The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (reading women .TXT) 📕

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.

When she asked for guidance, she was told that she had to wait.  A crate showed up at her house the day prior to the attack. It contained the gel and the ultrasonic sound devices. Also, inside, was a bullet-point of list of instructions on what her duties were with the Grays, what they were, and how they would be used. There were also cursory instructions on how to control them and protect herself. She said the instructions were handwritten and that some portions of the list had been scribbled out.

Avery mumbled something about it being impossible, and then transitioned over to something about genetic modification, before finally settling on yelling at me. “There is no way to confirm what she told you. I could still turn.”

“Look, Avery, I’m just telling you what she said.”  He began to rock back in forth in the seat, which let me know he was going into deep-thought mode. I needed to hurry up and tell them what I knew, or he was going to bombard me with so many questions I couldn’t answer, I’d never get to the ones I might be able to.

I continued:

When I called them zombies, she became upset. She said they weren’t mindless zombies. When I told her Avery got bit by one, she seemed genuinely surprised. She was more surprised when I told her about the lady in the kitchen who the Grays munched on for supper. She didn’t believe me. Up until the last moment of Kelley’s life, even after she decided to talk, she would lapse back to her years and years of brainwashing. This moment was amongst one of those. Even with all the issues she was having with the Grays, she couldn’t come out and say they were bad. They were a matter of nationalistic pride for her.

“That’s not how this works,” she told me. “The Byeongsa are supposed to be like weeds. They’re invasive; they crowd out and destroy anything near them, and when they die, you’re happy. Those who are left are either going to be us, those who will rule over your country, or those who will be ruled over. The Byeongsa will not be around for that. They will have starved and died out long before. Our Dear Leader has made sure of that.”

I asked her to tell me more about the gel and sound devices. She told me that once the operation started, the instructions she was given was to tell everyone in her cluster to wear the gel. She then went over the same bullet-point list as she had gotten, which as she said, didn’t amount to much. She said that she was dealing with people she had never known and having to tell them they were going to be controlling the byeongsa. She said the whole experience was surreal. Some of the people, even though they had been indoctrinated as much as she had, refused to believe what they were being told. She thought she was losing them. That they were going to mutiny against her. Luckily for her, a unit leader showed up, and he quickly got things under control. He also gave them the first specific instructions. They were told to begin herding the Grays to the airport.

“Was ‘ey goin ta fly ‘em somewhere?”

I tried to determine if he was joking.