Chapter one
Blood of a Brother.
"BRANDON ERNEST ALEX ROLLENDS" said a disembodied voice from the door. Bear chuckled the only one that had the audacity to call him by his full name was his best friend Keith. Bare opened the door and looked upon his friend. He towered over Keith, Bare being 6'3" and pushing three hundred lbs. and Keith being a mere 5'7" two twenty-five at the most on a good day. "So Brandon how goes it?" Keith said drawing out the word Brandon full well knowing that he hated being called by his given name. Bear preferred his acronym because: A. he was very bear like in size and every body said that they reminded them of a bear even before he told them his name. And B. because his parents used to call him Bear and he wanted to hold on to that little peace of them.
"Oh come of it jack ass" Bear said giving his friend a stern look. "But I am doing very well thank you. How have you been? God I haven't seen you in like two weeks."
"I've had a bit of a stuffy head." Keith said with a sniff. Bear looked him over he had the tell tale sings of a cold and Keith must have seen him because he responded with "Don't you look at me like that you big ass lug. It's not like I go EVIL or any thing." He said the last part trailing in a way that gave Bear the impression that he was trying to convince himself more then he was Bear. "Hell If I've got any thing I've got fucking R.I.G.H.T.O.U.S." he said jubilantly. Yet bear still stared and Keith must have felt this too because he got defensive and said "Goddamn it Bare I don't have it! I DON'T HAVE THE FUCKING EVIL!!" as he said it his hand came down on the steal coffee table witch promptly broke in half.
Bear stared in disbelief as his friend fell to his knees wile still mumbling "I don't have it no I can't I don't have it." And then he began exhibiting the final symptom Bear looked on at the man he conceded a brother began crying tears of blood and his irises turned a glowing blue watching this made Bear begin crying as well. He put one of his massive arms around Keith and they set there foreheads together. He cried with his friend while his other arm pulled the pistol from his waste band. Bear wisped to his friend "I know man. I know. It will be okay." But he didn't even believe himself. He pressed the gun against Keith's head and pulled the trigger. CRACK!!! And Keith was gone.
About a week later there was a knock at Bear's door he had barely moved since he put his friend down he had only moved from his couch to burn the corpse of the man who had stood beside him for so long. He reached from his couch top position and opened the door. His friend Jenny walked in and with a quick salutation walked to the kitchen and looked for some thing to drink. Praying for a beer she was quickly disappointed when she remembered that Bare never touched drugs or alcohol being a strong believer that he didn't need to fog up his mind in a time like this. So she settled for one of the several energy drinks that lined the refrigerator. "God you must be in heaven ever since LA sent these things up." And she chuckled to her self she looked around the small apartment and some thing just didn't seem right she looked at Bear and noticed it looked like he hadn't shaved in a week. "Man where has Keith been?" She said not knowing the affect that it had on her friend. "I haven't seen him in like three weeks and then you disappear for the last week. I assumed that you two tried to leave red sector." She sat on the couch across form him and noticed some thing else that the typical solid steel coffee table that sat between the two couches was broken and it was upon looking down at it that she noticed what was really wrong. There was a large puddle of dried blood inches from her feet and all over Bears clothes. She gawked at him "Bear what happened." She said. At that Bear began to sob and looked at her "H-He came o-o-over and h-h-he had the e-e-e-ev." He said thru the tears. She gasped as she knew what he was talking about even though he hadn't finished the sentence before collapsing in tears.
"Who? Who had the evil?" she asked thinking any number of people.
"K-K-Keith" Bare sobbed.
Jenny gasped she knew how close Bare and Keith had become. They had gotten that way because both there parents had been killed in a near by city that during the war had been flattened by an atomic bomb. They had been friends before that but they became brothers after. Jenny thought to her self he was the only man that Bare would allow to call him Brandon without killing them. She stared as the mouton of a man sobbed in front of her and found herself beginning to cry.
Steve, Jenny's boyfriend, peaked his head in the door and it took him a moment to take in the scene. He saw what had to be the largest man in red sector bawling and covered in blood while being held by his own girl friend who was crying just as hard. Both were sitting in front of a puddle of dried blood and a solid steel coffee table that was broken in half. "Jenny. G3 is up for showers" he said which got Bear to look up at Steve and growl. Bear had a made a point to make it known that he didn't like Steve. Jenny once asked him why he did and Bear said that "he just isn't the right kind of person" then she asked "then who is the right kind of person" the only response she got from him was "not Steve".
Jenny looked up at Steve and said "Keith is dead. He got EVIL and Bear had to put him down and burn the body." Steve looked at them in a speechless stupidity. He put his hand on Bears shoulder and Bear flipped him so he landed with a hard thud on the remnants of the coffee table. In an instant Bear was standing over Steve and the gun flew out of his waist band and was pointed at the head of the floored man. Bear had the look of insanity on his face that told Steve and Jenny that he was in the mood to kill him given a reason. The angry insanity slowly melted back into normality and then deep sadness he sat back down on the couch and broke into tears again as he looked at the gun in his hand.
"This is the very gun I used." He said with a blank look on his face. "I killed him with this gun and then I burned his body." He said with the same blank face but then his arm moved up and pressed the lukewarm steel of the gun against his temple. "It seems fitting that I should use it to take my own life as well." Jenny shrieked and tackled Bear she managed to wrestle the gun away from him she stared him down "GODDAMN IT BEAR!! YOU NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP SOBBING. IT WASENT YOUR FAULT!! YES YOU SHOT HIM BUT YOU HAD TO!! HE HAD EVIL YOU COULDENT JUST LET HIM GO!!" Jenny shouted at Bear.
"HE WAS MY BROTHER. AND I KILLED HIM!!
"BUT YOU MAY HAVE SAVED RED SECTOR!!" at this Bear just stared. It was true, one case of EVIL could contaminate the entire sector, he was safe because he was completely immune to both EVIL and R.I.G.H.T.O.U.S. Ever since he was eight years old he had been immune to the common cold. In fact it was his blood that helped develop R.I.G.H.T.O.U.S. It was also why his parents were in the city when the bomb went off his father was coming back from the government lab where he worked and his mother went to the air port to pick him up.
Apparently this went thru Bears head because he looked at Jenny, shudder, and said "Yeah… I guess your right" then he picked up her energy drink and took a long pull off of it. "I just fucking wish it didn't have to be this way." He said.
In an insensitive move Steve interjected with "Well are we going to go get our showers? I missed the other days so it's been fore days since I last showered." Bear growled again and said "Get the fuck out of my house and get your shower I'll get Jenny there later, you obviously don't care about this plight."
Steve didn't like this at all and added "Jenny is my girlfriend and I will take her to the showers myself. Come on Jenny lets go." Jenny just looked at him and shook her head. Steve went red and got very flustered then said "FINE! But we are going to fucking talk about this later." With that he left and slammed the door behind him.
Jenny looked at Bear "I'm sorry he… I don't know what to say I guess he has just become hardened by the war."
Bear stared at her for a moment. He had had a crush on her ever since they were in school but he could respect that she was in a committed relationship although he resented that she was with Steve. After his moment he said "We have all been hardened by what's happened. Steve is just an ass hole."
Jenny was glad Bear had stopped crying then she reached around him and searched around in his pants when she found what she was looking for she pulled it out. She looked at the Ipod that she had just retrieved Bear always had it on him and always had charged ever since LA had turned the power back on. She flipped thru the songs and found the one that she was looking for, placed an ear bud in each of there ears and hit play. The familiar sound of Thy Unveiling by ICP filled his ears and he felt him self smile for the first time in a week. This song always made him feel good because it reminded him that god was always out there no matter where he was. He blinked and looked at Jenny grooving to the song "You know and I hate to say this but Steve is right it is Com-day, plus being that I haven't been to a Com-day in a week I have worked up some tokens. We should go."
Com-day stood for Commodity day and came every other day. It is where you got to use tokens that allowed you to: take warm showers, wash your cloths, get fresh water and any thing else you could think of. Though you could still buy other non commodities with currency of some sort, usually Westland money or things like salt, food, or any thing you could part with the but, the tokens were for things that made life easer and or possible.
Westland had a strong currency because they had a lot of things that other countries wanted. Westland had some of the richest salt mines in North America and a lot of ocean water refineries. Since some off shore drilling was allowed by the Westland government they had a lot of fossil fuels but they had even more hydrogen which had become a very strong fuel since the war. That gave them the ability to buy and there for the ability to give out a lot of fresh water. It was a good life in Westland but, on the other hand it was not good a good life in red sector of Westland. It was called red sector because to they had large numbers of people infected with EVIL and the Bath all round them they on top of that had three blast sights on the north and south sides of it. Nuclear blast sights tended to be places that those infected with R.I.G.H.T.O.U.S. would stay.
Bear came out of his extremely long shower feeling and looking clean and shaven. It was the best he felt since he had put Keith down. Deep down he still felt like a murderer but he knew that Jenny was right he had done the right thing.
He smiled at the sweet solitude of the laundry mat. Bear loved doing laundry it made him feel like he was washing his brain along with his cloths and right now his brain could go for a good washing. So he sat as the sloshing clothes slowly were cleansed and listened to his Ipod finding select songs that made him feel especially good, he was looking for any pick up he could get at this time. He was lip sinking to the sweet slow tune of Withered by Dark Lotus when the door opened and he looked up to find Clare walking in.
Her lips moved soundlessly, and Bear just stared at her then she reached over and yanked the ear buds out of his head and said "How's life Bear?" She sounded jubilant and happy which were hard emotions to come buy these days.
"It hasn't been great lately but I can't complain today." He said in a way that made her look at him in concern. Bear wished that women would stop looking at him like that after he answered that question. He felt that a combination of how he subconsciously put a tone to his voice and the fact that he had been missing for a week was why they looked at him with such concern.
"I haven't seen you in a week what's up. And buy the way you tell Keith that he still owes me five tokens lazy bum must be avoiding me. I haven't seen him at one Com-day in bout three weeks." At this Bear's heart dropped. Images of his dead brother flooded his supposedly cleansed mind. A moment of pain flashed thru his head. Clare must have seen this in his eyes for she followed with "Bear what's wrong." He looked at her and regretted saying what he said next.
"Keith is dead. He had EVIL and I put a bullet in his head." And in a flurry of tears and concern she tackled Bear in to a hug. He hated the response he got from women for this was typical of what they would do. When he would tell a man they would flash the "Do you want to talk?" look to him and he would flash the "No. Not at the moment." look back and that would be it, end of transaction. But sadly women would wale and leak from the face and want to hold him. He wouldn't mind a women holding him if it wasn't because they felt bad for him and, they were starting to ruin one of his favorite shirts. Although this might just open up some opportunities for a little more than holding, with this thought he gave himself a bit of a devilish smile and a half wood.
"Oh my god! I feel so stupid for saying that, that must have seemed so hateful. I'm sorry a million times over." She pleaded breaking in to tears of shame and concern.
"Oh god. Stop, stop, stop." He said as he picked the girls head up off his shoulder "It's not your fault. Hey, you were just going off the info you had. It's fine. I'll be fine don't fret. Come on chill." He said as much for him as he did her.
"No you must be devastated, I mean you and Keith were brothers every one knew that. Oh I feel so horrible. Can you ever for give me." She said thru tears. Bear looked at the woman who was bawling on his arm, as he thought back and remembered that she had always been a crier. He huffed and decided to ride out the gale of tears with the small woman.
Eventually she was able to compose herself. It was just as well, because it was right around the time his clothes finished washing. He put then in the dryer and kept thinking about the tiny woman she reminded him how much that red sector needed him. And yet still… He thought he had been thinking about those words any time he found some thing positive and or a reason to stay in red sector. And yet still… the thought trailed off and before he knew it the dryer was buzzing he got his clothes to gather and returned home to start a new week. He got home and removed the old coffee table, but when he returned from the recycle plant he must have spent an hour staring at the puddle of blood determined to clean it up himself. After an undeterminable amount of time he decided to compromise with himself and went and got a friend.
He left home and half an hour later he returned with Vanessa another good friend he had made living in red sector. Bear chuckled to himself remembering the time he had proposed to her when she was pregnant. It may not have been his baby but she was so devastated that the father wouldn't marry her that he figured he would ask just to make her smile. She told him that she would but she loved the father of the baby so Bear paid him a "visit" and "convinced" him to marry her. He laughed watching the man limp over to her about two days after and tenderly got on his knee. He almost couldn't do it because the range of motion it required was too much with his burses.
Bear looked at Vanessa "I know it's a morbid task I just can't do it on my own. I wouldn't ask if…" he began but she cut him off.
"I under stand don't worry." She picked up a sponge and a bucket which Bear had filled with some soap and a gallon of fresh water. He remembered to spend some his extra tokens on a couple gallons of water so this could get done. It wasn't long be for the hard wood of this living room floor was clean and all they had was a bucket of bloody water. "Ah!" she proclaimed "Done. That didn't take as long as I thought it would." She stood back and looked at her handy work.
"Yeah you can't even tell it was there." Bear said as he carefully took off her rubber gloves and respirator, and then he went bring her a glass of clean water. He dumped the blood water down the drain. This was okay these days because the only water in the pipes any more was irradiated so on body ever was stupid enough to use taps. "Hey… Thank you that would have never gotten done with out your help. Really thank you." Bear said. She looked at him in the same way that he had so many women look at him earlier that day. Slowly she did the inevitable and the tears welled up in her eyes as she said "I feel so sorry. I hope you are doing okay." She did as he expected and laid her head on his shoulder and went about leaking all over one of his favorite shirts.
With Vanessa back home Bear settled down to go to bed. As he laid his head down he looked up at the ceiling, where he had painted a mural of the doomsday clock from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. It was not pointing at any where it usually did (11:45pm-12:00am) but at 12:05am. This symbolized to him what his life was now ... A life after midnight.