This Rotten World | Book 2 | Let It Burn

by Morris, Jacy

  He looked at the buttons again, wondering what the hell he was missing. Another shot caused him to flinch, and he began flipping switches and yanking on the plastic handle, hoping that something he did would be the right combination to get the generator started.

  "Fuck," Joan muttered, as she loaded another round into the gun. Mort could hear the groan of another dead thing as it tried to get at them in the shed. The odd thing about the moans of the dead was that they sounded neither male nor female. He wasn't sure that they were using their voices at all. It sounded almost as if the dead were just squeezing dead air out of their lungs, a haunting sound, a sound that he would never get used to.

  Mort gave a giant yank on the cord, and then the generator sprung to life, sputtering and then catching. He didn't know how long a half a can of gas would last in the generator, but he hoped it would be long enough. Mort pulled Joan backwards with his free hand, and swung his machete into the head of a bald man, his gut flopping loosely in his ripped and shredded pajamas. The blade sent vibrations up his arm as it cleaved through the bone. He used the weight of the falling corpse to free the blade, blood arcing in fine red droplets and painting the concrete floor.

  More were coming. If the dying generator hadn't been enough to draw them, the gunshots from Joan would have done it.

  "Let's get back inside," he said, and they stepped out of the garage, keeping their eyes on the shaking forest. It was as if the trees themselves were coming to life. They ducked inside the sliding glass door and locked it behind them. As they disappeared around the corner, they could hear the dead banging upon the windows.

  ****

  When the lights went out, they stood still as statues in the dark of the room. Clara wanted to scream. She wanted to turn around and run, but she knew that this was just panic speaking. Instead she stood still, listening to the noises in the dark. They could hear the sickening rip of flesh, blood droplets hitting the hardwood floor, and something much worse... the revolting sound of someone chewing on sloppily. In her mind, she pictured one of the dead, their lips sticky with blood, trying to chew its way through an ear of all things. She wanted to scream.

  The silence crept on for an eternity. In the distance, they heard gunshots, and the chewing stopped for a second, as if whatever was chewing, had stopped to decide if they wanted to go investigate the noise or continue feasting on its current meal. It went back to eating, the easy flesh too good to pass up.

  She wanted to reach out to Lou, grab a hold of him, just to know that he was still there and that she wasn't alone in this nightmare. For a moment, the chewing stopped, and then there was a sound that made her legs wobble at the knees... the sound of sniffing.

  Clara didn't know if the creature could smell anything over the tangy aroma of blood and split innards, but it must have, because the next thing they heard was the sound of clumsy feet slapping against the wooden floors. The third footstep was followed by the grate of the bed frame against the floor as someone bumped into it.

  She couldn't resist anymore. She had to back away. Clara successfully moved one foot backward, but when she placed the second down, the floor gave an abysmal creak. The steps began to come quicker now, and just as she was about to turn and run, the lights flickered back on. She saw Lou fall backwards, the little boy's face just mere inches from Lou's own, his mouth and hands covered in blood. His stomach bulged unnaturally as they tumbled to the ground. On the other side of the bed, she saw the source of the boy's meal, his mother, her guts strewn about the floor. In the corner of the room, in a chair that probably cost more than her first semester's tuition at law school, she spied Rick, sitting unnaturally, his head tilted back and his rifle at his feet. Blood splattered the wall behind him. She saw all of this in the span of a second, and then she was behind the boy, a handful of his hair griped tightly in her fist, pulling his head backwards and up to prevent him from taking a bite out of Lou's throat.

  "Get 'im off me," Lou screeched, his normally deep voice cracking with panic. Clara pulled with all her might, yanking the child off of Lou, though it took all her strength to do so. She spun, using the child's hair for leverage and tossed his body on the bed. His swollen gut jiggled grotesquely, and then Lou was there swinging the machete as the monster sat up on the bed. Lou's swing landed with so much force, that it cracked the child's skull in half, embedding the blade in his brain. The white sheets were covered instantly in red as blood poured from the massive head wound. The boy's hands clawed at the air one last time, and then fell still, just as his mother got to her legs.

  Intestines dangled from her shredded abdomen, sliding across the floor like the blood-soaked tentacles of an unidentifiable sea creature. She came towards them, and Clara grabbed her rifle from the floor, aiming at the woman's head. She fired instinctually, remembering the feeling of getting it right in the Walgreens parking lot, and the woman slumped to the ground, blood pouring from the exit wound in the back of her head.

  "Jesus Christ," said a voice behind them.

  They spun around to find Mort and Joan standing in the doorway.

  "What happened?" Joan asked.

  "I don't think that boy was immune," Lou said.

  The realization washed over them, and though they should have known better than to get their hopes up, the death of the boy still hit them, still drained the last vestiges of hope that they had been clinging to.

  "Let's go find Katie," Lou said.

  "We better do it quick. There are a bunch of those things trying to get into this place," Mort said.

  Lou grabbed Rick's rifle, and then they left. Joan was the last one out of the room. She took one last glance at the lifeless body of the boy on the bed and then shook her head.

  ****

  Katie knew what the man wanted, as soon as they were left alone. She didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. He wanted what every man wanted. To be completely honest, she had wanted it too.

  He said he had been sent to watch over her, just in case the bite on her arm and the missing fingers were actually wounds caused by the dead. They didn't want her turning when they weren't looking.

  She could see that the man wasn't scared of her. He wanted to be close to her. When she took her shirt off, he did get close to her. Their coupling was quick, unsatisfying, but she felt better when it was over. As men did, he rolled over, and was softly snoring in no time.

  She stood in the fancy bedroom looking at her naked form in the mirror. Was it swelling? She couldn't be sure. Maybe it was just all of the crappy canned food she had been eating. When she tired of looking at herself, she walked into an adjoining sitting room, her bare feet moving soundlessly across the wooden floor, and unplugged a lamp. She tugged on the cord, ripping it free from the base of the lamp. It was almost a shame she thought, about the lamp, not the man.

  The man was nothing to her. She wrapped the cord around her fists, making sure that her grip was as tight as possible, and then she walked back into the bedroom. He was laying prone on the bed, his pale ass pointing skyward. She straddled his back and looped the cord over the man's head, bringing it tight against his neck in one smooth motion.

  When the act was done, she had new scratches on her arm, and her jaw and teeth hurt from gritting them as she strangled the life out of the man. She laid on the bed for a while looking at his face. It was hideous. His eyes were red with burst blood vessels, and his tongue lolled out the side of his mouth, his curly brown hair shone with grease in the faint daylight that came in from the windows of the second-floor room.

  When the lights flickered and went out, she got up and dressed. As she tied her shoes, she noticed the man struggling to get out of the bed, and that's when the first gunshots were fired. Her first thought was to grab the man's gun and put a bullet through his head, but it looked more complicated than the revolver she had been using, so she walked into the other room and picked up the now-cordless lamp. It was a heavy thing, slightly gaudy. It looked as if it had been the height of fashion
some thirty years ago, but now it was just a bulky piece of junk that was solid enough to cave in a man's skull... she hoped.

  She held back a giggle as the naked man came at her, his eyes blood-red and his unimpressive penis bouncing from side to side. She danced around him, and swung the lamp at the back of his head, just above where the neck met the skull. It was a good swing, and it stunned the man, but it didn't put him down. They went on like that for some time, her dodging his clumsy attacks, and him, stumbling every time she belted him across the skull with the lamp. She knew when he was dead, as there was an audible crunch from his skull, and he fell to the ground jittering like a fish that had jumped out of a lake and landed in a boat of all places. His hands and feet hammered the ground, and then he was dead, for good this time.

  How long had she been in this room? She didn't have a clue. It had seemed like only a few minutes, but the angle of the sun was all wrong. Perhaps she had dozed off next to the man for a while. Things were... fuzzy recently, and she didn't much care for it. She picked up the man's rifle and looked out the window.

  From her vantage point, she could see them coming... the dead, walking like a line of volunteers searching the woods for a dead body, only everything was backwards. The people in the line were the dead bodies, and they were looking for the living. The house was fucked she decided.

  The lights in the room came on, and she looked down at the gun in her hands. It was nice, a loved thing, like she had been once, but it was just a tool, just as she had also once been. She twisted it and turned it in her hands, trying to figure out how it worked just by looking at it. She thought she could figure it out. From another part of the house, she heard anther gun shot. It was only a matter of time before that Rick fellow came to check on her. She got down on one knee and balanced the rifle on the bed, aiming it at the door. When she saw his red face, she was going to put a bullet right through the fucking thing.

  She cursed silently when the door was thrown open and the face that appeared wasn't red. It was Lou, and he jerked backwards a second when he saw Katie with the gun. In his eyes, she had glimpsed the truth. He was afraid of her. That was good. She stood up and slung the rifle's strap over her shoulder, smiling as cheerily as she could muster.

  The others didn't know what to say as they stepped into the room.

  Mort pointed at J.B.'s dead body and asked, "Why is he naked?"

  Katie just smiled, grabbed J.B.'s FBI hat, and walked out of the room.

  Chapter 23: Let It Burn

  The white Jeep puttered along, its engine roaring on, sounding like it was going to die at any moment. It had half a tank of gas, and the countryside, dotted with the dead, flew by them. The sun was going down, but they were fine with that. They would look forward to the end of that day, the end of that final glimmer of hope. They would let it fade, until the orange was gone, and all that remained was a distant memory, like a half-forgotten dream, about the time they thought there would be a cure.

  "You got a smoke?" Mort asked.

  Clara dug in her pocket without speaking. She had honestly forgotten about her haul with everything that had happened. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. The brand didn't matter. Brands would never matter again, and she packed them by slapping the box against the palm of her wrist. She peeled the cellophane from the pack, flipped the lid, and then ripped the foil inside free, exposing 20 symmetrical circles, arranged in three rows of 7, 6, and 7. She pulled one free and slapped it into Mort's hand.

  Mort grabbed the cigarette from her, lit it, and then turned sideways, hiding it from view. When he had turned back around, she saw that Mort had fashioned her a makeshift birthday cake from a Hostess cupcake, the brown kind with the swirly line of white frosting on top, and the burning cigarette.

  "Happy Birthday, Clara."

  Joan laughed in the driver's seat, and began singing "Happy Birthday." Katie, Mort and Lou joined in.

  When the song was done, they all fell silent, waiting for her to make her wish. She watched as the smoke swirled in the air.

  "Aren't you going to make a wish?" Mort asked.

  Clara's voice caught in her throat. She swallowed and then said, "What is there to wish for?"

  Katie, unconcerned about the smoke affecting the child inside of her, turned around and said, "Just let it burn."

  So they did... they watched as the cigarette turned to ash in front of them. It started bright orange, and then it began to fade. When it looked like it was going to go out finally, Clara pursed her lips and blew gently on the cigarette, sending bits of ash tumbling onto the cupcake.

  Eventually, the cigarette made it down to the butt, and Clara threw it out the window. Let it burn, she thought. Let it all burn.

  Epilogue

  Rudy awoke. His arms and legs didn't want to work at first, but he eventually managed to push himself upright. He didn't recognize his surroundings. Green fabric, filled with heat. He rubbed his hands over his eyes, trying to make sense of what he saw.

  When he sat up, his whole body ached. He noticed he was naked. Somewhere he could hear the sounds of gunfire. For a second, he wondered if he had missed his finals, but then it came back to him. There were no more finals. No more video games. No more apartment building, as it had burned to ash.

  The sound of gunfire became more intense, and he could hear men's voices shouting. Rudy threw aside the filthy sleeping bag and looked down at his naked body. He seemed smaller than he remembered, and suddenly he was hit by an insatiable thirst. Water. He needed water.

  His lips were chapped, and he tried to moisten them with his tongue, but there was nothing there. Even swallowing seemed to be impossible. In the corner of the tent, he found his clothes neatly folded, a large pair of jeans, his ruined underwear, and his shirt, a bloodstained, brown polo shirt. He stumbled over to the clothing, and tried to put it on. He had to rest a couple of times throughout the process.

  When he finally stood up, he had to hold his pants up with one hand. The shirt was baggier than he remembered, and his tennis shoes, originally a wide width, were now like slippers on his feet. With one hand holding up his pants, he reached out and pushed the flap of the tent aside.

  Fresh hell greeted him. He remembered it now, jumping from the building, floating through the air, the dirty gray roof of a semi-truck meeting him face first. How did he get here?

  In front of him, a line of vehicles were pulled in a circle. Nightmares crawled over the hoods of the vehicles and underneath them as well. He was a dead man. He heard gunfire, and he stepped out into the baking sun.

  He turned in the opposite direction, and saw two olive green vehicles weaving in and out of wrecked and stalled cars. He was on a bridge, in the middle of it in fact... and the only humans in sight were driving away from him. He heard the sickening smack of dead flesh on asphalt, and he knew the dead were making it through the barricade behind him.

  He began to run. It wasn't a fast run. It was more of a plodding quickstep, driven forward by the weight of his own body. He tried to muster enough energy to scream, but his throat was too dry.

  With his free hand he waved at the trucks, hoping that they wouldn't mistake him for one of the dead. Gunshots rang out, and he could have sworn he felt a bullet zip by his head as the back end of one of the large trucks swung back into view as the driver straightened out the vehicle.

  Then he saw something that made him pick up his pace, Amanda's face in the back of the truck. He saw her eyes go wide, and her arms spread out, as if she were trying to get the soldiers to stop for him. For a few agonizing seconds, they drove further down the road, the taillights disappearing behind the downward curve of the bridge.

  Rudy ran as fast as he could. His head throbbed with pressure, and he was too dehydrated to even sweat. But Amanda was there. That meant that he needed to be there as well. To his amazement, the vehicle grew closer. They had stopped for him, and as he crested the apex of the bridge, he saw the brake lights glaring bright red. They were waiting
for him.

  Amanda waved at him, her skinny arms beckoning for him to run quicker, and he wished he had wings. He wished he could lift himself off of the bridge and fly right into her arms. The soldiers' shots rang out all around him, but he refused to turn and see what they were shooting at. That was the past; that was not for him. Amanda was for him.

  Black spots swam in front of his eyes, and his pace slowed. His throat began to tighten, and he could barely catch a breath. The air was like quicksand in his lungs, and he felt as one would feel when drowning. With his free hand, he searched his pockets for his inhaler, but there was nothing. His vision began to fade, and though it was the middle of the day, he felt as if night were closing in. He stumbled over a severed leg that seemed to pop up out of nowhere, and then he went down on his knees, his jeans ripping on the asphalt. He didn't even feel the pain.

  He crawled, putting one hand in front of the other on the hot pavement. The muzzle flashes of the soldiers' rifles did battle with the stars in his eyes, and before he passed out on the bridge, he managed to finally scream. "Amanda!" Then it was dark, and the trucks disappeared.

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