by Marlin Grail
I lack the foresight that my light jogging still needs eye coordination, especially in this pitch black. One of my legs goes out from under me. It’s an easy catch of it to the ground, but everything gets knocked out of momentum for me. I can’t catch my flashlight, and it falls into the puddle I slipped on.
The light irradiates an enigmatic solid. The solid mass has deep tears in the softness of its complexion. The flesh is dead. I can make all of this out without having to shine directly at it myself.
It’s a figure right above me… And it looks like… Lissie?
Oh no… Not again…
Chapter XII
I immediately slam my eyes closed. My shoulders squish to the sides of my neck, as though I’m flinching and waiting for her to attack. In my right mind, I recognize this trickery wants me to believe it’s really true.
That she’s really here. Behind me.
But the insanity of that possibility being real drives me up the wall. I shrill in my head that she’s not really behind me, but…I know her distinct features. The puddled water didn’t make me think it was her.
I saw her face…and it’s not right to see her as an undead.
It isn’t enough to have just caught glimpse of her face. That already stings me in my heart, but then…she calls out to me.
“Gary. My flame,” she says in her softest, most alluring voice I’m prone to kneeling at almost every time she speaks in it.
Lissie… No. No, you’re not real.
“Gary, why won’t you look at me?” She sounds her wounded self when falling victim to gloominess, tormenting me with every syllable of her words.
I clench my chest violently, grunting to hold in the pain, so I don’t fuel whatever this thing is. This nightmare.
It’s not her. Just like Alex, you have to be an illusion. You’re…not real.
This figment of my imagination gets not only faced, but tested, when I grab her undead face with both of my hands. My thumbs land precisely on her eyes, so as to not make mine begin weeping by seeing them, then I push deep.
My teeth are exposed to the environment. The ruthless cold air in this sewer blows on them. This is the coldness I need in order to fit how I need to feel right now.
Cold and hollow inside. Ruthless.
My nails begin to feel the inner sides of the eyelids. But it’s not done yet.
I have to beat this nightmare. I have to not show fear.
I eventually begin roaring at the pace it takes me to feel my drilling make progress, centimeter after centimeter, drop after drop that squirts red on the knuckles, until, finally, its undead moan of losing life breathes on me before falling fast and hard.
It wasn’t Lissie. It deserved what it got.
“This isn’t real.” I whisper to myself, alone again, with no sign of Ernie or the others.
How do I break out of this hallucination?
Then, as I frantically turn in all directions around me, looking down doesn’t even get considered as a thought. At least not until I hear this infernal laugh come from below. I pretend to only register that it looks very identical to Lissie.
It’s still not her though.
“YOU FOOL!” it says aloud, with another maniacal laugh following.
“Who the hell are you!”
I don’t know why I’ve said it. It could be anything at this point, but, considering Claw’s laughter in my previous hallucination…this isn’t just nature in hazes. This is intentionally being done towards me.
The gaping holes in its eyes don’t prevent the body from rising its upper half off the ground, disturbingly knowing where to look to find me.
“I WILL BE SEEING YOU SOON!”
There’s a throbbing sensation in my head, as though I have a wicked headache. It pulses in and out the instant I try anything punishing towards this demonically-layered voice.
Then, the sensation of drowning occurs.
“Splash!”
The sound floods and defiles my ears. There’s only blackness, but I instantly put together I’m feeling water. I scramble to figure out what’s happened in the time I’ve just missed from where I was to where I’m at now.
This is like a crude transition from one scene to the next within a movie. You ask so many questions. Why it transitioned like that? What did you miss?
For my life, I’m unwilling to let it go unanswered.
Ernie’s voice, funneled by his hand curled around his mouth, booms my name from above me.
This sewage water’s elevation isn’t high enough to sink my whole body down, but I’m feeling at my lowest point and feel utterly filthy.
I’m in sewage water, and I have to welcome it. If it means I’m free from that hallucination.
With my whole lower body soaked completely, me laid out in my dirty bath, I quickly fling my hands over to my jeans.
I don’t feel any more gusts from the haze.
“Gary! Are you okay?” Ernie asks.
“Yeah! I…I think I’m good.”
He doesn’t further his concern with how the fall to the ground below the walkway was. My condition is noticed when I struggle to get up, due to stiffness in my back. I feel my vertebrae ache all up and down my spine. The fall was most of reason for my back’s pain, but the hurt’s sticking on me more from how my sword’s sheath braced me.
It was the contact point, and it must’ve dinged my back more that way. Ernie guides me with his flashlight to the ladder handles fixed on the wall up to his and the others’ level.
“Hurry! I don’t know if that thing will try to cling to you again!”
When I grow agitated with fighting my body to get up, I do an alternative method of moving. I turn onto my stomach so that I’m facing the ground below me, and gain my stability on all fours. I swash the kiddie-pool of sewage water in crisp, little tsunamis all the way until the rusting iron is in my reach.
I happen to catch wind of my odor. It’s gotten worse, certainly from the water that was full of mysterious foulness. The stench is drying up on my actual skin. Jefald holds his nose and squints his eyes almost to a close when I hit the last step.
“Oh, you reek!"
I practically gloss over his comment, though I don’t usually accept rude remarks like that without input. The main information I want to know is what happened during my missing time episode.
“Ernie, what happened to me?”
“The haze had hovered up to your face. You just stood here, mindless. We quickly figured having you fall over the railing into the water would help.”
I comb my hair back with my fingers. At the same time, Ernie takes on helping dry me up by offering his long-sleeved uniform to wipe my face on. When I swipe left and right, blinking deliberately to clean my eyes and better see him, I can tell he looks wary of me, as though he’s preparing himself for thinking I’ll grow aggrieved by their methods.
“Thanks for the save, guys.”
I really appreciate their quick thinking. I’m not angry from it, and this is a curveball to what I think they expected.
My clothes shrivel up my skin tightly, the coldness texturizing my skin with goosebumps all over, but I’ll have to ignore how unsanitary they’ve become. They are my only pair, so I work with them. I do a rudimentary way of drying, rubbing and twisting out the excess liquid until I feel I can make due.
“You good?” Holcomb checks in.
“I’m good. Thanks, guys, for coming back to help me.”
All said and done, we have to pursue our main purpose.
We need to return to the surface. “Ernie, do we know—”
My question gets an answer, but not to this matter. It’s to another.
The sound of commotion comes above us. It’s the commotion of plummeting foot stomps, then the roaring of various voices, muffled words, but their intensity won’t be masked by our several vertical feet apart.
It’s beginning…
Chapter XIII
I thought we’d all be on the same page. I hurry up on
this new ladder that Ernie found us, which will head us to the surface again, but I’m slowed down when Jefald scowls at my need to prevent crisis.
“They aren’t on your side any more, Gary. They’ve all probably been told you’re a fugitive—if you say Clouse’s very manipulative.”
I let one hand dangle off of the ladder, and twist myself to where I still face him and the others. My defense for the C. followers certainly wants to shift from zero to 100 in irritation, especially as the three with me become statues from indecisiveness.
I should’ve been ready for this argument. They barely asked anything about C.’s followers the entirety of this mission. They haven’t necessarily cared about them. This isn’t fair for those people. I have to help.
“Casey and his unit could be in danger of losing more if they fight them,” I persist without reluctance. “You said it yourself. They’re low on numbers. I don’t know much regarding their weaponry or skill. I certainly believe we should all be on the same side. We need to all be against Claw, if it means no more people will die after his death.”
Jefald turns away, a raised head to Ernie’s taller figure. “Ernie? You told me you thought of who those officers’ murderers were?”
Ernie angles a side-stare to him, likely feeling he’s been cornered by Jefald, with no choice but to share his thought with me now as well.
“What? You think they had something to do with it?” I ask.
He pauses and then, “You have to admit, Gary, the numerous buildings with shaking chains, how close in distance we’ve seem to have been with those up top right now?”
I let my steam out through my nostrils, out of respect for his, Jefald’s, and I’d imagine also Holcomb’s sensitivity to this subject. I won’t budge with my wanting, though, because…I surely know one set of people up there wouldn’t do something that terrible.
Trey and his people wouldn’t. Trey would go against Claw on something that cruel and disrespectful to the dead. They bury their enemies! If that doesn’t show who they are, then I must be quite easy to influence by malevolent beings. But I saw good in Trey the first time he discovered me and Ashton.
“Well, why don’t we find out?” My very accented lift to a question sets Jefald off to pace in full irritation. I push my point in more regardless of how he feels. “I’ll be recognized. I can convince them to—”
“You’re not in your right mind, dude!” he spouts, with wide-spread arms to also express his disapproval. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think any of us are comfortable with you steering anything. You’ve been getting warped up here.” Jefald pokes the side of his head with his straight and strict index finger.
This is where I erect my own finger point at him. My unrelenting eyes stare at his, though only can I see the white parts of them, since his pupils aren’t even comfortable looking at me directly. “I’m telling you, we can stop a firefight. In my earlier hallucination, this is where Claw and O. diverted, trying to sneak around the Capitol, because Casey and his unit were distracted by the blaze of the battle.”
Holcomb, with his hand spinning like a rotor, loose in finger formation, is ample in power, especially as he words his own grasping of my reason. “You think we’ll manage to catch Claw and O. off-guard when they see their followers not follow on their purpose to attack Casey.”
“We can stop this. We can end this. Here. Now.” I curl my free hand into a fist.
I imagine I look like a primate sunk in his base instincts, his instincts to look after people. People who need freeing.
The people at the setup might be free, but these people above reminds me I’m not thoroughly done with it all. I won’t emotionally pardon them with just Claw’s and O.’s deaths.
Though Holcomb’s been the closest to have been persuaded, none of them take a step up to the ladder.
Very well. This I must do on my own.
“You guys can stay down here, find another manhole to come out of. I’m heading up.”
“Gary, no,” Ernie keeps me in place by his hand around my calf.
It’s clear to me they want me okay, but not just because they appreciate my abilities. They do care about me. But, I can’t let that stop me.
“Don’t worry about me, Ernie,” I insist.
“Gary,” His words following are hard to make out, since the yelling above ups in volume, blocking out most of what I see his mouth making, at least until his last words. “We’re friends, now.”
My hair tries to slide to my face, which I clear away, and this also clears up my murkiness on how I feel about that. “I’m sorry, but I can’t make any more friends… Not now… Just keep going.”
I’m polite about it, but remaining firm and distant. I shake his hand off my calf. This is that silent message I give for him, Jefald, and Holcomb to not disrupt my commitment to go up top.
When my face is but a few inches away from the lid, the lid’s holes letting me hear clarity from the surface, I take one last look below me. All three of them stand, forcing themselves to be emotionless, whether looking friendly, like Holcomb and Ernie, or looking mean, like Jefald.
I slip my fingers in the holes, then raise it off the ground. The sounds of its solid clanking resonate loudly on road pavement.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” I yell in surrender, my hands in the air once free from having the lid pushed out of my way. “It’s me! It’s me, Gary!”
Dark-blue tinted skies don’t blind me from pinpointing their figures. The sight of this color has that look like it could either be sunrise or sundown.
It’s getting close to morning.
“Gary?”
I recognize Trey’s voice. It stands out from the crowd, all whose faces I know, even if I’ve not spoken or interacted with every single one of them.
“Trey!” I exclaim in relief.
Trey sticks out both of his arms to gesture everyone to not open fire. All of their attention is there on me relentlessly however.
I mustn’t set any of them off.
“Gary, what the hell? How’d you get—”
“Please tell me none of you were responsible for those hanging people!” This just flows out, with me questioning every word for how startling it was.
I suppose I can’t stop myself from caring about Ernie, Jefald, and Holcomb. We are friends, and my concern for the truth isn’t denying it.
“What? What bodies?”
“Bodies from chains? That wasn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?
I relax in posture, drop my shoulders, and then close my eyes with relief. Now, I hope they’ve remained by the ladder. “Guys, you can come up,” I say, without really looking to clarify they are there to even hear it.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I hear feet heading up.
Yes. We’re one leap forward in forming an alliance. No one, except C.F.O.G., has to die.
Before even getting standing, Ernie projects in his most masculine dictating throat, “Where is your leader? Where’s his sidekick?”
These questions do tense up most of the C. followers, the clattering of gun’s safety’s and hammers cocking happening as their reaction. Trey turns around to halt them from shooting. In turn, I ensure Ernie, Holcomb, and Jefald don’t enter any battle depictions with their own stances, guns, or uneasy expressions.
“You see, guys? They didn’t do that!” I exclaim as a jolt of soothing them.
“Gary,” Trey interjects, “where have you—”
“It’s a long story with such little time.”
“We have time.” His eyes zoom past my shoulder, which I look behind to look at the same thing.
No sign of Casey or his unit is coming out of the Capitol.
“Is any of the infrastructure’s enemy really in there?” he asks me this with intuitive knowledge that something’s not right.
I’ve inscribed it in my eyes. He sees that.
All of them then get briefed by me, combined with the aid of Ernie’s words, about
C.F.O.G., Casey, and overall, the need to team up. His facial skin, usually never showing stretch of wrinkles to express disenchanted emotion, starts to fold heavily on his forehead from utter confusion.
A girl to his left, I think Silvia’s her name, lowers the weapon she had trained on me. It was originally held by her hip. By the end of our explanation, her rifle dangles down by her leg.
All of them are speechless, but I await Trey’s response.
I was right where he is in state of mind. I couldn’t believe this, even when I got told introduced to a supernatural phantom and a man who looked like he just came back from a business meeting. Only difference now is he has limited time to process this.
“Where’s C., Trey?” I urge.
“H-he and O. are going down the left side of the Capitol—”
“TAKE COVER!” Jefald yells, then embellishes in a war cry.
Trey’s eyes enlarge to bulbous spheres, which can’t pop open any more than they currently are. Without looking, I trust my feeling that one more microsecond spent trying to understand what’s happening is better worth spent dropping to the ground several feet in a squat.
“Gary, follow me!” Trey leads with a hand under my arm, both of us equally at the same speedy run to a car’s bumper.
Chaos enriches through our guns at will, with bullets at disposal. Trey and these followers hadn’t decided whether to trust us, but, without choice, we are now all on the same side, against the nameless figures, also meant to be on our side.
“They don’t know you’re friendlies!” I point out to Trey.
As much as Trey visible acknowledges and agrees with it, he, along with every other of the followers, remain keeping the heat on, through trading fire back at the Capitol. The large herd of undead surrounding the building is all I can pinpoint as a figure. Aside from them, I’m unable to spot any living figures at the windows of the building, but I know little flashes of yellow light pop in and out of the highest row of them.