Zach gave Cale a look. A look like he had just said something really stupid.
“Ya know you always quoted the rules of any zombie movie when we played video games. You never split up. Someone always gets killed when that happens,” Zach stated.
“Yeah, but those people aren’t you and I,” Cale smirked.
Zach grinned back. “I guess you’re right, but if I get bit I’m coming for you, Cale,” he said jokingly.
The two of them shared a laugh, and then went into a game of rock, paper, scissors to decide who was going where.
“Winner takes ground floor?” Zach inquired, preparing his hands for their ritual.
“Sounds good,” Cale replied.
“One--- Two--- Three!” The two recited in unison.
Zach formed a ball with his hand- rock. And Cale extended two of his fingers out- scissors.
“Damn. Best two out of three?” Cale said with a smile.
“Nope. Have fun,” Zach answered.
It was decided. Cale went up and Zach stayed down.
Zach watched Cale ascend the stairs, then turned and proceeded into his first room, rifle at the ready. The ground floor looked to be composed of four main rooms. The first was larger than the outside had let on, a ten foot by twelve foot room, with a low ceiling. He was about six foot, and the ceiling was only about five or six inches taller than him. He’d never really been claustrophobic, but he couldn’t help but think that this room felt like a coffin. Nothing but some furniture, an overturned wooden chair, and a floor rug occupied the room. The chair had been knocked over, most likely in a struggle between someone and one of the undead.
He righted the chair, as if to straighten the room for the owner’s return.
“Need a better housekeeper,” Zach joked out loud.
He looked down at the rug on the floor. It was wrinkled and worn, with obvious signs of traffic.
“Now, on to the next room.” He moved across to the next doorway.
68
Upstairs
As soon as Cale reached the top of the stairs, he looked back down to see Zach enter his first room. The second floor consisted of a hallway, with a door at both ends, and one right across from the stairs.
“I guess I’ll go left first,” he said aloud, as he readied his firearm.
The door on the left was the only one that was slightly ajar. He crept cautiously toward it. Through the small opening, he could see someone or something was moving inside. The smell of a festering cadaver began to overwhelm him.
“This one is ripe,” he thought. He tried to hold his breath but couldn’t help but gag.
He slowly pushed the door open. It was a small bedroom with a blanket on the floor. The movement he saw was just the shadow of a tree being buffeted by the wind outside. He quickly looked around the room, hoping to dismiss it as clear before he threw up. Satisfied, he turned and started for the door. But then, there it was. A closet door. It was flimsy looking, with a brass knob. Nothing special, except that Cale noticed that there was blood coming from under it. It had long since dried, but that didn’t mean shit in their current situation. He thought about shooting through at head level; maybe he’d get a lucky shot, but he didn’t want to worry Zach.
He reached for the handle. Grasping it firmly, he began to twist.
“Damn it. Locked,” he stated quietly.
After some deliberation, he decided that it wouldn’t be smart to just pass this over. The door did, after all, look structurally weak. He grabbed the door handle again, and pulled hard. The frame cracked and splintered. He definitely wouldn’t hide from the undead in these closets. Cale jumped back with his weapon at the ready. In the little crawl space laid a man’s desecrated body. He’d been ripped apart. Most of the pieces were there in the closet, maybe an arm missing or something. But someone had already been here. There was a hole in the forehead, where someone had possibly stabbed him.
The smell seemed to pour out of the closet. Like a tidal wave, the smell of decomposing flesh hit his nostrils. His eyes began to water, and there was the taste of bile in his throat. Cale noticed the maggots wiggling around in the corpse. He vomited, and began to cough. He walked out of the room as quickly as possible, shutting the door behind him.
70
Zach’s Demise
Downstairs, Zach had already cleared the dining room and kitchen, finding nothing of any significance in either of them. No signs of any struggle or the undead. They had originally trained to clear rooms as a team, but since the undead were easy enough targets, Zach didn’t mind splitting up. He couldn’t help but feel, though, that they were starting to get complacent. Pushing these thoughts from his head, he continued clearing the ground floor.
He stealthily moved toward the last room, where he could hear water running. Evaluating the bottom of the door, he noticed water trickling from underneath. He slowly pushed on the door. What came into view was utterly horrendous. A bathtub was over-flowing, filled with bloody water, and what could only be human organs floating in it, as well as a severed arm by the base of the tub. He could only assume that the owner of the appendage was in the bathtub. The water had kept the blood from hardening, which kept the insects and the smell to a minimum, but there was still the faint scent of the undead. The bathroom was a small room with white walls and a tile floor. The mirror above the sink was most likely smashed in the scuffle between the occupant of the tub, and one of the undead. The glass from the mirror cracked under his step. He looked down and noticed the handle of a hand gun behind the toilet. He bent down to pick it up. Another fire arm wasn’t a bad idea; Cale had a rifle and a pistol on him. As he crouched there, he dropped the clip from the weapon to see how many rounds it had. It was three rounds from being full.
Zach pocketed the firearm after reinserting the ammo clip. He looked at the tub one last time. The curtains had been torn down and the window above the tub was closed. He walked toward the tub and turned the faucet off. Then he reached for the window. He wanted to be sure it was locked. As he reached for the window’s lever, he slipped on the wet floor. He saved himself from falling into the atrocious water only by putting his arm straight to the bottom of the tub. The texture of the water was thick, and there were solid, but squishy pieces lining the bottom. He quickly retracted his hand, disgusted by the sight of the awful liquid in the tub.
“Damn it. I’m gonna throw up,” he exclaimed.
He went to the sink and started washing his arm off. Strips of whatever was in the tub clung to his skin like spaghetti noodles. He watched as the blood washed down the drain, then looked around for a towel. Behind him he could hear the door creak.
“Finished with the upstairs already?” Zach asked.
The only reply he heard was the sound of crunching glass. Zach attempted to turn, but his arm was seized by cold hands. Even as he gazed over his shoulder to see his aggressor, he knew this was it. His bicep felt a stab of pain. Then it began to feel hot, like someone had poured hot grease on his arm. With his free hand, he grabbed his knife and jammed it right through the cadaver’s right-eye socket. The undead, a woman, let out a shriek. Zach drew his new fire arm out, and angrily unloaded what was left of its clip into the woman’s head. He looked at his injured arm, disappointed. It had already begun to swell.
“FUCK!”
He ripped off a piece of his shirt to apply as a tourniquet. While he tightened the cloth, he looked at the corpse to confirm its deceased status. As he exited the bathroom he glimpsed himself in the fractured mirror on the floor. He already looked like death, and this just sealed the deal.
Family Portraits
Regaining his composure before moving on, Cale stood in the doorway. As he moved down the hall, still dizzy from a lack of clean oxygen, he bumped into a stand. Knocking the objects on it to the floor, he looked down and saw an upturned picture frame. Cale grabbed it and flipped it around. In the photo there was a family, smiling for the camera, and completely ignorant of their grim future. There was a man and his wife, the
ir two sons, and an elderly woman.
Cale recognized the two boys, the elderly woman, and the man, despite them being dead when he’d seen them. He placed the small portrait back on the stand, and retrieved the other item that had fallen. It was a vase with three dead flowers, wilted and brown.
He placed the vase next to the photo. He then proceeded to the next door, and inspected it for any damage, taking a moment to check the bottom of it, in case a shadow moved across. Nothing. As he entered the room, he first looked to the far corner, and then quickly behind the door.
“Clear,” he said to himself.
In the room, there were two beds, both with identical blue bedspreads. An open closet lined the far wall. The room was slightly smaller than the last one, ten foot by ten foot, maybe. A dresser sat in the corner, the drawers open and disheveled.
“Typical.” Cale had two little brothers of his own that he’d shared a room with for most of his life.
He hadn’t thought of his brothers for some time. He wondered if they were even alive or not. This was definitely the room of two young boys. It was painted white, like most of the rooms he’d been in so far, and had a border of red planes flying around near the ceiling. No carpet, just a wood floor. Opposite the dresser was a green toy chest, overflowing with toys. Model trains and cars were scattered around. He took one last look around the room. This would probably be where they’d set up camp. No signs of any kind of struggle in here. No human remains, no pools of blood. At least they wouldn’t have to clean.
Cale returned to the hallway, and headed to the final door to the left. The woman in the picture had to be in the house somewhere. If Zach hadn’t found her downstairs yet, this was probably it. Under the door shone a faint light, flickering, most likely a candle or a television. He pushed the door open quickly, hoping to catch the undead housewife off guard. He instantly confirmed the flickering light as a television. On the screen were images of the capitals of the world, and a message written in a language Cale couldn’t read, panning across the bottom, with a solid tone sounding. The message was most likely a warning, or a list of instructions.
A couch sat against the wall opposite the television. On the wall hung a family portrait of the two boys smiling, and their parents beaming with happiness.
“Too bad this whole end of the world thing ruined that,” Cale said, thinking of his own wife and daughter.
The walls in this room were faded to a kind of light yellow. The lamp in the corner lay broken on the floor. He panned around the room, looking for the missing house wife. The window in this room was busted. He looked for shards of glass on the floor, but concluded that the window had been broken from the inside. He approached the window, and stuck his head through the broken frame.
Looking down, he could see where someone had fallen. The bushes below were broken and mangled. He wondered what Zach’s search had turned up downstairs. As he walked out of the small room, he heard a shriek. It wasn’t Zach. Cale ran out the door and down the stairs. The sounds that followed were a yelp of pain, and then gunfire. That had Cale worried. Why would Zach fire that many times?
He reached the bottom of the stairs, “ZACH!” he yelled.
“ZACH, WHERE ARE YOU?”
Zach came out of the kitchen, clutching his bloody right shoulder, with a look of despair on his face.
“She caught me by surprise,” Zach said. “She was trapped behind the fucking door.”
Cale hurried toward Zach to inspect his shoulder. He couldn’t tell what kind of wound it was under the makeshift tourniquet.
“Fuck, tell me she didn’t bite you,” Cale begged.
Zach fell silent. Cale was flooded with emotion. He felt guilty about suggesting they split up. He should have been there for Zach. At the same time he was furious that Zach would allow himself to be taken off guard.
“GOD DAMN IT!” Cale screamed, “I SHOULDN’T HAVE---“
“This isn’t your fault Cale,” Zach started. “I was careless, and my back was turned.”
“FUCK!” Cale screamed again.
Cale crouched on the floor. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to run outside and into the street. He wanted to shoot every infected he saw. Make them pay for taking his friend.
“FUCK!” Cale yelled once more.
He sprang up to a standing position and began pacing the floor, hoping desperately to develop a solution. He wanted to shout at Zach, but didn’t want to make things worse. Zach watched, as Cale paced ferociously, running his hands through his black hair. He didn’t dare say anything to him. After all this time together, he’d never seen his roommate this worked up. Eventually Cale’s pace slowed. Then he sat on the floor.
“Damn it,” Cale said, as he looked at the floor.
He couldn’t look Zach in the eye. They both knew what this meant. First Cacy, now Zach. Cale contemplated being alone for the journey home. He couldn’t make it, not without Zach. Zach had been instrumental in keeping Cale from breaking down numerous times during this deployment.
“I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t had---“Cale started.
“I don’t blame you,” Zach said, cutting Cale off mid-sentence,
“I’m just as much to blame. I mean, fuck, she was right behind the damn door.”
The two sat in silence for a moment longer. Zach loosened the tourniquet and rolled up his sleeve to observe his wound. The bite was turning black, and the veins around it were starting to bulge and darken. The blood was literally dying in his capillaries. Cacy’s hand had looked the same way after he had been bitten. The bites didn’t always kill you right away, but they did eventually. Then they brought you back as a member of the dark collective, attracted to the smell of warm flesh. It was inevitable; Zach would become one of them.
“Zombies man, this world has gone to shit,” Zach stated.
Cale returned to his feet, and moved closer to Zach to get a better look at the bite.
“Looks like you’ve got a couple of days before it---“he couldn’t finish his sentence.
He couldn’t say “before it turns you into a cannibalistic nightmare,” he thought to himself.
Cacy lasted almost a week with a bite to his hand. This bite was closer to Zach’s heart. Cale speculated that the proximity of the infection to the heart would impact gestation time for the virus. The closer to your heart, the faster you’d convert. That was his theory anyway.
“What do you wanna do about this?” Cale inquired.
“I---“Zach began.
He looked out the window over the sink, lost in his own thoughts. There was so much he wanted to live for now. The sun outside was setting. No doubt the shots would draw in some stragglers from the surrounding area.
“Come on,” Cale broke the awkward silence. “Let’s board this place up for the night.”
They searched the house for wood to block off the ground floor. They started with the doors, pulling them off the hinges and blocking the windows, leaving only the kids’ bedroom and bathroom doors intact. After donning their tactical gloves, Cale and Zach moved the bodies and pieces of them, outside. Cale, fearing that Zach’s infection would spread faster if he exerted himself, told Zach to go rest and see if there was anything on the T.V. upstairs. In the meantime, Cale cleaned the bathroom, letting the wash basin drain, and fishing out the solid contents of its final inhabitant. It had been awhile since either of them had had a good shower. Neither of them had bathed for more than two weeks now, and they’d finally have an actual toilet. No more holes in the ground that you’d have to hover over. Thank God they were headed back into the modern world. After sweeping up the glass with the broom he’d found in the towel closet, he sopped up the water and blood. The bathroom now looked decent, except for the broken mirror of course.
“CALE!” Zach yelled form the upstairs living room. “YOU GOTTA SEE THIS!”
News
Cale quickly darted up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. He turned right at the top of the stairs, and headed for the emp
ty doorway. He saw images of terror on the T.V. screen, news coverage of survivors living in groups. They were barricading themselves into schools, churches, and stores. Images of massive crowds of the undead. Some were moving slowly, others as if speed walking.
“Keep watching, the images cycle back through.” Zach stated, mesmerized by the horrors they saw.
Cale gaped, “Is that the---“he stared in shock,”Vatican?”
Under the video clip, in English, was the subheading, Vatican on Fire. The visions that followed were even more surprising and appalling. People jumping off of buildings, the Eiffel Tower with people hanging themselves from the top, and large groups of people being devoured by massive gatherings of the undead.
“Anything from the U.S.?” Cale questioned.
“Yeah, just watch,” Zach answered.
The President of the United States came on, giving a speech on the country’s current situation.
“We are utilizing every asset to analyze this problem. Teams of scientists are finding a solution as we speak. America will not fall at the hands of biological terrorism. We are currently investigating the origin of this illness, and we will find who is responsible.”
A woman in the crowd raised her hand. The President nodded his head in her direction.
“What is being done about the soldiers who are deployed or overseas during this crisis? Are they being flown home? Are their families being informed if they’re ok or not?” she asked. “All American soldiers are holding their positions at this time. The war on terror still persists.”
Zach and Cale exchanged looks of amusement.
“Can’t believe I voted for this guy,” Cale stated.
The President, now looking straight into the video camera, changed the subject. “With the help of our allies, we will overcome this crisis. And we will rebuild.”
The clip was over and now cycled back through its continuous loop. Cale walked around the couch Zach was laying on, and sat in the chair he’d brought up from the den downstairs. It wasn’t as comfortable as it appeared, but at least it was a place to sit.
Blood on the Sand (Z Plan) Page 7