This Rotten World (Book 1)

by The Vocabulariast

  He redoubled his efforts, but the tightness in his knee would only allow him to go so fast. He hoped that the woman in the pharmacy was able to get away; especially if he didn't manage to get away himself. At least then his death would be for something. The prospect was a damn site better than any demise he had ever envisioned for himself in his clearer more transcendental moments.

  As he reached the end of the aisle, he could hear their snarls getting closer, their shambling footsteps outgaining his mad hop. Their sneakers squeaked on the bright, white linoleum. He silently cursed himself for not snagging cigarettes as soon as he had walked into the store, but then again, how was he supposed to know that an army of dead things were wandering around in the back? That asshole in the truck could have at least given him a heads up.

  When he passed through the automatic sliding doors, he felt the fingertips of the lead corpse brush his jacket. He turned around and confronted the snarling face; bloody furrows ran down the woman's face as if someone with sharp fingernails had tried to gouge her eyes out. Her long blonde hair clung to the blood, and Mort shuffled backwards. He felt his knee pop, and suddenly he could barely move. The woman reached for him and he shoved her away. She backpedaled clumsily before falling hard on her back. As she awkwardly attempted to rise, the crowd of creatures behind her parted and moved around her form as she were a rock sticking up in the middle of a river.

  His knee was now composed of pure fire as he hopped on one leg. He looked everywhere for some sort of escape. More fingers brushed his back, and out of desperation, he put on a final burst of speed. He spotted his salvation in the form of a metal shopping cart. The fingers were brushing his back again, and despite the fact that it lit every nerve in his knee on fire, he forced himself to use his leg as if it were normal.

  Mort ran for his life, screaming in agony, and wrapped his wrinkled hands around the red handle of the shopping cart. The cold metal was the most welcome sensation he had felt in a while. For the first time in a long time, he felt alive. Now he had to keep it that way.

  Mort used his momentum to push the cart along. He put both of his feet on the bottom rail and leaned forward. The cart moved at a faster pace, although he could feel every pebble that the hard, rubber wheels rolled over in his knee. He chanced a look behind him, and he almost screamed in excitement to see the creatures losing ground.

  The wheels on the cart started to slow. So he hopped onto the ground and ran some more, sending more pain through his knee. He couldn't keep this up either. Four quick paces, and he was done. He steered the cart towards the exit to the parking lot, and without looking for traffic, he rode into the street. The creatures were a good twenty paces away, but they were not looking to give up the chase.

  In the distance, he could see that the road had an ever so gentle downwards slope. He just had to reach the apex of the road, and then it was all easy street, at least until he got to the bottom. The rain continued to fall. His head steamed in the night, and he knew this feeling... this feeling of having to escape or die. He had known it from the day he was born. It was what he was good at, escaping. If only these creatures had existed always, then he would be a god among men. But in a way, they had existed... except they had voices, smiling promising voices. In the end, they all wanted him dead, the ones with voices and the ones without.

  Mort reached the precipice of the hill and hopped onto the bottom bar of the cart again. The acceleration was slow, but he simply couldn't use his knee anymore; at this point, he doubted if he would ever be able to use it normally again. The creatures gained on him, snarling, their wet shirts clinging to their bodies. Just as he thought they were going to outrun his cart and ruin his glorious escape plans, he began to pick up speed. The closest creature made a last grasp for him, and clawed at the air before hitting the ground face first in its exuberance.

  Mort screamed in exultation as he gained even more ground. The wind on his face and every inch of distance made him forget about the raw fire that was crawling up his leg. He laughed loudly at the idea that a homeless man like him would save his own life by riding away on a stolen shopping cart.

  He was almost to the bottom of the hill, when he noticed the truck from before had plowed into another car at an intersection. He was headed right for it. The shopping cart was going too fast for him to jump off without hurting himself even worse than he was. Mort clenched his jaw and rode the cart into the wreckage.

  Chapter 27: The Mortician

  Something bad must be happening up top. That's how Jim Jenks thought of the hospital above when he was stuck in the morgue. Twenty years, and he had never seen this amount of carnage in such a short amount of time. Thank God the city wasn't an attractive spot for terrorism. He hoped he would never have to deal with one of those situations. Though he was used to death and familiar with its many ugly faces, it still bothered him deep down in that part of him that he kept buried away during work. A body or two a night was something that he could digest... more than that, and the soft middle of his brain began to feel it.

  When he was at work, the cold, calculating scientist part of his brain took over. Amid the smells of formaldehyde and decaying bodies, the part of him that was a father and a loving husband went away, saved from the horrors of a modern world where one wrong turn could turn you into an unrecognizable load of hamburger on a stainless steel metal slab. His stomach grumbled.

  For a second, he thought longingly of his lunch. He didn't know where the stereotype of the creepy mortician with a sandwich hanging out of his mouth came from, but at the moment, he wished it was something that he could actually pull off. He hadn't been able to grab breakfast on the way into work. That was about four hours ago, and he had steadily been receiving and cataloguing deliveries all day. That's how Mortician Jim thought of them, as just deliveries to be prodded and then filed.

  His latest was a man that had been ravaged in the Hospital's E.R. room by his own wife. At least that's what the orderly had said after they wheeled the body down here. The blooming red stain on the sheets let him know that what was underneath was going to be pretty gruesome. He sighed deeply and prepared himself for another round of "Things I Hope I Don't Dream Of Tonight."

  He pulled the sheet back. The first thing that hit him was the smell of fecal matter. The second thing that hit him was the sight of the man grimacing in pain, his intestines piled on his midriff where a hole has been torn.

  Jim pulled a fresh set of powdered latex gloves from a box. He snapped them on and then grabbed his trusty scissors from the metal tray next to the gurney the man was lying on. He began cutting the man's clothes free. The T-shirt was easy, but the jeans took a little work. When he was done, the wrinkled old man lay naked on the examination table, his white skin standing out in stark contrast to the blood that covered his destroyed abdomen.

  Now it was time for his favorite part of the examination process... the writing of notes. Jim pulled his trusty pen from his pocket and walked over to his desk, where he kept the various forms of his vocation organized. He pulled out a thick form and began writing the required information down. His scrawl was almost unintelligible, but it was really the only way to do the job. He chuckled again about all of the public's misconceptions about his job.

  If this were a movie, he would be speaking into a microphone while he began delicately carving on the corpse in front of him. Autopsies took time... in a movie, a recorder might seem handy, but sitting down to transcribe hours of recordings would be an egregious waste of time, especially since all of his reports were read, summarized, and distributed to multiple agencies throughout the city. Of course, in the movies, he would be examining something more exciting than a dead old man who was obviously the victim of some sort of fever-inspired cannibalism.

  After he finished the preliminary work on the form, Jim pulled open his drawer and pulled a toe-tag out. He filled in the patient's name based upon the information that was found in the man's wallet. He walked over to the corpse and placed it over the man
's big toe.

  He screamed out loud when the old man sat up, his intestines becoming unbalanced and splattering to the floor. Mortician Jim's scientific mind was intrigued, while the family man inside screamed out in primal fear. Even as he backed away from the old man, his scientific mind was reasserting itself, stuffing his other self into a compartmentalized section of brain. His scientific mind's first course of action was to see if the man responded to any sort of stimuli.

  "Are you ok?" he asked almost robotically.

  The old man merely lumbered towards him, trailing bits of intestine.

  "Can you hear me?" he asked, quite sure he already knew the answer to his question. There was no response, and this time the man was closer. A hypothesis was forming in the gray matter of his brain, but it was too crazy to even admit to himself. The man had been dead, of that he was sure. The victim had not been bleeding when he had come in... that's a sure sign of death, especially with the sort of wounds that he had. On top of that, his brief contact with the man revealed that his skin was cool to the touch. Despite all of these facts, Jim couldn't bring himself to believe the logical conclusion... the old man stumbling towards him was literally a walking dead man.

  As Jim's mind began doing loops in his own cranium, the man was upon him. His wiry arms grasped him and tried to pull him closer. They struggled, and Family Jim came to the surface. He wanted to go home. He wanted this nightmare to end, and then it did. Jim's ankle became entangled in the old man's intestines, and he stumbled to the ground, hitting the side of his head against his own desk.

  He was unconscious by the time he hit the floor, which saved him a lot of pain.

  ***

  Slim had worked security at the hospital for decades, but tonight was the craziest night that they had ever had. Security guards were being called from all over the hospital to deal with different issues. Patients were attacking people all over the hospital. It was times like this that he was happy that he had drawn morgue desk duty over some of the more intensive security gigs.

  The sight of the bodies being wheeled in body bags, under sheets, and sometimes in pieces had disturbed him at first, but he had gotten used to it. The basement of the hospital had a certain routine to it, a routine that allowed one to forget that he was essentially guarding dead bodies from the living and making sure no freaks got into the morgue and fiddled around with the dead. The only time he ever had any real trouble was when some family member demanded that they be let into the morgue.

  That's why he was taken by surprise when Jim Jenks, a man he had known for decades stumbled up behind him and took a bite out of his neck. As his blood sprayed across his own security desk, Slim put his hand to his neck in disbelief. When he pulled his hand away, there was more blood and more spraying. He shoved Jim Jenks to the ground, and then saw another person down the hallway... a naked old man... with his guts hanging out.

  Slim reached for his radio to try and call for help, but he fell to his knees. His brain was not receiving the amount of blood that he was used to... which is what tends to happen when someone takes a bite out your carotid artery. The radio was heavy in his hands, and he managed to press the button, but he couldn't figure out what to say.

  His vision became spotty, and when Jim Jenks put his hands on him again, he didn't even think to fight. He was gone by the time the old man reached him. But he would be back.

  Chapter 28: A Message to You Rudy

  The sounds in the hallway had stopped fifteen minutes ago. When they stopped, Rudy hung up the phone; he had waited long enough. He had made sure all of the lights were off in his apartment, and now he crouched on the stained carpet, straining his ears for any sign that his nightmare was over. His heartbeat was all he heard.

  Then his phone rang. The Super Mario Brothers' theme song shocked him into clumsiness, and he bobbled his phone several times before he could slide his finger across the screen to answer it. By then, the banging on his doorway had begun.

  "Hello?" he answered.

  "Sir, did you call the police?" was the reply.

  "Yes! God, yes! You need to help me. There are maniacs trying to break into my apartment!"

  The dispatcher's reply was cool and calm, "Sir, can you tell me your address?"

  Rudy rattled off the address as he crept up the hallway to his front door.

  "What is your name?"

  "My name is Rudy Lincoln. You guys need to get here now. I don't know how long this door is going to last." Rudy leaned forward and looked out the peephole. His British neighbor and the man with the messed up jaw were both banging on his doorway. It rattled in the jamb.

  "Rudy, I need you to hold on," the dispatcher said in a voice that was meant to be soothing. "The police are on their way, but it's going to be a while. I need you to find something, anything, to barricade the door with."

  Rudy was taken aback by the dispatcher's response. "Barricade the door? What am I? A fucking carpenter? How the hell am I supposed to barricade the door?"

  The dispatcher took no notice of the growing panic in Rudy's voice. "Do you have something you can put in front of the door? A piece of furniture, a dresser, anything to slow them down. I need you to hold on, Rudy."

  Rudy backed away from the door, and looked around his living room. He wasn't much of a furniture person. The only thing that would even be remotely helpful would be his La-Z-Boy. "I have a chair," he announced proudly to the dispatcher.

  "That's good, Rudy. Can you block the door off with the chair?"

  "I think so." Rudy put the phone down and then dragged his chair across his apartment and down the hallway that led to his door. Once it was in place, he grabbed his phone and plopped down in the chair to give it some added weight.

  "I did it," he said, gasping for air. "How long until the police are here?"

  There was no answer from the other end of the line. Rudy jumped as the pounding continued.

  Chapter 29: Fixed-Gear Only

  Dustin hopped on his bike and pedaled to where the explosion had lit up the night. He struggled to comprehend what he was seeing upon arriving there. A cop car was on fire. It had clearly been the source of the explosion, and yet, the occupants, who must have been in the car at the time of the explosion, were still stumbling around.

  Their clothing was burned off of their bodies, and the masses of charred flesh stumbled blindly down the street. Dustin kept waiting to hear sirens, but there was nothing. Sheepishly, Dustin put his feet on the pedals and rode away. There wasn't much he could do, and things in the city had obviously gone from bad to worse. He could feel panic welling up in his chest. If a cop car could explode and burn for five minutes without the sound of sirens echoing through the night, then things were definitely out of whack.

  Dustin was about a mile from home when he spotted another sign of something not quite right. A man clad only in pajama pants burst from the front door of a house. The shirtless man wasn't what made Dustin slow down and look at the man; it was the blood that covered his face and his mouth.

  "Are you alright?" he called to the man from a safe distance.

  The man began to approach him, giving no sign that he had even heard Dustin's question. Dustin shook his head and began to pedal away. At the intersection of the next block, he saw a car accident. The red sports car looked as if it had T-boned a woman in a silver Camry. The driver of the Camry appeared to be dead, as her forehead had most definitely been caved in on the steering wheel. Another bloody woman was struggling to get out of the driver's side seat of the sports car. The male passenger was trying to attack the woman in the driver's seat, but the seatbelt was holding it back.

  At that moment, Dustin decided two things. He would help the woman in the sports car, but after that, it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. Dustin rode over to the car, and tried to open the driver's door. It wouldn't budge, so he lifted up his bike and smashed the window with the handle bars. He reached in and pulled the lady out, averting his eyes as her skirt came up past her thighs as s
he slid out of the window.

  Immediately she grabbed a hold of him, and Dustin had to resist the urge to throw her to the ground out of fear. She clung to him, sobbing, and repeating "He's crazy!" over and over. Dustin looked over the woman's shoulder and saw that the man in the passenger seat was still struggling to reach the woman.

  He held her at arm's length and looked into her eyes, "We have to get out of here. Things are very bad right now."

  She nodded her head in understanding, so he continued, "Can you stand on a bike?" Dustin looked over at his bicycle, as did the woman he was talking to. It wasn't very impressive, but that's the way that Dustin had always liked it. Hand-crafted from the best parts he could scrounge, his silver glider didn't so much impress as it prevented any would-be thieves from taking it. It was a good bike, though it didn't look the part. The silver pegs on the back tires would give the woman plenty of space to stand if she could keep her balance.

  Seeing Dustin's ride, the woman became somewhat hesitant. "You mean on that? Why don't we just call the cops?"

  Dustin couldn't help the smirk that inched into the corner of his mouth. "Lady, about a mile back, I saw a cop car burning. No one was coming to help them. They've got bigger fish to fry tonight. If you want to wait around for your friend to unbuckle his seatbelt, be my guest, but I'm not going to sit around here and wait with you."

  He waited as the words sunk into her head. When her eyes cleared, she looked at him, and said, "I think I'll wait for the police."

  "Suit yourself, but you have to ask yourself one question... do you think they'll show up before that guy gets here?" Dustin pointed down the road where the shirtless man in the pajama bottoms had come shuffling down the street. The woman screamed and buried her face in his chest. He resisted the urge to laugh at this cliché moment of weakness. "C'mon, my apartment's not too far from here."