The Rotting Road

By V.H. Galloway

In this second installment of The Un-United States of Z trilogy, Dr. Zen Marley clings to last vestiges of his humanity. Following desperate rumors of a cure in Los Angeles, he and his crew of colorful but clashing personalities battle human and rotter foes across the southwest.

At the volatile Arizona border, Zen makes a critical decision for survival that puts his friend's lives at stake. And in Los Angeles, Idriss Kimball erupts into a despotic miasma. He leads the rotters on a conquest that only Zen can stop.

With enemies mounting on all sides, Zen finds that his biggest struggle may be against himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: V.H. Galloway
• Release date: Apr 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9780984467938

V.H. Galloway

V.H. Galloway is a novelist of Science Fiction and Fantasy. In 2008, she traced her African ancestry to Sierra Leone, West Africa and the subsequent trip 'home' remains one of her proudest moments. Unsurprisingly, African mythology is a recurring theme in her fiction. From her career in I.T. to her fascination with the stars, she is made of and loves all things geek.

Book preview

T H E R O T T I N G R O A D

A Novella

Book Two of The Un-United States of Z Trilogy

***

V. H. G a l l o w a y

Published by Nomad Media

Copyright © 2015 by Nomad Media. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

ISBN: 978-0-9844679-3-8

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living, or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For Jose and Ressie

CHAPTER ONE

Idriss Remembers

Downtown Los Angeles, CA

Homeless District

At one time, the building had been a textile factory, a place where thousands had come to make and earn their livings. Decades later, it had become a den for the lawless: prostitutes and pimps, addicts, and other degenerates. Then, the artists swept in like a tidal wave of paints and chalks.

They muralled walls. They planted trees and flowers. Sculptures appeared alongside mini parks and community gardens. And when the debauched could no longer stand the new artistic spectacle, they fled. Creative anarchy gleamed in their wake, its disciples claiming the building for their own.

It was here Idriss Kimball first found shelter; amongst those of his own ilk. Now, the building, largely destroyed, housed another type of fiend. It loomed as a five-story brick lion's den, upper floors largely unused, the lower floor decimated. Doors were torn off their hinges, the hallways labyrinths of trash and other debris.

Carcasses, some cleaned to the bone, others half eaten, filled the place with a stink that, to its new residents, was as welcoming as the aroma of home-baked cookies. Rotters, in varying states of degeneration wandered the rooms, others content to sit and stare at what few trappings remained of their prior lives. Some fights broke out over unfinished meals, but on the whole, it was a strangely content community.

On the highest level of the building, a loft had been created by demolishing the walls of three apartments. Along with his sculptures and artwork and supplies, the space still held the original furniture: sofas and loungers now stained with blood, a ripped and shredded mattress, and in the silent refrigerator, human parts stewing in old Tupperware.

In the lone intact lounger sat the refugee prophet, Idriss Kimball. The moniker had been given to him by one of the residents in the building before everything changed, his best friend, Kemal. After his departure from the corporate world and the art scene, Idriss held court on street corners, sharing his love of philosophy and its ancient masters with his band of homeless disciples.

Idriss had once been an impeccable man, tall and broad, with a carefully coifed Afro. Today, one might have likened his hair to a bird's nest, his posture no longer straight and true. His teeth, once revealed in cocky grins, were often cloaked in blood and tattered flesh--not necessarily his own. His skin, smooth and copper, had become blistered with decaying whorls of green and gray.

He was thankful his eyesight remained--and so too his mind. He could see what he meant to build from the debris of the world; could hold to the position he had coveted in his former life.

A leather-bound book with gold lettering lay open in his lap. It was the only thing that remained of his former life, carefully tucked into his cart, a treasure he could not lose. When he read, he placed a blanket over his legs, and donned gloves so as to not to soil the pages. He read Shakespeare aloud:

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here

The course of true love never did run smooth

Lawless are they that make their wills their law

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered

I was adored once too."

The words rolled around in his mouth, and he relished the feel of them romancing his tongue, and the sound of them reverberating around the room. Such was his practice everyday, so that while communicating with his people in their strange, new language, he did not lose the ability to speak his native tongue.

But what was native?

He'd been frightened at first, just like everyone else. When the wave came, it hit the street people first; the drug users, the homeless. His friend, Kemal, no matter how hard Idriss had tried to stop him, had continued to use the Unicorn. Where he got the money from sometimes, Idriss didn't know, but anything could be sold. Blood. Semen. Either way, life.

Four weeks ago, Kemal had climbed into the cardboard box they'd shared beneath the 405 overpass. The cramped space was no real home, but Idriss lit a candle and the walls glowed warmly enough. In the golden light, he saw the horror of what Kemal had become a second before his friend pounced.

There had been no room to escape, Kemal' hands scratching and clawing at Idriss like a feral cat. Idriss fought as best he could, howling his horror, until at last he wrenched free. The box collapsed, allowing him to roll loose, and dripping blood down arms and chest, he fled.

The change was slow, the understanding of the language quick. Idriss didn't know why, but while the others changed, deteriorated, even died quickly, he alone had maintained his wits, his ability to speak and think beyond the craving for flesh. His physical deterioration was plainly evident, but compared to the others, minimal.

That first night, he'd been afraid. But the next morning, he returned to the broken box, to find Kemal waiting there, for it was the one place Kemal still knew. Idriss fell in line with Kemal, shuffling around the city, attacking at will, killing. Though he relished the violence, he also saw it as an opportunity. To strike back at a society that had discarded someone of his talent and promise.

Idriss resisted the craving.

But too soon, he could no longer hold down the food he'd scraped from the trash bins. Now, he craved precious flesh.

It was his idea to hit the Fifth Extension Art Factory. It was where he'd lived before they tossed him out on the street. One minute the darling of the industry, the next, an outcast because he wouldn't kiss some art dealer's ass. The penthouse they currently occupied had been the dealer's.

Idriss got up and carefully set the book back on the shelf next to his other treasured tomes: Aristotle, Mary Wollstonecraft, DaVinci; Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, and Octavia Butler. He walked over to the refrigerator and opened it up to inhale the smell of death. He picked up a clear plastic container and grinned at what remained of the art dealer, his eyeless head.

Idriss' mouth watered as he remembered the eyeballs--a slick, gush of flavor he liked to consume with a dash of hot sauce; some things from his former life still held a place in his new one.

Setting the head back on the shelf, he picked up a putrefied arm from the stack on the bottom shelf. It was meaty still, the maggots not having gotten the best of it, but still having softened the flesh just the way he liked it.

He carried the arm to the window and passed the one picture that still remained in the apartment: his wife Kisi nestled close to