This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down (9 page)

They climbed the ladder. Lou
looked back to see Brian holding his wife in his arms, whispering into her ear
and kissing the side of her hair. Sarah's eyes were squeezed closed. Lou didn't
want to see anymore. It wasn't for him to see. Zeke tapped him on the shoulder
and they walked to the other side of the boat, looking out over the water. Zeke
pulled a battered pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and handed one to Lou.
He lit it for him, and Lou took a deep drag, blowing the smoke into the air
where it was whisked away by the ever-present river wind.

From behind them, they heard a
single gunshot. The girls screamed and sobbed. Lou took another drag from the
cigarette, and blew more smoke into the air. This was the second boat Lou had
ever been on. He hated it.

Their ride back to the refugee
camp started out relatively uneventful. When Joan had finished her cigarette,
coughing and complaining of being dizzy in the process, she had dropped to the
ground and examined Martinez' wound. The man in the sunglasses handed Joan a
knife and she sliced open the leg of his pants, exposing a nasty compound
fracture. There was nothing that Joan could do at the moment, but she let them
know that they would need to get where they were going pretty fast. The man in
the sunglasses smiled as he accepted back his knife and said, "That's the
plan."

The truck swerved and bounced
through the city, avoiding the dead. Even a giant truck like the one they were
riding in would break down if it rammed into too many of the dead. It was a
transport vehicle; not a bulldozer. 200 pounds of limp flesh at 30 miles an
hour... that was a recipe for AAA. Only, AAA didn't exist anymore.

"Thank you for your help,
miss...," the man in the sunglasses said, leaving the statement open.

"Winston, Joan Winston. I'm
a doctor at the hospital, or at least I used to be."

The man nodded his head. He was
older than she had initially expected, somewhere in his forties. She could see
silver in his hair.

"I'm sorry about the whole
naked thing. We can't be too careful. Being a doctor, I'm sure you can
understand that."

"Understand and like are
two completely different things. But yes, I understand. And what is your
name?"

The soldier removed his
sunglasses and hung them on the shirt pocket of his uniform. He held out his
hand. "I'm Staff Sergeant Hubert." Joan shook his hand. "What
can you tell me about what happened at the hospital?"

"The place got seriously
fucked. That's what happened at the hospital," Clara said, with her usual
acidity.

Hubert turned his head to regard
Clara, as if he hadn't noticed her. "And who are you?"

"I'm the only one of Joan's
patients that's still alive."

Joan put her hand on Clara's
arm. "She doesn't mean anything. We've all had a tough night." The
truck swerved to a stop, and they all lurched forward on the benches, splaying
their arms to help them regain their balance.

"What's going on?"
Clara asked.

Staff Sergeant Hubert put on his
sunglasses and exited the back of the truck. His soldiers followed him, except
for Martinez who lay on the floor groaning. Clara and Joan looked at each
other, and silently came to the agreement that they should take a look as well.

Clara hobbled over to the back
of the truck. The soldiers were gathered around the vehicle, their faces robbed
of their typical soldier stoicism, replaced by slack-jawed awe. A quarter-mile
away, they could see the outline of the Memorial Coliseum. Fences ringed the
stadium, pitiful things that looked as if they were hastily thrown up.
Scaffolding was thrown up behind the fences, and between their truck and the
fence, an army of the dead milled around.

The problem was obvious; too many
of the dead were milling around the fence. Hubert was gesturing and pointing at
the fence with his hand, giving the men directions. He turned around and saw
them peeking out the back of truck, and he smiled at them reassuringly.

"This is not good,"
Clara said. "That's supposed to be the refugee camp?"

For once, Joan agreed with her.
She brushed a lock of brown hair out of her face and said, "We'll be
alright," more to allay her own fear than to make Clara feel better. The
soldiers finished their conversation, and they climbed back into the truck.
They began peeling the tarp off the back of the truck, exposing the ribs like
the mammoth fossils of a dead dinosaur.

"What's the plan?"
Joan asked.

Hubert smiled. "It's
simple. We're going to pull up along the fence, and jump out of the back onto
the scaffolding."

"You've got to be kidding
me," Clara said.

"Anyone want another
cigarette?" he responded. Clara raised her hand, but Joan kept hers down,
chewing on her lip.

From the ground, Martinez said,
"I'll take one, sir."

Hubert knelt down on one knee,
"You're going to be safe in a matter of minutes, Martinez." Blood
covered the floor of the truck, and Martinez' skin had paled considerably.
Hubert stuck a cigarette into the man's mouth, and lit it. Hubert's Zippo did
the job of lighting the cigarette, while his sure smile did the job of lighting
up Martinez' face.

The men had removed the tarp,
and the sun poured down on them. It had to be two or three in the afternoon,
and the sun felt harsh on their skin. Joan felt sweat form on her lip. There
was a breeze, but it wasn't enough to quell the heat. Hubert pounded on the cab
of the truck and they moved towards the wall of the dead.

The truck bounced around, the
remaining men jostling back and forth in the back of the truck, their rifles held
with one hand, while their other hand grasped the exposed ribs of the truck.
The noise of the massive diesel engine drew the attention of the throng in
front of the Coliseum. It wasn't long before the sound of a hundred dead hands
banging on the thick steel of the truck created a deafening cacophony.

A helicopter joined the fray,
steaming out of the north. It tried to thin out the crowd of dead between the
truck and the Coliseum, turning the infected into a pulp with guns that were
meant to mow through steel and concrete. Head shots were not a sure thing with
a helicopter being buffeted by the wind. Gore sprayed everywhere, the
helicopter's artillery being a little bit of overkill for the soft mass of the
dead. The soldiers opened fire, and over the noise of the chopper, the crack of
rifles, and the hundreds of dead beating on the truck, no one noticed when the
upper half of a torso flew into the back of the truck. Blown free from its legs
by the powerful Gatling gun on the chopper, the torso landed right on Martinez.

No one heard his screaming, as
everyone's attention was focused on the wall of the infected that was trying to
beat their way into the back of the truck. They were uncoordinated but
tenacious. As it inched forward through the crowd, Hubert and his men fired
into their mass, missing more often than not due to the jouncing of the truck
over bodies. The truck pressed forward, but the bodies were too thick, and as
it approached the fence head on, the wall of creatures was pressed inward against
the thin mesh wiring. It began to bow inwards, and the soldiers on top of the
scaffold signaled for the truck to back up.

The driver threw it into
reverse, and the truck came to a halt. One of Hubert's men was off balance, and
he fell onto the floor of the truck, where the torso of the dead creature that
had thoroughly devoured the throat of Martinez reached for him, grasping onto
his shirt. The soldier stood up with the dead torso hanging off of him. He
clawed at the creature, and this time Hubert noticed. He signaled the soldier
next to him, and Clara and Joan moved as far away from the struggling soldier
as possible.

The truck lurched forward,
knocking the soldier with the dead torso off balance. He tumbled to the ground,
and blood hit the green metal floor of the truck. Hubert took aim and shot the
torso, and the bitten soldier sat up, touching his face. Blood came away on his
hands and he looked at Hubert with a frightened look on his face, as his own
mortality flooded his frontal lobe. Hubert pulled his sidearm and put a round
through the soldier's head.

From his position on the ground,
Hubert didn't see Martinez' eyes snap open. Clara did. She yelled, "Watch
out!" as loud as she could, but over the noise, it was a mere murmur.
Martinez managed to stand on his one good leg, and as the truck rolled over
more bodies, he lost his balance and fell forward, tackling Hubert to the
ground. His sunglasses slid to the tailgate of the giant truck, and when he
rolled over on his back, Joan could see the terror in his eyes.

As the truck pulled parallel
with the fence, Martinez took a bite out of Hubert's thigh. He screamed in
pain, trying to shove him off with his left hand, while his right hand searched
for the pistol that he had dropped when he fell to the ground. The two
remaining soldiers had their work cut out for them, trying to keep the dead
from climbing aboard.

Hubert found his gun and place
it against Martinez' forehead. He pulled the trigger and blood splattered the
back wall of the truck's cab where Joan and Clara were standing. The soldiers
on the other side of the fence called out to them, their hands outstretched.
Without thinking, Joan pushed Clara forward. Clara's hands were held out in
confusion as if she didn't know what to do next. To Joan, she seemed on the
verge of breaking.

The soldiers grabbed Clara's
hands, yanked her out of the bed of the truck, and threw her down on the ground
where more soldiers were waiting. It was a tough fall, but it was better than
being dead, and the soldiers had very little time or patience at that
particular moment. Joan fared better. She was more present than Clara was, and
when the soldiers held out their arms to her, she gladly accepted them. Joan
scrambled down the scaffolding, not wanting to be in the way. When she hit the
bottom, she turned and watched as the last two soldiers made their way onto the
platform.

Then she saw something amazing.
Hubert stood up in the back of the truck, his sunglasses back on his face, and
a cigarette in his mouth. He waved to her, smiling as if to say it was all
worth it, then he put a gun to his head and blew his own brains out. His body
collapsed to the back of the truck as if in slow-motion.

One of the soldiers on the
scaffolding banged on the roof of the truck's cab, and it lurched away,
rumbling over the dead, the driver checking his mirrors to see if he had any
hangers on. How he was going to get out was a mystery to Joan, but he would
figure it out.

Right now, she was more
concerned with all of the guns pointed at her and Clara.

"Strip," one of the
men said. Joan did so without hesitation. It was a new world, and public nudity
was no longer frowned upon.

Blake walked down the street,
his hunting rifle in his hand. The rifle was solid, and Blake knew how to use
it, but he only had one box of ammunition. Unlike most people, his rifle was
actually only for hunting, and he had no need for more than one box of ammo...
until he had woken up to find the world dying.

Mort followed him closely, his
pistol in his hand. There were only three bullets left in it. He was saving
them for a special occasion. They ran down a thinly populated street, home to
low buildings, the occasional tree, and the dead. They had seen a few people
scattered about, but no one appeared interested in making friends. The few cars
that had passed them by had been at full rev and flew past them without even
slowing down. The buildings in this part of town looked like they had been
built in the '70s. They were square squat structures that had the feel of a strip
mall. Narrow alleys ran behind and between each of the buildings.

They moved at a slow pace,
necessitated by Mort's swollen knee. Blake knew where he was going, a pawn shop
that was only a couple of blocks down the road. They had guns. They had plenty
of them, but he didn't know if they would be able to get in. They were taking a
chance, but if it led to them escaping from the city, then Mort was all for it,
and he knew that he was going to need more than three bullets to pull off the
Great Escape.

The building was nothing
special, but Blake walked around it anyway, peering in the windows. No one was
home it appeared. The inside of the store was dark, and the windows were
unbroken. They walked down the alley that ran down the west side of the store,
enjoying the shade it provided. There was a back door there, but it had no
handle. Blake thought for a second before saying, "I guess we're just
going to have to break into the place."

Mort shrugged his shoulders.
Whatever they were going to do, he wanted to do it fast. They turned to walk
out front. Blake smashed one of the unlucky dead that had followed them down
the alley across the face with the butt of his rifle. It crumpled to the
ground, but Blake gave it a couple more whacks. It was most definitely dead,
permanently, when Blake stopped.

They stood in front of the
store, a handful of the dead shuffling down the street towards them.

"Alright, here's the plan.
We break in the window, and run to the rear as quick as we can. A shithole like
this isn't going to have the guns out front. They'll most likely be in the
back. We'll pop into the back, grab the guns, break out through the back door,
and skirt around the back alley to avoid anything that comes investigating.
Sound good?"

Mort nodded, "Sounds like a
plan."

"Now if we break this glass
and an alarm goes off, we're really going to have to move our asses."

"Right," Mort said,
taking deep breaths in preparation. "I'm ready."

Blake looked at the front of the
pawn shop. "4 DVD's for $10," was painted across the window in red,
yellow, and black. "That's a hell of a deal," Blake said before
smashing the window in with the butt of his rifle. There was no pause as the
pawn shop's alarm sprang to life. It was an ear-splitting noise, so sharp and
powerful that Mort could swear he felt each blast in his teeth. The alarm could
probably be heard for blocks.

Blake ran through the store. He
was much quicker than Mort seeing as how he hadn't destroyed his knee the night
before. Blake hopped over the counter in the back of the store and then kicked
in the wooden door behind the counter. Mort moved as quick as he could, which
wasn't actually all that quick. He rolled over the counter and landed on the
other side. When he stepped into the back room, Blake was tossing boxes of old
junk on the ground. DVD's, tools, and junk jewelry all piled up on the floor.
On the opposite side of the room, Mort spied a chest hidden underneath some
boxes of CD's that were covered in a layer of dust.

Mort shoved the box to the side
and lifted the cover of the chest. Lying in the chest was a treasure trove of
guns. "Over here!" Mort yelled over the alarm.

Blake spun, the cowboy hat on
his head hiding his eyes in the shadows of the pawn shop. "Hell yeah,
Mort. That oughta do."

Blake playfully slapped Mort on
the shoulder and then squatted next to him, pulling the guns out of the box.
"No ammo. It's like havin' a Thanksgiving dinner in a can and no damn can
opener."

Mort looked around the room.
Everything had been checked except for an ancient, olive green filing cabinet
in the corner. He limped over to it and tugged on the cabinet's top drawer. It
wouldn't budge. It was locked.

Blake stood and looked out into
the main part of the store. He could see the first of the dead ambling through
the entrance. He pulled his hunting rifle from his shoulder, checked to see
that it was loaded and the safety was off, and then he said, "Come on.
Let's get out of here. We struck out."

"No, man. I'm tellin' you,
the ammo is in here," Mort said as he continued bashing on the file
cabinet. He could hear a clinking sound inside.

Blake held his rifle up to his
eye, put the dead man's face in his sights and exhaled before squeezing the
trigger. The body went down, and Blake racked another round into the chamber of
his rifle. He could see the shadows of more dead moving around through the
paint on the stores windows. The alarm was a dinner bell, calling the dead
forward.

"Stand back," Blake
yelled, taking aim at the metal lock in the top right corner of the filing
cabinet. Mort dove to the ground at Blake's words, and the shot he unleashed
made the alarm pale in comparison. Mort put his hands to his ears, and wondered
if he would ever hear again. He shook his head, and the head-splitting screech
of the pawn shop's alarm slowly switched places with the ringing in his ears.
Mort walked over to the filing cabinet and pulled on the handle of the top
shelf. It slid open with just a little effort. The drawer was piled high with a
haphazard collection of receipts and pawn slips. Mort ran his hand through them
just to be sure. There was nothing in the top drawer, so he slammed it shut.
Mort flinched as Blake fired off another ear-cracking round. He pulled open the
middle drawer, and it was more of the same, and a bottle of whiskey.

Mort looked at the whiskey. It
seemed like a fine thing to find, but he slammed the drawer shut as another
round from Blake's rifle echoed through the pawn shop. In the confines of the
back room, the noise was so loud that Mort imagined that his ears might
actually be bleeding from the trauma. With hope in his heart, he pulled open
the final drawer, the bottom drawer, and there they were, faded boxes of
ammunition, the cardboard aged with time.

Blake looked over and tossed him
a bag. "Fill it up!" he yelled before taking sight and blasting
another tone out of Mort's aural repertoire. Mort spread the green canvas bag
wide open, and scooped the boxes out of the drawer and into the bag as quick as
he could. There were six of them, and then a little something extra. Mort held
the metallic-green egg shape up to his eyes. He had never seen a grenade before
in real life, let alone held one in his hand.

"Whatcha got there? Some
firecrackers? Woo!" Blake smiled over at Mort as he racked another round
into the chamber of his rifle. Mort found another grenade in the drawer and
tossed them into the bag. "What kind of ammo do we have in there?"
Blake asked.

"We got some nine
millimeter, some 12-gauge buckshot, and some .300 Winchester Magnum rounds. Any
of that mean anything to you?"

Blake didn't immediately answer.
Instead he put his eye to the sight of his rifle and pulled the trigger. Mort
was able to get his hands over his ears in time, though by now he fully
expected that he had suffered permanent hearing damage. "It means it's
Christmas, man."

Mort walked over to the crate
full of guns, and Blake began pointing out which ones they wanted. In the end,
they had two rifles apiece slung over their shoulders, and a couple of handguns
stuffed into their pants. "Let's get the hell out of here, get somewhere
where we can take a breath, and load up."

As Mort headed to the back door
of the store, he looked out into the thrift shop's main floor. The dead were
funneling through the one broken window, stepping awkwardly over the now-still
corpses that Blake had created. There were ten or so bodies, yet still more
came. Clearly, they were not put off by seeing their brethren rotting on the
floor, nor were they interested in eating the meat of the dead. Mort shivered.
They
only want the living
.

Mort headed to the back door,
and tested it. He pushed it open only to find that it was blocked by something.
He pushed harder and heard something tumble over. He stepped into the alleyway
to find that it was filled with the dead. Blake bumped into his back as Mort
attempted to head back inside.

"What are you doing,
man?" Blake said as they momentarily struggled to go in opposite
directions.

"There's dead out
there."

"There's dead in here, too.
At least out there, we have a chance of getting away." Blake pushed Mort
aside and stepped into the alleyway to see for himself. He brought the rifle up
to his eye. Mort looked back into the store. As Blake began firing, the first
of the dead rounded the corner, bumping its shoulder against the corner of the
wall and knocking it off-balance for a moment.

"Alright, let's go,"
Mort said, knowing that death was creeping through the pawn shop. Mort stepped
out into the alley with Blake, and closed the door behind him. Both sides of
the alleyway were filling with the dead, and he could see more entering to the
east and the west. Blake fired his rifle, but it was a losing battle. Without a
chance to reload they would be overrun. Mort pressed his back against the door
to the alleyway to keep the dead inside trapped. He tried to think, his
revolver in his hand, three bullets labeled for the dead.

Then he saw it. The beautiful
part of his mind, the escape artist that resided in him, spotted the dumpster
down the alleyway. The perfect height. It would do just fine.

"Clear me a way to that
dumpster," Mort yelled, running with the bag full of ammunition slung over
his shoulder. Blake did his job, and the heads of the dead exploded, as Blake
and Mort moved down the alleyway to the dumpster. Mort pulled his revolver and
placed it under the chin of one of the dead that Blake had missed. He pulled
the trigger and blood and bone shot into the air. It was as if for a brief
moment he was standing next to a demented whale that shot gore out of its
blowhole instead of water. The brown dumpster was large, and the dead pressed
around them. Mort threw the black plastic lid into the air and climbed into the
dumpster among bags that were relatively sealed and the smell of decaying food
matter.

Blake piled in after him, but
Mort hardly noticed, as he was too busy feeling around in the bag for the hand
grenades. "Get that lid closed," Mort commanded. Blake did as he was
told, and in the darkness Mort felt his hand close around one of the metal
eggs. He handed it to Blake, and then he searched for the second one.

"What the hell do you want
me to do with this?"

Mort's laugh echoed in the
dumpster, and the first of the zombies tried to lift the heavy plastic lid up
to no avail. Instead the arms snaked into the dumpster underneath the lid,
clawing and trying to grab anything they could find. Mort shivered at the cold
touch of their fingers, and then he put his own fingers around something even
colder. He pulled the grenade out, triumph in his throat.

"We're going to blow our
own asses sky high?" Blake said.

"It beats getting eaten."

"You're a wild man,
Mort." Blake smiled. "Alright, these things are old, so as soon as
you pull the pin, you toss that Easter egg right out as far as you can. You got
that?"

"I got it."

"Alright, on three, pull
the pin, and drop it outside. You got that? On three." Blake's voice had a
feverish quality. It was if he was high. Was it fear or excitement? Mort had no
idea, perhaps it was a mixture of both. Blake counted to three and then yanked
on the metal pin. Mort did the same and they tossed the grenades outside the
thick metal dumpster, praying that the grenades wouldn't destroy them.

The ensuing blast left them
senseless in the dumpster. The force of it rocked the dumpster into the air and
onto its side; its black plastic lid fell open, where it rested on the ground.
When Mort finally opened his eyes, he did so with a human head inches from his
face, trying to bite him. Mort counted it a stroke of luck that the head wasn't
attached to a human body.

Mort shook off the stars
swimming in his eyes, regretting the movement as soon as he did it. He turned
around to see Blake lying unconscious, his cowboy hat smashed on the side and
blood dripping from his head. Mort attempted to stand. He staggered around and
then fell square on his butt, throwing himself in the opposite direction of the
head that was lying on the ground. He stood once more and looked around him.
The grenades had left a large spray of gore around the alley. Torsos, limbs,
and heads were scattered all around, some of them crawling their way towards
him, others appropriately dead.

Mort bent down and gently tapped
Blake on the side of the face. It took a while for him to come around, and when
he did, his eyes had trouble focusing. Mort helped him to his feet, scrounged
their belongings out of the dumpster, and together they staggered out of the
alleyway, a stream of the dead following them close behind.

They weren't moving fast, but
they were moving fast enough to catch up to the two injured men. Even with his
brains scrambled, Mort could see that. Mort spotted another dumpster in the
alley that ran behind the shops. He left Blake standing up against the wall
while he dragged it to the appropriate position. Mort threw their bags onto the
roof and then climbed on top of the dumpster. He dragged Blake up on top of it,
and then boosted him up onto the roof.