In the Heart of Babylon by S.G.D. Singh

Author:S.G.D. Singh [Singh, S.G.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Glory Press
Published: 2019-10-19T22:00:00+00:00

Nadifa scrambled to his feet, terrified he'd somehow crushed Hanna's brother to death. Adam looked young, no more than eighteen, and as pale and fragile as a porcelain doll. Nadifa wondered if he'd ever been in the sun. His pants were folded up at the legs, his short sleeves empty at his sides. He looked utterly helpless.

“I'm guessing by the look on your face that you've never met anyone with phocomelia.”

“N-no.” Nadifa shook his head, surprised by how cheerful and calm the dude seemed, considering he was just thrown out of a helicopter into an underground house of horrors. And how the hell was he supposed to carry Adam to anywhere even remotely resembling safety?

“Phocomelia,” Adam said. “A rare, usually congenital deformity of the extremities in which the hands or feet are attached close to the trunk, and the limbs are grossly underdeveloped or absent. As you see.”

“Oh… kay,” Nadifa said, finding that wording unnecessarily harsh. Deformity? Grossly? After an awkward silence, he asked, “Does it hurt?”

“Hurt? No.” Adam grinned. “Pain in the ass when you grow up with people who believe racial cleansing is a feasible way of life, yes. Now, can we go before the zombies find us?”

“Right. Yes. Let me just—” Nadifa turned to look back at where they'd left the golf carts, but Adam interrupted him.

“Not gonna work where we're going. Use your jacket.” Adam's voice was matter-of-fact. “Think of me like a talkative backpack.”

“What?” The dude was nuts. Was he seriously making a joke?

But without a better idea, Nadifa took off his stained uniform suit jacket and, following Adam's instructions, buttoned the other boy into it. Next, he used the kitchen knives to carefully cut the material at the bottom of the jacket into strips, which he tied into knots to provide a base. He knotted the sleeves into a kind of loop, and then lifted Adam onto his back, holding onto the sleeves. The “backpack” did not seem comfortable in any way, but Adam didn't complain.

“It's not far,” he said. “We just take the service elevator in the clubhouse down to Level 9.”

Nadifa tried not to think about what would happen if they ran into a horde of infected in their current vulnerable condition, and then it was precisely all he could think about. He jabbed his knives through the material of the sleeves, weaving the blades in and out to hold them in place, the sharp side facing outward and made his way toward the clubhouse, hoping he didn't trip and impale himself in the process.

“The name's Adam, by the way,” Adam said from within the jacket.

“Nadifa.” An awkward silence. “So… you grew up down here? As in… ”

“As in, I've been imprisoned in this hellhole for about eleven years now, yep,” Adam answered easily, pointing the way behind the bar. “Varied attempts from the resident mad scientist to torture the deformity out of me since I was eight.”

“Holy shit,” Nadifa hissed. He shifted Adam's weight, approaching the elevators, blending with wood panels beyond the kitchen.

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