by Marlin Grail
The moment comes.
Now or never!
I shift on my wounded thigh, leaning the way he did earlier. I yelp because of the invisible knives digging into my sutured skin. They go deep, much like the way my foot digs into the ground. However, I’m unwilling to forget my plan, no matter how much nature wants to tempt me. I twirl the other leg, moving the other side of my body off and away from his bulldozing.
Feral acted a brute, but he’s witted enough to halt in his tracks before falling off of the ledge. But, as humans so often do, they look at the riskiest aspect before them.
That extra second he spends utilizing eye-foot coordination is the hour I need to gain an advantage.
I collapse to his long sheath, confident it holds a knife. Surely, the sun beams peering over us would show how reflective and clean the metal is. Someone like Feral would bask over its pureness in that way.
Time to stain it.
With my right hand, I rip it out of its sheath. The exerted force to tear it away from its sheath has kickback, and Feral aids in the kickback with a kick to my stomach. The knife remains in my hands even as I recuperate from the strong kick to my abdomen. I begin to already feel victorious. Feral doesn’t have the bravery to be up close and personal, even as I’m on my back.
He’s not done yet. This must be done.
I turn on my stomach, rising on all fours, all while giving my own feral stare. His hands finally rise to chest level, and initiates in his own fake-out steps and punches to me.
I smirk sinisterly even while I scream at myself internally not to behave this way.
Kill him with honor! Be noble! Don’t lose your sanity this way!
“Are you afraid?” I mockingly insult.
Feral gives no response, other than a snarl, and another less refined charge at me.
If you’re going to kill him, say you’re sorry!
I can’t.
I feel the possession of power over his once-deft mobility. I’m now pleased he’s scrambling, giving into complete human instinct.
Fear.
I watch as he bridges the gap in short, acrobatic, lunges toward me. I’m fixated on the knife. With my left hand, I swat away the one he extends towards me.
It muddies his vision of where my knife hand went. It’s rather obvious. It’s under my left, targeting straight to his exposed stomach.
Say you’re sorry first, Gary!
“You tried to kill my people!” Every word goes in synchronization to my thrust of the blade, both hands now cupping the handle straight toward his abdomen.
I’ve become something else, because I already pride myself in thinking he’s dead, before I even make contact.
What is happening to you? Why can’t you get control of your emotions? Is this what you meant when you told Lissie, that month ago at the shelter, that you fight your hardest to not act human, because, if you didn’t, you’d be inhuman?
I haven’t made contact, and I laugh assuming I have.
Then, his hand clenches down on my exposed wrist, and it shuts me up.
Chapter XLIX
Good. You deserve not to prevail here.
Somehow, in a beautifully executed way, he ends up rerouting both of my arms to my absolute left. Pushed as far as my shoulders will go, he holds them tight. It’s as though I’m being hog-tied. He pulls and holds my arms to further tighten the lock he has on me.
I’m vulnerable at this point.
You deserve to feel more pain, after that sadism you showed. That’s not how you’re supposed to behave. You’re not like Feral. You’re not C.F.O.G., but you make it easier on them to see you could be.
I fall to the ground from another swipe at my legs, but my arms aren’t free to catch me.
“Omph!” My face dives into the ground’s spongy, soft, but still rough surface.
He skulks about me, chuckling as he yanks the knife out of both my hands.
Now, he has the knife.
“What did you think was going to happen?” He waves the blade.
Only one eye is able to see it. The other is buried against the ground, only able to see darkness.
The other will see only darkness too, forever, if I don’t fight my way out of this. Fight, but fight with dignity, Gary.
I shake to break my arms out of his hold. I’m angered at how hard I have to try while seeing no visible strain in his eyes.
It was my own fault to have both of my wrists so close together, enough to where he can hold them at ease with only one of his wide palms.
His tall figure is brightened by the sun, the brightness of what seems noonish has whitened his skin complexion, and all its details. With this, I can’t make out if he’s mimicking an actual grin, like his face mesh’s.
You’re not like him. If you die here, then you’ll die as Gary. Dignified, and at peace that, more often times than not, evil topples, and makes quicker results.
But you know it does no good in the end.
Feral gripped the knife normally, blade sticking upward. Then, his arm skillfully flings it up in the air, where it lands in reverse back into his hand.
His shadowy figure comes crashing down towards me. The reverse grip knife is going to plunge into the side of my head.
If you can’t live, Gary, then you can at least die as Gary…
Just when I pictured my only visible eye to the world was to go dark, like the one currently stuck to the ground from being held down by Feral, a tumultuous boom startles my body enough to free myself.
Thank goodness. I feel fear again, like a human.
Instead of the weight I’d felt from Feral’s pressure keeping me down this entire moment I felt was the end, I wonder if that noise came from impact of the knife. However, I’m not dead. I can break free from the pressure of Feral, and my arms rejoice to be at my sides again.
Fatigued as I am, I’m deeply relieved to climb back up on my knees, free from Feral’s grip, and the knife fallen to my side, with no bloodstains.
I’m not dead.
My eardrums flex as much as the curling of my wrists, to calm my body back down from the loud noise’s high-pitch. It’s dark of me to then also feel maximum relief when I turn my vision farther past the knife.
I see Feral sprawled on the ground. There’s a deep bullet hole drilled into the back of his head.
“I’m…sorry,” The words shiver out of me while chills course through my veins. My face twitches as though I’m in below-freezing weather.
It feels that way when Ominous’ slow-cadence voice owns up to the act of killing Feral.
“I never was your brother, and I never wanted this.”
I’m terrified to look up at him, for once I do, I have no choice but to be absolutely thankful he just saved my life. The long-drawn silence seems to indicate he doesn’t plan on taking mine.
I realize that, but I’m still afraid to meet his eyes, and thank him.
How can I? He’s equally guilty with causing mayhem with Claw. I’m not happy he’s put me in this situation. I put myself in it though, so I shouldn’t feel I deserve to be happy at this point. Not unless I want to be sadistic.
My eyes focus on Feral’s body, and the bullet hole. It isn’t shaking me up nearly as much as the fact Ominous is currently reaching out to me, with a hospitable hand.
“Get up. I have much on my back, and you can help me get it off.”
I fear for my life, more than I feel I did when Feral clearly wanted to claim it.
Once I take Ominous’ hand it’s not without a trade. He didn’t save me just out of having a good nature. We’ll have an alliance. I’m terrified of it, and all the implications that will arise from such a thing.
I know it will further more open the gate to a new understanding of things I thought I had grasp of.
In agitation, his hand stretches in front of my face entirely. It fogs who I should be mad at now. Do I even have that luxury? No. I don’t. Therefore, I can’t be mad at him anymore. Not if he knows the whereabouts
of my people.
Take the hand. You’re Gary, and you’re dignified. Noble. You give people the benefit of the doubt to prove their justifications…even the ones who’ve done wrong.
My left hand carefully clasps his. Blood smears his palm. My mutating blood.
We have something in common there, but now we have another mutual agreement. He exposes his purpose here. “Without the F., and without the O., that just leaves two more.”
Chapter L
“Are you just going to stay silent?” Ominous questions me in irritation.
I… I can’t believe…
He arches his back, chin angled high, and eyes looking down with frustration to my silence. He sniffs loudly, not to clear up his nostrils though. “I told you your people are at my village. Several helicopters have landed there. I purposefully had you brought out here so you’d be close to them, and so it would give me opportunity to also be with my people.”
I remain cantankerous to all of his possible methods to get just one word out of me.
He’s staying patient with me, but it’s running thin. He makes flat hands, then swipes them left and right, as though cleaning an invisible whiteboard with them. “I get it. It seems all too fortunate for the both of us to get what we want. Your people being with mine, it seems all a miracle. But, it’s about time you and I had some luck on our side.”
Luck, huh? Maybe that’s what I should just fathom here. I shouldn’t care how it’s happened, other than that it’s true. My people are with his village, and the village is the area Ominous lied to Claw and Grim about by saying it was a rancid, awful place.
I’m reluctant to make eye contact with him. I’m intimidated at how fortuitous he’s made my mission become. With all the stress of the last day, I’m afraid I’ll fall and bow at his feet. Not by his request, but because I feel he’d be deserving of it because he helped to save my people. Worse, I’m worried this will make up for what he’s done in the past.
When he shot and killed Josh, before knowing he did kill him, he shouted he wasn’t a killer. He ran away from Claw more than once. Throughout the time I’ve known him, he seemed motivated only with the undead at his side, and not by the infrastructure.
“How’d you get mixed in all of this?” I softly ask.
He expresses confusion to what I meant.
“C.F.O.G.?”
The crinkling sounds of his feet resituating on the grass below signifies he’s not comfortable with the question.
Now, when I finally have the courage to look at him, he’s not comfortable speaking. He’s stumped on getting any words out regarding his answer.
“Feral took out the base because of me. Claw knew I was going to break away again, and go there. Instead, he sent Feral to tear it apart so I wouldn’t have anywhere left to go. If they knew the truth about this place…I don’t even want to think about what would happen.”
He doesn’t have to explain further. We both can guess.
I slowly shift my gaze back towards the sight of the descent down this hilltop. At the bottom, a long stream of water flows through its curving route, currently shimmering and drawing the eye continuously further down East. It then passes right by what looks like a large crater, piles of indescribable materials making little lifted grooves—mounds—within it.
He told me that’s a landfill, and that’s where his village, and supposedly my people, are.
I’ve been unable to spot any of the helicopters. Considering several groves are patched all around the large landfill, not to forget numerous man-made piles of trash that are tall and wide enough to hide any visible life down there, I can’t just take what I see, what he’s told me, at face value.
I must go down there and see for myself.
I nod at the two responses he’s made. First, it’s for the response he didn’t share regarding my original question, and then it’s for his most recent answer. “They’re all down there?” I ask, needing to hear the answer again.
“Yes.”
Guys. Lissie…
There’s an impulse he notices in me when I sharply twist my head back to look at him. At first, he shifts into a subtle defensive stance, but I bring up the unpredictable for both of us.
I graciously give him a cheery smile. “You’re right. I’m so lucky!”
He nods, reserved expression in full force to keep the rejoicing at bay. “Remember, Claw and Grim have no idea I’ve tricked them, but they’re bound to be snooping around. Especially after I’ve robbed Claw and the others of their ride.”
The giddiness I feel is siphoned away from this bad news. Although it has brought good news because of what he did. “So they know you’re up to something, don’t they?”
The both of us return to silence, but he gazes at the landfill with me. His eyes depict certain emotions boiling up to the surface. They look…ashamed.
I balance on this beam of how to remain distant. There’s a bitterness that I will always direct at him because of his past actions. While now, as much as I’m bloodied, stinking from dried sewage water, and, for a lack of better words, completely a mess, I have an intuitive need. I need to have him prove his distraught face, eyes blackened from lack of sleep, are valid with having tireless guilt. His response could possibly sweeten that bitterness.
I don’t mean to forget about you, Josh, or the four of you at the lumber mill, including the RPG carrier, or the whole Fort Washakie. But, it’s especially hard now not to notice how different he’s been from Claw, Feral, and Grim, from all the encounters I’ve seen.
He’s different from them.
We may have another level of common ground. We can understand we both hold regret in our hearts, for the ones we care about. I see that in his eyes as he looks down at the landfill.
“You’ve missed your village, haven’t you?”
“It’s been so long,” he exhales with a quivering lip. “I’m sorry about what happened at the Capitol. You holding out, refusing to give in to C.F.O.G., unlike me, well, it gave us this opportunity. I thought I was going to be stuck there. Forever.
“But, you causing her trouble enough to call me up those stairs, her stupidity about the false information I gave about my people…” He hesitated until I give him clearance to put his hand on my shoulder. “The ones that were not lucky enough to make it, every one of them…we can make things right.”
I firmly shrug his hand off. “What do you mean ‘right’?”
“Well, Claw is bound to figure out where I drove to. He’s smart, and Grim won’t be far. She’ll likely bring Casey and his troops along once they hear from Claw about my abandonment.”
“So, you’re saying a fight’s imminent?”
I step back away from the closed space between us, ready to instigate an argument. “If my people are down there, as you’ve said they are, then I’m taking them and going.”
He’s changed my motivations. I can run off with my group. We can continue away from all of this craze. I will forever thank Ominous for waking me up, and realizing there still is humanity in him—even if there’s none in the others of C.F.O.G.
I don’t have to be homicidal and thirsty for revenge anymore, if he’s planning on his own terms to go against them.
“You tried that before. Look where you ended up.”
I’d like to punch him in the face for that statement, feeling he assumes he’s clean from his mistakes, as though he’s much the wiser.
Need I remind you that Claw told me of the many times you tried to flee from all of this on your own?
My unspoken question must’ve been vibrating strong because once again he motions passive hands to clear the air by slicing it. “Look, until those two, that twisted ‘Adam and Eve’, are handled, they’ll always be intruding in our lives. Somehow they’ll find you and your group. Not with my aid, but with the aid of whoever they can swing to their side. They’re lunatics—no doubt—but intelligent and persuasive ones.”
I have no way to oppose what he’s said. There’s bee
n supporting truth to keep me here, not here here, but in this struggle with Claw and Grim.
Do I accept this?
Chapter LI
I take wobbly steps towards Feral’s dead body, hissing as I work a stiff leg to kneel next to it. More discomfort lurks in the surrounding environment when an undead comes from the woodlands of this hilltop, further down left of our position.
It’s trying to persevere past the thin trees. However, it ends up being blocked by two tree trunks adjacent to one another, like bodyguards whose sole purpose is holding this animated corpse back.
I figure Ominous, since he’s holding the active firearm, will quiet this loud disturbance. He does, though not with a bullet, but with a palm to the forehead. It’s the palm my blood smeared on when he helped me up.
He turns to look at me, head tilted with surprise. “You’ve been self-aware, haven’t you?”
I don’t respond, but the answer is there. It’s there when the undead falls to submissiveness, whether from his own mental virtue to control it in this instant, or the blood the undead sees before it.
Some part of the creature knows I’m mutated.
My blood’s converting to look more like their own. Still, I’m not drawing this moment out any further between Ominous and me.
We can have certain noble traits that parallel each other, but that’s as far as I’ll be willing to admit. I’m not into controlling undead.
I figure, since he’s the most intrigued by his immunity abilities, to let him handle that undead. There, down at the bottom of this hilltop, is a buffet worth of undead to let him chow down on their independence.
“That’s not me.” It’s an evasion.
“Sure,” he says sarcastically.
I get back on my feet, and take one last good look at Feral’s body. I take a lengthy examination of his bullet wound, the entrance of a circular cave that marks the exit point on his forehead.
