by Marlin Grail
“Therein lies another factor,” he cuts me off energetically. “I wasn’t fighting a war, or getting involved with stakes this high up there.” He turns his head down between his arms, making a ring with them, and seeming ashamed to look at anyone anymore. “I thought that’d be what I wanted. To be a savior. A hero. I got a taste starting last night. I don’t want to feel this pressure on me.”
“Tough.”
Lissie shocks all of us with this callous attitude.
Chapter LXXI
“I don’t think anyone here wants the pressure that’s on us every day,” Lissie continues harshly. “Yet, we plow through it. You know why? Because we’re survivors. You don’t just decide in this world when to turn the switch of continuous stress on or off.”
“This is different, Lissie,” Will helplessly argues. “I can’t take that weight on my shoulders again.”
“When you thought I was gone?” I intuit.
“Yes. Because…because I couldn’t be in charge, or reliable with anything…besides doing wrong.” Will rocks his head from side-to-side with vehement self-loathing.
I compress all his turmoil to the one pebble that’s stabbing his foot with sheer emotional agony.
He doesn’t want to be deemed second-in-command anymore.
“Will, you can be stripped of that title I gave you. As a matter of fact, our group doesn’t need a chain of command.” A humorless smile follows. It comes from recalling the past.
How short a time ago it was, but how long of a journey it’s been.
“When we lost the RV, and were truly an on-foot surviving group—where beforehand we all didn’t really have to interact until that point—I think then it was necessary to have someone in charge. Now? We know one another, so we’re not dependent upon a title anymore to help our dynamics.”
Will’s head freezes in mid-motion. He looks up at me with a tilted angle. “I…appreciate that, Gary.” He slowly stands up, apparently feeling rejuvenated with proof coming as a relaxed exhale. “I can’t stay, but—”
“Dammit, Will!” Lissie breaks down in the face of helplessness. “How are you gonna be okay by yourself? You know what’s out there. Where you gonna go?”
“But, it’s about this place. I can’t stay here.”
Thank you, Will, for coming around. The worst thing about coping with the troubles this world brings is when you blend both the good and bad as one. Of this, I will confidently say we’re the good here.
“All right,” I accept. “Tomorrow, after I guide some officers to an area, we’ll get going. Okay?”
“No. I can’t stay here another hour. If it wasn’t for Lissie getting me in here, I’d be gone already.”
“Yeah, and you’d take for granted the exhaustion I got just from running past soldiers opening fire on the undead, and then a damn haze. I could’ve got my own head blown off for you. Or turned.” Lissie’s anger rises again.
She’s loyal to her family. She’s willing to put herself in that danger.
I draw her close with a coaxing hand. Lissie lets me show my gratitude that she didn’t get hurt or killed. While resting my head on her thigh, I remain fixated on Will’s anxious stance. I glance at his stomach when I get too self-conscious to stare into his eyes.
Part of me wants to yell at you for putting Lissie in that kind of danger. Part of me wants to rave that it’s proof, Will, that she and all us would take a bullet for you. We don’t want you gone from our group. Or gone from our lives.
“You have to stay tonight, Will. That’s an order.”
“I told you I’m done being in a soldier-life.”
My monotone sharpens. “Then not as an order. As a plea. Please stay tonight. Tomorrow all of us will leave—after I help Maurice and these people.”
The hand not held tightly around Lissie’s body directs him to follow its motion. The open palm symbolizes who I’m referring to.
The ones that’ve been silently witnessing our family drama.
“Very well. But don’t count on me handling a gun for a while.”
“Hold one at least,” I negotiate with him. “I don’t need you firing it. I don’t need you to be a hero, but I want you alive.”
He and I trade those blank masculine expressions guys seem born to do. We do it as an attempt to hide the awkwardness, and in turn change the subject when the awkwardness is too much.
“Shit, Gary. I’m sorry. I’ve yet to ask what the hell happened to you.”
He leans in closer, even picking the candle up to further get a view of my hurt face. Lissie curtly expresses discomfort with him being so intent. I subdue both of their worries with a little chuckle.
“I’ll be fine. So long as I have you guys.”
Our shape isn’t complete as a triangle. I’d be fully at ease if we were a five-pointed star. So I hope Will has some information regarding our missing family.
“Do you know where Ashton and Janice are?”
“In a similar space like we are. I’d say they’re fine.”
A pound on the door resonates.
“Guys!” comes from a female officer. “We’re asking every cabin to stay closed until tomorrow. The condition outside’s clearing up, but it’s not fully safe out here yet.”
Maurice has kept to herself for majority of this time, as have all the other people. No doubt, when Lissie and I first entered here, it rattled their fear levels up another gear, considering the gunfire, and just not being able to know what’s been happening.
That’s not who they are or where they’re at anymore. Maurice and most of these people’s voices raise in positive acknowledgment to this female officer.
I breathe in happiness. “Things are looking—”
“Don’t jinx us again, man,” Will interrupts with a humorous tone. “You heard I said ‘again’.”
“Come on,” Lissie says. “You don’t believe that.”
“Oh yes, I do.”
“Look, why don’t we just think about it while we go to sleep,” I suggest.
It’s as if the word “sleep” is a trigger word for them, because one yawns first, and then it makes the other do the same. Even in the dim candlelight, I can see their exhausted eyes darken and seemingly swell from tiredness.
I can only imagine how they see me.
They’re probably in shock I’m still conscious. I wait until I see Will situate against the wall. I wait some more by snuggling with Lissie on the blanket. Thinking how I wait for them to fall asleep—self-awareness—triggers me to finally let myself rest. This floor is the softest my back has felt in a long while.
I pass out within a short amount of time.
Chapter LXXII
I awaken to hear the outdoor bugs singing their hisses. These bugs only distribute noise like this during a fresh sun. Eerily, it’s already a new day. It came at the lightning speed of what felt like a matter of minutes.
See, Will? That wasn’t so bad.
I expected my eyes to catch an immediate glimpse of him, considering my back is towards Lissie’s front.
The problem is terrifyingly simple.
I don’t see him.
Chapter LXXIII
Where did he find a piece of paper and something to write with? Better yet, how’d I not hear him go out the door?
“What’d that ass write down?” Lissie growls in frustration.
I look down blankly. I find I’m accidently crumpling the paper with my fingers. Watching Lissie pace back and forth is upsetting me more than I’m letting on.
Why’d you leave? What did I not—
“Gary, what does it say?” Lissie’s agitation is directed towards me now.
I stop inadvertently withholding what we both want to know. Instead, I read aloud what he wrote for us.
“Guys, I’m not breaking us apart. I just need a little break on my own. To help start anew. What better way, Gary, than to go to Perry, Utah? I don’t know your house’s address, but I’ll find a place. I’m sure, when scavenging at a grocer
y market, or convenient store, we’ll bump into each other. We’ll be new residents, and more than that. We’ll be new people. I’ll even introduce myself.”
Perry, Utah? We’ll find you there?
Lissie sinks into a flustered state. Spewing profanity is her clearest course of action.
I can’t get to that level of anger with her—not in that way at least. I turn the paper into a tiny ball, and flick it away at a trash pile.
“As soon as I handle what Maurice needs, we’re taking a vehicle.”
The vehemence turning Lissie’s cheeks to red roses fades. Her eyes go from being slits to widened and observant of everything around her. Currently, their focus goes past me, to a point of interest there.
It’s Ashton, with two crutches under his armpits. “How you doing, bud—”
I’ve never physically crashed at him with this speed, but there’s always a first for everything.
Including the fact I see his foot’s broken. “What happened to him?” I hurry over to Janice, who also receives a hand out to be the third in our hug.
“Oh, Gary,” she breathes out with exhaustion. “It was a close one with him. Our quarters got crushed.”
“I found that much out.” I turn my head behind me. I’m a little upset with her. I’m confused as to why I wasn’t told this about Ashton.
“Hey, man!” Ashton draws me back in. “I’m okay. But what the hell happened to you?”
“Yeah. You know…”
“No, actually, I don’t,”
I snap my neck to the right, facing the direction towards the monumental trash pile. “Let me show you—all of you.”
We go down a trash lane, heading past the round-about monumental trash pile, and there he lies still.
But there is a surprising change for me to gasp like Ashton and Janice are.
Several burial spots are being dug by some people. It looks like most are for the undead that were leaking in through the busted entrance spot. One which now looks to be receiving a resourceful fix.
The truck with the obliterated container is getting its broken pieces jammed back to their original structure. It’s so it can remain as a primary barricade for that part of the perimeter.
The officers surrounding the inside of this area are helping to drag undead bodies to a particular burial hole. It’s large, wide, and deep. On the outside, I can see undead, but all are just lifeless bodies mudding up the perimeter, like dead gnats on a window sill.
But all of that is merely worthy of an approving nod.
What makes me really gasp, after observing all of the other aspects, is Odhran’s, Grim’s, and Claw’s bodies are lined up for three graves.
“Whoa,” Ashton breathes in shock.
“So he’s now…dead?” Janice asks softly.
I nod.
Her gaze instantly darts over to the direction I know she’s intrigued by. It’s the body with the glamourized cloth and silver chest plate. “And who’s she?”
“That was…his partner.”
“C. had a partner?”
Again, my quiet nod is enough for her to return it in understanding.
Then, after this moment of quiet communication is transmitted, the memories I’ll forever have of Claw, his words, his last words especially play in my head. They remind me of the immediate action I should take before his body is dumped into the ground.
What is in his lower pocket, and how would it have “freed” her?
I quickly go over to his body, thankfully without any trouble from the man shoveling the grave lots. I kneel down and reach in. My instinct feels it’s wrong, forbidden even, to manipulate his jacket pocket this way. There’d be no way I could’ve felt it when he was alive.
Being able to search it only verifies Claw…Clouse…C. is, without a doubt, dead. So, I stop hesitating and holding my breath.
I reach all in.
I feel something smooth, cylinder-smooth. It’s light enough for just my index and middle fingers to pull out by its indented and grooved top.
It’s a tiny bottle.
On immediate examination, I can see the bottle is made out of see-through glass. The majority of it isn’t though, because a white, flaky, crystalized-looking substance fills up most of its volume.
“What is that?” the shoveling man asks. He pauses in his duty to examine it with me.
“I have no idea.”
Every stem of my nerves is demanding I simply let it not be known. Holding this bottle and trying to solve any more of this mystery is unsettling me, making me what? Sympathize with Claw?
What would this have done to Grim? Would this have freed her? From her affliction…change…madness? What?
Ashton leaps his way towards me, seeming used to moving on his crutches. “What’s that, bro?”
“I…it’s nothing. Nothing for me to worry about.” I smother the bottle in my curled fist, hiding it from view. My own especially. “Do you know anything about Hannibal’s whereabouts?”
“I think last I saw him was about a half-hour ago. He’s further back in this place.”
I nod with disquietude. The message to him is clear.
“You want me to bury them?” he offers.
“In your condition, no!” I tease, feeling my mood lighten for just a moment.
“Oh, so you’re in a better one than me, are ya? Where’s a mirror?”
He and I share this laugher as our subtle means to rekindle the absence of our friendship, without getting too emotional about it. But I quiet down when I realize Claw’s body is right below us.
Respect for the dead. Even if they were your biggest downfall and enemy.
“Hey,” I call out to the shoveler. “Is it ready for them too?”
“Just finished.”
A flush of warmth crawls up my face when knowing, in all retrospect, they’re about to be placed in their graves. The past is dealt with, just after letting go of each of the legs I pick up off the ground. Me and this shoveling man started out with Odhran, but whilst hovering him in the air, Maurice happens to halt us.
“May I say a few words?” she asks me.
“Absolutely.”
She moistens her chapped lips, and ping-pongs her gaze up and down Odhran. They grow wet. She’s dignified with her tone as a tear drops. “You have my word I’ll continue to have us thrive. Without you pioneering the few that we started out as, we’d be somewhere different. I’d not be who I am if it wasn’t for you. I’m sorry you still felt alone with all of us by you.”
She pinches her tear ducts, and hits home with me on the concluding line.
“We all have a chance for redemption, and you proved it by coming back yesterday.”
Chapter LXXV
I wonder, what happened to Odhran to fall into C.F.O.G.? What caused him to leave this place, and all these people that truly seem to care about him?
What would it be like if I was sucked back into a bad crew? Say, for instance, had I gone down the path of ruthlessness and chaos Kary, Opal, and Reggie showed me and Ashton they were heading down?
Would I have gone with it because they were familiar?
Odhran said to Grim he never believed in C.F.O.G.’s purpose, but did their pasts together, however long and eventful it was, make him consider coming back? Because, at least, he felt he wasn’t alone in this world?
I’ll never know the answer, but that’s life. We never know for sure. We can only guess we understand, and in that understanding, hope we’re moving forward the best way we know how.
Maurice takes the steps away from his body. This distance cements hers and Odhran’s farewell. I notice she’s ruminating, looking down at the ground, and not noticing I’m looking straight at her.
We all have things we don’t always wish were brought up to the surface, and publicly shared for all to know. I don’t think I’m comfortable sharing the suicidal desire that pulsed through me when the anger and hopelessness was too much.
I do an optical rundown of Odhran, checking to
ensure this is his body’s last exposure to the surface. His eyes have been shut. His blond hair and its strands have been lovingly brushed off his peaceful face. The last aspect to take into consideration are his fatal wounds.
They’ve seeped through his clothes. I take a long hard look at the gaping hole in his solar plexus. The least I can do for Odhran is never forget what killed him, and who it was.
Both qualities will never see the light of day again. So it’s best to have both imprint in my mind. I study the hole, seeing the muscles and deepest tissues we each have within us.
I hunch over a little. It’s a cringing reaction at the idea of being impaled.
I’m not sorry I killed you, “Shades” and your group, but I’m sorry at the same time. Especially regarding the use of my sword on how you also died. If anything, this burial and this brief memorial for Odhran, channels you five as part of this too.
Odhran gets lowered down in his six-foot deep bed. I willfully take the inflamed soreness while I bend down. That’s just one of my debts that I’m currently paying off. It’s for those that have died by my hand, and the ones that died during my motivation to stop it all from happening.
It’s done, but my body’s healing isn’t.
As long as I can feel this pain, I’m alive. Since I’m alive I’ll willfully power through it.
“Let’s get her next,” I guide the shoveler.
Grim’s body is limp. The bare skin of her limbs don’t even have the slightest flex of muscle. There’s too much of a mess on her face for me to want to observe, but I gulp and power through.
Power through it. You owe it to them, and yourself, to own what you’ve done.
“Rest in peace,” I bid adieu somberly. I close the one eye she has left.
Rather than pick her up by the legs, I tell the shoveler to switch places with me, so I can grab her by the arms.
I do this so I can imprint this image in my head forever.
This is crucial. If I can live, knowing they can’t, then I should always remember why they can’t. I couldn’t forgive her, so I won’t forget her.
