I Believe We're The Enemy

Ginny’s P.O.V.

After another week of being cooped up in the hotel with an enraged Whatsername, the tension has risen to a snapping point. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with Frank, and though they’ve become very close friends, she often seems afraid of him. However, most of us have been left out on her back story, so I don’t know exactly why Frank suddenly seems so dangerous to her.

Eventually, everybody is so tense and awkward that we decide that we need to get out of the hotel for a little while. Gerard revs up the car’s engine, and Rose decides to stay behind with Grace, leaving just enough room for the rest of us. I take my seat between Ray and Gerard in the front, clutching Ray’s hand as he pecks my lips lovingly. “If anything happens out there, don’t get hurt, okay?” he murmurs, his face close as he gazes intently into my affectionate eyes. In response, I meet his lips with my own, deepening the kiss until Frank starts whistling at us from the backseat. I reach back and whack him gently, refusing to lean away from Ray. Everyone else in the car giggles, even the silent Whatsername.

Gerard finally commands us to “quit snogging and look alive”, just in case we need to be on the alert. However, our drive is going peacefully, and as Ray pops a CD into the Trans Am’s radio, another one of the boys’ familiar creations rings out. To my surprise, al four of them start singing along softly, and Inferno and I bob our heads along to the beat.

An hour later, the car gives a sudden shudder and, without warning, stops. Gerard, suddenly quite bad-tempered, lets out a string of quiet curses, and we all clim out of the car to fix the engine or at least stretch our legs. Knowing that Frank won’t be able to reconstruct whatever has fallen apart in our car on his own, I trot over to help him, handing him whatever he requests from the ‘emergency car-fixing kit’ and giving him tips whenever he’s confused. After a few minutes, we’ve made some progress, but the car isn’t going to be completely functioning for a while.

Suddenly, Gerard shouts something hysterical and starts pointing to an object on the horizon, his hazel eyes wide with anxiety. Everyone clusters around the car as a strange-looking truck comes into our view, and our ray guns practically fly into our hands as we prepare for a fight. Ray makes his way to my side and squeezes my hand gently, our soft gazes meeting for the most affectionate of nanoseconds. Then, the truck stops, and the air turns to fire as an all-out battle is waged with the dracs emerging from this absurd vehicle.

I stick close to Ray and Frank, defending them just as ferociously as myself, but everything else is a blur. The dracs have never come this close to us before; as one latches on to Inferno’s arm and starts to drag her back toward the truck, I realize that their motives might differ from just wreaking havoc. However, Gerard walks up to the drac dragging Last Inferno to her certain demise and takes it out with the butt of his gun, leaving himself open to capture by the other draculoids.

“Run!” he screams to Inferno, his eyes flashing with emotion as she hesitates. “You, and Whatsername, get out of here while you can!” Whatsername grabs Last Inferno’s arm (I get the feeling she wouldn’t have moved otherwise), and the two girls make a break for it, while behind them, a trio of dracs take custody of Gerard and drag him toward their truck, which I now see has what looks like an enormous glass box attached to the end of it. The other four of us shoot frantically at Gerard’s captors, but they dodge every beam and toss him through a tiny door and into the box, locking the door behind him. One drac stands on a tiny step next to Gerard’s cell, while the other two climb into the front of the truck and hit the gas, carrying our leader away from us. Frank and Mikey both go crazy, but as the lone drac hits a button on the side of the glass box, pouring a greenish-white substance into the air around Gerard, Ray grabs my wrists and holds me back.

“What are you doing?” I shriek, turning to look at him.

“They’re going to hurt you,” he replies, digging his fingernails into my arm as I struggle to escape his grip. Luckily, the dracs’ truck isn’t driving too quickly, so Frank and Mikey have a fair chance at catching it, but inside what I now realize is a mobile gas chamber, Gerard’s face is starting to turn purple as he hacks and coughs and claws for oxygen. If we don’t get him out very soon, he’s guaranteed not to survive. A wave of emotion fills my lungs, and suddenly I can’t breathe through the lump in my throat; I can’t watch one of these boys I love so much die without at least trying to save him.

“Ray,” I hiss, “let go of me.”

“No. I’m not letting them put you in there.”

Rage fills my limbs, and I strike out at him with my free arm, which he dodges. “What the hell is wrong with you? Gerard’s dying over there, and if we don’t help there’s no way he’s going to escape!”

”I don’t care. I’m not going to let you die, Ginny. I love you.”

“FUCK OFF!” I shriek. “Don’t you give a damn? We’re nothing without him! If you don’t even care, get the fuck out of my life and go find someone else to be in love with!”

Immediately, I realize that what I’ve said is beyond wrong, but the moment Ray drops my arm, his face a picture of shock and hurt, I’m too busy racing after the truck to care. Mikey and Frank are exhausted, but I’ve still got enough energy left to accurately hit the button that turned on the gas chamber, stopping the flow of poison into Gerard’s atmosphere. The other boys (sans Ray) attempt to shoot a hole in the glass, but nothing works until I send a ray of light into the padlock. Gerard tumbles out of the now-open door, coughing sporadically, and Frank rushes over to help him.

The truck rolls to a stop, and the drac which was knocked aside by the opening door stands and, unexpectedly, sends a single shot into Gerard’s shuddering body. Everything stops. Mikey shoots down the two dracs running from around the truck, but that doesn’t change the fact that Gerard, my Gerard, is dead.

“Gee?” I whisper, suddenly unable to grasp what’s going on around me. I stumble toward his slender body in a haze of panic, watching as Frank kneels next to the limp Gerard and starts to scream. Everything is rage. My short, black-haired friend rises quickly from his position of mourning and glares at the surrounding desert, his fingers closing around his ray gun. First, the drac who shot Ray falls, its body soon quite full of laser marks, and then Frank turns to Ray, his green eyes blazing. “No!” I shout, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him away from Ray. “Don’t hurt him. This isn’t his fault.” I turn to Ray, expecting relief, but all I spy is betrayal and hatred. It occurs t me that this shouldn’t be happening, but right now, that doesn’t quite penetrate my numbed brain.

Whipping around at the sound of laser blasts, I find Mikey struggling to aim his gun at himself, and I race over to pry it from his pale, shaking hands. “Leave me alone,” he shrieks. “I don’t wanna live.”

“Mikey,” I whisper, “please, if anything, just stay alive for Rose, okay?”

“You don’t understand!” he hisses, trying to hit me and failing. “He’s not your brother. You can live without him.”

“He is my brother, Kobra. Trust me.”

Mikey finally succeeds in slapping me, but even though I’m reeling from the blow, his gun is not returned. I shuffle over to where Gerard lays, his feathered eyelashes tangled together, hiding the fact that his eyes are gently closed. Frank is curled up on top of his chest, sobbing angrily into the dusty air. My uncertain fingers find their way to Gerard where I feel for a pulse with gentle hands.

Thump.

“Frankie,” I whisper, “he’s alive.”

Frank just shakes harder, gripping Gerard’s shirt with his slender fingers. “Why won’t he wake up?”

I sigh. “I... I don’t know. But he’ll wake up eventually, I hope...”

Mikey approaches us, still glaring at me, and places two fingers next to mine on Gerard’s neck. “Sh-she’s right, Frank. He’s okay, I think.”

Though he finally sits up and crawls away from Gerard (a few inches, at least), Frank’s face is still streaked with tears the continue to drain from his scrunched-up eyes. “I-I want G-G-Gee,” he mumbles, clutching one of Gerard’s hands as I wrap my arms around him and hug him tightly.

“It’s okay, Frankie,” I reassure him. “Let’s go back and finish fixing the car, and then we can go home, okay? Everything is going to be alright, I promise.” No matter what I say, Frank only has eyes (and ears) for Gerard, so while Mikey carries Gerard back to the Trans Am, I drape an arm over Frank’s shoulders and guide him past the mildly shell-shocked Ray to the car’s open hood.

Frank now takes over the role of bumbling assistant while I fix the car, leaving Mikey and Ray to argue under their breath. I know that I should apologize to Ray for what I said, because I really didn’t mean any of it, but in all honesty, I’m rather afraid. Not to mention that if I hadn’t done that, Gerard would be one hundred percent dead right now.

Once the car is finally fixed, I wipe off my hands on my jeans and approach Ray. Suddenly, I’m almost trembling from anxiety; what if he’s really mad at me? I love him, and I’m not about to simply let him go.

“Ray,” I murmur, cautiously meeting his tentative gaze, “I’m sorry for what I said to you. I wasn’t thinking, and-”

“You sure as hell sounded like you meant it,” he spits, his voice full of hurt that I can tell he’s trying to hide.

I sigh. “I didn’t mean what I said and you know it.” He only continues to glare at me with confused eyes, and I feel tears biting at the back of my gaze as I realize that he’s not going to forgive me. I drop my eyes to the ground so that he can’t see them glaze over. “I love you.”

“You can’t even look me in the eyes when you say that, you little lying bitch! What the fuck is wrong with you? All this time, I thought you really cared about me, Virginia, but I guess you just wanted a little fuckbuddy to mess around with.”

“Ray,” I whisper, barely able to speak past the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry. You know that’s not true. I love you more than I’ve loved anyone before, and I can’t lose you now. Please, forgive me.”

“You can beg and plead and cry all you want, Letterbomb, but that won’t change my mind.” With that, he turns on his heel and storms away, his large mass of hair bobbing violently.

“Ray...” I know he can’t hear my whispers, but I tell him I’m sorry anyway, repeating the words until they no longer make sense, then switching to I love you. Halfway through this routine, a random figure walks up and hugs me, telling me that she heard the whole thing and she’s sorry, but I don’t even comprehend the fact that she shouldn’t be here.

“They burned down the hotel,” Rose informs Mikey between reassuring kisses. I ignore the couple, because thinking of love makes my stomach hurt, and let Frank guide me back to the car. Funny to think that just two minutes ago, I was the one guiding him. I sit next to Grace in the front seat and stare out at the desert, feeling just as empty as the relentless sand all around me. Once an hour has passed in silence, driving onward through the desert dust, Ray falls asleep behind me, and after one sideways glance at him in the rearview mirror, I finally burst into tears. Though Grace and Rose attempt to console me, I’m still shaking with sobs when we finally stop in front of a small bed-and-breakfast that has obviously been abandoned for many years. The front room is small and cozy, with a pair of sofas not unlike the ones at our old hotel, while the kitchen and the other five rooms are suitable for our needs. After refusing to eat dinner, even though I’ve finally managed to regain my composure, habit overtakes me and I start to follow Ray into one of the bedrooms.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouts, looking down at me now with more condescending hatred than confusion. I shrug.

“Get out. You’re alone, babe,” he hisses sarcastically, closing the door more gently than expected. Conveniently enough, Frank walks up to me then.

“You can sleep with me, Ginger. We’ll be the first ones to know if Gee wakes up.” I nod and follow him to the next room, where Gerard’s still-unconscious body is stretched across the bed. Frank and I worm our way under the covers next to him, and luckily his body is so warm that it’s almost as if he’s just sleeping. However, I stay closer to Frank.

“Ray really hates me, doesn’t he?” My voice comes out as a pathetic croak.

Frank sighs. “He’s just angry. And hurt. He couldn’t hate you even if he wanted to.” Tears find their way onto my cheeks once again, but Frank kisses them away and hugs me close to his body.

“I never meant to hurt him. I can’t forget the look on his face...” Shivers go down my spine because I’m so sad, so guilty, and so lonely that it hurts me.

“It’s okay,” Frank replies, rubbing my back gently. “I’ll take care of you, and we’ll get Ray to love you, I promise.”

“I miss him, Frankie.”

“Already?” he laughs.

For the first time that night, I almost smile. “Yes.”