Save Me From This Nightmare

Zack watched as the sun began to rise, giving light to the jungle terrain around him. He had no idea how long it had been since the explosion or since he’d been captured. He hated the fact that he hadn’t seen his loved ones in what felt like an eternity. He hated what the scientists had done to him. It was a painful process and they didn’t even bother to do anything to numb the pain during his surgery. He also hated that he had to wear sunglasses everywhere he went because his eyes were so sensitive.

Out of everyone involved, he had been the one person to take this situation the hardest. Before everything happened, he loved his life. He loved owning his clothing line, Vengeance University, and felt that it was very successful. He had two dogs, who were like his children and he loved spoiling them. What he missed most of all was his wife Hannah. The two had met during their senior year in high school and hadn’t left each other’s side since. However, that all changed the day he was taken to the lab.

He and Hannah had been running some errands when the couple was suddenly attacked from behind. He remembered that she had been attacked first and he turned around to save her but he was attacked too. The last thing he saw before he was knocked unconscious was his wife’s unconscious body being placed in the back of a white van.

He woke up strapped to an operating table and saw two men standing on either side of him. He saw that one of the men holding a scalpel, which caused him to try and escape. He saw the man with the scalpel place it towards one of his eyes and the next thing he remembered was intense pain before passing out.

This time when he opened his eyes there was intense pain because of the light. He could hardly keep them open. He kept his eyes squinted while he searched for a light switch but he never found one. Instead he found a pair of sunglasses resting on what he guessed was a small table. He quickly put them on in hopes them relieving the pain in his eyes.

When he put them on he glanced around the small white room and saw that there was only a small bed in the corner and a metal desk with a small metal chair on the opposite side. He looked in front of him and saw there was a long mirror, which took up almost the entire front wall. Here was a small area next to it that looked like a door but there was no handle.

“Good morning Experiment 713. I hope you like your new housing arrangements.” A voice echoed throughout the time room.

Zack frantically searched the room for the source of the voice but found nothing. “Who said that?”

“It’s very pleasing to see that you have healed from your surgery, 713,” the ominous voice sounded throughout the room.
“Where am I?” Zack asked.

“You are at your new home. Consider yourself lucky to have this opportunity. “

Zack thought about what the voice had just said. Why should he consider himself lucky? He had no idea where he was, strange people had done something to his eyes, and he had no clue where his wife was or if she was safe.

“Your wife is dead.”

Zack couldn’t remember what the voice had said after that. He couldn’t believe it. The most important person in his life was gone and he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

He had no idea how long he had been at the lab when the explosion happened. He didn’t have any contact with anyone except for the voice over the intercom. Hell, he didn’t even know that there were other people at the lab until he escaped his room when the door suddenly burst open and saw six other people standing outside. When he got closer to the group he noticed that they were all his close friends from high school, which surprised him.

He could see his friend Matt Sanders, a person whom he had known since elementary school, standing with his arms crossed as he watched the testing lab burn down from a distance. Right next to Matt was Jimmy Sullivan who seemed to be laughing hysterically as he too watched the building disintegrate.

Behind Matt and Jimmy, there was a smaller group of people who looked like his friends Brian, Johnny, and twins Matt and Jason Berry. He was surprised to see anyone here, let alone familiar faces.

“Holy fuck. Zack you’re here too?!” Johnny said when Zack approached the group.

“Yeah,” he said as he too began to watch his prison burn. A sense of happiness and joy overcame him when he watched the place that had ruined his life disappear.

After talking to them to try and figure out what exactly happened to them, he found out that the guys had no idea how much time had passed since they’d been captured. He also found out that these horrible people told their friends and family that they had died, which is why no one came looking for them. Zack also remembered that the rest of the guys, excluding Jason, had been in serious relationships too and asked if they took their significant others as well.

“No,” a look of sadness washed over Matt Sanders’ face. “We were told that after the news of our ‘deaths’ that they all moved on.” He saw a look of confusion appear on Zack’s face. “Why do you ask?” Matt assumed that Hannah had been perfectly fine back in Huntington Beach living a new life.

Zack began to get uncomfortable with was Matt mentioned. He thought about Hannah everyday but he never actually came to terms with her passing. “Um… I don’t know how to say this… but Hannah was taken too.”

“Really? That’s great…. Well under the circumstances. Where is she?”

This is the part that Zack was dreading. Hannah was extremely close with these six men too. They were going to be crushed when they heard that she died.

“Actually,” he scratched his head. “She… died.” He began to feel tears fill up his eyes.

The attitude of the group had changed once Zack made his announcement. Hannah was a crucial member to this little family that they had. She was there for everything, even when the guys thought about starting a band back when they were in high school.

“She’s really…. gone?” The sadness evident in Matt’s voice. He had considered Hannah a sister and to find out that she was gone brought many feelings that he didn’t know existed to the surface.

Zack couldn’t take it anymore. Seeing all of his friends devastated over the fact that the most important person in his life was gone completely broke him. He began to cry hysterically since he hadn’t mourned her death properly. One by one each of these men began to cry for two reasons; one being the fact that one of their close friends was hurting and the second being that they were never going to see a wonderful person who was so important to all of them ever again.

From that day on, they made a pact that they were going to stay as a group and figure out a way to get home to California.

Zack sat in silence, watching the world outside, as he remembered those first days since he’d been captured and reuniting with his friends. A lot had changed since then. It was a dangerous world out there and he sometimes felt like he would have been safer if the lab hadn’t blown up. There were these creatures that ran around during the night. Jimmy had a theory that they were experiments that had gone wrong, that they were once humans who had terrible accidents happen to them.

“Hey Zack,” Johnny’s soft voice sounded throughout the room. “The food supply is running low so we have to find the nearest store and get more.”

This is what a normal day in Zack’s life was like now. Every few days or so guys would leave once the sun rose and try to find a grocery store or an abandoned convenience store in hopes of getting food and avoiding the creatures. They seemed to have an issue with the light so they only came out at night.

“Alright. I’ll be there in a second.” Zack responded. He quickly gathered all the supplies that he would need before meeting Johnny so they could face the outside world.