Uncovered

• Timothy Westphal, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2013

It was midnight and James Mareth was running around in ragged, blood-stained clothes. He had several wounds but he knew that he had to keep running else he would be caught and killed.

James Mareth was a fourteen year old boy that went to a school in New York on the edge of the island of Manhattan. He was in his school trying to find out what the ‘sss ch sss ch sss ch’ sound was that he had been hearing for the past three weeks in class. He was surprised to find that there were two men at the gate and he was even more surprised when they attacked him with baseball bats. He was lucky that they missed his head so he was able to run away but the wounds he had received were slowing him down. He turned left into to a corridor, then right and found himself in the library. The sound was even louder there so James guessed that whatever was making the sound was close by. James walked between the shelves but suddenly the door was smashed open and the two men with the baseball bats walked in. James grabbed a book so he could throw it and cause a distraction on the other side of the room but the book he grabbed wouldn’t budge. He pushed the book and a secret hatch opened on the floor next to him. The men had almost reached his aisle so without a second thought he jumped into the hatch and he heard it click shut behind him.

James found himself in a dimly lit white corridor that you might expect to found in a fancy new hospital. He walked along the empty corridor. He passed rooms that were filled with test tubes that had different coloured liquids. As he turned into the next corridor he heard footsteps coming in his direction. With his heart in his mouth he opened a door and jumped into the room. He was a second too late. Just as the man rounded the corner he saw the door swing shut. James sat silently against the wall not even daring to breathe. He looked up and to his horror saw the door handle was slowly turning. He looked around the room for somewhere to hide but there was only a trolley with some test tubes in it in the corner. He knew that he just had to accept the inevitable. He watched as the door slowly opened and to his great surprise in walked Hugo Glukhov his Russian history teacher.

“Hello James”, said Hugo in calm voice as if he had been expecting James all along.
“Hello sir”, said James who was more than a little confused. “Now James considering that you have gone through all the trouble into getting in here, I would like to show you what I’m doing down here before I kill you”. “I do have to kill you James because you have already seen too much”. Now if you would like to follow me I can explain it all, oh and James don’t even think about trying to escape because then I would have to kill you before I got to show you my ingenious plan”. Mister Glukhov led James through a maze of corridors until they came to a large room that couldn’t have been more out of place. James concluded that whatever was making the noise was inside the room because he could now hear it booming from inside the room. Mister Glukhov opened the door and James gasped as he saw what was making the noise.

Inside the room was a huge box like machine with a conveyer belt running through it. Paper was going in one side and money was coming out the other side. “So you want to become rich”, said James.
“Oh no, not only rich, I am going to become one of the most powerful men in all of new Russia”, said Mr Glukhov who was clearly enjoying telling someone else about his plan. “New Russia”, James said a little puzzled.
“You see, James, this money is only to pay for a much bigger operation. Those test tubes you saw in the rooms back there well they were filled with new version of Ebola that is ten times worse because blood bursts through your skin, and it is ten times more infectious. It can even be transmitted by the wind and in case you don’t know what Ebola is, it is a highly infectious disease where blood pours out of every hole in your body until you die”. James stood there utterly horrified as mister Glukhov explained all of this. “Do you see what I am saying James”, said Mr Glukhov, “Just imagine if I put one in someone’s food here in New York, that person would instantly get the disease then everyone around him would get it in a matter of seconds and it would quite rapidly spread throughout the city and everyone would die. Now imagine if I did that in every major city in America as well as drop a container of them in the middle of an army base. America would be absolutely crippled leaving it an easy target for the Russian army to come in and take over”. James listened intently and then after mister Glukhov had finished speaking he actually smiled because he thought he had found a quite deadly flaw in the plans. “Mister Glukhov, have you thought about what might happen to the Russian army when they come and invade?” said James
“Yes, that was a major inconvenience to the plans”, said mister Glukhov, “but you see that because of my genius we found a solution to that problem. We made the virus partial to extremely low frequencies so that when I push the button on that remote control over there, it sends an extremely low frequency sound wave from a satellite all over America and the virus simply dies”. “You’re a mad man”, said James in absolute disgust, “You’ll never get away with this”.
“Ah, but I will”, exclaimed mister Glukhov, “Now, I’ve had enough of you so now I’m going to kill you, but I’m not going to simply shoot you because that would be boring so if you could please follow me”. Mister Glukhov led James down the corridor and turned the corner. James followed him but when he turned the corner he saw a sudden movement and felt a searing pain in his head then dropped to the ground, unconscious. He woke to find himself in a tightly sealed room. His head was throbbing where he had been hit and he was still a little bit dizzy. When he moved to stand up he made a splash. He realised the room had water in it and the water level was slowly rising. He looked around to see where it was coming from and he saw a loose flaw panel with water slowly bubbling from the edges of it. James started towards the panel when heard a loud hiss. He turned around and saw a huge water snake slithering down the wall. He reached down to his shoe and pulled out a pocket knife that looked absolutely tiny compared with the big snake. The snake struck out its head at James and it was all he could do to dive out of its way. He saw it turning around and knew he would not survive much longer. He had to come up with a plan and he had to do it fast. The snake leaped at him again and he side stepped it but when its head had gone past he lunged after it and drove the knife into its head. The snake died instantly but the water started to dilute with blood. James turned his attention back to the panel. The panel was half a metre wide so he went over and ripped it out of the floor to see if there was a way to escape. When he ripped it up he instantly regretted it because the water started gushing in through the gap. James new that there was only one possible way of escape and that was to dive down through the gap and that was only a very slim chance of escape. He took a gulp of fresh air and dived down through the gap. The tunnel seemed to go down forever and he knew he couldn’t hold his breath for much longer but suddenly he came to a curve in pipe so he kept swimming into the blackness bumping into the walls of the pipe until he was swimming up. By now his lungs were screaming at him for air and he thought that he was going drown when he bumped into some bars. He saw a light through the bars and was overcome with a sense of rage of coming so far and now he was going to die. He didn’t know if his rage gave him extra strength or the bars were just weak from years of rusting but when he yanked on the bars they broke off. With a renewed spirit he swam up as fast as could. James didn’t think he was going to make it when he suddenly burst out of the water gasping for breath. He lay on his back slowly kicking his way into shore. After a minute of slow kicking he found himself on the beach. He thought he could have lain there forever but he knew he had to get back to the school and stop his mad history teacher. He slowly walked back through the streets towards the school. When he got there instead of going through the gates he jumped over the fence. He ran as fast as he could towards the library and when he got there he started to search for the fake book. The search didn’t take him to long because he remembered which aisle it was in and where about it was. James opened the hatch and jumped through it. As soon as he landed he ran into the nearest room and grabbed one of the test tubes and put it in his pocket. He ran through the corridors until he found the room with the remote control in it. He started to walk towards it when Mr. Glukhov stepped out from behind the door. James had done karate for eight years and was almost a black belt. He tried a roundhouse kick that would have knocked Mr. Glukhov unconscious if it had made contact. Mr. Glukhov had jumped backwards with lightning speed into a defence stance with his legs apart for a low centre of gravity. James instantly knew he was facing a master. Mr. Glukhov lunged forward with a left jab and James had to fling himself backwards to escape the blow. He now found himself cornered between the wall and the door. He knew he wasn’t going to win the fight. There was only one option left to him and he took it. He opened the door, threw the test tube at Mr. Glukhov and jumped out of the door and closed it behind him. He cringed as he heard Mr. Glukhov scream. He ran away from the sound, up through the library and out of the school. He ran as fast as he could to the police station and he told them everything that had happened. They sent a team of police down to the school to make sure no one would escape while they called the special forces team to come as fast as they could. Men in special suits went into the room that had the remote in it and killed the virus. As for James he was sent home to get some rest and he would answer some questions in the morning. When he got home his parents grounded him for coming home so late and dirty. How unfair he thought, he saved the whole of America and he got grounded.


The end