by Morris, Jacy
****
Mort stood next to the front window, his stomach rumbling as it digested. He looked at the house across the street and wondered what new wonders awaited inside. Just sitting in the house of these dead folks had shown him an entire lifetime of experiences that he had never had. There were beds soft as clouds, furniture that felt like it hugged you, carpet that made every footstep a luxury... and this wasn't even a fancy house according to Clara.
All he had ever known since leaving the tin shack he and his father had called home was the occasional dorm room, cots that felt like they were trying to eat you alive, and hard floors that smelled of antiseptic and abrasive cleaners. Even in his home with his dad, the floors had been cold hard wood, aged with years of traffic, the passing of a thousand footsteps etched into the floor. His bed had been nothing more than an aging mattress sitting on the floor. If he rolled the wrong way, he would get a bed spring in the ribs for his trouble. It had happened so many times that when he had transitioned to sleeping on the dirt or in the grass, it had been like nothing to him.
Now he stood staring across the street, wondering what other wonderful things there were to see in the house across the way. Lou was right to avoid the houses with multiple stories. While they presented more likelihood of food or weaponry, they also represented a greater chance of finding more of the dead. Large houses meant families. Families meant fighting to live. Those that weren't successful in that fight, as most people weren't, wound up walking among the dead. Those houses with families inside... those were not the places they wanted to be.
"Hey, maybe we should check out that other house over there," Mort said to no one in particular.
Lou came and stood by him, poking his head out through the blinds and peering at the blue house across the street. "Might be something we can use in there. Doesn't seem to be anyone else around," Mort said.
In the street, there was only one of the dead shuffling about, looking left and right, wondering which way to go. Something about the nature of the cul-de-sac seemed to confuse them. Circles... maybe they weren't into circles. But that was ridiculous. What would circles have to do with anything?
"Let's do it," Lou said.
Mort pulled his hammer from his belt loop and walked to the front of the door. That stumbling dummy out there was his, and then he would get to see what another house was like. He was giddy with the feeling. Something about breaking into someone's house excited him in a way that few things had over the years. Even the anticipation of killing the dead woman that was shuffling in the street was exciting to him now. He didn't think it should be that way, but that's how it was working out. He was changing.
Maybe it was the death of Blake that had sparked the change in him. Where before he had only felt an equal mix of fear and revulsion, now there seemed to be a slowly smoldering coal of hate permanently glowing in his chest. When he saw the dead, it were as if the wind were fanning the coal to life, causing it to glow hotter and brighter.
He wanted to kill them now. He wanted to make the world safer, so that no one else would have to know the pain of losing someone that really mattered to them.
Mort threw the door open, and he slowly jogged, breathing in sharply every time his knee sent pain shooting up his leg. Before the dead lady could even turn his head toward her, he was swinging his hammer at her. He watched as the hammer clanged off the side of the woman's skull, rocking her head, as if in slow-motion. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and the stiffness of her body was gone instantly. She fell loosely, a blood flowing from a crack in her skull, and then she was on the ground. Mort didn't even bother checking her. She was dead now.
Lou ran ahead of him, kneeling low, and he exploded upward, throwing his shoulder into the front door of the blue house. It did not explode inward as the other had done. Instead it rattled heartily in the jamb, bouncing Lou backwards. As Lou rolled out of the way, Mort brought his own heel up and kicked at the door. The door still managed to hold on.
"They got that deadbolt on. We could kick at that thing all day, and it wouldn't budge. Let's check the back, it might be easier," Lou said.
They sprinted around the side of the house, vaulting over a waist-high wooden fence and landing on a concrete sidewalk. The backyard of the house was as overgrown as everywhere else in the suburbs. Branches brushed against their pant legs as they circled behind the house. An old grill stood rusting in the sunshine. A sliding glass door reflected their unkempt images back at them.
Mort reached for the handle and pushed it sideways. It rumbled open to his surprise. He didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. The interior of the house was dark. The living room's white carpet was spattered with blood, and Mort gripped his hand tighter. They knew immediately that someone or something was in the house... they could smell it. The wreckage of an entertainment center was strewn across the living room and the furniture was knocked over. A fight had happened here.
They had come this far, so they decided to press forward. The smell of rot and death intensified. A central hallway bisected the house with rooms on the left and the right hidden behind doorways. Mort jumped as Lou banged on the wall.
Immediately, they heard a thumping behind one of the doors.
"Maybe we ought to just ignore that room," Mort said.
Lou nodded at him, and then said, "You stand next to that thing. I'm going to see what I can find. If that door breaks down, you gimme a holler."
"You got it."
Mort stood next to the rattling door, trying not to jump every time whatever was on the other side bashed into it. In the other parts of the house, he heard Lou tossing and searching the rooms. He heard items clatter to the ground. Bang. Jump. He heard drawers being torn open. Bang. Jump. He heard metal hangers scraping along dowels in closets. Bang. Jump. Then it was quiet.
Mort waited for another bang. But there was nothing. He leaned against the wall, his head tilted up. The afternoon heat caused waves of sweat to drip down his face, and he could feel more trickling down the small of his back. He wiped his hand across his face to keep the sweat from getting in his eyes, and that's when the door across from him swung open, the creature on the other side using dormant memories to manipulate the door handle.
A gray face with curly black hair was upon him in an instant. He managed to bring his hammer up between him and the snarling man that was attacking him, but they fell backwards. His weight was crushing, and the smell of the dead man upon him was sickening. How long had he been rotting in that room?
"Lou," he rasped, unable to devote any breath or energy to yelling louder. All of his strength was going into keeping the clacking teeth of the dead man from sinking into his skin. The man had a nasty wound on his forehead, and a flap of skin fell down, obscuring his left eye. Blood dripped from the wound, and Mort squeezed his eyes shut as the cold liquid fell on his cheek.
He turned his head to the side and yelled, "Lou!" as panic welled up inside him. Suddenly, the weight was lifted off of him, and Mort dared open his eyes again. The man was large. An orange construction vest hung over a white T-shirt that was too large for his swollen and rotting gut. Lou shoved the man backwards against the wall.
Mort got himself to his feet, and Lou followed after him as they backed into the living room where there was more room to swing their weapons. The construction worker staggered forward, that lone flap of skin dancing with each movement. The creature gargled something at them and then reached for Lou.
In mid-swing, Lou tripped over some wires and fell backwards. He went down. Mort acted fast. Swinging his hammer at the man's head. He connected with the construction worker's jaw. The crack of the hammer echoed in the living room, and teeth flew and landed on the already bloody carpet. The construction worker seemed dazed for a moment, but he still came forward. Mort swung again, his arm already sore and tired.
The man's broken jaw dripped more blood onto the carpet. Mort gasped for air, but he didn't have enough strength to crack the man's skull. He
swung the hammer anyway, but the dead man was on him again, his cold hands grasping at him, his mouth trying to work. He felt the dead man's face upon his own, and he screamed.
The man's face cocked to the side as Lou bashed him with his baseball bat, killing him instantly. As the limp weight of the dead man crashed into him, they fell to the ground. Mort scrambled out from under the man and picked up a misplaced throw pillow. Frantically, we swiped it across his face where he had felt the creature's teeth pressing into his skin.
"You, ok?" Lou asked, a wary look in his eye.
Mort said nothing. He kept wiping his face with the pillow. Then he flipped it over to the clean side and did it again, looking at the pillow to see if any of his own blood was there. There was nothing. He wiped his face again, needing to be sure. Still no blood. But he couldn't stop checking.
"It's alright, Mort," Lou said.
"He got me, man. I know it." Mort wiped at his face again, needing to be sure.
"You're not bleeding. You're fine. Calm down."
"Fuck that, Lou. I ain't going out like that." Still no blood on the pillow.
Lou stepped over to him and pulled the pillow away. "You're fine. There's nothing there."
But Mort could still feel those hard teeth pressing into the skin of his cheek. He sank to his knees and shuddered. He felt tears forming in his eyes as he put his hands to his face. Lou squatted down next to him, and put his hand on his shoulder. Mort flinched for a second, but then he accepted it. His shoulders bobbed up and down as he silently sobbed.
Lou moved closer and put his arm around Mort. Mort's hand reached up and grasped Lou's encircling arm, as if he were holding on for life, which in fact he was. They all were.
****
It shook Lou to see Mort in the state he was in. He knew how he felt. Emotions. They were real. For his whole life, he had been told not to have any, not to show any. But they were real, and in this world, they were always being tested. Emotions this deep, where every moment could mean the death of you or someone you cared about, were everywhere. When Zeke had died, it was like he had been reborn as a wounded, scared baby dealing with experiences that he had never had to deal with before.
Even when he had shot his own father, Lou hadn't felt those emotions. But when Zeke had gone, for the first time, he had experienced loss, the type of loss that those motherfuckers in Hollywood always played up in the movies. The type of loss that could send a man to his knees blubbering like a five-year-old.
Before all of this had happened, before the dead had taken over the world, he had been a man. He had been one of those thoughtless creatures, stumbling through life with no purpose, no reason. He hadn't felt anything but hate and pleasure, mixed with the occasional self-loathing. The feelings he had experienced since the world had begun to crumble, those were new. Those were hard to deal with. They were like being shown a new color for the first time. The mind struggled to make sense of them, and they threatened to consume.
As he watched Mort sob on the floor. He knew that he was going through the same thing. He held him tightly, and a new emotion crept over him, something he had never really expected to find in the apocalypse. Compassion. He felt Mort's pain. He would give anything for it to stop. Lou new that Mort's pain came from more than a near-death experience. It came from loss, and the constant up-and-down of the post-world. One minute, you're eating a can of soup that made you feel like a king and the next, you were on your ass, fighting off the dead.
"I got you," Lou said.
Just a month ago, the thought of putting his arms around another man would have brought revulsion and thoughts about what other people would think of him. Now, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, and he wondered, How did I miss out on so much of the world when it was still here?"
"I got you, man. It's going to be alright." Mort's sobbing had slackened off a bit, and his hand began to relax on Lou's forearm. He was coming back to himself, exiting that world of emotion and feeling, sliding back into his body, a little different, a little changed. That's how they lived their lives now, growing and changing, sloughing off their previous selves after each major event like snakes shedding their skins.
"You alright?" he asked.
Mort nodded.
"Alright. You stay here. I'm gonna look this place over."
Mort nodded again. Dazed... like one of those things. But he would snap out of it and be stronger. That's what had happened to Lou. He thought back on the man that he was, and he realized he had been little more than one of those dead things out there, shuffling along, looking for something to eat. Before the dead had already started walking, he was out there doing the same thing. Now, he was alive. And he intended to stay that way.
Lou started his search in the room that the man had locked himself in. It was a mess. Brown streaks of blood and rot covered the walls. He didn't know how long the man had been entombed in his own bedroom, but it had been long enough to slather virtually every surface with some sort of filth.
From the large bloodstains on the bed, it looked like the man had been attacked and then died on his bed. There was no sign anywhere of the person that had attacked him. Lou squatted down on his knees to peer under the bed. It seemed to be the only place not covered in blood. He pulled a shoe box out from underneath the bed. Immediately, he felt disappointment at its weight; there would be no weapon inside.
He took the lid off anyway and found himself face to face with pictures and love letters. He recognized the face of the construction worker, although in many of the pictures he had a beard. The woman in the picture was handsome, not exactly beautiful, but to Lou, she looked like a dream. She had shoulder-length red hair, a smattering of freckles, and a smile dominated by crooked front teeth. Best of all was the smile. Here were people who had experienced something real in their life, people who had seen the best that life had to offer.
Lou looked around the room, realizing that is was only big enough to accommodate one person, and barely big enough for the construction worker by himself. He grabbed one of the letters, written in an almost child-like cursive script. It was dated a few years ago. He toyed with the idea of taking the letters, and maybe reading them when he got bored, but in the end, he put the pictures and the letters back in the shoe box and pushed it back under the bed. It was what he would have wanted someone to do for his things if he had any.
He stood and ignored the blood-soaked note on the night table. It wasn't a story he wanted to carry with him.
In the other room, he marveled at a wall full of DVD's all stored on mismatching racks. The construction worker must have been a movie buff in his spare time. He recognized a few of the titles, but most of them were horror movies and not really his thing. It's not like he could watch any of the damn things anyway. He returned to the closet he had been digging through when Mort had been attacked. He had been looking at the man's jackets and deciding which one he wanted to take.
It was summer now, but if they ever made it to the coast, he would want something to wear. He had never actually been to the coast, but Joan had told him how it was. Unceasing wind, always a little bit colder than you wanted it to be. Lou hated the cold. He pushed the jackets aside, trying to decide which one would do the job. In the end, he pulled out a black windbreaker. It was light enough, and it was black. Camouflage was important now. Bright colors wouldn't be a good choice, not that the man's closet had much variation. It was mostly brown, green, or black clothing, nothing too exciting.
Lou took the jacket off the hanger and wrapped it around his shoulders. It was big on him, but he immediately felt the warmth of the jacket's lining. It seemed as if it had never been worn. He would take it. Maybe something better would come along. He kept the jacket on, not wanting it to tie him up as he searched the rest of the house.
In the last room, he found a crappy set of display cases filled with toys, some of which he recognized and some which he didn't. There were no weapons or anything useful at all... unless you counted t
he little plastic bobs gripped in some of the action figures' hands.
Lou walked back through the hallway and into the kitchen, stopping briefly to check on Mort who was still on his knees trying to get his bearings back.
"You alright?" he asked from the kitchen.
"Yeah. I'm alright," Mort said.
Lou let it go at that. Mort's voice had said that he wasn't exactly alright, but he would make it through. Bugging him about it would just make things worse. Lou began flipping open the cupboards in the kitchen.
He found a good amount of food in cans. Single guys always had food in cans. He looked around for a garbage bag or something to carry the cans with. He opened up the cupboard under the sink, and immediately shrank back, wishing that he hadn't. A swarm of flies escaped from underneath the sink, buzzing around his face. He wanted to throw up, but he put his hand over his face, grabbed one of the paper bags under the sink and slammed the cupboard closed. He scooped the cans into the bag, and then walked to the bathroom to check on the toiletries. He didn't expect much from a single dude's house, but some toothpaste and some mouthwash would go a long way towards increasing morale.
He was in luck. He even found some floss and an unused toothbrush. Lou ran his tongue across his chipped front teeth. They had clacked together when they had jumped off the roof of the gift shop, and he had come up spitting gritty pieces of enamel onto the asphalt. He felt their new roughness with his tongue, annoyed by the unfamiliar shape of his teeth. It would be important to brush. He doubted there were any dentists around to fix him up if something went bad. He pulled the toothbrush out of the packaging and shoved it in his own pocket. Never had the phrase finders-keepers been more accurate.
Lou handed the bag of goods to Mort, and they sprinted across the street to the house they were occupying. Across the way, Lou thought he saw a flash of movement coming from the house with the blood smears all over it. He put it out of his mind. It was probably just another of the dead, brushing up against the curtains.
