This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down (19 page)

They were locked in the booth,
Murph and the Chief. The dead roamed the power plant, their numbers growing. Shambling
corpses from the city trickled in through the downed gate, stumbling over the
twisted metal and old, cracked pavement. Murph had no idea of what was drawing
them to the power plant, but their numbers had grown considerably.

The town of Boardman was a small
town, never more than 3,500 people living there at any given moment. How many
of those people were dead now? How many of those dead were making their way to
the power plant, drawn by some impulse that Murph was too dim to understand?

Murph had watched the gauges
dwindle over the last hour. The power plant was not putting out the amount of
energy that it had been. They knew the reason why. One look at the conveyor
belt was answer enough. The coal wasn't coming in consistently. Out in the
yard, mountains of raw coal stood under covered sheds. The hoppers that fed the
conveyor belt relied on this mountain for fuel, but the hoppers had to be manually
filled to keep the boiler burning. Every other aspect of the power plant was
automated. The coal was crushed before it was fed into the boiler. The heat
from the burning coal super-heated the water flowing in industrial pipes,
transforming it into steam that turned turbines. The turning of the turbines
created electricity, all the electricity that Portland would need. But the
hoppers were running dry. Someone would have to go outside and use the
mini-dozer to push more coal into the hoppers.

They both knew it, but still
they sat there, watching as the power plant's output dwindled. When it had
reached a critical level, the Chief stood up and looked at the door.
"Well, we can't wait any longer."

This was the moment that Murph
was dreading, the moment where the Chief sent him out among the dead to refill
the hoppers. He would do it too... or at least try to. It wasn't as if he had
anything else to do.

"You want to go out
there?" the Chief asked him.

Murph shook his head.

"Yeah, I didn't think
so." The Chief stood up and looked around the office. He reached into the
front shirt pocket of his power plant overalls, and produced a pack of
cigarettes, a soft pack, the foil torn apart. He shook the pack, peering inside,
and said, "Hell, I'm almost out of cigarettes anyway. I'll go."

Relief washed over Murph,
followed by a withering dose of shame. He wished he could be like the Chief,
brave... calm. But he wasn't. Murph would never admit it to the Chief, but he
was scared, more scared than he had ever been in his life. Death was not
something that he spent of lot of his time thinking about, but now it was here,
and it was literally knocking on the door.

The Chief held the pack of
cigarettes out to Murph. "You want one of these before I go?"

"But what about the
rules?"

The Chief smiled, a fatherly
smile, and said, "Son, the moment the dead began getting up and walking
around the world, I think all of the rules went right out the window. Go on. Do
it."

Murph reached into the pack with
a trembling hand, and as they smoked underneath the florescent lights of the
control room, amid all of the twitching dials and glowing lights of the
console, the Chief told him his plan. Murph nodded and shook his head, focusing
on the task at hand. He would be important; he would serve as the Chief's eyes,
watching his back every step along the way.

When the time was right, and their
cigarettes had been ground to ash on the floor of the control room, the Chief
moved to the door. He turned the lock with a trembling hand, and then yanked
the door open. On the other side of the door, a familiar face greeted them. It
was one of the men that had left earlier, presumably to save his family.
Apparently, all he had succeeded in doing was becoming a meal for the dead. His
right arm hung at his side, tendons and bone exposed where the flesh had been
chewed off.

The Chief lowered his shoulder
and bulldozed the man off of the metal stairs that led up to the door. Murph moved
to the door, slammed it shut, and locked it. Before he closed the door all the
way, he saw the Chief in full flight, dodging through the handful of dead that
had gathered in the cooling tower room. He shivered with fear.

The chair squeaked as Murph plopped
down in it, wheeling it closer to the console and the controls for the
monitors. He followed the chief's progress on the screen. He was in the
cafeteria now, scrambling over the cafeteria tables to avoid the outstretched
hands of the dead. He spun out of the reach of a creature, only to spin right
into the arms of a grasping woman, her ankle bent at an impossible angle. The
Chief shoved the dead woman backwards, and she flew through the air and slid
ten feet across the slick cafeteria floor.

Murph's heart beat in his chest,
thundering underneath his sternum. He could only imagine what the Chief was
feeling as he scrambled for his life. He had a sudden urge for a bowl of
popcorn. The Chief made it through the cafeteria, and then bolted out the door
that led to the loading docks.

Murph switched the camera with
one hand, while clutching his radio in the other. On the loading docks, the
dead were staggered far apart, but as the door burst open, all heads turned to
the Chief as one, and the circle of the dead started tightening immediately.
The Chief ran to his truck, hopped in the cab and began rooting through it, his
back turned to the camera and the dead that were shuffling towards him. When a
man in a flannel shirt was within three steps of The Chief, Murph hopped on the
radio and said, "You got one behind you. Pretty close."

The Chief popped out of the cab
and spun around, delivering a solid punch to the creature's face, and shoving
it backwards, where it tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs. The Chief
hopped back into the cab and closed the door behind him. The dead were around
him now, banging on the flimsy metal of the Mazda pick-up.

"Come on, move your ass,
Chief."

Inside the truck, the Chief
found what he was looking for, and he fumbled with it in his lap. When he was
finished, he raised his hand, and there was a flash of light as he blew out the
glass of the driver's side window. One of the dead dropped to the ground, but
another stepped up to take its place, its arm clawing through the broken glass.

Murph saw the Chief swing his
elbow, smashing out the back window of the truck's cab, and then he was
crawling through the broken glass. He stood up in the back of the truck, and
waved around a revolver. He tucked it into the back of his pants, and then bent
down to pick up a crowbar that was lying among the garbage and empty beer cans
in the back. As the dead surged around the truck, he lashed out with the
crowbar, with little effect.

The Chief took a small, running
start and then leapt out of the back of the truck, landing hard upon the
ground. He was on his feet in a flash, his feet pounding the dust of the yard
into the air as the dead moved after him. Murph watched him run. His steps were
slower, and he was tiring out. Murph pumped his fist as the chief ran past one
of the dead, clocking it in the face with the tire iron. It fell to the ground,
but stood back up again as the Chief ran off the camera.

Murph switched to the conveyor
belt camera, and panned the camera to the side, where the mini-dozer sat
unmoving, like a child's forgotten toy underneath a mountain of coal stacked
higher than the camera could see. The dozer was a company vehicle on a secure
lot, so the key was still in the ignition as the Chief hopped into the black
driver's seat and turned the key, stomping on the gas pedal.

Murph could see that there was
trouble, so he grabbed his radio and said, "What's wrong?"

The Chief ignored Murph's
question, banging on the dashboard of the dozer, pounding on the gas pedal and
angrily turning the key. The dead had begun to wander onto the screen, drawn by
the noise of the choking engine.

"You got company, Chief.
They're getting closer."

The Chief set his handgun on the
dashboard within easy reach and continued to try to start the vehicle. Around
the front of the dozer, the dead spread out in a semi-circle, inching closer. A
black cloud of exhaust erupted from the dozer, and the Chief threw the dozer
into reverse, spinning it in a wide circle. As he spun the dozer around, he
brushed by one of the dead. It reached out to grab the Chief's arm, but he
jerked the dozer to the side, throwing the creature to the ground and plowing
into the mountain of coal. Angular chunks of coal cascaded down the side of the
mountain, making walking treacherous for the dead, but still they came. At the
impact, his handgun flew off of the dashboard, and Murph cursed in the control
room.

The Chief operated the dozer,
pushing a pile of coal ahead of it as it trundled towards the hoppers. In the
process, he ran over the dead, people with familiar faces, if not names. The
vehicle was slow, so it didn't kill them, but as the dozer's tracks rolled over
their broken bodies, they came out the other side worse for wear and less
functional than they had been before.

The Chief continued the process
for four or five loads, and Murph watched as the dead's numbers dwindled, mown
down by the heavy tracks of the dozer or pushed inadvertently into the hopper
along with loads of coal. The dials rose slowly and the power plant began
pumping out more energy.

Then disaster struck. One of the
dead reaching out for the Chief missed and grabbed hold of something vital to
the dozer's operation. Its arm jerked for a second as the dozer pulled away,
and it came away with a rubber hose in its hand. The dozer left a dark stream
of liquid as it trundled across the dusty desert ground. Murph knew something
was wrong when the dozer crawled to a halt. He pressed the button on his radio
and asked, "Chief, I think you got a problem. You're leaking
something."

There was no answer from the
Chief. He hopped out of the cab of the dozer with the tire iron in hand. He ran
around the front and looked. Murph could tell right away it was bad because the
Chief shook his head, and his shoulders slumped down. The Chief held his radio
to his mouth and said, "It got the damn oil line. It's fucked."

"What are we going to
do?" Murph asked.

"We can't do shit." A
dead woman approached the Chief from behind.

"You got one behind
you," he said.

"Thanks," the Chief
said into the radio as he spun and delivered a one-handed blow to the woman's
head with the tire iron, caving in the side of her skull and knocking her to
the ground. The creature's limbs still reached for the Chief.

All the noise and excitement had
brought most of the dead in the area to the Chief's position, but it didn't
seem to faze him at all. "Alright. I'm coming to get you."

Murph didn't know why he said
it, but he knew it was true as soon as he did. "Don't. You'll just get
yourself killed."

The Chief scrambled up the side
of the mountain of coal away from the dead that were after him. He looked
around and then located the camera and looked straight at it as he held the
radio up to his mouth. "You sure, kid? I can come get you. I don't mind."

"Nah, I'm fine. I think I'm
just going to sit here. Maybe listen to the radio."

"I'll get some help. I'll
be back for you. Just hang in there."

They were nice words. Murph
wanted to believe them, but he knew they were just words. They had failed.
"Good luck, Chief."

"Call me, Walt," the
Chief sent back.

Murph laughed. What a weird name
for the Chief. "Good luck, Walt."

"I'll be back," the
Chief said as he scrambled sideways on the mountain of coal.

Murph leaned back in his chair,
having nothing to do but stare at the dials on the console. He watched as the
needles ebbed, and eventually the hum of the cooling towers ceased altogether.
The lights went off in the power plant, and the monitors went black. Murph
reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He probably should
have told the Chief that he still had cigarettes, but it wouldn't have
mattered. He pulled one from the pack and lit it up.

The banging on the door didn't
bother him at all. He put his feet up on the desk, grabbed the FM radio from
the console and fiddled with the channels until he found a station that was
still playing music. The only one he could find was a classical station. He
didn't mind this either.

He listened to the swell and
rise of the music, turning it up loud to drown out the banging on the door. It
was beautiful, he closed his eyes, took a puff of the cigarette and blew the
smoke into the air, as his mind swirled with colors that undulated and moved to
the rhythm of the music, brightening with each bang of the drums, slithering
with the whine of the violins.
I should have learned an instrument,
he
thought to himself.

Then the music died. Gone, just
like that. It was his fault. He knew that. The power plant was responsible for
well over 60% of Portland's power, but along the way, it fed all the small
towns throughout the gorge. The power was running its last wires, like a river
damned up at the source.

Portland was in for a world of
hurt. He'd hate to be trapped in an elevator when the juice ran out. Murph
laughed and lit his lighter. On the radio was an ancient tape deck. He pressed
the eject button and pulled out the tape cassette. It was white and ancient.
Cheap Trick. He laughed, put the tape cassette in the tape deck and pressed
play. He closed his eyes and refused to open them, as "I Want You to Want
Me" blasted on the radio. Underneath the guitars and drums, the banging
outside let him know that he was indeed wanted.

Ace and the boys had lived
through an interesting 24 hours. They had rolled through the city, collecting
refugees, calling out to them, and picking up cars and supplies. The supplies
were mostly junk food and beer. The cars were mostly hot-wired, hastily brought
to life by his checkered-past compadres during stops. Behind the Turtle
stretched a line of cars, filled with bland, thoughtless people, people who
would have rotted in their homes were it not for Ace and his merry band of
liberators. They were happy to be saved, but should they be?

Behind that line of cars came a
different line. The dead trailed them. They could have lost them easily, but
Ace didn't want to lose them, so the convoy moved at a snail's pace. He wanted
them to join in the fun. This was going to be Ace's final concert, and he
wanted the entire city of Portland to be there, dead or alive.

Pudge had finished securing the
amp to the roof of the Turtle, rigging it with bungee cords and some ratchet
straps they had found underneath one of the benches in the back of the vehicle.
The people in the back of the Turtle smiled at him, as he moved to the side to
let Pudge crawl back inside via the turret. They didn't know what he was
planning, and even if they did, there was nothing they could do to stop him. Ace
threw the guitar over his shoulder and mounted the turret, poking his head out
to see the ruins of the world around him.

The sun was going down, and
shadows were taking over the city. To the west, the sun glowed a fiery orange,
as it began its descent behind the hilltops that made up the Willamette Valley,
Portland nestled smack dab in the middle. The sky looked like fire. Ace smiled,
and felt the buzz of his guitar building as he turned all of the knobs on the
amp up as high as they would go. He strummed the guitar, and sound blasted through
the evening.

Smoke hung heavy in the air.
Buildings burned throughout the city, and they had stopped combing the streets
for survivors. Now people ran out of their houses upon seeing their convoy.
Dozens of cars lined up behind them, and for anyone that was ready to go, they
had plenty of time to reach one of them and board the train to safety... or so
they thought.

The Turtle was great for
clearing out random cars that were blocking the streets. There were times when
they had to circle around particularly nasty wrecks, but for the most part,
they could just shove everything out of the way if they moved slowly.

As the sun disappeared and the
shadows overtook the streets, Ace caught a glimpse of the Rose Garden in the
distance. That was where they were headed according to Pudge, not to the giant
building that resembled a sleeping headless turtle, but to the squatty building
next to it. That was where the government was. That was where the show was. It
was going to be a hot ticket. He was going to blast the gates off the place.

He smiled at the image that was
building in his head, an image of chaos and carnage. He climbed out of the
turret and stood on top of the Turtle. He looked down at the amplifier strapped
down on the roof of the vehicle. With his faded Converse shoes planted firmly
on the roof of the Turtle, he struck the guitar. The noise was deafening, and
his ear drums shook with the force of the amp, but he didn't care.

He didn't care about anything.
He played a song, like a piper of long ago... only there were a lot more than
130 children following him, and they were going into town, not away from it.

****

Joan was busy putting salve on a
rotund man's hands when the lights went out. "Shit," she said, for
there was nothing else to say. The darkness lasted a few seconds, and then the emergency
lighting kicked in. It was an orange light, not nearly as bright as the florescents
she had been working under, and now the entire triage center was laced in
shadows.

She heard her patient exhale
heavily, as if he had been holding his breath for a long time. His face matched
the fear that Joan felt at losing power. Joan attempted to calm him down by
saying, "Freaky, right?"

The man looked as if he was on
the verge of tears. His eyes were filled with a watery shine that could spill
onto his cheek at any moment. Without warning, Clara appeared, skidding to a
stop on the concrete floor. From the corner of her eye, she saw the patient
reach up to his face and wipe his eyes.

Clara strode across the floor,
oblivious to the presence of the patient. "This is not good."

"I'm sure it will come back
on in a second. The Army will figure something out," Joan said, more to
calm the patient than anything else.

"Are you blind, Joan? They
are barely keeping this place together. What makes you think that they can get
the power back on?"

"She has a point," the
man said.

Joan didn't bother to
acknowledge his presence. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"We've got to get out of
here."

Joan had heard this before. As soon
as they had made it to the Coliseum, Clara had started working on figuring out
a way out of the place. "There's no place to go, Clara."

"Any place is better than
here. What happens when we run out of food? What happens when those fences come
down? What happens when those soldiers go from being assholes to being sadistic
assholes?"

Joan shrugged her shoulders and
admitted defeat. "You're right. Of course, you're right. We'd be better
out there on our own, fighting off the thousands of dead with our bare hands.
Is that what you want?"

"I may know a way
out," the man said. They listened as the man, whose name was Rudy,
detailed the plan that had been told to him only that morning.

"Do you think they'll let
us go with you?" Joan asked.

"I don't see why not,"
he said.

"It's worth a shot. It's
not like anyone else is offering us a chance for survival."

"Great," Rudy said.
"Follow me."

****

The night deepened, and outside
the Coliseum, a sound could be heard over the thousands of dead, wailing. It
was a harsh sound, starting faint at first. Then as the sound came closer,
those inside the Coliseum could hardly believe what they were hearing. It was
music, the harsh, distorted twangs of a guitar being played at lightning-fast
speed. The soldiers stood dumbfounded as one of their own vehicles approached,
a train of cars following behind, the vehicles' headlights shining in their
eyes.

They stopped at the edge of the
sea of dead, and the man stood on top of the vehicle, playing like a mad man.
The music built, until it seemed the man's hands would fall off. By now,
refugees from inside had filed out to see what the commotion was. No one
noticed as a group of people split off from those watching the impromptu
concert. No one cared.

The man played and played, and
the dead began to shift away from the fences, drawn to the skinny man in the
leather jacket, standing on top of a Stryker and giving the performance of his
life. The soldiers cheered, causing a scattered handful of the dead to turn in
their direction once more. But the main mass of the dead continued heading
towards the guitar-playing madman. He smiled at them, lit up by the massive,
generator-powered spotlights that the soldiers had erected just in case the
Coliseum lost power.

Then the song was over. The
soldiers stood, looking at the man... wondering what he was going to do next.
They didn't have to wait for long. As he popped back into the Stryker, a voice
came over the loudspeaker of the vehicle.

"Martial law is over. We,
the people, declare our independence."

Major Miller was standing in the
courtyard, trying to understand what was going on, when the turret on the
Stryker erupted. Bright flashes appeared from the muzzle of the fifty caliber
machine gun, and the Stryker accelerated. The machine gun sent rotting body
parts arcing through the air, and the Stryker's wheels bounced over the dead
that it mowed down.

With the aid of the machine gun
and its own crushing momentum, the Stryker cut a swath of destruction through
the dead and was at the fence in no time. It didn't stop at the fence as the
crowd in the Coliseum's courtyard expected. Instead it barreled forward, fifty
caliber shells ripping through the fence, the soldiers, and the refugees on the
other side.

The soldiers opened fire on the
Stryker as it lurched across the courtyard, launching the bodies of the living
into the air. The Stryker turned in a tight circle, sparks erupting from its
armored plating as soldiers fired at the vehicle. Then it plowed through the
other side of the chain link fence, ripping it down, and opening up a
hundred-foot gap in the Coliseum's defenses. The vehicle was a knife, slashing
its way across the refugees' throats. Then it was gone, shooting off into the
night, dripping blood and leaving the soldiers scrambling to plug the hole as
hordes of the dead poured through the gap.

****

Lieutenant General McCutcheon
was in the comms room when he heard Major Miller's panicked communiqué. It was
hard to hear the words over the machine gun fire in the background, but he
understood the gist.

As soon as the Major was done
talking, McCutcheon scrambled his troops. The choppers wouldn't be much use in
the dark, but at the very least, they could get some of his men, and maybe the
refugees out of there. McCutcheon stood on the apron of the terminal, squinting
his eyes to protect them from debris as he watched the choppers take off.

****

When the guitar-playing madman
had first shown up, Blake had tapped Mort on the shoulder and pointed at a
group of people hurrying away from all of the commotion. Blake hastily
scribbled the words, "Let's follow," on a notepad. Mort nodded his
agreement, and as usual, Blake took the lead.

Blake had been mostly silent for
the entire day. To Mort, he seemed like a man trapped inside of his own head,
aching to get out but not knowing how. As far as Mort could tell, there was no
improvement in Blake's hearing. But his eyesight was still 100%.

Blake walked slowly ahead of
Mort, his back hunched over, and his feet sliding silently across the concourse
floor. Mort wondered exactly what it is they were doing. Blake hugged the wall,
and Mort did the same. Ahead of them the group of people was moving much faster
than they were. They watched as the group ducked into a side door. Blake held
his hand up, and then, after a few seconds, he waved Mort on. They pulled open
the door and crept down a set of dimly lit stairs.

The emergency lighting made it
difficult to see, and as they reached the bottom of the stairwell, Blake leaned
around the corner. Mort leaned around with him, peering down the shadowy
hallway of the lower level. If the upper-level could be said to be Spartan, the
lower level made the upper level look absolutely cozy.

The walls were white,
criss-crossed with exposed wiring and the gleam of steel pipes. The ceiling was
more of that cold concrete that made up the upper concourse, gray and
spiderwebbed with cracks. At the end of the hall, just around the curve, they
saw the group of people moving quietly down the hallway, purpose in their stride.
Mort thought he recognized the doctor that had worked on Blake.

They crept along until the group
came upon a door. From down the hall, they heard a man say, "Let's bust
this bitch wide open." Then there was a banging sound. The hall filled
with a loud ringing that echoed off the concrete walls.

Blake scribbled something on his
notepad and handed it to Mort. For the last day, Mort had been communicating with
Blake solely through writing. Mort was out of practice. He had never been much
of a reader in school, and once he had hit the roads and railways, all he ever
had a chance to read was random bits of graffiti splattered on the railway
cars, and most of that was unintelligible. He took the notepad and read Blake's
words. "What are they doing?" he had written.

Mort took Blake's pen and wrote,
"They're trying to break down a door." He handed the pad back to
Blake, and he read the words. He shook his head, and they waited. There was a
loud crash from around the bend; it sounded as if they had finally succeeded in
breaking open the door. The voices down the hallway became more muted, and Mort
assumed they had entered the room. He stepped in front of Blake and leaned
around the curving wall of the concourse to see a soldier approaching the room
from the opposite direction, his rifle in his hand.

Mort leaned back, and listened.
Blake grabbed his shoulder and held the notepad out to him. Mort scribbled
"SOLJER" on the notepad and handed it to Blake. Around the corner,
Mort heard a man, shout, "Freeze!"

There were words from inside of
the room, but Mort couldn't make out any of them. Without warning, Blake took
off down the hallway, running as quiet as a man could in cowboy boots. The
soldier heard Blake before he saw him, but by then it was too late. Blake dove
and tackled the man to the ground, pressing the gun to his chest. They fought
on the ground, and Mort cursed at his own cowardly paralysis.

The swearing kicked him into
action, and then he was there, right next to Blake. He didn't want to do it,
and he felt awful about it, but he kicked the soldier in the head. The soldier
went still immediately, his eyes rolling in the back of his head and his arms
locking into a frozen position. Mort's hands came to his face, and he looked
around apologetically. "I didn't want to," he said.

The doctor came over and dropped
to her knees. "Is he dead?" Mort asked.

Blake stood up, pulling the
rifle from the man's hands. He patted Mort on the shoulder and said,
"Thanks."

The doctor looked up at him, and
said, "He's going to be alright, but his face will probably never look the
same." Mort could already see the swelling on the side of the man's cheek.
He didn't like what he had done, so he turned and focused on the room.