Decay (Book 2): Humanity (12 page)

“I was there when Jonathan, Guillermo . . . and Elliot, left. The night before they set out, Elliot used a radio to send a message. I can’t translate Morse code, so I don’t know what the message was. Honestly I wasn’t even sure if he was sending a message. Maybe he was just messing with an old radio he had found. I should have stopped it all right there, anyway, Deacon. I thought that
I
was the worst person on the planet. I never imagined I was wrong about that.”

Deacon stood up and placed his hand on Roger’s shoulder. “None of us would have known. You made a mistake. Whatever happened with Bradley is behind us. You saved Sophia and the twins. Andy and Amie are alive because of you. Thank you.”

“I found my family,” Roger sighed. “Burying them was the second hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“What was the first?” Deacon asked.

“Putting them down.” Roger walked out of the room just as Deacon saw the redness in his eyes. Sophia went to comfort him.

“I’m sorry about what every one of you has gone through. It must be tough having a family in this world,” Mark said as the blood continued to flow from his mouth.

“Yeah.” Deacon grabbed a knife from the small kitchen area and walked over the Mark. “I’m just gonna cut you free, man. You need to relax,” Deacon said as he noticed Mark was starting to breath heavily.

“Of course,” Mark said. His heart was still beating in his ears.

“I’m sorry I punched you in the face. I hope you can forgive me.”

“I understand how you must’ve felt about me. I’d be suspicious, too. Besides, you don’t really hit that hard,” Mark said has he spit his tooth out into his hand and wiped the blood off his chin with a paper towel.

“I can hit you again,” Deacon laughed. His expression quickly went to dead serious. “I have to go tell Sophia the truth. If I’m lucky I’ll only look as bad as you do right now.”

Chapter 17

Jonathan explained everything that happened to him from the time their father picked him up from school that day over a year ago, to the minute Mad Man Rob stepped out of that psychotic bus of his. Most of the time he talked, Jonathan wasn’t even really paying attention to what he was saying. For all he knew most of his story was jumbled and chaotic. He couldn’t help but stare at his brother. Michael had changed so much yet not at all.

Michael was still just as tall as Jonathan was. Jonathan was sure that their different diets and activities would create some sort of difference in their appearances, but he couldn’t find anything that stuck out. Michael’s dark brown hair was much shorter than Jonathan’s, whose hair was shaggy from the lack of proper haircuts. Their brown eyes locked at one point, and Jonathan could swear he was staring into a mirror.

“Mom’s death was better than most, given the circumstances. Our whole lives unraveled the day the deadies came. We had to leave Aunt Sheryl in the hospital. She was in a coma at that time anyway, and the power was very inconsistent. The place had been running on backup power and it wasn’t going to hold much longer. Mom didn’t want to leave, you know? She wanted to stay by her sister’s side. It was a miracle I pulled her out of that place.

“Like everyone else, we didn’t know what was happening at first. Mom was all panicked about Dad’s phone call, and a few days later the shit hit the fan. We barricaded the door to Aunt Sheryl’s hospital room until I finally convinced Mom that those crazy people beating on the door would make it through eventually. We were only on the second floor, so when I saw the first opportunity, I jumped down and ran to the car. Drove it around and helped Mom down.

We managed to survive hiding in different houses and buildings in Iowa City. Mostly bars. As it turned out, most of the looters missed tons of supplies left in the bars. We even lived in the Carver-Hawkeye Arena for about a month. That was actually pretty cool. We were forced out of there when it started to get colder, ended up living in the Old Capital building with a few other survivors.

“It was fall when Mom got sick. I don’t know what it was. It started as just the sniffles one day and before I knew it she couldn’t move. I thought to myself, what would Jonathan do, and I realized I was right down the street from one of the best hospitals in the nation. I tried for days to get back into the hospital, but I could only make it so far before the deadies were out too thick to move through. She died because I couldn’t save her.”

“You did what you could, Michael. You heard my story. At least you tried. I stood by and watched as Dad was taken from us,” Jonathan said.

“You want to know what makes me feel better when I get to thinking about our family?” Michael asked with a slightly goofy smile. He saw the look on Jonathan’s face and continued, “Hey, Mad Man?”

“Yeah,” Mad Man Rob answered from across the garage. He had been building something that Jonathan couldn’t quite wrap his head around. His wild hair made it look as if he was just electrocuted. Standing by his large stainless steel workbench was a shaggy black dog. Its long purple tongue hung from its open mouth. A half Chow, half Lab named Dog.

“How do you spell
warsh
? I can’t seem to figure it out,” Michael’s smile broke into a childish giggle that made him look just as he did when they were kids.

“Shut up,” Mad Man Rob said light-heartedly, scratched Dog behind the ear, and returned to work. Before the attacks, Mad Man Rob was one of the best mechanics around. Self-taught, but hands down the best. If it had an engine he could fix it, regardless of size. Anything from lawnmowers to heavy construction equipment and he loved it. Rob had a short fuse, though. It was all too often that he could blast off into a fit of rage, throwing things around and destroying stuff. Scaring the shit out of everyone around that didn’t know him well enough to know if they just stayed out of his way they’d be find.

“I haven’t seen an animal in quite some time. There were a few squirrels and maybe some birds in the mountains, but I guess I haven’t thought too much about the animals,” Jonathan stated as Dog came over to him and rested his big head in the young man’s lap.

“Yeah. The deadies attack them, too. They really hate anything that is alive. I actually watched one across the street in the field trying to catch a bird,” Michael laughed and shook his head as if to say, stupid deadie. “Did you find anything in the morgue?”

“What?” Jonathan asked. This question blindsided him.

“The morgue. At the BCRC?”

“There is a morgue at the BCRC?” Jonathan would have never guessed.

“There’s a morgue at the BCRC?” Michael said in a high pitched, mocking tone. “Yes there is, Jonathan. It’s a damned medical research facility. They have a morgue. Hundreds of bodies are donated to that place each year for their top-of-their-class researchers to cut up and poke and prod. I’ve never seen it myself due to security reasons, but I know it’s there. Dad has talked about it many times. It’s not a secret, it’s just non-employees can’t get to it.”

Jonathan thought about this for a while. Dog tried for a second to climb into Jonathan’s lap, realized he wouldn’t fit, and sat back down on the floor.
A morgue? But Sam was never in the morgue. He was in the lab from the start. Any bodies in the morgue would have all been on record.
It was certainly interesting to know that he thought they searched the whole place. There may be many more secrets in that building.
Jonathan was lost in thought for the rest of the afternoon.

“Wake up, Jonathan. There might be an issue with your friend.” Michael stood at the open door of a small bedroom. Jonathan was tangled in a blanket on the floor. His sleep had been restless, making it an unpleasant battle to work his way out of the tangled mess. Grabbing his jeans off the back of a chair, he pulled them on and walked out to find Guillermo.

“What is the problem?” he asked May as he walked into the living room at the other end of the house.

“Your friend will starve to death if we don’t feed him soon. We have most of the supplies we could ever need here. After all this time I’ve collected many things to cover almost any emergency. However, I don’t have any feeding tubes,” May stated solemnly. “He’s going to need real nutrients or he won’t make it.”

“I thought you said he would be fine,” Jonathan hadn’t intended to sound as angry with her as he had.

“I’m truly sorry, dear, but I assumed he was in better shape than he is. After all, there is only so much I can do with what I have.”

“So what do I need to find?” Jonathan asked. “I will leave immediately.

“There’s a hospital in the center of Muscatine. I’ll need an NG-tube. Nasogastric. The tube will run through his nose and down into his stomach. We can prepare food for him here, but it will be much better to find any of the formula that would go with it. It’s prepared with all of the nutrients his body will need, and it will go through the tube easier. You can probably find everything you need in a med room. There’s one on each floor.”

“I will return soon. Thank you,” Jonathan said. He walked out of the room to find his coat.

“Wait for me, Jonathan,” Michael said catching up to his brother in the hall. “I’ll ask Mad Man Rob if he wants to go with us.”

“I cannot ask all of you to get hurt helping me save my friend,” Jonathan replied.

“He’s your friend, Jonathan. I would do anything for you and your friends. Besides, Mad Man Rob loves going out to bash skulls.”

“Why do you not just call him Rob?” Jonathans questioned.

Hesitating for a second on the answer as if he wasn’t sure himself, Michael replied, “Because his name is Mad Man Rob. Why do you talk like a robot?”

“Fair enough.”

The air outside was cold. The light from the sun hadn’t reached over the top of the large wall yet. Tears were forced from their ducts as the biting cold assaulted Jonathan’s face. The walls blocked the wind, but there was no blocking that awful, bitter chill. A loud clanking of steel on steel erupted from the garage as the two walked across the gravel driveway. Michael pointed at CREEPR 1 parked outside of the large building.

“I designed a lot of that,” he said proudly. “Mad Man Rob is a master at fabrication. Without him I wouldn’t have ever seen that beast alive. If you tell him what needs to be done he will do it. If he doesn’t know how to do it–he’ll create a way to do it.”

“Must be heavy,” Jonathan observed keeping his words to a minimum, as it was far too cold to talk.

“Not really. We stripped it down to pretty much a structural frame that supports all of the weaponry. It’s really only slightly heavier than it was to begin with,” Michael said proudly.

Jonathan thought back to dreams–fuzzy dreams–he had had of a semi and an airplane, but his jaw was clamped shut too tightly to ask. He couldn’t help but admire the machine as they walked right by it. Deacon would have loved seeing it; hopefully he would have the chance.

“Hey, Mad Man? Do you want to make a run to town with us?” Michael yelled before they even opened the wooden door to the garage. Warm air blasted them both as Michael pushed the door open and stepped through. The clanking stopped as Mad Man Rob turned from his work. Dog trotted over to the twins and rubbed against Jonathan’s leg.

“What?” he hollered.

“We are going to town. Do you want to join us?” Michael asked once again.

“Yeah, let me grab my gear.” Mad Man Rob wandered further into the garage. Jonathan saw him grab a few big cylinders and clip them into what appeared to be a harness. He connected hoses and wrapped a belt with a long leather holster fastened to it around his waist. “I need to stop by the welding place on Grandview Ave and grab a few more tanks,” he said as he waved a brass Oxy/Acetylene torch in his hand.

Jonathan stepped to the side to allow Mad Man Rob to walk by and his eye was caught by the light reflected off something further back in the large garage. The ferocious chrome grille of the semi radiated with the fluorescent light from above, casting an eerie aura around it. The matte black paint job had only made the chrome stand out that much more. Jonathan had always been convinced that the research stating that twins had a certain extra sensory connection with each other was true. Seeing the monstrous semi parked, no
waiting
, there in the garage just hammered that in so much further.

“You like that?” Michael asked. Jonathan could hear it in his brother’s voice that his pride was swelling again. If he didn’t control it then there was no way his head would fit through the door they came in. Mad Man Rob was going to have to open the bay door.

“I have seen it before. I dreamt about it, Michael.”

“Really? Like, you actually saw it?”

“Yeah,” Jonathan replied.

“You always did believe all that stuff about twins being psychic. I’ve never had anything like that happen to me. I’ve had feelings that I’m sure where yours, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything you were doing. I think the strongest feeling I’ve had is sadness.” Jonathan left out the part of his story about what happened to Emalynn. “It felt like my heart broke, Jonathan, but I was having a great day.” Michael looked at Jonathan and saw sadness in his eyes.

“It is not really a
psychic
thing. I just . . . you know we have to hurry, Michael. I have to save my friend.” Jonathan walked out of the garage and walked across the gravel driveway. He climbed into the BMW and started it.
Should have started it sooner
, Jonathon observed. The engine whined a little before coming to life. It was about a minute before Michael climbed into the passenger side of the car.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been in here,” he said, feeling nostalgic as he ran his hands along the dash and then the leather seats. “Mad Man is going to follow us in his truck. There are a few other guys riding with him.”

“What do I do to get out of here?” Jonathan asked.

“Just follow the Mad Man out.” Michael pointed to the black 1950’s Chevy pickup. It rode lower than Jonathan had expected from the Mad Man, and he wasn’t really surprised to see a plow of sorts made of steel pipes, very similar to the ones Deacon built for the Tundra, wrapping around the front. The truck was also very quiet, which Jonathan figured was to avoid attracting attention. The Chevy was his supply-run truck, his grocery getter.

Jonathan couldn’t help but smile as he pulled up behind the truck. The unofficial license plate read UN-DEAD. The black letters popped out against the polished stainless plate. “He makes those himself,” Michael said as he realized what Jonathan was looking at.

“Guillermo is going to love this guy,” Jonathan stated. “He has the same strange obsession with naming things.”

The large door in front of them opened. Jonathan hadn’t seen it the first time. The gate was opened before he made it around the bus. He hadn’t even realized exactly how tall the gate was. The wall was gigantic, much higher than necessary, or so Jonathan thought. The gate was just as large, and Jonathan could see from this side that it was supported by car axels that allowed a pulley system to slide the gate open with ease. He followed the truck out onto the street. There was nothing around but a few fiends standing in the field across from them, frozen in place.