“And you failed. I saw your cave. You failed. What happened, did you actually think you were the one chosen for all this?”
“When it all started, I felt the strength in me,” he curled his free arm as if making a muscle. “I felt confident, sure of myself, nothing could stop me. This was all…all my time.”
“So you gathered survivors,” Trevor said. “You found yourself a quiet little mansion in the woods. Somewhere secluded.”
“Yeah…yeah,” George agreed. “I could see a picture in my mind, isn’t that funny? I found a place like that picture.”
Trevor told him, “It wasn’t quite right, was it? Not exactly like the picture in your mind.”
George shook his head. “No. Not exactly. But close enough.”
“You saw this place. You saw the place given to me. “
George clenched his teeth, “This should’ve been my place. Mistake or no, I was first. It should have been mine.”
“You didn’t have the right, what? Combination of genes? You were an offshoot. A second thought. The wrong mix. But you had a little, a taste of what I got, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” George conceded.
Trevor told him, “The people came to you when they saw your confidence. Hell, you felt like you could save the world, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” George said. “And I could hear the dogs in my head. I would call to them and they came running.”
Stone told him what he already knew: “But you only had half of it. When they came to you, something happened. It wasn’t right. Your thoughts in their head…the wrong frequency or something.”
George bit on his lip.
Trevor paused and considered the implication. All these years he believed the Old Man granted him the ability to communicate with the K9s. The entity had said, “Now, as to the second gift. Well you already got that one but you’re too shell-shocked to know it. When you get to the house that’s when you’ll realize that one. I guess I kind of lied when I said you don’t have no friends no more.”
Yes, Trevor thought as he stood across from George. I did already have it. At the house, after my parents were killed…I could hear the dogs then. I just thought I was going crazy or something. But they warned me to get going.
“You awake over there, brother?”
“All these years I thought the K9 thing was a gift,” Trevor finally spoke.
“It was,” George agreed. “It was a gift revealed in your genetic code; half coming from your dad, the other half from your mom. Like brown eyes and black hair, or maybe a pre-disposition to diabetes. All activated at the right time and the right place.”
“I thought it was a gift from the Old Man,” Stone mumbled to himself.
“The what?” George asked.
“Nothing,” Trevor said. “So the dogs came to you, but they went nuts. Started ripping each other apart.”
George confessed, “That’s right, yeah. Still, even without the dogs I knew I could do it. I knew I could be the savior. I just needed time; that was all.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Trevor corrected. “You weren’t meant to! You weren’t meant to be! It had to be me. I was the next link in the chain. A chain of genetics going back-what? — to the dawn of man? Some code mixed in the primordial soup.”
“It could’ve been me!”
“Maybe a pre-determined plan. Maybe just a fluke. But it had to be me. I was the only one who could be JB’s father.”
That’s why I couldn’t be with Nina. He could not say some things aloud.
George grumbled, “I had the people with me, they trusted me. I was a great leader. They’d do whatever I asked! They pledged their loyalty to me! They followed without question!”
Ashley snapped, “And you led them to what? Death?”
George’s face twisted like angry storm clouds on the verge of spawning a tornado. First, it looked like rage…then agony.
“I…didn’t…do…any…thing,” he flexed the fingers on his free hand as if trying to crush away the memories. “We hid…to gather our strength. We had food, guns, water.”
Trevor understood. He said, “You hid too long. They came to get you. They wiped you out like trapped rats. No one told you,” Trevor paused, considered, and said, “no one told you it was time to fight.”
George’s lip quivered. “There were so many. I never thought there could be so many. What you call Ghouls and Red Hands by the thousands, Hivvans, and more. Wave after wave.”
Trevor surmised, “Your own Battle of Five Armies. But you let them get to your front door step. You fought on their terms, not yours.”
“Yes,” George closed his fist and gnawed on a thumb knuckle. “I heard my people screaming…dying…ripped apart.”
“So you hid,” Stone knew the rest of the story. “You abandoned your people as they were slaughtered. You fled to the cave and you piled their bodies high to hide your hole. You stayed there and drew your pictures.”
“So…alone…” George mumbled.
Ashley broke in, “This has nothing to do with us! This has nothing to do with our son!”
George threw his eyes at her with anger but it was Trevor who spoke.
“Don’t bother, Ashley, you can’t reason with him. He came here to try and hurt me with all these revelations, to impress me that he could get by my dogs and guards, all to show he was one up on me because he figured a lot out while he was sitting in his cave. Beyond that, he doesn’t have a plan. Maybe some fantasy about killing me and taking my place, but even he’s not insane enough to really think that would work.”
George trembled, closed his eyes for a brief second, and then said, “I think I had one advantage you didn’t, little brother. Your pieces are put together like a puzzle, mine are all jumbled up and missing parts because I only had dad, not the right mom. From my mess, I was able to see the picture. Point is, sitting in my cave I had visions. Probably something in my genetic code slipping out because it was all afoul and whatnot. That’s how I put together the pieces. I dreamt everything. Our family line, our genes stretching back through time and around the world. You’ve got blood in your veins from every point on the compass.”
“A responsibility I never wanted,” Trevor said. “I can’t run from it and it’s made me do some things I regret. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just another monster that came to this world five years ago with the rest of them.”
“Oh yes, yes, you are,” George whispered. “I’ve seen it, Trevor. I’ve seen the monster inside you because it’s inside me, too. You think nature was going to choose some knight in shining armor? This isn’t a kid’s storybook. There’s messy work to be done. For every Sir Lancelot in your blood, there’s a Genghis Kahn. You were built for this, and they used a lot of parts from the dark side of the workshop. Me? Well, I didn’t get all the right parts.”
Trevor asked, “So what do we do now? What brilliant plan have you got… brother?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? Where do we go from here?”
Ashley said, “Please, let my son go.”
George pulled the knife away from Jorgie…then quickly returned the blade to his throat. Ashley gasped but no blood came, not yet.
“I was thinking,” George smiled. “Maybe I can’t be the man who saves the world. But maybe I can be the man who makes sure the world ends. Maybe I can be a bigger monster than even you, Trevor. I just have to slice this tender little throat and maybe that will do it. Of course, I’ll have to carve up the two of you just to make sure.”
A gentle smash sounded in the room, as if a glass knocked over. Trevor saw the balcony curtains flutter and a tiny canister roll on the floor.
Suddenly the room erupted in a blinding flash of light. A high-pitched tone blocked all sound from Trevor’s ears. He could smell the smoke of the detonation.
