The Forbidden Zone

Chapter 2 - The Right Thing To Do

Passing through the debris thrown to the sides of the former barricade meant to keep us out I stepped into the ship's command center.

The girl who had called to me beckoned and I hurried over to where she and three boys were busy at instrument panels.

One boy looked to be Japanese and the other two appeared to be Thai. They were all flipping away at switches and levers and in concern I said in English hoping that they could all understand since that was the only other language I knew other than Hindi, "Wait, what you do? You know what it is you are doing?"

The Indian girl spoke in response shaking her head, "No, Nysha, look everything is dead. Nothing works!"

The Japanese boy nodded and said slowly in fragmented English, "Massive power failure."

Looking to him I asked, "You mean the engine stopped working in the ship?"

Shaking his head quickly he waved his hands 'no' and said, "No, no. This is different. Everything cooked. Never work again. I think it what they call EMP."

Staring around at the others I made the obvious statement in rebuttal to that, "Why would they do that? They need us! We are a major part of their rebuilding plan. They used a lot of their remaining resources and personnel to come capture us."

"Not them, but 'Others' I think." He was quick to respond with.

For a moment I stood dumbfounded by his statement.

A voice, with a heavy Pakistani accent to it spoke from behind me in English, "Makes sense."

Hearing the voice of one of India's long-standing enemies made me inwardly cringe as I turned to view the speaker.

She was beautiful, even as a fellow female I could recognize that unashamedly.

She was taller than me and instantly I heckled up inside as if sensing a threat in her to my own well-being.

I said in rebuttal, "How do you think it makes sense that the, 'Others' would do something so....so..."

"So sophisticated." She finished for me and I nodded sharply in response.

"They want us as badly as the elite pigs do. We are like the last gold on earth to them and now we are all gathered together in one place for them to feed upon."

"You think they are coming here?" The other Indian girl asked in panic.

The Pakistani girl nodded indifferently before concluding her theory with, "They found the holding centers did they not."

Like it or not she had a point there.

The Japanese boy spoke, "They could have tortured survivors to tell them where it was we were going. Even debilitated as they have gotten to be they could have at least gotten a victim to launch a nuke....up there. Maybe many nukes." He finished with, as he figuratively pointed towards the ceiling and the sky beyond.

It was a long shot, but there were elements of substance to it just the same.

The reality that flesh eating soulless creatures bent on consuming anything with a soul still in it in hopes of gaining back what they had lost, were even now making their way across the ocean after us was chilling beyond words.

Looking up I was about to ask a question of the boy when I was cut off by the curt voice of the Pakistani girl, "Listen!"

I really did not like her, but patiently I bit off what I was about to say.

In the silence then I heard it.

The sound was a dull echo like, 'bang....bang' noise.

It sounded weird somehow as if it was a canned noise of some kind and not in the immediate vicinity.

Following my ear's insight I stepped toward the one side of the control room followed along closely by the Pakistani girl. We saw it at almost the same moment and rushed to it.

There was a pipe with a cap on it that I recognized from movies as a mouthpiece for relaying orders verbally without the use of an intercom or loudspeaker. Reaching the pipe we leaned toward it and sure enough the banging noise was louder.

"The boiler room!" We both exclaimed out with as we read the label on the pipe the noise was coming from.

Turning to the others in the room I exclaimed, "Has anyone gone down there yet?"

They shrugged as if to say they didn't know, but I was already moving. Someone or at least 'something' was clearly down there.

From my travels about the ship over the past week I knew roughly where the access door to the boiler room was and yet being such a large ship it took us several minutes to get there during which time we picked up quite a following.

Getting near to where I knew the access point to be the Pakistani girl rushed ahead and not to be put down I sped up as well.

Reaching the door first she turned to me half out of breath and barring the way she said, "What if it isn't someone locked up?"

A telling moment passed by before she added, "What if it's one of the 'Others'?"

A tense silence ensued in the crowded hallway.

Strangely I had never fancied myself to be the leader type, but it was my voice that spoke out in the stillness, "We need to know for sure. We can't leave someone locked up. We can't do that or we...... we would be like those who stole us away from our families. No matter what we can never be like them! No, not any of us, ever!"

The girl before me inclined her head and gave a slow nod before turning to push at the door. It only shifted an inch, but then it shifted more as I and others came up to push against it in concert with her.

The door gave way as all the stuff piled against it was pushed back. There was no light in the expanse beyond the door and the reality of that was beyond eerie to experience in the moment.

At any moment poised on the edge of darkness's gloom I expected something to leap out and start biting at me.

Instead of a bite though came a very male sounding American accented voice, "Over here!"

Drawing in a breath of relief I was in time to see the Pakistani girl do the same.

She'd been just as scared as I was. Somehow knowing that helped me feel better.

Turning to the packed hall I cried out, "We need a light of some kind."

Before long a couple of boys squeezed by us with a pair of makeshift torches in hand. As the fiery light lit up the gloom the boiler room compartment came alive with dancing shadows.

We moved forward into the darkness and with our progress the shadows all about us danced in a way that I found to be beyond creepy and far too close to a horror movie I had once seen.

The unknown male's voice rang out again directing us and we moved forward as a group.

In the midst of the boiler room we came up upon what could only be called a cage. It was something you'd expect to see a poacher keeping a guerrilla or something like it in, but this one held a man.

He wasn't a teenager like most of us, but in fact I took him to be in his mid-30s to 40s, if the hard lines of his facial structure that bespoke of hard-won experience were to be believed.

He had a rugged independent like quality to him and seeing the way his big hands gripped at the bars of his cell I was reminded all over again of the analogy of a wild animal desperate for freedom.

His voice confirmed it, as it grated out with clear masculine authority, "Get me out of here!"

The authoritarian quality of the voice had me moving forward as if my own father had directed me to do something.

Several hands grabbed at me and held me back, even as one of their voices cried out in a panic, "Look there on his shoulder! He has the marks! He is one of the 'Others'!"

The shadowy dancing torchlight directed my eyes toward the man's only visible shoulder. The man was shirtless and though he had heavy body hair it was yet clear to see that he had the two red infamous marks denoting the gene therapy application that had promised to make all the bad times go way and life to return to normal.

My heart chilled within me at what I had almost done.

In answer the caged man gave the cage door a loud rattle as he declared with pronounced masculine wrath, "I am not one of them! Now open this door!"

No one moved and in a way it was suddenly clear to all that nobody was going to answer his request.

Regarding us all with extreme frustration he sighed and pushed away from the bars only to slam up against the back side of the cage with a growl of rage that sounded almost animal like.

The point that I took away though was that it wasn't animal sounding in the ways that the 'Others' sounded like. It was just close to it.

Maybe he was in an early stage of the process of changing and thus still sounded more human. If so, why would they have brought him?

If he was one of the 'Others' of what possible value could he have to the elite that they would risk bringing him to their safely hidden away land?

He was darkly muttering to himself as he began to pace back and forth tightly within the narrow cage.

I could only catch a word or two of what he was saying, "Nothing but kids...... stupid kids......"

Suddenly the scene we all stood gripped by was shattered apart by the echoing call of someone from the hall, "Land! We see land!"

It was the diversion we all needed to turn away from the impossible responsibilities of the moment before us. Like dutiful mice we left the boiler room quietly.

The last glimpse I had of the man behind bars was of him silently watching us leave.

Surely if he was one of the 'Others' he would even now be yelling and screaming profanities at us, but this man did not do any of those things.

It was like he had silently chosen to accept his fate. How did someone without a soul do that?

His silent demeanor upon our retreat affected me more strongly than anything else that he could've done.

I was at the back of the pack who were now quickly disappearing from view as they rushed topside to view the land on the horizon.

Inside I felt like I was dragging a great weight behind me that if I didn't stop I would somehow be pulled over into a great abyss by. The man surely couldn't be trusted though.

Abruptly the Pakistani girl, who was just ahead of me, reached out to seize a torch out of the hand of the Japanese boy from the control room.

We three were all that was left of the crowd from earlier.

Taking the torch she turned to forcefully head back the way we had come.

Startled, I looked at her, even as the boy jabbered away in Japanese excitedly, but before I could speak she held up a hand and said, "You said, that no matter what, we can't be like the pigs who put us here!"

She didn't need any further argument from me as I was already turning around. It was just deeply wrong to leave this man to die down here.

He was going to kill us when he got out, but sometimes the obvious truth just didn't matter when the right thing needed to be done.

Shaking like a leaf I went back the way I had just come from until I was in view of the man, who stood as silently as we had left him.

The Pakistani girl held up a big wrench and said, "Promise not to kill us if we let you go!"

"I promise not to kill you." The man's deep voice echoed solemnly out with.

Hastily I added, "And none of the others either!"

"Well now, that depends." He drawled out with what actually sounded like dry humor.

My voice squeaking I asked, "Depends on what?"

"Whether they attack me first, Honey. I will defend myself."

Logically my mind concluded that was only fair, but emotionally it was far too open-ended for my liking.

Calling myself all kinds of stupid I stepped forward and took off a set of keys on a hook that hung out of reach of the cage.

In the semi darkness I stepped close enough to the cage door to fit the key into the lock. My hands were shaking so badly I couldn't even get the key to fit into it.

Suddenly a powerful hand wrapped about my wrist completely, even as his coolly accented American voice intoned, "Allow me."

His hand firmed away all the shaking within mine and directed the key into the lock. His wrist turned and my hand went with it in mirror action.

The cage door sprung open and drawing in a deep breath I stepped backward quickly as my wrist was released.

The man only dressed in a pair of pants stepped free from the cage and let loose with the loudest sigh of relief I had ever heard.

Breathing deeply for several long moments he stood poised before us even as we held our breath.

At last he spoke, "Thank you! I have to admit I was going a bit crazy in there."

Glancing to the Pakistani girl off to his left, who still held the wrench high in the air, he said in a bemused tone, "Guess I should work on my choice of word selection shouldn't I."

Slowly, she lowered the wrench and the Japanese boy beside me breathed out deeply as the man before us made no move to kill us.

Stepping forward several paces the man sorted through some clothes laying in a pile nearby and came away with a long sleeve shirt.

The man had very broad shoulders that rippled with power.

It was not a bulging beach body physique but rather it was a physique that bespoke of one gained through hard work.

Beyond what one could see he had an aura of power about him that said that he could move large obstacles in his path that many wouldn't be able to.

It was very clear that if he wanted us dead we would've been, but so far he'd shown no indication of wanting to devour us.

As he tried to button up the shirt that didn't quite fit I found myself grow brave enough to ask, "Why do you have marks from the gene therapy, but... but...."

"But I'm not one of the 'Others".

I nodded quickly as he finished my stuttering statement.

"That's a story for another day, Princess. Rest assured for now though that I am neither one of the infamous 'Others' and neither am I one of the globalist pigs that put us all here."

"But you are not one of us either." I said perceptively.

"No, I am not." He affirmed and then with no further explanation given he proceeded to stride forward and out of the room.

Having no other recourse we blindly followed along after him, while at least maintaining a slight distance from him.

The Pakistani girl still held the wrench down by her side as if in readiness for him to suddenly turn for the worse.

Glancing back at us he noticed the wrench that she still held at the ready.

Giving her a smiling look he said, "Smart girl." and then he was up on deck striding forward through the sunshine, even as the temperature in this land of the Penguins was unbelievably warm feeling.

If one looked hard enough it seemed one would find that almost everything a government informed its citizens of through state-controlled media and programming was a lie in some ways whether knowingly intentional or otherwise.

The man's striding pace had me hurrying to catch up and now out in the daylight I sized him up more indepthly.

He may have been younger than I had first thought him to be, but in general he had a competency of spirit to him that made him seem far older than what he was.

He was a big man, while he was not overly tall, neither was he short. The bigness came into effect with how he was built.

Everything about him was bigger than average without being fat at all, even though his belly did have a bulge to it that would've been deemed unfit by modern standards. His physique reminded me instead of a warrior who could spend all day slicing off heads in the trenches of war where a ribbed out beach dude would've been crying out for mommy long before lunchtime in extreme dehydration.

The man in general was not beautiful and certainly even the term 'handsome' as it was usually interpreted could not be applied to him. Despite that I oddly found him appealing somehow as if he actually was handsome.

Everything about him echoed of a strong-willed certainty that spoke loudly to an unseen reality that what this man put his hand to do he would succeed in. He was exactly the kind of man that in times of peace the world would censor and seek to minimalize, but in times like these would beg to help save them from the monster in the room.

In short he was exactly the kind of man my father had been like and if the two had met I could even have seen them as becoming close friends.

How did I know all of this?

Were my senses and perceptions lying to me about him?

Was he really a monster after all and just biding his time to strike and feed upon one of us when our backs were turned?

Despite how eminently immersing he was of a subject of observation for me to consider I found my gaze shift from him to the rapidly approaching landmass that featured a beach lined with trees and beyond that a forest that integrated upward into a snowcapped mountain that rose up distantly almost out of view.

A strong current was taking the powerless ship in towards shore exceedingly fast. Way too fast!

The reality of crashing onto the beach was likely to be-come a soon felt thing for all of us.

Imperceptible to my own conscious choice my eyes left the sight of the land to find out what had become of the man I had helped to uncage and release upon the rest of us for either evil or perhaps something even worse.

My eyes found him as he knelt beside an opening in the forward prow busily yanking powerfully away on a rusty lever.

What on earth was he doing?

The Pakistani girl beat me to it by asking, "What is it you do?"

The wrench in her hand had started to lift even as others around us, formerly mesmerized by the fast approaching land, now turned to look at the stranger with dumb surprise.

The man glanced up at her and smoothly interjected even as he tugged away repetitively on the lever with all his might, "Honey, if you hadn't noticed there's a bit of a strong current going on here and unless you want to end up on top of a giant bonfire as several thousand gallons of fuel oil blows up from underneath you, I suggest you give me a hand getting this emergency anchor deployed."

The man made sense and feeling vindicated inside for helping him I hurried forward to lend my aid. My counterpart in this scene took her wrench and hooked the open ring portion of the non-wrench side over the end of the lever the man was powerfully yanking away at.

"Now that's just good thinking." The man huffed out with as both she and then I added our effort to his as we pushed against the locked on wrench even as he pulled.

The reality that all our lives could depend on what we were able to achieve seemed to be only echoed into fact by the sight of every blood vein in the man's neck in front of us looking as if it was about to pop as he strained to make the lever budge. His extreme effort only characterized to us how extreme our own effort should be.

Straining side-by-side we pushed as if our lives depended on it because they did. I believed that wholeheartedly.

There was a loud rusty pop and all of a sudden the lever gave way and the emergency anchor dropped for the ocean blue taking hundreds of feet of coiled chain along with it.

We; however, found ourselves launched forward by our strained momentum of force. The two of us tumbled forward onto the man who was in turn knocked backward by our incoming momentum.

Dazed I took in the reality of finding myself fully splayed over half the man we had just released from a cage, while the other half of him was shared by my co-conspirator in all of this.

Both of us gasped hotly in surprise as we looked down at the man who had broken our fall forward with his own body and now had a steadying hand on each of our asses.

The look on his face was one of shock, but it wasn't di-rected at us specifically so much as the reality that he was taking in the full view of both of our sizable cleavages perilously close to spilling out of our makeshift clothing and onto his chest.

The awkward shock of the moment was accentuated even more acutely by the reality of feeling his hand palmed over my ass grip down firmly on one ass cheek in particular.

Desperately then we both fought to pull our makeshift clothing up and get ourselves up off of him and out of his grip.