End of the Road (8 page)

"Why don't you think he's really your
brother?"

"I dunno, just suspicious, I guess."

"Well gee, can you think of any reason
someone would want to pretend to be your brother?" Sallie Mae made
a silly face and tapped her fingers on the table, making Gary
laugh.

"Naw, I guess not. I've got no home, no car,
no money, no girl friend. Heck, no real friends. Guess I've been a
wanderer too long." He shook his head and sipped his coffee.

"Maybe you were looking for something that
you didn't even know you were missing?"

Gary sat silent for a few minutes, then
nodded. "Sallie Mae, you may be right. If Eddy is my brother, he
might be the only member of my family left." He exhaled slowly.
"Now I'm getting nervous, dang it."

"Naw, nothing to be nervous about. You
appear to be a smart man, you'll know if he's your brother or not.
If he is, great. If he isn't, maybe you'll make a friend." She
smiled and stood. "Think my break's over. You let me know if you
want anything else." She picked up the now cool coffee pot and
walked towards the counter. "I'll make a fresh pot."

Gary nodded absently,
already lost in his thoughts. Could he really be getting ready to
meet his long lost brother? Up until now he hadn't thought so but
had agreed to meet anyway. After talking to Sallie Mae, he felt
different. Optimistic but also like he now had something to
lose.
Quit it, you can't lose something you
never had.
He looked at the clock on the
wall. Less than thirty minutes and he'd get some answers -
maybe.

Sallie Mae handed him a copy of the local
paper. "Something to keep your mind busy," she'd said. He'd read
the comics and was perusing the classifieds when the bell over the
door tinkled. Putting the paper down in anticipation, he refused to
glance over to see who had entered. He listened as Sallie Mae and
her mother chatted with the newcomer, then he heard the approaching
footsteps.

A deep voice asked, "Gary?" and he glanced
up. The newspaper slid to the floor as he stared at the man in
front of him. The face seemed very familiar. He stood to shake
hands and as Eddy smiled Gary realized why. It was true, he and
Eddy were brothers. In fact, they were twins.

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Photo copyright Kate Ramsey

Donna B. McNicol retired
after 30+ years in the IT industry. In 1996 she started
moonlighting in freelance writing; she spent the next ten years
writing for such online sites as The Mining Company, Suite101,
BellaOnline and About.com.

In January 2012 she started
dabbling with flash fiction and before the year was out had
published several compilations, two short stories and was included
in an anthology. In early 2013 she published her first two novels,
Home Again - a contemporary romance, and Not a Whisper - the first
in the Klondike Mystery Series.

Donna currently lives and
travels full-time with her husband, Stu, and their pup, Sadie,
along with their two Harley-Davidson motorcycles in a 41' fifth
wheel toy hauler trailer pulled by their medium duty
Freightliner.

http://donnamcnicol.com
~
http://facebook.com/mywritespot
~ Twitter: @dbmcnicol

Chapter 7

One More Mile

By Dale Roberts

It’s funny, the things that go through a
person’s mind at a time like this. As I lie here on my bed, I have
little else to do but think… and remember.

Right now, it’s lyrics from an old Bee Gees
song

The preacher talked to me and he smiled

Said, come walk with me, come and walk one
more mile

I don’t have a clock, but I can tell what
time it is by the height of the tall, narrow light as it makes its
slow accent up the wall as the afternoon sun, ever falling toward
the horizon, shines through a narrow westward window… my only
window. It’s close to the top. The sun is about to set. It will be
my final one. In two hours they will come for me.

You know how they say that right before you
die, your life flashes before your eyes? Don’t believe it. It isn’t
true. It doesn’t happen on its own. You have to work at it.

I think back and try to see my earliest
memory. I was a child, no more than three. My father carried me,
wrapped in a blanket to our car. I can’t see the car, nor can I
remember where we were going, but I can feel the warmth of his body
as he holds me close, protecting me from the cold. …I never saw him
again.

I think about my grandfather, the noble, yet
humble man who raised me and taught me the most important lessons
in life: nothing makes a man feel more like a man than an honest
day’s work; always give more than you take: and most important,
always be honest with those you love, especially yourself.

He taught me to fish and how to play
checkers and how to snap green beans from the garden. He taught me
to ride a horse and milk a cow. He taught me to be the man that
people could respect.

I think about the night he died. I was
seventeen and I am not ashamed to say that I cried.

I think about my grandmother, the sweetest
angel God ever put on the earth and how she lost part of herself
that night. Her partner of fifty-six years, the only life she had
ever known was gone. She was afraid. How I wished I could take her
pain.

My life, like every other, has had its ups
and downs, joy and pain, failure and triumph. I look back and
smile, seeing my little boy hook his first fish, squealing with
excitement when it wiggled on the end of his line as he tried to
free it from the hook. I see him cry at the sight of a dead
squirrel on the side of the road. I see him beaming with pride as
he walks across the stage to take his high school diploma.

I look back and my eyes fill with tears as I
remember our last moment together.

“
Be careful and keep an eye
on the fuel gauge. It can be a long way between stations,” I said.
“And, no texting. Wait ‘till you stop.”

“
I’ll be careful Dad. You
taught me well.”

He backed out of the drive and disappeared
down the street, on his way to make his own life.

The campus was only three hours from home,
but… I only wish I would have told him I loved him.

That’s all I can do now, relive the memories
from a life that will soon be all but forgotten by the rest of the
world; all except for what I did.

I try to make peace with
all of my choices and can only hope that in the end, when my life
is measured in the balance, the
good
will out-weigh the
bad
, and that the lives I saved will
somehow makeup for the one I took.

*******

Jacob was my son, our
miracle baby. He was born with a severe heart defect in which the
left ventricle, the main pumping chamber, failed to develop.
Through some divine intervention, a child was born on the same day,
in the same hospital with a
profound
defect where his brain and spinal cord were
essentially missing. His heart and lungs were healthy. His parents
decided to donate his viable organs. My son received
them.

I remember the day he came home from the
hospital, five months old, covered in hair and overweight; side
effects from the steroids and anti-rejection medications, but he
was a happy, healthy boy.

His medical bill was a staggering $2.3
million, but the hospital wrote it off in exchange for the right to
use his case in a public relations campaign. The story made
national headlines and was great publicity for them.

We had weekly follow ups with his
cardiologist for the next couple of months, then bi-weekly.
Eventually we took him in only once every two months, with annual
tissue biopsies from the heart to look for signs of rejection. By
the time he was six he was a healthy, active boy playing T-ball and
soccer. And, he excelled academically, taking advance courses in
high school.

I remember the first time he borrowed the
car to take Michelle Harris on their first date. He drove in our
driveway at 10:13, just enough time to drive home from Michelle’s
after dropping her at 10:00.

He was a responsible and respectful young
man, the way we taught him to be.

He had an interest in medicine, and received
a full scholarship to the University of Texas for his undergrad
work where he made the Dean’s list with a 4.0 all the way through
his first two years. In the middle of his junior year, he was
accepted to UT Southwestern’s medical school.

The hospital that performed his first
miracle as a baby offered another: to pay his tuition and provide a
residency in pediatric cardiology under their sponsorship: another
great PR move for them.

It was late July when he was leaving home,
after a long summer visit, to begin his senior year at UT that he
crossed paths with Johnny Walker.

Johnny was a twenty-eight-year-old loser, a
local kid who had a long-standing relationship with local law
enforcement. I had arrested him twice for possession of marijuana.
When he was twenty-two, he killed four teens on their way home from
a night on the town when he crossed the center line and hit their
car head-on.

What they say about drunks never being the
ones hurt is true. His only injuries were a broken nose from
striking the steering wheel and a cut on the top of his head from
hitting the roof of his truck. There was a broken bottle of vodka
with no cap, what remained of its contents soaking the
floorboard.

I placed him under arrest in the emergency
room for driving while intoxicated when the doctors released him. I
held in my hand a warrant for a legal blood alcohol test.

When he went to trial seven months later,
his lawyer claimed that the lab that processed the blood specimen
had made errors and offered proof of shoddy work in the form of
citations by the state concerning improper documentation of quality
control measures.

The judge agreed. He threw out the drunk
driving charge and found him guilty of four counts of vehicular
man-slaughter for failure to maintain control of a vehicle. Since
the alcohol could not be considered, he was sentenced to thirteen
years. He was released on parole after serving five.

A year after his release, he was arrested
for drunk driving again and since this was his first offense in the
eyes of the law, he was placed on probation.

On a Sunday morning in July Johnny awoke in
the cab of his truck in a ditch. That was as far as he made it
after a night of heavy drinking.

If only he had slept for five more minutes,
Jacob would be alive and I would not be telling you this story
today.

They called me to the scene and Jonny Walker
sat unharmed, in the back seat of a state trooper’s car.

I suppose there is no need to go into
detail. I’m sure you can imagine what happened that day: the day
Jacob was robbed of his future and the world was robbed of the
lives he would have saved…mine, for one.

Only minutes now before I reach the end of
my road, take my last breath. You’d think I would be praying, but
now I think about the future and wonder what my final thought will
be.

The preacher talked to me and he smiled

Said, come walk with me, come and walk one
more mile…

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Dale Roberts is the author of three crime
thrillers

IRREFUTABLE

The FOLLOWING

SEPARATE LIVES

Chapter 8

The Zombie Pestilence

By Randall Morris

It started with a cold. A little girl in
London got the sniffles. When it got worse, her parents took her to
the doctor and they sent her home with a prescription for bed rest
and chicken noodle soup. This cold, however, was special. It was
touched by the hand of Satan. It became something so much worse
when the fever hit. The little girl suffered through ridiculous,
uncontrollable temperatures until she finally died. That would be a
horrible story… if it were the end. That’s the beginning of my
story.

The little girl came back. Within a few
hours of her death, she was up and walking around again. Her
parents were overjoyed right up to the moment that she bit them.
Mom took a bite to the hip and Dad to the arm when he tried to pull
her off. Maybe they would have caught the zombie bug without the
bite by just being around their little girl so much but the bite
sealed their fate. As with most problems, the apocalypse started
out small and governments and doctors only started paying attention
when it started to spread.

It’s 2023. Over 90% of the Earth’s
population is dead. I was an exterminator before all of this
happened. That doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters right now
is that I’m alive and so is… most of my family.

My wife and Melody, my sixteen-year-old
daughter, went for a food run in the family car one day. It
shouldn’t have been a problem. Everyone in our family had raided
the local stores over and over again. They had guns, ammo, and
knives with them in the car. My son and I covered them with rifles
as they left.

When they were on their way back, my
daughter was playing with her iPhone. She was a sixteen year old
girl and that’s what girls do, even when they are in the middle of
a zombie apocalypse. They play Angry Birds. They text. I’m not sure
how in the hell she still knew people to text since just about
everyone I knew outside of my family was dead, but she somehow
still had people to text. She didn’t think it would be a problem
because we didn’t see any undead around the house.

It caused a serious problem because the
phone buzzed and startled her. When she bent down to pick it up, a
hand reached out of the bushes and grabbed her arm. I don’t know
how we missed that zombie in the bushes. Maybe we had gotten lazy
patrolling. This was supposed to be a simple food run, but it ended
up costing me my wife.