This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down (11 page)

The man didn't see any, so he
turned and yelled something at the soldiers behind him, then he noticed the
blood inside the jeep. He spoke into a speaker on his shoulder, then he started
pointing and yelling orders at the other soldiers. They grouped up and took
positions in the street.

Ace couldn't tell what the man
had ordered, but he knew it wasn't good. "Get your guns," he said.

They arranged themselves around
the bar. Ace sat behind the drum kit on the stage. Slutty Rivets and Pudge were
behind the bar, while Slick and Spider hid in the hallway that led to the club's
bathrooms. The door to the bar opened, and five soldiers walked into the room.
From their vantage point, all they could see was Pudge and Slutty Rivets behind
the bar.

"Howdy, boys," Slutty
said. "What can I get you?"

The soldiers were confused. They
had been expecting a lot of things, but a guy standing calmly behind a bar was
not one of them. They were young and confused.

"Don't you know that we're
under martial law?" the least confused man said.

"Right," Slutty
replied, "we're staying inside in the best place possible. You boys want a
beer?"

Ace watched the exchange from
behind the drum kit. The dark sunglasses over his eyes made him feel invisible.
They were young, they were order, and they were pissing him off.

"No beer for us. We're just
wondering if you know what happened to the soldiers that were driving the jeep
outside."

Slutty shrugged his shoulders
and said, "I don't know anything about no soldiers."

Sweat rolled down Pudge's face.
He had the poker face of a five-year-old. "What about you?" the soldier
asked. "Have you seen anyone?"

Pudge stammered, unable to form
a coherent answer. Ace hated him for it, but he secretly loved him for it as
well. Now he could put his plan to work. Ace grabbed a drumstick, and began
playing the drums, banging on them rhythmically, a drumbeat that he had heard a
thousand times before, a drumbeat that Hey Fever had belted out a thousand
times before.

The soldiers jumped at first,
but Ace just smiled. They looked at him with surprise and gathered right in
front of him. Pudge and Slutty Rivets pulled their guns out, and from the
darkness of the hallway, Ace knew that Spider and Slick were doing the same.

"Stop that!" the
soldier commanded. "You're going to bring a shitstorm of those things in here.
They're attracted to sound!"

Ace channeled his fury into the
drumming. The noise was deafening, and he smiled, making sure he had their
attention. He banged on the crash cymbal repeatedly, filling the building with
violent noise.

"Stop!" the soldier
yelled.

Ace grabbed hold of the crash
cymbal with his left hand, stifling its raucous ringing. Outside, he could hear
more gunshots. Ace smiled. That's exactly what he wanted.

Without warning, Ace dropped the
drumsticks to the ground and drew his handgun. The soldiers, dumbfounded by his
erratic actions stood there, not knowing what the hell was going on. Ace pulled
the trigger, a sneer plastered to his face.

As soon as his first shot was
fired, the boys joined in, adding their own rhythm to his beat. They made
music, beautiful music that filled Beelzebub's with a sound that was better
than any sort of distorted rhythm he could have ever wrung from his electric
guitar. Smoke and fire filled the building, and then it was over.

From outside there were more
gunshots. Ace hopped off the stage, reloading his weapon. He pulled a rifle off
of one of the soldiers lying on the dancehall floor. His boys appeared from
their hiding spots.

"That was severe,"
Spider said.

Ace smiled. He was having a
truly excellent time.

Outside, the gunshots had stopped.
"Grab an instrument," Ace told them. "It's time for the
encore." The boys were confused, and he laughed, a choked strangled thing
that sounded more like the death rattle of a madman than an indication of
appreciated levity. Through the window, Ace could see them coming. This would
have to be a quick performance.

Ace and the boys lined up by the
windows, rifles in their hands. Ace took aim at a burly man, a barrel-chested
beast of a man who would have wiped the floor with him. But the world was
different. Now 130 pounds was as dangerous as 210. His mouth filled with
saliva, as he thought about pulling the trigger.

The soldiers on the street
looked around, trapped between the dead and wondering what had happened to
their own soldiers. They circled around the entrance of Beelzebub's, the
building's dark-tinted windows preventing them from seeing the danger that
awaited them. "Fire," Ace whispered.

Then he pulled the trigger,
blowing a hole in the shoulder of the burly man. He spun and fell to the
ground. Others dropped, but the soldiers were quick. They took cover behind the
vehicles, and returned fire as they could.

"Move back," Ace
yelled over the gunfire. "Stay low." They crab-walked to the back of
the building, all except for Slick who was flat on the ground, blood spilling
from his throat and pooling on the concrete floor. Ace giggled a bit at the
sight, shrugged his shoulders and said, "A four-piece band is better than
a five-piece anyway." In the back hall of the club, they reassembled and
reloaded.

"What the hell are we
doing?" Pudge asked.

Ace clapped him on the shoulder
and said, "We're fighting for our rights." The sentiment did not
assuage Pudge, and his face had the look of one who is given the news that they
are about to die.

"What's the plan?" Slutty
asked.

Ace thought for a second. There
were maybe five soldiers outside, with hundreds of dead closing in. But Ace
didn't want the dead to have all the fun. "Pudge, you stay here. Fire a
shot out the window every few seconds. Slutty Rivets, Spider, you come with
me."

They ran through the
graffiti-scarred corridor, and Ace pounded out the emergency exit to the back
of the building, Spider and Slutty Rivets on his heels. They could hear Pudge's
gunfire. It was answered by more gunfire from the streets. Ace reached the
corner of the building and pressed his back to the bricks, enjoying their
coolness in the heat. Sweat covered his body, and the sound of gunfire masked
their booted footsteps.

Ace cautiously leaned out,
surveying the situation. There were four men, two behind their commandeered
jeep and two behind the armored vehicle. That was good, or at least he thought
so until he spotted the man sitting behind the mounted machine gun of the
armored vehicle. He slowly pulled his head back and looked at Slutty Rivets and
Spider.

"Five guys," he said.
"Two behind the jeep, two behind that giant thingy, and one on the
gun."

"The fifty caliber?"
Slutty asked.

"I don't know what you call
it. The big gun on the thingy," Ace replied.

"That's a fifty caliber
machine gun," Slutty said. "That thing will turn your body to
hamburger and mist with just one round."

Hamburger. Yum. Ace was hungry
again. "You guys worry about the guys on the ground. I'll kill the guy on
the machine gun."

Ace didn't wait for the guys to
react. He ran out to the street, his eye already sighting down the rifle. He
pulled the trigger, and the sound of automatic fire rang through the streets.
Sparks bounced off the metal guards around the machine gun, and he saw the man
duck his head down. The turret turned towards them, and Ace aimed again. Out of
the corner of his eye, he saw Spider and Slutty Rivets gun down the men behind
the vehicles. They didn't have a chance.

The machine gun was almost dead
on with him, so he danced to the side, firing his rifle at the tiny square
between the metal guards. More bullets bounced off the guards, and Ace thought,
This is it. This is how I die.

Then he saw Pudge climbing up
the side of the vehicle, a handgun gripped in his fist. There was a light pop
and a puff of red mist, and then Pudge was jumping off the top of the vehicle,
a huge smile on his face. Ace had never been so glad to see the man's
forgettable face framed by his scruffy goatee. Ace laughed out loud and raised
his gun over his head, firing rounds into the sky like a primal ape who had
just discovered fire.

The dead were closing in
quickly, so they scavenged what they could, rifles, cigarettes and cash off the
dead men's bodies. Ace was digging through the pockets of the dead soldier in
the turret when he heard the noise. Echoing off the buildings was a thumping.
It was getting closer. He scanned the skies with his eyes, trying to pinpoint
where the sound was coming from. It was a helicopter. His boys looked around as
well. They climbed into the armored vehicle, slamming the doors behind them and
looking up at the sky through the armored windows.

As Ace was looking up at the
sky, he felt a movement beneath him, and the soldier whose pockets he had been
rifling through sprang into action. The soldier gripped his arm, and the grip
was so strong that Ace thought the bones in his arm were going to snap. He
yelled for help, but the chopper hovering over their heads prevented anyone
from hearing him. Ace pushed the soldier as far back from him as he could, which
wasn't very far in the confines of the turret. With his forearm locked under
the soldier's chin, he pushed his head up, and with his free arm, he reached
behind and pulled his revolver free. He placed it underneath the chin and
squeezed his eyes shut as he pulled the trigger. The dead soldier slumped in
the turret, and Ace pushed the corpse out of the turret and onto the floor of
the vehicle.

Ace turned his eyes back to the
sky in time to see the helicopter hovering over them.  Without thinking, Ace
guided the machine gun in its direction. He pulled the trigger on the gun, and
rounds began pouring out of the weapon. A belt to his left slid through the
machine gun, and thick brass shells fell to the floor of the turret, clattering
metallically before falling inside the vehicle. His initial spray was off
target, but it was only a second before he peppered the side of the hovering
helicopter with rounds, his ears ringing from the noise.

Holes erupted in the windows of
the helicopter, and it began to swerve off course, spinning out of control. The
helicopter hit the ground hard, pieces of metal flying off of the chopper. It
did not explode as Ace had hoped, so he continued firing the machine gun, until
the belt of ammunition was gone. Still no explosion. He cursed in his head, as
he hopped out of the turret.

"Holy shit, man! You just
took down a chopper," Spider yelled. At least, that's what Ace thought he
yelled. His ears weren't currently functioning at that moment. After years of
playing concerts without earplugs, his hearing had deteriorated sharply. Now he
could hardly hear a thing.

Ace ignored the praise of the
others and began rooting through the back of the vehicle. Two benches faced
each other, and above them was some room for storage, but there wasn't much
room for anything. "Shit!" he screamed, punching the steel wall in
frustration.

Slutty Rivets looked at him, a
quirk of a smile on his face, partly hidden by his red beard. He held out his
hand and said, "Looking for one of these."

Ace looked down and saw a
spherical shape, topped with a ring and a handle, a hand grenade.
This will
make beautiful music,
he thought. Ace hopped out of the vehicle, the cold
metal of the grenade in his hand. He took a few steps towards the helicopter,
unsure of how far he could throw the thing. It weighed as much as a
medium-sized rock. He hefted it in his hand again.

A little closer
, he
thought. Ace jogged forward, his eyes on the helicopter. From inside the
cockpit, he could see movement, whether it was a living person or a dead person
trying to escape, he didn't know, and he didn't particularly care. A
blood-smeared hand bashed against the spider-webbed glass of the cockpit.

"Throw it, pussy!"
Spider yelled at him. Ace laughed, pulled the pin, and threw the grenade as far
as he could. His throw was short, but it took a fortuitous bounce and rolled a
few feet, lodging under the middle of the helicopter wreckage. The anticipation
was intense, and then it exploded. The wreckage lifted off the ground, shards
of metal flying into the air. It erupted in a bloom of flame that rocked the
buildings next to the wreck, shattering windows and making Ace's ears ring once
more.

Ace fell back on the ground when
the grenade exploded. He watched the second explosion, the smoke and flames curing
upwards to the sky.
Glorious
.

This was a war that they would
lose. The only real question was how long they would continue to fight it.
Sergeant Tejada had delivered his latest report. In the last ten hours, they
had lost close to 1,000 troops and made hardly a dent in the population of the
reanimated.

The reanimated, that was the
official term that Washington had settled on. The men had logically taken to
calling them Annies. At first, he had wanted to snap at the first man he had
heard use the term, but it was typical army behavior. It was better to give
them a cutesy nickname than to call them what they were. Calling them the
reanimated reminded the men of the fact that their enemies used to be the
people that they were sworn to protect and fight for. Calling them the
reanimated reminded the men that their own families might be out there,
walking, searching for someone to eat. If they wanted to call them Annies to
feel better about it, then that was fine by McCutcheon. If calling them Annies
prevented them from freezing up when they had to pull the trigger, then that
was also fine by him.

Bad news just kept rolling in.
An entire squad had gone missing, dead or deserted, McCutcheon didn't know, but
he knew things were going to get worse before they got better. They had lost
two Apaches in the last 10 hours, in addition to the five-hundred men. One had
been inexplicably shot down in the city, and the other had just disappeared. The
men were replaceable, the choppers were not. The entire United States Army was
spread across the country so thin that it was only a matter of time before the
President unleashed the final protocol, and they would neat to make a hasty
retreat when the orders came down the pipeline.

They were on borrowed time here.
The best they could do was gather survivors, thin the numbers, and keep a
sizeable fleet of movable vehicles for when the order came down. The reports
out of New York led him to believe that the order would come sooner than later.
In New York, a hundred-thousand troops had been whittled down to nothing in the
span of a day.

Philly and Boston were much the
same, but there was still damn little news about Denver. He had tried his wife
and daughter's cell phones a dozen times in the last ten hours, but they hadn't
even rung. He pushed thoughts of his family to the side. He had a job to do,
and he was going to do it.

He sent a runner to find
Sergeant Tejada. Tejada was a good man, capable, but he was the type of soldier
that never wanted to get too high in the army. He was comfortable leading men
and following orders. Making decisions was not his forte. As Lieutenant General
McCutcheon's right hand, he was indispensible.

Sergeant Tejada entered the
warehouse, saluted and stood at attention. "At ease," McCutcheon said
dismissively. "Sergeant Tejada, what is the report from the refugee camps?"

"Sir, the entire Coliseum
is secure. However, Major Miller reports that the fences aren't secure enough.
He estimates the crowd of Annies to be somewhere at ten thousand."

"Jesus," McCutcheon
said, unable to control his reaction. He wiped his hand across his face as if
there were something hanging off of it. "'Ten thousand did you say?"

"Yes, sir."

"Continue with the report,
Sergeant," McCutcheon prompted, his mind still trying to grasp the concept
of ten thousand of those things held back by chain-link fences topped with
razor wire.

"They have plenty of food,
but he requests more ammunition. All road traffic to the refugee center should
be suspended until the perimeter is cleared. They have lost several squads who
were trying to drop off refugees. The squads were overrun in the process."

"Alright. This is what I
want. Pull the choppers from search and rescue. I want them shuttling survivors
and ammunition back and forth between the Coliseum and here. How many men are
at the Coliseum camp?"

"Three thousand, sir, less
some casualties."

"Right. Well, give them the
ammo that they need. All search and rescue operations are to bring any
survivors here. We'll transport them to the refugee center from here by
helicopter. Anything else?"

"Sir, the reports from the
soccer stadium are somewhat..." the Sergeant swallowed before he
finished... "worse."

McCutcheon didn't like two
things, the fact that Sergeant Tejada had held back intel and the fact that
Tejada actually seemed hesitant to give him some news. "Well, don't keep
me in suspense, Sergeant. Spit it out."

"Sir, the soldiers at the
soccer stadium report that it is an indefensible position. They have taken
heavy casualties, and refugees have all but stopped trickling in."

"Heavy casualties? What are
we talking here, Tejada?"

"They're down to half and
ammo is an issue, sir."

McCutcheon did the math in his
head. 1,500 soldiers gone... in the space of a single day. How was this even
possible? What the hell was going on out there? "Call 'em back. Get those
choppers going. Bring the refugees first, then get those soldiers out of there.
Anything else, Sergeant?"

"No, sir."

"Very well then. You know
what to do." Sergeant Tejada saluted and turned smartly, marching out of McCutcheon's
makeshift office. "And Sergeant?" Tejada turned around to regard
McCutcheon. "Never be afraid to give me bad news. I want to hear it as
soon as it happens." Tejada nodded his understanding, and then made his
way out of the warehouse to spread the orders.

McCutcheon stood up from his
seat and walked outside with a cup of regulation issue coffee in his hand, mud
as it was more commonly known. He exited Warehouse #206 and stepped outside. Shading
his eyes from the falling sun. 2,500 soldiers in a single day. At that rate, he
would be out of soldiers in less than two weeks. Now was the crucial time. Now
was the time where they either wrapped a single, iron, military fist around
this problem or they broke and ran.

Was Sheila out there, driving
towards some refugee center that was woefully ill-equipped to handle the
problem? The Coliseum hadn't been the best choice, but it offered the best
vantage point. Its roof was more accessible for snipers, and it could easily be
fenced off. Also, the Moda Center had been trashed by the time they had first laid
eyes on it, the reanimated crawling through the building in the darkness. Ten
of those 2,500 dead soldiers had been men sent in to clear the place.

The soccer stadium? Well, that
was a tactical error. They simply hadn't known the types of numbers they would
be dealing with. The dead were growing exponentially, while their own numbers
were shrinking. It was a bad day to be in charge.

In the fading light of the day,
McCutcheon scanned the perimeter of Terminal 2. The shipping containers were
being stacked on the backside of their own chain-link fence, creating a solid
barrier and additional walkways for the soldiers to use. The height of the
shipping containers provided an vantage point for the soldiers as they kept the
perimeter cleared of the dead. Even now, he saw some of them taking potshots at
the reanimated who had gathered around the terminal to watch the proceedings.
Within hours of being on site, McCutcheon had issued a universal permission-to-fire
order.

Through one of the gaps in the
shipping container wall, he saw one of the reanimated fall. It didn't matter;
three more were approaching in the distance. How much ammunition did they have?
Were there enough bullets to put one into every citizen of the United States if
need be? McCutcheon shook his head and took another sip of mud. Dark thoughts
came to him.

A fresh-faced soldier with
military-issue glasses sprinted up to him with a sheet of paper clutched in his
hand. McCutcheon took it from him and looked at the words printed on it. He
sighed heavily and dismissed the soldier. New York was gone. It would only be a
matter of hours, maybe minutes, before the news made the rounds. Morale was
fucked already, and this was the last bit of news that they needed.

The good news was that he had
been promoted, although he didn't know what good the pay raise would do him if
the world was on the verge of collapsing and he had no family to spend it on. He
crumpled up the paper and threw it on the ground. He watched his men as they
worked, stalking the compound, their rifles unslung, some stacking boxes and
digging in, others rushing about carrying out any of a thousand different
orders and tasks that were needed to make the military machine function.

McCutcheon took another sip of
mud, and looked back at the gap between the shipping containers. There was
another rifle pop, and a reanimated woman fell in a heap. There were five more
behind her, approaching through the maze of industrial buildings that
surrounded Terminal 2, the once bustling Port of Portland.

He took a final sip of coffee,
but couldn't quite force himself to swallow it. He spit it onto the ground and
dumped his coffee mug out. He shook his head at the words on the cup. It was a
white piece, cheap and laced with fine cracks from years of use. "World's
Best Dad," it said.
What a cruel coffee mug,
he thought.