This Rotten World | Book 4 | Winter of Blood

by Morris, Jacy

  "Aren't you going to help them?" Nathan asked, gesturing vaguely towards the wall where he had left Amanda. "They could be coming back any minute now."

  Diana regarded him with a cold glare but said nothing.

  He began to backpedal, and a feeling settled into the pit of his stomach. He turned, ready to take flight as Diana and her goons advanced on him.

  A loud bang behind him caused him to jump. He turned to see another group of people, armed and grim, filing in through the door he had used to enter the pool. He was trapped between the two groups.

  "Hey, come on now. This isn't funny," Nathan said, eyeing the guns trained on him. He spun, looking at one group and then the other. "Why are you doing this?" he pleaded. He moved inch by inch, keeping himself perfectly between both advancing groups. Their silence was maddening. Finally, he stopped turning and stared at Diana. She was in charge here. She was the one he would have to get through to. "They need our help," he said to her.

  She didn't acknowledge him, advancing, her boots clomping on the cold concrete that surrounded the pool.

  "They saved us! They taught us how to survive!"

  Diana stood in front of him now. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and jerked him to within inches of her face. "The key-word is 'taught,' Nathan. 'Taught us,' as in past-tense. There's nothing left to learn from them. We don't need them anymore."

  She paused then, and by staring into her cold, dark eyes, he was able to form a psychic connection with her. He knew what came next. He read it in her mind.

  With a voice like a glacier, she said, "And we don't need you." She spun him around, so his back was to the pool, and then she pushed.

  His eyes grew wide as he went weightless. He fell backward, his arms pinwheeling in the air. Then he landed with a crunch. The back of his head bounced off the concrete, and he felt everything go black. He wasn't even awake as Diana ordered her men to fire. Several rounds ripped through Nathan's body, several ricocheted off the tiles of the pool, cracking them and spraying porcelain shards into the air, but one round hit home, and without an ounce of pain, Nathan died, permanently.

  Diana said nothing. That was one nuisance that was gone. As far as she knew, there was only one more remaining on the Nike campus. In less than ten minutes, that one would be gone too.

  ****

  Amanda saw the flare in the sky a few minutes before she heard the faint echo of gunshots from across the Nike campus. She froze, literally and figuratively, the metal coping she straddled cooling the inside of her thighs and her crotch until she was almost numb down there. Her mind locked up as she went through all of the possible explanations for the gunshots.

  Her mouth opened and closed as if it had the answers that her mind couldn't supply. They would be here any second now, Rudy and the others.

  She looked down below her at the mass of dead that had gathered upon seeing her atop the wall. Panic filled her body and her mind. Escape. That was all she could do at this time… get out and away. She should have brought her own rifle. She hadn't practiced with hers as much as Rudy had, and despite knowing all of the things that could have gone wrong, she inexplicably had left her rifle back at the guard building. This was too fast, too soon. It shouldn't be happening like this. But it was, and like a child swallowing their medicine, she gulped the thought down and made it part of her understanding of the world.

  "Ok, ok." She nodded to herself and decided to do the only thing she could do. She waited. Maybe it wasn't as bad as she feared. Maybe she was just overreacting. She divided her attention between scanning outside for Rudy and looking inside for Nathan or, worst-case scenario, Diana and her followers. Back and forth she looked, hoping that she'd see Tejada's square head appear at any moment.

  But Diana appeared first, her and eight, rifle-toting Nike employees. They strode across a once-manicured stretch of grass. The length of a football field was all that lay between Amanda and the building Diana had exited. They could shoot her at any moment if Diana gave the word. And then she'd fall, outside the wall and into the waiting hands of the dead. Hell of a way to go, she thought.

  She turned to scan for Rudy and the others one last time. Nothing. There was nothing, just the dead, grunting and growling to get at her, her foot hanging just out of their reach.

  She turned and looked at Diana. Her group was closer now, close enough that Amanda could see the look on her face. It was not the look that one would want to see on a potential enemy. She actually smiled, a quirk of a smile, and Amanda knew that she had to go. Though she couldn't see Rudy and the others, she had to go. Weaponless and alone, she had to get out, or she would be dead.

  Amanda looked down at the dozens of the dead that had gathered around her position. That way was no good. Then she scanned the wall all around her. She spotted one area that had potential, a small hillock within jumping distance of the wall. If she could make the jump from the wall to the top of the hill, she would have a chance.

  She leaned over and braced her hands against the cold metal coping of the wall. She pushed upwards, pulling her legs up behind her. The top of the wall measured about half-a-foot in width. If it was a piece of wood on the ground, she would have no trouble running along it. But as she looked down at the cold metal below her, she couldn't filter out the ground on either side. If she fell to her left, she would be devoured by the dead. If she fell to her right, Diana would devour her just as surely.

  They were closer now, Diana and her goons. She might have waited too long. She took a breath and ran forward, rushing along the slick, metal coping. Blood pounded in her head, but the noise wasn't loud enough to drown out the gunshots of Diana's goons. She heard the bullets whizz by her, or maybe she imagined it. Either way, she was moving; she was doing it. A hundred feet, that's all it was, a hundred feet along a span that was an inch or two wider than her feet.

  She didn't notice anything now, just her feet running along the metal. She didn't hear Diana's shouted command to "Kill that bitch!" She didn't see the dead as they turned and stalked behind her, pushing and bumping into each other as their prey escaped like a squirrel running on top of a fence to escape a barking dog.

  Then, without warning, she looked up and realized it was time. She had made it halfway at least. She launched herself at the hillock, her heart leaping into her chest. She landed with an "oomph" as the last rifle shots echoed on the other side of the wall.

  She pushed herself to her feet, too scared to do an inventory on her own health. She ran down the other side of the hill, never pausing to look back. She had to see where she was going. If the dead were going to get her, they were going to get her, and looking back would only slow her down and make that prospect more likely.

  She ran then, weaving in and out of the dead, her boots sinking into the snow. Thank God I dressed for the weather. Of course, her clothing would be part of the issue if she didn't find the others soon. Her jacket was heavy and bulky, and she felt like she was roasting inside of it. Her boots were waterproof, heavy, and she felt like she was running with ten-pound weights on her feet. Her breath already came in ragged gasps. With twenty clear feet of level grass ahead of her, she risked a look over her shoulder, and she fought the urge to throw up.

  The dead were coming. Even if she found the others, they were going to have a hell of a time losing that tail.

  When she turned back around, she skidded to a stop. The rifle was the first thing she saw. Then she scanned upwards to find Epps' beautiful face. She bent over and laughed, snot spraying from her nostrils.

  "We ain't got time for that, girl," Epps called. "Get your butt over here."

  ****

  Tejada cursed under his breath. He knew it was coming; he wasn't really surprised, but their timetable had been forced up considerably, and they weren't as prepared as they ought to be. They walked quickly, checking their shots, saving precious ammunition for the dead that actually posed a threat. Ammo was going to be a problem now.

  There was a part of him that
wanted to burn the Nike campus down. It wouldn't be too difficult to get themselves a vehicle, line it up, and knock down that wall. It was the least that they deserved for trapping them out here. Their chances of survival had been diminished significantly since that morning. Underprepared, undersupplied, and with no place to go, his first reaction was to kill them all.

  He listened to Amanda's gasping report about how Diana had pulled the men away from the wall, about how she and Nathan had dragged the ramp all the way to the other side of the campus, and about how Diana had appeared, armed with a goon squad. It was a shame about Nathan. He was almost certainly dead, a good guy, albeit he would have been next to worthless outside the wall. He didn't have it, didn't have what it took to make it.

  Tejada's brain turned like a waterwheel driven by a current of outrage and indignation. After all we did for them… the ungrateful bastards.

  "What are we gonna do?" Masterson asked.

  Tejada eyeballed him from the corner of his eye. Masterson had eyes like a scared horse, wide and scattering back and forth as if the dead could appear out of thin air. They had no place to go. His men were scared. Revenge, taking down the Nike campus could cost him more men than he was willing to lose, and he wasn't willing to lose any.

  He swallowed it. He swallowed the hate and the rage he felt for Diana and her people. She was nothing. Their lives were everything. They could all conceivably live if they ignored the Nike campus. But some of them would assuredly die if they went after them. "We turn the other cheek," Tejada said in response to Masterson's query.

  From behind him, he heard the expected gasp of Whiteside. "Turn the other cheek? Fuck that, I say we frag 'em all."

  "They've got guns now, and they kind of know how to use them," Tejada said. "What do you want? Revenge or to keep breathin'?"

  That shut Whiteside up, and no one else raised any objections. "No. We were gonna leave anyway. We're on the road a little sooner than I wanted, but this was always the plan."

  "So, what are we gonna do?" Epps asked, before hocking a gob of spit into the snow.

  "We're gonna go shopping," he said.

  Chapter 3: Old Wound Burning

  Joan was glad she couldn't see the grave buried under all the snow. For the thousandth time, she thought, All that work, and she couldn't be saved. She felt the loss of Clara deeply, as she probably should have felt the loss of her parents and other members of her family. But she hadn't seen them. She hadn't known how they died. They could still be alive somewhere for all she knew.

  She hadn't seen Clara's death, either. But she had seen the aftermath. Clara's death, after they had successfully rescued her from being buried in the ground, had hit her harder than anything so far. She thought of all those they had lost, Zeke, Lou, Blake, Clara, maybe Mort. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the tears in her eyes to go away. She didn't want the others to see.

  Their camp consisted of six people now. They held a tenuous peace at best. The only reason she was still alive was the fact that she was a doctor. Every single person in the camp besides herself was pregnant, and she would be needed during the births. Those were still a month or two away, but she would be needed. The only thing was, she didn't know how many of them would still be alive in a month or two.

  Besides herself, the camp consisted of four pregnant ladies she knew next to nothing about, and Katie, another pregnant lady that she had been with since near the beginning. Tammy sat in a lawn chair, her naturally curly blonde hair forming a wild afro around her head. Bits of grass bobbed in her hair, giving it the appearance of a bird's nest. Tammy had said next to nothing to Joan since the whole compound had gone to shit. Joan knew that she and Katie were to blame for that blank look on her face. With their men gone, Tammy and the other women had sunk into a depression.

  Liz, the woman to Tammy's left, held a spear in her hands and stared off into space. The wood at the end of the spear had been stained red from killing the dead. Every day, she climbed on top of the trailers and killed the dead. When one of the dead would come calling, banging on the thin metal walls of the trailers, she was the first one to waddle to one of the ladders. Her belly was swollen with child, and she said she would be due in a month. Joan watched her absentmindedly scratch a large brown mole on her cheek.

  Joan had lost track of time, but these ladies seemed to do nothing but talk about it. They had target dates and calendars on their minds. Every day for them was another day closer to giving birth. Then they wouldn't need her anymore. After the children were delivered, she would be expendable.

  She knew this was the case, mostly because Theresa was still alive. Out of all the women that could have died the night they took over the compound and rescued Clara, temporarily, Theresa was the one that Joan would have volunteered. Theresa wore her emotions on her sleeve. She was a livewire, a white-trash timebomb without a filter. Over the last month, Theresa had threatened to kill her no less than a dozen times. These threats seemed to come out of nowhere.

  One time, they had all been eating a meal of creamed green beans, straight from a can, when Theresa had paused in her meal and looked across the fire, locking eyes with Joan. "I should kill you right now," she said.

  "Then why don't you?" Joan had asked. She would not let Theresa bully her. The others around the campfire didn't stand up for her, didn't say a word. This included Katie and Dez, the two crazies of their group.

  Theresa had thought long and hard, the fire dancing off her eyes. "That would be too easy for you, I think." And with that, they had all gone back to eating, each of them lost in their own thoughts.

  A touch on her shoulder broke her out of her thoughts. It was Katie, one of the two crazies. "You, ok?" she asked.

  "What? Oh, yeah. I was just thinking." Truth was, that's all Joan really did these days. Her leg prevented her from doing much else. "Can you help me up? I wanna go inside. I'm freezing." Katie, without a smile or any reaction at all, held out her arm. Joan propped her spear on the ground and pushed herself up, gasping in pain.

  She tried to keep still for much of the day; her leg had healed badly after being broken. She feared it would never be a hundred percent. Back in her doctor days, if she had seen a case like hers, she would have recommended re-breaking the leg and setting it properly. But that was not how the world worked anymore. Now, she took what she got. She would most likely have a limp for the rest of her days, and if she wanted to walk any more than a few dozen feet, she would need a cane.

  With Katie's help, she was able to hobble to the abandoned ranger station that she temporarily called home. The inside of the station was a wreck, and it was only barely warmer than the snow-covered exterior of the compound. The rickety walls let in a hundred drafts, and Joan always had the distinct feeling that the building could collapse at any time.

  In the darkness of the cabin, she could hear the giggling of Dez, the last pregnant lady in their group and the furthest along in her pregnancy. She was also the person that, from a doctor's standpoint, Joan worried about the most. Something had snapped in Dez. Her "husband," although Joan gathered that they had never been formally married, had tied her to a bed for weeks upon learning that Dez intended to harm the baby growing inside of her. Even now, Joan expected to find Dez lying in a pool of her own blood any day now. She was as mad as a hatter.

  She spent most of her day carving swear words into the wooden walls of the back room of the ranger station. The only time she ever came out of there was to use the latrine or eat a bird-like amount of food. Any other time, she would be in her room, muttering to herself, and carving "fuck" for the thousandth time in the walls. She was really getting quite good at it.

  Katie ushered Joan to the room that they shared in the ranger station, and Joan groaned as she laid down on the bed. At night, Katie and Joan would take turns sleeping in case one of the pregnant women decided they weren't needed anymore. The tension of not knowing when the others were coming for her gave her a headache. She had broached the topic of leaving wi
th Katie several times, but Katie's reasoning was sound, even if she, herself, was not. Katie was somewhere in the range of eight months pregnant. Joan could barely walk without help. The weather was terrible, and they could freeze to death. Neither of them was in any condition to hunt, and the dead were all around them. It was a solid list of reasons, and any one of them could be the end of them outside of the compound's walls. Combined, she knew that she really didn't have a choice in the matter

  But that didn't stop her from dreaming of it. She wanted out, and there were days where she didn't care how it happened or what the consequences would be. But Katie remained solid in her refusal, and without Katie, she would have no chance on her own unless she intended on limping all the way to the ocean on her own.

  "Are you gonna be alright?" Katie asked.

  Joan nodded and propped her spear against the bed within easy reach.

  Katie nodded and turned to leave.

  "Where are you going?" Joan asked, her eyelids already feeling heavy.

  "I gotta get some firewood. We're running low."

  "Be careful out there," Joan said.

  Katie closed the door without responding. Through the thin wooden door, she heard Katie say to Dez, "Keep an eye out for her, wouldja?"

  Dez's giggling stopped for a brief moment, and then she said, "Sure."

  Joan didn't know if she felt more or less in danger with Dez watching her. She was mulling over the pros and cons when she dozed off.

  ****

  Katie exited the ranger station with a rifle in her hands. The rest of the crew's guns were locked up in the ranger station, under the bed that Joan reclined on. She had thought of pitching them over the wall just so the other women wouldn't have access to them, but they might be needed. The world was different now. You never knew when you and your enemies were going to need to team up and take out the dead.

  She headed over to the gate. For now, it was clear to go in and out of the compound. They had cleared the dead from the trailers in the morning. It was their ritual. By the afternoon, there would be a couple more. Over-night, six to twelve more would have joined them. It was the same every day. Katie didn't know where they came from or how they got there, but there always seemed to be more. Just once, she'd like to wake up and not have to climb on top of a trailer with a spear.