This house is seriously defended. He used two by fours to build barricades over the windows. This house is sealed up tight so that no one can get into the house. He wanted to keep something more than those roaming cannibals out of the house. They couldn’t pry off those boards. Turning my head, I look at a shed out back, it’s large and looks like it’s part of a greenhouse. Whoever lived here must have had a nice yard. It has that kind of feel to it, but whoever was here before now, they definitely had their worries.
There are three bodies in the mud behind the house. They’re barely sunken into the churning earth that seems to be swallowing everything that gets caught in the drifts of mud during the storms. One of the bodies has a shovel planted in it, which makes me nervous just at the sight of it. Who would kill a man with a shovel, but who’s to say that it’s a man in the first place? There’s a lot of terrible things out there in the world and I’m not so certain that men are part of it anymore. The world is populated with horrors that seek to destroy and maim all that’s left of the world and maybe the man with the shovel implanted in him is part of the problem.
There are two other bodies that draw my attention. They’re away from the dead man with the shovel planted inside of him. In the darkness, I can tell that one of them is a man, though he has decayed highly, or perhaps something worse has happened to him. Depending on how long he’s been dead, he might have had some help from scavengers lurking in the area. It’s so strange that humans would be what survived all of this and are the scavengers now, feeding off the dead. The bugs, the birds, and everything else that turns desperate in the world has long since vanished. Maybe they moved on to better lands, if there’s any left.
The second body is not a man, I know that much just from looking at it. Whoever it is was wearing a dress that looks like it’s brown, but that’s probably from being out in the elements. Maybe it was white when she was wearing it. Or maybe it wasn’t a she at all, just a man who liked wearing dresses and decided to do whatever he wanted at the end of the world. It would make sense, that’s his choice after all. Whoever they are out on the lawn, I can’t help but wonder who they might have been when they were alive. Maybe they were the people who originally lived here and were drawn out of the house before being ambushed and killed. That would have been a sad, miserable fate, but their fate is sad no matter what happened. I look at them and feel like I might possibly be looking at Jason. Maybe one of them was the fabled Jason, and died in the middle of some confrontation. Maybe my father sent us out here without knowing that Jason had died and now we’re looking at the ruins of what he left behind. What if the fate of the world is in there, alone and abandoned without someone to take over?
If that’s the case, then I’m thoroughly screwed. In fact, if this is Jason’s stronghold, then I’m completely screwed no matter what. There’s no medical staff here, no military presence, and there’s nothing to point to the possibility that the world is moving toward a better place. I look down at my hand on my stomach and know that my fate is sealed. I’ve known it was sealed since it happened and I told myself not to have hope, to be a realist, but somehow I’d let hope slip through. How could I not? If this is Jason’s place, then I’m officially looking at my own grave. It’s not a house or a fortress, it’s a mausoleum that I’m going to be inhabiting soon. I’m not happy with this fate. I’m not happy in the slightest. I’m looking at my own death here and it’s in physical form. No one should have to so darkly look upon their own demise. There should be happiness in it. There should be hope. I look at the house and realize that there’s a small measure of hope in my end. There had been a plant upstairs after all.
“It looks like we can get into the basement,” Lexi says, pointing to the cellar doors. One of the doors is open slightly. I don’t like the look of an open door. Everything about it screams ‘trap’ and I’m sick of traps right now. I’m sick of always being in danger and I just want to go see the plant without having to worry about clearing rooms or searching for hidden killers. Is that too much to ask?
Lexi grabs Charlie and picks up the last pistol that we have with any number of bullets in it. I rummage through the scraps left in our box of bullets and load the last that I can into my Sig. I have three rounds, enough for us to kill three people. I don’t have much faith in that. If there are zombies near, there will definitely be more than three out there. They always draw more with them, forming hordes rather than just tiny pods of them. I throw open the door of the truck and painfully swing my legs over the side of the seat before dropping down onto the sodden earth. The shock of the impact ripples up through my body and nearly doubles me over with pain. I’m worthless in my condition. I’m not going to help anyone, but there’s some safety in numbers. Besides, if they get into a truly desperate situation, I can think like Noah.
I picture his ruined face in the depths of my mind before he charged into that farmhouse days ago. I see the determined look he had in his eyes before charging the front door and slamming it shut. There’s so much beauty in the soul of a person’s sacrifice. It means so much to give one’s life in the effort of keeping others alive. It makes everything more precious and more purpose-driven for those who remain. Those who struggle with the weight of surviving often aren’t looking at things rightly, in my opinion. Death is a gift and gifts should be cherished and savored, not held onto begrudgingly and bitterly. That’s squandering what you’ve been given. But what do I know? I’m a dead woman and the dying and walking dead usually have different logic from the living. Things are clearer for me and I entertain the idea that clarity might not mean what I’m seeing is right. So I remain silent. I keep my thoughts to myself and close the door behind me.
I step over the dead bodies in the lawn. In the days since their death, they’ve started to barely sink into the earth, which makes me think that they didn’t die too long ago. But the fact that they didn’t die long ago also makes me think that we may not be alone here. Their faces look like they’ve been picked clean by scavengers, while there is still flesh clinging to some of their bones that has hardened and blackened in the harsh sunlight that has glared down on their remains. I look at them and feel no sympathy or mercy for them. They’re dead. If anything, I envy them. I’ve chosen the long road and right now, I don’t think that it’s worth it. I should have bled out. I look at Lexi and Greg who are taking the lead, looking into the darkness without a flashlight or any source of light. They’re walking blindly into a cellar. They don’t need me. They would be just fine if I was dead.
The way Greg walks is cruelly comical at best, painful at its worst. I look at his staggered limping and I think that I should tell Lexi how to get rid of the leg in the event that I drop dead before dawn. She should at least know how to try and save him. If she amputates the leg properly, he might be able to survive with her, to help her out until she and Charlie find safety of some kind, whatever that means in this world.
“I can’t see a damn thing,” Greg grunts angrily, swinging open the second door, hoping that the light will sneak down inside. “We should wait until dawn.”
“And where are we going to wait?” Lexi calls back to him angrily. “We need to get inside.”
“I’ll go first,” I volunteer for them. They look at me, both of them have protests written on their faces and in their eyes, but I know that my logic is sound. They know it too. They look at me and nod slowly, understanding that I’m going to go no matter what they say and that I should be the first to go. I’m almost dead. If there’s something waiting for me down there, then it’ll just be the dead girl who dies. Greg looks at me with sad, painful eyes. I haven’t seen that look before and it hurts, but I shrug it off. I can’t focus on the inevitable end. I have to do this. I have to do it for them.
The one thing that gives me boundless amounts of hope is that there are definitely no zombies down there. They’re not subtle or complex beings that would set a trap. When they hear food, they come running for it, grasping for it with their fingers and with
their jaws snapping, clacking ravenously as they seek their prey. If they were down there, they would have come roiling up through the cellar doors, arms stretched out and tackling Greg. I walk past Lexi and I brush past Greg, who gives me a look that tells me I need to be careful. It’s almost laughable. Where was he earlier today with that look? I could have used it before going into the house. I smile bitterly at the thought. Like I would have listened to him.
I take the slippery, muddy steps one at a time and slowly enter the darkness. It’s like I’m walking into a cave and there’s nothing that offers even a tiny source of light except for the dark night behind me which seems warm and welcoming compared to the inky black that I step into. My feet hit the cold, concrete ground and I listen for sounds of movement. Right now, all I can hear is the patter of the rain outside and my own breathing. I don’t think there’s anything down here with me, and if there is, it’s being incredibly silent.
It would be a lie to say that I’m not afraid, but fear doesn’t mean much to me right now. My body is as good as dead and they can have it if they want, so long as they don’t hurt Lexi or Greg. Just take me and leave them alone. I want to shout it to the world around me. Take me, leave the others alone. Blindly reaching for the wall near me, I feel a light switch and flip the switch. It doesn’t do a thing. I don’t know what I was expecting it to do, but I was hoping it would give us something. Running my hand along the wall, I feel the dust and cobwebs from the abandoned house. As I walk painfully along the wall, searching for something that might shed some light on this place, I hear a loud crash as my legs slam into a table.
“Babe?” Greg calls to me nervously.
“I’m fine,” I say to him, reaching out and feeling the table.
My fingers probe the area and as I search the contents of the table, my fingertips run across something that is distinctly familiar and I smile at the feel of it. I know this because my father used to take us camping all the time after our mother died. It was his way of escaping the world and I don’t think he could have coped without finding that escape, that place to heal. I feel for the button and when I find it, I’m pleased to see that the batteries are still alive, for a while at least. Gripping my Sig, I press the button and watch as the world flickers to life around me, cast in a pale blue light that illuminates the darkness, casting shadows away. Half expecting something to come charging at me, I’m pleased to see that I’m alone down here.
The area is cluttered and strangely organized, and I realize that this place is designed to look like it’s nothing but junk, but that’s just a lie, a façade to keep people away. Instead, I see beyond the base designs of the deception and see that this is actually a living space. It makes sense to me. It’s what I would have done if I’d had a place to hunker down after knowing the things I know now about the world. Whoever owned this house, they seemed to have been living down here, or at least, this was the fallback point for them in case anything happened to the house.
I hear Greg and Lexi coming down the stairs and as I grip my stomach, I know that our next priority needs to be taking care of the injuries that we’ve sustained. They can’t be held off any longer. If Greg is going to survive, I need to work on his leg. If I’m going to survive for a while longer, I need to stop the bleeding, at least on the outside. I’m pretty much stuck with the internal bleeding. I’ve come to terms with that. Greg and Lexi look around and I can’t help but feel like we’re just scratching the surface on something. This isn’t just a house. This is a sanctuary. It might not be Jason’s place or the sort of safe haven that we’d been looking for, but it definitely has a clear purpose.
“You think there’s anyone upstairs?” Greg asks, not hiding his voice with a whisper. He’s bold and he’s fearless right now. I don’t blame him. If there are people home, I don’t want them to think that we’re sneaking through this place, looking to catch them off guard. I want them to know exactly who we are, exactly what we’re looking for, shelter.
“I don’t know,” I groan, trying to keep the pain from coming out vocally. I need to hide it. I need to repress it from the others. They have to know that I’m all right. If they start worrying about me, then it’s all over for me. They won’t let me help with anything. I take another step into the light of the basement, my shadow casting a long column of darkness over the cellar. “We should wait until morning to check it out.”
Chapter Ten
Thunder ripples across the sky and Lexi sits down in a beach chair that she finds with Charlie, rocking him even though he’s not awake. She has a mother’s instinct finally and is caring more and more about him with every passing hour. She takes care of him like a mother ought to, like she should have been for days now. I look at her, wondering how much longer until she’s back to full health. I’ve never been around a woman who has just given birth and I’ve never delivered a human baby before. Maybe she’ll be better in a few days or a few weeks. I know that maternity leave can last like six weeks, but that doesn’t mean that she’s still recovering, does it? This is the kind of stuff that I’m kicking myself now for not learning, not that I ever saw a need for learning it.
Grabbing the lantern, Greg and I scour the basement until we find two more; one of them is a Coleman lantern and works with an actual flame. It’s old school, but I’m grateful for it. I give one of the lanterns to Greg and Lexi so they can have some light while I make my way back to the table I found the first lantern on, and clear it off meticulously. Greg hobbles out to the truck and starts bringing our supplies in a little at a time. While I’m still cleaning off the binders and notebooks from the table, Greg sets my pack down next to me.
“Going to work?” he asks me sweetly and I smile at him through the pain, nodding to him. I have to start putting a dent in what needs to be done before I can even hope to stand tomorrow. They’re going to need me at my full strength before all of this is over. They’re going to need my help in the coming days and I better be able to endure it if I’m going to join them. “Be careful, Val,” Greg says to me, reaching for my hand. I feel his hand on mine and it gives me a small measure of comfort. Honestly, I wish that I could stay with him. We had so much promise and such a bright future at one point. I’m sad for all the things that we’ll never have, that we’ll never experience because of all of this awfulness. It’s a shame and it’s a pity. In the end, though, we don’t get to pick our paths. We endure what we’re given and make the best of it as we go.
“I will,” I lie to him. It’s a necessary lie. I’m going to do what needs to be done and if that means putting me in more pain so that I can endure a few more days, then so be it. I’ll do whatever I can to ensure that I help them to carry on. I’m not going out in comfort. I’m going out kicking and screaming. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. So until that moment, I’ll tell Greg whatever he needs to hear to keep him from freaking out and panicking about my survival. “I’m going to be fine,” I lie again. “I’ve seen worse injuries and the victims pull through.”
“Good.” He wraps his arm around me and pulls me close, kissing me on the forehead. His lips feel cold, and fire rips through my abdomen.
Shrugging off my jacket, I look at my shirt and how tainted it is now with blood and all of the gore of the world spattered all over it. No one wants to see that when looking down at themselves. I look at it and I feel disgusted by it. Unbuttoning my shirt, I take it off and toss it onto a plastic chair with my pack and jacket. Standing in just my bra, I look down at the bloody wrappings and wonder if the bleeding has stopped. If I’m lucky, I’ll be working with a dried wound. That might buy me a little more time, not much, but at least I won’t worry about bleeding out for a while. I take a deep breath and open my first aid kit.
I don’t have a whole lot of supplies left, but what I do have will suffice for a short term fix such as this. Reaching down, I find the tiny little packet that’s a cotton swab drenched in alcohol. I put the packet out on the top of the table and look at it before glancing at my bandages
. There’s not much left that I can use, so I gently remove the Ace bandage and roll it up on the top of the table to use later. Peeling off the gauze, I feel the scabbed-over blood pulling away from my skin, tugging at me as I take it off. I shudder at the feeling and place it on top of the table, looking at the dirty, bloody wound in my stomach. How could something like a piece of a window frame do this to me? I’m dying because of a window frame. It seems so silly and I shake my head at the thought of it. I should have been more careful. I should have been smarter about all of this. I shake my head. Oh well, what’s done is done.
Tearing open the packet, I pull out the moist cloth and unfold it, holding it in my already wet hands and looking at the inch of injury on my stomach. It’s enough to leave me a walking corpse, but it doesn’t look like much. I stare at it for a moment before I start cleaning around it, making sure that the wound is ready for me to seal it up the best I can. All of it is going to come to an end one way or another, but my sister and boyfriend are watching me. I can feel their eyes on me, digging at me. They’re studying every movement I make. I know that they’re worried about me, so the illusion is essential. They’re waiting for a sign that I’m not well, that I’m, in fact, dying.
The cold cloth quickly scrubs away the bloody scabs on me. I make my way toward the edge of my wound, feeling the tug of the cloth as I scrub and try to bite back the pain by clenching my teeth shut, grinding my teeth in agony. As I keep cleaning, I look down at the wound, I see the peculiar pale flesh beneath the scabs, the wound is bleeding slightly, awakened by my actions. It doesn’t matter. I knew that it would start to hurt again. I’m doing the most I can with what little I have. A dozen more alcohol swabs would be nice, but I don’t have them. Dropping the swab on the table, I look at it, completely red and brown from the blood. It’s useless now. My wound stings from being jostled back to life and the alcohol bites at it cruelly, but I’m not worried about it. The pain from the external wound is so small right now that I can hardly notice it.
LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Page 91
