This Rotten World (Book 3): No More Heroes

by Jacy Morris

  At the top he turned around and locked eyes with Diana. "I did it all for you," he said.

  "I know," she replied.

  "Will you come with me?" he asked.

  "No." Tears came to her eyes.

  Nike nodded, and then he went over the wall, dropping to the ground easily. Then he was off. They watched him jog toward the cookie-cutter townhomes across the way, which were separated from the road by a tall wall that acted as a sound barrier from the once-busy road. He disappeared through an opening in the wall, and then he was gone. Just like that, Nike was no more.

  Walt and the others left their positions on the wall, and they headed back to the security building. Tomorrow would be a full day. They would be clearing the dead out of the other buildings. Tejada had already stated that he intended to have this place Annie-free by the end of the week. They needed to be well-rested so that they didn't make any mistakes.

  They passed by Diana who sat on her knees in the tall grass close to the wall, tears in her eyes.

  Chapter 18: The Rescue

  It was night by the time they managed to clear out the dead. But there were more out there in the forest. The women, emotionally and physically spent, had called it a night. There would be more killing in the morning. Katie still had one more thing to do before she could rest. She crept down off the wall, landing on the bodies of the dead. She moved carefully to avoid twisting an ankle on the squishy mass below her. She made it to the blood-soaked ground, moving slowly and quietly.

  It was dark out, too dark to see much, and Katie expected one of the dead to come shambling out of the forest at any moment. She should have stayed inside. She should have waited for daylight, but she had to know. She had to know if Clara was still alive. She crawled across the dirt, moving to the spot where Clara had been buried. She felt for her in the gloom of the night, and her hand fell on the black, plastic helmet.

  The head inside the helmet jerked and moved, but that didn't mean anything. If she were dead, it would do the same. She lifted the helmet off of Clara's head and then waited a second before asking, "You still alive?"

  In a voice as quiet as the rustle of fabric, Clara said, "Yes."

  Katie was overjoyed to hear her response.

  "Get me out of here," Clara said, her voice trembling.

  "We can't."

  "What do you mean you can't?"

  "It's too dangerous. Too dark. All that noise pulled a lot more of the dead from the highway than we counted on. We don't know how many are out there, and it's too dark to work out here without lights. We could be surrounded in a heartbeat, and then we'd both be dead."

  Clara hissed then, "Get me the hell out of here."

  Katie wanted to, she really did, but she already heard rustling from the forest. "Tough break, kiddo. But don't worry. I'll be keeping watch all night. Nothing will get close to you. But, just in case, I'm going to put this helmet back on."

  Clara's muffled "no" disappeared abruptly as Katie pushed the helmet down onto her head. She felt awful about it, but it was too dangerous to work out here. She heard a groan from her right and sprinted back to the wooden watchtower. She climbed as if the dead thing were right on her heels, and then she was up and over, disappearing around the waist-high wooden railing of the watchtower. She lay sweating on the wooden planks, feeling cold in the middle of the cool night.

  She sat up and looked into the middle of the compound. The fire pit was dark. The women of the compound, overcome with sadness, fear, and their own cocktail of conflicting hormones had taken themselves off to bed after a tense moment when they had all stared at each other, weapons in their hands, waiting for the other side to make a move. But neither did, and now all was quiet.

  Joan still sat in the middle of the compound, a rifle in her hands and a blanket over her lap. Katie climbed down from the watchtower and walked over to her. It was hard to tell if she were still awake or not in the shadows of the night.

  Katie jumped when Joan asked her, "Is she still alive?" It sounded to Katie as if she had been crying.

  "Yes."

  "Thank God."

  She could have said something about God and the dubiousness of his existence, but she kept her lip zipped. "We'll get her in the morning. It's too dangerous out here now."

  "You can't just leave her out there." Joan sounded shocked at the idea.

  "It's ok. I'm going to keep an eye on her from the watchtower all night and make sure that nothing happens to her."

  "I'll stay with you."

  "As awesome as that would be, I don't see any way to get you on top of that watchtower, unless you learned to climb a ladder with a broken leg." Joan was silent, and Katie wished there were enough light so that she could see her face. "Come on. I'll help you to bed, then I have to get back up on that wall in case Mort shows up or Clara needs help."

  She bent down and picked up Joan, wincing at the oniony smell that emanated from her. Together, they walked/hopped to Joan's trailer. They bumped through the trailer in the dark, Joan cursing in pain as they hit the edge of the counter. Katie set her down as gently as she could, and Joan laid back with a sigh.

  "What happened to Lou?" Katie asked.

  "They killed him." Joan seemed to want to say more, but she didn't.

  Katie wanted to feel something. She wanted to feel anything at that moment, but she had already killed Chad and his brother. If she had known what they had done to Lou, she would have stopped and enjoyed it more.

  "What do you know about these women? Are we safe here?" Katie asked.

  "I don't know. They're not killers if that's what you're asking. They sat around while the men did all the killing, so I don't know if they'll come after us or not."

  "I guess we'll see in the morning."

  Katie left then, but she returned quickly with the rifle that Joan had used earlier. She placed it in bed with Joan and said, "If anyone but me comes in that door, you shoot 'em. Ok?

  Joan didn't say anything, but Katie trusted that she would make the right decision when the opportunity presented itself. She went back outside, cursing the inky black sky. She climbed back up on the watchtower and stared into the darkness of the area around the compound. It was quiet enough that she could hear every footstep out in the woods. They would have more work to do in the morning, and she was glad that she hadn't tried to rescue Clara in the middle of the night.

  In the solitude of the night, she replayed the events of the day. Did she have a death wish? Was she just sane enough to make the insane happen? By all means, they should all be dead. Somehow she had won out; somehow she had saved the friends that she could.

  She was sorry about Lou. He had been a good person. He, out of all of them, had accepted her for who she was... and exactly who was she? The question seemed to come out of nowhere, and, as questions frequently do to those sitting in the dark with nothing else to focus on, it seemed to take on an importance of its own. It were as if the question itself were life or death, something that could destroy her if she didn't manage to answer it correctly right then and there.

  She knew who she used to be, a doddering old housewife, a plain Jane running through her life never thinking about anything. But who was this new Katie? Feelings of guilt began to creep and crawl through her soul as she thought about all of the things that she had done since this had all began. Killing people... that was easier than killing the dead. The living knew what they were doing, and they deserved the punishments that she had dealt out to them. But the dead, they were artless, just stumbling blocks of meat. She killed them out of necessity. But the people.

  You're full of shit, girl. She looked down at the ground willing her mind to not disappear into the realm of justifications for the things she had done since the end of the world. She thought about the people she had killed and realized very few of the killings had been justified. They had been the actions of someone who truly was insane.

  Katie imagined her heart as a pulsing organ floating in the stars above. On its surfac
e, she could see the scars that were left from not so long ago. A dark light pulsed along those scars, and she knew that she would have to face them or they would eat her up as sure as one of the dead would.

  For the first time since it had all begun, she thought of her child, her glorious son. He had been everything to her, her world, her reason for being. She hadn't been forced into being a housewife. She had wanted to be. She had wanted to give up everything of who she was so that her son might have the best life possible. She recalled her husband, a hardworking man who had only shown herself and her son love. Her life had been perfect.

  That's why her scars ran so deep. She allowed herself to cry in the darkness for what she had lost. For the first time, she allowed herself to relive the memories of everything that she had lost. She allowed herself to feel the guilt of everything she had done since she had killed them. Katie began to heal.

  ****

  Clara's night was pure hell. She longed to move with every inch of her body, but the only part she could move was the one part of her body that she didn't dare to. There was an ache in every muscle of her body from sitting still for almost a whole day. Though the earth supported her, she felt as if it were crushing her to death with its cold embrace.

  She could see nothing through the death-filmed visor of the motorcycle helmet on her head. But she could hear the dead milling about in the forest, crushing branches and dry leaves. Katie had said she would be close, and a couple of times in the night, she thought she heard sobs. Though they filled her heart with sorrow to hear, she was grateful to know someone was out there watching over her.

  Clara too cried as the dread of not being able to escape began to crawl through every inch of her body. She tried to stifle it, to shove it down, but doing so only seemed to make it worse. First, the tears came to her eyes, and she felt as if her entire body were going to explode if she didn't move soon. Then the thoughts began to creep in at the edge of her consciousness... thoughts of the dead finding her underneath that motorcycle helmet and eating her face, their grubby hands groping to gouge her eyeballs from her skull.

  She began to hyperventilate, until she was sure that the only way to stop her erratic breathing was to scream. Tears fell from her eyes, snot ran from her nose, and she had no means to wipe either away. The feeling of being trapped intensified steadily, until she thought that it would be better to scream and get it all over with than to spend another second in her tomb.

  Just when she was about to throw it all away, she saw a glint of orange light rising over the trees in front of her. She locked onto that glowing light with a single-mindedness that helped her keep from screaming. Clara soaked up the glow of the sun, locking onto it with her eyes as her tears dried up and her breathing began to slow. It rose higher in the sky, giving her hope.

  They would be coming for her soon. They would get her out.

  When she heard the shuffling footsteps behind her, Clara thought, Thank God, and she tried to turn around to see Katie. She realized her mistake almost immediately, as the dead thing behind her moaned and fell to its knees, pawing at the helmet on Clara's head.

  Clara screamed.

  ****

  Katie woke with a start. Immediately, she knew she had fucked up. She stood on the watchtower, and saw a beefy man pounding on the motorcycle helmet on the ground. The creature looked like a gorilla having a temper tantrum.

  "No, no, no," she repeated over and over. She grabbed a spear just as women began pouring out of the trailers to see what the noise was. Without thinking, she hopped over the railing of the watchtower. What she really wanted in her hands was one of those guns, but she knew that she couldn't draw any more attention to the compound and still have a chance of rescuing Clara.

  She was three feet away when the bulky dead man ripped the helmet from the ground. For a second, Katie thought that the monster had ripped Clara's head clean off, but then she saw cascading brown hair glowing orange in the morning sunshine.

  With no time to think, she jammed the spear at the back of the large man's skull. It did nothing but shred a roll of fat on the back of the man's head. He went to his knees, his hands pulling at Clara's hair, oblivious to Katie's efforts to kill him for good.

  Katie circled to the front of the dead man as he yanked the hair out of Katie's scalp, along with a sizeable piece of flesh. Panic welled up within her as Clara's blood began to flow from the wound. As the dead man shoved the chunk of flesh into his mouth with one hand, he reached for another handful of hair. Katie gave it everything she had, thrusting the spear through his eye which regarded her as nothing more than an inconvenience, the way families used to look at the telephone when it would ring during dinner. The spear entered his eye, broke through the orbital bone and then sent a shockwave up her arms as it drove through brain and impacted the back of the man's skull. He fell over sideways, one hand still locked in Clara's hair.

  Her head was yanked to the side, and she was crying. "Don't worry, I'm going to get you out of here," Katie said, digging at the ground with her bare hands. Blood ran from Clara's scalp wound, it was the size of a fist, and Katie had no idea how they were going to deal with a wound like that.

  "Get me outta here!" Clara commander, her eyes wide like a spooked horse.

  "Help!" Katie yelled, knowing that any hope she had of extricating Clara quietly was now blown. She drove her hands into the dirt, hoping that the women inside the compound would come to her aid. She dug deep, thankful that the earth had already been dug up once. It was loose enough for her to make some progress with her bare hands.

  "There's another one!" Clara sobbed, panic in her voice.

  Katie got to her knees and pulled the spear from the dead man's skull. She spun around to see a one-legged child crawling upon the ground. Bits of dirt-covered flesh from its missing limb trailed after the monstrosity, and she drove the spear into its skull. Mordbidly, she noted how much easier it was to drive a spear through a child's skull.

  With that done, she took a good look around her, spotting a handful of the dead moving towards her through the trees. She returned to digging, but kept the spear close to her.

  Clara was in tears. Katie tried not to look at her face. She focused on the task at hand. "You're going to be alright," she said trying to comfort her, though she had so far only managed to uncover the top of Clara's shoulders.

  "There's too many of them!" Clara wailed.

  Katie looked up from where she was digging to find the pregnant women of the compound standing on the watchtower, looking out at them.

  "Are you going to help us or just stare at us like a bunch of fucking cows?" Katie yelled at them. The women on the wall did nothing. They were cows.

  Then the dead were upon her. She rose from the ground with the spear in her hands, knocking the dead backwards and clubbing them on the side of the skull with the heavy length of wood. There were too many of them for her to risk stabbing them in the head and losing the spear. But she knew she couldn't hold them off for long. Her arms would be exhausted before she ever managed to kill them all.

  If this is how I go, then fuck it. She swung the spear again, knocking the nearest of the dead to the ground, but it got right back up again. She fought tooth and nail, striking and pushing the dead back, until her arms were rubber, but still no one from the compound came to help her. She fought like a wild animal, hitting them when she could. The entire time, she kept her own body straddling Clara's exposed head. They would have to get through her to get to Clara.

  Those cowardly bitches will pay when I'm done. But she knew she was already done. She knew she was losing this fight. She could barely lift the spear in her hands, and she wished she had brought the gun with her anyway. She imagined how easy it would be to take a step backwards and shoot them all in the head, and then, as if her thought had made it happened, she watched as the head of the ghoul to her right exploded in a shower of crimson gore. She stood there, shocked and uncomprehending.

  "Get her out of there!" a voic
e yelled.

  Katie cast her eye at the watchtower for just a second to see a sweat-soaked Joan leaning against the railing, a rifle in her hands.

  Immediately, she fell to her knees, and though she was dead tired already, she managed to find some reserves to try and dig Clara out of what could very well be her grave. "You gotta start wiggling," she told the woman as another gunshot rang out.

  "I'm trying," she said, her shoulders bunching.

  Katie's fingernails chipped and broke as she plunged her hands into the dirt, clawing it upwards and out of the hole. More gunshots rang out, and Katie knew that she was fighting a losing battle. The gun wouldn't hold them off forever. Sooner or later there would be too many of the dead upon them, and then it wouldn't matter; they would both be dead.

  She dug and she clawed, and then a miracle happened; Clara was able to free one of her arms.

  "Keep wiggling," Katie said. "Keep trying to get yourself out of there."

  Together they worked, Katie digging and Clara trying to break herself free. Groans echoed through the forest all about them, and the wide, panicked eyes on Clara's face told her that the dead were getting closer. When they finally had Clara's torso free, Katie said, "Hold on. I'm going to try and pull you out." She hopped to her feet and circled behind Clara. "Give me your hands."

  Clara raised her hands above her, and Katie grasped them. She pulled and pulled, yelling through the exertion she was putting on her already broken body. "Come on!" she yelled through gritted teeth as another clap of thunder split the morning air.

  "Look out!" a voice yelled. She didn't know if it was Joan or one of the others, and she didn't have the time to figure it out. From behind, cold hands grabbed her around the torso. There was another thunder crack, and then she felt fire in her shoulder. She screamed in pain, falling to the ground. At least that thing isn't touching me anymore.