There was silence, and then a click. The Presidentspoke one last time, "Tell my wife and daughter I love them, and try andkeep them safe." The boom of the gun blew out the microphone that ThePresident was using, but it didn't matter. No one else would be speaking.Showtime was over, and around the country, soldiers and citizens turned offtheir TV sets, hoping that they could be as brave as The President was in hisfinal moments.
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This Rotten World:
Let It Burn
By Jacy Morris
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THIS ROTTEN WORLD: LET IT BURN
Prologue
Lou sat on the roof of the movie theater. In normaltimes, it would have been considered a nice day. The heat that had clung to thecity for the better part of the week had broken, leaving behind a crystal-bluesky and a breeze that would have been refreshing if it didn't carry upon it thestench of death.
From his vantage point on the roof, Lou could see thewest side of the city, its tall buildings thrusting up into the sky. There wereless of them now. To Lou, the city was a great dying beast, and it wasn't dyingquietly. Fires raged unchecked through the metropolitan area. Its handful ofskyscrapers had turned into towering infernos, giant sticks of incense thatcouldn't cover up the smell of the city's demise. The dead roamed the streetslike maggots crawling over the city's rotting flesh.
Portland, Oregon, once a hipster haven, the progressivejewel of the Northwest, was now nothing but a collection of buildings on theprecipice of becoming a ruin. Like Pompeii or Easter Island, Portland wasstarting its descent into history, cracking and crumbling; the dust and ash ofmillennia would cover the city. Its buildings would collapse as fires, wind,and the carving knife of time sent the once immovable structures tumbling totheir final resting place.
Lou wondered how long it would be until the city wasfound again. He doubted it would be during his lifetime. The situation hadprogressed too far. Would archeologists rediscover the city in a hundred years?Two hundred? Would the city go unchecked for a thousand years, until somerandom person stumbled across the "ancient" civilization. Whatrecords were they going to leave behind? The internet was gone, satellitesorbits were quickly decaying, and no one knew how to run a press anymore. Itwas entirely conceivable that their entire civilization could disappear, butfor the books they had printed. In that case, he guessed all that would be leftwould be Stephen King stories and Tom Clancy books.
But, that was the future. The city wasn't entirely goneyet. There were still those that remembered what Portland was like. They buzzedamong the buildings like flies, travelling in circles, looking for places tofeed, places to rest for a spell and catch their breath. But they were dying.Soon, there would be no one left to remember what the city was like before thedead had refused to stay that way. Humanity was on a collision course toextinction. It had been a little over a week.
Lou's thoughts ran dark. It was only natural, despite thesunshine, despite the breeze. Nothing was right. The breeze carried with it thesmell of the dead. The sun turned the rotting corpse next to him into a tickingtime bomb of disease, the abdomen swelling with bacteria and gas as the body'scells broke and nature took over. Clouds of haze from burning buildings marredthe view as the smoke drifted over the valley.
The buzzing drew him to the edge of the roof. Thirty feetbelow him, they milled about, the former residents of the city, clawing at theside of the building as if they could scale the walls.
Lou watched them rake at the stone walls, and in hismind, a scale began to tip. It was a long way down, but he knew that it wouldbe a quick fall. It would be two, maybe three seconds, and then it would all beover. The hopelessness had set in quick after he had taken care of Zeke. Fuckthat. After he had killed Zeke. Might as well call it what it was. What hopedid he have of making it if Zeke, a trained soldier, hadn't even managed tosurvive for a week?
The two had been through a lot together. An escape fromjail, a flight through the city with a thousand shambling corpses on theirtrail, a ride down the Willamette, and finally, their flight from the MemorialColiseum as it plunged into madness, the dead surging through its busteddefenses and reducing the whole building into a massive mausoleum. Hundreds, ifnot thousands, of people had died in the fall of the Coliseum. Of that number,whatever it might be, there was an abundance of people who were more fit forsurvival than him. Yet, they were all trapped in that giant tomb, where oncebasketball players had run up and down the court to the adoration of thousandsof fans, and he was here, sitting on a roof next to a corpse.
Lou looked up at the sun, the brightness of the glowingorb causing the skin around his eyes to crinkle, rays of sunshine warping intosword-like spikes around the edges. He laughed, an unexpected noise that cameout of him unbidden, a short guffaw that said, "Well, look at menow." The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. He was stillfighting for his life, just like when he was a kid on the streets. He had grownup without a mother, and his father's only interests seemed to be making moneyand getting high. He had always been on his own. He had always been surviving,and yet, today he was tired of it. Surviving for what?
Lou looked down at the corpse at his feet. Zeke, finallystill. His body had sat on the floor of the theater for a day, the entire groupin shock at the demise of their presumed leader. Lou had carried the head upfirst and set it down on the hot roof with the sort of reverence that the mandeserved. Zeke had bound the individuals in their group together with hisplans, with his confidence. He had given them purpose and direction. Now, they wereall just sulking
