This Rotten World | Book 1 | This Rotten World

by Morris, Jacy

  Philly and Boston were much the same, but there was still damn little news about Denver. He had tried his wife and daughter's cell phones a dozen times in the last ten hours, but they hadn't even rung. He pushed thoughts of his family to the side. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it.

  He sent a runner to find Sergeant Tejada. Tejada was a good man, capable, but he was the type of soldier that never wanted to get too high in the army. He was comfortable leading men and following orders. Making decisions was not his forte. As Lieutenant General McCutcheon's right hand, he was indispensible.

  Sergeant Tejada entered the warehouse, saluted and stood at attention. "At ease," McCutcheon said dismissively. "Sergeant Tejada, what is the report from the refugee camps?"

  "Sir, the entire Coliseum is secure. However, Major Miller reports that the fences aren't secure enough. He estimates the crowd of Annies to be somewhere at ten thousand."

  "Jesus," McCutcheon said, unable to control his reaction. He wiped his hand across his face as if there were something hanging off of it. "'Ten thousand did you say?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Continue with the report, Sergeant," McCutcheon prompted, his mind still trying to grasp the concept of ten thousand of those things held back by chain-link fences topped with razor wire.

  "They have plenty of food, but he requests more ammunition. All road traffic to the refugee center should be suspended until the perimeter is cleared. They have lost several squads who were trying to drop off refugees. The squads were overrun in the process."

  "Alright. This is what I want. Pull the choppers from search and rescue. I want them shuttling survivors and ammunition back and forth between the Coliseum and here. How many men are at the Coliseum camp?"

  "Three thousand, sir, less some casualties."

  "Right. Well, give them the ammo that they need. All search and rescue operations are to bring any survivors here. We'll transport them to the refugee center from here by helicopter. Anything else?"

  "Sir, the reports from the soccer stadium are somewhat..." the Sergeant swallowed before he finished... "worse."

  McCutcheon didn't like two things, the fact that Sergeant Tejada had held back intel and the fact that Tejada actually seemed hesitant to give him some news. "Well, don't keep me in suspense, Sergeant. Spit it out."

  "Sir, the soldiers at the soccer stadium report that it is an indefensible position. They have taken heavy casualties, and refugees have all but stopped trickling in."

  "Heavy casualties? What are we talking here, Tejada?"

  "They're down to half and ammo is an issue, sir."

  McCutcheon did the math in his head. 1,500 soldiers gone... in the space of a single day. How was this even possible? What the hell was going on out there? "Call 'em back. Get those choppers going. Bring the refugees first, then get those soldiers out of there. Anything else, Sergeant?"

  "No, sir."

  "Very well then. You know what to do." Sergeant Tejada saluted and turned smartly, marching out of McCutcheon's makeshift office. "And Sergeant?" Tejada turned around to regard McCutcheon. "Never be afraid to give me bad news. I want to hear it as soon as it happens." Tejada nodded his understanding, and then made his way out of the warehouse to spread the orders.

  McCutcheon stood up from his seat and walked outside with a cup of regulation issue coffee in his hand, mud as it was more commonly known. He exited Warehouse #206 and stepped outside. Shading his eyes from the falling sun. 2,500 soldiers in a single day. At that rate, he would be out of soldiers in less than two weeks. Now was the crucial time. Now was the time where they either wrapped a single, iron, military fist around this problem or they broke and ran.

  Was Sheila out there, driving towards some refugee center that was woefully ill-equipped to handle the problem? The Coliseum hadn't been the best choice, but it offered the best vantage point. Its roof was more accessible for snipers, and it could easily be fenced off. Also, the Moda Center had been trashed by the time they had first laid eyes on it, the reanimated crawling through the building in the darkness. Ten of those 2,500 dead soldiers had been men sent in to clear the place.

  The soccer stadium? Well, that was a tactical error. They simply hadn't known the types of numbers they would be dealing with. The dead were growing exponentially, while their own numbers were shrinking. It was a bad day to be in charge.

  In the fading light of the day, McCutcheon scanned the perimeter of Terminal 2. The shipping containers were being stacked on the backside of their own chain-link fence, creating a solid barrier and additional walkways for the soldiers to use. The height of the shipping containers provided an vantage point for the soldiers as they kept the perimeter cleared of the dead. Even now, he saw some of them taking potshots at the reanimated who had gathered around the terminal to watch the proceedings. Within hours of being on site, McCutcheon had issued a universal permission-to-fire order.

  Through one of the gaps in the shipping container wall, he saw one of the reanimated fall. It didn't matter; three more were approaching in the distance. How much ammunition did they have? Were there enough bullets to put one into every citizen of the United States if need be? McCutcheon shook his head and took another sip of mud. Dark thoughts came to him.

  A fresh-faced soldier with military-issue glasses sprinted up to him with a sheet of paper clutched in his hand. McCutcheon took it from him and looked at the words printed on it. He sighed heavily and dismissed the soldier. New York was gone. It would only be a matter of hours, maybe minutes, before the news made the rounds. Morale was fucked already, and this was the last bit of news that they needed.

  The good news was that he had been promoted, although he didn't know what good the pay raise would do him if the world was on the verge of collapsing and he had no family to spend it on. He crumpled up the paper and threw it on the ground. He watched his men as they worked, stalking the compound, their rifles unslung, some stacking boxes and digging in, others rushing about carrying out any of a thousand different orders and tasks that were needed to make the military machine function.

  McCutcheon took another sip of mud, and looked back at the gap between the shipping containers. There was another rifle pop, and a reanimated woman fell in a heap. There were five more behind her, approaching through the maze of industrial buildings that surrounded Terminal 2, the once bustling Port of Portland.

  He took a final sip of coffee, but couldn't quite force himself to swallow it. He spit it onto the ground and dumped his coffee mug out. He shook his head at the words on the cup. It was a white piece, cheap and laced with fine cracks from years of use. "World's Best Dad," it said. What a cruel coffee mug, he thought.

  Chapter 16: Watching the Gauges

  Colin Murphy sat at the control board of the Boardman Power Plant, his feet up on the console and his arms behind his head. That he felt no sense of impending doom was a mystery to him. The radio's reports had become even more dire, and the men and women that had fled the power plant had yet to return. He should have been panicking, but he had his job to focus on.

  Murph watched the monitors, moving from one mundane checklist to the next. The power plant usually had twenty to thirty employees working there at any given time. Most of the members of the staff were redundant. Power was serious business; there always needed to be a replacement if someone became ill... and there also needed to be a replacement for that replacement. But now it was just himself and the Chief.

  "Get your goddamn shit heels off that console, Murph," the Chief yelled as he burst abruptly through the door to the control room.

  Murph pulled his boots off the console so fast that he ripped something in his guts, the muscles knotting in instantaneous pain. He groaned as the Chief slapped him on the shoulder. "How are things looking out there?"

  Murph checked the instruments on the console. The lights were right and the dials were normalized. "It's all green, Chief." They stood in silence, watching the monitors flit from one scene to the next. Murph had no idea wha
t to do next. He wasn't much of a conversationalist. You might even call him awkward. The thing was, the Chief wasn't much better. He was comfortable shouting orders, but until this afternoon in the cafeteria, Murph had never even thought of him as human. Sure, he was shaped like a man, talked like a man, and ate like a man, but in all other respects, he came off as something entirely emotionless and almost robotic. To see him soften and actually agree to let power plant employees walk off the job was completely unexpected.

  "Hell of a thing, huh, Murph?"

  "What?" Murph was caught off guard by the Chief's sudden words, and then he covered it up by saying what he usually did in these situations. "Uh... yeah. Totally." Nothing got a man out of an awkward situation like saying the phrase, "Yeah. Totally."

  The Chief continued rambling, and Murph knew that he was safe for a little while. "Lots of people out there counting on us. You know that?"

  Murph did his best to focus on the Chief's words. He seemed distracted, frazzled, the way Murph was whenever he got up enough guts to talk to a woman who wasn't three sheets to the wind.

  "You know, I got family in Portland."

  Murph swallowed and said, "Yeah?"

  "Yep. I got a boatload of cousins that left the rez to find a better life there."

  Murph's palms began to sweat as his conversational skills kicked in. "What's a rez?"

  The Chief laughed hard and slapped him on the shoulder. "The reservation." Murph's face was blank. "Where the Native Americans live?"

  "You mean Indians?"

  The Chief's laugh was booming in the confined space of the control room. "Yeah, you got it." They lapsed into another awkward silence.

  The monitors flitted by, never-ending parades of still photos with no one in them, the loading dock, the floor, the conveyor belt, the gate outside, the boiler, the cafeteria. Nothing. No movement. Just pictures of a world that had become still. Murph wanted to see the workers there, moving about, laughing and jawing back and forth the way they did, but there was nothing, just cold concrete, unused furniture, and empty space.

  "What about you? You got anybody out there?" The Chief asked.

  Murph had nobody, but he didn't feel comfortable sharing the fact with the Chief. "I got someone in The Dalles," he lied. He didn't know why. He didn't even know himself. The Chief silently nodded, his brown-skinned face bobbing up and down in the florescent glow of the control booth.

  "Do you think they'll come back?" Murph asked.

  "It's been hours. I'm sure if they were going to come back, they would have done so by now. I'm sure we'll all be just fine." The Chief slapped him on the shoulder one more time and then turned to leave saying, "Keep up the good work, Murph."

  Murph just stared straight ahead at the console and the monitors above it. When the door closed behind the Chief, he relaxed, the tension draining out of his body so that it filled the chair he was sitting in. He leaned back in the chair and put his heels back up on the console. What was happening out there?

  His mind wandered, conjuring absurd what-if situations. He wished he actually had a girl in The Dalles. Hell, he wished he had a girl anywhere. He imagined himself tossing his work badge on the cafeteria tables and rushing out with the other men and women to save his true love. She would be huddled in a house somewhere, waiting for him to appear and save the day. Then he would kick down the door, and they would embrace. Perhaps sweeping romantic music would be playing in the background.

  Murph punched up the boiler feed and stared at it as he played scenes of heroic sacrifice in his mind. The conveyor belt marched on in silence, dropping load after load of coal into the boiler where it was turned into electricity. Murph didn't care about the process. He didn't need to. He just needed to watch the lights on the console and make sure all the needles on the numerous gauges stayed out of the red.

  On the monitor, the light from the boiler shifted as if it were alive. The monitor was black and white, and the light brightened and darkened, fading in and out almost as if there were a pattern. Murph was on the edge of understanding the pattern, understanding the secret of the power plant, when a body tumbled over the edge of the conveyor belt and into the boiler.

  Murph's first reaction was to check the gauges. Chunks of coal were one thing, but an entire human body was something entirely different. There was no reaction on the gauges, and for a second, Murph second guessed himself. Maybe he had imagined he had seen a body. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.

  He unlocked the monitor feed and watched as it cycled through each of the cameras. Cafeteria... nothing. Loading dock... the Chief smoking a cigarette. The floor, machinery shrouded in shadows chugging away. The conveyor belt... just a thousand feet of industrial belts pulling raw coal into the boiler. The gate outside... oh shit. The gate outside.

  Chapter 17: In the Coliseum

  After the second indignity of having to take their clothes off, Clara and Joan had made their way inside the arena. They had eaten food on Styrofoam trays and milled about in the parade of refugees. They had slept on the arena floor, on makeshift cots that had been set up for that purpose. There were more people than there were cots, and Joan and Clara had been one of the first to arrive at the Coliseum.

  For a while, the flood of refugees was fairly steady. Big green trucks would pull up to the fences after a path was cleared for them and drop off survivors. Helicopters constantly buzzed overhead, dropping off supplies and refugees. Soldiers stood on the scaffolding, gunning down the dead, but in Clara's mind, something seemed off.

  With the amount of dead on hand, there should be a steady stream of gunfire, but their numbers had only swelled throughout the day. Clara sat in the fading evening light trying to figure out what they were doing. All of her inquiries had been rebuffed by the soldiers that were in the courtyard. They weren't avoiding sharing information with her; rather, they seemed too afraid to talk about their own situation, as if saying it would make it all seem too real.

  Clara clomped around the front of the Coliseum, doing laps in her walking boot on an ankle that still hurt mildly. In a thinly disguised attempt at hitting the soldiers up for information, she had spent the better part of the afternoon bumming cigarettes from random soldiers she sae taking a smoke break. They were more than happy to give her a cigarette, the information not so much. Her throat was raw from smoking when Joan appeared at her side just as the sun was going down.

  "Why don't you come inside and get something to eat?"

  Clara didn't say anything. She just kept surveying the fences, the worried look on the soldiers' faces, and the growing throng of the dead. "Hey, you ok?" Joan asked.

  Clara turned to Joan and said, "No. I'm not ok. We're not safe here."

  Joan laughed, dismissing Clara's worries. "What are you talking about? Look at all these soldiers. If we're not safe here, then where are we safe?" Clara looked around the courtyard, taking in the somber faces and the worried looks.

  "Nowhere probably," she replied.

  Joan put her arm around Clara's shoulders, and turned her around. "Come on. Stop worrying. You'll feel much better after you eat."

  Behind them a new group of survivors was being forced to strip. Clara didn't want to see the large ginger naked anyway, so she let Joan usher her inside. The Coliseum reeked of stale glory and the spilled beer that had sunk into the spiderweb cracks that laced the utilitarian concrete floor. The floor was lacquered to a shine, but the smell was still there, clawing its way up her nostrils. It was a better smell than outside. Damn that hot weather. The stench of the dead was starting to become overpowering. A couple of hours ago, a soldier had begun handing out camouflage bandanas for the men on the fences to put over their faces. She wished that she had bugged the soldier for one, but he seemed in a hurry, and she wasn't quite sure of her place in the refugee camp. Everyone seemed nice, but she felt like a child in a classroom, the soldiers the teachers. She was sure her autonomy was just an illusion, and that it could be taken away at any moment.

&
nbsp; They walked around the concourse, Joan nattering on and on, as if they were at some sort of ridiculous sleepover where the entire city had been invited, alive or dead. "I think we have it good here," she said. "I've seen their set-up and everything seems to be running nice and smooth. The triage center is largely empty, but they're letting me help out."

  "That's great," Clara said noncommittally, imagining Joan as the teacher's pet of the classroom. They stood in line, and Clara suffered through Joan's mindless chit-chat. They had been through a lot together, and though Clara didn't necessarily like Joan, she was the only person she knew in the entire city. Clara had kept largely to herself. After high school, that had been the way of things. The friends she had made in high school drifted away, people she had thought would be in her life forever just seemed to sort of vanish into thin air. So-and-so had a child. So-and-so went off to college. So-and-so moved to Europe.

  Her own family had moved around the country, dispersing after she graduated as if to say, "Well, we did that. Another one fit for society. Now we can retire to Florida." Her parents had only existed in post cards and Facebook posts for the last five years. Then her mom died, and it was if her father had died as well. The post cards came less and less, and they only occasionally talked on the phone. How long had it been? Six months since she had talked to him? She hated herself for that.

  Her life had largely been a solitary one, until Courtney came into her life. Rough around the edges, snarly as hell, but sweeter than sweet underneath the tattoos and attitude. No one had ever treated her like he had. She was his entire world, and he was hers. They had spent years existing in each other's presence, and then he was gone.