Urban Decay: A Short Story

Act I Scene I

Narrator: Today would be the day that he took action. He would spend his nights alone looking out the window at the familiar miscreants, who took over the night and the streets with their drug dealing and petty hustling. They would dart into alleys for some quick communication and a quick exchange. Then, one or the other would run off down the street to get high. This is how he spent much of his days, now. John would stare at the desperation below. He would watch, wait, and deep down inside a rising anger would fill his chest. Now, that Marge had passed, he no longer had a release valve to help channel this developing anger. Also, with Marge gone, he felt like he needed someone to blame for his loneliness and isolation. The people on the streets were an easy target for his rage.

John is an ex-Marine serviceman. His retirement has lasted 10 years now and all his pension allows is for a small one bedroom apartment, in the downtown core. The city he lives in will not be named, because the problem of social decay appears in most major cities.

The source of the problem is those who live on the streets, untreated psychiatric patients. They walk the corners of the downtown city streets and they look like something out of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. They have sores on their faces and they shamble neither here, nor there. They have pale skin and their eyes ever dart from spot to spot.

Many of them make their living by destroying their community through their criminal activity, from the inside out. A drug deal here, an explicit act there and soon those living in the area have to turn away in disgust. Then, complacency numbs the neighbourhood as a whole. Someone else should deal with the problem. What are the government officials doing about the street kids? The drug dealers, the peddlers and the users have run the streets for too long. This has gone on long enough, John thinks to himself.

John: John mutters: “I cannot just sit here and watch this go on.” John stands up; he is obviously irritated. He heads into the hall closet and there he removes a long barrelled rifle, with a mechanical motion. He checks the chamber. Inside, a long bullet is housed within. A magazine looms below. The rifle is fully loaded. John thinks to himself: a problem requires action. I cannot ignore what is happening anymore!

John is now trying to muster himself: “a coward dies a thousand deaths, but a hero dies but one.” He laughs: “that is what they taught me in training, anyways.”

Narrator: John is a troubled figure. He is a man suffering the remnants of post-traumatic stress disorder. He damaged psyche is the result of too much exposure to warfare and human violence. With his wife as support, John thrived in some areas of his life. Now, John is alone, with too much time to think of violent solutions to societal problems.

John places the rifle into a rucksack and afterwards, he pauses at a picture of his late wife, Marge. He kisses his lips and John then puts his fingers up to the picture. He whispers that he will see her soon, but the look in his eyes is one of doubt.

Out on top of the roof now, John looks down at the busy foot traffic below. He is four stories up and here, he has an excellent viewpoint of the misdealings below.

Quickly, John moves into action. He places a scope on top of his long barrel. He turns the safety off and then, he looks down the scope at the unsteady, drifting figures below. John continues to try to steel his nerve: “at least I will go out with a bang,” he muses half-heartedly.

John: They have families. But, how many lives have they ruined? John’s conscience screams to stop: what would Marge have said? He does not remember. Marge has been gone for two years now. John focuses his attention on a hooded man standing on a street corner. He is wearing a faded corduroy jacket. There he is. John’s anger is irritated again.

Narrator: A week early, John had been mugged on a street corner by several youths, one block from his apartment. He was carrying groceries and John could not respond with any type of defense, to this threat. They took his wallet and soon, the band of thugs was running off, laughing. John was humiliated.

This event is personal, but John’s real motivations are deeper than that, he thinks to himself. However, this previous event has likely acted as a trigger to John’s present behaviour.

John: John murmurs to himself again: “hold there my friend. I will be with you in a moment.” John repeats the line from a grumpy customer service clerk from the day before.

Narrator: John fastens a silencer to the end of his extended M-16. The rifle looms like a black predatory bird pointed downwards.

John: “Almost ready,” John looks self-satisfied. There is a smile across his face. He has not felt this excited since he was ordering awe-struck rookies into the jungles of Vietnam. Damn, that was a long time ago.

Narrator: John looks through his scope one more time and below he has trained his rifle on Johnny. Johnny is now a street thug and a drug dealer. Sometimes, he works security on a local brothel and most of his dealings are of the criminal kind. Broken and alone, Johnny left an alcoholic father and an abused mother behind at the age of fourteen. He never looked back.

He often hopes to get off the streets, but the tug of crystal meth' always brings him back to the same places, the same people and the same behaviours. John knows none of this.

John: He is muttering almost inaudibly: “hold steady there my friend. The gates of Troy have fallen and Achilles is stepping through.” An avid reader, John reminds himself of the great battles of literature. Nowadays, there are no great us vs. them battles. There are only shades of grey that can be split like a hair, between right and wrong. My time for revenge…glory is now, he thinks. I will clean up this neighbourhood.

Narrator: Johnny is discretely counting some of his takings for the day. He covers a thick wad of cash with the sleeve of his jacket. He does not want to bring stares from passer-bys, or from the hustlers. A siren blares in the distance.

Johnny: “10, 20, 50…What the hell?” A red dot is moving around Johnny’s black coat, much like a laser pointer. He looks up and he is temporarily blinded by a light off in the distance. Johnny raises his forearm to cover his eyes and he has a quick memory of his dad coming into his room, belt in hand.

Narrator: The bullet travels through Johnny’s arm and into his temple. Johnny had time to see the muzzle flash, but there was no sound. Johnny is dead before he hits the pavement. He collapses against a pole, with a hazy light illuminating a dark pool forming at Johnny’s feet. People shamble about searching the sidewalk’s cracks for drugs. They are oblivious to his deathly stare.

John: “I gotcha sucker!” There is a look of glee in John’s eye. A sparkle has returned there, but insdie there is something darker also. John thinks: who’s next?

Act I Scene II

Narrator: Down below, disshelved figures fall along the sidewalks. In the distance, sirens rage and the foot traffic increases moving from east to west.

John: John speaks to himself: “what is going on down there?” John sits up and from this position, he looks down to see a group of homeless and professionals in a mixed crowd running quickly past his apartment. John tries to reassure himself: “this is not because of me.”

John picks up the rifle again and through the glass he can see a mob of people attacking others in the center of a four lane intersection. John sees one man bite at the throat of another short, flailing woman: “what is this?” John is confused and so is the dying woman on the ground.

Narrator: However, those feeding below have never felt such focus in their lives. There is no more fear of paying the bills, or getting the children to school on time. There is only the need to feed. In uptown, a cleverly triggered biological device has gone off. Its two hour fuse expired and now an airborne virulent agent is being pushed out of metallic cylinders into the streets below. An infection is spreading amongst the populace and all those within one square city block are likely to be carrying the Orpheus virus. There is a 95% chance of infection.

John: John looks perturbed now: “if the gates of Hell have opened, then I shall return you to your watery grave.” John lifts his rifle and a muzzle flash shoots out the end with a small pop. John to himself: “there is one of those thugs!”

Narrator: John sees another one of the men who attacked him, earlier in the week. He is looking over his shoulder. He looks back down the street. There is a familiar red dot on his chest. He looks down and then up. John smiles and soon, Dillon will no longer be dreaming of getting off the streets.

His release from the local psychiatric hospital will be a brief one. Without his bi-polar medication, he is running on a manic high. Dillon has not slept in two days and instead, he has been selling on the street corners. Then, everything changes.

There is another pop and Dillon is writhing on the ground, just like many of the others in the alleyways and on the road beside him. He is now just another lifeless corpse among the ruins of the downtown core.

John: “Gotcha!” John looks satisfied, but he continues to fire into the hordes of the infected, below.

Narrator: A police car has stopped in the intersection. An officer steps out of his door, while drawing his revolver. Thirty of those infected with the Orpheus virus are soon clambering his way. The police officer holsters his weapon, returns to his car and he is shortly moving down the street. Those infected are on top of his vehicle, inside his wheel wells and on the hood of the car, as the siren blazes mutely atop. This is chaos!

John: Feeling self-righteous: “that is what you get for not passing the Military Service Pension Act buddy!” John laughs to himself and he is back looking through his scope – searching for targets. Bodies drop below from John’s gunfire, but the pandemonium is moving into high gear.

Narrator: There is a crashing inside the apartment, at the main entrance. John sits up. He grabs his rifle and descends four stories to the main lobby entrance. A woman is banging on the door and a couple of residents are staring out of their apartments.

John: The ex-Marine waves his hand: “get back inside and lock your doors. There is a riot outside. Someone call the police!” John walks up to the glass of the door and before him he sees a woman covered in sores. This is Sarah. She is now a shadow of her former beautiful self.

Sarah: She screams: “let me in!”

Narrator: John recognizes her as one of the regular users on the block.

John: He snarls: “no way sister. I know you.”

Sarah: “Please, I have a kid.” Sarah is a survivor. She knows how to manipulate others to get what she needs. She will sell her body for a hit, or steal from another. She will talk of non-existent children, just to save her own skin.

Her back story is a similar tragic one, as her life changed when she was involved in a fatal car accident. Her boyfriend died and she was taken to the hospital. Addicted to painkillers by the time of her release, Sarah just never recovered from the loss of the one she loved and the removal of her health.

Narrator: John is oblivious to her past. He does not want to know.

John: “Get back! You will get what you deserve out there.” John kicks the glass, while Sarah looks over her shoulder. A man leaps into the alcove of the entrance and he is on her, tearing at her shoulder. Sarah screams, but she is soon overcome. John thinks: it looks like cleaning up the streets will not be so hard, after all.

Interlude

Narrator: The good father, the healer, the warrior and all of the archetypes of human civilization are reduced to one thing in this environment – fear. The instinct to survive pushes thousands from the east of the city into the west end, where the Boyle River forces survivors into tiny lanes of foot traffic. Few will make their way to the other side.

Act II Scene I

A woman from behind John speaks: “why did you not help her?” John turns to see an eighty year old woman with blue hair and curlers standing there.

John: “She was already gone…too far gone for anyone to help.” John looks back outside at the rushing mob. “Close this door behind me. I am going to see what I can do.”

John cradles his M-16 under his right arm and he steps out into the screams, foolishly/valiantly. From a raised vantage point on a floor bed, John takes aim at a group of the infected. They are tearing into a young man. He fires. Three of the figures drop and the crowd continues running, like a stream of humanity. “Stop running and fight you cowards.” There is no reply, except for the screaming.

Narrator: John steps into the throng, in an attempt to stop the mad rush. This is a mistake.

John: “Stop!”

His rifle is knocked out of his hands and he is swiftly brought into the mass of the crowd. Several blocks go by, until John is finally able to remove himself.

A few survivors lay in an alleyway. Some of the people here are in distress. Others have red, swelling wounds on their bodies. Bite marks cover one man’s face.

John: They are infected. John has seen through his scope what happens to those who are bitten. They will change into animals, with soulless eyes.

To escape, he is rushing down a dark alleyway. He trips on an overturned shopping cart, which is full of cans and bottle. A large rattle ensues: “shit!” John is swept up in the mass hysteria of the moment and he does what his fight or flight system tells him to; run! Thirty years of military training are forgotten, as John looks for cover. John is rushing down alleyways, in a confusing dash.

Act II Scene II

Narrator: The city lights flicker off and on. John rushes down a side alley,that ends in a dead end. A 1/4 ton truck is stalled in the alley, blocking the dead end from John’s view. John goes down the narrow opening, until he sees himself trapped. He is panting and desperate. He pauses to put his hands on his knees.

John: “30 years in the suck could not prepare anyone for this.” John catches his breath and he looks down the alley, towards his escape route. Several figures are approaching, from that direction. John’s voice falters: “this is not good.” His eyes dart right and left for an escape. There is none.

Narrator: The darkened shapes do not move fluidly. Some of the figures pull their legs in weird movements, while others slump to one side or the other. Their movements are awkward and different from those deemed normal, but their voices are all unified with a low guttural moan. They smell John. They can see his exhalations. They smell his perspiration and they know that his intestines, his heart, and his liver will all taste good. They must infect him.

The Orpheus virus compels those infected to seek out others. This virus has been released in thirty major cities across North America. Mexico City is exhaling its last smog fuelled breaths, while Toronto moves back five hundred years to the Dark Ages. Few will survive this well coordinated biological attack.

Even Fewer will discover who started this targeted attack. But, the survivors of the infection give hint to the source. Buried under stories of dirt and rubble the politicians look at the infection spreading across multiple countries, from the comfort of their LCD screens. They and their families will pick up the pieces, long after the working and middle classes are gone. Those uninfected will be turned into profit through slave labour.

None of this matters to John. The immediacy of his situation is darkly dawning in his brain. His mind screams: fight!

John: “Stay back.” I have a pistol. He feigns retrieving something from behind his back. The figures pick up their pace. They no longer feel fear. The dark stained figures are homing onto John’s voice. John looks for a weapon and here, he finds only littered newspaper and spent prophylactics. His mouth cringes in disgust. He mutters: “is this how I will die? In an alley full of filth?”

John looks at the figures in front of him. A light from above casts a dark glow on the mob before him. He sees one of those he has killed earlier in the night. Sarah’s face is a combination of gore and hunger. There is only a vague recognition of John. She hears her own inner voice screaming infect, run, bite repeating in her head. Her struggle on the streets is over. In its place is the urgency to feed, to infect others.

John: John scans from left to right: “no, stop!” John sees four of them. He raises his hand. One shambler is obviously a cop. He is wearing a tattered uniform, while his radio follows behind - scraping. Another figure is a homeless man. The smell of piss on his jacket and pants is over-powering to John. John coughs; the smell of blood, urine and vomit on the four figures makes John retch. John turns to Sarah, desperate: “please, I am sorry. Forgive me” Sarah stares on. She is focused on John’s throat. There is no forgiveness here.

John looks at the fourth figure, before they attack. She is a sixty year old woman, likely a grandmother. John is briefly reminded of Marge. John thinks to himself: life is no longer meaningful without you. John’s training kicks in and soon, he is lashing out in one last bout of anger.

Narrator: His pummeling is mostly futile and the gory figures descend on his crumpling body. John is crushed beneath their weight.

John: To himself: “I will see you soon, honey.” He is looking heavenward, but nothing looks down from above. The last thought John has before succumbing to one vicious bite is short and mundane, like the comedic plays he would read that would almost always end in a bizarre marriage: I should have stayed home to watch Jeopardy.

Narrator: No one can go back, once they have made a choice. John’s final screams for remorse go unheard, much like John’s feelings of those struggling on the streets. His lesson is a deadly one, but there is a message here; community decay stops through understanding, not through violence. There is flicker of understanding in John’s final looks. Perhaps, the lesson is not too late, for this prideful hero.


Source:

The source of the above black and white photo is Urban-exposure.com:

Urban Exposure

Some of the material that inspired this short story include:



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Posted in: 2011,drug dealing,drug use,homeless man,revenge,short story,social problems,society,tale,undead,urban sprawl,vigilante,zombie,zombie short story