Victor stayed silent while Kyle went on his little monologue.
“Do you have anything to add?” Kyle asked.
“Not really. It seems like you have all the information you need.”
Kyle thought about all the comments he had just made. It seemed like Victor was right. The solution was simple, and Kyle understood. He just couldn’t believe that it was that simple.
“Turn right at this light,” Victor said pointing his finger.
Kyle turned as the boy instructed.
“Take a left here at this stop sign.”
Again, Kyle did as instructed. Before long they were parked on the sidewalk of a two-storey house. The neighborhood they were in was generally quiet. If they didn’t know that the world was overrun by monsters, they wouldn’t have thought that anything was amiss on this part of the city.
Victor opened the passenger side door and was about to take a step outside when Kyle grabbed hold of his arm. “Stop,” he said.
“Let me go, dude,” Victor replied.
“No. Remember what we talked about earlier? A lot of shit has happened to you the past few days. Same with me. I don’t want you to go in there and find your mom dead, or worse. She could be infected and trapped in the house. That could really set you off, and I don’t know what you would do to me or yourself if that’s the case. I’ll go in first to check the situation.”
“Let me go,” Victor said.
“Listen to me,” Kyle said hardening his grip on Victor. “I’ll go in and check on her. If she’s dead, or turned, I’ll come back out and let you know so we can continue on our way. If she’s alive you can stay here with her if you’d like.” As Kyle said that, he felt a void in his belly, as though someone punched him in the gut. He didn’t want to let Victor go, even though he would have no choice. “Just stay here.”
“Fine,” Victor said, defeated. “Come get me when it’s all right for me to come in.”
Kyle checked the magazine on his Glock. There were only two rounds left. He took some rounds out of the robot backpack and loaded them into the magazine as well as one of the spares. He put the spare magazine into his pocket and gave Victor a look of concern. “This is just in case there are other things in there besides your mother.”
Victor remained quiet. He just stared out of the window toward the front door.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Morgan Cross.”
“Okay, Morgan. I’ll be right back …” Kyle said as he opened the door and slammed it shut. He held the Glock in front of him as he walked toward the front door. He moved slowly at first, but then began moving faster. He reached the front door and tried the door knob. It was locked.
Kyle glanced back to Victor who was motioning to check underneath the welcome mat. He was confused for a moment. Kyle had never been good at charades. Victor continued to point down to the ground until Kyle finally understood. He lifted the welcome mat and laying there was a gold-colored key. He lifted it gracefully, as if though he just solved a thousand-year-old puzzle.
The gold key fit in the deadbolt lock as well as the master lock. Both of them popped open louder than he wanted. Stealth was the key to this. He didn’t want to alert anyone of his presence, alive or otherwise. But then again, if someone was alive inside the house, he didn’t think they would be dumb enough to leave a spare key to the house in such an obvious hiding spot.
Kyle slowly opened the door when the scent of potpourri seeped outside through the crack of the door. He pushed it open wide enough for him to enter. When he was inside he closed the door behind him.
Directly in front of him was a staircase with a few framed photos on the wall all the way up to the second floor. To his left was a small living area with a sectional couch pressed up against the back wall, and in front of that was an entertainment center with a 32-inch plasma television sitting on top of it. Closer to the staircase was a small hallway that led toward the kitchen, but before entering the kitchen it split into a T-intersection where to his left was a small hallway that led to the restroom and to the right was the door for the garage.
He walked into the kitchen, still keeping the handgun on anything in front of him.
The house was completely clean, as though no one had been living there for quite some time. Kyle realized that coming here was probably a waste of time. Victor’s mother hadn’t been here in awhile. She probably hadn’t made it back home from the initial outbreak. Kyle remembered how crazy the streets where when the dead began coming back to life. He himself almost hadn’t made it back home from work.
Maybe the trip wasn’t for nothing. There could be food in the pantry or other supplies that could prove useful in Kyle’s journey to find Jasmine. Victor had mentioned that his mother was a nurse and that there were first aid kits around, along with other medical supplies. The question was, where were they?
The thought of going back outside to get Victor crossed Kyle’s mind, but Victor wandering around his old house might serve as a burden instead of a dash for the supplies. He’d probably find his old bedroom and curl up under the covers crying for his mother. No, it’d be better for him to stay out in the car.
Kyle walked away from the kitchen and headed back toward the front door. If medical supplies were going to be anywhere in the house, they would be upstairs in one of the rooms, possibly the bathroom. He took the first step and it made a loud screech. He cringed at the noise, but moved up another step. The second one was more silent.
He paused for a moment to take a better look at the family portraits hanging on the wall. Kyle wanted to see what Victor’s family looked like, even though it didn’t matter anymore. They were probably all dead anyway. In the first photo there were five people in total, an older male, an older woman, two girls in their early teens and one younger boy. Kyle stared closer at the boy. It didn’t really look like Victor, but the boy in the photograph was younger. It could have been what Victor had looked like many years ago.
Curiosity got the better of him. He continued walking up the stairs, glancing at all the photographs. Each one had the same smiling family, but he couldn’t find one photo of Victor. He finally saw a more modern photo of the young boy in the first family portrait. It definitely was not Victor.
Suddenly, the situation clicked in his head. Kyle was had. Victor led him into someone else’s home, not his. He bolted down the stairs, holding the Glock forward. He opened the door and continued running toward the truck. From his vantage point he saw the passenger side door completely open. Victor was gone.
Chapter Eighteen
“Fucking kid,” Kyle muttered under his breath.
He walked around in circles, staring at all the houses. He knew that one of them was Victor’s real house, but he didn’t have a clue which one. There were a few dozen of them, and each one looked just like the other.
On a hunch, Kyle ran toward the truck, hoping that Victor left behind some sort of clue or maybe even a note or something. Anything. He looked in the truck, but didn’t find anything that might lead him toward Victor’s direction. A feeling of dread and loneliness began to fester inside Kyle’s belly. He had to find Victor, just like any parent would retrieve their lost child.
“Victor!” Kyle yelled.
He continued to spin in a circle, looking at all the different houses, trying to find that one unique characteristic that would indicate the house he was looking for. “Victor!” he yelled again, but this time as his scream became part of the howling breeze. Kyle found what he was looking for.
The house directly across the street from him had a large window that looked out onto the front yard. The window was partially opened. Kyle hadn’t noticed if it had been already opened when they’d arrived, but looking at the size of the crack, he saw it was open just enough for Victor to slide his frame through.
Kyle looked both ways before crossing the street. There was nothing in either direction, just a line of houses that continued until the road banked down. The grass
in the front yard was wet; he felt his shoes sink a little into the soft earth as he walked toward the open window. Surrounding the house were small patches of growing mustard grass. It wasn’t that uncommon for Kyle to see the yellow plant growing wild, but the amount here seemed excessive.
A blue curtain blocked the view into the house. Kyle moved it aside with the barrel of the Glock, to get a better look inside. It was dark and hard to see what kind of horrors lay beyond the blue curtain. He grasped the cloth with his free hand and pulled, which caused it to snap from its curtain rod and fall to the ground. Sunlight shone in to the room. Kyle pushed the window a bit more so he could enter. Victor was considerably smaller than he; he resembled a stick bug more than a teenage boy.
The window creaked as Kyle slid it open. It only traveled a few inches before something locked the window in place. It didn’t make any difference. Kyle was able to squeeze himself into the house.
It didn’t take long for Kyle to realize he was in a living area. The two couches were covered in plastic protectors and in front of them was a coffee table with a few stacks of books and magazines. There was no television in the entertainment center propped up against the right wall. Instead, there was a stereo system in the spot where a television usually goes. On one of the picture frames, Kyle saw a photograph of a young boy in the arms of an older woman. Both of them had huge smiles on their faces, the perfect images of what life was like before the Existing Dead. He stared at the photo, the glare from the glass casting his reflection. The boy in the photograph was Victor. He had the same dark hair, the same brown eyes, the same smile, the same joyful expression he had when something excited him. His eyes would squint and dimples would appear above his cheekbones. Kyle didn’t know if he’d be able to see that type of expression on his face again, not after everything that has happened to him, and everything else that might happen to him.
Kyle pointed the pistol forward and started to make his way left, where there was a staircase and another small hallway.
“Victor?” he whispered as he turned toward the hallway.
The brown carpet began to turn into tile as he entered the kitchen.
“Victor?” he said again.
He quickly did a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn when he heard a thump coming from somewhere behind him. It could have just been a common noise, the house settling, but Kyle decided to walk back to the living room and up the stairs.
Standing at the foot of the staircase, Kyle glanced to the top. The menacing gap stared back down at him as if he were at the entrance to a cave. He took in a deep breath and slowly began to take the stairs. The first few steps were silent, but as he approached the top, the steps began to creak under him.
“Victor?” he whispered. “Where are you?”
He reached the top and could barely see the weapon in front of him. He did, however, see to his left was a door. He put his hand on the knob and slowly turned. It popped open and the door slowly swung. There was a large window to the left of the room that was letting sunlight in. The room was filled with boxes, as if this room was used for storage.
Walking to one of the boxes, Kyle noticed what was inside. It wasn’t just boxes for storage. It was food. Tons of canned goods were packed into the boxes. It reminded him of all those canned food drives he was a part of every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sliding the closet door open, he spotted crates of bottled water, juices and even twenty four-packs of soda. Aligned on the wall with the window were a few white boxes with the words “Medical Supplies” written across them with a Sharpie.
“It looks like Morgan was prepared to wait it out,” Kyle said under his breath.
Kyle finished examining the boxes and turned to walk toward the door. There were a few more rooms he had to check, and hopefully Victor was in one of them. As he approached the dark entrance, he held the Glock in front of him, finger on the trigger, ready to fire at the first sign of danger.
He stepped through the threshold and immediately turned left to walk down the hall to another room. The house continued to creak under his feet as the door grew bigger and bigger. The coldness from the doorknob felt good on Kyle’s hot and sweaty palm. He had always been embarrassed by his sweat-gland problem, but this was no time for him to dwell on that.
The doorknob turned without a problem. He pushed the door open, revealing a dirty and overused restroom. The tiled floor was dirty, covered with black spots and sticky areas. Despite its poor maintenance, there were a few decorations that gave it a feminine feel.
There was nothing more to inspect about the room. It was just a small restroom with one very small window above the toilet. He turned to face down the hallway and saw the figure of a person watching him. Kyle didn’t waste a second and pointed the weapon toward the shadow.
“Who’s there?” Kyle said in a stern and powerful voice.
He saw the head on the shadow shake “No.” Then it spoke. “My mom’s not here.”
“Victor,” Kyle said as he walked toward him. “Why the fuck did you send me to some other house?”
“I don’t know.” Victor looked at the ground.
Kyle sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Your mom’s not here? Did you see all those supplies she has in that room over there?” He pointed toward the room at the top of the staircase.
Victor nodded.
“You checked everywhere?”
He nodded again.
“What do you want to do?”
He shrugged.
“Can you please use words?”
“Since my mom’s not here, I guess there’s no reason for me to stay. Can I stay with you?”
Kyle smiled, but quickly wiped it off before Victor noticed. “You’re my partner. You’re always welcome to stay with me. ’Til the end.”
Obviously, something was wrong with Victor. It felt as if there was no more fight left in him, no more hope. At least through their journey, Victor had this moment to keep him going. The journey to get him home and find his mother was finally here. Sadly, it wasn’t the outcome he’d wanted. Victor had wanted to find his mother alive, to feel her warmth, to feel her close. This made Kyle think about the moment when he would arrive at Jasmine’s house. Would she be dead? Would she even be there? Would he take the final answer as well as Victor was? In the end, if Kyle found that Jasmine had passed on, he would at least have Victor by his side.
“So, where to now?” Victor asked.
“California,” Kyle answered. “It’s time I stop dicking around and go find Jasmine.”
“Thanks for bringing me here.”
“No problem, Sport,” Kyle said, not realizing that he had just called Victor the same nickname he had given to his dead son. “Let’s take those boxes your mom has in that room over there.” He pointed at the room again. “You never know, we might find some use for them.”
“Okay.” Kyle followed Victor as he trudged into the room.
“What was your mom doing with all this stuff? I highly doubt that she was able to store all this once shit started happening. I acted almost immediately, and I wasn’t able to stock up on this much food and water.”
They began to close up boxes.
“I don’t know. My mom was very resourceful. When that Swine Flu or whatever the hell it was happened a few years ago, she came home that night with everything she could take from the hospital she worked at.”
“Was it just you two living here?”
“For the most part. My dad left years ago so it’s been me and her ever since. Well … a year or so ago one of my aunts stayed with us.” Something seemed to click in Victor’s head as he spoke. “Which reminds me.” He stood and began making his way out the door.
Victor walked into the master bedroom. He reached for the closet door and was about to open it when Kyle stopped him.
“Wait …” he said and raised the weapon. “Open it slowly and stay out of the line of fire.”
Victor opened the closet door slowly. Kyle was expecting the worst to be tr
apped in that closet, but there was nothing. Only clothes on racks and a pile of shoe boxes.
Victor entered the walk-in closet and reached for something at the top of the rack. He pulled out a small fire-proof safe with a lock keypad in front. Holding it by the handle, Victor walked passed Kyle toward his mother’s unmade bed. The metal safe slammed face-up on the bed.
Victor recited the pass code as he entered it, “8-6-7-5-3-0-9.” There was a sustained beep as the lock was deactivated.
Kyle began to chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Victor asked.
“The combination.”
“Yeah? What about it?” He stared at Kyle with nothing but confusion over something so simple as a seven-digit number. Kyle could see that Victor really had no idea what those seven numbers meant, nor did he want to explain it to him.
“Nothing … What’s inside?”
“Just this,” Victor said pulling out a silver .357 magnum.
Kyle froze in place. He didn’t know that seeing the same type of weapon that had killed Eddie and Mary would make him feel so sick to his stomach.
“Have you seen a gun like this before? Can you show me how to use it?”
Kyle tried as best as possible to hold back vomit. He nodded and said, “Yeah. But put it away for now.”
Victor lifted his shirt and holstered the gun on his belt. He grabbed the box of ammo and put it in his pocket.
“Where did that thing come from? Whose was it?”
“My dad’s.”
“What happened to the gun you got from Susie?”
“I dunno.” Victor shrugged. “Lost it I guess.”
“Okay, well, I’ll help you load the magnum later. It’s pretty powerful,” he said as the sound of the .357 firing and the image of Eddie’s grinning face being pulverized flashed in his head. He cringed.
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