This Rotten World (Book 3): No More Heroes

by Jacy Morris

  Theresa was proud of this fact. It was plain to hear in her voice. Joan was unimpressed. They had simply relocated a trailer park to the middle of nowhere. "Did you ever think about going to the coast?"

  "What for?" Belle guffawed. "You in the mood for some clam chowder?"

  The two cackled like witches, loud and obnoxious. Joan envied them this freedom. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed as hard as the two ladies had, over a poor joke even. She also envied their relaxed nature in general. She had seen too many horrors in the last couple of months. Even now, she felt like she should be on top of the trailers with Clara making sure that none of the dead breached the walls.

  These two had seen none of that. They had stayed with these men and played house. That's why they could laugh like that. She sat there through the night, listening to them go on and on like a couple of madwomen, talking about things that didn't matter anymore. They were content. They were happy, but Joan was none of these things. Lou's words ran through her mind, and she worried for him. Even if he survived his burns, he would be a blind man in a world where the dead could appear as if by magic.

  She watched as Clara and Chad jumped down from the barricade. She followed him from the corner of her eye. The man disappeared into the shadows that surrounded the trailer she had been living in for the last day. She wanted to scream at Clara to stop him, but she knew that would just get them both in hot water.

  Instead, she had to do the harder thing. She had to sit there and pretend like that man wasn't going to go in there and kill Lou. But she knew that was what he was doing. She knew that she was sacrificing Lou for herself and Clara, and she hated herself for it. She despised this place. She wanted to see it burn to the ground, with these cackling heifers sizzling in the middle.

  As she cleaned and bandaged Clara's hands, tears sprang to her eyes, but she willed them away. When she was done, she stared into the fire, and when the men atop the trailers called a halt to the work, she sat there meekly as they told their stories. They made themselves sound like conquering heroes; Achilles and Hercules had nothing on these men. They did not fear the dead. They made the dead their "bitches," as they were so fond of saying.

  As Chad reappeared, Joan swallowed the words she had in the back of her throat. She swallowed the hate that flowed in her gut and threatened to suffocate her. She smiled at Clara as if everything were ok, though it wasn't. Later, as the men smoked dope and most of the women went to bed, Belle and Theresa carried Joan back to her trailer. Clara followed along, her spear long since put away. There was no need of it, after all.

  Belle and Theresa continued their inane chatter. "Dale's going to want a piece of me tonight, I bet," Theresa said. Joan wondered which one was Dale. Was he her brother too? Who else would want a piece of these ogres?

  "Oh, you wish," Belle said.

  "You're just jealous because no one wants a piece of you," Theresa shot back.

  But that wasn't entirely true, and as Theresa yanked open the door to the trailer, someone did take a piece of Belle. It was Lou, on his feet, groping with his hands. He found Belle's long greasy hair, and Joan was dropped unceremoniously to the ground. Belle's screams were not unlike the cackles she and Theresa had shared earlier, loud and insane. But this time, the pain came through. This time, Belle saw the horror that she had been missing out on within the cozy confines of the compound.

  Then Joan screamed in pain as she was yanked backwards by her hair. Her hands shot up to grab the fists knotted in her hair, and this lessened the pain somewhat. She looked up to see Clara pulling her backwards, and she knew she was going to be alright.

  The men came rushing, coughing up marijuana smoke, their faces red, their eyes uncomprehending, all except for Chad. He knew what was waiting in that trailer. He knew Lou was dead because he had killed their friend himself. He rushed past Clara and Joan, spear in his hand. Men raised burning sticks high, as Chad rushed in, a dashing hero to them, an evil villain to Joan.

  By firelight, Chad jammed the spear through Lou's skull. He fell to the ground, his face covered in blood. Belle got up screaming. Her large, floral print muumuu was covered in her own blood, and she screamed and screamed. And for the first time in a long time, Joan laughed a laugh that could not be contained, a big throaty chuckle that contained within it all the irony the world could muster.

  Later, the men, disturbed by her callousness, would explain it away as a sort of delirium, a woman's weakness at seeing violence. But in their hearts, they knew the truth. Their new doctor had no love for them and would be happy to see them all die.

  As Belle was led away, Chad ordered two men to bring the doctor. Joan laughed as she was picked up and carried into the big house. She laughed as the men set her down. Chad slapped her hard across the face, and Joan tried to kill him with her eyes.

  "Save the baby," Chad said.

  "It's already dead," Joan replied.

  "Save it, or your friend is next."

  Joan looked to Clara who had followed her into the house. "I'm going to need some things."

  "You name it," Chad said.

  She listed off the things she would need, and then the men went to work sterilizing her tools. Belle screamed the whole time, and from another room, Joan could hear another woman cussing up a storm.

  "Shut that fucking hog up!" the voice screamed.

  When she had everything she needed, she went to work.

  ****

  Clara crawled into bed after Joan. It had been a long procedure, bloody, brutal, and one-hundred percent futile. The tools that the men presented her with were nothing like the sort Joan had needed to try and successfully do what needed to be done. They were sterile though, not that it mattered. Halfway through the procedure, Belle had passed away. They tied her arms and legs as her body cooled, so that her corpse, when it reanimated, wouldn't attack them.

  The baby had been born stillborn. It was a boy. It did not come back to life. Joan was thankful for that. Whatever this disease was, it was not present in the newborns. Whether they would carry it once they were born into the world was another mystery that would have to wait. Clara guessed that it would. The disease was in all of them. Each of them, when they died in their turn, would reanimate again... but at least a fetus was still protected from this hell by the barriers between mother and child.

  "They killed Lou," Joan said.

  The words didn't surprise Clara. She had noticed Chad's absence, and she had known it was no good.

  "They were the ones that threw him into the fire," Joan said.

  Clara squeezed her eyes shut. A cocktail of emotions flooded her system. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. But most of all, she just wanted this nightmare to be over with. They were dropping like flies here, and now there were only four of them left, if Katie and Mort were still out there somewhere. Who knew? By now they could be dead as well. They might be the only ones left.

  One thing she knew was that they couldn't stay here. "We have to get out of this place."

  Joan sniffled in the dark, and then she spoke. She sounded tired, beat down. "We can't leave. I can't survive out there with my leg like this. Even if the roads were clear, I wouldn't be able to go more than a mile a day, and the roads aren't clear. They're clogged with cars and the dead."

  "I know." She had known all the reasons why they couldn't escape before Joan had even said them.

  "What are we gonna do?" Joan asked.

  "We're going to do the only thing we can do." She placed her hand on Joan's shoulder. "We're going to survive." In silence, they shed their tears for Lou.

  Chapter 15: The Journal

  Tejada sat on the lawn of the Nike campus. In his head, thoughts rolled around like thunderheads. There was definitely a storm coming. The only question was, could he ride the lightning and bring his men out unharmed on the other side.

  The biggest problem so far had been his loyalty. His men came first; there was no question about that. But after that, how important was an
yone else? He had meant it when he had said there were no heroes anymore... but did that mean that he shouldn't try? Were the people of the Nike campus expendable? Could he do what thousands of generals over the history of humanity had done to survive and just take what he wanted and not give a fuck about who he was taking it from?

  He shook his head. First thing was first. Time to clear out the armory. His sources had collected enough information that Tejada had been able to fill in the blanks. Soon after the shit had hit the fan, the security had turned on the regular civilians of the Nike campus. Nike had set it up so that they all died, chewed to death by their own men in their sleep. How he had accomplished the particulars of that feat was still a mystery, but the word was that Nike's goon Harper had a hand in it. He suspected some sort of drugging. There was no way that a security force, no matter how shitty would just keep sleeping while their fellow guards were killed. The dead did not maintain operational silence... they caused fear and screams wherever they went. Even if they had been that shitty, there wasn't a single person left in this world who wasn't a light sleeper. It just didn't add up.

  That meant that Nike had his supporters, his conspirators. The only question was, what would happen to these people once they left? Tejada and his soldiers would leave; that was a certainty. This place was a dead zone. Those walls wouldn't last forever, not if the dead from Portland made it this way. They would eventually, he was sure of that. It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow, but someday, the million dead bodies that were in and around Portland would show up on the doorstep, and then those walls weren't going to be worth a piss in a hurricane.

  "We're ready, sir."

  Tejada pushed himself up off the ground. His bones were sore. It wasn't just fatigue; it was a result of getting old. He had aches now, constant aches in his shoulders and hips. Some mornings were better than others, and today wasn't one of the good ones. Christ, will I even live long enough to get old?

  "Let's move 'em out."

  The men walked across the courtyard, heading to the former security building. In their hands, they held baseball bats, liberated from the Ken Griffey Jr. tribute wall. They weren't doing anyone any good stuck to the wall, and half his men had no ammunition, and the other half were nearly out. Tejada hoped that they would be able to restock in the armory of the security building, but first they would have to clear the damned thing out.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw a man rushing up to him. It was Nike. He was trying to make it look like he wasn't in a panic, but Tejada suspected the last time that man had moved that fast was some time ago.

  "Sergeant? Sergeant, I need to talk to you!"

  "So talk," Tejada said.

  "Just what do you think you're doing?" Nike asked indignantly. Tejada had heard that type of voice many times over the years. It was a politician's voice, a voice used to thinking they were the brightest, smartest, and best person in the room. Tejada knew that Nike was none of these things. He knew that Nike was a piece of shit.

  He stopped his walk across the campus. His men kept going, but Tejada wanted Nike to see his face when he talked. "We're going to clear out that security building. You said you wanted our help here, well, we can't do that without weapons. So there it is."

  "You can't do that," Nike said.

  "And why the hell not?"

  Nike was flustered. He fumbled for an answer, and the one that he came up with was about as useful as a dick on a toadstool. "Because you're putting us all at risk."

  Tejada nodded as Rudy and Amanda walked past, baseball bats twirling in their hands. "At risk?" Tejada could hardly believe the temerity of the man. "At risk? Motherfucker, you're at risk here every second of every day. Did you not learn anything from what happened the other night? Each one of these buildings is an abscess, an infection, and if we don't fix it up now, sooner or later this whole place is going to die, including your pampered, spoiled rotten ass." Tejada said this last part so loud that the civilians that watched couldn't help but overhear it. Some of their hands went to their mouths, but most of them seemed satisfied with it. They didn't want Nike here anymore than Tejada did, not all of them. Tejada suspected that wouldn't be a problem for very long.

  "You're making a mistake," Nike said with finality.

  "Sometimes you have to." With that, Tejada turned his back on the man and caught up with his soldiers.

  "You going in with that bowling ball, Walt?" Tejada asked.

  The young man smiled at him, hefted his bowling ball and said, "Bowling balls don't break. Baseball bats do."

  It was good logic. Tejada had Masterson go and pull a dozen more bats off the wall, just in case. He came back carrying them like an armload of firewood.

  "Anyone breaks a bat, don't be a hero. Hightail it back here, grab another and get back in line. You got that?"

  "Yes, sir," came the chorus.

  "Would you do the honors, Nike?"

  Nike stepped forward, the keycard around his neck held in his hands. "You're making a big mistake."

  "He heard you the first time, asshole," Whiteside said.

  Nike bent down and placed the keycard over a nondescript square reader, then he backed up. As he passed Tejada, the sergeant snaked a hand under the lanyard around Nike's neck. "I'll take that," Tejada said. Nike didn't argue. The dead were already at the doors.

  "Alright, open it up!" Tejada yelled as Nike turned and ran.

  Rudy, their heaviest man let the door open a crack, and one of the dead stumbled out. Rudy and Masterson pushed the door closed, and it locked with a click. The dead man had that military look about him. Large chunks of flesh were missing from his neck and arms, but he was mobile enough.

  "Come and get it, motherfucker," said Gregg as he moved backwards, drawing the dead man's attention away from Rudy. The zombie stumbled after him as Gregg danced backwards, watching each step as he backpedaled down the small flight of steps that led up to the building.

  "Batter up!" Tejada yelled.

  Whiteside ran forward, baseball bat at the ready as the dead man hit the last step. He took a swing and the dead man rocked sideways, somehow still standing on its feet. Whiteside danced away.

  "Next batter!" Tejada shouted.

  This time Brown ran up. He clocked the damn thing so hard one of the dead things eyeballs popped out of socket. It crumpled to the ground, and a cheer went up from the onlookers behind them. Tejada smiled and waved at them.

  "Get him out of there!" Tejada yelled.

  Amanda and Allen, wearing yellow rubber gloves that went up to their elbows, pulled the man off to the side.

  "Check its pockets, then douse the motherfucker," Tejada snapped at them.

  The two rifled through the man's pockets, producing a lighter, some loose rounds of ammunition, a pocket knife, and a pack of smokes.

  "We got smokes!" Whiteside yelled.

  "Don't get too excited. No one touches anything until that building is cleared," Tejada said. Whiteside's head dropped, but he was raring to go in the blink of an eye.

  Amanda and Allen had finished going through the man's pockets. They doused his body with gasoline and then lit him up. Inky black smoke spread into the air. Allen looked at it going into the sky. Tejada wondered what he saw with that poet's brain of his.

  Tejada shouted, "Send out the next one, Rudy!" He tossed the key card to Rudy, and he looped it over his neck. He bent down and touched the card to the reader, there was a small click, the door opened, and another Annie came shooting out the gates.

  "You want some of this? Come on, ugly!" Epps yelled at it, leading it down the steps.

  "This one's yours, Walt!" Tejada yelled.

  Walt, his skin brown from the sun, stepped up, twirling the bowling ball as if it were nothing more than an orange on a string. He changed the direction of his twirling and then suddenly, the eight-pound ball was crushing the side of the dead man's head. It dropped to the ground, and Amanda and Allen dragged it out of the way.

  "Home run! Nice
one, Walt!" Day yelled, and he held out his hand for a high five, which Walt gleefully returned.

  Brown chided Whiteside. "See that, hillbilly? One swing. You think you can do that?"

  "Oh, bring it on! Most homers gets them smokes," Whiteside said.

  Things continued that way for some time. A pile of possessions accumulated on the ground, and more smoke filled the sky. His men were having a good time, perhaps too good. Tejada turned around for a second to keep an eye on what was going on behind him. He saw the Nike residents standing there, their hands shading their eyes in the midday sun. The look on their faces did not match the looks on his men's faces. They were not celebrating; they were not having a good time. They were revolted.

  Tejada sucked on his teeth, and he wondered if he should give a fuck. There was going to be a lot more revolting business before this was all over and done. There were at least 15 buildings to clear out before Tejada would call this place safe, well, fifteen buildings and a couple of rats.

  He supposed it was his training that made him reign the men in, that and a little embarrassment. These people had been human after all, and they had made a game of killing them. "Alright, let's tone it down a bit! We got an audience."

  His soldiers looked over their shoulders at him, but they nodded. The hooting and hollering stopped, and they were serious once again.

  Another hulking man stumbled out the door as Masterson pushed it shut behind him. Whiteside stepped up and swung his bat. It broke across the man's giant skull, but the man kept coming. "Aw, hell no," Whiteside said.

  Tejada could see what he was going to do next, and he yelled at his man. "Leave it, Whiteside!"

  Whiteside took the broken handle of his bat and ran at the dead man. He jammed the sharp end of the bat into the creature's face, but he missed anything brain related. The Annie wrapped two gray hands around Whiteside's throat and squeezed, despite the baseball bat sticking out of its mouth. Whiteside's eyes bulged out of his head, and Tejada pulled his pistol from its holster. He took the shot, and the big man fell backwards, his hands locked tight around Whiteside's neck. Whiteside fell on top of him, pummeling the man with his fists. His face was turning blue.