He did not look like a person tasked to save mankind. He was tall, just over six feet, and was powerfully built like a football player though it was clear he’d lost a lot of weight since June. His skin was pale, and eyes drawn from too much death and sorrow. He had scruffy dark brown hair, and hadn’t shaved in days. His brown eyes were alert, and intelligent, but he wore no halo, and had no aura. He was dirty, and tired. His smile was worn like he hadn't had a reason to use it in a very long time. He was one man. He was the every man. Maybe that was the point all along Gilbert thought. If evil could easily make a normal person break, then there was no hope for the weak.
Gilbert lied to him that day to gain his trust, and those lies sat inside him like festering rot. Was the eternal soul of his wife worth condemning all of mankind to oblivion? Gilbert hoped he had time to sort everything out in time. So much was at stake.
*****
The cold, dark place came back to him soon after he met the man known as the Soul. It was Christmas night when Gilbert heard gunshots ring out from campus, and despite the instructions of evil, Gilbert ran to aid Adrian anyway. He hadn’t been specifically told not to help, and any time he could confound the Devil, he did so. Gilbert watched a truck blast down Auburn Lake Road away from the school, just as he pulled his Buick straight towards the end of his road, Prospect Circle. Auburn Lake Road was the street that ended at the private school.
Gilbert arrived on campus and went directly to the dormitory that Adrian had made his home in. Adrian called it Hall E. Inside Gilbert found an emaciated family of four with Adrian, and that was the bloody beginning of their community. The Williams family consisted of Charles and Patty, the mother and father. They had a 17 year old daughter named Abigail, who was a student at the school when the world ended, and their 12 year old rambunctious boy named Randy.
The Williams family had come from the town of Westfield about forty five minutes from campus, and they had been followed by someone. His name was Sean, and he was the leader of the survivors in Westfield. Sean had attacked Adrian and the Williams family just minutes earlier, and would likely return to finish the job with more people. There were gunshot holes through the boards Adrian had put over the windows, and two dead bodies outside the dorm. Adrian had hunted his attackers down and shown them how it was done. Gilbert was proud.
That night Gilbert had slept in Hall E and he slept the sleep of babes. His dreams were full of life, love, vigor and he experienced more rest in the recliner in the common room of the dorm that night than he’d had since the first dreams of the cold place back in early June. For whatever reason, he was at peace in the dormitory.
When Gilbert returned home however, his first shut eye resulted in an immediate nightmare. The Voice was angry. Gilbert felt a vibration grating on his very being from the raw emotion in The Voice.
“Never sleep near the Soul again.”
Gilbert stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled. “Why’s that Mr. Devil? Jealous?”
“It matters only that it displeases me. It is not part of the plan. Do not do it again.”
“I can’t make that promise. I’ll sleep where I have to, when I have to in order to accomplish my task.” A soldier’s answer to an officer’s order. Gilbert felt a growing rumble in his mind that he instantly identified as fresh anger from The Voice. Gilbert wasn’t scared here anymore. He now knew he could get under the skin of the Devil. He felt what passed for an angry sigh in his mind from The Voice.
“Sean will return soon. You must allow him to escape when their attack fails.”
“How am I supposed to do that? What if he gets hit by a stray bullet? We’re setting up a pretty solid ambush here, it could easily happen.”
“He will not be shot. And you MUST allow him to pass. He is one of my chosen, as you are. His task is to die at Adrian’s hand in anger, not as an idle victim in a shooting in the road.”
“Interesting. He lives to die another day.”
“Indeed. Make this occur Gilbert Donohue. Your wife’s soul could be lost for eternity should you fail to perform.”
Gilbert was getting awfully sick of these threats.
*****
Adrian’s ambush happened not long after that dream. Adrian and the Williams family had set up the trap in the middle of Auburn Lake Road just before the campus entrance. They’d put down sheets of plywood filled with nails to flatten tires on vehicles, and they’d prepped trees to fall to crush cars, and to make an escape impossible. Gilbert was to remain near his house, and when the attack came, he would rush to the road as a rear guard, and prevent more attackers from arriving, and cut off any escapees.
Except he had to let Sean escape. And Gilbert did just that, though it pained him to do so. When the shooting began down the road Gilbert drove out into the road and laid down suppressing fire on the shooters in the small Westfield convoy. He wasn’t trying to kill anyone that day, just to keep their heads down. The last thing he wanted to do was to accidentally shoot Sean, and fuck everything up for his wife.
Gilbert knew who Sean was the moment he put eyes on him. He had been crawling in the ditch, buried over his head in snow, heading away from Adrian’s accurate fire and didn’t stand up until he was well away from the gun battle. Gilbert had been behind the hood of the Buick, taking cover when Sean stood up and saw the old man. His eyes locked wide open in horror as Gilbert leveled the heavy .45 at Sean’s chest. When Sean looked up from the gaping barrel of the pistol Gilbert took stock of the Devil’s chosen.
Gilbert knew Sean was a politician. Sneaky, slimy, and he looked every bit the part of the spoiled, charming brat. His tiny round glasses were covered in white fog, and his face was spattered with the blood of his dead minions. If the world's politicians had been forced to get the blood of the warriors they sent off to fight their battles on their faces, Gilbert reckoned there'd be far fewer wars. Of course standing there in that moment, knee deep in the snow drift, Sean looked very much defeated, and afraid.
Gilbert thought about squeezing the 1911's trigger, and ending the shit bag right there, but he thought of his wife, and knew he couldn’t. This wasn't the moment, not yet. He lowered the pistol, and waved it to the side, indicating to Sean he should get the fuck out of Dodge. Sean stood still for a moment, wondering if it was a trick, and finally Gilbert spoke up, “Fuck off, asshole. You don’t die here today.”
Gilbert saw Sean’s beady eyes blink on the other side of his glasses, and he bolted down the country road to freedom. Gilbert saw Sean once more sometime later, when rather than killing him with his own hands, Adrian let Westfield’s jaded and fed up people take care of him.
Sean did not die at Adrian’s hand in anger, and the Devil went home empty handed once more.
*****
Before Gilbert watched Sean meet his end he went on an expedition against what he knew The Voice would want. Adrian and company had acquired two snow mobiles right before the attack and Gilbert had been using them to get around. His Buick was mediocre in the snow at best, and the Chevy truck they’d salvaged for him was quite crappy on gas, making the snowmobile a perfect compromise. Fast, fuel efficient, and it could cut across the woods blazing a short trail wherever they needed to go.
Gilbert used the snow machine in early January after the attack to accomplish two tasks. Before the end of the world began, Gilbert and his wife owned not one, but two businesses. Adrian only knew of one. From the ground up they had started a small regional chain of Italian restaurants. When he and his wife decided to scale back the scope of their life and move towards retirement, they had sold the restaurants to a larger chain, and retained a single business, that of the distribution warehouse that had supplied their own restaurants.
The warehouse was on the far side of town heading towards the city. Gilbert knew the town was covered in undead from the reports Adrian brought back from his trips, but he knew he had to go back to the warehouse to see if it was still intact, and full of the food he and his wife sold to stock restaurants all over the region. Gilbert also wondered if his wife would be there, still in the business. Gilbert skirted town on the snow machine, and drove down the country road to the small industrial strip where his business was.
The business was named innocuously enough. He and his wife wanted a name that was clearly different than their restaurants, so they called it Donohue Imports, which said pretty much nothing about what the business did. When Gilbert pulled the snow machine into the parking lot, it was clear the building hadn’t been visited in some time, if at all. The strip they were in had a plumbing supply store, a furniture restoration business, and a hobby shop. None of those businesses would draw in looters looking for food or ammunition.
Gilbert let himself into the back fire door of the warehouse, and was happy to see that all the food in stock was still there. Cans and cans of vegetables, tomato sauce, pickles, peppers, flour, oil, and cases stacked atop cases of condiments lined massive shelves. The warehouse wasn’t large by industrial standards, but in a world producing no food, a hundred cases of edible loot was the equivalent of an apocalypse king’s ransom. Gilbert strapped a few small cases of food onto the snowmobile when he left to store in his already cluttered basement, and he returned home. Gilbert kept this new dark secret. Telling Adrian about the food would no doubt bring down the wrath of The Voice. This was a secret he’d have to hold onto for some time. Hopefully he could tell Adrian before his darkest secret was revealed.
The other task Gilbert accomplished with the snowmobiles at the dawn of the New Year was finding additional fuel storage for the campus. Fuel on hand was a huge issue for the residents of the school and they needed more barrels on hand to store gasoline. Gilbert discovered four drums at a house which he and Adrian collected with some difficulty. It was only made difficult by a nightmare visit the night prior by The Voice.
Gilbert didn’t even react when he realized he was in the dark place again. The fear of the cold, the dark, and the smell of rotting blood had left him. Inside all he had was frustration, and a burning desire to find a way out of his predicament.
“Gilbert Donohue, a moment will arrive soon that you must act upon.”
Gilbert inhaled deeply, letting the chill reach deep down inside him. It no longer felt painful. It was reduced to a mere irritant. He exhaled, and replied to The Voice, “What is it now?”
“Tomorrow you will go to the home to obtain the barrels for fuel. You will be approached by other survivors. They will attempt to contact you. You should engage them as hostiles, and force Adrian to kill them.”
“Why? Are they dangerous to us?” Gilbert’s white eyebrow perked up sharply.
“They will be armed.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Police are armed and I never shot at them. Are they a threat to us or not?”
“It does not matter. You will instigate a firefight with them. Force Adrian to come to rescue you. He is fragile now, and needless violence will upset his moral equilibrium.”
“I don’t like this one bit. I don’t want to kill anyone that doesn’t have it coming.”
“It does not matter if you like the tasks set forth for you. It matters only that you complete them, and retain the sanctity of your wife’s eternal soul. You still love her Gilbert Donohue, don’t you?”
With an angry grumble, Gilbert woke up.
He led Adrian to the home later that morning, and just as The Voice said, they were approached by fellow survivors after Adrian and Gilbert dispatched two undead at the home. They were jovial. They even waved as they approached. Gilbert waved at them, lifted his AK-47, and fired a shot over their heads. He would not allow their blood on his hands. Of course Adrian rushed to his aid, and like the soldier he was, he dispatched the threats efficiently, and calmly. Despite hating what was happening, and hating himself for having started it, Gilbert loved watching him move and shoot in battle. He was graceful, and efficient, with no wasted movement. He was instinctual, and predatory, like a hunter of men. He would’ve been a lethal operator had he stayed in the military. The man exuded complete confidence under strife. Secretly Gilbert rejoiced at Adrian’s strength and focus.
Gilbert rejoiced once more when Adrian didn’t break emotionally after the firefight. He was still strong. Resolved. Gilbert was beginning to think he was unbreakable.
Humanity’s chances for survival lived for another day.
*****
Things took a turn for the worse for Gilbert not long after, and it had little to do with The Voice. On the other side of town all along there was a large batch of survivors. Gilbert had a small ham radio set up in his basement as the beginning of one of his hobbies during his retirement. The thing never quite worked as well as it was supposed to, and that always confounded Gilbert. When he'd bought it, it was supposed to be able to reach all the way around the world, but the old Green Beret had never managed more than the surrounding states, and even then it was shit reception. From November on or so, Gilbert had managed to stay in touch with Brian Moore, the Chief of Police on the other side of town. Brian had accumulated nearly two hundred survivors at a secure factory, and Gilbert was staying in touch to have a plan B. Gilbert was friends with the Chief’s dad going back nearly twenty years, and he knew Brian like he was his own child. Brian was a good man, and a good father.
They exchanged stories over time, caught up on how things were since the end of the world, and made sure that they were both safe and sound. Brian was concerned for Gilbert because Adrian’s group had been heading into downtown more often and stirring the hornet’s nest of undead. Brian also felt that they were stronger unified, and he wanted Gilbert to persuade Adrian and the Williams clan to move to their home, the old corporate headquarters for a solar panel manufacturer.