by Steven Novak
NOTE
Bloodboots features characters that first appeared in the novel, MEGAN: BREADCRUMBS FOR THE NASTIES BOOK ONE. While the story is meant to stand alone, further reading is advised.
Copyright © 2014 Quiet Corner Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and characters are used in a fictitious manner and should not be construed as true events. It is intended for adults only and contains sexually explicit content. All sexually active characters are eighteen or older and not directly related.
1.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised how quickly we turned on each other. We should have seen it coming, everything that happened. It was staring us in the face. The human race is a fickle thing. For all our advancements, we never really evolved. When life became easier to manage, so did we. We lost our claws. Our teeth dulled. We traded who we really were for a life of relaxation. We shoved it to the rear of the closet, buried it in clothing and gadgets and pills to make us forget it existed in the first place: self-imposed ignorance.
We forgot we were animals.
Before the world went to shit, I was a day trader. I spent my days in a world of concepts, ideas and numbers devoid of substance beyond the nonsense we assigned. I dealt in ghosts, moved them around and put them back again. I was good at it, defined my existence by it, and believed I was special because of it. It bought me things, lots of things. If my car was better then my neighbors’, I won. If my apartment was bigger, I let them know it. If my girlfriend had a better ass, I flaunted it. When people looked at me they saw something they wanted and couldn’t have. I was perfect, a golden god atop a temple of green. I made them jealous. Publically they claimed to hate everything I stood for. Privately they wished they were me. That’s just the way it was. There’s no denying it. When I looked at them I saw numbers, price tags, and name brands, comparisons. They existed to be judged against, to confirm what I already knew, to feed my ego.
The Crash of ’38 was an end to the fun. It took almost everything, nearly cleaned me out. My girlfriend took the rest. When I couldn’t buy her things, I no longer served a purpose. Our relationship wasn’t really a relationship at all. It was an agreement. I was fine with that. We both knew it. Physically she was out of my league, flawless, feminine yet firm in a way that made every inch of me ache. She was out of everyone’s league. Her body was perfect, the best money could buy. My wallet was long, and thick, and gorgeous. Without it she wouldn’t have given me the time of day. She was willing to spend her nights on her back because she could spend her days wrapped in money. Made sense to me. Nature has always paired the strong with the strong, best with the best. For a period of time that’s exactly what we were. We had so many things to prove it.
Strength meant something very different then.
The fallout from the crash was bigger than any of us expected. Everything had been tied together, one economy for one world, the glorious beginnings of a utopia built on the common ground of greed. Suddenly the numbers we created were working against us, fictional constructs given a life of their own, taking on meanings we never intended. They were fighting back. The comforts of the middle, the things that kept them docile and manageable, went away. The bottom swelled, spread into areas they weren’t meant to, learned things they were better not knowing. The protests came first and riots shortly after, the desperate blows of desperate people. They were hungry. They were tired. They’d had enough.
The animals had found their teeth.
Groups emerged, old and new. Differences became a reason to hate. Hate became a pastime. I’m not even sure who fired the first missile, or where it landed, or how many died. No one is. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. When it happened, it happened quickly, couldn’t be taken back. A country I’d never heard of was suddenly gone, half its bordering neighbor blown off the map. There wasn’t any fallback plan or secret strategy for victory. There was only survival: them against us, us against the world. They pushed a button and they just kept pushing.
The one with the most bombs wins.
The first sentence in the epitaph of the human race.
When they exhausted their bombs they turned to gas. When the gas was gone they got creative, secret things created in secret labs by men just looking for a way to send their kids to college. They didn’t know what they were making, never imaged any of it would actually get used. They certainly never thought the fallout would have the effect it did. It was just science, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, steps on the stairway to something better. They were wrong. Anything capable of killing was used to kill, to win. No matter how awful it was.
When I first heard stories of the dead coming back, I didn’t believe a word of it. Even after everything that had happened, it still seemed silly. I changed my mind when I watched a ten year-old kid take a bite out of his mother’s leg. He just bit it, chewed, swallowed, and went back for more. I never forgot the look on her face, confusion mixed with horror, the sad realization of ending. Instead of helping, I ran.
What would’ve been the point?
I only survived because of luck. I’d love to tell you there was more to it, but there wasn’t. The bombs didn’t land on my head. It’s as simple as that. When money still meant something I had some, a little. I used it. When I pulled Patrick from his home the place was working with a skeleton crew, volunteers without family of their own, refusing to leave, silly people fighting a hopeless battle. Eventually they’d be forced to leave. They wouldn’t have a choice. The city was crumbling. Little boys were eating their mothers.
A month later there wasn’t anything left.
I used my connections to get Patrick out of the city before the gimps made it theirs. We wound up at a military outpost, packed into barracks like prisoners, living off rations, side-by-side with the wealthy turned poor. Some of us believed it was only a matter of time before things returned to normal. I was one of them. It seemed reasonable. Things had been bad before. There were wars, and plagues, and all sorts of nastiness. The human race loved to fuck itself. We were good at it.
But we always came back. It never ended us. This was just another bump in the road, a detour on the journey to greener pastures. I actually believed I’d see my apartment again, the city, maybe bang a beautiful girl.
I was an idiot.
When delivery of rations to the base began to slow, the mood changed. The men with the guns were more in charge than ever. Suddenly our money didn’t matter. Communications with the outside dwindled. Stories of life beyond the base grew stranger. The dead weren’t just coming back. They were changing.
“A god damn monster, fifteen feet tall, covered in fur.”
“Sons of bitches are draining the blood from people and leaving them on the side of the road.”
“Tore him to pieces…nothing left.”
At the time they just seemed like stories, nonsensical ravings of the bored and hysterical. Even in a world of the absurd they seemed absurd.
They were also true.
Eight months after arriving at the base, it was clear we needed to leave. It wasn’t safe, not for me, especially not for Patrick. The guards had grown sick of us. We were a drain on their resources, extra mouths that needed feeding, pampered-rich and useless, offering nothing in return. We’d overstayed our welcome.
Patrick’s situation didn’t make things easier. When my little brother was born, he was dead. The umbilical cord knotted itself, wrapped around his neck while still in the womb. The thing keeping him alive literally choked him to de
ath. They worked on him for seven minutes, pumping air into the lungs of a corpse. He wasn’t supposed to come back. Seven minutes is a long time.
It wasn’t long enough.
I resented Patrick growing up. I’m not proud of it. I hated the way people looked at him, the way they looked at me because of him. My brother was a Bertie, one of the first. Berthold’s Syndrome took everything from him. The disease was relatively new at the time. There were always specialists around. Everyone wanted to study him, hook him to machines, make some notes and write a paper. His pain held the prospect of income, fame, maybe an award. If there was anyone who actually wanted to help, I never met them. When they’d written everything they could write, they went away.
Patrick stood out because he was different. When strangers met him, they pitied him. When they learned I was his brother they pitied me.
I was twenty-three when my parents died, a car crash. Some drunk sideswiped them, crushed my mother’s chest, and drove a piece of metal through my father’s skull. And that was that. The care of Patrick fell to me. I didn’t ask for it, didn’t want it. There was no one else. Instead of dealing with my brother I hid him away, pretended he didn’t exist. It was easier for both of us.
I’m not entirely sure why I picked him up when everything went to shit. Maybe I felt bad. Maybe I just couldn’t let him die. I don’t know. Maybe it was just something I did.
I spent so many years in the company of assholes; maybe I wanted to be near something different.
Locked away in our barracks without the proper medication, Patrick’s Berthold’s became impossible to manage. He was always in pain. He needed pills the soldiers were no longer offering. The sympathy they showed earlier in the year was gone. When they looked at him they whispered, heads shaking, eyes rolling. He was a drag on their resources, useless in the reality of the new world. We all were.
Unfortunately, leaving wasn’t an option. During the first year the base was under constant attack. All day long the gimps clawed the fences and scraped the walls, sunken faces, eyes without pupils, milky white and distant. More arrived by the hour, the reanimated dead. They never stopped coming, groups of a hundred and more, packed together, desperately searching for a way inside, hungry. Confident the walls would hold and desperate to conserve ammunition, the soldiers eventually stopped shooting. The gunfire was only drawing the nasties in. Instead they patrolled the fences in groups, stabbing through chain links with knives, bodies piled atop bodies, everything rotting. At first the stench was unbearable. In time it became the norm.
The bastards never stopped moaning and screeching in that low, guttural way they screeched. I hated that screech.
Between Patrick and the gimps, sleeping was impossible. I’d lie awake at night, listening to them scratch, rotten fingernails snapping, teeth scraping concrete. Every night was a repeat of the last, unending, unchanging, as constant as the moon. After a while I was able to pick specific voices from the crowd and gave them names: Fred was a deep moaner. Mark hit the high notes. There was something almost sexual about Janice—high-pitched, building to something she could never reach, a frustrated housewife in need of a spanking. I liked Janice. Things went on like this for months, everything the same—until the night it was different.
One night, something new joined the chorus.
The howling came from the forest to the west; it was unlike anything we’d heard, louder and more guttural, almost like a dog if a dog could scream. Whatever they were, they weren’t gimps. The next morning the guards were on edge, weapons higher than normal, fingers dancing along triggers.
I was waiting in line for water rations when I overheard two of them talking. I shouldn’t have been listening; I was asking for trouble, so I did my best to remain discreet.
“Cap wants to send someone out there.”
“Fuck that. Ain’t no one doing that shit.”
“Says he wants to know what it is, thinks it’s worth checking out.”
“Cap’s lost his fucking mind if he th—”
I wasn’t discreet enough. Suddenly there was a rifle in my back, hot breath in my ear. The instant the pair surrounded me the line for water ceased to exist. I was alone.
The guy behind me was massive: dark skin, darker beard, a mountain of hormones and muscle with a four-inch scar across his cheek. “Got a problem, Hoss?”
I didn’t respond. I knew better. I lowered my head and looked at the dirt.
The second soldier pressed his forehead to my nose and didn’t stop until he knew it was uncomfortable. He was shorter than me but as thick as his pal, looking up with steel eyes. “Man asked you a question…think you should answer him?”
I didn’t know what to do with my hands, where to put them. My breathing was ragged. I tried to hide it. Everything felt wrong. The gun in my back touched spine. Another jabbed me in the chest. They were asserting their dominance, proving they were in control. They were the alpha-males. It was their world now. My apartment didn’t matter to them. My car was pointless. If my girlfriend had been around they would have taken her and her beautiful ass. She would have gone willingly, probably enjoyed herself—strong with the strong and all that bullshit.
I’d been replaced.
When I spoke it was a whisper, barely audible. “No.” It was exactly what they wanted to hear.
“Damn right you shouldn’t. You’re alive because Cap’s decided to keep you alive. Your retard brother burns though our medicine because Cap’s letting him burn through our medicine. You get to piss and shit and breathe because Cap lets you piss and shit and breathe, understand? If you want that to change, we can change it, Slick. Just say the word. We can make your life a lot easier…make it all go away. You’ll never have to wait in line for rations again. Is that what you want?”
I knew my place. “No.”
“No, what?”
I knew how to survive. “No, Sir.”
I probably should have let them kill me, toss what was left over the wall and feed me to the dead. That would have been easier. A week later it got worse.
A week later everything went to hell.
2.
The number of gimps outside the base was shrinking. Every night there was less. Unfortunately, they hadn’t found somewhere else to terrorize. They didn’t lose interest and stumble away. They were being taken. Every morning we’d find them torn apart, remains scattered everywhere, bits and pieces, bloody lumps of decayed flesh, bones picked clean. There were arms in the fence, hanging from the barbed wire, bodies nowhere to be found. One time I saw a head in the grass, just a head. It wasn’t dead. The mouth kept moving, milky eyes blinking. I swear it was looking right at me. The bastard had no body and it still wanted to eat.
No one was coming to save us.
The things in the forest, the howlers, were hungry too. They were stealing the gimps from right under our nose. Whatever was living in that forest was fast. They were quiet and they were hungry, and they would only get hungrier. It was only a matter of time before they had enough of the frozen section and came looking for something fresh. We all knew it. Tensions were rising. The divide was growing. On Thursday rations were suspended. On Friday there were back. Saturday they were gone again, and Sunday they returned. Monday morning we were instructed to remain inside our barracks. Anyone outside would be shot on sight. That’s what they told us. A small contingent of soldiers were tired of being ordered around. Communication with the outside world no longer existed. The old world was gone. Statuses meant nothing, titles meant less. The water was boiling.
Monday night the gunfire started. It lasted till morning.
The next day was different. No announcements were made, no word of rations or rules, nothing. By the end of the day we were all on edge.
“I’m not going to just sit here! They can’t do this to us!”
Fifteen people remained in our barracks. Fred Felchus was one of them. Fred was once the CEO of a small start-up that blossomed into a big deal. His car had probably been
better than mine, clothes more expensive. His wife had been a fifty year-old with a face stretched five times too many. I never had the luxury of meeting his mistress, but I bet her ass was incredible. His watch cost him seven figures. He still wore it. When I first met him I was jealous. After a year I found it sad. Fred had lived a life of luxury, unfamiliar with hardship. Shabby treatment never sat well. Fred couldn’t take it anymore.
“That’s it! If no one else has the balls to find out what the fuck’s going on, I guess I’ll have to do it myself!”
When he headed for the door his wife tried to stop him, pulled his collar, and ripped the pocket from his jacket. Fred was hardheaded, accustomed to having his way. None of it worked. When he left the barracks she followed.
Neither came back.
We sat in that room for three days, roasting in the heat, listening to the howlers and the gimps, the monsters outside. I was hungry. We were all hungry. When the forest screamed, so did Patrick. I did my best to calm him, but rubbing his head accomplished little. When he twitched he made noise. When he made noise he pissed off the guards. Sometimes they’d bang on the walls, cracking steel with the butt of their rifles. Other times they’d just scream. There was a moment, very brief, when I considered putting Patrick out of his misery. We still had pillows. He would’ve gone quietly, never felt a thing. It would have been so easy.
I’m not proud of it.
On the fourth day they fed us like animals on the floor, picking at mush with our fingers. It didn’t matter what we were eating; there wasn’t a second thought. We were hungry.
When everything is hungry, anything is food.
When we were done they dragged us from the building and lined us up. I had to carry Patrick, arms around his waist, struggling to keep him vertical. The prisoners from the rest of the barracks joined shortly after, eighty of us, half-starved, barely able to stand. The sun was bright and hot, and it hurt so bad it took me a while to open my eyes.
“Vacation’s over, people.” It was the little guy from before, the one who put his gun in my belly. Apparently he was in charge. Fantastic.
