This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down

by Vocabulariast, The

  ****

  Lieutenant General McCutcheon was in the comms room when he heard Major Miller's panicked communiqué. It was hard to hear the words over the machine gun fire in the background, but he understood the gist.

  As soon as the Major was done talking, McCutcheon scrambled his troops. The choppers wouldn't be much use in the dark, but at the very least, they could get some of his men, and maybe the refugees out of there. McCutcheon stood on the apron of the terminal, squinting his eyes to protect them from debris as he watched the choppers take off.

  ****

  When the guitar-playing madman had first shown up, Blake had tapped Mort on the shoulder and pointed at a group of people hurrying away from all of the commotion. Blake hastily scribbled the words, "Let's follow," on a notepad. Mort nodded his agreement, and as usual, Blake took the lead.

  Blake had been mostly silent for the entire day. To Mort, he seemed like a man trapped inside of his own head, aching to get out but not knowing how. As far as Mort could tell, there was no improvement in Blake's hearing. But his eyesight was still 100%.

  Blake walked slowly ahead of Mort, his back hunched over, and his feet sliding silently across the concourse floor. Mort wondered exactly what it is they were doing. Blake hugged the wall, and Mort did the same. Ahead of them the group of people was moving much faster than they were. They watched as the group ducked into a side door. Blake held his hand up, and then, after a few seconds, he waved Mort on. They pulled open the door and crept down a set of dimly lit stairs.

  The emergency lighting made it difficult to see, and as they reached the bottom of the stairwell, Blake leaned around the corner. Mort leaned around with him, peering down the shadowy hallway of the lower level. If the upper-level could be said to be Spartan, the lower level made the upper level look absolutely cozy.

  The walls were white, criss-crossed with exposed wiring and the gleam of steel pipes. The ceiling was more of that cold concrete that made up the upper concourse, gray and spiderwebbed with cracks. At the end of the hall, just around the curve, they saw the group of people moving quietly down the hallway, purpose in their stride. Mort thought he recognized the doctor that had worked on Blake.

  They crept along until the group came upon a door. From down the hall, they heard a man say, "Let's bust this bitch wide open." Then there was a banging sound. The hall filled with a loud ringing that echoed off the concrete walls.

  Blake scribbled something on his notepad and handed it to Mort. For the last day, Mort had been communicating with Blake solely through writing. Mort was out of practice. He had never been much of a reader in school, and once he had hit the roads and railways, all he ever had a chance to read was random bits of graffiti splattered on the railway cars, and most of that was unintelligible. He took the notepad and read Blake's words. "What are they doing?" he had written.

  Mort took Blake's pen and wrote, "They're trying to break down a door." He handed the pad back to Blake, and he read the words. He shook his head, and they waited. There was a loud crash from around the bend; it sounded as if they had finally succeeded in breaking open the door. The voices down the hallway became more muted, and Mort assumed they had entered the room. He stepped in front of Blake and leaned around the curving wall of the concourse to see a soldier approaching the room from the opposite direction, his rifle in his hand.

  Mort leaned back, and listened. Blake grabbed his shoulder and held the notepad out to him. Mort scribbled "SOLJER" on the notepad and handed it to Blake. Around the corner, Mort heard a man, shout, "Freeze!"

  There were words from inside of the room, but Mort couldn't make out any of them. Without warning, Blake took off down the hallway, running as quiet as a man could in cowboy boots. The soldier heard Blake before he saw him, but by then it was too late. Blake dove and tackled the man to the ground, pressing the gun to his chest. They fought on the ground, and Mort cursed at his own cowardly paralysis.

  The swearing kicked him into action, and then he was there, right next to Blake. He didn't want to do it, and he felt awful about it, but he kicked the soldier in the head. The soldier went still immediately, his eyes rolling in the back of his head and his arms locking into a frozen position. Mort's hands came to his face, and he looked around apologetically. "I didn't want to," he said.

  The doctor came over and dropped to her knees. "Is he dead?" Mort asked.

  Blake stood up, pulling the rifle from the man's hands. He patted Mort on the shoulder and said, "Thanks."

  The doctor looked up at him, and said, "He's going to be alright, but his face will probably never look the same." Mort could already see the swelling on the side of the man's cheek. He didn't like what he had done, so he turned and focused on the room.

  The room was filled with all sorts of weaponry, guns, knives, even a couple of swords that had been confiscated from refugees. The group of people that they had followed were gearing up, picking up weapons, scrounging for ammunition, and shoving whatever they could in their pockets.

  "Hell yeah," Blake said as he strolled over to a table and lifted up a gunny sack full of weapons and peered inside. To Mort, he looked like a redneck Santa Claus. The bag was full of the weapons the soldiers had confiscated from Mort as soon as they had loaded Blake onto the helicopter. Blake set the bag on the floor and rooted through it. He smiled for the first time since he had lost his hearing as he held up his hunting rifle. He admired it as if he had just discovered the Holy Grail, and then he held it up to his lips and kissed it. Mort watched as he first loaded it and then flung the rifle over his shoulder. "Grab that bag, and pick out a gun, man," Blake said to him.

  Mort did as he was told, although he knew next to nothing about guns. A tall white man spoke to him as he attempted to load some bullets into a handgun. "You guys looking to get out of here?"

  Mort looked at the man, smiled, and said, "You show me the way, and I'm right there with you."

  "You know how to use that thing?" the man asked him.

  "Not really," Mort said.

  "Here," the man held out his hand, and Mort handed him the gun. He cocked the slide, showed Mort where the safety was, and then handed the gun back to him. "Just aim and squeeze."

  Blake stood guard at the door, his rifle in his hands. Mort was loaded down with a bag full of guns and ammo, and the gun in his hands felt like a living thing. He looked around the room and saw that everyone else was armed as well. Adrenaline shot through him, and Mort understood that this was the way out. This was how he was going to survive. He smiled in the gloomy room.

  "Let's go," the white man said.

  ****

  They followed him, weapons in their hands.

  On the main concourse, hell had erupted. Zeke and his group emerged from the lower level of the concourse to find it overrun with the dead. Outside, helicopters were firing into a seething mass of the dead. Inside, the dead were advancing. Soldiers who had spent all of their ammo were swinging their rifles like baseball bats. Refugees were pushing and shoving with their hands, trying to keep the dead off of them. Some of them were successful, most of them were not.

  The group attempted to head out of the main doors, but the mass of people there was too confusing, too mixed up with the dead. They couldn't even fire their weapons among all of the confusion. The emergency lights created shadows that made it hard to tell who was alive and who wasn't. They retreated in the other direction, heading to the backside of the Coliseum. Refugees and soldiers flooded around them, but the dead were not there yet.

  Zeke looked for an emergency exit sign. All thoughts of hopping in a Stryker went out the window the moment he saw the wall of dead that were coming their way. How many were there? He had no time to ponder the odds they were facing, as an emergency exit loomed ahead of them, its lights glowing red in the gloom of the concourse.

  "Hey!" a voice yelled as Zeke reached the door. Zeke spun around, the automatic rifle he had confiscated at the ready. It was Private Bryant. "Where are you going?"

&
nbsp; Zeke smiled at the man. "Away from here. If you were smart, you'd come with us."

  Private Bryant thought about it, but Zeke could see the duty in his heart tugging at the logic in his mind. "I can't," he said.

  "Suit yourself. Good luck," Zeke said as he kicked open the door to the emergency exit. With that, the group turned their back on Private Bryant, and pounded down a stairwell. Lou gave the Private a lone wave of thanks, and then the door clanged shut behind them.

  Zeke felt sorry for Private Bryant. He was, like a lot of the soldiers dying in the Coliseum, a good man. He would have been useful. But that was life in the military. He had his orders, and he was going to follow through on them. Zeke's only order was to keep himself alive. If he could save some others in the process, well, then that was good too.

  Chapter 34: Saint Bryant

  Private Bryant's last moments were a nightmare. He watched as the group disappeared through the door, taking with them his last best chance for survival. Other refugees fled through the door, but the majority ran wide-eyed into the arena. He knew that staying in the Coliseum was a death sentence, but he chose it anyway.

  Standing on the concourse, he pulled his M4 up to ready position as refugees flowed around him like a river. He called to soldiers as they ran past, and flicked the selector on his rifle to semi-automatic. Bryant looked down the sight of his rifle, and lined the red dot up with the forehead of an Annie. He squeezed the trigger, and its brains exploded on the concrete wall of the Coliseum. Another one took its place, and he fired again. Some running soldiers skidded to a stop next to him, and they did the same, his calm spreading to the soldiers around him.

  He concentrated on his breathing. Though his heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest, he breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, squeezing the trigger on the exhale. Still the tide advanced. The line of soldiers shuffled backwards now, the sound of rifle fire smacking off of the concrete walls, and he could hear nothing.

  He saw the emergency exit slide by on his right as he moved backwards. He should have gone with them; he saw that now. His rifle was empty, so he pulled the magazine out and slapped another one home.

  Private Bryant screamed and spun as he bumped into something behind him. It was another soldier. The dead had encircled the entire arena. The soldiers looked at each other, resignation in their eyes. On the other side of the soldier, another wall of the dead was approaching. They were going to be sandwiched between two masses of the dead. The soldiers funneled backwards through an entrance to the arena floor, their rifles firing away. They shuffled backwards down the stairs as the Annies advanced.

  If they had managed to kill with every single bullet they had, they might have had a chance, but they missed quite often. Bryant counted himself a fair shot, but he was only taking one down for every two shots fired.

  He looked over his shoulder as he backed down the concrete steps that led to the floor of the arena. He imagined that this was what hell looked like. The refugees, what few there were left, huddled in the center of the arena with no place left to go. All around the arena, the dead streamed in from the entrances. In the distance, they looked like trains of slow moving ants.

  Bryant and the other soldiers backed up, firing and killing as many of them as they could, but he could see that it wasn't going to be enough. His fears were confirmed when he pulled the trigger and nothing happened. He felt his pockets for a fresh magazine, but he had used them all up.

  The soldier next to him, tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a magazine. He dropped the spent one and slammed the last one home. The dead were hungry. They wanted him. They wanted them all. Bryant looked to the sky, begging for help from someone, anyone. God... the devil... a giant space peanut, he would take assistance from anyone or anything. There was no answer.

  Bryant spun on his heel, the rifle in hand, and he approached the refugees, leaving his brethren behind. "Who wants to die?" he yelled.

  The refugees looked at him, fear on their faces. Tears ran down their faces. A child clung to his mother's jeans. Then it dawned on the refugees exactly what he was offering. A woman raised her hand, and Bryant did what he had to do. He did what he was sworn to do. He protected the woman from becoming one of them. One squeeze of the trigger and she was saved. The refugees crowded around him, volunteering for the easy way out, volunteering to go to the afterlife with no blood on their hands, and without having experienced the painful sensation of human teeth tearing at their flesh.

  "You're a saint," they said as they lined up in front of the muzzle of his rifle.

  The line went quick, and when his rifle clicked empty he shrugged in apology at the remaining refugees. He looked around the arena and saw that they were surrounded. There was no way out. He flipped his rifle around, and swung at the first Annie that approached him. He connected solidly with the rifle, but the creature still came. He swung again, knocking it to the ground. His arms and hands stung from the impact.

  All around him, the people fought for their lives. He stumbled over one of the bodies he had executed, and went to the ground. The dead lay on top of him, grasping and squeezing at his body. He grit his teeth as they crushed his arms and legs in their fervor. Screams filled the arena floor, and then the lights went out for good as the emergency lights of the Coliseum died.

  Private Bryant heaved one last time, freeing himself from the Annie that was on his chest. He rose, kicking and punching. He didn't know if he was punching the living or the dead. None of it mattered. He walked over soft chunks of flesh, unmoving beneath his feet, pushing and shoving his way through the nightmare. Screaming among the screams. Grunting, heaving, fighting for every last breath. In the darkness a rifle exploded, and he moved toward the source of light. Someone was still alive. Someone was still fighting, just like him. Arms groped around him as he swam through the sea of the dead, towards the source of the rifle fire.

  "Fire in the hole!" a voice yelled, and there was a clank to his left. The world lit with a brilliant white light. He had no time to blink as shrapnel tore through his body. It was over quick. When he rose again, he felt no pain. He stumbled about in the darkness, hungry.

  Chapter 35: Into the Night

  Katie was in the middle of the pack. Behind her, she could hear Brian's labored breathing as they pounded down the stairwell. When they reached the bottom, they readied themselves, with Zeke taking the lead. Katie watched him, desire in her heart, as he pushed open the door.

  The door opened onto the loading docks underneath the backside of the Coliseum, and the sight was anything but calming. While not completely jammed full of the dead, it was going to be a tough slog to get out of there. They moved through the door, their feet shuffling them over the concrete. Zeke was the first to fire, and she saw one of the dead drop to the ground. As if he had given the order, the rest of the group opened fire as well. Katie brought up her handgun, the one that Fred Walker had given her, and she lined the sight up with the head of a hulking white man, his eye hanging by a scrap of flesh. Her shot missed the eye, but buried itself neatly in his forehead.

  They advanced through the covered area, mowing the dead down as if it were a walk in the park. Behind her, Katie could hear Brian's snot-nosed whelp shrieking in terror. She glanced over her shoulder to see Brian's sweaty face, shining in the moonlight, his child's face buried in his shoulder. The sound grated on her ears, and she wanted nothing more than to turn around and put a bullet through the brat's head. This wasn't a world for children. It wasn't a world for family either. She bit her lower lip and fired again, as the group stepped out from underneath the overhang of the loading dock's roof.

  The sky was clear, lit by a sliver of moon, which was good because the streetlights were out, and the city was a mass of darkness, seething with the dead. She shivered, as they shot their way through the throng of the dead surrounding the Coliseum.

  They were almost on the other side of the mass when disaster struck. The worried wailing and whimpering of
Brian's child had changed; it was now more of a shriek. She turned around to see Brian gnawing on the child's neck. Blood flowed from her wound, and his beard was turning a true red color. Without thinking, she aimed her pistol at his head and shot him dead. His long lanky body collapsed to the pavement, and the girl rolled from his arms.

  Blood shone black in the moonlight as Katie stood over the injured girl. Her teenage sister was there, placing her hands over the wound in her neck, and putting up a fuss. Katie looked around to see the others gathered in a circle, the dead approaching them. Their weapons were at their sides, and they all seemed lost. Katie did what she thought was right, what the cold-hearted presence that had taken root in her chest told her to do. She shoved the older girl to the side with her shoe, and then fired a bullet through the brain of her sister.

  "Let's move," she yelled, as if she had just stopped to tie her shoelace. The looks from the others in the group bothered her, but not enough to stand there and become a meal for the dead that were encircling them.

  ****

  Lou picked up Jane, pulling her away from all that remained of her family. Now they were just two more slabs of meat lying in the road. If he had been inclined, he could have left her there, and let the entire family tree turn brown and die right there. Yet, he didn't. He never wanted to see people hurt, and he had seen so much of it over the last couple of days. He grabbed the girl and threw her over his shoulder, where she lay like a dead fish sobbing her sister's name.

  He tapped Zeke on the chest as he ran by, and they moved through the crowd, firing into the dead. They were wandering, spun off from the Coliseum like a spark looking to take hold in the night sky, trying to find a place to light before it turned dark forever.