Season of Rot

by Eric S. Brown

  “You ready, sir?” Wiggins asked, escorting the president to the second truck in the line. “It could get a bit hairy out there.”

  “I am as ready as I will ever be, General.”

  “Then let’s get the show on the road,” Wiggins said, laughing. He opened the door for the president, then walked off toward the lead truck.

  As Clark watched him go, he couldn’t help but think of the people they were leaving behind: Dr. Buchanan, most of the civilian staff. The convoy could only hold so many people, and Wiggins had allotted most of the space to military and security personnel. Clark gritted his teeth; Wiggins had no right to jeopardize so many lives just to protect him, but to the general and his soldiers, it was their duty. The United States lived on as long as the president was alive, and in a way Clark was forced to admit they were right.

  Besides, he almost thought Dr. Buchanan preferred being left behind. The scientist had claimed the energy field trapped in Earth’s atmosphere was changing. Apparently, the aspects of the energy that had crippled mankind’s technology would soon pass—”Two to four days, tops,” Buchanan had said—but that was the only ray of hope; the energy field showed no other signs of decay. Buchanan surmised that the energy was permanent, or close enough not to matter.

  And worse, his most recent data showed that only eight percent of the world population was immune to the biological effects of the field. When Clark asked why most of the White House staff was as of yet unaffected, Buchanan answered that some humans possessed a greater tolerance than others and that the bulk of the White House personnel had been sheltered inside during the wave. He guessed they would be normal until they were outside long enough to absorb the same amount of radiation as those who’d been openly exposed to the light. That was why he seldom came out of the underground bunker; that was why he wanted to stay behind. The good doctor didn’t want to find out whether or not he was immune. He just wanted to stay sane for as long as he possibly could.

  A contingent of Wiggins’s men still guarded the fences, and Clark watched from inside the second truck of the convoy as they opened fire into the creatures outside the southern gate. The things dropped in waves, but others moved up to take their place. The guards were sure to run out of ammo before the city ran out of creatures, but Wiggins would’ve known this and would have planned for it. Surely enough, within seconds Clark heard the thumping sound of grenade launchers being fired from the lawn. Explosions sounded outside the gate, and the lead truck shot forward, crashing its way into the mob. It plowed through the creatures, crunching some under its wheels and bouncing others off its armored plating.

  Then the whole convoy was moving outside the gates. The M-60s mounted in the open cars blazed, and small-arms fire crackled over the howling creatures. Clark’s truck bounced as the driver turned out of the yard too quickly, hitting the curb as he swung around to follow the other vehicles.

  Inside the cab of the lead truck, Wiggins smiled. Everything was going as planned. The convoy cleared the horde, and the open road lay before them.

  “Sir, what’s that?” his driver asked.

  Wiggins squinted. A lone creature had walked out of a building and was crouching in the road ahead as if waiting for them.

  The damn thing had a rocket launcher held firmly against its shoulder.

  “Oh shit!” Wiggins screamed, reaching over to claw at the wheel, the driver too stunned to react in time.

  Light flashed from the launcher’s barrel and the rocket streaked into the cab where Wiggins sat.

  Clark heard the explosion as he watched the lead truck erupt into a ball of fire. Adrenaline surged through his body, and his knuckles went white from his grip on the armrest.

  The car immediately behind Wiggins’s truck crashed into the flaming wreckage so fast it overturned. Like a chain of falling dominoes, the convoy grinded to a halt. The creatures behind them were catching up, and more poured out of the side streets and alleys. They were everywhere.

  One soldier manning a M-60 in the car behind Clark was torn in half as a dozen psychos attempted to pull him from the vehicle. His intestines left a trail of red on the car’s paint as the upper part of his torso disappeared into the angry horde.

  “Mr. President!” the soldier beside him shouted as a grotesque, drooling face pressed against Clark’s window.

  “Jesus!” Clark threw his arm against the inside of the glass to lend it extra support, hoping it would hold. “Take us back! Take us back now!”

  The driver threw the truck into reverse and gunned the engine, backing straight into the brick wall of an apartment building. Clark was thrown forward from the impact, and his window shattered. Hands pulled him through the small opening into the street, dirty, bloody hands with jagged fingernails. He swam in a sea of biting teeth as his flesh was ripped and shredded, and in the distance black smoke rose from behind the White House’s open gates.

  9

  As Jeremy drove through the streets of Canton, he stared in shock at the mayhem around him. The whole town looked as if a war had been fought there. The Pigeon Center Market was a mess, its doors broken open, glass shards glittering everywhere. Other places were burnt to black rubble. Here and there cars were stranded in the road, some wrecked, others abandoned, their doors left open from when their occupants had fled. Some of them, unfortunately, hadn’t fled far.

  There weren’t many of them—Jeremy could go for minutes at a time without spotting one—but when he did, he always looked away. The bodies were horribly mutilated, torn or hacked to pieces. Some even appeared as if they were partially eaten by a pack of animals.

  Jeremy had seen only three survivors since he’d driven into town. Two of those had been crazy like old Luke, and he’d avoided them as best he could. The third, he thought, may have been normal, but as Jeremy’s truck approached, the man ran into the depths of the paper mill. Jeremy got out and called after him, but didn’t dare go into the dark, winding corridors alone, even with the rifle and handgun.

  The Ford’s radio was broken, and everywhere Jeremy went, the power remained off. He knew little more than he had back at Luke’s.

  On the edge of town, he pulled the truck to a stop at the Exxon station and killed the engine. The sun was setting, and long shadows stretched across the pavement from the pumps. He climbed out of the Ford, leaving the .30-.06 in the seat, but he pulled out the .38 and didn’t bother to conceal it. He knew better than to try the pumps themselves, so he walked towards the station.

  The place was eerily silent. Like at the Center Pigeon Market, the doors were shattered, and Jeremy’s boots crunched on glass as he entered. The smell of rotten meat made him gag.

  In front of the first aisle, the cashier lay on the floor with a gaping hole in her chest; it looked as if someone had shot her point-blank with a shotgun. Urine, tinted red, pooled around her corpse, and the summer insects buzzed about her, laying their eggs in her gray flesh.

  Jeremy covered his mouth as he moved deeper inside the station. Displays were overturned; coolers were left open or shattered, the aisles ransacked, and about the only thing left untouched was the cash register. Money had become just green paper again, useless. From what he’d seen in town so far, people took what they wanted or died trying.

  Jeremy searched the store and loaded a bag with everything useful he could find: a jar of peanut butter, a lighter, a few warm beers and some bottled water, a crushed loaf of bread. There wasn’t much left in the store, and it took a lot of effort to find even those few things. He also managed to find the store’s first-aid kit, buried under a pile of junk behind the main checkout counter. All in all, he considered himself very blessed.

  He unloaded his treasure into the truck and went back to the storage shed behind the station. He shot the lock off the door and took a jug and a siphon cable from inside. Maybe he couldn’t get gas from the pumps, but there were more than enough vehicles waiting out there; it wouldn’t be a problem.

  As he returned to the truck this time, h
e saw them coming down the road: five men and three women in tattered clothing. Their eyes seemed to glow yellow in the fading sunlight.

  Jeremy threw the siphon and jug into the truck’s bed and leapt inside the cab. As he locked his door and cranked the engine, the people broke into a run. He floored the gas pedal and squealed out of the parking lot without looking back. He drove for over ten miles before he stopped to get gas from a Buick, which lay stuck in a ditch by the roadside.

  As he waited for the jug to fill with gas, he wondered where he would go. If Canton was like this, he couldn’t imagine what Sylva must be like, much less Asheville. He thought hard about where he might be able to find help. Where the hell was a close enough place that might still be normal? He slumped against the side of the Buick in defeat, watching the road and tree line for any sign of movement.

  It popped into his head then like a bomb going off. All his life in Canton, he heard stories about a military base up in the mountains. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was called. Hell, he didn’t even know if it was real, but he knew roughly where it was supposed to be, and if anyone could get through this mess okay it would be the army.

  He snatched up the jug and yanked the siphon cable free of the Buick as he ran for the truck.

  10

  New York was a distant memory, something from a previous lifetime. Amy shook her head to clear her thoughts. In her sweaty palms, she clutched a M-16 rifle she had stolen from a long-dead looter; she and Katherine were hiding behind a stack of crates on the dock.

  Dan, God rest his soul, had driven them through the worst of it before he’d finally flipped out; Katherine had put a bullet in his skull. The boy, Jake, had died too. Apparently he suffered from some kind of asthma, and without his meds neither Amy nor Katherine had been able to help him. But all of that was the past now, clouded and murky like a fading dream.

  Right this second, they had other things to worry about. Amy glanced over at Katherine, crouched several feet away. There was no question of who was the leader. Katherine, Amy had discovered, was an ex-cop, and she was good at what she did.

  On the other side of the docks, a pack of human-creatures milled about, sniffing the air, occasionally turning on each other even as they stalked their prey.

  Coming to the docks had been Katherine’s idea. They’d noticed them from the interstate, and she had suggested they could find a boat and set out to sea, maybe find an uninhabited island and start over, just the two of them. Even with their limited supplies, it sounded like a great idea. Traveling by sea was much safer than any road on the mainland. Out there, the creatures could never reach them.

  Of course neither of them had planned on running into a pack of the creatures. Their new hope had blinded them, had made them careless, and now they were trapped, cut off from both the van and the boats.

  She and Katherine would have just killed them—they were both well armed with gear they’d found or lucked into along the way—but the pack was over two dozen strong and this was their hunting grounds. Lord only knew how many still lurked in the buildings. Hiding from them had become the only option, and even that had made things worse, giving time for more creatures to show up as the women waited for the first ones to wander off.

  Amy could see the strain on Katherine’s face. She couldn’t recall when either of them had last slept. Sweat glistened on Katherine’s tanned skin, and her glance said that this was it, the end for both of them. All that remained was deciding how they would die: either hide here and pray, or go out fighting to reach the van. Amy already knew what Katherine would choose, even as the ex-cop stood up with her shotgun and blew a hole in the nearest creature’s chest.

  Amy wanted to leap to her feet and help her friend, but she refused to believe that all their suffering had been for nothing. Deep down she wanted to live, and she was forced to admit that Katherine’s pointless exit strategy was just macho bullshit.

  Amy, still hidden behind the crates, watched the creatures charge toward them as Katherine pumped a round into her weapon and shot another psycho in its stomach, loosing its intestines onto the dock. Despite her bulging muscles, Katherine appeared helpless in the face of the horde closing in around her.

  With tears in her eyes, Amy turned away as the things reached Katherine and tore at her with their nails and teeth. She tried to block out the screams for help as she crept towards the edge of the docks and eased herself into the water below.

  Amy let the currents carry her into the dark beneath the planks, hoping the things would be too occupied with Katherine to search for anyone else. As far as she knew, they had not seen her.

  Katherine fell silent, and Amy began to weep.

  Hours later, when the sun had set and the docks had grown still, Amy hauled herself out of the water. None of the creatures had stuck around. Even Katherine’s body was gone, leaving only smears of blood where she’d fallen.

  Dripping wet and wrinkled from the water, Amy stumbled to the van, her muscles aching from hours of keeping her afloat. She carefully checked the vehicle to make sure nothing was waiting inside, then slid into the driver’s seat. She clawed the extra set of keys out of the glove box and shoved them into the ignition. The moment the engine roared to life she knew the creatures would come pouring out.

  She turned the key, and her heart froze as the van sputtered loudly without catching.

  Amy tried again as she noticed movement on the docks and in the shadows of the buildings; the night came alive with the sound of hungry howls.

  This time the engine turned over and she peeled out towards the main road, laughing hysterically as the van lurched over a speed bump, onto the interstate.

  Despite the wreckage and abandoned cars littering the roadway, Amy found her foot getting heavier and heavier on the accelerator. Adrenaline rushed through her exhausted body as she swerved this way and that, dodging obstacles. She felt free, as if she were losing her mind, and it was okay. It would have been so easy to just keep going faster and faster until her reflexes couldn’t keep up and she died in a fiery crash. It would be a better death than being ripped apart like Katherine.

  Amy reached to click on the radio, knowing she would only find static across the dial, but something flickered in the rearview mirror and caught her eye. The van almost collided with what was left of an overturned eighteen wheeler as she jerked upright in her seat.

  Slowing down, Amy studied the police car that had come up an exit ramp behind her to give chase.

  “What the hell?” She knew it wasn’t possible. Everyone in the world was either crazy from the effects of the wave, dead, or on the run like she was. Yet seeing the car’s flashing lights brought back feelings of hope. Maybe her flight was over and the officers would look out for her and take her somewhere safe. Maybe somehow in this city people had survived and organized.

  She brought the van to a stop as the police car pulled up beside her. Amy was in the process of rolling down her window as she glanced into the car. A man in a tattered uniform with yellow-tinted eyes stuck a .38 out his window and aimed for her head.

  “Oh God!” Amy snapped around to the steering wheel and rammed the gas pedal to the floor. The officer’s shot slammed into the van’s side just behind her door.

  “Oh God, oh God, they’re not supposed to be able to drive!”

  In the rearview, she saw the thing’s partner trying to lean out the passenger-side window to shoot at her.

  He’s going to blow out my tires, Amy thought. There was no way she could outrun them, not in this van, not with the roads the way they were. But the creatures could die—they were just people driven crazy by the wave—so she did the only thing she could think of.

  Making sure her seatbelt was fastened, she hit the brakes. Tires squealed as the van came to a halt—and the police car smashed into its rear.

  Despite her seatbelt, Amy was thrown forward. Her forehead struck the steering wheel and her world faded to black.

  #

  She
came to with a start. Something wet trickled down her face. Amy wiped at it and her hand came away covered in a warm, wet red. Her head was pounding, but otherwise she seemed okay. She reached over and dug a .45 from the glove box and unsnapped her seatbelt. When she opened the door, she sprawled out onto the road, unable to keep her balance.

  The police car was still there, a mass of broken metal wedged into the van’s rear. The driver was clearly dead; pieces of windshield glass jutted from his face, and his head dangled at an unnatural angle.

  Amy pulled herself to her feet and stumbled closer, holding the pistol ready. When she got close enough to see inside the car, she noticed the other officer’s bottom half resting in the blood-soaked passenger seat. The top half of his body was nowhere to be seen.

  She slumped to the ground beside the car. It was only a matter of time until more of the creatures came out of the night around her, but both the van and the car were totaled. She needed a plan. She couldn’t just sit there and wait to die, regardless of how much she hurt or how tired she was. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and it fought to wrap her in its embrace. She shook herself awake, and her head throbbed from a fresh burst of pain. Her only chance was to find a working car with the keys still inside.

  She got to her feet once more and walked down the interstate to start her search.

  11

  Geoff lay back against the tree trunk, perched high above the ground on a narrow branch, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He massaged the corners of his tired eyes with his finger, then blinked several times to clear his vision.

  Below him, a kid moved slowly up the mountain trail. Normally Geoff would have radioed the base to let them know and to get orders on what to do. Fuck that: normally he wouldn’t have been out here, risking his life to do the job of the base’s malfunctioned external sensors.