This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down (10 page)

Then came the hard part. Lifting
weights wasn't a typical part of a homeless man's daily regimen. Mort got a
handhold on the roof, but couldn't manage to pull himself up. His legs flailed
in the air, as the dead began to moan underneath him, their arms reaching to
the sky as if in supplication.

"Blake!" There was no
answer.

He felt the first hand on his
boot, and doubled his efforts, but it was no use. "Blake!"

A hand wrapped around his ankle,
squeezing it. Mort screamed in pain. "Blake!"

His fingers started to slip, and
he felt another hand grasping at his ankles. Then Blake was there, blood
leaking out of his ears, and his eyes glazed over. His rough hand grabbed Mort
by the wrists, and with all of the energy that he had left, he pulled Mort onto
the rooftop.

They lay there in the sun,
gasping and hurting all over. Blake sat on his tail, his hands pressed to his
ears, and his eyes squeezed shut. Mort sat up, pulled the guns and ammunition
out, and through trial and error, he managed to get them fully loaded. Below
them he could hear the moans of the dead.

In the distance, he saw a
helicopter fluttering through the air. Mort stood up, and waved his arms. The
pilot flying the helicopter either didn't notice or didn't care. Either way,
Mort sat back down, and waited for Blake to regain some semblance of his former
self. Mort looked back in the direction of the pawn shop. Smoke was rising
where they had come from. The grenades might have done more damage than he
thought.

Mort pulled a mangled but
functional cigarette from his pocket and lit it up, adding his own smoke to the
air. It was his last one.

Beelzebub's had been easy enough
to find. They actually could have walked there, but riding in the jeep was a
nice change of pace, and it kept bullets in their guns and the hands of the
dead off their skin. They pulled to a squealing stop in front of the brick
structure, its long floor-to-ceiling windows were tinted so that they couldn't
see inside. There were no signs of life in the street. There was movement, but
not from anything that was living.

They hopped out of the jeep,
resisting the urge to fire their weapons at the dead. They had seen how quickly
the dead had circled in on the wounded soldier. Even now, their presence was
drawing attention. Ace walked to the front of the building and stopped in front
of a door set into red brick walls; the propane torches flanking the door no
longer guttered flame as they did the night before.

He placed his hand on the black,
iron handle of the door and yanked. To his surprise, it swung open with ease.
The inside of the building was black, the only sound the buzzing of flies. Ace
reached into his pocket and pulled out his trusty lighter. It was a brass
Zippo, purchased on one of his previous tours through the United States. Before
they had fled the jail, they had claimed their personal effects using a key
covered in blood. He was glad he had stopped to liberate it, though the light
it cast in the club was minimal. He stepped inside, and pulled his gun free,
enjoying the reassuring weight of it in his hand.

The floor of the club was
littered with broken glass, puddles of beer, and the occasional pile of blood.
No one had bothered to clean up after the concert the night before. That was
good. That meant his gear was still here. He felt the men behind him pressing
him forward.

"Look for a light," he
told the red-bearded man. Without speaking, the man did as he was told, holding
his own lighter in the air, dragging its light along with him. Ace felt like an
archeologist, discovering the remains of an ancient civilization. "Like
motherfucking Indiana Jones," he said under his breath.

Ace stood in the middle of the
club, his lighter held above his head, remembering the chaos of the previous
night. It seemed like a lifetime ago, him standing on stage with his friends,
playing guitar, belting out lyrics, and scanning the crowd for appropriate
backstage material. That life was over.

The lights came on suddenly, and
Ace blinked his eyes as they adjusted. He snapped his lighter closed. In the
bright lights, the club seemed small. On the stage, their instruments still
sat, never to be played again. The man with the teardrop tattoo moved behind
the counter and began pulling out beers and placing them on the counter. The
other men gathered around, thirst on their lips.

Ace had no interest in drinking
with them. His mind reeled and roiled with emotions, emotions he wasn't capable
of dealing with. Hey Fever's drum set sat silent in the background, the words
"Electric Fever" scrawled across the bass drum in angular, yellow
script. He walked to the stage and looked at the candy-red bass lying on the
scuffed wood of the dance floor. Jungle Fever's blood was still smeared on the
frets, the neck of the bass lying several feet from the body. Of all the things
Ace had seen over the previous 24 hours, seeing the bass lying broken on the
ground was by far the worst.

He leaned against the stage and
closed his eyes. He saw the entire night in his head, the entire horrible
ordeal. When he opened his eyes, the world was still there, and he rolled onto
the stage. He got to his feet, and walked past Hey Fever's drum set, tapping lightly
on the floor tom. Hey Fever's half-empty beer still sat on one of the Marshall
stacks. He moved to the back of the stage, pushing the ancient, stained, red
curtains aside.

He walked down a narrow back
corridor to the band room. The cinderblock walls were glazed in red paint
buried undernesth thousands of examples of poor graffiti drawn in sharpie. He
put his hand to the wooden door of the back room and shoved it open. It slid
silently on well-oiled hinges, and he saw inside. He breathed a sigh of relief
as he saw that everything was just as they had left it, messy and ready to use.

A baggie filled with white
powder sat half open on top of his suitcase, a battered suitcase that his
mother had given him. His clothes were bundled underneath, and empty bottle of
beer littered the tables and couches. The room was stuffy and hot, the smell of
stale alcohol permeating the air. Ace grabbed the baggie out of the suitcase
and left the room, abandoning his only possessions, his only reminders of the
world that he had left behind some 4,000 miles away. It would be good to forget
that world.

Ace returned to the bar and
found his guys sitting there drinking themselves silly. He plopped the baggie
down on the counter, and the red-bearded man said, "Fuck yeah."

The red-bearded man pulled a
credit card from his wallet. Then he used his large, meaty hands to pull the bag
open, and with the plastic square, he lifted some of the powder out of the bag
and dumped it on the bar's counter. He began chopping at it and forming it into
lines. When he was done, he looked around and found a translucent green straw.
He was about to snort it, when the red-bearded man looked at Ace and offered
him the straw. It was an honorable thing to do; it was the right thing to do.
Ace took the proffered straw, bent over the counter, plugged his free nostril,
and snorted the powder up his nose.

The chemical concoction numbed
his nasal passage immediately, and he felt the familiar rush. He dabbed at his
nose, knocking free any loose granules, and leaned back as his heart began to
beat faster. He watched as the others lined up, except for the chubby man with
the goatee.

"What's wrong? You too good
to party?" Ace asked

The pudgy man looked at him and
said, "I've never snorted coke before."

Ace smiled at the man. "There's
a first time for everything."

"Go on, man. It ain't gonna
kill you," the red-bearded man said.

The pudgy man looked at him,
uncertainty in his eyes. "You sure?"

"What's your name?"
Ace asked him.

"Earl," he said.

"Earl? That name is no good.
I'm going to call you Pudge. New world, new names."

Pudge looked at him, clearly
uncomfortable with all of the attention. "Now, Pudge, this is a new world.
No one is going to come in here and arrest you. All the cops are dead. You saw
that." Ace tapped on Pudge's chest, his skinny finger bouncing off of the
worried man's breastbone. "How's your heart?"

"Fine as far as I
know," Pudge said.

"Then cocaine is fine as
far as you know. Do one line. See if you like it. If you don't," Ace
spread his hands wide as if to say, "I tried my best."

The red-bearded man handed Pudge
the straw, and he bent over the counter, hesitant as if someone was going to
tell him he was doing it wrong. He snorted in, his eyes squeezed shut, and he
leaned back, coughing a little bit. Ace slapped him on the back, laughing.
"See? Not so bad, is it?"

"Yeah," Pudge said his
pupils growing wider with every second. "Yeah, that wasn't bad at
all."

The red-bearded man snatched the
straw from Pudge, and leaned over the counter, snorting his own line without a
pause. He passed the straw to the man with the shaved head, who shook his head
"no."

"Are you afraid too,
Slick?" Ace said.

The man with the shaved head
looked at him, and said, "My name's not Slick, and I don't like
cocaine."

Ace stood up from his chair, the
cocaine rushing through his body, his mind focused and euphoric at the same
time. "Your name is Slick."

The man with the shaved head
stood up off his stool, took a drink from his beer, and placed it on the
counter. "No one tells me what my name is. My name is Marshall, not Slick,
not Buddy, not Champ. It's Marshall." Marshall placed his hand on Ace's
chest, his own nose inches from Ace's nose. "Don't fuckin' forget
it."

Ace laughed. In his head, he saw
a world of possibilities. This was the first challenge to his power. This
moment was important. This was the moment that Ace had waited for, the moment
where he would bind the others to himself for the rest of their pitiful lives.
He looked the man in his steel-gray, emotionless eyes.
Murderer's eyes,
he
thought.

He half-smiled at the man and
said, "You don't have to do the cocaine... Slick."

At the mention of his new name,
the man with the shaved head swung his fist at Ace, a powerful punch with all
of his weight behind it. Ace ducked under it with ease, and brought his knee
into the groin of the man. He crumpled to the side, and Ace grabbed the baggie
of cocaine and pulled out a handful. Then he squatted on the prone man and
shoved the powder in the face of the man, blinding him. "What's your
name?"

The man with the shaved head
wriggled on the ground, his eyes stinging as he tried to breathe. Ace
maintained a position on top of the man's chest, but still the man didn't
answer. "What's your name?" Ace asked again.

The man with the shaved head did
not answer, so Ace punched him in the face, causing the man to crack the back
of his head on the floor. Ace stood up and commanded the other men. "Grab
him."

The man with the red beard
hopped over the counter of the bar while Pudge and the man with the teardrop tattoo
pulled the man with the shaved head to his feet.

It was quiet, except for the
ragged breathing of the injured man. Ace looked him in the eyes, those
steel-gray eyes.
Bitch eyes,
Ace thought. "What's your name?"

"Slick," the man said,
defeat hanging in the air like the smoke from a burning stick of incense.

Ace slapped him on the shoulder
and said, "What are you drinking, Slick?"

Slick wiped his face and looked
at Ace, gauging the potential danger in the situation. Ace shot a disarming smiled
at him. Slick sat on his stool and said, "IPA."

The man with the red beard
hopped back over the bar, happy to be done with the bullshit. He fumbled around
behind the bar before he pulled out a bottle of beer. He popped it open for the
man, and slid it down the bar where Slick caught it. He tipped the bottle up to
his lips and drank heavily.

"That was intense,"
Pudge said.

"What about me? What's my
name?" the man with the teardrop tattoo asked.

Ace looked at the man. He was
skinny. His arms were covered in coarse black hairs. More hair stuck out of the
ring of his collar. "I'm going to call you Spider."

The man with the teardrop tattoo
spat his beer on the counter. "Spider? Couldn't you have come up with a
more original name? There are a thousand Mexican dudes out there with the
nickname Spider."

Ace shrugged his shoulders.
"Names are hard. You remind me of a spider. Maybe you will become a
legend, and when everybody says the name Spider, they think of you."

Spider shrugged. "One name
is as good as the next I suppose."

The man with the red beard handed
Ace a beer. "Thank you," Ace said. He looked at the man, trying to
think of a name for him. Red... that was a good name, but it was too easy. The
man with the red beard was a hulking man, easily six inches taller than Ace.
His arms were thick, the skin pink like a pig. No... two animal names would be
too much. They already had one Spider in the group.

The hulking man wore light brown
Carhartt pants, copper rivets gleaming in the light of the bar. "What are
those?" he asked, pointing at the rivets.

"Pants?" the man
replied, confusion on his face.

Ace shook his head in
frustration. "No, the metal."

The red-bearded man looked down
at his pants and smiled in comprehension. "Rivets?"

"Rivets!" Ace banged a
fist on the counter. "Those are some slutty rivets, friend. I will call
you Slutty Rivets. That's your name."

Slutty Rivets laughed loudly.
"I like it," he said. "It's ridiculous, but I like it."

They continued drinking, Slick
sulking at the end of the bar, his head resting on his hand, white powder all
over his clothes. From outside they could hear the banging of the dead on the
tall windows. Their peace wouldn't last much longer, but it was ok for now.

"What about you? What do we
call you?" Slutty Rivets asked.

A sheen of sweat clung to Ace's
forehead as he sipped from the tall, red, white, and blue can of beer. It was
watery, but cool, just the way he liked it. Names... names... names. What was
his name in this new world? Who would he be?

Names entered his mind and left
quickly, discarded as being too tacky, too silly, or too stupid. In the end, he
went with the first fake name he had ever worn. The past was the past, and
though this was a new world, some things were still true. He was still crazy as
hell. He was still pissed off. He was still ready to burn the world to the
ground. "Call me Ace," he said.

From outside, they heard
gunshots. Pudge ran over to the window to see what all the commotion was. He
stuck his fingers between too slats in the blinds and spread them, giving him
enough room to see outside. "We got trouble," Pudge said.

Ace hopped off of his stool, and
walked over to the window. He looked outside. Another vehicle had pulled up
behind their purloined jeep. The olive green vehicle was larger, more armored,
and had a huge machine gun mounted on the back. Soldiers hopped out of the
vehicle. It looked like a turtle to Ace. They took aim and fired their rifles,
clearing the dead from the immediate area. The majority of the men stood around
the perimeter of the street, their eyes scanning the perimeter. One soldier,
with a self-important walk, stalked up to the jeep that Ace and his boys had
commandeered. He looked inside and checked for keys.