by Morris, Jacy
This Rotten World:
Let It Burn
By The Vocabulariast
Text Copyright © Jacy Morris 2016
All Rights Reserved
Also Available from Jacy Morris
Fiction:
The Abbey
The Children of Hamelin (Coming Soon)
The Enemies of Our Ancestors (as The Vocabulariast)
This Rotten World
This Rotten World: Let It Burn
Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (as The Vocabulariast)
Non-Fiction:
Let's Get Drunk and Watch Horror Movies: 50 Horror Movie Reviews and Drinking Games (As The Vocabulariast)
Let's Get Drunk and Watch Horror Movies: Volume 2 (As The Vocabulariast)
Music:
All Hell Breaks Loose Soundtrack with Jeremy Brown (Available on iTunes)
Movies:
All Hell Breaks Loose (Available from Wild Eye Releasing on DVD)
The Cemetery People (Coming Soon)
Spec. Scripts:
Find my work on Inktip.com (email me at [email protected] to find out how)
Table of Contents
Also Available from Jacy Morris
Prologue
Chapter 1: Catching Up
Chapter 2: The Tale of Little Jane
Chapter 3: Popcorn and Raisinets
Chapter 4: Escape
Chapter 5: Into a Building
Chapter 6: Not Quite the Way It Was Planned
Chapter 7: Scoring a Ride
Chapter 8: Swan Dives
Chapter 9: Burnside Bridge
Chapter 10: A Waste of Pork and Beans
Chapter 11: The Decision
Chapter 12: Parking Garage of the Dead
Chapter 13: Into the Darkness
Chapter 14: A Day at the Zoo
Chapter 15: Don't Feed the Bears
Chapter 16: Like Worms in the Sun
Chapter 17: Disappearing Into the Sky
Chapter 18: A Hooptie for Us
Chapter 19: In the Burbs
Chapter 20: After a While, Wild Dogs
Chapter 21: A New Hope
Chapter 22: A Fool's Errand
Chapter 23: Let It Burn
Epilogue
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prologue
Lou sat on the roof of the movie theater. In normal times, it would have been considered a nice day. The heat that had clung to the city for the better part of the week had broken, leaving behind a crystal-blue sky and a breeze that would have been refreshing if it didn't carry upon it the stench of death.
From his vantage point on the roof, Lou could see the west side of the city, its tall buildings thrusting up into the sky. There were less of them now. To Lou, the city was a great dying beast, and it wasn't dying quietly. Fires raged unchecked through the metropolitan area. Its handful of skyscrapers had turned into towering infernos, giant sticks of incense that couldn't cover up the smell of the city's demise. The dead roamed the streets like maggots crawling over the city's rotting flesh.
Portland, Oregon, once a hipster haven, the progressive jewel of the Northwest, was now nothing but a collection of buildings on the precipice of becoming a ruin. Like Pompeii or Easter Island, Portland was starting its descent into history, cracking and crumbling; the dust and ash of millennia would cover the city. Its buildings would collapse as fires, wind, and the carving knife of time sent the once immovable structures tumbling to their final resting place.
Lou wondered how long it would be until the city was found again. He doubted it would be during his lifetime. The situation had progressed too far. Would archeologists rediscover the city in a hundred years? Two hundred? Would the city go unchecked for a thousand years, until some random person stumbled across the "ancient" civilization. What records were they going to leave behind? The internet was gone, satellites orbits were quickly decaying, and no one knew how to run a press anymore. It was entirely conceivable that their entire civilization could disappear, but for the books they had printed. In that case, he guessed all that would be left would be Stephen King stories and Tom Clancy books.
But, that was the future. The city wasn't entirely gone yet. There were still those that remembered what Portland was like. They buzzed among the buildings like flies, travelling in circles, looking for places to feed, places to rest for a spell and catch their breath. But they were dying. Soon, there would be no one left to remember what the city was like before the dead had refused to stay that way. Humanity was on a collision course to extinction. It had been a little over a week.
Lou's thoughts ran dark. It was only natural, despite the sunshine, despite the breeze. Nothing was right. The breeze carried with it the smell of the dead. The sun turned the rotting corpse next to him into a ticking time bomb of disease, the abdomen swelling with bacteria and gas as the body's cells broke and nature took over. Clouds of haze from burning buildings marred the view as the smoke drifted over the valley.
The buzzing drew him to the edge of the roof. Thirty feet below him, they milled about, the former residents of the city, clawing at the side of the building as if they could scale the walls.
Lou watched them rake at the stone walls, and in his mind, a scale began to tip. It was a long way down, but he knew that it would be a quick fall. It would be two, maybe three seconds, and then it would all be over. The hopelessness had set in quick after he had taken care of Zeke. Fuck that. After he had killed Zeke. Might as well call it what it was. What hope did he have of making it if Zeke, a trained soldier, hadn't even managed to survive for a week?
The two had been through a lot together. An escape from jail, a flight through the city with a thousand shambling corpses on their trail, a ride down the Willamette, and finally, their flight from the Memorial Coliseum as it plunged into madness, the dead surging through its busted defenses and reducing the whole building into a massive mausoleum. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people had died in the fall of the Coliseum. Of that number, whatever it might be, there was an abundance of people who were more fit for survival than him. Yet, they were all trapped in that giant tomb, where once basketball players had run up and down the court to the adoration of thousands of fans, and he was here, sitting on a roof next to a corpse.
Lou looked up at the sun, the brightness of the glowing orb causing the skin around his eyes to crinkle, rays of sunshine warping into sword-like spikes around the edges. He laughed, an unexpected noise that came out of him unbidden, a short guffaw that said, "Well, look at me now." The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. He was still fighting for his life, just like when he was a kid on the streets. He had grown up without a mother, and his father's only interests seemed to be making money and getting high. He had always been on his own. He had always been surviving, and yet, today he was tired of it. Surviving for what?
Lou looked down at the corpse at his feet. Zeke, finally still. His body had sat on the floor of the theater for a day, the entire group in shock at the demise of their presumed leader. Lou had carried the head up first and set it down on the hot roof with the sort of reverence that the man deserved. Zeke had bound the individuals in their group together with his plans, with his confidence. He had given them purpose and direction. Now, they were all just sulking loners waiting for the inevitable, waiting for death to come knocking at the door... but death didn't knock. When it was your time, it just kicked the fucker down. He had seen that with his own eyes.
Once he had moved the head to the roof, Zeke's body had come second. He had thrown the stinking mass over his shoulder and climbed carefully up the ladder that led to the roof, rung by rung, pausing every so often to cat
ch his breath and readjust Zeke's body on his shoulder. He had not been a small man, that was for sure.
They had all said their goodbyes earlier, those that had known him the longest, and even those that hadn't known him very long at all. The words had all been positive, nice things, the type of things that a cynic might call platitudes. But in the end, the group had all agreed that his body had to go. No one wanted it in the theater. It was too similar to the creatures that were banging on the walls and doors. No one wanted to see the dead anymore. They wanted to huddle inside, bury their heads in the sand, and hope that it all just sort of went away.
Lou looked down at the ground again. There was only one way it was all just going to go away... a two to three second fall ought to do it. In the distance, a skyscraper that had been burning steadily for the last day finally crumbled to the ground. Lou felt the ground quake underneath his feet, and a cloud of debris, dust and smoke sprung up into the sky... yet it still burned, even the ruins still burned. Good, he thought. Let it burn. Let it all burn.
Lou bent down and grabbed Zeke's body, throwing it over his shoulder and balancing it on the edge of the waist-high wall that ran around the perimeter of the movie theater's roof. "Sorry, buddy." He pushed the body over the edge, and watched it tumble to the ground. It fell quick, quicker than Lou had expected. A little less than two-seconds and it was on the ground. The swollen stomach of Zeke's body had burst open, spilling its decaying and putrefied contents on the cement sidewalk that surrounded the theater.
Without thinking about it, Lou turned around and grabbed Zeke's head off the ground. The flesh was cold and made his stomach turn. It felt as if he were lifting a thing made of wet clay. He threw it over the side, and then wiped his hands on his jeans. It didn't matter. It's not as if his jeans could get any dirtier.
Lou regarded the Portland skyline one last time. Flames had started climbing one of the still remaining skyscrapers next to the one that had collapsed. He climbed down the ladder, into the darkness of the movie theater thinking, Let it burn. Let it all burn.
Chapter 1: Catching Up
Anderson Broussard, known as Andy to his friends when they were still alive, sat in the projection room of the movie theater. The room was hotter than the rest of the theater due to its proximity to the roof and the fact that air conditioning appeared to have gone the way of the dinosaur.
Andy wondered if there were any cities out there that were still making a go of it. Was L.A. doing fine? Not if they lost their electricity. Hell, L.A. had been known to have brownouts before the shit had hit the fan. He imagined groups of scared survivors huddling in their attics, dying from dehydration and heatstroke rather than the bites of the dead. Would they rise as well, without having been bitten?
Thinking about survivors made him think about his own group of survivors. He didn't know what had overcome him on that night, the night the explosions had rocked the city streets. Helicopters had rained fire in the distance; blinding fireballs had risen to the sky. Andy had watched it all from the roof of the movie theater, the night offering the only real respite from the heat inside the building. Without air conditioning, the cavernous spaces had become sweltering sweatboxes. At night, on the roof, he was able to climb up and get some fresh air, enjoying the coolness of the evening as it washed over his skin.
That night, as the city burned, he had watched as a group of survivors wound their way through the dead, limping and carrying their injured up the street, guns in their hands and blood pouring from multiple wounds. The dead were following them, slowly but surely. He knew they couldn't run forever. Despite his mind telling him not to, he decided to help them.
Andy had pounded across the roof, scrambled down the ladder, and almost fallen and broken his neck in the process. The emergency lights were still working then, so he was able to sprint through the theater to the front doors, which were plastered with movie posters for films that would most likely never see release. He had thrown open the door and called the survivors to him.
He had never been so happy to see people as Andy had already given up on ever escaping the theater alive. He still remembered the day he had become trapped there. It was only three days ago, but it seemed like a lifetime. Change had a way of lengthening time as folks around the world were discovering. Everything had changed. Time had slowed to a crawl, and every moment seemed to last forever. At some point during his days alone, sitting in the movie theater, watching movies by himself and shoveling popcorn into his mouth, he had realized that the theater was very likely to be his tomb.
Andy had no car. He didn't even have a place to live. All he had was a job at the movie theater, a bank account, and a projection room to sleep in. He had been an idiot for moving to Portland. Social media and random internet friends had made it seem like the greatest place on earth. "Come here. Be weird," they said. But the reality was that there was no place to live, and every place had been too expensive for his meager means. As soon as he had stepped off the Greyhound, he had felt the clock start ticking; his meager life savings would only keep him off the street for a week.
Andy had canvassed the city looking for jobs, applying, writing down fake addresses and the cell number of his still working phone. He had almost cried when he received a phone call for an interview. Stopping by one of the city's numerous fountains, he had cleaned himself up, and walked to the interview, his heart thumping in his chest. He would like to say that he had aced the interview, but the manager, a portly man with glasses, didn't even grill him or serve up any hard questions. Just like that, he had become the newest member of the Lloyd Cinema team. He had felt relieved. Had he known that the movie theater would potentially serve as his final resting place, he would have felt differently. Even before his first paycheck had come in, the city had started its plunge into chaos.
The first few days were nice actually. The boss phoned in complaining of a cold, so he and another girl, whom he immediately developed a crush on, had run things. Andy sold and tore the tickets, and then ran behind the counter to serve up concessions. Luckily, it was a slow day, which gave him plenty of time to try and work his charms on his co-worker. Apparently the exchange rate on charms in Portland were a little steep, because all he got were a couple of humoring looks and an awkward arm cross. The next day, he was alone, and the paying customer total was somewhere in the range of ten. In the streets, from behind the tinted windows of the movie theater, he heard sirens and saw cop cars prowling up and down the streets.
"What's going on?" the kid had wondered aloud while waiting for a batch of popcorn to pop.
"End of the world, kid," an old man in Birkenstocks and a tie-dyed t-shirt said, clutching his ticket to the latest summer blockbuster, something with aliens and a bunch of CGI in it.
"What are you talking about?" Andy laughed.
The man looked at him, a very serious look on his face. "The dead... they're coming back to life."
At first Andy could have sworn the man was joking, but the man's grim face never cracked. There was a haunted look in the man's eyes, but before he could press him on it more, the man asked, "Can I have some extra butter on my popcorn? Not much point in eating healthy now, is there?"
After the conversation, Andy called his boss. There was no answer. Having no place to go and being 3,000 miles away from his family, he did the only thing he could think of. He hunkered down in the projection booth and called home. The conversation had been brief, loveless. Things at home had not changed. His father, ever drunk, ever disinterested, had only told him to stay safe. As the day went on, no other employees had showed up for work, which was fine with Andy as it gave him more hours and potentially more pay. Like a fool, he had stayed at the theater, hoping to get some sort of money out of the deal, waiting for his boss to call in or appear at the doors to tell him how great a job he had done in keeping the theater open.
When no one showed up on Saturday, not even customers, he knew that something had gone egregiously wrong. In the parking lot, people had
been shambling towards the theater. With his dustpan and broom in hand, he stood and watched as the first of them approached. When the creature was close enough so that he could see the gaping wounds on its arms and legs, Andy ducked behind a cardboard display for some sort of cartoon adventure, a tall colorful monstrosity that employees would fight over, only to have the winner take it home and immediately sell it on eBay. It was all true. The dead were alive. The man hadn't been joking.
He had locked the front doors and scrambled to plaster the glass with movie posters and promotional items. Even after they could no longer see him, they had banged on the doors for hours. Eventually, some time the next day, they disappeared, perhaps drawn to easier prey.
After that day, he had spent his time making popcorn and watching the same movies over and over again. The only break he had from the cheap grindhouse biker movie, the latest summer blockbuster, and the most recent remake was when he would try to sleep, napping on the floor of the projection room, dreaming that someone would come bursting through the front doors and save him. Then the power had gone out. He began spending his evenings on the roof, wondering if he was going to die in the movie theater. Then he began wondering if he could take his own life. Suicide was beginning to look like a pretty good option when he saw the survivors running down the street.
Now, they were here. He couldn't believe his luck. It had actually happened. He felt as if he had struck the lottery. If he hadn't been on the roof at the exact right moment, he might have missed the passing group of survivors; he might have missed his chance of escaping. He might have hung himself in the projection booth with a noose made from film reels.
So why was he still sitting in the projection booth? Why was he still sweating in the tiny room, while there were actual people below that he could be talking to? The fact was that nothing had changed. They were still likely going to die. Only now, he would probably die hungry and thirsty when they ran out of food. Candy bars and popcorn only went so far, and with the power out, they couldn't even make any more popcorn. The soda machine didn't work, and the water had stopped flowing as well. All they had were a few cases of lukewarm water bottles. Things were not getting better; they were only getting worse.
