This Rotten World (Book 1) (14 page)

Old Han
cackled in his beat-up, gold Daewoo Espero. It was the first car that he had
managed to buy in America, and it was the only car. It wasn't Chinese, but
Korean was the next best thing. The last thing he wanted to do was give the
lazy Americans any more of his hard-earned money. He didn't mind that the car
barely ran and that replacement parts for the defunct car manufacturer were
hard to find, especially when one was using broken English to describe what one
needed.

He reached
for the car stereo, and turned up the sound on the tape deck. Black Panther's
delightfully glammy metal jams blared on the radio, a message from the early
'90s Chinese rock band still struggling on in a Korean car driven by a Chinese
man in America. Old Han laughed at how wonderful the world was.

As he moved
through the city, away from his burning bar, he came to a stop at an
intersection. He was frightened out of his daydreaming by a blood-soaked
woman's hand pounding on his window. Blood poured from her forearm, and Han
could see figures chasing after her.

He stepped
on the gas, his car sputtering down the street, the muffler jangling around,
ready to fall off at the next speed bump. Han swore in Mandarin. He swore more
when he saw that she had left a bloody handprint on his driver's side window.
He was half tempted to turn right around and run the lady over. They were
probably on some drug-fueled binge, her and her multiple boyfriends. Americans
were like that. Gross, immoral, and riddled with addictions.

When Han
had to stop at the next intersection, it was because it was clogged with
traffic. People were honking and shouting as three men struggled amid some car
wreckage. Han waved his hand in dismissal and backed the Daewoo up. He knew
another route. It was a dark alley, filled with potholes, but it would take him
around the clogged intersection. He sucked in a breath of air as his muffler
scraped the ground after a vicious pothole.

Somehow,
the Daewoo made it through the forgotten and unkempt alley, only to be
confronted by a crowd of people advancing down the  next street. It was at this
point in time that Old Han finally realized that something out of the ordinary
was going on. The group of people marching toward his car were all injured in
various ways, some stomach-churning to see. There were only two choices, drive
forward and plow through the people, or drive backwards and risk destroying his
car.

Old Han decided
to wait and see what would happen. He didn't see any weapons; maybe they would
just move on. Just in case, Han reached into his glove box and pulled out a
pistol. As the gang approached, he shrunk in his seat. When the first of the
group did not pass the car, he knew he was in trouble. A man in a gray
sweatshirt began pounding on the driver's side window, while another man began
pounding on the other side. Soon, more had joined in the pounding. He felt the
car begin to rock back and forth.

"Motherfuck
it." Old Han stepped on the gas. Bodies flew left and right, but Han still
couldn't see as there were three people clinging to the hood of his car. He
swerved to the right, and two of them fell off to the side. His view was still
obstructed however, as a man with an eye hanging by a scrap of tendon still
clung to the hood of the Daewoo. Han swerved to the left this time, and his car
hopped the curb, drove on the sidewalk for a few yards, and then thumped back
onto the street.

He screamed
triumphantly at the top of his lungs as the last man rolled off of his car. The
noise in the car was deafening, as his muffler had dropped off when he jumped
the curb. The loud sputtering of his engine exploded throughout the early
morning air, echoing through streets teeming with the dead. As Han sped on, he
kept his pistol in his lap. He rocketed down the streets, heedless of speed
limits. He saw it now. The destruction, the wandering people. His eyes had
finally opened. He had to dodge several grasping sets of arms reaching for his
car as he weaved through the city streets. He avoided oncoming cars, doing
their own swerving. In one yard, he saw a man with a shotgun firing into a
group of people. He continued on.

When he
finally pulled into the driveway of his single-level ranch home, his hair had
escaped its ridiculous comb-over. It stuck out every which way. With his pistol
in his hand, he turned off the car and sprinted toward the front door. He
pulled his giant key ring out and searched frantically for the right one. He found
it and burst through the front door of his house. He slammed the door shut
behind him and locked the door. He was standing there looking out the blinds
when his wife came up behind him.

He could
smell the sickening stench of her perfume before her arm snaked around his
waist. He could feel the saggy meat of her breasts against his back. The
feeling revolted him.

"What
are you looking for?" Fang asked in perfect English.

Han ignored
her and kept peering out the window through his thick-lensed glasses. They must
have been thirty-years-old, but the glasses were all that he had left from
China... that and his repugnant wife. There... at the street corner. He saw
two, maybe three people walking down the street. They must have been drawn to
his house by the  thunderous noise of his muffler-less Daewoo. He backed away
from the blinds, and shoved his wife away.

She looked
at him with hurt in her eyes. She always had that look. It infuriated him.

"What's
wrong?" she asked.

Han ran his
hands through his thinning hair, causing thin wisps of it to stand up in even
crazier directions. "Have you heard anything weird tonight?"

"Weird?
What do you mean?"

"I
mean crazy people. Running around, hurt."

Fang look
confused. "I was sleeping for most of the night. What's going on?"

Han
dismissed her with a wave of his hand and walked over to the couch. He plopped
down on the couch, annoyed by the divot his wife's ass had made in the couch
over the year,  and reached for the remote. He turned on the TV. While he
waited for it to warm up, his wife plopped down on the couch next to him,
crowding him with her body, her perfume snaking its way up his nose.

The picture
finally showed up on the TV, and he flipped the channel to the news. They sat
in silence as the pictures flitted across the screen. His wife inched closer
and closer to him as horrifying image after horrifying image flashed across the
TV. Things were bad, very bad. For the first time in a long time, he didn't
mind his wife's touch. He welcomed it.

He looked
at his wife and kissed her, not the cold American kisses that they had shared
for the last few decades, but the hot kiss of their youth. Who knows what would
have happened next had the window not burst open and the maimed corpse of an
American youth begun crawling through the window.

Ace heard
the door to his cell clang open, just before he blacked out. When he awoke, he
awoke to a strange sound that was barely audible underneath the buzz of the
cellblock's yelling. It sounded like a cat eating wet cat food, smacking its
lips together. Ace almost faded out, as he thought of his cat at home, a small,
orange beast with a crooked tail being watched by his mother. His fans would
get a kick out of knowing that he still lived at home with his mother and a
cat. The only thing that stopped him from fading out completely was that the
noises were much too loud for a cat to be making them.

He opened
his eyes and groaned. His throat was bruised and raw. As he sat up on his cold
metal cot, he saw his cellmate kneeling over something with his back to Ace. It
took a while for his eyes to adjust, but then the face of the cop with the red
goatee came into focus. His eyes stared up at the ceiling... lifeless.

Suddenly,
Ace was no longer a fan of America. Blood ran from the cop's mouth, and Ace
could only think of one thing to do. He stood up, barely able to steady himself
on his legs. He would only get one chance, so he waited silently until he felt
like he was ready. When he had built up the courage, he charged at the back of
the feasting man and dropkicked him in the back as hard as he could. The man
went skidding across the floor and out of the cell. Ace popped to his feet,
wobbling unsteadily as the blood was still trying to refresh his brain. He
grabbed the cold metal bars of the cell door and slid it closed with a clang.

He was just
in time too. He had to spring backwards to avoid his cellmate's outstretched
arms reaching for him through the bars. He hung just out of arm's reach and
studied his cellmate's face. His mouth was covered in blood, and he could see
bits of flesh stuck in the man's teeth. His eyes were glassy and unfocusing.
Ace flipped him off, but it was as if he was invisible to the man, except for
the fact that he was clearly hungry for seconds. Over his cellmate's shoulder,
he could see the man in the cell across the hall reaching for him as well, his
face pressed against the bars.

Ace bent
over the mutilated jailor. The smell of his insides was pungent, and he had to
fight to keep from gagging. The roar of the cellblock was deafening. With his
hand over his mouth and nose, he dropped down to his knees and searched the
guard's body. Today, was his lucky day... if a day filled with murder and
violence could be considered lucky. The jailor still had his keys on him.
Twenty keys on a ring, but no gun, and a guest just outside the door who could
throw him around like a ragdoll if he got close.

Ace was
formulating a plan when the guard grabbed a hold of his arm and began pulling
it to his mouth. Instinctively, Ace cracked the guard across the jaw, but still
the man clung to him. Ace got off of his knees and yanked his arm away from the
guard.

"Hey!"
he yelled, not knowing what else to say, his English temporarily failing him.
He backed away from the guard, bumping into the far wall of his cell. The guard
managed to get to his knees, the shreds of his intestines flopping on his brown
guardsman pants. "Stop!" Ace yelled.

The guard
advanced on him, and out of sheer panic, Ace spun and landed a hard kick on the
guard's face. The guard toppled to the ground. For a moment, Ace was concerned
for the man's health, and then he realized that the man was in fact dead. The
blank stare, the gaping gut wound, it all made sense to him.

As the
guard rolled over and tried to get to his feet, Ace pounced on the man's back,
grabbed his head and began pounding it into the concrete floor of the cell. The
guard was helpless, and when Ace had finished, the guard's forehead was caved
in and the ground was covered in blood. He stood, shining with sweat, and let
out a ragged sigh.

He looked
into the hallway, and his former cellmate was still there, still clawing at the
air and trying to get to him. Now he had to deal with him. Ace rummaged through
the guard's pockets, coming up with nothing more than a collapsible baton. No
gun. No taser. Just a solid piece of metal that wasn't very likely to deter his
former cellmate.

Ace flung
his wrist out, flicking the collapsible baton so it opened. He took a swing at
the concrete walls of his cell. A small flake of the concrete wall flew off. The
baton was heavy and weighted properly, but it was going to take one lucky hit
to take out his cellmate.

The air
whistled as Ace approached his cellmate and swung the baton in a  downward arc.
The baton glanced off one of the steel bars, robbing it of its impact. The man
on the other side of the bars appeared to feel nothing as the metal baton
bashed into his shoulder. For a second, Ace wanted to just stab the baton at
the man's eye and kill him outright, but the collapsible nature of the baton
wouldn't allow it, so he continued to swing away.

Despite the
fact that he could play guitar and belt out songs at the same time, in
virtually every other facet of his life, Ace was not considered agile. It took
him about twenty swings to finally land a solid blow to his cellmate's head. In
the meantime, the noise in the hallway had increased, and people were shouting
up and down the hallway.

He had
trouble making out the words of the other prisoners, but then he heard gunshots
from the entrance to the cellblock. Ace swung the baton harder and faster,
desperation lacing every swing. The din in the hallway rose higher and higher,
and then there were more gunshots. Just as he was about to deliver another
swing at the man, the side of his cellmate's head exploded, blood splattering
the concrete floor of the hallway. Ace stood there, his arm raised in the air,
and for some absurd reason, he stared at the puddle of blood oozing out of his
former cellmate's skull... trying to make a shape out of it, as if it were a
cloud floating in a blue spring sky. It looked like a fish he decided, a fish
with its guts spilling out.

As he stood
there, trying to come up with another shape, two men ran down the hallway, guns
in their hands.

A pudgy cop
in riot gear began yelling at the prisoners, "If you're alive, yell your
name, otherwise we will shoot you. I repeat, if you are alive, yell your name,
otherwise I will shoot you."

The
shouting became more intense. The voices of the panicked prisoners reverberated
off of the concrete walls, echoing back and forth and building in intensity.

The pudgy
cop's partner stopped in front of Ace's cell. He looked at Ace with suspicion
in his eyes and his gun raised.

"Ace!
My name is Ace! Ace! Ace!"

The cop seemed
satisfied.  Then he noticed the jailor on the floor, a blood puddle expanding
from his split melon. "What the fuck is that?"

"He
try to kill me," Ace pleaded. The cop aimed his gun at him as Ace
continued to yell, "He tried to eat me!"

Just when
it seemed like the cop was going to pull the trigger, the man that had been
bashing his head against the bars for the last two hours, reached through his
bars of his cell and yanked on the cop's satin police jacket. He managed to
squeeze off a round that zinged by Ace's head. Hot fire ran down his cheek.

"I got
one!" the cop announced to his partner as he slipped out of his jacket and
away from the grasp of the man in the cell.

"Well,
then take him out," his partner yelled.

Ace was
still in shock when the cop pulled the trigger. Despite everything he had seen
that night, he still felt fear gurgle in his belly as the cop put a round
through the head of the man across the hall. He slumped to the ground, his face
still pressed against the bars, and blood running down his face, dripping onto
the concrete floor.

The cop
continued down the hallway, Ace momentarily forgotten. Ace flinched every time
there was a gunshot.
That could have been me,
he thought. He held his
hand to his bleeding cheek and hoped his bandmates were yelling out their
names, but he couldn't tell over the din of noise coming from the cells.

When the
cop had checked every cell, he came walking back through the hallway.
"Stay in your cells. We have an emergency situation. If you stay in these
cells, you will be safe. We will be back in an hour to check on you. Especially
you, buddy boy," he said as he strode past Ace's cell.

As the cop
disappeared from sight, Ace could hear the man repeating his message, and then
they were gone, both of them. Noise still flooded the cells. People were
yelling for help and asking questions. "Stay in your cells," the man
said again, slamming the door shut behind him.

Fuck that.

Ace pulled
the key ring off the jailor and began plugging the keys into the lock on his
cell, one by one. The last thing he was going to do was sit in a cell with a
rotting corpse, waiting to be executed. He didn't know what was going on
outside, but this was most definitely not normal... even for America.