Rotter World (Book 2): Rotter Nation

by Baker, Scott M.

  “Sorry about the smell.” The old man raised his gnarled hands. “Hygiene is not easy for someone in my condition.”

  Windows hesitated. Nothing in his manner was threatening, so she cautiously approached. “I have your dinner.”

  “Is it that time already?”

  He pulled the loose flap of the sleeping bag back across his lap to mask the stench and held out his hands. Windows tried to hand him the plate, but he could not hold it because of his fingers. The plate started to slide, threatening to spill the food across his lap. Windows caught it at the last minute and tilted it so the contents moved back to the center. Moving closer to the old man, she knelt beside him and scooped up a forkful of beans.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he croaked, his tone neither defiant nor proud, but one of a man long used to being mistreated.

  “I know.”

  Windows moved the fork closer, and the old man leaned forward and opened his mouth. He chewed furiously and swallowed, and opened his mouth for more. Windows obliged. The poor old man was starving, a sensation she remembered well from her first few weeks on the road right after the outbreak. It dawned on her that no one had ever fed him before. Oh sure, Debra and the others had brought him his food. With his deformed hands he couldn’t eat, which explained his appearance and his soiled clothes. She couldn’t imagine what hell he must have gone through these past several months.

  Windows noticed a single tear sliding down his cheek, leaving a grimy path through the dirt.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DeWitt stood in the center of the doorway. “We need you outside.”

  Robson set down his end of the desk that he and Jennifer were moving out of a windowless office to convert into living quarters for Dravko and Tibor. “Is there a problem?”

  “Not yet. We have company.”

  Robson reached for his AA-12. “Rotters or gang members?”

  “Neither.” DeWitt stepped aside and held open the door. “Come see for yourself.”

  Robson and Jennifer followed DeWitt outside into the parking lot. A single figure approached the compound from the same direction they had driven in earlier that day. Robson assessed him as approximately thirty years of age, with an average height and build. He wore a hunter’s camouflage jacket and matching pants, plus a black baseball cap with the Boston Police logo emblazoned across the front. A sniper rifle hung over his left shoulder. The visitor walked down the center of the road so everyone could see him, approaching at a slow pace so as not to pose a threat. By his demeanor and actions, Robson pegged him as a cop. That meant he probably represented no immediate danger. If he did, then his skill level would outmatch everyone except Robson.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Robson noticed Jennifer place a hand on her holstered Magnum and move off to the right to provide cover fire if necessary. When the others saw this, they also spread out, forming a phalanx around the visitor. The visitor paused. He spread his arms to the sides with the palms out, showing that he held no weapons.

  “I’m not here to start trouble,” said the visitor. The “r” in start sounded more like an “h,” signifying a Boston accent.

  “Good,” said Robson. “Because that’s the last thing we need. Put your weapon on the ground and slowly approach.”

  “Sorry, I’m not going to disarm myself.”

  “Then I guess we’ll just have to shoot you.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Man, this guy has balls, thought Robson. “And why won’t I?”

  “You’re a fellow cop, so I assume you won’t shoot me without good reason.”

  “Stay where you are and don’t move.” Robson approached the visitor, watching for any sudden movement. The visitor looked relaxed.

  When Robson got to within ten feet of the visitor, the latter said, “If you’re planning on frisking me, I have a Colt .45 strapped in a shoulder holster and a hunting knife lodged against my back.”

  “Show me.”

  The visitor slowly reached for the flaps of his jacket. Robson heard the others raise their weapons. Without taking his eyes off the visitor, Robson waved his hand in a downward motion, ordering his people to stand down. The visitor clasped the flaps of his jacket and opened the ends, and then turned in a circle. Sure enough, he wore a Colt .45 strapped into a shoulder holster and had a hunting knife lodged against his back.

  When the visitor faced forward again, he let the flaps of his jacket drop and again extended his hands with the palms open. “Are we okay?”

  “For now.” Robson stepped forward and extended his hand. “I’m Mike Robson, the leader of this group.”

  “Neal Simmons. Consider me the local welcoming committee.”

  “I assume there are more of you?”

  Simmons nodded.

  “And I assume at least one of them has a sniper rifle trained on my head ready to take me out if we moved against you?”

  “I knew a fellow cop would have figured that out. No offense.”

  Robson chuckled. “I would have done the same thing. How did you know I was a cop?”

  “We’ve been watching you all day. You give orders like someone used to commanding authority. The clincher was when you approached me like I was an armed suspect.”

  Impressive, thought Robson. “What can I do for you?”

  “We wanted to invite you to have dinner.” He pronounced it “dinnah.”

  “Are you serious?” Robson must have said it louder than he meant to because he heard the others raise their weapons again. He shouted, “Put those things away!”

  “Thanks,” said Simmons.

  “Don’t mind them. We’ve been on the road so long we’re all a bit jumpy.”

  “Well, the invitation to dinner is still on. It’s been awhile since we’ve talked to anyone, and we would love to know what’s going on out there.”

  “I don’t know. There’s still—”

  Simmons cut him off. “I can offer you a hot meal and a cold beer.”

  “What time do you want us there?”

  * * *

  Simmons wasn’t kidding about a hot meal. Robson could not remember the last time he ate this good. Dinner consisted of vegetables and venison, real venison cooked over an open fire rather than dried jerky. And cold beer. Honest to goodness, cold beer. He hadn’t had one of those since before the apocalypse. By the end of his second bottle, he felt his thinking getting fuzzy, the effect of not having a drink for so long. But damn, did it taste good. After everything they had gone through the past few weeks, this return to normalcy, even if only brief and surreal, was refreshing.

  Robson focused his attention on the others. The survivors of Fort McClary sat around the dining room table of the church rectory, eight in total. Two weeks ago, before that fateful mission to Site R, they had numbered more than fifty. Now his numbers were half that, and most of his people had been sent off on a yacht to Omaha. He tried not to dwell on it.

  “You have a sweet deal going on here,” said Robson as he speared carrots onto the end of his fork. “We haven’t seen anything like this before.”

  Simmons nodded his thanks. “We lucked into this.”

  “We” referred to Isaac Wayans, Simmons’ partner. He stood over six feet tall and weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds, all of it muscle. Wayans wore his Boston Police BDUs. He hardly said a word during dinner, eating his meal with a sullen expression that furrowed his bald pate.

  When his buddy refused to respond, Simmons patted him on the shoulder. “This town is so small, we’re the only ones who care about it. The general store is the most significant spot, and the locals emptied that out before they left.”

  “So the locals just abandoned this town?”

  “Not a soul in sight when we arrived, although as best as I can tell there were only a few people living here to begin with. That’s why we set up camp around the church. The steeple gives us a good vantage point to survey the surrounding area. Over time, we commandeered a few solar-powered gene
rators to keep the meat we hunt frozen.”

  “And keep the beer cold,” said DeWitt, holding up his bottle.

  Simmons smiled. “We live here in the pastor’s house, and keep a get-away vehicle hidden off the road half a mile to the north. So far, no one has noticed us.”

  Jennifer sat forward and leaned her arms on the table. “How did you wind up here?”

  “When we left Boston,” started Simmons, “we headed north—”

  “I mean, what’s your story? What made you guys abandon the city to take up residence in a pastor’s house in the middle of nowhere.”

  Simmons went silent and averted his eyes from his guests. Wayans glanced over at his buddy and then the others. He spoke in a low, deep tone tinged with an anger and disgust that seemed menacing.

  “Lady, we left the world behind when it went to friggin’ hell.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Everyone stared at Wayans. He took a deep breath, held it for ten seconds, and exhaled. Although his anger dissipated, the disgust still remained.

  “Simmons and I made up the Boston Police sniper team and were on duty when those friggin’ things… what did you call them, rotters? … started coming back from the dead. The mayor was friggin’ useless. The first day of the outbreak, when they brought the first bite victims into Mass General, he went on television and ranted about the gun culture and violent video games causing people to attack each other. It took him two days to figure out this wasn’t a bunch of friggin’ druggies strung out on bath salts, but a real pandemic. By then the outbreak had spread all over the city. Downtown became a killing zone, and in places like Southie and Roxbury, people took matters into their own hands. They couldn’t hold it back. By the end of the third day, everyone not already dead was making an exodus out of the city.

  “For some friggin’ reason, the mayor took it upon himself to contain the outbreak. There were already reports of infections as far north as Beverly and as far south as Fall River. He closed down the Callahan and Sumner Tunnels and set up roadblocks on the roads out of the city, checking everyone for bite marks before letting them pass. One was set up in the center of the Tobin Bridge. We were assigned to the Chelsea end, and set ourselves up in one of them three families alongside the bridge. We had orders to shoot anyone who jumped the roadblock and tried to escape. Only one attempt occurred, some guy with a wife and three kids. Can’t say I blame him. I wouldn’t want to be trapped in a city being overrun by the dead just because some friggin’ politician is looking out for his political future. But orders are orders. So we blew out the tires and immobilized his car, and then held him at gunpoint until the cops came for him and brought him back to the roadblock. After that, no one made a run for it. Talk about a friggin’ crappy assignment. It beat manning the roadblocks though. We were in constant radio contact with the guys on the bridge, and every time they called in you could hear screaming, arguing, crying. A friggin’ madhouse.

  “About two hours into our shift, all hell broke loose. Not sure exactly what happened. As far as I can tell someone must have either turned at the roadblock, or the dead finally reached them. Whatever happened, everyone broke and ran, a couple of thousand people swarming across the bridge hoping to get to safety. We didn’t know what to do and then... then….” Wayans paused, fighting back his emotions. “Someone blew up the friggin’ bridge. The charges were rigged to detach the two center spans. They collapsed onto each other and pancaked into the Mystic River. I don’t know what bothered me more; listening to the cries of help of all those dropped into the river, or the terrified screams of those still trapped on the southern span of the bridge being overrun by the dead.”

  Jennifer placed a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God.”

  “God had nothing to do with it, lady.”

  “The mayor ordered the bridge destroyed with all those people on it?” asked Robson.

  Wayans shrugged. “The mayor, or someone who took his orders too seriously. It doesn’t friggin’ matter. Thousands died on that bridge. Plus we heard explosions throughout the city. Not sure where they came from. From what I could tell from the smoke, they also detonated the Sumner and Callahan Tunnels as well as the underground expressway. Few people made it out of Boston alive.”

  “What’d you do?” asked Jennifer.

  “Nothing we could do. We got the friggin’ hell out of there as fast as possible. We made it as far as Revere before the highway became impassable. We took the back roads until we found a Harley shop, confiscated a few bikes, and headed north.”

  “And that’s when you found this place,” said Robson.

  “Yeah. Friggin’ paradise.”

  Wayans went silent, so Simmons took up the conversation. “It actually took us a few weeks to find this place. By that time, I had a bad case of the flu, so we crashed here for a week until I got better. Once we realized how secure it was, we decided to stay permanently. We’ve been here almost seven months.”

  “No one else ever came by?” asked DeWitt.

  “They did, but we never reached out to them. Most were either trouble or stupid, and we didn’t want to be holding their hand.” Simmons slapped a hand against Wayans’ arm. “Remember that moron who came by here a few weeks ago?”

  Wayans chuckled. “The jerk was driving a Toyota Corolla, not the best vehicle for surviving the zombie apocalypse. He left his wife and kid sitting in the car while he walks into the general store like everything was normal. Don’t know how that friggin’ guy lasted so long.”

  “What made you want to reach out to us?” asked Robson.

  “We didn’t,” Wayans sneered.

  Simmons cast his friend a disapproving glance. “I saw you when you rolled into town, and you looked like you knew what you were doing. I figured you were safe. Besides, we’ve been cut off for so long, I hoped to get some news about the outside world and find out your story.”

  Robson spent the next hour relating the details of Fort McClary and how their lives fell apart with the arrival of Dr. Compton, his claim to have a vaccine for the Zombie Virus, the disastrous journey down to Site R, and what they found upon returning to the fort. He concluded with their recent escapade in Portland.

  When he finished, Wayans stared at him. He pointed to Dravko and Tibor. “You mean those two are friggin’ vampires?”

  Tibor leaned forward and smiled, baring his fangs.

  Wayans shook his head. “Friggin’ unbelievable.”

  “You don’t seem surprised,” Robson said to Simmons.

  “Are you serious? If you told me a year ago I’d be hiding out in a church avoiding the zombie apocalypse, I would have locked you up. The existence of vampires seems blasé now.” Simmons glanced over at Dravko. “No offense.”

  The vampire nodded. “None taken.”

  “What now?” Simmons asked.

  “We’re just going to rest up here a few days and scope out the rape gang’s hideout, and then we’ll get Windows back and be gone.”

  “Is that the gang who took over the old storage facility down off of 28?”

  Robson nodded.

  “Do you need help?” asked Simmons.

  “You don’t have to do this,” answered Robson.

  “Yeah, man.” Wayans looked confused. “Why do you want to get involved?”

  “Because I’m tired of just sitting around here,” said Simmons. “This is the same gang that destroyed Locke Lake five months ago, and we did nothing.”

  “We couldn’t help them. There are only the two of us. You friggin’ want to blow this deal to get involved in a fight that’s not ours?”

  “Yes. We used to protect people. If these guys have the balls to take on the rape gang to save one of their own, I want to help them.”

  “Why?” Wayans nearly spat the word.

  “Because I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”

  Wayans huffed and crossed his arms across his massive chest.

  “That is,” Simmons directed to Robson, “if you want
our help?”

  Robson smiled. “Hell, yes.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Natalie checked her watch for the tenth time that hour. It read six minutes before eight AM.

  Good. Only a few minutes left until shift change.

  She glanced over at the others. Tiara was napping on one of the seats. Sandy sat in front of the radar, her head drooping until any sudden motion woke her up. Sandy had been doing this every few minutes for the past hour. Normally, Natalie would chastise her for falling asleep at her post, especially since a dense fog had rolled in a few hours earlier, cutting visibility to less than a hundred feet. She would probably be dozing off herself if she wasn’t so wound up. Not that she had a reason to be. Other than flotsam near some of the larger port cities and the occasional stray small boat, they had not run into anything significant since Boston. As far as she could tell, they were the only ones around for hundreds of miles.

  Having three people on duty to run the yacht during each eight-hour shift might have been superfluous; however, it kept the Angels occupied, which she considered important right now. They had spent the entire previous day cruising down the coast, every city or town they came across ravaged and swarming with rotters. Nowhere did they see any signs of survivors. By late afternoon, the Angels had become morose, so Natalie ordered Josephine to take the yacht twenty miles off shore where they couldn’t witness the endless destruction and devastation. She then set up the three-team shifts so they wouldn’t just sit around growing more depressed. With luck, it would keep up their spirits for the rest of the trip.

  If her own emotions served as an example, it would fail miserably.

  Natalie sighed. She had not been this miserable since the first weeks of the outbreak. She missed Robson. Ever since his team had picked her up outside of York Beach in southern Maine and brought her back to Fort McClary, the two of them had been together. She had even fallen in love with him, and they had consummated their relationship at Site R. At that time, everything had seemed so promising. They had become lovers, had defeated Compton’s plan to kill them all, and had brought samples of the Zombie Vaccine to Fort McClary to forward it to the government-in-exile in Omaha. That’s when everything fell apart. Now she sat on a yacht heading for Omaha while Robson went on a suicide mission to save Windows from the rape gang.