This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down (14 page)

Mort tried to hold onto his
lunch throughout the chopper ride. He had never been in an airplane, let alone
a helicopter. His ears still rang, but it was a damn sight better than it had
been. On the rooftop, he had tried to help Blake get to his feet, so that they
could move away from the fire, but Blake had been useless, even after his eyes
had opened. His first few seconds of blinking didn't uncross his eyes, and as
Mort helped the man to his feet, he had doubled over and vomited, falling to
the ground like a drunk.

Mort had barely noticed the
sound of the thumping rotors of the helicopter as it hovered over them, turning
the smoke from the burning thrift shop into roiling shapes that looked like
waves. Blood dripped from Blake's ears, and Mort waved at the pilot, who sat
behind the controls, looking down at them through the dark lenses of his helmet.
He seemed more like a terrifying insect than an actual human.

When the helicopter swung to the
side, Mort shielded his eyes from the wind that sent the tiny pebbles and loose
rocks that covered the roof flying. The side of the helicopter slid open and two
soldiers hopped out. They yelled at him, but over the noise of the helicopter,
Mort couldn't make out their words.

He stood there, trying to read
their lips, shouting back and forth. The soldier on the left held up his arm
and pretended to bite it, then he pointed at Mort and Blake, who was lying on
the ground his arm over his face. Mort understood what the man was asking, and
he shook his head, yelling, "We aren't bitten," as loud as he could.
"It was an explosion!" he screamed. The man nodded, and turned
around, giving the pilot a thumbs up from where he watched the proceedings in
the cockpit.

The soldiers lowered their
weapons and helped Blake up off the ground. They dragged him to the hovering
helicopter, and helped him into it. The best he could manage was to lie across
the floor, the tips of his cowboy boots pointing up into the air. Once Blake
was situated, the soldiers turned to Mort and waved for him to get on the
helicopter. Mort bent down and picked up the bag with all of their weapons in
it.

Immediately, the larger soldier
held out the palm of his hands and gestured for Mort to stop. He demanded to
the see the bag and Mort handed it over reluctantly. The soldier went through
the bag, and from the soldier's body language, he could tell that it was no
longer his. When he was done inspecting the bag's contents, the soldier gave
the pilot a thumbs up. Mort climbed into the helicopter, and they lifted into
the air.

Now he was trying to keep his
lunch down. If it wasn't for Blake, he would have taken the guns and let the
helicopter leave him on the roof, but Blake was hurt bad. The man had saved
him, the least he could do was endure the presence of some authority until he
was sure that Blake was alright. It was the code of the homeless. You didn't
owe anyone anything, until they showed you kindness. Blake had showed him
kindness. He owed it back. Maybe there was a doctor where they were going.

The helicopter slowed to a hover
over a rooftop, and the two soldiers in the back rappelled onto the roof.  Slowing
down somehow made his nausea even worse. Mort watched as the soldiers went
through the same pantomime that Mort had gone through with a family of people
clinging to the shingles of a roof. Mort took a risk and leaned out over the
edge of the helicopter. Beneath them, the dead had gathered, their arms
stretched to the sky as if they could climb the air to get at their prey. The
world began to rock from side to side in his head, as if he had had too much
whiskey, and he fell back and gripped the edge of his seat, cold sweat
sprouting over every inch of his body. Mort was not a fan of heights.

The family was sitting on the
peak of a two-story house. Outside, the soldiers were having a heated
discussion on the pitched roof. Mort couldn't catch the words that they were
saying, but the man buried his hands in his face, briefly, and then hugged his
kids and his wife. With that, the soldiers ushered the wife and children to the
helicopter. Mort helped lift them into the helicopter, where they sat, tears
running down their faces. The soldiers climbed on board, and though Mort didn't
want to look, he did. On the roof, the man waved at his children, his face
becoming smaller and smaller. Below him, the hordes continued trying to climb
the sky. The man sat heavily on the shingles of the roof, his hands over his
face as the chopper flew through the sky, packed with survivors and heavy
emotions. Even after they were out of sight of the man, he could still see the
look on his face and the small trickle of blood running from his forearm.

They sped through the evening sky,
and Mort was thankful for the thumping of the rotors and the roar of the wind,
as it drowned out the noises of the grieving children who clung to their
mother, her arms too busy being wrapped around their shoulders to stem the tide
of tears pouring down her own face.

As they flew through the city,
Mort fantasized about stealing the helicopter and flying it to someplace better
than the refugee camp that the soldiers assured him was safe. He would take it
and fly it to the ocean. It had been a while since he had seen a beach, and
there were certainly likely to be less of those things out there. What were
they? Were they completely dead? Did they still have memories? There were so
many questions and too few answers, but in the end, the only real question was
would they survive? Mort closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the sad
faces across from him.

The rhythm of the helicopter's
whirring rotor threatened to lull him to sleep, but before that could happen,
they were touching down on the ground. Mort helped Blake to his feet, and they
managed to get him out of the helicopter. Before they could even take a few
steps, the helicopter was off into the sky. In its absence, the silence seemed louder
than the helicopter; then he realized that the soldiers were yelling at him. He
could make out the words above the ringing in his ears, but only barely.

"He needs help!" he
yelled to the soldiers. They either didn't hear him or didn't care.

"Put him down," they
yelled, "and strip!" As soon as the family was ushered away to a more
private location, Mort helped the barely conscious Blake sit on the ground, and
he did as he was told. His dirty body gleamed in the spotlights, and he twirled
around so they could see that he wasn't bitten.

One soldier stepped up close to
him, pointed to the cuts on Mort's forehead, and asked, "How did that
happen?"

I used my head to bash
through the window of a cop car,
he thought. "I jumped through a
window."

"None of those things got
you?" the soldier asked.

"Wouldn't be here if they
did," Mort said.

The soldier looked at Blake on
the ground. "What about him? What's his story?"

"He got his bell rung by an
explosion. He needs a doctor."

"He bit?" the soldier
asked.

"He wouldn't be here if he
was, would he?"

The soldier looked at Mort, and
then made up his mind, pointing in a general direction. "There's a triage
center back there."

"Thanks," Mort said as
he lifted Blake off the ground. Mort limped in the direction of the Coliseum,
his throbbing knee of little concern.

"Where are we?" Blake
managed to mutter, before his head drooped to his chest.

Mort surveyed his surroundings.
He didn't like what he saw. Pale fingers, the flesh rubbed and scratched off of
them, curled through the tiny diamonds of the chain-link fence surrounding the
Coliseum. Faces devoid of color, with the exception of crimson blood, pressed
against the fence, as if they could simply push their way through. There were
too many for Mort to count. A clock started ticking in his head. His survival
instincts kicked in, and he knew that it would only be a matter of time until
the fences came down. He had to get Blake looked at before it was too late to
check out.

Sunlight poured into the back of
the Turtle through the turret above. They were all calling it the Turtle now.
Ace and his three surviving men threaded their way through the city in the
Turtle. Their numbers had swelled somewhat after they had destroyed the
helicopter. A handful of survivors had run out to them, waving guns in the air.
They were not the sort of folk that appreciated such things as "martial
law."

Beer flowed in the back of the
vehicle as Ace strummed his electric guitar. He had liberated it from
Beelzebub's after the crash, along with his amplifier. The Turtle was too
confined for him to plug it in, and playing the guitar without massive amounts
of distortion was something of a turnoff.

The others talked while Ace
strummed, waiting for the next opportunity for chaos. Slutty Rivets drove the
vehicle, with Spider in the front passenger seat. Pudge was in the back with
Ace, making nice with their new passengers. He seemed relieved not to be stuck
with only Ace to talk to. Ace listened to their conversation in the back of his
mind while he played his favorite song "Death and Gasoline" on his
guitar.

"So you guys were just
hiding in your apartment building the whole time?" Pudge asked, goofy
disbelief in his words.

A man with a thick gray beard
nodded his head and said, "Yeah. We didn't know what we were going to do.
I guess we thought about just sticking it out and hoping the military would
handle it. When we saw you guys take out that helicopter, we knew the military
wasn't going to be able to do shit."

"Have you guys heard
anything about other parts of the country?" Pudge asked.

The man reached down and pulled
a can of beer out of a bag. He popped the top and took a sip, drops of beer
falling from his mustache to hang in his gray beard. "Ain't you guys seen
the news?"

Pudge shook his head. "We
were locked up last night."

The man with the gray beard just
shook his head as if he couldn't believe the words that were coming out of his
mouth. "It's all over, man. They got this shit in D.C., New York. Hell,
they even got it over in Japan."

Ace missed his fingering.
Whether it was because of what the man said or because Slutty Rivets had just
run over a bump in the road, he couldn't say. He wouldn't say. Not even to
himself.

"It's happening
everywhere?"

The bearded man shook his head.
"Ain't no place safe, not in town, not outside of town. The only place
that is safe would be the Coliseum. There's a station on the radio been
broadcasting some nonsense about a rescue camp, but it's all nonsense, just
government hooey to get us all to come out of our homes and get ourselves
killed."

"Why would they do
that?" Pudge asked.

The bearded man took a sip from
his beer and smiled. "Overpopulation, my friend. There's just too many
damn people, not enough jobs, not enough space. Hell, you think the government
didn't know about this shit? You think they didn't know that there was a virus
out there that could turn people into the living dead? They probably invented
it! They probably have the cure out there right now, and they're holding onto
it until enough of us have died. By then, there won't be enough of us to do
anything about it. And if they do decide to save us, even after all of this
mess, the people will probably still thank them."

Ace smiled down at his guitar.
He could see the bearded man's words seep into the other passengers' brains,
burrowing deeper, like the roots of a tree, threatening to crack their brains
apart as the roots thickened  and the ideas gained more and more credence. They
wanted answers, and a bearded man drinking a beer was giving them one. Though
the answers were ridiculous and worthy of derision, they wanted one so badly
that they were willing to accept even the most foolish answer given. Ace
thanked the bearded man in his mind.

"I don't like this
government," Ace said.

The passengers looked at Ace, a
skinny man in a leather jacket, dark sunglasses covering his eyes, and his arm
draped over an electric guitar. He had been quiet for the whole ride, so when
he spoke they listened. Even Slutty Rivets and Spider in the front of the vehicle
stopped their chattering.

"I think this man is
right," Ace continued, pointing at the bearded man. "But I also think
the time for talk is gone. Now, today, we need actions. Who are they protecting
in this Coliseum? You?" Ace pointed at the man with the gray beard.

"Nah, man," he
replied.

"You?" Ace pointed at
Pudge.

"Do I look protected?"

"So who are they
protecting? They didn't protect me. When you were hiding, trapped inside, they
didn't protect you. They protect themselves. They have the way to stop all of
this, but they are not using it."

Ace let his words sink into his
passengers' brains, planting more roots, creeping, crawling roots.

"They hide in this place,
this Coliseum, waiting for us to die."

The passengers' faces were angry
now. The roots were swelling in their brains, pushing logic to the side,
cracking reality, and casting Ace in a new light.

"I say it's time to take it
back. If they won't protect us, then we must protect ourselves."

"Right on," the
gray-bearded man yelled. Others joined in, echoing his sentiment.

Pudge straightened his glasses
and looked up at Ace, who was now standing, fever hanging on his lips.
"How do we do that?"

"If they want refugees,
then we will bring them refugees." Ace looked down at his guitar and
smiled. "We're going to put on a little concert. It's the last show on
earth, boys and girls. And you're all invited."

The Annies were drawn by the
helicopters. McCutcheon knew that. The Annies did not sleep. McCutcheon knew
that. The Annies wanted to eat live flesh. McCutcheon knew that as well. What
McCutcheon didn't know was that the Annies could have such a demoralizing
effect on soldiers that had been hardened by years of service overseas.

These were men that had seen and
done things that most civilians could only begin to imagine. Yet, within the
last four hours, he had received note of several suicides, a major outbreak in
the base, and one notice of an entire chopper crew going AWOL, in addition to
the ones that they had lost earlier in the day.

McCutcheon could understand the
chopper crew. They had the means, they had the chance, and they were now gone,
and there was no way to get them back. He envied them. If he could get away
with it, he would probably try to make his way back to Colorado and find his
wife and daughter.

What he couldn't understand were
the men and women who killed themselves in their bunks. They found one man
hanging from a pipe in the bathrooms, his legs jittering and kicking as if he
were alive. He wasn't though, as the two men had found out when they attempted
to cut him down. You couldn't blame them for trying to save him. It was an
unfortunate situation, but the reality was that one man's selfish act had led
to a mass panic resulting in the death of a couple hundred soldiers.

After they had dispatched the
suicidal soldier and all the victims of the outbreak, McCutcheon had to deal
with an even worse problem. Two soldiers had been bitten during the outbreak,
and he had them quarantined. He gave them one hour to get their affairs in
order while a soldier stood guard over them, a rifle in hand. When their time
was up, he collected their letters, saluted the men, and put the gun to their
heads himself. They had only been bitten, but this was the protocol now, immediate
termination of the compromised.
Kill 'em,
he thought. Simple bites and
scratches had ended these men's lives. Before they could turn, he had ended
theirs.

McCutcheon wasn't mad. It was
all just a matter of understanding reality. The reality was that outside of the
perimeter, there were thousands of dead, honing in on their own encampment.
Whether they knew they were there or whether they were simply following the
helicopters didn't matter. The end result was the same. Outside of the camp,
the dead gathered, their faces pressed against the fence. Men, women, and
children of the United States of America, were now his number one enemy, and
they were loud.

The Terminal was filled with the
constant buzz of their moaning and sighing. The noise seemed to cut through
every sort of barrier that he had put between himself and the milling masses.
It was a plaintive sound, one that found its way inside a man's brain and
rattled around, until all you could think about were the thousands of decaying
corpses that were pressed up against the Terminal's fortifications. He
understood why a man would kill himself after listening to it for hours. Their
situation seemed hopeless, and to be honest, McCutcheon's number one concern
was no longer saving Portland, Oregon. It was now to do right by the soldiers
under his command. They were outnumbered, they were under-supplied and
understaffed... and they were falling apart.

People were slipping away,
either by disappearing or by killing themselves. Something had to be done, but
what?

McCutcheon sat in his chair, the
voices of the dead threading through his mind and turning his thoughts dark.
The latest soldier to kill himself had done a poor job of it. Slit wrists,
followed by a crazy stumble through camp, during which he had latched onto
several people, some of whom would later wind up locked in a room writing their
final words to someone they loved, who may or may not be alive or dead. At
least the first guy had the common decency to hang himself and prevent his
corpse from wandering all over the damn Terminal.

McCutcheon sat up in his chair
and pawed through the letters, his fingers still reeking of gunpowder. He hoped
he wouldn't have to shoot anyone else that day. The letters were sappy, showed
little creativity, and were utterly heartbreaking in their simplicity. He
stuffed the letters into a manila envelope and left it unsealed. There would be
more. He knew that, and it wasn't like the damn post office was running
anymore. He tossed the envelope on his desk and walked over to the coffee
machine in the corner.

Some of the communications
officers were there, talking in hushed tones, their faces gray and ashen.

"What's the word,
men?"

Neither of the men could look
him in the eye. That was not a good thing.

McCutcheon grabbed the coffee
pot, and dumped some mud into his cup. For a second, he thought about just
drinking the coffee black for the men's sake, but only a maniac would let the
army's supernatural coffee concoction slide down their throat without a dose of
sugar or cream. He grabbed the powdered creamer on the counter, and dumped it
into his cup, followed by one plain white packet of sugar.

He could feel the communications
officers watching him out of the corner of his eye. He stirred the coffee with a
plain white swizzle stick, and when he couldn't stand their staring anymore, he
said, "What is it?"

The stockier of the two communications
officers looked at him and stammered out a reply. "We were just talking
about contingency plans, sir."

McCutcheon laughed without
looking at the men. "Oh, really? And what did you two geniuses come up
with, all on your own?"

The taller communications
officer spoke. "We were just wondering when the mission would be called. I
mean we've made almost no ground so far and..."

McCutcheon stopped stirring his
coffee and turned to face the men. "Stop right there, private. Your first
mistake was talking in the first place. Your second mistake was trying to
figure out something that is far beyond your pay grade. But your biggest
mistake is walking around here flapping your gums about contingency
plans."

McCutcheon grabbed his cup of
coffee and tossed it into the metal sink. He slammed the coffee cup on the
counter and looked the tall man in the eye, boring a hole into his head with
his stare. "You want out of here? Huh?" The men said nothing, their
eyes large and round. "There are three ways out of here, private. One, you
die. Two, you drop your shit and walk out of here, and you die alone. Three,
you stop your sniveling, you get back on those comms, and you help us start
winning this war."

McCutcheon strode up to the tall
man, and though the comms officer had some six inches on him, McCutcheon could
feel him shrink with every syllable. "Now get your ass back on those
comms, and if I hear any more of your uninformed suppositions about tactics,
you'll find yourself hiking home through Annie territory with nothing but your
dick in your hand. You got that?"

"Sir, yes, sir." The
communications officer saluted McCutcheon and turned on his heel, heading back
to the small room where all of the communications equipment had been set up.
The smaller communications officer did the same, and when they had both
disappeared, McCutcheon set about the business of redoing his coffee, which he
had only dumped purely for theatrical reasons.

It was worse than he thought.
The men were squirrelly, he could feel it. The two communications officers
weren't just discussing contingency plans. They were feeling out the situation,
testing his mettle, seeing if any cracks were forming in his resolve. This was
how it went. This was why they were doomed.

In a normal confrontation on
foreign soil, this situation never happened. Soldiers did not simply drop their
rifle and walk off into foreign lands. But they weren't in a foreign land.
These men were home, their boots firmly walking on the dirt that they had each
vowed to protect. Home was a stolen car away, and at the rate they were going,
there wouldn't be an Army to bring them back in. First came the talk of
contingency plans. Then came the talk of disappearing. Then came the outright
defiance and a broken chain of command. McCutcheon was fairly sure that there
was nothing he could do about any of this. The ball was dropping. He could
either get out of the way or get crushed by it.

"Fuck," McCutcheon
said as he took a sip of mud. "Not enough sugar."