This Rotten World | Book 2 | Let It Burn

by Morris, Jacy

  "Blake's not the type of guy to leave us stranded here. I don't really know about Lou," Mort said.

  Chloe looked at Mort. It might have been the first time she had ever actually looked at him, he thought. "Yeah, but how well do you know any of those people? Two weeks? I've had partners that I thought were angels turn into demons after two weeks. They could be gone already, and we can't afford to wait around here on the odd chance that they somehow find a way back. We might as well sit around waiting for God to miracle us out of here."

  Rudy shook his head, as if making up his own mind. "She's right. Even if they wanted to come back, there's a chance that they don't make it. We should plan for the worst and hope for the best."

  Andy, his voice shaking with fear said, "Good lord... what is the worst?"

  "The worst? The worst is those barricades break down in the middle of the night, and we have to jump out the damn window," Clara said.

  "I don't think I can jump out the window," Andy said.

  "Then I guess you'll be one of them."

  "This is getting us nowhere," Joan said.

  Katie knew what to do. It was dangerous, but it was something they should have done to begin with. "Let's check out the upper floors."

  The group groaned at her request. "Why would we go looking for trouble?" Joan asked.

  "Are you crazy?" Rudy added.

  "What could we possibly hope to find?" Amanda wondered.

  In the end, none of them wanted to jump out the damn window, and rather than sit around, wasting what little resources they had, they decided to go on the hunt. But first, they would need weapons that wouldn't attract every dead being within a half-mile radius.

  Chapter 7: Scoring a Ride

  "Shit, shit, shit!" Lou yelled. He yelled to himself for the most part, although he was sure that Blake was filled with the same sentiment. Neither of them had wanted to ditch the others, but they only had two options, turn tail and run or take the moral high ground and become fast food for the dead. There were easily two to three hundred of those dead fucks milling around the building. They didn't have that kind of ammo on them.

  They ran through the streets, and Lou felt a peculiar feeling of déjà vu. It was only a couple of weeks ago when Lou and Zeke had made their dreaded waterfront run to what they thought would be their escape plan, a boat on the Willamette River... but there were no boats this time, just streets filled with abominations that all wanted a piece of him and Blake.

  Once they had put some distance between themselves and the main horde, they slowed to a walk. Blake slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled one of the many notepads he had stashed on his person out. He handed it to Lou, along with a pencil, and then said, "What's the plan?"

  Lou just looked down at the notepad in his hand. He waited for something to pop into his mind, anything, but there was nothing there. Where was his leadership now? He looked at Blake with fear in his eyes. Now Blake would know that he was useless. All he could do was shrug. He threw back his head and looked at the sky, as if God would give him an answer. All he saw was smoky sky and a sun dulled by haze.

  He lowered his eyes, to look at Blake, and as he did, he saw something. Above the buildings in the distance, he spied the emerald spires of the Oregon Convention Center, and an idea crossed his mind. If they were in luck, their problems would be solved.

  He slapped Blake in the chest with the back of his hand to get his attention, and then he pointed to the buildings in the distance. Blake looked over his shoulder at the green glass tops of the convention center.

  "The convention center? What about it?"

  "They've always got car shows going on there in the summer," Lou said. Blake didn't seem to understand right off the bat, so he simply wrote "car show" on the notepad and showed it to him. Blake nodded his understanding, and then they set off in the direction of the convention center, winding their way between the dead.

  The green towers loomed above them the closer they got, and Lou started to notice a similarity in the dead around the convention center. Many of them wore lanyards with some sort of badge around them. The dead were mostly men, with a few women sprinkled throughout. There had definitely been something going on at the convention center. Now they just had to keep their fingers crossed and hope that whatever it was, there were still some sort of vehicles on the property.

  They hit the concrete apron of the convention center, adrenaline kicking in. The building was large, circular, and dominated by windows. The dead here were spread out. Though behind them, they had begun to form another comet tail as the dead fell in behind them. Lou could feel the pressure mounting. They ran to the first set of doors and tugged on them, but they wouldn't budge.

  Lou tried to peer inside the building to see what was on the other side, but the reflective glass combined with the orange morning light made it hard to see inside the dark building. He could feel something in there looking back at him.

  Lou made eye contact with Blake, and they both knew what to do next. The sound of gunshots echoed through the streets, and the groans of the dead drifted across the air in reply. He could swear that there was a hint of excitement in those groans, but maybe his mind was just playing tricks on him. With the butt of his machine gun, Lou swept the shattered glass out of the door frame and stepped inside. He was on a carpeted concourse, the wall sweeping in a curve to his left. In front of them, a set of escalators headed downward. Above the escalators, suspended from the ceiling, a strange brass ball stood rocking back and forth. He didn't have time to figure out what made the device work; there were a handful of creatures scattered throughout the inside of the convention center.

  "Let's light 'em up," Blake said. "I don't want any of those things biting me on the ass."

  Lou nodded and then took aim. The bodies fell and old blood soaked into the red carpet, darkening it in patches. They ran through the building, weaving through the dead rather than stepping over them, as if, like some sort of horror movie villain, they would come back to life the moment they attempted to step over them.

  They rushed through the hallway, and bashed their way through a door that led to the main floor of the convention center. Immediately, Lou could sense the cavernous space that was before him. He couldn't see it though. It was pitch black on the main floor. The only light came from diffused daylight that drifted downstairs from the windows above. He didn't need light to know that there was something moving in there.

  Blake put his hand on Lou's shoulder and pulled him backwards. There was no way they could go inside. It would be death without light. As he took one last look, a pair of stumbling brown boots stepped into the small window of light that filtered around their bodies, and they backed away, closing the door behind them. The convention center was just like everywhere else. It was a place of death, a grisly museum paying tribute to what man once was.

  They continued through the hallways, circling around the outer concourse. Everywhere he looked, Lou saw the dead closing in on them through the glass. In the hallway ahead of them, there were more, turning towards them, as if signaled by the others of their kind. A woman in a blue skirt snarled at him, and then she was shot down, never to snarl again. The gunsmoke hung in the still air of the convention center. Lou flinched at the crack of Blake's rifle, its report deafening in the enclosed space.

  Lou was beginning to feel like a rat on a treadmill. How long could he keep up this pace? The only thing that pushed him on was what he had seen on the main floor of the convention center... the gleam of a chrome hubcap. That meant there were vehicles. That meant there was a chance. Granted, it wasn't much of a chance, but it was something.

  He jumped as he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was just Blake, trying to get his attention. "Look out there."

  Lou walked over to the window that Blake was pointing out. Below them was a dropoff. It appeared to be the loading docks for the convention center. Large semi-trucks were parked down there, and in the cab of one of them, he could see movement. It was the
best chance they had.

  Before he was done looking, the double doors at the end of the hallway burst open to reveal a flood of the dead, stumbling and shambling towards them. Lou and Blake filled the hallway with gunsmoke and noise as they mowed through the dead with their guns. Then they ran out of bullets. They had thinned the herd considerably, but they were still going to have to fight their way through the ones that remained.

  Lou flipped his machine gun around, holding it like a baseball bat. It didn't matter if he damaged the gun now. He was out of bullets anyway. He swung the rifle at the closest creature. It smacked off the side of the creature's head, and it fell to the ground. They advanced forward. To his right, Blake did the same to the next one up.

  They stepped over the bodies that had piled up before them. From behind, they heard the approach of the dead they thought they had left behind. The doors to their right began to shake, and Lou felt death looming over him.

  "I ain't gonna die here today," he said, more to keep himself moving than anything else. He repeated the phrase over and over, using it to push back the feeling of exhaustion that had come over him. Sweat poured from his bald head, dripping onto the floor as he swung his machine gun, cracking skulls and sending the dead to the carpets.

  The banging became louder on the doors. They knew they were here. Though the creatures on the convention center floor couldn't see them, they knew that something living was on the other side of the doors. How many were there? How long could the doors hold out? Lou didn't plan on being around to find out.

  "I ain't gonna die here today!" he yelled as he sent a grasping child to the ground, her tiny skull bashed in. Two weeks ago, he would have cried over such a thing. Now he didn't give a fuck. Now there were no rules. These weren't people anymore. They were hungry creatures whose only goal was to make him one of them. They were dead already. He was doing them a favor.

  "I ain't gonna die here today!" He swung the butt of the machine gun again, and they fell before him, sometimes taking two swings, but most went down in one. The groans behind them were louder, and with one final swing, a pathway opened up before him as a body fell to the ground. He ran through the opening, hoping that Blake would see him and follow.

  "Wait for me," Blake yelled, his country twang all but extinguished by fear.

  Then they were running down a flight of stairs, the ends of their rifles dripping gore onto the concrete steps. In the back of his mind, Lou heard the door to the stairwell open at the top of the stairs, and then there were footsteps and rumblings as the dead pursued them. Lou imagined a place, a high up place with no ladders or stairs, a place where he could sit and just breathe fresh air without the fear of the dead sneaking up on him while he slept. He would like to find that place.

  Maybe he wasn't cut out for this whole leadership thing. So far, he had gotten the other survivors trapped in an office building. He had managed to get himself and Blake hopelessly separated from the group, and now they were running in the streets, a trail of the dead chasing after them. Some leader he had turned out to be. He began to wonder if he shouldn't have thrown himself off the roof the way that poor little girl had done.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, Blake threw his shoulder into the handle of the steel emergency door. It opened easily, and then they were running across a gray parking lot with faded yellow lines. How long would it be until all the lines on all the roads were washed and faded from the streets?

  Lou shook his head, re-focusing. The stress was getting to him. He was in a mental space that could easily lead to a fatal error. That would be fine for him, but he had Blake to think about as well. They sprinted across the parking lot, their bootsteps heavy and scraping, the muscles in their legs burning.

  The semi-truck rose ahead of them. It was a dark blue with two polished silver smokestacks rising into the air like the emerald towers of the convention center. On the side was stenciled "Columbia Trucking Company." A plain, gray, fifty-foot trailer was hooked up to the back, but there was no time to set it free. The dead were already pushing through the stairwell door and making their way towards them.

  Lou hopped up on the running boards of the semi-truck and looked inside. He almost fell backwards as a half-chewed face smashed into the driver's side window. He held onto the silver handle bolted upright to the side of the truck's cab, and with his free hand, he tried to pull the door open. It was locked. The dead were closer.

  With his machine gun, which was probably more appropriate to call a club now that he was out of bullets, he bashed on the glass of the driver's side window. It shattered on the first go, sending chunks of safety glass cascading to the ground. The dead man inside lurched out immediately, the upper half of his body hanging out of the window.

  Lou fell backwards onto the pavement, landing hard on his shoulder, and then the trucker inside was falling on top of him. Lou shoved his left hand up under the man's chin pushing his head back and trying not to notice the big square teeth that gnashed at his face. His right shoulder wasn't working properly, and when he tried to push with it, it sent a searing bolt of pain into his brain.

  Blake stepped behind the trucker, wrapped his rifle around the creature's throat and pulled him off of Lou. Lou sat up, gasping for air, his arm hanging loose at his side. On the ground, he spied his machine gun, he picked it up with his good arm, and swung it one-handed in a wide arc that ended on the trucker's skull. The trucker went limp in Blake's arms, and Blake let the man drop to the pavement. Behind them, the dead were surging, picking up speed the closer they got. The whole battle had probably taken ten or fifteen seconds, but it had been enough for the horde to close the gap on them.

  Blake began to search through the man's pockets. Lou went about the business of climbing inside the cab, which was a tricky proposition with only one good arm. He didn't think it was broken. He had broken bones before, many times. He climbed into the cab, gagging at the smell. He didn't know how long the truck driver had been locked up in the cab of his truck, but it had been long enough to smear gore all over the interior.

  Blake hopped in behind him, keys dangling in his hands.

  "You know how to drive one of these things?" he asked Blake as he slammed the driver's side door shut. Blake hadn't heard him, so Lou pulled the notepad from his pocket and wrote his question down. He held it in front of Blake as he adjusted himself in his seat.

  Blake read the note and then turned to him and smiled. "No, but I can figure it out. What choice do we have?"

  Lou nodded his head, and then sat back in the passenger seat, trying to ignore the burning in his shoulder. He watched as Blake tried to start up the engine of the truck, turning the key, doing things with his feet, and throwing the stick shift around like a mad man. If Blake couldn't figure out how to drive the damn truck, they were going to be in a world of hurt. The dead were there now, their hands reaching into the open window of the driver's side, grasping and pawing for anything living and fleshy. Lou leaned over Blake, startling him, as he pushed down the little knob to lock the door.

  "Thanks," Blake said.

  "Not a problem."

  Then the engine sputtered to life. Black smoke drifted down from the chrome smokestacks, as the engine first rattled and then found its sweet spot, idling in a diesel din that could be heard by every dead thing within two blocks.

  "Here goes nothing," Blake said. The gears grinded and the engine revved, followed by an uninspiring lurch forward and the stalling of the engine. For a second, the hands of the dead disappeared, and then they were back, trying to figure out a way to get into the cab of the truck.

  "Shit."

  Blake held up a finger, as if to say, "Gimme a sec." Then he reached down below the dashboard and popped a lever to release the truck's emergency break with a hiss of air.

  "Now we're cooking." Blake started up the truck again, and it roared to life. This time, they managed to keep moving, plowing through the dead, forcing them to the side or running over them outright. As rotten bodies clanged
off the metal sides of the truck, Lou hoped that they weren't too late.

  Chapter 8: Swan Dives

  Amanda craned her head to the side to see around Rudy's bulk and to avoid the sight of his dirty underwear every time his pants began to fall down. She desperately hoped that they would find a clothing store soon. Her own clothing was stiff with sweat, oozing an odor that was equal parts fear and exertion, an unpleasant combo to say the least. If they ever did find a clothing store, she planned to throw her current clothes in the garbage... and maybe light them on fire as a precaution.

  Rudy hiked up his pants again. He needed a belt. She added it to the mental list she kept of things to do: find something that can help Rudy hold his pants up. Also on the list were the items "stay alive" and "find food."

  She looked behind her at the bodies on the floor, just a couple of stray lost souls turned into monsters. It was a typical day in the post-apocalypse, a high of eighty-five degrees, nothing but sunshine and rampant death. She held her nightstick in her hand, wishing that she hadn't lost her sword when they had escaped the movie theater. But the sword hadn't been all that great to begin with. It tended to bounce off bone, requiring more precision than she could consistently provide. The nightstick would have to do.

  She refocused, trying to bring herself back to the moment. She used a breathing technique that they had taught to her in high school. She focused on her breathing, bringing the world into view around her. In through the nose, deep unending inhalation. When her lungs were full, she let the air out through her mouth. The world became sharper, her mind more alert. As she continued breathing, her nerves settled, and the stray thoughts of her conscious mind settled to the ground like dead leaves falling from a tree. When they were all gone, she was in the stairwell, the smell of the dead blooming off of their prone bodies.