This Rotten World | Book 4 | Winter of Blood

by Morris, Jacy

  ****

  Joan was a failure. She knew it with one-hundred-percent certainty. The baby she had brought into the world was most likely going to die because she hadn't been able to save the mother. She hadn't been able to help Clara when the time had come. Hell, the one person she had managed to save was Katie, and something was still wrong with her. She looked weak all the time, pale with dark circles around her eyes. If she had encountered Katie in the wild, she was sure that she would think Katie was one of the dead.

  She expected Tammy to die any second now, to rise from her bed with a taste for human flesh. That would be the final straw. She would never operate on another person again, not without another doctor by her side, another person that knew what they were doing. For herself, she wasn't sure that she had ever known what she was doing. It had been so easy in the hospital, with nurses and assistants to make sure everything was sterilized, all the materials were prepped and present. But out here, it's like her training was completely worthless. Sure, she could operate. She could do the incisions, the excisions, the stitching, but without the equipment she needed to ensure post-care, all she was really doing was sentencing people to death. Never again, she vowed.

  "How long you think this can last?" Mort asked.

  "As long as that baby keeps crying," she responded.

  "I don't think the walls are going to last that long," Mort said.

  Joan knew he was right, but she couldn't say it. She couldn't say it because to say it would be to make it real, and if it were real, they would have to find a solution. They weren't going to like the solution. None of them were. But she knew one thing. She wasn't ready to die yet.

  ****

  Theresa and Liz stood in the foyer of the ranger station, a small, eight-foot by twelve-foot room that had little in the way of furniture. What furniture there was had been stacked up against the door. The two lovers sat on the floor in front of the furniture, adding their own weight to the barricade. With each thump at the door, they could feel the vibrations in their spine. They held spears in their hands, and their rifles sat propped up against the far wall.

  Theresa was not very good with the rifle. She trusted the spear more. Her back ached, and her bladder felt full; it frequently did now. The baby inside her had been restless all evening, perhaps responding to the cries of the other child in the other room.

  "I wish someone would shut that baby up," Liz said.

  Theresa thought about admonishing her for her callous thought, but she had had the same thought quite a few times in the last day. The first day had been fine. It's just a baby, she had thought. The second and third day, she had been able to hold onto that idea. But this was the fourth day, and she absolutely wanted that baby to be quiet. She didn't like to think about the ways this could be accomplished. They weren't good. But after four days… well, Theresa didn't think Tammy was going to wake up anyway, and unless one of them gave birth first, then that baby wasn't going to survive. It was at death's door as it was… but death was at the door for them, and something needed to be done.

  She leaned her head back against the ancient oak desk that kept the dead from breaking inside. "I don't think it will last much longer," Theresa said.

  "But then it will turn," Liz said, a note of horror in her voice.

  "We don't know that."

  "If it was your child, would you want to let it turn?"

  Theresa turned and looked at Liz. She didn't see the mole on her face anymore. She only saw a woman she cared for deeply. "Could you drive a spear through that baby?"

  Liz looked away from her, ashamed. "No."

  Theresa patted her on the arm. "Neither could I."

  ****

  Katie started across the room, cold determination in her heart.

  Dez locked eyes with her. "I'm not going to stop you," Dez said.

  "You couldn't if you wanted to."

  Katie moved around the end of the bed. She went to the cold place, the place she had lived for months after the death of her family. In the cold place, she didn't feel anything. She was someone else. In the cold place, she could do what needed to be done.

  She saw Dez turn her head. A look of shock and horror took root on her face. Katie turned as well, spotting movement out of the corner of her eye. She raised the spear, reared back, and prepared to kill whatever was moving.

  "My baby," a weak voice said.

  Katie corrected her spear in mid-thrust, plunging it into the bed's headboard, inches from Tammy's wide-eyed face.

  She sagged to her knees, and the cold place melted away. Shame hit her like a tidal wave, and she sat there, gasping, thankful that things had not gone the way she had expected.

  Dez stood up and brought the baby over to Tammy. "He's starving," she said.

  Tammy, too weak to hold her baby, let Dez hold the child up to her breast. After a few encouraging words from Tammy, it finally latched on and began feeding. Tammy tried to keep her eyes open, but then she passed out again. The baby continued to feed… and Katie looked on, terrified that Tammy would die at any moment with her newborn child suckling at her breast. She gripped her spear and silently hoped that Tammy would pull through.

  At least it was quiet now.

  ****

  Liz and Theresa made dinner. It was the last of their food, except for the bear meat buried in the snow, an army of the dead between them and a good meal. They dumped cans of peas and beans into a cast-iron pot. They cooked it over the fire, taking turns stirring the food in silence. When the concoction began to bubble, they pulled it from the fire to let it cool.

  When it was cool enough, they carried the pot into the room where Tammy and her baby lay. They took turns eating with the same spoon they had used to stir the mix with, passing the spoon around in a circle as they each took a bite. Katie stood in the doorway, looking down the hall to the front of the ranger station, should the dead manage to break through. But the onslaught of the dead had quieted some now that Tammy's baby wasn't crying nonstop.

  With each mouthful, they watched the food in the pot disappear. It would be gone soon, and then there was a good chance that they would follow soon after. As the last of the beans and peas disappeared into Liz's mouth, Theresa cleared her throat and said, "I don't want to die here."

  The room was quiet, but all of their thoughts echoed with Liz's words.

  "I don't wanna die here either," Mort said.

  "None of us do," added Joan.

  "So, what do we do?" Dez asked. She sat in the corner, the baby, full and content, resting in her arms.

  "We have to leave," Katie said. "We either leave or we die. Those are our only two options."

  "We could fight them," Mort added.

  "If we fight, we die," Theresa said.

  Mort nodded. He knew that as well as they did. There were too many of them out there. The house rocked with their pounding.

  "What about Tammy?" Liz asked.

  "We can't take her with us. She's too weak. For all we know, she's going to die anyway." Theresa said.

  Joan looked Theresa in the eye and said, "I can't leave her. I won't."

  Katie nodded and said, "If Joan stays, then I stay."

  "That decides it for me," Mort said.

  Theresa looked at the three survivors, flabbergasted. "Don't be stupid. If you stay, you die. If we fight, we die. Our only hope is to leave… leave her behind and break through the dead."

  "Then that's the way it has to be," Joan said. "We don't run. We don't leave the helpless. Especially not… especially not when we put them there."

  "You didn't put her there," Liz said. "That's just the way it is. We can't control how her pregnancy went. That's God's plan."

  "I don't believe in God," Joan said. "Especially not now."

  "If you don't believe in God, then stop acting like you are one. There was nothing that you could have done. It is what it is. We can just leave and live," Liz pleaded.

  "No," Joan said.

  Theresa let out a long sigh
. She put her hands to her face, and then slowly dragged them away. "If we're going to stay, I'm all for fighting, but I don't want to wait until I'm too weak from hunger."

  They all nodded.

  "What about the baby and Tammy?" Dez asked.

  They all turned, regarding the unconscious Tammy on her bed.

  "We'll give her a day," Joan said. "I don't think we can wait any longer. The baby comes with us. Maybe we can find some formula and some baby bottles."

  Dez made a face and looked down at the baby in her arms. "And some diapers."

  In other times they would have laughed. Instead, they went about the solemn business of cleaning up the baby's mess.

  ****

  Joan stood over Tammy, feeling for her pulse. It was stronger than she expected, but it was time to go, while they still had strength, while they could still fight. "Wake up, Tammy. I need you to wake up."

  "She's not going to wake up," Katie said. "We've waited long enough."

  Joan knew it was true. She knew that they had waited longer than they should have. They were burning daylight, and none of them wanted to be stuck in the wilderness when the sun went down.

  "I'll do it," Dez said, showing the impatience that she had shown all morning. Joan couldn't blame her. In one way or another, the ranger station had been her prison for two-thirds of a year.

  They had discussed ways of putting Tammy out of her misery, although Joan now suspected that if they had enough time, she would make a full recovery. Joan had wanted to smother her. But Dez said, "She's just gonna come back after that, and then we'll have to put a spear or a bullet in her brain anyway. Why not just cut out the middle stage and end it all at once?"

  It had made sense, but Joan wasn't ready to give up now. She cursed under her breath, and her emotions overtook her. She slapped Tammy across the face and yelled, "Wake up!"

  Tammy groaned in pain and mumbled, "Why are you hitting me?" She sat up, and their plans all went to shit in that moment.

  A hand punched through the wall of the ranger station, right behind Tammy's bed. The dead hand pulled backward, grasping onto the top of the board it had penetrated. The board gave way with a groan as the ancient, rusty nails pulled free.

  "Oh fuck," Tammy groaned, looking over her shoulder.

  "Mort!" Joan called.

  A dead thing put its rotten face to the hole in the boards, and it thrust an arm in through the gap, pawing at Tammy. Mort rushed into the room with a spear in his hand. He jabbed it at the face between the boards, and it fell backward. When Mort pulled his spear back, it was coated in syrupy blood. Two more dead faces appeared at the gap, jostling to get inside, their dead fingers grasping onto the adjacent boards. They heard the groan of the nails on either side of the gap, and they knew their time at the ranger station was over.

  "I got Tammy," Mort said.

  "Why didn't you just let me sleep?" Tammy whined as Mort bent down and threw the tiny woman over his shoulder. She groaned in pain.

  "She can't go out there like that!" Joan said.

  Dez and Joan rushed around the room, finding clothes for Tammy to wear so she wouldn't freeze to death in the elements.

  "They're coming!" Liz yelled from the room across the hall. They heard the splintering of wood.

  "They're super-pissed right now!" Theresa yelled from the front of the room.

  Once they had pants, shoes, and a jacket on Tammy, Mort picked her up again. "Who's got the baby?" he asked, his eyes big and round in his face.

  "I do," Dez said as she slashed at a pillow with a knife. She pulled the stuffing from the pillow and wadded it up, stuffing it in the baby's ears to protect it from the sound of gunshots. It was the best thing she could think of. She placed the baby in a backpack and zipped it up, leaving enough room for air to get in. Then she held the rifle in her hands. Liz, Theresa, and Katie all had rifles. Mort walked with his hammer in one hand and his shotgun slung over his back. They left the room, the nails of the loosening boards still groaning as the dead thrust their arms in through the crack.

  "We're going!" Theresa called, and Liz appeared from the back room.

  Katie gave last-minute instructions, saying, "Whatever we do, keep moving! If you fall, you're done! Don't turn back for your friend. Break through the circle, and see if you can help from the other side. Everyone got that?"

  They nodded. Katie smiled. She liked killing the dead.

  "I'll stick to your back," Katie told Dez. The woman with the haunted eyes nodded back at her.

  To Joan, Mort said, "Joan, you stick with me. If I gotta carry you and Tammy out of here, I'll do it. But it'll be much easier if you can keep up with me."

  Joan nodded. She bounced up and down nervously, her spear/crutch gripped tightly in her hands. She would have given anything for two fully functioning legs at that moment.

  "I'm dizzy," Tammy said as she hung upside down from Mort's shoulder.

  Liz and Theresa began tossing aside the old furniture that they used to barricade the front door. The last thing to move was the desk. As soon as it was halfway out of the way, the dead pushed the door open.

  Their gray hands pawed at the air, and Katie fired, dropping the first one in the door. Dez dropped another with her handgun. The dead came in a never-ending wave, and for a while, the front room of the ranger house was a pit of thundering gunfire. Gunsmoke filled the tiny space, swirled by the draft that rushed through the building. Bodies dropped, and more of the dead climbed over, crushing the corpses underneath.

  The survivors were forced to retreat, and still, the dead came on.

  "We're not getting out of here," Mort groaned, trying to find any way to escape the ranger station. He hefted the hammer in his hand, and then he turned to go to the back of the building. He stood in the hallway, the dead still struggling to pull the boards free in the room to his right. He looked straight ahead, at the dry boards in front of him. He set Tammy on the ground, and she groaned, her hands going to the stitches in her belly. Mort took a deep breath, the gunfire raging behind him, and he charged forward.

  He knew what he was doing was stupid, that there was no way that he was going to burst through the wooden boards at the end of the hallway. Most likely, he would bounce off and fuck up his shoulder again, and then Tammy would really be fucked because he didn't think any of the others could carry her, and she certainly couldn't walk on her own. But there was no other choice. He hit the boards, and instead of bouncing off, his shoulder plowed through with a loud crack. He stepped back and looked at the hole he had made.

  He immediately set about kicking the splintered boards and making them wider.

  "I got a way out!" Mort yelled. "Back here!"

  With the hole made, he turned and picked up Tammy off the ground.

  "I hate you," she said weakly. But Mort didn't have time for any of that noise. He rushed through the hole he had made at the back of the ranger station, the jagged wood digging furrows on his arms as he slid through, even through the thick cloth of his military jacket.

  Then he was out into the day, breathing fresh air for the first time in four days. He moved forward, looking from side to side. The dead were coming from around the sides of the ranger station.

  Joan came out next, moving quickly but gingerly in the snow, unsure of its depth. Mort swung his hammer at one of the dead that came around the corner. "Keep going," he told Joan.

  She did as she was told, and the next person out was Dez. Once Dez was out, she backpedaled, thumbing rounds into her rifle from a pocket on her jacket. Then came Liz and Theresa. Katie was the last one to appear. Mort had to clobber two more of the dead that rounded the corner as Katie took her time killing the dead in the ranger station.

  "Let's go, Katie!" Mort called.

  Katie turned and burst from the ranger station, and like that, they were out into the compound. Mort spun and assessed their situation. They would have to work across the circle of trailers to make it to the break, or they could rush the guard post and drop d
own from there. There was a wall of the dead between them and the opening between the trailers, so he chose the guard post. "Get to the guard post!"

  They ran then, Mort chugging along with his hammer in his hand and Tammy slung over his shoulder. Joan hopped as best she could, her teeth grinding against each other as she pushed her gimp leg to the point of agony. Dez kept close to her. Theresa and Liz cleared the way up front, while Katie brought up the rear, gleefully killing the dead.

  They clomped up the wooden steps, the gaggle of the dead swirling after them.

  "Let's be quick! Theresa shouted from the top of the guard post. She had seen the dead milling about in the woods. They were still coming, and if they didn't get over the wall fast, they would be surrounded in no time.

  Mort leaned Tammy up against the railing. She swooned there like she was drunk, but he could tell she was a result of a combination of pain and weakness. "I'm gonna climb down. Y'all lower her down to me."

  He didn't wait to hear whether they would or not. There wasn't time to doublecheck anything. They were in a full-steam-ahead situation. To do anything else would mean their own death.

  Mort landed deftly among the snow and the dead bodies, thankful that he hadn't twisted an ankle. They were already moving slow as it was.

  He heard the sound of Katie's rifle as she fired off more shots. Theresa and Liz lifted Tammy like she was a piece of firewood. Putting their hands underneath her shoulders, she dangled there, and Mort grabbed her around her waist and set her down. She was so light. He was willing to bet she had lost ten pounds in addition to the weight of the baby she had carried. Mort leaned her up against the wall to give his back and his shoulder a break.

  Next came Dez. She came down ass-first with her back turned to the forest so as not to injure the unnamed baby in her backpack. Mort guided her to the ground, and then turned back to the forest, gripping his hammer like it was a live eel trying to escape. He wanted to shout at the dead in the trees, yell at them to come out and fight, but his words would be lost on their dead ears.