This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down (7 page)

The girl rose to her feet,
hungry for more. The soldiers didn't know what to do. They were waiting for a
command from the man in charge, but he gave none. He seemed confused, content
with looking at the blood that ran down his arm. He dabbed at the bite on his
cheek, wincing in pain.

The girl reached her arms out to
him, and the man in charge shoved her away, almost without thinking. Chloe was
the first to speak, "Shoot it," she said. Rudy looked at the faces of
the soldiers around him, young men, not much older than himself. They looked at
each other, wondering which one of them was made of tough enough stuff to gun
down a little girl in the streets of Portland.

"Gimme a gun. I'll do it,"
Chloe said.

Amazingly enough, one of the soldiers
handed his rifle to her. She looked down the sight of the gun, lined up her
shot and squeezed the trigger. She handed the rifle back to the man who had
lent it to her.

The soldiers ushered Rudy and
the girls to the trucks. Already a crowd had gathered around them. The soldiers
dragged the man in charge after them. "You ok?" one of the men asked
him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm alright.
Just stings a little."

They climbed up into the back of
the truck, a large two-ton beast that guzzled diesel and looked like a
mechanical ancestor of the covered wagons that so many had used to emigrate and
make their lives in Oregon over a hundred and fifty years ago.

They sat on the metal benches that
lined the sides of the truck. The man in charge leaned his head back against the
tight green tarp of the truck. "Send Silva up here," he bellowed. A
man with sickly, yellow brown skin stood up and rushed to the man in charge. He
began washing and cleaning the wounds, water mixing with blood and falling to
the floor of the gurgling truck.

"Can I have my gun back
now?" Chloe asked.

The man looked at her, smiled,
and said once again, "You're not going to need it." Sweat gathered on
his brow, and Chloe heard his stomach grumble as they bound his wounds.
"Don't worry. You'll be safe," he said, before coughing weakly.
"Hurry, up with that bandage, Silva. I don't have all day."

Rudy and Amanda watched as the
man in charge paled. Their hands were interlocked. Rudy turned to Amanda and
asked, "Can I have one of those beers?"

Katie had driven towards the
river and into one of the more industrial parts of town. She saw few people. If
they were there, they were hiding. The only signs of life she had seen had been
other cars passing on side roads, there for an instant and then gone. Large
warehouses, some seemingly as old as the city itself, rose into the sky, most
of them thirty or forty feet high. The views were terrible, but due to the lack
of housing in the area, she could almost forget that they were in the middle of
a potential apocalypse event. Her Dodge Durango purred along while the voice on
the radio droned on.

A shelter,
she thought.
Would
it be enough to keep them out? Would it be safe enough?
She thought of the
time she had spent in the old man's house, Fred Walker. She thought of the
relentless banging, the untiring assault her dead husband and child had put on
the door of Fred Walker's bedroom. That was only two of them. What would happen
if there were a thousand of those things? What would happen if there were twenty-thousand?
What place would be safe from that sort of attack?

A helicopter buzzed overhead, firing
a rocket into the day. The explosion rattled her windows. She couldn't see what
had been blown up, but she hoped the explosion had taken plenty of those things
with it. She halted the vehicle at a stop sign, more out of habit than anything
else. Other than the noise of the helicopters in the sky and the haze that
crept through the city, it seemed like nothing more than an ordinary day in
Portland. What would she be doing now if this were just a typical day in June?
She'd probably be making lunch for Kevin while her husband bashed away on his
laptop, trying to craft some sort of young adult fiction novel that would sell
in the millions, so he could quit his job. He said he knew the formula. He said
he had cracked the code. She believed him, though there was no proof that he
held within his head the code to capture the hearts of millions of teenage
girls.

She would probably be putting
together some sort of sandwich assortment, ratcheting up the air conditioning,
and fighting the temptation to open a bottle of wine. Kevin would be in his
room playing video games or down the street playing street hockey with one of
his many friends, dirty little things whose noses always seem to be runny.
There she would be, fighting the urge to get drunk by slathering mayo on
generic, grocery store bread. The new world wasn't all bad, she guessed, as she
grabbed the open bottle of wine off the seat next to her and took a long slug from
it. It was one of those single-serving bottles. Just enough for a good pug in
the car. There was a pile of them in a shopping bag on the passenger seat.

Sometimes, in the world before,
Katie would pick up a couple of them, and knock them back in the car while
waiting for Kevin to finish up with soccer practice. Soccer... there was one
thing she wouldn't miss. A bunch of kids running around kicking a ball for
ninety minutes while over-aggressive parents rooted on little Johnny as if he
were actually something special. Kevin was nothing special. She knew that. She
was realistic. He probably would have grown up to be a banker or a sales rep
somewhere, something average, something soul-sucking. Katie lowered the window
and tossed the empty bottle out of the window. She grabbed another one and was
concentrating on opening it up when a garbage truck flew by her parked car and
plowed into the steel loading door of a warehouse across the street.

She managed to twist the cap off
of the bottle of wine, and she knocked it back. Nothing like a little Crane
Lake chardonnay, while you watched your favorite new soap opera, How the World
Stopped Turning. She watched the legs of a dead thing jitter back and forth as
it tried to extricate itself from between the shredded steel of the rolling
door and the now destroyed van. On the back of the van was a smiling plumber in
blue overalls holding a toolbox. "What are you so happy about?" she
asked.

There was no answer, so she
stepped on the accelerator. Memorial Coliseum was only a few miles away, but
she had already gone through the easy part. Now she was entering North
Portland, a vastly more populated area of the city, home to hotels, convention
centers and the two big arenas in the city, the Memorial Coliseum and the place
where the Blazers played. That building's name had changed so many times, that
she wasn't sure what to call it anymore. For the first decades of its life, it
had been called the Rose Garden... everyone still called it that, though the
rights to the building had been dealt to some corporation or other. No one
cared. It was still the Rose Garden, and it was far larger and more secure than
the Memorial Coliseum.

She drove down Grand Ave. to get
there. She was familiar with the road, due to the fact that every time Kevin
made the honor roll, he would inevitably get a coupon for a free Blazers
ticket. Only his ticket was free; whoever accompanied him had to pay. Most of
the time, her husband would go, but she had wound up being forced to go a few
times. Kevin loved the Blazers, as did seemingly every boy that grew up in
Portland, and most of the girls too. Katie found them disgusting,
self-involved, and sporting egos that seemed to barely fit within the confines
of the Rose Garden. But she loved her son, so she went, spending exorbitant
amounts of money on beers as she sat and watched Kevin root his team on,
arguing every call, and cheering with every basket.

Grand Ave. was not empty. In
normal times, Grand Avenue was a wide street, several lanes across that ran south
to north through Portland. It was a couple blocks removed from the Oregon
Convention Center, and it was lined with hotels, office buildings, and
restaurants. Some sort of convention must have been going on, because many of
the people she saw were wearing lanyards with credentials around their necks.
They were dead, of course, stuck attending a convention for the rest of
eternity. They blocked the road with their large backsides and cheap suits, blood
staining their generic, button-up shirts.

As she wove through the people,
she wondered what sort of convention they had been attending. They didn't look
like comic book geeks or auto enthusiasts. Maybe it was a boring conference,
like one of those one's that Jason sometimes attended, flying off to some boring
town in Iowa or Missouri to attend a conference about teachers and teaching. Katie
never understood why he even bothered;  it wasn't as if he was going to learn
anything new.

She decided against a teacher
conference as she dodged a plump man, his belt lashed on too tight to create
the impression that he had a double gut, one above the belt and one below. His
belly smacked off the side of the car and he tumbled down onto the hot pavement.
There were too many men for it to have been a teacher's conference,
she
thought.

She swerved left and cruised
down Multnomah St., ignoring the red lights. The concentration of helicopters
was thicker here, and she could hear their noise through her windows and the
blast of the air conditioner. She passed underneath I-5. As she zoomed under
the road hanging fifty feet above her, she saw bodies falling onto the pavement
behind her. Presumably, they were the dead who were lurking on the elevated
highway above.

Katie crossed over the Max
tracks, and skirted around the Rose Garden. The dead milled around the front of
the place, the windows to the Rose Garden were smashed beyond belief, revealing
a yawning black cavern. It gave her the chills, so she continued past, her
Durango speeding past the outstretched arms of the dead. She hung a right on
Interstate and continued around the block, circling around to the Memorial
Coliseum. The dead were thick here, and she couldn't avoid bumping some of the
out of the way. She had to slow down or risk damage to her vehicle. The last
thing she wanted was to be trapped just yards away from the Memorial Coliseum
with hundreds of the dead between her and her goal.

Somewhere in the back of her
mind, she toyed with the thought of backing up and trying to find another way
out, but she plowed ahead, her mind fixated on the possibility of normalcy, on
the possibility of being rescued. She looked in her rearview mirror to see that
the dead had closed in upon her. She accelerated forward, shoving them, moving
them aside; a few fell under the wheels of her vehicle, and she bounced around
in the cab of the Durango, smacking her head against the window as she rolled
over their bodies. Then she saw it, a chain-link fence blocking the road.
Soldiers stood on platforms behind the fence, rifles at the ready. They were
firing.

Christ,
she thought.
How
the hell am I supposed to get in there?
Bodies dropped around the car, and
she saw one of the soldiers pointing with a red flag to a section of the fence
that had been opened for her. Soldiers stood blocking the entrance, mowing down
anything that got between her car and the opening. The ride to the opening was
awful. Her SUV jounced over the bodies on the ground. She could taste it in her
mouth, the breath of freedom that the fence represented, the freedom from the
world of death that surrounded her. Hope made her floor the accelerator, and
her head bounced off the headrest behind her as the vehicle accelerated. A dead
man stepped in front of the car, and his body went flying. Immediately, the
sound of the SUV changed. Instead of the wonderful purr that she had fell in
love with at the dealership, the Durango now emitted a clunky, grating noise.
Steam began pouring out of the hood of the vehicle, and she could barely see five
feet in front of her.

Katie skidded to a halt, just in
time to avoid running over two soldiers who had their hands out in a halt
gesture. The steam billowed from the vehicle, but she didn't care. She was
alive. She was safe. Katie unfastened her seatbelt, and popped out of the driver's
side. She spun around to look behind her as the soldiers swung the gate closed,
securing the gate with heavy chains and padlocks.

The dead were there almost
immediately, their faces pressed up against the chain-link fence as if they
could chew their way through. "Fuck you!" she screamed at them, her
middle finger in the air and tears streaming from her eyes. She dropped to her
knees sobbing. It was some time before she realized that she was being gripped
by the arms and dragged toward the Coliseum.

She watched the faces of the
dead shrink as they pulled her away.
I made it. I fucking made it,
she
thought.
 Now what?

Lou had thought it up first. The
military man just went along with it. Helicopters swung through the sky, but
Zeke wanted nothing to do with the military. Lou didn't know why, but he could
sense that. Zeke was military; Lou would bet his soul on that fact. It was the
way he carried himself, quiet, confidant, almost robotic. But there was
something else going on in the man. When they had been handcuffed to the bar in
the police station, Lou had been sure that the man had left him for dead, all
hell breaking loose around him, people dying, coming back to life, and then
eating each other. When Zeke had slipped his handcuff and walked out of the
station, Lou had thought he was dead. The cold look in his eyes as he walked
away was enough to tell him that. But then he had been there, kicking at the
wall with him as things in the police station became even more desperate. He
owed Zeke.

So he had come up with a plan, a
way to get out of the city. The world's oldest highway ran right through the
heart of town, and all they needed was a boat to take advantage of it. They ran
towards the river after their escape from the apartment. The dead stumbled after
them. They had their guns in their hands as the afternoon sun beat down upon
them. It was the middle of the day and it was hot.

The four blocks down to the
riverfront had been essentially danger free. The dead were about, but they ran
hard past them every time they appeared between themselves and their goal, a
boat, a ticket out of town. Maybe things were shitty everywhere, but at least
on a boat, they could get away from the thousands of dead that littered the
city's streets... unless they could swim. Lou didn't want to think about that.

They reached the green strip of
grass on the west bank of the Willamette River. It was a wide open space, which
suited Lou just fine. He had experienced enough of the dead popping out around
corners, arms clawing at air as they attempted to take bites out of his flesh.
This was much better. Nice green grass, water to your left, and the ability to
see any threat that could come at you. It was, in fact, a walk in the park.

Lou gripped his gun tight and
tried to keep from counting the dead that were spread out on Portland's front
lawn. That's how Lou thought of Waterfront Park. Up ahead of them, the Burnside
Bridge loomed above them. Lou could see shapes at the top of the bridge,
looking down at them and flailing their arms.

"Heads up," Lou said
to Zeke as the bodies began tumbling over the railing and onto the grass below.
Some of them fell and stopped moving, others rose, and came after them. They
saved their bullets, choosing to run instead, looking downriver to see if they
could see anything that could be considered a boat.

They ran under the shadow of the
bridge, and when they emerged into the sun, there was more sound behind them as
more of the dead fell to the soft grass behind them. It was a long fall, maybe
thirty or forty feet, but the dead didn't care. They could break arms, legs,
even backs and keep coming. A surprising number of them seemed to function
perfectly, even with their ribs sticking out of their chests.
They were like
drunks in a car accident,
Lou mused. Too far gone to think to brace
themselves, they tumbled loosely to the ground and stood up.

"We're building quite a
following," Lou said.

"I always wanted to be
famous," Zeke said, smiling. It was the first bit of humor that he had
heard from the man. It eased a lot of the apprehension that Lou felt about the
man. He was capable, cold-blooded, but there was a human in there somewhere.
Two miles south, Lou spotted what he was looking for, the furled sails of boats
at dock. They sat on the river, looking like toys in the distance. Lou wanted
to be on one; he wanted to feel the wind running over his bald head.

The park ran parallel with the river,
the city's buildings reaching into the sky to their right. From among the tall
structures to their right, Lou watched as a family burst onto the green grass
of the park. They were a good quarter-mile ahead of Lou and Zeke. The father
ran with a young daughter held in his arms. His beard was reddish-brown in the
sunlight, and his pale legs flashed with lean muscle where his khaki shorts
ended. The mother was in a dress, holding it in her hands, as she dragged along
a teenage daughter. The dead poured out of the city chasing them. They reminded
him of a sluggish comet tail, their excited bodies shambling after the family.
The family had no weapons, and it looked like they had just made their own personal
trip through hell.

"Oh, shit," Zeke said.
Their path had become significantly more difficult thanks to the family and the
creatures pursuing them. Lou looked over his shoulder at their own comet tail.
It seemed as if nothing would ever be easy again.

Between ragged breaths, Lou
said, "We gotta get past those people, man. If we get caught between their
tail and the one we have following us, we're dead meat."

Zeke looked at him and then
looked over his shoulder. He saw the sense in Lou's words, and without
speaking, they picked up their pace to a quick jog, not fast enough to tire
them out, but quick enough to let them overtake the family. Lou kept his eyes
on the family as they moved, trying to keep sight of them through the mass of
the dead that followed on their heels.

Lou felt the impact of each step
in his knees. It had been a while since he had done so much running, first from
the police station where he had almost dies and now from a horde of the dead
that were locked in on them. The sun beamed down on his head, and he reached up
to wipe away the sweat that collected and hung in drops on the fine black hairs
of his eyebrows.

He watched as the family ran
underneath the Morrison Bridge. A new problem presented itself. The dead began
tumbling over the sides. Unlike the Burnside Bridge, the Morrison Bridge was
built lower. It was still a twenty-foot fall, but those ten-feet less made a
difference. Most, if not all of the dead that tumbled over the side of the
Morrison Bridge got back to their feet after smacking into the soft green grass.
As the family ran through the decrepit basketball courts under the bridge, they
emerged on the other side into the sunlight, and another wave of the dead fell
off the bridge, crashing into the ground.

There was now an army of rotting
dead between Lou and Zeke's destination. Lou watched as the red-bearded father
tumbled to the ground, spilling his young daughter onto the hard pavement. They
scrambled to get to their feet, but there was nothing that could be done.  Lou
couldn't hear their shrieks over the moaning, but he knew that they were
screaming. Lou didn't know why he did it, but he held his gun into the air and
pulled the trigger. The gunshot rang out through the city, echoing off the tall
building to the west and the river water to the east.

For the first time in his
meaningless life, Lou had an audience. He also had stage fright. Hundreds of
the dead turned and headed in their direction, temporarily forgetting the
family frantically trying to gain their feet. Lou felt good about it. He was
likely to die because of it, but the family had enough of a reprieve to collect
themselves and continue their flight. It felt good in his chest.

Zeke tapped him on the arm as he
ran by and said, "Dumbass."

Lou didn't care. Zeke's words
weren't said in a mean way. They were said in a way that implied that all he
had done was make their life harder. They turned right and headed for the
shelter of the city, sprinting across the green grass of the waterfront,
breathing hard, the two tails coming together to form one. Lou didn't know how
much further he could run, but Zeke looked like he could run all day. Sweat
covered his white T-shirt, but his breathing was much easier than it had been
yesterday when they were pounding on the brass bar together in the police
station. It was like he was made for this shit. Lou wiped more sweat off his
brow before it could fall into his eyes, stinging them.

They cut through the city,
waiting for the crowd of shambling dead to follow them. Where had they all come
from? How had the city fallen so quick, so fast? His mind had no time to
wander. His legs burned. He had run maybe three-quarters of a mile, but it was
enough. "Hold up," he said, bending over and gripping his knees.

Zeke slowed down, breathing just
as hard as Lou. He put his hands over his head and said, "Not like that.
Like this. Bending over makes your body work harder to get oxygen."

They walked slowly, the
scattered dead of the city gaining ground on them. All Lou needed was a few
minutes. He stood and put his hands on his head, though all he really wanted to
do was double over and fall to the ground. He cursed the heavy, khaki boots on
his feet. They were fashionable; the ladies seemed to like them, but damn did
they get heavy quick when he was running.

They walked casually, their
hands over their heads, the dead drawing closer and closer. "What's it
like to be a hero?" Zeke asked.

"I don't know. You tell me.
You're the army boy."

Zeke nodded at him, not
surprised that Lou had accurately pinpointed his past profession. "Yeah,
well, even in the military, I never called down the wrath of a couple hundred
cannibals just to save one family."

"You would have done the
same," Lou said. Zeke shook his head in the negative, but Lou could see it
in his eyes. He could see the hero inside of him. Zeke didn't know it was
there, and perhaps he even believed he didn't have it in himself, but Lou could
feel it.

"Come on. Let's cut across,"
Zeke said. They turned left and headed south down 3rd Ave., a dingy sort of
street filled with bars and shithole convenience stores. Lou looked longingly
at the food in the stores. He could see that the glass had been busted in and
the shadows of bodies milled around in their dark interiors. Lou glanced over
his shoulder. He was shocked at how much ground the dead had gained. They
weren't fast, but they didn't slow down.
Thank God they couldn't run
, he
thought.

They strolled down the middle of
the street until they passed the spot where the Morrison Bridge dumped out onto
3rd Ave. Then they walked one more block, keeping out of reach of the dead
behind them, alternating quick bursts of light jogging with fast walking. They
turned left on Morrison St, which surprisingly didn't even connect with the
Morrison Bridge. Lou thought it always had, but it looked like he had been
wrong. It didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but he always hated
being wrong. Ahead of them, two blocks to the east lay Waterfront Park. They
had basically moved in a circle, drawing the dead behind them, and clearing the
way before them at the same time.

"You ready?" Zeke
asked.

"You know it," he
replied, and then they broke into an easy trot, that didn't feel so easy the
second time around. His footsteps were heavier, and his boots felt like iron
weights hanging off of his feet, but he pushed himself like he had never pushed
himself before. His life depended on it. He knew a boat and some open water
would be waiting at the end of the jog. It would be worth it.

Once again, they set foot on the
green grass of Waterfront Park. There were no obstructions, and the dead were
scattered about, too thin to pose much of a threat. Their tail was still
following, but hopefully they had lost most of them with their twists and
turns. Lou looked in the distance to see if he could see the family, but all he
saw was another bridge and a blob of corpses falling off its edge. With any
luck they would spread out by the time they reached the dead. He looked further
down, and saw the unfurled sails of the boats even closer. They couldn't be
more than a third of a mile away.

They approached a fountain, the
Salmon Street Springs. Lou remembered playing there as a child, while his
father had sold dope to the people who milled around its edges, watching the
children scream and laugh as the water doused them in the summer heat. Even in
his happiest memories, his father was always up to something. Lou shoved the
thought aside. Now was not the time to start feeling sorry for himself.

"Get that gun ready,"
Zeke said. "I think we're going to have to blast our way through the next
batch."

Lou did as he was told. He
ejected a clip from the handgun, shoved it in his pocket, and put in a fresh
one. He would have liked to stop and reload fully, but there simply wasn't
enough time. Even a minute or two could be fatal out here. For the first time
in his life, Lou wished he was one of those skinny Kenyan runners that he
always saw on TV. Then he could run forever. Then he would be safe.

They approached the bridge hoard
and skirted around them, their guns at the ready. There was no way through, and
they couldn't afford to have more dead come crashing down right on top of them.
Lou could see their shadowy torsos milling around on top of the bridge. Zeke
took the lead, and gunfire rang out. They had to slow their progress to make
the shots count as they moved through the dead. The last thing Lou wanted to do
was walk past one of the things he thought was dead only to have it latch onto
him and take a bite out of his ankle.

Lou held his handgun up and at
the ready, while Zeke took measured shots, walking heel to toe through the
crowd. Lou's heart pumped in his chest, and he could taste the fear in his
mouth.

"Out!" Zeke yelled. He
ejected his spent magazine, and Lou took over, taking careful aim.
The head,
he thought,
it's got to be the head.
He squeezed the trigger, but
the round simply blew through the shoulder of an old man. The old man rocked
backwards, his thin-framed glasses falling off of his face and onto the ground,
where he stepped on them. Lou was more careful the next time, lining up his
shot, and squeezing the trigger gently. The bullet entered the bridge of the
man's nose, and the exit wound sprayed blood on the dead lady behind him. The
man finally went down. He took stock of who was closest, and he found a lady
two feet to his right. He took aim again, and scored another hit, her body
falling to the ground.