Decay (Book 2): Humanity (13 page)

Pulling off of Cedar Street, Jonathan followed the truck up the steep, winding driveway of the towering hospital. The brick building sat up on a hill, or down in the hill if entered from the other side. Before they could turn to drive along the side of the hospital toward the entrance, Mad Man Rob swerved out and drove around back. Jonathan could feel that something wasn’t right, and out of a habit he had picked up over the last few months he checked his options for an escape route.

“What is happening?” asked Jonathan. He was nervous and trying to keep a good distance between him and the truck in front in case they needed room.

“Bandits!” Michael exclaimed.

“Really?” Jonathan was sure he was being messed with, but it did seem plausible now more than ever.

“Well, no, but kind of, yes. Remember that old cartoon, the Hatfields and the McCoys? Where the granny sat on the rocker on her porch and shot her shotgun at the neighbors. Every blast rocked her chair again? Think of us as one family, and them,” he pointed to the hospital, “as the other. They’ve definitely upgraded their fleet. I saw a pretty sweet looking military Humvee over there. They didn’t have that last time we ran into them.”

Jonathan pulled up closer behind the truck and rolled down his window. “What do we do?”

“We’re in neutral territory, but they don’t always follow the rules, Jonathan. Their camp is up north. We set up an agreement that if either group needs supplies from certain areas we are welcome to them without any trouble. The last time we ran into them in a neutral zone they killed three of our guys, so we try to avoid them as much as possible.”

Jonathan’s thoughts drifted to Laikynn and the cannibal camp. Not exactly the same, but if the cannibal camp would have left them alone . . . well. Memories flashed in his head. He tried to fight them, but they told him what would have to be done if the two groups couldn’t coexist. Jonathan found it best to leave that part out of the story he told his brother, as well.

Mad Man Rob stepped gently out of the truck, leaving the door open. He ran back to the BMW. “Well? It’s your call. If you think we can trust these bastards this time we’ll go in. If not, we can wait them out.”

“We do not have all day,” Jonathan replied.

“Guillermo won’t starve to death right away, Jonathan, but I know how you must feel about him lying there. Let’s wait for just a little bit, ok?”

“Thirty minutes. Any longer than that and I am going in, with or without you guys.” Jonathan stared straight ahead through the windshield. He didn’t want to see neither Michael nor Mad Man Rob until it was time to go find what he needed.

“I’ll make a deal with you, Jon,” Mad Man Rob said. “You come with me now to grab what I need, and when we get back, I’ll go in with you . . . whether they’re still here or not. We’ll be back in thirty.”

Jonathan nodded and watched as Mad Man ran back up to his truck. He sat down slowly and pulled the door closed quietly. The truck rolled past a couple dumpsters, then along a thin path that led them to the other side of the hospital. They turned away from the building just as they came to the emergency room entrance, drove down a sloped driveway, and pulled back out onto the road.

Driving well over the speed limit, and ignoring the stop signs, they reached the small store in less than five minutes. Jonathan and Michael watched as Mad Man Rob and two other guys climbed out of the small truck. Luckily for the man riding the middle, the transmission was automatic. Jonathan could only imagine how uncomfortable it would be having the shifter slammed into your crotch. The men held assault rifles. Mad Man Rob grabbed his harnessed tanks and brass cutting torch from the truck bed than signaled for one of the men to back up to the dock where the dwindling supply of tanks was.

Matt and Rick were the other two guys that came with Mad Man Rob. Matt was a tall thin man with a tangled beard and an oily brown coat and matching coveralls. Rick was much shorter, shorter than Jonathan by at least four inches, but the man was stalky. He filled out his sweatshirt and didn’t seem to be bothered so much by the blistering cold. All three of them chain-smoked their cigarettes like there was no tomorrow, which Jonathan accepted as a strong possibility.

The twins stepped out of the BMW and looked around. Cold wind snapped against their faces like a cold gym towel as it whistled by. Jonathan could see some fiends wandering about down one of the side streets. They moved slowly and didn’t seem to care much for them, or maybe they hadn’t noticed them. Across the street was an empty lot with a set of train tracks running through them. Behind that was a white garage and the levy, beyond that was the Mississippi River.

Jonathan thought about walking over, seeing the river, but his eyes were drawn to a woman who had just walked up over the levy. She was too far away to see, and at first Jonathan thought she was just a fiend. Then she took off running toward them.
Another survivor?
Jonathan’s heart stuttered. He watched as she ran toward them. She looked as though she must have been starving and cold. Her clothes were a wreck.

Michael raised his rifle as he noticed what his brother had been staring at. “We got a runner,” he said.

“A runner?” asked Jonathan. “Is she with the group at the hospital?”

Michael turned to him with a confused look. His head cocked to the side as he repeated, “She’s a runner.” Aiming his rifle, he let the round fly. It whizzed across the street and into the frozen gravel drive way where the woman was running. The round drove into the frozen earth that made up the levy. Michael aimed again and fired another shot. Her head split open, a red mist filled the air, freezing before it settled onto the white rocks.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Jonathan yelled. He jogged to the end of the small parking lot. His hands on his head.

“SHE . . . WAS . . . A . . . RUNNER,” Michael said slowly. “You know them, right? You studied these damned things.”

Jonathan had an overwhelming confusion wash over him. “What? She was a fiend?”

“Fiend. Bone bag. Deadie. Undead–thing. Yes, Jonathan. You’ve never seen them before?” Michael felt a strange amusement at this. “About, I don’t know, a few months back, I guess, they started to run. Not all of them, but quite a few.”

“I need to study it,”

“I’m not helping you load that thing up in the car, Jonathan.”

“I will need a living one, anyway,” Jonathan replied.

“We’re all set,” Mad Man Rob said. The truck now had six of the large metal bottles loaded into the bed. “Let’s get you to that hospital.”

Chapter 18

Pulling off of Cedar Street once again, they drove up the path and pulled around to the front of the building. Jonathan couldn’t tell if the others were gone or not. The parking lot was packed full of cars, most of which still had doors open or windows down. So many people flooded the hospitals thinking their loved ones were just sick, not believing the stories coming from the coasts about the dead rising. Mad Man Rob must have felt they were all clear; he pulled right up to the front of the building, coasting alongside the windows that lined the front, many of which had been busted out and boarded up.

The frozen ice crystals crunched under the tires of the BMW as they came to a stop behind the truck once again. Jonathan watched as the men climbed out of the truck. Mad Man Rob, Matt, and Rick instantly readied their weapons which put Jonathan on edge. He knew there was always a threat from the fiends, but he hated when they added the threat of humans. Fiends were at least predictable. Humans were scared, greedy, and reckless.

Running his hands along the door handle, Jonathan was reluctant to open it. He knew as soon as he did that cold air would take his breath away. Michael climbed out first, and Jonathan, not wanting to look like the weak brother, followed instantly. The air was dry as it ran down into his lungs. Flurries of snow began to dot the world around them.

“Let’s get this done quickly,” Rick insisted. He walked toward the boarded up glass doors and slid them open easily. The automatic mechanism that controlled them had been disconnected long ago, but both groups knew to keep it shut. Rick closed the doors as everyone made it through.

“She said there should be med rooms on each floor. I guess what we need could be in any of them,” Jonathan pointed out. “Stick together or split up?”

“Might as well split up,” Mad Man Rob suggested. “That way we can grab anything else that looks good. We boarded up all the broken windows after everything settled down, and now we keep the doors shut to keep the bone bags out. I doubt there are any here, but if there are, it’ll just be a straggler or two,” he added, noticing Jonathan’s expression. “You two take this main floor while the three of us check the lower level?”

“Sounds good,” Michael said. The group split up. Jonathan didn’t feel great about the decision, but he was in their territory now. He wasn’t in the position to vote against these guys.

Jonathan followed Michael as they walked through the hallway. The air had a stale, musty aroma. The hall broke into a series of rooms and smaller hallways. A gift shop sat down one hallway, waiting rooms down another. Going into the gift shop crossed Jonathan’s mind. He thought about grabbing something for Guillermo, he’d like that, but the windows surrounding the room, along with the floors and walls within, were smeared with blood. Every seat in the waiting room was stained that stale brown color. Chunks of flesh clung to the walls and tables.

“Look,” Michael said. He pointed to a thick spot of blood that glimmered enough to catch his eye. “It’s still wet.”

“Looks like human blood. Fiend’s blood is usually already coagulated as it leaves the body,” Jonathan explained as he crouched down next to the blood splotch. “This definitely happened rece–“ A clatter rang through the doors behind the nurse’s station in the physician’s area. Michael placed his index finger to his lip and gripped his rifle. Jonathan followed his lead by un-holstering one of the Springfields.

Michael crept around the large desk and toward the door that led back to the exam rooms. He pressed his ear against the cold wood. The sound of a slow, croaking breath hummed through the door. He held his hand in the air and signaled for Jonathan to step back a bit. Michael stood firm and counted under his breath before kicking the door open and aiming his rifle through. The door was heavy and didn’t open as quickly as Michael was hoping it would. After taking a step back he kicked it open again. This time he followed through with the kick and the door open wide enough to see that the hallway beyond was empty.

“We both go in together,” Jonathan suggested stepping up beside Michael after the door had shut again. The brothers stood side-by-side and stepped up tightly against the doors. Peeking through the window, Jonathan didn’t see anything on the other side. He crouched back down and looked at his brother. He realized that it felt great to look at that face again. There were many times he found himself back home talking to his reflection in the mirror, pretending to be talking to Michael. This may have been crazy, but it helped Jonathan cope with being alone. “We go on three.”

Just then the door burst open from the other side, knocking Jonathan to the ground and slamming Michael into the wall. Blood sprayed from Michael’s nose and ran from his busted lip. Jonathan’s head swam, the knot on his forehead was already forming and turning a reddish purple. There was no time for them to recover, the fiends burst through the door and swung their arms wildly. They came within inches of Jonathan’s face, but came no closer.

“How’s it going, Michael?” the deep voice asked. Jonathan’s head was fuzzy, and he was sure that the fiend just talked to him. He sat up, shaking his head and trying to focus. The fiend backed away, and behind it was a man. He held the fiend at the end of a pole. “Did you bump your noggin?”

“Who . . . ?” Jonathan tried to ask.

“You don’t recognize me, Mikey? You little bastard.” The man looked down at him, spitting a little as he talked. His face slowly came into focus. He was dirty with a thin black beard. A white scar was seared into his left cheek, running from his ear to his nose. “Has this damned scar changed my face so much that you can’t tell who I am?” he roared.

“Calm down, Bill. You slammed that door into his face hard enough to scramble his brain,” another voice said. This voice was much calmer, older, and somehow wiser. Jonathan caught a glimpse of Michael . . . hiding behind the door, scared. No, not hiding, he was waiting. The other man stooped down next to him. He was much older, his long white hair tickled Jonathan’s face. “That is quite the goose egg you got there, Mike.”

Jonathan let them run with the thought that he was his brother. His head had cleared, mostly, but he would keep them thinking it hadn’t. As long as they thought his head was messed up he wouldn’t be expected to talk much. With a little effort, he had confirmed that both men had been leading a fiend around at the end of a pole. The man named Bill was an asshole, and the older man seemed like he could be an alright guy. Probably just fell in with the first group he came across.

“Let me help you up, Mike,” the older man said. He took Jonathan’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s get you something for your head.”

“What the hell are you doing, old man?” Bill said, stepping right up to the older man. Both men stood about the same height. “That little bastard can suffer for all I care. Do you remember this?” Bill pointed to the scar on his face. “He sure didn’t ask if I wanted any goddamned help after he cut my face open!”

“As I recall, Bill, you shot a few of their guys in the neutral zone. He was just defending himself.” The old man led Jonathan back through the doors, keeping the fiends at a distance. They both reached their decayed hands back toward where Michael was waiting. “Come on, you dead bastards.” The man pulled his fiend away from the door before it could reach the young man behind it.

As the doors swung shut, Michael bolted down the hall. He had to think of something fast. Rounding the curve of the hallway, he came to the large windows that faced out into the parking lot. Two men stood next to the BMW while another stuck halfway out while he dug through the contents. Michael knew he couldn’t make it past without them seeing, and he wasn’t in the mood for a fight. He ducked back behind the desk and cut down the hall with the gift shop.

“There really isn’t much left, but you know that, don’t you, Mike?” the old man asked, half talking to himself. Jonathan watched as he picked through some of the cabinets that had been picked through many times before. Bill stood on the other side of the large room, leaning against a bed. Both of the fiends had been hooked to a bed across from them. They reached for them, moaning and gurgling, but neither Bill nor the old man seemed concerned.

“Just let me kill the little shit, Randy,” Bill said. His patience was obviously wearing thin. The man kicked away from the bed he was leaning up against and walked over to the fiends. “If you won’t let me kill him, let them. We can say we were never even here. Maybe we showed up . . . just a little too late. Or what about Tonya? Her blood is spilled all over the hallway out there. Maybe it was this asshole and not one of these dead fucks. He broke the truce by killing her; now we kill him.”

“That’s enough, Bill.”

Jonathan’s vision had cleared, and he was well aware of what was happening, but his head felt like it would split open. His heartbeat throbbed in his ears. He couldn’t smell anything anymore, but he was sure by the looks of this room that it was ten times worse than the hallway had been. “Just let me go back to my group. I just need to grab a few things and I will be on my way.”

“He talks!” Randy said in a surprised, friendly tone. “I was starting to think that knock on your head made you stupid.”

“I have a man that needs some medical supplies. Please, let me grab what I need and go. I never saw either of you.”

“Well now!” Randy stated. “I guess it’s in the truce that we have to let you get supplies to keep a man alive. What do you need, young man.”

Relief washed over Jonathan, but the throbbing in his ears made it hard to remember what he needed. His head hung down on his chest while he searched his memory. “An NG-tube,” he finally managed.

“Ah.” Randy’s eyes lit up. “Those are right down here. Let me grab you a few.” He continued to talk as he walked away. “We had to grab a few of these ourselves a while back,” he said, his voice sounded slightly muffled from inside a closet.

Bill stepped even closer to Jonathan, and Jonathan could tell the man didn’t like him. The hatred radiated off of him so heavily that Jonathan was sure it would set his clothes on fire.

Randy came back quickly enough, and handed the young man a few plastic packages, each one containing a length of clear tube. Randy smiled wide as he looked at the teen.

“Uh, is there . . . um, food for this? Some kind of formula?” Jonathan asked, unsure.

“Of course! Silly me for not grabbing some.” Randy walked back down the hall, disappearing back into the closet again.

“Can I help you with something?” Jonathan asked as he noticed Bill stepping even closer. The look on the man’s face was toxic.

“No,” Bill replied. “I just can’t wait to kill you.”

Randy walked back just as Bill took another step closer. The old man carried a cardboard box containing two dozen cartons of formula. “This should do it.” He smiled at Jonathan. “But let me show you how to use it.”

“Oh I will not need to know how. I really appreciate your help, but I can be on my way.”

“That’s right, you have the nurse. Very kind woman, she is,” Randy said. “But I’m going to show you anyway, just in case.” He set the box down next to Jonathan and grabbed one of the plastic bags containing the NG-tubes. Pulling it open, he grabbed the tube and rolled it in his fingers.

All of a sudden Jonathan felt very uncomfortable. His heart rate increased rapidly, causing the throbbing in his ears to rattle like a drum roll. “You really do not have to show me,” he said with a nervous smile. He hopped down off of the bed and turned to grab the box. Randy lunged at him, wrapping the tube around his neck, not very tight at first. “Please!” begged Jonathan. “I just want to help a friend.” He could feel the tube tighten around his neck. The throbbing started to slow, but he wasn’t sure it was a good thing.

With his free hand, Randy pushed the box of formula off the bed and under the fiends. Their dry, rotting fingers curled as they reached for the living bodies. The box crumpled under the foot of one of the fiends, the liquid formula inside spilled onto the floor. Jonathan hoped that wasn’t all there was, but his head felt as if it was drifting off of his shoulders, so he doubted it really mattered anymore. The tube kept tightening more and more around his throat. He knew that he would die today.

Just as his eyes began to close forever, Jonathan heard two loud pops. Air rushed into his lungs as the tube slipped away from this neck. The throbbing in his ears continued, but he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. The fuzz in his vision quickly ebbed, and he could see the two fiends lying in a heap on the floor. Blood and formula pooled around them. Randy and Bill had been ordered back against the wall. Their hands held high above their heads.

“Well, well. This looks like a breach of the truce, ol’ boy,” Mad Man Rob said. “And that means we get to take something from you.”

Both Randy and Bill looked between Michael and Jonathan. “What the hell is this?” Randy finally asked. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Don’t you worry about my brother,” Michael said.

“He attacked us first. I take it he didn’t know about the truce,” Bill jumped in; his smile was crooked on his face.

“You attacked us,” Michael stated. “I was right there behind the door.”

Randy smiled. “You hide, like a little girl while we took your brother. I am not surprised that you are all cowards. How about you fight us like men?” Randy shared Bill’s crooked smile.

“Like you were fighting my brother like men?” Both of their smiles faded. “I get to take something,” Michael said in a commanding voice. He winked at Bill and drew a line across his left cheek with his finger. “Maybe I’ll put a mark on the other side.”