This Rotten World | Book 1 | This Rotten World
Page 1
This Rotten World
By Jacy Morris
Text Copyright © Jacy Morris 2014
All Rights Reserved
Also Available from Jacy Morris
Fiction:
The Abbey
The Children of Hamelin (Coming Soon)
The Enemies of Our Ancestors (as The Vocabulariast)
This Rotten World
This Rotten World: Let It Burn
Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (as The Vocabulariast)
Non-Fiction:
Let's Get Drunk and Watch Horror Movies: 50 Horror Movie Reviews and Drinking Games (As The Vocabulariast)
Let's Get Drunk and Watch Horror Movies: Volume 2 (As The Vocabulariast)
Music:
All Hell Breaks Loose Soundtrack with Jeremy Brown (Available on iTunes)
Movies:
All Hell Breaks Loose (Available from Wild Eye Releasing on DVD)
The Cemetery People (Coming Soon)
Spec. Scripts:
Find my work on Inktip.com (email me at thevocabulariast@gmail.com to find out how)
Table of Contents
Also Available from Jacy Morris
Prologue
Chapter 1: Zeke
Chapter 2: Mort
Chapter 3: Rudy
Chapter 4: Teach
Chapter 5: Joan
Chapter 6: Clara
Chapter 7: Through a Garden Hose
Chapter 8: Nightsticks
Chapter 9: Dustin and Bill
Chapter 10: Code Red and Endcaps
Chapter 11: The Munchies
Chapter 12: Haldol and Bite Wounds
Chapter 13: Use Your Head
Chapter 14: Speakerphones and 12-Gauge Shotgun Shells
Chapter 16: A Total Lack of Trumpets
Chapter 17: From Worse to Worser
Chapter 18: Pop-Tarts and Paint Thinner, the Breakfast of Champions
Chapter 19: Iceman and Busy Signals
Chapter 20: Never Too Late
Chapter 21: Katie Bar the Door
Chapter 22: Making Stories
Chapter 23: Check-In Time
Chapter 24: Roasted Goat
Chapter 25: Ace is Number 1
Chapter 26: The Shopping Cart of Salvation
Chapter 27: The Mortician
Chapter 28: A Message to You Rudy
Chapter 29: Fixed-Gear Only
Chapter 30: Molly
Chapter 31: Observation
Chapter 32: Boot Camp
Chapter 33: The Last Tear
Chapter 34: Quarantined
Chapter 35: The Long Way Home
Chapter 36: This Old Cell
Chapter 37: Hot Chops
Chapter 38: Hey, Neighbor
Chapter 39: As Day Breaks
Chapter 40: On the Road
Chapter 41: The New Katie
Chapter 42: Friends and Murder
Chapter 43: Til Death Do Us Part
Chapter 44: Swords and Flames
Chapter 45: To Sleep or Not to Sleep
Chapter 46: Becoming Chaos
Chapter 47: I'd Like to Make a Collect Call to Armageddon
Chapter 48: Move Over Rover, the Army is Taking Over
Prologue
BOOK 2:
WE ALL FALL DOWN
Chapter 1: The Dinner Bell
Chapter 2: Self-Service
Chapter 3: Pretty Big Balls
Chapter 4: Those Things'll Kill Ya
Chapter 5: A Numbers Game
Chapter 6: Getting Wheels
Chapter 7: Fortified
Chapter 8: Boardman, Oregon
Chapter 9: Rescue
Chapter 10: Safe
Chapter 11: Riverside
Chapter 12: Two to Drop Off
Chapter 13: The Dumpster of Salvation
Chapter 14: A New Band
Chapter 15: Digging In
Chapter 16: Watching the Gauges
Chapter 17: In the Coliseum
Chapter 18: Ginger Fluff
Chapter 19: Dinnertime
Chapter 20: Polite Conversation
Chapter 21: When is Check Out Time?
Chapter 22: The Last Show on Earth
Chapter 23: Droppin' Like Flies
Chapter 24: Barbarians at the Gate
Chapter 25: Take Two of These and Call Me in the Morning
Chapter 26: Killing Time
Chapter 27: Room #27
Chapter 28: Shit Buddies
Chapter 29: On Notice
Chapter 30: In the Booth
Chapter 31: On the Fence
Chapter 32: Wanted
Chapter 33: The Pied Piper of Portland
Chapter 34: Saint Bryant
Chapter 35: Into the Night
Chapter 36: Not Enough Beer to Go Around
Chapter 37: The Third Time is the Charm
Chapter 38: We All Fall Down
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prologue
In the future:
The sun beat down upon him. Beads of sweat ran down the sides of his face. One ran down the side of his nose and perched on the edge of his upper lip. He blew the bead of sweat into the air and grunted as he pulled on the coarse rope. His hands, now callused and blistered after days on the roof, lumbered with robotic automaticity.
His mind wandered as his body engaged in actions that had essentially become second nature. He pulled on the rope some more. In the back of his mind, he registered the coarseness of the rope on the exposed parts of his hands. He had wrapped some shreds of an old shirt around his hands a few days ago, when he first began his work.
His shoulders were red from exposure to the sun. In the past, he would have worried about increasing his risk for melanoma, but not anymore. Now it was perfectly fine to smoke, drink, and sit in the sun for hours upon hours. Hand over hand, he hauled on the rope, leaving bits of skin and blood behind on the frayed, hempen strands. Finally, he hauled his prize up onto the roof, a heavy, blue bowling ball with a metallic finish, swirls upon swirls playing on its surface. It looked like a small planet sans continents. The sun lit every metallic piece of glitter embedded in its plastic. The bowling ball rested in a cradle that he had fashioned out of rope. Crimson drops of gore dripped from the bowling ball onto the loose pebbles that covered the roof of the gas station.
He looked off into the distance, wiping the sweat from his brow. His arm dropped to his side, and the sweat that he had wiped off ran down his fingers and dripped onto the roof. He flexed his aching fingers and looked at the yellow and red gas station sign. $4.19 for a gallon of gas. He had a feeling that it was actually worth a little more these days.
The man pulled a cigarette from a bag that sat on the ground next to a shiny, silver air conditioning vent. He lit the cigarette, looking at the naked lady lighter he had pulled from a house two weeks past. He wondered if he would ever see a naked lady again, a living one at least.
He dropped to the ground and leaned his back against the air conditioning vent. The heat of the flimsy metal burned his skin, but he no longer cared. He took a deep drag off of the cigarette, enjoying the burn of the smoke as it curled its way into his lungs. He looked up at the azure sky, wishing for rain. Hell, a cloud would do just fine... anything for a brief respite from the relentless sun. There was only one thin wisp of a cloud floating through the sky, a mocking wisp with a shape like nothing. He took another drag from his cigarette, and closed his eyes.
He awoke to the pain of burning on his fingers. The man tossed the cigarette across the roof and looked at his ruined digits. Red blisters and pain, exactly what he needed... more blisters and pain. He stood up, shakin
g off the soreness that had seeped in unbidden during his brief respite.
The man picked up the bowling ball by the rope and dangled it out over the side of the gas station roof. He peeked over the edge, already prepared for what he was about to see. Rotten faces peered up at him, scraps of flesh hanging off of their cheeks, their arms raised up to him as if they were at a concert and he was the object of their affection. But that's not how it was... he was just a meal, standing on the roof of a gas station, holding a bowling ball tied up in a rope. He swung the ball in an arc, releasing it at an angle that sent it hurtling straight down.
He watched it fall, tracking its movement. The zombie's head exploded like an egg. Instead of yellow yolk, red chunks of brain erupted from the shattered skull. He almost laughed as the now headless body fell over to the side slowly like R2-D2 after one of those little creatures blasted him with electricity in the beginning of Star Wars. He would have laughed if it weren't for the fact that two more corpses were shambling down the street, ready to take up watch at the bottom of the wall. A hundred more clawed at the rough red brick of the gas station.
Bodies littered the ground all around the squat building. The moans of the dead drifted through the air. He couldn't wait for the sun to kill him. But in the meantime... he pulled on the rope.
The sun beat down upon him. Beads of sweat ran down the sides of his face. One ran down the side of his nose and perched on the edge of his upper lip. He blew the sweat into the air and grunted as he pulled on the coarse rope. His hands, now callused and blistered after days on the roof, lumbered robotic automaticity.
Chapter 1: Zeke
Today was the day that the guns had to be cleaned. No one was making Zeke do it, but years of habit prevented him from taking it easy. Zeke was a well-adjusted veteran who had recently seen his service in the Army end. There had been no promotion in his future, so he saw no more point in wasting any more of his life. Still, the old habits died hard.
His house was a squatty, two-bedroom bungalow on the edge of Portland, Oregon's SE quadrant. He lived there alone... hence, all the guns. They weren't alive. They didn't keep him warm at night, but they gave him something to do on those nights when the past seemed to be sitting outside of his window, breathing its dusty breath.
There were so many guns because... well, he had no wife and no life outside of the military. This was a problem. For Zeke, life was not supposed to be like this. When he was a young boy, dreaming in Toledo, Ohio, he had more than once imagined that in the future he would live a picture perfect, Rockwellian existence with a standard-issue wife and several kids running around the yard to pass on his legacy. He looked at his guns. They were the closest thing to a family that he had and the only legacy he was likely to ever pass on.
His parents had died years ago, when he was only ten-years-old, after a drunk driver had run into them head-on, twisting their car and their bodies into an unrecognizable mess. He could almost remember their faces... almost. But years of dust, travel, and simplicity of emotion had left him vacant and damaged. He plucked a shotgun out of the gun locker in the corner of his living room, a SPAS-12. It was empty. Zeke knew the feeling.
Zeke sat on his couch and turned on the TV with his remote control. The flat screen sprung to life. He unscrewed the magazine extension, and slowly removed the magazine spring, making sure it didn't fly off. His hands moved easily, disassembling the fore-end and the bolt from the receiver. On the TV, the news was on. Boring feel-good stories, and little else. The weather report came up. It looked like the month of June was going to be a scorcher. It didn't bother him. He had grown used to sweltering heat over the last decade of operating overseas. Hell, he had actually grown to like the heat.
As the "local" sports news came up, he couldn't help but laugh. Having grown up with actual sports teams on the TV, Portland's sports news always seemed rather hokey and small-town to him. They only had one team, the Trail Blazers, a perennially underperforming professional basketball team. There was also a soccer team, but no one that knew anything about sports really considered soccer an actual sport. When the Blazers weren't playing, everything circled back to Oregon's colleges, The University of Oregon and Oregon State. Were you a Duck or a Beaver? Who gives a fuck? He reassembled the SPAS and cocked it, making sure the action felt right. Everything was copacetic. He filled the magazine with shotgun shells, and then cycled them through with the pump action just to make sure.
Zeke placed the shotgun back in the gun locker, and walked to his dumpy old refrigerator, which had probably been put in right after the house had been built in the '60s. The hipsters that migrated through his neighborhood to reach Southeast Portland would have called it retro; he called it a piece of shit. The refrigerator was the only original piece of the house that still remained. It hummed along loudly, occasionally rattling as if it were about to give up the ghost, but it kept things cold, so he really had no problem with it. He pulled the dirty white door open and looked inside the fridge. Ah, a cold PBR. Nothing says "Tuesday rocks" like a cold PBR and the smell of gun oil.
He walked over to the front window of his small shitbox and peered out through the bars on the window to eye the street people. He lived on the corner of a road to nowhere that intersected with 82nd Ave... a great road if you liked crystal meth and hookers. He popped the top of his beer, and took a long swig, enjoying the burn of the beer as it travelled down his throat. There were times when he thought he ought to track down his realtor and put a bullet through his head, but then he realized it was his fault for not staking out the place on his own. One hour spent around here at night, and he would have known better than to buy a house this close to 82nd.
The night people moved at a shambling pace. Their lives were over, but they had no idea. Once you got on the meth, that's all there was to it. You might as well throw yourself from a bridge downtown. The bars on his windows were for them. A methhead would do anything to get the cash to buy another fix. They walked along, picking at their skin, missing teeth, and generally making non-junkies feel nauseated by their very existence. He had lost a shovel, a bucket, some empty beer cans, and an old coffee can full of loose screws and nails in the first week he had lived here. He learned quickly not to leave anything outside, and the bars had been his first modification to the house. He was surprised that they hadn't bothered to try and take the bars yet. The scrap metal industry was doing just fine in Portland.
The junkies weren't the only annoyance on the street. The hookers, riddled with disease and about as sexy as a vagina lined with razor blades, occasionally had their Johns park in front of his house, never for long though. The cocking of a SPAS-12 tended to soften up even the most randy of Johns. He smiled at the night, took a sip from his beer, and walked back over to his gun rack. He lifted his chrome Desert Eagle Mark XIX from the rack. Of course, if you were looking for an effective anti-Viagra, pulling the slide on your Desert Eagle would do the job just as well as the pump from a SPAS.
Deep down, he knew that it was wrong to point guns at junkies, hookers, and Johns. But that's how he had dealt with his problems for the last twenty years. The lack of institutional norms was hard to take advantage of when all you ever knew were foster homes and the Army, which for all intents and purposes was essentially a foster home for adults. He hadn't learned to talk to women in the Army. There was no "Pick-Up Lines Boot Camp" unless you counted the peacocking bullshit of the other soldiers, which was just as likely to get you slapped or beat up in real world applications. His awkward conversations could fill volumes.
As he was reassembling his Desert Eagle, he heard a scream outside. "Fucking hookers," he thought to himself. He pressed against the barrel, holding the barrel assembly against the frame of the gun. He swung the barrel lock into closed position, and cocked and released the hammer to make sure it was working correctly. He slapped a magazine home and cocked the gun, rushing out the door, the cold, steel tang of adventure dancing on the tip of his tongue.
Chapter 2: Mort
>
Mort tossed and turned under the Interstate Bridge. The chill of the evening had snuck up on him, leeching into his bones. He had gotten so comfortable sleeping without a blanket in the last two weeks, the first days of summer weather, that he hadn't needed his blanket. He could hear others in the night, coughing while the fire in the rusty oil drum guttered weakly, putting out barely any heat. The cars roared down the highway a hundred feet above them. He had often imagined what would happen if there were an earthquake while he was sleeping underneath the bridge. He pictured tons of concrete breaking away and burying him amidst cars, rebar, and empty whiskey pints. No one would even know to look for them.
He snorted in, inhaling the fragrant musk of his own facial hair which was marbled with gray. He felt ripe. Maybe it was time to take himself down to the fountain and get himself a bath, but not tonight; it was too cold. Mort flinched as another person in the camp coughed, a rattling, phlegmy bit of business that didn't help him sleep any. His teeth began to chatter.
He sat up and blinked his eyes, the rods and cones taking their time to adjust to the gloom under the highway. Ivy flowed down a steep hillside and a pillar of solid concrete, twenty feet in diameter shot up into the sky where it met with the underside of the freeway. The freeway rattled and roared as a semi-truck bounced across its rutted structure. Mort hugged himself tightly and rubbed his arms, trying to warm them up.
The ground was soft and dirty, but the cardboard he had been sleeping on was fresh, and in good shape. Still, the chill of the ground had crept up through its limited insulation. It felt like it was 50 degrees out... a low-number for the beginning of June. His blanket was stashed away in his shopping cart, where it lay untouched for the last two weeks. His shopping cart rested against the concrete pillar. He got to his feet, fighting pins and needles in his left foot. He limped across the homeless camp, stepping over bearded bodies and broken glass.
Mort reached his shopping cart, a rusted old gentleman that had been with him for two years. He wasn't even sure the store he had stolen it from was still in existence. It was a skinny cart, in good working order, and piled high with everything that he owned. Some bits of clothing here and there, a spare set of shoes, odds and ends, and his trusty street blanket... impervious to moisture, totally camouflaged, and utterly priceless. He began shifting his belongings, trying not to make too much noise. The blue tarp on top crinkled loudly as he peeled it back.