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

soldier who had
taken Chloe's gun run his hands over his body, lingering in the places that
Rudy wanted to linger in. Jealousy rose in him before it was followed by a
softer anger. It was a strange cocktail. When the soldier was finished, he
patted down Rudy, and then Amanda. His hands lingered on her as well, and for
some reason, Rudy found himself equally enraged, if not more so.
    "They're clean," the
soldier announced, smiling slyly at the other soldiers.
    The man in charge spoke with a
plain voice. "Don't you know you people are supposed to stay inside?"
    "Our building was going to
burn down around us," Rudy started before the man in charge cut him off.
    "Looting is a capital
offense during martial law." He squatted on the ground and picked up
Rudy's backpack. He unzipped it and pulled out the plain white boxes that
contained his medications. He held the offending items up.
    "I was going to die,"
he complained. "The glass was already broken."
    The soldier put the medicine
back in the bag, zipped it up, and tossed it at his feet. "Yeah, desperate
times and all that. The fact is, you're lucky we found you. You can relax.
We're not going to arrest you. In fact, you're saved."
    They stopped leaning on the wall
and turned around to look at their saviors. "What do you mean?" Chloe
asked.
    "We're setting up a rescue center.
We'll take you there."
    Rudy felt his heart leap in his
chest. A rescue center! Some place guarded by soldiers. They were saved. No
more running. No more fearing for their lives.
    The soldiers surrounded them. The
man in charge said, "Let's get them to the trucks," and then they
made for the exits. Rudy watched as the soldiers pocketed items from the store,
so Rudy did the same, grabbing a bag of chips, some exotic flavor of Cheetos.
Amanda grabbed a warm six-pack of beer off of a shelf, and stuffed it into her
backpack. One of the soldiers looked at her, disapproval in his eyes.
    "What? I'm in
college," she said, as if that would explain it all.
    "Can I get my gun
back?" Chloe asked as they approached the broken glass that now served as
the Walgreen's main entrance.
    The man in charge spun around,
walking backwards, and said, "You won't need it where you're going." As
he stepped out into the sun, ashy brown hands clamped around his throat, and
the ghastly face of one of the dead appeared, snaking a bite out of the man's
cheek before anyone could do anything.
    The soldiers were slow to react,
their rifle straps catching on their soldiers, panic in their movements. The
man in charge attempted to push away the creature that bit him, but another
appeared, sinking its teeth into the meat of his arm. He screamed, and gunshots
rang out in the hot air of the day. The first creature went down in a heap, and
the man in charge pushed the second one to the ground, cursing under his
breath. It was a little girl, her dress covered in blood that had dried brown.
She looked up at the man in charge, and she snarled at him, bits of his flesh
caught in her braces.
    The girl rose to her feet,
hungry for more. The soldiers didn't know what to do. They were waiting for a
command from the man in charge, but he gave none. He seemed confused, content
with looking at the blood that ran down his arm. He dabbed at the bite on his
cheek, wincing in pain.
    The girl reached her arms out to
him, and the man in charge shoved her away, almost without thinking. Chloe was
the first to speak, "Shoot it," she said. Rudy looked at the faces of
the soldiers around him, young men, not much older than himself. They looked at
each other, wondering which one of them was made of tough enough stuff to gun
down a little girl in the streets of Portland.
    "Gimme a gun. I'll do it,"
Chloe said.
    Amazingly enough, one of the soldiers
handed his rifle to her. She looked down the sight of the gun, lined up her
shot and squeezed the trigger. She handed the rifle back to the man who had
lent it to her.
    The soldiers ushered Rudy and
the girls to the trucks.