by Billy Farmer
The warm, rancid breath I felt on my face and inhaled through my nostrils jolted me back to my senses. The Gray crouched between my spread legs, much closer to the goods than was remotely comfortable. His gray face was covered in dried blood, which instantly reminded me of the lunch lady back at the house. I threw up, most of which ran out of my mouth, down my face, and into my ear. The Gray sniffed and snorted wildly.
Besides his face being the normal gray, it also drooped badly on one side, maybe from a stroke or whatever was causing them to go crazy. His face also seemed to be locked in an almost sorrowful expression, which in no way resembled his demeanor towards me. He grabbed air with his hands, just above me: once, twice, and then over and over again. I used my elbows to crawl backward a few feet, but he sensed my movement and followed. I could see the silhouettes of at least two of the ones I had lured away from the duplex, but for whatever reason, they didn't join the fray. I moved again, with the same result. I tried to get up, but he was too close.
If I scooted backwards, he moved forwards. If I tried to get up, his probing hands would feel me. I’d have to wait for the right moment. Luckily, that moment didn’t take long to arrive. The baby began to cry, loudly.
The Gray jerked his head around towards the sound of the screaming infant. I took advantage of my opening. I quickly scooted far enough back that I could maneuver my rifle around for a shot. I aimed at his head, and just as he began to turn his gaze back towards me, I fired. His head exploded above me in a mist of crimson. He lay crumpled between my legs, a small hole just above his left eye, blood flowing from the wound causing the white snow to turn red.
I was on my knees in an instant, trying to regain my footing. “Fuck!” I slipped and fell. I yelled out loud, adrenaline coursing through my body. I reached for the rifle that had fallen to the ground when I slipped and used it as a crutch to help me regain my footing. I was dizzy, but at least upright. I moved quickly towards the sound of the crying baby.
I heard two quick shots, followed by two thuds. Two dead Grays lay crumpled on the ground, still twitching. Kelley was nowhere in sight. I followed the screaming baby, as did every other damn Gray in the vicinity. I bowled over a Gray from behind. I honed in on the wailing baby. Kelley was just in front of me. I yelled for her to follow me. She adjusted her course and I quickly caught up to her.
“Miley’s,” I said quickly, struggling for breaths. At that point, it didn’t matter how much noise we made, because the baby had already done the damage. They were coming at us in every direction. It also didn’t matter in which direction we went because every Gray in a half-mile radius was converging on us.
There were pounding footsteps a few yards behind me. I turned and fired the rifle, clipping the lead Gray in the leg. He cried out in pain as he tumbled in the snow, after losing the use of his nicked leg. Lucky shot to the knee cap, I thought. I slung the rifle over my shoulder and ran as fast as I could for the next thirty or so yards.
I skidded to a stop within a few feet of what used to be the entrance to Miley's office. No! The entire door frame had been pulled out of the structure, leaving a double-door sized opening in the building. The frame lay on the ground, the top-center part bent outward in a sharp V-shape, a chain still attached.
“Fuck,” I yelled. There was no one there. Miley’s had been broken into. With the doors gone, it wouldn’t be safe inside. All of this was for nothing – there was no place to go now. And my friends… “Fuck!” I repeated. Between the wailing baby and my bellowing curse words, we might’ve well been circus barkers with bullhorns. Come one come all; come pummel your baby and washed up former drill superintendent.
“Where’s your boss?” Kelley asked, her voice tinged with worry. Maybe she wasn’t a robot, after all.
“I don’t know.” The Grays were quickly surrounding us. “We’re going to have to figure something out quickly.”
The lead element was maybe twenty yards and closing. We might be able to kill a few of them, but that would pull in some of the dumber ones who were struggling to find us. Still, we were going to have to do something. “How many bullets do you have?” I asked. No response. “Get ready to run… and shoot if necessary, but not until then,” I said.
“William!” I heard the sweetest voice in the world. It was Tish. “Get in here, now!”
The baby screamed at the top of her little lungs. Kelley fired two quick shots. The grays fell to the ground, one of which slid to within a foot of me. Kelley was turned and moving towards Tish when I took out the next closest two. Of course, I needed four shots to do it. The pounding feet were close, but it was now or never. I had to run. Just as I was about to be overtaken, I saw a figure walk outside the entrance. There was a pause, then a deafening barrage of shots fired towards the Grays behind me. I was going to make it.
Titouan stepped back in side, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and grabbed the lamp off the ground. Holy shit, Titouan saved me.
Titouan and Tish led the way forward. Several bodies lay dead on the floor. “Watch the bodies,” Titouan said. “And fucking hurry!”
I heard Kelley say something as she stepped over one of them, but I didn’t think anything of it. There were five or six of them that I could see. It was hard to see in the relative darkness, but they didn’t look like Grays.
Once at the top of the stairs, with Grays in the building and on our heels, Tish pulled a thick metal door across the entrance, effectively closing off the stairwell to the second floor. The sound of several Grays slamming against it brought me great joy. Fuckers.
Kelley stood like a statue. Her left hand balled into a fist, while the other white-knuckled the pistol. She was oblivious to everything, including her bawling child. The baby was still in her parka, squirming as you would expect a baby to do when it wasn't happy.
“Are you okay, Kelley?” I asked.
“Let’s take this to the third floor. There’s heat up there,” Tish said, before Kelley had a chance to respond or ignore as usual.
I stood on wobbly legs. I was hurting all over so badly that I barely made it up the single flight of stairs to the third floor. Warmth. There was heat… and electricity. I heard Tish close another metal door behind me. The clang of it locking was one of the greatest sounds I'd heard in a long time.
The first thing I noticed on the third floor was that all the windows were covered with a dark covering, giving the appearance of complete darkness to anyone trying to look in from the outside. Did I mention that there were heat and electricity? I was confused by that, but I sure as hell was happy about it.
Avery came out of one of the conference rooms. If memory serves me correctly, it was the same one Miley demoted me in. He didn’t even bother taking me into his office. Ah, nice memories to go with my current state of terror and astonishment.
Avery looked me up and down, no expression on his face, not even a blink of an eye, before saying, “Miley wants to see you after you get cleaned up. He will not talk to any of us about what is going on. Only you. And, I might add, you look terrible."
“Good to see you, too, bud…But why won’t he talk…?” I just realized I saw everyone but Sam. “Where the hell is Sam?” I asked, afraid I’d get an answer I didn’t want to hear.
“He’s in the conference room, resting,” Tish said.
I exhaled. “I was afraid for a second.”
“He’s fine. Right now, you just need to clean up, and then find out what Miley knows,” Tish said.
“He hasn’t said a word to you guys?”
A flash of anger flitted across her face. “He’s acting weird. He knows something.”
“Okay,” I said, leaving it at that.
I walked over and peaked into the door in the conference room. Sam seemed to be napping. People sometimes tell you things they think you need to hear. I just wanted to make sure what Tish said wasn’t an example of that.
***
I unslung my backpack and took my parka off and placed it on the restroom floor, a
long with my bloody boots and gloves. It only took a short glance in the mirror to see what a mess I was. I couldn’t tell if my tri-colored face consisting of purple, red, and black was from one gigantic bruise or a bunch of smaller ones. I had the gash I received from the corner of the table back at the patch, and to top things off, my left eye was nearly swollen shut. I could also see that the screwdriver wound had stopped bleeding, but damn it was sore. I looked like shit.
I stayed in the bathroom for what seemed like forever, basking in the wonder that was warm water. I soaked a rag in hot water, draped it over my face, and left it there until it cooled off, and repeated the process several times as I rested on the toilet. It's amazing how much the little things mean after not having them for a short period of time.
I was met outside the bathroom door by Titouan and Avery. I dropped my gear by the wall, and before I could ask why the long faces, Titouan said, “That woman you picked up. She was covered in the same mucus the lady back in the house was.”
We had both fought with the Grays. It made sense that both of us would be covered with the stuff. “Yeah, my coat is covered with it. So what?”
Avery gave me a skeptical look. “Perhaps.”
“Guys, I don’t have time for this…” The hallway was empty. “Where are Kelley and Tish?”
Titouan pointed to one of the small supply rooms. “Locked in there,” he said.
“If you two have something on your minds, why don’t you to just cut to it. I’m too damn sore and exhausted to be playing games with you two.”
“Sam asked me to check on Tish, but the door was locked. Sounded like they were arguing in there, but they hushed up when I called to them, acted like nothing was wrong,” Titouan said.
“Well, maybe nothing was wrong. I have to talk to Miley. I don’t have time for this,” I said.
Titouan flashed me a look that I recognized from the old Titouan. “Tell him I said hello.”
“I’d rather not talk to him at all, or at least not all cloak and dagger like he apparently wants. I’ll gladly trade you places.”
Titouan shook his head and walked away. That was the Titouan I knew and loved.
I heard a door open down the hall. Tish exited the room and walked over to where Avery and I stood. “Remember, Miley wanted to talk to you.”
I nodded, and then said, “Everything okay with Kelley and baby?”
“Yeah, I was just checking over her and the baby.” She gave Avery a quick glance before settling her gaze on me. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering, that’s all. The baby was in the cold a long time.”
“She’ll be okay.”
I was relieved to hear that. “Good.”
“How is Miley?”
Tish smirked. “Drunk.”
***
Miley sat at his desk, looking much more haggard than I’d ever seen him. “Mr. Miley,” I said and nodded hello. Miley always preferred to be called Mr. Miley. I'm pretty sure his friends, if he had any, were kept at the same arms-length decorum. He waved me over to have a seat across from him at his oversized desk.
“Hello, William.”
There was a long and awkward pause where neither of us said anything. He took several long drafts from a bottle I recognized. A bottle I couldn’t believe he was drinking from. He must’ve noticed me looking at it.
“When the world goes to shit, you can drink the good stuff. You want a swig?”
“I stopped drinking a while back.”
“Prohibition is so cliché, William. Drink with me.”
“What’s going on here, Mr. Miley?”
He pounded the gaudy decanter on the desk. “I’m getting drunker. That’s what’s going on.”
“In Barrow?”
“Do you know this was my brother’s favorite? He was much more sophisticated and refined than I’ll ever be. Take this bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII Cognac. Seven thousand dollars I’m holding right here. Even the long name is pretentious as hell. Makes no sense, really, but it makes me think of him. You remember him, right?”
“Yes… I liked your brother a great deal. It was a tragedy what happened to him.”
“Too great of a loss to bear, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry about your brother, but there’s some shit going on. What the hell do you know?”
“I don’t know what’s happening…” He took another drink. “Well, I might know some of what’s happening. I just don’t know exactly how.”
“What does that mean?”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter if I tell you or not. What are you going to do, call the FBI or CIA?” He laughed and took yet another drink.
“I don’t understand.”
“Did you happen to see the front door to my office?”
“Hard to miss. It’s gone.”
“Exactly. I was attacked.”
“The Grays did that?”
“Grays?” he asked, beginning to laugh.
“Yeah, that’s what we’re calling them, I guess.”
“I prefer monsters.”
“Please, Mr. Miley, can you tell me what you know.”
He took a giant mouthful of the cognac; so much so that it trickled out of the corner of his mouth and onto his shirt and desk. He wiped his face and then pointed to a weapon that I hadn’t noticed in the dimly lit room. I wasn’t an expert on such things, but I believed it was an AR-15. I remember the magazine more than the actual rifle. It was one of the high capacity jobs that were popular with the wingnuts who shot up public places. Anyway, it was one of the drum-type magazines – maybe a hundred rounds. “No, the damn Grays, as you call them, didn’t pull the door out of the frame. No, the people who did that were fully thinking, non-monster son of a bitches. I took care of them. Except one of them, anyway.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I fucked up, William. I got caught up in the wrong things…”
I knew he was drunk, but he was making no sense whatsoever. “I’m exhausted, Mr. Miley.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m trying to explain to you what the fuck is going on. So how about listening to me.”
I nodded.
“Everything was going my way. I had a friendly administration – one I helped get elected, I might add,” he said, his head tilting heavy to one side as he spoke. “I just needed money. Capital, you know. I mean the bastards were going to open huge swaths of the Arctic, and I can’t take advantage of it. I’m tapped out. I have no liquidity, at all. That’s why I sold East Texas. I needed fucking money!”
I was getting ready to say something when he put his hand up, letting me know to be quiet. He then stood up, turned the bottle up, and nearly fell backward in the process. He walked over to the rifle and slung it over his shoulder. Deciding that standing wasn’t a good idea, he fell back down in his chair, swigged another long drink before continuing.
"That’s why I closed down and sold almost everything that was onshore. The Arctic was the way to the future. I was ahead of all the big boys. I just needed the money. I have contacts in Russia and places worse than Russia. Lots of them. I called in a favor or two, and I was pointed to a group of investors who could help. They offered a deal I couldn’t turn down.”
All I could muster was, “And the deal was?”
He began to laugh. “All I had to do was hold five containers at the Patch for a few weeks. I’d get loans at rates men like me dream of, and money – a lot of money -- funneled in through back channels to discrete accounts on a certain small, Pacific island. It was perfect. I was going to ram a gigantic cock right up BP, Exxon, and any other fucker who got in my way. I was going to be on top for once.”
I knew exactly what containers he was talking about. "So the people who guarded those containers weren't government contractors? I guess you just figured us for morons, then?"
"I suppose since we're being honest here, that you're right. We all have to eat a little shit sometimes. I lied to you, and you knew better
to question things."
“Jesus, Miley.”
“I don’t remember you ever calling me just Miley.”
“All kinds of firsts, I guess.”
“To be fair, I didn’t know what was in the containers, either. Just like you, I knew better to ask.”
“Bullshit. There’s a big damn difference between us.”
“I suppose you’re right. The result is the same, though. We both got fucked.”
“So, who attacked you?”
“The people I made the deal with, I’m assuming. Tie up all loose ends. If things were as successful elsewhere as they were here, I’m not sure why it mattered. I guess that’s just how they play.”
I stood up. It dawned on me that things were much worse than I ever imagined. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My mind raced. Thoughts spun around like they were in a centrifuge, only none separated into anything remotely discernible.
“What the hell do we do?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m leaving Barrow as soon as possible. I already have my things packed and ready to go. I knew you would show up, assuming nothing happened to you, and I wanted to do as best by you as I could… as best as I could before I left. There are supplies in the small conference room. I don’t have many weapons, but I gave you what I could spare. Whether you believe it or not…” He paused for a long moment. I thought maybe he was preparing another lie for consumption. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Does it really matter?”
“Probably not…” His hard features softened. With sadness in his voice I hadn’t heard since his brother died, he continued. “My girls are in Anchorage. I don’t know if they’re alive or not. I sent them messaged, but they never replied.”
“I hope they’re okay.”
Ignoring what I just said, he handed me a piece of paper. “I want to do this for you. Memorize it because I’m going to burn it before I leave. You were always my favorite, William. I saw you, whether you believe it or not, as almost a son that I never had. I fucked up… and I know this won’t fix things, but it’s all I can do.”
