by Marlin Grail
“No!” I fearfully yell out, praying I’m doing the right thing, and that I didn’t just help put a target on Gary’s back. “You want the man in the white shirt! You want him! He’s the one immune!”
Apparently without further desire to chat, the armed man pushes up off the ground by digging his palm painfully into my back. I realize in frustration we can’t expect these men to accept bobbing heads or a foolish move to stand up.
Fortunately, my gaze was turned towards Gary’s direction. I watch as he gets lifted off the ground. A soldier picks up his sword, and hands it to another. Gary is then escorted to where the helicopters remain idle, their main rotors spinning anxiously. The last armed person waits until he receives some sort of signal by one of their own.
They then proceed to turn their backs on us.
Wait! You can’t just take our leader and friend!
My thoughts pop out of my mouth, which this last person has a keen ear to notice. He takes immediate aim at my risen body. Knowing I’m only a split-second from being shot, I give my most genuine show of harmless intent.
“Take us!”
He marches up to me, pressing his rifle’s barrel firmly where my heart sits. “You’re not immune! You’re not to come if you have nothing extraordinary to share!”
He says this as though I’m supposed to feel ashamed. Gary turns to look over his shoulder to see us. He abruptly halts his escort, an inaudible dispute happening between him and them.
Wherever he’s going, I don’t expect he’ll be given free rein to decide who and where his connections are. He’s wonderfully bold to work his yet-to-be stripped rights as a person on them.
Just before this person can turn away from me yet again, I call out something I don’t know that will do any good, but it’s worth finding nonetheless.
“Your haze facades! They wouldn’t be going to Cheyenne, would they?”
It’s a stretch, but an inconsequential one, so, if’s there’s no connection, it doesn’t change anything. If it does, we change everything.
A squinted stare comes from one of them. “What would you know?”
Chapter XLVII
Bingo.
“I know something big is happening there! We come from C.!” I pause, disbelief shining true in my voice. “Don’t tell me. C.’s got helicopters—”
“You’re all from C.?” the man asks me, not letting down his aim.
I nod. There isn’t a glimpse of dishonesty behind my eyes.
“Hands up! Stay exactly at the distance you’re at now, from me, all the way to the transport!”
This is the beginning to something truly marvelous. It may not be what we intended to travel into, but we have to rationalize the circumstances as is—like Gary. We’re much better off getting into the helicopters than we are scavenging, fighting, and almost losing some of our greatest allies…and family.
I don’t have to be pushed any further to obey. The same is said for the others. Gary is already mounted onto the first helicopter. Then, assuming she’ll get this sweet opportunity to rest easily beside her boyfriend, Lissie is jolted to a halt when this armed officer viciously shouts, “No! Stay right there! You’re heading inside the one behind!”
What a bummer for Lissie it must be, not being able to reunite with her love. Hang tight, Lissie, if we can help it any, we’ll make sure you both find chance to hold tight on one another again.
With that order in mind, I await in discipline stance as I was told to long ago in ROTC, until I’m guided to my spot. These officers do not behave like a by-the-book soldier would, nor does their pilots. The moment Gary’s helicopter shuts its doors, it lifts off, uncaring that the rest of us are but a few feet away from its hulking mass.
“You!” one of them shouts at me. “You’re with her!”
This is my first time ever entering this kind of transport. I would be lying if I said I’m not nervous.
Every step I take towards the roaring and relentless rotor has me thinking how small I truly am. Not just literally, but philosophically. Where we’re headed is going to expose us to something much more than being a survivor on an abandoned lot of land.
I can already foresee Gary is meant to do something large. By extension, so are we.
This isn’t luck for us. This is part of God’s plan for us. Are we that important? The remaining population of other humans on this earth toil and suffer. Are we being crowned the responsibility to help reduce that?
Let’s not get carried away, Will. We don’t know yet where we’re headed.
I situate onto the transport’s raised platform. I’m already having to take grip of an arm handle in order to keep standing.
I believe it’s safe for you, Will, to finally acknowledge that ROTC, or soldier life in general, wasn’t intended for you.
I sit down on a built-in plain and uncomfortable seat. There’s two officers already seated on the other seats across from me. Lissie rests beside me. She’s visibly confounded as she watches Gary’s helicopter gain high altitude, before a black smokescreen engulfs its body.
Hazes controlled to mask and hide these aircraft? A high operation is under way, or has already been. There’s no denying those hazes in the sky we saw earlier were to hide everything we’ve been exposed to.
I still have a desire to ask numerous questions. Before the next breath leaves my body, it’s immediately shut down by the officer in front of me.
“You won’t be asking anything. Your purpose in coming is if you can give vital information. You’d better hope you can.”
I lower my head with respect to his stern threat. It assures me about all the trouble they’d be going through in order to gain more knowledge about C.
It’s funny. At first, I thought these people were with C., but, now, I’m starting to wonder more what’s so ginormous about him that has whatever surviving limbs of the government mobilizing? There’s no doubt in my mind they’re heading straight to Cheyenne. Is this a three-way war?
I’m inclined to believe, with what I heard Gary tell us shortly before we were split up, that he knows far more than we do. But how much does he know?
We’re a helicopter ride away from finding out the larger picture.
“We’ve got information. Don’t you guys worry,” Lissie says abruptly.
However, the officers in front of us don’t seem to notice. Her comment blends into the loudness coming from the doors closing. Circular panels allowing us to see outside suddenly drives this all in for me.
I’m in a military helicopter in the apocalypse. This is proof of hope, but a hope just as menacing as the actual threat.
It’s then, when clanking noises from behind me sound off, that a tamed hissing releases from both sides of the helicopter. Blackness trails out like terribly-colored exhaust out of a car’s exhaust pipe. The surreal smoke wraps snugly right beside our doors, nothing but dark haze delicately flowing and sticking to the windows with congealed particles.
I’m reluctant to say, ever since the time of learning C.’s immunity and control over the hazes, that this magical dust is pretty to look at.
It’s my responsibility not to be reeled in by its magnificent appearance. I can’t imagine how this massive responsibility has messed with Gary’s mind. He doesn’t have to be afraid of them anymore, but, like C. and the other man, he probably thinks now how lonely and disconnected they’ve had to be from everyone around them.
I don’t pity that for those two, but I would for Gary. If, by any chance, the hazes now know he knows, they’ll be more attracted towards him.
“These days, anything is possible,” I freely say out loud, drawing the others attention.
But only Lissie nods with me on it.
Chapter XLVIII
(Gary)
I feel the drop in elevation as we land on a place these personnel seem to lack fascination for. Which tells me it’s a place familiar to them.
Our masking haze disappears in a swift process. A green light switches on behind m
e afterward, and I’m able to view the outside once again. The ground is more of the monochromatic tan, vast and naked. In the distance, a large range of enormous mountains breaks the horizon.
As much of a spectacle as it is to see this outdoor terrain, it’s nowhere near as complex and nerve-racking as the several trenches I see dug around the helipad. These trenches are like a moat.
However, instead of water, the gray heads fill the space.
It’s the undead bumping shoulder to shoulder, in a perpetual stagnant stance. To top it off, a see-through roof is fixed above them.
A controlled environment to divide where these undead go. No wonder these vast plains have no sight of any wandering about.
Once I take this fact into account, I can see just how far these trenches go. They reach out from the helipad, then further in a straight line to the other parts to this facility. Even then, this web stretches far and all around, in directions that seemingly lead to nowhere.
This must be how they level off any that happen to stumble across these grounds.
“Follow me!” I’m ordered by the fully-masked personnel officer standing by the open transport door. “Straight line! Don’t deviate off the walkway!”
I take his order to heart. I can imagine that newcomers would have a difficulty feeling comfortable or calm around the countless lifeless corpses that one alone could fill someone’s nightmares.
I tread the current stretch of walkway, but barely focus on moving forward until I see the other helicopters carrying my people trade places on the helipad.
The leading personnel officer gives a firm smack on my chest. “Keep moving!”
I’m powerless to identify exactly where I’ve led my people, but I’m in full control here. The phantom voice told me these officials will need me. In that case, I’ll keep in mind this isn’t a mandatory enlistment to something self-sacrificing.
I study the various structures, already close to the first kind. A water tower is on our right. Not considering the level of purposeful fortification against the undead, I can tell the living still take great care towards this sturdy and right source—all of these grounds I’d imagine.
I conclude this is a base, a setup of operation, but how many are in on it?
I pay closer attention to my surroundings, identifying the whole remainder of what the site has to offer. Another water tower proudly rises further down from us. The walk is flat, no hills or rises whatsoever, yet this uneventful horizontal makes the distance between here and there deceiving as to how long it really is. A boom of thunderous explosion comes from below us, the left lane of undead. I naturally twist my front to brace for the danger I’ve grown used to.
“Hey! Those convertors won’t get to us!” the officer behind me bites with confidence.
Another behind him then comments, “Yeah! And, don’t you now know you don’t have to worry about them anymore?”
The concept’s new to me. I’ve spent this whole year watching my back from them every second of every day.
I turn to speak, but the officer leading us instinctively orders me to keep forward. Looking all around me, I’m inspired to burrow in my silent thoughts, but, suddenly, I recap what the person called the born haze.
Convertors? That word stuck out to me when C. called them the same classification.
My eyes only watch us get closer and closer on what feels like an endless travel. I know the personnel in front and behind have grown bored themselves, and it starts to affect their stature as military officials.
“So, we gonna play Jenga one more time?” I hear one of them behind me mumble to the other.
One more time, is that right? Something’s happening, and in a short matter of time for them to raise that concern.
The undead’s unspeakable noises finally reach a point to where they’re only heard behind us because a blockade within the trenches keeps them from going any further. The only obtrusive remainder left, offering a last chance to back out from this commitment, is but a simple barbed wire gate. There’s men already on the other side eager to let us through.
Perfectly in the center of the fence is a man, suited like any other day at an office job. His expression goes with his outfit, worn from fatigue, but relentless in whatever waking world he’s handled for a while. The gate freely lets him step out first, the front personnel knowingly getting out of his way.
His eyes examine me from the ground up. “Are you the immune?”
His curious, but distant, tone has me shake back awake to present interaction. “Yes, that’s me. What is to be—”
“You know where to take him,” he instructs the front personnel, gesturing with his hand that’s outside of his pants pocket.
An immediate tug comes from them, fluently pushing me to their front, and guiding me through the vicinity. At this point, it’s not so much the worry of where I’m going, but more of where my group’s headed.
“What of my people?” I ask with concern to the officer.
“They’re to be taken for questioning,” his response has no empathy for me.
I have no doubt it will regard what we know of C. I hope we’re not pinpointed for pressuring. Especially if they see us as equal to their most wanted, C., being the top of the pyramid.
I subtly disobey by reverting back to looking over my shoulder. Unlike before, where he’d force my attention back upfront, I turn. “Tell me they’re going to be safe. Can you promise that?”
As my main prediction of what he’d respond with, I get a simple “They’ll be fine.”
I insist again. “Can you promise me they’ll be—”
Now by the doors of a warehouse, he energetically rushes one of the sides open, prompting only a head jerk at me to head inside. I don’t immediately obey.
I take a firm nudge from the personnel behind me to force the final steps that will have me lose sight of my group.
Remember, Gary, they aren’t dependent. They’re excellent survivors. They can be all right without your presence right by them.
No matter how many times I close my eyes to calm myself, they immediately jolt open to the foreign sounds making themselves known.
First, several officials with white coats on are looking at me without malevolence, but reservation. These people are positioned in seats beside a large frame of analog devices, ones too complicated for me to know what they function as.
Just ahead, under florescent lighting—the first lighting I’ve noticed beyond a flashlight or the sun in a long time—beams straight below to a cubical space, about 1/3rd the size of this warehouse. This seal-tight space has a door with a large valve wheel that needs two hands to manually turn it open.
“Step inside,” an officer in front grunts to me while working the valve.
There’s no turning back now.
I accept the threshold from my rights as a civilian to being a…
Case study.
Chapter XLIX
This base has been built for too long of a time. The people around seem too settled in at a point where I’m clearly not the first they’ve seen being closed in this space.
I quickly realize the point of this division from here and the rest of the warehouse.
A tap on the see-through wall, plus an open mouth with sound-directing hands around the mouth indicates it a sound test. The fact I didn’t hear a single noise hit from the finger, nor the loudness of the voice, I’d imagine means the test passed successfully.
All I’m capable, and subtly commanded to do, is to simply stand here, pending further occurrences. Dead silence, the loudness of my own thoughts, converts to an ignited, private, conversation with the phantom.
“Can you hear me?” it asks.
It’s the repeated tone I’ve heard loop at me before. Under my own manipulated attitude, I answer “Yes?” I say this with false politeness.
The one misstep I feel I did is vocalize the question.
I quickly retrace back to say it in my mind, when I’m shocked to hear the voic
e say back to me, “Good. Remember me from the school? I helped you.”
I have to clear my throat, a reaction to how bizarre it is to hear this echoing voice. It sounds ever more detailed, slightly delaying its indomitable, but non-adversary, tone.
“You can only hear me through extremely silent conditions, and near a link to my frequency, preferably a radio tower. Tell me, are you afraid?”
Thinking back to my last mission with Josh, I remember there was a radio tower near the school, faint and in the distance, but near enough to see.
I’m uncertain as to how it wants me to answer. It sounds like a question with no wrong response, but it already sounds like it has an expectation for one or the other.
“Should I be afraid?”
“If I am, I don’t mean to scare you. I want to help. The people around you want us to be friends.”
The answer soothes the problematic confusion I have about this turn of events. But I know there’s a bargain already ingrained in this phantom’s continuing dialogue.
After catching my pause, I take the opportunity to entirely be abrupt. “Excuse me, but, before coming you told me that you had to tell me important information about C. You said these officials don’t even know?”
Moments of piercing disquietude follows my question, leaving me hooked to hear this conversation continue.
“… Yes. I told you I know him. I know O. I know C.F.O.G.”
He speaks these abbreviations about these figures, as if I’m fully aware of—mainly—the other two letters, or the two other people. I begin prodding, refusing to let myself stay passive to this chatter.
“How do you know of them? I know it sounded like O. knows to hear you. I would imagine C. as well. First, how are you able to speak to me now?”
The phantom isn’t as eager to start up its speech, as though it has to consciously keep pace with my wound-up temper.
“… A frequency, like I said. I speak through a frequency only a select few people have heard throughout the years. I know not why I can, but on my plain it’s very lonely. I’ve made connection with people—you being the newest for me.”