This Rotten World (Book 1) (11 page)

Something
bad must be happening up top. That's how Jim Jenks thought of the hospital
above when he was stuck in the morgue. Twenty years, and he had never seen this
amount of carnage in such a short amount of time. Thank God the city wasn't an
attractive spot for terrorism. He hoped he would never have to deal with one of
those situations. Though he was used to death and familiar with its many ugly
faces, it still bothered him deep down in that part of him that he kept buried
away during work. A body or two a night was something that he could digest...
more than that, and the soft middle of his brain began to feel it.

When he was
at work, the cold, calculating scientist part of his brain took over. Amid the
smells of formaldehyde and decaying bodies, the part of him that was a father
and a loving husband went away, saved from the horrors of a modern world where
one wrong turn could turn you into an unrecognizable load of hamburger on a
stainless steel metal slab. His stomach grumbled.

For a
second, he thought longingly of his lunch. He didn't know where the stereotype of
the creepy mortician with a sandwich hanging out of his mouth came from, but at
the moment, he wished it was something that he could actually pull off. He
hadn't been able to grab breakfast on the way into work. That was about four
hours ago, and he had steadily been receiving and cataloguing deliveries all
day. That's how Mortician Jim thought of them, as just deliveries to be prodded
and then filed.

His latest
was a man that had been ravaged in the Hospital's E.R. room by his own wife. At
least that's what the orderly had said after they wheeled the body down here.
The blooming red stain on the sheets let him know that what was underneath was
going to be pretty gruesome. He sighed deeply and prepared himself for another
round of "Things I Hope I Don't Dream Of Tonight."

He pulled
the sheet back. The first thing that hit him was the smell of fecal matter. The
second thing that hit him was the sight of the man grimacing in pain, his
intestines piled on his midriff where a hole has been torn.

Jim pulled
a fresh set of powdered latex gloves from a box. He snapped them on and then
grabbed his trusty scissors from the metal tray next to the gurney the man was
lying on. He began cutting the man's clothes free. The T-shirt was easy, but
the jeans took a little work. When he was done, the wrinkled old man lay naked
on the examination table, his white skin standing out in stark contrast to the
blood that covered his destroyed abdomen.

Now it was
time for his favorite part of the examination process... the writing of notes.
Jim pulled his trusty pen from his pocket and walked over to his desk, where he
kept the various forms of his vocation organized. He pulled out a thick form
and began writing the required information down. His scrawl was almost
unintelligible, but it was really the only way to do the job. He chuckled again
about all of the public's misconceptions about his job.

If this
were a movie, he would be speaking into a microphone while he began delicately
carving on the corpse in front of him. Autopsies took time... in a movie, a
recorder might seem handy, but sitting down to transcribe hours of recordings
would be an egregious waste of time, especially since all of his reports were
read, summarized, and distributed to multiple agencies throughout the city. Of
course, in the movies, he would be examining something more exciting than a
dead old man who was obviously the victim of some sort of fever-inspired
cannibalism.

After he
finished the preliminary work on the form, Jim pulled open his drawer and pulled
a toe-tag out. He filled in the patient's name based upon the information that
was found in the man's wallet. He walked over to the corpse and placed it over
the man's big toe.

He screamed
out loud when the old man sat up, his intestines becoming unbalanced and
splattering to the floor. Mortician Jim's scientific mind was intrigued, while
the family man inside screamed out in primal fear. Even as he backed away from
the old man, his scientific mind was reasserting itself, stuffing his other
self into a compartmentalized section of brain. His scientific mind's first
course of action was to see if the man responded to any sort of stimuli.

"Are
you ok?" he asked almost robotically.

The old man
merely lumbered towards him, trailing bits of intestine.

"Can
you hear me?" he asked, quite sure he already knew the answer to his
question. There was no response, and this time the man was closer. A hypothesis
was forming in the gray matter of his brain, but it was too crazy to even admit
to himself. The man had been dead, of that he was sure. The victim had not been
bleeding when he had come in... that's a sure sign of death, especially with
the sort of wounds that he had. On top of that, his brief contact with the man
revealed that his skin was cool to the touch. Despite all of these facts, Jim
couldn't bring himself to believe the logical conclusion... the old man
stumbling towards him was literally a walking dead man.

As Jim's
mind began doing loops in his own cranium, the man was upon him. His wiry arms
grasped him and tried to pull him closer. They struggled, and Family Jim came
to the surface. He wanted to go home. He wanted this nightmare to end, and then
it did. Jim's ankle became entangled in the old man's intestines, and he
stumbled to the ground, hitting the side of his head against his own desk.

He was
unconscious by the time he hit the floor, which saved him a lot of pain.

***

Slim had
worked security at the hospital for decades, but tonight was the craziest night
that they had ever had. Security guards were being called from all over the
hospital to deal with different issues. Patients were attacking people all over
the hospital. It was times like this that he was happy that he had drawn morgue
desk duty over some of the more intensive security gigs.

The sight of
the bodies being wheeled in body bags, under sheets, and sometimes in pieces
had disturbed him at first, but he had gotten used to it. The basement of the
hospital had a certain routine to it, a routine that allowed one to forget that
he was essentially guarding dead bodies from the living and making sure no
freaks got into the morgue and fiddled around with the dead. The only time he
ever had any real trouble was when some family member demanded that they be let
into the morgue.

That's why
he was taken by surprise when Jim Jenks, a man he had known for decades
stumbled up behind him and took a bite out of his neck. As his blood sprayed
across his own security desk, Slim put his hand to his neck in disbelief. When
he pulled his hand away, there was more blood and more spraying. He shoved Jim
Jenks to the ground, and then saw another person down the hallway... a naked
old man... with his guts hanging out.

Slim
reached for his radio to try and call for help, but he fell to his knees. His
brain was not receiving the amount of blood that he was used to... which is
what tends to happen when someone takes a bite out your carotid artery. The
radio was heavy in his hands, and he managed to press the button, but he
couldn't figure out what to say.

His vision
became spotty, and when Jim Jenks put his hands on him again, he didn't even
think to fight. He was gone by the time the old man reached him. But he would
be back.

The sounds
in the hallway had stopped fifteen minutes ago. When they stopped, Rudy hung up
the phone; he had waited long enough. He had made sure all of the lights were
off in his apartment, and now he crouched on the stained carpet, straining his
ears for any sign that his nightmare was over. His heartbeat was all he heard.

Then his
phone rang. The Super Mario Brothers' theme song shocked him into clumsiness,
and he bobbled his phone several times before he could slide his finger across
the screen to answer it. By then, the banging on his doorway had begun.\

"Hello?"
he answered.

"Sir,
did you call the police?" was the reply.

"Yes!
God, yes! You need to help me. There are maniacs trying to break into my
apartment!"

The
dispatcher's reply was cool and calm, "Sir, can you tell me your
address?"

Rudy
rattled off the address as he crept up the hallway to his front door.

"What
is your name?"

"My
name is Rudy Lincoln. You guys need to get here now. I don't know how long this
door is going to last." Rudy leaned forward and looked out the peephole.
His British neighbor and the man with the messed up jaw were both banging on
his doorway. It rattled in the jamb.

"Rudy,
I need you to hold on," the dispatcher said in a voice that was meant to
be soothing. "The police are on their way, but it's going to be a while. I
need you to find something, anything, to barricade the door with."

Rudy was
taken aback by the dispatcher's response. "Barricade the door? What am I?
A fucking carpenter? How the hell am I supposed to barricade the door?"

The
dispatcher took no notice of the growing panic in Rudy's voice. "Do you
have something you can put in front of the door? A piece of furniture, a
dresser, anything to slow them down. I need you to hold on, Rudy."

Rudy backed
away from the door, and looked around his living room. He wasn't much of a furniture
person. The only thing that would even be remotely helpful would be his
La-Z-Boy. "I have a chair," he announced proudly to the dispatcher.

"That's
good, Rudy. Can you block the door off with the chair?"

"I
think so." Rudy put the phone down and then dragged his chair across his
apartment and down the hallway that led to his door. Once it was in place, he
grabbed his phone and plopped down in the chair to give it some added weight.

"I did
it," he said, gasping for air. "How long until the police are here?"

There was
no answer from the other end of the line. Rudy jumped as the pounding
continued.

Dustin
hopped on his bike and pedaled to where the explosion had lit up the night. He
struggled to comprehend what he was seeing upon arriving there. A cop car was
on fire. It had clearly been the source of the explosion, and yet, the
occupants, who must have been in the car at the time of the explosion, were
still stumbling around.

Their
clothing was burned off of their bodies, and the masses of charred flesh
stumbled blindly down the street. Dustin kept waiting to hear sirens, but there
was nothing. Sheepishly, Dustin put his feet on the pedals and rode away. There
wasn't much he could do, and things in the city had obviously gone from bad to
worse. He could feel panic welling up in his chest. If a cop car could explode
and burn for five minutes without the sound of sirens echoing through the
night, then things were definitely out of whack.

Dustin was
about a mile from home when he spotted another sign of something not quite
right. A man clad only in pajama pants burst from the front door of a house.
The shirtless man wasn't what made Dustin slow down and look at the man; it was
the blood that covered his face and his mouth.

"Are you
alright?" he called to the man from a safe distance.

The man
began to approach him, giving no sign that he had even heard Dustin's question.
Dustin shook his head and began to pedal away. At the intersection of the next
block, he saw a car accident. The red sports car looked as if it had T-boned a
woman in a silver Camry. The driver of the Camry appeared to be dead, as her
forehead had most definitely been caved in on the steering wheel. Another
bloody woman was struggling to get out of the driver's side seat of the sports
car. The male passenger was trying to attack the woman in the driver's seat,
but the seatbelt was holding it back.

At that
moment, Dustin decided two things. He would help the woman in the sports car,
but after that, it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. Dustin rode over to
the car, and tried to open the driver's door. It wouldn't budge, so he lifted
up his bike and smashed the window with the handle bars. He reached in and
pulled the lady out, averting his eyes as her skirt came up past her thighs as
she slid out of the window.

Immediately
she grabbed a hold of him, and Dustin had to resist the urge to throw her to
the ground out of fear. She clung to him, sobbing, and repeating "He's
crazy!" over and over. Dustin looked over the woman's shoulder and saw
that the man in the passenger seat was still struggling to reach the woman.

He held her
at arm's length and looked into her eyes, "We have to get out of here.
Things are very bad right now."

She nodded
her head in understanding, so he continued, "Can you stand on a
bike?" Dustin looked over at his bicycle, as did the woman he was talking
to. It wasn't very impressive, but that's the way that Dustin had always liked
it. Hand-crafted from the best parts he could scrounge, his silver glider
didn't so much impress as it prevented any would-be thieves from taking it. It
was a good bike, though it didn't look the part. The silver pegs on the back
tires would give the woman plenty of space to stand if she could keep her
balance.

Seeing
Dustin's ride, the woman became somewhat hesitant. "You mean on that? Why
don't we just call the cops?"

Dustin
couldn't help the smirk that inched into the corner of his mouth. "Lady,
about a mile back, I saw a cop car burning. No one was coming to help them. They've
got bigger fish to fry tonight. If you want to wait around for your friend to
unbuckle his seatbelt, be my guest, but I'm not going to sit around here and
wait with you."

He waited
as the words sunk into her head. When her eyes cleared, she looked at him, and
said, "I think I'll wait for the police."

"Suit
yourself, but you have to ask yourself one question... do you think they'll
show up before that guy gets here?" Dustin pointed down the road where the
shirtless man in the pajama bottoms had come shuffling down the street. The
woman screamed and buried her face in his chest. He resisted the urge to laugh
at this cliché moment of weakness. "C'mon, my apartment's not too far from
here."

Dustin
walked over to his bike, picked it up off the ground and straddled it. The
woman looked at him doubtfully, and for the first time he noticed how
attractive she was, despite the fact that her nose was crooked and blood was
pouring down her face. The shirtless man down the street groaned loudly, and
that made up her mind for her. She hopped on the back of the bike, and stepped
on the pegs. Her arms gripped his shoulders tightly to the point of being
painful. Together they took off into the night.