The Beginning of An Apocalypse
Fourteen

Cas stood there and watched as men were lowered down from the helicopter and far enough away from where Marcus was stuck. Cas watched closely hoping to see them getting Marcus. She had to know he’d be okay.

Cas watched as the men carefully walked closer toward Marcus. With their metal rods, they poked at Marcus’s sides.

“Careful!” Cas shouted.

“They’re doing what they are trained to,” Gabriel said pulling her a step back from the edge. “Leave them alone if you don’t want your brother to be gone.”

Cas stared at the back of Gabriel’s head while he stayed leaning against the wall looking down at the scene. He knew where he was coming from but at the same time, she didn’t. All she knew is that she wasn’t going to listen to him. Not about this.

Cas was back beside the edge. She saw that four of them had the metal rods underneath Marcus’s body and were trying to lift him off the shard of the car. “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on. Come on.”

She wished she could be down there with Marcus. He was probably in so much pain and he had no one he knew besides him. Plus with all that’s happened to him, he’s feeling every negative emotion on the planet. It’s going to hit him hard if not now then some other time. But when it does, it’s going to feel like he was hit by a train and was stuck under the wheel. Never dying just being strung along underneath all the guilt and the hate and the sadness.

But that was for them to deal with after he was brought to a hospital and treated. Once all of the action seemed to go down and it was just them and the rest of the world protesting behind roads of barricading officers.

Cas stood there and watched as they only had to push Marcus up a little more above the shard. With only just a little more strength, Marcus would be freed from the shard and be able to be transported onto the stretcher, into the helicopter, and to a hospital.

Every part of Cas’s body was shaken. Her mind was a mess. She was thinking of everything that could go wrong as well as everything that could go right. And both were on very far ends of each other. There was a thin line that separated everything.

The very bad, mild bad, bad. Then there was Very good, mild good, and good. There were so many more in between, but from what she knew these were the most important. The most catastrophic.

“Careful,” Cas heard Gabriel repeat to himself. She looked down and saw that Gabriel was on edge. For the first time that she had seen him, he was on edge. He was tapping his heel against the ground while his hands were growing white as he squeezed onto the steel of the bridge. He was biting the inside of his cheek and his eyes were fixed on the scene with fierce intensity.

But Cas had the feeling something else was on his mind. Something to do with what was going on, but not Marcus.

Cas looked back and realized Gabriel had a reason to be that paranoid. They had gotten Marcus off the steel shard and were getting him closer to the stretcher when Marcus’s arm fell off his body and onto the metal rod. One of the men. The one that was holding the side of the metal rod that Marcus touched screeched and let go of his side. Marcus slid off the poles and hit his head. One of the soldiers tripped and the metal rods fell onto his leg being the only reason he didn’t roll down to the edge of the net.

“Marcus!” Cas shouted.

“Don’t drop him,” Gabriel muttered. He took a step back before he did anything rash that would not help the situation. He turned away only to look back and what he saw was not something that improved his mood. Improved his feelings about this.

Marcus was off the rods now. He was forcing himself to stand up and when he was standing he had already bumped into one of the soldiers that fell. The soldier had shouted and tried pushing away but it was done.

They stood there above them watching as the man slowly fell into the sickness that would soon kill him.

Cas watched as the man continued to plead for help. As the visible changes in his psychical appearance started to happen. It was like his bones were breaking. Like his bones were trying to push out of him. His insides were in control of him now.

“Help him!” Cas shouted as if they would listen to her. She looked at Gabriel as if he would or could do something. Gabriel could do something and he possibly should do something. But he knew no matter what he did he would make no one happy.

“The man’s going to die anyway,” Gabriel said. “There is no helping him.”

“We can’t just leave them down there!” Cas shouted. “They’ll die! You said you’d help me get Marcus! Save him!”

Gabriel didn’t answer her. He didn’t see what good it would do but only make her want to hit him more. Not that she could or that he would let her.

Gabriel leaned over and watched as Marcus was finding some way to walk. He was walking toward the soldier who was now seconds from death. The black blood that he was puking up was slowing and that meant everything inside him was already gone. The man was already dead and there was nothing anyone could do. Especially not Marcus.

Marcus continued to walk toward the dying man until he stopped. He looked back up and saw both Cas and Gabriel staring down at him. He didn’t look at Cas who was screaming his name and trying to study her surroundings and find a way down there. He didn’t look at her for help or was filled with fear.

He looked at Gabriel.

Marcus’s hands laid down at his sides, he looked directly up at Gabriel and Gabriel knew that Marcus knew. Marcus could still tell what was around him. Who was around him? He still remembered and if he was ever saved he would be able to tell his story. He would be able to tell someone whether it be Cas or the police.

He would tell her about how Gabriel picked him up from the side of the road and planted the proposition on him. How Gabriel practically kidnapped him and manipulated him into participating by seeing a piece of paper that was technically illegal. Marcus would tell them that he had started this all with one simple injection. He had tricked him and now this was released onto that word.

And with that one word, Gabriel knew that he had to do something. He had to do something and not something good.

No matter the cost, no matter what he may lose, he needed to get this over with.

Gabriel turned around to look at one of his own safely chosen men to guide him through here. “Hold her,” he ordered one of them and they nodded. They knew what this meant, and Gabriel made sure of that.

The man came up from behind Cad who was bent over the railing and screaming for Marcus not to fight or touch anyone. For him not to do anything.

She was so focused on him that she didn’t notice that there was someone coming up from behind her. She didn’t know until his arms went around her body and pulled her back. “Hey! Let go of me! Let go!”

She screamed and kicked her legs back. She kicked him many times she knew, but for some reason it did nothing. The man who held her was surprisingly strong. She tried to scratch him, but his arms crushed hers and there was no way she could move them.

“Gabriel!” Cas shouted. “Get your man off me! Tell him to let me go before I kill him!” Cas’s face was red with fury. Her heart continued to beat faster as she shouted curses and threats at the man who held her. She was caught up with him that she didn’t see Gabriel.

Gabriel was crouched down beside his long case. He was unlocking it and when he opened it she realized what it was. It was a gun. But not any gun that she had ever seen before. It was the start of an alien movie, she thought.

It was made of an almost blueish grey. It had a long handle that went around the owner’s shoulder that held up the massive barrel of the gun. But the gun didn’t have bullets it had something of a blue glow inside it. A bright blue glow that didn’t let her look away from it.

Gabriel grabbed it from the case and flipped a gleaming black switch and the blue glow inside the see-through barrel flashed. The muzzle of the gun changed its shape from closed and compressed to wide open with a large hollow circle in the middle.

“What-what are you doing with that?!” Cas shouted. “Gabriel!”

“It shouldn’t have had to come to this!” Gabriel shouted back at her. They had to shout or it would have been harder to hear from the background of the helicopter. “But I can’t let your brother live.”

Gabriel nodded to the man that held Cas and she felt him hold her tighter. Cas connected the pieces a lot slower than she had wished. Gabriel was going back on his word. He was going to kill Marcus. He was going to kill Marcus with that gun. Whatever that was.

“No!” Cas shouted. “You even go near him and I swear to god I will hunt you down and kill you myself!”

Gabriel didn’t care for her threats, he ignored them. He had other things to worry about than mere civilians’ feelings. Gabriel walked back to the edge of the steel railing and looked back down. Marcus was still standing there staring up at them. The soldiers that were down there tried to poke him with the medal rods, but all they did was make Marcus want to go after him. Gabriel watched as Marcus plunged forward at someone who had poked him. They dropped the rod and fell backward

“Idiots,” Gabriel muttered to himself. Gabriel set the barrel of the gun down on the railing hoping for more support. This felt like it weight tons and that it was going to break his bones. He only needed a second to let it rest before he picked it up and took the shot.

Marcus stood there giving him the same look as before. He knew who Gabriel was and he would have no trouble telling him. It was too much of a risk and Gabriel wasn’t going to let the risk stay there. The risk to his company. The risk to his freedom. The risk to get what he’s worked on since he was twenty years old which was fifteen years ago.

“Sorry, kid,” Gabriel said. “But I’d rather have you dead than me.”

Cas saw that at any second Gabriel wouldn’t be thinking, he wouldn’t be waiting for his shoulder to regain feeling, he would fire that gun. Gabriel told her that Marcus couldn’t die so she knew that if he was trying to shoot him now, then he may have found something that would. If not fully sure that it would kill Marcus, there had to be a chance.

“Don’t you dare kill him, Gabriel!” Cas shouted. “I will kill you!” No matter how much she screamed or tried to get his attention, Gabriel ignored her. He wasn’t going to listen to her and she knew that. She couldn’t get him to stop but she could try to get the man that held her to stop.

“Do you want to let him kill Marcus?!” Cas shouted to him. “He’s a kid. He’s just a child who hasn’t even had a childhood!”

Marcus didn’t deserve this kind of fate and she hoped that these men believed that too. Shetoooped at least some part of them were human.

“He doesn’t deserve this! Let me save him! You’ll have a kid’s death on your hands if you don’t stop this! Are you okay with that?” No matter what she said it didn’t matter. They were like stones, they didn’t listen to her. They didn’t even reply to her questions and shouts. They only told her to shut up and stop fighting when she got even a little bit more furious and started kicking around.

“Gabriel, don’t!” Cas shouted almost practically giving up on winning the favor of the man who held her back.

“I can’t say that I’m sorry Cassidy,” Gabriel said without turning to face her. “But I wish it didn’t have to come to this.”

“Well, it’s not going to end this way!” Someone shouted from behind Cas and the man. All Cas felt was the man’s grip on her loosened and her ears rang when he Hollard in her ear.

The man fell and she almost fell with him. But someone had caught her. The woman who had shouted back at what Gabriel had said. Cas could only barely hear it, but she believed she knew what he had said.

The woman caught her and when Cas looked over she saw who it was. Liza. Liza stood there, her red hair a mess because of the wind that was sweeping around them. “Hi,” Liza said. “Now save your brother. You got two seconds. Literally.” Liza threw Cas off her and Cas stumbled only a step forward. She looked up and saw that Gabriel had that alien gun off the railing and was ready to shoot.

In second’s time.

“No!” Cas shouted. Cas ran at him from the side to push him out of the way, not off the bridge. As she ran she saw Gabriel staring at her from a side profile. He would have stopped her if he could, but he had one shot and he wasn’t going to destroy that shot.

He put his finger on the trigger and aimed at the daring Marcus. He pulled the trigger in the same second that Cas found her way to push into Gabriel’s side. “No!” Cas screamed as she heard the sound of the gunshot. It didn’t sound like a gunshot. It sounded like a bomb. An explosion of not just one bomb going off but a hundred all at the same time.

Gabriel hollered in pain when he fell to the ground with his arm under the massive gun. Cas was halfway across him laying there with her head pressed against the ground. The gun did not only have something to do with sound but there was also a force that knocked them all down.

Gabriel and Cas were at the edge of the bridge when the gun fired and now they were seventeen feet from the edge. Liza was thrown further but instead of falling to the ground as Cas and Gabriel had, she back smacked into the van, and then she hit the ground. She and the two men were knocked unconscious.

Cas lay there trying to recover from the intense painful ringing in her air. She couldn’t tell if she was standing, sitting, or laying. She saw colors when she opened her eyes and she was sure she was going to be sick.

Cas’s mind was all over the place. The worst thing was probably how hard her head was pounding right now. It affected everything else. She could hear her head throbbing and her heart beating. Her heart was set off distress signals from every point in her body.

She tried to move her body. She tried to get up or to speak or to do anything that could prove she was okay. She couldn’t tell if her body was moving. The colors in her eyes were now coated in the blood that was falling on her face.

The last thing she felt like she saw was a small child’s discarded teddy bear laying on the ground. She looked at the teddy bear trying to block out everything and focus on that. She thought it would work, but it didn’t stop her eyes from closing.

It didn’t stop her from passing out.

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