We Are Still Here

by Jimmy Bird

  I spoke to my father, “I love you to dad”

  I glanced over at my mom “And I love you too mom.”

  I pulled away and looked around, “Well? Are we ready to go?”

  My mom looked from me to my dad, “Yes, honey. I guess, we are. Do you have anything that you need to grab?”

  “Um.... I guess if everything has been shipped to Oklahoma, I can’t think of anything. Wait, I need to see my C.O. about my discharge papers.”

  My dad draped his arm over my shoulder and led me towards the door, “We have your discharge papers.”

  I froze in place, “You have my discharge papers? Why do you have my discharge papers? That’s not the way the military works!”

  My mom could sense me getting upset again and tried to smoothly intervene, “Honey, it’s okay. They told us that with your medical condition, they didn’t think that you were mentally able to sign the papers. Since we’re your parents, they had us do it.”

  “I…. I guess that’s understandable.”

  I took a deep breath. The military had been my life since I was a teenager. It was all I had ever wanted to do and now, it felt like I was being pushed out the door like I was nothing.

  I sighed with a heavy heart, “Okay. I guess there’s nothing left for me here, let’s go home.”

  My mom’s face brightened up, “Okay sweetie. Let’s go home.”

  I walked out of the room that had been my home for the past few weeks. Everything seemed different. Everyone seemed different. I was in a part of the hospital I had never seen before. It looked like we were down at the end of a long hallway. From where I stood there didn’t look like many rooms around. I began to have an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  My training automatically kicked in, causing me to observe and record everything I saw. My postured stiffened and slowly shrugged my dad’s arm off my shoulders. I slowed my pace down and slightly turned my head to see who was in front and behind me. I was ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

  I’m not sure if my dad or mom noticed my actions. They were walking faster than I was. They were occupied with talking to each other.

  The first thing that I noticed was that there were hardly any hospital personnel around. It was weird considering it was supposed to be a military hospital. I saw two nurses at the end of the hallway talking to each other but no doctors.

  I’ll tell you what I did see was four mysterious government looking type of guys in suits that looked like they were watching me. My gut told me that they were watching me. They sort of looked like the guy who was in my room right after I woke up. Two were located up the hallway, just past the two nurses. The other two were behind us, not too far from my room.

  Briefly, I wondered what they were doing there, but I already knew the answer. The same reason that they were trying to make me sound crazy. I could feel my heartbeat get faster as my blood pumped into my face. I’m not sure why, but it felt like they weren’t about to let us leave.

  I stopped walking altogether and was about to turn around and say something when I felt a firm grip on my shoulder. I quickly turned to face the person who had grabbed me, ready to strike. With a clinched jaw, my legs and arms automatically went into a defensive stance. Without thinking about it too much, I pulled my shoulder back, grabbed the hand, and twisted it at the wrist.

  I was met with the shocked face of my father. For the first time in my life, I witnessed fear in my father’s eyes and I…. I was the cause of it.

  I let his hand go, “Oh, dad. I…. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  He grabbed his right wrist with his left hand and massaged it, “It’s okay sweetie.”

  My mother jumped in, “It most certainly is NOT okay. Honey, you could have seriously hurt your father. Are you sure that you’re okay to go home?”

  My father chimed in, “I’m fine. I think that I just scared her is all.”

  My mother ignored him and began looking around, “We need to have your wrist checked out. Where’s a doctor?”

  She looked up the hallway towards the nurses and spoke loudly, “Help, we need a doctor!”

  I stepped backwards, horrified by what I had just done to my father. I glanced towards my room. The two agents were gone. Surprised, I looked in the opposite direction. Those two agents were also gone. What was going on?

  The nurses arrived and immediately looked at my dad’s wrist. They didn’t even ask what was wrong or what had happened. They went straight towards my dad’s wrist! What was going on?

  A third nurse came out of nowhere and walked up to me. She began looking me over, “Captain Serina? What happened?”

  “How? How do you know my name?”

  While looking me over, she calmly responded, “Don’t you remember? Never mind, I guess you wouldn’t. You were out of it. I was the nurse that watched over you when you first got here.”

  “Um, thanks, I guess. I’m okay. My dad scared me and I just, sort of reacted.”

  She pulled out a flashlight and flashed it in my eyes, “How did he scare you?”

  The light was bothering my eyes, “I guess it was because I thought that I saw something.”

  Staying business like, she asked, “What did you think it was that you saw?”

  It felt like I was being interrogated, “I’m not sure. I just thought that I saw something, and it felt kind out of place.”

  She pulled away the light, “I see. Have you felt like this before?”

  I looked at her and sarcastically replied, “Yeah, when we were fighting the escaped test subjects that didn’t die!”

  She calmly responded, “Don’t you mean when you were fighting the ex-military group?”

  I looked her straight in the eyes. Something behind her eyes warned me to get my story correct. It felt like she was trying to help me out. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I glanced to the side of her face. I noticed that my parents and the nurses had been silently watching me. Was that what she was trying to warn me about?

  I took a deep breath, “Yeah, that’s what I meant. I’m not sure what’s going on with me right now.”

  She reached out and briefly hugged me. She quickly pulled back to arm’s length and spoke in a cryptic message, “Captain, don’t worry. You’re fine. I know that things seem confusing right now, but it will all work out for you. Trust me.”

  I frowned my eyebrows as she let go of me. Without waiting for a response or saying another word, she turned around and walked away. She motioned for the other two nurses followed behind her.

  My mom walked over and hugged me, “Are you sure you’re alright?”

  I slowly pulled away and turned to face my dad, “I’m fine mom. How’s your wrist dad?”

  My dad responded, “Honey, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I should have known better then to have grabbed your shoulder like I did and with you being in your current state of mind.”

  “Dad, what do you mean by that?”

  He looked sympathetic, “Well, it’s just that with your special training and with you being in your current state of mind after surviving the accident. I…. I just should have known better. I’m sorry.”

  I began to tear up and reached up to hug my father, “Dad, you never have to apologize to me. I love you. I…. I just thought I saw something and was concentrating on it when I felt an arm on me. I…... I’m sorry.”

  We hugged it out. My mom broke in, “Well, I think that it’s time to go home. Don’t you, Serina?”

  I let go of my dad and looked around. When I didn’t see anything, I turned back to my mom, “Yes, ma’am. I think I’m ready to go home now.”

  I looped my arm around my mother’s right arm and my dad’s left arm. I looked from one face to the other and forced a smile. I nodded towards them and began taking a step. I kept smiling as we walked down the hallway together. In the back of my mind, the nurse’s words kept repeating, over and over.

  The next few hours were pretty much uneventful.
The front desk had my discharge papers already for me, both from the hospital and the military. With a heavy heart, I signed both.

  I will admit that the strangest thing happened once I stepped outside the hospital. We were waiting on the valet to bring my dad’s rental car up when my phone rang. I glanced down at the Caller ID and noticed that it was Rick. I realized that I hadn’t heard from him, Mike, or Justin since that one visit a few weeks ago.

  I was about to answer it when I noticed a familiar looking man in one of those government suits, watching me. He was sitting on a bench, just on the right side of the doorway. He wasn’t even trying to be stealthy.

  My mom asked, “Who was that sweetie?”

  I hit the ignore button on my phone and responded, “Oh, it’s Rick.”

  My dad asked jokingly, “Who’s Rick? A love interest, maybe?”

  I felt like I was a teenager again, “No, dad. Rick is a guy from my unit. One of the few who survived.”

  My Dad’s eyes took on a sad look, “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. I....I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  I smiled, “It’s okay dad. Rick was probably just trying to see how I was doing or something.”

  “Why didn’t you answer?”

  I tried to think of an excuse, “Because....Because I was going to wait until we were on the plane.”

  My mom asked, “Why? You could have talked to him. It wouldn’t have hurt our feelings. I don’t want you to think that you’re going to hurt our feelings by being on your phone.”

  “Really mom, it’s okay. I’ll talk to him later.”

  I held up my phone, “Look at all these text messages. I need to get through all these messages first. I wonder why I didn’t get these while I was in the hospital?”

  “How many text messages?”

  I looked down at my phone, “225.”

  The car pulled up. The valet attendant got out of the car and held the door open for my dad. My dad thanked him and slid into the driver seat. I opened the driver’s side passenger door and started to slide into the seat when I noticed that another vehicle pulled up behind us.

  I closed the door and glanced over my left shoulder when I saw movement. The person in the suit got up and walked towards the SUV behind us. After seeing that, maybe the guy was just waiting for a ride.

  I looked down at my phone and started going through my text messages. Most of the messages were from my family and longtime school friends, except for a few select few.

  Most read like this, “Hey, I heard about your incident. I’m praying for a quick recovery and hope to hear from you soon. Love you. Call me.”

  The few messages that did stick out the most to me was the ones from Rick, Mike, and Justin. The messages were kind of cryptic, but they were there. It seemed that in the past few weeks, both Rick and Mike decided to move their families to Oklahoma. Apparently, my childhood stories had inspired them to move to Oklahoma. Neither, gave me much more information than that. They wanted me to call them whenever I could. They needed me to direct them on where to move.

  Justin on the other hand, had a different message for me. Apparently, the battle caused him to re-think his mortality. He felt that something was coming and wanted to spend as much time with his family before it arrived. I only talked to him once since then, but it was pretty much the same message.

  Our return trip home was uneventful. I spent most of my time going through my other text messages and my emails from my personal email address. There were a lot of emails and texts.

  The weeks following my discharge were filled with visiting family and friends. My ‘PTSD’ showed up shortly afterwards. I got to where I couldn’t stand to be around people. Well, that’s not entirely true. I wanted to be around Mike and Rick.

  My parents believed I was losing my mind, but that couldn’t be furthest from the truth. I got out and got a job at a local Wolf Reserve. I can’t explain it, but I wanted to study them. I was able to get Rick and Mike each a job up there. The Reserve was more than excited to have a few ex-military heroes in their employment.

  The days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months. Before long, I moved out of my parent’s house and onto the Reserve. Being a Wolf Reserve that contained wild wolves, they needed a person to stay and monitor the wolves around the clock. I was more then happy when they offered me the job.

  With me living on the premises, I was able to slowly work my way into a command position. My military rank and education raised me quickly through the ‘ranks’ until I was supervisor. In less than a few months, I was running the place. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but it was efficiently running. I had set up a work schedules that optimized our workload. I set up guard posts at the gates to discourage people from trying to break in. I mean, people were breaking into the Reserve to try and kill our federally protective wolves for the pelts. It ran smoothly.

  After a few months, I received an anonymous email from an unknown source. Whoever it was, sent out a cryptic email that bothered me. It had nothing in it. There was only something written on the subject matter.

  It read, “Get Ready. They’re Coming!”

  I didn’t know what to think. Was this email directed to me? I needed to know.

  Fearing the worse, I increased our security. I called my parents and Justin, trying to get them to come to the protection of the Reserve. My parents thought I was nuts, but Justin. He’s the one that bothered me. He had been my right-hand man for so long that I thought that as soon as I called him, he would have been here.

  He politely refused and stated, “I’m sorry Captain. I appreciate you thinking about me, but I’m going to stay with my family.”

  Challenging, I asked, “Why? Why would you want to do that? You know what’s coming.”

  “Captain, I’m sorry, but I’m staying here. After all this time being a civilian, I’m not even sure what’s going on anymore. It may turn out that you may be right. But then again, you may be wrong.”

  I pleaded, “Justin, listen to me. I need you here. You’re my right-hand man. We’ve been through so much together. Come on, we need you here. You wouldn’t have to worry about anything. You can bring your family with you. I have it all set up for us here at the Wolf Reserve here in Yukon. We have this place ready to survive whatever comes our way.”

  I heard the sadness in his voice but respected his decision, “I appreciate it Captain, but I’m staying here.”

  I blew out my frustration, “Okay, Justin. Just remember, I’m here for you and if you do change your mind, I’m at the Wolf Reserve in Yukon.”

  He sounded sad, “Thanks, Captain. I’m sorry.”

  I was disappointed, “Roger that, Justin. I hope to see you around.”

  “Me too. Bye Captain.”

  Chapter 11: Makalyn’s Escape

  Serina’s eyes glistened with moisture as she looked at me, “That was the last time I had talked to your brother.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. I mean, how could I? This woman had spent so much time with my brother, that she had practically been his older sister, if not a mother.

  I reached out and put my arm around here, “I’m sorry Serina. I hope that my brother brings my family here.”

  She didn’t respond. Instead, she turned her head around just enough so that our faces were inches away from each other. We were face to face.

  To my surprise, she leaned forward and put her lips to mine. My eyes opened in surprise. I was caught completely off guard. Instinctively, I pulled back.

  I must have had an offended look on my face because she quickly apologized, “I’m sorry. It’s just that I just thought that you liked me.”

  Shocked, I lied, “It’s okay. It’s that I, um, kind of have a boyfriend.”

  She sarcastically replied under her breath, “Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  She smiled, “Haven’t you figured it out by now?”

  “Figured out what?”

  Her smile turned evil, “S
weetie, the life that you knew, is over!”

  My jaw dropped, “What? What do you mean?”

  She started to get angry, “Your brother, sisters, mom, dad, grandparents, family, friends, and your BOYFRIEND. They’re all gone! They’re dead!”

  I began freaking out, “Why? Why would you say that?”

  Calmly, she replied, “Because it’s true.”

  Changing the subject of conversation, she turned towards the tables being set up, “Looks like it’s time to eat. Are you hungry?”

  I didn’t know how to feel and stood up, “No, I’m not! I want to see my friend. I need to make sure that she’s okay. Just as soon as she’s healthy, we’re going home.”

  A distant look crept into her eyes, “Okay. If that’s what you want, I’ll have Billy take you to her.”

  She looked over at a guy I had seen around and motioned him over, “Billy! Can you come over here, please?”

  I looked over and noticed a guy beginning to walk our way. He looked to be around my dad’s height. The similarity didn’t stop there. He also had long hair and a goatee. He did have a bigger body frame then my dad had.

  While walking over, Serina said, “Billy has turned into my right-hand man since YOUR brother decided to ditch me for his FAMILY.”

  I looked over at her as she continued talking, “Billy is a childhood friend who came to visit me after I was discharged. He and his wife had just separated, and he was looking for something meaningful in his life. I gave him that meaning!”

  Billy walked up and stopped. He stood straight with clasped his hands behind his back, “What can I do for you Serina?”

  She looked over at him, “Can you take Makalyn here to see her friend? You know, the one THAT was bitten”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked from me to him and back again, “Yes. She needs to see what happens to people who are bitten.”

  “For how long?”

  She smirked, “Until she understands that her life belongs to me now.”