This Rotten World (Book 1) (19 page)

When they
finally made it to the other side of the street, they sprinted down the
sidewalk. Lou pulled him towards a squat brick building with three floors. The
windows were boarded up, but judging by the squalid look of the building and
the neighborhood, he wasn't sure that it was because of the situation.

They ran
around the side of the building, dodging random monsters and their outstretched
claws. The entire building was shaped like a letter C. A tall, wrought-iron
gate blocked off the empty courtyard while a wing of apartments to the north
and south rose above it, blocking out the sun. They scaled the fence, and
landed with a thud on the other side.

Zeke
finally took the moment to look at his hand. It was still gushing blood. Behind
him, he could hear groaning and the banging of creatures on the gate.

"C'mon.
Let's get inside," Louis said as he strode across the courtyard. The walls
were littered with graffiti and empty cans of cheap beer and malt liquor.
Cigarette butts covered the sidewalk. Lou walked up to the front door and tried
to turn the handle. Nothing happened. "What the fuck?" he said as he
tried again to the same result.

"Nobody
home?" Zeke asked.

Lou stood
back from the door and yelled up at a window above the door. "Gary Lee!
Let me in! It's me, Satchmo!"

Lou pounded
on the front door, and finally a man opened it, a man with a very mean looking
submachine gun pointed right at them. He was big, black, and very muscular. His
shirt could barely contain his arms, and his Jheri curl shone in the dim light
of the entryway.

"What
are you doing here? How do I know you're not one of them things?" the man
asked, waving the machine gun around with an easy familiarity and a dash of
irresponsibility. The man made Zeke nervous. There was something about him that
seemed off.

"Gary
Lee, it's me, man. Satchmo."

"Yeah,
yeah. I know you, but who the hell is this guy?" Gary Lee said, waving his
gun around some more.

Lou smiled
and pointed at Zeke. "That's the man that helped me get away from the
cops."

"You
sure he isn't a cop?"

"I'm
not a cop," Zeke said.

"Fuck
you," said Gary Lee, "I wasn't talkin' to you. I'm talkin' to fuckin'
Satchmo."

Lou moved
to Gary Lee in an effort to calm him down, "He isn't a cop, man."

"You
guys get bit?" Gary Lee asked, his guard slipping a little bit.

They both
shook their heads, but that wasn't good enough for Gary Lee. He made them show
him their arms and legs, and when he had seen everything he needed to see, he
said, "Fuckin' motherfuckers. I ought to shoot your asses right now for
bringin' them things here."

They looked
behind them to see that ten of the creatures were now at the gates, their arms
thrust through the wrought-iron bars, faces pressed against them.

"Come
on in. Get your asses in here. You're drawing a fucking crowd already."

They
entered the apartment building, and for a second, Zeke thought about turning
right around. The inside was filled with pungent smoke, carpet that smelled
like old urine and vomit, and every inch of wall was plastered with more
graffiti. A life-size portrait of Gary Lee with four naked, big-titted women
clinging to his legs while he brandished an AK-47 dominated the wall of the
stairwell. They climbed the stairs, and emerged in a second-floor foyer which
was filled with couches full of sleepy, passed out people. Gary Lee kicked one
of them off the couch with his silver-tipped boot. The couch was duct-taped
where the worn fabric had split apart. Gary Lee plopped onto the couch and
pulled a joint from a shirt pocket.

He lit it
and took a puff, as he began to question them about what they had seen.
"So what's it like out there? We had to close up shop last night. One of
the girls got herself a nasty case of dead standing on the corner last
night."

Lou related
his tale and told the story of how he had gotten picked up by the cops for
assaulting one of those things. He told of their escape from the police station,
and the harrowing adventure they had just trying to move a mile across town. At
the end of the story, Gary Lee just took a puff off his joint, and said,
"No shit." Then he got up and walked away.

Lou led him
to a room with some dirty mattresses on the floor. Zeke was dead tired, so he
fell on the mattress, despite its stains, and drifted off to sleep. It was a
tortured sleep, piled high with screaming drill sergeants, both alive and dead,
making his life a living hell. At the end of the dream, he was standing in the
bottom of his hole in the sand when bodies began falling on him, burying him
under their weight. He awoke screaming.

Zeke buried
his face in his hands and then rubbed the sleep from his eyes. When he took his
hands away, the dream began to fade from his mind and he noticed that Lou was
watching him. "I'm alright. Just a bad dream."

Lou was
smoking a cigarette while lying on his back on the dirty mattress. He looked up
at the ceiling, as if he were daydreaming. He ashed on the ground, as apparently
hundreds of people had before.

Zeke rose
from the mattress and shook his head. He was sore, tired, and all he wanted to
do was lie in the bed. But he knew that wasn’t prudent. The soldier inside of
him commanded him to get up, check out his surroundings and see if he was
completely safe. Zeke got to his feet and nudged Lou into action with his boot.

“C’mon.
Let’s go check out the situation.”

With Lou by
his side, they proceeded to walk through the building, stumbling upon sights
both horrifying and concerning. In one room, people were smoking crack, about a
dozen of them, glassy-eyed, unkempt, and unaware of their presence. For them,
it seemed as if the world was turning just the same as it ever was. They simply
poked their heads in the room and moved on. They could hear the sounds of sex
behind a few of the closed doors; they moved on from those rooms as well.

“I’m not
sure this is the safest place to be,” Zeke whispered to Lou.

“Yeah, I
know. But it was the closest place.”

“Well, we
ought to see about putting this place far behind us. I don’t like the things
that are going down here, and it’s bound to end up badly. If those things get
in here, there’s not a single person here capable of fighting besides
ourselves,” Zeke said as they walked by an unconscious junkie lying in his own
vomit, pants half-on and with no shirt.

“I agree,
it’s not ideal, but all we have is a butcher knife and a meat cleaver. We’re
not going to last long out there if we don’t upgrade.” They came to a stop at
the landing. They peeked through the curtains and through the boards on the
windows. It was still daylight outside, but you wouldn’t know it from inside.
The courtyard was still empty, except for trash and graffiti. More of the
creatures had gathered at the gate to the courtyard. The gate bowed inward, the
weight of the people outside straining the gate to its limits. It was only a
matter of time before it gave way completely, and then the flimsy wooden doors
downstairs would be next.

“Well, we
better make our move quick. Or we won’t be able to move at all.” Zeke turned to
Lou and said, “How much do you care about these people… Satchmo?”

Lou looked
around the landing at the flopped bodies, litter, grime, and sadness. “I don’t
give two shits about these people. They’re dead already. When that fence goes;
this place goes.”

“What about
Gary Lee? You guys seem to have a history.” This part was important. How Lou
answered would influence how he would proceed.

Lou nodded
his head and said, “Me and Gary Lee go way back. He used to look out for me.
But over the years, he became more about Gary Lee, more about the hustle. Truth
be told, he was more likely to blast a hole in us than to let us in here. If he
gots to go so we can go, then he gots to go.”

That’s what
Zeke wanted to hear. Zeke had no illusions about what it would take to get out
of here alive and move to a more advantageous position, preferably somewhere
outside the city, with a thick wall and plenty of ammo.

“At the
very least, we could use his gun, and any more he has lying around. If he won’t
cooperate, then he’ll have to go.” It all made sense to Zeke. As he looked out
the window one more time, he saw the fence give just a little more. “Let’s go
find Gary Lee.”

Lou led the
way through the trashed out halls and up some stairs, past tweaked out junkies
and crack whores. They came to a room at the end of the north wing. A skull was
painted on the door in blood.

“This is
it,” Lou said, “Gary Lee’s room.”

“Let’s do
this quick,” said Zeke. He reared back and with his right leg he kicked the
flimsy door open, splintering the doorjamb. They rushed inside to find Gary Lee
completely naked and in mid-thrust on a chained up woman. They grabbed Gary Lee
and threw his naked body to the ground. Zeke held the butcher knife to Gary
Lee’s throat. “Don’t move a muscle, or your headless body will be flapping
around here like a chicken with its head cut off. You make a sound, and it’s
your last.”

“Hey, man.
Look,” Lou said, his hand pointed at the chained up woman.

Zeke turned
his head to see the woman clearly for the first time. She wasn’t a woman; she
was one of those things. Blood caked her backside, and her eyes were pale and
lifeless. Zeke thought he was going to throw up, and he could see the same look
on Lou’s face.

Zeke turned
to Lou and said, “You’re sick. I ought to chop your head off right now.”

Gary Lee
laughed, not fazed by the knife to his throat, “I always knew this day would
come. I just didn’t know it would be at the hands of you, Satchmo. What are you
doing running around with this cracker? Why are you doing this?”

Lou looked
at Gary Lee and said, “You’re not the Gary Lee I grew up with. The Gary Lee I
knew would be fighting, trying to help people. Instead, you’re up here, high as
hell, and… I can’t even say it.”

Gary Lee
laughed some more. “Go on. I’m not ashamed. She lets me do whatever I want to
do. It takes a little while to get used to the cold, but it can be done. Go on
give her a try yourself. I'd stay away from her mouth though.” Lou's laugh was
a booming one, tinged with a slight hint of madness.

“Don’t
listen to him, Lou. Find the goddamn guns and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Lou tossed
the room, coming up with a submachine gun, a couple of pistols, and a few boxes
of ammunition. Lou loaded the guns and they were ready. He took aim at Gary Lee
and said, “Any last words?”

Gary Lee
looked at Lou with defiance in his eyes, “You’re no son of mine.” With that,
Lou pulled the trigger, sending Gary Lee’s brains splattering across the dirty
white mattress.

Zeke sprung
to his feet and grabbed the submachine gun from Lou. He had known all along, of
course. The resemblance was too much to be a coincidence. Give Lou a Jheri
Curl, and he would be the spitting image of Gary Lee, only twenty years younger
and without the haggard junkie face.

“You good?
You ready to move?”

Lou looked
at Zeke and said, “Nah, man. I’m not good. But I can move.”

Just then,
they heard what they had been fearing. With a shriek of twisted metal, the gate
came down. Zeke pulled the curtain back and watched as 30 dead people shambled
across the courtyard, breaking glass bottles and crushing cans with each
footstep. There were more dead heading their way, drawn by the shriek of the
gate or the gunshot. It didn't matter.

“What do we
do now?” Lou asked.

Zeke
squeezed a round into the naked lady's head and said, “We wait.”

Old Han
fired his pistol without thinking as the youth slid through the broken window.
His wife’s shrieking drove all feelings of romance away. As more people appeared
at the window, he retreated to the back of the house, dragging Fang along with
him.

“Bad things
are happening,” Han said, “very bad things.”

Fang
stopped screaming long enough to state the obvious, “You killed that child.”

Normally,
he would have told her to shut her mouth, but it was important that she
realized what was going on. “He was already dead. Look.” He pointed at the
figure of the youth wearing a black Bruno Mars t-shirt. The youth stumbled down
the hallway, blood seeping from the bullet hole on his shirt.

“I don’t
understand,” Fang whimpered.

“Of course
you don’t. What would you do without me?” Han took aim and the child fell to
the ground, a hole in his forehead and his brains sliding down the living room
wall. There were more behind him. Han dragged Fang into the bedroom and closed
the door behind him.

He set the
pistol on the bed as he began to drag the dresser to block off the door.
Despite the fact that the dresser weighed twice as much as he did, he managed
to get it in front of the door just as the pounding began.

He turned
around to wipe the sweat off of his brow when he saw her standing there, the
gun leveled at his face.

“What you
doing?” Han demanded. He took a step towards her, and she yelled at him to
stop, her finger on the trigger. “You crazy?”

“You’re the
crazy one,” she yelled. “You always have been.”

“I’m only
say once. Give me that gun.”

“Then what?
Don’t you see? It’s here. The end of the world is here.” She smiled as if a
grand idea had blossomed in her brain. “It’s here.”

She pulled
the trigger, and Old Han fell backwards onto the floor. His hand went to his
chest. Blood pumped out of it spraying across the room with every beat of his
heart. Fang dropped the gun on the bed and knelt beside Han, cradling his head.
He looked up at her with questioning eyes.

They said
nothing. Fang held her man until he faded away, tears streaming down her face;
the pounding at the door become deafening. His eyes closed one last time, and
she knew he was safe, her devoted husband, safe from his own madness and
perhaps even her own.

Fang had
waited patiently for the end of the world, waited years in fact while that
decrepit little ball of hate had slept silently next to her for decades. That
cheapskate, heartless bastard refusing to die on his own, yet refusing to leave
her at the same time. Pride is a strange thing, strange enough that it could
make two people who loathed each other sleep in the same bed for year after
year, neither one refusing to budge, refusing to give in and admit that
somewhere along the way they had become wrong for each other.

Han’s
inability to embrace the opportunity around him, to understand the new world
that they were living in, had driven a wedge between them that set them growing
in different directions for decades. Each day they woke up, they were further
and further apart.

She had
looked at him from the corner of her eye during breakfast, plotting against him
for years. She could see the same looks from him every now and then, but as is
always the case, the woman was always better at hiding her feelings, at being
more circumspect.

Now it was
done. Her new life awaited her just outside the door.  All she had to do was
shoot her way past them and make it to somewhere safe. She stood up, gently
setting Han’s head down on the floor.

She pulled
an old piece of luggage from the closet, the same luggage she had used when
they had come to America. She began putting her clothes in the luggage,
cramming them into the suitcase with shaking hands, unconcerned with tidiness.

She was zipping
up the suitcase when Han’s hand, still slightly warm, seized her ankle. He
pulled her down to the ground and began clawing at her. He was small, but she
had always been smaller.

Fang
screamed as Han straddled her and bit into the flesh of her bicep. She punched
and kicked, but nothing had any effect. The struggle lasted longer than one
would have expected looking at the size of Fang, but in the end, the pounding
on the door stopped, and Han and Fang were united forever as husband and wife,
trapped in a squalid room in America, far from home.