This Rotten World | Book 1 | This Rotten World

by Morris, Jacy

  His front door opened out onto the second floor of a courtyard. He looked left and then right, not trusting the quiet of his general vicinity. He bounded down the rickety iron staircase, in a hurry to be done and away before the highways became clogged. He walked briskly, looking all about him, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. He had a white-knuckle grip on his baseball bat.

  He approached the back of his primer gray Volkswagen Beetle knockoff. Made in Mexico, the car was an aging antiquity that suited his sensibilities just fine. Living in the city, Dustin had never had much use for it. The most he ever did with the car was hop inside, start up the engine and take it around the block for a few minutes. It was slow to get going, but it ran like a gem once it got the kinks out.

  He lifted the hood of the Beetle and then crammed his suitcase in as tight as he could. The hood would close, but the food was going to have to be crammed in the back.

  A noise startled him into action. He slammed the hood of his car, and hefted his bat, ready to defend himself. It was just Suzy, standing there with a bag of food in her arms. Dustin smiled and let the bat fall to his side, "You scared the shit out of me."

  Suzy looked almost embarrassed, "I'm sorry."

  "Don't worry about it. I'm glad you're coming. I didn't really want to do this all alone." Dustin opened the car for her, and she dumped the bag of groceries inside. Together, they walked back to his apartment and grabbed the last bag of groceries. They sat in the seat of the car as the day brightened. He put the key in the ignition, turned it, and began to feel nervous as he couldn't get the engine to turn over.

  He was on his third try when Suzy screamed and pointed down the street; two people were walking towards the car, their shambling steps and blood-spattered clothing ominous in the light of the day. He turned the key again, and this time the engine caught. Dustin pulled away from the curb, fumbling with the stick shift, as it had been a while since he had last taken the car out for a spin.

  The windshield was dirty and the morning glare made it hard to see. He slowly maneuvered the car through the growing crowd of creatures at the end of the street. Suzy jumped as one of them struck at her window, shattering the window and covering Suzy in jagged bits of glass. Dustin accelerated.

  Once on the road, the going was a little easier, but it was clear that the city was fast becoming a shell of its former self. Random bodies littered the street, and dozens of those things were wandering about. The noise of his car drew their eyes and their footsteps.

  There were other cars on the road as well, seemingly just as dangerous as the creatures that filled the streets. He swerved to avoid a speeding sports car only to sideswipe one of the dead. Suzy screamed at the impact. Despite the fact that he was pretty sure the woman had a broken leg, she still got up, and followed after them, limping and stumbling in his rearview mirror. He hoped she never caught up.

  It was only a mile to the freeway on-ramp, but in that mile, they saw all they needed to see to know that they were making the right decision. As Dustin hit the freeway on-ramp, he accelerated around a corner, only to slam on his breaks at the last second. He skidded to a stop, inches from the car in front of him.

  The traffic was backed up for miles. Cars were honking, people were waving their arms out windows, and in general, it seemed like a giant disaster waiting to happen. Dustin was about to throw it in reverse when two other cars pulled up behind him, trapping him on the on-ramp. In the distance, he could see greasy smoke rising to the sky. There were no lights; no fire trucks weaving through the traffic to put out the fire.

  Dustin got out of the car to ascertain the situation, ignoring the protest of Suzy. He couldn't see much, but no one seemed to be moving. On a whim, Dustin looked behind them, and saw a horde of people heading toward them on foot. They stumbled and shambled but in the few seconds he took to watch them, they were a few feet closer, and he knew that was close enough.

  He got back in the car, rolled down his window and adjusted his side mirror. He could see the heads of the crowd cresting the visible horizon. Dustin threw the car in gear and said, "Hold on."

  Suzy screamed some more, and Dustin cranked the wheel to the right, pulling into the emergency lane. He gunned the engine, and the car jerked to life, racing up the emergency lane. He could feel the evil stares of the people that he was passing, but if it kept him away from the people that were behind him, he could tolerate a few dirty glances.

  He had gone about twenty car lengths when a semi-truck veered into the emergency lane, halting his progress. He skidded to a stop. By now, more cars had followed his course of action, and there was nowhere to go. He was trapped between a concrete divider, a semi-truck that had no interest in getting out of his way, and a line of cars that had all followed him up the emergency lane.

  Seeing no other option, Dustin turned the car off and exited the vehicle. More screams from Suzy. He was deaf to them, just as he would be to everything if he didn't get them moving. He ran up to the semi-truck on the left side amid honking and cursing from the cars behind him. He waved his hand at them as if to say he was sorry, which he was.

  He reached the cab of the semi-truck, a gaudy yellow thing with a smiling lady in lingerie emblazoned on the side. He hoisted himself up on the step to see inside the window. He was greeted with the sight of two barrels of sawed-off death. Immediately, he threw one hand up, while the other grasped on the handle on the side of the truck. Seeing as how he hadn't had his head blown off yet, he decided to push his luck.

  "Can you roll down your window?" he yelled.

  The driver was hesitant, but against his better judgment, he lowered his window. "What do you want?" he asked gruffly.

  "I was just wondering if you could move this truck so we can get out of here. We've got some visitors back there." He pointed back in the direction they had come. The driver moved quickly despite his bulk. He threw upon the door that Dustin was clinging to, sending him tumbling to the ground.

  "Where?" he asked. The driver stood in his doorway, his hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the morning sun. Dustin was about to point out the throng, when the driver's mouth dropped open. "Jesus H. Christ. Is that them?"

  "Them?" he said confused.

  "The fucking monsters. Is that them?"

  "Yeah. I guess that is them. Now can you move this truck or what?"

  The driver looked down at him as if he were a piece of gum stuck to one of his tires. Without saying a word, he sat back in the driver's seat of his truck and slammed the door shut. The hiss of air brakes being released was the only warning that Dustin had before the truck blasted into gear, smashing into the sedan in front of him. In a few seconds, the truck was motoring down the emergency lane, taking off rearview mirrors and paint with each car it passed.

  Finally, a stroke of common sense. Dustin ran back to his car, dodging another vehicle that was eager to follow the truck's example. He was too tired and nervous to even yell anything at the driver. When he got back into the car, Suzy was in tears. Dustin checked his rearview. He could see the horde approaching the first set of cars that were still stuck on the on-ramp... the ones who had decided to play by the rules. He watched as the first of the creatures shattered the glass of the car and pulled its occupants out screaming. He tried to start the car.

  Only it didn't start. It just made a sick wheezing noise as he clamped down on the clutch and turned the key. The cars behind him were honking furiously.

  "Start it! Start the car!" Suzy yelled.

  "What do you think I'm trying to do?" he yelled back. He looked in the rearview mirror to see that the horde was coming closer. Some people were getting out of their cars, running up the street. He saw one woman with a baby in her arms fall to the ground. The people behind her didn't stop.

  "Start the car!"

  Dustin didn't bother to respond. On the fourth try, the car finally started up, and they lurched to a crawl as people were flooding around his car. Up ahead, he saw something he didn't want to see.
Another crowd of humanity was fleeing in their direction, which could only mean there were more coming from up the highway.

  "I have to get out of here!" Suzy yelled.

  Dustin could only inch ahead a few car lengths before he had to stop completely. Up ahead, he saw the semi-truck stopped in its tracks, the driver hanging out the door and firing his shotgun at whoever came close, running or not. All hope of escape was blocked. Before he could formulate a plan, Suzy threw open her door and bolted from the car, screaming, "I'm not going to die here!"

  Dustin threw the car into park and was about to get out to chase after Suzy when one of the creatures dove into the door that Suzy had left open.

  With the little space left available to him, Dustin was able to get his baseball bat up between himself and the creature that was attacking him. Cold, clammy hands clawed at his face, and he screamed as one of the icy fingers gouged his eye. Behind him, he heard broken glass. Hopes of a brave stranger pulling him out of the car danced in his head for a brief second, until he felt another set of chilly hands wrap around his throat. His screaming stopped, and he couldn't breathe.

  No matter how hard he wanted to scream, he couldn't. The vice grip hands kept him from doing so, even when the creature behind him bit off his ear. He could feel the blood running down the side of his head. He was blinded with pain, and he finally managed to let out a scream when the creature he was battling managed to hook his fingers into his eye socket and pull his eye out. There would be no escape.

  Chapter 41: The New Katie

  Katie pulled the door open. As fast as she could, while they were still trying to respond, she placed the gun to their heads and pulled the trigger. They dropped. The bangs were loud. By the fourth one, she could no longer hear them, and the front of the house was clear. More people were headed her way, but she no longer cared if they were alive, dead, or somewhere in between.

  She flung the door to the bedroom closed and leaned with her back against it while she re-loaded her gun. It was hers now. By the simple act of pulling the trigger and splattering her family's brains on the floor of the old man's bedroom she had claimed it for eternity. Even if someone managed to pry the gun from her cold, dead fingers, it would always be hers. She smiled at the old man on the bed. Fred Walker would walk no more. In the end, the decision had been easy for him. The bite. It had to be the bite the radio said. He had wanted to die.

  What was more difficult was her own decision. With a family dead, and more than a handful murdered by herself alone, she really had no reason to go on. But she did. She wasn't acting on instinct; she was conscious of her decision.

  Her first stop would be back home, if there was a home to go to. But first, she had to make it there. She pulled the door open to find another one walking through the front door. She looked very familiar, although her hair was stringy and matted with dirt and part of her cheek was missing, exposing her teeth. The old her would have hesitated, perhaps even tried to talk some sense into the woman.

  The new her pulled the trigger and barely winced at the booming echo as that somewhat familiar face turned into a mass of red flesh and bone fragments. She stepped over the recent addition to her corpse collection and made her way down the street.

  The sun was up. It was a new day, and her nostrils were filled with gun smoke. She strolled down the street, her bare feet welcoming the cool morning asphalt. Though it seemed like she had run miles last night, she was actually only a block down the road from Fred Walker's now lifeless abode.

  There were people in the streets, but whether they were living or not, she didn't care. As long as they didn't get in her goddamn way, they could stumble about all they wanted to. Katie calmly walked to her house. She stopped in the front yard to examine the burnt cop car from a distance. There was no sign of the occupants of the car, so she decided to head into her house.

  The knob turned easily in her hand, and she stepped inside, her gun at the ready. It was like a time machine. There they were on the wall, hung in a silver picture frame, his hand on her shoulder. She knocked the picture off the wall as she passed it. It crashed to the floor, the glass shattering. Katie stepped into the kitchen, admiring the items in the house as if she were some sort of archeologist that had stumbled upon the perfectly preserved residence of some ancient civilization.

  Katie leaned against the kitchen counter. "Why the fuck am I here?"

  If this were a normal school day, she would be putting together lunches. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sliced apples, and some cheese-flavored goldfish crackers, just what a growing boy and a loving husband needed to make it through the day. What a pile of shit that life had been. Truth be told, she had hated it. But she was locked into it, the mortgage, the responsibility of bringing a child into the world, the weight of wedding vows... she could have walked away from it all years ago, if it weren't for the loneliness.

  She cared about them, but it was so much easier to just be on your own. Somewhere deep down inside, she felt guilty, as if the fact that she had secretly wished for this scenario, albeit without the resurrecting dead bit, had caused it to come true. Now she was in a kitchen that belonged to no one. All its owners were dead. She was standing on the precipice of her own future with nowhere to go but forward due to the fact that, behind her, her life lay in decaying ruins. She stood waiting, waiting for the future to come to her.

  Katie walked upstairs, changed into some more suitable end-of-the-world clothing, and then she grabbed the keys off the hook by the door. She stuffed the revolver into her jacket pocket, and then walked into the dark garage. With her left hand, she turned on the lights. She walked to her car, unlocked it and sat inside. That deep down, sad part of her said that she should just sit there with the car running while the garage filled with carbon monoxide, binding to her red blood cells and preventing her body from absorbing and carrying oxygen. That would be too easy though.

  She knew what her new purpose in life was. It was to find hell and burn in it.

  Chapter 42: Friends and Murder

  Zeke didn't get far before his conscience was biting at his heels. He stopped at the corner of the street, his hands on his knees, the sweat on his head cooling in the morning air. The soldier in him wanted to run, get back home, load up his guns and hump it out of town. He'd shoot first and ask questions later.

  The retired part of him couldn't help but feel as if he was merely acting on instinct, like a robot. He thought about who he had been before he had enlisted. Some people had called him funny. Others had called him lover. Right now, Zeke called that person dead. If what he thought was going down was actually happening, and he went back to what he was in the army, well then it was like he had died at the hands of the whore already.

  Zeke turned on his heel and ran back down the block, bursting through the police station's tall wooden doors. The scene was still horrifying, and for the first time in a long time, Zeke felt fear. He felt humanity at the back of his throat, ready to be released. He ran to the black man and began kicking furiously at the bar.

  "C'mon, man. Hit that bar, or I'm leaving your ass here." The man looked at him, relief in his eyes. He redoubled his efforts, and Zeke kicked the bar as hard as he could.

  Behind him, the three cops remaining in the station were wrestling with their own. It was only a matter of time before they pulled their weapons and put them down. Then they were all stuck here. That could mean escape, or it could mean death for every man chained to the bar. Overcorrection was always a possibility when it came to duty. If anybody knew that, it was Zeke.

  The bar wriggled against the wall. The bolt securing his friend was now looser than ever, but it just wouldn't budge. Once again the black man sat down on his haunches, placed his feet against the wall and pulled with all his might. While he was doing this Zeke leapt up into the air and landed on the brass bar. It worked. The concrete cracked and the bolt came free, and none too soon, as the man next to his friend had finally lost his battle with the undead. Whole fingers st
uck out of his attacker's mouth, blood dripping down the dead man's long gray beard.

  The black man worked the silver handcuff feverishly down the bar, wrecking his wrist and drawing blood in the process. He pulled his hand free just as gunshots rang throughout the precinct lobby. Zeke and his new friend took off into the early morning sunlight, dripping blood and sweat. More shots rang out behind them, and they instinctively ducked, but the shots were coming from inside the building.

  The streets were eerily empty for an early summer day, and Zeke knew that it was only a matter of time until they were confronted with another situation. They ducked into the stairwell of a parking garage and took cover among the cold concrete stairs. Zeke peeked his head over the railing from time to time to assess the situation and make sure that they weren't being followed. Meanwhile, his friend collapsed on the stairs taking deep ragged breaths.

  "I thought you left me," he managed to get out between jerky huffs.

  "I probably should have," he said as friendly as he could muster, which on a good day sounded like Beaver Cleaver's dad reading the Beav the riot act.

  "My name's Louis, but everyone calls me Lou." He held out his hand. Zeke shook it gladly.

  "I'm Zeke."

  They sat there that way, breathing heavily in the shade of the parking garage. Gradually their breath became more normal, and exhaustion began to creep in.

  "What do we do now? You think those cops are going to come after us?"

  Zeke scrutinized the street down below. "No. They've got bigger fish to fry. I'm exhausted." Zeke plopped down on the concrete steps of the stairwell, despite the fact that it smelled like a homeless person's lavatory. "We're not going to last long on the street. You have a place we can go?"

  Lou thought for a moment, and then said, "Yeah. I got some friends about a mile down the road. They got themselves a place, but I don't think it's the type of place you're looking for."