The Last Words

by Marcus Caine

  Now the barge was right up by the shore and some of them had made their way around it and were climbing up the rope. It wouldn’t be long before they made it up the barge and over to us. Worse than that though, the front of the barge was coming around to the bank and dragging the tugboat with it. If we got right up to the shore in this we were fucked. The shore was crawling with crazies now, they looked like bugs on a carcass, waiting for us just right over there, and I didn’t think any amount of guns or ammo was going to save us if we hit that shore.

  Another rumble, and this one kept going. Holy shit, we had a chance. Now Joe was trying to get it going forward but the end of the barge on shore was giving him some trouble. He yelled something at Cassie and she replied, looking at the cable ropes.

  I felt the small tug rumbling and could hear the cable straining and he must have been kicking it up to try to get us loose, and it was rocking. The sound of screeching metal against rocks was the sound of the barge getting free of the shore, the powerful little tugboat pulling as hard as it fucking could. God, I hope we don’t burn it out, then we would be dead for sure.

  But it worked, we were free, we were on the way past the bridge and out to sea.

  Oh, the bridge, that was a whole ’nuther problem.

  From the journal of Jude Guerrero

  12/25/2012

  I gave the wheel to Dr. Gates, telling him to just keep it going straight so I could see how things were going outside.

  We were still attached to the barge, and the barge had affected on it, heading up through the shit to where we were, and not giving a damn about it.

  Tim Tom and Cassie were fending them off, no real problem, while I tried to figure out how to get us free from the barge when suddenly I heard a loud thump, then a splash. The affected were falling out of the sky now.

  “What the fuck?”

  We were passing under a bridge. The affected from both sides were sprinting up the bridge and some of them were even jumping off to try and get us, they wanted us that bad. The problem wasn’t that they could survive the fall, a couple hit the boat and were dead, the problem was just getting hit by a falling one.

  We all had to get in the wheelhouse to avoid being landed on, which meant not being able to protect the boat from any trying to crawl down the tow line from the barge, and not being able to work on detaching us from the barge. We were moving fast enough that we were clear of the bridge after a minute so we were able to go out and see the damage. A few broken bodies of affected, blood smeared on the deck, but it didn’t look they managed to break anything.

  Two had made it down the rope to the boat but I took them out with the .45 and Tim Tom got the others trying to make it down the line. But they were still jumping from the bridge, onto the barge now, and it looked like they were surviving that fall because, well, they were falling into a nice soft giant pile of shit. We could see a lot of them jumping from the bridge, and if even just some of them survived we would be in trouble if we can’t get detached from the barge.

  Now we were working on getting detached from the barge while trying to keep the affected from coming down the line to our boat. It was amazing how fast they could come down that metal wire line. But, I guess, when you didn’t give a fuck about burning your hand with friction or falling in, it was easier to move much faster. Cassie and Tim Tom were keeping them off, but there were several lines for them to come down. We were attached very close to the barge and eventually we might run out of ammo. Plus, we had to stop and reload. We couldn’t keep this up forever, and worse, I could already see another bridge coming, covered in affected. They seem to have noticed us, and there were probably a few more bridges until we were clear. If we can detach the barge then at least we can keep them from getting aboard that and crawling down the ropes at us, and we’ll be able to move much faster past the bridges so they’re less likely to land on us.

  I managed to loosen the line up some, giving them a longer distance to cross to us. But I still couldn’t figure out how to detach us. It looked like it was attached at the barge, so that was the only place to easily detach it. The shotgun wasn’t going to sever that thick steel line and it would be dangerous to do anyway. No, we were going to have to find some way to do it at this end, and soon.

  Then it hit me and I ran back into the wheelhouse.

  “Doctor, did you throw the welding in the bag?”

  “Well, yes, I think, yes.”

  “Hot dammit.”

  I went and grabbed it and took it to Tim Tom. He knew exactly what I was wanting. Better than that, he seemed to have a good idea of the best way to do it too.

  He started cutting as close to the mechanism as possible, to avoid the cable flaying after it broke and cutting one of us in half. And, he cut some off each at a time, so that once they started coming apart we wouldn’t have one or two cables on one side pulling us.

  “Doc, slow it down,” I yelled.

  “You sure?”

  “Just a bit.”

  We couldn’t just put on the brakes or the barge would hit us.

  Tim Tom kept working, first this side then that, until he was down to one cable still attached on each side, and he kept going back and forth, cutting some off one then the other.

  When one went he went back to work on the other as the boat started leaning to one side because of the pull of the barge.

  “Slow down a bit more.”

  The barge was getting closer. The affected on that side were already starting to jump at us to try to get to the boat, but not quite making it.

  I knew he wouldn’t know what I was saying but I couldn’t help but yell it, “come on Tim Tom, hurry up.”

  He got it as a few affected made it to the boat and we had to clear them off the deck with our .45s. As soon as the last cable snapped he turned to me and grinned, yelling, “hey Joe, Merry Fucking Christmas.”

  I grinned then turned to the front. “Doctor,” I yelled, “full speed. Full speed!”

  He cranked it up and we were off, and just in time. We were almost right under the other bridge now and the affected were leaping off at us.

  A few hit but died on impact, and we went through fast enough that not many made it. We were able to get up enough speed, these things weren’t exactly built for speed, to get under those last two bridges and then we were out at open sea.

  I took over.

  All clear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  From the journal of Jude Guerrero

  12/25/2012

  I suppose now was the time to tell them my plan. My plan that I had written down back when we first saw the boat. None of them had really talked about what we were going to do after we got the boat. Where we were going to go. I’m sure they all had their ideas, some island somewhere, maybe Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket or maybe even somewhere farther away. An island with at least some resources; shelter, food, fresh water. They would start talking about it soon, after the shock of being free wore off, and then I would have to tell them what we were actually doing.

  You see, after seeing the boat and reading my journal some, I realized there could, no, there probably are, people somewhere who were unaffected. I didn’t hold out much hope for most of civilization, the Phrase had probably been translated into most existing languages, had probably spread throughout the world. And those, like us, who were not affected because they were brain damaged, or deaf and blind, or for some other reason, they were probably dead. Let’s face it, if we hadn’t been able to get into an easy to secure ward for the criminally insane, with heavy gates, barred windows, locks, if we hadn’t had vans and someone who knew how to weld bars on the windows, if we hadn’t been on an island, if we hadn’t been so close to a state police station with guns and ammo and a place inside to hole up, if we hadn’t had a boat so close, and, honestly, if I hadn’t been an ex-Navy SEAL, and if we didn’t have these unique disabilities, then we would all be dead or affected.

  But, I remember before my accident, hearing about lost trib
es in the Amazon, tribes who had not yet come into contact with the rest of civilization. Tribes with unique, unknown languages. And there are other small pockets of people throughout the world who spoke old, almost dead languages. I had read about them when studying languages. Some of these people might actually survive, cut off from our dying, or rather dead, civilization. And maybe someday the affected would kill each other off or die. After all, they aren’t terribly bright. How long will they be able to live on their own? Maybe someday the affected will be gone and one or more of the small pockets of survivors might actually venture out into the dead world, the last surviving humans, and start to recreate, no, create a new civilization. But, what happens if they find our old writings and interpret our languages and eventually find the Phrase? Would it wipe them out too? Don’t they deserve a chance? A chance to start it all over.

  The Phrase, it is probably everywhere. People were writing it in blood. True, Twitter and Facebook and all that were dead and gone. But people probably wrote it down, graffitied it, put it in their diaries. It might even be in newspapers and books. And what happens when they find it? Don’t they deserve a chance to start over fresh, without the Phrase?

  You see, I may not remember what happened in that cell, but I did get a chance to write it down. Something happened to me, something in me changed, I can still feel it even if I don’t remember it. What are the chances that a brain damaged navy SEAL, with some knowledge of navy ships, would be in a well-protected forensic mental ward, and near enough to weapons and a boat? It’ no accident, you see. It’s no accident.

  I have a mission now. I have something that I MUST do. This tugboat can get us down to Annapolis, Virginia, a place I am familiar with because I spent a great deal of time there before my injury. A place with warships, battleships, cruiser, destroyers. Of course, with this small crew I can’t get one of those big ships going on its own, but with the tugboat, or some of the navy issue tugboats, I can pull one of the smaller cruisers. I can pull it up and down the coast and I can use the big .50 caliber guns on board to hit any fuel tanks, oil refineries, anything else that will blow up to set the cities on fire. And maybe we can even figure out how to use the cruise missiles, the tomahawks, to hit targets farther in.

  With no one coming out to try to stop us, we’ll have plenty of time to cruise right up to shore, take our time aiming and firing, and then we don’t even have to rush out. It’s not like the affected will be firing back at us. It could take us the rest of our lives, to go up and down the coast, slowly burning all the cities to the ground with our little tugboat dragging along a war ship. But we have the rest of our lives to do it, don’t we? We’ll have to find food and water along the way, and fuel. Maybe we can drag a few tankers and cruise ships out to sea, to an island somewhere. There are plenty near Virginia Beach, hell, there’s a whole long coast line that creates a harbor for hundreds of miles. We can blow up any bridges and the little bit of land that connects it to the mainland and easily secure the whole thing and anchor our ships in the harbor there along the coastline. Cruise ships will have a lot of food aboard, and we can figure out a way to get fuel from tankers into our boats.

  We can start at the top of the east coast, that’s where most of the cities are anyway, and work our way down; Bangor, Boston, New York, Providence. Maybe we’ll even make it down to the Gulf, maybe. I doubt we’ll make it all the way to the West Coast, but we’ll try. The Northeast will take a while, with that concentration of cities, but burning it all down will have the biggest effect. And, if we can get the missiles working I know there are some nuclear warheads on some of the ships in Ann Arbor, I know that for a fact. We can use them to clear out even larger swaths of civilization. The fallout is only dangerous for a while, people are living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it’s not like a reactor collapse or anything, it’s much less radioactive material. Though, I suppose some reactors will be collapsing, won’t they? It’s unavoidable.

  We just have to start the fires, and hope the flames will do the rest. Without anyone there to put out the fires they should spread easily. There’s plenty of fuel in a city, not just buildings but gas lines, chemical plants, cars full of gasoline, gas stations. Hell, New York is already on fire, we might find a lot of our work already done for us by the affected.

  I can’t believe I’m writing this, or even thinking this. To set fire to my own country, the country I love, the country I fought for and almost died for. But, is it really my country anymore with everyone dead or affected? I can’t believe I’m going to burn cities down, cities full of people, full of books. Jesus, God, I’m going to become a book burner. And all those people. What will my body count be? Worse than a dictator’s? But, are they really even people anymore? They’re barely more than animals. And chances are any people who are left are already dead, or soon will be, devoured by those cannibals. Everything about the world I knew and loved, gone, burned down, by me. But what choice do I have? I must destroy my own civilization, or at least as much as I can, so that humanity has at least a chance to live.

  Writing this is hard enough, but saying it out loud, trying to convince them that this is the only way, that will be so much harder.

  From the journal of Dr. Montgomery Gates

  12/25/2012

  I can’t, I just can’t believe the things I’m hearing, the things Jude is saying. To destroy everything, everything we are, as a people, as the human race. Not everything of course, but as much as possible. To kill all those people; will it be thousands, millions? I can’t believe I’m hearing this madness.

  Surely he is affected now or maybe he has gone mad after seeing so much death.

  Will the others listen to him, ilk or not? Should I listen to him? Is he right that we must start over?

  How can I watch established civilization burned to the ground? All the knowledge of centuries of progress gone?

  I cannot. I am out here with them, but alone.

  Maybe I could surprise him but can I take the other two under him myself?

  Will they fight me or side with him? After all, faceless killing is easy. It’s not like they will see the people they are destroying. But I’m not a soldier and he is.

  Would they listen to him otherwise?

  So how can I possibly foil his plans?

  I fear I cannot.

  Will every evil we inflict be for the greater good?

  Now I grasp I’d erred in favor of reason when reason has nothing to do with this.

  Do I participate in this macabre dance?

  Help to fire on cities full of people? Are they really people?

  Is Jude correct in that we are guided by a divine providence?

  Are we the last of humanity? The last vestige? Really?

  We, the guides of this mobile firestorm.

  Without Jude, would those two be able to continue this assault?

  I’m thinking of things I abhor, nedless to say. Murder. Mayhem.

  Entering the valley of the shadow of death as a deliverer instead of a receiver.

  Is this what route I must take?

  This unbearable genocide.

  What if I begged Jude, would he rethink this?

  Or can I figure out a way to change his mind?

  Could I prod him into waiting? Buy myself time?

  Or sabotage the navel vessel?

  To prevent the massacre. Stop the mass murder.

  But by killing what may be the last remaining real humans. Am I defending the affected? Am I… is it possible I am affected? It was just a short nap. But how could I be thinking of cold blooded murder if I’m not? Sure, I left the others to die in their cells, told Cassie and Eric that they were already affected. And that wasn’t a lie, not really. They were affected, even C5. But it was because I exposed them. But I was doing it to study The Phrase, to learn to fight it. To see the many ways it could be spread. To see if seeing it in pieces here and there would still affect someone. To see if hiding the phrase subliminally would affect someone. I did it for science
, for humanity.

  But, looking back at what I am writing, there is little doubt. I am affected. It is too late for me. And if you’ve read everything I’ve written so far, and if what I learned from testing on the others is accurate, it is too late for you too.

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