This Rotten World | Book 4 | Winter of Blood

by Morris, Jacy

  With the prospect of a break looming, Epps scanned all of the likely buildings in their path. If they found a good one, they would have to do a loop and lose their tail, which had steadily swelled over the last half-mile.

  Epps took aim at an Annie blocking their way between two wrecked cars. He squeezed the trigger, and as a group, they moved through the bottleneck. There were less crashed cars out here. The roads weren't deadlocked like they had been in Portland. Perhaps, if they could get a car started, they could make their way out of the city in style. Although, the roads weren't necessarily in the best of conditions. Hell, it might be quicker to hike out than to drive.

  As he weighed the pros and cons of such an action, he spotted a two-story building down a side street. It was off the main drag and hidden slightly by the building in front of it. "I think I found something," Epps said eagerly.

  "Let's check it out," Tejada said, gasping in pain as he sunk deep into the snow.

  Epps turned, and they moved around the first building, a bank that seemed all but abandoned. How much money was in that bank's vault? How many people had died and slaved away to make that money appear, and for what? Absolutely nothing. When the time had come, all that money hadn't meant shit. The rich had died just as quickly as the poor.

  They did their trick, losing their tail, huffing and puffing across a snowfield, stumbling and falling. Were the dead smart enough to follow their trail? He hoped not. That would imply they could think on some level. Epps was more comfortable imagining they were mindless feeding machines operating only on instinct.

  Actually, that didn't sound so great either.

  As they reached the far side of the bank, they stood in its shadow, which was only slightly darker than the rest of the world. The wind whipped, sending a swirl of snow around them. Perhaps they would be lost visually to the dead behind them. As they looked at the building some thirty yards away, they tried to imagine what was inside. Epps noted the sign out front: Trinity Assisted Living Facility.

  "Old people," Epps said.

  "What?" Allen asked.

  "It's gonna be full of old people."

  "It could be full of the Lollipop Guild," Tejada said, "and I wouldn't give a damn. We gotta get in there."

  Lollipop Guild? What the fuck is a Lollipop Guild? Epps sprinted across the thirty yards between the bank and the assisted living facility with Allen at his side. Somehow, it always seemed that way. Allen was probably his best friend out of the group. He was funny and chill at the same time. Most of the other guys were alright, but there was always something about them that made them not a perfect fit. Whiteside was an asshole, Brown could turn super religious at the drop of a hat, Gregg and Day were somewhat bland, and Masterson, well, Masterson just rubbed him the wrong way sometimes. But he always got along with Allen, and he knew Allen felt the same way.

  The sliding glass doors didn't open upon their approach. Allen pulled his hatchet from his backpack and slammed it in between the two sliding glass doors. He wiggled the blade back and forth, and Epps wedged his fingers between the doors. He pulled and pulled until the gap was wide enough for people to walk through, even Rudy. He and Allen stepped to the side, eyeing the edges of the bank to see if any of the dead were going to show up. By the time Tejada hobbled his way through the door, none of the dead had appeared.

  Together, Allen and Epps backed into the darkness of the building's entryway. With the palms of their hands, they slid the doors shut. As they slid closed, Epps spied one of the dead appearing from around the corner of the bank. Their tail had finally appeared.

  With that, they sank into the darkness of the assisted living facility.

  It was gloomy inside, and the air smelled of death.

  ****

  Rudy eyed the interior of the assisted living facility dubiously. He and Amanda dragged Tejada over to a chair behind a big wooden reception desk. Tejada landed in the chair with a groan and threw his bag from his shoulders. He looked exhausted, and he grimaced in pain. Rudy had never seen the man like that. Whatever he had injured, the pain must have been excruciating. Rudy thought Tejada was the type of guy that could chew bullets and spit fire. To see him laid low by something like a muscle pull gave him a new perspective. He realized they were all just one pulled muscle away from joining the ranks of the dead.

  "No lights," Tejada said to the group. "Sweep and clear."

  With Tejada's orders clear, they split into groups and spread throughout the building.

  "You stay here with the Sarge," Rudy said to Amanda.

  "Where are you going?" she asked indignantly.

  "To sweep and clear."

  "I'm coming with you."

  Rudy didn't like the sound of that. Perhaps he was being overprotective of Amanda, but hey, he wasn't going to let the only person that had ever really loved him risk her life. "Stay with Tejada. If those doors break, he's going to need someone to help him get away."

  He saw the look in her eyes, the one that said, "I know that you're trying to keep me out of harm's way, and if it didn't make perfect sense, you'd be hearing about it."

  Masterson called over to Rudy, "You can come with me. Keep an eye on our backs." Rudy nodded and readied his rifle.

  "Hatchets only," Tejada called after them. "No screaming or hollerin'. Use knockdown protocol."

  Knockdown protocol… that's what Tejada called it when you tripped one of the dead onto their face and bashed their brains in. It made sense. Swinging into a pawing set of arms had a tendency to get messy, especially if you were going to be swinging something like a hatchet. It could glance off an arm at any time. Plus, there was the potential for getting scratched or winding up with an Annie's thumb in your eye. But the Annies were slow and clumsy. If you could circle around them and push them down on their faces, they couldn't hurt you.

  Rudy climbed up to the second floor, following Masterson and Gregg. While the soldiers were accepting of him, he hadn't truly become one of them yet, even after several months of living in the same building. But he knew it was just a matter of time until they saw him as one of them, as long as he didn't do anything stupid.

  The smell of death grew stronger as they climbed the stairwell. At the top of the stairs, the first thing they saw was an elevator to their right. From inside, they heard a faint banging.

  "Is anyone there?" Gregg hissed at the elevator door. His question was answered immediately by the tell-tale groan of the dead and more banging.

  Masterson rolled his eyes, "Shit. What'd you go and do that for, Gregg?"

  "What?" Gregg asked, throwing his arms apart as if he hadn't done anything wrong.

  "Now we're going to have to shut that thing up," Masterson said, exasperated. Masterson gave Gregg another rueful shake of his head, but Gregg didn't seem to mind. "Rudy, get your hatchet in that crack."

  Gregg snickered a little bit. "That's what she said."

  "Yeah, laugh it up, buddy. You ain't gonna be laughing when you pull those doors apart," Masterson said.

  Gregg's laughing stopped.

  Masterson muttered under his breath, "…fucking take shit seriously. Like I'm the only adult around here."

  Rudy wedged the blade of his hatchet into the elevator and wiggled it back and forth until he was able to get his fingers inside. Gregg stepped up beside him, and together they drew the doors apart. On the other side of the doors, they found another set of elevator doors, the ones that would allow them inside the elevator car. The banging from inside was louder now with the exterior set of doors out of the way.

  Rudy looked back at Masterson, at his tired face. It was blank, and he nodded at Rudy. Rudy crammed the blade of the hatchet between the doors and repeated the process of wedging and twisting it until he could get his fingers inside. He gagged as the smell of rot clouded his face. Gregg threw up next to him, turning to expel liquid onto the side of the wall. The smell of Gregg's vomit somehow made the odor more bearable. When Gregg was done puking, he grasped the edge of the elevator door and
started pulling.

  "Watch them fingers," Masterson said.

  The door slid open slowly, and Masterson's flashlight bobbed on the interior. The only warning that Rudy had was a rush of foul air, and then he heard the clack of skull against the metal door. He pulled his hands back in time to avoid getting bit. Instinctively, he shoved Gregg out of the way.

  Masterson sighed, the tip of his rifle dipping towards the ground. "Alright, step back. We're gonna have to go live on this one. Can't have one of you guys losing your diddling fingers."

  Rudy was only too happy to step away from the stench coming out of the elevator.

  "Tap on that door, Gregg."

  Gregg spared a pained look in Masterson's direction, but he stepped back up to the door and rapped on the metal doors with his fist.

  The Annie inside banged its head against the door, and Masterson took the shot. The muffled blast from his rifle echoed loudly in the interior. They all stood in silence, waiting to hear if the Annie inside still moved. But what they heard instead was thumping coming from all around them.

  "What the fuck is that?" Masterson asked.

  "Annies," Gregg said.

  "They must be in all these rooms," Rudy said.

  The noise built to a deafening thumping, and they could hear the sound of splintering wood. Rudy and Gregg moved to stand next to Masterson. They looked down the doorway-filled hall. They watched a fist pop through one of the doors, black and rotten, then another, then a head. Straggly white hair caught on the splintered wood of the door, ripping away a chunk of rotten scalp.

  "Oh, Lord," Masterson said.

  "We gotta get 'em," Rudy said. "They're making too much noise."

  Rudy hefted his hatchet in his hand, and he ran towards the woman with her head poking through the door. Her dead eyes followed him as he thundered down the hall. He raised the hatchet up over his head and buried it in the back of the old woman's head. All around them, they could hear the pounding, so loud. It was bound to bring more of the dead to investigate from outside if they didn't act fast.

  Rudy threw open the next door and stepped back. The smell hit him like a brick in the face, and he spied an Annie in a wheelchair before his eyes watered up, and his mouth filled with bile. It rocked in the wheelchair, hungry for Rudy's flesh. Then it tipped over on its side. Still buckled to the wheelchair, the Annie pulled itself after Rudy, crawling across the gray carpet. Rudy shook with something, fear, outrage, he didn't know what. But he waited until the Annie had dragged itself within inches of his foot before he planted his hatchet in its brain. He had to brace his boot against its back to remove the hatchet, and when he did, something inside of him died. He didn't know what part it was. He didn't know if it was important, an integral part of his being, but he knew that something had changed within him.

  They moved quickly then, Masterson holding his hatchet, while Rudy threw open the doors. Gregg moved behind the Annie drawn to Masterson directly ahead. Once it cleared the doorway, Rudy would put his leg out in front of the Annie, while Gregg would push it from behind. In this way, like a group of schoolyard bullies, they were able to clear their hallway, one by one. When they were done, there was only one sound left, that of a lone Annie banging against the interior of the elevator.

  "Looks like you missed," Gregg crowed to Masterson.

  Masterson rolled his eyes. Covered in sweat and the blood of the dead, they walked back to the elevator and pulled the doors open.

  A creature stumbled out. It had been a woman, a nurse judging from the flower-print scrubs that she wore. The Annie sported a fresh bullet wound in its shoulder, and a syringe hung from its desiccated arm. Rudy stuck his leg out. Gregg pushed. Masterson brought his hatchet down.

  Rudy kicked the woman over. He had noticed something in the dim light of the elevator lobby. Pinned to the Annie's chest was a note. He bent down to examine it.

  In shaky writing, the note read: Forgive me for what I've done. No one came. No one was here, and we started running out of medication. I couldn't watch them suffer. I wasn't strong enough. But, we had a large supply of morphine, so I did it. I killed them all. Forgive me. I deserve to rot in this elevator, but please, give my patients the rest that they deserve.

  The note sent chills up Rudy's spine.

  "What's it say?" Gregg asked.

  Rudy shook his head and crumpled up the note. "It doesn't matter. Let's check downstairs."

  ****

  Allen and Epps were the only two on the third floor. Underneath the smell of rot, there was another smell that brought back a flood of memories, memories of Allen's grandmother, memories of when she had lived in a place like this. They weren't happy memories, and he remembered thinking that his grandmother seemed like a caged bird in the retirement home where his parents had placed her.

  When she lived on her own, she was a vivacious woman, always gardening in her backyard. She grew the biggest watermelons he had ever seen, and they tasted the best too. She went on walks, ran a book club, ate healthy. She did everything right. But when her memory started going, none of that really mattered, so they had put her in a place like this.

  Allen recalled visiting her once, this was near the end when she barely remembered who he was. To be fair, he had been a teenager then and had changed quite a bit over the last few years, growing taller, leaner, more introspective. His mother had left him alone for a few minutes while she went to find a nurse.

  He sat next to her bed, trying not to notice the smell of death. It hung like a pall over the entire place, and the smell had grown stronger over the last few months of his grandma's life. She reached out to him and grabbed him by the wrist, squeezing it with more strength than he thought she could possess.

  "Whatever you do," she said to him, "do it with love."

  There was no more. She let his wrist go, and he rubbed at it, sitting in place, terrified that she was going to attack him. The moment stuck with him, one of those terrifying moments that one recalled every now and then, its memory brought on by a sound, a smell, a taste. The smell of the assisted living facility brought the memory back, not the rotten smell, but the smell underneath, that of pure death.

  But now, he had that fear again, like something was going to reach out of thin air and grab him by the wrist. He gripped his hatchet tighter against such an attack, though he knew he was being foolish. A man can fight a lot of things, but he can't fight his feelings. They are what they are, and with that understanding planted firmly in his brain, Izzy crept into the hallway. It was lit only by the cold, gray light that streamed in from a window at the end of the hallway.

  "You ready to do this?" Epps asked.

  "No, but let's do it anyway."

  They went up to the first door. Allen reached out and put his hand on the doorknob. He didn't want to turn it, and he must have paused a moment too long because Epps said, "Well, are you gonna open it or not?"

  With that, he turned the knob and pushed the door open. Immediately, a cold hand grabbed his wrist, squeezing with a terrible strength.

  He screamed, sure that the corpse of his long-dead grandmother had come back from the grave to tell him again, "Whatever you do, do it with love."

  He backed into the hallway, the creature latched onto him. Allen's eyes were as wide as manhole covers. A part of his brain saw Epps moving out of the corner of his eye. Then he heard the thunk of Epps' hatchet, and the grip of the dead thing loosened.

  It fell to the ground, old, toothless. It couldn't have bitten him if it wanted to. It wasn't even a woman. It was an old man. Allen took a closer look at its face, just to be sure, and then he swallowed his fear, bending over and breathing heavily. He flexed his wrist, grimacing in pain. He didn't think anything was broken, and the pain was already starting to go away.

  He jumped as Epps slapped him on the shoulder. "You alright, man? You look like you've seen a ghost. Shit, I didn't think you could get any whiter."

  "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Allen said, though visions of his dead gran
dmother still danced in his head. It was then, with the vision fading, that he realized what he had done. He had screamed and woke the whole damn hallway up.

  "Come on. We gotta shut them Annies up before they draw more," Epps said.

  Already many of the doors rattled in their frames. A fist punched through the flimsy wood, and Epps and Allen rushed towards the door.

  "You open it this time," Allen said.

  Epps looked like he was going to argue for a second, and then he shrugged his shoulders. He stepped up to the door, an arm still sticking through it, and he threw the door open as hard as he could. They both stepped in the room, gagging from the stench. Daylight poured in through one of the windows. Epps slammed the door shut, the Annie still stuck in it as it turned its body and flailed at him. Allen stepped up and delivered a crushing blow with his axe, trying not to feel the vibrating sensation as the axe broke through the Annie's skull and buried itself in its brain. The Annie went limp and fell, hanging from the doorway by its arm.

  Allen gave a mighty wrench and pulled his hatchet free. Epps went over to the window and pulled the shade. Before it was all the way down, Allen saw a crowd of the dead milling in the distance by the bank thirty yards away. Fuck. They're still out there.

  But he didn't have time to dwell on the ones outside because the ones inside were making quite the racket. One by one, they opened the doors to find the dead waiting for them. When they were finished, the halls were lined with the corpses of Annies. They stood gasping for breath, their arms quivering from overuse.

  ****

  Tejada and Amanda sat behind the reception desk. Tejada listened closely in the gloom of the lobby, listening for screams, shouts, calls for help… anything. He felt useless sitting in a stupid desk chair. He had never liked desks, never wanted to be tied down to one. Desks weren't for men. Real men got shit done. Though, now that his body seemed to be turning on him, he had to consider the possibility that he wasn't a "real" man any longer.

  The moments seemed to pass in agonizing slowness. He heard a muffled gunshot, followed by the pounding of the dead from the floor above. He hissed between his teeth, resisting the urge to call out to his men and find out what was happening.