Virtual Insanity

[ItzToxie]

Carl sat down and stared out of the window. He'd grabbed everything he'd needed from the dorms and outside. The SVD was wrapped up tight in bedsheets, grass woven through the fabric. The same could be said for Carl, a bedsheet wrapped around him, grass and foliage pressed through and wrapped around where he could. Wasn't a real ghille, but it would be just enough to blend in to the snow. By the time he reaches his target location, it'll be long past sundown. Right now the blizzard was getting worse.

He pulled out a newport and lit it, taking a long drag.

He lied to Reinette. He lied to Chevy and Charlie. He told them he'd get them out of here, he'd kill the monsters, he'd save the day. Clearly, he didn't. Would he lie again?

He closed his eyes. Inhaled deep.

"Suppose it don't matter." He answered to himself. If he did, he wouldn't be around anymore anyways. Carl couldn't kill monsters. He tried for all that it mattered though. He tried to save people too, but that was a farce too. He was a machine gunner, not a corpsman. Sure he wanted to be a pilot, but at the end of the day, he was good for one thing, and it wasn't killing monsters or helping people.

For a while, he'd fooled himself. He thought he found his calling when he got his B Billet. Got to go through boot camp all over again to earn his campaign cover. Got to teach a bunch of identical looking bald kids how to be adults, how to be Marines. He learned everything about them, where they were from, why they joined, what they were good at, and what they sucked at. Then he made them better at what they sucked at. The weak got stronger. The dumb got smarter. The meek got braver. He wanted them to be successful, he hoped they were whatever they were doing now. That was what he lived for, but it wasn't what he was meant for.

Carl's specialty was locating, closing with, and destroying the enemy through fire and maneuver. Fire into close combat. Kill the enemy. Janus Hayes wanted him to kill people. It was what he was trained to do, and in the end he couldn't escape that.

You want me to kill people? Fine, I will.

He took another drag, watched the sun keep going down.

He'll give the bastards what they want. They want combat data? They're going to get a very, very, in-depth class on it tonight. And if Carl lives to see another sunrise, he'll give them another when it goes back down, and again, and again, until they come to him. Then he'll show them the meaning of fire in close combat.

Carl didn't help people. He killed people, and it was time to show those bastards what that really meant.

He stood up and walked to the doorway. The portal to ice, cold hell. He took a final drag of his last cigarette before the end of the world. He'd lived a full life. He couldn't complain in the end. Because of him, a lot of people didn't get that chance. If this was it, this was it. It if meant others got their chance, then he could live with that.

It wasn't all that scary. Wasn't like he was really killing people now, anyways. What kind of a person does this? Feeding them to monsters? Turning them into them? That wasn't a person. Wasn't even an animal. It was evil. Pure evil.


He wasn't killing people. They looked like them, talked like them, but a person wouldn't do what they did. Reminded him of that one quote him and his boys used to giggle at. Carl stepped into the snow and pulled up the makeshift hood. He put the butt of his cig out on his thumb to keep him focused, then tossed it into the snow. Despite it all, he smiled. He knew what he wanted on his tombstone.

'How does it feel to kill a human being?'

'Wouldn't know, human beings don't work for Janus Hayes.'~ Gunny Kowalski.

((Carl Kowalski continued elsewhere.))