Chapter Fifty one

Gerald

The sun is going down, and Gerald is struggling to stay hidden. With at least half the entire populous on the lookout for him, he ironically finds himself with nowhere to turn but the same dark crevices of the city the rats have been forced to live in. He’s even been scrounging in dark alleys for abandoned clothing so he can look like one of them too. If he can stay off of the radar for at least a week, he might be able to escape using his old alternate identification from the Lions Group. As for now, the situation is too hot and he’s going to have to hold up out of sight in the metal culvert pipe he found off the side of the road for another night. It’s at least dry, and out of the wind for now.

There are worse places he could spend the night. The derelicts will all be out soon, and he needs to get out of sight. As proud of himself as he is for destroying SSS, he finds himself still being extremely angry and resentful. The hunger of having not eaten for nearly three days now is really gnawing at him. He can’t risk everything over trying to find a meal, not yet. If he does get caught, after what he’s done, no one is going to be bringing him in alive. The other investigators will make sure of it.

As the last of the bright sunset drops below the jagged horizon of the city, he checks around himself one more time, listening carefully for anyone nearby. Satisfied he’s in the clear, he crawls into the corrugated steel tube in the side of the drainage canal and beds down. While he settles down and considers how to get the hell out of his situation, he listens to the distant sound of tires on the overpass, and tries to fall asleep. The little pillow he made from plastic bags is a little crinkly, but it makes him smile at how comfy it actually is.

Just as he closes his eyes for the night, he hears something that makes his head lift up. Something is making a tapping noise farther down the other end of the small tunnel. When he turns his head back to see what it is, a small rock bouncing down the tunnel smacks him right in the ear. It’s not the kind of rat he was expecting.

The echoing voice of someone comes down the pipe at him. “That’s the guy, that’s him.” Another small rock comes skipping down the tunnel at him. This time, it smacks him right in the top of his head. He’s wide awake now, and livid as all hell. All he wanted was some damn sleep, and some ass-hat has just pushed him right over the edge.

While he’s distracted, focused on the far end of the tunnel, someone else grabs ahold of his boots and hauls him out onto the ground. The back of his head drops and smacks the bottom of the sloped concrete wall when he falls to the ground. The blunt pain in the back of his head is intense, making him grit his teeth tight. A seething growl is forced out between his teeth. When he tries to roll over, the hands still holding onto his ankles try dragging him again. He curls back up at them like a rattlesnake, ready to tear chunks off of whoever it is.

Springing up off the ground in a forward flip, Gerald lurches for the nearest jackass still cocky enough to have not run away. He eyes a good ten heavily garbed people surrounding him in the dawn, likely trying to steal anything he has. He grabs the first man in front of him by the shoulders of his cloak and hammers his knee into their chest with indescribable rage. Surprising even himself, the man’s sternum pops loudly under the blow. When he thrashes them to the ground, they flop about silently, trying to gasp for air like a fish out of water.

Without any hesitation at all, he kicks the heels out from under the next nearest person and slams the back of their head down onto the concrete. A small streak of blood spurts out from under their short hair. There’s not even another twitch from them after that. When the others start to back up, he can’t help but to grab one more of them before making a break for it. They need to be taught a lesson, one they won’t forget.

He snatches a fistful of someone’s cloak and their hair underneath it, making them scream in terror. It’s a woman, one stupid enough to have come along, and she’s helpless to get away from him. He learned long ago to not give anyone any mercy on the merit of being a woman. She sought him out for this, and he’s going to give her what she has coming.

While the others try to plead for him to stop, he locks her head back in his arm and jerks her around as hard as he can into a momentous body slam. Her neck is already breaking before they can finish screaming “No!” The woman’s limp body sprawls out across the ground in front of them like a wet towel tossed in the dirt.

While the others are still reeling in shock, he scrambles away as fast as he can in a full sprint. It’s too dark to really see where he’s going now, but he can at least see the ground far enough ahead of him to not trip over anything. As he runs, the sounds of more and more footsteps join in on the chase after him.

Whenever he looks left or right, he catches glimpses of people running parallel to him. No matter how hard he pushes himself, he can’t outrun the masses pouring in from everywhere around him. He was sure he had picked a place to hide where no one would find him. It doesn’t make any sense. It looks like the entire southern sector has come out for him. It won’t do him any good trying to outrun them anymore. It’s just not going to happen.

He slows his pace down so he doesn’t wear himself out any more than he already is. It’s going to come down to one last fight, and he’s not about to let them wear him down like a pack of wild dogs first. Still, he keeps moving in hopes of finding some impossible way to escape. No one has mustered the courage to come at him again yet, but they’re likely to start stoning him to death any second now. His eyes dart every direction for any way out.

Finally back at SSS home base, Vaun is up late, drinking by himself again. He drove the shuttle truck home all last night, slept during the day, and is wide awake now. He can’t believe he missed all the giant robot action while out on the road. He’s watched all the videos of what happened more than twice now. With nothing else to do, he quickly clicks through the local network channels, trying to avoid commercials.

When he comes across what looks like a helicopter spotlight chasing a homeless man, he pauses. He sits up straight when he notices the throng of at least two hundred more derelicts seeming to be chasing after the man too. He scoffs, having never seen anything like it before.

“Dayamn! Looks like a brotha broke the hobo code! Fuckin piranhas.”

Whoever the man in the middle is, he must’ve done something really bad. He’s probably a rapist or something, and he’s about to get what he deserves. Like usual, law enforcement isn’t going to get there in near enough time to save the guy. The rats are blocking the patrol cars at every turn for miles out. Only a news chopper seems to be able to get close, but only close enough to zoom their camera in.

When the running man reaches a large overpass bridge, he rips off his mangy canvas poncho and throws it over the edge. When the camera follows it dropping well over a hundred feet down to the water, he recognizes the place as the big iron bridge that all the homeless people hang out under. There’s no escaping the place.

He shouts at his holographic projector the projector as if they can hear him on the other side. “Ooh, you’re screwed now dude. You can try n jump, but that aint gonna turn out good.”

When the derelict takes his undershirt off too, and ferociously throws it on the ground, it’s a bit of a surprise. The man is an animal, and probably cranked out on PCP. The news feed zooms in close on him. His sweaty white skin is tightly wrapped around huge hairy shoulders, wide lats, and a big chest built for bench pressing cars.

Beer sprays out of Vaun’s mouth when, plain as day, Gerald’s face looks up into the light of the helicopter. Gerald’s eyes are wild, and his teeth are bared. The mob of zealots have surrounded and shut him off at both ends of the bridge now, trapping him in the middle. Most of them are wielding crude weapons like pipes, boards, and bricks. One individual wearing what Marek described to him as being a trader’s cloak, steps out in front of the mob. The man appears to be in charge, and points at the man accusingly. There is no audio, but the man is surely making some condemnation speech before inciting the mob killing that will come next.

Vaun jumps up and runs to his door, throwing it open as hard as he can, slamming it into the wall. He rushes to the intercom at the front desk and yells as loud as he can into it, loud enough to wake the dead. “Get your asses out of bed! They’ve got Gerald! The rats have got Gerald cornered on the bridge! They’re gonna kill im! It’s on the news!”

Within a matter of seconds, he’s drifting across the black marble floor down the hall in his socks and crashing through the double doors of the bar. The channel is already up on the main projector. Clarice, who was making some drinks, is standing behind the bar with her mouth open, watching. Hardly anyone even looks back at him when he rushes in. They all watch while the asshole in the trading cloak tries to make a spectacle out of Gerald. All eyes are still on the news when Sy barges into the room too.

While the man in the cloak is preoccupied with running his mouth, Gerald readies himself to make his move. He knows his life is going to end in a matter of minutes, but he absolutely means to take anyone he can with him. The very second the trader’s eyes are turned away, he lunges at him from behind. In stunned shock, everyone else flinches back, leaving the arrogant prick for the taking. Only one person shouts “watch out Doug!” It’s too late.

Gerald swings his hand high overhead, like he were pitching a baseball, slamming it down on top of Doug’s head, and digging his fingers into his eye sockets. With a snarl, he drags Doug backward across the ground by his skull and into the center of the empty circle they’ve all made for him. In a fit of wild rage, he slams Doug’s skull down on the pavement over and over until gore has been spread all around himself.

Immediately, the crowd crashes down around him like a tsunami, trying to crush him. Everyone on top of him is trying to tear him apart all at once. Tight gripping hands are grabbing his skin and flesh everywhere. He can’t see anything under the pile of people covering him, but he thrashes about wildly in every way he can. Maniacally, he swings his elbows, kicks, bites, and claws at everything around him. Trying to lift the crushing weight of people off of himself, he presses against the ground with all the strength he has.

His hand is on someone’s face, and they’re screaming in pain, right in his face. In an absolute rage, he rams his hand into their mouth, to shut them up, and completely collapses their jaw off its hinjes, breaking it into multiple pieces. When the weight of bodies on top of him is too much, and crushes him to the ground, he tries to scream in anger as hard as he can, but nothing comes out. All he can do is blink against the blood starting to trickle over his eyes. His very last moment is spent under a mass of the most torment he could ever have managed to create. If a fortune teller ever told him this would be his final moment, he would have smiled.

The room is left completely silent, until Sy speaks up in the back of the room. “Hooo-leee-shit.”

Clarice looks like she saw something she really didn’t want to. The blood has receded from her face, leaving it quite pale. “What the fuk just happened?”

Vaun scratches the top of his head. He’s nearly sweaty from watching what went down. “I never thought I’d ever say this, but damn, what a champ. I wish we could’ve won that man over to our side.”

Sy looks around the room at everyone with raised eyebrows, trying to catch individual people’s eyes. “Yeah, no shit.” He points at the projector. “That’s why I had you guys on lockdown.” He doesn’t say it, but he really feels like retiring right now.

Over in the corner, Tony takes another gulp out of the pitcher he is using as a glass. “I was like… rooting for the guy there for a second. Shit was nuts.”

Selner chuckles. “Props for the epic last stand tho, right?”

Clarice pours a shot of their cheapest crap, a fairly dark brown whiskey, and drops a single red splotch of hot sauce into it. It sinks to the bottom like little glob of blood. She slides it down the long span of epoxied bullet shells to Vaun.

“New drink! I call it the Gerald.”

Vaun picks it up and looks in through the side of the glass curiously. “Hey, I’ll drink to the savage.”

Clarice quickly makes another one and slides it on down to Sy. He picks it up and holds it up high, turning around to everyone in the room. All the rest of the glasses in the room raise up in honor of a worthy adversary.

“To Gerald, god rest his soul.”