This Rotten World | Book 2 | Let It Burn

by Morris, Jacy

  She didn't look for long, but it was long enough, as one of the dead squatted down and placed its two hands over the dead woman's abdominal cavity. Like a man trying to open a bear trap, the dead man pulled with all of its might. When the skin of the woman's stomach ripped open, she stopped watching. The other's backed away as well.

  They stood listening waiting for the sign that it was time to go. The pounding on the gift shop stopped altogether. Now there was only the sickening sound of wet flesh being chewed and shredded, of teeth ripping cartilage and chomping on bone. It was time to go.

  Without even thinking about it, the survivors all ran as one, jumping off the two story building and into a grassy patch of landscaping off to the side of the gift shop. It was a two-story fall, but it was softened by the dewy grass and the rain-softened ground, still damp from the storm that had moved through a couple of nights before.

  Joan landed without grace, hitting the ground with her feet, and then immediately spilling onto the ground to dissipate the shock of her landing. She was on her feet in an instant, running... running back towards the dark tunnel, her flashlight in her hands. The dead gave only a minimal chase, the call of an easy meal too good to pass up. Still, there were a few shamblers behind her and the others. To her left, Lou spit bits of teeth onto the concrete sidewalk.

  Then they were in the cool darkness of the tunnels, their boots and shoes scuffing the smooth concrete. Their flashlights clicked on, and they ran, flying as fast as they dared in the darkness. Joan cringed as more dead faces appeared in the yellow light of her flashlight. They didn't even fight them, content on knowing that by now they had spread out. They dodged around them, avoiding their grasping hands and gnashing teeth. They all made it past, and for three minutes more, they ran full speed through the tunnel, stumbling and catching themselves in time before taking diggers into the loose rocks that lined the tunnel.

  When it seemed they had all gone far enough, they slowed to a fast walk without saying a word. Joan wondered at that. She wondered about the programming of the human brain. What was it capable of in life or death situations. What was a group of brains capable of?

  "Man, I can't wait to get out of this tunnel," Mort said.

  It felt good to hear Mort's voice. He hadn't said much since Blake had died, and this was the first sign that maybe he was more resilient than she had given him credit for. "You and me both," she said.

  Then there was silence as they moved through the tunnel. After they crested the hill, they could see a circle of light in the distance as big as a dime. They shuffled downhill, their eyes scanning the circle of light for shadows, signs of the dead milling about between them and their escape.

  Joan could smell fresh air as they neared the exit. She was looking forward to getting into the sunshine. In her ears, a sound grew as they neared the light. It was the buzzing sound of a large group of people in one place.

  They emerged into the sunlight, blinking their eyes and grabbing their various weapons as their eyes adjusted. To their left and right, concrete walls rose twenty feet into the air, shaping the earth around it and preventing it from collapsing onto the MAX tracks.

  The concrete walls sloped downward in the distance until they were about waist-high. As they walked along the tracks, they all heard the sound, but they made no comment as the noise intensified. They put one foot in front of the other and trudged onward like a convicted murderer walking to an electric chair, the inevitability robbing them of all fear. They knew it was bad. They knew death was waiting for them, but what the hell were they supposed to do? Turn around and give up?

  As the concrete walls around them sank, Joan strained her head to see what was on the other side. She took a step forward, and the world came into view. The highway ran to their left. Between them was a waist-high concrete divider topped by a flimsy chain-link fence. On the other side of that fence, there was a sea of cars with broken windows and ajar doors. Winding through the traffic were the decaying bodies of the dead, shuffling nowhere in particular. Before they could duck down, they were spotted. One of the dead, a man in a camouflage jacket with a bloom of red on his neck, groaned in their general direction and started across the pavement in a shambling gait. His thighs bumped up against a car body, and instead of going around, like a normal person would do the dead man fell on top of the hood and crawled his way across. Soon, hundreds of the dead were mimicking his approach, and by the time they had gone a hundred feet, the entire other side of the fence was lined with the dead, pressing their faces against the fence, their hands grasping the links fiercely.

  The fence shook back and forth with their weight. "You think that's going to hold up?" Joan asked.

  "Man, I hope it does," Clara said. "I'm tired of running."

  "Tired of running? Already?" Lou said, drawing a dirty look from Clara.

  Katie, in an unusual moment of levity, said, "By the end of this thing, we're all going to be champion marathon runners."

  "Great. You got any tape for my nipples?" Clara asked. Mort looked at her with a strange look on his face that made Clara feel awkward. "You know... because when you're jogging for long periods of time, they chafe." Her explanation didn't seem to make things clearer for Mort, and they continued to plod along the MAX tracks.

  Behind them, they heard the jangling of a chain-link fence as it toppled over and hit the MAX tracks. The dead rolled over the fence, struggling to find their footing on the malleable chain links. They tumbled more than climbed over the thing, and within seconds, the survivors had grown another tail. But ahead of them was smooth sailing. The tracks continued running next to the highway for some distance, and the dead, held back by the still standing sections of chain-link fence could only smash their hands and faces against the metal links in the hopes that the fence would give way.

  They had gained ground on the dead behind them. The unsure footing of the rocks and the tripping hazard of the tracks kept them from pursuing at maximum speed, which was fine with Joan.

  To their right, a couple of tall office buildings loomed up in the bright day. There were many broken windows on the tall building to the right. Joan recognized it as St. Vincent's Hospital. She knew the building well. She had worked there for a few years, before getting a better paying job at Emanuel Hospital in Portland. She imagined some of the doctors and nurses that she had known were still wandering the hallways of St. Vincent's. Then she tried to wonder which ones would have been able to survive. The situation had deteriorated so quickly in her own hospital, despite quarantine measures. She doubted any of the people she had known had survived.

  How could she have known just how quickly things were going to go south? It's not as if anyone had ever trained her in school for the possibility of the dead coming back to life. There was nothing in the entire historical medical record that made the brightest minds in the world even think it was a possibility. Yet, here she was, trudging down a set of train tracks with a trailing escort of hundreds of dead.

  For a second, she felt like royalty, parading through the streets while her adoring fans lined the avenue. This must be what pro athletes felt when they drove down a street after winning a championship. Only, the things on the other side of the fence weren't so much fans of her as they were fans of eating her flesh. She felt a brief impulse to wave at them, but she didn't think it was right to do so.

  Despite the fact that the faces and bodies mashed up against the fence were dead, she still thought of them as people, even when they had to be killed, there was still a part of her that felt sorry. She wondered if, in some twisted way, she was breaking her Hippocratic oath. The one line that kept coming back to her was, "Above all, I must not play God." Such a strange thing to be included in an oath for people who were interested in helping others.

  It was understandable though. The many doctors and surgeons she had met over the years had tended towards being largely narcissistic and in love with their own abilities, a bunch of know-it-alls who made damn sure that you knew they knew
it all. Such people, left to their own devices, invariably began to see themselves as existing in a permanent state of "above," above the law, above the rules of man, above the conceits of their own warped minds. But now, here she was, playing at God... deciding whether to let these pitiful creatures live or die.

  Some scientists might claim that the living dead were sick. Others would say that when they reanimated, they, in fact, stopped being human at all. The truth was that Joan didn't have enough proof either way. Dead, alive, human, not human... it all came down to survival. Fuck the Hippocratic oath. What good would she be doing if she just let one of those damn things chomp on her the first time she encountered one due to some archaic oath that people only took because of tradition, not because of any belief in the words they said? Hippocratic oath. What a fucking laugh.

  As the tracks began to descend, another tunnel loomed ahead of them. It was a short tunnel, and they could see daylight on the other side. The tracks ahead were still mercifully clear. Joan knew this place. It was the Sunset Transit Center. It was still technically part of Portland, but it was so far out, that most people considered it part of Beaverton, the suburb that was closest in on Portland's southwestern border.

  A long set of stairs would lead them upwards here, if they so wished. Above them would be a couple of small kiosks that served pre-made pastries and coffee... if anyone were still alive. Past that would be a three-level garage, probably still filled with cars waiting for their owners to appear and take them home. It wasn't likely to happen.

  "We should go up here," Joan said.

  "Are you sure?" Lou asked.

  "Yeah, if we keep following these tracks, we're going to have to go through the heart of Beaverton. Up there is a parking garage. We might be able to find a car and get it working. Traffic might be a little better out here on the outskirts of the town. If we have to go through the middle of Beaverton, you're likely to have to walk through a whole city that's like that highway over there... only without the fences to keep them held back."

  "Sounds good to me," Mort said.

  "Me too," Katie added.

  They nodded their heads. It was settled. They climbed up on the concrete platform, and headed up the north set of stairs. Joan could feel the burn in her calves by the time they reached the top of the long stairwell.

  To their left the Java Station sat, closed and shuttered. It would have been nice to have gotten some coffee there, even if it was the "shittiest coffee ever" as she had written on her yelp review that one week she had taken public transportation to the hospital because her car was in the shop. Those metal shutters would be like a dinner bell to the dead once they started banging on them to try and pry them open.

  "You think they got any cigarettes in there?" Clara asked.

  "I wouldn't bet on it," Joan said.

  "Fuck the cigarettes," Mort said. "They got any food?"

  Joan didn't say anything to that as her own stomach grumbled at her. The parking garage spread out before them. It was dark, but they could still see as they stepped into the bottom floor of the garage.

  "Should we see if any of these will work?" Lou asked. "There don't appear to be many of those things around."

  It was true, there were only a couple of drifting shadows in the parking garage, already honing in on their position. But they could handle one or two. If all they ever had to face was one or two of those things, they would easily be able to make it from here to the beach.

  Joan whispered the word "careful" to Mort as he moved to intercept one of the shadows. The clunk of hammer upon skull was familiar and comforting by this time, and one of the shadows dropped to the ground, never to get up again.

  "Anyone know how to hotwire a car?" Lou asked.

  Joan knew the answer before everyone shook their head. If Lou didn't know how to hotwire a car, then none of them did.

  "Alright, stick together, we'll check the doors, see if they have any keys stashed away. It's the fucking suburbs. Lots of trusting dumbasses out here," Lou said.

  "Hey, I used to live out here," Joan said.

  Lou just shrugged his shoulders as he attempted to open the door of a black SUV. No luck. They moved down the rows, tugging on door handles. The first car they found that had an unlocked door was a white station wagon. With Mort standing guard outside, they got into the car and rifled around, tossing the contents about, hoping upon hope that there was some sort of key.

  Lou opened the glove compartment, throwing papers on the floor. Katie got down on her hands and knees, avoiding using her maimed hand, and shined her flashlight underneath the seats of the station wagon. Joan, knowing the suburban mind, ran her hands along the wheel wells of the car, mentally keeping her fingers crossed that the idiot who had left the station wagon unlocked had hidden away a hide-a-key.

  All she got for her troubles was a dirty hand.

  "Got something for ya," Clara said, dangling a piece of cloth out of the car. It was a red bra, its owner probably long dead.

  "You know, at this point, I'm thinking about it, just to have something sort of clean to wear."

  "It's yours if you want it," Clara said.

  Honestly, Joan considered snatching the bra from Clara's hand, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it.

  They left the doors on the vehicle sitting open, closing them just enough so the car would stop beeping. Two bodies rotted on the floor of the parking garage, Mort having added another curious soul to the pile via his hammer.

  "Maybe you can get yourself a job as a carpenter when this is all over," Clara said to him.

  The joke must have gone over Mort's head because he just said, "I wouldn't know what to do."

  They checked the cars on the first floor and moved upwards, curving around to their left and emerging onto the second floor of the parking garage. There were less cars here and less of the dead. They could still hear their clumsy feet scraping against the concrete floor of the parking garage.

  "Where are they all?" Mort asked, his voice still muted with grief as he commented on the relatively small number of the walking dead.

  Joan had no answer. No one did. Maybe they were just lucky that this place wasn't flooded with the dead. Maybe they were all on the highway, or maybe this was just the result of the numbers game. There were a lot more people in Portland than in the suburbs. Beaverton was still fairly populated, but it was less dense. Perhaps their luck was finally turning. Maybe they could actually get out of this thing alive.

  They pressed forward, pulling on the handles of the cars as they passed. Joan was about to pull on the handle of a tall pickup truck when she spotted a quick flash of movement inside the blood-splattered windows. She backed away as a man in a Portland Trailblazer's hat smashed his face against the glass, his lips sticking and dragging along the glass while his one good eye locked on her. His fists pounded on the glass, and it looked like he was trying to push his way through the window.

  She backed away from the truck, continuing onward and upward, sprinting through the shadows of the parking garage. Their options were running out. All doors were locked. Then they were in sunshine, as they stepped onto the top floor of the parking garage. Joan squinted her eyes, in an attempt to keep from being blinded. Behind her, she heard a wet thump. It was the sound that dead flesh made as it impacted concrete. They had all become familiar with the sound over the last days.

  Joan spun around only to see one of the dead rising to their feet after falling off the upper level of the garage. She froze looking at the woman. She wore scrubs, comfortable running shoes, and her hair fell over her shoulders. For a second, Joan felt as if she were looking into a mirror. This was her. This was what she could have been if things had gone just a little bit differently. If Clara's boyfriend had chosen to bite her instead of the nurse, she would be the dead one, the one walking around a parking garage, blood spilled down the front of her scrubs.

  When the woman reached out for her, she was so entranced, that for a second, she didn't even thi
nk to defend herself. Then Clara was there, knocking the creature on its back and bludgeoning the woman with a metal pole she had liberated from a storage room in the zoo's gift shop.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Clara asked.

  Joan was shocked by how genuinely mad Clara was. "I- I don't know." Clara dragged her by the arm and pulled her further up the ramp. "I just sort of froze," she said, unable to explain the weird rabbit hole she had fallen into. A simple lapse in thought, a brief divergence, and she had almost lost her life.

  "Keep your head on, Joan. We're not out of here yet."

  Joan tried to shake the thought that she had almost died, but it sat there in her mind, the scene playing over and over. Stupid thoughts leading to stupid thoughts. She was too cerebral. Her mind wasn't an advantage in this world. Her thinking had almost gotten her killed. She wondered how many people had died just because they were thinking instead of reacting. Had they so thoroughly bred the fight or flight mechanism out of themselves that people would really stand there and die rather than run or fight back?

  In front of her, the others checked the door of the few car on the top level of the garage. Meanwhile, Joan tried to clear her mind and live in the moment. It was a tall order for her. Katie turned and yelled triumphantly as the door to a brown, '80s era Cadillac swung open at her touch.

  The survivors ran to it, and began running their hands along the curves and crannies of the car the way a judge at the Westminster Dog Show would poke and prod the poodles and the pugs, feeling about for any abnormalities, anything that could be a key.

  Joan did the same, cringing at the dirt and grit that she got on her already dirty hands as she explored the wheel wells. Then she felt it. A small plastic container that moved with the pressure of her hand. She grasped it and pulled it free from the metal. In the sunlight, she examined the tan container for the trick to opening it. She found it, slid the container open and pulled out a key, shiny and new, perhaps never even used before.