by Marlin Grail
“Look not at me, but look through me, Gary. That’s an order.”
Jefald and Holcomb watch us, but they oddly seem uncomfortable. As though it’s also them being given a lesson. One I’ve put on the three of us because of how I’ve been behaving.
“Gary, I didn’t think you would need to hear this, but you’ve left me no other way. Accept it in your head now. Your people are dead. There was nothing you could’ve done to stop it.”
My face expresses a plea for him to stop, but he persists.
“It doesn’t matter how many you take out now, or think you’re cleansing the world of bad people to make things better. It doesn’t matter if you beat C. senselessly to the ground. Your people won’t come back from that. Ever.”
The words claw out of me. “Why? Why…won’t…they come back?”
Ernie shows another complex look, but it’s the most relatable one he’s given me. Understanding.
It’s one which tells me he can relate to this.
“Well, because that’s not how the world works. But you can make yourself work this out. Holcomb was right—before you man-handled him. This is something you have to own up to. Don’t blame bad people for bad things. Bad things always happen. In my belief, you can’t have good without bad.”
My slumped shoulders, pain-stricken eyes—ones that aren’t afraid to show tears—all of that seems to signal to him my time for recuperation is still needed.
I’m not ready to move on from my people. I still want to be right where I was when I was told the news. I know why Ernie’s making me have the thought they’re already dead…
But…
“Come on. We’ll find someplace to gear back up. We’ve got time, if your phantom voice was right about C.’s current position.” He idealizes the need for a change of pace. Now.
He knows this isn’t a phase of mine…but I’m already growing comfortable to make this grieving be a part of my life. Like the moon is tonight, it’ll disappear for some time, but, like always it’ll come right back. Ernie’s trying extremely hard to help my guilt not become my life’s moon. Since he’s the leader for this mission, I’ll let him lead me.
Lead our mission, and lead my healing.
Chapter II
We go one building ahead, and another ahead of that one. But they might as well be conjoined, seeing as how their ruins are all winners to their personal competition on being the most desolated and uninviting.
Ernie has it in his mind though that we need to take a breather. Mostly for me to become more centered with our objective.
Jefald flinches, turning his head to look behind him, a watchful owl ready to spot any threat around. After our encounter at the train depot, he has great reason to.
“Your pick of the place, Gary,” Ernie offers.
As I look up at these small, cozy, but risky because of their size, buildings, my eyes only want to observe their windows, cracked and not. It’s all the same to me now. They could all be infested with risky aggressors.
“I think we should walk down a little farther,” I suggest before letting out a pause. “… There. Let’s hit that other avenue.”
I’m keeping us going forward this way, but I’m also delaying what Ernie wants me to move on with. I want to delay something cathartic, though I’m desperately in need of it.
Holcomb, a jiggling mass of muscle as he tries to keep up beside me, lets himself freely dispose of any friction he felt between us. He mumbles specifically to me, “I never lived in a big city before.”
“That’s something unknown for both of us. I only visited a great many of them. Cheyenne looks like those others I’ve been to.”
He shakes his head, as flippant as Will’s was. “Any Cheyenne residents that’d be around would feel like those are fighting words, Gary.”
I only side-stare him. I don’t mean to be cold, and his nervous cough makes me realize I’m becoming emotionally abusive. “Look, I’m sorry,” I apologize. “I would just imagine this is going to be my only time I’d like to ever be in Cheyenne, Wyoming.”
His snarl of vocal forgiveness, without actually wanting to show it, was also initialized as a preparation to spit. “Don’t worry about it, man. I can’t even begin to comprehend what you must be going through.”
I wouldn’t ever wish this complex network of feelings on anyone, under any circumstances. I just can only hope Grim doesn’t feel as deeply as I do—considering I’ll be taking her partners’ lives.
By this point, we’ve crossed this street of buildings, only to feel like we’re in a loop again because the next street looks like it has the exact same structures.
“Come on. Your pick.” Ernie reminds, now pending more for a definitive answer this time around.
In order for me to ease the tension I’ve established between Holcomb and me, I ask if he can offer his flashlight to illuminate our options. Its ray of light embarks far straight in front of us, going beyond what I need it to show me.
“Please shine it to the left some more,” I ask softly.
I find a place that looks comforting enough. It’s a two-story brick building, looking like an old flower shop.
Holcomb’s flashlight mingles with Ernie’s, though Ernie’s doesn’t shine on anything else. Puzzled, I see Ernie is focused directly on one thing.
“Pollution cloud!” he exhales.
The three of them bolt straight to the flower shop, to the big broken display glass. Its shards protrude at its base, and is but a hurdle they leap over.
As for me, this haze doesn’t hold that same power over my head anymore. This moment, though I can’t see much of its intangible mist or blobbed form in any way, I know it sees me.
I have this feeling my intrigue won’t diminish or evaporate like it won’t; this is the rare occasion I feel something…call out to me.
I’m tempted to go into the haze.
I want answers. I want to hear the phantom give me an update on the condition of the base, or any of C.F.O.G.’s statuses.
“Gary, you whacko!” Holcomb lures my fragmented focus on their demands for me to follow. Their tense fists can’t magnetize my attention for much longer as the hair on my arms stand up.
The light-felt touch of this haze is subsequent to my acceptance to enter its entirety.
Then, in a flash, a tight and non-polite tug on my shirt pulls me to them. “Damn, man! Get in here!” Holcomb aggressively yells at me.
What is happening to you Gary?
I can only question myself about my dazed reaction once I’m forced under the same roof.
Though, I’m not as frustrated or baffled as the rest of them are towards this matter. The darkened environment hides my embarrassed and flushed face. My embarrassment’s due to the fact I get repeated smacks on my shoulders by Holcomb, and even Jefald.
Ernie then redirects how this interrogative assault on their part will commence. “Everybody upstairs first!”
Holcomb growls out his tiredness over my “rookie mistakes”, all the ones I’ve had these three experienced soldiers deal with. Still, they keep our protection their first and foremost priority.
An undead manages to fall down the corridor by the broken wooden staircase right as soon as Jefald nudges me up to the front of the line. My reaction time lets me counteract against its grasp for me.
This reaching out represents its absolute carelessness to pain, because it bashes straight into the corner of the stairway’s wall. It is clearly uncaring about the impact it must’ve felt to some degree.
I shouldn’t be surprised. These monsters can’t feel anything.
I feel like a ballet dancer as I balance myself, not being my best with it though. A clumsy twirl to regain my control over gravity is all I’m able to do.
Jefald acquires the battle knife holstered by his leg, and has his reverse grip dig hammer down onto the side of the undead’s head. Those nasty noises from it stop. The threat, the darkness has gotten burned by light, and Jefald saved me from being pulled into
its darkness.
“Thanks,” I breathe out heavily.
“Just get up there,” he issues with attitude.
Well, I did stir up much by doing what I did. Even being pushed up the stairs almost got us into major trouble.
“Ernie, if you have to punch me to get me back on track, feel free,” I offer, dispirited that it will even work.
Ernie cocks his head, looking inclined to do so. Instead, however, he slowly relinquishes his gun down to the ground of the wall behind the both of us.
“Well, as much as I would like to think it would help you, that’s not what you need.” This increases the vibration of what I worried about happening. “But, I think you need more of an outpour of what you’re feeling… Outpour, then.”
I feared this coming about, because I notice Ernie is not afraid of what’s already in the face of reality. He sees that my face can show truth through sadness. Sadness is a part of the process of healing, and Ernie wants me to heal.
My sorrow burns right through the lack of control I’ve kept up during this time in Cheyenne. My crying comes, and won’t let up. “I can’t believe this shit!” I panic in my garbled throat.
Ernie’s reaction ages his face more, likely due to him already expecting these words he’s probably heard dozens of times from different people. Some were probably in harsher condition than my sorry self is.
I’m wrong to think it means he’s trying to make me feel less than.
“Gary, let this out. Your pain isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, but let it flow as though it’s the worst thing to have possibly happened to anyone in this world.”
The creaking in the floorboards resonates with my grief. I begin stamping my feet in tune to the discharge of my emotional pain. This pain feels like a digging right through to my heart.
“I failed them! I failed them all!”
I’m off my gyroscope. I swerve side to side, until I end up falling back against the wall Ernie’s propped up on. He only moves to evade my hard landing.
I use one hand to hide my eyes, with a thumb and index pinching the sides of my tear ducts. But the way liquid is, it always finds a way to escape. My tears aren’t hiding. Ernie, Jefald, and Holcomb are witness to a grown man sinking deeper into an absolute mess.
Then, I suppose, Ernie has enough as I pushed his fair limit with my crescendo of crying. “Gary, Gary...that’s enough. Undead may hear you.”
My eyes open. I’m of the confused thought when I come to know how my emotions practically put me to sleep, in a way, since Ernie lets me know I’ve been crying now for a good ten minutes.
“I’m sorry…for every one of them. Even…Jacob and Mitchell.”
“Jacob, and, Mitchell?” he questions with curiosity.
“Yes. They were two teens my group and I found while under the control of Claw’s setup. I thought I was helping them, but I led them to their deaths. I’m responsible—”
“O-okay!” he interrupts, trying to be respectful and to also calm my rising hyperventilating. “I know what it’s like to cause more loss from thinking you’re doing right. Believe me, I do. Let me ask you, did you give them a choice?”
The ludicrous “convince or kill” choice. I can’t believe that’s what Claw had everyone follow. To be honest, I should’ve just lied to the supervisor about Jacob and Mitchell’s existence. We would’ve all been much better off.
“W-we…weren’t allowed. Our choices were to convert them to integrate, or to kill them. Well, they were willing to integrate, but…they became an example of what happened if one of our own killed another of in the infrastructure. They were accepted in, then immediately killed in front of me and my group.”
Ernie angles his gaze away, then shuts his eyes to pay silent respect. “I’m sorry, Gary. I don’t know everything as to how it went down, but I know you were doing what you thought was best… You should be grateful you can always say that with a straight face.”
I’ve been needing to hear these binding words for a while. They’re rather simplistic in nature, but I absolutely want to hear them as is. I’ve been needing to be told by someone on the outside that I did what I could.
Now, I have this in common with Janice. She needed her people to let her know she looked after her son the best she could. What would she say about this? She was there with me. Would she be like Ernie, or like me?
Under more casual circumstances, I would have this turn into an hour-long conversation, but that would mean we forget the main purpose of being here. It’s to get me calm, but in a truncated period of time. The haze getting in the way was purely inconvenient. And Jefald has just announced that inconvenience seems to have left.
Ernie takes a deep breath as he launches himself off the wall. “We’ve got to get moving, Gary.”
With eyes swollen, and hands being wiped clean of tears and mucus, I know my time to grieve has come to an end. “I understand, Ernie. Thank you.”
I go out for a handshake, which in turn evolves into a secure grip we both have on each other. “You’ll get through this, man. Time won’t heal it alone, though. As long as you actively work to pass through this, it will hurt less and less.”
He didn’t say the pain will go away. I commend him more because it’s part of an indirect quote of his that he’s expecting me to soon identify with my own tongue.
I begin identifying with it now.
“Let’s get moving.” I commit to getting back on track, sorting out what’s going to change in life with the time allotted for us. “C.F.O.G. needs to be stopped.”
Just as I head for the splintered stairway, one that would’ve had this building condemned a year ago, Holcomb requests his own shot to share. I eagerly allow him to.
“I know you can speak to the ‘ghost on the other side’. So, since we know ghosts exists…then you shouldn’t worry about where your people might have ended up. You know…if they’re gone…they could still be out there…in some way.”
His reluctance to spill out the mention of them isn’t a futile impulse. I make, as clear as my exhausted face muscles can expand and contract, a small half smile. The happy half is in reaction to his explanation that’s warm, while the serious half is about how I feel if that were true.
If they were ghosts, just like the phantom I can communicate with, then I would be agonizingly worried. This phantom may be in some limbo state. If there truly was an afterlife, a “heaven”, then that’s where I’d want them to be. I’d want them to be there, even if that meant I could never hear them like I do the phantom.
“Thanks for that thought,” I sincerely say, giving him a pat on his back. “Come on. I’ll talk to you about when I was a musician, and my different experiences throughout my travels to America’s biggest cities.”
Chapter III
We head straight out of that flower shop. Minutes later we cut through a cemetery.
Life’s synchronicity is in tune with me tonight. Death is visiting me a lot.
Ernie migrates us to a large tree, mostly to shadow ourselves in the dark. I look all around, down every visible street, so much so I direct my head like an officer would to direct traffic. I’m doing this because undead could be anywhere down those forlorn streets.
I time my scanning, which is why I feel like an officer directing traffic. I Look straight ahead, then left for 30 seconds, then I look behind and right for 30 as well.
“All right, men.” Ernie gathers our collective attention. “I told you that Casey’s kept his location hidden from us and from our operative.” Ernie rests his left palm over his right, as he lets his automatic rifle dangle by his side. Considering the circumstances, it’s a bizarre carefree statement. “So, I’m asking for some help here. Do any of you have an idea on where he and his unit might be bunkered down at?”
We all seem to scratch the back of our heads because it’s a trivia question none of us can answer. Jefald considers a factor to keep in mind. “He’d be somewhere recognizable and not at the same time.”<
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“That’s probable,” Ernie replies. “But the place would have to be large enough to comfortably house all of his men, including G., while they still manage a tight enough space. I don’t know about you, but none of these streets look like they’d have buildings to properly shield themselves from the world. We know we haven’t found one yet.”
Ernie mumbles grouchily. My attention is torn when at the same time I launch an assault on an undead with my sword. The swift slice I give to the side of its head apparently tickles Holcomb.
“That was dirty, Gary!” he exclaims in a low-key tone.
I don’t talk about it.
“Focus, Holcomb,” Ernie asserts calmly.
The undead’s body falls to the ground. The side of its head looks like bloody, damp clay from the open gash it received. “I don’t know Cheyenne very well,” I state to excuse my lack of input.
Ernie and the rest pander and critique about the fact Casey left us in the dark about his whereabouts.
“C.’s bound to be having just as much of a difficult time as we are,” I say to be positive.
“I’m sure, but that doesn’t necessarily make me feel better about this ‘race’,” Ernie says in frustration.
It doesn’t matter to me how difficult it is to find Casey. In a little while, I just feel I’ll be seeing Claw and O. again. And, without a doubt, a fight will ensue. I’d much rather feel I’ve earned that chance to fight than if it comes easily.
Just then my memory benefits us.
It seems to pluck out a random, specific piece of information I recall learning about Cheyenne. It once seemed meaningless to my life. Now…it just might not be.
“You know, Cheyenne doesn’t have many tall buildings. As a matter of fact, the Capitol is the largest one in the city.”
Ernie pauses and has to think about it. He’s forced to halt when an undead curls from around the hidden side of this large tree. However, he doesn’t lose his train of thought, and continues talking as he stabs at the undead’s head with his combat knife. “I do know the address to it.”
