“You’re not making sense,” Ashley complained.
“Oh honey, you need to start paying attention,” the brute said. “We’re talking big concepts here and you can’t see beyond the front of your nose. Hard to believe you’re such an important part of all this.”
That sparked Ashley’s attention.
“Me? What? What do you mean?”
“You still don’t get it, do you? Oh honey, you need to understand something. All of this,” he waved his arm-the one that did not have the knife to Jorgie’s throat-around the room but his motion referred to the nightmarish world in which they lived. “All of this, it’s on your shoulders.”
“What?” Ashley quivered.
The man finished, “You and Trevor here. You started this. You caused Armageddon.”
Ashley’s jaw dropped. Trevor’s eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, let that soak in real good. Let that sting for a bit,” the man smiled evilly.
Trevor tilted his head as the dots of understanding connected. “The other half of the equation. I was half, and Ashley was the other half. Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s good. Yeah, A plus B equals C. You had to be A and her as B. That’s how nature’s been planning it all along. Now you’re thinking. Think some more for me. Tell your honey what I am. Go ahead, Dick.”
Trevor licked his lips.
“You are a mistake.”
Surprisingly, George nodded in agreement.
“You were never meant to be. Your mom wasn’t the right mix with my dad.”
“Yeah! Yeah! Keep on going.”
“My dad was meant…was meant to be with my mom. The same way I was meant to be with Ashley.”
George said, “A genetic code, Rich! All through history. I’m not so sure about this whole ‘meant’ thing, but you two had the ingredients for the recipe for Jorgie here.”
Dad and mom looked to their son. Jorgie stood but his head wobbled side to side, his eyelids fluttered. The blow left him dazed and unaware of the conversation.
Ashley asked, “What about my boy?”
George said to her, “Let me bet you a dollar that you were starting to get sick and whatnot before all hell broke loose.”
Trevor remembered how Ashley felt nauseous at about the same time people started disappearing and monsters started creeping around in shadows. He remembered waiting for her on the porch with her father while Ashley got sick upstairs. At the time, he dismissed it to nerves. However, more than a year later when they pulled her out of a green gooey cocoon with the initial batch of ark-riders, they realized she carried a child.
The doctors calculated she conceived not long before disappearing, but it was hard to tell exactly when given that they had been having sex almost every night. Richard loved it at the time. He attributed Ashley’s eagerness to her nerves about the wedding, too.
Ashley unconvincingly insisted, “You are crazy.”
“Think about it, honey,” the man enjoyed horrifying her. As he did, a nasty edge built in his voice. “Think about when the creatures started appearing. If you go back and check them old newspaper clippings, you’ll see. Not The New York Times or something. Check out The National Enquirer. Shit like that. Sometimes the tabloids get it right. Hell, they were ahead of everyone this time around. They got the last, best scoop.”
Trevor said, “What does that have to do with anything? We were planning for our wedding, that’s all. I was a nobody.”
“We both were, bro, but we weren’t destined to stay that way, were we? You and Ashley here, like gasoline and fire, baby. Put the two of them together and you get a big boom. That boom was Armageddon.”
Trevor’s mind raced. Since the day he first met the Old Man in the woods, he wondered why he had been chosen. Why had the estate been prepared and stocked for him? Why did he receive the library of memories? Why could he communicate with dogs and why did they follow his every command as if they were an extension of his body?
He saw George-this warped man that claimed to be his half-brother-stare at him, savoring the torment that came with each revelation. Trevor also saw that whatever trauma had deformed and starved his body had also robbed George of his sanity.
“Wait…wait a second…” Ashley’s hand wavered in the air. “You’re saying…you’re saying that when I…when we…I got-”
“C’mon honey, spit it out. You can do it but you can’t say it? Maybe you should’ve been a little more shy when Richie here wanted to go poking around between those nice legs of yours.”
“Our son,” Trevor jumped in. “When we… when he was conceived…”
“Yeah! Now you got it! Bingo!”
“Wh-what?” Ashley stuttered. “Because I got pregnant..?”
“No, honey,” George explained. “Because you got pregnant with this thing…”
George shook JB by the back of the neck.
“Thing? That’s my son!” Trevor snarled.
George spat back, “Too bad I can’t just slit his throat and undo what happened to the world. No, I guess the cat is out of the bag on that one.”
Trevor said, “He was meant to be. You were the mistake. You don’t belong.”
His half-brother curled his lips like a coyote warning off a badger.
“Yeah, I was a mistake. Sort of the fly in the ointment; the monkey wrench in the works. But I was first.”
“And you failed. I saw your cave. You failed. What happened, did you actually think you were the one chosen for all this?”
“When it all started, I felt the strength in me,” he curled his free arm as if making a muscle. “I felt confident, sure of myself, nothing could stop me. This was all…all my time.”
“So you gathered survivors,” Trevor said. “You found yourself a quiet little mansion in the woods. Somewhere secluded.”
“Yeah…yeah,” George agreed. “I could see a picture in my mind, isn’t that funny? I found a place like that picture.”
Trevor told him, “It wasn’t quite right, was it? Not exactly like the picture in your mind.”
George shook his head. “No. Not exactly. But close enough.”
“You saw this place. You saw the place given to me. “
George clenched his teeth, “This should’ve been my place. Mistake or no, I was first. It should have been mine.”
“You didn’t have the right, what? Combination of genes? You were an offshoot. A second thought. The wrong mix. But you had a little, a taste of what I got, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” George conceded.
Trevor told him, “The people came to you when they saw your confidence. Hell, you felt like you could save the world, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” George said. “And I could hear the dogs in my head. I would call to them and they came running.”
Stone told him what he already knew: “But you only had half of it. When they came to you, something happened. It wasn’t right. Your thoughts in their head…the wrong frequency or something.”
George bit on his lip.
Trevor paused and considered the implication. All these years he believed the Old Man granted him the ability to communicate with the K9s. The entity had said, “Now, as to the second gift. Well you already got that one but you’re too shell-shocked to know it. When you get to the house that’s when you’ll realize that one. I guess I kind of lied when I said you don’t have no friends no more.”
Yes, Trevor thought as he stood across from George. I did already have it. At the house, after my parents were killed…I could hear the dogs then. I just thought I was going crazy or something. But they warned me to get going.
“You awake over there, brother?”
“All these years I thought the K9 thing was a gift,” Trevor finally spoke.
“It was,” George agreed. “It was a gift revealed in your genetic code; half coming from your dad, the other half from your mom. Like brown eyes and black hair, or maybe a pre-disposition to diabetes. All activated at th
e right time and the right place.”
“I thought it was a gift from the Old Man,” Stone mumbled to himself.
“The what?” George asked.
“Nothing,” Trevor said. “So the dogs came to you, but they went nuts. Started ripping each other apart.”
George confessed, “That’s right, yeah. Still, even without the dogs I knew I could do it. I knew I could be the savior. I just needed time; that was all.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Trevor corrected. “You weren’t meant to! You weren’t meant to be! It had to be me. I was the next link in the chain. A chain of genetics going back-what? — to the dawn of man? Some code mixed in the primordial soup.”
“It could’ve been me!”
“Maybe a pre-determined plan. Maybe just a fluke. But it had to be me. I was the only one who could be JB’s father.”
That’s why I couldn’t be with Nina. He could not say some things aloud.
George grumbled, “I had the people with me, they trusted me. I was a great leader. They’d do whatever I asked! They pledged their loyalty to me! They followed without question!”
Ashley snapped, “And you led them to what? Death?”
George’s face twisted like angry storm clouds on the verge of spawning a tornado. First, it looked like rage…then agony.
“I…didn’t…do…any…thing,” he flexed the fingers on his free hand as if trying to crush away the memories. “We hid…to gather our strength. We had food, guns, water.”
Trevor understood. He said, “You hid too long. They came to get you. They wiped you out like trapped rats. No one told you,” Trevor paused, considered, and said, “no one told you it was time to fight.”
George’s lip quivered. “There were so many. I never thought there could be so many. What you call Ghouls and Red Hands by the thousands, Hivvans, and more. Wave after wave.”
Trevor surmised, “Your own Battle of Five Armies. But you let them get to your front door step. You fought on their terms, not yours.”
“Yes,” George closed his fist and gnawed on a thumb knuckle. “I heard my people screaming…dying…ripped apart.”
“So you hid,” Stone knew the rest of the story. “You abandoned your people as they were slaughtered. You fled to the cave and you piled their bodies high to hide your hole. You stayed there and drew your pictures.”
“So…alone…” George mumbled.
Ashley broke in, “This has nothing to do with us! This has nothing to do with our son!”
George threw his eyes at her with anger but it was Trevor who spoke.
“Don’t bother, Ashley, you can’t reason with him. He came here to try and hurt me with all these revelations, to impress me that he could get by my dogs and guards, all to show he was one up on me because he figured a lot out while he was sitting in his cave. Beyond that, he doesn’t have a plan. Maybe some fantasy about killing me and taking my place, but even he’s not insane enough to really think that would work.”
George trembled, closed his eyes for a brief second, and then said, “I think I had one advantage you didn’t, little brother. Your pieces are put together like a puzzle, mine are all jumbled up and missing parts because I only had dad, not the right mom. From my mess, I was able to see the picture. Point is, sitting in my cave I had visions. Probably something in my genetic code slipping out because it was all afoul and whatnot. That’s how I put together the pieces. I dreamt everything. Our family line, our genes stretching back through time and around the world. You’ve got blood in your veins from every point on the compass.”
“A responsibility I never wanted,” Trevor said. “I can’t run from it and it’s made me do some things I regret. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just another monster that came to this world five years ago with the rest of them.”
“Oh yes, yes, you are,” George whispered. “I’ve seen it, Trevor. I’ve seen the monster inside you because it’s inside me, too. You think nature was going to choose some knight in shining armor? This isn’t a kid’s storybook. There’s messy work to be done. For every Sir Lancelot in your blood, there’s a Genghis Kahn. You were built for this, and they used a lot of parts from the dark side of the workshop. Me? Well, I didn’t get all the right parts.”
Trevor asked, “So what do we do now? What brilliant plan have you got… brother?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? Where do we go from here?”
Ashley said, “Please, let my son go.”
George pulled the knife away from Jorgie…then quickly returned the blade to his throat. Ashley gasped but no blood came, not yet.
“I was thinking,” George smiled. “Maybe I can’t be the man who saves the world. But maybe I can be the man who makes sure the world ends. Maybe I can be a bigger monster than even you, Trevor. I just have to slice this tender little throat and maybe that will do it. Of course, I’ll have to carve up the two of you just to make sure.”
A gentle smash sounded in the room, as if a glass knocked over. Trevor saw the balcony curtains flutter and a tiny canister roll on the floor.
Suddenly the room erupted in a blinding flash of light. A high-pitched tone blocked all sound from Trevor’s ears. He could smell the smoke of the detonation.
His eyes blurred. Figures burst into the room; the sharp report of gunfire. He felt a pair of hands on his shoulders throw him to the ground then the weight of a body on his back.
“Tango down! Tango down!”
More commotion, voices shouting.
Trevor blinked his eyes rapidly. They slowly cleared but his ears continued to ring.
Lights snapped on in the office. He heard Ashley crying.
Then he heard the voice that was most important to him.
“Fa-Father? I don’t feel so good.”
“Easy, easy does it,” came Gordon Knox’s voice as Trevor tried to stand.
Knox spoke to someone else: “Status?”
“Clear, Sir.”
Gordon Knox stood, releasing Trevor from his protective tackle.
Trevor stumbled to his feet.
“Jorgie? JB where are you?”
Gordon led Trevor by the arm because his vision remained fuzzy. Trevor realized I.S. agents filled the room. Someone must have heard the commotion in his office and alerted the standby tactical team.
Jorgie sat on the floor behind the desk with his hands on his ears saying, “I can’t hear anything.”
“Son…are you okay?”
“He’s okay,” the voice of Benjamin Trump said. “Got a good bump on the head, though.”
Trevor turned to the blurry figure who sounded like his father-in-law. He put a hand on the older man’s shoulder and said, “It was you? You alerted I.S.?”
“Haven’t been sleeping much, not with what happened in the den the other day. I heard something going on, snuck up the steps and peeked in the door. Instead of rushing in and getting us all killed, I figured I’d call in the cavalry.”
“Good job,” Trevor said as his eyes cleared a little more. Then he knelt to the ground and hugged his son.
Ashley staggered over, nearly crawling on the floor and calling for, “JB!”
The boy reacted to his mother’s voice. “Mommy? Mommy,” he cried softly and jumped as fast as he could into her arms.
Grandpa came over and hugged both his daughter and grandson.
“Sir,” one of the Internal Security agents examined the prone form of the intruder. “He’s still alive, barely.”
Trevor staggered to George Junior who lay on his back. He did not look so scary with all the lights on. More sad than anything else.
Blood flowed from a bullet wound to his skull. His eyes fluttered as his life drained.
“George, tell me,” Trevor spoke softly. “You said something about my son being special. What was it George? What do you know that I don’t?”
“Hey Richie…don’t…don’t stop…don’t stop fighting. That was my…my mistake.”
“My son, George. What about my son?”
“Maybe…maybe I’ll meet our father…Rich…I’d like that.”
19. Divination
The billboard blared, “Keep Yelling Kids! They’ll Stop!”
Stonewall cast an eye at that tribute to commercialism but noted, wryly, that yes, he and his men would, indeed, stop.
2 nd Mechanized Division approached the South Carolina border on Interstate 95. Infantry in a collection of ‘uniforms’ ranging from army fatigues to football team t-shirts marched in uneven order along the shoulders of what had once been the north bound and south bound lanes of the highway, forming four distinct lines. The men and women of the division carried gear in backpacks, duffel bags, purses, shopping bags, and wheeled suitcases making them resemble less an army and more a ragtag band of grubby hitchhikers.
Their weapons consisted of hunting rifles, shotguns, and some military-grade carbines; a variety of arms requiring a variety of bullets, a situation that created constant supply challenges.
Cavalry units formed a loose picket line in the distance ahead while crawling APCs, Humvees, and civilian-model vehicles clogged the middle of the road.
General Stonewall McAllister trotted along on horseback with Captain Kristy Kaufman as well as his bugler-freckle-faced Benny Duda-at his side and a perfectly blue sky above. The terrain ahead appeared flat and featureless; except for gaudy billboards promoting the “South of the Border” tourist stop.
Kaufman finished the most recent intelligence report: “There are no signs that the Hivvans have sent reinforcements from Columbia to support the supply depot at Dillon. That means the garrison there is on their own.”
“I am not happy, Captain. Not at all.”
“Sir? I would think this would be good news.”
“What? Yes, the lack of reinforcement is good-if not surprising-news. However, I am focused on the bad news today. We have lost cohesion in our division,” he pointed forward to the unknown ahead. “The front of our column is but seven miles from the objective.” He then turned in his saddle and pointed one gloved hand to the north, behind them. “Yet our column stretches some ten miles. We will arrive at Dillon piecemeal.”
“I understand, General. I suppose those screamer attacks managed to scatter us.”
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