runs things.”

“Okay then, is the council okay with abandoning one of our own out there?”

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. The council may be in charge, but they don’t really run things. If you want to go out there and get yourself killed, you go right ahead.”

“We’re not going to get ourselves killed. We go out there every couple of days, and we have not had any losses since Sharon went missing. There aren’t that many zeds out there.”

“It’s not the roamers you should be worried about. Don’t cross Kaur unless you want to regret it.”

“I’d regret abandoning Sharon and Jimmy a hell of a lot more.”

He turned his back to me, ”We’ve all lost people in this, it’s just a fact of life now.”

“They're not lost. We know where they are. What kind of coward would leave them to die when it would be so easy to save them?”

“The kind of coward who wants to live. The kind who knows what’s in his best interest.”

“What if it was your wife that we could save?”

“I hope that bitch is dead," Mitchell spat.

“Alright, what if it was your daughter? If she’s still out there somewhere, wouldn’t you want someone to lay their life on the line to save her? Sharon is someone’s daughter!” I yelled.

He rounded on me then, and for a split second I thought he was going to kick my ass (and he could too), but instead he moved past me and opened the door, “Don’t you ever talk about my daughter again! Get the fuck out of my apartment!” he roared at me.

I wandered for a bit after that, the adrenaline draining out of my system leaving me feeling a bit nauseous. I walked the hallways of the living areas, around the shopping floors, and over the medical center.

I got more bad news there. Sara Seder, who had as far as I know been recovering from her gunshot quite well, had taken a turn for the worse last night, and passed away. The med center people didn’t tell me this, but I know she must have been decapitated, and her body destroyed as soon as they declared her dead.

Maybe I'm becoming paranoid, but the thought that crossed my mind at the realization of what would have been done with her body was that there would be no evidence of how she died. There are no autopsies performed anymore, so there will be no evidence of what really killed her. Of course this assumes that what I was told by the med center staff if a lie.

Yes, definitely paranoid.

When I got back here to my apartment, there was a note taped to my door with my name written in Alex Sigler’s spiky handwriting:

Meet me by the pond tomorrow at 9pm. We’ll go jogging.

-Alex

I don’t know what that’s about, but I’ll let you know after I meet with him.

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