Followed East

by Andre Gonzalez

  There were no secrets when working for The Crew, especially when it regarded the safety of its members. Word would have already spread about the phone call Griffins had just received, and all the Crew members in the bullpen gawked at him, many pulling pistols out of their desk drawers and ensuring they were loaded.

  “Colonel Griffins!” a woman from one of the desks shouted as she stood up, pistol in a wavering hand. “They can’t actually get in here, right?”

  “Of course not. We’re going to secure the exterior right now and will meet them head-on. No one is getting into this office. Once I leave, I’m calling for quarantine until the threat has been neutralized. You all need to stay here, and stay safe.”

  Griffins continued forward, his rifle perched over his shoulder, Kyle and Captain Ramírez following behind like scared mice. He charged through the office and into the main lobby, not looking to whoever sat behind the reception desk as he pushed open the door to the garage.

  A black SUV awaited them, exhaust puttering faint gray clouds into the air, the rear passenger door open with a driver standing nearby, a bulletproof vest strapped over his black suit.

  “Good morning, Colonel,” he greeted, nodding to Kyle and Ramírez as they all piled into the back of the vehicle.

  Apparently the arrangements had already been made, as the driver didn’t ask where they were going, and started driving as soon as he sat down. It was normally a slow drive through the garage and up the spiral road to ground level, but today tires screeched at every subtle turn, nearly scraping the concrete walls that surrounded them.

  Colonel Griffins scrolled on his cell phone during the ride up, not once breaking eye contact with his screen. Kyle wondered where his phone had gone, likely still in the colonel’s office with its secret message from Brian.

  Once sunlight broke through the darkness of the garage, the colonel looked up and slid his phone back into his pocket. “Take us to the front gate please,” he said in a hurried tone. Kyle had never seen the colonel in a flustered mood—and still wouldn’t consider this one—but he definitely seemed a bit more anxious than usual.

  The driver zoomed across the lot toward the Pentagon’s main gated entrance where a soldier paced back and forth, rifle embraced in two bulging arms.

  Colonel Griffins hopped out of the SUV when they reached the gate and stomped directly over to the soldier. Kyle followed their conversation through the window, but couldn’t make out anything as their voices were distorted. The soldier nodded to Griffins before the colonel patted him on the shoulder and returned to the SUV, plopping down as he pulled out his cell phone, keeping his gaze to the ground as he waited for someone on the other end to answer.

  “It’s Griffins,” he finally said. “Where are they?” Griffins nodded as he raised his head, his eyes dancing around the idle vehicle. “Okay, block the freeway, we’ll be right there.”

  Griffins hung up and looked to the driver. “We need to go to I-395, just after the I-95 interchange.”

  “Yes, sir,” the driver said, and blazed out of the parking lot with the same urgency he had left the garage.

  Griffins was already dialing his phone again by the time they reached the main road. “It’s Griffins. I need all hands on deck. I-95 northbound. We’re going to cut them off right now. Roads will be closed in less than five minutes.”

  The colonel hung up and slipped his phone back into his pocket, shaking his head.

  Kyle slouched in his seat, anxious from hearing the words Griffins had spoken. Closing the freeways? Cutting them off? How many of them are there? Is Brian with them?

  “We should be there in about fifteen minutes,” Griffins said in a relaxed voice, as if they were driving to a movie theater for a quiet afternoon indoors.

  Ramírez, who hadn’t spoken a word since they left the offices, cleared his throat and asked, “How many are there?”

  “Hundreds,” Griffins mumbled, clearly not wanting his own words to be true. “They’re driving as a caravan, en route for the Pentagon, but we’ll cut them off before they can even get close.”

  Ramírez sunk back and let his shoulders slump as he stared at twiddling fingers.

  “Nothing to worry about. I’ve been in this situation once before. When we arrive with 500 of our own soldiers, we’ll have them all extinguished quickly. I give it two minutes until they’re all dead on the freeway.”

  The colonel’s tone shifted from angst to near giddiness.

  Kyle’s palms turned slick with sweat, and felt beads of moisture forming around his head, oozing down his neck and back.

  “Wells,” Griffins said, making direct eye contact with Kyle. “You ready for this?”

  “Yes, sir.” Kyle had to force the words out of his mouth, his throat swollen with fear.

  Yes, he had been trained for this exact scenario, and jumping out of a truck to start shooting Exalls would come naturally once he started, but mentally he was far from ready. He was supposed to be starting his final year of high school, lounging around the halls as unofficial kings, enjoying a light schedule full of gym and art classes. Kyle wanted desperately to be with his friends, as far away from the nation’s capital as possible. Instead, he’d look death straight in the eye in a few minutes, and God willing, would wake up tomorrow.

  The SUV turned onto the freeway when Kyle realized he was the only one without a bulletproof vest, and asked the colonel if there were any extras.

  “We have everything you need in the trunk. Vest, rifles, grenades, you name it. We’ll get you suited up when we get there.”

  How could he be so nonchalant about what was waiting down the freeway? Couldn’t they be attacked at any moment during the drive, just like when he had arrived at the airport last night? Kyle was exposed and vulnerable to whatever might happen in the next few minutes, and Colonel Griffins didn’t show an ounce of concern.

  Griffins leaned forward, his heavy brow furrowed as he stared at Kyle, Ramírez essentially absent as he slunk into the corner of his seat. “When we spoke on the phone last night, you sounded like you had something important to say. Was everything okay?”

  Really? Kyle thought. This is the moment you want to have this discussion?

  Kyle had been so focused on his own mortality that he forgot all about Sandra locked in the basement thousands of miles away. His tongue turned dry at the thought of having this conversation, subconsciously expecting it to come much later, perhaps over a celebratory dinner after wiping out the Exalls.

  “Everything was fine . . . there was just something I think you needed to know.”

  Griffins raised his eyebrows, pushing half a dozen wrinkles into his forehead. “And that is?”

  “Did my grandma ever tell you about a secret she kept in her basement?”

  Griffins leaned back and looked to the ceiling as he thought back to the several decades he had known Susan Wells. “She had many secrets, but I’m not sure which one you’re hinting at.”

  Kyle’s eyes dashed to Ramírez and saw him staring to the ground, disengaged from the conversation.

  “About the Exall,” Kyle said in a tone just above a whisper, as if his throat needed to be cleared.

  “Exall?”

  Shit, Kyle thought. He really doesn’t know.

  “I really don’t know if now is the best time to discuss this, Colonel.”

  “We have five more minutes; tell me what you can.”

  Kyle took a deep breath before speaking, seeing Ramírez drop his head to the ground from the corner of his eye. “There is a living Exall in her basement. I found a secret door in her panic room and followed it into a lab where she has an Exall named Sandra tied down to a table.”

  He spoke these words quickly, as if they were exploding from his lips to escape.

  Colonel Griffins smirked, keeping his gaze on Kyle’s troubled face.

  “I always suspected it,” he said, not an ounce of surprise in his voice. He shook his head. “Oh, Susan, you never fail to amaze me.”

&n
bsp; “I thought you might have a much different reaction,” Kyle admitted.

  Griffins nodded, his smirk remaining. “A few years ago, yes. But your grandmother has left a trail of information that’s been slowly unraveled since her death. I had a hunch this revelation might come, although I didn’t expect it to happen during my lifetime. We had lots of conversations—her and I—about keeping an Exall over a long duration of time. Normally when we capture one, they’re already dead or they vanish into dust. I’ve seen that firsthand.”

  The SUV slowed down, and Kyle looked out the front windshield to wide open freeway ahead. Not a single car in sight. Colonel Griffins didn’t pay any mind and kept his full attention on Kyle. Ramírez looked up from his corner, but remained very much invisible.

  “Susan always talked about capturing a young one, but they were so rare to come across to begin with. She thought that would be our best chance since they might not know how to make themselves vanish yet. I don’t know how she knew this, but I never doubted her for one second. Did you speak with the Exall?”

  Kyle nodded. “I did. Her name is Sandra and she told me all about her time with my grandma. But she doesn’t understand the concept of time—at least our time. She doesn’t know anything about age or how long she’s been locked down there.”

  “She was nice to you? No violent urges?”

  “Nothing that she showed, but again, she is strapped down to a table and can barely move her head around to see.”

  “Fascinating. Susan had to have left notes about her findings. There’s no way she just left a ticking bomb like this behind for us to try and figure out on our own.”

  “Oh, there are plenty of notes, drawers full of them. But I didn’t have time to look through all of it; that’s when you called me to leave.”

  The SUV came to a complete stop, but Colonel Griffins didn’t seem to care.

  “I want to get on the next flight to Denver with you—after we handle today, of course—and you and I can work on this as a special side project. I have thousands of questions and I suspect Susan’s notes have the answers.”

  The colonel glanced over at Ramírez, who had now appeared alert with his head perched and his gaze out the window. Ramírez surely heard everything being discussed, but played it off as if he were in his own world. No Crew member could stay oblivious to their surroundings no matter how hard they tried.

  The SUV had stopped in front of a barricade of orange cones lining the width of the freeway on both sides of the median.

  “This is our stop,” the colonel said. “We’ll have to continue this conversation later. Let’s go take care of our business.”

  Griffins nodded to Kyle and Ramírez before opening his door, the two of them following. The morning grew warmer and more humid by the second, the sun beating down on them mercilessly as the caravan of Exalls continued to approach them from five miles away.

  32

  Chapter 32

  Colonel Griffins immediately ordered Kyle to the back of the SUV where the trunk door had popped open, revealing a stockpile of rifles, pistols, ammunition, and vests. Kyle rummaged through everything until he found a vest and helmet his size, and a rifle to his liking, immediately loading it with the special choker bullets that sucked the life out of Exalls. His hands shook, reality again creeping up his esophagus in small, terrorizing tremors.

  Brian shot my grandma. Whether he was in charge of his body or not, he was still the one who pulled the trigger. Whoever or whatever was controlling him will only keep doing it until they can’t.

  The thought of killing his best friend had tried to poison his thoughts at random times. But he always managed to fight off the idea, pushing it aside as improbable, a long shot scenario of events that might actually happen.

  Once Kyle slipped into his vest and had his loaded rifle perched by his side, Colonel Griffins joined him. “Wells, I have something for you.” The colonel reached a thick hand inside his vest and pulled out a palm-sized, rectangular card, tattered around the edges. He handed it over. “This was your grandmother’s.”

  Kyle grabbed the card and studied an image of Saint Michael choking a demon on the front, and a short prayer on the back.

  “He’s the patron saint of protection. Susan kept it under her vest every time she went into battle. And it never failed her.”

  Until Brian shot her in the back.

  Kyle felt an instant connection with the prayer card, as if it had Susan’s grit and determination smeared across it. Grabbing it settled his nerves and ceased the trembling in his hands. While a simple piece of paper wouldn’t stop a bullet, it throbbed like an ancient relic in his hand, promising that everything would end okay.

  More soldiers had arrived, pouring out of SUVs and tankers alike, filling the open space in front of the road blocks. There were at least one hundred soldiers conversing, carrying on with the day as normal, while more vehicles pulled up with Crew members.

  Colonel Griffins felt the volume of the chatter growing and acknowledged the swelling population of Crew members crammed together. “Good luck, today. I know you’re going to do great.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  Griffins nodded and left, pushing his way through the crowd to the front. He put two fingers between his lips and whistled a shrill, piercing sound that earned everyone’s attention. The chatter fell silent as all eyes turned their attention.

  “Good morning,” Griffins said, elevating his voice. “The Exalls are five minutes away. We’ve recently learned that they’ve become even more advanced than our last encounter four years ago. We’re also not sure why they are interested in attacking us so soon. There has long been a pattern they return every thirty years. It appears that a few never left and have infected hundreds of innocent lives to amass an army. I don’t know what their motive is today, nor do I care. The interstate is closed in both directions to provide us with isolation. There is no risk in harming civilians so long as we keep this contained within the barriers currently in place.

  “Use any and all means necessary to wipe out this population of Exalls. We’re not interested in capturing today, simply exterminating. Thank you for your service, today and every day. Now who’s ready?”

  More Crew members were still working their way into the mass huddle, but collectively let out a thunderous cheer. Men and women, young and old, all stood together on this morning for a united cause. Kyle noticed every Crew member carried themselves with pride and joy, a palpable dedication to their role in keeping the world and humanity safe. The Crew took care of its members, so they only needed to stress about solving the mystery of the Exalls. Today, however, they were all killing machines, leaning on their years of training for this exact moment. There wasn’t an ounce of doubt or fear present in this growing group of Crew members, and it rubbed off on Kyle.

  He was not alone. If the Exalls were coming for him, they’d have a hell of a fight capturing him. Confidence radiated through the group, and Kyle noticed many of the soldiers smiling at each other, even laughing, as if they looked forward to this day like a special holiday. He wondered if his grandmother would be here today if she were still alive. He closed his eyes, trying to take a step back mentally, and imagined Susan Wells in this group of Crew members, likely next to Colonel Griffins getting everyone riled up.

  The thought brought a smile to Kyle. He may have only been a Crew member for a few months, but his life had been one long preparation for this moment. He tightened his grip on his pistol and joined the rest of the group starting to disperse into their positions.

  “Two minutes!” Colonel Griffins shouted, his voice drowned out by the rising chatter.

  No more nerves crept into Kyle’s gut as he looked up to see the glimmering of dozens of vehicles approaching in the distance.

  “Everyone get behind a vehicle!” Colonel Griffins shouted, taking his own advice and jogging behind a tanker the size of a diesel truck. All of the soldiers followed the command and spread across the open space behi
nd the tankers, SUVs, and trucks.

  Kyle ran through the training that would forever remain stuck in his mind like a wine stain on a white shirt. He recognized the triangular formation the other soldiers had lined up, and immediately joined them, finding his spot in the back of a triangle where the newest members belonged, leaving the more experienced troops on the front line.

  They waited, everyone facing forward in anxious anticipation. Colonel Griffins stood in the centermost triangle, craning his neck around the tanker for a view of the approaching Exalls. The soldiers were spread the entire width of the highway, yet everyone still had a clear view of the colonel.

  What had been a loud chatter moments ago gave way to deadly silence. The world felt deserted, even the white noise of traffic absent from the freeway.

  “They’re coming on foot!” Colonel Griffins barked. “Let’s march forward!”

  Without hesitation all the soldiers marched through the small gaps between vehicles, bottlenecking before reforming in their proper formations on the other side of the orange cones. Kyle saw a growing blob of people marching toward them. Crew members all stood shoulder to shoulder, rifles gripped in front of them.

  “On my command!” Griffins shouted.

  Everyone lowered their rifles and cocked them, an authoritative clicking sound nearly in sync. The group of Exalls grew closer, their hundreds of footsteps clopping and clicking on the asphalt. They were roughly three hundred yards away and advancing quickly.

  “Forward!” Griffins shouted, prompting all Crew soldiers to start their way toward the Exalls. Kyle looked over his shoulder to see the separation between themselves and the tanks. Shouldn’t the tanks be the ones moving forward and blasting away the gray people? Surely they were no match for a United States military vehicle.

  Kyle could see all of the Exalls holding weapons of their own. Even as they approached each other, Kyle’s confidence grew. The Exalls had no formation, likely no strategy aside from spraying bullets and hoping for the best. They weren’t equipped to match the Crew and would all be roadkill before brunch was served. The Exalls were spread evenly across the freeway, standing in what looked like three long rows.