B00BDBO28Q EBOK Page 8

  They moved inside. Particles of dust danced in the flashlight’s beam as Jeff surveyed the kitchen, splashing light in the shadows. Listening for any movement, they moved across the floor carefully. The kitchen and family area were combined in one large room, giving the two of them a clear view across the house. Splinters of light filtered in through the gaps in the couch barricade at the back door. Other windows had the ubiquitous black bags taped over them, but whoever had done it had not done the best job, and enough light trickled in that Jeff could turn off the flashlight.

  Megan noticed a pile of empty cans and cereal boxes stacked in and around the trashcan in the kitchen and pointed it out to Jeff. He nodded. Someone had been staying here and, from the looks of things, had remained for quite some time. Other debris, including empty milk jugs, was scattered across the floor. A quick search of the pantry and kitchen cabinets revealed no more traces of food...at least not anything edible.

  The garage had been musty, but the air inside the house was a bit riper. Jeff could smell the familiar stench of defecation that tended to overwhelm everything else once the toilets stopped working and there was no way to get rid of the human waste.

  He was looking at the dual staircase leading down to the basement and up to the second floor when he heard a door creak open behind him and a sudden gagging noise.

  Turning quickly, he saw Megan running to the kitchen sink. As he rushed to see what had happened, he was hit by a wall of foulness that nearly knocked him over. Pulling up his sweatshirt, he covered his nose and mouth, but the rich smell of feces was overpowering. As Megan began to retch into the sink, he turned and discovered the source of this new and far more potent odor.

  Shaking his head, Jeff pushed the bathroom door shut. He did not bother looking inside but could guess that there were buckets or other containers filled with piss and shit. Looking down, he saw the towel that had acted as a seal to keep as much of the smell inside the bathroom as possible.

  Jeff waited patiently as Megan finished dry heaving. With the door shut and the towel in place, the smell was shifting from overwhelming to barely tolerable once again. She wiped a thin line of spittle from her mouth and stood leaning over the sink.

  “Go back outside. I can do this by myself,” Jeff said. “There isn’t anyone here. They must have taken off.” She shook her head but looked woozy, and her knees almost gave out on her.

  “Well, at least stay down here. I can’t have you barfing up a lung while I check things out upstairs.” Megan tried to retort, but the heaves came back in a rush, and she bent over the sink again. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Jeff said as she waved him off. He started toward the stairs.

  It was gloomy on the second floor, but even with the blinds and curtains closed, there was more than enough light for him to see that nothing was hiding in the shadows cast in the hallway. The sun was dipping into the west, but it was still light outside. He set the flashlight down at the top of the steps and glanced over at the open area to the right. It was sparsely furnished with a small bookshelf, TV, and a couple of chairs. Looking down the hall, he could see that all the doors were shut. He moved into the sitting room and opened the blinds on the window, letting in more light. With bat in hand, he turned to check out the bedrooms.

  The smell wasn’t nearly as strong up here, and Jeff was already envisioning being able to bunk for the night in one of the bedrooms. They could discuss plans for tomorrow after they settled in.

  Moving across to the first door, he leaned against it and listened as he held the knob. As he had suspected, there was no sound except that of his own heartbeat. Still holding the bat, Jeff opened the door in a rush.

  Nothing stirred, and he moved in slowly, the bat held in front of him like a sword. The dim light revealed that the room had belonged to a teenage girl. The pink paint and the posters of the boy bands du jour made it obvious. The bed was even made. The room looked organized, but a thick coating of dust made it clear it had not been used in quite some time.

  He moved across the hall and checked the next room. This was a boy’s. There was a NASCAR poster with some driver Jeff didn’t recognize on the wall along with several other posters featuring muscle-bound superheroes. “Where were you guys when we needed you?” he whispered before stepping back into the hall.

  The next room was another boy’s, this one the younger of the two. Jeff smiled as he looked at the toys strewn across the room and the stickers adorning the walls. Unlike the others, this room had a lived-in look about it, with books and stuffed animals lumped in random piles, though the boy’s dresser was caked with as much dust as there had been in the other bedrooms.

  Stepping back out into the hall, he shut the door behind him. There were two more doors to check, and he already knew which one was the bathroom. Although he could detect no odor coming from it, he was inclined to leave it shut after Megan’s foul mistake downstairs.

  The final room at the end of the hall had to be the master bedroom. This house was similar enough to Jeff’s that it seemed obvious. Turning the knob, he pushed the door open.

  The scene that awaited was like something out of his worst nightmare.

  Body parts lay splattered across the floor. The king bed looked as if someone had been taken apart piece by piece on top of it, with the remains spread from the headboard down to the foot of the mattress.

  Ragged piles of bones were strewn across the room. Something that looked like a child’s ribcage lay crushed near a dresser, a trail of viscera leading from it to the back wall, on which an explosion of blood and entrails was displayed.

  The room’s disarray and the streaks as though bodies had been dragged, fighting, through it hinted at the struggle that had taken place. There were other horrors as well...lumps of pulped meat, gristle, and cartilage. It was a slaughterhouse.

  But that was not the worst of it. Not by far.

  Jeff’s eyes focused on a woman’s corpse partially hidden behind the bed. He could see that it had not been long since she was killed. In fact, the smells in the room were fresh; everyone in it had died recently.

  The woman’s body had been brutalized to the point where there was barely anything left of her neck or upper torso. Even her skull had been cracked, and her brains, or what remained of them, dripped onto the floor.

  Horror blazed through Jeff like an inferno, burning every nerve ending in his body. Her arms were outstretched toward him, her fingers gripping the carpet as if she had been trying to drag herself toward the door. Although the back of her skull was crushed, her eyes remained open, and it appeared as if she were staring at Jeff, a permanent scream frozen on her face.

  When the corpse gave a violent twitch, he took an involuntary step back and jammed his fist into his mouth to prevent a scream from bursting from his lips. A small yip still came out as his eyes grew wide in terror.

  That was when a man stood up from behind the bed. He had been feasting on the lower half of her body and had been hidden from view. It was hard to understand how he had remained hidden, as big as he was. Strings of his wife’s intestines dangled from his mouth, and a smear of blood covered the bottom half of his face.

  The man’s milky eyes widened when he saw Jeff, and he let out a bloodcurdling scream as he charged. He was a blur as he tore across the room. Jeff had never seen someone infected move that fast.

  He barely had time to react before the hulking figure crashed into him, driving him back into the hall and down to the floor. Jeff’s breath came out in a huff, and the baseball bat flew clear as his hand slammed into the wall.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Jeff blurted out as the stench hit him just before the tremendous weight of the man came crashing down. The infected man was a giant—three hundred pounds at least. Jeff moved his stinging hand and desperately beat at the ghoul’s face. Its mouth was already plunging toward his shoulder, the cracked and broken teeth on display as the beast ignored his blows. Shifting his assault, Jeff pressed up against its forehead, hoping to keep the tee
th at bay. The skin was dry and loose under his hand, and he felt it start to tear away from the man’s scalp. Jeff knew that if he tried to hold on for very long, the flesh from the top of the ogre’s head would slide off the skull and it wouldn’t even notice.

  Jeff felt a mammoth hand wrap around his throat and was able to suck in one last breath before his airway began to constrict. The man-mountain’s fingers were trying to dig into the soft flesh there. As he fought to free himself, Jeff knew it would not be long before his throat was ripped out.

  He snatched at the monster’s paw with his free hand as panic kicked in. He was still holding the ghoul’s head away but only had a few seconds to work with. He grabbed at the fingers around his throat and tried to pry them free. The skin here was loose as well, and there was no way to get a solid grip. Jeff succeeded only in peeling away layers of flesh as he frantically dug at the digits.

  Despite the panicked kicks and the frenetic contortions of his body as he tried to throw the giant off, Jeff made no headway, and spots began to swim before his eyes. All he could do was pray that unconsciousness claimed him before the teeth tore into his flesh.

  There was a deafening roar in Jeff’s ears, and the grip around his throat loosened. Some sort of viscous matter dripped onto the hand that had held the monstrosity’s head at bay. It slid down his arm in thick globs. He struggled to breathe as he frantically fought to get the dead weight off of him. Pushing the head aside, Jeff maneuvered away from the hand that had nearly crushed his neck, and desperately sucked in air. Megan’s face swam into view. She was saying something, but he couldn’t hear her. She looked alarmed as she tried to help him move the ton of dead flesh off his body.

  It was not until Jeff could refill his lungs that he was able to shift the man’s weight to the side and squirm free. He scuttled down the hall, backpedaling as fast as he could away from the giant carcass. The fluid that had dripped down his arm looked like some sort of swamp mud. Jeff rubbed his arm frantically on the carpet, desperate to get it off his skin.

  Megan knelt in front of him and shook him by the shoulders, the revolver still pressed into one hand. She looked as stunned as he felt, and though her mouth was moving, no sound came out. He grabbed her and pulled her close, hugging her. He didn’t know what else to do to get her to stop shaking him.

  They held each other for the next few minutes, their hearts finally slowing to a normal rate as they rocked back and forth, eyes closed. Jeff’s breathing returned to normal, though his throat was throbbing and he had to keep his breathing shallow to avoid sharp pains.

  It wasn’t until the ringing in Jeff’s ears signified the return of his hearing that it dawned on him that he’d gone deaf. Soon after, he registered the buzzing that was Megan’s voice. After another minute, he was able to comprehend what she had been trying to say to him.

  “…thought he had gotten you...sorry I had to do that, but there was…” It was still choppy, but Jeff nodded at her and gave her a shaky smile.

  “You did great,” he heard himself say as he leaned against the wall. He closed his eyes in an attempt to get his bearings, but that only made the dizziness worse. A whopper of a headache was also announcing its arrival.

  He tried to stand and nearly slid back down the wall. Megan moved in to help, but he waved her off, and he managed to right himself on the second attempt. Looking down at a huge lump of decayed flesh at his feet, Jeff shook his head. None of them had moved that fast before. Other than the fact that its brains were now dripping in thick chunks down the wall, the ghoul looked to be in pretty good shape. Decomposition, which was so common amongst the infected, was limited. In fact, outside of the dry, leathery skin, the man looked almost normal.

  Jeff looked at Megan. Despite their little close encounter with the beast, she looked better than when he had left her downstairs. Grinning, he chucked her lightly on the shoulder. She blushed and smiled meekly.

  Suddenly, her eyes went wide, as if she had just remembered something. Raising the revolver, she turned to face the master bedroom. “Are there any more of them?”

  Megan started toward the door, and Jeff yelled out as he ran ahead of her. “No!”

  He blocked her path and, without looking into the room, pulled the door shut. “You don’t want to go in there. Trust me.”

  Jeff held out his arms, guarding the door. Megan was startled by his reaction but saw the look on his face and slowly nodded as she lowered the gun. Jeff’s shoulders sagged in relief as he moved back toward her.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized as he put his arm around her shoulder, turning her around. “But there’s nothing in there you need to see.”

  Megan looked up at Jeff, but he kept his eyes forward as they moved back down the hall. Less than a minute later, they were outside, climbing back into the van. As they pulled away from the curb, Jeff rubbed gently at his bruised throat, never looking back at the house.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, they found another house. The garage was open, and none of the windows was boarded up, which Jeff hoped indicated that the owners had fled long ago.

  A quick but thorough search confirmed that the house was indeed abandoned. Whoever had lived there had left in a rush, like so many other families that had chosen to head either to one of the emergency shelters hastily set up by the National Guard or to anywhere else where they thought they might escape the ravages of the virus that had burned through the earth’s population in a matter of days.

  Jeff pulled the van into the garage. Megan was already inside, searching for anything they could add to their meager food supply.

  He stepped out of the vehicle and moved toward the driveway. Scanning the street, he saw nothing that caught his eye except for the sun, which was beginning to set. Houses cast long shadows as the bright yellow orb continued to sink below the horizon. Off in the distance, he could see wisps of smoke curling up to the sky from the smoldering ruins of his house.

  Jeff rubbed his eyes. His headache was in full bloom and it felt as if his brain were trying to pound its way out of his skull. In a way, it was a comfort; ...a distraction from the real pain he was feeling.

  After taking one last look around, he pulled the garage door closed. He wondered if there was any booze in the house, because all he wanted to do was drink until he forgot everything that had happened that day.

  Chapter 13

  “We need to get going.”

  Sunlight trickled in through the drawn curtains, spreading fingers of light across the floor and onto the bed. There had been no alcohol in the house, but he still felt hung over as he ran his tongue over his teeth. His mouth tasted like a baby dragon had peed in it.

  Megan was standing at the foot of the bed, wearing a clean sweatshirt and jeans. They were loose on her, but given her near-anorexic condition, Jeff thought they were a pretty good fit. She looked freshly scrubbed, and there was something about her that he could not pinpoint, but she looked sharper, more alert than she had the day before. He nodded and ran his fingers through his tangled hair.

  “There are plenty of clothes in the closet that might fit you,” Megan said, and Jeff looked down at his sweatshirt and jeans, in which he had slept. They were in bad shape. Not only were they drenched in sweat, there were dried splatters of blood and smears of dirt all over them. “I put a couple of the bottles of water we found downstairs in the bathroom…” She let the comment hang in the air.

  “I know I smell like an outhouse.” Jeff cracked a smile. “I’ll change and clean up.”

  A small grin passed over Megan’s lips. “I’m going downstairs to see what else we can take with us.” She paused, looking at her hands and picking at a fingernail. Jeff stared, waiting for her to say whatever was bothering her.

  “We are going to leave, right?”

  Jeff sighed as he stretched, rubbing the bruise on his neck self-consciously. It was a garish purple but didn’t feel as bad as it looked. He recalled their conversation from the night before and understood
why Megan was acting so timidly.

  They had argued about leaving immediately. Jeff thought it might be a good idea to stick it out for a few days, while she wanted to figure out a way around the blockade of cars so they could start trying to find other survivors. She suggested checking out the emergency shelters, and when Jeff laughed bitterly, she glared at him until he fumbled over an apology and mumbled an excuse, saying, “You never know” to placate her.

  In the end, they agreed to wait until morning to decide. Megan fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but Jeff was stuck tossing and turning over the next few hours as he tried to figure out what they hell they were going to do.

  He nodded, too tired and feeling far too shitty to argue again. Megan’s smile lit up her face.

  “Great!” She turned to leave the room. “I’ll see if I can rustle up some breakfast.”

  “I’ll take two eggs over easy, three slices of bacon, toast with just a touch of butter...and a gallon of coffee,” Jeff said, staring at the floor between his legs and trying to keep from throwing up on his shoes.

  He heard Megan’s laugh as she walked down the hall. It sounded happy. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Five minutes later, he felt well enough to stand and make his way to the bathroom. He saw the bottled water Megan had brought up, along with a bar of soap and some toothpaste. Jeff laughed and stared into the mirror.

  It was hard to believe the person looking back at him was Jeffery Blaine. The gray streaks in his scraggly beard and the drawn and haggard expression made him feel a couple of decades older than his thirty-five years. His hair was a tangled, curly mess that hung in greasy clumps around his face.

  He flashed a peace sign at the mirror and assumed his best stoner pose. “Dirty fucking hippie,” he mumbled under his breath. If he could just find a pair of Birkenstocks in the closet, it would complete the look.