The Last Man

[GreatScott04]

THE LAST MAN
A FANFIC BY JERRY_TH3H4MST3R

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Freddie

The Los Santos heat was relentless, bearing down on him like some mythical beast, perspiring his body so much that his shirt stuck to his back. He pressed the cold bottle of Sprunk in his right hand against his forehead as he looked out over Del Perro Beach, and wondered how much longer he was going to have to wait. He knew the man he was supposed to be meeting was not a punctual man, so had already half-expected him to be late, but tardiness was a personal peeve of his and he was starting to get impatient.

The beach was full of people enjoying the Sunday afternoon weather before they had to make a return to their working personas the next morning. Families lingered furthest down the beach, close to the shoreline, where parents could keep a close eye on their kids splashing around in the water. Halfway between the water and the boardwalk, the sand was dominated by the younger crowd laying out on their towels, soaking up the rays. He noticed that a good majority of these sun worshippers were females, and figured that those with boyfriends had probably left their partners at the outdoor gym further down the boardwalk. Up by the bars and coffee shops lining the boardwalk itself, Freddie was surrounded mostly by couples out for a romantic walk, and youngsters with their skateboards and bicycles.

Everywhere he looked - at the families laughing and playing, at the bikini-clad groups of sun-lounging girlfriends, or the hoards of raucous kids - people seemed to be easily pleased by a little blue sky and sunshine. He found it amusing that he had spent many years in envy of these people, only now to realise that he didn't miss that life at all. Almost twenty years he had lived in a world a million miles away from all of that "normality", in an almost alien world of war, wondering what his life would have been like if he hadn't been able to convince his parents to give him their permission to join up at the age of seventeen. He didn't envy these people anymore. He felt sorry for them.

"Enjoying the weather, Sergeant?"

Freddie didn't recognise the voice - he had never heard it before - but he knew it was the man he had been waiting for, because only that man would still call him "Sergeant" as though the moniker still meant something to him. He turned to face the speaker, a middle-aged man with close-cropped greying hair, arched eyebrows, and a face worn by years of hardship. He was tough-looking, as one would expect of a man who had spent any amount of time serving as a Navy Seal, but also held himself with a certain air of over-confidence. Freddie took an instant disliking to Don Percival, and not just because the man had incorrectly referred to him as "Sergeant".

"I know we haven't met before, and it might seem unusual for us to be meeting now, but we like to make sure our people integrate back into society okay after a resignation."

"Sure," Freddie replied, "Except I didn't exactly resign."

Percival waved a hand indignantly.

"Semantics. How are you settling back in?"

"Fine."

It was a lie. He was using what money he had left to stay in a hotel, and he was rapidly running out. There was no work for a man who had spent most of his life in the military sector - both government and private. Who wanted to hire a man whose best skill with his hands was knowing how to use them to kill another person? No, he wasn't finding it easy to integrate back into society, but he wasn't about to tell Percival that.

"Good. Well, I'll get right to the point then. It sounds like we're both busy men."

Freddie couldn't help but notice a glimmer of a smirk play across Percival's lips as he spoke the words, but he resisted the urge to challenge it. Of course Percival knew that Freddie wasn't doing well. He'd been a military man himself, and had been running Merryweather for ten years now. He must've known how difficult it was for soldiers to fit themselves back into civilian life.

"I thought it best you hear this from me, rather than see it in the news."

Intrigued now, Freddie pushed himself away from the railing he had been leaning against and closed the gap between Percival and himself. The older man was reaching into the folds of his suit jacket, and produced a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Freddie, but Freddie refused it. Once Percival had one firmly between his own lips, he began talking again.

"It's about Montgomery."

Alex Montgomery had been a part of Freddie's Merryweather unit for six years. Before that, he had been a marine for ten years. He was one of the best demolition guys Freddie had ever known, and a man he had considered to be one of his greatest friends. Montgomery had been unusual amongst the Merryweather ranks because of his status as a family man. In the regular army, men often had wives and children, but the men who moved on into the private sector were usually single men who dedicated all their time to the job. Montgomery had initially joined Merryweather in order to keep providing well for his family, but had eventually been convinced by his concerned wife to return to civilian life. Freddie had kept in regular contact with him, and knew that he hadn't always stayed above aboard when it came to making money. He had told Freddie about offering security advice and consultation to the kinds of people who couldn't take their business to companies such as Gruppe Sechs, but he had also told Freddie about how well such work enabled him to live - had even sent pictures of his nice new house in Alderney and his flash new Cognoscenti - and Freddie had begun to suspect that Montgomery hadn't drawn the line at advising and consulting. That was most likely why he wasn't surprised when Don Percival told him that Alex Montgomery had been murdered. Edited May 14, 2015 by JERRY_TH3H4MST3R

[Mokrie Dela]

Some nice detail in this. I especially like how comfortable the narration is at the beginning, picking out the sorts of detail I would notice on a beach. It set the scene well.

 

Then when Percival appeared, I have to say, i didn't feel it was quite as strong. Exposition crept it, but that's okay at times. The trigger in this story appears to be Alex being murdered, but the event itself is mentioned in an almost offhand manner. Up until this point, nothing happens - there is no story, really. But for an event that likely will kickstart the story, I felt a distinct lack on impact.

 

Technically, speaking, however, I feel this is very good. I can't really point out any serious errors - save one. "OK" which, in prose, should be "Okay", but that's a minor point.

[GreatScott04]

I got that feeling when writing it. The second half didn't flow as well. Need to avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary details.

[GreatScott04]

Cortez

The sidewalks around the exterior of Mirror Park were flooded with local residents and civilians who had travelled from other parts of the city in order to try and get a first look at the crime scene, but the uniformed officers behind the police barriers were having no trouble keeping anybody from getting too close. It was at the entrance points to the park where the police were having difficulty. As always when something unusual was happening in the city, the media had caught a sniff on their winds of informants and the reporters had shown up in force.

A path for Detective Ana Cortez was carved through the hoard by the officers as she approached, and she ignored the flash of cameras and the onslaught of dictaphones as she snaked between them and slipped through the police barriers. It was only the Weazel News reporter using her name - as well as the question he asked - that made her pause.

"Detective Cortez, is this another Merryweather murder?"

She turned to look at him; thunder in her eyes. The whole collection of reporters fell suddenly silent, anticipating a statement. She steeled her gaze, relaxed her jaw, trying not to show her fury.

"Where did you hear that?" She demanded.

The Weazel reporter grinned at her, but he did not reply. She hadn't really expected him to give up his source so easily, but it had been worth the try.

She turned and continued further on into the park, but her confidence had been knocked. With the media in possession of information they had been keen to keep to themselves - the fact that three recent murder victims had all served in the same Merryweather unit together - the investigation was going to become much more difficult. She was also angry at herself, because she had been given the responsibility of putting together an investigation team she could trust, and obviously somebody on that team had proved to be distinctly untrustworthy. That would complicate the way the investigation could be conducted from then on, not to mention the repercussions she would face from her superiors. She put the predicament to the back of her mind for now, however, because there were currently more pressing matters at hand.

As she neared the area where the latest victim had been found, she was pleased to see Detective Swanson was the one representing the investigation team on-scene. If there was anybody on her team she knew she could still trust without any doubts whatsoever, it was Eric Swanson. He smiled at her as she neared, and gestured her over to his nearby unmarked cruiser. By the time she reached it, he had slid into the driver's seat and leant over to open the passenger door for her. She joined him inside the vehicle.

"What do you know, Swanson?"

"I ran the vic's ID through the computer. It's another one."

Swanson started typing into the laptop currently attached to the dashboard of the cruiser, bringing up a list of ten names. Cortez instantly recognised some of them. They were the names of three murder victims that had been found over the past five weeks, including the man that had been found that morning. Seeing those names on the screen, amongst the others she didn't recognise, she had a feeling she knew what Swanson was going to tell her.

"These are all the men from the same Merryweather unit. These five have also been murdered in the past two months."

She read the names that Swanson pointed out to her on the screen. Three from Liberty. One from Carcer. One from Venturas.

"What about these two?"

As she pointed out the two remaining names on the list, she noticed that one of them was listed as living in the next county. The other said unknown.

"This guy, Sawyer, is registered at an address in Blaine County. We're still trying to find the other guy, the one who led the unit."

Before he had finished speaking, Cortez had pulled the door closed and clicked her seatbelt into place. Understanding her intentions, Swanson followed suit, shoving the key into the ignition and the vehicle into drive as Cortez hit the sirens. The reporters at the barriers scattered like ants as the cruiser exited the park at speed, tyres squealing a little as they hit the tarmac, and roared off in the direction of the nearest freeway.

Freddie

He had been on the bus almost four hours when it finally came to a stop, its overheated air brakes hissing one last time for him, outside a convenience store in the small town of Grapeseed. Freddie thanked the driver, apologising again for not having anything smaller than a twenty when he'd gotten on back in the city, and stepped off the bus and into the baking sun. It had been just over twelve hours since he'd met Don Percival in Del Perro, and the weather in Los Santos had taken a turn shortly before he'd left - cold and overcast one minute, even colder and raining the next - but here in the desert, the sun was back with a vengeance.

Placing a pair of black wraparound sunglasses with amber lenses on his head, he waited for the bus to move off so that he had an unobstructed view of the street, and then starting walking the pavement to the south. He had a map of the town tucked into the back pocket of his cargo shorts, but he'd had plenty of time to study it on the bus journey and he knew his bearings well enough to not yet require it.

The streets of Grapeseed were deserted at this early hour. Not like certain streets of Los Santos, which would still be teeming with some kind of life. The quietness was oddly comforting coupled with the hot morning sun, and the distant whistle of the wind through the hills reminded him of being in the Middle East in his younger years. It somehow felt strangely like home - if he had ever had a proper one to recall the feeling of.

He walked some way down the street, soaking up his surroundings as he went, almost as if he were scoping the place out for a potential vacation. In fact, he was looking for people more than anything else. Suspicious people. Out-of-place people. Anybody who might jump out at him and tickle his cautious instincts. But he saw nobody. At this point, he wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

After making a full circuit of the western end of the town, he came back around to seek out number 1893 along the main road. It was a small, dilapidated house with a short driveway, covered by an awning, on its left side. It was nothing much, but Freddie hadn't expected anything grandiose from the man who lived there.

Stepping past the white picket fence which marked the edge of the property, he approached the door with growing caution. Even across the distance from the sidewalk, he had seen that the wooden frame of the door was splintered where somebody had jimmied the lock. It was still open, yellow light from a little old lamp in the foyer beyond spilling out slightly onto the doorstep. He pushed it open a little wider; just enough for him to slip through the gap, and when he closed the door behind him, he was greeted by an even greater silence.

A quick but cautious sweep of the house revealed that nobody was there - either dead or alive - although it was obvious that somebody had left quite recently. There was a pan of pasta on the hob in the kitchen, and a clean plate on the counter next to it. Somebody had clearly been in the process of making dinner when they'd been interrupted - perhaps by the person who had jimmied the front door. But it was the state of the bedroom which interested Freddie the most, and he returned to it after finishing his search of the rest of the house.

The mattress had been removed from the bed, and a small arsenal had been laid out on the base. There were a number of different calibre pistols, a shotgun, a SMG, and an assault rifle. Most of the weapons were accompanied with spare mags, and both the SMG and the rifle were adorned with barrel grips and scopes. Unable to help himself, Freddie picked up one of the pistols and removed its mag. It was fully loaded, and further inspection revealed a round already in the spout. These guns were owned by somebody who knew how to use them. He slapped the mag home and replaced it on the bed.He had only straightened halfway to his full height when he was halted by the feel of cold metal pushing into the back of his neck.

"Should've left when you had the chance, boy."

Freddie instantly recognised the Texan drawl of the gunman, and a soft smile played across his lips. He slowly raised his hands where his captor could see them.

"Heading to a party, Sawyer?"

"Freddie?"

The gun barrel was removed from the back of his neck, and he turned to look upon the face of Frank Sawyer for the first time in three years. The Texan was still a huge man, the prominent bulge of muscles still showing through his snugly-fitting clothes. In fact, apart from a slight lengthening of the hair, Sawyer looked exactly the same as he had all that time ago. He smiled at Freddie, showing large white teeth, and pulled him into a strong embrace.

"I was hoping you'd show up! How'd you know where to find me?"

"Percival gave me the address. Who knows how he got it."

"You spoke to Percival? What did he say?"

Sawyer gestured him through to the kitchen, where they sat down at a small round table and Freddie started to tell him all about what he'd been doing the past three weeks.

"So what the f*ck is going on, Sawyer? Eight guys - all military guys, and some of the toughest bastards I know - are all dead."

Sawyer frowned in confusion. Clearly he hadn't yet heard that Noscoe had been found dead in Mirror Park. When Freddie told him, he visibly deflated at the table. He covered his face with his hands, and Freddie thought he was sobbing, but then Freddie heard him taking deep breaths and realised he was rather trying very hard not to.

"Who broke in here, Frank? Where'd you chase them to? And what'd you do when you caught them?"

Sawyer answered by reaching inside his jacket and producing a silenced pistol. He placed it on the table and turned his head to stare out of the kitchen window. Freddie touched the barrel of the weapon gingerly with two fingers. It was hot. He didn't need Sawyer to tell him if he'd hit his target or not. Sawyer wasn't known for missing targets. Ever.

"Jesus, Sawyer. What the f*ck is going on?"

Sawyer looked into Freddie's eyes now. His face was plastered with guilt, and remission. Freddie could see how much he was struggling. He, too, had lost eight of his best friends, but - unlike Freddie - he was in on whatever it was that had resulted in their deaths. Given the setup in the bedroom, he was maybe even directly responsible for them. Freddie watched as the Texan fought to contain the welt of emotion building up inside him, apparently caused by Freddie forcing him to deal with the deaths, rather than simply arming himself to avenge them. Eventually, after a look at his watch and a quick confirming glance at the clock on the wall, Sawyer's face of anguish was once again replaced by his steely gameface.

"I need to move. Are you coming?"

"Where?"

"I'll explain later."

Freddie shook his head no, and settled back into his chair. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked up at his friend. His last living friend. But he didn't say a word. His whole demeanour already told Sawyer "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's happening". Sawyer glanced frantically at the clock again.

"We need to go to the port in LS. There's no time, Fred. But please, I promise, if you help me now, I'll tell you everything when we get back."

Freddie didn't like the thought of following Sawyer blindly into anything at that moment in time. It wasn't something he had done before, not even in the army, and he'd always figured that was a big part of how he'd managed to stay alive, especially given the high-risk element of his particular way of getting by. He knew he would be foolish to start ignoring his instincts now, but he also knew that whomever had killed the others was now almost certainly on a mission to finish the set with Sawyer's own life. If he let Sawyer go now, he might well be attending funerals for each of his friends the following week.

"Goddamnit, Sawyer!" He said as he rose up from the table, "I'm not killing anybody, you understand?"

"That's fine. You can drive the car."

Sawyer seemed almost excited that he had convinced Freddie to come along with him, and Freddie wasn't surprised by that. Sawyer had always been most at home on a battlefield. Of all the guys, he would've missed the theatre of war the most; perhaps even more so than Freddie, though for different reasons. Freddie was a clever guy. He missed the planning, the strategy, and the flawless execution of a mission. All Sawyer missed was the smoke and gunpowder.

"There's a duffel bag in the closet. You load up the guns, I'll go start the car."

Sawyer was outside before Freddie had started packing the duffel bag with guns. Freddie had spent a few seconds trying to find something to cover his hands first - with no idea where the guns might end up, he didn't want his prints all over them. As he zipped up the bag and left the bedroom, he heard the engine of the old Voodoo on the driveway sputter into life. When he reached the foyer and saw the mess on the back of the front door, he kicked himself for not figuring it out sooner.

Sawyer had been home when an unwanted visitor had come calling. He'd heard the intruder forcing a crowbar between the front door and the frame, and he'd reacted quickly. Fitting a suppressor to the barrel of the nearest gun, he'd taken position in the bedroom, the door of which opened out onto the foyer. He'd waited until the intruder had gained entry, stepped inside, and closed the door behind them. As the intruder had turned, probably starting to draw a weapon of their own, Sawyer had shot them through the head, spraying blood, brain matter, and pulverized bone all over the front door. He hadn't left his house to chase the intruder. He had left the house with the intruders body, in order to dispose of it.

Freddie decided not to ask Sawyer what he'd done with the body. At this point, the less he knew about that the better. All he wanted to know was why his friends and former brothers-in-arms had become victims of murder. He hefted the duffel bag onto his shoulder and reached for the door handle. That's when the explosion ripped through the house, shaking its foundations, shattering all the windows at the front, and blowing the door inwards with such force that it knocked Freddie off his feet. He landed hard against the wall, his head splitting open after such sudden and brutal impact with the brickwork. Stars began to flash before his eyes as the roar of the explosion became a ringing in his ears, and he knew he was going to pass out. Before he did, however, he realised one thing. Adam Sawyer was dead. His last living friend had been killed. Freddie was the last one.

He didn't hear the fast-approaching sirens in the distance. He had lost consciousness.