This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down (13 page)

Katie sat in the nosebleed seats
of the Coliseum, her back pressed against the cold concrete wall. She sat alone
staring down at the buzz on the floor of the Coliseum. The Memorial Coliseum
was home to the Portland Winterhawks, a junior hockey team that had produced some
of the best talent in the NHL, at least that's what her husband Jason had said
when she had asked him what exactly the Winterhawks were. Their logo was the
head of a Native American with multi-colored feathers hanging in his black
hair. How that related to hockey was anyone's guess. As far as she knew, there
was no tribe named Winterhawk and there was no bird named a winterhawk either.
She guessed it was better than Braves or Warriors or something generic like
that.

Right now, people were tromping
across the logo, which was usually covered by three-quarters of an inch of ice.
She wondered if anyone would ever skate across that logo again. Katie sat,
wrapped in dark thoughts, a blanket to keep her mind from the other emotions
that were struggling to escape from her. She didn't want them. She didn't want
the sadness, the grief, the rage. She would take a triple dose of denial. When
she had first come in, a lady had greeted her, and chatted to her, asking her
if she had lost anyone. Katie said, "No."

The lady had shaken her head in
confusion at Katie's terse response, then she had walked away, a hurt look on
her face. That was fine with her. The people here wanted to bond. They wanted
to feel better. Katie just wanted her gun back. Her harrowing entrance into the
refugee camp had been the first sign that she had most likely made a mistake.
Now she was intent on escaping from the Coliseum, getting some sort of weapon,
and leaving the city altogether. It was the only play that made sense. If her
mind had been right, she would have figured it out a lot sooner, but the idea
of being someplace safe had called to something within her. Perhaps it called
to her willingness to abandon responsibility and let someone else do the
thinking.

Katie's stomach gurgled. She was
hungry and a little drunk. They had taken her gun, but allowed her to keep her
tiny bottles of wine. She would have traded them in a heartbeat for the gun,
but the soldiers weren't interested in trades. They were interested in talking
big, maintaining a sense of authority, and denying the fact that every hour
more and more of those things showed up, shambling and pressing against the
woefully pathetic fences that encircled the Coliseum.

The flow of refugees had slowed
down, whether that was because most people were dead or because they simply
couldn't reach the Coliseum, Katie didn't know. Either way, it all meant bad news
to Katie. She kicked the seat in front of her, and swore under her breath.

On the floor of the Coliseum,
survivors huddled in groups, their Styrofoam trays resting on their knees. Some
slept, some wept, but they all had the same look of shock on their face. There
were few children, and the ones that were there sat as if in a daze, their
worlds shattered into so many pieces that they had no idea how to even begin
putting them all back together. Katie couldn't look at the children for long
before thoughts of her own child started to bubble up.

Food. If she was going to
escape, she was going to have to find something to eat. Katie rose from her
seat and stumbled down the stairway that led to the concourse, her purse in her
hand, tiny bottles of wine clinking around inside. She exited the stadium and
found herself on the dirty gray concourse. It had an industrial, heartless feel
almost as uncomfortable as the view through the glass front of the Coliseum.
Soldiers packed the Coliseum's broad courtyard, a square of concrete that sat
before long windows that led from the floor to the Coliseum's airy ceiling. The
soldiers were out there, rifles in hands, and beyond them were the fences,
backed by scaffolding that the soldiers stood upon to shoot at the dead outside.
There were thousands of them. There was a sea of rotting flesh out there,
pawing at the chains of the fences. The soldiers on top were shooting at the
dead below, the noise of rifle shots was unceasing and muffled only by the
thick glass windows of the Coliseum. Other soldiers sat below, filling
magazines with clips of ammunition and stripping and cleaning rifles that had
been fired throughout the day. They were all busy, and they were barely making
a dent.

A chopper lifted straight into
the air from the courtyard, its rotors whirring into invisibility and blasting
the soldiers with a gritty wind. Shell casings rolled across the ground, brass
stars twinkling underneath the generator powered floodlights in the courtyard.
A soldier ran inside on some sort of mission, and as the door swung open, a
blast of air from outside hit her in the face like a punch, the smell of
thousands of dead that had spent most of the day putrefying in the sun. Her gag
reflex was strong, but she clamped her hand over her face and moved away from
the front of the building, stalking around the concourse to find where they
were serving food.

She had seen other refugees
moving across the Coliseum floor, paper plates of steaming food in hand. She
hitched her purse up on her shoulder. It was all she had left, and it was about
the most worthless possession anyone could have in a time like this. Liable to
be snagged by the dead, she knew it was only a matter of time before she would
have to give it up. When her wine was gone, she would toss the bag into one of
the many trash bins around the arena, along with her credit cards, her wallet, and
all the make-up she had dutifully applied to her face for the last three
decades of her life. She hadn't quite decided what to do with her cell phone. Part
of her wanted to keep it, but another part of her wanted to bury it in one of
the garbage cans, along with the pictures of her husband and child that were
stored on it.

She pulled the cell phone from
her purse, a clunky chunk of glass, metal and plastic. It was an outdated phone
by society standards, nothing fancy, but it held pictures, some songs, and a
list of her few contacts. Ever since Kevin had been born, her list of contacts
had slowly dwindled until it was just her, her brother in Vermont, and her
mother. She opened up her list of contacts... so small, so pointless. Having a
child had been the worst choice she could have ever made.

Katie selected her mother and
listened as the phone began to ring. She hung the phone up after two rings, and
tossed it into the nearest garbage can, tears threatening to escape from her
eyes. She walked fast, as if the phone would jump up out of the garbage and
follow her around. Katie didn't want to know. She didn't want to know how her
70-year-old mother was surviving this. She didn't want to have that
conversation. She didn't want to tell her what had happened to Jason and Kevin.
Most of all, she didn't want the phone to go to voicemail. She didn't want to hear
her mother's voice telling her to leave her name and phone number so that she
could get back to her. Not getting an answer would be the worst.

She walked along the concourse,
until she came to a white trailer that had been set up to serve food to the
refugees. That's what they were now, refugees in their own country, in their
own home, fleeing from a disaster that seemed to have struck the world down in
one fell swoop.

When she had first arrived, she
overheard two people talking about causes of the disaster. Maybe it was nature
trying to create a blank slate. Maybe God was real, and he was pissed. Katie
laughed in her head. What a waste of time their conversation had been. Two
scared men trying to figure out who or what they should blame. Blame wasn't
going to make it go away. If anything, knowing would just make it worse. Katie
was glad she didn't know why the end of the world was happening. Knowing why
would lead to the hope of being able to stop it. Stopping it would mean
continuing on for who knew how long with the guilt of killing her husband and
child... the guilt of knowing that she had, in her most melancholy moments,
actually fantasized about doing it before the world had rotted.

 There were two lines of people
waiting to be served. Boxes of bulk food items were stacked haphazardly around
the trailer. She could see soldiers working feverishly inside the trailer,
dishing out food as fast as they could, but still they could not keep up with
the demand. The refugees stood, a hundred deep, many of them lost in their own
thoughts. Smiles were few and far between.

Katie stepped up behind a man
with a red beard. His hands were placed protectively on the shoulders of two
children, and their eyes were painted with sorrow. They did not speak. They
stood there, mute, waiting in line like cows for the slaughter. The children
made Katie feel sad. How would they die? Would they get eaten? Would their
father murder them to save them from an eternity stalking the world as living
dead? Would he do nothing?

There was only one thing that
Katie felt good about, knowing that she had ended her own child's twisted
existence. Kevin wouldn't be target practice for anyone. She had ended him, the
way it should have been. Family takes care of family.

"When the time comes, it
should be you," she said to the red-bearded man.

He looked at her, horror in his
eyes. "Excuse me?"

"If they turn, make sure
you're the one that does it. You know what I mean?"

The man didn't say anything
else. He propelled his children to the back of the other line. Katie smiled and
waved at the children. They did not reciprocate.

Katie turned her attention to
the line in front of her. At least she'd get her meal faster this way. The
trailer was pumping out plates of food at an alarming pace. Katie wished they
would have given out more packaged food, something that would last a while in
an emergency, but food was food, even though the stuff they were ladling out
didn't seem all that appetizing to her.

With her mind lost in thought,
she stepped up to the counter, and a woman in fatigues plopped a tray in front
of her. First, there was a scoop of mashed potatoes, likely from some
dehydrated source. Then there was an unappetizing piece of breaded meat topped
with another ladleful of gravy. Next was a scoop of mixed vegetables, carrots,
peas, and corn that all had that shrunken look that comes from being
dehydrated. Finally, she was given a dinner roll with some sort of butter
substitute in a tiny golden package. It was followed with a bottle of water,
which Katie was a little upset with. The rest of the meal brought about the
nostalgia of meals long ago at her elementary school in Vermont. The only thing
missing was an 8 oz. carton of 2% milk.

Katie stepped out of line with
the Styrofoam tray in her hand. She was looking at the meal in front of her,
wondering what she was going to eat first when a voice spoke at her side.
"Nothing like the old armed forces to put a little meat on your bones in
the cheapest, most flavorless manner possible. Am I right?"

Katie broke out of her culinary
contemplation and looked at the man who had spoke. He was an older gentleman,
with a mean look about his eyes, but a kind bent to his mouth."

"Yeah. At least I didn't
have to make it myself," she said.

"Amen to that." The
man plopped his bottle of water onto his tray, and held out his now freed up
hand. "My name's Zeke."

Katie shook the man's proffered
hand and smiled, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" the man
said.

"That you've been stuck
with that stupid name for your entire life."

The man laughed, a deep hearty
laugh that echoed throughout the concourse. It was a dusty sounding laugh, as
if that register of his throat hadn't been used in years. "Yeah. I'm sorry
too." They stood there for a moment, experiencing a brief moment of
awkward silence before Zeke said, "Are you here with people?"

Katie shook her head, the truth
too raw and unpredictable to be allowed to cross her lips. "Well, would
you like to eat with us?" he continued.

"Us?" Katie asked. The
man with the mean eyes pointed to a man who was waiting by an entrance to the
arena, an impatient look on his smooth, almost baby-like face. "Oh, I
don't..."

Zeke interrupted her and said,
"I'm not asking you out on a date, lady. I'm just trying to have some
dinner and some conversation."

Katie felt relieved and somewhat
disappointed. Maybe she would like a date. Maybe she would like a little time
to forget the last 24 hours, but the man had said he wasn't interested... but
maybe that was just to cover up the fact that he was interested. Men were
seldom "not interested," even when they pretended as if they weren't.
Jason had been much the same when they first started going out... Jason.

"I would love to join
you," she said, hoping that dinner with the man and his friend would allow
her to shake the sadness out of her mind, or at the very least smash it down into
the background long enought to give her a break. Plus, it looked like the man
could handle himself if it came down to it. He had the sort of physique that
spoke of a lifetime of being fit. There was a little relaxation and normalcy
laced over the top of it, but he had the rough thick hands of a man who could
handle himself when the shit hit the fan. She needed people like that. Dread
continued to gnaw at the nape of her neck, trying to claw its way inside her
mind where it could explode into full-fledged panic.

The man smiled at her,
"Right this way, lady."

Katie followed.

Zeke didn't know why he decided
to speak to the woman. She had that hollow look about her, that look that he'd
seen soldiers get after something unspeakable happened. Shell-shock some called
it, though the public had decided to give it an entirely more P.C. name. Zeke
preferred shell-shock to PTSD. He had no time for acronyms. Whatever you
decided to call it, the woman had that look about her. The look tugged at
something inside him, something that he had long thought was dead. Here was a
situation that he could do something about. Instead of just sitting in the
bleachers and eating his traditional military meal, he could actually do
something useful. The surprising part about it was that he wanted to.
Compassion was something that he had thought he had lost underneath the hot sun
of foreign lands.

When Louis had decided to draw
the dead away from Brian and his family on the waterfront, something had awakened
in Zeke, something he had long ago buried. While they sat in the courtyard of
the Coliseum stripping naked to show they weren't bitten, he had thought about
the person that he had become over the last decade. For all intents and
purposes, he had been committing suicide. His house, small and utilitarian, was
to be his tomb. He sat inside it, eating, drinking, and polishing his guns,
waiting for the day that he wouldn't wake up.

Zeke's time in the military had
been unremarkable for the most part. It was standard-issue. He had seen death
in many shapes and forms, from the anonymous type to the up close and personal
type. Somewhere along the way he had closed up shop. Now he found that the shop
was open, and though the items were covered in a layer of dust, they were still
useful; people still wanted and needed them. He would give them, free of
charge.

They hiked into the arena,
holding their trays steady and climbing high, so they could have a good vantage
point and avoid the crowd of refugees below. Most of them sat slumped in the
arena's seats. Some were lying on the floor, their heads buried in their arms.
Some sobbed, their hands buried in their faces.

"Lady, this is Louis,"
Zeke said, introducing the man that he had gone through hell with. Zeke's legs
were tight, his lower back felt like an alien was trying to erupt out of it,
and he hadn't been that out of shape to begin with. How Louis was still walking
around was a mystery to him.

"Louis, this is..."
Zeke waited for the lady to say her name, but none was forthcoming. "This
is Lady."

"Pleased to meet you,"
Louis said over his shoulder as he limped up the concrete stairs to a spot that
was relatively devoid of other inhabitants. He side-shuffled a few seats into
the narrow row of plastic seats, and plopped down, a great sigh escaping from
his lips. Louis was exhausted, and Zeke knew that he would pass out soon.

The woman sat down, her curly
brown hair wild but ultimately attractive. Her clothing screamed "mom"
to Zeke, her delicate un-toned hands and the pale ring of skin around her left
ring finger spoke of tragedy. He wouldn't press the situation. She seemed nice
enough. She most likely needed someone to talk to, and Zeke could tell that
Louis was not long for consciousness. Even before he ate his food, Louis bent
down and stripped off his shoes, sighing in relief as he pulled off the second
boot.

"You got anyone else here
with you?" Zeke asked before spooning a forkful of once-dehydrated
vegetables in his mouth. They were flavorless, and still hard in spots, but
after years of eating them, Zeke didn't mind. When he looked at the woman, he
saw that she was struggling to find a way to answer. He had started off with
the wrong question.

Trying to move past the
awkwardness, Zeke said, "Me and Louis here had one hell of a ride into
this place. Didn't we, Louis?" Louis nodded his head, his eyes droopy, as
he forked a glob of mashed potatoes into his mouth. "Yeah, we got picked
up in a boat with that guy over there." Zeke pointed to Brian and his two
daughters, Ruby and Jane. They sat away from everyone else, the oldest daughter
picking at her food while the youngest cried softly. The father had his arm
around her, but he stared off into space, his mind somewhere else. Zeke felt
for the man.

He dropped his voice and said,
"When the military stopped us, they executed his wife. She had been
bitten, so he's a little... well, you know how it is." The woman looked at
him, a quirk of a smile on her lips. She had that same far-off look that was
clinging to Brian's face.
Shit,
he thought,
I did it again.

In a monotone voice, the lady
said, "We have to get out of here."

Zeke laughed. He had been
thinking the same thing. The defenses were good, if you were guarding against
humans, creatures that feared for their lives and could be incapacitated. The
dead outside knew no fear. Those piddly chain-link fences were no match for the
press of dead flesh. Zeke and Louis had seen that first-hand at the tenement
they had escaped from... and those had been wrought-iron fences set into a
concrete base. "Ain't that the truth, lady."

"Do you have a plan? You
seem like the type of guy that can handle himself. I don't want to be caught in
here when it goes bad." The lady began forking the food into her mouth
after speaking. It was as if articulating the words out loud had made the
situation real and kicked her into high-gear.

Zeke laughed. "Always be
prepared. You must have been a Boy Scout when you were a kid."

With a mouth full of breaded meat
and gravy, the lady said, "Nope... I was a Brownie? So what's your big
plan? A man like you must have a plan."

"The plan? The plan is to
rest up and be ready to move when it all goes down."

The lady ate another bite of
food, her delicate, soft-hands seeming out of step with the look in her eyes.
She had the look of stubborn survival, undercut with a side of grief. It was an
old look, not the sort of thing you'd expect to see on a housewife's face.
Without having to ask, Zeke knew her story. Her family was dead, and she was
shuffling on. Had she lost a husband? Kids? More than that? It didn't matter.
Zeke had no one to lose. He could be strong enough for her, if she would let
him.

"How do you think it's
going to happen?" the lady said.

Zeke leaned back against the
hard, plastic seat, raising his arms above his head and stretching. He pulled
his sealed bottle of water off the floor, unscrewed the top and tipped it back.
"I think that when it happens, it's going to happen fast. There will be
chaos, and that's when we have to make our move. Without a vehicle, we don't
get out of here. Without weapons, food and water, even if we get out of here,
we'll only be able to survive for a few days at most."

Zeke pressed the side of the
fork to the mystery meat on his plate, separating a bite-sized piece with
minimal pressure and popping it into his mouth. "When it goes down, we'll
know it's going down. In the meantime, eat, drink, be merry, save your water
bottles and keep them filled. We'll keep someone on watch at the front of the
Coliseum. When things go south, we'll all get out of here together."

"What about weapons?"

Zeke swallowed his meat, salt
and grease clinging to his throat like desperation. "Look around.
Everything is a weapon. The key is to keep them off of you. Killing them is
good, but keeping them off of you so you can escape is just as good if not
better."

"How many people do you
have going on this little field trip of yours?"

"Well, there's me and my
man Louis over here." Zeke was about to slap Louis on the arm, but he saw
that Louis had finally fallen asleep. His tray leaned precariously on his lap,
so Zeke picked it up as gently as he could and set it on the concrete ground.
"Then we've got those guys over there as well," he said, pointing
towards Brian.

The lady turned her head and
looked at them. The look on her face let Zeke know that she wasn't thrilled that
they were being included in the package. "Seriously? Kids?"

Zeke took a sip from his water
bottle and nodded his head, as if there would be no negotiating.

"What makes you think you
can keep those kids alive?"

"I can't. But there's
vehicles out there that can. You ever heard of a Stryker?" Zeke asked.

"You mean like someone goes
on strike? My husband almost went on strike last year." Zeke didn't know
what she was going to say next, but whatever it was it caught in her throat and
would not come out.

Zeke thought it best to forge
ahead, so he said, "Yeah, well, a Stryker is an armored personnel carrier.
They call it an APC in the military. It's pretty much impervious, runs on eight
wheels, and can withstand all sorts of small arms fire. It's got room for ten.
We get those kids in there, and we should be able to get out of the city. So
what do you say? You want to come with us?"

The lady looked over her
shoulder again, eyeing the kids. Disgust was etched on her face, and something
else. That's when Zeke knew that she had lost more than her husband. She had
lost it all.

The lady looked back at him and
said, "If it comes down to me or those kids, I'm not saving them. You got
that?"

She had lost everything,
including her compassion. Zeke knew the feeling. Hopefully, he could help her
find it again. "They're not your responsibility. No one can make them your
responsibility."

The lady locked eyes with him.
Brown eyes, clear as glass, not a speck of madness in them. "If those kids
get bit, someone better take them down. Or else I will."

Zeke didn't have much to say to
that. He knew that there were dead children out there, faces pressed against
the chain-link fences. The idea of having to kill one of them had never crossed
his mind. The idea of having to kill a living child on the verge of turning
made his skin crawl. Putting a gun to the head of an adult trying to feed on
you was one thing, putting the gun to the head of a child that you could hold
at arm's length was another.

"You understand?" the
lady said.

Zeke nodded his head, and then
the sadness flooded into her eyes, the logical, cold-blooded part of her,
diluted by the cut of grief. She pulled a tiny bottle of wine from her purse,
unscrewed the aluminum cap and took a sip. She held it out to Zeke. He shrugged
his shoulders and took it from her. It tasted like acidic grape juice. It
wasn't a PBR, but it would do the job.

"Good, now I don't feel
like such an alcoholic."

"That makes two of
us."

For the first time, the lady
smiled, lips parting like clouds, teeth like rays of sunshine. He would help
this lady, if she would let him.