This Rotten World | Book 1 | This Rotten World

by Morris, Jacy

  Zeke tapped him on the arm as he ran by and said, "Dumbass."

  Lou didn't care. Zeke's words weren't said in a mean way. They were said in a way that implied that all he had done was make their life harder. They turned right and headed for the shelter of the city, sprinting across the green grass of the waterfront, breathing hard, the two tails coming together to form one. Lou didn't know how much further he could run, but Zeke looked like he could run all day. Sweat covered his white T-shirt, but his breathing was much easier than it had been yesterday when they were pounding on the brass bar together in the police station. It was like he was made for this shit. Lou wiped more sweat off his brow before it could fall into his eyes, stinging them.

  They cut through the city, waiting for the crowd of shambling dead to follow them. Where had they all come from? How had the city fallen so quick, so fast? His mind had no time to wander. His legs burned. He had run maybe three-quarters of a mile, but it was enough. "Hold up," he said, bending over and gripping his knees.

  Zeke slowed down, breathing just as hard as Lou. He put his hands over his head and said, "Not like that. Like this. Bending over makes your body work harder to get oxygen."

  They walked slowly, the scattered dead of the city gaining ground on them. All Lou needed was a few minutes. He stood and put his hands on his head, though all he really wanted to do was double over and fall to the ground. He cursed the heavy, khaki boots on his feet. They were fashionable; the ladies seemed to like them, but damn did they get heavy quick when he was running.

  They walked casually, their hands over their heads, the dead drawing closer and closer. "What's it like to be a hero?" Zeke asked.

  "I don't know. You tell me. You're the army boy."

  Zeke nodded at him, not surprised that Lou had accurately pinpointed his past profession. "Yeah, well, even in the military, I never called down the wrath of a couple hundred cannibals just to save one family."

  "You would have done the same," Lou said. Zeke shook his head in the negative, but Lou could see it in his eyes. He could see the hero inside of him. Zeke didn't know it was there, and perhaps he even believed he didn't have it in himself, but Lou could feel it.

  "Come on. Let's cut across," Zeke said. They turned left and headed south down 3rd Ave., a dingy sort of street filled with bars and shithole convenience stores. Lou looked longingly at the food in the stores. He could see that the glass had been busted in and the shadows of bodies milled around in their dark interiors. Lou glanced over his shoulder. He was shocked at how much ground the dead had gained. They weren't fast, but they didn't slow down. Thank God they couldn't run, he thought.

  They strolled down the middle of the street until they passed the spot where the Morrison Bridge dumped out onto 3rd Ave. Then they walked one more block, keeping out of reach of the dead behind them, alternating quick bursts of light jogging with fast walking. They turned left on Morrison St, which surprisingly didn't even connect with the Morrison Bridge. Lou thought it always had, but it looked like he had been wrong. It didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but he always hated being wrong. Ahead of them, two blocks to the east lay Waterfront Park. They had basically moved in a circle, drawing the dead behind them, and clearing the way before them at the same time.

  "You ready?" Zeke asked.

  "You know it," he replied, and then they broke into an easy trot, that didn't feel so easy the second time around. His footsteps were heavier, and his boots felt like iron weights hanging off of his feet, but he pushed himself like he had never pushed himself before. His life depended on it. He knew a boat and some open water would be waiting at the end of the jog. It would be worth it.

  Once again, they set foot on the green grass of Waterfront Park. There were no obstructions, and the dead were scattered about, too thin to pose much of a threat. Their tail was still following, but hopefully they had lost most of them with their twists and turns. Lou looked in the distance to see if he could see the family, but all he saw was another bridge and a blob of corpses falling off its edge. With any luck they would spread out by the time they reached the dead. He looked further down, and saw the unfurled sails of the boats even closer. They couldn't be more than a third of a mile away.

  They approached a fountain, the Salmon Street Springs. Lou remembered playing there as a child, while his father had sold dope to the people who milled around its edges, watching the children scream and laugh as the water doused them in the summer heat. Even in his happiest memories, his father was always up to something. Lou shoved the thought aside. Now was not the time to start feeling sorry for himself.

  "Get that gun ready," Zeke said. "I think we're going to have to blast our way through the next batch."

  Lou did as he was told. He ejected a clip from the handgun, shoved it in his pocket, and put in a fresh one. He would have liked to stop and reload fully, but there simply wasn't enough time. Even a minute or two could be fatal out here. For the first time in his life, Lou wished he was one of those skinny Kenyan runners that he always saw on TV. Then he could run forever. Then he would be safe.

  They approached the bridge hoard and skirted around them, their guns at the ready. There was no way through, and they couldn't afford to have more dead come crashing down right on top of them. Lou could see their shadowy torsos milling around on top of the bridge. Zeke took the lead, and gunfire rang out. They had to slow their progress to make the shots count as they moved through the dead. The last thing Lou wanted to do was walk past one of the things he thought was dead only to have it latch onto him and take a bite out of his ankle.

  Lou held his handgun up and at the ready, while Zeke took measured shots, walking heel to toe through the crowd. Lou's heart pumped in his chest, and he could taste the fear in his mouth.

  "Out!" Zeke yelled. He ejected his spent magazine, and Lou took over, taking careful aim. The head, he thought, it's got to be the head. He squeezed the trigger, but the round simply blew through the shoulder of an old man. The old man rocked backwards, his thin-framed glasses falling off of his face and onto the ground, where he stepped on them. Lou was more careful the next time, lining up his shot, and squeezing the trigger gently. The bullet entered the bridge of the man's nose, and the exit wound sprayed blood on the dead lady behind him. The man finally went down. He took stock of who was closest, and he found a lady two feet to his right. He took aim again, and scored another hit, her body falling to the ground.

  "Clear!" Zeke yelled, and Lou fell back so that Zeke could do the heavy lifting again. He was much more accurate, and they had a lot more ammunition for the machine gun. They were almost to the sunshine, when a fresh wave of the dead fell over the side of the bridge above them. Zeke went full auto with the machine gun, ripping through the bodies in front of them. "Run!" he yelled, and they did.

  They sprinted as if the entire world was on their heels. The dock was within sight. All that stood between them was five-hundred feet of rocky river shore. "Fuck yeah!" Lou yelled between deep ragged breaths. The dock was there, right in front of him. He kept his eyes on the sails of the ships, willing himself to keep moving, though his legs burned, his knees ached, and his shoes felt like he was lugging hollowed out walrus carcasses on his feet. He tripped once, and tumbled to the jagged rocks where the river water lapped at their cold grey forms. He bounded to his feet, using the last reserves of his energy, and they approached the river dock. He clambered up the side of it, Zeke ahead of him. His boots rang out on the aluminum ramp that lead from the shore, then they thumped on the wooden planks of the dock.

  Lou turned around, and behind him he saw his worst nightmare. Their flight through the city had created a roiling, stumbling mass. Good luck to anyone who ran afoul of that group. Lou focused back on the task at hand, "What boat are we gonna take?"

  "Anyone we can. You know how to hotwire a boat?"

  Lou looked at Zeke like he was crazy. Then a voice rang out over the docks. "Over here!" a man yelled. Zeke and Lou turned to see who was yelling
at them. It was the red-bearded man and his family.

  Zeke patted Lou on the chest and said, "Looks like being a hero pays off."

  Lou could not explain the feeling that he felt then. It was a warmth that started somewhere in his heart and radiated throughout his body. But it was more than that. It was as if some long dead part of him had come back to life, some part that he had tried to destroy throughout his entire life, a life marred by mistake after stupid mistake. It was pride, something he hadn't felt in a lifetime.

  His boots clunked on the wooden dock, feeling lighter than a heart full of pride. He hopped onto the boat and sat heavily. The boat was all white. A canopy covered the pilot's seat, but there was room for seven or eight people in the boat if they crammed in tight enough. The man with the red beard tried to start the boat up, but it wouldn't turn over.

  "Untie the boat would, ya?" he said. Zeke hopped out of the boat, and undid the rope that secured the boat to the dock. The buzz of a thousand corpses got closer, but still the boat wouldn't start, the engine making a sickly choking noise.

  "Is this thing going to start or what?" Lou said. The man's wife and children huddled in the back of the boat, a hopeful look on their face.

  "It'll start. It's just been a while," the bearded-man shot back, concern creeping into his voice.

  Zeke hopped back into the boat and began reloading the magazines for the machine gun. Lou took his cue from him and did the same. "Dammit!" the bearded-man yelled, before slamming on the steering wheel as Lou slid another 9mm bullet into the magazine in his hand. The clomp of the dead reverberated off the wooden boards of the dock.

  "You better get that thing going, man. We don't got all day," Lou yelled before turning to the children and their mother. "You guys might want to move up front, and cover your ears." They moved dutifully, the mother prodding the children protectively. They sat in the front seat, right on top of each other, their hands over their ears.

  "You ready to do this?" Lou asked Zeke.

  "Whether I'm ready or not, it's the way it has to be." Zeke held his fist out to Lou, and Lou pounded it with his own fist. They took aim at the heads of the nearest of the undead column that tromped across the wooden boards.

  They surged along the dock, as if they knew that their prey had nowhere to go. Their arms were held straight out before them, hands formed into claws as if they could tear their flesh apart from ten feet away. The engine gagged again, choking and grinding. No luck. The girls began screaming, and Lou fired off his first shot. The lead corpse fell into the water where it floated. Zeke put another one down, but they were moving faster now, like a snowball on its way downhill, gaining momentum the closer it got to the bottom. Lou didn't have time to think anymore. He didn't have time to measure his shots. For every two shots he fired, one of them dropped, and then they were at the edge of the dock trying to get onto the boat. His gun clicked empty, and he began swinging the pistol like a hammer, bashing the grip of the gun into the matted bloody hair of the dead. They pushed, flowing at them like an unbreakable wave, and then he heard the happiest sound of his life.

  The engine sputtered to life, black smoke spurting out of the exhaust of the boat. The boat lurched forward away from the dock, and Lou threw the dead woman he was struggling with into the water. Even as she flew away from him, her arms grasped and clawed at him. When she hit the water, she sank like a rock, her arms reaching up for him. Lou vowed to never swim in the water again.

  Then they were away from the dock. The line of the dead stretched down the wooden planks and the riverside for a couple hundred feet. Lou collapsed onto the hard fiberglass bench on the rear of the boat and let the river wind glide across his bald head. He closed his eyes and soaked it all up. He had never been on a boat before.

  It was quiet on the boat, except for the gurgling of the engine, which sounded like nothing compared to the ear-shattering noise of gunfire in the city. Everyone was silent, as if speaking would wake them up from the dream of escaping. Lou opened his eyes. The children clung to their mother, tears leaking from their eyes. Zeke sat across from him in the back of the boat, loading bullets into his empty magazines. Lou decided it would be prudent to do the same, so he exhaled slowly, pushed the peace aside, pulled the clip out of his handgun, and reached in his pocket for ammunition.

  "Thanks for getting us out of there," Lou said.

  The bearded man said, "No. Thank you. If you hadn't fired that gun, they would have overrun us."

  The boat bounced over the water, and Lou looked at the city passing by. He had never seen it from this angle before. The river banks were lined with shambling forms. "Where are we headed?" he asked.

  "Away from here," the bearded man said. "My name is Brian. This is my wife Sarah, and my daughters Ruby and Jane. Pleased to meet you."

  "I'm Lou, and this quiet guy over here is Zeke."

  The wife nodded at him. Her dress was covered in blood, and a thought struck Lou. The blood, the bites, they had to be sure. "Was anyone bitten?"

  The wife looked at Lou with fear in her eyes. Lou got the feeling that she was hiding something, but he didn't know about how to go about getting her to admit it. The world was dying, and here he was worrying about upsetting anyone; meanwhile, the woman across from him could be turning into one of those things in front of his very eyes, ready to eat her own children at a moment's notice.

  They sped underneath a bridge, and there were a few splashes in their wake as the dead fell into the water.

  "You think they'll drown?" Lou asked Zeke.

  "I don't see how. They're not breathing."

  Sarah spoke up then, "So you think they're actually dead?"

  Zeke turned to the lady and flashed a toothy grin. "Lady, I know they're dead. As soon as you guys get that into your head, you can get about the business of dealing with it. No, they're not sick. No, they're not alive. No, they won't respond to reason. All they respond to is a bullet to the head. You reshape your reality with those parameters, and you'll be just fine."

  It was a harsh wake-up call, but it was a necessary one as Lou saw it. The children clung tighter to their mother, their father glancing back at them from the corner of his eye. They cruised under another bridge, and more splashes followed them. The boat was not fast, but it moved fast enough. The dead were not masters of timing, otherwise they would have been covered in a deluge of the dead every time they passed underneath a bridge. The boat forged north, splitting the Willamette's murky waters, the sun in the sky, and the banks of the city lined with the dead. Helicopters flew above, thundering through the valley. He saw one in the distance, lighting up a stretch of freeway that hung suspended in the air. Spent shells glittered in the sun like fairy dust, and Lou imagined that he could hear them hitting the road beneath.

  "You think your boys can stop this?" he asked Zeke.

  "They're not my boys. Not anymore."

  "Hey, guys. We've got a problem," Brian said. In front of them, boats sped toward them. Not your average coast guard boat or port authority rig. These were military class ships. Lou could see the guns on the decks. They were locked into a course that would directly impede their own progress. "Should I turn around?" Brian asked.

  Zeke laughed slightly. The noise sounded like a cat learning how to speak English. "You'd never escape those. They can go about thirty five knots an hour. How fast can this thing go? Seven?"

  "Eight if I push it," Brian said with a faint ring of hope.

  "Yeah, well, push it or not, we won't be escaping these guys. Let's just see what they want."

  Brian kept the boat on the same course. When they were about a hundred yards out, one of the ships activated their bullhorn, "Turn off the engine and prepare to be boarded." Brian did as he was told. The boat slowed immediately, bobbing on the river. Lou slid his gun into the waistband of his jeans, but there was nowhere for Zeke to put his gun, so he left it on the ground.

  The boats cruised up to them, one on either side. The navy ships towered over the boat that
they were in, their decks easily above the highest point of their own vehicle. Lou looked up to see guns trained on them, serious men with serious faces doing serious work.

  "Are any of you bitten?" a soldier asked them. They shook their heads.

  "No one is bitten," Brian yelled up to the soldier.

  "Stand back," the soldier yelled as a ladder was lowered from the side of their boat onto their deck. There wasn't much room to maneuver, as the boat was packed tight with the six people that were already on it. A soldier, black hair peeking out from underneath his cap, climbed down the ladder, landing on the deck of the boat with a hefty thump. His boots were dark and heavy, as was the gun in his hand. He searched them wordlessly. He spotted the submachine gun on the deck of the boat, and he bent down, picked it up, and tossed it up to a soldier waiting on the deck.

  When he was done patting down Zeke, he yelled, "Clean!" loud enough for the soldiers on the boats to hear him. Lou was next. The anti-authority part of him wanted to punch the man in the face for putting his hands on him, but he understood it. He pushed the feeling down inside, and let it burn. The soldier pulled the gun from the waistband of Lou's jeans, and tucked it into his own pants. With his gun aimed at Lou, the soldier turned to Brian and said, "Are you guys alright? Is this man holding you hostage?"

  Lou couldn't believe what he was hearing. His smoldering sense of anti-authoritarianism clawed up his ribcage. Even at the end of the world, a black man couldn't catch a break. "Motherfucker, I ought to..." he started before Brian jumped in.

  "No, as a matter of fact, he saved us."

  Lou was still outraged, and he stared the soldier down, until he turned his head away. If this was the street, he wouldn't have had to turn his head because he would already be face down on the concrete, doubled over, with Lou's boots planted firmly in his ribs. But this wasn't the street, and the man had a gun.