This Rotten World | Book 4 | Winter of Blood

by Morris, Jacy

  Amanda must have noticed his angst because she said, "They'll be alright. You've trained them well."

  "Training doesn't make you invincible."

  "They know that. You know that. All you can do is control what you can control."

  "Well, that's not good enough." He attempted to rise up out of the chair, but the pain in his hip flared bright, to the point that he wasn't even conscious of falling back into the desk chair. One second, he was trying to get up to help his men, and the other, he was sitting again. But hey, at least the chair had some good lumbar support.

  "How's your hip?" Amanda asked.

  "It's a pulled muscle, maybe a tear. Nothing that a little time won't fix…"

  "But we don't have time," they both said at the same time. Tejada laughed quietly.

  "Am I that predictable?" Tejada asked,

  "I wouldn't say predictable. No, that's not the word. I would go more with reliable."

  Tejada smiled. Amanda had a way of making everything seem all right. He had that gift too, but his was more of a "Do what I say, and everything will be alright" type of gift. Amanda could probably make a tornado seem like a gust of wind. Hell, even after she had leapt over the Nike wall with no weapons on her, she had been all smiles. Most people he knew would have been shitting in their pants.

  "You're alright, Amanda," Tejada said.

  "That's high praise."

  "And don't you forget it."

  From another hallway, he heard a scream. It sounded like Allen. He tried to rise again, but his hip wouldn't let him. "Aww, fuck," he said as he plopped back down into the desk chair once again.

  "You're gonna make it worse," Amanda said.

  "Well, shit, it already feels like the worst thing in the world. Can't imagine making it worse would be a good idea." He resigned himself to being useless. He began to wonder how long he would be useless for, but then the thought crossed his mind that he might just be at the end of his journey, and he didn't like that.

  "You got anyone out there?" Tejada asked, nodding his head to the outside world.

  "You mean family?" Amanda asked.

  "Yeah."

  "I have parents. They live in Florida. Notice I said 'live.' Not past-tense. I know the odds, I know reality, but I choose to believe they're still out there. Maybe they took the yacht out, and my dad is catching fish out on the Atlantic."

  "A yacht, huh? I never pegged you for a rich girl."

  Amanda rolled her eyes, and for one of the few times in knowing her, she didn't have a smile on her face. "It's not like that. We weren't rich, but my dad scraped and saved for a yacht. It was his dream. Our house was small, he worked the docks, and though we could have moved into a bigger house, he always said that if we had a yacht, the entire ocean would be our house, so it was better to scrimp and save. And that's exactly what he did." Amanda smiled, her mind drifting back to those days on the ocean with her mom and dad.

  She'd always felt free in those days, as if the entire world had disappeared, leaving only her family.

  "Sounds nice," Tejada said.

  "Didn't you ever have any dreams?" Amanda asked.

  Tejada shook his head. He couldn't talk about dreams. To talk about a dream was like telling your birthday wish to someone after you blew out the candles. It wouldn't come true. "Never had time for dreams," he said.

  "You got time now."

  He laughed quietly. "That's what I'm afraid of." He paused then, but Amanda didn't speak. She didn't take up the slack he left her, and he knew, without having to even think too hard about it, that he wasn't getting out of this conversation without something.

  "There is one thing," he said. Then he hesitated, feeling foolish.

  "Go on," Amanda said. "I won't tell."

  Tejada smiled at her sheepishly. "Well, I always wanted grandkids, you know. I just wanted to, at the end of this life, be surrounded by youth and life… innocence. I wanted to spend my last days just enjoying the beauty of life, and not all the shit and decay." He dropped his head as his eyes began to fill with misty tears. He felt like an idiot, confessing his dreams to a girl less than half his age.

  "What's wrong with that? That's a good dream."

  "Yeah, well, it's also an impossible dream. I don't see a lot of ladies my age, and truth be told, I never really wanted to go through with the steps that would lead to grandchildren. I don't want to raise a kid. Don't want to feed 'em. Don't want to punish 'em. Don't want to worry about 'em. As a sergeant, I've done enough of that."

  Amanda asked, "Do you see these men as your children?"

  His first instinct was to deny it. He even began to shake his head. "No, I mean, I know I'm not. But I feel all the things a parent would feel for 'em. The worry, the laying awake at night and wondering what's going to become of them if I'm not around. I know I'm not their dad, and they don't see me like that."

  "I think you'd be surprised," Amanda said.

  He waved her off. "Bah, I'm just an old man in the dumps, talking about shit that don't even matter."

  "If all you talk about is the things that matter, then does anything truly matter at all?"

  "I don't follow."

  "Think about it. If you don't spend any time on unimportant things, and you only focus on the important things, then everything has the same level of importance, the same significance, which is to say none."

  "Did you get all them brains from college?"

  "Nope," Amanda smiled. "I always had 'em."

  "Well, you're talking circles around me. But I think I'm picking up what you're putting down."

  "Good."

  Just then, Brown and Whiteside came around the corner. Brown was wiping off the blade of his hatchet with a towel he had found somewhere.

  Quickly and conspiratorially, Tejada leaned towards Amanda and said, "Don't tell anyone what we talked about. It's hard enough to control these guys without them knowing how I feel about them."

  Amanda whispered, "What makes you think they don't already know?"

  Tejada's face took on a shocked look, and Amanda just smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder.

  "What's going on?" Whiteside asked, sensing something out of the ordinary.

  "Nothing. Gimme a report," Tejada said.

  "We cleared our floor," Brown said. "There was a lot of old people in their bedrooms. No real issues, but man, do I feel like shit clubbing down all those old people."

  "Ahhh, they're not even people anymore," Whiteside said.

  "You don't know that, man." Brown looked sick to his stomach. "We don't know anything. Those were people's grandmas and grandpas, man. How do we know they're not still in there somewhere?"

  Whiteside shook his head. "Look, man, all I'm sayin' is that if they were in there, it don't make a damn lick of difference, cuz they were comin' after us, and if someone comes after me, I don't care if it's your momma; it's me over them."

  Brown snapped at the mention of his mother. He grabbed Whiteside by the front of his shirt and pulled him close, his fist cocked back.

  Before he could get the punch off, Tejada piped up with a "Hey, hey, hey!"

  Brown let Whiteside go, and Whiteside straightened the front of his shirt self-consciously. Brown said, "Just don't be talkin' about my mom. You ever talk about my mom again, and I will beat the white off you. Then you'll have to change your name from Whiteside to just Side."

  "Fuck you, Brown."

  "Hey, knock that shit off," Tejada said.

  Just then, Allen and Epps came back. "What's going on?" they asked, sensing the tension in the room.

  "These two knuckleheads were about to bust each other open because Whiteside said something about Epps' momma. So basically, a bunch of bullshit."

  Epps and Allen shrugged and gave their report. They were quickly followed by the return of Walt and Day, and Rudy, Masterson, and Gregg. They all reported the same thing, a lot of elderly dead people and an empty building going to rot.

  When they had all finished their reporting
, Tejada asked, "Did anyone see a place for all of us to hole up? Preferably some place without windows."

  "Found a conference room in our hallway," Walt said. "It'll be a tight fit, but it ought to do."

  "Alright. For now, I think it's best that we keep together. Let's get our gear and get to that conference room. We need to breathe a bit, get some rest, and sort out our kits."

  They all moved to follow Walt back to the conference room. Except for Tejada. When he stood, the pain shot through him, and he tumbled to the ground. Amanda was there immediately, struggling to pull him to his feet.

  By the time he got to his feet and recovered from the pain, Masterson was returning, smiling a fool's grin. "I got you something, sir."

  Tejada looked at the wheelchair like it had spit on his only son. Only he didn't have a son, so he couldn't complain. A fucking wheelchair. He was only forty-one, and now he was being wheeled around in a wheelchair. The pain was too great, or else he would have limped to the conference room on his own, even if it took all night.

  He plopped into the chair, only slightly pissed off at having to let his men see him like that. Masterson wheeled him to the conference room, and Tejada pointedly made himself refrain from ordering everyone to wipe the smug little smiles off their faces. He just had to grin and bear it. That's what parents had to do for their kids every now and then.

  Chapter 7: Over the River and Through the Woods

  The snow had fallen all night, and it wasn't until the letters of the note were barely visible that Mort had gone inside to warm up. He spent that night eating the rest of his oatmeal. Tomorrow he was going to go to the compound and demand to be let in. He couldn't afford to be getting tired out there, among the dead. That wouldn't do.

  He had made it halfway through the store of wood that had been left outside when they found the house. He had gotten pretty damn good at starting fires. Luckily, the old woman that lived there had kept a solid stock of lighter guns in the house, handheld lighters shaped like pistols that he could use to light the pages he tore out of the books inside. At first, he had tried to read the books to take his mind off his situation, but in the end, that had only earned him a headache.

  The woman had a nice collection of books, but he still felt bad every time he ripped the pages out. Someone else could have read them, but he was the only person around at the moment, so he grabbed a copy of Moby Dick and ripped out twenty or so pages, balling them up and placing them underneath the dried and split logs that he pulled from the storage overhang underneath the house. The logs caught fire quickly, and his hands were the first thing to start tingling as the fire chased away the chill.

  He pulled the old lady socks he had been using as gloves off his hands and held his hands out to the warming fire. When his hands were nice and warm, he pulled his boots off and did the same for his feet, putting his socks near the fire. The left one had a hole in it where his big toe poked through. None of the old woman's socks would fit his feet.

  He put a kettle filled with snow in the fire. He watched the snow transform from white powder to liquid and then into a boiling lake. When it was nice and hot, he poured the boiling water over the oatmeal, stirring it and letting it sit. The first time he had made oatmeal this way, he had burned the taste out of his mouth. When the oatmeal stopped steaming, that's when he would take a bite, but only after he had covered the concoction in his last bit of ketchup.

  He looked at the pile of condiments. He was not looking forward to mustard-flavored oatmeal, but that's what he would be doing if they didn't let him inside the compound. But that wasn't going to happen. He couldn't think that way. Everything was going to work out. He had the luck of the hobo with him. He smiled at that. Shit, everyone was a hobo these days.

  When he was done eating, he wrapped himself in a blanket and sat in front of the fire with his eyes closed. He didn't want to look at the flames. They reminded him of too much. They took his mind to places he didn't want to go–– back to the city, back to where everything had all gone to hell. He remembered seeing cops burning in a police car, their skin charring in front of his eyes as they tried to come after him.

  Mort shook his head, trying to focus on something more positive. Katie and Joan were still alive. That fact combined with the oatmeal in his belly to make him feel warm inside, but one thing was still bothering him. They hadn't mentioned Clara's name. The omission dampened his spirits only slightly. Maybe whoever wrote the note just forgot to put her name there. Or maybe Clara was dead. He didn't like that thought.

  Clara had always been nice to him, for no reason other than that's the type of person she was. She was funny and kind and tougher than she looked. He spread out on the floor, wrapped in blankets. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of Clara's face.

  But sleep came hard that night, like grabbing a handful of water. He got a little, but every time he tried to squeeze that small bit of sleep to make it last, it would escape from him, and he would wake up wondering if Clara was alive or dead.

  Mort's only company was the sound of the wind and the wood crackling in the fireplace. But they made poor compatriots. The wind whispered of the dead, making the tree branches rattle in the darkness, like bones crashing into each other. The pop of the fire, chunks of wood exploding and bouncing off the screen made him jump occasionally. But worse company than those two dubious companions were his own thoughts.

  He began to imagine how Clara had died, and somehow, he had jumped to the conclusion that she was, in fact, dead. Why else wouldn't they have written Clara's name in the snow? There was plenty of room in the snow. Death was the only answer. Had she been eaten? Had the other people in that camp killed her? Maybe the lady with the big mole on her face? None of the answers were satisfactory, and he rolled over on his side to stare at the flames of the fire.

  He let the flames dance in front of his eyes, focusing on them until his own thoughts went away. They told their own tale, using the wood as fuel. The coals flickered gray and orange at the bottom of the logs. He could hear the whisper of their burning in his ears, and he let the coals tell him a story. They lulled him to sleep, where he dreamed of cold hands clawing at his face. He dreamed of living under a bridge with his old gang of homeless people. He dreamed of seeing Clara coughing in pain under the bridge, looking up at him, her hand outstretched, pleading for help. There was nothing he could do, so he held her hand and let her relax as he said goodbye.

  When next he awoke fully, for there were many moments in his sleep where he awakened at the sound of crackling wood or a strong gust of wind, he found his eyes wet, and his heart was pumping as if he had just run a mile. But he felt better. He took a deep, shuddering sigh and waited for the blue of the morning to turn into a more solid gray.

  When the sky brightened, he pushed himself off the ground and threw some more logs onto the fire. Using a few more pages from Moby Dick, he raised the fire back to life. He spent the next fifteen minutes working the kinks out of his body. He walked back and forth across the hardwood floors of the living room, spinning and turning. He bent his knee several times, holding a squatting position even though it hurt him to do so. He flexed his shoulders, stretching his arms out wide and reaching up to the sky until the tightness there went away. He flexed his neck from side to side, breaking the stiffness loose.

  After Mort finished his exercises, he grabbed a packet of mustard, bit it open, and squirted its contents into his mouth. He winced from the pungent flavor of the mustard and repeated the process three more times. "I hope they got some food over there," he said to no one in particular.

  He walked through the house, retrieving all of his belongings. There wasn't much. His backpack held a can opener, a fork, a spoon, a couple of those lighter guns, and some rolling papers he had no real use for, as he had run out of tobacco some time ago. In addition to this, he wore his jacket, his rifle, his hammer, and his shotgun secured about his body. He thought about bringing Moby Dick along, but he left it behind. He was already carrying
a fair amount of weight due to the fact that he had to carry the rifle and the shotgun.

  He stepped to the front door and peeked through the boards to see if there were any surprises waiting for him on the porch. Seeing none, he threw the door open with his free hand while his other held his hammer ready just in case.

  The sign was gone, as if it had never been there, and snow still fell from the sky. It was going to be a cold day. That much he knew.

  Venturing out onto the porch, Mort sighed as the warmth of the fire was pulled from his body by the howling wind. He stomped through the accumulated powder on the steps, holding onto the railing carefully so he wouldn't slip on the compacted, icy snow underneath the soft powder on top.

  He made it to the bottom of the stairs and scanned the snow for signs of the dead. Seeing none, he breathed easier, though not entirely easy as a gust of frigid wind snatched his breath away for a second. He walked down the barely visible path to the main road, enjoying the feeling of his muscles warming up. The heat from exertion was the only way to stay alive out in the wilderness. If he sat down for an hour or two, he might never get up again.

  There were no signs of life on the main road at all. The blanket of snow was pristine, unmarred by footsteps, though occasionally he would see the dainty hoofprints of a passing deer or elk. He saw no bear prints, which was fine by him. He had seen one prowling around in the area behind his house one day, and it just about made him crap his pants. The dead he could handle, but if a bear got it in its mind to come after him, he didn't think the rifle in his hand would do much to deter it. The shotgun would most likely just piss it off unless he got lucky.

  As Mort pondered what he would do in case of a bear attack, he came to the spot he dreaded most, the washout. He stared at the washed-out section of road. Ten, fifteen-feet across maybe. He walked up to the edge of the road and peered down. It was a good twenty-foot drop, and there was no way around it without climbing the cliff to his right. Or he could backtrack for a mile or two until he could make it to the river, then come up the river bank; although that would involve traipsing across a questionable crust of ice for a couple of miles. He might not survive a trek like that.