This Rotten World | Book 2 | Let It Burn

by Morris, Jacy

  She stomped her foot down on a pedal on the side of the bike, the way she had seen men do it in movies, but nothing happened. She screamed in frustration, but even that came out wrong, sounding more like the gargle of a choking woman. Then she felt the touch, the touch of Courtney's hand upon the nape of her neck. His cold clammy hand slid through her hair and over the side of her face.

  She spun around to look at him, and his face was gone. In place of eyes and nose was just one giant mouth. Teeth bristled in the Courtney thing's maw as it moved in for a bite. It could take her head clean off. She screamed as the teeth dug into the sides of her neck.

  ****

  She awoke to the clatter of raindrops on the SUV's roof. She felt tears cooling on her cheeks, and she huddled with her body facing the side of the SUV. Behind her, she could hear the slow and steady breathing of Joan. At least she hadn't woken her. The nightmare fled from her mind, leaving behind only the lasting image of Courtney with his entire face replaced by a huge mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.

  What time was it? Then she wondered why she even wondered what time it was. There was another of man's inventions about to go extinct. The minute was nothing anymore. Hours, days, weeks, months... who would keep track of these things? Certainly not her or the survivors around her. Clara didn't know what day of the week it was anymore. She hadn't heard anyone ask about it for days now.

  Clara jumped as Joan lashed out at her with her fists. She must be having a nightmare, too, Clara thought. She grabbed her fists to stop them from doing any damage and yelled, "Joan!" until she stopped flailing about. "It's just a nightmare, Joan."

  Joan sat up sideways, her hands went to her face. Clara knew exactly how it felt. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

  Joan just shook her head. Clara understood. Talking about nightmares never helped. It just solidified the fears in the mind, making it more likely to reappear in the future. No, the best option was to forget them completely, move on, and hope that they never came back. Clara lay down once more, wondering why she couldn't have a good dream about Courtney. She wanted one desperately, just a normal dream. Maybe they could be sitting on the couch watching TV, Courtney making snide comments about all of the talentless celebrities on the screen, just the way he used to do.

  That's all she wanted, a slice of normalcy... well, it wasn't all she wanted. As she lay there, she started thinking of all of the things she wanted to distract herself from the nightmare that still clung to the edges of her consciousness. Behind her, Joan had fallen asleep again, her breathing gaining a deep regularity that was comforting to Clara.

  The first thing she wanted was a pile of blankets in a house with a roaring fire. Clara shivered as the chill of the night crept in through the busted out windows of the SUV. The second thing she would want would be a hot shower, preferably with a lifetime supply of shampoo and shower gel. She could scrub for weeks, but it probably still wouldn't be enough time to excavate all the grit and grime that had sunk into her skin, hair and fingernails. Then she wanted a hot meal... not something from a can, but a home-cooked meal, with fresh bread. Hell, at this point, she would settle for just the smell of fresh-baked bread.

  A pair of gunshots rang out in the night, the sound muted by the wall of water that fell from the sky. Clara's stomach rumbled, and she gave up on getting anymore sleep. She crawled over the back seat of the SUV. She unlocked the door, and then looked out the window. It was pitch black in most places, but underneath a tarp she spotted a small campfire burning in the clearing.

  Clara took a deep breath, stepped out into the rain, and gently closed the door behind her so as not to wake Joan.

  The rain began to slacken as she approached, but she still had to catch her breath as the cold drops hit her skin. Sergeant Tejada sat huddled next to the fire, the light from the flames dancing on his wide angular face. The other soldiers were all sleeping or on guard duty. The Sergeant stared into the fire, lost in its glowing embers. Clara took a seat next to the fire, and almost laughed as the Sergeant tossed a textbook on the flames.

  He must have seen the burgeoning mirth on her face, as he said, "Ain't no use for calculus now. School's out for the summer."

  "You think it will ever start up again?" she asked.

  She knew the answer. She knew it would be years until actual schools would start back up again. She knew that there was a chance that the human race was a grounded fish lying on the beach gasping it last air. But she waited for his answer anyway.

  After a calculated moment of thought, he said, "I hope so. I hope we can make a difference. I hope that one day things will return to normal. It probably won't be in my lifetime, but there's always hope."

  "Is that why you and your men are out here? Because of hope?"

  He looked at her, a steely gaze that softened for just a split second. "Yeah, I suppose that's why we're out here... because of hope, because the only other option is despair. I'm not one for giving up."

  She looked around at the camp, and huddled in on herself to protect against the night's chill. She held her hands out to the fire. "Yeah, I can see that."

  "I can see it in you too," he said.

  "What?"

  "I can see that you're not a quitter. You've got some fight in you. You all do." He poked the fire with an old car antenna, sending a pocket of ashes scattering into the sky life a cloud of fireflies. "You wouldn't have made it this far if you didn't."

  "I don't know about any of that. I'm just trying not to get killed."

  Sergeant Tejada chuckled a bit, a deep chuckle that seemed out of place. "Trying to stay alive. Hell, that's the biggest fight we got out here these days. I know a lot of soldiers that couldn't face it. They took the easy way out." Sergeant Tejada made a gun out of his fingers and held it up to his temple, pretending to fire. "These weren't no creampuffs neither. These were the type of men that would walk into a firefight singin' the Star-Spangled Banner. But when it came down to it, and the death of the world was staring them in the face..." Seargeant Tejada poked the fire again. "...well, they found themselves not up to the task. So, when you say you're not a fighter, I don't believe you. You're here. You're alive, and you're going to keep fighting. And we'll keep fighting right along with you."

  A muffled gunshot rang out in the night. Sergeant Tejada stood up and dropped the antenna on the ground. "Excuse me, miss. I gotta go see what the hell is going on." With that, Sergeant Tejada walked off into the night.

  Clara stared into the pit of the fire, suddenly feeling very exposed in the night air. Above her, the sky was a dark gray, lit only by the faint glow of the moon's light trying to penetrate the cloud cover above. She wrapped her arms around herself, and watched the dance of the orange light in the fire's coals. Page after page shriveled and burned. She would catch a word or three as each new page was exposed for a brief second before it was consumed by the fire. Perhaps if she caught enough of them, she could predict the future.

  She was trying to make sense of the words, when a voice came out of the darkness startling her. "Where are you guys planning on going?"

  Clara jumped and jerked her head to locate the speaker. It was a young man, dressed in fatigues, his face smooth and youthful. He must have been eighteen or nineteen-years-old at the most. "Jesus, you scared the shit out of me."

  The boy just smiled. "Sorry about that."

  Clara turned her attention back to the fire.

  "So are you going to answer my question?" the soldier prodded.

  She looked at him and saw no harm in telling him where they were going. "We're going to the coast."

  The man made a quiet whistle. "The coast? That's a long way."

  "Yeah, well, hopefully it's far enough away that we can put this damned city behind us. At the coast, there's less people, so hopefully less of those things."

  "You guys sure you don't want to stay here? We got lots of guns."

  Clara didn't quite know how to put it gently, so she blurted out, "What good are guns witho
ut bullets?" She wished she could take it back as soon as she said it, but the man across from her just smiled.

  "You think we're crazy, don't you?"

  "I didn't say that," she replied.

  "You didn't need to say it. It's obvious."

  She looked up to the sky, annoyed by the youthful prodding of the soldier. He was trying to lead her somewhere she didn't want to go, so she simply said, "I don't think you guys are crazy. I think you're a bit unrealistic, but not crazy. I mean, what are you going to do when you run out of bullets?"

  "We'll do what we always do. Improvise."

  The cocksure nature of the kid's answer drove her nuts. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to take him down a peg. She wanted him to realize that this wasn't all just some sort of twisted game they were playing. Before she could get any of this out, Sergeant Tejada's red face appeared out of the darkness. "What are you doing over here, Carter? Go get some damn sleep. Your watch starts in four hours. I don't need you nodding off at your post."

  "Yes, sir," Carter said before disappearing.

  Sergeant Tejada stooped down next to the fire, and picked up the car antenna he had discarded earlier. He poked around in the embers of the fire before tossing another textbook in the flames.

  "Everything alright?" Clara asked.

  "Fine. Just fine. If an Annie steps on the bridge, then an Annie dies on the bridge." Sergeant Tejada pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket. He lit it and then looked at her. "You want one of these?"

  Clara wanted nothing more, but she decided to play it cool. "Why not?" Sergeant Tejada took the cigarette from his lips and reached across the flames to hand it to her. Then he pulled another from his pocket and lit it.

  "I didn't used to smoke, you know. I just took it up." Sergeant Tejada fell silent. He puffed on his cigarette and blew the smoke into the night air. It hung and wafted away from the campfire.

  Clara measured her next words carefully. "You know what you're doing is hopeless, don't you?"

  Sergeant Tejada just smiled as his head drooped a little bit. "I would never say such a thing." He looked around the encampment, as if to see if anyone was listening. "This isn't all about taking back the city. That is indeed an impossible task. This is about saving lives... the lives of my boys. I have fourteen soldiers here... fourteen soldiers so far from their homes that they can never hope to make it back on their own. They needed purpose, and misguided or not, I gave it to them."

  "How long will that purpose hold them?" Clara asked before taking a heavenly drag of her cigarette, ignoring the fact that the butt was still somewhat wet from being on Sergeant Tejada's lips. Beggars can't be choosers.

  "Truth be told, I don't know."

  "You could always come with us. We could use the firepower."

  Sergeant Tejada looked at her, a questioning look on his face. "You don't want that. None of you do. Sure you want the guns, but you don't want to see what happens when a soldier goes south. When a soldier loses all hope, and some of these boys will, you don't want them around. It's more for you than for us."

  Clara didn't quite understand what Sergeant Tejada was trying to say. "What are you getting at?"

  "I'm saying that you've got women in your group. These men are just boys, boys who have lost everything they know and love. You don't want a trained weapon turning on you in the middle of the night."

  Clara understood what he was saying. She had understood it from the moment they had been dragged out of the back of the semi-truck. Amanda had seen first-hand what happened when a soldier went rogue back at the Coliseum when a soldier had tried to rape her in the bathroom. If it wasn't for Chloe, things would have gotten worse. She just nodded, and Sergeant Tejada fell quiet.

  "You could always follow us at some point," Clara said.

  Sergeant Tejada smiled. "Now there's an idea. Maybe you're onto something." He tossed another book on the fire, took a drag from what was left of his cigarette and then tossed that in as well. "When I run out of books, I might just think about it."

  Clara stood up, took one last drag from her cigarette, and tossed it in the fire. "Well, thanks for the cigarette. I'm gonna go see if I can get some sleep. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow."

  "That you do," Sergeant Tejada said. He watched as Clara took off into the night, disappearing amid the dark cars. A smile came over his face. He looked at his pile of books and wondered how long they would last.

  ****

  Amanda listened closely to Rudy's breathing. It was slow and steady, unchanging. It comforted her. In the tent they were in, she could feel the heat from his body warming her up. One of the soldiers had been kind enough to lend it to them when he saw the state of Rudy.

  Joan had given him a full examination once they had gotten settled. With the equipment she had, which was nothing more than a first-aid kit, she couldn't tell what was wrong. She had checked his bones, the two of them struggling to pull the shirt off of his massive chest. There was no apparent injury there, and his arms and legs seemed fine, no swelling or discoloration. The big concern was his skull. There was a gash on the back of his head, and Joan was sure that he had sustained some sort of brain trauma in his fall.

  She didn't want to think about what would happen if Rudy didn't wake up tomorrow morning. The other survivors agreed that sitting on the bridge was a recipe for disaster. Sooner or later, a horde would come pouring out of the city, and the soldiers wouldn't have enough bullets to stop what would happen next. The others were intent on moving on. Amanda didn't know if she could leave Rudy behind.

  The soldiers made her nervous, and she didn't like the way they looked at her. Although, she couldn't tell if that was all in her imagination or something real that she was picking up on. Maybe it was just a residue from what had almost happened to her at the Memorial Coliseum.

  She stopped her train of thought, and listened, making sure that Rudy was breathing. There it was, that nasally breath inward. She sighed with relief.

  She had been trying to sleep for a couple of hours, but her constant need to check on Rudy's breathing had prevented her from drifting off. She should have fallen right asleep. She was exhausted. The day had been a long and hard one, but they hadn't lost anyone. She thought of Rudy once more. Well, not yet anyway.

  She didn't know why, but tears came to her eyes. What should she do? If Rudy didn't wake up in the morning, should she stay here and watch over him? What kind of friend would she be if she just abandoned him at the first opportunity? Rudy might be a mess of a human being, but he was a good friend. He had never left her side for longer than a few minutes ever since the incident in the Coliseum. She knew he blamed himself for it, but it hadn't been his fault.

  She made up her mind. If Rudy stayed, she stayed... maybe some of the other survivors would stay as well. In her mind, she started checking off those who would be likely to stay and those who would be likely to go. She was turning over the issue of Chloe in her mind when she heard a noise at the flap of the tent. She sat up, grabbing the night club that she had carried across half the city.

  "Who's there?" she demanded.

  "It's just me. Chloe."

  Amanda relaxed and dropped her nightstick on the floor. "Oh." They were silent, and then Amanda asked, "Why aren't you sleeping?"

  "I just wanted to check on you. See how you were doing."

  "I can't sleep," she said.

  She could feel Chloe crawling around her legs, entering the tent. Amanda felt the tickle of Chloe's blonde hair in the dark as it trailed across her own face. "What's wrong?" Chloe asked, her hot breath washing over Amanda's face.

  "I can't stop thinking about tomorrow. If Rudy doesn't wake up, then what happens? We can't just leave him here, with those... with those... soldiers." She heard the warble in her voice, and bit her lips to prevent the inevitable sob from coming.

  Amanda jerked as she felt Chloe's hand stroking her hair. "We won't leave him here. If it comes to that, I'll stay with you guys."

 
Amanda couldn't believe what she was hearing. Chloe, seemingly the coldest bitch in the world, was willing to wait for Rudy. Maybe if Chloe was willing to wait, the others would too. Gratitude flooded through her like the burn of whiskey on a cold winter's day. "Thank you," she managed to squeak, trying to hold back the hot tears in her eyes.

  The stroking of her hair continued, and then Chloe said, "Why don't you go out to one of the cars? I'll keep an eye on Rudy and make sure he's alright."

  ****

  Chloe listened to his breathing for an hour after Amanda left. It was strong and showed no signs of weakening. That would make it harder when the time came. But the time would come. She just had to work her way up to it.

  It wasn't the deed itself that was difficult. It was coming out smelling like a rose after the deed was done. She simply couldn't allow Rudy to live. The bridge was a deathtrap. Anyone with two eyes could see that. Staying on the bridge for one night was a necessity, but anything beyond that was an invitation to calamity. She was not going to die waiting for a fat man to wake up.

  She couldn't head out on her own. Like it or not, she was tied to these people. If they said "Stay," then she stayed. If they said "Go," then she would go. But she wanted to go, and she wanted to do it right now. These people meant nothing to her. She didn't give a shit about any of them. As far as she could tell, they were all just as mindless as the dead things walking through the streets... all except for Amanda.

  She leaned her head back and pictured Amanda's face, the soft curve of her youthful cheek, the smattering of faint freckles on her cheeks. She was beautiful, and despite her every intention to not become attached to any of the people around her, she couldn't help but fall for her. Her sweet way with Rudy, that incredible blundering bulk that had brought them together. Her lust for life, despite the world being filled to the brim with death, kept Chloe going. These things drew her to Amanda.