Up in flames, p.1
Up In Flames, page 1
part #8 of This Rotten World Series
Also Available From Jacy Morris
1000 Pieces of Sweet (Coming Soon)
The Abbey
The Drop
Killing the Cult
The Lady That Stayed
One-Shot (Coming 2025)
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The Taxidermied Man
An Unorthodox Cure
One Night Stand at the End of the World Series
One Night Stand at the End of the World
One Night Stand in the Wastes
One Night Stand in Ike
One Night Stand in a Place with No Name
One Night Stand in the Box
The Enemies of Our Ancestors Series
The Enemies of Our Ancestors
The Cult of the Skull
Broken Spirits
This Rotten World Series
This Rotten World
This Rotten World: Let It Burn
This Rotten World: No More Heroes
This Rotten World: Winter of Blood
This Rotten World: Choking on the Ashes
This Rotten World: Rally and Rot
This: Rotten World: Tempered in Blood
This Rotten World: Up in Flames
This Rotten World:
Up in Flames
By Jacy Morris
Copyright © Jacy Morris 2023
All Rights Reserved
Cover Illustration by Don Noble
Table of Contents
Prologue: Papa
Chapter 1: Speak Up
Chapter 2: Headless Snakes
Chapter 3: The Lay of the Land
Chapter 4: Respite
Chapter 5: Sometime You Have to See for Yourself
Chapter 6: Conspiracy
Chapter 7: Heather's House
Chapter 8: The Return of Blackroot
Chapter 9: No Such Thing as Good Men
Chapter 10: Sneaking Out
Chapter 11: Nothing Good Happens Behind a Walmart at Night
Chapter 12: Follow That Car
Chapter 13: Are There Motorcycles in Heaven?
Chapter 14: Hamburger
Chapter 15: Bloodlust
Chapter 16: Conspiracy Theories
Chapter 17: Firefight
Chapter 18: The Only Cure for an Infestation
Chapter 19: Bubba
Chapter 20: Who Brought This Hell to the Potluck?
Chapter 21: One Last Smoke
Chapter 22: Popcorn
Chapter 23: Aliens and Stoners
Chapter 24: A New Car, A New Soldier
Chapter 25: Burn Rubber
Chapter 26: Roadblock
Prologue: Papa
Farrell Orndorff picked up his cell phone for the tenth time. He stood on the porch of his house, gazing out over his crops, his cattle, his land. Inside, his wife prepped for dinner, which was hours away, hoping beyond hope they would have guests to join them.
The TV said a lot of shit, but Farrell didn't necessarily believe any of it. So far, he'd seen nothing on his ranch that would indicate the end of times. Oh, his workers were getting antsy and nervous. Migrants with brown faces and dim minds, they believed in all sorts of superstitions. One of the cleaning women kept insisting on propping a broom upside down next to the door to keep out spirits.
Farrell didn't have time for that bullshit, but his wife, who he had to admit was somewhat on the dim end of the spectrum herself, wouldn't let him move it aside. "What could it hurt?" she'd asked when he had complained about it.
But, yeah, the workers believed the shit they were hearing on the radio. Luckily, they didn't have TVs. It was better to hear about it than see it, he guessed. When Farrell had first awakened that morning to listen to the news as he waited for his pot of coffee to brew, he thought he'd been the butt of an elaborate prank. He'd picked the remote up off the counter and begun flipping channels. The scenes of destruction had turned his stomach, made him queasy. His first thought had been for his granddaughter. If this thing was real, which was still highly unlikely in his mind, his granddaughter was in danger—probably his daughter and her stoner husband as well.
The phone never rang, even as the sun came up. The chickens began clucking in their coop, shouting warning to Farrell Orndorff. When his wife Maggie had come down a few minutes later to find him standing there with his cell phone in his hand instead of out rousting the workers from their bunkhouse, she knew something was wrong.
"What is it?" she'd asked.
He pointed her to the TV, wanted her to see it for herself just in case he had it all wrong and this was just some fucked up TV show he was watching. He was getting older. Maybe his mind was finally starting to go.
"We have to call the kids," his wife said from the living room, her voice edging into panic as she scrambled upstairs to grab her own cell phone.
"I already tried," Farrell said. "No answer. Doesn't even ring really."
"What does that mean?"
"Hell if I know," Farrell said. He walked over to his landline. Damn thing only rang twice a day, and it was usually some sort of telemarketer telling him about his car's extended warranty in a robotic voice. Wondering if maybe there was something wrong with their cell phones, he strode over to the land line, plucked the receiver off the cradle, and dialed his daughter's number. "Pick up, Heather," he mumbled to himself, his wife looking on as he waited for the phone to ring. It rang once and then went to voicemail.
He came to it then—the decision. It reared its ugly head. He studied its teeth, the pinkness of its tongue, the blood on its lips, and decided he had to find out.
From the den, he pulled a Remington Model-7 from a rack, along with a simple Remington shotgun, both purchased in the '80s when the wolf population had suddenly boomed. From a cabinet, he grabbed a couple boxes of ammo.
"What are you doing?" Maggie asked.
"I'm gonna go get Pammy."
"Should I go with you?" Maggie asked.
"Nope," he said. "They might be on their way here. If I miss 'em, I want you waiting here so you can gimme a call if they show up. Then I'll come on back, and we'll all hunker down until this shit blows over."
"Language, Papa."
"Sorry," he said, though he didn't mean it. If you couldn't use swear words at a time like this, when could you use 'em? But his wife had always been particular about those things. She had her own superstitions, the ones put into her by the church. While Farrell didn't believe in all that fire and brimstone bullshit, he did believe in the morals of the church, not because of any ghost stories or shit like that but because it was just good advice to be nice to your neighbors.
He grabbed the shotgun, went over how to use it with Maggie, showed her how to load it, told her to keep the butt against her shoulder and be ready for a kick. Told her not to point it at anything unless she was ready to pull the trigger. When he finished, he gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, "I'll be back soon."
"Here," she said and handed him his phone charger. "Just in case."
She had tears in her eyes, so he kissed her again, hugged her tight. As he hustled out the door, the stock of his rifle bumped into the broom and knocked it over. He bent down and placed it back where it had been, right-side up as Rosaria had taught them. Can't hurt, I guess.
****
Guillermo De Soto, Memo to his compadres, wondered what was taking the bossman so long. Behind him, the other men sat listening to the radio, lounging around the bunkhouse's rickety table, clad in ill-fitting sweatshirts, their hair sticking up every which way. He stood at the door, wondered what the bossman would make of all the stuff on the radio. Outside, the kids ran in boisterous, aimless circles, already getting underfoot.
When the bossman emerged from the big house, Memo whistled, got the attention of Pedro, Eddie, and Miguel. They turned to look at him with serious eyes. They were each far away from their respective homes, had formed a tenuous bond of friendship working in the fields of the bossman, slaving away for money to send back home. They'd be here for a few more months before moving on to a different place. Some of them would go home, wait for the next season to come along. Others would take their meager money and drink it away. Memo, he was all for getting the fuck out of here. The radio had said nothing about México, was only concerned with what was happening in the pinche United States.
The bossman clomped up the steps leading to the bunkhouse, a look on his face Memo didn't care for. In his hand, he clutched a rifle, and Memo started to get a real bad feeling. Maybe he'd gone loco, snapped completely. He'd always been a weird dude, straight-laced and clipped with the men, but he'd never done anything violent. Maybe today was the day he showed his whiteness, his true disdain for the brown workers who kept his ranch running and profitable.
Before the bossman had to knock on the door, Memo stepped outside, "Good morning," he said in his accented English.
"Morning Memo," he said.
Farrell explained the situation, said the word "bonuses" a few times, and that's all it took for the other men to join the cause.
They piled in one of the bossman's rusty pickups while he sat in his new SUV, a Range Rover, situating his rifle on the passenger seat.
Before he left, Memo said goodbye to his kids, told 'em to be good for Mama. He gave his wife Rosaria a hug. Without looking back, he climbed into the back of the pick-up, with Eddie at the wheel.
The brown men talked in hushed voices, and Memo wondered if the money was going to be worth it. The truck started up, rattled like a dying thing, and they bounced off the bossman's property, a 30-acre cattle ranch that did a little bit of everything. It's only a couple of hours… and if the bossman is serious about those bonuses, it'll be worth it.
That was the last time Memo saw his wife and kids.
Chapter 1: Speak Up
Cammy's head spun. All around her, gunfire exploded, and despite knowing what was going on, she couldn't help ducking every time someone fired off a round. Her eyes were wide in her skull, and even though she blinked and flinched as everything exploded, she tried to take everything in.
The Walmart slid by on their right, the windowless walls keeping them safe from the dead and the dying inside. She ran in the middle of a group of bikers and doctors. Her greatest wish at that moment was to leave, for God above to pluck her off the planet and stick her in heaven. She wouldn't even feel bad about cashing out on the rest of her life. She just didn't want to be eaten. It seemed a funny thing to think, something one shouldn't have to say or think, but she'd seen it, seen the way the dead, with their dull teeth, had to tear and gnash to break through human skin.
When she was little, she had pinched a girl at her daycare. The woman in charge, a weirdo with glasses and a vest covered in cartoony buttons, had pinched her back to teach her a lesson. Now she couldn't even think about being pinched without a spine-tingling sensation crawling up the small of her back and making her hair stand on end. Being eaten would be so much worse.
"There's more!" one of the men called as they rounded the front corner of the Walmart. Their vehicles sat untouched as a field of the dead spread out across the yellow-lined asphalt. The gun in her hand was worthless, and though she wanted to stop, stand still, and figure out how the thing worked, she didn't know what she was doing, would likely become surrounded if she slowed to even a walk.
The dead weren't fast, but they weren't slow either. They walked with a sort of impatient lean, as if there was a wire attached to their back lifting them up onto their tippy toes. Anyone unfamiliar with them would think they would just topple over at some point, but despite this uncoordinated stumble, none of them ever fell.
Cammy ran confused, not knowing where she was going. She had seen the remains of her truck all twisted and broken behind the Walmart. The old man had plowed it into another vehicle, for what reason she didn't know, wasn't even sure if the old man had made it out alive as she hadn't waited to find out. But now she was on foot, unless she could get a ride.
All around her, bikers and the survivors of the hospital, of which there were far too few, piled onto bikes and into cars and trucks. Cammy had just about reached her limit, and though she wanted to call out to the people fleeing the parking lot, she was also afraid to speak up, worried her voice would make the dead hone in on her. As they drove off, one by one, she found herself running out of options. "Wait," she whispered, fearful of being heard as the old man who'd wrecked her truck ran past.
But the dead didn't need to hear Cammy. All they needed was to see her, see how she walked, see the healthy sheen of her skin, smell the sweat on her body. They knew she wasn't one of them, wasn't one of the rotting masses who needed to fill their bellies.
"Wait," she said a little louder, her voice drowned out by the guttural gurgle of a Harley-Davidson speeding away.
The dead, their options dwindling, all turned toward Cammy. As the last of the bikes roared off, she raised her voice, knew if she didn't, she would die right then and there in a Walmart parking lot. She couldn't think of a worse place to die.
A man on a bike, a bandana wrapped around his head, spun around. She saw it was the man with the pen sticking out of his neck. Flash she'd heard someone call him. He came rumbling back, firing off a handgun. None of the shots landed, and she flinched as the bullets blew out the flesh of the dead to her left and right. Here an arm exploded, there, a chunk of someone's back dropped to the pavement in a spray of blood.
The man rode by, kicked the dead out of the way with a leg, and then spun his bike around sharply, pulling up alongside her. He waved at her with his hand, unable to speak, and she plopped on the back, clinging tight to him, glad she had performed the emergency tracheotomy.
He patted her on the knee, and they rode away, Cammy squeezing the man's ribs for all she was worth.
The road ahead was populated by the shambling remains of the residents of Casper, Wyoming. They held their arms out as if they just needed a hug, but what they really wanted was to eat her, and anyone else with a pulse.
Ahead, the other vehicles roared through town, traveling along the Yellowstone Highway, with no plan whatsoever in their minds.
Tears came to her eyes, not because she was sad, but because she couldn't see any way out of this situation, any way to escape becoming food for the dead. What the fuck was she supposed to do? She was a rad tech, and nothing more.
If one of the larger dead people got ahold of her, there was nothing she could do. She was weak, and scared, so the tears fell from her eyes, blurring the world around her. She knew these streets, had driven them every day since she had gotten her job at the Wyoming Medical Center.
None of this is real. It can't be.
Cammy squeezed tighter as Flash jogged the bike around one of the dead. She pinched her eyes shut, felt her tears stream along her cheeks and back toward her ears. Eventually, she couldn't take it anymore, the sight of the dead, their bikes, the blood dripping onto the streets, so she closed her eyes and pressed her head to the back of Flash's leather jacket.
They traveled for no more than a few miles, and then they came to a stop.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself in front of an Exxon gas station.
But, we already have enough gas.
Chapter 2: Headless Snakes
Jaiyama cursed, her stomach grumbling. On the back of her bike, Ernie rode bitch. They had passed plenty of places to eat, you know, if this was normal times. But it wasn't. You couldn't just go through a Taco Bell drive-thru and order a Mexican pizza and some tacos.
The first place that offered ready and available food, something they sorely needed, was an Exxon Gas Station off the main drag. Attached to the gas station sat a convenience store. Its lights were off, and as their bikes neared, a man in a pickup truck saw them coming, yanked the nozzle from his gas tank and left it lying on the ground. He took off with a squeal, and this pleased Jaiyama.
She'd had it with these Wyoming rednecks. They were fucking everything up. Right now, they should all be in the Walmart piling up shopping carts full of food and filling their guts. But now, here they were, about to raid a fucking gas station instead.
Jaiyama left her bike running and fed beautiful red shells into her shotgun as Ernie stepped off the back. With the shotgun gripped in her hand, she stepped off her ride.
"What are you doing?" one of the hospital staff called from the safety of their car.
"I'm getting some fucking lunch," she called.
Jaiyama didn't bother glancing left or right. She knew what awaited them. More of the dead. They were always around now, drawn by the sound of their bikes and the way they moved, she supposed.
She leveled her shotgun at the glass doors, fired once, racked her shotgun, and fired again. As a group, they rushed the store. One of the hospital men took off, his tires squealing on the road. Jaiyama didn't care. If he wasn't with her, he was against her. Fuck him.
She ducked under the metal bar in the middle of the door and stepped inside, her boots crunching over broken glass.
Without speaking, the horde of bikers and even the remaining hospital staff tore into the place, pulling food off the racks, ripping it open, and stuffing it in their faces. Somewhere, Jaiyama was sure an alarm was going off, but she was fairly sure no one was going to come for them. She plucked a bag of Doritos off the shelf, ripped it open, and upended it into her mouth chewing with pure joy.
Back in the beer section of the convenience store, the biker with the ZZ Top beard was handing out beers. Jaiyama whistled, and the man sailed one across to her. She caught it in mid-air, and washed down the Doritos with an ice-cold Budweiser. Fuck this feels good.
Then she glanced out the window, saw the dead coming, homing in on them, slow but steady. After a loud burp, she called out to the looters, "Grab what you can. We got company. Beer me!" she called to ZZ, another beer flew through the air, she caught it and slurped it back. Normally she was a tequila gal, but right now, the beer hit the fucking spot. With her head tilted back and the beer spilling down the sides of her mouth, she reached out to a rack, grabbed a couple of candy bars at random, and stuffed them in her pockets.
