Gary's Trilogy (Book 3): Still Myself, Still Surviving (The Retaliation)

by Marlin Grail

  “I care about Clouse. I had to work my method in order to meet him, tell him he pretty much did all his gathering of you groups for nothing. He didn’t take too kindly when I shared it, but I think what set him over the edge was—”

  I should’ve been paying attention to the footsteps coming.

  Chapter XXII

  Claw’s made his way over. With a gun.

  “NO!” I yell in panic.

  The blood that splatters all over my face is all too much for my brain to comprehend what I’ve just seen.

  Claw has put a bullet straight through the side of this AWOL soldier’s head.

  His supposed past friend, one who went through all of this trouble to help him—even after all this—he just killed him in a heartbeat.

  “I taught you to watch your surroundings repeatedly. I saw the Chief, and you didn’t,” he disrespects.

  How could you be this careless? They wanted to save you, and the trouble of humiliation and misfortunes for others. Did he go about it with the most brute honesty? Hell no, but, now that I think about it, he may have came to me after he spoke with you, in hopes I might’ve distracted you with my abandonment of your organization.

  He truly wanted to stay loyal to you.

  Hell, after all that’s happened, he was talking to you with friendliness. This is what he deserved? For being your friend?

  Claw dilly-dallies with his slow laughter. My head synchronizes with it while twitching in fury, all the way until it stops. But, the trembling from the revolver’s loudness makes him laugh up some more.

  I’m speechless, but I must try and stay my ground. “W-why hurt those that believed in you?”

  “They didn’t believe in me,” he corrects. “They believed in this C. they never met in person once.” He digresses with his lightened tone. “Actually, I was shocked you believed I knew about it when you brought Alex up to me. I was staring at you most of the time with the look of ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!’ You weren’t smart to see it.”

  He shakes his head, appearing as though he’s trying to recalibrate what he wanted to truly tell me. “It was just a hell of a miracle the Fort heard of me.”

  Luck. You just powered on sheer luck that whole time. Bastard.

  He gives me a crooked smirk for several moments of silence. It’s one that quietly commands me to look away and submit. “I’m a masterful one to adaption in the moment. You showed me the boy, my humanity showed. When he mentioned they knew me, I fluidly spoke like I knew what I was talking about. When the Chief pointed his spear in my face, the way he spoke to me like he knew my face, even though he didn’t, was just pure on-the-fly strategy.”

  “Had it not worked in your favor?”

  “Then I would’ve found a reason, an explanation, to get you all to obey my order to kill them, seeing as how I was so great at bending you to my every whim.”

  My imagination stirs the pot of fantasy to what I’d do to him right here, if it was only the two of us. Reality is, it would take a meteorite to smack through this glass, a bullet perfectly shot clean through his brain. My anger darkly turns to sadism. The artist in me powers on this anger, so I can try and calm myself with these visions of his death happening right here.

  “I still don’t understand much of what you’ve told me,” I scoff out from sheer helplessness.

  “Of course you don’t. It’s why I’m so much better than you’ll be for her.”

  I tilt my head, neck exposed, as if it’s a platter to a vampire. I look at him with squinted eyes alongside my gesture of confusion. “What?”

  His mouth opens, but his sight descends downward to the five-foot-ten female clung to my right shoulder.

  “Yes,” she injects.

  As he steps away, she twirls around me to take his spot. Her hand’s stuck on contact and sliding from one deltoid to the other.

  Even as my holders let go and warily watch me rise, my sight ignores these transitions. It’s held tight to look outside this broken window, down at the people—all foes and friends.

  The transaction with Trey is in motion to how Grim wanted it to appear. To look as though Casey and his soldiers are approaching with means for peaceful negotiation.

  “Did you come with them?” she asks.

  “Three of them,” I frustratingly exhale. “Surely, they were in on this with you all too.”

  “They came from the base?” Her intentionally luring question doesn’t fail to suck me to look right back at her. “I highly doubt it, sweetie. I’m not lying about that.”

  On one hand, this is coming from my enemy. Someone who I was informed needs to be killed, but betrayal has been around every corner for me. So much so I’m not in my right mind to see these as her most hateful words.

  She seems…genuine.

  “So, what exactly do you want of me?” I ask.

  Her eyes, speedy demons that can transition from contradicting emotions—anger, to happiness—in a flicker of a dilation, come to be pleasured by my question. She gives her devilish smile, lower lip sucked in, then answers, “I think you know already.”

  To convert to them.

  “I won’t.” My tone changes from pure vehement fire to cold calculation. Though frosty, it heats this argument up just as much.

  She loses that smile of hers, trying to catch onto my different pace. “I don’t think you have much of a choice, Gary. You’re mine, and you’re with your new family.”

  I turn my head away from her. My eyes look back down to the street. I’m all too hypersensitive to identify exactly some of those people. The most notable identity I can see is Ernie. The patch on his shoulder gives him away.

  It signifies his position in rank in the U.S. Military, but none of that matters anymore. He might as well just look like a test dummy body that’s placed in a car meant to crash in a car-testing facility.

  There’s nothing I can do to stop the crash. Or whatever diabolical act Casey and his soldiers have planned to double-cross on the now being released Trey. I can’t stop that or the double-crossing about to be done on the rest of those innocent followers.

  Who am I kidding? Everyone here isn’t a victim. We’ve all screwed up, or screwed over, people.

  Or let others do our mistakes for us.

  None of us deserve the ability to walk with a high head, or to use a mouth to spew more lies out of.

  I’m about to regret this pessimistic feeling in me…

  And I’m definitely going to regret not having the chance to say sorry to those dummy bodies down there about to hit the wall.

  Chapter XXIII

  The last defined thing I see, before purposefully sealing my eyes shut from witnessing the guns on Casey and his soldiers’ weapons lift up, is Trey. He receives a harsh shove. Trey tumbles down below them. He’s no longer their focus. Which means he’s not in danger of getting shot by them, or anyone.

  Not unless any of the C. followers care about Trey having their bullets puncture through him.

  But he might as well have been killed by getting shot.

  He finally tumbles down the Capitol’s front steps. The undead by the lower steps take to him quite eagerly.

  Stop it! Stop it! I can’t…STOP…any of this.

  “Watch, Gary,” Grim whispers.

  It confuses me to not know whether she sounds energized from the violence happening down there, or because she’s energized from my terrified eyes that beg for darker than dark.

  My retinas can’t forget what I saw last.

  Trey being pushed down those steps, helpless to catch himself against those undead—I replay it continuously. The undead hadn’t crawled their way up those front concrete steps. It’s as though there’s an invisible barrier they obey, rather than their vacuous understanding of steps making every one of them inept to make the journey.

  So Trey’s falling and rolling to them has made their macabre bevy more than grateful.

  Sadly, I’m thankful that if there’s any of his screams
filling the atmosphere, then they’re not able to be heard up here. But maybe they are, and that’s why I’ve cupped my ears with both hands.

  I’m not afraid to look like a fool to her, to Claw, to all of them. I blurt noises from my mouth to mask the gunfire I know has been fatal to several living bodies on the street.

  Claw’s voice is muffled, but I can hear it’s agitated. He’s wrestling with my right hand to come off. I combat his physical pressure, at least until he makes a gap wide enough for him to divide my hand entirely from my ear.

  I then feel a cold, steel, blade smoothen itself up and down my ear hole. “You hear me now? If you don’t shut up, and open those eyes, and bear witness to your bridge we’ve salted and burned for you, then those ears and lids are going to be sliced off completely.”

  “It’s okay,” Grim behaves with sadistic compassion. “I’ll still love you without those essential human parts you have.”

  I’ve seen mentally unstable people before, but I never thought I’d see one this magnified and up close.

  “Okay,” I frantically repeat several times.

  Claw eases the blade off, but only when he notices I don’t twitch my gaze off the street view. “You know why you’re seeing this?”

  I remain too petrified to answer. I then become too afraid to interrupt him, in fear I’ll offend and go too far. I’m powerless in a way I’ve never experienced until now.

  I hate it.

  Claw continues on, casual, and with no remorse to what’s happening at the same time of his explanation. “This is rebirth, on many levels. You may not believe it now, but when society is at a standstill, people run around like their headless chickens. Why? Because their heads are gone. Not theirs, but, the ones who gave them direction. Those heads.”

  Grim eagerly finishes up for him. “And, the ones who give direction stand out the most over them.” She gives a poke to my stomach with her happy finger. “You, Gary, are one of us that stands out from the rest. We are the controllers over the things that surely is God’s answer to purify humanity. The irony he used with air pollution, the very thing most people ignored, we control it. We’re his elite, and he counts on us to keep his plan in motion.”

  I feel both of their breaths on my skin. It’s warm, but thoroughly chills my body.

  If I deny their reasoning, they’ll think I don’t understand. If they think I don’t understand…

  What else have I got to lose though? My people are dead. My mission failed. There’s nothing to look forward to. And surely I’m not accepting their proposal.

  “I’m not like you,” I rationalize to them both in the very slim hope they’ll listen. “I don’t want to rule over people. I don’t want to colonize a new ‘purified’ set of humans. I don’t want any part of this.”

  My eyes close, just about the same time that the riddling of gunshots comes to an end. There’s no backfire from any rebellious soul because they’ve all left their vessels.

  I should join them. I know there’s some sort of life after this one, and I don’t fear it, as long as I know Lissie’s there too, watching over this. Over me. I don’t believe they’re alive anymore. They couldn’t be. After all of this betrayal, surely the operative leader lied to me too.

  Only she knows her fate. I don’t know if I’m willful anymore to find out concretely if she’s alive or dead.

  If she’s gone, she surely is watching over me. Does she hate herself for not being able to do anything about it? I need to let her know it’s okay, but not through a haze…

  She can’t be alive anymore, but I must be on the same plane as her.

  I drop to my knees. Pain blooms when a glass shard cuts into my skin. “You’ll have to kill me, because I’m not joining this.”

  I’m ready…

  Chapter XXIV

  I expose my neck, ready to take Claw’s blade as a left to right slice. Or a rifle in the chest. Either way, whatever way, quick, or lengthy, I’m okay. I won’t tear up from it.

  Not one of them deserves another tear of mine to bathe in.

  Grim groans in annoyance. It doesn’t influence me to open my eyes.

  I don’t care anymore.

  Then, something else is influential enough to get me focused again, something that’s too hard for me to ignore.

  Because my ears aren’t fading into deafness, nor my vision fading to darkness, my death is apparently not coming here. I realize they’re not choosing that path for me.

  Neither of them look and sound like they agree it’s the best course of action.

  “He needs exposure. Exposure to the conditions of peasant experiences,” Grim decides. “Maybe then he’ll know his place belongs here, and he’ll agree to start classifying someone in such a class they deserve to be in.”

  No! I’ve given you freedom to kill me! It could be the worst way to go, but do it!

  My silent freak-out transcends to actual words. “I won’t live in this! I’m done!”

  “No, you’re not,” she defies. “You’re too special to be done.” First, comes her order to the men behind me. Then, she calls another figure, barely known to me as well. “Ominous! Come up, love!”

  His boots pound wood beam after wood beam, but they aren’t heavy with menace, but sound more like a grumpy kid being told by his mom to head over to her.

  “What?” he rudely asks.

  “Don’t ‘what’ me,” she slingshots his attitude back at him. “You remember still where your old place is? The one you say you still have nightmares over, and wished to never visit—”

  “Why?”

  She plops a hand to the top of my head. That hand I wish to break in several jagged angles. “Take him to it. Let him see what drove you back to us.”

  Back to you? I shouldn’t forget Claw did tell me Ominous abandoned them more than once. I brought him back with others for the last time he tried to escape…

  Escape? Could it be…?

  Everything around me turns foggy. There’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears. It doesn’t really process that I’ve been hit. I’m knocked to the floor by something hard and blunt enough to do so.

  I can, however, process it’s not enough to kill me. I raise my chin to get my sight back onto those two, because my neck doesn’t have enough strength to lift off the ground.

  They’re trying to knock me out!

  I grunt loudly, hoping it will keep my sudden rush of sleepiness at bay. I can make out what Claw says next, but barely. I’m falling unconscious. Before darkness creates a time to be inactive, and safe, to an extent, I can hear his words blended in with his demonic chuckling.

  “We’re going for a drive.”

  Chapter XXV

  (Ashton)

  I keep bugging and bugging them, even offering myself as the absolute last of the defensive line, so my gun won’t be pulled out until then. It would be unlikely I’d have to, but it’s not good enough to persuade anyone.

  Janice, Will, nor Lissie think it’s for the best.

  As much as I’d like to be a pushy, complaining, ass about it, I’m letting my foot’s healing also be the convenient time for me to change how I handle difficulties. Doing this is my way of paying respect to my best friend and brother, Gary Nillon.

  It’s dark to think this, but it’s not avoidable for me anymore. I already knew there was a strong possibility of him not coming back. I didn’t tell Lissie this, and I won’t tell anyone, but when I saw him last…the majority of me figured it would be the last time. That’s why I was so angry last night.

  I wept shortly afterwards when Hannibal told us. I was embarrassed about crying in front of the personnel that were fixing up my foot. As Hannibal was telling us this by my medic bed, the back of my mind was also thinking about how his name suits the way he revealed it.

  He was distant, apprehensive, and sounding as though it was an obligation. Looking back, I didn’t think I would’ve also gotten upset by the fact he didn’t have anxiety wrinkle up his suit when he did share the news.
>
  But I did. I wanted him to show some damn remorse.

  He and I won’t be getting along any time soon.

  But there’s another problem upfront. I watch Hannibal preparing us to for what’s outside the hanger doors. The presentation is going well, but this time I wish he still had that distant, apprehensive attitude.

  Instead, he appears nervous and on edge.

  The process involves setting up barriers for the turrets to be behind them. Riflemen are to be in a kneeling position over those barriers.

  Again, he’s gotten everybody on board, but he’s visibly anxious all over. It gets higher in definition on his stressed face once he comes further closer to my area, further up to these hanger doors, to hypothesize where the risks for me will likely exist.

  “What about the hazes?” I ask him, when he comes close enough in proximity to my corner space, during this examination walk.

  “You mean, the dark clouds—”

  “Yeah. What happens when they get drawn in? You can’t shoot them.”

  So much is at stake here, which is why I had argued, still want to, about my assistance. Every finger on a trigger counts, and I’m not being over-dramatic. I’ll make a scene regarding what I disagree about, but I’m not being over-dramatic to my points.

  “Well…” He stretches a long and stumped pause before cursing himself.

  My head falls back. It thuds against the corner wall of my corner space. My eyesight beams straight ahead at the hard-to-ignore cubical chamber at the far end of the hanger’s opposite side.

  Being proactive in improving the situation is helpful in self-improving.

  I’m throwing a possibility onto the table that will factor a small percentage of success that might counter the already high and ginormous percentage of shit hitting the fan with our plan.

  No harm trying, right?