This Rotten World | Book 2 | Let It Burn

by Morris, Jacy

  Just a few weeks ago, they had all been shocked to see Katie gun down a little girl so fast that no one had even had the time to object. Now, they couldn't wait to see it done. The death of an undead child was nothing anymore. It was just a fact of life. There was no more goddamn karaoke, beer was no longer cold, and sometimes you had to stab an undead kid in the eye with a paring knife taken from the kitchen of an old man that had just held a rifle on you.

  "Toss this place," Lou said, and they rushed through the house, finding anything they could use to fight with. They had lost their weapons, their food, even their damn toothpaste in the fire. One damn cul-de-sac, Clara thought, and we couldn't even make it out unscathed.

  Clara and Joan headed down the stairs into a basement area. The basement was dark, lit only by a couple of small rectangular windows set near the roof of the basement. They were in a room with a smooth concrete floor, crisscrossed by webs of faint cracks. The walls were concrete, lined with wooden joists that kept the upper floors from caving in on them. A water heater sat cold and dead in one corner; a similarly defunct furnace sat next to it.

  In the gloom of the basement, they found handled implements, things that could be used to both keep the dead away and potentially incapacitate them if necessary. Shovels, a pickaxe, a sledgehammer. They grabbed them and climbed up the stairs, their weapons carried the way mothers used to carry babies.

  They dumped them in the living room, amid the sounds of the dead trying to bash their way into the house.

  "I saw a hammer and some nails down there," Clara said. "Should we board this place up?"

  "I don't know," Joan said.

  She seemed lost in her own thoughts, but now wasn't the time for introspection or wallowing in self pity. "Hey, are you ok?" Clara asked Joan.

  "No, no, I'm not," she responded.

  "Listen, I know things are shitty right now, but you can't give up. We're all here. We're all trying to stay alive."

  Joan looked at her, a cold look in her eye. "We're not all here."

  Clara slapped Joan across the face. Joan looked shocked, and Clara didn't feel the least bit sorry for it. Hell, she owed her one anyway for tricking her into quarantine. Never mind that the move had probably saved her life. "Hey, don't gimme that shit. Things suck. I get it. But that's no reason to give up."

  Joan didn't say anything. She looked down and to the left, as if she were ashamed to look at Clara.

  "So let's go get some of those fucking nails and board this place up."

  Joan nodded her head, but didn't say anything. They walked back down into the basement, gathering nails, while the others searched the house. Clara was eying a pile of loose wood when she thought of something. "Shit," she said.

  "What?" Joan answered.

  "I should have grabbed that bastard's cigarettes before we came inside."

  "Uh-uh," Joan said. "Haven't you heard? Second-hand smoke will give you cancer."

  Clara smiled for a brief second. There she was. That was the Joan she knew and needed, not that weak, almost frail creature that had made a brief appearance upstairs. She bent down to grab some loose two-by-fours, avoiding the rusty nails sticking out of them.

  ****

  The sounds of hammering rang through the house, and time seemed to stand still as the place heated up in the summer sun. Sweat poured from their faces, and their bodies reeked of exertion. When they were done, all of the doors and windows of the first-floor were boarded up in some fashion. They sat silently, dining on the canned food of the old man.

  There wasn't much there. It didn't look like the man had done much scavenging. They found an empty box of ammunition to go with the rifle that they had taken from his body, but there was nothing else besides the tools they had found in the basement that could help them combat the dead. Lou and Mort sat around in some of the old man's clean clothes. The women had slowly picked through the clothes of the dead woman. It wasn't fashionable, but they were clean, and that's what mattered.

  In the old man's bedroom, they had found a journal, a sad tale of ignorance and suffering. While the dead banged on the doors outside, they took turns reading the journal in a small voice, savoring the older entries and the images and pictures it brought up of a grandmother enjoying her grandkids for the summer. They fell asleep amid the banging, with dreams of the smell of baking cookies in their heads.

  When they awoke, it was early. These days, no one ever slept in. Mort, who used to spend half of his day sleeping underneath a bridge could never seem to get more than a couple hours of sleep. When his eyes cracked open, he stared at the popcorn ceiling until it began to move about as if it were cottage cheese floating on top of a gentle body of water. He largely ignored the sounds of the dead as they hammered on the wooden boards that barred the windows, the glass long broken.

  He sat up and rubbed his eyes to find Katie sitting on the sofa, absent-mindedly rubbing her belly. The look on her face sent shivers up his spine. Mort walked into the bathroom, a chore that he didn't relish. There was no water pressure anymore, no more flushing toilets. Everything just collected. Luckily, they hadn't eaten much the day before, but it was enough.

  For a second, Mort thought about just using the bathtub, but though it was the end of the world, he just couldn't justify it. He finished his business, and stepped into the hallway. He climbed up the carpeted stairs of the house, worn in patches from years of abuse. He stepped into a room that had the temporary feel of a guest room, blankets, bed, chair, but not much else. They hadn't boarded up the windows above, so he slid one open as silently as he could.

  In the dark of the pre-dawn, he stepped onto the roof, feeling a sense of trepidation as his boot met the grit of the ceiling tiles. He leaned his body out, keeping low so that he wouldn't fall off the roof or alert the dead below to his presence.

  The house they had escaped from was now nothing more than a smoldering pile of ash. One of the houses next door to it had burned down as well, starting a chain reaction of burning houses. Smoke still filled the air, and it was tinged with the noxious elements of a house fire, including all the chemicals released by burning paint, cleaning supplies, and other things.

  Blake's gun... it was in there somewhere. Mort felt like an asshole for leaving it behind. Below him he saw the chewed up body of the house's owner sliding around on the lawn. He cursed the man. Why did he have to stick his nose in their business? If he had just ignored them, they would be far away from here, supplied, prepared, ready to move away from the spinning buzzsaw of the city.

  The street was filled with the dead, grunting and moaning in the black morning. More trudged down the street, drawn by the glowing embers of the burnt up house, the still hot flames of a few burning houses, and the pounding of the dead on the house they were in.

  Mort kept low and worked his way across the roof, moving around to the back to see what that was like. Being on the roof made him nervous, and he took his time. The back yard was an overgrown mess, knee-high grass and weeds, contained only by a low wooden fence, that looked as if it were more rot than fence.

  On the other side of that fence was another overgrown yard. That would be their way out. It was the only possibility. The dead out front had been kept at bay so far by the wooden fence. The back yard was clear. Once the sun was up, Mort would wake up the others, if they weren't already awake, and they would move out.

  He sat on the roof and watched the sky lighten, going from a black to a deep blue, and then transitioning from a light plum color and into a blazing orange, that eventually made him squint his eyes. That way was east. He turned and looked the other way as the sun illuminated the hills that rose up around them. Smoke dotted the sky in the distance as the world came into focus and he waited to see what new hell the world would have in store for him that day.

  ****

  When Lou hit the fence, he heard it before he felt it. The wood cracked and gave way underneath his weight, the boards too rotten to support any sort of weight, but still strong enough to
send a thunderous crack into the morning air.

  "Shit," he said as he landed with a thump in the dewy morning grass. He pushed himself up off the ground as the others sprinted through the gap in the fence. Mort pulled him up, and they moved through the tall grass, their eyes glued on the ground ahead, none of them wanting to find a surprise hiding in the waist-high grass.

  In their hands, they gripped shovels, a pickax, and even a sledgehammer. There was even a lone table leg that they had liberated from a coffee table in the living room of the old man's house. Joan gripped it in her hands. Despite the fact that the table leg was easily the least effective of the bunch, she was glad that she had it, as it would be the easiest for her to use. She had never been very strong, and the lightweight weapon was good enough for her. They would find something better down the road, at least she hoped so.

  She smiled at Clara as they ran, through the street. She knew it was a fleeting feeling, but moving about in the cool morning air, the sun glowing orange behind them, made her feel at least a little bit of hope, almost as if she were just going for a morning jog. They found the gate in the backyard and tried to open it. The overgrown foliage at its base prevented the gate from opening, and Mort and Lou had to throw their shoulders into it to get it to slide open wide enough for them to slip through.

  Then they were on another street, a typical suburban thoroughfare that ran through the neighborhood. Signs of decay could be seen here and there. A cop car sat with its doors open in the middle of the street, the policeman nowhere to be found.

  They ran up to it, and Katie searched it quickly, looking for anything that they could use. There was nothing. It had been picked clean already.

  A block down the street, with the dead forming up behind them, they found one of the policemen, trapped underneath the tire of an SUV, his back broken, but his arms still clawing at them. Bullet holes dotted the windshield of the SUV, and blood painted the windows.

  Again they paused to see if they could find a gun, but it was already gone.

  They had no plan, they just knew to head west. Like Lewis and Clark before them, they were on an expedition that could end with them losing their very lives. One thing was certain; they weren't likely to wind up in history books for their deed.

  Their breathing was heavy now, and panic was running roughshod through their bodies, making them feel hectic and unsettled inside. Then they heard the growling. Joan spotted the first dog, a medium-sized mutt with straggly white hair and a muzzle that had turned brownish-red over time. An old dog collar jingled as it pawed its way down the pavement, its long claws clacking against the hard surface.

  Joan didn't pay it any mind. It was just one dog. Maybe it just missed its owner and wanted some companionship. That's what she told herself anyway, but in her mind, she couldn't stop thinking about the crazy old man as he was torn apart.

  Then another dog appeared to her left. It moved swiftly through the knee-high grass that defined the front yards of suburbia, reminding her of a shark moving through the water, the drying reeds parting before its blood-colored muzzle. This one wore no dog collar. The brown and black dog, matched their pace, and Joan bit her lip, worrying.

  "I think we have a problem," Joan said. As she turned to look at Clara, she spotted another flash of movement in the grass to their right. It was another dog, a burly Rottweiler, its black pelt shiny and slick.

  "Yeah, I see 'em," Clara said.

  "I think they're herding us," Joan said.

  Katie, out of nowhere, said, "Maybe they're just waiting for one of us to fall. Then they'll pounce."

  "Whatever the fuck they're doing, I don't like it," Lou said.

  "Man, I am not trying to get bit by no dog," Mort said. "Ain't there enough stuff out there trying to bite us?"

  "Let's check out one of these houses with a garage," Lou said. "Maybe we can find another car and get the fuck out of here."

  "I think that's a grand idea," Joan said.

  They continued on for half a block, eyeballing the houses as they passed. Busted windows and bloody doors were no-no's they all agreed. There were a lot of no-no's. Eventually, the decision was made for them when ahead of them appeared the leader of the pack, a massive dog that looked part Doberman and part Rottweiler. It sat in the middle of the street, its tongue lolling out of its mouth as if it were waiting for its master to come home. It didn't seem to have a care in the world, but when they got within ten feet of the thing, it began to growl and snarl, its white teeth looking like a mouth full of daggers to Joan.

  "In that house," Lou said, pointing towards another two-level building with a parking garage.

  "Don't make any sudden movements," Joan said. "Dogs can sense fear." She didn't know if it was true, but from her random encounters with stray dogs throughout her entire life, that had seemed to be the case. They walked slowly, with confidence, up to the door of the house. It was a plain white house, a couple of needlessly grandiose columns climbed skyward and propped up an overhang that covered the entrance of the abode. Lou reached for the black iron handle of the door, depressing the button on the handle. It didn't give.

  The others stood with their backs to the house, watching as dogs of all shapes and sizes, some with collars around their necks, padded towards them, tongues lolling in the heat. They were hungry. Joan could see that in their eyes. "Get that door open," she said as calmly as she could. Behind the dogs, the dead were gathering to see what all the commotion was.

  Lou stepped back and delivered a kick at the doorway. It rattled in its frame but didn't give. The leader of the pack began growling, and then he barked, saliva flying in the sunshine. A dog to their side, sprinted at them, and Katie was forced to bring her shovel downwards to meet the dog. It yelped and bounded away eyeing Katie warily.

  Behind them, they heard the splintering of wood as Lou finally managed to kick the door open. Gray hands reached out to him, and he jammed his shovel underneath a dead man's chin and pressed him backwards into the house.

  Joan backed inside with the others, the dogs barking uncontrollably at them. The dead were closer now. It would only be a matter of moments before the pounding began. They closed the door, and Joan and Clara leaned up against it. Their backs pressed against the door.

  "Find us something to block this door with!" Clara yelled.

  "Hurry!" Joan added.

  From the living room, Lou's straining voice yelled, "I'm kind of busy." They could hear the groans of the dead man in the living room.

  Joan's eyes, wide with fear, scanned the interior of the house, noting the dark stairwell that plunged down to her left. It was a split level house, and the lower region looked dark and unwelcoming. As she stared into the shadows, she saw movement. A withered hand appeared, wrapped in a blue bathrobe up to the wrist. Then a sallow face appeared out of the darkness, milky eyes sat above a snarling pair of lips, and the woman climbed the stairs.

  Clara gripped the pickaxe in her hand, but there wasn't room to swing it. The woman was upon them as noises rang out from all over the house. They could hear the grunting of Lou as he battled something. Katie was screaming for help somewhere, and Mort was off doing who knew what. Clara and Joan were on their own.

  Joan brought the table leg up and used it as a prod to keep the dead woman off of them. For a second, she felt like a schoolyard bully must feel when a smaller kid attacked them and all he had to do was put his hand on their head to prevent the smaller child from hurting him. She pushed the woman backwards, and the creature's foot caught on the stairs leading downwards. She tumbled backwards, her blue robe tangling about her body.

  A sudden bang behind her caused her to scream out. The dead were already here. She wondered if the dogs had attacked any of the dead, or if they knew to stay away. She felt it was probably the former, as the dogs didn't seem to have any interest in the dead wandering through the streets. They only wanted live flesh.

  Joan pressed against the door as the dead tried to force their way in.

 
; "Shit, here she comes again," Clara said.

  And she was. The woman in the blue robe was no worse for wear, and she climbed the stairs yet again, her lips drawn back in a snarl, her grasping hands reaching out for them.

  "We could use some help right about now!" Joan yelled as she pushed the woman back again. Lou came rushing through, gore dripping from the end of his shovel. He spotted the woman, and used the shovel as a spear, aiming for her neck. He jammed the blade of the shovel into the soft flesh there, and they heard a crunch. The force of the blow propelled the woman backwards and into the wall. Lou pushed with all his might, and they heard a sickening crunch just before the woman's body fell to the ground. Still blinking and gnashing its teeth, the woman's head rolled off the blade of the shovel and bounced down the stairs, where it came to rest in the shadows.

  From the other room, Mort and Katie appeared, dragging a sofa. They maneuvered it through the hallway and Mort bent down, grunting at the pain in his knee, and tipped the couch upwards so they could lodge the couch between front door and the stub of wall that separated the hallway to the left from the stairwell to the right.

  With the door in place, Joan finally breathed a little easier. She felt like collapsing to the ground, but bent over and placed her hands on her knees instead. Sweat dripped from her face, falling off in tiny droplets that exploded on the faux-parquet flooring.

  She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. She wanted to rant and rail at the universe for the predicament she was in, but she didn't. She was too tired. Clara grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the house's living room. The man that Lou had dispatched sat crumpled in a corner, his forehead caved in. Katie moved to another crumpled form, a younger woman, about Joan's age, and began the task of pulling her pickaxe out of the woman's head. Joan felt a wave of revulsion sweep over her as Katie put her foot on the woman's back and pulled with all her might. The pickaxe came free with a sickening schlupping sound, and blood poured out onto a small rug that covered the wooden floor.