Season of Rot

by Eric S. Brown

  So far he’d seen no signs of his pursuers. When he’d first started running, it had been like something out of a nightmare. Jeeps full of the dead had come roaring out of the breeding complex. The first two hours of the chase had been the roughest, ducking in and out of the trees, zigzagging his path, eluding both those chasing him and the normal patrols in the area. He hadn’t seen or heard a jeep or dead man in the past seven hours though, and he couldn’t force himself to go any farther at this point. He needed rest desperately.

  Scott wiped the vomit from his lips and rolled over onto the ground, stretching out. The noise of a rifle chambering a bullet snapped him out of his thoughts.

  A woman stood over him with the barrel of a .30-.06 aimed at his chest. She was covered in blood that wasn’t hers. Long red hair was matted to her face and shoulders by sweat, blood, and dirt. She appeared healthy and well fed, but every inch as tired as he felt.

  “Hello?” Scott greeted her weakly.

  “Are you a doctor?” she asked in a voice filled with both anger and deep sadness.

  Scott’s mind raced. What the hell was he supposed to say? “I know a little,” he answered quickly, lying very still so that the woman didn’t feel threatened.

  She took a step away from him. “On your feet. My husband and son are hurt. They need help.”

  “Okay.” Scott pushed himself up, despite how much his whole body ached.

  The woman led him about a fifth of a mile east. He knew instantly something wasn’t right, even before they entered her makeshift campsite. He could see a young boy gagged and tied to a tree, straining against the ropes; the body of a man lay stretched out nearby.

  Scott wondered if the woman had kidnapped the child—until he saw the massive gunshot wound on the boy’s chest and began to realize just how much trouble he was in. He forced himself not to stare at it as it twisted under the ropes, tearing its flesh as it tried to get free.

  Scott knelt down beside the man, who was alive, just barely.

  “Can you help them?” the woman pleaded, the barrel of her rifle still aimed at Scott.

  He doubted very much he could fool the woman into letting her guard down. She was too on edge. “Why did you gag the boy?” he asked, hoping to lead her mind back to Earth.

  Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. It was clear she couldn’t rationalize her behavior without admitting her son was dead. “He… he was just gibbering. Saying horrible things. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Was he really your son?”

  “Yes,” she answered, not bothering to correct the word “was.”

  “And this is…?” Scott placed a hand on the man’s arm.

  “Riley. He’s my husband, Riley.”

  “He’s going to die just like your son did,” Scott said, staring down the madness in her eyes. “He’s lost too much blood. There’s nothing we can do for him out here.”

  “Liar!” The woman’s finger tightened on the trigger as she shoved the barrel of her .30-.06 closer to Scott’s face.

  “Whoa!” He raised his hands high in the air. “Careful there! I’m sorry, lady. I just call them as I see them.”

  The woman hesitated, lowering the rifle’s barrel slightly. Scott grabbed for the weapon. Too bad for him, Hannah was faster.

  12

  Hannah smashed the butt of her rifle into the man’s face as he took a swipe for it. He fell backwards, cursing and bleeding from his nose. The things he’d said had cut through her illusions like a razor, exposing the truth: her son was dead and her husband was dying. She’d be damned if this filthy punk was going to take her dad’s rifle too.

  She snapped the rifle’s butt back up against her shoulder and braced it. The weapon barked as the shot smashed open the skull of the thing which had once been her son.

  The man cringed away, as if she were more dangerous than ever. He raised a bloody hand to stop her from hurting him. “Please.”

  “What’s your name?” Hannah asked.

  “Scott.” After a second, he added, “Ma’am, I don’t mean any disrespect, but your husband just quit breathing. I don’t suppose you’d be kind enough to shoot him too?”

  “Riley!” Hannah cast her rifle aside and threw herself over her husband’s corpse.

  Its eyes shot open.

  “Watch it!” Scott pulled her off the body and shoved her aside as the dead man sat up and reached for his arm. Scott pulled a .45 from the corpse’s own holster and gave it a reason to lie down again. The shot seemed to echo in the air.

  Hannah turned her face away from the gore, sobbing, though she had no more tears. Scott made no move to comfort her.

  He popped the magazine out of the handgun and took stock of the number of rounds left, then snapped the magazine back inside the gun. He also sorted through a backpack, which appeared to have belonged to the child. Whoever this woman was, her family had been well supplied.

  He opened a granola bar from the pack and tore into it, unable to control himself. Scott couldn’t remember the last time he’d had real food, and it tasted like heaven, stale or not. “Where are you from?” he mumbled through a full mouth.

  Hannah ignored him.

  Scott finished the granola bar in a second bite. “How have you managed to stay alive this long?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Well for one thing, you have food. You’re well armed. Hell, I even saw some antibiotics in this pack. If you’re from some kind of settlement or shelter that survived, I’d sure as hell like to know about it.”

  “Where are you from?” Hannah shot back.

  “Trust me lady, you don’t want to know.” Scott snickered and ripped into another ration bar. “I’ve been locked up by the dead in a camp straight out of Hell.”

  “A camp?” Hannah was stunned. “Why didn’t they kill you?”

  “Where have you been, sister? How do you think the dead get their food these days? There aren’t enough of us left out there for them to just round up and slaughter for dinner anymore. They’re trying to breed us like cattle so that they’ll always have food.”

  Hannah stared at him in horror.

  “Yeah.” Scott nodded. “It’s all that and worse. I still want to know where you came from. You sure as hell weren’t in a camp.”

  “My husband and child are dead.”

  “I’m sorry.” Scott twisted the top off of a canteen and helped himself to some water. “Seen a lot of people die. One of my friends died just so that I could make it out of there. It looks like your husband died trying to take you to greener grass too. Better get used to it, people dying. That’s how things are with the dead ruling the world. Speaking of which…” Scott closed the canteen. “We need to get moving. Staying in a single spot for a while can be suicide. Who knows who or what heard those shots.”

  13

  Luke was anything but your typical engineer. Long black hair with spots of gray hung over his purple flannel shirt. He sat crouched on the knees of his worn blue jeans, fiddling with a homemade torpedo casing. He heard O’Neil enter his workshop, but made no move to stop fine-tuning his current project. “I’ll have two more live ones by tomorrow morning,” he said.

  O’Neil sat on Luke’s unused workbench. “Why do you always work on the floor?”

  Luke smiled. “The freedom,” he answered simply. “It helps me think.”

  O’Neil grunted. “Whatever works, I suppose. As long as you don’t blow a hole in the bottom of the ship.”

  “You didn’t come here to talk about my work habits, Mr. O’Neil. What’s up?”

  “The captain’s planning to raid a port in South Carolina tomorrow night. I’ve got the usual crew ready, and I’ll be in command of the operation. I thought I’d stop by and see if you’d come up with anything new.”

  Luke glanced back at O’Neil. “If you’re talking about understanding the dynamics of what makes the dead get back on their feet with hungry stomachs…” Luke pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “No, I h
aven’t. That’s Doc Gallenger’s area, not mine.”

  “I thought you were helping him.”

  “Sure, when I have the time. You might have noticed I have been rather busy lately, what with keeping this old girl running and designing these new toys for the captain.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust that Gallenger’s doing his best, Luke, I just thought—”

  “What? That having nine degrees in everything from pathology to physics makes me superhuman? That I am supposed to be able to wave a magic wand and save your ass? I wish.” Luke shrugged. “I ain’t God, ya know.”

  “I didn’t say that you were. God has a social life,” O’Neil teased.

  “You want me to go with you tomorrow?”

  “Hell no! Steven would have me shot if I let you off the Queen. You’re the only real brain we’ve got.”

  “So you say,” Luke said. “There are plenty of people on the boat who could do what I do around here.”

  “Maybe, but not one of them could do it all.” O’Neil got up from the bench. “Just promise me you’ll get to helping Gallenger, okay? We need a way to stop the dead more than we need the weapons to keep running.”

  As O’Neil turned to leave, Luke muttered, “Be careful out there, you idiot.”

  “I always am,” O’Neil responded with a flash of his teeth, then he was gone.

  14

  Scott figured Hannah was whacko after what she’d endured, with every right to be, so he let her brood as they walked. The woman insisted on traveling east to the coast, so that’s where they headed.

  Scott had managed to get a few hours of blessed sleep while she kept watch, and he counted himself lucky she hadn’t killed him while he dozed. When he woke up, they buried her family and moved on.

  “What the heck is that?” Scott asked as he noticed a building ahead of them.

  Hannah paused. “It’s a cabin,” she said, and then continued towards it.

  “Whoa. What are you doing?” Scott grabbed her by the arm. “We don’t know if anyone’s in there.”

  “There’s not. Not anyone alive anyway.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Hannah pointed through the trees. “The door’s been busted open. The windows are shattered. And that appears to be dried blood all over the outer walls.”

  Given little choice, Scott followed her into the clearing in front of the cabin. Several bodies, all dead from head wounds, littered the grass.

  “Looks like somebody put up a good fight,” Scott commented.

  Hannah headed straight for the main door, which dangled by a single hinge. She stepped past it and into the building.

  A body missing its legs and arms watched her enter. Old blood stained its mouth and chin. Hannah was sure its tongue had been cut or bitten out; otherwise the thing would have been screaming obscenities at her.

  She glanced about the remains of the simple room. Someone had taken shelter in this place, seeking safety in the wilderness just like her own family had done, only these poor people must have been discovered before they could run.

  Hannah jumped as a gunshot sounded behind her, sending the limbless monster on its way to Hell.

  Scott shrugged as she glared at him. “It was creeping me out, okay?”

  The pair carefully searched the place for more of the dead or anyone left alive. They met back in the cabin’s main room, alone.

  “We’ll take what we can,” Hannah said. “Food, ammo, whatever, but we’re not staying.”

  Scott was too delighted to be put off by her air of superiority. “You’re not going to believe what I found out behind this dump!” He smiled. “Come on, I’ll show you!”

  15

  The cabin had been a godsend. Scott couldn’t believe their luck. With their stock replenished and their stomachs happily full of canned corn and dried tomatoes, they journeyed east again, much richer. Hannah still carried her .30-.06, which she never set down for a second, but now she also carried a functional AK-47 assault rifle. Scott himself had added a pump-action twelve gauge to his arsenal. Their best find, however, had been the bike. It allowed them to continue traveling off–road, yet much faster.

  Scott held onto Hannah’s waist as she throttled the small bike’s engine at over forty miles an hour. She jerked the handlebars from side to side, dodging trees, and Scott wasn’t sure but he thought for the first time since they’d met he saw the slightest smile on her lips.

  “If you don’t mind if I ask,” he yelled over the bike’s roar, “why the hell are you so set on going east?”

  Much to his surprise, Hannah answered him. “I want to see the ocean one last time before I die!”

  Scott mulled over this revelation for a second. “Works for me!” he shouted, and Hannah charged down a tiny hill.

  16

  The Queen sat in the harbor, motionless and far from the docks. No organized attack had been launched against her yet. Henry O’Neil admired her from a distance as his lifeboat drifted toward the shore. There were four boats, each carrying an equal share of the raiding party.

  O’Neil’s heart pounded in his chest. A long time had passed since he’d been on shore. He’d fought numerous battles aboard the Queen and occasionally ventured onto a dock to hold the hordes of the dead back for returning raiding parties, but this was different. He was excited and scared shitless at the same time.

  An African American man named Roy sat across from him, loading a shotgun. O’Neil didn’t know Roy well, but he knew him to be a veteran of raids.

  The plan was simple. Land on the beach near the warehouses along the dock, hit the shore running, and stock up on whatever nonperishable foodstuffs they could get their hands on; they would then steal one of the boats that lined the port and ferry the goods back to the Queen. This operation would cost them most of the remaining lifeboats, but if they could steal some decent motorboats, it would be more than a fair trade.

  Jennifer and Jason also shared O’Neil’s lifeboat. The twins were inseparable. Jennifer was the warrior of the pair. Muscles bulged from underneath the jumpsuit she wore. In addition to the rifle and sidearm she carried, she hefted a machete. She was something of a legend among the Queen’s raiders, and her confidence made O’Neil feel safer.

  Jason, by contrast, lacked muscle. He was the party’s medic and an assistant to Dr. Gallenger. The young man’s brow was creased in thought as he checked over his medical kit.

  O’Neil held no official rank, having come aboard the Queen after the plague started, yet he was second only to Captain Steven; everyone treated him with respect. He hoped he lived up to it out here where it mattered most.

  The lifeboats reached the sand of the shoreline. O’Neil screwed a silencer onto the barrel of his pistol and stepped onto solid ground. His land legs were clumsy, but as he raced after the others toward the docks, he got the hang of it.

  The party split up and headed for different warehouses while one group went in search of a getaway boat. There was no sign of the dead, but O’Neil knew it wouldn’t be long.

  Within minutes they located a pair of small motorboats, the only ones around that appeared functional, and soon after, men brought the first load of canned and freeze-dried foods. That’s when the shit hit the fan.

  One of the raiders screamed, “They’re coming!”

  Before O’Neil could shout orders, the dead charged forward from the town, and the docks were suddenly ablaze with gunfire.

  17

  The would-be raiders quickly found themselves pinned down and outnumbered. “It’s a trap!” someone shouted, and O’Neil cursed the idiot. It wasn’t a trap, it was probability: the creatures were everywhere these days.

  Jennifer threw O’Neil off his feet as a bullet whizzed past. “Better keep your mind on the fight, sir!” Then she raised her M-16 and swept their enemies with rounds.

  O’Neil hated the dead. Why couldn’t they be the lethargic automatons driven purely by instinct like in the movies he’d seen as a kid? Life freak
in’ sucks, he thought. Pushing himself up, he took aim at a creature with a hole in its chest and a butcher knife held above its head. With a single shot from his pistol he dropped the thing to the ground.

  The dead were attempting to flank the raiding party and cut them off from the boats. O’Neil knew if that happened, they were all screwed, so he bolted for the docks. He saw Jennifer wrestling with a dead woman who’d made it past their wall of fire. Jennifer’s rifle was gone and she struggled to bring her machete into play. She never got the chance. The dead woman lashed out with a straight razor, and Jennifer’s throat sprayed blood.

  As O’Neil reached the boats, Roy was there waiting for him.

  “We’ve got to get the food back to the ship!” O’Neil shouted.

  Roy nodded. Most of their party was already dead or dying, and they couldn’t risk trying to save the others. Too many people on the Queen depended on them, and if they failed, a lot more would die.

  “What the hell is that?” Roy yelled, pointing.

  O’Neil turned to see a dirt bike zigzagging towards them through the midst of the battle. Two human shapes rode it, one clearly a woman at the handlebars.

  “Fuck that,” O’Neil said, bringing up his pistol to take a shot at her. If the dead thought they could crash a suicide bomber on a damn dirt bike into the motor boats, they had another thing coming.

  Roy struck O’Neil’s arm, knocking his pistol downward so that he fired harmlessly into the wood of the dock.

  “Why the—” O’Neil started, but Roy cut him off.

  “Those ain’t dead folk!”

  O’Neil glanced at the bike again as Roy fired up the boat with the most cargo. The motorcycle skidded to a halt a few yards from O’Neil, and the passenger—a haggard young man with lashing scars covering his bare back—jumped off. “Going our way?” he asked.