by Morris, Jacy
Also Available From Jacy Morris
Fiction:
The Abbey
The Cult of the Skull (The Enemies of our Ancestors: Book 2)
The Drop
The Enemies of Our Ancestors
Killing the Cult
The Lady That Stayed
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
This Rotten World
This Rotten World: Let It Burn
This Rotten World: No More Heroes
This Rotten World: Winter of Blood
An Unorthodox Cure
Movies:
All Hell Breaks Loose
The Cemetery People (Coming Soon)
This Rotten World:
Winter of Blood
By Jacy Morris
Copyright © Jacy Morris 2020
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
This Rotten World:Winter of Blood
Prologue: A Light Still Burns
Chapter 1: The Snow Turns Red
Chapter 2: Lowering the Drawbridge
Chapter 3: Old Wound Burning
Chapter 4: Supermarket Sweep
Chapter 5: Apocalypse Anonymous
Chapter 6: I'm Too Old for This Shit
Chapter 7: Over the River and Through the Woods
Chapter 8: Doors and Dibs
Chapter 9: Raw Nerves and Meat
Chapter 10: A Day to Remember
Chapter 11: Ordered Not to Die
Chapter 12: Keep Your Brains Off the Photos
Chapter 13: Matching Haircuts
Chapter 14: The Miracle of Life
Chapter 15: Audrey Hopburn Belgian IPA
Chapter 16: The Gypsy Drifter
Chapter 17: Whole Lotta Shaking Going On
Chapter 18: Horse Stew and Sex
Chapter 19: Into the Snake Pit
Chapter 20: Open House
Chapter 21: Blood on the Ice
Epilogue: The Roar of a Million Lions
Prologue: A Light Still Burns
The power for the lighthouse had disappeared long ago, fading away as the world itself had done. But Rhodri Williams had figured out a plan. He had scrounged everything he needed from the city of Seaside, a once bustling tourist trap with nice, sandy beaches. The beaches led to a jut of rock, on which sat his lighthouse. He called it "his" because he had about as good a claim to it as anyone. He had poured thirty-five years of his life into the place, longer than anyone else. His friends in town used to ask him when he was going to retire, and he had never had an answer. But he knew the answer now. The answer was never. Not while there were still ships sailing on the sea.
Rhodri saw them out there sometimes, ships, bobbing along in the ocean. He didn't know where any of them were heading. Maybe they were dead, adrift, floating along with no one at the helm. But he knew that some of the ships had living people on them. He had seen signals from the ships, even been able to hail some of them on the radio. Those were the best times.
To be honest, it was those moments that he still lived for. They meant that his life still had a purpose, a reason. He had never considered himself much of a people person, not until they all went away.
He headed downstairs, circling around the spiral, iron staircase so fast that he felt dizzy when he reached the bottom. His was not the tallest lighthouse on the Oregon Coast, but it was fifty-feet straight up to the lamp at the top, with its shattered mirrors and stunning view of Seaside and its surrounding area. From its height, he could see the city to the north, sprawling and dead.
The city crawled with the dead now. Rhodri had seen them up close when he had needed to find a new power source for the lighthouse once the electricity had gone. The lighthouse had backup batteries, but these were short term and not meant to be the sole source of power for the lighthouse. After a couple of nights being lit up, the lighthouse would have gone dark, and the ships, the meandering ships full of souls too afraid to come to land, would have been dashed against the rocks south of Seaside. He couldn't have that on his conscience, not if he could do something about it.
So he had journeyed into the city. Seaside was not a big town. It had a population of about 7,000 people. He had always considered it more of a cozy village than a city. In the summer, Seaside swelled with tourists crowding the beaches, playing in the arcade, eating snow cones and elephant ears. But he guessed that time was over. When the apocalypse had hit, and that's what it was, he knew that now, the town had been at the height of tourist season.
He had listened to the breakdown of society as it was broadcast over the radio, listening to everything he knew fade away, one by one. It had started with the hospital. Rhodri heard the call go out over the police band, some sort of trouble with a patient. He had climbed his tower briefly during the day, watching as the police cars drove through town, like small toys to his eyes. He marked their progress, and when they reached the hospital, he climbed back down and listened some more.
"Shots fired, officer down." These were the words that stood out to him, amongst all the codes and questions; these were the words that told him that something was wrong.
His living area at the base of the lighthouse was not extravagant. It didn't need to be. He was only one man who never had any visitors. The majority of his days were spent sleeping and cleaning and turning off the alarm he set for himself lest he forget to eat. If he didn't set the alarm, he could lose himself upstairs, staring at the ocean and watching the ships pass by. He was not the stereotypical picture of a lonely lighthouse keeper. Oh sure, he enjoyed his solitude, but many were the days when he was able to stroll out the front of the lighthouse and bike down to the city to eat at Ruby's Roadside Grill. A bed, a sitting area, a small kitchen, a couch with a TV that he seldom used, and his desk with all of his logs and his radio– these were all of his possessions besides the bookshelf that rested against the wall.
It was as close to home as he would ever come, and it was likely to stay that way. Soon after the incident at the hospital, he heard other calls over the police band, including ones he couldn't quite believe. One officer reported that he had shot his partner at the hospital. Another one said something about zombies, and at that point, Rhodri felt the small, squeezing claws of panic in his chest. What the hell was going on out there?
As he sat on his couch, listening to the calls begin to pour in, he looked over at his kitchen and did a quick inventory in his mind. He had food. He always did a run and stocked up at the beginning of the month. He didn't like to go into town that often. He valued the environment, and his old pickup truck guzzled gas the way a sailor guzzled alcohol after making it back to land, so he kept his trips to once a month. He had lived so long above the ocean that he thought he might like the sea more than actual people. It was the middle of June… but if he waited until the end of the month to go get food and the whole thing didn't blow over, he might very well find a situation where there was no food left on the shelves, especially if whatever was happening continued to move as fast as it had in the last hour or so.
When the dispatchers started panicking, saying they needed to get home over the radio, that's when Rhodri knew it was serious. They were abandoning their posts. He had climbed the steps to the top of the lighthouse. It was a beautiful day. He remembered it clearly. It was the type of day that made Oregon beaches famous. The sun shone down; puffy, white clouds raced along under the sky. The temperature was a balmy seventy degrees. The day seemed perfect. He could almost catch a whiff of elephant ears on the breeze.
But then he spun around and looked toward the highway. A line of cars stretched to the limits of his sight. SUVs, semi-trucks, locals and tourists trying to escape, th
ey were all there, locked bumper to bumper. There was no way out or around. All they could do was wait.
He saw shapes running amongst the cars. And then he heard the gunshots, and then the screams. Somewhere in the north of town, a fire had started, inky black smoke crawling into the sky where it hung like a celestial bruise.
Rhodri climbed down from the top of the lighthouse. Something was going on out there, something bad. He walked over to his bookshelf and stared at the titles: zombie books, row after row of zombie books. There was something about the end of the world that had always fascinated him. Could this be it? Could this be the zombie apocalypse? He had shaken his head and called himself an idiot. Zombies weren't real. Then he heard the crackle over the police radio. "If anyone's still listening, shoot them in the head! They go down if you shoot them in the head!" The officer sounded panicked, scared.
He had stood for a moment longer, his mind spinning at a million-miles-an-hour until he thought his brains might actually pour out of his ears. Then he ran to the corner of his living area and pulled the station's ancient revolver from the antique desk. The desk had been there for as long as he had been working there; the revolver had been there even longer. You never knew when a drunk townie would try to break into the lighthouse for a good time. He checked the revolver, spinning the cylinder and making sure there were still rounds in it. In the back of the drawer, he found a disintegrating cardboard box with twenty rounds rolling around inside. The box crumbled in his hands it was so old. He put on his windbreaker and dumped the spare bullets in his pocket.
Rhodri left his truck sitting in the parking spot at the base of the lighthouse. It was loud, conspicuous, and worse, the road to the lighthouse led to the highway. He wouldn't be able to get through that mess of gridlock, not if some of those shadows were things that could only be killed by being shot in the head. On top of that, if he had to retreat, he would be bringing them back to the lighthouse, where he would then be surrounded. Better to be safe than sorry. The phrase was never truer.
It was two in the afternoon by the time he reached the beach, climbing down the hidden trail he had created over the years, the path covered by scrub brush and grass. It was a steep descent that brought him into a shallow, concealed cove. Visitors never came this far south. After climbing a few rocks and a brief wade through a waist-deep tidepool, he found himself standing on the most southerly of Seaside's beaches.
To the north, the beaches ran for a mile. If any of those tourists had been smart enough or knew the place well enough, they could have taken their SUVs on the beach and hightailed it up the coast to the next town, which was located a mile or two to the north. The town was smaller, barely able to be called a town. Maybe the highway wasn't clogged up there.
He ran quickly, the ocean breeze pushing him toward the row of hotels, townhomes, and mansions that lined the ocean shore. He chose the easiest path into Seaside, a nice level stretch of sand suitable for running. He saw no one on the beach during all of that time. It was eerily deserted, especially for two o'clock on a summer day. The path dumped him out at the edge of the city proper. The first person he saw was a man in flip flops stumbling down the street. Blood ran from a wound on his neck, and it wasn't until Rhodri asked him if he was alright that the man turned to look at him.
He found himself backpedaling away from the unblinking, dead gaze of the man. The man came at him, shambling. One of his flip flops came free, but the man didn't care. With one arm hanging at his side and the other reaching out for him, the man came on. Rhodri turned and ran, the revolver forgotten in his pocket. He didn't want to admit it to himself then, but he had already gone into full survivor mode. 26 bullets. That's what he carried into the dying city of Seaside, and he couldn't afford to waste a single one, especially if he could run and fight another day.
He ran up Avenue U, heading in the direction of the supermarket. It was the closest one to the lighthouse, a small, family-owned store he had been to dozens of times. The streets were empty of cars, besides the ones parked on the sides of the streets. Where usually there would be a dozen beach bum families walking down the sidewalk with ice cream cones in their hands, there were only a handful of people. Although, he supposed they weren't really people after all. He sprinted to the market, moving around the slow-moving people in the street, the ones with the bitemarks–– the zombies. He couldn't bring himself to fire on them. What if it was all just a big misunderstanding? What if the people were sick, but that's all? What if they were going to get better?
Rhodri pushed open the door to the market, and all of that bullshit fled from his head. On the floor, a man squirmed, punching at an old lady as she bit into the flesh of his arm. Blood spurted onto the linoleum in the dim light.
He knew the old lady. She ran one of the art studios in town, a spindly little place always filled with tourists with too much money in their pockets, looking to find the next big artist. Her name escaped him at that moment.
"Help me," the man on the floor said weakly.
Rhodri held the revolver in front of him. He didn't want to kill anyone. But if this really was what he thought it was, the woman was dead, and the man was too… he just didn't know it yet. Conscious of the shambling people he had left on the street, most likely still traipsing after him, he stepped up to the back of the woman and brought the handle of the gun down on the back of her skull. A normal person would have been knocked unconscious, and he could have gone about the business of helping the wounded man. But the elderly lady did not collapse in a heap the way any normal person would. Instead, she turned on him, baring bloody teeth.
She frightened him. Never, in all of the books that he had read, had the hero been frightened. But that's exactly what he was… maybe he wasn't the hero. Maybe he was the next victim. He stumbled backwards, backing away from the woman, his mind whirring as if a hurricane stormed through his brain. He wanted to turn and run, but he had come here for a reason.
"Back off, lady," he warned. But she did no such thing. Instead, she came closer. He only had two choices, attack the lady or go running right back out into the street with nothing to show for it. He spun the revolver around in his hand so he could use the handle as a club. He overrode that little voice in his head that told him this was all wrong, and he swung the revolver at the woman's head, putting all of his weight behind the swing. She toppled on her side, the top half of her body landing on the black rubber track that the cashiers used to draw groceries down the line. Without waiting, he brought the handle of the revolver down on the side of her skull repeatedly, his body quaking with revulsion at his own actions.
When he was finished, his hand and the revolver were covered in blood, and the woman didn't move. Rhodri's fear hadn't disappeared. If anything, it had only increased. He looked at the man on the floor. The man groaned in pain, clutching at his arm, and without the lady's head in the way, he could see the blood pooling on his chest. He had been bitten multiple times. Blood covered the floor, and Rhodri could see a spurt of rich red arterial blood coming from a bite in the man's forearm.
"Help me," the man said. His voice was weak.
"Use your belt. Cut off the flow of blood, or you're going to bleed out," Rhodri said. He was not a hero at that point, and he knew at that moment that he never would be. He stepped behind the counter and grabbed a couple of reusable shopping bags. He hurried past the corpse on the checkout counter and the man who might be dying on the floor, and he filled the bags with cans of food. He ignored the man's pleas for help. When he was done, he ran out the backdoor of the grocery store, hoping that the handles on the bags wouldn't break. A family ran by him, heading away from the highway, fear in their eyes, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. They didn't know where they were running, and they avoided him as much as he avoided them. He could have called out to them, offered them a place to hide and be safe, but he didn't. He didn't have enough food, and he knew that the more people you had in one place, the more chance there was that one of them would fuck up an
d get you killed, especially in an apocalypse… especially with kids involved. Better to go his own way. He was no hero.
Rhodri ran back to the lighthouse, stumbling through the beach sand to his secret path. He waded through the water, climbed over the rocks, and made his way back up the steep side of the hill on which the lighthouse perched. The day was darker now, the sun finding its way further west. He paused halfway up his climb, his forearms aching from carrying twenty pounds of food in each arm up the side of the damn hill. He sat in the tall grass, hidden from sight, and looked out over the town. There were shapes on the beach now. He recognized the shambling walk. Some of them had followed him from the city. He thought the ocean would make short work of them, but he couldn't be sure. He was glad he had used his secret path. If they had followed him up the road, he might never get back out again. There was only one way into the lighthouse, well, one way that involved staying alive. If the dead blocked it off, he would have to shoot his way out.
When he felt energy return to his legs, Rhodri grabbed the bags of food and made his way to the lighthouse. Inside, the first thing he did was wash the blood off his hands, washing until the skin on his hands was pink and raw. With his forearms still burning from lugging food up the side of the hill, he managed to put the food away and then climbed the staircase that led to the top of the lighthouse. From his perch in the sky, he scanned the beach. He spotted a knot of shadows moving at a quicker pace than the dead. It was the family from before, or maybe it was a different one. It was hard to tell at this distance. They made it to the water, the mother dragging one child behind her. He could tell by the uncoordinated movements of the family that they were running out of steam. Running on sand could do that to you, and if it was the family from before, they hadn't looked like they were that fit to begin with. Rather than watch the dead close in on them, Rhodri stepped inside the lighthouse. He couldn't watch them get torn apart. Even the thought of it was just too gruesome. On top of that, there was an annoying voice in his head that kept telling him he was wrong and that their deaths were his fault. He could have saved them.
