Decay (Book 2): Humanity (10 page)

“What is that?” Deacon asked as the fiends around them reached up in an attempt to grab the men who were just beyond their grasp. The roaring engine grew louder, and the black Dodge Ramcharger came into view. The chrome side pipes glistened in the sun’s radiance. The windows were heavily tinted, and the black rims were wrapped in thick Mickey Thompson rubber. A man stood up through the custom sunroof and began gunning down the fiends that hadn’t been run over by the monstrous truck. The four-hundred and forty cubic inch engine bellowed through the side pipes as it climbed over the bodies.

The black SUV came to a stop next to the wall where Deacon and Mark had moments before prepared themselves for death. Deacon was surprised that he had to step up onto the truck from the nine-foot high wall. The two men climbed down into the truck through the sun roof and looked into the face of Roger. Deacon let out a guttural laugh as he looked at his friend. Then he burst into tears as Sophia turned around in the driver’s seat.

“Hello, love,” she said tipping her bowler hat. She smiled, but it wasn’t a smile Deacon liked.

Chapter 15

Jonathan drove fast as the afternoon dwindled into night. He was pushing eighty-five miles-per-hour, which was a brisk jog for the powerful BMW, but he was comfortable and making great time. They had taken the long way on a few occasions to avoid cities and large towns. They were more fearful now than ever after meeting up with the cannibals.

Guillermo slept heavily in the back seat. He wasn’t comfortable, but his ammo box pillow was better than nothing. Jonathan could hear his head bounce off of it with each bump they hit. The BMW slowing down disturbed his equilibrium just enough to stir him from sleep. He sat up, rubbed some crust from his left eye, and looked around. “Where are we?” he asked.

“I am pretty sure this is Grandview. My dad said he used to terrorize this town when he was a kid. He lived here for about a year, I believe, but he was born and raised in Iowa City. This town had the biggest small town Fourth of July celebration, too, from what he told us. He always planned on bringing us out to see it. There is a fuel station up ahead. I am going to stop real fast and see if there is anything of value remaining.“ He stopped talking as he came around to the front of the gas station. The windows were busted out and black char marred the front of the store. Jonathan pulled off of the highway and turned into the dark parking lot.

“Someone didn’t like this place very much,” Guillermo said.

“Yeah.” Jonathan sighed in disappointment as he looked at the burnt storefront.

“Someone crashed their chopper.”

“What?” Jonathan looked across the street at the green helicopter lying on the dead grass and snow. “I am sure that everything useful is gone by now,” Jonathan said, unaware that it had actually been a Veterans Memorial.

“Are there more stores over that way?” Guillermo asked.

“No. No I do not think so. It is just a small residential area. I guess you could say that it is a bedroom community. I have a pretty good feeling that Michael would not be there. He would be closer to the river and supplies. I want to believe that he is in Iowa City, now. After all, that is where my aunt was, but I have a really strong feeling that he is closer to the river. According to the road signs, the city of Muscatine is up this way a few more miles. It is along the river, plus it is not a large city.”

“So there shouldn’t be too many fiends crowding the streets unless they migrated from other areas?”

Jonathan nodded. ”That is exactly what I am thinking. And if that is the case then it is our best bet.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“A few years back, my father was thinking about taking a job as a Biologist with a company here just to be closer to the rest of our family. We came out and stayed for about two weeks over the summer while he made his decision. Obviously he did not take the job and we moved back to California.”

“So maybe you’ll see some things that will bring back some good memories,” Guillermo said with a smile.

They climbed into the car and pulled back out onto the highway. It was a fifteen minute drive to the town of Muscatine, but Jonathan was going to make it in five. It started raining lightly as they blew by the dead fields on both sides of them. Long drifts of snow filled the ditches. The BMW didn’t slow any as it quickly approached a wide intersection. A few cars were tipped over on the sides of the road from when they were cleared out of the way either by the military or survivors.

“We should probably slow down a bit, my friend,” Guillermo said with just a hint of alarm. “We are down to a two-lane road here. You never know when something might get in our way.”

“I dropped down to fifty a while ago,” Jonathan said as they blew past a restaurant with a large ice cream cone jutting from the roof. He was welcomed by a brief flash of a memory. He could remember going to the Cheri Top Drive-In with his family. It was the type of place where the customers sat in their cars and the waitresses came out, took their orders, and brought their food out on a tray that was hung from the window. He ordered a double cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla shake that turned out to be much larger than he expected and more delicious, too.

He didn’t expect to come across a “good memory” so soon, and he hadn’t realized he had closed his eyes until he felt the car slide sideways as the tires broke free on the slippery pavement. It was ten degrees outside, and the rain froze quickly. None of Jonathan’s limited driving experience had been in these winter conditions. Elliot had driven into Colorado, and Guillermo drove most of the way here. What little road Jonathan had covered up to this point had been fairly dry.

Jonathan tried to correct the course of the BMW, but he wasn’t sure how. The car started to spin as it slid down the center of the road. There was a quick glimpse of what looked like a used car lot. Then a store, the only word he read was
Farm
as it was illuminated by the headlights before it disappeared behind a long white building. Their next view was that of a Bowling Alley. At this point, Jonathan closed his eyes, not wanting to see any more of this rotating world. Guillermo braced himself for the worst. As the BMW stabilized facing the opposite way it was sliding, Jonathan opened his eyes just in time to watch as the road swept out from under them. The stop wasn’t sudden. Instead, the BMW hit a snow pile, hopped up over it, and dug down deep into the other side.

“Shit!” exclaimed Jonathan. “I am so stupid.” He looked over at Guillermo, whose head hung at his chest. Blood dripped down the right side of his face and onto his shirt. “Shit!” Jonathan undid his seat belt and bolted from the car. He sunk in the soft, wet snow, and the cold crystals filled his shoes. “Shit!” he yelled again.

After fighting his way to the passenger side, he pulled the door open and laid the seat back. He checked for a pulse, but couldn’t find one. He placed his ear next to Guillermo’s face, hoping to hear him breathing, once again nothing. “You have to wake up. Guillermo!” he shouted as he slapped his friend’s face. Unsure of what else to do, Jonathan began chest compressions. He had never done CPR before, but he understood the concept.

Guillermo’s sternum popped under Jonathan’s hand as it broke under the pressure. He could cut open a fiend’s head and examine the brain, but hearing that sound from his friend’s body was almost too much. Pressing hard on the center of his chest, Jonathan realized he wasn’t even keeping count. He tipped Guillermo’s head back, plugged his nose, and blew into his mouth. He could taste Guillermo’s blood on his lips.

Jonathan gave Guillermo CPR for hours, maybe days, perhaps longer. That’s how it felt, but it was one minute and twenty-three seconds before he felt the heart beat in the palm of his left hand. It was faint, but it was there. He could see the mist from Guillermo’s warm breath as he exhaled into the bitter Iowa chill. Jonathan smiled, but he didn’t have time to celebrate.

He was grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground. The fiend had a tight grip on his wrist and twisted it hard in an attempt to break his arm. Jonathan used the soft snow to his advantage, pulling the fiend down on top of him and rolling him over. They slid a foot down the back side of the pile before Jonathan was able to work his way onto the fiend’s back. Jamming a knee in between the dead man’s shoulder blades, Jonathan opened the back door of the BMW and slammed it into the fiends head until the dead man stopped moving. Dry chunks of blood and flesh stuck to the door.

He stood up and looked at the bicycle shop he had crashed in front of. Inside the store, two more fiends pounded frantically at the glass. Jonathan climbed out of the snow pile and walked out of the snowy parking lot, wanting nothing more than to see some sign of help on the dark street. Instead, he looked at the horde of undead filling Grandview Avenue as they marched toward the commotion. “Guillermo!” he shouted and ran back to the car.

More fiends began to come around the orange building across the street. The sign for the Mexican restaurant
lay on its side facing the street. The orange paint reflected what little light there was. The bitter wind blew in Jonathan’s face as he tried to keep his balance in the snow pile.

“Guillermo, you have to wake up. I know you are almost dead, but we have to move or you will be completely.” Jonathan shook his friend, checked that he was still breathing, and shook him some more. No response. He turned back to the street, estimated about a hundred fiends, and then he heard it, the low rumble of a large engine. It revved up several times; the exhaust exhaled a cackling sound like a stock car awaiting the green flag.

The big black school bus rolled to a stop in the street thirty yards away from the BMW. Lights of all colors flashed wildly from the roof, lighting up the night sky. Jonathan almost felt like he was tripping out on some drug or another. The fiends surrounded the bus, rocking it and hammering on the sides. The sides, from what Jonathan could tell, were reinforced with a steel grated fence that must have weighed the bus down considerably. The top of the fence was wrapped in razor wire like a prison trying to deter the inmates from escaping.

Clank
. With the fiends all around the bus, Jonathan watched as the steel grated fencing swung down like a flyswatter of mass destruction. The high-pitched wail of metal-on-metal cried out from the hinges as the heavy fence streaked toward the street. Flesh and blood splattered everywhere as the fiends were smashed into the cold pavement. There was a sickening patter as wet body chunks hit the concrete. The fiends in the front were cut in half by a long blade that swept out, slicing through them, while the fiends at the back of the bus were set on fire by a blanket of flames.

With the undead threat eliminated, the bus rolled forward slowly, crushing the fiends underneath it. Then it backed up and drove forward again, working its way across the width of the street in this slightly excessive fashion. The fiends that had once lain in its path were now a gooey paste. Jonathan’s stomach dropped as he realized that the death bus was driving toward him. He was hoping to be saved, but he wasn’t sure if this would be any better for him. With the intention of protecting Guillermo he climbed over the BMW and grabbed a rifle from the back seat.

Jonathan crouched behind the car and steadied the rifle against his shoulder. He watched as a man stepped down from the bus. The flashing lights had stopped, but there were several lights still shining. The backlit man was nothing but a wild haired silhouette which made Jonathan think Beetlejuice had just jumped out of the bus in that crazy black and white striped suit.

“What do you want?”

“I just saved your ass, kid. You better adjust your attitude before I bounce your head off the hood of that car,” the man said in a strangely friendly way, but Jonathan wouldn’t trust anyone.

“I will shoot you if it comes to it.”

“I expect you would, but you will only have to if I can’t trust you,” the man retorted. “Are you alright? Why don’t you put th-“ the man paused, strained his eyes a little as he looked at Jonathan behind the headlights of the BMW, then asked, “Michael?”

“What?” Jonathan straightened a little.

“Michael? I thought you were staying at the shop. Is everything alright?”

“How do you know Michael?” asked Jonathan as he fought to climb down from the snow pile.

“Jonathan?” the man asked after staring at the teen for several long seconds.

Jonathan placed the rifle strap across his shoulders and walked toward the man. “Who are you?”

The man laughed a hearty laugh. “Mad Man Rob. Pleased to meet you, Jonathan. Your brother told me a lot about you.”

“Please take me to him. I have a friend with me.” Jonathan pointed to the BMW. “He is hurt pretty bad.”

It took Mad Man Rob a few minutes to tie a chain to the BMW and pulled it out of the snow. With a flashlight in hand, he crawled around the car inspecting the undercarriage. “It looks like it should be alright but the exhaust is torn off. Your brake and fuel lines look good. I can’t really get a great look from here, but I’ll check it out more when we get back to my shop. You really need to be careful driving in this weather.”

“I did not think it would be icy. It was raining, after all,” Jonathan said, embarrassed.

Mad Man Rob laughed again. “Welcome to Iowa. It’s cold as hell one day, warm the next. Snowy the day after that and a muddy mess the next day. A warm rainy day can turn this place into an ice rink in no time. A freezing cold rainy day can end badly in an instant. Now let’s hurry and get you and your friend warshed up.”

Jonathan climbed into the BMW, started the engine and was hit with a cold blast of air from the vents. He quickly pressed the button to shut the blower off. It wasn’t until he wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel that he realized how cold it had been. Even his fingers would barely curl. As he followed behind the black bus, Jonathan kept a close eye on Guillermo. When it was time for Guillermo to die, Jonathan didn’t want it to be at the decaying hands of the fiends, but he wasn’t ready for that time to be now.

Sloppy chunks of fiend splattered against the pavement as it fell from the razor wire fence around the bus. Jonathan tried to keep his distance, but he could already see the goo roll up the hood toward the windshield.
Hopefully there is a car wash still open
. He eased up on the accelerator as the death bus slowed down in front of him and turned off of what the road sign labeled Stewart Rd.