Sunrise

by Boye, Kody

  “Yeah,” Dakota said. “It is.”

  CHAPTER 5

  A man put a gun to his head in the middle of the night and pulled the trigger just after he wrote his goodbyes.

  None of his sleeping neighbors heard the noise.

  Feathers flew about the room.

  The sergeant was dead.

  Roused from sleep by frantic fighting in the hallway, Dakota rose, pulled his pants up his legs and made his way out the door. Almost immediately, he found Kirn, Wills and the civilian named Michael arguing with one another.

  “You have to calm down,” Michael said, tightening his hold around Kirn’s upper arms.

  “CALM THE FUCK DOWN?” Kirn screamed. “HE’S DEAD!”

  “Who’s dead?” Dakota asked.

  “The sergeant,” Wills said, voice dull and with little emotion.

  “You don’t know if he’s dead,” Michael said, pulling his hands away from Kirn tried to slap them away. “Private Roberts hasn’t gone in and seen him.”

  “WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?” Kirn howled.

  “I’m right here,” Roberts said, entering through an escape hatch on the second floor. “What’s going on?”

  “HE’S DEAD! THE SERGEANT’S FUCKING DEAD!”

  The color drained from the lanky man’s face. “What happened?”

  “HE FUCKING SHOT HIMSELF IN THE HEAD GODDAMMIT!”

  “We went to check on him because we didn’t hear him walking around,” Wills said, drawing all eyes toward him. “That’s when we found him.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Erik asked, heading toward the stairs.

  “OF COURSE HE’S DEAD!” Kirn screamed.

  Dakota pushed his way forward as the small group of men descended the stairs. Behind him, a door opened and Steve and Ian peered over the banister, but Dakota paid little attention. He only stopped in place when the door to Jamie’s room opened and Jamie stepped out.

  “What’s going on?” Jamie asked.

  “The sergeant’s dead,” Erik said.

  “What?”

  “Kirn and Wills found him this morning. I’m going to check now.”

  Together, they pressed forward, toward a single door that stood at the end of the hallway.

  Roberts pushed his hand forward. His fingers latched around the doorknob. A cloud of flies and the smell of death surged forward as the door was opened.

  It took Private Roberts only one look at the body. “He’s dead,” he confirmed.

  Kirn wailed.

  A black hand crept over Dakota’s shoulder.

  So, it said. It’s begun.

  Jamie set a hand on his shoulder.

  It’s all good, that touch said.

  Dickinson said it once.

  Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for Me.

  Kirn and Wills removed the body. Tossed into a bag and loaded into a jeep outside, the sergeant’s death seemed little more than elementary, a process previously repeated, but never truly accomplished. It would be taken into the park, Erik said, and buried near a memorial.

  “We honor our dead,” Jamie had said.

  And honor them they would.

  Seated in a chair far away from the scene of the crime, Dakota watched as Jamie paced back and forth across the rooms. The windows were open, harbingers of the fresh and new, and the mattress stood bare, testament to a life cut short. Any blood and brain matter that had been on the wall was long since gone, though who removed it, Dakota didn’t know. It didn’t particularly matter when a man whose emotions were already in heartstrings was walking back and forth with a hurt look on his face.

  Dakota had no idea how to console the man. In the last week, he’d gone against his better intuition and had continued to visit Jamie, partially for the company, but mostly to show that he cared. While he felt he’d grown closer to the soldier in that time, he didn’t think it allowed him any insight as to how to comfort him.

  Hurt beyond words and unsure of what to do, he stood and did the only thing he could—stepped forward to offer his support.

  “Will you be all right?” Dakota asked.

  Jamie turned his head up. His sad, brown eyes looked like depthless pools of black water. “I’ll live,” he said.

  “You can’t help what he did, Jamie.”

  “No, but I should’ve known something was wrong.”

  “How?”

  Jamie pushed a note toward him. “Read it.”

  Blood stained the legal pad’s intricate floral lining, but didn’t make the note any less readable.

  My cancer is what’s forced me to do this.

  Dakota stopped reading. He looked at Jamie to see if he could find any change in his demeanor, but quickly bowed his head when a tear slid down the man’s cheek.

  He continued reading.

  To those of you who may be reading this, or to those of you who will, I want to say one thing and one thing only: You are strong, quite possibly stronger than I was even in the prime of my life. I tried to keep my spirits high and my will thick since my treatment ended the day New York City was hit by the worst catastrophe of the human race, but as life foretells, most good things eventually come to an end.

  By the time you read this, I will have killed myself after my remaining testicle fell off.

  “Jamie,” Dakota started.

  “Keep reading.”

  Even though my pain was unbearable, and even though I felt as though my heart was crumbling, I had no right to terrorize the people I was supposed to be protecting, nor was there a purpose to the suffering I inflicted upon Corporal James Marks. If you read this, Corporal, know that my anger was not directed toward you, but at the thing that festered inside of me up until the moment I died.

  To all of those who are reading this, will be reading this and will read this in the future, please take note—by the classification of the United States Military, order of duty will be assigned to the next highest ranking officer. That is Corporal Marks. He will lead you to victory. He will keep you safe.

  I wish you luck in your quest. God may be dead, but we are not.

  - Sergeant Adrian Armstrong, United States Military

  “It’s a tough thing to handle,” Jamie said, accepting the pad back when Dakota passed it forward. “Knowing that he had so much faith in me, but wasn’t able to show it because of the pain he was going through.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Dakota said.

  Jamie shook his head. Tears coursing down his face, he stepped forward, wrapped his arms around Dakota’s shoulders, and buried his face in his shirt. It took but a moment for the most horrible, heart-wrenching sound Dakota had ever heard in his life to tear its way from Jamie’s chest and echo throughout his ears. “God,” Jamie wailed, tightening his fingers in Dakota’s shirt. “Why me? Why me?”

  “It’s ok,” Dakota said, setting his hands on the man’s ribcage. “Jamie…Jamie…listen to me, ok? It’s not your fault. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

  “I don’t think I can handle this, Dakota. I just can’t!”

  “Why not!”

  “I’m not strong enough!” the man cried, pulling his face away. “I can’t keep living my life the way I am! I can’t deal with not knowing whether or not I’m going to wake up in the morning, if I’m going to fuck up and kill someone, if I can’t do something right. I can’t…I can’t…”

  Jamie tangled his hands in Dakota’s hair and forced their lips together.

  Dakota froze. Shocked, frightened, and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life, he simply stood there, unsure of what to do.

  A moment later, Jamie pulled away, more tears coursing down his face. “I fucked up again,” he whispered. “I can’t do anything right.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dakota asked, face drenched in another man’s tears.

  “I have feelings for you, Dakota.”

  “I…I…”

  I do.

  “I do too,” he said. “I have feelings for
you too.”

  Jamie wrapped his arms around Dakota’s shoulders.

  A light lit in Dakota’s heart.

  Is this it? he thought. Is this what it feels like to be loved?

  He chose not to answer. He simply leaned forward and pressed his face into the other man’s neck.

  “Everything ok?” Steve asked.

  “No,” Dakota said, collapsing onto his bed. “He kissed me.”

  “What?”

  “When we were in the sergeant’s room. He kissed me.”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t gay?”

  “I thought so too,” Dakota said, the army man’s tears still warm on his face.

  “How’d it happen?”

  “He broke down, said he couldn’t go on living the way he did, how he couldn’t worry about whether or not he would get somebody killed or do the job right. Then he grabbed me and forced his lips on mine.”

  “Not the most subtle way of doing it,” Steve said, “but it works, I guess.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Steve.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He kissed me in a moment of passion. It…it might not even be the way he feels.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said…he said he had feelings for me.”

  “Then he has feelings for you,” Steve said. “He can’t deny the way he feels.”

  “It’s just, I don’t know…”

  “Let me tell you something,” Steve said, stepping forward and setting his hands on Dakota’s shoulders. “No straight guy would ever kiss another man, especially not the way he kissed you.”

  “I don’t…” Dakota sighed. “I guess I’ll just wait on it. I’m pretty upset too.”

  “It’s hard to see someone cry. It’s even harder to have to share their emotions.”

  “It wasn’t the right moment for that to happen.”

  “Who’s to say there’s a right moment for anything?”

  Dakota shrugged.

  Shaking his head, he spread out along his cot and closed his eyes.

  Heart hurt, brain swimming, he reached up to touch his face and realized the tears still hadn’t dried.

  That moment was real.

  “Knock knock,” Jamie said, tapping on the partially-opened door with the back of his fist. “Can I come in?”

  Dakota looked up. Jamie stood in the doorway, watching him with unsure eyes from behind a messy strand of fringe. Though his demeanor seemed slightly better than it had before, he still showed the tell-tale signs of crying—his eyes were red and his cheeks more than twice their size, awkwardly-childlike on such an adult face. Even his nose, perhaps his most dignified feature other than his beautiful brown eyes, looked red and chafed.

  He looks like a wreck.

  Of course he did. Who in their right mind would expect someone not to cry when given the world to bear on their shoulders?

  Just like Atlas.

  A skull caved before his vision. Blood splattered his hand.

  A jarring pain coursed up his wrist before he realized it was all just a vision, a memory creeping upon him at the most inappropriate time.

  “Dakota?” Jamie asked, sniffling, reaching up to wipe his nose with the back of his hand.

  “Come in.”

  Jamie stepped forward, closed the door, and began to cross his room. Halfway between the door and Dakota’s bed, he stopped, seemed to consider his actions, then settled down on Steve’s bed. “What I did was inappropriate,” he said, turning his head up.

  “Don’t worry about it, Jamie.”

  “No, Dakota—I am, and I have been. I should have never put you in that situation.”

  “It’s ok.”

  “No it—”

  “Just answer me something,” Dakota said, raising a hand to interrupt him. When he was sure Jamie wouldn’t speak, he let it fall to his knee, then took a breath. “I want you to be honest with me. Ok?”

  “Ok.”

  “Are you gay?”

  “Of course I am. What other reason would I have to kiss you?”

  “Moment of passion,” Dakota said.

  “Like I said, it was inappropriate.”

  “No it wasn’t. How was it any different from a kiss after a date?”

  “Have you ever been kissed before?”

  Dakota swallowed a lump in his throat. “No,” he said.

  “See? I just robbed you of something special, something that you might not have been ready for.”

  “Jamie…” Dakota sighed. Standing, he crossed the short distance and settled down beside the soldier on Steve’s bed. At first, he was unsure as to whether or not he should grab Jamie’s hand, but he eventually gave in and slid their palms together. “You didn’t rob me of anything.”

  “Yes I did, Dakota.”

  “How could you have robbed me of something if I wanted it all along?”

  The cloud of doubt before Jamie’s sad eyes seemed to clear instantly. “What?”

  “I’ve had a crush on you since the first day I got here. “

  “You have?”

  “I have.” He tightened his grip. Jamie squeezed his hand in response. “I’m eighteen years old, I’ve never been with another man, and it’s the end of the world. To be honest…if you hadn’t done that, I probably would have never worked up the urge to do it. You’re not like most other guys, Jamie.”

  “I’m just like everyone else.”

  “No you’re not. I’ve been around a lot of them, and I can tell you that I’d never been around a man that had such a calm presence until I met you. Hell, Steve’s been my best friend for years and I still get nervous around him sometimes.”

  “He seems angry,” Jamie mused.

  “He is,” Dakota sighed, “about a lot of things, but it doesn’t change how I feel. I love him like a brother. He’s one of the few things that kept me from going off the deep end after that first year in the foster home.”

  “What happened that first day, Dakota? You know…when they came to your town.”

  “The woman who ran the foster home had taken everyone else to the park. I said I didn’t want to go because I was still upset about being told that I would have to leave by the end of the week. I knew something was wrong, because I’d seen the reports of the rioting on the news, but she told me it was nonsense and to turn it off. It wasn’t long after she left with the rest of the kids that Steve came pounding on the door, screaming that the ‘zombies from New York’ were coming.”

  “They weren’t even being called zombies at that time.”

  “What were they being called before?”

  “Infected,” Jamie said. Dakota shivered. Jamie squeezed his hand. “I wish I could be as strong as he is. I’m feeling pretty worthless right now.”

  “Hey,” Dakota said, stepping away from the bed. He tilted Jamie’s head up so they could look each other straight in the eyes, unnerved at the feeling of the man’s beard under his fingers. “I’m gonna help you get through this. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “You’ll help me?” Jamie asked.

  “Of course I will. You can count on it.”

  “There’s a meeting at dinner tonight. I’m not sure how it’ll go.”

  “I’ll be there for you.”

  Jamie smiled.

  The sight nearly broke Dakota’s heart.

  Jamie rose from his place at the head of the table. “Listen up, everyone! I’ve got something to talk about.”

  Chatter around the table stopped instantly.

  Please let this be ok, Dakota thought, scooting his chair closer to Steve as he waited for Jamie to speak.

  “I know we’ve all had a bad day,” Jamie continued. “It’s tough, losing someone that we admire and respect, and it’s especially hard to lose a man like Sergeant Armstrong. I’m sure you all know what’s coming. We need a leader, someone who can keep peace and order as we tr
y to rebuild ourselves and the world we now live in. By chain of military command, and by orders from the sergeant himself, I will now assume command of the Saint David’s Ward Mental Institution Base.”

  “Bullshit!” Kirn cried, slamming his hand on the table. “Fucking bullshit.”

  “Is there a problem, Deputy Kirn?”

  “The sergeant would never let a pussy like you take over the base.”

  “It’s in the note,” Private Roberts said, raising his voice above its usual low pitch.

  “He was out of his mind when he was writing it, you fucking piece of shit!”

  “He’s been out of his mind since the day this started, Deputy. In case you happen to have forgotten, Derek, Sergeant Armstrong had stage three testicular cancer. The chemo was the only thing keeping him alive. No chemo, no prevention; no prevention, nothing to keep the cancer from spreading.”

  “It was probably in his brain by the time he died,” Jamie concluded, setting both hands on the table. “For your information, Deputy Kirn, Private Roberts was studying with the army to be a nurse before we were called back to service. And if you give either of us any shit, I’ll have you removed from the base.”

  “So this is how it is?” Wills spoke up, his big mouth once again notorious for coming in two steps too late. “The sergeant dies and we get reduced to chicken shit?”

  “The sergeant’s gone. I’m in charge now. Besides,” Jamie added, “neither of you were above either of us to begin with. You were cops before this. We’re soldiers.”

  Wills said nothing. Kirn’s mouth curled to one side in a snarl, but he somehow managed to contain himself, despite the crimson spreading across his face like blood on a tile floor.

  In the lapse of silence that followed, Desmond stepped forward with the food and began to arrange it on the table.

  “Thank you, Desmond,” Jamie said, clapping the young man’s shoulder. He did not seat himself. Instead, he remained standing, looking upon the eight men before him. He cleared his throat to return everyone’s attention to him. “I’m instating a few other rules and precautions while we’re at it.”