A Broken World (Book 3): Fractured Memories

by Lauck, Andrew

  “This, everything,” I gestured to her, to the room, “I’m scared that this could all be a fantasy, like I’m dreaming.” Her hand rubbed across my chest.

  “I promise this is real, Eric.” I reached up and placed my hand over hers, my thumb rubbing across her knuckles.

  “I know, but…”

  “But, what? Talk to me.”

  “What if I don’t deserve this? What if this leads to consequences that we can’t fix? I mean, we both know how dangerous emotions are out there. I guess…I guess I’m just scared to let myself feel again, because if I do then it’s real, and losing something that’s real would kill me.” She kissed the top of my hand, my lips. She lingered there for a moment, the scent of her hair intoxicating.

  “Eric, you’re a good man. You deserve to be happy, no matter what you think you’ve done. You said it yourself, that survival isn’t living. If you’re scared of what will happen, I say we make a promise to each other.” She sat up, bringing both of my hands into hers. “Eric, I promise to live, to start really enjoying life.”

  “Come on, Jessica,” I started to argue. “This just feels cheesy.” She gave me a look, sighing and setting my hands down. I quickly grabbed hers again, pulling her back to the bed and looking her in the eyes. “Alright. Jessica, I promise to live, and to never give up. Happy?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding and tearing up before kissing me again. I could feel her smile against my lips, feeling truly good. “Never give up,” she repeated in a hushed tone, as if saying it too loud would jinx the moment.

  My eyes opened, the memory of that night sending a spark of electricity through my body. Letting out a primal growl that seemed to shock even the fearless ferals, I strained every muscle in my arms to pull free and bash the ears of the one straddling me. Rolling, I pried its hands off of my throat and coughed out a breath despite its friends returning to attack.

  One last time, I thought to myself as I drew my Ka-Bar and picked up my Sig from the mud. With the cool rain dripping off my hair and pelting my face, I tapped into that killer instinct that I had forsaken. I wedged the magazine of the hanging M4 between the teeth of the feral beneath me, ducking under the sling to kick the rifle in and crack open the feral’s skull. As I did so, I sliced open the stomach of the left feral while using the pistol as a bludgeon, cracking against the kneecap of the one on the right. A coup de grace finished the feral on my left, stabbing my knife under its throat before twisting the blade loose and burying it in the eye of the right one.

  Blood flowed along the ground, splitting the air in waves, as I stepped across the open ground like death incarnate. The ferals surrounded me, attacking as one, and I was thrown to the ground once again, splashing mud and gore in a circle. Bringing myself to a low crouch, I slashed at the inside of their knees, severing tendons and rendering them unable to stand, while beating away others with cold steel. The latter was less effective, but it was enough to stall while my blade was busy carving artistic reds against the backdrop of lightning strikes.

  Rolling forward and staying low, I spotted the body of the fallen Ranger, a gathering of corpses piled around him, and knew he had gone down fighting. There was no time to mourn, though, as I was immediately set upon by another group of ferals, their attention torn between me and someone else. I felt the nails of one feral rake across my back, but I twisted my torso to stab through its calf, the tip of my knife exiting through the shin. The feral collapsed forward, allowing me to withdraw the Ka-Bar and slice open its throat.

  “Eric!” I heard Jessica yell, trying to locate the source of her voice, before the vehicles plowed through a length of fence, the chain link flying through the crowd, dicing a few ferals into small chunks. My eyes locked on her position, sitting in the driver’s seat of the Humvee, her M16 propped on the window to shoot, and I pushed myself up, the combination of exhaustion, injury, and drenched clothes beginning to weigh me down. Just a little farther.

  Slogging forward, Jessica did her best to clear a path, as well as the two soldiers still left. One of the S.E.A.L.S. was behind the wheel of the transport truck while the last Ranger stood on the back panel, alternating between helping me and keeping the ferals at bay below. I was thirty feet from the fence, barely staying upright, when a feral stepped in front of me, the gleam of the knife in its hand mirroring the sharp teeth in its smile. Blood dripped from the tip of that knife and I had to wonder if that was the one that tried to kill me earlier, the one that succeeded in slashing Gabriel open. In my delusional haze, I swear the face staring back at me was my own, had I continued down that path of darkness.

  “This is the face of a real monster, Eric,” it mocked, lifting its mouth in a sinister grin.

  Whether the visage was born of delusion, guilt, or mad fury, I charged at the feral. I saw its arm move, preparing to slice, and ducked, sliding between its legs. As I passed through the mud, I stabbed the Ka-Bar into its ankle, bringing the feral down. This one was still fresh, though, hungrier than the others, and reacted quickly, contorting itself around as I rose. I felt a sharp pain dig into my shoulder as cloth and flesh parted to steel, releasing a roar of emotions as I lost my grip on the handgun.

  I reached up and grabbed its wrist, pulling the feral forward and smacking it into the ground before me. Bringing my hand up, I felt around until I gripped the knife, gritting my teeth and ripping the blade free of my shoulder. The feral was already trying to rise, but I brought my elbow down, smashing its nose in and trapping it against the wet ground with my knee. The knife quickly followed where my elbow had been, plunging into the center of its face with little resistance.

  “There’s the Eric we know,” it seemed to laugh, and I knew it was in my head. Still, it caught me off guard and made me hesitate, which was a mistake. While I was busy with the knife-wielding feral, I felt others surround me and stopped hearing the sound of gunfire.

  Feeling hollow, I pulled the knife out of the feral’s face and tore my Ka-Bar free, rubbing my fingers against the hilts to have a solid hold. I turned around to find a dozen of the twisted husks of former humans staring at me, the hunger and desire causing them to twitch in anticipation. For the first time since facing my first one in the arena, I felt no chill of fear as I stared down the sadistic ferals.

  “You wanna meet a real monster…I’m right here,” I exhaled, as they came at me. The next two minutes were spent in a blind rage, blood and gore splashing across the canvas of the muddy ground like a Jackson Pollock painting. If killing were an art, those seconds of unleashing all of the pent-up frustration and anger became my Sistine Chapel, a masterpiece of destruction that threatened to consume my humanity until the last body dropped and I once more laid eyes on Jessica.

  The look on her face snapped me back from the brink, knowing how close I had come to truly becoming what my guilt had shown me in that feral, and I made a beeline for the Humvee, dropping the kitchen knife as I sprinted the last twenty feet. I reached the Humvee, barely entering the vehicle before yelling for Mills to punch it. She tried her best to push the pedal through the floor and, unlike those movies where the car doesn’t start in the worst possible situations, the vehicle lurched forward, the tires grinding over bodies as we hauled ass out of the area.

  Finding a second to breathe now that I was safely in the steel chassis, I felt around my hip and realized I had left my Sig behind, the handgun that had been with me through it all. I couldn’t but grunt a laugh at the symbolism as I keyed up the radio and contacted Harper.

  “Eric? What’s your status?”

  “Fucked, sir. The reactor was too far gone and we’ve lost some of the men. Douglas tried to stay back and buy us some time, but we need to evacuate this area ASAP.” He paused, considering my words for a moment, before coming back on.

  “Understood. Good job, son. I’ll relay that to the rest of the boys and we’ll fall back to Point Bravo.” Bravo was a pre-designated town well-outside of the nuclear blast radius, with Alpha being the reactor itself if everyth
ing had gone well.

  “See you there. Over and out.” I released the button and didn’t even hear Harper’s response, beginning to nod off until the radio squelched again.

  “Is anyone there? Over.” Gabriel’s voice filled the Humvee before he coughed uncontrollably. I snatched up the radio.

  “Gabriel? Where are you? We’ll come pick you up!”

  “I’m…I don’t know where the hell I am, mate. North of the reactor, I suppose, but you’re not picking me up.” Jessica grabbed my hand and pulled the radio toward her.

  “Gabriel, this is Jessica. Tell us where you are so we can save your English ass.” He laughed, which proved to be a bad idea as he fell back into a coughing fit.

  “It’s nice to hear your voice, too, love, but I’m afraid that won’t be happening. I wasn’t even planning to make the call, because I knew you two crazy kids would try some daring attempt at rescue, but unfortunately you won’t be enjoying my company on the return trip.” Pain crept into his voice.

  “Was that explosion yours?”

  “Yeah, not my best idea ever, but desperate times and all that, right?” The radio cut out for a full thirty seconds, coming back mid-sentence. “…and I caught a piece in the leg. Basically, I’m surprised I’m still breathing.”

  “Gabriel, please, don’t do this,” I pleaded, even though I knew it was all bullshit. At this point, I think I was just trying to vindicate myself of guilt.

  “Eric, there are a few things I wanted to say earlier that I didn’t. I feel as though this would be the best time to fix that mistake. Wouldn’t want to go with any regrets.” He choked out another laugh and I shook my head, knowing the man was insane. “First, I don’t want any of you to feel guilty for this, especially you, Eric, you stubborn bastard. I wanted to play the hero for once, and I drew the short straw. It had to happen to one of us eventually, so I’ll remember to save that seat. Second, continue to trust each other. I’m pulling for you two, because you make each other better and you always seem to have each other’s backs, so don’t screw it up. That trust is rare, especially these days.”

  “We won’t,” Jessica spoke through tears.

  “The last thing I want to say is that I was wrong, Eric. Killing is what we do, but you could never be the thing you hate, no matter how much you think so. Jessica and Katherine anchor you, and your fear drives you away from giving in completely. I thought I had no one left in this world after my brother died, but it turns out I found another. You’re a good man, Eric, and one I was proud to call family. Jessica was part of that family, too, so we would have never worked out. Good call on her part.” She laughed and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “The feeling is mutual, Gabriel.”

  “Don’t get all sentimental on me. I refuse to have one of those emotional death scenes, you know?” I nodded, forgetting that he wasn’t in the vehicle with us, and he continued. “One more thing, Eric. I need you to promise me two things.”

  “Anything.”

  “I need you to tell Christie what happened. I may have become affectionate with her over the last few months, and I’d hate to have her think I just stopped dropping by.” I let go of the call button and Jessica informed me that she had seen him in the radio room before she talked to Kat. He had probably been on the radio with Christie.

  “I’ll do it, but I wish you could tell her yourself.” He laughed half-heartedly.

  “So do I, mate, but we both know that’s not how it works. The other thing is I need you to promise me…” His voice softened as he was fading. “Promise me that you’ll take care of them. You’ve got a great family, with Katherine, Matthew, and Jessica. They’re all good people, the best of us, and you deserve to be happy with them. Promise me that you’ll love them and keep them safe, and if you wanted to throw in a harrowing tale of one badass Brit, you could. Maybe Gabriel won’t come off as such a dick in your next book.”

  “I promise, especially the part about you,” I replied, determined to keep it. “You’re a good man, too, though.” The radio was silent for a while.

  “Good or bad, I knew my story would end bloody, Eric. That’s the way it was always written, and I wasn’t about to be cheated out of the right ending. At least this way, I went out with a bang.” He coughed, his voice growing distant after another long pause. I could hear him struggling to inhale, knowing it wouldn’t be long now. “It’s beautiful, you know. The view. I’ve always wanted to just sit on a hill and watch the sunrise. It really is amazing.” In all of the commotion, I hadn’t even noticed the dull orange on the horizon as the sun began to emerge, the storm having stopped by that point.

  “Yeah, it is. I’m just sorry you’re alone, brother.”

  “We all die alone, Eric…That’s what makes our bonds in life so important.” I could see him smirking, because I knew he said that just to sound profound for the journal I would inevitably write, but he had earned it. “I think I’m going to rest for a while, if you don’t mind, but wake me when the sun is up, yeah?” Fear crept into his voice as he finally acknowledged that he was dying.

  “Yeah, Gabriel, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks,” he breathed, and the radio went dead.

  **********

  I took over driving for a while after that, letting Jessica work through her tears as I forced myself to postpone grief one last time. We made it to the evac point to find Harper’s convoy waiting, along with the dozen families and at least fifty more survivors hiding out in nearby buildings. All of those people were saved because of the sacrifices made at the reactor, and those men wouldn’t be forgotten. As a sort of funeral pyre, we stayed to watch the reactor melt down and send a mile-high signal of flame to memorialize their deaths before leaving.

  We made it back to Mississippi, bringing the survivors to safety, before taking refuge in the outpost walls. Jessica and I said our goodbyes to Harper and the other soldiers, letting them know we would return to San Antonio when we were ready. We stayed behind, letting ourselves mourn and recuperate, before finally venturing out past the walls.

  **********

  In the following days, we drove to Utah and passed on the news of Gabriel’s death. I had expected Christie to be a wreck, but she had already known somehow.

  “When we talked on the radio, Gabriel told me he had a bad feeling, like he wouldn’t be making it back, but I told him I hoped he was wrong. He told me goodbye, and I just knew that was the last time I would hear from him.” With that, Christie had broken into tears and Jessica had comforted her. Eventually, when she had calmed down and we told her everything that had happened at the reactor, she smiled, proud that Gabriel finally got to feel like the good man that he was.

  We stuck around to help Christie around the outpost however we could, being there two weeks later when Christie received the outpost-wide report that Captain Murray had succumbed to his illness. Jessica and I made the trip to Mississippi for his funeral, watching his casket lowered into the ground. He had fought the illness just long enough to see us win, a triumph that he could take to the grave. We said our condolences and shared a toast to celebrate Murray’s accomplishments before leaving.

  Three months later, I found myself attempting to clean up a little before seeing Kat Crouching at a riverbank outside of San Antonio, I stared intently at my reflection, the dark eyes of a monster looking back, before a drop of blood hit the water and the monster rippled away. Removing a clean napkin from my pocket, I dabbed it on the cut and folded my razor, finished shaving.

  “The look on your face worries me, since the last time I saw it we were about to get into some heavy shit. What’s on your mind?” Jessica asked from behind.

  “Do you really think it’s possible?” I replied without moving, my eyes fixed on what lay ahead. “That if we go back to civilization, to the city, that we’ll be able to forget all that we’ve done? What we’ve had to become?” She looked down for a moment before answering.

  “What we’ve done is survive, plain and simple.
We’ve made choices, hard choices, that no one should ever have to face, but we’ve made it this far because of those decisions. You ask if we’ll be able to forget.” She inhaled deeply. “Probably not, but we can try to put our past behind us and move forward, together.” I glanced over my shoulder, meeting her eyes.

  “There are people who will never know the violence we’ve done, or had done to us. They’ll never understand, can’t understand, the brutality and savagery that we’ve experienced and seen. We’ll have to fake smiles and talk to them as if we belong, but can we ever fit in? Pretend that we haven’t let ourselves become the very thing that robbed us of so much?”

  I waited for a response, but there wasn’t one. Running my hands through my hair, I exhaled sharply.

  “I can’t help but think of everyone we’ve lost and wonder what they would think if they could see us now. Have we let them down?”

  “They would understand.” Jessica knelt next to me and placed her hands on mine, the bruises gone and the cuts on my knuckles healed. “I think they would agree that, especially after doing what we’ve done, we deserve to be happy. Besides, I don’t think you’re entirely a lost cause.” I cocked my head.

  “Why not?” She shrugged.

  “Because, despite everything you seem to put on yourself, you’ve never given up on humanity, Eric.” I nodded solemnly and looked back at the water, our faces now replacing the monster in the dark swirl of red below. Lifting one eyebrow, I grinned mischievously.

  “You know, we’re dangerously close to having an emotional moment.” Jessica smiled and squeezed my hand.

  “Yeah, but, unlike you, I loved romantic movies.” She attempted to wink, which was not her strong suit, and both eyes closed, but it made me laugh. “Now,” she stood, “are you ready to go?” She held out her hand and I took it, rising to my feet.

  “I was born ready,” I replied in my best Connery accent, which wasn’t that great. She rolled her eyes.

  “You’re so annoying, you know that?”