This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down (15 page)

The first thing that Murph saw
on the camera was the busted gate lying on the ground, entangled in the wheels
of a pick-up truck. The gate had been a black iron thing that had always looked
out of place. It was the type of gate that seemed more appropriate for a
mansion than a power plant. The gate was affixed to a couple of concrete guard
shacks. As long as Murph could remember, there had never been any guards at the
power plant, just a magnetic reader that scanned their work badges. Now the
gate was twisted underneath the truck, while the guard shack itself was caved
in by the front fender of the pick-up truck. He had no idea how long the truck
had been there because he had no idea how long he had been lost in the hypnotic
glow of the boiler.

The doors to the truck were wide
open, as if someone had fled the scene, and black exhaust still erupted from
the truck's muffler. Bodies lay scattered about the desert ground, apparently
thrown from the back of the pick-up in the collision. Sitting behind the wheel
was a slumped form. Murph recognized the bony forearms immediately, even over
the grainy camera footage. It was Skinny Tom.
What the fuck was he doing?

Murph watched as the form behind
the steering wheel sat up and slid from the driver's seat. It stumbled
drunkenly, and Murph could see that Skinny Tom was injured. The fingers of his
right hand were missing, but he didn't seem to notice. Then Murph saw another
form climb out of the cab of the truck, a little boy, his arm dripping blood
and a blank look on his face that was a perfect match for the look plastered
across Skinny Tom's face. On the black and white monitor, it looked as if the
boy's overalls had been stained in oil, but Murph was certain it was more
blood.

The figures that had been thrown
from the truck began to move. They must have been packed into the back of the
pick-up like sardines. There were ten that Murph could see. He watched as
Skinny Tom knelt next to a woman whose forehead was bleeding. He wrapped his
arms around her and pulled her close, as if for a hug. Then her arms began to
flail in the air, her head thrown back and her mouth wide open. Murph couldn't
hear the scream, but it felt as if he could.

Murph grabbed his radio, pressed
the button and said, "Chief, we got a problem out at the main gate."

"What kind of
problem?" the Chief replied.

"There's been some sort of
accident. Skinny Tom and a bunch of other people I don't know. I think they might
be some of them."

"Alright, I'm checking it
out."

"You want me to come down
there?" Murph asked.

"No, you stay put. Don't
leave that room for nothing."

"You got it." Murph
punched up the loading dock and watched as the Chief ground out his cigarette
and walked over to the cab of his own truck, a beat-up old Mazda, low to the
ground and covered in rust. He leaned into the cab of the open window, and
pulled out a hunting rifle. He flung it over his shoulder, pulled a cigarette
out of his pocket, lit it, and took off jogging down the road, leaving a trail
of smoke behind him.

Murph switched the monitor to
the front gate and tried to figure out who was alive and who was dead. After a
couple of seconds, it wasn't so hard to figure out... because they were all
dead, except for one, a teenage boy, his Chuck Taylor's kicking up dust as he
looked for a way out of the circle of dead that were closing in on him. He
climbed onto the hood of the truck, and kicked at their pawing hands.

The Chief appeared, his rifle in
his hands, and his back to the camera, a cigarette still hanging out of his
mouth. He raised the rifle to his eye, and there was a flash. Skinny Tom
flinched and turned around, blood running down the front of his chest. The
Chief's first shot had entered his back and erupted out of his chest, turning
his shirt into a dark mess. His attention was now drawn to the Chief along with
a couple other of the dead.

The Chief used the bolt action
on his rifle to eject the spent shell casing and drive another round into the
chamber. Then he looked down the sights of the gun. There was another flash,
and this time Murph saw the back of Skinny Tom's head explode, showering the
dead behind him in more dark spots. Skinny Tom fell to the ground.

Murph felt relief as the Chief
began putting the dead down, one by one, the teenage boy still kicking and
shoving them away from the hood of the truck. Murph's relief was short-lived
however, as the boy slipped on a spot of blood on the truck's slick hood and
fell to the ground. The Chief worked feverishly, firing, operating the bolt on
his gun, and firing again, all to no avail. The boy was gone, torn to shreds by
the three remaining dead who had pounced on him the moment he had fallen to the
dusty ground.

The Chief sighted down his rifle
one more time and pulled the trigger, but this time there was no flash. He let
the muzzle of the rifle droop to the ground, and then the Chief backed away. In
the distance, Murph could see more people approaching down the main road...
slowly, ever so slowly.

Before the teenage boy in the
Chuck Taylor's could rise from the ground, the first of the walkers had
arrived... he was just as dead as the others.

The black man hovered over his
friend, getting in the way and asking questions whose answers he probably
wouldn't understand. He was dirtier than dirty, and Joan made him wash his
hands before he could even step foot into the triage area. He had come in
carrying a dazed white man with blood leaking out of his ears. They were
covered in filth, looked exhausted, and their skin was a patchwork of bruises
that made her hurt just looking at them.

The white man sat before her,
his eyes distant and dazed. "What's your name?"

He looked at her, uncomprehending.
She looked into his eyes, pulling out a penlight she had snagged from the head
medical officer. She shined them into his eyes, taking note of the dilation.

"Can you hear me?" she
asked. She snapped her fingers next to his ear, and frowned at his lack of a
reaction.

"His name is Blake. He
saved me."

"Blake, can you hear
anything I'm saying?" she said as loud as she could.

The man in front of her frowned
and shook his head. "I can't hear what you're saying," he said.

Joan pulled an otoscope from the
wall, attached a disposable plastic tip to it, and leaned in to look at his
ears. It wasn't good. Blake's eardrums were ruptured, far beyond what she could
fix. Normally, they would heal with time or with the help of a little surgery,
but this was not the place to be doing such a procedure. Joan pulled a notepad
from her pocket and wrote on it.

She held the pad out to Blake,
he focused his eyes on it, and then his head dropped.

"What does it say?"
Mort asked.

She held the notepad out to him,
and his lips moved as he read the words. "He's deaf? Is he going to get
better? Will it heal?"

"Not on its own. The
rupture is too large in both ears."

Mort let the words sink in. He
couldn't imagine what Blake must be feeling. This new world was not the type of
world you wanted to be living in without the ability to hear. Mort put his hand
on Blake's shoulder as a sign of comfort. Blake looked up at him, smiled and
shrugged. "It ain't all bad," he said. "Now I never have to hear
the Dave Matthews Band on the radio." Blake smiled at Mort.

Mort didn't know what to do, so
he just smiled back.

Joan wrote more words on the
notepad and handed it to Blake. He read the words solemnly, as she filled in
his friend. "Your friend has a concussion. He needs to get plenty of rest,
which I know is a tough order to fill right now, but if he's going to survive,
he's going to need plenty of rest." Joan opened a drawer and pulled out a
bottle of military grade acetaminophen in a nondescript white bottle.
"This should help with the headaches that you both undoubtedly have. My
advice? Go grab some food, find a cot, and rest up."

"Thanks, Doc," the
black man said. "My name's Mort. We appreciate it." He held out his
hand to her, and Joan shook it gracefully.

"I'm Joan. Oh, and here.
Why don't you take this, you'll probably need it." Joan handed Mort the
notepad and the pen. He shoved it into the large pocket of his secondhand
military jacket and then had Blake throw an arm over his shoulder. As he bent
down, he winced at the pain in his knee.

"You ok?" Joan asked.

Mort shook his head. "It's
nothing, just hurt my knee a bit."

Joan shook her head. Men, they
were always the same. Even in the midst of an apocalypse, they refused to take
care of themselves. Joan patted the table, and said, "Get up here. Let's
take a look."

"No, it's nothing, Doc. I
got it covered."

"Stop being a stubborn
shit, and get your ass on that table."

Blake stood up and wobbled over
to a small chair in the corner, holding onto the bottle of painkillers. "Well,
since you put it that way," he said. Mort flopped on the table, sighing as
he laid down. Joan pulled his pant leg up and sighed in frustration as she
looked at Mort's swollen knee.

"How the hell have you been
walking around on this thing?"

"Ain't had no choice. Out
there, it's either move or die. I'm not much into dying."

Joan pressed on the knee,
testing it. She made him bend it and flex it. She sighed. "You're damn
lucky. I don't think there's anything structurally wrong with it, but if you
keep pushing it, it's going to get worse, and you'll injure it further.
So," Joan pointed back and forth at both of them, "the two of you
need to drag your butts down to get some food, find some cots, take three of
those pills, and get as much rest as you can. You, grab some ice. It'll help
reduce the swelling in your knee and his head."

"Sure thing, Doc."

"And if I see you two up
and walking around, I'm going to have those soldiers strap you down to your
cots and make sure you get the rest you need. Got that?"

Mort shook his head and got up
off the table. He gave Blake a shoulder to lean on and they disappeared from
the room. Joan plopped down in the chair that Blake had vacated.
What was
she doing?
The end of the world was out there and here she was playing
doctor. She supposed she just enjoyed being needed. In here, she was still
relevant, still important. Out in the real world, she was a liability, a brain
without the ability to take care of itself. She was dead meat walking on her
own, amongst the other dead meat.

She leaned forward and put her
head in her hands. The tears came, for the first time, and they came with
force. The tears were laced with a fear that she could taste in her mouth,
metallic and sharp. The prospect of her own death flooded her brain, and she
began to think about what a waste her entire life had been. She had worked hard
to become a doctor, and then, once she had become a doctor, that's all she had
done. There was no family, no friends, just work, some acquaintances, and a cat
that seemed altogether indifferent to her.

Thoughts of her cat stuck in her
apartment sent a new wave of sobbing through her. She wanted to kick her feet
and scream and roll on the floor, but she didn't; she just sat in her chair
smashing her hands into her face to hide the shame of her emotional breakdown.
Fuck
it. She had earned it.

"So you are human," a
voice said.

Joan couldn't even pull her
hands down to look at Clara. Another sob tore through her body. She felt awful
acting this way. So many people had lost so much more than her, and yet here
she was wailing like a baby, and now Clara was seeing it all.

Then there was an arm on her
shoulder, comforting her. Somehow, that made it even worse. Clara, who had lost
her soulmate, was comforting Joan who had lost nothing but the status of being
a doctor and a cat. Joan laid her head on Clara's breast and the sobs came,
along with the tears and the snot. She wanted to stop, but she couldn't. Her
arms reached around Clara, grabbing handfuls of her shirt, and together they
sat in a room in the underground of the Memorial Coliseum, while above them the
dead milled about, searching for a way to get at all the living people inside.

When the sobbing had subsided,
Joan lifted her head, her eyes red, her nose runny, and said, "I'm sorry.
I don't know why I'm crying."

Clara smiled at her and said,
"It's ok. I know why."

"Sure you do?"

"Yeah. I do. You're crying
because it's all going away. Change is hard, and though these changes are
fucked up and crazy, what it comes down to is that this is all basically just
change. We'll cry, and then we'll adapt."

Clara's words were hardly
comforting, but something about the way she said it calmed her down. There was
a bit of logic in there that she clung to. It was all just change. As horrible
as everything was, it all came down to change. Joan could change. She may not
be fit for this world any longer, but she could change. She could grow and
adapt.

Joan looked at Clara and smiled.
"I'm glad you're here."

"Yeah. I'm glad you're here
too."

The subsequent silence was
awkward, like the type of awkward when lovers first declare their love for each
other, wondering if the other had really meant it or had just said the words
back to be nice. Joan cleared her throat and stood up, rubbing at her eyes.

"I must look like a
mess." She walked over to the sink in the room, and turned on the water,
slurping it down straight from the faucet.

"We've got to get out of
here," Clara said abruptly.

It took a moment for Clara's
words to register in Joan's mind. "What do you mean?"

"We're not safe here."

Joan laughed, a short sharp
laugh with the ring of dismissal about it. "What are you talking about?
There are soldiers all around us. I can't think of any place safer."

"Yeah, and have you looked
at the soldiers recently?" Joan looked at Clara with confusion in her
eyes, so Clara continued. "I've been watching them, they're different. The
looks on their faces... there's fear in their eyes, Joan. I can see them
breaking down."

"You're just imagining
things," Joan said, mostly because she didn't want to believe it.

Clara grabbed Joan by the arm
and pulled her out of the triage center. They climbed a flight of stairs and
emerged out onto the concourse. It was night outside, and the noise of the day
had subsided so that all that was left was the sound of gas-powered generators
chugging away underneath the moans of the dead who numbered in the thousands.
The night was filled with the perpetual rattling of the chain-link fence that
encircled the Coliseum's courtyard.

"Look at them," Clara
said.

Joan did look. The soldiers
milled about, their faces haggard, their rifles clutched in their hands as they
stood at their guard posts, atop makeshift platforms overlooking the perimeter
of the Coliseum. There was little of the good-natured chatter that was so prevalent
when they had first arrived. Men on the ground walked along the fence, jabbing
bayoneted rifles into the eye sockets of the dead. The dead would slump to the
ground, only to be replaced by a fresh dead face.

"Notice anything?"
Clara asked.

"They're not
shooting."

"They haven't been shooting
for the last few hours. I asked a soldier why and he said they were conserving
ammunition. You know what that means?"

Joan swallowed hard. "They
don't have enough bullets to defend us."

"How long until those
fences come down and we're trapped inside a concrete tomb with no way
out?"

"What should we do?"
Joan asked.

"I don't know," Clara
replied. "The best thing we can do is be ready."

"Ready for what?"

"To fight for our
lives."