B Farmer - Betrayal

“Son, what do you want me to do?” Sam asked, eyes wide in terror.

“Turn left!” I yelled.

“Turn left where ?”

“Laura Madison Street. Should be your next left,” Tish said.

“That’ll work,” I said, not having a clue where we were.

“Then what?” Sam asked, as he nearly sideswiped a car trying to dodge a gathering of Grays in the street.

“Just drive,” I said.

“I hafta know, dammit,” Sam pleaded, pulling a hard left down the street Tish suggested.

Up ahead, I could see the headlights of a stopped vehicle blocking our way. “Turn right, Sam – turn right!”

Miley saved our ass when he gave us the keys to the Ripsaw. It was a beast of a vehicle. Of course, it wasn’t just the stock Ripsaw, the one that cost well over a hundred grand. No, this one was customized to accommodate and impress the gaggle of executives and finance guys he liked to personally ferry out to the Patch. It was fast, sleek, and built like a tank. The latter was about to become the most critical feature.

The street I told Sam to turn on was full of Grays. The other roads were blocked by vehicles, so it was the only viable option. The tightly packed Grays disintegrated as Sam accelerated through them. “Whatever you do, don’t stop!” I yelled. The blood, guts, limbs, and other human debris collected on the windshield to the point where Sam was having a difficult time seeing where he was going. Still, he didn’t stop, and thankfully neither did the heavy-duty windshield wipers.

“They’re trying to pin us in!” Titouan yelled from the back.

He was right.

As we crossed the next intersection, the air filled with the cracks of gunfire from the west. Another truck slid into place, blocking our way. “Son, what am I ’posed ta do?” Panic evident on Sam’s his cracking voice. “’Fore long, we ain’t gonna have any place ta go.”

I was mostly sure the road we were on would take us to Stevenson Street. If that were the case, and assuming it was clear of the Order, we could turn left there and be out of Barrow in a matter of minutes. We would worry about what to do next once we got that far. If we got that far. One step at a time was all we could do. “Turn left when we get to the end of this street, and then gun it until I tell you to slow down.”

My head slammed against the headrest as Sam followed my directions. There was a truck coming from our left, but before the truck could cut us off, Sam expertly power slid around it, causing the driver to try to match our turn. When he couldn’t, he ended up plowing into a house instead of us.

On that same token, Sam lost traction momentarily and slid wide on the turn. The rear of the truck sideswiped an electric pole. I gave a quick glance towards everyone in the back. They were getting the hell jostled out of them but seemed no worse for wear after the collision.

The truck that tried to pin us was in far worse shape than us, and the driver was struggling to get unstuck from partially being inside the house he crashed into. We would be long gone before he got going again, assuming he could get going. I silently thanked ass-bag Miley again for the truck.

“William, look to your left down that street,” Avery said while pointing to our left down one of the streets we had passed going the other way only seconds previously.

“You have to be kidding me,” Titouan said.

The Grays were attacking the first vehicle that tried to block us in. That’s why they weren’t murdering us. They were being attacked by their own weapons. “Fuck ’em,” I said.

“I second ’at,” Sam replied.

Sam held the gas to the floor as we sped out of town. I was sure I heard gunfire as we raced past the airport, but there was no way they were going to hit us — assuming they weren’t firing at the Grays, which seemed more likely — given how fast and how far away we were. I breathed a cautious breath of relief. I thought we might live after all.

We followed Stevenson Street until it ended and then continued along the beach, just of the sea wall, for an additional three or four miles until we reached what Tish said was Nanavak Bay. I had Sam orient the Ripsaw in a manner that would allow us to see if there were any signs of headlamps off in the distance. After I asked if everyone was okay, I told them we’d sit there for a while until we knew for sure we hadn’t been tailed.

After I was sure we were relatively safe, I unbuckled my seatbelt and slunk back into the warmth of the heated leather seats. Trying to think about anything other than our predicament, even if it were just for a moment or two, I began thumbing through the large center-console display unit. I was disheartened to find out the satellite radio wasn’t working – or the satellite navigation, for that matter. I then tried to search AM/FM bands, hoping to hear some news, but no one was transmitting. My little foray into relaxation wasn’t working.

There was a bit of good news. Lit in bright blue on the LCD screen was the time. It was 12:21 AM. For whatever reason, I felt comforted by knowing what time it was. I’m not sure why. Maybe I knew then that things had changed for good, and that at that moment the last bit of normalcy was being able to tell time. The bad news was — and there was always bad news — we’d only been dealing with the Order for less than twenty hours. It sure seemed a hell of a lot longer than that.

The irony of the situation occurred to me as I further explored the different things you could do from the LCD screen. I was sitting in an exotic vehicle that cost more than a couple years of my salary. Hell, probably a lot longer than that. It was an impressive machine. It’s fitting, I guess, on some cosmic level, that it took what amounted to an apocalypse for me to experience such a luxury.

I heard Avery sighing. I gave the electro-doodads a break long enough to steal a glance, making sure he was okay. He sat rigid in his seat, fidgeting with the bloody bandage covering the bite the Gray had given him. I wanted to let him off the hook first. That news would be the only good news I’d give that night.

I tried to get his attention, but he was clearly somewhere else. A raised voice later, and he finally looked away from his injured hand. Not beating around the bush, just like Avery liked things, I said, “You’re not going to turn into a Gray. That’s not how this works.”

He looked skeptical.

“It’s not a virus or anything natural .” I made sure to accentuate the word natural. “The Order has poisoned our drinking water. The Grays, as stupid as this sounds, are what amounts to biological weapons. They’ve turned our own people literally against us.”

Everyone, except Avery and his syncopated snapping, fell silent. It was one thing to wonder what could turn people into gray monsters. It was a hell of another having the curtain of wonder abruptly removed along with the worried wondering – or some part of it, anyway. There was no cussing or gnashing of teeth; no whimpering or crying; no rapid-fire questions, either. Just silence. After all, what coping mechanism existed for the mess that we had fallen into? We sat like that for a long time. It was only after I had grown tired of carrying the weight of what else I knew that I finally broke the silence.

I decided to mitigate some of the damage the massive truth-bomb had left. I told them things could’ve been worse. The methods keeping the Order out of sight all those years was undermining their efforts in a significant way. Kelley didn’t know until two days prior that she would be working with the Grays. She was told that she would be working with “byeongsa,” which in Korean meant soldier. That obviously confused her because the Order didn’t consider themselves soldiers. She thought maybe North Korea was sending actual soldiers.