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. Apparently, he wasn’t. “What, son?”
“No, there was just much more room there.”
Sam laughed. “Oh.”
Kelley said she had placed the sound devices at the airport as she was told, but almost no Grays responded to them. The few who did kicked and beat them until they no longer worked. They then ran off.
“The way you talk, their entire operation was a disaster, but we know that’s not true,” Titouan said.
He was right. While I was pointing out how this or that didn’t work, the reality of the situation was, even if the Order did have weaknesses, they had turned most of the inhabitants of Barrow into mindless monsters. So, no matter their shortcomings, the Grays just being Grays, was enough to destroy our civilization.
And they weren’t wholly incompetent from an organizational standpoint either. At least not in the beginning. We only lived because the Order needed us to be test dummies. That and we had a separate supply of drinking water. Kelley said she was supposed to round up a small group of people, even if it meant her own, and run another test on them. They were getting ready to ask (or force, if Bob was right) for volunteers when Kelley was told a group of people perfect for the test had entered Barrow.
I didn’t tell them at the time because they were under enough stress, but we had been tracked since the moment we left the Patch. After the failed airport test, the leadership wanted answers. And why wouldn’t they? The failed experiment and the dangers the Grays represented had caused issues all up and down the leadership hierarchy, especially in Barrow.
Even with all that, Kelley had made sure to tell me, “How could we complete our mission without the aid of the byeongsa? There would be millions of you against thousands of us.” She, along with others, believed the Grays had been tampered with. That must’ve been the case, because “their Dear Leader would’ve never given them a defective army,” she had told me. But that seemed untrue. Almost every instruction she was given on how to operate the Grays seemed wrong.
“How were they ever going to?”
I turned to face Titouan. “Huh?”
“Win without the Grays.”
“I have no clue,” I told him.
Sam sucked air between his teeth before saying, “Crazy, crazy, shit right ’ere.”
I remember sitting in my seat and shaking my head against the headrest. I knew crazier shit that I hadn’t even told them yet. I crosschecked all of it in my mind before uttering another word, making sure I hadn’t gone crazy. Like I would’ve known. That I only felt like I was teetering towards madness told me I wasn’t all the way there yet. I hoped.
I began again. I told them about the second test the leadership wanted to run:
Kelley managed with much struggle to get the Grays in an area just ahead of us. Just before we got there, though, they began wondering off, lured off by noises or whatever else that grabbed their attention. Only one stayed. The one who attacked Tom. Kelley said he was one of the smarter ones. He did what he was intended to do, which led me to agree with Kelley, that perhaps the agent was tampered with.
“Who in the hell would’ve known how ta mess ’em up?”
“Sabotage, you mean,” Avery said, taking a break with the phone long enough to be an ass.
Watching Sam making a fist and flicking a half-smile towards Avery, I said, “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe the CIA or maybe someone in the Order.”
“It would have to be someone who knew the vast complexities of whatever agent was used,” Avery said, matter-of-factly. “Just any rube could not, I assure you, do it.”
“Let’s save that conversation for another time.”
Avery muttered something before going back to what he was doing.
Kelley chased the unruly Grays to a house down the street from where Tom was attacked. They were pounding on a door when she got there. She thought it likely someone hadn’t drunk the water and was hiding. Instead, she found one of her comrades holed up inside with what used to be an entire family. The dumb ass had apparently forgotten to smear himself with repellent, and the Grays had chased him into the house. To his credit, Kelley said he had killed two of the three people inside. To his detriment, he hadn’t managed to work up the nerve to kill the child.
If things weren’t already ridiculous enough, she decided that the best thing he could do to restore his honor was to kill himself. The fucked-up part was — I mean the more fucked up part — she wanted him to do it in a way that helped her. I didn’t know how, and for whatever reason didn’t ask, but she knew we were headed to Miley’s. I guess it made sense that Miley Industries owned the Patch, and since we were from there, it wasn’t a wild assumption to believe that would be the place we would go, especially given there were no other more appealing locations in Barrow. Whatever it was, she created a scenario she hoped would garner our help and allow her to go there with us.