“Would a faulty batch have spread this fast?” Kyle asked.
Mark shrugged, looked at Alice, and waited. Alice tapped her chin with her finger, as if she was giving this a lot of thought. She was a paralegal at a family law firm that mainly did divorces and estate planning, but sometimes she dealt with other things. Sometimes she had random knowledge of the most unusual topics of conversation.
“It’s possible, I suppose. Theoretically, maybe, but this isn’t theory, Kyle.”
“No shit,” he looked once more at the broken glass, wondering how the hell they were going to patch it up. They could board it over, he supposed. Luckily, it was one of the windows facing away from the road, so people driving by wouldn’t see a boarded-up window and think it was an abandoned house they could claim.
No, these windows backed up to the woods, to the dark forest, to endless nothingness.
“What do we do with her?” He finally spoke again, looking at the body on the floor. It felt wrong to leave her, even overnight, and to be honest, it scared him a bit, too. He didn’t consider himself weak, didn’t think of himself as a wuss, but he had no interest in sleeping in a house with one of these things lying on the kitchen floor.
“Should we bury her?” Alice asked. “I mean, it was her house. We kind of stole it.”
“Fuck, Alice,” now Mark sounded irritated. “You can not get emotionally attached to these things.”
“I know.” She put her hand on his shoulder, and Mark calmed. Seriously, how did Alice manage to keep him in check so well? As far as Kyle could tell, they weren’t dating and nothing romantic had ever happened between them, but still. Alice had a quality about her that enabled her to calm even the most ferocious of beasts, and Kyle wished he had that.
He wished he could calm anyone, but mostly, he wished he could calm himself. Staring at the woman on the floor reminded him of his mother, of his sisters. It reminded him of family dinners and holidays and birthday parties.
His mother would spend hours in the kitchen, running around, making sure the frosting was on all the cookies and the cupcakes looked perfect. She’d fuss at everyone to make sure they were having fun, that they were comfortable, that their drinks stayed full.
Was his mom lying on the floor of their home the way this woman was?
Had she been caught by the virus?
Had her life been taken?
Kyle didn’t call her enough. He knew that. He should have called her more. He should have been there for her more. Fuck, when was the last time he’d even called her? It’s not like his job was that demanding, but he dealt with technology all day and when he got home, Kyle usually just wanted to chill. He didn’t want to fuss with Skype or his computer or anything, really. He just wanted to unwind.
Now, he regretted it.
Now, he wished he had been better.
Now, he thought he should have been a better son.
“We leave it until the morning,” Mark said. “It’s pouring. We can’t do anything now. If we leave it outside on the porch, we’re going to get wild animals.”
“If there are any left,” Alice added.
“I’m pretty sure the animals haven’t all turned.”
“How can you tell?”
“Calm down,” Mark said, then he turned to Kyle. “See if you guys can find a flashlight or something, okay? Let’s try to get this window at least sort of covered. We can clean up the water damage, but we don’t want anything or anyone crawling in during the night.”
Kyle wanted to point out that the window was high to climb in. He thought about saying he had struggled to climb in, but then he looked at Mark. Mark was built like the soldier he had been. He might be a veteran now, but being out of the army hadn’t had any effect on his physique. In the time Mark had lived in their building, Kyle thought he’d gotten even bigger, if that was possible.
He wasn’t sure.
Kyle turned and started fiddling with the kitchen drawers. He felt around until he managed to locate a small flashlight. It was tiny. Mark had a small one, too, and Kyle regretted they hadn’t found any big ones during their scavenging mission the day before. Why hadn’t they kept going until they’d found flashlights?
Oh yeah.
They’d been too focused on inhalers.
There was a hammer in the junk drawer, too, but no nails. That kind of defeated the purpose of even having a hammer, Kyle thought, and he realized once again just how unprepared they really were.
“Nails?” Mark asked.
“Nothing.” Kyle sounded defeated, even to his own ears.
“What about thumb tacks?” Alice piped up.
“What about them?”
“We don’t have boards to cover the window, anyway. What if we pin up a blanket?”
“That won’t keep anything out,” Mark stated the obvious.
“No, but it’ll keep the water out, at least a little bit. Besides, we can set up a trap, like a noise trap. That way, if anything comes inside while we’re upstairs sleeping, we’ll hear it.”
“She’s right,” Kyle said. “It’s late and we’re all tired. It’s dark. We aren’t going to get a window properly boarded up in the dark. I say we go with Alice’s idea, then go to bed.”
“Fine,” Mark nodded curtly. He didn’t sound mad they hadn’t been able to board up the windows. He, too, just sounded exhausted. Kyle wondered if Mark had even slept much the night before. Somehow, he doubted it.
Alice produced a blanket from the living room, but it was too thick to pin to the wall. After a few unsuccessful tries, Mark rolled his eyes.
“My exhaustion is making me stupid,” he said. He opened another kitchen drawer and fumbled around, then closed it. Then he squatted down and started looking through the cupboards. After a minute, he seemed to find what he was looking for, and he pulled out a box of plastic garbage bags.
“Got it,” he said with a smile.
“Genius,” Alice said.
They tore the garbage bag so it was a long, thin sheet of plastic and tacked it over the open window.
“Problem solved,” Kyle said. Then he looked back at the woman on the ground. “For now.”
Chapter 12
Mark walked slowly up the stairs, swinging his little flashlight back and forth. He remembered holding it when he was a kid, remembered gripping it in his hands in the dark under his blanket.
It wasn’t fair he was scared of the dark.
It wasn’t fair he was the only one of the kids who was.
He’d been in the dark many times since those days. He’d been in the dark many times after he’d grown up, after he’d discovered that sometimes, the scariest monsters are the ones in the light.
Tonight, though, he’d been pushed back into blackness. The power was out at the tiny house. Maybe there was a generator in the garage. He’d look tomorrow at first light. If they could get a generator going, they’d be able to have lights at night. They’d be able to turn on the air conditioning in the summer. They’d be able to run a fucking nebulizer for Kyle if they could ever get their hands on one.
Kyle and Alice were downstairs locking up the house. They were checking to make sure the windows were locked. When they were finished, they’d move some furniture in front of the door.
Mark knew why they suggested he go upstairs and check for more residents of the little farmhouse, and it wasn’t because they couldn’t do it themselves. It wasn’t because they were afraid.
They just wanted him to have a few minutes alone.
He liked that about Alice and Kyle. They were quickly beginning to feel more and more like family than apartment-mates. He liked that they knew he had issues, but they didn’t rub those in his face. They didn’t give him shit.
They didn’t seem to care that sometimes, he just needed to be alone, but that was okay.
They didn’t seem to care that sometimes, Mark was just a little messed up in the head.
He reached the top of the stairs and stared at the three wooden doo
rs.
Which one would be heaven?
Which one would be hell?
He had to choose which to open first, but it wasn’t an easy choice. He could tell, well enough, what he would find: two bedrooms and a bathroom. It was good there were only two doors. That lowered the chance that one of them would be a children’s room. Mark wasn’t sure if he could deal with little kids today.
He felt bad, feeling happy that a couple might not have kids. It was something he and Janelle had argued about endlessly. He wanted babies. Lots of them. He wanted boys and girls and puppies. He wanted a big family.
He’d never felt like he was a part of anything before. When he was a kid, he bounced around in different foster homes until he landed in his permanent one. He still didn’t get adopted – who wanted a teenager? – but he finally started to feel like he belonged somewhere. He finally started to feel like things weren’t so bad.
Maggie had been a great mom. She’d done everything she could to give her foster kids a good home. They didn’t always have a lot of toys or the latest video games or new clothes, but they had food, and they were safe, and they felt loved.
Mark wanted to do that for someone else. He wanted kids with Janelle. He didn’t care if they had their own biological babies or if they adopted. He didn’t care about some kid having “his” blood.
No, Mark just wanted a family. He wanted people to love and people who loved him.
That had turned out real fucking well for him, hadn’t it?
Mark looked back at the doors. He swung the little flashlight at each one, looking for clues that might tell him what was inside. A kid’s room might have stickers or posters on the door, while a grown-up’s bedroom might have a tie hanging on the doorknob, or even a bra.
These doors were empty.
There wasn’t so much as a bloody handprint, which he thought was strange. Maybe the woman hadn’t been infected for very long.
Has she turned before her husband left? Mark doubted it. He guessed that the man had run out to the store to do an errand or to fill up with gas one last time before the shit hit the fan, but he had gone too late.
He had turned, and so had she.
Mark wanted to know how she’d been infected. She hadn’t been bitten, as far as he could tell. Maybe she’d been one of the unlucky people who just caught the damn virus. Mark would do just about anything to find out how that happened, how that worked. Was it something in the water? Was it actually a vaccine? Was it something else entirely?
How was the virus transmitted?
He was no scientist, no doctor. He wasn’t even that smart of a person, but Mark knew that until they discovered how the virus was contracted, they had to be careful. That body downstairs? That made him nervous. He had half a mind to drag it outside, despite the rain. He had half a mind to go try to burn it or dump it somewhere no one would ever find it.
He should wait until the rain stopped, but he didn’t want to. He wanted it to be gone. He wanted that thing out of his sight.
He heard Alice and Kyle talking quietly downstairs, and he realized he needed to get a move on things. They wouldn’t leave him alone indefinitely; at some point, they’d want to go to sleep.
Kyle had given Mark the handgun to go upstairs. He gripped the weapon in his hands, enjoying the way it felt. It was heavy: just the right weight. He needed to find another one for himself. The rifle was fine for now, but eventually he’d need his own Glock.
He’d need something he could use when the monsters got too close.
This would be better than the rifle for indoor shooting, if it came to that. Mark was tired, though. He didn’t want to kill anything.
It didn’t really matter that these things were human anymore. They still felt human. Killing them still felt like he was murdering someone and his heart still hurt. He would never tell Alice, never tell Kyle. If badass Mark couldn’t handle killing someone, how could they?
Mark turned the knob on the door to his left. He waited at the door, hesitating. If there was an undead in there, maybe it would come out at him when it heard the noise he was making. He would rather that happen now, while he was on guard. He didn’t want to feel comfortable, to start thinking he was okay, and have it happen then.
He didn’t need that.
He flicked the flashlight around the room. It was a bedroom and appeared to be empty and unoccupied. Good. He took a step inside, then another. The curtains were open and the blinds were pulled up, giving him a clear view of the storm outside. He took in the room, looking around it before deciding it was definitely empty.
There was a large bed in the center of the room, along with a dresser and a television on top of that. A large DVD collection sat next to the television along with a pile of books. Good. Maybe they could actually do some reading, even if they couldn’t watch the movies. The only thing worse than living through the apocalypse was being bored during it.
Mark checked for a bathroom, but the only door in the bedroom led to a closet filled with boxes and clothes. He closed the door. That looked like a project for Alice and Kyle. They were good at tackling tough problems like organization. That was so not something he cared about.
Mark went back into the hall. The center door opened to a bathroom. It smelled like it had been recently cleaned. Bleach? Maybe the people who lived here had been trying to avoid coming down with the illness. Maybe they had some sort of warning, some indicator they were going to catch whatever it was.
He opened the medicine cabinet just to see what was inside. There were no inhalers. Sorry, Kyle. There was, however, a bottle of prescription painkillers that he could use. He pocketed them. Maybe the pills would help him sleep. He didn’t like the idea of waking up screaming, didn’t like the idea of needing Alice to calm him down.
He was a grown-ass man. He should be able to sleep through the night without having night terrors, but the truth was that he still couldn’t. He still needed something to dull the pain of his existence and he didn’t have alcohol, so these would have to do for tonight.
Once they were more settled, he could go look for a liquor store or something. They might be in the country, but all that meant was the liquor prices would be lower than what he was used to paying in the city. Even farmers needed to drink sometimes to help them unwind.
He went back into the hall and closed the door behind him. Alice and Kyle were laughing downstairs. At this point, they weren’t even trying to be quiet, but Mark didn’t care. They were pretty sure the house was empty. They were almost absolutely certain. He just had this one more room to check, one more room to try.
Then they could rest.
Then they could relax.
He knew as soon as he opened the door that something was wrong with this one.
This wasn’t just an ordinary room.
This one wasn’t empty.
The smell hit him before anything else and he knew then that they couldn’t stay here.
They would have to go.
They would have to find somewhere else.
Pity, really, because the house had seemed so perfect. It was far away from everything and it had a big yard. It would have been a good place to set up camp. It would have been a good place to start a life.
But this room changed everything. It took away all of their hopes. It destroyed their dreams of finding something normal, of finding someplace new, someplace safe.
This room could not be saved.
If he retained nothing else from the Army, Mark still had the ability to clean. That was something that had been drilled into him. Anytime he was bored or performing poorly or tired, he’d clean a pot or a room or a toilet.
Now he could clean anything. He’d once spent four hours scrubbing a bathroom until the color was bleached from the tiles.
If there was a way to get a smell out of something or a stain or a spot, Mark could find it. He could clean anything.
He could not, however, clean this room.
There was no way.
>
He knew, even before he had a good look, that it would be impossible to get the smell out of this room. It didn’t matter how much bleach they used or how much elbow grease they put into cleaning, the smell of death was not going anywhere.
Two red eyes glowed in the darkness, watching him. He hadn’t been expecting that. There had been no sign downstairs of a family pet. He hadn’t noticed a food bowl or a water dish or a little mat in the living room.
He hadn’t noticed that this family had a dog.
Only now, as the dog began to growl and the signs of infection were obvious, Mark realized he was going to have to do it. He was going to have to shoot the dog. He raised the handgun and aimed, though he knew it would be tricky in the darkness.
The dog barked once.
Downstairs, Kyle said, “Did you hear that?”
Mark didn’t hear Alice’s reply. The dog leapt at him, jaws wide, and Mark shot it. He fired three times, just to be sure, and the dog made a sickening sound as it hit the ground. Kyle and Alice were tearing up the stairs, but Mark left the room, closing the door behind himself.
“Don’t,” he said when they reached the top of the stairs. “Don’t you dare open that fucking door.”
“What’s in the room, Mark?” Kyle whispered.
“Don’t,” Mark said. “Just don’t go in, okay?” He looked at Alice and shook his head. “Don’t.”
Chapter 13
They wouldn’t be able to stay here. That much was obvious. They couldn’t leave tonight because of the weather, but soon they would go. Soon they would leave. Soon they would have to find somewhere else to hole up, and Alice hated that.
She hated knowing that they had gotten their hopes up about this place, only to have them crushed, but she knew Mark was right.
There was no way they’d be able to sterilize the house.
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse (Episode 2) Page 6