by Marlin Grail
I’m speaking with a spirit. I’m in contact with someone who’s died, apparently not recently dead. All my curiosities about the other side is answered here. Still, there remain many things unanswered. These surprises absorbed by me can’t be lived long. I must press on for information.
“What of ‘C.F.O.G’? They hear you too? When did they first hear you?” I persist, with slightly rising agitation.
“… Self-proclaimed ‘C.’, as he’s identified best as, came from this facility. He was the last of the volunteered subjects from the U.S. Army known to hear me. I spoke with him for days. Right where you stand is where he descended down his path of ultimate scheming. He and his other three all learned of their abilities here.”
“W-why aren’t they still here?” I question, challenging myself to stay collected.
“… They each broke out, months following the outbreak. C. put it that they each have a purpose. Together, the four of them will start a new human colony. It will be a kind only the immune are accepted into. It will all begin in Cheyenne.”
Chapter L
I don’t know whether to grasp my forehead with fear, anger, or both.
My discovered immunity has given an edge for the “good” side of the spectrum, yet why do I feel this gift is a downer? I want to look after my group by any means necessary. I didn’t think I’d get sucked up into trouble like that of an epic story from mythology.
As much as I’d like to stop here, I press on, letting my own pure curiosity be my self-remedy.
“How would they do that? Only four of them to start a new society?”
“… G. of C.F.O.G. is his queen. She is all of their queen. However, he’s deemed them both the new Adam and Eve. She’s the most evolved with her abilities. These officials have found her already in Cheyenne. She’s held by a man C. once called his friend. Casey is his name. Casey and his unit have her trapped there, until they can bring her back here.”
A facade about war at Cheyenne C. shared with our setup was partially true? Still, what was his purpose to start the infrastructure?
“… I can read your thoughts,” the voice includes in its briefing. “It’s been quite a while since he and I have communicated with one another. From what I remember of his thoughts, he needed numbers. From what I remember, he’s detail-oriented. These details are just pawns to his game against these officials. However, he still needs others to help him battle Casey.”
Trey and his people, along with the other three groups. I didn’t see them at all when the Fort dispersed. They think they’re taking the fight to aggressors. The setup will just stay on edge wondering why there’s no invasion. By the time they lose loyalty, C. predicts he’ll already have what he’s masterfully planned out.
Wobbly all the way down to my knees, I don’t fight the urge to collapse. I plant a fist below me to act as a stabilizer.
Again, should I feel fearful, or angry? Can I be both this time around, when these officials can’t have me in-between? They either need me to help them or not.
My concern jumps back to the thought of my people—Lissie, Ashton, Will, and Janice—being used as pawns to convince me to join this firm.
In that case, I’ll do what they need of me. I give into another organization, as long as it means my people have the safest route because of it.
“… You’ve been quiet, and wondering of ‘my people’. Who are they?” the voice genuinely asks me.
A sudden boost of energy forces me off my knees, especially when that suit-and-tie man enters the warehouse.
“Tell me as best you can!” I fervently hope it will divulge an answer. “Are my people in danger?”
It remains unengaged, choosing this time more than ever to take its longest pause. I watch the officer that let me in begin to turn the valve. Just in time, I hear, though weakened in volume, and modulated by the seal-tight space opening, “Convince them, or they are bound to be silenced.”
I understand. I won’t ask.
The officers gesture for me to get out. I lunge straight to the suited man’s collar. The suit looks perfectly uninfluenced by the hazards of this world—untampered—until I scrunch it up with my fists.
Chapter LI
His fabricated bland expression becomes panting for distance between his and my own.
Because I was in a vacuum where no outside sound could be heard, I assume the simultaneous clicks I hear from these officers are their weapons.
“Are sure you want to do this?” this man chokes out. His cold look is impressive, but my eyes can see what he really feels.
This man treasures civility, and it’s understood that’s due to his lack of exposure to the outside world. It’s why my slightest aggression has him trembling and hoping for reconciliation.
While staring directly at him, I speak towards the whole warehouse, “All of this effort to get someone who’s immune. Currently, you have him. If I’m shot dead, then you’re not going to know anything about the latest information regarding the enemy.”
He shifts his shoulders repeatedly, but there’s no give. My grip only clenches tighter. “You were only in the chamber for a ten minutes. I’m sure you haven’t learned anything—”
“You want to argue what I know? I know that O.’s abilities have evolved to where he can have control over numerous undead—at once. I know about an AWOL soldier, I now assume is yours, that watched over and brought reassurance to a peaceful community, only for the same day the fake C. arrived to destroy it. Many people have been lied to. Most of them will be okay, but not at all for the others.”
He only scoffs as I take a necessary breather from the lack of pause to my statements. “We’ve already been told that by your followers! We need specifics—”
“That’s another thing!” I interject. “My people need to stay with me—safe! If you dare hurt them, at all, you might as well consider this partnership over before it even starts!”
This threat might very well be the last one I make. It depends on what’s developed on their situation. If I’m too late…then it’s too far out of my right mind to continue restraining my physicality on him.
He holds his breath, side-staring me, and shaken.
I jolt his whole body, uncaring to the further tension of the guns behind. “Well? Are they safe?”
“… They are, but for maybe another minute.”
I’m ready to roar in fear, but I have to stay angrily-centered. “You have the power to change it! I know you do! As long as they remain safe, and you promise I’ll be able to see them, then I’ll do whatever you need of me!”
The seconds flee.
My emotions run rampant, unashamed to show him my stability in this world is because of them. Finally, he gives a command to an officer I know is less than a splinter away from my side.
“Hurry! Call it off! Go!”
While I affix my predatory-glare to that officer, I don’t let this man go until I see the ruckus within the warehouse erupt. Everyone is doing their part to ensure they don’t have the setback.
One I will set off if their efforts fail in time.
I feel my eyes start to glisten, thinking about the alternate reality where it’s over for them. That reality bleeds into this present, where it could go either way.
“Why? Why have them killed?”
He appears to become susceptible to my tangible grief, looking away from me. “I-we can’t have the public not completely involved be near our operations. They can’t know certain things. The public fears abnormality. They can’t handle—”
“THEY are not the public!” I rush out over him, rejuvenated back into my vexation. “The world has had to embrace the abnormal in order to survive! Those people, my family, they are just as important in this as you see me!”
Both of our heads snap to the direction of the figures striding back inside, less refined from the calm persona they’ve collectively shown. “They’re safe! They’re being taken to safe quarters!” one of their voices hurries from the outsid
e.
Guys. Lissie.
I figure my eyes would dry back up, but they only liquefy further. This time from relief. It’s the greatest weight lifted off my shoulders. Because they followed through on this bargain, I hold no more violent vehemence towards this man.
I let loose his collar, slowly taking my steps away. “Okay. What is it you need of me?”
Without response, he puffs back up to his perfect posture, fixing his clean and slick hair to how it’s supposed to be. He then nods a silent order only his personnel understand. Forceful hands on both sides of me lock my arms behind my back. They preemptively add straining pressure on them, assuming I’ll fight it. Instead, I treat this as sparring training, where I’m to let it happen without resistance.
“You got what you wanted,” says the man to me, “and now you do what we want. First, you listen, and you listen good.”
Either it’s the uncomfortable nerve pinches I feel on me, or I genuinely feel bad for the confrontation. Either way I answer, “Fully, sir. I’ll listen.”
C. was always cheery under his orders, which I seemed to subconsciously not respect as deeply as this man already has me sounding.
“You’ve never been enlisted in anything before, have you?”
“No, sir.”
“Now—there’s no other way to put it—you’re a soldier. You’ll be dispatched for a mission, tonight being when you go. This mission is taking you back to where you were originally headed.”
“Cheyenne?”
“We need you to gather as much information from our frequency voice before you leave. It’s for our advantage over the enemy.”
“C.F.O.G.?”
“So you already know?” he says, surprised.
He walks over to the analog equipment, where the white coats are positioned, then curls a finger for me to follow. Rather than be let free by the officers, they turn me around, then have me walk their incredibly synchronized pace.
“Would you like to know what we do?” a white coat worker asks me.
As means to signify I understand this man wants me to behave in an orderly fashion, I look to him for approval.
“Yes,” he answers for me.
The white coat woman pauses what she was working on, spinning in her chair to face me entirely. “So, you know certain areas in the world were heavily air-polluted, true?”
“Yes, I’m aware,” I calmly respond, beginning to grow used to the tense tightness around my skin.
“We don’t know which country originally began this method, but we know that Beijing, China was the first major city to try a different approach to reduce their smog levels. The method was bizarre, but they firmly believed nothing would go wrong. Personally, I didn’t know what to make of it.”
As though the man is aware she’s deviating in her dialogue, he proceeds to continue for her.
“In theory, this method involved a spore sent to the atmosphere. It would be intelligent enough to know the smog was too deadly for it, and would work to eradicate that smog.”
How could I not connect them together? Hazes, smog, the particles in the sky, and temperature rising? The basics about air-pollution I knew, yet, up until now, I couldn’t fathom that’s what it was.
Entranced by this explanation, I don’t notice he’s awaiting a response for me.
I open my mouth, but he immediately starts up again.
“True, we have no understanding of the culprits responsible for this ‘creative’ process. What we do know is that spore type came from a bacteria fatal to humans. Most anyways.”
Was this really a method to help the humans, or purposefully made to harm? In disguise as nature gone wrong?
It seems he then feels confident enough to let me be released, crossing his arms as he watches what I’ll do next.
“I won’t do anything rash, sir,” I assure, while massaging my forearms.
He barely hides a smirk. “We have reason to wonder if combining this spore, plus the effects fatal smog has when contacted to a human’s skin—the pores—is how the mutation happens.”
I don’t have long-sleeve clothes on me. My skin has been exposed to the hazes. No doubt, this stunning factor is why they’re helping fill me in for why I’m considered “special”.
“Okay. So, my main question left is, why do the undead haze-incubate? Why do they explode from the inside out?”
His response is to point a finger straight at the roof. I immediately understand he’s pointing beyond.
“The sky?”
“Yes. Dirty streaks in the sky are air-pollutants. ‘Undead’, as you call them, breathe this in. Then the incubation-period fills the body with nothing but this. Which is why when they burst as a small ‘haze’, it takes further time to obtain the real sky smog. Mobile land ones eventually head back to the sky where they combine together with other ones.”
It has a life cycle. The spores live with purpose, with growth. It has a life it lives.
So much of my grasp of all of this information knots up. I end up holding my head. This visible bafflement toggles this man to cough out a chuckle. “Yes, so now you know why we’ve gone through months and months of research to barely ingest the tin-can of this freak catastrophe.”
I look up at the chamber, realizing my claim to this project is long-lasting. I chew my lip in confusion to another factor. “What of this phantom? Why do the immune only hear it?”
Chapter LII
At this point, he exhales with disappointment, grabbing my shoulder with one hand.
“Sometimes, you have to go for resolutions out of normalcy. We don’t know why, but this frequency voice has been with us for years. I mean, decades of EVP contact with it that could only be heard by a select few in the nation.”
He then looks down, as though he’s reluctant to speak further. He then throws me a curveball.
“Since you already know certain things, there’s no harm in telling you, during that time, we broadcasted this frequency under false pretenses, when asked about the reason for this mysterious broadcasting.”
I remain staring, examining the empty chamber, and wondering if this phantom even knows how long it’s been communicating.
I once heard before by paranormal experts that time on the other side goes faster than here. For all we know, it thinks it’s been speaking to the living for a day’s worth of conversation.
I turn my sight back to him. “Some things—maybe—we should just be thankful it is how it is.” I then politely have him take his hand off me, leaving a gap of silence. Closing my eyes, I breathe out, “You need me in the chamber again? Okay.”
He makes a sound that has my eyes spread open fast.
“You need to realize this mission has to guarantee C.F.O.G.’s downfall. They have no intention of returning back here. At this point, they aren’t capable of being rational enough to change purpose. With that said, most of them can’t be left to roam the earth freely.
“We leave G., she being the most powerful, with some of our own in Cheyenne, because we’ve needed to draw out the others. When the others are taken care of, we take her back here. We need to know more why she’s as capable as she is.”
Essentially, this will involve killing and kidnapping. I wish I could say this is fazing me, but it’s the benefits for my group that’s keeping my opinions buried.
I accept his blunt, but helpful, means to have me know the risks he’s hesitant to say right-out.
“I can tell there’s hidden context,” I raise to his attention, feeling more of our bargain is about to share its clincher.
“There’s a strong chance you could die. If you come back here, alive, then we will need you to stay with us. G. will be returning to these grounds, but under much more security and secrecy on her whereabouts.”
“In order to figure out more about how to counteract the hazes?” my intuition has me ask. “I’m okay with staying on these grounds, sir, for the rest of the time it takes to prevail from this apocalypse. My only catch is my peo
ple must live on the premises with me.”
The officer on my left finally utters a statement I heard him constructing under his breath during our long conversation.
“Sir, we’re running low on time before deployment.”
He acknowledges, then concretes his requests for my service as a “soldier” to this operation. “They will stay on the grounds, perfectly safe. Please, we need you to gather more information.”
It is here my head turns to notice the sound of the valve wheel spinning.
I’m committing to a duty that involves me killing, just coated neatly, much like the operation C. had structured. It hasn’t fully sunk in for me just what terrible hurt him, O., and the others have done to these officials, but I know what happened at that Fort was because of C.F.O.G.’s motives. It had to be.
If taking three lives will prevent more lives from being in danger, like Trey and his people, then I must commence with this first step.
Walking a straight line, similar to heading into this base, has never been so challenging.
But this walk I’m forging is my fate.
One where I can possibly help end all of those mindless, unorganized, walking undead around the base—and around the world—from further existing.
Chapter LIII
I feel as if I’ve grasped a firmer understanding of the variety of deaths there truly are, the worst being a killer of dreams.
In this case, I’m living the worst death to inflict. Even if C.F.O.G. don’t care about the multiple deaths that have happened due to their desires.
“Well? What have you learned?” I’m asked by the suited man.
“C. and O. have reached the outskirts of the city. F.’s whereabouts is bothersome. The phantom assumes each of them are somewhere near a tower you’re broadcasting on. But, again, F. isn’t with the other two. So his motivations of where and why he’s headed elsewhere is unknown.”
