Read Humanity Gone (Book 3): Rebirth for Free Online

very next recipient. Then the plague came along. Ironic, I guess.” He finishes the cigarette, extinguishing it on the brick of the wall. His eyes go to the sky and blink repeatedly. A gust of chilled air rustles his hair. “I figured if I could get him out of the city, perhaps there would be a chance at another hospital. I would drive to as many as I needed to, or as many as he could handle. It was that morning that I decided to...” His words break off and he looks to me. His eyes are large and seem to burst with regret. I raise my eyebrows and give a tiny nod while rolling in my lips.
    “Darrel, I know it was you.” My answer doesn’t seem to shock him. I didn’t expect it to. He looks ahead, seemingly afraid to look me in the eye.
    “I figured. How long have you known?”
    “Not until we first got here. You look a lot different with that beard of yours. But it was your voice I was eventually able to place.”
    “Jo, I’m so sorry.” He pauses. “I needed to get him out of there, so I rounded up a few of my friends, and they swore to help me.”
    “Why didn’t you just tell us about your brother then?”
    “I told the story to a few other cars that morning. They didn’t care and drove off. Jon and I were barely acquaintances from school. I figured I would do whatever it took.”
    “I understand that,” I say. After the plague, that's what we all had to do.
    “You don’t hate me.”
    “No.” I pause. “When I realized it was you, I immediately knew that whatever caused you to do that was out of desperation.” I look up into the clear night sky. At the constellations. “It’s easy to lose ourselves when we are protecting those we love.”
    I think of Jon, Caitlyn, and even Ryan.
    “Thank you.” His voice is sad while his eyes look stern. Perhaps he would have cried, but I feel it is something he has already cried about too many times.
    “So why Darrel these days?”
    “Darry just sounded so juvenile. I had to grow up.”
    “We’ve all had to grow up.”
    “How do you think it’s going to go tomorrow in the city?”
    “If we stay together, we’ll be okay.”
    I start to walk back into the Ax. Darrel lights another cigarette and breaths it in deeply without a single cough. I stop.
    “You never finished about your brother,” I say. He looks to me and then forward. His left hand buries in his pocket while the other holds the burning cigarette to his side.
    “I managed to get him out of the city a few days later in a bus that the government was using to relocate children. I found it abandoned not long after you and your brother drove away. It looked like it had been ambushed or something. It didn’t start, but a buddy of mine was able to fix it up. A whole group of us managed to get out of the city on that bus. Most of my friends were low-lifes or soon-to-be criminals, but I figured that if we got into trouble, we could stand tall. We headed east to look for a home. We roughed up a lot of people to get the supplies we needed. However, my brother grew worse and worse.” He paused for another drag on the cigarette. “There was nothing we could do. After a night, while he was in extreme agony I took him in my arms. I told him that we just found some medicine that will make him better”
    A tear finally fell down his eye, but his composure did not break. He turned to me in the entrance of the Ax.
    “I then injected my brother with an overdose of heroin my buddy had on him.”
    “I’m so-” he doesn't let me finish.
    “We pulled over, and I buried him. Not long after, I left them all. My girlfriend had been with me, but she chose to stay with them. They could keep her, 'safer' she said. I didn’t want to be a part of the violence if I didn’t need to be. Not anymore. Never again did I want to initiate violence; I want to stop it when I can.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It’s okay. I’ve dealt with this. It’s a little tough at times, but I’ve dealt with this all. Tori has been great.