“You’d think I’d be used to bad smells by now,” I said, stifling my gag reflex.
“You’d think,” Sara called from the other room.
I pulled the rotting food out of the freezer and dropped it into the floor. I saw no need to be neat about it.
“There is a lot of food in here,” Sara said. “Jars of home-canned stuff.”
“I’m not finding the seeds,” I said as I shut the freezer door and opened the larger refrigerator door.
“Ooh, peaches,” Sara said. “I love peaches.”
“Get what you can, and take it out to the van.”
I shut the door to the refrigerator and started opening kitchen drawers and cabinet doors. I still didn’t see any seed packets, but I pulled down some of the food from the kitchen cabinets and put them on the counter.
“There’s more food in here on the counter,” I called out to her. “I’m going to take a quick look around.”
“Mind your dawdling, mister!” she called back. I shook my head and grinned. I knew she’d said that with a straight face.
I went into the living room. It looked like an old lady’s lived there. There were lots of doilies and knick-knacks and pictures of grandkids. There was a short bookcase next to the television. I wouldn’t have bothered with it, but I saw that one of the books said GARDENING in big letters, so I went to grab it. When I pulled it out, I noticed a small green book next to it—a gem. It was a field guide to edible wild plants. I took it, too.
Sara came through the living room with a box of full mason jars.
“Get the door for me,” she said.
I held the front door for her, and put the books in the box as she walked past.
“I’m going to check the other rooms then I’ll give you a hand,” I said.
The nearest closed door was a coat closet. I didn’t take time to search it. The next door opened to stairs descending into darkness. I don’t know why, but I shivered just looking in there. Sara came back in and stopped.
“Basement?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Gonna check it out?”
I shrugged.
“We’re still clear outside, if you want to look,” she said, handing me her flashlight.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s kind of creepy.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Nobody’s making you.”
“I know, but she might have kept her seeds down there.”
“Okay,” she said. “Check it out, and I’ll get some more food.”
One of the things that primitive men (cavemen) had was instinct. They could sense danger, and I’m guessing they trusted that sense. Over the millennia, that instinct has been suppressed and ignored to make way for more noble concepts like courage, heroism, and…male pride.
I turned on the flashlight and took my first step onto the creaky stairs. I couldn’t get over exactly how much the stairs and the ink pit I was entering reminded me of a gazillion different scary movies I’d seen. In the past, I would have consoled myself with the assurance that the things waiting in the basement were only in movies—ghosts, vampires, ax murderers, zombies—but I no longer had that assurance. At least two of those things could be down there, and I wasn’t prepared to completely rule out the other two…not anymore.
The basement had no windows at all. I shined the pitiful convenient-store-impulse-rack-piece-of-shit flashlight beam on the bare, unpainted concrete block walls, then to a stack of soggy cardboard boxes and a couple of five-gallon buckets of potatoes. We’d definitely take the potatoes. I continued to sweep the beam around the room. In the corner was a large upright freezer.
I could hear Sara’s footsteps above me.
I took a deep breath. The air smelled damp and musty. It took a second, but it dawned on me that the smell was a good thing. Relief washed over me when I realized that the lack of the smell of death meant there wasn’t anyone down there but me. I decided to check the freezer for seeds then head back up to help Sara. I heard the door open upstairs as Sara went back out with another load.
I pulled on the handle, but the freezer door wouldn’t open. I noticed a small round lock near the handle. I was about to leave, when my light shined on a small key on a ring hanging on a masonry screw sticking out of the wall. Then my light fell on some square wire racks leaning against the wall next to the freezer. I figured they must have been the shelves from the freezer.
I took the key then turned it in the lock. The door opened with a sucking sound, and the stench hit me in the face. I put my hand over my mask to cover my nose and mouth and shined the light inside. She was squatting in the freezer, her knees around her ears. She wore a dress and apron. A foul liquid started running out of the box and onto the concrete floor. Her head turned slowly, and she squinted into the narrow beam of light.
I stumbled backward, “Holy shit!”
Sara was still outside and didn’t hear me scream. The old lady’s bony knees popped and crackled as she stood. Her hands were bound together in front of her with a short, white extension cord. She whined then growled. My first impulse was to run, but I kept my wits about me and pulled the .45. I stepped back into the puddle in front of the freezer and slammed the door shut. She started bumping around inside and howling, so I turned the key in the lock. She was knocking around so much, I thought she would turn the appliance over.
I heard the front door open upstairs.
“We need to head out,” Sara called down to me.
“Be right up!” I said, trying to sound casual.
I grabbed the two five-gallon buckets that were full of potatoes and headed upstairs. They must have weighed thirty pounds or more each. There was a gunshot outside, so I quickened my pace. When I got to the top of the stairs, I set the buckets down in the living room and went outside. Sara was standing on the porch with her rifle to her shoulder looking down the barrel. I followed her line of sight and saw three figures jogging down the road toward us.
She fired again, and one of the figures tumbled forward.
“What’s that smell?” she said, as she took aim again.
“I stepped in something,” I said.
Her shoulder jerked with the recoil when she fired the third time. Another one fell.
“Grab that box, and we’ll go,” she said, nodding toward a box of canned goods on the porch.
“You get the box,” I said. “I found some potatoes in the basement.”
She fired a fourth time, and I went back in for the potatoes. When I came outside, Sara had her rifle slung on her shoulder and was on her way out to the van with the heavy box of food in her arms. Only one of the creatures still advanced, but it was dragging itself along on its belly.
Sara opened the rear of the van and heaved the box inside. Then I lifted in a bucket of potatoes.
“Cool,” she said, “We could have baked potatoes.”
“Or potato soup,” I suggested, hefting the second bucket.
“Haven’t you had enough soup? Too bad we don’t have any butter, sour cream and bacon bits. Then we’d be living the good life.”
Then she looked down at my boots.
“You really stink,” she said. “What is that?”
“The old lady that lived here was down in the basement. She was starting to….liquefy, I think.”
“Ugh. We need to find you another pair. I don’t think you’ll ever get that smell out of those.”
“There are more boots in the moving van,” I said. “We can save some of these potatoes and use them for seed.”
“But no other seeds?”
“Not yet.”
“We’ll try another house,” she shrugged.
We tried four more houses. With each stop, we collected a little more food and we attracted the infected. Rather, Sara attracted the infected. By the third house, there was no doubt that they were after her. Brian’s theory that it was the blood, didn’t seem right to me. It was easier for me to believe that it was pheromones.
We’d ha
ve to wait it out for a few days, and I was okay with that. We’d replenished our food enough that we could withstand a week-long siege. We’d have to catch the chickens and put them in a safe place until it was over. By the time Ben Parks came to lure them away, we’d probably have a big crowd around the house.
“You know what?” I said, suddenly having a delicious idea.
“What?” Sara said. She sounded distracted, as she drove us to the fourth house.
“If we’re going to be stuck in the house until this is over, and if they’re coming anyway, why should we be concerned about noise?”
“What do you mean?”
“We can go back out to my house and get my game system, or maybe stop somewhere and pick up a sack full of movies to watch. That generator is still in the van over at the museum.”
She grinned a little, “That sounds awesome. Do you think it would be okay?”
“Yeah, but it’s after noon already, so we need to hurry; we still have preparations to make.”
The doors on the fourth house were unlocked, and the house was unoccupied. The garden plot behind the house was a little more obvious. There were six raised beds divided by gravel paths. We found their seeds in the back of the refrigerator in a large manila envelop.
“They’re all from last year, but some of the packets have never been opened,” I said. “We’ve got cucumbers, zucchini, basil, dill, okra, a couple different varieties of tomato, three different kinds of pepper, spinach, and beets.”
“Will that be enough?” Sara asked.
“It will, so long as it is just us. I’d like to find more.”
“We can look another day,” she said. “I’m getting hungry and kind of tired.”
We headed back to the museum, and Sara let me out by Betsy’s minivan. I pulled the long orange extension cord out of the museum’s window and stowed it in the minivan. I went back over to the van, and Sara rolled her window down.
“I don’t know if we’re going to have time,” I said. “We still need to go out to alert Ben Parks and Ron Meyer of our plans, we need to catch the chickens, and we need to barricade or board-up the house. The generator is out of gas, so we’ll have to get some.”
“So no movies or games?”
“Maybe only time to get one.”
“Movies,” she said.
I nodded, “Okay, let’s find us some movies then we’ll get to work on the serious stuff.”
CHAPTER 18
The day had been like a minefield. We’d had so many near-misses. We should have quit after we found the seeds.
I climbed in Betsy’s minivan, but it wouldn’t start. I kept turning the key and pumping the gas, but it just wouldn’t catch. I went a little longer than I should have, but so far as I knew, when we were in town earlier, we’d lured the bulk of Clayfield’s downtown infected at least three blocks south of our location.
The first couple of creatures that came around the back of the museum didn’t scare me. When I saw a few more in the mirror, I still wasn’t concerned. But before I could make myself give up on the minivan, they’d surrounded me. Sara pulled the cargo van through the crowd and alongside my vehicle. We weren’t much more than an inch from each other. She went over to the passenger side and rolled the window down. I let my window down, too.
“Crawl through,” she said, sounding disappointed.
I wriggled from one van to the next through the windows then put the window up again.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
There were less of them behind us, so Sara put the van in reverse then cut the wheel so that we were backing toward the Clayfield Chronicle building.
“It’s hard to see out the back,” she said. “It’s one big blind spot back there.”
The crowd moved with us and grew. Sara got the van backed well out onto 8th Street then put it into drive.
“What are you doing?” I said. “Just keep going. We’ll back out away from them then take the side roads out of town.”
“I’m already doing this, besides it looks like I’m going to hit something back there.”
“You won’t, just keep driving backwards.”
“We’re fine,” she said, checking her mirrors. Somehow she managed to ignore the dead faces pressing against her window. “I’m going to turn around up here and—“
“No, Sara!” I said, feeling uneasy. “Go backwards. There are less of them that way. Don’t go toward downtown!”
She did it anyway. She got as far as the transmission shop and had to stop because the press of people had gotten too thick. I moved to the back of the van, to help direct her.
“Put it in reverse then cut it hard to the left. Do it fast and hard.”
The van lurched back.
“No!” I yelled. “To the left! You’re going the wrong way!”
“Stop screaming at me!” she yelled back. “I can’t see anything!”
It was getting difficult to hear each other because of the cacophony of howling, moaning, and hands slapping the van.
“Pull up!” I yelled.
The van lurched back again.
“Dammit, pull up!”
“I can’t pull up!”
I made my way to the front of the van, “Okay, then go back. Go fast and punch through.”
Sara was crying. I checked both side mirrors. The damned things were everywhere. She put the van in reverse. We rolled up onto the curb and over a highway sign. I heard a loud pop.
“Shit,” I said. “I think we lost a back tire.”
I looked around for options. There were two old buildings right across the road on Broadway. They were set close together with an alley in between them. The alley had been formed a decade before when the building between them had collapsed. The building had been narrow, as far as buildings go, but the space it left was wide enough for three cars drive through abreast. There was already a truck parked in there with an odd A-shaped rack in its bed. On the side of the truck it said QUALITY GLASS SERVICE. I figured the rack in the back of the truck must have been for hauling large sheets of glass. The building on the other side of the alley was Plucky’s Diner.
A block past Quality Glass Service was the First Baptist Church. It looked like a castle, and would be a good place to hole up for a while, but I didn’t think we could make it that far.
“We need to do something,” Sara said. “They keep coming in.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“That building there on the left, the glass place, has a garage door on the other side,” she said. “Do you think we could pull the van in there?”
“I can’t see it,” I said, shaking my head.
“It’s there. My friend Lori worked there one summer answering phones. She used to hang out by the garage door and talk to the guys that worked back there.”
“Even if the door is there, how are we going to open it? And what if there is already a truck parked in there?”
“We have to do something!”
Doors had been installed in the glass place and diner so they could access the alley.
“See if you can get into the alley,” I said. “Park next to the glass truck. We’ll go into the building through the side door.”
She shifted into drive and floored it. The van struggled, but slowly, we plowed through the crowd, crossed the street, and pulled into the alley. The creatures immediately rushed in on both ends.
I presumed Sara would come out on my side, and go into the diner, but before I could say anything she’d climbed out her door. There was no time. She would never make it around the van to me. She hesitated when she realized her mistake. I was standing in the alley doorway of Plucky’s, and I started to go back to the van, but it was too late. There was no time for hesitation or second thoughts. Sara was forced to the other building. She skirted around the hood of the glass truck, and ran inside. We shut our doors just as the horde filled the space.
Chapter 19
I
leaned against the door until I got it locked. They pounded against it and howled. It was dark in the room. I fumbled around in the plastic bag until I found the little flashlight. I was in the diner’s storeroom. My flashlight beam shined on a large refrigerator set in the wall. There were heavy wooden shelving units that went all the way up to the ceiling filled with bulk tubs of pickles, ketchup, and mayonnaise. There were also large cases of plastic cups and napkins. On the far wall was a plain wooden staircase going up, and opposite that, a door that led into the kitchen.
I looked around for windows that would give me a view into the alley and across to the other building. I needed to see if Sara was okay, and I needed a way to communicate with her. I hadn’t thought to look for windows when I was outside, and I doubted there would be any since the alley walls used to butt up against another building. I went into the kitchen then out into the dining room. I was surprised to find the front of the building unoccupied. There was old food on the grill and tables, and two of the tables in the dining room were turned over, but no one was inside. I went to the front entrance and turned the lock to prevent anyone from coming back into the building. There weren’t any windows on the alley side that I could see on the ground floor, so I ran back to the stairs.
The second floor was a large open room that was being used to store old tables, chairs, and Christmas decorations from the restaurant. In the corner by the stairs, a small space—approximately ten feet square—had been separated from the rest of the room by homemade plywood divider walls to be used as an office.
It was well-lit by three windows in the front of the building and one in the rear. There were no windows in the alley side or the other side wall. The building on the other side was still standing, but at the time, I couldn’t recall what business had been occupying it.
There were no more stairs inside, so I went to the back window with the hope of finding a fire escape where I could access the roof. There was an old, rusty ladder bolted to the outside of the building beside the window. It hooked over the edge of the roof then descended down to about five feet off the ground.
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