This Rotten World (Book 3): No More Heroes

by Jacy Morris

  The city around him was beautiful. The buildings stood broken and empty. Car wrecks were spread out in the streets like smashed bugs, their fenders and tires dotting the concrete like appendages ripped off by the dark kid who sat at the back of class and laughed whenever someone hurt themselves.

  He could see the top of Amanda's head fifteen feet below him. She would reach the ground before he did, and this is what caused him to speed his descent. He didn't want her standing down there by herself. She needed him to watch her back, and he owed it to her. Amid the sound of gunshots and the plaintive groans of the dead, the rope stripped the flesh from the palm of his hand, and then he landed on the ground with a thump, his knees buckling under him.

  He stood, ignoring the sting of his hand as he reached up to help disconnect Amanda from her rope.

  "Untie yourself!" Masterson yelled at Rudy. "You're wasting time! She can take care of herself. The soldier took aim at another of the dead and turned his brains into a red mist that exited out the back of his skull.

  With blood pouring from his hand, he untangled himself from the rope and then walked over to Amanda to help her.

  "I'm fine," she said. And she was. As soon as they were free, the ropes began to dance. Rudy looked upward to see Epps and Ramirez stepping into space, literally running down the side of the building like the overpaid actors of an action movie.

  "Holy shit!" Rudy said, pointing up at them so Amanda could see.

  When they got close to the ground, they pushed away from the building, spinning about so that they would land on their feet instead of their face. As soon as they touched the ground, the rope that Rudy had used to descend fell to the ground, severed at the other end by Tejada. Andy began coiling the rope, as Rudy and Amanda clung to each other.

  The dead did not seem so distant from this vantage point. In fact, they were closer than ever. The soldiers had begun to inch backwards, their circle tightening as the dead closed in. There were simply too many of them and not enough bullets to go around. Even if they had all the bullets in the world, there was no way that a handful of soldiers could bring down all of the dead before they were eventually overwhelmed.

  "Heads up!" Andy yelled as another rope tumbled to the ground. Then the last remaining rope began to jerk around like a living thing. Rudy looked up and watched as Tejada came sprinting down the side of the building, the rope laced around his body like a harness. He didn't even bother to hold the rope with two hands as everyone else had. In his left hand, he held a handgun, and he fired down into the mass of the dead.

  Rudy could smell the dead now. He could see their tattered bodies and ruined clothing up close and panic began to take hold. He looked around for a weapon, anything that he could use, but there was nothing. He had never felt so helpless in his life.

  Tejada landed on the ground with a thump. He pulled a knife from his belt and handed it to Rudy. "If they get close, stick 'em in the eye. You miss, you're dead."

  Rudy took the knife with gratitude, and then Tejada handed Andy a handgun. "You fuck up this time, and I'm never giving you a gun again," Tejada said.

  Andy nodded his head, a slow grin spreading across his face as he accepted the weapon. "We gotta move people!" Tejada yelled.

  And they did. They ran down the west side of Big Pink towards Burnside Street, circumventing the pile up that had initially ruined their escape. They picked off the closest of the dead as they moved. The soldiers were good; Rudy had to admit that. Their aim wasn't perfect, but it was certainly good enough to keep them from getting swarmed for the time being.

  They angled their way onto Burnside Street, and then they looked west, where the road rose to meet the hills that separated Portland from the suburbs to the west. Cars smoldered in the road, but for the most part it was clear, you know... if you didn't include the hundreds of dead bodies heading their way. There was no way they would be able to make it through the wall of dead in front of them. They were staring death in the face... only it didn't have one face anymore, it had hundreds.

  The guns around him fired nonstop. The noise was deafening. It was understandable that Rudy didn't hear Tejada's order to get down. One minute he was standing there, clutching Tejada's knife in his hand, and the next, Amanda was inexplicably pulling Rudy to the ground.

  "What's going—" he had time to say before the world erupted. Ahead of them, the bodies of the dead exploded in a shower of blood. Limbs flew through the air and Rudy saw it all as if in slow-motion. The blood geysering upwards as if Old Faithful had suddenly vented underneath the dead. Arms and legs and unrecognizable chunks of meat arced outward and then splattered the dusty pavement. He was amazed and horrified at the same time.

  Then Amanda was on her feet, pulling Rudy upwards as the soldiers picked themselves up. All except for the one they called Kazinsky. He tottered on his feet, wobbling back and forth like a drunk. He hadn't heard the order to get down either. He turned then, his scruffy mouth opening and closing as if he couldn't find the words to explain the shaft of bone that stuck out of his chest. "Sarge?" Kazinsky said, blood bubbling out of his mouth. Then the soldier fell to his knees.

  "We don't got time for this. Get through that breach!" Tejada yelled.

  Then they were running through the hole that Tejada had blown wide for them. Rudy flinched as Tejada executed Kazinsky on the spot, his handgun somehow sounding louder than all of the shots that had already been fired that day.

  "Watch your fucking ankles!" Epps yelled, and then Rudy saw why. The dead, though they had been blown apart, were still active. Heads attached to armless torsos gnashed at the soldiers' ankles as they picked their way through the mess.

  He watched as Brown kicked one in the teeth with his boot and sent the head spinning away across the pavement. Then it was his turn to pick his way among the dead. The pavement was slick, the way it gets when it rains for the first time in a couple of weeks. It made him recall one of his persistent nightmares from when he was a kid, the one where he was trying to flee a faceless human and no matter how fast he ran, he couldn't get any traction.

  But in the real world, he moved, kicking arms and legs aside and swearing under his breath. The gap that Tejada had created began to tighten as the still functional dead pursued them, and in a minute, maybe less, their route to freedom would be gone completely if they didn't get to the other side. The dead were not deterred by seeing their mates die. The dead did not stop to honor the fallen. They only had one thought, one wish... to feed.

  Ahead of him, one of the soldiers slipped in the mess. He fell flat on his back within arms' reach of the severed torso of a priest. As the clutching limbs of the maimed priest began to squeeze at his arms, he screamed a scream that sounded like it was being pushed out of him. Rudy heard his arm crack, and then the other soldiers were there, firing into the heads around him, sending up shards of pavement and bone. They lifted him to his feet, and his arm flopped around like it was made of rubber. The sight of the man's arm, flopping like a rubber chicken, sent chills up Rudy's spine.

  "Beacham's broken his arm!" Brown yelled.

  It didn't seem to bother Tejada. "Then give him his handgun. He can still shoot with one arm."

  Rudy's blood ran cold at the thought. There had been many times over the last month when the reality of this world had caught him by surprise, but the coldness of Tejada's words hit him hard. He had no time to dwell upon this as he focused on not slipping to the ground so that he might avoid the grasping arms and gnashing teeth on the street. He stifled a laugh as the thought crossed his mind that America had finally become a true melting pot, for on the pavement lay people of all races, creeds, and religions. Humanity was finally coming together... by being torn apart.

  When his feet hit dry pavement, he let out a breath that he didn't even know he had been holding. The voices of the dead sounded like a dry wind whistling through the night air, only louder and more persistent. It wormed its way into his ears, until he actively had to think about something else.
>
  He focused on Beacham, the soldier with the broken arm. It dangled at his side, swaying with each step. Beacham let loose a solid stream of swear words, unbroken and blistering, as he moved down the street. Swearing didn't matter anymore. No one looked twice at Beacham as the vilest string of profanity that Rudy had ever heard kept pouring from his mouth. He heard word combinations that would have made him laugh out loud just a couple of months ago, but now they were just something to file away for later use. Beacham, despite his broken arm, moved forward, keeping pace with the others. It were as if he were a steamboat, and his profanity was the coal that he used to heat up the engine.

  There were still sporadic dead ahead of them, and who knew how many more in the buildings around them, but they had busted through the heart of the city. He was still alive and so was Amanda. To Rudy, that was the most important thing.

  Rudy tossed a glance over his shoulder to see a mass as wide as the street advancing upon them from behind. At the feet of this mass, he caught a glimpse of several torsos dragging themselves along the road, their fingernails tearing off as they scrabbled at the unforgiving pavement.

  He focused on Beacham's swears... at least they came from something alive.

  Chapter 4: Burnside

  The gun in Andy's hand felt cold. It smelled of cordite and oil. But he loved it. He loved it the way a boy loves the first girl they ever kiss. He had pulled the trigger, oh, how he had pulled the trigger. He hadn't even flinched as the slide ratcheted back, quick as lightning, to eject a shell with each purposeful squeeze. He didn't flinch as fire erupted from the barrel of the gun.

  He couldn't afford to. He wanted to see it. He wanted to see them die. And while he had missed more times than he had hit, for a beginner, he thought he had done fairly well. He hadn't gotten impaled by bone shrapnel or broken his arm. That was something the soldiers couldn't say.

  Understanding, that's what had been missing. He understood now. He understood how this group worked. This group wasn't about friendships and relationships. It was about function. They did what they had to do to accomplish their goals. Just as he had done what he had to do to escape his home and the daily beatings the other boys in town had given him. It was no different. Leave town. Get a job. Become a man. He didn't do this because he wanted to, but because it's what he had to do.

  The men around him had done the same, all except for Rudy and Amanda. Amanda was a woman. Rudy, well, he wasn't exactly what one would call a man. They were more like lost little dogs he decided, pathetic, pitiable but expendable. If they died, there might be some tears, but in the end what did they actually lose? A couple of mouths to feed? Some dead weight?

  No, he was becoming. That was the only word he could think of to describe his newfound badassness. He was becoming. Becoming the man that the bullies back home would never let him be. Becoming self-sufficient, the way his father had never allowed. He was one of them. Maybe not entirely, but it was only a matter of time.

  If more of them died, that time would come even sooner. He felt bad for thinking like that, but the truth was the truth. A machine didn't lie. When a gear was stripped of its teeth, the machine stopped running. There was no crying about it. You just pulled the old gear out and put in a new one. He was the new gear. Shiny, new, capable. That's what he decided he was. When Tejada had put the gun to Kazinsky's head, it had crystallized this idea in his own head.

  As a boy in high school, he had read Jack Kerouac novels and fantasized about how one would develop the ability to think the way that the author did. How did one see through all the bullshit and come to realize the reality of things without judging? It was experience. Experience made the man, and for the first time in his life he was getting it.

  He didn't mind the screaming of Beacham. He didn't mind the fact that they were running out of bullets. He didn't mind the hundreds of dead that were following behind them, no more than an engine minds what car it has been put into.

  They passed by Powell's Books, and he remembered the world as it was, dirty... teeming with humans who were little more than wastes of time and space. He had been a fan of books, devouring cheap paperbacks hoping to find the secrets of life contained within. He had seen them, but he had somehow failed to notice the truths within. Hunter S. Thompson told him to live. Kerouac had told him to get out there. But had he listened? No, he had stared at the brush strokes but never succeeded in seeing the big picture. It was embarrassing, but better late than never he supposed. But he was getting it now.

  He remembered this bookstore. He remembered the promise held within. Powell's was the first place he had applied for a job. Living under a bridge, with a cell phone as his only proof of existence, he had waited a day for the bookstore to call him. They never did. Now they were all dead. He would like to think of it as karma, and he could almost trick himself into doing so if it weren't for the fact that everyone who worked at the place that had eventually hired him was dead as well. But fuck them too. None of them had even bothered to call the theater to see how things were going when the world started to fall apart. He couldn't blame them. It was a shit job, and he had only worked there for a couple of weeks. He hadn't even gotten his first paycheck yet. But still, there was a tiny part of them that hoped they all got what they deserved.

  You're being petty, Andy. It was the voice of his mother, the great socialite. He never could find the right balance of manners and machismo to please the woman. Neither could his father, which was why his dad had spent most of his waking hours out on the golf course or at work. But if she could see him now, a gun in his hand, trekking the earth while the majority of the world lay dead or dead-ish... what would she say? Maybe, for once, she would be proud of him. Maybe she would overlook the fact that he had had his ass kicked daily for a year by the sons of her other socialite friends. The nerve of him, showing up at one of her parties with a black eye.

  They passed by the book store, and he wondered if anyone would ever read a Kerouac book again? He certainly wouldn't. There was a crash from one of the buildings behind them, and a handful of the dead tumbled to the street.

  "They're falling out the windows!" Epps announced.

  "All the more reason to get the fuck out of this city," Tejada said, cool and calm. Andy filed away Tejada's tone and inflection in his brain as he maneuvered around a car with several flat tires and busted windows. Had the dead destroyed the car or had looters?

  They pushed forward, the road rising slightly. A small amount of smoky haze obscured the hills in the distance. They moved at a pace slightly quicker than a walk, and already Andy could see Rudy struggling to keep up. For his part, he did seem to be in better shape than he had been yesterday. The murderess, Amanda, held tightly to his arm. He wondered if they had fucked yet. He doubted it. He just couldn't picture that great ball of flab spreading that little girl's legs. The thought made him ill.

  What would happen to her if Rudy were gone? That would be an interesting predicament. Would she glob onto the next nearest man? Would she fall for him? He scoffed at himself. If there was one thing he knew, it was that no woman found him attractive. He had the stink of loser about him. Maybe that's why he liked Tejada so much. He was pure winner. Pure alpha male. Tejada, back when the world was still a thing, could probably pull a different girl every night if he wanted to.

  Andy felt himself getting angry again, his temper rose within his chest, and he raised his gun at the nearest dead thing. He pulled the trigger, but the handgun just clicked.

  "You gotta have bullets to make it work," Epps said.

  Why did everyone in this world talk to him like he was the village idiot? Andy just nodded and ignored the tiny knot of hate that had been planted in his brain. The knot was for Epps. If Epps was good, it wouldn't grow. It would just be a small dot in his brain. But if Epps ever said anything like that to him again, it would grow. And that would be dangerous for Epps.

  Tejada slammed a fist into Andy's chest. "Here. Load it up. Never know when you're going to need
it."

  Andy cupped his hands under Tejada's fist, and a handful of 9mm rounds clinked into his hands. He ejected the handgun's magazine, relishing the sound of metal sliding against metal, and then he fed the bullets into the magazine one by one. When the magazine was full, he slammed it home. He felt like James Bond, one of those alpha male assholes, and he liked it. Ahead and to his right, he saw a man that looked a lot like Rudy, tougher, more tattooed, but still doughy and pathetic looking. He was dead of course, but he still moved.

  Andy took aim with the handgun, squeezed the trigger, and smiled as the fat dead guy crumpled to the ground.

  "Nice shot," Tejada said.

  Andy tried to fight off the blushing, but it happened anyway. The other soldiers saw, and that only made him blush even more. Normally, he would berate himself for being weak, but it didn't matter now. They would all know how great he was sooner or later. He was betting on sooner. He was becoming.

  Buildings rose around them, and the noise of the dead trailing behind them echoed off the wall. The street was narrow, and the buildings were tall. He could see the dead at the windows now, looking down upon them like Greek gods from the top of Mount Olympus. They pressed against the glass, their hands banging upon the panes. The pounding combined with the moans of the dead behind them, and then a new sound began. It was the sound of breaking glass.

  "Get away from those buildings!" Tejada yelled. The survivors scrambled over the hoods of cars and around twisted and burned vehicles as the bodies tumbled to the ground, only to rise again with broken bones and smashed faces. In the middle of the road, they were safe from the plummeting dead.

  "Pick it up!" the soldiers yelled to each other, urging each other onward. The dead shambled after them, struggling to match the soldiers' speed. The soldiers executed the ones that were close enough, and onward they marched until they came to an overpass. Cars, trucks, and vans were parked bumper to bumper, and they had to split up to make their way through the maze of automobiles.