This Rotten World | Book 4 | Winter of Blood

by Morris, Jacy

  She understood now. The entire world was a road. As long as your car could physically keep moving, you'd have a chance. Of course, the real danger came from the possibility that everyone would realize this. That's when accidents would happen.

  "Are you there, Mercy?"

  "I'll be home soon," she said.

  ****

  That had only been the beginning of her life as a survivor, and the first thing she had learned was that the rules don't apply. Rules could get you killed. But it was also the hardest lesson to keep to. Her rules, her insistence on being completely reliant on herself, had gotten her killed. It had gotten Duane killed back at the Target as well. They would die on the same day. She supposed that was something.

  Tears came to her eyes, and the tall soldier put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

  Duane… now there was no one left to… she couldn't say the words.

  "I have a favor to ask of you," she said.

  ****

  Mercy led the soldiers up the stairs of the townhome, holding the lantern in front of her. She didn't feel bad, just a little warm, maybe feverish. She reached the top landing of the stairs and paused outside of it. She knocked on the door in the way that they had agreed. She heard the click of the latch on the other side, and her daughter's sweet face greeted her, her eyes going big at the presence of the soldiers on the landing.

  The barrel of her daughter's handgun came up, wavering on hands too small and weak to hold the gun. But Mercy put her hand over the barrel, pushing it back to the floor. "It's ok, Hope. They're here to help."

  She smiled down at her precious little girl, and tears came to her eyes.

  "What is it, Mommy? Why are you crying?" a small voice asked from the interior of the room. The voice belonged to D.J., small and bundled up in the warmest jacket she had been able to scavenge. Her children were three and five-years-old, and they were the best thing she had ever done in the world.

  She wasn't going to be able to see them grow old. She wasn't going to be able to see them have children of their own. She wasn't even going to be able to know if they lived past tonight. So, she did what she could; she scooped up Hope and carried her over to D.J., setting her down. She hugged them both tight, her hands feeling their hair, her nose smelling their smells.

  "Where's Daddy?" Hope asked, her voice trembling.

  "He's on his way. He had to lead the dead away." It was not something that she had ever imagined a mother would have to say to her children. Maybe she was the only person in the world that had ever uttered that combination of words. She felt bad for lying to them, but they didn't need to know. Not now. They would come to realize the truth when they were old enough for it to not hurt so bad. She had made sure the soldiers agreed to that.

  "I need you two to go with these soldiers now. I have to wait for Daddy, but when he gets back, I'll be right behind you."

  "Why can't we wait?" D.J. asked.

  "We just can't," she snapped. D.J. flinched at her tone, and she ran a hand down the side of his face to soften the sting. "There's no time. We need to move. These soldiers have weapons, and they're going to leave the city, but they need to move now and get back to their people. They're going to protect you. They're better at killing them than me or Daddy are."

  "I don't want to go," Hope whined.

  "Me either," D.J. echoed.

  "Hush now. This world isn't made for what you want. You have to do what you have to do. I've told you that before, and right now, this is what you have to do, so I don't want to hear any more about it."

  They nodded their understanding, tears gleaming in their eyes. She hugged them tight and said, "I love you." They told her the same, and she held the words in her heart, letting them heat her from the inside.

  She bundled them up in their warmest clothes and packed their emergency bags with extra socks and gloves. She knew how D.J. tended to lose things, and it was cold outside. When they were ready to go, she said, "I want you to listen to these men. They're good men. They know what to do. You do everything they say, no arguing. You hear me?"

  They nodded, and she kissed them on the forehead and hugged them one last time.

  The tall soldier held out his hand to Hope, and she grabbed it. D.J. reached out for the white soldier's hand, and he grabbed it as well. Then Mercy ushered them to the door. She took one last fill of the sight of her children, and then they disappeared into the howling wind and snow. She closed the door behind them, her eyes streaming tears.

  She stumbled down into the basement of her townhome, the home that she and Duane had worked so hard to create for the children. She dug a few photo albums out of a dusty cardboard box, and she sat down to look at the pictures. She looked at photos of her wedding. She studied her children's baby pictures. There were her parents, lost at the onset of the world's rotting condition, holding her children. She was glad that they had gotten to know their grandchildren. They had been fantastic grandparents, kind and gentle, the way she had hoped to be someday.

  When she was done, and her heart couldn't be filled with another memory, she put the photo albums back. She closed the box, interlocking the flaps to offer them some sort of protection on the odd chance that the children would be able to come back someday and find them. It was a small hope. She laughed to herself. Just like her daughter—a small Hope.

  She put her shotgun underneath her chin, squeezed her eyes shut, and pulled the trigger. Brains and blood splattered the cardboard box. She would have been happy to know that she had been right to close the lid. D.J. and Hope wouldn't want a photo album with her blood on it.

  Chapter 13: Matching Haircuts

  Hope wanted to scream. She didn't know why Mommy had stayed back or where Daddy was, but she knew that Mommy was sad. She didn't want to think about what that meant, so she didn't. She focused on not screaming instead.

  She hadn't been outside in a long time. Mommy and Daddy and old Uncle Chris had said it was too dangerous to go outside… that she would be eaten. Now she understood why she had been told to stay inside. She wanted to talk and ask questions of the man that carried her, his breath echoing in her ear.

  The tall man, with skin like milk chocolate, ran through the snow, his head swinging from side to side. She bounced in his arms. She couldn't run through the snow. It would come up to her belly if they put her down in it, which they had a couple of times when they crossed over a fence. She had stood there, holding D.J.'s hand, wondering when one of those things would come out and bite them. She expected one to pop up out of the snow at any moment.

  She was cold, but she was too scared to notice. Periodically, she craned her head to see if D.J. was there. She could only sense his shape in the darkness. She couldn't make out his eyes or smile at him the way she knew she should. If she was afraid, D.J. was probably terrified.

  "We're going to set you down now," the tall man said.

  They put her and D.J. down in the snow, and the three men ran away from them. She saw the movements in the dark, but she couldn't make out what they were doing. But she knew the men carried axes. The hungry ones fell in the dirt, and the soldiers came back and scooped them up.

  "Are they dead now?" she whispered.

  "Yeah," the man gasped. "They're not getting up again."

  She didn't know where she was or how far away from home she had come. Time was different out here. In the house, every day seemed to take forever, the nights especially, when they turned off all of the lights and sat together in the basement, huddled under blankets together to keep warm. Out here, there was so much to see, even in the dark. She spied great shapes, big and looming in the distance. She heard the wind and occasionally the groans of the hungry ones. She saw the stars above, brighter than she had ever seen them before. They were beautiful. She wished Mommy was there to talk about the stars. She knew about the stars, knew all the shapes they made. But Hope knew nothing about them.

  "How much farther?" the tall man asked.

  "'Bout a half-mile to the
fence, and then we're home free," the white man said.

  "You need to switch?" another man asked. His skin was dark, so it was hard to see his face, but for the reflection of the starlight off the snow in the man's eyes.

  "Yeah, you carry her for a while."

  They handed her off, and Hope felt hurt for a second. She liked the tall man, felt like she'd gotten to know him in the time that they had spent together. It was the only person she had been around since Mommy and Daddy in a long time. She felt betrayed by the tall man. Maybe he didn't like her.

  No, dumb-dumb, he's just tired. The thought came out of nowhere, in the voice of Mommy, although Mommy would never call her dumb-dumb. It made her feel better, at least. He was just tired. Adults got tired when they did things. D.J. could run around the basement all day, running in circles, making airplane noises, though neither of them had seen an airplane in months. Was that the right amount of time? Yes, Daddy always said, "It's been months." It's been months since we've seen anyone else. It's been months since the TV went dead. It's been months since the electricity went out.

  "What's your name?" Hope asked the new man that carried her. Maybe he would be as nice as the other one.

  "Epps," he said.

  "I'm Hope."

  "Pleased to meet you, Hope," he managed to string together between breaths.

  She didn't respond. He was nice, she decided. They skidded to a stop, and Epps put her on the ground again. This time, she sank into the deep snow, and her legs and belly were too cold. Her teeth started chattering against her will. She couldn't make them stop. Then Epps was lifting her over a fence. The tall man took her, and she wrapped her legs around his torso and hugged him tightly. She watched as they did the same with her brother, and then Epps climbed the fence after them.

  She wondered if she would be able to climb that fence on her own. She would like to try one day. It looked like it might be fun to climb up and be tall for a moment, and then drop down to the snow below. She wouldn't land on her feet like Epps did. She would flop into the snow and make a snow angel the way that Mommy had taught her.

  The tall man stuffed her inside a broken window and said, "Be quiet."

  She did as she was told. Mommy had told her to listen to their instructions. The tall man bent his body and pulled himself inside the window.

  It was dark inside, scary. It didn't seem like a home, not one that she would want to live in anyway. "Is this your house?" she asked.

  "Shhh," the tall man said.

  "Sorry," she said, feeling bad that she had disobeyed the man's orders. Mommy would be mad. She was always mad when they didn't do the things that Mommy said to do. When D.J. had unlocked the door to peek outside, he had gotten a whuppin' that she could still hear in her head. Mommy didn't like when you broke the rules. She wondered if she were going to get a whuppin' when Mommy got there.

  She began to cry.

  ****

  Tejada paced in the abandoned office space. He was kicking himself for sending off three of his people. What if they never came back? He'd have to go looking for them. He might be able to allow a random survivor to go off to certain death, but not his boys, not three of them. He must be out of his mind for even considering it. But, it had been a snap decision, one made with haste in mind. Every second he had delayed had been another second that something could go wrong.

  Blood seeped from his thumbnail, where he had chewed it down to the quick. Then he heard it, a small voice, crying.

  Gregg burst into the room where Rudy and Amanda and Walt sat, their eyes closed in slumber. They had been tired enough to fall back asleep. They roused as Gregg started speaking in a hushed whisper. He needn't have bothered. That crying would be enough to wake the dead, literally.

  "They're back, sir," Gregg said.

  "All of 'em?" Tejada asked.

  "Plus two."

  Plus two? Tejada waited impatiently. He didn't want to have conversations near the broken window. It was best to keep quiet when the dead were around. There wasn't a lot of them outside right now, but that could always change. If they didn't have an opening when it came time to leave, it would be exponentially harder to leave. All thoughts of their escape vanished from his mind, as Epps, Allen, and Brown escorted in two small forms.

  "What the fuck is this?" he asked, the words spewing forth from his mouth before he could stop them. The little girl, her head covered in a fine down of blonde stubble, bawled. Her face turned red, and her mouth hung wide open as snot and tears ran down her face. A little boy stood next to her, holding her hand in his tiny little paw. His eyes were watery with tears, but at least he wasn't bawling like the girl.

  "Someone shut her up," he hissed.

  The soldiers looked at each other. They didn't know what to do. Part of the reason these men were still with him was that they didn't have families to go to. All the family men had left Portland, heading back to their homes—hopefully to find their wives and children still alive. His men had nothing. So, they all looked at each other and shrugged their soldiers.

  "What's wrong, little girl?" Tejada asked.

  This only sent the little girl into another wave of even louder crying. Then, in response, her brother's chin started quivering, and he knew the two little ankle-biters were going to start doing a duet any second. "Masterson, Gregg, you two are on the window. Close that door behind you."

  The two soldiers did as they were told, and the look of relief on their faces was enough to make him want to call them back. Maybe I should guard the fucking window, he thought. Getting these two whelps to shut the hell up was beyond him.

  "Amanda, you know anything about kids?" he asked, grasping at straws.

  "Just 'cause I'm a woman? Nope. I don't know anything. I was an only child."

  "Me too," Walt said.

  Brown threw up his hands and said, "I don't know nothin' about no little white kids. Back at home, if me and my brothers started bawling like that, we got the strap."

  To Tejada's surprise, Rudy was the one that stepped up. He rose from the floor and came over to the little girl. He squatted down and rubbed her shoulder, making shushing sounds. He brought her in close to his body, and she buried her head in his soft chest. The boy, not to be left out, followed his sister's example.

  "It's ok," Rudy repeated over and over, patting their heads and squeezing them tight.

  Tejada thought the little girl was going to go into a fucking seizure she was crying so hard.

  Tejada called Allen, Brown, and Epps over to a side office, keeping his lips tight. The kids were quieting down now. He didn't want to do anything that would open up the floodgates again.

  Once they were in the office, they spoke in hushed tones, quiet enough so that their words weren't audible through the walls. He turned to the men, glaring at them in the darkness. They couldn't see his face, but they knew what it looked like, just from the words. "What the fuck is this, gentlemen?"

  "Two kids, sir," Allen said.

  "And the woman?"

  "She got bit," Brown said.

  Jesus, Tejada thought. "Is anyone coming for these two kids?"

  "Dad's dead. Mom's dead. We didn't see any sign of anyone else. We couldn't leave them there on their own."

  "No, you couldn't," Tejada agreed. The grizzled sergeant ran a hand over his face. He was tired all of a sudden.

  "You ok, sir?" Allen asked.

  "Yeah. This is just a complication," Tejada said.

  "With all due respect," Epps said, "they're not a complication. They're children."

  "I know that."

  "They just lost their parents," Epps continued.

  "Haven't we all?" he asked.

  "Not when we were kids, not most of us anyway," Epps said.

  "So, what are you saying?"

  "The problem is," Allen interjected, "they don't know they lost their parents. They still think they're coming for them."

  "Oh, this just keeps getting better and better. Any of you guys know anything about kid
s?" Tejada asked.

  "Other than once being one, I don't know shit," Brown said.

  The other two kept quiet. "Well, I guess we all just became parents."

  "If you don't mind, I'll just be the cool uncle," Allen said.

  "The fuck you will," Tejada said. "I sent you out to help that woman, and you bring this. You're fucking Papa Izzy Allen, dad number one in my book."

  "Yes, sir," Allen said.

  Tejada ran a hand over his head, feeling his hair again. "Well, at least they don't need fucking haircuts."

  Chapter 14: The Miracle of Life

  The mountain air was cold. Mort labored in the shadow of the trees, his breath billowing out before him. Each breath stung. He swung the axe as hard as he could. His shoulder had healed over the last few days. Now it was nothing more than a small pain, a reminder that he could have hurt himself even worse. He would never approach the washout again. He limited the range of his activities to the stretch of forest between the highway to the north, the washout to the south, the river to the west, and the canyon to the east. He didn't know how big the area was, but it provided enough wood for them to keep warm.

  Since the group's come to Jesus moment around the campfire, he had spent every day gathering wood. It was freezing out. The wind whipped through the small valley they called home. He had gathered as much loose wood as he could find, but that was in small supply now. The ground was covered in snow, and all the branches underneath were soaked with wetness, and he had to dig to find them. This meant it was time for the axe.

  The axe was a heavy thing. Even before he had taken his first swing with it, he had known this fact. It had a silver head, tarnished and old. The handle was wooden, worn smooth by the men that had used it before him. He feared the day it would break, and he hoped it never came. If the axe broke, he would be forced to try and break wood with his bare hands, finding trees with dead branches that he could snap off. They would freeze to death if that happened.

  He didn't know how much longer the winter would last. He had lost track of the days, and he had never really had much use for calendars in his previous life. He knew the seasons. He knew the dry winters of California. He knew the crisp fall of Arizona. He knew the cool summers of Oregon. But he didn't know how long they would last or when the seasons would turn until the weather made it apparent. When he woke up shivering, he knew it was time to leave Oregon. When he woke up sweating, he knew it was time to leave California.