sunshines_rain

     “Oh man, government my ass!” he shouted, and I couldn’t help but smile a little to myself in spite of it all.  The whole back part was completely deserted, except for the crew busses and a man sitting in a steel chair.  When he saw us he got up in a hurry and ran to the gate, seeming amazed to see another healthy person.  Right away he called out to us.

     “Hey, who goes there?  Access here is restricted, you know.”  His words were meant to be threatening, but he just seemed happy to be talking to healthy people.  I was still too pissed off at that old hag to answer, but Frank saved the day this time.

     “Hi, um… we’re the band that played here a few nights ago.  My Chemical Romance.  Look, we were at the hospital a few days ago and just wanted to come back to our bus.  See, it’s sitting over there, off to the left.  We just wanted to come back to somewhere we knew, you know?” 

     The man regarded us thoughtfully for a minute.  His blond hair was cut in that style that you see every other forty-year-old man wearing, and his features were soft and kind.  In the end he just smiled and opened the gate.  Unexpected kindness in a world full of misery. 

     “Sure, but come in quick,” he said with care.  “My daughter liked your band an awful lot.  I’m… I’m sorry about your bassist, that must be tough on you guys.”  Aw shit, Mikey.  I bowed my head.

     “Thank you… uh…,” Frank tried to say, tactfully changing the subject.

     “Morton.  Morton Gregory.  Don’t worry, nobody has touched your bus yet.  I thought maybe you boys would come back.”  His unexpected warmth after that old hag made my mood a little better.

     “Thanks Morton.  Um… the lady at the front told us this was government only, is that true?  I don’t see anybody here?”  Frank felt like saying that as we went through the gates.  He gritted his teeth at the mention of that woman, and so did I.  Ray’s wheelchair nearly tipped over because it ran over a bump.

     “Oh, Joy?  She just likes to say a bunch of bullshit.  We’re not really government.  They just appointed us to write down the names of everybody that comes through here and to organize them, since we’re still healthy and all that, and everybody they have is getting sick.  I organize, she does everything else.” 

     The four of us stared at each other for a second, all thinking the same thoughts.  Joy?!  What the fuck.   Even Ray was shocked into silence with that one.  Morton read us like an open book, because he started chuckling. 

     “I see she got to you fellas.  Don’t worry, I’ll deal with her if she makes a fuss.  It’s nice to have any kind of company that can still walk.”  That was all he told us before beckoning for us to go on.  When he saw Frank crank open the door, which was slightly ajar, he went and sat down in that chair again.  He never said another word. 

     We helped Ray out of the wheelchair and up the steps.  He was already getting weak, and could barely walk.  His coughs were sounding nearly as bad as Mikey’s first did, and his hair was damp with sweat.  I didn’t want to have to go through it all again, but it became even more apparent that Ray was going to slip away faster than my brother had. 

     Even to this day I’m proud that I could still help Ray into his normal bunk after seeing the remnants of Mikey’s blood pooled on the floor, still not being cleaned up.  In a flash he was suddenly puking all over me again, and I was still screaming.  Part of me will always be screaming, I’m afraid.  Even though there were flies buzzing around the soiled carpet, to me it still looked as fresh as the first time I’d seen it.  But even though I was disturbed by the sight, I still managed to barely flinch. 

     You know what’s funny?  We didn’t even wonder where the rest of our crew was, and everybody we were touring with.  I mean, shouldn’t somebody have cleaned that up?  I guess tragedy does that people and gives them selective thinking, but I still think that I should have asked myself that some time during the coming days of hell.  But maybe, just maybe, I already knew where they were.

     When Ray finally settled into his clean mattress, it took him only two minutes to fall into a shallow, troubled sleep.

     Bob quietly shut the curtains to his bunk with tender care, and all three of us spent the next half hour cleaning up the smelly spot of puke on the floor.  Strangely enough, I was able to do it with steady hands.  Even though in my mind I was shaking like a madman and curling up in the corner, in the reality my friends saw I was calm and collected.  Maybe a little too cold, but weren’t we all?  They never knew that as all three of us tried to sponge my brother out of the carpet, I never quit hearing my screaming. 

     In the end we were left with a pink stain on the carpet, but it was so much better than what had been there before.  At least now I could look at it and tune out the screaming, and there wasn’t a smell anymore.  But cleaning up the lingering remains of my brother had taken a toll on all three of us, and we were all left looking pale and tired.  We ended up sitting at the small table in the front of the bus, staring at each other like we were all complete strangers.

     “Guys, I’m going to turn on the radio.  We might as well hear what’s going on while we still can.  I mean, it’s not like the power is going to last forever,” Frank said, and for some reason that always stood out more than a lot of other things in my mind. 

     I never did suspect that Frank would pick up the radio station from Illinois.  As he fiddled with our junky radio, trying to find a signal, I never really did think that he’d find the station.  We didn’t even know at first.  Instead we just sat there and listened to the music with barely half an ear.  We tensed only when we heard the familiar jingle of the news.  First we all looked at each other, and then our eyes travelled to the radio, not quite believing our ears.  This station, and this voice was from a lifetime ago.

     “Good evening, and this is Kathy Harris with the evening five-second flash.  New reports are coming in that the city of Detroit, as well as our own, are going to be put under military quarantine starting tomorrow.  It became known days before that centers in Nevada and other infected states were put under the same procedure. 

     “I am to inform the public, yet again, that the quarantine is not to be violated.  No traffic will be allowed to leave or get into the affected cities.  Any violation of these terms is punishable with death.”

     We all looked at each other with mild shock.  Bob flashed me a look that pretty much said really, you could have fooled us.  Then the three pairs of eyes went back to looking at the radio.  The news report had interested me so completely that I hadn’t thought about Mikey at all.  For the first time in hours he had completely left my brain.

     “Now, I could tell you all that yada-yada about how if you’re sick that you should stay indoors.  I would be, but really, almost all of my superiors are dead and dying right now.  Guys, it’s no use.  Just please, don’t end your life before it needs to.  Two of our DJ’s already committed suicide, and pretty soon I’m going to be running this joint myself.  I’m really not in the mood, so please don’t do it before it’s supposed to happen.  Thank you.

     “This is Kathy Harris, signing off yet again.”

     When an old Aerosmith song started playing, we just sat there and stared at each other.  It really wasn’t any surprise that the infamous Kathy Harris had gone a little loopy on the airwaves.  I mean really, who wouldn’t?  But the idea that Detroit was being quarantined just put us all in a blacker mood.  I tried to think about what would happen next, and at least tried to comfort myself by saying I wouldn’t live much longer anyway.  Fuck, did that ever turn out to be a lie. 

     That whole night was tense and silent.  What were you supposed to do when you knew that the rest of your life was just borrowed time?  We couldn’t find the nerve to talk, and we couldn’t stand to hear Ray’s strangled breathing coming from behind the curtains.  So we did what most normal people would have done.  All three of us went to bed. 

     I do remember that was the night I couldn’t sleep.  I just lied there, staring at the familiar ceiling, and wondering where all the time went.  Now that I had time to think, I asked myself a lot of things.  Where was Mikey now?  Was there really an afterlife?  Did death hurt a lot in the end?  Was there just… nothing after death?  And I cried.  Softly, so that nobody could hear.  When I finally did fall asleep, I dreamt of Lindsey and Mikey.

     That night was the last time for weeks I would have the capacity to think that deeply.  The next day Ray got much worse, and by the afternoon he’d puked up his first wad of blood.  You know, it was Frank that got hit with the bloody puke that time, not me.  I’ll never forget when I helped him wash it off, because he was a fucking mess.  That’s all I’m going to say, to save him some dignity.

     Morton came onto the bus occasionally to bring us food, and see how Ray was doing.  God bless him, because if he hadn’t been there, we probably would have starved.  None of us were going to leave Ray.  I’m just so glad that he was kind enough to make us take care of ourselves, and make sure we stayed alive for as long as possible.

     We took turns watching over Ray.  It took him until nearly midnight to start screaming.  Before that we’d started sleeping in shifts, because we knew that had to start sometime.  Like Mikey, Ray couldn’t keep anything down either.  At least Morton found us some pyjamas to make him a little more comfortable.  When it wasn’t my turn to watch Ray, and I wasn’t sleeping, I’d go and talk with Morton.  Part of me still thinks I should have stayed with Ray, but in all honesty I couldn’t have done that without going insane.  I needed some kind of break.  Morton told me a lot of things in those few visits.  As we stood together smoking cigarettes I learned about his daughter Denise, and his wife Charlotte.  That poor man had lost them both within days of each other, among other sad facts he told me.  He also said he should have quit smoking, but I was glad I could get my fix somewhere. 

     I could tell more about the last few days before Ray died, but I can’t bring myself to do it.  You have to understand, I was so numb and dull at that point a lot of it seemed like a dream.  First Mikey, then Lindsey, and now Ray.  I was slowly being left alone.  One, by one, by one, I was going to lose them all.  How else is a sane man supposed to handle that, except by shutting down?  I made sure I was there as much as I could be for Ray, and Morton, but in all other areas life was just dull pain.  Like a toothache in a way.

     April twenty-third was a struggle to get through without screaming myself.  Ray started begging us to stop it.  To kill him.  He told me where some Tylenol was, and asked if I’d feed him both bottles on the bus.  You have to understand, he begged me to do it.  He wanted to end it without pain.  Ray had seen how much agony Mikey had been in before he died, and had watched my brother choke on his own bloody bile.  I can’t blame him, but I never gave in.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider it, and consider it hard, but in the end I didn’t fold.  Somehow, I hoped that he would get better.  It would turn out that through everything I’d never quit wishing for a miracle.

     Ray lived until eight-oh-nine in the morning, on April twenty-fourth.  Like Mikey he choked on his own bloody bile, and like Mikey, he died in the worst pain imaginable.  He was like a brother to me, and watching him go like Mikey had only made me die a little more inside.

     After he left I couldn’t find any more tears to cry.  I was so empty.  So fucking gone except for all the sadness and anger at things I had no power to change. Instead of crying I crawled into my bunk and just lay there, shaking and feeling absolutely nothing except emptiness.

     Somehow, I think that’s worse than if I’d cried all the tears in the world.

Chapter Seven


Author's Note: Sorry for the huge delay guys!  I had the art project from hell due, and then when I finished the update my beta was busy for a few days, so it took longer than it should have.  Forgive me?  And sorry I've been MIA the past few days.  The new update is already 1/3 written, so expect it by Friday.