This Rotten World | Book 1 | This Rotten World

by Morris, Jacy

  ****

  It was The Speech. In the days that would come, as the world dwindled and humans fought to avoid the same fate as the dinosaurs, the dodo bird, and dial-up internet, the few remaining people would remember it as the day that The President gave a eulogy for the entire world. Those cities that still had power, but little else, were allowed to view the message on their TV's. Those cities that didn't have power would never hear the words, but they would spread by mouth. It was the day of all days, the day the world stopped pretending it could recover. Everyone in the military would see it, those that weren't dead or walking around the world trying to eat others.

  Over campfires, survivors would stoop and whisper to each other in hushed tones that wouldn't attract any of the dead, "Did you hear The Speech?"

  This is how it went:

  The President appeared, a thin man from Jackson, Mississippi... gray around his temples that hadn't been there in the first two years of service. He had a preacher's face. He was not what one would call handsome, more... authoritarian, like those austere and severe photos of the Founding Fathers disseminated in textbooks.

  On this day, he was dressed all in black. He stood in front of gray, nondescript walls built from cold, unforgiving cinder blocks. He stood not in behind a fancy podium with the Presidential Seal on it, but behind a plain lectern like one you might find in a second-rate community college. Sweat stood on his brow, and he wore no make-up so that the viewers could clearly see the bruisish bags under his eyes. He did not smile. He was not trying to get re-elected. He spoke as himself, honestly, perhaps since the first time he had run for public office in middle school.

  "We all fall down from time to time. For years, the human mantra has been 'We will get back up.' It's a good mantra, and it worked for a while. My advisors have apprised me of the situation in the United States and throughout the entire world. Many of you watching this can look out your window and see the situation with your own eyes. You don't need me to tell you that it's not looking good.

  Some of you have been waiting for us, the government, perhaps even myself to right the ship. Well, I'm here today to tell you that it's simply not going to happen. We all fall down, even governments... even myself."

  The President held his hand up to show a wound. By now, everyone could recognize the familiar shape of a human bite.

  "My advisors have recommended one last-ditch effort at saving the United States. They want me to unleash our own nuclear arsenal on the United States. They want me to drop bombs on the heaviest population centers, destroying a good portion of the country and the reanimated that now infest it."

  The President paused as if to let the words sink in, and for everyone trapped in a large city, the words did sink in.

  "But knowing what I know now, now that my own time has come, I simply can't follow through on their recommendation. If there was a way for me to fight this, I would do so until my very last breath. I will not rob Americans of that same opportunity. So I say to you, the people that have made this life so worth living, we all fall down... but now it's time to get up and fight."

  Hope filled those that were listening, a resolve that many hadn't felt since the Twin Towers fell. The country had never been as united as it had since that fateful day... and yet only five percent of the surviving population had the opportunity to even see The Speech.

  "Martial law is over. I want to thank our armed forces for sacrificing and defending this country and its citizens. Now it's time to take care of yourselves and your own families. The government is dead, the military is disbanded, and it is up to each of us to defend ourselves in the manner that we best see fit. Good luck to you all. I only wish I would be there to see it all en, and to see the human race triumph over the greatest challenge we've ever faced. Good night, and may God watch over us all."

  The camera cut, but the sound did not. A hollow voice appeared as if from the depths of a tin can, "You want us to do it now?"

  The President's voice crisp and clear responded, "I'll do it myself. Give me the damn gun."

  There was silence, and then a click. The President spoke one last time, "Tell my wife and daughter I love them, and try and keep them safe." The boom of the gun blew out the microphone that The President was using, but it didn't matter. No one else would be speaking. Showtime was over, and around the country, soldiers and citizens turned off their TV sets, hoping that they could be as brave as The President was in his final moments.

  Be sure to check out

  This Rotten World:

  Let It Burn

  By Jacy Morris

  Here is a sneak preview:

  THIS ROTTEN WORLD: LET IT BURN

  Prologue

  Lou sat on the roof of the movie theater. In normal times, it would have been considered a nice day. The heat that had clung to the city for the better part of the week had broken, leaving behind a crystal-blue sky and a breeze that would have been refreshing if it didn't carry upon it the stench of death.

  From his vantage point on the roof, Lou could see the west side of the city, its tall buildings thrusting up into the sky. There were less of them now. To Lou, the city was a great dying beast, and it wasn't dying quietly. Fires raged unchecked through the metropolitan area. Its handful of skyscrapers had turned into towering infernos, giant sticks of incense that couldn't cover up the smell of the city's demise. The dead roamed the streets like maggots crawling over the city's rotting flesh.

  Portland, Oregon, once a hipster haven, the progressive jewel of the Northwest, was now nothing but a collection of buildings on the precipice of becoming a ruin. Like Pompeii or Easter Island, Portland was starting its descent into history, cracking and crumbling; the dust and ash of millennia would cover the city. Its buildings would collapse as fires, wind, and the carving knife of time sent the once immovable structures tumbling to their final resting place.

  Lou wondered how long it would be until the city was found again. He doubted it would be during his lifetime. The situation had progressed too far. Would archeologists rediscover the city in a hundred years? Two hundred? Would the city go unchecked for a thousand years, until some random person stumbled across the "ancient" civilization. What records were they going to leave behind? The internet was gone, satellites orbits were quickly decaying, and no one knew how to run a press anymore. It was entirely conceivable that their entire civilization could disappear, but for the books they had printed. In that case, he guessed all that would be left would be Stephen King stories and Tom Clancy books.

  But, that was the future. The city wasn't entirely gone yet. There were still those that remembered what Portland was like. They buzzed among the buildings like flies, travelling in circles, looking for places to feed, places to rest for a spell and catch their breath. But they were dying. Soon, there would be no one left to remember what the city was like before the dead had refused to stay that way. Humanity was on a collision course to extinction. It had been a little over a week.

  Lou's thoughts ran dark. It was only natural, despite the sunshine, despite the breeze. Nothing was right. The breeze carried with it the smell of the dead. The sun turned the rotting corpse next to him into a ticking time bomb of disease, the abdomen swelling with bacteria and gas as the body's cells broke and nature took over. Clouds of haze from burning buildings marred the view as the smoke drifted over the valley.

  The buzzing drew him to the edge of the roof. Thirty feet below him, they milled about, the former residents of the city, clawing at the side of the building as if they could scale the walls.

  Lou watched them rake at the stone walls, and in his mind, a scale began to tip. It was a long way down, but he knew that it would be a quick fall. It would be two, maybe three seconds, and then it would all be over. The hopelessness had set in quick after he had taken care of Zeke. Fuck that. After he had killed Zeke. Might as well call it what it was. What hope did he have of making it if Zeke, a trained soldier, hadn't even managed to survive for a week?

  The two
had been through a lot together. An escape from jail, a flight through the city with a thousand shambling corpses on their trail, a ride down the Willamette, and finally, their flight from the Memorial Coliseum as it plunged into madness, the dead surging through its busted defenses and reducing the whole building into a massive mausoleum. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people had died in the fall of the Coliseum. Of that number, whatever it might be, there was an abundance of people who were more fit for survival than him. Yet, they were all trapped in that giant tomb, where once basketball players had run up and down the court to the adoration of thousands of fans, and he was here, sitting on a roof next to a corpse.

  Lou looked up at the sun, the brightness of the glowing orb causing the skin around his eyes to crinkle, rays of sunshine warping into sword-like spikes around the edges. He laughed, an unexpected noise that came out of him unbidden, a short guffaw that said, "Well, look at me now." The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. He was still fighting for his life, just like when he was a kid on the streets. He had grown up without a mother, and his father's only interests seemed to be making money and getting high. He had always been on his own. He had always been surviving, and yet, today he was tired of it. Surviving for what?

  Lou looked down at the corpse at his feet. Zeke, finally still. His body had sat on the floor of the theater for a day, the entire group in shock at the demise of their presumed leader. Lou had carried the head up first and set it down on the hot roof with the sort of reverence that the man deserved. Zeke had bound the individuals in their group together with his plans, with his confidence. He had given them purpose and direction. Now, they were all just sulking loners waiting for the inevitable, waiting for death to come knocking at the door... but death didn't knock. When it was your time, it just kicked the fucker down. He had seen that with his own eyes.

  Once he had moved the head to the roof, Zeke's body had come second. He had thrown the stinking mass over his shoulder and climbed carefully up the ladder that led to the roof, rung by rung, pausing every so often to catch his breath and readjust Zeke's body on his shoulder. He had not been a small man, that was for sure.

  They had all said their goodbyes earlier, those that had known him the longest, and even those that hadn't known him very long at all. The words had all been positive, nice things, the type of things that a cynic might call platitudes. But in the end, the group had all agreed that his body had to go. No one wanted it in the theater. It was too similar to the creatures that were banging on the walls and doors. No one wanted to see the dead anymore. They wanted to huddle inside, bury their heads in the sand, and hope that it all just sort of went away.

  Lou looked down at the ground again. There was only one way it was all just going to go away... a two to three second fall ought to do it. In the distance, a skyscraper that had been burning steadily for the last day finally crumbled to the ground. Lou felt the ground quake underneath his feet, and a cloud of debris, dust and smoke sprung up into the sky... yet it still burned, even the ruins still burned. Good, he thought. Let it burn. Let it all burn.

  Lou bent down and grabbed Zeke's body, throwing it over his shoulder and balancing it on the edge of the waist-high wall that ran around the perimeter of the movie theater's roof. "Sorry, buddy." He pushed the body over the edge, and watched it tumble to the ground. It fell quick, quicker than Lou had expected. A little less than two-seconds and it was on the ground. The swollen stomach of Zeke's body had burst open, spilling its decaying and putrefied contents on the cement sidewalk that surrounded the theater.

  Without thinking about it, Lou turned around and grabbed Zeke's head off the ground. The flesh was cold and made his stomach turn. It felt as if he were lifting a thing made of wet clay. He threw it over the side, and then wiped his hands on his jeans. It didn't matter. It's not as if his jeans could get any dirtier.

  Lou regarded the Portland skyline one last time. Flames had started climbing one of the still remaining skyscrapers next to the one that had collapsed. He climbed down the ladder, into the darkness of the movie theater thinking, Let it burn. Let it all burn.

  Be sure to check out

  THE

  ENEMIES OF OUR

  ANCESTORS

  By

  The Vocabulariast

  Here is a sneak preview:

  THE ENEMIES OF OUR ANCESTORS

  Prologue: The Night Whispers

  Kochen walked through the night, his bare feet testing for sharp rocks before he put his full weight on the ground. In this way, he moved through the black-chilled air. Wind blew through his obsidian hair, and his dusky brown skin raised gooseflesh in response. Kochen looked up and saw the outline of the canyon's rim against the night sky, the faint hint of blackness against a dark blue. More stars than he could count looked down at him. It was the time of the Lynx moon, the time of the bobcat. Its full, round face rose into the sky, bringing with it the onset of spring. He could smell the change in the air. Though he was only six-winters-old, in a world where seasons meant everything, he had learned the signs of change at a young age.

  He walked through the empty farmland, away from the mud and stone houses that his ancestors had carved and molded into the cliff, his toes sinking into the loose brown soil. Kochen lived on the lowest terrace of the village nestled among the cliffs, so he needed no torch to descend down the variety of stone ladders that led from the highest level to the rough stone ground. He had simply walked out of his family's small room where his mother and father slumbered, inched down a single, thirty-rung ladder, and he was on the ground.

  The farm soil had already been broken up for the spring. The soil felt cool and soft against his toes as he plodded through the loose farmland, avoiding the budding shoots of corn. He stopped to relieve himself, pulling his loincloth to the side. His urine steamed in the night as it pattered to the ground, impossibly loud.

  Behind him, he heard someone doing the same. He turned to look and saw his father.

  "What are you doing out here?"

  "No, what are you doing out here?" his father shot back.

  Kochen had been told over and over to not wander far from their house to relieve himself in the night. No one had ever explained why; they just said not to.

  "I had to go. Besides, it's good for the crops." Kochen finished up his work and let his loincloth fall back into place. His father did the same. Kochen walked in his direction, and his father cuffed him on the back of the head.

  "That is for thinking you know it all. Get your skinny rear-end back into the house."

  Kochen ran in the night, lest his father's ire turn into more than just a simple cuff. He was usually slow to anger, but tonight he seemed different.

  "Next time, you go from the ledge like everyone else."

  Kochen heard the words, but dared not give a response on the odd chance that it would be seen as disrespectful. As Kochen put his first, rough hand on the ladder, he heard a noise, a low rumbling. It was not a noise he had ever heard before. It echoed through the canyon and across the farmland. A gust of wind blew the hair on his head backwards as he turned around to see what was making the noise.

  In the faint light of the moon, he could see the blue shine of his father's skin running towards him. The tilled farmland was darker in the night than the untilled earth of the canyon floor, and when his father reached the edge of it, the earth opened up. A shape emerged, maggot-white, and twice as tall as his father. At first it seemed like a massive white worm, erupting from the ground, but then he noticed the arms Twisted and corded with segmented veins, the creature's arms were all twisted muscle and bone. In place of hands, the shape had sharp spikes, hooked like the backwards limbs of a praying mantis, and its eyes were black bulbs in a misshapen skull that was covered in skin the color of fresh-washed mushrooms..

  Before he could even scream a warning to his father, the creature had shoved a claw through his father's middle, the other claw wrapping around his throat. Kochen's sob caught in his own throat,
as his father descended into the ground in the embrace of the creature. The soil parted for him, and it was as if he had sunk into the river instead of the farmland of the village.

  Kochen climbed the ladder, and reached the edge of the limestone landing. He sat on the edge, his feet safely on stone, watching and waiting for his father's hand to appear from the ground. It was a good harvest that year.

  Be sure to check out

  The Abbey

  By Jacy Morris

  Here is a sneak preview:

  THE ABBEY

  Prologue

  He would make him scream. So far they had all screamed, their unused voices quaking and cracking with pain that was made even worse by the fact that they were breaking their vows to their Lord, their sole reason for existence. Shattering their vows was their last act on earth, and then they were gone. Now there was only one left. A lone monk had taken flight into the abbey's lower regions, a labyrinthine winding of corridors and catacombs lined with the boxed up remains of the dead and their trinkets.

  Brenley Denman's boots clanked off of the rough-hewn, blue stone as he trounced through the abbey's crypts, following the whiff of smoke from the monk's torch and the echo of his harried footsteps. His men were spread out through the underworks, funneling the monk ahead of them, driving him the way hounds drove a fox. The monk would lead them to his den, and then the prize would be theirs. And then the world.