This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down by The Vocabulariast Page B

create
the impression that he had a double gut, one above the belt and one below. His
belly smacked off the side of the car and he tumbled down onto the hot pavement. There were too many men for it to have been a teacher's conference, she
thought.
    She swerved left and cruised
down Multnomah St., ignoring the red lights. The concentration of helicopters
was thicker here, and she could hear their noise through her windows and the
blast of the air conditioner. She passed underneath I-5. As she zoomed under
the road hanging fifty feet above her, she saw bodies falling onto the pavement
behind her. Presumably, they were the dead who were lurking on the elevated
highway above.
    Katie crossed over the Max
tracks, and skirted around the Rose Garden. The dead milled around the front of
the place, the windows to the Rose Garden were smashed beyond belief, revealing
a yawning black cavern. It gave her the chills, so she continued past, her
Durango speeding past the outstretched arms of the dead. She hung a right on
Interstate and continued around the block, circling around to the Memorial
Coliseum. The dead were thick here, and she couldn't avoid bumping some of the
out of the way. She had to slow down or risk damage to her vehicle. The last
thing she wanted was to be trapped just yards away from the Memorial Coliseum
with hundreds of the dead between her and her goal.
    Somewhere in the back of her
mind, she toyed with the thought of backing up and trying to find another way
out, but she plowed ahead, her mind fixated on the possibility of normalcy, on
the possibility of being rescued. She looked in her rearview mirror to see that
the dead had closed in upon her. She accelerated forward, shoving them, moving
them aside; a few fell under the wheels of her vehicle, and she bounced around
in the cab of the Durango, smacking her head against the window as she rolled
over their bodies. Then she saw it, a chain-link fence blocking the road.
Soldiers stood on platforms behind the fence, rifles at the ready. They were
firing.
    Christ, she thought. How
the hell am I supposed to get in there? Bodies dropped around the car, and
she saw one of the soldiers pointing with a red flag to a section of the fence
that had been opened for her. Soldiers stood blocking the entrance, mowing down
anything that got between her car and the opening. The ride to the opening was
awful. Her SUV jounced over the bodies on the ground. She could taste it in her
mouth, the breath of freedom that the fence represented, the freedom from the
world of death that surrounded her. Hope made her floor the accelerator, and
her head bounced off the headrest behind her as the vehicle accelerated. A dead
man stepped in front of the car, and his body went flying. Immediately, the
sound of the SUV changed. Instead of the wonderful purr that she had fell in
love with at the dealership, the Durango now emitted a clunky, grating noise.
Steam began pouring out of the hood of the vehicle, and she could barely see five
feet in front of her.
    Katie skidded to a halt, just in
time to avoid running over two soldiers who had their hands out in a halt
gesture. The steam billowed from the vehicle, but she didn't care. She was
alive. She was safe. Katie unfastened her seatbelt, and popped out of the driver's
side. She spun around to look behind her as the soldiers swung the gate closed,
securing the gate with heavy chains and padlocks.
    The dead were there almost
immediately, their faces pressed up against the chain-link fence as if they
could chew their way through. "Fuck you!" she screamed at them, her
middle finger in the air and tears streaming from her eyes. She dropped to her
knees sobbing. It was some time before she realized that she was being gripped
by the arms and dragged toward the Coliseum.
    She watched the faces of the
dead shrink as they pulled her away. I made it. I fucking made it, she
thought.  Now what?

Chapter 11: Riverside
     
    Lou had thought it up first. The
military man