This Rotten World | Book 1 | This Rotten World

by Morris, Jacy

  Zeke shot upwards at the sound of the Coliseum's PA system crackling to life. He rubbed his eyes as he looked around, and he knew things were not right as soon as he noticed an armed soldier standing at the exit to the concourse. His rifle was not hanging loose; it was trained on the arena floor.

  "This is Major Miller of the United States Army. I need all civilians to move down onto the floor of the arena."

  There was a sluggish response. It did not sit well with the unseen Major Miller. "Now, people! This is not a suggestion. This is an order."

  "What the hell is going on?" Lou asked.

  "Trouble," Zeke replied.

  The speed of the civilians was still not fast enough for the Major. "If any civilians refuse to move to the floor of the arena, they will be given a warning. If they still refuse to move, they will be shot."

  Zeke and Lou rose to their feet. To their right, they saw Brian pick up his youngest and begin the awkward march down the steps with a near comatose child bundled in his arms. June followed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. All around the arena people were moving, bounding down the stairs in a rush.

  When Zeke and Lou reached the floor of the arena, Zeke turned in a slow circle. At each entrance was an armed soldier, their rifle trained on the floor of the arena.

  The PA system crackled again, and Major Miller said, "Thank you for cooperating. I have a message for you." The crowd of refugees looked around at each other, questioning looks on their faces. Zeke could feel the tension of the crowd rolling over his body.

  "Up until now, it's all been cake and gravy. But things are changing," Major Miller's voice had a hard edge to it. "This morning, we found one of our men dead in a bathroom stall. His skull had been bashed in."

  The Major let his words hang in the air for a second. Zeke scanned the faces of the crowd around him. One face in particular stood out to him. It was the face of a young girl, she couldn't have been much older than twenty, and there was a fresh bruise along her jawline. A hollow look of fear filled her eyes. She dropped her gaze to the floor as he watched.

  "We can't have that. We are here to protect you. And now, we have to protect you from yourselves. Vacation is over, people. We are in a tenuous situation at best. The protocols are going to be different now. There are no more free rides. Citizens will work for their food, or they will not eat. You will help yourselves, or you will all die. And for those who killed our soldier, we have a message for you. We will find you, and you will be dealt with. For anyone who doesn't like the new protocols, you are not prisoners. You can climb the fence out front and leave any time you wish. We won't stop you."

  Zeke scoffed at the man's words. The man was giving them a choice that was really no choice at all. You can either do things the army way, or you can kill yourself. It wasn't a choice at all.

  Zeke watched the young girl as she kept her eyes locked on the floor. The fat man next to her, who couldn't have been much older than the girl, kept looking at her and another woman. His face had turned beet red, and Zeke could see the same look of fear in his eyes that he had seen in the girl. Something was going on there. It could be just your run-of-the-mill "I'm afraid for my life" fear, but he thought it was more than that.

  "... so get your rest while you can. At dawn, we will give you all jobs, and we expect you to do them."

  The Major's speech ended without ceremony, and the people on the floor of the arena milled about, while the soldiers disappeared from the exits, drawing back like snakes into burrows.

  Zeke watched the fat man and the young woman. The man's cheeks blew out as he sighed a heavy sigh of tension. Immediately, the man and the young girl began speaking with another woman in hushed tones, their heads put together. Zeke recognized a plan being put together when he saw it.

  Lou tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hey, man. What do you make of that?" Lou asked.

  "It's starting," Zeke said.

  "What?"

  "The end."

  ****

  Lou went to find some breakfast while Zeke grabbed a cot next to the trio of whisperers. To the untrained eye, he seemed to be taking a nap, his arm hanging over his eyes, and paying them no attention at all. In reality, he heard almost every word they said. From their conversations he was able to piece together what had happened.

  The young girl, the one with the bruise on her jaw, had been attacked. The other girl, the one with the tight body and the dead eyes, had come to her defense. The fat man... well, Zeke didn't know how he fit in, but he was definitely a part of it judging by his shifty eyes, constant hand-wringing, and general skittishness.

  When Zeke had heard enough, he sat up, let his eyes adjust to the harsh light of the arena, and walked over to the three of them. "Sounds like you guys have yourselves a problem."

  They sat there, dumbfounded, as if he were speaking to them in an alien language. Then, the one with the dead eyes spoke, "Anything we have is no concern of yours."

  Zeke squatted down and looked the girl in the eyes. She was the leader. She was the only one he really needed to talk to, but he spoke loud enough for the others to hear, for their benefit. "No, it is our concern because things are about to get very ugly in here."

  "What are you talking about?" the red-haired man asked, and Zeke could see that he was more of a boy really.

  Zeke smiled and took a pointed look around the arena. "Place like this... it's got eyes." Zeke nodded at a corner of the arena. A shiny black dome hung on the wall, and as they looked around they noticed others scattered throughout the arena. "Now those eyes may not have seen what you did, and I'm glad you did what you did, but they may have seen something. One person goes into a bathroom. Another person follows, and then a third. Only two come out. I'm no mathematician, but even I can do the subtraction on that."

  The young girl's face paled. The boy turned red and looked like he was trying to swallow his own face. The blonde girl just stared at him with those cold, dead eyes. "What do you want?"

  Zeke licked his lips. "The way I see it, you've gotten us all into a heap of trouble here. This could have been a fine place, for a while at least. Now it's going to get rough, but it doesn't matter because it was bound to end up this way sooner or later. Put a group of people with guns in charge of a group with none and bad things are bound to happen."

  "Get to the point," Chloe spat.

  "We're gonna get out of this place. It's doomed. We knew that from the moment we stepped foot inside. Hell, we all know it. But we've got a plan. All we need is some numbers, some people willing to do what needs to be done. The way I see it, you can help us, or you can wait for those soldiers to find the right footage on those cameras. Then they find you. Then they find her." Zeke hiked a thumb at the young girl, "After that, they throw you over the fence, or worse."

  The young girl groaned. The blonde nodded her head seeing the sense in Zeke's words. "So what do we have to do?"

  Zeke smiled. He was glad they saw things his way. The first thing we have to do is destroy the evidence. It's not quite time to pull the pin on this place yet. So we're going to need some more time."

  "Jesus," the boy said. "Will we ever get back to normal?"

  "I'll take alive over normal any day, kid." Zeke held out his hand, and the boy shook it in a flaccid way that made Zeke's skin crawl. "Name's Zeke."

  ****

  Katie watched Zeke talk to the girl. From her spot in the crowd, she had been keeping an eye on Zeke. She didn't know why. She was curious about him. Was he going to be true to his word, and keep the physical thing just physical, or would he want more? When she saw him talking to the blonde, she felt something that she hadn't felt in an eon. Jealousy. Where had that emotion been? The truth was that Jason was nothing much to look at. He was so plain, so boring, that she never really worried about whether he would come home at night smelling of another woman's perfume.

  But Zeke. That was a different story. Zeke was a man. Come up with any definition of what a man was supposed to be, and you could at
tach Zeke's name to it. The jealousy was a surprise. That he was talking to the blonde and that Katie actually cared was another one. She felt as if her heart and her brain were tugging her in different directions. She wondered if she would split in half before one side won.

  Katie looked at the girl. She had soft features, but the strength of youth. Her eyes were piercing, round and big. She looked like one of those anime characters that her son had loved to draw so much. Her curves were out of this world, and Katie could see why anyone would be keen on talking to her. Hell, if Katie were a man, she would be all over her.

  But what truly bothered Katie was that Zeke talking to the blonde was something that she couldn't control. She had put Zeke in his place in the luxury box, taking control of the situation and letting him know that he had no hold over her. She felt good about that. But what she didn't feel good about was Zeke talking to this girl. She didn't like it one bit.

  Chapter 30: In the Booth

  Private Hugh Bryant sat in the security room of the Coliseum, pouring through the footage from the previous night. It was a chore because the security system didn't come with an instruction manual. He was working feverishly, checking each feed, rewinding, fast-forwarding, rewinding again. There was just so much coverage. With the exception of the locker rooms and the bathrooms, it seemed as if every inch of the Coliseum had a camera covering it.

  Major Miller was a tough man, and he didn't want to let him down. The consequences for disappointing the Major were always harsh and more often than not mean-spirited. Many of the men hated him, his round, ruddy face always barking out orders amidst a stream of profanity. But he wasn't all bad. When you did a good job, he let you know it, and Bryant had done enough good jobs for the Major over the last five years to feel like the man wasn't a complete asshole. He wasn't about to let him down now.

  Bryant moved his hand across the security console, moving the trackball in his hand back and forth. That wasn't the right camera either. He punched up another camera, one of about a hundred as far as he could tell. This one gave a God's eye view of the concourse. He rewound the footage to two in the morning and then skimmed through it. His breath caught in his throat as he saw Private Estep walking into a bathroom. He rewound the footage, just to be sure. Yep, that was him.

  Private Estep was one of those guys that should have probably been in prison, but who had found a home in the military where his depravity was largely a benefit... when he was on foreign soil. Most of the men had no love for the man, but he was one of their own, and the prevailing sentiment was that whoever had murdered him had to pay.

  Private Bryant rewound the footage and watched as a pretty woman waved at the soldier and then entered the bathroom. His stomach turned as he watched Private Estep look up and down the concourse as if he were going to cross a street. Seeing no prying eyes, he then headed into the bathroom after the girl, hiking his pants up and smiling like a goon.

  He leaned back in his chair and wiped the sweat from his brow. He had found it. The footage rolled on, and then he saw a beautiful blonde woman enter the bathroom. He double-timed the footage and watched as the two girls came out of the bathroom, a swollen jaw, a disheveled look, and one girl clutching the other one. He didn't need to see into the bathroom to know what had happened, and he sat back in his chair to think about what he was going to do about it.

  On one hand, perhaps Private Estep had gotten what he deserved. It didn't matter to Bryant that Estep was a "brother-in-arms"; no true brother of his would ever attack a woman. Private Bryant knew that there was no way that the now-deceased soldier was going in there just to take a leak. He was going in there to do some foul business and had gotten what he deserved. But Major Miller wouldn't see it that way. All Miller would see was a dead soldier. Dead soldiers meant retribution. Retribution meant those girls would have to pay for defending themselves from being raped.

  Jesus, he thought. He leaned back in his chair and prayed for an answer, hands clasped together under his chin, head bowed forward. He had decided what to do when there was a knock on the door. He quickly switched the monitor to another channel and then hopped up out of the rolling chair that he had been sitting in. He walked over to the office door, turned the knob, and fell flat on his back as the door was slammed backwards.

  A man stood above him, business in his eyes. He was a thick man, built for trouble, and black stubble framed his square jaw. The man picked him up off the ground by his shirt, his teeth clenched in a menacing fashion. Private Bryant didn't see the first punch; he didn't see the second punch either.

  When he woke up, his head was spinning and he was bound and gagged, silver duct tape sealing his mouth. All of the monitors had been smashed, and the DVD's that stored all of the footage were broken into pieces. Three men and two women were gathered in a circle, speaking in hushed tones.

  The blonde girl, the one from the video looked over at him, a suspicious look on her face. "He's awake."

  The tall white man looked at him and then spoke to the bald black man, "C'mon, man. You know what we gotta do."

  The black man had his back to Private Bryant, and he said, "No. I know this man. He's a good man."

  "You're out of your mind," the tall white man said. "We let this guy walk, and we're dead. He's going to go straight to that colonel, and it's not just going to be them, it's going to be us too."

  The fat man whined, "I don't want to die, but I don't want to kill anyone either."

  "No one cares what you want. It's not like you'd be the one killing him anyway," the blonde girl spat at him.

  Bryant grasped the situation, but there was nothing he could do. They were deciding his fate right in front of him. Underneath the duct tape, he tried to make words, but nothing he tried was intelligible.

  "This is the same guy that showed us where the weapons were locked up," the black man said. Now Bryant recognized him. The unwieldy, khaki boots. The bald head. The black man was his only chance. "We can't just kill him," he continued.

  "Showing us where weapons are and covering our ass for a murder are two entirely different things," the blonde said.

  "She's right," the other girl said.

  The black man shook his head and then sighed. He looked at Private Bryant as if to say he was sorry.

  "It's decided," the tall white man said. He pulled a knife from his belt and advanced on the man.

  Private Bryant shook his head from side to side and tried as hard as he could to speak.

  The white man squatted down and sat in front of him. There was no joy on his face, just a cold efficiency that scared the daylights out of Private Bryant. He couldn't believe that this was how it was going to end, killed by the very people he was sworn to protect.

  Private Bryant flinched when the man raised his hand to his face. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the first bit of pain, and then it was over. The man had pulled the duct tape off of his face with a loud rip.

  "I'm sorry about this. Any last words?" the man said. Private Bryant hesitated. The man pulled his knife hand back, ready to plunge it into his body.

  "Wait!" He didn't scream the word so much as he projected it, making it as commanding as possible. The man had an army bearing about him that he recognized, and the tone of voice worked.

  "What?" the man asked.

  "You're not out of the woods yet," Private Bryant said.

  "What are you talking about?"

  Private Bryant looked around the room, making eye contact with everyone he could. "The DVD's are only half of it. You also need to destroy the hard drives. The discs only record the last 24 hours, the hard drive saves everything, and I'm not the only soldier here who can access the security cameras."

  The white man looked over his shoulders and waved the others over to the monitors. "Find that hard drive."

  The group moved over to the desk, and began looking at the smashed up console. Private Bryant felt relief. They had no idea what they were doing.

  The young girl spoke to the fat man
, "Can't you find them, Rudy? Aren't you some sort of computer expert?"

  Rudy threw his hands up in the air. "I'm not that much of a geek. My only real experience with this type of stuff is video games."

  The black man kicked at the console, trying to break things.

  The blonde girl and the brunette squatted down and took turns yanking on parts of the console to no avail.

  The man with the knife sighed. "We don't have time for this." Without warning, he jerked Private Bryant to his feet, the knife held to his throat. "What do we do?"

  Private Bryant was calm. "Free my hands, and I'll show you."

  The man with the knife hesitated for a brief second, but then he sawed the duct tape off of Bryant's wrists with the knife. Private Bryant sank to his knees, and slid the entire console out from the wall. He worked fast, sweat springing to his brow. He popped the console open neatly after removing a handful of screws with his ever-present screwdriver. He reached into the back of the console, and pulled out a metal box, and held it up the way a doctor holds up a newborn baby for the mother to see.

  The man with the knife snatched it out of his hand. "Nice work, Private."

  The man examined the device, threw it on the ground and crushed it. It came open a bit and was dented, but Private Bryant knew that his boys could still get the information off of it. "Here, let me."

  He held out his hand for the knife. The man looked at him like he was crazy, and then he took a leap of faith and handed the knife to Private Bryant. His heart jumped in his chest. Bryant knelt down and cracked open the hard drive's case, pulling the disks free. Then he handed the silver disks to the big white man and said, "This is what you need. Mess those up, and they'll never know."

  The man crushed them in his hands, grabbed the knife from Private Bryant, and drew deep furrows all over the disks. Then he slid the knife into his belt and turned to Private Bryant. "Thanks for your help. The way I see it, you just saved our lives and your own. You helped us, so now you're in it with us. Do you agree?"