Each day that passed left him with less hope that the government and scientists would intervene and cure the plague that created such a mess. He couldn’t imagine enough humanity remained within the undead to bring them back to life. At some rudimentary level they functioned like creatures with only one purpose to their existence.
To feed.
Standing on the ground floor, Metzger gave the house a look from one end to the other before slowly making his way to the basement. He saved the basement area for last with good reason, somewhat apprehensive about opening the wooden door. Placing his hand atop the sidearm on his right hip, he took a deep breath and exhaled before slowly turning the knob, figuring zombies weren’t going to naturally clamor to the top of the old creaky stairs. Pulling the door outward, Metzger fingered the gun’s grip, prepared to find answers downstairs or leave the property completely disappointed.
As luck would have it, he found nothing waiting for him on the other side of the door, but the basement offered only darkness and a damp, musty smell that immediately permeated his nostrils. He took one step down and immediately came to a halt as a throaty groan reached his ears. Feeling certain his heart stopped as well, Metzger knew that visually confirming nothing left him with a lingering hope that finding undead parents did not. He wanted hope, and he didn’t want to tell his brother the worst possible discovery if and when they spoke again.
Making a fist, Metzger tapped the wood beside him, hoping to reveal any additional zombies, or draw the first one to him. The first walker grumbled and groaned again, shuffling several steps closer to the stairs, creating a dramatic moment as Metzger waited to see if it looked familiar to him. He didn’t want it to be one of his parents, still roaming freely after devouring his other parent to the point that he or she couldn’t even reanimate. The thought of shooting his mother or father in the head, whether they were technically dead or not, haunted him.
“No,” he muttered to himself as his heart raced, unable to confront such a major revelation just yet.
He walked to the top of the stairs and closed the door behind him, unwilling to face the truth. Sucking in deep breaths, he leaned against the door momentarily, hearing the zombie clop against the stairway behind him before tripping and falling. Metzger walked into the kitchen to search for a flashlight inside the cupboards, using the search as an excuse to prolong discovering the harsh truth. He felt certain he was about to confront what nearly every offspring confronted sometime during their lives, although this was far from a traditional method of finding one’s parent deceased.
Knowing he was simply delaying the inevitable, Metzger wandered aimlessly around the kitchen, trying to decide whether he wanted to vomit or collect his wits and confront whatever lurked in the basement. His breathing came in heaves as he placed both hands on the countertop, attempting to calm himself and make a decision. Already knowing he couldn’t leave the house without knowing one way or the other, he began opening cupboards until the third one revealed a flashlight. He pushed the button, finding the batteries still provided light to the durable device with a beam that lit up the kitchen, even with natural light entering from several angles.
He made a snap decision to take care of the matter swiftly and deal with the consequences afterwards because he simply needed to get moving if he wanted to meet up with his brother. Holding the flashlight in his left hand, Metzger drew the .357 with his right hand and returned to the door. He managed to turn the knob awkwardly with both hands before stepping back as the door swung open. Immediately detecting the zombie at the bottom of the stairs, Metzger shined the light downward, saw the yellow of its eyes, and shot between them rather effectively before any details burned themselves in his memory.
Immediately the zombie fell limp and the head smacked against the wooden stairs leaving a blood stain. Although he tried to avoid seeing any details, Metzger got a glimpse of the undead walker and felt reasonably certain it wasn’t anyone he knew. Considering the undead were roughly a month into a state of decay they still looked very much like their former selves.
Refusing to waste time, he bounded down the stairs and examined the fully dead zombie, finding the clothing to be fairly young in taste, like something a college student might wear. When he reached the concrete beyond the last step Metzger lifted the head, finding the face unfamiliar with a red spot in the center of the forehead where his bullet found its mark. He released the hair, allowing the head to smack soundly against the stairway as he turned to examine the remainder of the basement.
Mostly storage for holiday decorations, and where laundry got done during the week, the basement harbored no other secrets upon exploration. It smelled terrible, thanks in part to the corpse lying at the foot of the stairs, though a second pantry offered more canned goods when Metzger opened it. He felt surprised that no one had raided area houses, but scavengers likely wanted to hit retail stores and local markets first. Eventually desperation would drive the living to the houses where rotting surprises awaited them. Clearing a house wasn’t incredibly dangerous if done correctly, and choosing to invade residences over stores might have kept Metzger alive to this point.
Depressed and disappointed, Metzger trudged up the stairs to the first floor, wondering what forced his parents from their home and why absolutely no clues presented themselves. His mother was the master of leaving messages, whether on a notepad or Post-it notes placed on the kitchen table or refrigerator. Metzger plucked the hard line telephone off the receiver along the kitchen wall to verify that it indeed produced no dial tone. Knowing the phone wasn’t a viable option for his parents, he wondered why his mother hadn’t left any kind of message behind. Casual searches of the cupboards and any drawers throughout the house hadn’t produced anything useful.
He spent nearly fifteen minutes going through the remainder of the house, searching for anywhere notes or clues might have been left. A fruitless, exhaustive search left him more frustrated than before, so when he returned to the foyer and spied movement outside the house he decided to extend his detective work to the outdoors.
Grabbing the shorter of his two swords, which he had set on the living room floor between exploratory stints, he opened the door and stepped outside to the brisk, fresh air. The air never really smelled fresh with thousands of undead wandering aimlessly, but Metzger barely noticed any foul odors in the old neighborhood. Clutching the sword with a death grip, he stalked directly toward the zombie with a purpose, determined to put down every single undead walker he found until he discovered something about his parents.
Ordinarily he might have immediately regretted his decision, considering he lacked protective clothing at the moment, but his anger and a need to vent overtook any collective reasoning at the moment.
As the lone zombie stumbled over to him, Metzger clutched the sword handle with one hand and used the other with an open palm to shove the tip of the blade through the zombie’s eye socket like a skewer. It dropped instantly, and he was careful to let the sword fall with it before pulling it out for fear of snapping the thin blade. Shaking any blood and brain matter off the blade, he held it at his side and waited to see if any other undead appeared to confront him.
“Come on!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Come and get me!”
He waited impatiently for about a minute before some of the undead that roamed the streets during his initial approach began filing through some shrubs and stumble across the curbs at the neighborhood entrance. Half a dozen drew closer to him, staggered in intervals that didn’t cause him concern for his safety. He sliced directly through the skull of a black female zombie that showed its teeth when it drew within striking distance. Before it even hit the ground Metzger charged the next member of the undead, kicking it in the chest with his boot, which knocked it to the ground, allowing him to stab the sword through its skull to finish the job.
Metzger studied each face as the undead approached, looking for anyone familiar, desperate to piece together the mystery that plagued him
. He recognized none of them, though they appeared to come from a variety of occupations and walks of life. His sword finished a deceased gas station mechanic, a businessman wearing a tattered tan suit, a woman wearing blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and dirty gardening gloves, and finally a teenager wearing kneepads and a helmet who appeared to be out skating when the inevitable happened. Saving him for last, Metzger noticed a bite mark along the young man’s shoulder that could very well have ended his vibrant young life and transformed him into a flesh-eating monster.
A combination of a growl and a hiss emulated from its throat as it drew near Metzger, beginning to extend its arms upward to grab at his potential victim. Instead of simply utilizing the sword for a quick execution like the others, Metzger walked backwards, switching the sword to his left hand so he could draw the .357 Magnum. The lack of answers left him furious, and though he knew his emotional state, combined with his irrational actions, might get him killed, he no longer cared. Waiting only a few seconds because he didn’t want to regain his senses and back down, Metzger fired a bullet into the center of the zombie’s head, certain to attract more of its kind in short order.
“Come and get me, motherfuckers!” Metzger screamed, his blood now boiling because he wanted every single one of the undead eradicated for disrupting his life and his family.
Staring at the bodies lying around him momentarily, he waited for additional takers, but nothing stumbled his way over the next few minutes. He began to calm down slightly shortly after that with nothing to strike at or shoot. Feeling somewhat like a transformed monster returning to his far less angry human form, Metzger began to control his breathing, nearly coming to terms with his careless behavior. He holstered the .357 once he found no need to use it around him, holding the sword at his side until he verified no danger remained.
About to rationally contemplate his next move for survival and gathering answers, he turned around to find Charles Garvey staring at him with blank, brownish eyes, clawing at the window he once could have easily opened if he chose to.
Now windows, doors, and child-proof gates might as well have been hardened prison bars to the primitive undead behind them. Occasionally they broke through, or accidentally opened them through random movements of their hands and fingers, but for the most part any barriers kept them at bay.
Somewhere in the recesses of Metzger’s brain a faint red glow became a fiery ember that quickly caught fire and sent him charging the front door. He wanted to know why the neighbors hadn’t acted to help his parents, wondering how they were so careless that they became undead themselves. Without so much as a split-second of indecision, he tromped up the front stairs onto the short concrete landing, kicked in the door near the doorknob, and waited with his short sword drawn for any undead inside to come his way.
Because the door broke away from its top two hinges it fell awkwardly inside at an angle, likely to trip anything that crossed its path. Still barely attached to the bottom hinge, the door was left mostly horizontal at knee level except for the one corner that touched the ground. Metzger heard footsteps before any of the undead came into view, and as the footsteps drew closer they sounded something like a herd of elephants and Metzger wondered just how many people sought refuge with the Garvey family when everything went bad.
“Shit,” he muttered dejectedly when several undead rounded the corner and began tripping over the door and one another.
Once their pale, dead eyes locked onto his form, they crawled, walked, and stumbled in his direction as quickly as their decaying forms allowed.
Although it required more concentration this time because more than half a dozen charged Metzger in a formation of sorts, he tried to study their faces before swinging away with the sword. It occurred to him that his parents might have gone next door to stay with the Garvey clan for safety, because strength certainly came with larger groups. If a single person among their group became infected, however, the disease could have easily become airborne or transmitted through a bite. Metzger wished he understood the science behind how the apocalypse began so he knew any additional precautions to take, but he wasn’t around many dying or diseased people the past month.
Apparently children zombies moved more quickly because of their size and the fact that they decayed somewhat slower for some reason. The granddaughter and grandson reached him first, even more ominous than adult zombies because their growls were more like defensive hisses than throaty groans. Both eyed him like he was the pizza they had ordered hours ago, warm and delicious to their palates. Unfazed by their age and appearance, Metzger waited until they were close enough to taste the blade of his sword as he swung through their necks, beheading both in a single swipe.
He knew from experience that removing the cranium from the body didn’t entirely kill the zombie because the head remained animated with a biting jaw and eyes that continued to scan the area. Impending danger kept him from finishing the job as four zombies closed on him and more reached the front door of the house. Knowing adrenaline could sustain him for only so long, Metzger opted to continue using the sword, rather than firing a second shot that might attract additional undead.
Within a minute he took down Charles Garvey, the man’s wife, and two other adults he didn’t recognize. He required only a few more seconds to stab through any craniums left on the ground that continued to move, looking down to find blood droplets on his blue jeans and shirt. He felt terrible for finishing off the Garvey family because for the first time he essentially killed people he knew, who once conversed with him and spent many a neighborly evening with his parents. His mother spoke of times the couples made dinner for one another or sat around a fire pit in the backyard during fall evenings.
Looking at the carnage around him, Metzger felt the anger ebb from his body, replaced by a feeling of complete solitude and emptiness. After all of the travel, risking his life from one town to another, he arrived home to find no one he knew among the living, and no answers. He suddenly wished he’d found his parents, even if they were undead, so he wouldn’t feel trapped in his home state. As much as he wanted to reunite with his brother and move on to whatever life awaited him, Metzger felt compelled to find something, anything about his parents.
When the urge struck him to move along before more undead stumbled his way, Metzger stole a glance toward the front door, seeing one final zombie fill the threshold, catching him by surprise. Positive he recognized this particular walker, he fell to his knees and continued to stare forward, feeling a tear come to one eye. Perhaps he wished too soon for answers at any cost, because his heart fluttered momentarily at the shock of the zombie standing before him.
“Mom?” he questioned as his fingers released the grip on his sword, allowing it to fall beside him.
Five
Metzger never felt his knees hit the concrete of the sidewalk because the onset of shock left him staring blankly at the front door of the Garvey household where he felt certain his mother died. His initial awe lasted only a few seconds as the female zombie came into clearer view from the doorway.
Although she was clearly of senior citizen age when she died, this woman drew closer, looking at him simply as dinner, and looking less like his mother with each step. The undead straggler wore only two facial expressions, one being completely and utterly neutral and the other a feral, gnashing of the teeth attack mode. Too mentally and physically exhausted to grow angry again, Metzger stood as he scooped up the sword, barely finding the energy to take a swing at the zombie’s skull. Fortunately the blade did most of the work, severing flesh and bone, dropping the attacker immediately.
Wondering if the house was free of undead, Metzger trudged to the front door, waiting to see if any other enemies appeared in the doorway. He didn’t feel much like clearing the house, but felt it was necessary in case his parents had sought refuge with their neighbors as so many others apparently had done. The house had no front porch, and a set of three steps led into the house, which immediately provided a differen
t atmosphere than the more familiar residence next door.
Bowls, plates, food cartons, plastic containers, and silverware appeared randomly strewn across tables, chairs, and the floor as though survivors had confined themselves to the house for a period of time before the group turned. Metzger sheathed his sword, opting to pull the .357 in case he was surprised around a corner or doorway. He immediately found it impossible to move silently, because every step emitted a clop from his steel-toed boots or the crunch of something discarded along the floor as he stepped on it.
Feeling reasonably certain every zombie had already stumbled outside to greet him, Metzger made his way through the living room and kitchen rather quickly, finding nothing hazardous awaiting him. A bathroom and one small bedroom also revealed nothing except more clutter and some dirty clothes. Metzger made it a point to look for evidence of what happened within the house, or any notes left by the group while they were alive. He surmised the house maintained power through at least a few weeks, providing safe haven for the group until something drastically changed.
“It must have been swift,” he figured aloud, following the same path he had in his parents’ house since this place also had an upstairs and a basement.
He walked up the wooden stairs to the second story, immediately hearing some kind of noise from the other side of the bannister. Hesitantly climbing the last few stairs, Metzger found the upstairs rather dark because windows were covered with quilts and blankets, allowing minimal daylight to peek through. Much like the neighboring house, all of the upstairs doors remained closed, and one of the rooms presented some noise as thin shadows swayed back and forth beneath the wooden door. Instead of four, there were three doors this time, but he immediately disliked the idea of examining the room with groans and moans.
Considering the door was the furthest from him, Metzger started with the nearest door, finding a fairly well-lit bedroom with nothing dangerous inside. Clothes lay strewn across the twin bed, and several black trash bags were lying beside the bed with their tops ripped open, revealing more clothes inside. He wondered if the group scavenged some local stores and houses to find food and clothing when the outbreak first began.
The Undead Chronicles (Book 1): Home and Back Again Page 6
