This Rotten World (Book 1) (18 page)

Only it
didn't start. It just made a sick wheezing noise as he clamped down on the
clutch and turned the key. The cars behind him were honking furiously.

"Start
it! Start the car!" Suzy yelled.

"What
do you think I'm trying to do?" he yelled back. He looked in the rearview
mirror to see that the horde was coming closer. Some people were getting out of
their cars, running up the street. He saw one woman with a baby in her arms
fall to the ground. The people behind her didn't stop.

"Start
the car!"

Dustin
didn't bother to respond. On the fourth try, the car finally started up, and
they lurched to a crawl as people were flooding around his car. Up ahead, he
saw something he didn't want to see. Another crowd of humanity was fleeing in
their direction, which could only mean there were more coming from up the
highway.

"I
have to get out of here!" Suzy yelled.

Dustin
could only inch ahead a few car lengths before he had to stop completely. Up
ahead, he saw the semi-truck stopped in its tracks, the driver hanging out the
door and firing his shotgun at whoever came close, running or not. All hope of
escape was blocked. Before he could formulate a plan, Suzy threw open her door
and bolted from the car, screaming, "I'm not going to die here!"

Dustin
threw the car into park and was about to get out to chase after Suzy when one
of the creatures dove into the door that Suzy had left open.

With the
little space left available to him, Dustin was able to get his baseball bat up
between himself and the creature that was attacking him. Cold, clammy hands
clawed at his face, and he screamed as one of the icy fingers gouged his eye.
Behind him, he heard broken glass. Hopes of a brave stranger pulling him out of
the car danced in his head for a brief second, until he felt another set of
chilly hands wrap around his throat. His screaming stopped, and he couldn't
breathe.

No matter
how hard he wanted to scream, he couldn't. The vice grip hands kept him from
doing so, even when the creature behind him bit off his ear. He could feel the
blood running down the side of his head. He was blinded with pain, and he
finally managed to let out a scream when the creature he was battling managed
to hook his fingers into his eye socket and pull his eye out. There would be no
escape.

Katie
pulled the door open. As fast as she could, while they were still trying to
respond, she placed the gun to their heads and pulled the trigger. They
dropped. The bangs were loud. By the fourth one, she could no longer hear them,
and the front of the house was clear. More people were headed her way, but she
no longer cared if they were alive, dead, or somewhere in between.

She flung
the door to the bedroom closed and leaned with her back against it while she
re-loaded her gun. It was hers now. By the simple act of pulling the trigger
and splattering her family's brains on the floor of the old man's bedroom she
had claimed it for eternity. Even if someone managed to pry the gun from her
cold, dead fingers, it would always be hers. She smiled at the old man on the bed.
Fred Walker would walk no more. In the end, the decision had been easy for him.
The bite. It had to be the bite the radio said. He had wanted to die.

What was
more difficult was her own decision. With a family dead, and more than a
handful murdered by herself alone, she really had no reason to go on. But she
did. She wasn't acting on instinct; she was conscious of her decision.

Her first
stop would be back home, if there was a home to go to. But first, she had to
make it there. She pulled the door open to find another one walking through the
front door. She looked very familiar, although her hair was stringy and matted
with dirt and part of her cheek was missing, exposing her teeth. The old her
would have hesitated, perhaps even tried to talk some sense into the woman.

The new her
pulled the trigger and barely winced at the booming echo as that somewhat
familiar face turned into a mass of red flesh and bone fragments. She stepped
over the recent addition to her corpse collection and made her way down the
street.

The sun was
up. It was a new day, and her nostrils were filled with gun smoke. She strolled
down the street, her bare feet welcoming the cool morning asphalt. Though it
seemed like she had run miles last night, she was actually only a block down
the road from Fred Walker's now lifeless abode.

There were
people in the streets, but whether they were living or not, she didn't care. As
long as they didn't get in her goddamn way, they could stumble about all they
wanted to. Katie calmly walked to her house. She stopped in the front yard to
examine the burnt cop car from a distance. There was no sign of the occupants
of the car, so she decided to head into her house.

The knob
turned easily in her hand, and she stepped inside, her gun at the ready. It was
like a time machine. There they were on the wall, hung in a silver picture
frame, his hand on her shoulder. She knocked the picture off the wall as she
passed it. It crashed to the floor, the glass shattering. Katie stepped into
the kitchen, admiring the items in the house as if she were some sort of
archeologist that had stumbled upon the perfectly preserved residence of some
ancient civilization.

Katie
leaned against the kitchen counter. "Why the fuck am I here?"

If this
were a normal school day, she would be putting together lunches. Peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches, sliced apples, and some cheese-flavored goldfish
crackers, just what a growing boy and a loving husband needed to make it
through the day. What a pile of shit that life had been. Truth be told, she had
hated it. But she was locked into it, the mortgage, the responsibility of
bringing a child into the world, the weight of wedding vows... she could have
walked away from it all years ago, if it weren't for the loneliness.

She cared
about them, but it was so much easier to just be on your own. Somewhere deep
down inside, she felt guilty, as if the fact that she had secretly wished for
this scenario, albeit without the resurrecting dead bit, had caused it to come
true. Now she was in a kitchen that belonged to no one. All its owners were dead.
She was standing on the precipice of her own future with nowhere to go but
forward due to the fact that, behind her, her life lay in decaying ruins. She
stood waiting, waiting for the future to come to her.

Katie
walked upstairs, changed into some more suitable end-of-the-world clothing, and
then she grabbed the keys off the hook by the door. She stuffed the revolver
into her jacket pocket, and then walked into the dark garage. With her left
hand, she turned on the lights. She walked to her car, unlocked it and sat
inside. That deep down, sad part of her said that she should just sit there
with the car running while the garage filled with carbon monoxide, binding to
her red blood cells and preventing her body from absorbing and carrying oxygen.
That would be too easy though.

She knew
what her new purpose in life was. It was to find hell and burn in it.

Zeke didn't
get far before his conscience was biting at his heels. He stopped at the corner
of the street, his hands on his knees, the sweat on his head cooling in the
morning air. The soldier in him wanted to run, get back home, load up his guns
and hump it out of town. He'd shoot first and ask questions later.

The retired
part of him couldn't help but feel as if he was merely acting on instinct, like
a robot. He thought about who he had been before he had enlisted. Some people
had called him funny. Others had called him lover. Right now, Zeke called that
person dead. If what he thought was going down was actually happening, and he
went back to what he was in the army, well then it was like he had died at the
hands of the whore already.

Zeke turned
on his heel and ran back down the block, bursting through the police station's tall
wooden doors. The scene was still horrifying, and for the first time in a long
time, Zeke felt fear. He felt humanity at the back of his throat, ready to be
released. He ran to the black man and began kicking furiously at the bar.

"C'mon,
man. Hit that bar, or I'm leaving your ass here." The man looked at him,
relief in his eyes. He redoubled his efforts, and Zeke kicked the bar as hard
as he could.

Behind him,
the three cops remaining in the station were wrestling with their own. It was
only a matter of time before they pulled their weapons and put them down. Then
they were all stuck here. That could mean escape, or it could mean death for
every man chained to the bar. Overcorrection was always a possibility when it
came to duty. If anybody knew that, it was Zeke.

The bar
wriggled against the wall. The bolt securing his friend was now looser than
ever, but it just wouldn't budge. Once again the black man sat down on his
haunches, placed his feet against the wall and pulled with all his might. While
he was doing this Zeke leapt up into the air and landed on the brass bar. It
worked. The concrete cracked and the bolt came free, and none too soon, as the
man next to his friend had finally lost his battle with the undead. Whole
fingers stuck out of his attacker's mouth, blood dripping down the dead man's
long gray beard.

The black
man worked the silver handcuff feverishly down the bar, wrecking his wrist and
drawing blood in the process. He pulled his hand free just as gunshots rang
throughout the precinct lobby. Zeke and his new friend took off into the early
morning sunlight, dripping blood and sweat. More shots rang out behind them,
and they instinctively ducked, but the shots were coming from inside the
building.

The streets
were eerily empty for an early summer day, and Zeke knew that it was only a
matter of time until they were confronted with another situation. They ducked
into the stairwell of a parking garage and took cover among the cold concrete
stairs. Zeke peeked his head over the railing from time to time to assess the
situation and make sure that they weren't being followed. Meanwhile, his friend
collapsed on the stairs taking deep ragged breaths.

"I
thought you left me," he managed to get out between jerky huffs.

"I
probably should have," he said as friendly as he could muster, which on a
good day sounded like Beaver Cleaver's dad reading the Beav the riot act.

"My
name's Louis, but everyone calls me Lou." He held out his hand. Zeke shook
it gladly.

"I'm
Zeke."

They sat
there that way, breathing heavily in the shade of the parking garage. Gradually
their breath became more normal, and exhaustion began to creep in.

"What
do we do now? You think those cops are going to come after us?"

Zeke
scrutinized the street down below. "No. They've got bigger fish to fry. I'm
exhausted." Zeke plopped down on the concrete steps of the stairwell,
despite the fact that it smelled like a homeless person's lavatory. "We're
not going to last long on the street. You have a place we can go?"

Lou thought
for a moment, and then said, "Yeah. I got some friends about a mile down
the road. They got themselves a place, but I don't think it's the type of place
you're looking for."

"What
do you mean?"

"Let's
just say these brothers aren't the most social dudes."

Zeke looked
at the man, trying to figure out exactly what he meant. "What do you mean
'social'? Are they drug dealers? Pimps?"

Lou looked
at his feet. "They're all that and more. You might want to think twice
before going there. They're not too fond of white folk."

Zeke
laughed. "At this point, the street is full of motherfuckers who ain't too
fond of anyone, no matter their skin color. I'll take my chances."

"Amen
to that."

Zeke stood
up and helped Lou to his feet. Then he reached in his pocket for a cigarette.
He held one out to Lou, who grabbed one out of the pack, and together they
stood on the concrete steps, lost in thought and smoking. When they were done,
they tossed the butts on the ground.

"Well,
no time like the present to get a move on," Zeke said.

They walked
quietly down the steps of the stairwell and entered the street. They walked in
the shadows of the buildings. Despite the fact that it was morning, there were
very few people out and about. The second intersection they reached provided a
nice vantage point for Lou and Zeke. They looked down the street which rose to
the west as it left the middle of town. Zeke pointed out a couple of burned out
cars, and a knot of shambling bodies two blocks down.

Things
didn't seem to be getting better. Despite this fact, the middle of downtown was
probably one of the safest areas of the city. It was composed mostly of high-end
businesses and office buildings. There were very few residences in that part of
town, and most of those were locked up like Fort Knox with iron-barred doors
only accessible by keycards.

They
continued their trek. Zeke's hands itched for a weapon. His eyes darted around
the street, scanning for potential threats and looking for anything that they
could use as a weapon. There was nothing. Even the garbage can lids were
chained up tight. At this point, he would settle for a wooden stick, but even
that didn't present itself.

Another
block down, amid the canyon of eerily quiet buildings, a car careened past them
in the street. The driver ignored them as they flattened against a wall.

"You
have a car?" Zeke asked Lou.

"No,
but I wish I did. I'd get the hell out of this city right now."

"Yeah,
well you and about five-hundred-thousand others probably had the same idea. If
that fool gets on the highway, he isn't going nowhere."

The zooming
of a passing car engine had livened up the street a bit. A few shambling people
rounded the corner, walking away from Zeke and Lou in the direction of the car.
They let them move down the street, and then followed at a slow and quiet pace.

In a
whisper, Lou said, "Let's cut over a block, and see if we can go around
those fools."

Zeke nodded
his head. It sounded like as good a plan as any. They crept silently up the
sidewalk. When they reached the corner, Zeke leaned around it to see what was
ahead of them. The streets were definitely more populated. It seemed the closer
they were getting to the center of the city, the more of them there were.
Zeke's first instinct was to sit on the ground and die.

His second
instinct was to get pissed. "Let me ask you something, Lou. Are these friends
of yours worth reaching?"

Lou laughed
quietly. "I wouldn't say they were worth reaching, but if you want more
than just your dick in your hand, then yeah, they're worth it."

Zeke was
tired of playing by the rules. He crossed the street motioning for Lou to
follow him. In front of them was a restaurant, a fancy steakhouse from the look
of it. It looked like a suit and tie affair, but none of that mattered now. The
doors were shut tight when he tried them.

Still
whispering, Zeke said, "We're probably not going to make it a mile without
some sort of protection. I bet there's some shit in that restaurant that we can
use. Knives, pipes, anything that'll keep those things at arm's length. The
other side of town is a little more populated, and I'd rather be prepared than
caught with my pants down."

"I
agree, only there's a problem," said Lou.

"What?"

"We
don't got no ties," Lou quipped.

"Alright,
enough of the humor. When I bust open this window, we're going to have to be
quick. A place like this probably has an alarm on it. Grab what you can, and
get ready to fight because those things have a one track mind, and judging by
how they reacted to that car, they seem to be drawn to sound."

"I got
it. Why don't we just go through the door?"

Zeke
laughed as he said, "The glass is too thick. We'd need a sledgehammer just
to get through it.

Zeke took
his shirt off and wrapped it around his fist. He drove it through one of the
big glass windows, silently hoping to not cut an artery in the process. The
noise was far louder than he wanted. The alarm started almost immediately. With
his boot, he kicked out enough glass for himself to crawl inside the window. He
crawled in, cutting his hand on an overlooked piece of glass jutting up out of
the frame.

"Watch
that glass," he said over his shoulder as Lou crawled in behind him. They
made their way to the back of the restaurant. Zeke grabbed a spare towel off of
a countertop and wound it around his injured hand. Then they made their way
back into the kitchen.

They didn't
have to search long before they found the cutlery hanging above a prep station.
Zeke grabbed a shiny, stainless steel cleaver off of a hanging rack and he
handed Lou the next biggest knife, a wicked butcher knife that wouldn't look
out of place in Michael Myers' hands.

"Let's
go," he said.

Lou
followed him without questioning, which was a good sign as far as Zeke was
concerned. All he did was say, "It's a shame we can't stay and cook a
steak. I've never had the scratch to eat in a place like this."

"You
can stay if you want to, but you're more likely to become dinner than to eat
dinner."

"Fuck
that," Lou said as Zeke pushed his way out the emergency door in the back
of the restaurant. He could hear glass crunching underneath someone's feet as
the door swung shut behind them. Those things might move slow, but they sure had
a way of sneaking up on you.

Which is
why he wasn't surprised when they were confronted by the one-armed corpse of a
custodian on the other side of the door. The custodian snarled at him, his
jumpsuit covered in old gore. That wasn't the disturbing part though. In the
custodian's teeth, he saw bits of hairy flesh stuck between his two front
teeth.

"Alright,
Lou. Aim for the head. That seems to be the only way to drop one of these
motherfuckers." Lou swung his knife sideways as the wayward janitor
reached for him with his one remaining arm. The knife glanced off of the man's
skull, filleting a nice flap of skin off the side of his head, but doing little
else.

Zeke
stepped in with a well-aimed chop to the back of the creature's skull. The cleaver
stuck and the zombie stood there jittering about, but he was still alive.

"Use
it like a spear, Lou. This ain't the damn movies. That thing isn't going to cut
through bone like that."

Lou nodded
in understanding and stabbed the knife through the custodian's eye. He fell to
the ground and Zeke stepped on his head and pulled the cleaver free, wiping the
blade on the cleanest part of the custodian, which took a while to find.

"Nice
work," Zeke said, "now let's move our ass."

Lou was
breathing heavily as they continued their cross-town jaunt. The piercing noise
of the alarm from the steakhouse had drawn all sorts of the creatures from out
of the woodwork.

"You
up for a jog?" Lou asked.

"Well,
I better damn well better be," Zeke replied.

They took
off running at an easy pace. Weaving in and out of the dead people that had
been drawn to the alarm. They managed that for some blocks, and then the years
of smoking began to catch up to Zeke. His lungs burned with fire, and sweat
poured down his face. His legs felt like rubber, and it was all he could do to
keep putting one foot in front of the other. In gasping breaths, he managed to
ask, "How much further?"

Judging by
Lou's lengthy breathless reply, he was in much the same situation as Zeke,
"Not much further. Only a couple more blocks."

They ran
down the middle of the street now, which was ideal because it kept any random
dead people from springing out at them from alcoves. The sun blasted down at
them, the shadows disappearing from the street as it rose into the sky,
bringing forth the heat that had disappeared with the night rains.

Down one
alleyway they saw a man fighting ten or more of the things with only an
umbrella in his hands. Neither of them slowed their rubber-legged jog. They came
to the very center of town. Burnside was a wide street with two lanes of
traffic heading east and west. The road was clogged with stalled cars, their
doors open, and blood staining the pavement. Smoke curled into the sky from the
east, and to the west he could see entire apartment buildings burning. Zeke's
mouth dropped open as he saw a person jump from the top floor and plummet to
the ground.

Lou grabbed
him by the arm, and they weaved through the traffic jam of empty cars. The dead
were everywhere, and the cars were only a minor inconvenience, as they sought
to get their hands on Zeke and Lou. They made it to the other side of the
street after cutting back and forth through the rows of cars to avoid the dead.
It was if they were playing a real-life version of Pac-Man... only there were
no power pellets, but Zeke hoped that would change when they got to the place
Lou was talking about.