I edged towards the store, my eyes drifting left and right, looking for an indication of anything that might give away a possible trap. I got within ten feet of the door before I realized that the door was rigged with a small pipe bomb. The trip wire was already pulled and the little foot long piece of death slowly fell toward the ground. You know that classic slow-motion scene when something critical happened? Yeah this was it.
I dove back from the door and placed the exterior wall between me and the vestibule of the double doors. The shockwave and the flames still were hot and my ears were ringing for a little, but no serious injuries. Damn that was close. Just when I decided that Kroger was worth less than getting killed, a second explosion rocked the ground and the world went dark.
I woke up in a recovery room. The room was pretty sparce, more like a prison cell with a comfy bed. A man walked into the room about ten minutes later.
“…you almost didn’t make it kiddo,” he said. He paused, seemed to mull something over and then said, “its been almost a month since we have seen another living person outside of our research team. How did you survive this long?”
“how long was I here? I only was outside for a day or two” I replied.
“you’ve been here for two days. What about the other three weeks? Tell me the truth, what are you doing here?”
I looked around a little. This could get ugly, but what was I going to do? There was not much to really defend myself with and the man was already pretty imposing from where I was laying. I did not say anything in the end.
“smart-ass are you?” he continued. “you gonna answer or do we have to ask your ugly alien-looking friends?
“alien friends?” I asked.
“you dense, son?”
I am not dense, but this guy was crazy, and by saying “we” it made me wonder if there were others or if he was talking to himself.
“you must be, or still on a ton of narcotics because you have not even realized you have lost both your arms and a leg in that booby-trap at the Kroger,” he said.
I came back to reality with a backpack over my head, being dragged along a linoleum floor. I had no idea where I was, but the smell of formaldehyde suggested that I was in some sort of medical facility, but that does not really narrow it down. I kept limp and continued to be dragged down the hall. I figured that I was better off quiet, rather than a hero. I could feel that my knife was gone, but it would not have done me much good and probably would have gotten me killed.
They stopped dragging me after we went through some doors. I only knew it because the people dragging my said something about a keycard and to hold the door. I tell ya, I have some killer deduction skills. They hefted me up onto a table and as they pulled the backpack off my face I took another hit to the head. It all went dark from there.
“Back to sleep cutie,” A man said. I seem to take it in the face a lot.