by Marlin Grail
Holcomb’s eyebrow raises up, not from disbelief in me though. I can tell that’s not why. He fizzes liquid in his mouth in a high-pitched noise as he mulls over what I’ve said. “That’s weird, man.”
Ernie scratch away at the back of his head. His internal detonator of anger has been defused by Holcomb’s calmer choice of interaction. “All right, then. Gary, what might you have seen that could potentially help us?”
They both eye me down, and I’m more than ready to share what I witnessed. Before that I recognize our team needs to come first and foremost. “We should get Jefald, and continue moving. I’ll share it then.”
Both of them angle their head back in shock. But it’s only something the two of them understand this time around. I watch their facial expressions represent curiosity, and reserved appreciation, to my change in tone, attitude, and overall empathy for all of them.
It reminds me of what our dynamics were before the haze encounter—which was very much real.
Though what happened on the external hasn’t, or hopefully, won’t happen, the changes I felt internally still feels how I felt after my catharsis with Ernie. My armor was damaged, but my ability to deal with it has been polished. Permanently.
“Come on,” I say, continuing to notice their impressiveness with me. Before heading down those same stairs I thought I’d never walk again, I turn to face them. As I twist my head, I catch sight of the faded flower wall paint I remember getting saddened by.
I don’t get disrupted by it anymore.
The hallucination, whatever that was, though had its horrific moments, still seemed to emulate hope to an extent. The hope that things can move on for me.
“Ernie, Holcomb. Thank you both for being patient with me. In my hallucinating world, and in this real one.”
I’m not surprised when they look at each other. Both men force bland expressions so as to not give little smirks. Apparently, they don’t want to seem gloating about things they’ve said and encouraged, and didn’t really or haven’t, regarding me.
By the time we reach the outside, I instinctively see where Jefald’s tirelessly clapping and flapping arms keep the haze trailing on him. He doesn’t need to receive any signal from us to readily juke his way past the grounded storm cloud.
The moment he reunites with us is the moment he’s got to spew his own stress on me. Except this time it’s with a fist to my face.
“That’s for not doing what we told you!”
Ernie and Holcomb harshly pull him back from me, preemptively ensuring there’s distance between us. I understand why—they think I’ll strike back at Jefald.
I only stretch my open jaw from side to side, deliberately blinking a few times to lighten up the emotional reception on my part. “That was a good one.”
He risked his life to help me. I should be grateful he doesn’t want to do more to me.
“Gary, are you good?” Ernie asks worriedly.
“Yeah…. Thanks, Jefald.” My response may have come out with a sarcastic undertone to their ears, but I concrete it enough with a genuine handshake for Jefald.
As expected, he glares at me with uncertainty. But because I stand there patiently, he ends up shaking my hand. “As long as you don’t do something like that again.”
“I won’t.”
The haze thinks it’s closing in on us, but when we start heading straight ahead further down the street, it won’t affect us in any way ever again. Not much time goes by, but not much new distance is measured either, considering I recognize where Ernie’s silently guiding us towards.
The cemetery.
My desire to bring up what I recall Ernie telling us there has me palpitate out a strung-out call of his name.
If it’s true, then I did see a premonition. Am I ready for that kind of exposure to a new frontier of my immunity?
“What is it?”
He grows further concerned when I groan out in frustration. I’m going to let out my “psychic intuition” spread to real life. They might accept what I’ll have to say, or might not, but anything that can help us should be at least given a chance.
You might be able to stop certain things from happening, Gary.
“You’re going to tell us, at the big tree further down in the cemetery, that you need help coming up with ideas to find Casey.”
In the back of my mind, I prepare myself with being verbally attacked and being considered arrogant, even though Ernie told me he’d like any information I have that could be useful.
In my mind, the reason he hasn’t asked me anything yet about what I saw is because he was waiting until we got to the tree. I hope the future can be altered by just one event, such as that migration to that particular tree.
“That’s right,” Ernie sounds shocked. “What did we come to agreement on?”
“We speculated, but it was confirmed that the Capitol of Cheyenne is where Casey and his unit are at.”
As usual, he curls his fingers as he’s thinking and assessing a situation. I find myself doing my own nervous quirk of gently tapping the ground with the heel of my foot. I know time could be limited for us, especially considering only minutes might be left before the distant gunfire I recall.
Trey…I can help save you.
“We should hurry,” I urge.
Ernie doesn’t deny he’s ready to bolt too. He takes point to lead us down the road heading right of the cemetery.
Initially, I want to bring up the route we took to get very close to the Capitol, one that’s now not more than a few blocks away. However, my irrational fears help take us down a slightly different way.
Like now, the hallucination version of us were trying to take a route that would lead us to the Capitol, but away from the direct firefight happening around it. Plus, I’m afraid to enter the same building we did in the hallucination, especially because of Alex.
We end up marching through to a new block of buildings, and a new valley surrounds us. Our latest car bumper we’ve hugged alongside—like all the others we’ve bounced off from—makes this street look nothing unique to us. However, upon again resorting to Jefald’s keen eye, looking above this car, his quick draw of his hand to clamp hard to the metal body, and gasp that gives his appalled voice a whole new sound to me.
It has Ernie and Holcomb shine their flashlights straight ahead, and then above.
“Oh my god,” Ernie heavily breathes out.
It’s not what is hard to see, but it’s what is hard to erase from memory.
That makes him, including myself, take several steps backward. Bodies hang on metallic chains tied to windows, the looseness of the wind letting them slightly sway left and right. Unmistakably, these people are not in civilian clothing, but in gear.
It’s gear eerily similar to Ernie’s, Holcomb’s, and Jefald’s.
“This must be where they went.” Ernie shudders.
“Who?” I ask him.
Ernie has to look at me directly, apparently to divert his mind away from this grizzly sight of hanging officers. They’re in the two-digit mark, 11 of them. He can’t seem to talk and take this all in at the same time.
“T-they were the ones who arrived here, shortly before we did, Gary. The same day you and your people arrived, they left the base…they came here.”
Chapter X
I trip on making a composed response, one where I can freely express confusion. But, for the sake of Ernie’s visible dismay, along with his two comrades, I only present sympathy and hurt alongside with them.
“It was those damn hostiles at the train depot!” Holcomb angrily assumes.
“You know what?” Jefald inputs, “It could’ve been those ‘C. followers’ Gary was telling us about. I could see Clouse encouraging something like this. I mean, he—”
“Enough!” Ernie orders viciously. “Enough. These people were good soldiers. Good people all together. We know that, and that’s enough. We need to keep being reminded of why we’re here, why I believe they were also here. We’re he
re to eliminate C.F.O.G. That’s why we’re going to not stop now.”
He adjusts his rifle in both hands, aimed downward, but ready to stay frosty from here on out.
“Let’s push through. Quietly pay your respects while passing.”
I can sense his stomping is different from the stomping of before. Before, it vibrated with the precision in being a soldier. Now, it’s a personal march, ready for a full collision at our enemy for personal revenge.
Holcomb and Jefald also follow suit with their leader. I maintain a distance from them so they can each have their own time to bathe in their fury. I stick right as the tail end to our diamond formation.
I observe the dark masses to both our sides, having to remind myself to not look too intensively, in the circumstance the three of them see me as intrusive.
Then, the unthinkable unleashes.
Only about midway through this street, and the sounds of those chains begin to rattle. Hard. They sound as though they’re being violently shaken up and down.
People! The living’s doing this!
“Opposition!” Holcomb shouts this, sounding like he knows where, who, to aim at, but he himself is unaware.
All of us lift up our guns. We try to balance our vision to both sides of this street, to ensure gunners won’t catch us by deadly surprise. The shaking of those chains don’t let up.
The sheer disrespect to these officer’s bodies enrages Ernie. He lets bullets ding and break a few of the windows where these chains are fixated on. He immediately regrets his angry moments when a few of those bodies drop to the ground as a result.
This is where his mistake becomes more than moral.
“Hazes are bursting out!” I shout.
How? They weren’t undead, they were just bodies. How could hazes have been in them still?
This terrible charade of synchronized shaking won’t lose its symbiotic movements with the bodies still high up on the buildings. Then, every rattling chain slips down fast and harsh to the ground, cracking the bodies enough for hazes to freely spew out.
Though I realize I’m safe from them, no matter how many of these cluster together, I instantly devote myself to the safety of Ernie, Holcomb, and Jefald.
They are my top priority.
Conveniently, there is a manhole cover just a few feet ahead, but the little time it would take to reach it could be meaningless. The hole might as well be a million miles away if a haze beats us to the finish line first. Every one of the hazes begin to encircle us, but so does my forceful rush at the three men to hurry towards that lid.
My back’s exposed to the front haze, but it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve grabbed hold of the lid’s tiny circular holes with my thumbs.
“In! Now!”
I feel that haze closest in the front halt and trickle its free-flowing streaks all around my back, like I’m a barrier between it and my dispatch. One by one, Ernie, Holcomb, and Jefald rush down the wall ladder. They’re in such a scramble they don’t care if they land their rear side to the top of the one’s head below them.
As for me, I wait until enough of a gap between us is made between me and the rest of them, so I can assure the hazes only try and stick onto me.
It seems my immunity aids in our survival again, but now I worry what it will inflict on me, due to my exposure to them, even as I seal us from the surface.
Will I hallucinate again? I didn’t think before I had actually gone in the haze, but I did. Because I consciously let myself be touched by them…am I seeing things rightfully so right now?
Is what’s happening at the moment real?
If I receive another slap by Ernie, then that’s when I’ll ask for an apology to his sharpness…
If he and the others would be alive to slap me, that is.
Chapter XI
“Everyone okay?” The anger in Ernie’s tone from what happened up top is now overridden by concern.
“Check,” Jefald replies.
“Check too,” Holcomb says calmly.
“Gary, what about you?”
There is too much of a disturbance surrounding me to answer back. A small amount of haze is swirling around my waist, like infinite moons circling a planet at once.
“Guys, stay back!” I warn in crisp fear because of their closeness to it.
A little haze can still do unfixable damage to a person. I saw it once months ago. A man’s arm got caught up in the haze, and the arm came back not his own. He shrieked in pain, assuming it would make the other man with him shriek too. They showed sympathy, but…from a distance.
All I could witness was that man’s arm get chopped off, as a means to preserve his life. I’ve seen numerous things this whole apocalypse.
These three don’t need to be put alongside with those “things”.
Thinking back to that time, when the very sight of a haze sent chills up and down my entire body, has me fully comprehend how chilling it’d be to have one of these three need amputation.
Holcomb is the one who tries me on how I’ll respond.
He reaches for me and I snap, “Don’t try and touch me!”
“I’ll tug at you from above the—”
“It doesn’t matter! It could zip right up to make contact with your hand!”
They are stumped with how to proactively help get this haze off of me. It is in a ring around my lower torso, my own ring like Saturn, except it’s not fascinating to our eyes.
It’s repulsive and troublesome.
“Well, what are we supposed to do?” Jefald’s temper sounds defeated, as if there’s no point in asking the question.
“We can try and circle around Gary. Maybe its vision is looking behind him,” Ernie considers as a possibility.
Holcomb and Jefald don’t go against his thought of action becoming the course of action, but they remain unnerved by following his silent order. Both of them carefully inch their way to my sides. Their eyes are trained intensively to this haze.
On one hand, the purpose is to prod this “animal” to go after one of them, yet they’re reluctant to set it off by finding its front.
“You go behind Gary, Holcomb.” Jefald makes it sound more as a dare than anything else.
“You really gonna do that?” Holcomb scrunches his lips to raise and touch the bottom of his nose as he asks.
“Guys, one of you do it.” I tense up my neck muscles to emphasize time is of the essence.
Holcomb flings spite to Jefald with a head shake and hiss of a “T” syllable sound. But he makes his walk around me. I imagine Jefald has challenged Holcomb’s bravery, thus why Holcomb’s doing this as well.
Ernie has his flashlight locked straight onto the haze. The light illuminates fine detail of its polluting particles dance a charade as it floats round and round my body.
“Skipping back!” Holcomb tenses in his throat so it deepens.
He finishes his vocally exclamation at the moment his jittery movement launches him behind me in a hop. Since all three of them have triangulated around me and the haze at this point, we figure Holcomb’s throttle in evasion would somehow trigger the haze to come undone and go chase after one of them.
There’s no budge or change in its attachment from me.
“Dammit!” Ernie growls.
As important as it is, I have to say we’re wasting time. A battle could erupt any moment now.
Before my tongue can shape together my thoughts about the situation, Ernie blocks it with a straight forward side-to-side motion of his wrist in disagreement.
“Hell no. We’re not leaving you behind.”
“You won’t be,” I correct, “but you shouldn’t be near me. Clearly, this haze won’t detach, and I can’t be okay if one of you end up bumping into me. Into it. So, make a protective gap between me and you all.”
I insist this change of direction with our squad without hesitation. Standing here only freezes me in my point of view.
Then, his eyes begin to reflect a light differently from how it was
when he disagreed vehemently. He approves.
“Fine. You don’t fall behind, though.”
I nod, a reminder to him that I’m fully in this mission as he, Holcomb, and Jefald are. Jefald turns ahead, giving one nod of respect for my decision before turning back entirely.
I then cling onto the sewer wall. There’s a moistness I feel to my back, but it’s nothing compared to the chill I feel seeing Holcomb have to quickly scamper past me.
It’s wrong to have to do this, but I believe it’s surely the give and take of having immunity on my part. I give people an edge, but I can’t be near them. I’m sure this problem would’ve came up at some point with me being around my people.
I close my eyes for a brief moment to myself, keeping in mind I can’t disappear too far from the three of them. This becomes clear when Ernie shouts at me from a distance, gesturing with a head cock to let me know they’re heading down a new corridor through this puzzle of a sewer system.
“My life’s changed. I’m also making change,” I whisper to myself, ending this splinter of a revelation.
My flashlight bounces its ways through the glossy reflection of dirty sewage water below my feet. A little cringe happens when a tiny droplet falls on my face.
We make our distance down these narrow walkways and tunnel cylinders, with only the single mandatory eyeball check about what’s forward, and, occasionally, regarding anything that could magically appear from behind me.
A brisk moment of my growing worries about becoming a permanent haze carrier flares up. I don’t have to think hard about it, for the haze wrapped around my waist is difficult to forget. I chuckle to myself. It’s my refusal to seriously take in the fact I have a haze circling around my hip region.
I’m can’t believe this truth, even though it’s shoved in my face… Well, I might as well shove my insensible hands to touch it. Playing with it might lessen my anxiety of it.
I let my left hand go down to the haze—fingers bended and spread out as it dives deep into its form. There’s not reaction on its behalf as I let my fingers play around in its streaks. The amorphous quality in it reminds me loosely of a liquid thicker than water, but you can’t feel this liquid at all. It floats with just enough predictability to its shape, retaining even while I vigorously try to swish and swash at its nonexistent mass.