When I reach what I’m certain is the lawn, I survey the house again, taking in all of its features. The shutters have been closed and then boarded up meagerly. The porch wraps around the house for the majority, except for in the back where I’m assuming the pantry and the kitchen are. I move quietly, wanting to avoid any disturbances. I think back to Jason and wonder if this is another scenario like that. I know that I should call out, but I decide that I’m going to wait for a moment, look over the entire house before I give myself away, not that wandering around the building isn’t taking care of that enough. I make my way around the side and see that there are several garbage bags covered in a fine layer of dust sitting against one of the doors and I know exactly what is happening here.
This is not a Jason scenario. This is something far worse. I can smell it from where I stand, maybe thirty yards from the house. It hits me like a brick in the nose and I immediately raise my stump to cover my nostrils as I look at the bags with my eyes watering. It stinks so bad that I think I might gag, but I’m quick to recover. I’m used to this sort of horrendous abomination. I don’t need to guess or be frightened by it. I want to know why. Why do they do it? Why do they suddenly think that it’s a reasonable thing to do.?
Around the back of the house, I find more and more of the bags stuffed up against a detached garage that is painted red and white as well. I want to be certain. I don’t want to enter this house with any sort of misconceptions about what is happening here. I approach the pile of sacks and the stench is so bad that I bend over and start to gag. I cover my mouth and stand up, blinking several times, getting ahold of myself before approaching the bags again. I reach out with my bladed stump and slice open the back, letting the putrid, rancid odor burst forth like a hellish belch. Reddish, gray liquid and chunks pour out of the bag and all over the others, spilling across the ground. I look down and see a rotting hand much smaller than mine, and several bones. I look up from the hand that has fallen out of the hole and back up at the bag where a tarnished, rotting face stares past me with one eye that is shriveled. I turn around and look at the house. Fucking cannibals.
I walk around the building again and decide that there’s only one course of action to take here. I’m going to go back down to the truck. I’m going to get a container of gasoline and I’m going to return, light the whole damned place on fire and let the savages burn alive. I’m sick of these monsters living in the same world as I am. Why should I play by the rules while these abominations wander around doing whatever they want? It’s time for me to start doing what I want and right now, I want to burn some demented fuckers alive.
When I’m walking around the front of the house, heading back to the truck, there’s a disturbing thought that creeps into my mind. Where is he getting the meat? Where are they getting the meat, more likely? There’s no one in the town, so that means they have to be getting the meat from somewhere else. I look back at the garage and suddenly feel something very wrong inside of me. Whoever is inside of that house, they have to be keeping their victims nearby or inside the house. Feeling the weight in my pack, I know that I have my bolt cutters with me and that the garage around back had been locked shut with a padlock.
“Damn it, Lindsay,” I growl before heading back to the garage. I move low to the ground, quietly. I can’t hear anything inside, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t watching me. The moment they come out, I plan to race down the hill to get to the truck. I make my way to the garage and drop my pack quietly before unzipping it and pulling out my bolt cutters. I look up at the house one more time, making sure that there’s no one watching me or coming for me. Cutting the padlock, I toss it into the dirt nearby where it makes a soft thud. Pulling open the doors, I look into the darkness and regret everything.
There are bodies hanging upside down from chains in the rafter of the garage. All of them are missing their heads, feet, hands, and skin. The floor is covered in blood and the whole place reeks of rot. I suppose whoever is eating them doesn’t really care about the condition of the meat he’s eating. Some of the bodies are children and others all appear to be women. They are motionless, hanging from their chains as they languish in the darkness. I close the door and look back at the house. I have to act. I have to do something about this psychopath.
Sneaking up to the kitchen door, I peek in through the window and see only the darkness of the house. The kitchen is large enough to have a staff working it, which makes me wonder how well-to-do the owners had been. I can see the hallway that leads into the house, but it’s too dark to make out anything. I pull away from the window, afraid that there are two hungry eyes in that darkness, watching me with envy and delight. Maybe he wants me to come in. Maybe that’s what he wants. Perhaps I’m just playing into his sick, demented plan. Slowly, I reach out for the handle and give it a try. There’s no give at all. It’s locked. I release the knob and stand very still, listening to the movement in the house, trying to pinpoint where exactly this killer might be lurking. From my circumnavigation of the house, I found only two other doors, which means I need to move.
The door on the side of the house is locked as well. I look down at the black bags that are full of body parts and I feel nothing but a consuming rage. Maybe they’re all dead. Maybe his victims are the people hanging in the garage and I’m going in there to fight him and who else knows, when I could just burn them all alive. I try to peek in through the window of the door, but the curtain is pulled over the window and there’s nothing visible. I take a step back and decide that it’s not worth it. I should just go get the gasoline and burn the place down. There’s no one in there, or else they’re all asleep. I take a step off the porch and start heading for the truck. It’s time to make a pyre again out of these monsters.
I think about all the bad men I’ve killed on my journey across the country and I wonder if I’ve made it a little easier for those who aren’t evil or wicked. I wonder if the people out there who don’t feed on the living or hunt the weak are doing better. Or am I just putting a bunch of Band Aids on the leaking dam? Walking toward the slope, I figure that it’s better to try and rid the world of some evil people than stand by and do nothing. After all, that’s all that matters. Trying to make the world a better place doesn’t always work, but it’s still worth the effort.
“Help us!” A voice rips through the air and I freeze before my foot can land on the ground beneath it, and look over my shoulder at the house. It was a small voice, the kind of voice that barely makes it through the walls, but I heard it nonetheless. Turning around, I look at the house and I know that there’s someone in there. But what if it’s a ruse? What if they’re trying to lure me into the house in order to kill me and eat me?
“Then the joke’s on them.” I rip my machete free and start running back toward the house.
Maybe they’ve left the house, searching the town for supplies or fresh victims, and those they’ve captured are locked inside the house, waiting to be rescued. If that’s the case, then I’m the only hope they’ve got. Even if that isn’t the case, I’m still the only hope they’ve got. If the cannibals are in there, then I’m the only person who can do anything about them. I rush onto the porch and stop just short of the door and look at my dark reflection in the window against the bright world behind me. Without a moment of hesitation, I give the door a kick that sends it flying open, covering the floor with splinters from the door frame. Light swirls and fills the darkness of the gloomy house and I suddenly hear the noises. They’re upstairs.
Stepping into the house, I toss my sunglasses aside and look into the gloom, my eyes adjusting quickly to the dark. I don’t see anyone waiting to attack me. I step into the dated foyer and look around, listening to the thumping and the banging upstairs as a woman screams for help again, this time, very loud.
“Shut up, bitch!” a voice snaps at her. “Whoever the fuck you are, you best keep on moving. You hear me!”
“Let go of my baby!” the woman shrieks again at the top of her
lungs as I make my way toward the stairs. “Help, please, help us! He has my baby!”
“Shut the fuck up!” the man roars.
“Help,” a smaller voice cries, the voice I had heard in the first place.
I take each step quietly, making my way up the stairs, listening to the struggle. Whoever he is, he doesn’t have a gun. If he had a gun, the woman would be dead and so would the smaller voice. I don’t know if it’s a little boy or a little girl, but they’re all still alive. There’s a bloodcurdling scream and I know that I need to move. At the top of the stairs, I turn toward the only door that’s shut. There’s a light underneath the door, escaping into the hallway, flickering. It’s a candle. Gripping my machete, I approach the door and listen as there’s more movement inside. I feel the knot constricting inside of my stomach and I don’t want to open that door. I don’t want to know what’s inside there. The smell is horrendous.
With a loud boom, the door bursts open with the force to implant the door knob into the wall, keeping the door open. There’s no door stopper and the man inside gets a full look at me and I see him. He has a knife in his hand and a dirty, dingy hand wrapped around a little girl’s throat. She has tears running down her face that has been savagely maimed as the man waves the knife out at me. It looks like a steak knife and the blood on it is obviously from the girl. The man is completely naked and has a full erection. The woman is lying by the bed, naked and sobbing in fear for her little girl. The man has a long scraggy beard in thick black hair hanging over his face. There are candles all about the room and strange drawing on the walls. This man broke a long time ago and this is all that’s left of him. I take a step forward and hold out my machete. I don’t want to know what’s been happening here. I shouldn’t have gotten this involved. I should have burnt them all to the ground.
“Let the girl go.” I give the man this one warning.
“Drop the machete and I’ll let her go,” the man snaps at me, his teeth are stained and dark. They’re rotting out of his mouth.
I look around the room. There’s a baseball bat leaning against the wall right next to my bladed stump. Even if the bastard tries to attack me, I’m going to gut him with my bladed stump, but the baseball bat would work nicely. I figure from his distance, if he charges me, I can reach the bat and swing it just in time. “You’ll let the girl go?” I ask him.
“You got it,” the man grins, giving away his motives.
I drop the machete.
The man hurls the girl aside, she lets out a scream that is cut short when her head smashes into the bedside stand that her mother’s right foot is near. She drops like a sack of potatoes and doesn’t move, but that’s not my concern at the moment. My concern is the naked cannibal charging me, still sporting a full erection. I reach for the bat and swing it upwards as fast as I can. The man is closer to me than I realized. The bat smacks into his hand and wrist with my full force and speed with a loud, sickening crack that matches the sound that escaped from the girl’s head when she hit the bedpost. The man shrieks and slams into the dresser before I bring the bat down again on his head. Like the girl, he drops to the ground limp, but he doesn’t stay that way. I watch him twitch and quickly start to recover.
Planting a foot on his wrist, I swing the baseball bat down with all my strength on the man’s ruined hand. I feel the cracking of the bones reverberating through the wooden bat and the sounds rippling through the air. The man screams as I roll him over and plant a foot on his stomach before I swing with all my might at his exposed testicles and penis. I hit him once and listen to the shriek of agony before I swing again and again, beating his genitals until they’re nothing but swollen, bruised, bleeding ghosts of their former selves. The man is whimpering and crying when I take the bat to his knees so he can’t walk or crawl away. He passes out from the pain, but he’s not dead. Not yet.
The woman is on the floor next to the girl, her arms wrapped around the girl and her face twisted in sorrow and horror. I walk up to her, looking at her. I can’t help but stare. She is beautiful, nowhere near the sculpted figure of Lindsay, but she has a beautiful face, something Lindsay did not have. Her body is skinny, suffering from the travel and the forced survival. I jump at the sound of movement in a closet and I quickly reach out with my bladed stump, putting it between me and the closet, waiting for another attacker. The closet looks like a rape dungeon with metal bars. Behind the bars, a small figure lurks.
“Nick, it’s okay,” she calls out and I watch as the closet door opens and a small boy steps out, looking at me with large, terrified eyes. Walking over to the ropes that are holding her wrists, I slash them and let the mom work on the daughter as I turn back to the man on the floor. His eyes are opening and I’m standing over him.
Pinning his arms to the floor with my knees, I listen to him groan and squirm before I hold the bat over the man’s moving lips. He’s mumbling something, trying to curse me or plead with me. It doesn’t matter. I hold the bat over his lips and flick it, listening to him scream as his rotten gums release most of his putrid teeth. Blood pours out of the corners of the man’s mouth as I hold out my bladed stump and sink it into the flesh of his throat. The man’s eyes widen as he feels the blade slipping into his flesh. He tries to scream, but I’ve savaged too much of his throat so only a shrieking gurgle escapes him. I watch him as he dies, the life bleeding out of him while he twitches and swallows, trying to hold onto what little shreds of life he has left.
I look down at the man, feeling nothing but gratitude that he’s gone. He wasn’t worth the life inside of him. I suddenly realize that I have an audience. Turning, I see the woman holding her girl, sobbing but staring at me with a horrified look in her eyes.
“Are there any others?” I ask her.
She shakes her head.
“Good.” I stand up and grab my machete, sheathing it before I grab the man’s right arm and drag him out of the room, leaving a bloody smear across the carpet as I take him from their sight. They don’t need this. They don’t need to see this monster anymore. As for him, I have my own plans.
Chapter Nine
I wanted to bury the girl for the woman, but there was no way of bringing her to listen to me. She was hunched over the girl when I last left her, trying to give her CPR. She has no idea what she’s doing. If she had any idea what was going on, then she wouldn’t be giving a dead girl CPR. I had heard the crack, barely seeing it. I had been so focused on the man. I needed to kill the man. Sitting on the porch, I look out over the dead yard and try to imagine how beautiful of a view this place must have had. Holding a bottle of water up to my lips, I feel my hands still trembling. I’m still not used to killing people, I guess. I’m not sure that I like that. It had been so easy. I can’t shake that feeling. It was like killing a goat or a kitten. It almost hadn’t been a fight. I try not to think about it. What I’m thinking about most is that I should approach the woman and offer to bury the girl. If Lexi or Val had died in my presence while I was forced to sit by and watch, I would have been mortified. I would have been broken on an elemental level. Then, left with burying my sweet, beloved child… that would have been too much. I can hear them talking inside. They’re coming toward me.
Standing up, I take a walk out into the yard, not wanting to eavesdrop on whatever conversation they’re going to have near me. I make sure that I’m not running off the porch. I meander, wander, slowly across the lawn, looking out over the town, wondering if there are any dark secrets still out there to be stumbled upon. To the north of here, there’s an entire city, smoldering into ash because of me. Maybe I should do the honors of burning this worthless spot on the map into history and oblivion. No. That’s not my purpose. My destiny is south of here. I turn to walk back toward the house. They’re done bickering.
Walking back to the house, the woman is wearing clothes that look too big for her, but even so she appears more or less physically fit, in an odd, bone-thin kind of way. The man hadn’t been that much of a fight. How did he get
the drop on her? I suppose I couldn’t blame her. A man took my hand off with a fake trash bag full of cans. Who am I to judge? She looks at me with her bright blue eyes. Her blonde hair is a mess, but she’s still got a face that would win over the hardest man. Her eyes are teary and all red. The door closes behind her. I can see the boy through the screen, staring at me with eyes filled with curious interest.
“She’s resting upstairs on the bed,” the woman says, wrapping her arms around her chest, almost as if she’s hugging herself. After the announcement her countenance changes and she appears so frail, so weak. I feel like if I punch her, I would break her—shatter her into a thousand little pieces. She looks at the ground while she speaks to me, but most importantly, what strikes me about her comment is how truly fucked up it really is. The girl is dead. I heard her skull crack. If anything, she’s in a coma, waiting to die. I look at her and wonder if she’s entirely there. “I want to thank you for saving us,” she says softly, almost a whisper of a breath. I look at her with cold, unappreciative eyes. I don’t know how to feel about this. Did I just save one useless soul only to have her die later on in the wasteland?
“Where’s your husband?” I ask her bluntly.
“He was in the National Guard,” she sniffs. I don’t like where this is going. “He was deployed when the military took over and called up all the reserves. He was sent to Detroit to try and stop the uprisings on the local campuses or something. Damn college kids. Anyways, just before the power went out, I watched his unit get overrun on television. I waited for weeks, but there was no word. He’s gone. I’ve been on my own ever since. Trying the best I can.”
I pray that her husband isn’t like me, wandering the wasteland, trying to get to his loved ones, only to find that she’s headed off. “I suppose you haven’t heard,” I say to her. “Someone burnt down Detroit. The entire city’s a grave. If he did die there, then the bastards who killed him are long dead. I promise you that.”
LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Page 42
