This Rotten World | Book 2 | Let It Burn

by Morris, Jacy

  Looking down at the rifle, she advanced upon the dead woman. Lila knew nothing of guns. They were simply items that the ignorant used to kill beautiful animals. The stock of the rifle was wooden, and she looked for anything that looked like a button. There had to be a safety catch somewhere, but she'd be damned if she could find it. Panic filled her, scrambling her brain and the thought processes that were normally her friend. She flicked a small switch, and then aimed the gun at the woman. She was within range of Sy now, only moments from dropping down and making a meal out of him.

  She put the rifle up to her eye, like she had seen the men in movies do ever since she was a little girl. She squeezed the trigger, and the rifle bucked in her arm, the stock slamming into her shoulder. The rifle clattered to the ground, and a red stain blossomed in the gray shirt of the woman, but the woman seemed to take no notice of it.

  She bent down to pick up the rifle; the dead woman did the same, as if mocking her. When she stood back up, the rifle in her hands, she saw the dead woman on her knees. Behind her, more shapes had appeared, as if out of thin air, and they too advanced upon the prone form of Sy.

  Lila lined the sight up with the dead woman's head, but again, the trigger did nothing. The rifle clicked and that's all it did. She looked at the rifle, frustration mounting. She ran towards Sy, prepared use it as a baseball bat to bludgeon the woman to death. By the time she was halfway there, she saw the first chunk of flesh pulled from Sy's body. He awoke and screamed. In response, the dead in the distance became agitated, their paces seeming to quicken as if they were afraid they would miss out on the meal.

  Lila dropped the rifle to her side. The bites. Sy had said the bites were what caused people to turn. That meant that Sy was going to turn.

  "Shoot me," he yelled, as the dead woman came up with a handful of flesh from Sy's mid-section. Lila pointed the rifle at the ground, and grasped the lever with the little ball on the end. She pulled it backwards, and the spent shell ejected out of the rifle, falling on the ground with a simple ping. Another round appeared in the chamber, and she pushed the lever forward. She raised the rifle again, and aimed it at the dead woman's head. She squeezed the trigger, and something wonderful happened. Her head disappeared in a shower of crimson. She was thankful to have stopped the chewing. Sy rolled over on his side, his face full of anguish. Blood ran from his wounds, pooling on the asphalt.

  He didn't have to say the words again. Lila knew that he was going to die. He was in so much pain that she cocked the rifle before he could say "shoot me" again. He couldn't even manage to say the words. He reached a hand out to her, pleading. The strength had ebbed from his voice, until the words were just unintelligible whispers drifting across the zoo parking lot.

  She walked closer to Sy, the rifle ready to shoot as the dead surrounded him. Then she said, "Close your eyes, Sy."

  He squeezed them shut, and Lila aimed the rifle at his head. She pulled the trigger, and a hole appeared instantly in his forehead. His skull bounced off the pavement as blood geysered out the back of his skull. The dead pounced on him immediately, and Lila cocked the rifle again. She jogged to the ruined gate of the zoo, jumping over the bent metal of the turnstiles and the busted wood. She ran through the gift shop, locking the doors behind her. In the security room, where the power no longer seemed to work, she sat in the swivel chair and watched the dark monitors. She tried not to see the reflection of herself in the monitors, tears running down her dirt covered face. Outside, the dead hammered upon the gift shop doors. She wondered how many bullets were in the gun.

  ****

  The elephant came stomping out of the trees, and the survivors scattered on the body-strewn asphalt. Joan couldn't believe how fast the creature moved. She had always heard stories of people being trampled by elephants, but until you saw one of them in full flight, it was impossible to believe that they could ever move fast enough to run over anyone. She flung herself to the side as a massive foot came down on the pavement.

  She rolled to her feet and saw that the others had managed to do the same. The lion sat watching from a distance, it's long pink tongue dangling out of its open maw, saliva dripping onto the knee-high grass. "We need to get inside those buildings!" she yelled, as she ran towards one of the squat wooden structures. The others followed her as the dead from the tunnel boiled out to the street from the underground MAX station. The elephant turned and reared, its trunk unleashing a hellish bellow, and then it charged through the dead, sending them flying like bowling pins. They picked themselves up, ignorant of the elephant's attack. They only had eyes and appetites for the survivors.

  The survivors flew towards the zoo's gift shop, hopping over the jagged pile of metal and wood that used to be the entrance to the zoo. "Should we go into the building?" Katie asked.

  "I've had enough of being trapped in enclosed spaces for one day," Mort yelled.

  "I agree," Lou yelled. "Let's get into the zoo and circle back around. Maybe they'll be more spread out by then."

  They sprinted down the paved paths. Leaves and overgrown brush made the zoo feel abandoned, and every now and then they would spot a random animal carcass. Joan jumped over the rotting body of a seal, her mind unconcerned with how it got there. It just was. This was the way of the world now. Around each corner waited a new surprise, a new nightmare, something horrendous that couldn't have been imagined before the world had died. But they were here now, ready to spring out at you without notice, like the three polar bears sitting on the path to their left.

  "I think this might be a bad idea," Clara yelled.

  Joan snorted for a second and then said, "What would give you that idea?" She didn't know where the comment came from, but it felt right. They sprinted down the path deeper into the zoo.

  ****

  They sat in the darkness of a tunnel catching their breath. Around them, dark shapes floated in cloudy water. They were in what used to be an aquarium, a circular fish tank that tourists could walk through, allowing them to see fish from all angles as if they were under the sea. For as beautiful as it must have been when everything was alive and the tank was full of light, it was now just a ghastly reminder of how the world had died

  Among the dark blobs of decaying fish matter, a few fish still swam about, opening their fish mouths and inhaling the rotten bits of other fish. Blake tried to not look at the cloudy, dead eyes of the shark lying on its side above him. It had long ago ceased to swim, coming to rest on the top of the tunnel above them. Its lidless eye stared down at the survivors, their wheezing breath echoing in the darkness. They had seen none of the dead since they had made their way through the zoo. But strange sounds filtered into the tunnel, and it was hard to tell if the sounds came from the animals or the dead.

  Blake sat on the floor, dropping his bag to the concrete. He could feel sweat cooling on his back, and his hair hung in wet strands down the side of his head. The others did the same. In the gloom of their tunnel, lit only by the white light coming in from either end, they each ate what they could. Sergeant Tejada had provided them some food, but for the most part, everyone dined on leftover movie theater snacks, candy, and bottles of water. If it was going to continue this way, Blake thought that he might join the other side, just so he wouldn't have to eat another candy bar. When he was done eating, he closed his eyes and leaned against the side of the aquarium. He longed to have his cowboy hat back so that he could pull it down over his face, but that was long gone, lost in a dumpster in the heart of Portland, in the same place that he had lost his hearing.

  Sleep came quickly, it always did. In his days in the National Guard, the others soldiers had joked that he must be narcoleptic because he could always manage to fall asleep immediately, no matter the conditions. Gunfire wouldn't stop him. Insufferable heat couldn't keep him awake. Not even his own troubled thoughts could prevent him from falling asleep for long.

  His dreams were dark, filled with the faces of the dead, not the rotting dead, but the people they had been before, screa
ming in pain as they railed against their condition. They didn't want to be dead, but they were nonetheless. In the dreams, he could hear again. Though they screamed, he was fascinated by the noises they made, terrible shrieks, garbled words that were more feeling than recognizable syllables. It was a nightmare, but to be able to hear made it all worth it.

  When he felt a rough shake on his shoulder, emotion shot through him, a longing so deep that he couldn't help but snap at the outline of Mort's face when his eyes opened. "What?" he said. Or did he yell it? He must've yelled it because Mort put a finger to his lips in a shushing motion. He pointed down the tunnel, and Blake saw the shapes outlined against the daylight pouring in from the tunnel's entrance. They had been found.

  Just like that, the sounds of his dream were gone, replaced by the dangerous silence of a dead world. He felt as if he were already partly dead as well. A couple more senses, that's all it would take. Wasn't that all life was? The processing of the sensory data around you? What can you see? What can you feel? What can you taste? What can you smell? Sound was lost to him. In his eyes, that made him less alive than the others.

  Blake grabbed his bag, which he had left already packed and ready to go. It was never a good idea to leave your gear lying around because you never knew when you would have to pick up and leave. He slung it over his shoulders and then shouldered his rifle. He moved softly through the tunnel, following the others out the other end and into the early afternoon sun. It was hot. It was also a bad time to be moving around; Blake could already feel sweat springing forth from his body.

  He imagined the sounds that he saw, the light rustle of leaves in the wind, the clop of his own boots on the pavement, the clink and clack of people running, loaded down with everything they needed to survive. He imagined it all as the survivors circled through the zoo, hoping that the polar bears they had seen on the way in were no longer there.

  The cages and enclosures were empty, and to Blake that meant something. He didn't know what. He doubted that the animals had started their own jailbreak, so that meant that someone had set them free. Someone who would do that... well, they probably wouldn't just take off, abandoning the animals to their own devices. The fish were one thing, but the elephants, the lions, the polar bears... they were sticking around. They had no place to go. They had no steady food supply, unless someone was feeding them somehow.

  The empty zoo flew by as they walked briskly. The dead were spread out, easy to move through. From the corner of his eye, Blake kept spotting movement in the underbrush. Animals or the dead? It didn't matter as long as they made it back out of the zoo.

  Ahead of him, Mort skidded to a halt. Blake, trying to see what was in the bushes, smashed into his back and then fell backwards, landing on his ass. He was about to swear, when he spotted the cause of their stoppage. In the walkway sat the three bears from earlier. They were closer this time. Their maws were stained red from eating something... something alive or something dead, it didn't seem to matter. Their skin was tight on their bodies, and they didn't look like the bears from those old Coca-Cola commercials at all. They were emaciated. They were hungry... they wanted meat.

  ****

  Lila watched them from the rooftop of the gift shop. She held the rifle steady in her hands, observing the people. They had done nothing yet to warrant her actions, but she could see how that might all be coming to an end.

  Life the last few weeks had been hard in the zoo. At first, she had felt great releasing birds and non-violent animals, but then she had finished the job, releasing predators into a wild that they knew nothing about. The animals that had stayed in the zoo quickly became food for the predators, the bears, the lions, the tigers. Then, when they had all run out, the predators became food for each other. The zoo had turned into a giant Darwinian experiment, and now all that was left of the zoo she had known were a few bears, one lion, some quick-thinking monkeys, and an elephant that seemed to have gone completely crazy when its mate had inexplicably died. At least the birds were safe, the ones that had left anyway.

  She had watched it all, though it pained her. For a brief second, she had considered taking down some of the bigger predators, but that wasn't who she was. She was no god; she was just an animal like all of the others. She had no special rights here to pick and choose who lived. That was nature's gig. So she let it happen, crying from the roof of the gift shop every time another animal lost its life.

  If only they had wanted to eat the dead. She had started with the lions, chopping Sy up into pieces to see if they would eat him. It was a success. But the other ones, the dead ones, they wanted nothing to do with them. The animals wouldn't go near the rotten ones, all except the polar bears. They didn't seem to care. They would eat anything.

  She didn't know if it was natural or something the meat of the dead had done to them, but the polar bears had become somewhat lethargic, sitting still for long periods of time until something living came their way. Then they would spring into action, circling like wolves, trapping their prey between their massive white bodies. That's how she had lost one of the tigers. She had let it happen; it was natural. Afterwards, she had lain down and cried, cursing whoever had made this happen. In her head, she knew that this whole situation had been created by man. Some asshole in a lab somewhere had been tinkering with something they shouldn't have, mixing and matching genes from different bacteria or viruses, splicing DNA... playing God and unknowingly the devil at the same time.

  When she saw the people raise their rifles, she knew what had to be done.

  ****

  If Blake hadn't been sitting on his ass, he never would have seen the glint of metal in the afternoon sun, but due to his angle, he was able to spot the flash in time to yell, "Shooter!" at the top of his lungs. He was in time. Just after the others scrambled, spreading out, he saw the muzzle flash of the gun in the distance. Bits of pavement smacked off the side of his face, coming perilously close to his eye.

  The polar bears, as if they were waiting for their cue, sprung into action. Blake couldn't hear the ferocity of their bellows, but he could feel them. From his seat on the ground, he unslung his rifle and took aim at the spot where the first shot had come from.

  He waited amidst the storm as gunfire rang out around him, and the polar bears lashed out at the survivors. Where was it? Where the fuck was it? There. Another quick flash of metal. Blake squeezed the trigger, once, then twice.

  He had no time to see what his shots had done, as a white blur filled his vision, and then he was pinned to the ground, fighting for his life underneath the massive weight of a polar bear. He couldn't breathe, but he saw the creature standing over him, its bloody mouth inches from his face. He felt a burn in his shoulder where the creature's powerful claw tore through his shirt, shredding the flesh there as if it were made of butter.

  His rifle was useless, jammed between his body and the bear, pressing uncomfortably into his side. He screamed in pain, and then he felt hot liquid fill his eyes. He was blind. He lashed out for whatever he could grab, jamming and poking his fingers wherever he could in the hopes that something would get the bear off of him.

  Pain was his world. His breath was coming out in shallow puffs. Whether that was because of the weight of the bear or because he was dying, he didn't know. With his left hand, he rammed his fingers into something rubbery, and the creature on top of him pummeled him with more swipes. He felt his hand encased in something jagged and vice-like, and then the pain grew even more. Then it was over. The full weight of the bear, collapsed upon him, and he lay there in the silence, blinded, and bloody, wondering if he was dead.

  He decided that he wasn't, because if this was what being dead was going to be like, he was going to have to get used to a whole hell of a lot of pain. Blake blinked his eyes, trying to see once again. The pain wasn't coming from his face, of that he was certain.

  "Get this thing off me!" he yelled, unable to see or hear if there was anyone left to even hear him. Then he felt movement. His first
thought was, "It's one of them." But then he felt the hands hook him under the shoulders and pull him backwards. Freed from the weight of the polar bear, Blake used his good hand to wipe the blood out of his eyes. He almost wished he hadn't.

  The path where the animals had attacked them was a bloody mess. Mort stood next to him, kneeling on the ground, the claw of his hammer dripping with gore. Blake patted him on the shoulder, feeling as if tears were going to come to his eyes. Mort helped Blake to his feet, and in a world of silence and pain, they stumbled away from the mess in the path.

  The bears lay dead, their pelts laced with holes until they resembled bear-shaped Dalmatians with red spots instead of black. The one that had wrestled with him had its head caved in. Blood dripped from its eye socket where Blake had managed to hook a finger into it.

  As he looked down at the polar bear, he remembered the pain in his hand. When he held it out to look at it, he nearly fainted. The hand was still there, but it looked nothing like a hand. Instead, it was a crumpled and crushed mass of skin and bone that rained blood onto the path. It was bad. He didn't need a doctor to tell him that.

  He saw the others gingerly walking. Lou held a rag to his head, and Blake cold see three horizontal slashes across his left cheek. The skin between the slashes hung loose, and blood poured from the wound. He was lucky he hadn't lost an eye.

  To his left, Katie squeezed off a round from a gun, the muzzle flair flashed bright in his eyes, and he thought it was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. For a moment, he had thought he had lost his sight as well as his hearing. But now he was seeing the glorious sight of gunfire. Blake turned to see what she was shooting at. They were not out of the woods yet.

  "Come on! Let's go," he yelled.