Everything went dark. I had entered a nightmare and there was no escaping.

My mind showed me things that I never, ever want to see again.

My father’s death. Deep behind enemy lines, taken as prisoner, beheaded on camera.

My mother. Torn apart by a horde of infected.

My friends. Sacrificed.

Maria. Gone.

My mind flashed forward to the future. The very possible end game of this pandemic.

The entire world overrun by the Oz virus. The extinction of the human race.

All of a sudden I was standing in the corner of the church basement. The basement was lined with military style cots, crammed with people.

The smell was overpowering. Children were crying.

And then, in the very middle of the night, the priest entered, his black robe flowing behind him, exposing giant vampire bat wings that had grown out of his back.

His skin was black and scaly, like a snake.

He looked at me. Held his index finger up to his lips.

He tip toed between the cots. To the opposite side of the room.

I followed him as he slowly slithered and stalked towards his prey.

I saw the girl, Sarah Mackenzie. Her sister, Hannah.

Their father, Ed. His ridiculous moustache.

An empty cot next to him where his wife once slept.

The priest moved past them. Kept moving to the far side of the room where there were two small children.

A girl.

A boy.

A hand reached out for them. But it was not a human hand. It was black and scaly. It had razor sharp claws and talons instead of fingers.

They gripped around the children’s legs and the priest dragged them out of the room as they slept.

As everyone slept.

The priest looked over his shoulder, back at me. He held my gaze and then smiled. He winked at me and then left.

I saw a column of light shining into the basement. I dived for it. My head throbbed. Pulsed.

When I finally woke, I was confused as all hell.

It took me a few seconds to realize I was hanging upside down. Fingers scraping against the black, bitumen road. I was in the town square. Maria was hanging up next to me about ten feet away.

I could feel myself swinging and swaying back and forth. The movement was making me nauseas. Then again, it could’ve been whatever we had been drugged with that was making me feel sick. Or you know, the fact that I was hanging upside down.

The town square had a roundabout, traffic circle thing, in the middle of the road. I guess it was more of a town circle then a town square. Anyway, in the middle of the roundabout was a bronze statue of a soldier. His head was lowered. He had a rifle in his hands.

At the feet of the soldier was a big block of white marble. Carved into the marble was a long list of names. I don’t know why, but I was trying to read the names, even though I was upside down, and everything was blurry, and I really should’ve been concentrating on getting out of this predicament instead of trying to read the names.

I could see the sun hanging low in the sky. I had no idea what time it was, but it had to have been late in the afternoon. This meant that Maria and I had been unconscious all day.

I came to the realization that I had woken from a nightmare and entered a real life one.

Now there really was no escaping.

Someone was speaking in a hushed whisper.

“God our Father, your power brings us to birth. Your providence guides our lives. And by your command we return to dust.”

It was the priest. His black robe was flowing as the hot desert wind blew through the town. In my mind he looked huge, like a giant all-powerful demon.

“Lord, those who die, still live in your presence, their lives change but do not end,” he continued. “I pray in hope for my family, relatives and friends. And for all the dead known to you alone. In company with Christ, who died and now lives, may they rejoice in your kingdom, where all our tears are wiped away. Unite us together again in one family, to sing your praise forever and ever. Amen.”

Another voice spoke. “At first I was mad. I wanted to…”

The voice broke down, choked up.

“It’s OK,” the priest reassured him.

It took me a few seconds to realize that the voice was talking to me. It was Ed. He was telling me his story. Trying to justify the horrible things he had done.

“At first I wanted to kill the Father for sacrificing my wife. But I came to the realization it was for the greater good. She is in heaven now. With God. She is safe. And our group is stronger for her sacrifice. She gave her life for us, to save us. She is a hero.”

I shook my head and everything went blurry. “Are you crazy? You plan on sacrificing us?”

“I am doing God’s work,” the priest answered. “To refuse is to condemn yourself to eternal damnation.”

“You’re all sick. You’re insane.”

“We make choices,” he said as he made the symbol of the cross over me. “We make sacrifices.”

I tried bargaining with him. I told him that Maria was immune to the Oz virus and that she could be the savior of the entire human race.

But the priest did not care.

He told me that nothing could save us. Nothing.

The priest then turned and walked away, his robe flowing in the wind. Ed followed him like a lap dog, still refusing to look at me.

As soon as they left I began struggling to get out, trying to free myself, trying to wake Maria up. I was suddenly very aware that the priest’s men were watching me from up in the bell tower. Just like we had watched that poor dying woman the day before. I wondered if that meant one of those monsters was now making its way into town.

I did not want to end up like that woman.

So I kept struggling. It was then I heard a howling moan. Somewhere off in the distance. And something different. A roar. Something bigger.

Coming closer.

I began to panic. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t stop thinking about how any second now, I was about to be fed to a freakin monster.

A voice spoke to me. A voice that was so clear and so loud. I looked around, expecting to see someone standing there, talking to me. But there was no one else in the town square besides Maria. And she was out cold.

The voice spoke to me again. It was the voice of self-doubt and fear. It kept getting louder and louder. The voice told me that this was it. This was the end of it all.

It kept saying, “You screwed up. You’re as good as dead.”

I looked up at my feet. I could barely feel them. The rope had cut off the circulation.

“There’s no getting out of this. You came all this way for nothing.”

I shut my eyes as tight as I could. My head throbbed with each pulsing beat of my heart. I had to try and think.

Think.

I had been drugged. I was hallucinating. Imagining the priest as a vampire and a demon. I was hearing voices.

I had to fight it. Concentrate.

Focus.

Maria needs me.

Come on Rebecca! Maria needs you.

She was hanging up by her feet from the next street light over. I called out to her but she didn’t respond. She was definitely out cold.

“Yeah, or maybe she’s already dead.”

“Shut up,” I said to the voice in my head.

Focus. I can do this.

“Sure you can. You know, this is exactly like the time Luke Skywalker was captured by that snow monster and taken to its lair at the start of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. He was hanging up by his feet and everything. This is kinda like that. Except you’re not on the frozen planet of Hoth. You’re in a desert. And you don’t possess the Force. And you don’t have a light saber. So there’s really no way you’re getting out of this.”

The voice was getting louder. Stronger. More convincing with each passing second. I had screwed up. There was no doubt about it. I should’ve been more careful. Jack was right. We should’ve made a stand back at the farm house. We should not have given up our guns so easily.

Now it was too late. Now there was no getting out of this. The voice in my head was right; I did not have a light saber.

A howling moan echoed through the streets. I looked back down the main road. At the far end of the street was a lone figure. It possessed the familiar gait of someone infected with the Oz virus. It was stumbling towards us. Slow yet relentless. I knew that at any second it would start sprinting for us. And when it got here, it would tear me apart. It would rip Maria, limb from limb. It would eat us. It would not stop.

Not until someone put a bullet in its brain. Or an axe. Or a knife.

I guess I should’ve been thankful that it was only one infected person coming for us, and not an entire horde. And not something else.

What a lousy thing to be thankful for.

“You should be thankful. Grateful. You still have your freedom.”

Another voice. A deep booming voice. The kind of voice you would expect to belong to God, or Father Time, or someone who had been around for a while.

It was the bronze statue of the soldier.

I told myself again and again that I had been drugged. “I’m hallucinating. This isn’t real.”

“This is real,” the statue said. “And you are free.”

“I’m not free. I’m tied up by my ankles, hanging upside down. I can’t even feel my feet. My head is pounding, my mind is screaming. I’m about to be eaten. Sacrificed.”

“You are free,” the statue repeated. “Free to die. Free to forgive the men who have drugged you and tied you up. Free to hate them.” The statue moved his head slowly, like he hadn’t moved in a very long time. He looked at me. “You see these names carved into stone? These are the names of soldiers who gave their lives in the great wars of man. They gave their lives defending their country. They made the ultimate sacrifice for the pursuit of freedom.”

“But I don’t even have a light saber,” I said.

“Neither did these men.”

“No. But they had guns. And tanks. And grenades. And knives.”

“And bayonets,” the statue added. “Which is basically a knife.”

I really wished I had a light saber. Not that I really even liked Star Wars. Kenji made me watch it once. He told me that the whole thing was based on a movie by Akira Kurosawa. He was always full of interesting and useless trivia. I think the movie was called ‘The Hidden Fortress’ or something like that.

“Kenji,” I said. “I wish you were here.”

But he wasn’t. That’s why he had given me the flick knife. For a moment like this. For a moment when I did not have a gun, for a moment when no one else was around.

It was a flick knife, so I could get to it quickly. It was blunt, but it didn’t need to be sharp because there was no point in cutting an infected person.

I needed to stab them in the head.

Right through their skull. Into their brain.

It was a last resort.

That’s why Kenji had given me the knife.

A last resort.

Knife.

“The Knife!”

I reached up into my back pocket. It was still there.

Kenji’s voice. “Press this button here and the blade flicks out. The actual blade isn’t that sharp, but if it comes down to it, you should be able to stab this into the skull of an infected person. Worst case scenario.”

I slowly slid the knife out of my back pocket, careful not to drop it. I pressed the button on the handle and the blade flicked out.

Now for the hard part, I thought.

I reached up with one hand to the rope around my feet and pulled myself up. I was basically doing a reverse, upside down sit up. This would be a struggle for me to do at the best of times. And now? Whatever I’d been drugged with had made me incredibly weak and lethargic. My arms were heavy. My fingers felt clumsy and uncoordinated.

I gripped the knife tighter. I started cutting and sawing. And for what felt like the longest time ever, absolutely nothing happened. I made no head way. I made barely a scratch on the rope. I wished Kenji had given me a sharper knife. This thing could barely cut through butter.

I risked a glance back down the main road. The infected person was standing there, looking up into the sky. Too stupid to realize there was a free meal hanging up in the town square.

It won’t be long though, I thought. The Oz virus was designed to find life.

And just then, right on cue, the infected person’s gaze slowly dropped from the sky. It looked right at me. And at that moment I knew.

I knew it knew I was there. And I knew it was only a matter of seconds before it started running for me.

But it never got the chance.

Something jumped on top of it and flattened it against the road. Claws went right through the infected person’s decomposing body. The monster then ripped its head clean off, ripped its torso in half. It held the remains up to its mouth, sniffed it, licked it, and then threw it away as it realized it could not eat the infected corpse.

There were three of them. They weren’t anywhere near as big as the one we had seen the day before. But they were big enough. They were bigger than any normal human being. They were built like gorillas. They even walked like gorillas, I thought. Every now and then they would stand up, look around, sniff the air. And continue their way into town.

A shot of adrenalin from I don’t know where, gave me strength I didn’t know I possessed. I lifted myself up again, and started sawing away at the rope.

And still, nothing happened.

I used the point of the knife to dig into the rope, to at least try and get the strands to fray just a little. I finally made some progress before my stomach cramped up and I fell back down.

I tried to ignore the memory of the woman from the day before, I tried to ignore the fact the priest and his men were probably watching me struggle from up in the bell tower.

I pulled myself up one more time. I knew this was the last chance I’d get, the last of my strength. This was it.

Now or never.

Do or die.

Life vs. death.

I took a deep breath and gripped the knife as tight as I could. I began sawing at the rope faster and faster.

The monsters were getting closer. I could hear them. They were making that weird guttural, purring noise. Luckily they seemed to be taking their sweet time getting here.

My arm began to cramp and burn as I sawed through the rope. But eventually the knife cut through and I fell awkwardly to the ground, landing on my right shoulder, smashing my cheek into the hot, rough, bitumen road.

I lay sprawled on the road for a few seconds as the sky and the world spun around inside my head. I ordered myself to stand up. And when I finally did stand, I fell straight back down.

Come on, I thought to myself. You’ve got to get Maria. You need to cut her free. You can do this.

I stood up on shaky legs. I felt woozy and nauseas and dizzy all at the same time. I moved over to Maria and began furiously cutting and sawing at the rope.

“Maria,” I whispered. “Are you awake?”

There was no answer.

I continued sawing back and forth. As expected, the knife wasn’t doing much. “Come on you stupid blunt piece of crap!”

The rope was starting to fray. But it was taking such a long time.

Fortunately, the three monsters were taking their time as well. I guess they had been trained or conditioned to expect a free meal. Meat that had been tied up. No need to work for their food.

I kept on cutting. The rope finally began to fray, little by little. I got into a zone. My arm and my hand were burning, but I had made a little groove in the rope and it was only a matter of time now before I cut all the way through.

Unfortunately, I was out of time.

I could feel their presence as they entered the town square. And then I could smell the rotting flesh stuck between their teeth.

The monsters had arrived. They had moved in slowly. They had me surrounded.

I kind of froze up then. I didn’t know what else to do, so I just kept on cutting through the rope. The weird purring noise got louder and louder. One of them roared.

I risked a glance over my shoulder. And at that moment I saw the monsters as the Muppets.

I saw Fozzie Bear.

Gonzo.

Cookie Monster.

Is cookie monster even a Muppet? I had no idea. The only thing I knew at that point; I was glad for the drugs. So very glad.

Eventually I cut through the rope. I even managed to catch Maria as she fell, before she smashed into the ground like I did. I shook her by the shoulders, trying to wake her. I even slapped her in the face a couple of times. But there was no response. I was about to check for a pulse when suddenly, I could feel the breath of one of the monsters on my neck.

And at that point, I thought it was over. I thought we were done for. But then I heard running footsteps. Human. Possibly infected.

The noise caught the attention of the monster closest to me. I wasn’t game enough to turn around and see how close it actually was, but it was close enough that I could feel its breath, and close enough that I could feel and hear it inhale sharply, as the noise of the running footsteps caught its attention.

I guess maybe it was a natural reaction for the monster. Hunters, like lions or tigers, they instinctively follow movement, something they can chase and eat.

I looked up and saw Ben running towards me. All seven foot, three hundred pounds of the man. He was screaming. Yelling. Axe in one hand. Crowbar in the other.

I was instantly confused.

Luckily, so were the monsters. They had backed away. Unsure of what was happening.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ben shouted at me. “Get up. Get out of here. Run!”

The drugs were still working their way around my body. And in that instant, Ben turned into a giant gladiator, battle axe in one hand, magical sword of the desert in the other.

I was frozen with fear and confusion.

Ben threw the battle axe and it moved through the air in slow motion. It rotated slowly and majestically. I followed its trajectory. It flew directly over Maria and me, right over my shoulder. The battle axe came to a stop, lodging itself right between the eyes of the nearest monster, right between the eyes of Fozzie Bear. It fell to the ground in a heap.

Ben pushed me forward, grabbed my arm, lifting me up. “Get out of here,” he repeated. “Now.”

I did exactly as he said. I picked up Maria and ran.

Behind me, Ben dislodged the battle axe from between the eyes of the fallen monster, as the other two converged on him. Amazingly, he didn’t seem too worried by this. In two swift movements, he had beheaded them both with the axe. And then he began to systematically, methodically, and enthusiastically smash them to bits with the crowbar, which in my mind at that point looked like the sword from ‘He-Man’. Ben may have even shouted, “By the power of Grayskull!” But I couldn’t be sure.

I continued to run away as fast as I could. Even though in reality I wasn’t running that fast. How could I? I was still dizzy, still weak. I was carrying Maria. I had no idea where I was going, so I headed for the nearest building. It just so happened to be a discount charity clothes store. I managed to hide in the front window behind a rack of clothes. I held Maria in my arms. I held her as tight as I could.

The world began to spin again. Faster and faster.

Nothing made much sense at that point. I was so out of it. The only clear thought in my mind, was that big Ben had just saved my life. And Maria’s.

He had killed three mutated monsters. Killed them with a battle axe and crowbar.

I thought he had joined forces with these murderers?

I thought he was just as mad?

But Ben saved our lives.

Before I could figure out why, or how, or what the hell was going on, I blacked out.