by Marlin Grail
I hope, just as much she shows, as much as Janice tries her hardest not to show, that we want this concern to go smoothly. We want to grieve over our friend, Gary, and we want our choice to move on.
This needs to be one less smack down at us by God.
No more bad news. Not today. Not now.
Hannibal has a stricken neck, stretching out and over everyone else’s in order to have a proper headcount of every figure in this chamber. “Then three at the left flank…shit.”
God, you sick joker.
My palms sweat from clenching them for as long as I have. But now more than ever as I watch the hazes fully pass the threshold of our defense lines. Had one of us remained there…we wouldn’t be that person anymore.
His cursing has drained all the natural wetness in my throat, and I swallow vigorously. “What? What’s shit?”
If I were Gary right now, what would he do? If he knew his people were taking a huge risk like this kind…shit, would he have been okay with them helping to fight out these undead and hazes? Splitting Ashton up from the rest?
Clearly, I’m not doing them right by letting Hannibal figure out this situation for us, but I’m powerless to help much. I hate being in this stress, stressing over others especially, because I’m not being reliable for them.
Hannibal gets significantly distracted to answer when seeing what we all see.
Chapter XXXVI
The hazes, all clustering together, draw close to the chamber’s open door. At this point, like the cornered animals we are, personal space is a thing of the past. Every shoulder, arm, and body presses against one another.
An officer and a personnel worker are nearby. The female holds tightly to that officer, fearful for her life, but comfortable and intimate enough to share that visible fright with him. Lissie seems to have caught sight of this alongside with me. Her breathing starts cutting short.
Gary wouldn’t allow fear, and fear of the past showing up again, to control what’s needed in the moment. Let her know that of her past boyfriend, as much as I know, and I know, it hurts.
“Lissie,” I call out. “Don’t look at them. Look ahead. That’s where we’re going.”
Her glistening eyes, likely going to sting the dryness already swelling on them, slowly sucks back up the moisture. She nods. There’s no verbal response from her, and it’s enough said. What isn’t enough for me is Hannibal’s choked tongue not answering back.
“Hannibal! What’s shit?”
“There’s not going to be enough transportation for everyone!” This answer is deeply impactful for all of us, but he doesn’t help ease that stress when he turns around to press his forehead up to the back wall behind.
Gary wouldn’t be okay with melodramatics. He would be about making action, with the least drama felt. You’re decent at that, Will. I’ll give you that. Otherwise, you would’ve been breaking every object in sight when told about Gary’s death.
Janice’s eyes too are glued to watching the haze cluster now seep in through the chamber door. It’s starting to get too close for comfort. That doesn’t mean her mouth, mind, is melting, melting, wax. “Hannibal, help lead us. Your people need guidance.”
She’s not unaffected by everything happening. Her continuous clenching to her chest, her heart, is a reminder she feels this heavily. So do her friends, and she won’t let down her friends.
“Hannibal, tell us where to go. Now.” She’s become curter with her tone.
Hannibal palms his chest, but not to hold back his pain. Unlike Janice, who wants to put herself last, I don’t see him attempting to do the same. It’s not forgivable to me. If he lets that couple, the officer and personnel worker, and everyone here, die in this chamber, because he freezes up, I can’t say I’d not want to gouge his eyes out.
My hands uncurl, letting air breathe to cool off the sweat, but only for a moment, because they then hold onto his suit’s collar.
“Look at me! We have seconds before we have to make a move to avoid those hazes! We know how we’ll get out, but you need to let us know where we go from there!”
Gary wouldn’t be this physical. I don’t think. Maybe. Would he tell me to be this aggressive?
Hannibal cuffs his hands around both of my wrists, because I’m pulling him into me so much he’d likely slip and fall if he didn’t.
It does give me the results I’m consciously pleading out of him.
“We, we’ll go in one together. You, your group, me, and two pilots.” His fear-driven breathing exhales the next half of his answer I want to hear, regarding the rest of the hangar’s people. “Three more helicopters, three more for grab.”
It’s a little, okay, a lot of an unruly method of getting the people to safety. Like not enough lifeboats to the sinking ship, so only the ones quickest will have them.
I hesitate to tell him how I feel about it. But because our tactic to evade the haze cluster in this chamber is coming to a close, we have to make do with his plan. “Okay. Now, yell it as you order everyone out of here.”
I do feel a pit forming in my stomach. Someone could easily ask me why I would care about others, when my group and I are safe on the transportation. It’s because Gary would.
If he was here, he’d likely deepen the hole he’s had within him go deeper. Cutting people away from your worries does that to anybody. Except I like being whole, even if I don’t have people around me.
Hannibal makes a sharp sound with his suit’s fabric, as his arm raises above himself. He twirls a finger in a circular loop to round up our attention to his beacon. I become a copycat to help any of the dozens of eyes realize there’s more to us in here than to die.
Our human-chain links like a train pulling along its carts. The people that were farthest to the left now are the herd leader, chugging us to the chamber’s left side wall.
We can all see the three-dimensional density we’d temporarily forgotten about because the back wall gave us only a visual of how the haze was in front. Now we all get to see the haze cluster’s position has been timed perfectly by us.
Though it’s a large and fat cloud of its own, it’s dabbed in the very middle of this chamber’s space. This position gives our gap between it and the chamber door a solid distance.
My heart beats for me to get to a faster speed than I’m at currently. A different sort of traffic is going on, and I have more reason to honk my horn at those ahead not running out of their pants to get to that door. I work my verbal horn without remorse. But, for once in my life, I see people not try to defend themselves from it, and the movement accelerates.
I’m…happy with what that means. What does it mean?
There’s enough people in this hanger to make a village, and one where there’s cooperation. For me, the apocalypse gave me a max number to expect of people to be coherent with one another before it gets risky. Five. Now there’s easily 25 people? I’m…happy to see we can be like civilians again in this hanger…
But am I ready to be reliable, even at times held accountable for 25 people?
I don’t feel I am for three…
When we rush out of the chamber door, chugging along in our single file line, coming out of it derails us all. Officers and personnel pair up, some officers quickly putting on their pilot helmets. Everyone is getting into small groups.
I think this means the village of 25 is broken. We’re all survivors now.
Hannibal sticks behind me, Lissie, and Janice. A few others, blended of officers and personnel, hover right next to him, subtly trying to state they are sticking right by his side. They look worn out, tired, and fearful for their lives.
What would Gary do? He would let his compassion show, but as long as he knows he’s not discarding his own people’s well-being.
I draw Hannibal in with a shoulder nudge. “Are their more transportation vehicles around?”
I feel those others’ eyes becoming those of survivors. They’re uncertain of me, and already prepared to defend what they want as their
s. They want to survive, and I shouldn’t stand in their way. I won’t as long as there’s a car for us.
Me and the group.
Hannibal picks up on my own subtle message, doing his best to balance looking at me, while looking over to several other things I’m not acutely aware of.
When the left flank stops firing, only a small quantity of undead wobble and trip over their countless brethren. A few personnel gather up the brave to head by their work tables on the far right, further down the middle of this hangar.
They remain vigilant as they awkwardly walk over the bodies, this practically now being an exposed burial ground. I watch Hannibal observe them with baited breath. They reach in their tables’ compartments, pulling items unknown to me, but easily explained as “work related”.
If I had a say in what they find necessary to retrieve before evacuating, it wouldn’t be test tubes, and containers filled with different substances. It would be medical kits and rations. If it calms them, and Hannibal, back down, back to a feeling of being in control of their situation again, then I won’t mind temporarily waiting for his attention.
I hear the chamber door close shut by a considerate person, sealing the haze cluster to a prison sentence I don’t think any of us care to number. Other than forever.
Lissie and Janice keep their attention fixated towards Ashton’s area, but they don’t want to leave Hannibal’s radius. I understand them, but soothe their fears with “I’ll keep him here. Reunite Ashton with us again.”
It’s internally satisfying to watch the left flank officers mindfully, but confidently, storm over to those undead that slip, trip, and stumble over bodies. They fall to their knees, or all fours all together, then receive a fatal shot or knife to their skulls.
We’ve won. War between human and human, and I’d say there is no winner. But between human and monster, then there is fairness to get pleased when the monster gets annihilated.
Both Lissie and Janice skip body over body, even stepping on mass, as long as it means they don’t slow down on reaching Ashton. I feel that tenseness in my posture too, because even though there’s no further living undead we see in the hanger, the left flank is no longer in formation.
Ashton’s solo at this point.
It’s an anxiety that’s surely over-protective here. Especially seeing how his barricades have to receive significant exerted physicality by both of them to reach his medic bed.
Gary wouldn’t feel accomplished with reuniting his people until they actually reunited. And, even then, until he knew they were safe as can be.
Finally, after uncomfortably putting my hands in pockets, still knowing those people beside Hannibal’s opposite side are drilling their gazes hard into me, I hear Hannibal put time aside to talk to me.
“We do have transport, but…you need to stay with me.”
“Why? If the ones to your right want it, then they can have—”
Hannibal cuts me off with a passionate head shake. “I can’t, okay? Your leader’s life was my responsibility, and, being the way I am, with the deal we made, I won’t go back on it. Alter it, maybe? But I won’t go back on it.”
My attention flickers over to those people, careful to not make long eye contact, especially with one who’s visibly insulted. I can’t blame them. They’ve practically, and indirectly, been denied passage to Hannibal’s helicopter. It’s a sure thing his won’t leave until he does, and, in turn, me and my people.
His unrelenting confidence with this matter shows he can’t be persuaded otherwise.
“Okay,” I exhale, worried to how the people to his right we’ll take it.
The one who was insulted initiates in storming past Hannibal, straight to me, but Hannibal instinctively blocks his path with one arm. “You know where the jeeps are stored,” he asserts to him, then to everyone else in this hangar. “If you want a helicopter, then three more are left! The one that left last night is returning now! I don’t know when though! As for those stored three, you know where they are! I suggest you hurry, for those are first come, first serve!”
At this point, I don’t dare turn in their direction. I don’t want it to even remotely look like I’m rubbing it in their faces—even though my expression shows them all an apology.
My focus does receive direction again when I feel Ashton’s medic bed bump into my leg. “How you doing, man?” I hurry to say to him.
“No different than I’ve been. In pain. Aren’t we always?” It’s sardonic, as he usually is, and it’s a reliever for his group.
My uneasiness around those people to Hannibal’s right mutates into a different kind of feeling. I watch as they hurry through the hanger’s undead burial grounds. My uneasiness about giving a simple command is rather simply justified.
It’ll lead and show our group that time moves forward, and so must we. Once we get to that helicopter, we have to live with new changes.
Changes that Gary isn’t going to be alongside with us.
Hannibal assists me, Janice, and Lissie lift Ashton’s bed off the ground. We’re all equally sharing his weight to ensure we can still be aware of the undead we step over, and so that we don’t trip over any. About midway through this burial grounds, the same officer and female personnel worker are visible to me again.
He, being the gentleman he is, assists her with a hand hold. They’re treading over the undead. It’s a far different world he’s likely caught glimpse of. He probably has the most experience between the two of them with what’s out there. But no more will they have this hangar to work and lounge in.
If one honey wants to ask the other how their day was, they’ll have to do it out there. In the vast unknown.
Lissie spots them too. Her lips curl inward, and her breathing cuts short again.
“Lissie,” I say sharply to her. “I know. I know, but don’t look. Keep looking forward.”
The hangar opening doesn’t feel like it’s gotten any closer, but I do feel my readiness to leave the facility has—essentially leaving behind what happened during our time here.
I keep that to myself. Otherwise, Lissie would likely scream in anger because of how insensitive she’d see me being, while Janice would tell me I should’ve kept it to myself. Ashton would be more on my side, but he would then be arguing with Lissie about how we should feel about this change.
Gary would let them feel the ways they want to. He encouraged it.
My biceps would appreciate a break, but I endorse this physical stress if it means we get out quicker. Especially, if it also quickens our chance to actually reflect on what’s happened recently.
I know when the helicopter can be seen, when the transport is clear for us to step in, and the rotor spins so loud people can barely be heard, that’s when it’ll be time to expect the grief.
The grief over Gary. The grief over having to move on.
If only I were Gary right now. I don’t want to screw up. I put on a hardened mask for them, as though I’ve never cried. Truth is, if I do it for you, then I’ll be right back in that point in time, where my girlfriend jumped in that pool.
I’ll be moving backward.
After swerving and tilting Ashton in his bed, rocking his proverbial boat, that’s when the entrance gives us all a breathing point. It’s one all of us, including Hannibal, subtly let one another know we need. When looking back at the hangar, and seeing the living people emptying it, I can see the haze cluster hugging the chamber’s front wall.
It’s an inmate that will never be freed, while we’re all given freedom.
It’s the hardest act to do though. Leaving with all of this freedom, and not sure what to do with it.
We all let out heavily-burdened exhales. Lissie starts to shiver from her tears. Janice has to wipe her left eye before it can start up on its own. Even Hannibal looks broken with absolute shock of his operation’s downfall.
All of it is saddening me to the point that once more I ask myself why I’m staying around people.
As a survi
vor, having connections with others is just begging for something bad to sneak up and destroy what you thought you were better off with.
Truth is it’s for the numbers. It’s for a better chance at survival, right?
We can only stop here for a moment, otherwise we won’t stop this…
Denial.
It’s all about moving forward, right?
Chapter XXXVII
(Gary)
They drag me by my one working leg. I believe they think this is courteous enough when it’s come to helping me. With that being said, they’re deprived of any idea how nerve-racking it is. They are cold to my panicking, to my gripping the dirt that bypasses us all.
I normally have a pet-peeve of having dirt stuck within my nails, but I want it to be apparent to them this is a struggle. One where they literally have to drag me wherever we’re going.
I’ve worked much of my depleting energy. I’m sure they know I have little left. A portion of it is diverted to demand where they’re taking me. All I receive is a harsher tug by the man that’s caused this tension between them and me. The moment I heard his voice I was wary to beg for his and the others’ mercy.
Obviously, now it was for good cause.
Of course, my dismay is in regards to what I should’ve seen coming, but was too stressed to focus on. A shot leg will do that. C.F.O.G. and their henchmen take me to an area, where I know the wilderness, its inhabitants especially, are meant to keep me on edge. I have to be ready for any trauma. I’m confident these four are tied to the people Ominous’ lament had encouraged Grim to expose me to.
My confidence these people want me alive is on par with how certain I could possibly feel about anything. Unclear.
But, what without a doubt shakes my confidence I will be fine is when we finally reach their destination.
It’s a bonfire, with several people circled around it. Gruff expressions in the men, and the wariness in the women, makes it all too real for me to process at once.
