This Rotten World (Book 1)

by The Vocabulariast

  A reporter was standing in front of a raging fire. Firemen were in the background, hosing down the flames that were burning out of control. The scrawl underneath read, "A plague of crime strikes cities across the country."

  Goddamn, terrorists, he thought to himself. As the reports flooded in, Rudy couldn't tear his eyes away from the screen. It seemed people were dying left and right up and down the east coast.

  There was a commotion behind the reporter, who was doing a fairly standard job of reporting the fact that there was a fire in an apartment complex. You could see her complete lack of concern shine behind her dead eyes. A flaming shadow emerged from the building, and paramedics and firefighters rushed to help the victim. How the figure could still be walking was anyone's guess. The cameraman zoomed in on the figure, and for a second Rudy thought he had mistaken a horror movie for the news. The victim's face was burned to a crisp, his eyes were gone, and yet, he was still walking, his jaw opening and closing in a mechanical manner. A couple of firefighters rushed the man, tackled him to the ground and began smothering the flames with a fire blanket.

  The reporter droned on, "There appears to be a survivor. He looks to be very badly burned." The reporter and the cameraman rushed in to get a better look. Trust the heartless reporter to take advantage of some poor human's last moments.

  The figure in the fire blanket was still struggling, which was no surprise. Anyone that had ever had a burn larger than a Skittle knows just how terrible a deep burn is. The amount of nerves that were firing on that poor guy must be in the thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. It wasn't surprising that he would struggle so badly.

  "Firefighters here have just rescued a victim from the fire," she said, almost believably. You could see the excitement build in her lips and her cheeks, not the excitement that comes with doing a good job, but the excitement that comes from finally attaining a goal. You could see her dreams of prizes and promotions dancing behind her soulless eyes.

  Rudy had seen enough. He picked up his chocolate bar, shoved the last chunk in his mouth and then changed the input over to his X-Box. Just before he switched the input, he thought he saw the burn victim chomp down on the arm of a paramedic that was trying to help him.

  That coldhearted bitch would probably actually win a Pulitzer Prize. As his X-Box booted up, he decided that he would pretend that everyone he shot tonight was a vulturistic news reporter. He was just about to enter an online lobby when he heard a door in the hallway slam.

  As silently as he could, he walked on his tiptoes to his door. He could hear clumsy footsteps in the hallway. He looked out of his peephole, straining to see anything. He waited patiently; the barely visible pulsing of the neon lights in the hallway played tricks on his eyes. Just when he thought there was nothing there, a shape rushed past the peephole.

  It was the neighbor from next door, a relatively nice woman who tended to look at him as if his entire body might be crafted from shit. He couldn't blame her. Few people found redheads attractive. Fewer still were attracted to the 300 pound variety.

  Her hair was in disarray. She had clearly just woken up, and he could hear her audience-less muttering as she passed the door. "Fucking drunk assholes banging on the door..." Her tirade trailed off as she passed his door and headed down the stairs. He hoped she wouldn't be dumb enough to let in his friend downstairs.

  The human part of him thought about going out there and warning her about the man downstairs. But then the asshole part of him thought, If she can't figure out not to open the door for an unresponsive man who is bleeding profusely from his face, then she's got bigger problems in her life. This was Darwinism, plain and simple.

  Rudy plopped back into his La-Z-Boy, and tried to log into a lobby. The night was slow, and there wasn't nearly as much traffic as there usually was judging from the little map of the world that was featured on the main page. Where normally the entire country of North America was lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree to indicate who was online, this morning there were pockets of darkness here and there. It was odd. Maybe the COD servers were being updated. He hadn't heard about any downtime for the game, but when you sold millions of copies of a game, you could fuck your customers over without even thinking about it. They would always come back.

  By now, the franchise had become a tradition more than anything else. Some people only bought one video game a year, and it was always Call of Duty.

  Rudy was pondering the dimwittedness of the series' fans when he was abruptly dumped into a domination lobby mid-game. The connection wasn't the strongest and the lag made his character jump around the screen. Rubber-banding they called it. Oh, boy. He wondered what area he had been connected to. Usually, he'd find himself lumped together with local players from the city, in order to cut down on lag. But occasionally, when you played this late in the evening, or morning as it were, you tended to get dumped into random groups of people from all over the country.

  "Rudy adjusted the mic on his head and said, "Where are you guys from?"

  A staticky voice promptly replied, "Alabama over here."

  It appeared the rest of the lobby wasn't using microphones.

  "Where are you from?" the other voice asked.

  "None of your goddamn business, you fucking noob!" he shot back. He laughed at his own cleverness, while deep down inside, he knew he was not particularly clever. He liked to pretend he was having a good time anyway.

  The other man didn't take the bait, and he continued to ignore Rudy as they played. There was a thumping sound over the man's mic. "What the fuck?" he mused intelligently as the thumping continued.

  Rudy took the chance to be even more of a dick. "Who is that, your dad trying to break down the door to get a piece of your ass?"

  "Fuck you, noobkiller420x," the man spat back. Then, to himself, he said, "Who the fuck is banging on my door like that?"

  The man must have left the room, because Rudy stumbled across his character sitting listlessly in a corner. He aimed his shotgun at the man's face and blasted it point blank. "Thanks for the points, Iceman."

  Iceman ignored him some more, and instead yelled, "What the fuck do you want? Go away! It's six in the fucking morning!" There was more pounding. Rudy found Iceman again, his character sitting in a different corner of the map but the result was the same.

  The pounding continued. "I've had enough of this shit." The sound of a chain rattling could be heard over the mic, and then Iceman said, "I don't know who the fuck you are, but you need to get the fuck out of here before..." Iceman shrieked into the microphone. "Get off me, faggot," he yelled.

  Rudy giggled a little bit and said, "Oh my God, I was right. It is your dad." The laughing didn't continue for long, as the screaming went on for quite a while. At one point Iceman pleaded for help and said, "Someone please call the cops. He's trying to kill me."

  The whole thing sounded like an elaborate prank, and Rudy wasn't about to take the bait, but then Iceman fell silent. Not long after, he heard groaning, and wet sounds, almost as if someone were chewing steak very loudly with their mouth open. The sound was grossing him out, so Rudy backed out of the lobby when the game was over.

  Through the door of his apartment, he heard footsteps pounding down the hallway. By the time he got to the peephole on his front door, his neighbor had already passed and slammed her door shut.

  He was about to go back to the comfort of his recliner when he heard an odd groan in the hallway. Slowly, the form of the man that had been chasing him shuffled into sight. Rudy became acutely aware that his breathing was far too loud. Each inhalation sounded as loud as a vacuum cleaner in his ears, while every exhalation seemed even louder. He thought about moving backwards slowly, away from the door, but his bulk had a tendency of rendering any of his attempts at silence completely futile.

  The man with the bloody jaw stopped and looked at his door, as if he could almost sense Rudy's presence. Rudy's heart beat within his chest as if it wanted to burst through his ribcage and go for
a walk on its own. The man turned and faced his door completely, and Rudy got as good a look at the man as he had ever wanted. The veins in his face were dark, as if he had liquid licorice running through his body. His eyes were oddly speckled, and his lips were cracked and dry. The blood on his jaw dripped down his shiny green jacket, and the man didn't seem to care about any of it. His eyes searched the door for something.

  After an eternity locked eye to eye with the man, he finally lost interest and stumbled his way down the hallway. Rudy took a giant step back from the door, and he must have hit the sweet spot on the hardwood flooring of his apartment. The creak wasn't the loudest thing he had ever heard, but at 4 in the morning in a mostly silent apartment building, it wasn't all that easy to miss.

  It seemed like it was only one intense heartbeat before the man in the hallway was banging on his door. Rudy fumbled for his cell phone, and he slid it open to expose the keyboard. His thick digits struggled to dial 911, and when he finally got through, there was no answer. A busy signal was all he got. How could the police have a busy signal?

  The door rattled in the frame as the man in the hallway continued to bang on the door. His groaning wasn't making the matter any better. Just when he thought the door might give way, Rudy heard a voice in the hallway.

  "Oi. What the fuck do you think you're doin'? It's four in the fuckin' mornin' and I gotta get up in two hours." It was his British neighbor across the hall, a cranky sort, who always seemed to have something negative to say. He could see the hate in his eyes whenever they passed each other in the hallway, but he was glad the bastard lived across the hallway just now.

  The lack of an answer from the bloody man in the hallway wasn't the appropriate response for his neighbor apparently. He slammed his door closed behind him as he stepped into the hall and yelled, "Hey, dickhead, I'm talking to you!" There was another silent pause, and then a groan from the bleeding man.

  "Back the fuck up, or you'll be bleeding from your nose as well as your chin," his neighbor yelled.

  Rudy used the noise as a distraction to scoot closer to the peephole in the door. Unfortunately, the peephole's field of view wasn't wide enough to allow him to see the door to his neighbor's apartment as the doors on either side of the hallway were staggered.

  He heard his neighbor strain, and say, "Get the fuck off me!" At that point, Rudy threw the locks on his door and risked a peek into the hallway. His neighbor, clad only in a pair of sweatpants, was pummeling the man in the hallway. They were locked in an embrace, and though his neighbor's punches landed with a meaty thud every time, the other man seemed to not even notice them.

  Blood from the man's jaw dripped down his neighbor's chest, and he could see that he had busted his knuckles open on the man. The man with the bleeding jaw seemed oblivious to the fact that the bone structure of his face had been completely rearranged.

  His neighbor was tired and sweaty, and his blows landed with less and less ferocity and frequency. Somehow, his neighbor noticed him peeking out his doorway. "Oi, fatstuff, why don't you get out here and help me?"

  The split second it took his neighbor to call out to him was enough of a distraction for the man with the bleeding jaw to get a thick bite in on the bicep of the British man. His neighbor popped the man across the chin, and teeth came flying out, along with a chunk of his own flesh from his knuckles.

  "I'm calling the cops!" he informed his neighbor before he slammed his own door shut. He turned the deadbolt on his door and ran to the furthest corner of his apartment. He used his pudgy fingers to dial 911, but the number was busy just as it was before. He could still hear his neighbor and the man struggling in the hallway. This night sucked.

  Chapter 20: Never Too Late

  Dustin stood out front with the cops. He had told them his entire story, but they didn't quite believe every word of it. Luckily, they had received a steady stream of calls, so they were in a hurry to be out and about. They took down his statement and his information, and when the crime scene photographer had left and the coroner had arrived, they let him go about his business. One of them told him not to leave town, but Dustin knew how these things worked. He could leave whenever he wanted to. They'd find him eventually.

  He laughed in his head at the sight of Old Han yelling at him in broken English about him cleaning up the mess he had made. He simply hopped on his throwback bicycle with the chrome fenders, gave Han the finger, and rode away.

  In the night, Han had yelled, "Fuck to you! You fuck to you!"

  Dustin doubted that the man would ever learn proper English, but when you've got all the money, you can afford to treat people like heartless products. He rode down the street, pondering it all, the unfairness of a wannabe despot hiring good people, the wind in his hair, and the silence of the night. Most of all, he pondered the fact that two people had died tonight, and he had witnessed both of them.

  The feeling of shock hit him suddenly, as is the case with most haunting experiences, the true impact of them seems delayed, like that moment when you cut your finger and it takes a few seconds for the blood to actually come pouring out. Dustin slowed to a halt, hopped off of his bike without thinking and sat down on the curb.

  He put his head in his hands and tried to press the images out of his mind with the palms of his hands. All that seemed to accomplish was making his eyes ache dully. He reached into the pocket of his camouflage cargo shorts and fished out a cigarette. He put it to his lips and lit it. In the smoke that he exhaled, he swore he could see the image of the young man that had stumbled into the bar. Death had walked into the bar tonight, and he was the only one that had left it alive. Well, him and Teach, but who knew where he was.

  At that moment, he saw his life with a burning clarity that few people ever see. Pouring drinks for drunks... how did his life wind up that way? What kind of life is that? It's certainly not what he dreamed of when he had been a kid. He could still remember his father's bearded face asking him what he had wanted to be when he grew up. The answer had always been the same... a lawyer.

  While the thought of being a lawyer made him feel stupid and naive now, it wasn't the money or the prestige that he wanted; it had always been the ability to help people that had drawn him to the profession. Who did he help now? No one. As a matter of fact, he was guilty of actively making some people's lives worse. You could see the signs on people's faces as they bellied up to the bar with trembling hands and alcohol blooms on their faces... and yet, it was their money and their time. Who was he to deny them the comfort of alcohol? After all, what did anyone really know about anyone else? How can one man make the call for another? Sorry sir, you've had enough.

  Now he was the one who had had enough. Dustin vowed to never return to bartending. Instead, he would go back to school and find himself. It wasn't too late. It was never too late... unless the world ended tomorrow, which he highly doubted that it would. Dustin dropped his cigarette to the ground, stepped on it with the toe of his Chuck Taylor's, and dove to the ground when the explosion rocked the night.

  Chapter 21: Katie Bar the Door

  The old man saw Kevin rise from the couch. Katie paid no attention as the cordless phone dropped from his hands and shattered into pieces on the floor. He was there. He was alive. For the first time all night, something finally made sense.

  "Kevin?" she said hopefully. There was no response, and Kevin stumbled around, his arms out in front of him as if he were blind.

  "Kevin?" she said again, hoping that he would snap out of his daze and recognize his mother.

  She saw his eyes dilate, and then he focused on her, a thin stream of drool running from the side of his mouth. But his face was expressionless, and for the first time in her life, she thought her baby boy didn't actually look like a male image of her. Right now, he looked like his dad, or at least what his dad had suddenly turned into. The raw wound at his throat had stopped pumping blood when they had gotten into the house, but now, as Kevin sat up, the blood ran down the wound, staining his alread
y stained Portland Timbers t-shirt.

  She wanted to hug him and make sure that he was alright, but something didn't quite feel right. The old man hurried to the boy and put his arm on his shoulder, looking into his face with concern.

  "Jeez Louise, kid. We thought you were dead." The old man's mirth faded as Kevin took a brief look at him with his emotionless face before he launched himself at the old man, snarling and sending drool flying everywhere. The old man fell backwards, and the fact that he walked at least two miles every day did nothing to help the fact that he was old. His hip broke upon impact, leaving him on the ground struggling to fend off the ferocious attack of Kevin.

  Katie looked on in disbelief, a glut of emotions surging through her heart and mind. There he was, her boy, alive. He was trying to murder the man who had tried to help them, which was a little disconcerting, so she did what mothers do. She said Kevin's full name, "Kevin Adam Thompson."

  Normally, the mere sound of the first two names would be enough to stop Kevin in his tracks. Not so this time. He paid as much attention to her as a blind man pays to paintings. "Kevin Adam Thompson, you get off that man right now!" she yelled in her best mom voice.

  The old man pleaded with her to do something. She was at a loss. She stood there, confused, elated, and completely clueless as the old man struggled to keep Kevin from biting into his leathery neck. He was in agony, as each movement sent nerve feedback from his hip up to his brain. His arms burned from the strain and still the woman did nothing. "He's not your son, anymore!" he strained, the veins in his neck popping.

  Katie shook her head, as if something the man said had actually made sense.