This Rotten World (Book 3): No More Heroes

by Jacy Morris

  With the dead advancing upon her, she didn't have time to pull the head out of the black motorcycle helmet, so she tucked it up under her arm like a football and ran back to where she had left Mort.

  ****

  Clara heard them first. They crunched through the dry, dead leaves of the forest, kicking piles of dead pine needles out before them with each of their shambling steps. As the first one appeared, she squeezed her eyes shut and remained stock still, hoping that they wouldn't notice her head sticking up out of the ground.

  How the fuck did I end up here? How did this happen? Death was coming her way at a slow walk, but she couldn't open her eyes and look.

  ****

  Chad wasn't sure that they were going to show up at this point. If they were going to show, they would have shown up before the dead did. The forest was crawling with the dead now. It sounded as if the forest had come alive. For a moment, he considered killing the music, but hey, he had promised a party and he was going to deliver.

  He turned around and looked inside the compound. His men were ready, stationed on top of all the trailers. There wasn't an approach from the forest that wasn't covered. Joan glared up at him from the courtyard. If it wasn't for the fact that she could deliver babies and fix up the injured, he would have put a bullet through her forehead right then and there... just because of that glare. Where did she get off glaring at him like that? He was the one that had lost a brother. What did she lose, a black man and her lesbian friend? Shit, she should be thanking him.

  There was no doubt in his mind that Joan and Clara were lesbians. Never in his life had he experienced such a negative sexual energy from a woman before, let alone two of them. Oh, well. He turned back to Clara, her brown hair shining in the sunlight. He wished he could see her face as the dead approached, but the tactic would prove more effective this way. They would take one look at the fear on her pretty face, and they wouldn't be able to resist.

  He smiled at his own ingenuity. She looked like a mole poking its head up out of the ground.

  Where are you, you bastards? Show yourselves. He wanted to see them try and save her. What a delightful TV show that would be.

  He saw it playing out in his mind. They would burst from the forest, panicked looks on their faces, digging at the ground while fighting off the hordes of the dead. Oh, this was gonna be awesome.

  Just then, a gunshot rang out, and there was a scream.

  ****

  Mort looked down, expecting to see one of the dead. Instead, he saw Katie, struggling to pull something from inside of a motorcycle helmet.

  "I got it," she hissed up at him, holding the helmet up like a trophy.

  Mort watched as she reached her hand into the helmet, jamming and pulling at the head stuck inside. Her hand came out bloody, and he could see her biting her lower lip as she strained. He was about to climb down to help her when the head came out with a sickening sucking sound, skinny strings of liquid rot trailing after it. She threw the head on the ground, its jaw opening and closing.

  "Ok, we're ready," she announced.

  Mort nodded. Now came the part that he dreaded. He took aim with the rifle at the nearest man. He stood in the open, walking along the top of a trailer, and Mort thought the man was a fool. He was perfectly visible, his body outlined against the whiteness of the trailer and the brown dirt of the compound, and Mort felt sorry for the man. But his friends were in need, and if this is what had to be done so that he would never be alone again, then so be it.

  "I'm sorry." He pulled the trigger, and there was a microscopic delay between the sound of the gunshot and the crimson cloud that erupted from the man on top of the trailer. The man stood for a second, his eyes locked on the cloud around him, and then the red stuff started to flow down his chest. He fell to the ground, screaming. Mort wondered how long it would be until he stood up again. He had just killed a man... he had just killed a man.

  He didn't have time to think about it. He quickly scampered down the tree as gunshots peppered the spot that he had fired from. Katie was already gone, running through the woods. He hung from the last branch, but it broke under his weight, and he fell backwards to the ground. Mort landed inches from the severed head that Katie had pulled from the motorcycle helmet. His eyes went wide as it opened and closed its jaws, still trying to feed, and then he was up. He scrambled through the forest to the next position, scanning the trees for the dead as he went. They were out there; they were coming.

  ****

  Chad heard the gunshot, but it took him a moment to put together what had happened. He turned to see Larry standing stock-still on top of a trailer on the other side of the compound, then the man slumped to his knees. Chad saw blood pouring out of his back and down his shirt, and without thinking, he aimed his rifle into the woods and began shooting. The others followed suit, their panicked yells disappearing under the booms of their gunfire.

  It had begun. His enemies had drawn first blood. He would be damned sure to draw the last.

  He emptied his rifle into the trees, into where he thought the shooter might have come from.

  "Dale! Check him out!" he yelled while he fed shells into his rifle. His ears rang painfully from all of the gunfire, but he didn't care. He scanned the forest around him. There was movement all over, but he couldn't figure out what was from the living and what was from the dead.

  "Take 'em out!" he yelled. "Take 'em all out!" As he turned, he saw Dale put a bullet in Larry's head. He was dead for good now. He turned around to keep his eye on his section of the compound, the section where Katie was buried. The dead were closer now. He held off on shooting them. Let them eat her first, then he would take them out. He watched the show play out before him, fighting the urge to turn around and take in everything that was going on.

  ****

  Katie ran through the woods, dodging the dead and kicking them out of the way when she had to. There were more of them now. The music was drawing them, and time was now a factor. She carried the putrid motorcycle helmet with her, its insides slathered in the rot of the dead. A large woman, who seemed to be mostly composed of large saggy breasts stepped in front of her, and she bashed her across the face with the motorcycle helmet, swinging it like a kid who had just picked up his first Wiffle ball bat. Kevin had a bat like that.

  The corpse fell over on its chest, it's feet going up comically in the air as it high-centered on its breast meat. Kevin... she knew that name.

  She approached the front of the compound, but stopped in her tracks as she saw the man atop the watchtower scanning the forest. It was the main man, the bad man. She pulled her handgun free, but knew that would be a death sentence right now. It would draw the dead to her like ants to the rotting core of an apple. Her only option then would be to run into the open area of the courtyard, where the men atop the trailers would mow her down.

  She heard another gunshot from outside the compound, and immediately the men began firing into the woods from whence the gunshot had come. All except for the bad man. He kept watch over Clara, his eyes scanning the woods.

  "Shit," she muttered. She only had one real option now... and it was basically suicide. She smiled. It was what it was. She pulled her handgun from her side and dashed into the clearing.

  ****

  Chad saw the pregnant woman coming from a mile away. He smiled at the object she had in her hand. It was a dark black motorcycle helmet. Clever, but not clever enough.. Too bad she wasn't going to make it.

  He looked down his rifle, tracking the woman as she ran. He would try for the shoulder of the hand holding the gun. Maybe then she would live. After all, there was still a child inside her. She fired her gun as she sprinted at him, a look of desperation on her face that almost made him feel something inside. He tensed his finger on the trigger, and then something strange happened.

  Blood flowed down his chest. He tried to take a deep breath but ended up choking on something salty and metallic.

  He tried to look down to see where the bloo
d was coming from, but he couldn't find the source. He turned around and saw someone standing there. It was Dez, a small knife in her hand. There was blood on the blade, and as he reached out to her, he stumbled. Blood jetted from somewhere in his body, covering Dez, and she looked him in the eye. There was nothing there for him. Just hate. He fell to his knees, and she remained dialed in on him.

  "Fuck you," were the last words he heard before he fell on his face, and he realized she had slit his throat. He put his hands up to stop the flow of blood, but it was too late.

  ****

  Katie didn't know who the woman was, but she had her thanks. She smiled at the sight of the big man's blood squirting into the air. Then she ran forward and slid to a stop where Clara's head poked up out of the ground. She didn't have the time to say more than a few words to her, but she managed to say, "Don't move, it's the only chance you have," before she slipped the putrid helmet over Clara's head.

  Then she ran and began to climb the watchtower. The wooden structure offered plenty of handholds. It was designed to keep the dead out, not the living.

  ****

  Clara had no time to respond to Katie as she slipped the helmet over her head. Hazy darkness enveloped her. The inside of the helmet smelled like death, and she could feel the coldness of rotting ick in her hair and on her skin. The visor of the helmet was down, and she could see shapes moving towards her. She remained still as the dead filed past her, kicking her in the head with their clumsy footsteps.

  She fought the urge to vomit and tried to will herself to go somewhere else, to disappear into her mind. It was the only place she had left to go. She thought of the world before, of a man who had loved her more than anything else. She thought of hours sitting at a computer screen writing up case briefs and analyzing previously tried cases. She thought of family members she hadn't thought of in years.

  She cried silently, as the dead absentmindedly kicked the helmet sticking up out of the ground, never stopping to wonder why it didn't move when they kicked it.

  ****

  Joan saw the woman walk across the courtyard, limping as if she hadn't walked in a long time. She saw the knife in the woman's hand, but she didn't say anything. The pregnant women were huddled inside the trailers, and she was the only person to see the woman, who looked like one of the dead herself, bury the knife in Chad's throat.

  She sat there, not calling attention to the ordeal as the men had their backs to the inside of the compound. The threat wasn't supposed to come from the inside. It was outside, and Joan didn't want them to think any differently. There were six men left now. Firing indiscriminately into the woods, bringing the dead down upon them.

  She watched as the woman calmly turned around and walked back into the house, shutting the door behind her. She watched as Katie's head appeared over the watchtower wall, and then tears of hope came to her eyes. Katie picked up Chad's rifle, hopped to the ground, and crept over to Joan.

  Katie put a hand to the side of Joan's face and looked her in the eyes. When she placed the rifle in her hands, Joan knew what she had to do. She nodded at Katie, and then Katie went to stand behind her back, so that they could cover the whole compound.

  "Now," Katie said, and they began to fire.

  Her first shot went wide, but her second shot didn't. It struck a man in the chest and he fell on top of the trailer. The man on the next trailer over, sensing that something was wrong spun around with his rifle in his hand. But in the time it took for him to figure out that the two women in the courtyard were not on his side, a bullet ripped into his skull. He fell backwards and tumbled off the trailer completely. They fired until there was only one man left. As Joan was racking home another round, in the bolt action rifle, he turned around and without hesitating threw the rifle down and put his hands into the air.

  Joan took aim at him, and then she hesitated. He was unarmed. He was a human being. She had sworn to never willingly harm a human being. But that oath was a relic from a different time. When his face turned from fear to supplication, she shredded that oath in her mind and pulled the trigger.

  He fell down to the ground, and then suddenly, it was quiet. She looked over her shoulder, and Katie stood there panting, her gun hanging at her side, her free hand pressed to her back. She sat on the ground, and they listened to the sounds of the dead. They had won. They had fucking won.

  ****

  The women came out of the trailers then, tears in their eyes, hands on their pregnant bellies protectively.

  "Why?" Theresa cried. "Why did you do it?"

  There was no answer they could give, and it wouldn't have been heard over the noise of the dead anyway. They pounded on the trailers, creating a thunderous sound that was sure to draw more flesh-eaters their way.

  "Spears!" Joan yelled, for she knew that they had them stored in the big house.

  The women stood there, mute and shocked.

  "Get the spears, or we're all going to be overrun!"

  One of the pregnant women, with a face like a Disney witch pointed as a corpse began to rise. It was Chad, his eyes cold and dead. He pushed himself up on the watchtower, and then stood, looking left and right. His eyes locked onto the pregnant women, and he tumbled from the watchtower wall. When he rose, his left arm was broken, but that didn't stop him from advancing. He came at them, gnashing his teeth.

  Katie lifted her handgun, but it clicked empty, the hammer hitting the brass casing of a spent shell. She frantically tried to reload, when a shot boomed out next to her. She jumped, fumbling her shells, and the dead men on top of the trailers began to rise as well. She saw Chad's corpse slump to the ground, a sizable portion of his skull missing. Smoke wafted up from the barrel of Joan's rifle.

  Theresa waddled out of the big house with the bundle of spears. She dropped them next to the women, and they each grabbed one. They stood in the middle of the compound, fear lighting up their eyes. The dead came at them slowly, and by the time they had entered the circle, Katie was slamming the cylinder of her handgun closed.

  She began to take aim and fire, killing two of the things with the six shots she fired. Still more came. Joan, who couldn't move from her spot, had the worst angle. She couldn't see around the pregnant women huddled around them, and for this reason her rifle was useless. The women grabbed spears, but they seemed not to know what to do. They poked and prodded the dead. One woman jammed a spear into the gut of one of the creatures, and it pressed forward, the spear sliding through its guts as if it were made of Jell-o. It sunk its fingers into the flesh of her shoulders, squeezing so hard her skin popped and they could hear bones break, and she screamed a blood-curdling scream.

  Katie saw all this as she tried to reload. There were still five of them, soon to be six if the pregnant lady turned. Katie didn't want to think about what would happen to the fetus inside the woman, but she did. She slammed the cylinder shut again and shot the pregnant woman in the head. Her life was over anyway. She took better aim this time and was able to put three more down.

  The remaining pregnant women batted at the dead with the spears, pushing them back and holding them off. Joan waited patiently for a shooting lane to open up for her. When one of the pregnant women fell to the ground, she was finally able to get a shot off. She squeezed the trigger, and there was only one remaining.

  "Dale!" one of the women cried as a dead man advanced upon her. She was unable to carry out the execution of the dead man, and she sank to the ground with her hands over her head as he fell upon her.

  Katie was out of ammunition, so she snatched a spear from one of the ladies who stood there dumbfounded and in awe as Dale ripped the woman apart. Katie stepped up and drove the spear through the man's eye socket, pressing him back until he was lying on his back. She pulled the spear out to get a better angle at the writhing dead man, and then she plunged the tip of the spear all the way through his skull.

  The mauled pregnant woman lay on the ground, blood wetting the compacted dirt below her. No one seemed to want to
do anything about the fact that the woman was going to be dead soon. Katie stood there with the bloodied spear in her hand.

  Loose flesh hung from the woman's face as she looked up at Katie. "No," she pleaded. "I want to live."

  The pleas fell upon deaf ears, and Katie advanced upon the woman. She put up mangled hands in defense, the left one missing fingers, but Katie wouldn't stop. The cries of the woman cut her, but she had to make sure everyone was safe. She stabbed the woman through the throat, and she fell onto the ground gurgling, still trying to plead for her life. When the light faded from her eyes, she plunged the spear into the woman once more, ending her life for good.

  Katie turned to find the women staring at her in disbelief. She hated them, those soft, doughy faces looking at her. They hadn't earned the right to look at her like that. They had spent their time hiding from the dead, playing house with a bunch of losers, and now they wanted to judge her. She had survived worse than dirty looks.

  "Grab a spear. Get on top of those trailers. This isn't over yet." As if to punctuate her words, a trickle of dirt tumbled to the ground from underneath one of the trailers as it shifted. They left the dead in the courtyard, and they climbed the ladders that led to the rooftops.

  "No guns!" Joan yelled as one of the women went to take one from a dead man's corpse. "That'll just bring more of them. And will someone please cut that fucking country music?"

  As Katie climbed to the top of the watchtower, she began to think about Mort. The dead were too thick around the compound for him to safely make it inside. She hoped he was somewhere safe. Maybe he was hiding in a tree. Maybe he was back at the house. She supposed it didn't matter. They wouldn't find out his fate until they managed to clear the dead from around the trailers. As she stepped onto the wooden planks of the watchtower, she was greeted by a hundred dead faces. Through them, she caught a glimpse of the motorcycle helmet she had placed over Clara's head. It was still in the same place... all the more reason to dispatch the dead as quickly as possible.