This Rotten World (Book 1) Read Online Free

squirted across the bar. The
next squirt wasn’t nearly as strong. Without thinking, Teach ripped the phone
out of the wall and charged the young man in the jeans. It wasn't an effective
weapon, but it did the job. When he was done, the phone dripped gore, and the
young man twitched on the ground.
    The
bartender squatted next to the old man. The blood was no longer squirting out
of his throat; it merely dribbled. “I think he’s dead, Teach.”
    Teach stood
up, walked over to his beer, and drained it in one go. “Yeah, well, it looks
like they both are. You got a cell phone? I seem to have ripped your landline
right out of the wall?”
    The blood
on his shirt had cooled, but a warmth still ran through his body. He didn’t
know if it was shock, the beer, or the fact that he had just killed somebody
who was trying to take his life, but he welcomed it.

Chapter 5: Joan
     
    Her phone
rang at 2 A.M. Being on call was literally the worst thing that had ever
happened to her... yet.  There she had been dreaming about swimming in warm
ocean water as blue as a Smurf's bottom while shirtless guys waded through the
surf to bring her colorful drinks in hollowed-out coconuts, then blam! That
damn phone goes off, causing her to sit bolt upright and sending her cat flying
through her apartment, but not before it could dig two painful furrows in the
flesh of her legs. And for what? To go help the dumbest and the lowest that
Portland had to offer. At 2 A.M. you were always dealing with one of three
things... some dumbass with something stuffed up their ass, some dumbass who
had gotten too drunk or high, or the poor bastard that had been run over by
someone who had gotten too drunk or high... occasionally they had something
stuffed up their ass as well.
    She
shrugged into her white doctor's coat and looked at herself in the mirror. It
was going to have to be a ponytail day. Joan quickly brushed her teeth,
spitting mouthfuls of old, dead bacteria into the sink and watching them whisk
away down the drain to a place where no one ever had to pull a grapefruit out
of someone's asshole. She had learned long ago that there's absolutely no
reason to look nice when one was working late at night at the hospital. You
didn't want to look pretty for some of the trash that walked into the place in
the dead of morning. She plopped some wet food into her cat's dish and walked
out of the door, keys jangling and brown ponytail bobbing back and forth.
    Her drive
through the city was peaceful. 2:30 in the morning wasn't bad if you wanted to
get somewhere. The night was cool, and the heat of the day had faded into a
crisp, almost autumnish feel. But autumn was still a few months away. In the
meantime, it was time to help stupid people who had maimed themselves in one
way or another. It was the time of barbecue accidents, fireworks injuries, and
rashes caused by the shaving of pubic hair, which people inevitably thought
might be herpes. It was a glorious time to be a doctor. As soon as she walked
in the door, she was inundated with a never-ending parade of dumbass.
    Her first
patient was drunk and burned. The man, who was wearing a Portland Timbers
jersey, had a second degree burn on his arm. In addition to the burn he no
longer had eyebrows and half his mustache was missing.
    "Alright,
what happened?" she asked.
    "The
barbecue..." he started. Then, having lost his train of thought, he merely
made a noise imitating an explosion and then giggled a bit. She straightened
him up when he began to lean perilously to the side, as if he were going to
pass out. He was in a daze mostly as she put the dressing on his arm, which was
probably a good thing for him, as the pain most likely would have required some
sort of sedative had he not already been three sheets to the wind. When she was
finished, she left him where he was, and told the R.N. to find him a room, so
he could be re-examined again later.
    The next
person she saw wasn't much better off, but at least she