This Rotten World | Book 4 | Winter of Blood

by Morris, Jacy

  She wished she had the same superpower, but every shriek made her eyes spring open. A new life… there was a new life in the compound, but she needed to know that it wasn't simply a trade of one life for another. She pushed herself off the ground, grabbed her spear, and hobbled into Tammy's temporary room.

  Dez looked up but didn't say anything. Joan made her way to the side of the bed, ignoring the pain in her leg. She lifted Tammy's eyelid to look at her pupils. She shined her flashlight in her eyes, and the pupil slowly dilated. Her pulse was steady, as was her breathing. She pulled back the covers and checked the stitches. Even if Tammy woke up, she would be bedridden for some time. She couldn't risk the wound breaking open again, not with Joan's supply of sutures spent.

  "How many times you gonna check her?" Katie asked.

  Joan didn't know what to say to the question. Had she been checking too often? "As many times as I need to."

  "What are you hoping to find?" Dez asked. "She's either going to die, or she's going to wake up. Looking at her isn't going to help her any."

  "I'm looking to see if there's signs of infection," she snapped at Dez, not because she felt any true ire, but because she was too tired to regulate her own emotions.

  "Why don't you lie down on my bed and get some sleep? We'll let you know if anything changes," Dez said.

  Joan replaced the bandages and the covers. "That's a good idea," she said. She hobbled out of the room, trying to leave her brain behind to watch over Tammy, but her stubborn brain came with her. It was funny that way; it went everywhere she did, no matter how much she didn't want it to.

  She closed the door behind her, flopped on the bed, and fell asleep to the horrific shrieks of a hungry baby.

  ****

  Liz huddled on the bed next to Theresa. Her lover's breathing was slow now; she had finally fallen asleep. But Liz couldn't seem to drift off. She had been close a few times, but the occasional banging on the side of the trailer would make her eyes snap open, and her heart would jump in her chest.

  They were surrounded by the dead now, and the snow kept falling. The trailer was cold. They had piled all of the blankets they had on top of the bed, but it was still freezing. She thought her feet would never get warm.

  She imagined a song from the times before, when everything had been normal, a simple little tune. She had forgotten the name of the singer, her raspy country voice echoed in her head. She wasn't sure she had the words right, but they were close enough. She played the song over and over in her head, focusing on the rhythms, the words, and her eyes drifted closed.

  Bang!

  Her eyes snapped open, and she was right back to being wide awake. They would have to clear the dead when the sun came up. There was no way around it. She couldn't live like this. Maybe they should all move inside the ranger station. She would run the idea by the other girls and see if they were good with that. It would be nice to be among other people. The trailer felt empty with just her and Theresa. Tammy's presence had always made it feel cozier, more like a home. She didn't understand why that should be; it was just the way she felt.

  Liz had come from a large family, both in numbers and size. Her family was filled with ogre-ish-sized people, none of whom would ever be considered attractive. They were a big people, round and tall. She had three brothers and two sisters. Of course, she didn't know if she still had that many siblings, or if any of them were alive, but her family had always been tough. She was sure her brothers would still be out there somewhere. They loved guns the way mothers loved their babies, the way she hoped to love her own baby someday. She imagined them surviving in the woods, living up in tree stands, waiting for elk or the dead to stomp by.

  She imagined them running through the forest, a step ahead of the dead every way, creating traps that would ensnare them. She missed them all. On the day that the trailer park had packed up and moved out to the ranger station, she had tried to call all of them, but to no avail. The lines were too jammed up. Now, there was no way of finding them. Maybe at her parents' house, they had left a note. The rise of the dead had to have moved slower out in the sticks. Less population, more space, more people with guns. It had to have happened that way.

  She realized now how bad she missed her family. She pictured their faces in her mind. Dave's big bulbous face, with his long brown hair. It had always been unkempt and stringy, but somehow it had fit him. Her brother Aaron, thick but powerful. She could see the two of them wrestling in the woods over something stupid, and she wanted to be there. She sighed and let the tears roll down her cheeks. The baby inside shifted, and her hand went to her belly unconsciously.

  Bang!

  The dead broke her out of her thoughts, and she wept silently, trying not to wake Theresa. At least one person should be able to get some sleep.

  ****

  Mort woke up feeling like he had run a marathon. The first thing he noticed was the silence. It was quiet in the ranger station and cold. The fire was down to coals, and the chill of the outside had crept in through the hundreds of holes in the ranger station walls.

  He pushed himself off the ground, stretching his shoulders, his knees, and his hips. The ground didn't suit him so much anymore. He had gotten soft from sleeping on couches. He flexed his neck, moving it from side to side, and it popped.

  The howling wind stopped for a second, and then he heard it, the groan of the dead. They were outside. They were waiting for them.

  Memories of the previous evening came back to him. He had never been so happy to see a baby. They had let him hold it, though he had never held a baby before. He had seen babies in the streets, being wheeled along by parents who either looked a-hundred-percent happy or a-hundred-percent exhausted, but none of those mothers and fathers had ever offered to let him hold their child. But here, in the small room, crowded with people, he had held onto the baby, marveling at how tiny it was. Tiny little fingers, tiny little ears, tiny little everything. It was the ears he couldn't get over. They were the size of lima beans. That the baby he held in his arms would turn into a grown adult, God willing, blew his mind.

  He had wondered what Blake would think of the baby. Would he have been a softie, cooing at the little guy the way Mort had?

  He sighed and poked his head into the room where Tammy had delivered her baby. She slumbered on the bed. Katie glanced in his direction. She stood like a guard, the butt of her spear set upon the wooden floor. Dez sagged in her chair, asleep, the baby cradled in her arms.

  "You hear them out there?" Katie whispered.

  "Yeah," Mort said.

  "Damn thing cried all night. Who knows how many of them there are now?"

  "Sounds like a lot."

  "We'll take care of it. I'll get some wood and get the fire up."

  She nodded at him, returning her attention back to Tammy lying unconscious on the bed. Mort hoped she woke up soon. He hoped he was there when she did. He wanted to see the look on her face when she saw her baby for the first time. He thought that would be a sight to see, something positive in a world full of negatives.

  He zipped up his jacket, threw on his gloves, and stepped out into the cold, white world. He could hear them better now, the dead, crawling around outside, searching and probing for a way in. They banged on the trailers, trying to pound their way in. The chain-link gate rattled against the plywood panels as they pulled and pushed on the metal.

  He hustled over to the woodpile, a sense of urgency filling him. There were too many of them. They had to be cleared. He carried the firewood inside, set it on the coals, and then grabbed a spear.

  "Is it bad?" Katie asked him as he poked his head back into Tammy's room.

  "Don't know yet. Sounds bad, though."

  "You want some help?" she asked.

  "No, you stay here… just in case." They both knew what just in case meant. It meant just in case Tammy woke up and tried to eat her baby.

  "If Dez wakes up or Joan, come on out and help me out. I have a feeling we're going to need it." />
  Katie nodded her understanding, and he stepped back outside into the cold whiteness. He shivered as all the heat was sucked from his body at once. He licked chapped lips, dry and cracked from being outside in the relentless wind. The snow still fell. He stalked across the compound's courtyard and climbed the wooden steps of the guard post. He didn't trust the rooves of the trailers. He had slipped on top of those metal roofs more than once in the last few weeks. Tumbling outside the compound now would be a death sentence.

  At the top of the guard post, he looked down into the faces of the dead. Their cold eyes locked onto him. How did they know he was alive? Why did they not turn upon each other? Why was it him they wanted?

  He twirled the spear in his hand. It took a lot of force to drive the dull spear tip through the eye sockets of the dead. The first Annie he took out was dressed like a construction worker, an orange, reflective vest wrapped around his torso. Its balding scalp was gray and mottled. He plunged the spear downward into its upturned face. He heard a crunch, and then it sagged down to the ground.

  The dead didn't care that one of their number was no longer with them. They offered no ceremony, no acknowledgement. They only wanted Mort. Everything else was inconsequential. Mort noticed that the dead were taller now. Only a few weeks ago, he would have had to really lean over to plunge the spear into one of the dead. Now, he could stand straight up and do the work. He looked out over the cleared area in front of the compound, and he realized that the snow had risen, compacted by its own weight.

  The implication panicked him. Even as the dead tromped over the body of the construction worker beneath them, he realized that the tops of their hands now came up to where his foot stood on the guard post. Could the dead climb? If so, they would be in trouble shortly. The trailers were a little taller than the guard post. If it didn't stop snowing, sooner or later, they would be able to climb right into the compound.

  He plunged the spear into another one and another, but then he stopped. The corpses were piling up. If he killed any more, they would have enough height to climb over. He stepped back from the railing, making the dead, hungry faces disappear. Their hands pawed at the lip of the guard post's wooden floor.

  Mort thought of fire, but he didn't know how he would be able to melt the snow around the compound without burning it up and leaving a hole in the compound's defenses. He toyed with the idea of running around outside and clearing the compound's perimeter, pulling the bodies away one at a time. But that seemed like a foolish idea.

  The world around him went quiet. A murder of crows flew into the sky to his left, followed by more birds to his right. The trees began to shake, and then he realized that he too was shaking. He grabbed onto the railing of the guard post, realizing for the first time just how poorly it was constructed with plywood and nails. The frame shook underneath him, and he turned to flee down the steps. He stumbled and held onto the railing. The ground was never in the right place as he tried to climb down, and he tumbled down the last few stairs into the snow.

  He placed his hands in the cold powder and pushed himself to his feet, though the very ground itself seemed to spite him by shifting and shaking underneath him. He tried to shake his head and make some sense of the roiling world. In the distance, he heard the cracking of tree trunks as their frozen boles failed to hold up under the earth's assault. He heard a great crack, and he watched as a tall tree fell down, flattening one of the trailers. Worse than that, he saw one of the trailers on the other side shift, leaving just enough room for the dead to make their way inside.

  "Liz, Theresa! Get your asses into the station!" he bellowed.

  He ran across the lilting ground and pounded on the door to their trailer.

  It was a painfully long time until they appeared, and the world continued to rock, the gap between two trailers growing wider and wider. He eyed the gap with nervousness, knowing that at any moment, the dead would appear. Liz and Theresa finally appeared at the door.

  "What's going on?" they asked, their eyes wide and filled with panic.

  "Earthquake," he said simply. "We got a gap in the wall. The dead will be in here any second."

  "Let's grab the food," Theresa said. Liz followed her inside, and the rocking suddenly stopped.

  "We ain't got time for food," Mort said. The world was quiet again. He waited, being as silent as he could.

  Inside the trailer, he saw Liz and Theresa throwing cans of food into pillowcases. He didn't say anything, didn't press them further, or pressure them to hurry up. He didn't want to make any noise at all, for fear of drawing the dead. He also realized that most of their food was inside Liz and Theresa's trailer, and unless they wanted to starve to death, they had better grab it now while they could.

  Shit, firewood. If they all went inside the ranger station, and they left the firewood outside, they would freeze to death at some point.

  "After you get that food, I need you guys to start bringing the firewood inside." As soon as he spoke, the first of the dead appeared at the newly opened gap between the two trailers. Liz and Theresa pounded down the trailer's porch, their round bodies running towards the ranger station.

  Mort turned and approached the dead things as they came through the gap, his spear gripped in his hand. Another one followed it, and he knew he was going to have to be perfect in order to hold them off. He skirted around the tip of the fallen tree that had crushed one of the trailers. He was glad that no one had been inside when the tree fell.

  The dead woman in front of him snarled, and he bent his knees and thrust the spear upward under her jaw, lifting her off her feet for a moment. Before gravity could fully take her limp body, he pulled the spear free and stepped back. The other dead thing came on as well, wearing a red sweatshirt and no pants, its tiny penis flopping from side to side. The sight made him even colder.

  He did the same thing to the man that he had done to the woman. Its body fell in the snow, and two more were there to replace it. He tossed a look over his shoulder. He saw everyone running back and forth with logs in their hands. When he looked back, a third dead thing was crawling through the gap.

  "Hurry up with that wood!" Mort called, before plunging the spear into the eye socket of one of the dead. Another of the dead reached out to him before he could pull his spear free, and he shouldered it away. He dragged the spear from the body and backed up. Another of the dead appeared in the gap, and he knew he was going to lose this fight. But he needed to fight long enough to keep the dead from attacking the women.

  There were so many of them now. He didn't have time to count them. He focused on killing as many as he could. He went somewhere else, his instincts and body taking over as he repeatedly plunged the spear into frozen flesh. A line of the dead led to the gap between the trailers, but still more were coming. From behind him, he heard the squeal of a crying baby, and he knew that he was out of space and time. He hoped that whatever firewood and food they had collected would keep them alive long enough.

  He turned his back on the dead and ran inside the ranger station. He slammed the door behind him, catching a brief glimpse of the dead that were following. There were too many of them. They would never get out of here. He pressed his body against the door. It shook in the jamb as the dead pounded upon it, the flimsy timbers holding together somehow.

  ****

  Highway 26 was a crazy road filled with twists and turns. It had been blasted through mountain rock, built upon shelves that overlooked steep forested valleys. In the old days, it had been a trail used to transition from the warm Willamette Valley to the environs of the coast. From there, pioneers had used it to establish trade between settlements. But now, it was a dead snake of asphalt, blocked off by stalled cars. Most of its patrons were now of the deceased variety.

  When the earthquake hit Oregon, many sections of the road stopped existing. Heavy with snow and stalled cars, all it took was one good shake of the road, and some sections dropped away, crumbling into the valleys as the Juan De Fuca plate submer
ged underneath the North American plate off the coast of Oregon.

  The impact of the earthquake would be felt for hundreds of miles.

  To the north of the ranger station, where the stalled cars stretched on for miles and the dead milled about like sleepy revelers at a tailgate party, the road would simply drop away. The dead rode this wall of asphalt and cars down the side of the hill, and while many of the dead would become trapped, many more would find themselves wandering through a small valley locked in by the crumbled highway to the north, a mountain ridge to the east and south, and a river to the west. There was only one place of interest in this area… the ranger station in which Mort and the other survivors cowered.

  The dead began their explorations with broken arms, legs, and backs, walking and sometimes crawling through the snow.

  Chapter 18: Horse Stew and Sex

  The Golden Arches, a monument to the world that had once been, when a man with a hunger could drive five miles in a car that ran on gas, pull up to an electric speaker, order a burger, and have some pimple-faced high school kid hand him a bag full of food. Would the kids remember that? Would D.J. and Hope remember when you used to be able to order something called a Happy Meal?

  Shit, would they even remember what the word 'happy' meant? Izzy doubted all counts.

  The sign on the highway said they were in North Plains. All he saw was a gas station, a McDonalds, and a couple of small restaurants. The houses of North Plains were are all situated down the road in a direction that they weren't headed.

  He took a deep breath. The sun was out again. The snow wasn't as deep anymore. It had been melting steadily for the last few days, and the temperature hung in the forties. It wasn't warm by any stretch of the imagination, but it was warmer. He would still be grateful to sit next to the fire at night, but it was going to be a different kind of night. According to the map Tejada had taken from the gas station, there were no places for them to hole up. Tonight, they would be "roughing it." Allen was not looking forward to that process. He had never been a big fan of camping, even though his old man had taken him out quite often as a youth. He liked the fishing, the occasional hunting, but waking up cold in the morning had always been painful, and this was during the summer. He didn't want to know how a night sleeping outside in the winter was going to feel, but he was going to experience it anyway. There was no getting around it.