Chapter 19

(Warning the following chapter has been switched from third person narration to first person narration through the eyes of the main protagonist Mason. You have been warned.)

“I cannot believe what I just read at all. That bastard wrote his own eulogy, and speaks all high of himself in it, and leaves it for you to be what exactly!? Thankful! He wrote his own damn eulogy!” the outrageous note I read made me really boil on the inside.

The fact that a father would leave such a lazy, and selfish excuse of a goodbye to his son is beyond me. And now I see why Logan doesn’t like guns. He had such a terrible experience with firearms from this suicide. I don’t blame him being slightly messed up. The only thing that I am wondering right now is how this man has survived up until this point without a single firearm. It is almost mystifying to think about.

“It is getting kind of dark Logan.” I say as he looks at me, and nods.

It is weird but I almost feel fear for sleeping in the same room with this man after seeing what he did to that man earlier, and knowing that he may somewhat resent me for the whole looting situation from earlier. But what was I supposed to do? Just let him. The amount of disrespect is probably enough to damn us to hell. All I know is I can’t worry about this, because having somebody to talk to has been a god send.

As we approach a suitable building, while outside the door I give my condolences for his parents, and he told me it is all in the past now, and he is right. In fact it is about twenty to thirty or so years in the past so it doesn’t matter anymore. We break in to find that there isn’t a speck of human life as usual, and search for suitable spots to lay down.

We talk for a little bit before I start to feel too tired to continue, and we make sure all exits, and entrances are sealed away as I then go over, and lay down with my eyes waning shut. It is only then that I realize that I hadn’t done my original routine of lighting a match at dusk. I was a little bummed because the fire does good to ease my tensions when I light it up, and stare at it good and long. But it wasn’t a big deal. And it was never a necessity.

The only thing that is on my mind now as I start drifting to sleep is the awful eulogy that his father had left behind for him all those years ago. It makes it weird because I could never have imagined something like that from my father. What the hell! I couldn’t even ever expect my dad to kill himself the way Logan’s did. And even though it is hard to trust Logan completely I am going to have to just trust… trust.

“Tomorrow is going to be a much better day.” I tell myself.

And all of a sudden I believe it. Though there was a lot of drama today, I still made a friend on top of that, and I didn’t even have to lower my standards because I still was able to make myself one human friend, and I am okay with it so far. (Mason loses his current consciousness, and drifts to a deep sleep. Strangely Mason despite being more eased than usual still pulled out his gun again that night.) I awake to find that Logan is already up, and keeping his distance as I find that I have my gun drawn. I freak out, and holster my gun.

“I am sorry about that.” I tell him. “Recently I have been pulling out my gun in the dead of night.” I inform him. He then looks at me in relief.

“So it’s natural for you?” I shake my head but he seems to be a little too relieved.

“Um yeah. It is no big deal.”

“I was just grabbing me a snack, and you pulled your gun out so I backed down. The same thing happened when I first found you.” Huh.

This is interesting, so I pulled my gun when he was first approaching me. If I had known that then my thoughts on the dude would be changed dramatically. Though does this mean I am slightly conscious even as I sleep?

“If you ask me it is a bad omen.” What? Now he has my attention.

“What do you mean Logan?” I ask him as I hand him some dry food from the bag. He digs into the food before proceeding to tell me what he means.

“Well I think it means you are unsettled, and aren’t getting enough rest. In fact it makes sense because yesterday you didn’t stop in the morning for breakfast, and instead were leaving right out the door. I am never usually in such a hurry.” He told me as he sat chewing while talking.

Could he be right? Am I unsettled, and moving too fast? No, no that can’t be right. I have somewhere to be, and things to do. He hasn’t had the type of urgency that I have right now, so he just doesn’t understand. This education-less plebian can’t sway my thoughts! It’s unheard of.

“Well since we are stopped, and you are eating breakfast Logan then I might as well get back to work.”

(Mason pulls out a notebook, and starts scribbling notes, and drawings into it.)

If I there was still going to be a blood stream then out would have outlets here, and here for the blood flow. “Wow, you never stop working on something. Or maybe you are keeping a journal of your little trip, am I right?” Logan was persistent on what I was working on.

“Well if you must know then they are blueprints.” I told him the truth, and he started to giggle a bit.

I was surprised at first but then I realized that he had no idea who I was, and I was planning to keep it that way. If he wasn’t going to believe me then that was fine, I wasn’t going to fight him. He did not need to know that I was a scientist, and he did not need to know I am a man of science. The odds are he doesn’t care too much about people like me anyway. It is probably best that I keep quiet.

“So what are you writing blueprints for there anyway?” So he doesn’t believe me but he is still curious enough to ask me. He doesn’t need to know so I will just lie, and maybe make a joke out of it. I point my finger in the sky, and with my other hand act as though I am putting on a pair of glasses.

“A spaceship!” I tell him, and he laughs even more.

“Hahaha. You really are a kidder.” Logan says while laughing.

His face quickly grows serious though, and he looks at me with eyes incredibly sharp. The last time I saw a look like this on his face was when he killed that man yesterday. I don’t know what to tell him now. I told him the truth already but after the rocket ship stunt I don’t think he’d believe me. I’ll just avoid it then.

“I, I would rather not say exactly what.” I tell him. He loosens up a bit.

“Well that’s okay then. We all have things we don’t want to share with people. Though I thought things like that didn’t exist anymore when the irons came.”

Phew, I really rather not tell him. I am a bit embarrassed by it, and only because I am not too sure if I will even be able to build it. It may be the thing that determines whether or not I will be able to kill Clive. Maybe not the key thing but it would help. It’d help Sylvia as well.

“Well I would say now is the time we get moving, wouldn’t you say so?” Logan says to me.

I am a bit surprised to see him as the one ready to move out. I snap the notebook closed. We start walking down a blacktop road, and wouldn’t you know, it started snowing. I thought I could feel it starting to get cold. I had no idea that it was almost about to start snowing though. This must mean that Christmas is right around the corner, and it has been a while since I have experienced a Christmas. And I don’t just mean that because I slept for sixty-seven years. I mean it because I went to sleep right before it started snowing, and I woke up after it started snowing.

It is kind of nice to walk through the falling snow like this, and feeling the cold air as it dries my skin, and my lips. It seems I may not make it back to Sylvia by Christmas though. “Huh?” (A sign reads: Welcome to LEE Virginia.) Lee Virginia huh. That means we are only a state away from Requiem.

“What’s the deal Mason? Are we almost there?” Logan asked me.

“Yeah we’re almost there.” A couple more weeks of walking. Hell I may be able to cut it into a week if we have only sleeping breaks, and eat, and use the restroom before we sleep.

“Well our journey together just started, and is almost over huh?” Logan said to me, and he was right. We only have this little walk to go before we get off scotch free.

I guess this means for Logan that it is all over. He will get to live the rest of his life out in peace. I on the other hand still have some important business to attend to. I have things to build, and advance as well as people to kill. In fact, I just thought about it but even after Clive is dead. Will it all be over? Or will I still have work to do? No! In fact I am positive that I will still have work to do.

I will still be able to lend my brilliant mind to Requiem. No, or will I be fighting. To be one-hundred percent honest I don’t know where I will go or what I will do after this is all over. Also I can’t be sure that I… I mean we will even beat Clive. I know that me, and Sam will be going at it with him but I don’t know if Sylvia will be able to help us or not. And I don’t think that I can do it without her help. Besides, we all need to get vengeance against Clive. After all he betrayed all of us.

“You must be thinking about something pretty important if you are spacing out like that.” Logan said to me snapping me out of my own thoughts.

“Yeah you could say that.” I told him.

“Well what is it then.” He wants to know huh. I guess there isn’t a problem in telling him.

“There is somebody who betrayed me, and I am going to kill him.” I told him the absolute truth, and it didn’t matter if he laughed or even got scared, it wasn’t going to change the fact that I will kill Clive. Although I actually got a reaction that I wasn’t expecting. He was very stoic, and didn’t seem to care too much.

“I don’t think you should focus too much on revenge.” He told me. “What if you are never able to enact your revenge… what if you just can’t? For example after my father did to me what he did I wanted to kill him. Well I couldn’t quite do that now could I?”

He was starting to bring up good points but what he didn’t understand is that for me it was more than simply revenge, and I couldn’t risk not killing Clive. Regardless, if I told him about Clive or not he wouldn’t believe me. What is there to believe? We were on a top secret mission to save humanity, and it was all ended by our squad leader taking advantage of all of us to become god from a serum from a man who is almost eighty years of age but with the body of a sixty or so year old man who made the serum for his blood only but then Clive was his son. And if Clive isn’t stopped he will enslave all humanity. That includes you.

I kept my mouth shut, and Logan kept going on about not letting revenge eat away at you as he brought up the possibility of Clive already being dead, and or me possibly not being able to defeat Clive in the first place. I assured him Clive wouldn’t be dead, and that was his retaliation toward it.

Truthfully he was probably right. It is true that Clive is now biologically immortal but he can still be killed through unnatural causes. Our best chance of stopping him just happened to be killing him. If we didn’t kill him then he would just go on forever. One of the things that kept me going was thinking of how he talked of taking Sylvia as his “bride” and that sickened me. And it wasn’t just her, because he would keep living on forever, and he would continue to take men’s daughters, and sons, and daughter’s mothers from them.

For these reasons I am willing to keep on going, and to keep fighting. Because at the end of the day, revenge alone isn’t enough reason to look Clive in the eyes let alone fight him. That is right, I am also doing this because he makes me sick to my stomach as well as for Sylvia, and everybody else.

“Listen Mason. I truly believe you should give up on this notion of revenge because you don’t know how long you have left so you may want to enjoy yourself while you can.” Logan said to me.

I just wasn’t going to be able to explain the situation to Logan, so ultimately I would not. The walk was getting frustrating as we were both getting tired. Dawn was approaching us though, and the day was almost over. I stepped through the now almost one inch of snow on the ground as both my, and Logan’s footprints were left imprinted into the ground. There was a trail of footprints stretching further, and further behind us as we walked like a trail of bread crumbs unfolding from behind.

It was the most comfortable, and peaceful experience that I had had in a great while. It was cold but due to the walking our bodies were warm enough to be comfortable. We had each other’s company, and to top it off the streets are empty. Were empty at least. More than a mile from us in plain sight was a pair of irons. There were two of them en route to us.

“Do we hide!?” Logan asked me frantically.

“Well what do you think?” I asked him as he pointed out that we’re likely already spotted, and should probably run. But I knew that he was ironically much older than me, and he may have a hard time running from it.

“You go through that alley, and try to hide as I distract them, and then find a way out of sight!” I couldn’t believe it. I am putting my life in harm’s way for a man I met two days ago. Am I that desperate not to be alone?

The pair grew closer to us with us having barely moved a couple feet with one iron that was slightly ahead of the other. I figure if I will start drawing the attention of one then I will start with this one. I pull the “Lady Killer” from its holster, and aim straight down the middle, and popped off a few rounds at the beast. The bullets themselves did minimal damage to the iron, but it did cause the iron to flinch, and lose its current wits. It leaped forward as I ran toward a building, and ducked.

The beast flew into the building in front of me, and I can see rubble flying in my general direction, and next thing I get smacked in the face, and stomach by flying rock, and brick. But the one that hit with the most force was a small rock that got my neck forcing me grab my neck, and start choking. The beast sprawled around in front of me as I pulled myself out of a pile of rubble as I notice the second iron catching up.

The first thing I can see is a back entrance on the other side of the struggling iron that smashed into the building in front of me, and decide to run past the disoriented one, and make it to the other side of that particular building. I run while taking a quick glance behind me to see if I can spot Logan, and it appears he has fled because I am unable to see him. I trip up a teensy amount of rubble but ketch myself relatively quickly.

I make my way through to the back, and make sure to keep hitting the ground running. From what I have witnessed of the irons so far they are pretty clumsy creatures, and only a few seconds upon exiting through the back of that building I am expecting something in particular. In three, two, and one… and upon the end of the countdown the second iron tripped over the first, and wrecked the second half of the building. With both temporarily fallen then I may be able to lose them through the streets.

I make my way through the back of another building, and after that into an alleyway, and then I start to get this strange feeling of what Logan said. He told me not to get too hung up on revenge because I may not be able to kill Clive anyway, and that is if I am even able to find him. Supposing he doesn’t find me first that is. If I can’t kill these two irons then I won’t ever be able to kill Clive, and that is the sad truth.

I mean what did I make this trip for if not to prepare for Clive? I pull my rifle out, and ready it in my hands as I look to see the irons current progress. They are just starting to get into my sight as I hug the wall to my left, and aim straight down the sight, and toward the second iron. I have the gun fixed on the beast as I squeeze the trigger igniting several bullets to him in the face causing slight injury at this distance.

The beast rams straight for me as the wall to my left starts breaking apart as I do a massive side sweep to my right to dodge as the creature puts on the brakes, and stops suddenly as I look into the room of the building it just blasted a hole in as I look for the closest staircase, and hurdle under the monster with my rifle pointing up, and I then pop off a few shots to the stomach as I make my way into the building, and up the stairs. The beasts start to immediately tear up the bottom to get me down as I jump through a second story bedroom window, and grab onto a window ledge, and pull myself up as only one iron spots my mischief. I break the window in front of me with the butt of my rifle, and climb in. immediately following the first iron that was the one who spotted me propped itself up face to face with me by grabbing onto the second story ledge as I point the fully loaded rifle right into his mouth, and start firing off bullets, and its quick reaction forced it to fall back as it twitched on the ground below.

I see the other emerge from the tumbling building right beneath me as I jump from the window, and right on the top of that iron as it freaks out, and jumps from that alleyway, and into the road. I grip it with my left hand as I edge myself forward. I start making my way to the front nearest its head as it gets wise to the act. It starts jumping, and smashing into buildings to get me off. All I can do is hold on, and slowly move.

“Sorry buddy, but you are not getting out of this!” I yell as I make that last pull through to get to the creatures head. I take my rifle then slam it down, and aim right in the creature’s forehead. Their heads are incredibly durable from far away, and can withstand large quantities of any infantry man’s gun from far away but with a powerful semi-automatic rifle like mine at point blank range, in a few shots it is all over.

“Now calm down and take your shots! Doctors’ orders!” I yell as I start shooting until I have only a few bullets left in the clip.

The creature tumbles to the ground limp, and dead in the middle of the road, and from the effect of it hitting the ground I tumble off, and onto the pavement. After the adrenaline rush I start to feel just how bruised up I actually am as my stomach, head, limbs, and throat all feel like shutting down.

“Tee hee… haha, ha ha ah ha ha!” I feel overjoyed, and have laughter flooding out despite my injuries, and wipe sweat off my forehead revealing the stream of blood from my head which prompted me to laugh some more.

“Looks like victory is mine.” I said softly to the dead iron next to me.

I look around slowly at first because I was too exhausted to get too invested in my surroundings searching for Logan but couldn’t find him. As the fuzziness in my eyes, and thoughts started to fade then I grew more worried. “Logan!” I called out several times with slight panic in my voice. I hear a small crumble behind me, and in my excitement I turn to see Logan.

It looks grim now. As I turn I see on the ground several sets of feet in front me a few glops of blood splash on the ground from the air above it as my eyes slowly wane up to see the bloodied face of the iron I had shot several times in the mouth, and my entire body almost shuts down from the shock as the creature starts crawling its way to me, and I gain my composure just enough to get moving myself. We are both slow from being previously wounded but despite that to no surprise the iron is still faster as it pulls itself several feet forward with its hands every second as I only limp about a fourth of a foot every second.

I can hear the rubble as well as the ground rubbing, and cracking up as the monster gets closer to me. And my body feels too numb to go any faster as the beast ketches up. I am freaking out so much I don’t know what to do! All I can do is limp, and know that it limps faster than I do. And I do not have the strength to fight it when it finally gets its hands on me, and that will be the end! It cannot end like this! It can’t!

I keep up the limping as I can feel it only feet away. All it needs to do is pull itself forward one more time, and it has me! Help, help! “Help!” I finally say aloud. I feel a slight brush of air across my neck as I glance over my right shoulder, and see Logan run past between me, and the iron. With the iron injured, and myself injured the iron could still get me but with Logan unharmed he was fast enough to get past it unscathed, and draw its attention from me to him. The moment the iron turns to go after Logan I turn, and take a knee.

I steady my rifles aim as I prepare to reload a magazine, and wait for the iron to get a few feet from me before I take my chance shooting. It just now clicks in my brain about the flare gun. As it continues to crawl in the other direction I readied the flare gun with one of my signal flares in it as I set it down next to me, and aim the rifle once more. I pop off the last three rounds in the rifle to get its attention from Logan to me.

Now that distance has been established between me, and the iron, and it has its face in my viewing once more I ready the flare, and smile as I hold the gun in my sweaty hands. The thrill of knowing the soon flames to erupt excited me as the beast screamed at me revealing its throat, and allowing for me to blast the flare with just the right amount of drop between me, and it for the flare to land in its throat. Its throat soon glowed beat red before flames soon emerged from within, and spread to the beasts face.

Further from the neck you could see its veins glowing beat red as its blood oozed from the areas while being the same glowing color as magma. The way it, and its anatomy burned from the inside out excited me. It was unlike any other creature that had been set on fire before, and it was glorious. I could no longer hold in my excitement as I yelled “Burn! Burn! Burn! Haha ha!” and had a massive smile while I screamed it.

I scared myself upon doing so because despite my smile toppled with the angry voice I used I almost felt sadistic in the moment. Logan walked his way up next to me. “It seems fire does quite the large amount of damage.” He said as I stared at the flame resonating with, and consuming the iron before me. “Yeah.” I say with a lack for words.

“We should probably get ourselves some distance from this fire, and find a place to rest.” Logan points out as I am still shocked, and wounded on my knees as I say “Yeah.”

Logan drags me into a building a few blocks away as we find a suitable one to spend the night in. “This one will work.” I tell him while he helps me through the streets.

I am already starting to regain my vigor but it will take a little more than one nights rest to fully recharge. Although it is clear that I needed Logan to get me away from that iron. I can be thankful to him for that at the very least. Logan blocks off the door behind us to the building he chose as he finds a comfortable place to lay me down.

“Hey Logan.” I say to him to get his attention. Me saying that is followed by a small silent pause before he says “What is it?” and with that response I feel happy that he allowed me talk to him despite him probably being very tired, and confused as to why he risked his life the way he did. It was the same confusion that I had felt when I got the irons after me, and away from him earlier.

“I just wanted to thank you for getting in front of the iron earlier. It was basically the equivalent of pushing me out of the way of a train as you take the hit, and I can’t not be grateful.” I told that to him as he looked at me as if he was obligated to do so. Almost as if he felt guilty.

“Yeah… well I owed you that much.” He told me adding more confusion to my mind.

“What do you mean?” I asked him but there was another one of those silent pauses until he finally just told me “Goodnight.” I left it alone after that, and decided to go to sleep.

What is all that noise!? I hear ruffling in the middle of the night as I start to open my eyes but can’t because they are crusted shut. Then as I wiggle a little there is a loud bang as if panic was taking place. I hear loud footsteps as my eyes then force themselves open with my body jolting up. I can’t even believe it. Logan is running… he is running, and has my backpack on his back. I was going to leave it alone until I remembered my flare gun to signal Requiem to drop the bridge was gone.

What is he doing? What is he doing!? I then knew not what to do but noticed I had once again drawn the “Lady Killer” in my sleep. And he must have figured I would be too tired to wake up. My eyes start to widen, and water up simultaneously as I throw the gun up, and aim at Logan. “What are you doing!?” I yell as I pull the trigger, and hit his leg. Right before I shot the gun too Logan was trying to pry the door open. And as he got it open that is when the bullet hit his leg, and he flew forward onto the side walk outside.

He was freaking out, and rolling back in forth in front of me screaming, and holding his leg. I limp my way toward him, and stay unsure of what I will do when I actually reach him, and confront him. Why did he do this? Why!? I get my way up to him, and I get distracted as I see a rising stream of black smoke from where we killed that last iron, together. “Damn you Logan! We killed it together!” I yelled as he squabbled on the ground.

“Now you went, and ruined our friendship!” I screamed as I pointed the gun right at him. “Why did you do this!?” I asked angrily again while trembling with the gun in my hand.

He covers his eyes from having the gun in his face, and screams for me to put it away while ignoring my question. “Why!?” I ask again as he attempts to calm me down so he can explain. His only request was I aim the gun toward the ground as he explains, and I oblige.

“Ever since my Father did what he did I have been on my own. Even now I have been with hundreds of different groups of people!” he says to me but now I am confused. Did he not sympathize with me the other day on how every group was out to kill him!?

I hate it when I don’t understand something!

“You see I have been living throughout the years by stealing from bandits, and raiders while they slept at night, and I would do the same to people who didn’t try to kill, and made me a part of their posse.”

“I could never fit well with groups!” Logan told me while whimpering on the ground. What an idiot! I was going to take him to Requiem, and his problems would have been solved.

“What about Requiem?!” I ask him now with more tears flowing down my face, and sliding across my numb cheeks.

“I can’t actually go to Requiem! I mean it sounded nice but there isn’t a single human for the last thirty-five years that I saw for longer than a week! And I am a thief by trade, there isn’t a job alive I would or probably even could do!” Logan is now crying.

“Just leave me here!” Logan orders me.

He keeps on saying the same thing now like some sort of broken record! Leave me, leave me, leave me, over and over again! I cannot take this anymore! Look at him, he is just like him. He is just like Clive. He used to me to get what he wanted, and when he had that he threw me away, and expects he will get away okay like it doesn’t concern him anymore.

“Leave you?” I say as he shakes his head yes while crying.

“I would never leave you, nor leave you alone.” I say while crying, and he then looks up at me with shock while I lift the aim of my gun back at him.

“You will pay for how you have betrayed me! Everyone who betrays me are going to have hell to pay. Miles got his!” I tell him as he acts in shock wondering who Miles is but I bet they were in league the whole time!

“Don’t play dumb! Miles! He is a backstabbing bastard just like you!” I put my finger over the trigger, and start to lightly squeeze.

“Miles got what was coming to him, and now you will get what you deserve! And don’t worry my friend. Clive will get what was coming to him too so it is okay.” Logan is now shivering in fear on the sidewalk of a road in Lee, Virginia as he begs for his life.

“Please Mason, you do not have to pull that trigger!” he yells at me but I do have to pull the trigger.

“If I don’t then justice won’t be fulfilled!” and just then he starts looking angry. Yes, it was just what I needed to actually pull the trigger on him. It was the same evil look he had when he stabbed that armed punk who attacked me. He then started spouting off angry lines of dialogue at me saying things.

“How dare you! Did I not save your life!? I read those notes of yours you crazy psychopath! Why do you need a mechanical right arm, and left leg anyways!? And a weapon of a giant robot too!? You are mental!” He ushered all those harsh words at me as I finally pulled the trigger, and blew his mind.

As it got quiet following the bang of the gunshot I froze. Did I really have to shoot him? I got that thought ground into my mind. I am sure I will be wondering that for the rest of my life. The question that will never get a clear answer. I can’t believe I shot him! My trembling hand extends toward his shocked, and tear filled face but I see the grime from my gun on my hand, and pull it back.

“Old man? Logan wake up!” I say but he just lies there motionless with a perfectly round circle symmetrical in his forehead.

“What have I done!?” I start crying. Even though he was planning on this from the beginning, he still was like a friend. Only like a friend though. I finally extend my grimy hand forward as I close his eyes. I sniff, and suck snot back up through my nose.

“Old man… I am sorry. I let my past emotions, and experiences get the better of me!” I can never take this back. I feel just like Clive.

“It was my fault my brother died.” Wayne’s words start filling up in my head.

“Wayne… everyone, I am sorry for letting you down.” I say as I stare at Logan a while longer. I drag Logan into an alleyway, and set his body in a metal street trash bin, and take his knife to carve his name into the metal.

“Rest in peace, Logan Drover.” I say as I carve that into the trash. I open one half of the two lids, and see his body in the trash as if it were opened in a showing as he lay in a coffin.

“I don’t know you too much so all I can say is goodbye. Thank you for the company while it lasted. Maybe I will write you a proper eulogy.”

After saying a few words I started busting open some of my ammo, and pouring the gun powder in different places on his body, and surrounded him with dry trash such as paper, and paper plates alike.

“Here you go. A proper burial.” I say to him as I watch, and remember Sylvia tell me how she wanted to be buried out here.

I light a match, and stare into the flame of it for a second. I then throw it into the bin that Logan’s body resides as the flames come up instantly. All I could think was how magnificent the flame from that fire was as he burned. He wasn’t going to just rot in a dumpster after all.

“What a flame. What a flame.”