by Marlin Grail
Still Myself, Still Surviving:
Part III: The Retaliation
By: Marlin Grail
Copyright © 2017 by Marlin Grail
All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from author. The author assumes no liability for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Credits:
(Landfill Background) © Katkov—Depositphotos.com
(Standing Man) © STYLEPICS—Depositphotos.com
(Black Abstract Clouds) © Tihon6—Depositphotos.com
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
Chapter LIII
Chapter LIV
Chapter LV
Chapter LVI
Chapter LVII
Chapter LVIII
Chapter LIX
Chapter LX
Chapter LXI
Chapter LXII
Chapter LXIII
Chapter LXIV
Chapter LXV
Chapter LXVI
Chapter LXVII
Chapter LXVIII
Chapter LXIX
Chapter LXX
Chapter LXXI
Chapter LXXII
Chapter LXXIII
Chapter LXXV
Chapter LXXVI
Chapter LXXVII
Epilogue
About Author
“Life’s a chance, but there are no wrong outcomes. Just some where we question what we could’ve done differently to not have gotten where we get.”
-Gary Nillon
“It becomes harder to forget you when I purposefully want to.”
-Ashton Demall
“I’ve got nothing unique to tell about my tragedy. I’m sure I would be seen as a copy of a copy to someone else in my position.”
-Lissie Boray
“I’ve changed exponentially in one day’s worth than I have for decades.”
-Janice Edna
“I’m really starting to miss those good ‘ol days, when it was just a group, against undead, and hazes… Maybe I even miss it when it was just me I had to worry about.”
-Will Lorcilis
Prologue
(Will)
If he were me right now, what would he do?
I watch Ashton. Watch as he repetitively swivels and adjusts his position on the ground. His foot’s bloody injury visibly seeps into the gauze Lissie and I wrapped around it. It’s been failing him every second we stay here.
Not only the aid itself is failing him, but so am I.
For the sake of Ashton’s well-being, I have to get him, and the rest of them, to safety.
Yes, our living quarters does save us the trouble from what’s currently outside, what with the crushed entrance. Undead, and hazes are out there, and I’m certain staying is the most rational choice we’re dealt. But with that being said, rationality doesn’t always mean the best choice. Anxiety is just bouncing off these walls, and it’s getting worse.
I silently uphold every avenue of choice, because I’m certain Gary would find something uniquely helpful in every possible option. The outside morning sun illuminates a cleverly-angled ray straight down into my vision.
I’ve never truly looked at this fiery ball in the sky when I fully could.
Now, only the slightest bit of it is powerful enough to get through the small crevice besides the large metal roof. This metal practically gave a knockout punch to our building, but thankfully it’s not a total wreckage.
It still did enough damage to make us imprisoned though. I wish to gaze upon that fiery ball in its entirety. I think we all do.
Which means we must think of getting out.
“Lissie, I think it will be best if we start examining a way out,” I bring up.
She sits on the opposite wall, every minute appearing to make new expressions to herself. I can see she’s on a roller coaster. She’s altering between appearing for a certain way for us and for herself. One minute, she looks noble, willing to begin locking away her worries for her love. But the next minute, she snatches the key to that lock, not wanting to give up the desire to worry the hell out of him.
Finally, after battling with herself, and after I call out to her name another time, she looks at me. “Do you think he knows? About what’s happened here?”
“I don’t know. He might. Even if he did, I’m not so sure there’d be much he could do about it. Whoever runs this operation, they’d likely be wise enough to not break the news to him while he’s on ‘duty’. If that person’s still alive, however.”
She turns her head back to a particular spot on the floor she’s become acquainted with staring at. It’s as if she’s gearing herself to handle a demise.
I’m not so sure if she’s thinking it being Gary or it being us.
She visibly stresses, giving a little rocking motion to her crisscrossed legs, as she roughly massages the back of her neck.
I’ve got to do something. I hate seeing this stress. But I hate stress I’m feeling by seeing it around me. I have to make the choice that gives everyone a better benefit than just remaining here, and doing nothing. We did something a few hours ago, which was to hide out the horde. That can’t be the “something” we do forever.
“Janice, what do you think?” I ask softly.
Once again, I feel like my voice is just only heard by me. I start to believe I have to be curt, mostly to experiment with what tone they’re most familiar with in a leader.
If I have to lead, then I might as well train to be a complete copy of Gary’s leadership. Why try and make them have to know a difference if one way works perfectly for them?
My tone becomes less of my own, and more like a mimicry of Gary’s voice.
It certainly catches her attention.
“Oh, Will, you don’t have to try so hard.”
Janice tilts her head towards me, then sways her gaze back and forth between me and the quiet girl by the wall. “I don’t know if Lissie would appreciate it.”
Ashton’s eyes are closed, at least I assume, since an eyelid is partially exposing his egg-white iris. His breathing lifts his stomach much higher than I recollect he ever had it raised while on his back.
At the moment, since he can’t stand, nor give a stand on what’s best for him, I need to make that stand.
I get my stiff legs up and planted to not sit back down. “Guys, I think we need to move. Again, Lissie, if you don’t mind, I’d like assistance.”
Left and right, I skim my eyes up at the intricate rubble. It’s a vicious sight of structural mesh that everyone would say should always been forbidden to see. We’re the only ones who seem to challenge what is baffling to even come to existence.
“Lissie,” I announce louder, since I’m not hearing any movement of the rubber material on her boots.
It’s as if she’s shell-shocked, even though that’s not viable to have in any of us right now.
Though I don’t want a visible sign of frustration to leave my body, the breath I exhale through my nostrils has failed that secrecy. “Fine. But, if you don’t mind, I’ll get started.”
Gary wouldn’t be okay with doing nothing. He’d want us to keep moving.
Much of what I grab with my palms is losing sensitivity to the irritating bits of concrete that’s sticking to the tiny liquid bits on my hands.
The plates of the roof I find the easiest to move do appear to be the most dangerous. Risk is felt not only by me, but also by Janice.
“Will, just, just leave it be, all right?”
“Well, then, what am I supposed to do?” My sharp tone makes her gently arch back, but that’s not saying she’s backing out from the argument.
“What you should be doing is keeping us calm by you being calm.”
“I’m calm! I’m cool!” The voice I use on her creates a blush on my face.
I’ve never raised my voice to Janice. She didn’t deserve it. Which means I don’t deserve the pleasure of being calm.
Rather than her keep this mirroring of tension deflecting back and forth, she lowers her head straight to Ashton’s forehead, giving a little peck to it.
I deflate, but I won’t sit back down. Instead, I head over to the corner farthest away from the two of them.
Ashton’s not causing any of this uneasiness growing in here. Him not getting any better, though, is in fact agitating, but only because I truly am worried about his condition.
It’s a silent game it seems we’re playing. At least, the whole three of us are playing.
I’m personally waiting for a new tone to take over the conversation, whether it’s Lissie or Janice. I’m hoping at least one of them comes to agree with me. However, I eventually begin feeling the soreness on my feet from standing nonstop, and pacing from one side of the quarters to the other.
Janice’s sympathetic, but unshakable tone finally comes through. “Remember, Will, keep us calm by you staying calm. You want to talk and behave like Gary? Then that’s where to begin.”
She’s not wrong, but I don’t want to be wrong either.
“It’s because we’ve been on the move a lot.”
This statement is powerful enough to pull her focus. With my shaking head articulating bafflement, I continue. It isn’t to manipulate, or to convince them.
Dare I say, it’s coming straight from the heart?
“Since we lost the RV, we’ve not had a break like this. Even when we found shelter, it didn’t stay ours for that long. We’ve all done things I’m sure we regret since then. I’m glad that’s not our lives anymore, but I’ve gotten used to moving forward. Even when backtracking to our group, I was still moving forward.”
I glance quickly at her, a little afraid how she’ll absorb this knowledge. Turns out Lissie also has learned as well, for her eyes are quite watchful of me.
Neither of them are ready to provide input, so I give my own feedback in the fabricated voice of how my dead girlfriend would give me input.
“Yeah, I get it now. I need to be on the same level as the rest of you are. So when we’re all ready, we’ll succeed.”
It’s all I feel that’s left for me to say.
And, ending on my melancholy attitude because of a brighter and brand new viewpoint on our situation, I rest against the back wall behind me, slowly letting it scratch my itchy back which I’ve ignored for some time.
To take care of others, I have to take care of myself.
I fiddle with the buttons on my shirt pockets. The light from outside blinds my ability to see how it looks out there. Because of it, I have to listen in on the world.
I hear the loud drooling which I could only imagine is dripping and salivating from undead directly on the opposite side of our quarters. The whole lot of them sound like a poor and off-pitch choir group. They’re all drunks letting out their best singing. It’s cringing if concentrated on hard enough, but it’s a quiet and simple fix when just likening it to a hum from a loud and relentless dryer.
They eventually mellow out the ears.
Then, a punch to my ear drums is the answer to no longer hearing what we have to hear. We get a chance to rightfully turn ourselves to new events.
“Is anyone alive in there?” a voice calls out from the crevice.
“Yes! Yes!” I answer excitedly. I stride from my wall to that one across in a matter of seconds before this male voice can respond back. “We’re all alive in here! One of us is injured though!”
His figure shades and shields my sight of the sun, but I’m starting to feel his officer uniform is the light I really needed to see. “Get to the far end! All of you!” he says, as more of an advisement versus an order.
“What do you plan to do?”
Within the little gap of space available, the damaged ledge of the wall is purposed as a balancing beam—a beam for a rectangular brick. One that has a label with the main words stating “C4”.
Shit! A dramatic proposal, but it most definitely should do the job right.
It’s at this point where he waits solely for me to disappear from his vision, but I tell him to wait until he receives a signal from me. “Guys, help me with Ashton!”
Ashton’s eyes split open, just like his mouth does when we begin shifting his upper body weight to have an easier hold of as we drag him away.
Janice pauses our effort. “Are you okay, Ashton?”
“Don’t stop! Keep going!” he growls deep in his throat.
The seconds grind longer as we try to keep his broken foot from losing its still position.
Surely, I can do better for you.
Though we do well to move him to the back of our quarters, his pain tolerance is significantly less than at the moment. So is my tolerance to accepting him in this kind of pain.
“The gauze isn’t helping enough, guys! We need to splint his foot!”
They’re speechless to argue it, and can’t find a reason to keep going. Fortunately, they won’t have to. “Lissie, get the bag that was next to you!”
I go get the other bag as well. My hustle is hurried by the officer outside of our wall when he finally isn’t amenable for patience anymore.
Well, we don’t even know what it looks like out there. No doubt, however, undead and hazes have to be shrouding his window of opportunity to save us.
We all return, huddled and prepared for what happens next. I slide my hands to where I know there was a handgun, one that had to have been glossed over when they searched our bags they brought with us.
I hope anyways.
I’m proven wrong.
My hand isn’t feeling or seeing where the gun was supposed to be, which was within a chips bag, one whose wrap was securely closed at its opening. I placed the gun there before we left our shelter. A future shit-show was what I feared, in the slight but very real possibility I lost my visible gun, or had to.
&n
bsp; Dammit! So much for that idea. They did a great security check when we really would’ve appreciated them being terrible at it.
Ashton’s pain causes him to visibly panic. “Take deep breaths,” I remind him.
“You try having a bleeding and broken foot!” he remarks, biting, but meant as his way of humor to this serious problem.
I have to be okay that this is something out of my power. None of us can further heal Ashton.
I’ll do my best regardless. “Listen, this explosion’s gonna be loud! Just try and suck in your—”
The “pluow!” sends a shiver throughout my body, and I find I’m the one who ducks and covers because of it. A little ricochet of concrete flings towards my arm, which I saw last second—spinning in the air like the rude Frisbee it was.
The smoke seems to not stick around long to proudly represent what it was responsible for.
It should be proud.
“You guys got an opening!” the officer shouts.
He motions his hand at us, as if he were trying to reel us to him with magic at his fingertips.
“Wait!” I articulate, more as a plea.
Janice remains jolted to every movement anyone of us has. I decide to be the one with the most deliberate movement to earn her flighty attention.
“Go out first.”
“I need to be here for Ashton—”
“Janice, you have to get out first! All due respect, you’re the oldest!”
She scrunches the half of her mouth up to her nose, it seeming a nervous twitch she does when something is right, but she can’t immediately agree.
“Don’t worry,” Lissie finally shares her own thoughts to our current circumstance. “We’ll all be right behind you.”
Janice lets her shoulders roll back up to a healthy posture, and slowly lets her hands slip off of Ashton’s body. It’s almost a necessity that I put a hand on her back to let her know it will be all right, but she stands up just before I can make hesitant contact with her.
The officer continues to encourage that we begin making our way to him. He motivates like a gruff father would for his baby to begin taking their first steps. “Get a leg on!”
Janice reaches upward, both of her arms extending so he can assist in pulling her towards him. His groaning breaths he takes as he gets her up makes him look almost peeved. He does sound as though he’s not entirely happy to help us. I guess he’s to be considered a soldier, and not every soldier is pleased with everything they have to do.