This Rotten World (Book 3): No More Heroes

by Jacy Morris

  She had smiled at the look on the man's face as he had come out of the bathroom. She knew that pain; she had felt it herself, but damn was it good to see that pain on someone else's face. From their vantage point in the woods, she had been forced to put her hand to her mouth to suppress a little giggle. Maybe that made her evil, but then again, maybe evil wasn't even real.

  From their vantage point, they had watched as Chad picked up his brother's body and carried it home. They had heard the cries from inside the compound and seen the rage on Chad's face.

  Then everything had quieted down, but Katie knew that the fight wasn't over yet. They had taken one of his; now he was going to try and take one of theirs. Mort and Katie had gone home to plan that night. The only problem was that they didn't know if Chad would come after them or do something to one of their friends in the compound.

  They had planned for both. As it turned out, Chad was coming for them.

  The men from the compound entered a clearing, and they found what Katie and Mort had left for them. She couldn't see their faces, but she knew that the little surprise they had left would make them pause for a second.

  She watched as Chad stood up from the corpse they had left in the middle of the clearing. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, "We know you're out there!"

  And so they were.

  "We've got your friends! Did you forget that?"

  Mort and Katie maintained their silence. She couldn't see Mort across the way, holding onto the rifle of the man they killed, but she knew he was hearing everything that was being said. It had taken a lot of work on her part to even talk Mort into this plan.

  He had moped and seemed out of sorts when she had killed the boy. But he would have done the same to them. He wasn't sent to spy on them. He was sent to kill them, and eventually she convinced Mort of this. It was still difficult getting him to go along with her plan, but eventually he relented. He was too gentle, too nice. If he could harness that great strong body of his, he would be a force to reckon with.

  The voice in the clearing continued, "I got a little game for you to play. Tomorrow morning we're having a feast. There's gonna be music, beer, maybe even a little hanky panky. You're both invited."

  The voice lapsed into silence, and Katie took aim at the man's head with her revolver. She had never shot anyone from that distance before, but she thought the gun was strong enough.

  "But let me tell you now, if you refuse our invitation, your friends are going to die!" He let the words hang there as Katie lined up her shot. "Party starts at noon! Don't be late!"

  Katie squeezed the trigger. Smoke and fire erupted from the barrel of her gun. She missed. The clearing erupted into a flurry of activity as another shot came from the other side of the clearing, Mort's shot. There was a scream of pain, and then the men from the compound were scrambling away.

  "Don't be late!" they heard a voice yell as they disappeared into the forest, dragging their injured man.

  They sat in the trees for a long time. They had agreed to this for safety, just in case the men from the compound left anyone behind in an effort to be sneaky. Katie doubted they would stick around. The confusion caused by the multiple shots would put the fear into them. Fear. Her shoulders shook as she laughed silently to herself. She hadn't felt fear for some time.

  She knew why. In order to feel fear, you had to have one thing, a reason to live. She didn't care if she died or lived, but she knew her friends did. She needed them on some primordial level that she couldn't explain. Did I actually use the word 'friends?'

  When the sun turned orange and started to disappear behind the trees, and she heard the shuffling of the dead below, she lowered herself from her perch. She rushed to the clearing, looking at the mutilated corpse they had left tied to an ancient tree stump with no legs and no arms.

  It had been a dangerous game, knocking the dead thing to the ground and cutting its arms and legs off with a machete they had scavenged from the vacation house. She looked at the poor creature's face, its lips shriveled back from its jagged and broken teeth. On its forehead, she had carved the words, "You're next." She raised the machete above her head and brought it down as hard as she could on the creature's skull. Its eyes finally stopped following her.

  At the crack of a branch, she spun with her revolver in her hand. It was just Mort, lumbering through the trees, his eyes big and round. "We gotta go. There's dead out here."

  She nodded, and they headed back to the house, dodging the dead that had been drawn to the gunshots from the road above. They didn't appear immediately, but once they showed up, they were constant. If a person fired a gun and stood in one spot, they would find you. They had learned that the other night after they had killed the boy behind the house.

  A dozen of the dead, not too many to handle, but enough to make things difficult had made their way to the house. They had huddled in the dark, the windows blacked out as they heard the dead bumping into the house, trying doorknobs. In the morning, most of them had moved on.

  Katie wasn't afraid then, and she wasn't afraid now as they moved through the gloom, silent as death. When they reached the house, they pushed the door open and checked everywhere for the dead. One good thing about setting up the trap in the clearing, they had drawn all of the dead away from the house.

  In the dark they sat, eating the food they had taken from the RV down by the campsite where they had left the big man's body. They were silent for a long time. The two, despite being on their own, hadn't quite managed to hit it off.

  "You hit anyone?" Mort asked.

  "Nope. Missed."

  "I hit someone," Mort said. He didn't sound proud of the fact. "Got him in the shoulder I think."

  They lapsed into silence again. Katie ate another stack of Pringles. They were good. They weren't the type of thing she would have eaten in the before world, but she was eating for two now. She thought she felt the baby move, but it was too soon for that. The feeling made her nervous.

  "What are we gonna do about tomorrow?" Mort asked.

  "I guess we're going to go to a party," Katie said.

  "You think it's a trap?"

  "I know it's a trap."

  They sat in silence, and then Katie reached over to Mort and pulled him close to her.

  "What are you doing?" he whispered nervously.

  "Don't worry. I won't hurt you."

  Mort let himself relax, and Katie did all the work. They slept through the night on the floor of the living room. Katie had dreams of a past life, one that made her brow wrinkle in her sleep. When the sun came up, she was back to being herself and ready to party.

  ****

  That evening was a nightmare. Clara hardly slept a wink as Joan busied herself with fixing up an injured man, and since she couldn't get around on her own, Clara had served as her helper. They could hear Chad ranting and raving in the courtyard, his rage echoing off the trailer walls. She could hear voices trying to calm him, but he wouldn't be calmed.

  The man who had been shot, Keith, grimaced in pain as Joan tested out his arm. Blood dripped onto the blankets that covered the bed they shared. The man's teeth glowed yellow in the lantern light as he grimaced. Joan tested the mobility of his arm, but it was no good. The shoulder was shattered, broken by a bullet.

  The best she could do was immobilize the arm. Luckily for Keith, the bullet had gone clean through. She recommended drinking some alcohol and sleeping sitting up... painkillers seemed to be scarce in the compound. She packed the wound with some rags that they had sterilized in boiling water, but Joan told the man that the chance of infection was pretty damn good without some antibiotics.

  When the injured man left, aided to his own trailer by a couple of other men, they lay on the bed, wondering what sort of nightmare they had gotten themselves into. Still, they heard Chad swearing up a storm in the courtyard.

  "I think we're in danger," Clara said.

  "I know we are."

  They had spoken little of Lou's passing, b
ut they both felt it. Clara lay down on the bed, trying to catch a few hours of sleep. She was awoken periodically by swearing and cursing in the courtyard. Even after the voices in the courtyard had faded and the night went calm, her dark dreams caused her to jerk away several more times.

  When she awoke, she readied herself for another day of wiping Dez's ass. As she exited the trailer, she felt a strange energy about the camp. Some of the women smiled at her, which was a rare thing. Ever since she had jumped on board the watchtower and speared the dead, they had avoided her like the plague, as if she had broken some sort of taboo commandment. Thou shalt not be a woman and kill the dead. Today, the women looked positively pleasant as they said hello or waved at her.

  She walked over to the campfire and prepared some instant oatmeal for Dez. She didn't speak to the other women, but she noticed them glancing at her from the corner of her eye. Something was up. She grabbed a small, dull knife from the pile of silverware and slipped the blade into the oatmeal, concealing it so that only the plain handle was visible.

  Then she noticed something else peculiar. The men of the camp avoided eye contact with her completely. Usually, whenever she turned her head, she could spot one or another of the men eyeing her with that look that men had. Today, it were as if she didn't even exist in their eyes. She might as well be a ghost walking around the courtyard as far as the men were concerned.

  Something was definitely up.

  She walked inside the big house, and Chad was there. He was gearing up. On a table in the main room, he had placed all of his weapons. There were a lot of them. He had rifles. He had knives in sheathes, and he had hundreds of rounds of ammunition set out before him.

  "Going hunting?" she asked, trying to hide her concern for the others.

  He just smiled at her as he fed rounds into the magazines on the table. She walked past him, the steam from the oatmeal billowing in the chill morning air of the big house.

  She pushed open the door of Dez's room, panic building in her chest. She wanted to run to Joan and drag her out of this place, but she knew that was a stupid plan. Joan couldn't go anywhere. She felt trapped. She felt dread, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  "What's wrong with you?" Dez asked.

  "Nothing," she said.

  "You're a terrible liar," Dez said.

  "I didn't have much practice before all of this."

  Dez nodded as she swallowed a mouthful of oatmeal. "Oh yeah, I can see it now. I bet you were a real firecracker before all this, never had to watch your mouth, always able to speak your mind. You know, it's funny how things like gender equality and feminism get tossed out the window once the only thing that matters in this world is your ability to survive."

  "Fuck that."

  Dez laughed again. "What? You think if our roles were reversed, you wouldn't be in the same position that I am? Think again, girlie. I ain't no Barbie Doll. I'm every bit as tough as you are. If it wasn't for Chad's goon squad out there, he would have been dead some time ago."

  "Yeah, well, that would be nice."

  Dez smiled at her, oatmeal stuck between her teeth. "What's up your ass?"

  "I think something is going to happen to me today."

  The smile fell from Dez's face. "Well, you know what to do about that."

  Clara looked Dez in the face, and she saw a killer there, a madwoman who had been treated like an animal. Her eyes were ferocious, and her jaw was set like the side of a mountain. "What do I do?" Clara asked.

  "You kill as many of those bastards as you can when the time comes. They try to put it in you, you cut the fucker off and stomp on it."

  Clara fell silent and spooned more oatmeal into Dez's mouth. She could hear Chad's boots clomping around in another part of the big house. Clara held a knife up in front of her face, showing it to Dez. "I'm going to put this here," she said as she slid it under Dez's pillow. "If I don't come back, I want you to fight your way out of here. I don't know what your plans are for the future, but no one should have to live like this." Clara loosened the knot on Dez's wrist, enough that she could free her hand if she needed to. "For when the time comes."

  Dez smiled at her, her brown eyes gleaming in the dingy room. "For when the time comes."

  Suddenly, the door to the bedroom was kicked open and Chad stood there, geared up like a one-man army. There was a knife in a sheath on every part of his body. The barrels of two rifles crisscrossed as they rose above his back. Belts of ammunition crossed his chest. He smiled at her, and for a moment, she thought he had heard everything that they had been saying.

  "Come with me," Chad said, and he held his hand out to her invitingly. "The men have been working on something just for you."

  She walked around Dez's bed and took Chad's hand. Together they left the room. Clara tossed a look over her shoulder at Dez. The woman's eyes locked with her own until she was out of sight of the door.

  As she stepped out into the sunlight, she knew that something major was happening. All of the men were decked out just as Chad was, their arms legs and shoulders bristling with weapons. Joan was there too. She sat in the middle of the courtyard, her meager medical supplies sitting on the ground next to her, concern evident on her face.

  Chad led her past them and out the front gate. A hole had been dug in the ground. She turned to Chad, not comprehending what was happening. The hole wasn't a grave, but it was big enough for someone to stand in. He smiled at her again, a crooked thing that spoke of a capacity for cruelty that she had never encountered before.

  "Get in."

  ****

  Clara wanted to scream, but she had done plenty of that already. She wished she hadn't. Behind her, she heard the clomp of boots on the watchtowers that overlooked the front gate. She wanted to turn around and look at Chad, but she couldn't.

  From somewhere, she heard a generator start, its dull thrum reverberating through the ground. She squeezed her eyes shut, fear threading its way through her body.

  The sun wasn't yet high enough to cut through the canopy, but it cast enough diffused light to allow her to see into the trees. A song began to play, something twangy... something country... something loud.

  She was going to die out here.

  ****

  To be honest, Mort was glad for the music. It covered his clumsy footsteps as he moved up the tree. Katie was out there somewhere. They had taken in the scene in front of the compound for only a few moments before Katie had grasped what they were going to do. Like it was nothing, she had come up with a plan. It was a dangerous plan, but it just might work. As the hole was halfway filled in, they had crept to the other side of the compound.

  He was now perched in a tree, overlooking the stronghold. He tried to remain as still as he could. He had chosen a nice leafy tree with plenty of large branches to help conceal him. The rifle he held in his hand was dull, its barrel covered in a layer of mud to prevent it from glinting in the sunshine that filtered through the branches overhead.

  He wasn't comfortable with the gun yet. It felt like a live snake in his hand, and he was nervous around it. They were burying Clara, man. These people were fucked up. He wished it could be any other way. There was no reason for any of this. There was no reason for the men in that compound to want any of them dead. He didn't understand any of it. If they had been a threat, if they had been dangerous or mean, then maybe he could understand it.

  Katie had told him that this would be the end. Either they won, or they died. Mort didn't know if he was ready for that. The old Mort would have left. He would have climbed out of that tree and gone home... home being whatever quiet, out of the way place he could find. But he couldn't do that now. He had become a part of something for the first time in his life. And being with Katie had taught him one thing... he never wanted to be alone again. So if this was what he had to do to make that happen, then this is what he had to do.

  He shook the thoughts out of his head, and squinted down the sights of his gun. He only hoped that Katie found what
she was looking for.

  ****

  Katie ran through the forest, machete in her hand. She ran as fast as she could up the old country road that ran past the vacation house and the campground. The dead were moving now. They honed in on the sounds coming from the compound. Even this far from it, she could hear the faint sounds of music. The dead turned to follow when they saw her, but she moved past them.

  She had to get to the highway. She was sure she would find what she was looking for there. The old country road led to the main drag, but it would also lead to the deadly traffic snarl that they had escaped from.

  Her back was killing her as she ran, and she hoped that the baby inside her would be alright. She wasn't so far along that a little jogging would hurt the baby, but exhaustion could. She swerved through a group of dead, ducking out of the range of their hands when she spotted something moving in the woods to her right.

  She smiled as she advanced upon the dead thing. She hefted the machete in her hands and stepped forward.

  The dead creature across from her was clad in a leather outfit. On its head, it wore what she was looking for. She knew what Chad was planning, she didn't know how, she just did. Maybe she was as twisted as he was. She stepped up to the creature, and its arms reached out for her.

  She brought the machete down on the creature's left forearm, and it didn't exactly cut through the thick leather biker jacket, but it did break the creature's arm. She spared a look over her shoulder to make sure the group of dead that she had recently passed wasn't breathing down her neck. They were closer, but she still had some time if she was quick. The second slice of her machete managed to completely slice off the right arm of the dead thing, just below the elbow. Black blood, dead blood, dripped from the wound, and then she shoved the creature on its back.

  She stood perpendicular to the prone corpse and brought the blade of the machete down on the creature's white neck. It's head slumped sideways, black blood running down its torso. The arms and legs stopped moving and it fell to the ground, but she knew the thing inside the helmet was still alive. The head was still attached, and it took her three more blows with the machete to sever its completely.