“I’d love to tell you that someday I know you and I will be in a beautiful, warm sunny place reflecting on our life on earth and surrounded by gorgeous women angels and drinking beers and watching from above as the Pats and Sox win more rings.”
“I hate the Patriots,” Dew-man struggled to verbalize.
“Oh, right. But I used to believe in all that stuff. I was raised that way. I believed in God, Satan, heaven and hell, and the places in between. “But over the past year or so I’ve really begun to wonder how a ‘God,’ if one really does exist, could not protect my family from turning into monsters, or from placing me in a situation where I have to kill them or be killed myself. I have lost my freedom, my career, the woman I love. And the earth as we used to know it is being slowly taken over and inhabited by carnivorous fleshfeasting demons that were once our friends and neighbors and relatives. What kind of ‘loving father’ would allow the world we live in to turn completely upside down like it has?”
Jake con tinued, “but, having said all that, even after all that shit has happened and there seems to be no explanation why, I still believe there’s an almighty one. And heaven. They say he works in some mysterious ways. Maybe someday it will all make sense to us. So, I know for sure that you are going to a place better than where we are right now. And I sure as heck hope that someday I will see you there and that we meet again.”
“Will you do me a favor, Jake?”
“Anything, dude.”
“Will you try to get in touch with my parents in Minnesota? Their address and phone
number are in my cellphone. Tell them something good about me? Something to make them proud of me, of the way they raised me.Even if you have to make shit up.” “Of course. That won’t be difficult at all. I’m sure they’re already proud of you, and they should be very gratified with themselves as well, for raising you the way they did. You turned out to be a great man.”
“I love you, brother,” Duy said, closing his eyes for the final time. “I love you, man,” Jak e whispered as he gave his close friend the merciful peace he had asked for.
Jake began to walk away from the body and in the opposite direction of the van. He was trekking with a steady pace toward the vast, punishing desert.
Mack jumped out of the driver seat and ran toward Jake, who never slowed down or missed a beat.
“Jake! Dude! Where are you going? The van’s in the other direction!”
“I gotta go, Mack. I’m not like you and everyone else on that bus anymore. I’ve changed. I’m no longer Jake. No longer human.I don’t feel, I don’t need. I don’t sleep... I’m better off alone.
“All of the things Duy just described to me, the way he was physically feeling and the things emotionally he wasn’t feeling. The visions, the delusions. I’ve been experiencing all of that for months now.
“DuyIs the lucky one, he doesn’t have to endure that pain any longer. I am not so lucky. I can’t even die properly. Trust me, I’ve tried to end it. But that didn’t work. So now I try to just remain numb to this life since I can’t feel it anyways. It’s best for everyone that I leave. I need to be alone; it feels better.
“Plus, I have some unfinished business with Fiedler and Blackhoof. After I take care of a promise I made to a friend. And then I am going to stop this virus from spreading before the whole world is infected.”
Jake paused, then extended his right arm forward to shake Mack’s hand. “We will meet again, dude. Who knows?Maybe it will be at the Steak Pit?”
“Umm, probably NOT at the Steak Pit. But somewhere, for sure.” Mack smiled.
“Haaa,” Jake grinned. “Strong, my friend. You sure have come a long way since field training. Stay safe brother.”
Jake, the wicked awake, colossal Caucasian, clad in his black BDU style pants, combat boots, and black Killswitch Engage concert t-shirt, walked toward the uninviting, sizzling desert before him. Daylight turned to dusk; the absence of light was something that Hathaway relished. The obscurity offered a concealment which made it that much easier for HIM to blend in with THEM, the evil ones that he has vowed to destroy.
Or rather, was it THEM, the wicked- who would be merging with him?
THE END
Wicked Awake Page 40