Like Kelley and Bob, I thought. Yeah. Then I remembered. “No,” I whimpered. “I shouldn’t have done that…”
I think I was standing at that point. I didn’t want to look, but I knew I had to. There was blood everywhere. There was blood on me, and even in my mouth, which was becoming too damn common. The metallic taste made me want to vomit again, but I somehow managed not to.
“Last time! They’re on the second floor right now. Get your shit together, or they’re going to kill us! We’re going to have to fight,” I remember Titouan saying.
There was gunfire outside and glass breaking somewhere. I had to get my shit together. I wasn’t going to let my friends down again, and I needed to be a man about what I did. I needed to see it. It would be closure, of sorts. It was just a snapshot of the coming brutality – the remorseless world we woke up to. If I was going to keep my humanity, I needed to own up to my own brutality. It hurt to see what I did… but that meant I still felt remorse. That separated me from those who meant to do me and my friends harm.
Kelley’s face was gone. Bob’s face was mostly intact. I must have been about out of bullets by the time I got to him. I made one count to the forehead, though. He wasn’t going to walk away, that much was sure. They sure as fuck weren’t going to live out their goddamn love story with all the pain they had help cause. I made sure of that. It felt wrong, though, but everything was wrong.
Kelley was pregnant, though… Dammit.
Avery patted me on the shoulder. I remember that as well as what he said. “We have to go, bud.”
“Alright,” I said.
“We’re going to have to fight our way out,” Titouan said, in a voice I almost didn’t recognize. He was changing. I wasn’t sure for the good or not, but he was changing.
“No more fighting. At least for now, anyway,” I said.
“William,” Sam said, trying to be as patient as possible given the current situation. “Grab the rifle. We goin ta have ta fight our way down to the first floor. Come on now, son. We need ya.”
“Follow me,” I said. Everyone jumped as a loud noise came from one of the floors below us. “I know another way. Miley showed me another way. Come on.”
Sam paused, unsure whether to trust my crazy ass. “You better know what you’re doin or we screwed.”
“I’m good. I’m okay,” I said.
As the others grabbed as much as they could carry, I remembered the backpack Miley had given me. I reached under the desk and grabbed it. I then opened the large cabinet door that led to the secret stairwell. With another bang sounding from just down the hall, no one had time to linger on the oddity of Miley having a secret passage.
Once in the garage, I handed a flabbergasted Sam the keys to the vehicle. Without comment, he hopped in and started the engine. It fired up on the first try. Everyone else loaded the provisions into the back of the vehicle. Within just a few moments, all of us were loaded in and ready to go. Sam looked to me.
As scared and confused as I was in that moment, I understood the necessity of an expedient exit from the garage. Competing with that necessity was the overwhelming fear I felt after Kelley and Bob’s admissions – the fear I knew my friends would feel when I told them about what I’d learned. It was no longer a theorizing game, in which I hoped for the best, and the worst was just something that happened in movies or television shows. If the Order was successful, the world outside that garage was going to be a terrible place.
I wanted to savor one last moment in the garage. I then pressed the button on the garage door opener. “Let’s go.”
Author’s note:
Well, there you have it, my first ever book. One of the first iterations of this book was written in 2014. During which time it was going to be more of an alien versus us kind of book. The Patch, William, and Avery were still in that version, but you would hardly recognize them. William was a nerdy scholar type, while Avery was kind of undefined – more of a tertiary character at best. The Patch was still a thing. Actually, the entire story, for me, revolved around the Patch, even though the first book didn’t linger there too long. The thought at the time was I wanted to write something about a cold, dark, and isolated place. Everything else sort of was created off that premise.
You’ll notice that some of the Grays act slightly differently than what is assumed from zombies. They carried, and on some level, knew how to use weapons. Although this isn’t exactly new in zombie literature, I wanted that to be the starting point. In other words, I wanted to repurpose zombies into weapons. This is where the Order comes into play.
As the story progressed, I started reading about CRISPR editing tools, and this really changed the arc of the story more than anything else. My thinking was, if the average Joe could get his hands on tools that would allow him to edit the human genome, what would happen if an entire country (or countries) put their energy into using genome editing for nefarious reasons, well, then they could do some pretty terrible things. Look for more of this in book 2.
Hopefully the story is enjoyable to you. It’s been a longtime coming for me to finish these books. I do work fulltime at my non-writing gig, so my schedule will be tight. Having said that, I do plan on publishing book 2 in May or June.
I appreciate everyone who has downloaded and read my story. It means the world to me. Thank you.
If you have any questions or comments, please check out my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/B.J.FarmerAuthor or email me at: bill@billyjoefarmer.com
Copyright
Edited by: Jeff Ford
Cover by: Alex Saskalidis @ 187Designz
Facebook: www.facebook.com/B.J.FarmerAuthor
Website: billyjoefarmer.com
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Dedicated to my love, Amanda.
Text Copyright © 2020, B.J. Farmer