This RottenWorld
By Jacy Morris
Text Copyright ©Jacy Morris 2014
All Rights Reserved
Also Available from JacyMorris
Fiction:
The Abbey
The Children of Hamelin (Coming Soon)
The Enemies of Our Ancestors (as The Vocabulariast)
This Rotten World
This Rotten World: Let It Burn
Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (as TheVocabulariast)
Non-Fiction:
Let's Get Drunk and Watch Horror Movies: 50 HorrorMovie Reviews and Drinking Games (As The Vocabulariast)
Let's Get Drunk and Watch Horror Movies: Volume 2(As The Vocabulariast)
Music:
All Hell Breaks Loose Soundtrack with Jeremy Brown(Available on iTunes)
Movies:
All Hell Breaks Loose (Available from Wild EyeReleasing on DVD)
The Cemetery People (Coming Soon)
Spec. Scripts:
Find my work on Inktip.com (email me [email protected] to find out how)
Table ofContents
AlsoAvailable from Jacy Morris
Prologue
Chapter 1:Zeke
Chapter 2:Mort
Chapter 3:Rudy
Chapter 4:Teach
Chapter 5:Joan
Chapter 6:Clara
Chapter 7:Through a Garden Hose
Chapter 8:Nightsticks
Chapter 9:Dustin and Bill
Chapter 10:Code Red and Endcaps
Chapter 11:The Munchies
Chapter 12:Haldol and Bite Wounds
Chapter 13:Use Your Head
Chapter 14:Speakerphones and 12-Gauge Shotgun Shells
Chapter 16:A Total Lack of Trumpets
Chapter 17:From Worse to Worser
Chapter 18:Pop-Tarts and Paint Thinner, the Breakfast of Champions
Chapter 19: Icemanand Busy Signals
Chapter 20:Never Too Late
Chapter 21:Katie Bar the Door
Chapter 22:Making Stories
Chapter 23:Check-In Time
Chapter 24:Roasted Goat
Chapter 25:Ace is Number 1
Chapter 26:The Shopping Cart of Salvation
Chapter 27:The Mortician
Chapter 28:A Message to You Rudy
Chapter 29:Fixed-Gear Only
Chapter 30:Molly
Chapter 31:Observation
Chapter 32:Boot Camp
Chapter 33:The Last Tear
Chapter 34:Quarantined
Chapter 35:The Long Way Home
Chapter 36:This Old Cell
Chapter 37:Hot Chops
Chapter 38:Hey, Neighbor
Chapter 39:As Day Breaks
Chapter 40:On the Road
Chapter 41:The New Katie
Chapter 42:Friends and Murder
Chapter 43:Til Death Do Us Part
Chapter 44:Swords and Flames
Chapter 45:To Sleep or Not to Sleep
Chapter 46:Becoming Chaos
Chapter 47:I'd Like to Make a Collect Call to Armageddon
Chapter 48:Move Over Rover, the Army is Taking Over
Prologue
BOOK 2:
WE ALL FALLDOWN
Chapter 1:The Dinner Bell
Chapter 2:Self-Service
Chapter 3:Pretty Big Balls
Chapter 4:Those Things'll Kill Ya
Chapter 5: ANumbers Game
Chapter 6:Getting Wheels
Chapter 7:Fortified
Chapter 8:Boardman, Oregon
Chapter 9:Rescue
Chapter 10:Safe
Chapter 11:Riverside
Chapter 12:Two to Drop Off
Chapter 13:The Dumpster of Salvation
Chapter 14:A New Band
Chapter 15:Digging In
Chapter 16:Watching the Gauges
Chapter 17:In the Coliseum
Chapter 18:Ginger Fluff
Chapter 19:Dinnertime
Chapter 20:Polite Conversation
Chapter 21:When is Check Out Time?
Chapter 22:The Last Show on Earth
Chapter 23:Droppin' Like Flies
Chapter 24:Barbarians at the Gate
Chapter 25:Take Two of These and Call Me in the Morning
Chapter 26:Killing Time
Chapter 27:Room #27
Chapter 28:Shit Buddies
Chapter 29:On Notice
Chapter 30:In the Booth
Chapter 31:On the Fence
Chapter 32:Wanted
Chapter 33:The Pied Piper of Portland
Chapter 34:Saint Bryant
Chapter 35:Into the Night
Chapter 36:Not Enough Beer to Go Around
Chapter 37:The Third Time is the Charm
Chapter 38:We All Fall Down
ABOUT THEAUTHOR
Prologue
In the future:
The sun beatdown upon him. Beads of sweat ran down the sides of his face. One ran down theside of his nose and perched on the edge of his upper lip. He blew the bead ofsweat into the air and grunted as he pulled on the coarse rope. His hands, nowcallused and blistered after days on the roof, lumbered with roboticautomaticity.
His mindwandered as his body engaged in actions that had essentially become secondnature. He pulled on the rope some more. In the back of his mind, he registeredthe coarseness of the rope on the exposed parts of his hands. He had wrappedsome shreds of an old shirt around his hands a few days ago, when he firstbegan his work.
His shoulderswere red from exposure to the sun. In the past, he would have worried aboutincreasing his risk for melanoma, but not anymore. Now it was perfectly fine tosmoke, drink, and sit in the sun for hours upon hours. Hand over hand, hehauled on the rope, leaving bits of skin and blood behind on the frayed, hempenstrands. Finally, he hauled his prize up onto the roof, a heavy, blue bowlingball with a metallic finish, swirls upon swirls playing on its surface. Itlooked like a small planet sans continents. The sun lit every metallic piece ofglitter embedded in its plastic. The bowling ball rested in a cradle that hehad fashioned out of rope. Crimson drops of gore dripped from the bowling ballonto the loose pebbles that covered the roof of the gas station.
He looked offinto the distance, wiping the sweat from his brow. His arm dropped to his side,and the sweat that he had wiped off ran down his fingers and dripped onto theroof. He flexed his aching fingers and looked at the yellow and red gas stationsign. $4.19 for a gallon of gas. He had a feeling that it was actually worth alittle more these days.
The man pulled acigarette from a bag that sat on the ground next to a shiny, silver airconditioning vent. He lit the cigarette, looking at the naked lady lighter hehad pulled from a house two weeks past. He wondered if he would ever see anaked lady again, a living one at least.
He dropped tothe ground and leaned his back against the air conditioning vent. The heat ofthe flimsy metal burned his skin, but he no longer cared. He took a deep dragoff of the cigarette, enjoying the burn of the smoke as it curled its way intohis lungs. He looked up at the azure sky, wishing for rain. Hell, a cloud woulddo just fine... anything for a brief respite from the relentless sun. There wasonly one thin wisp of a cloud floating through the sky, a mocking wisp with ashape like nothing. He took another drag from his cigarette, and closed hiseyes.
He awoke to thepain of burning on his fingers. The man tossed the cigarette across the roofand looked at his ruined digits. Red blisters and pain, exactly what heneeded... more blisters and pain. He stood up, shaking off the soreness thathad seeped in unbidden during his brief respite.
The man pickedup the bowling ball by the rope and dangled it out over the side of the gasstation roof. He peeked over the edge, already prepared for what he was aboutto see. Rotten faces peered up at him, scraps of flesh hanging off of theircheeks, their arms raised up to him as if they were at a concert and he was theobject of their affection. But that's not how it was... he was just a meal,standing on the roof of a gas station, holding a bowling ball tied up in arope. He swung the ball in an arc, releasing it at an angle that sent ithurtling straight down.
He watched itfall, tracking its
