by Mike Staton
As soon as he closed his fist, he whipped open the door and stormed into the house, M4 up and ready to spit fire at anyone who wasn't friendly. He swept the barrel around the empty room, and started forward to begin clearing the next room. Sarah followed his lead with Carlos drawing up the rear. Percival stopped long enough to make sure they were with him before breaching the next room.
Quickly and near silently they cleared the first floor. Percival hadn’t expected to find anyone on the first floor, given that the silhouette he’d seen passing before a window had been on the second floor.
As quietly as he could, Percival crept up the stairs. He kept his rifle leveled at the top of the stairs. He rounded the corner, sweeping the rifle back and forth before clicking on a flashlight for better visibility.
He knew that would possibly give him away, but he wanted to know what, or who, he was shooting before he pulled the trigger. Coming back into the lost suburb looking for Roy Joy would be pointless if one of them shot the large, crazy man mistaking him for a true threat in the dark.
Percival crouched and hugged the right-hand wall as he moved forward. He kept his rifle trained down the hallway. Only one pair of footfalls followed him down the hallway and he assumed one other member of his group had stopped by the stairs to provide cover and watch from there. He crept up to the first door, nudged it open with the barrel of his gun and swept in quickly. He moved through Roy Joy’s son’s room, quickly determining that the room was occupied solely by the boy’s corpse. He’d even checked under the bed, just in case whoever he’d seen in the house had decided to hide under the bed.
Percival retreated from the room, finding Carlos still in the hallway, gun pointing at the game room door at the end of the hall. Percival crouch-walked down the hallway, stopping briefly to clear Roy Joy’s master bedroom. He left the man’s home just how he’d found it, hoping it would be remain that way. He wondered, however briefly, if his home in Texas was still untouched. Or if it had been looted for supplies.
He knew his parents were gone, but a part of him would liked to have visited his home and collected things to better remember them by. Percival let the memory go as he stepped back into the hallway. Carlos fell in behind him as he crept up the hallway to the sole remaining room to be checked. He held his breath for a moment to steady his nerves before twisting the doorknob and thrusting the door open.
Light exploded in the darkened room. A deafening explosion of thunder echoed into existence and punished Percival’s ears as the doorframe splintered. He dropped to the floor, flattening himself as his finger found the trigger of his M4. Fire and lightning spat from the end of his rifle as he sent bullets downrange at a pair of legs behind the pool table that he assumed were attached to the assailant.
More bullets tore into the wall and doorframe above him as a scream echoed through the ringing in his ears and the noise in the game room. A body crumpled to join the legs Percival had been shooting at. More red than he should have been comfortable seeing was spurting from the ruined limbs.
Percival sprung up, bringing his rifle up with him. He kept it pointed at the downed assailant as he turned to look at Carlos. The man was slower at getting up than Percival, but seemed just as uninjured. Percival twisted to look down the hallway. Sarah was just poking her head through the doorway that led into the bathroom.
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He twisted back to the game room and stepped over the threshold into the room. He kept his gun trained on the crumpled person behind the pool table as he moved further into the room. Carlos followed him into the room, sweeping the rest. The assailant’s screams had tapered down to a soft sob and pain-filled moan. The sounds sent icicles into his gut, making him feel sick.
Percival rounded the corner of the pool table. The person he, and possibly Carlos, had shot lay crumpled on the floor. She, it was definitely a woman, had both hands wrapped around one of her legs. She was dressed in bulky military garb, a tanned, digital camo jacket and pants. A similarly decorated cap had left her head allowing a frizz of dark red hair to fan around her face. Her weapon, a larger, longer rifle than Percival and Carlos’s M4s, lay just outside of arm’s reach. If Percival had to guess, he would have called it an M16. Not that the wounded woman seemed to have any intention of reaching for it. Her efforts were focused on stopping the spreading the bloody patch in one leg. The other, which also had a couple of bullet holes through them.
“Rest of the room’s empty,” Carlos said quietly. “House won’t stay that way though. The zombies nearby will probably come running with the sound of gunfire. We’ll be lucky if none of them issue a feeding moan.”
Percival couldn’t rip his gaze away from the wounded and dying woman in front of him. The other people he’d killed had gone swiftly into the afterworld. This woman was slowly bleeding out on Roy Joy’s game room floor. It made him feel sick to his stomach. He didn’t enjoy killing by any measure of the word, but this was just plain heartbreaking.
He took a step closer and crouched down next to her. He glanced at the name stenciled over her left breast: Finnen. “What were you doing here?”
Finnen kept her eyes closed, uttering only a pained sound in response to his question.
Percival slung his M4 and bent further down. He didn’t feel nearly as cool as he hoped he was presenting. He gripped Finnen’s chin and turned her face toward him. “What were you doing here?”
“Y…you shot me,” she burbled out. She opened her eyes.
“Gotta make this a little quicker,” Carlos said. He had drifted to a window and peered out.
Percival looked back to Finnen and flipped his visor up. “Yes I did. But only after you shot at us.”
He made eye contact with her and held it. “Why would you do that?”
A pained chuckle leaked from her lips. “Don’t you… don’t you shoot at something bashing through a door?”
“Bashing, yes, turning a handle, no.” Percival released her chin. “What’re you doing here?”
“Nothing that… that concerns you,” Finnen murmured.
“You’re in my friend’s house, shooting at my friends while we’re looking for him,” he said. He stopped himself short of saying anything more on that line. He could feel his anger rising as he spoke. “Did you shoot someone yesterday?”
“Several so…someones. All gray and rotting.”
“What’re you doing here? Can you control the zombies?”
“Percival?” Carlos said. He’d moved away from the window he’d been observing out of. “We gotta go.”
Finnen closed her eyes again and let her head sink back to the carpet. “Delores Finnen, Private First Class, U.S. Army, two-two-three, four-seven, eight-six-three-three.”
“What?” Percival was confused by the woman’s response.
“Delores Finnen,” she repeated the full phrase again. Name, rank, and serial number.
“Fine, don’t be helpful,” Percival muttered in an angry tone. He reached across her, relieving her of two additional magazines for the rifle. Almost as an afterthought, he roughly reached into the neck of her jacket and ripped away a necklace. The jolt produced a gasp, then a fresh moan of pain from her. She was likely settling into shock as blood seeped out of her leg and into the carpet.
He stood up and looked at the chain he’d pulled off her. A pair of shiny metal dog-tags, incased in black rubber silencers, dangled from his fist. On them was printed: Finnen, Delores R., 223-47-8633, O+, Catholic. He stared past the shiny pieces of metal at the woman on the floor. The wannabes at the depot hadn’t possessed tags. Was she the real deal?
He crouched once more. “How many of you are there? Why would the Army shoot a civilian?”
But she didn’t answer. Finnen had passed out. The holes in her legs continued to leak blood with little sign of stopping. Percival was certain she’d die within an hour, if not sooner, without medical treatment.
“Undead assholes at the backdoor,” Carlos said quietly.
The military brought death with them to the little suburb of Knoxville and Percival couldn’t help but wonder where Finnen’s friends were. He stuffed her tags into his pocket and snapped his visor down. He motioned for Sarah to lead the way down the stairs. A small part of his humanity died as he made the decision to leave Finnen where she lay. At least she’d not be conscious when the zombies got to her.
*
The trip out the front door, carefully locked behind them, and across the street went quicker and smoother than Percival had expected. The zombies clawing their way in through the backdoor paid Percival and his team very little mind as they slipped through the front door and away. The best he could figure was that they were being drawn to the fresh blood, and fresh meat, upstairs.
A part of him regretted, in words he couldn’t express, the inevitable destruction of a portion of Roy Joy’s home. It had gone for months untouched. Another portion of him couldn’t dreg up a damn. He crossed the street in a hurried, crouched run. A portion of him could feel eyes on his every move. He felt as though someone, or something, were watching him.
It wasn’t the same feeling he got from stalkers. This one felt more organic. He wondered if Finnen’s friends had eyes on him as he moved across the street. If there was someone with a gigantic rifle and lusciously large scope sitting in some distant window with Percival’s head in the crosshairs.
Some part of him wanted to be the center of the universe like that. The rest of him hoped, with no small certainty, they never met the rest of Finnen’s squad. As Roy Joy had eloquently put it ‘the military’s bad.’
He pushed through the front door of the house across the street from Roy Joy’s, and quickly swept Finnen’s rifle across the interior. He noted the odd decorating job, black folding chairs and electrical cables, scattered around the living room, almost idly before declaring the room clear and proceeding further into the room. Sarah and Carlos followed him, their rifles up and ready as well.
He took a second glance around the room. Two doors and a stairwell leading up to the second story provided exits to the room. A thick, black cable stretched through a roughly ripped hole in a smaller door set into the side of the stairs. He assumed it was access to some sort of storeroom beneath the stairs.
Sarah closed the door behind her as Percival pushed further into the room. He studied a table that had been flung onto its side, and the curious mismatching family portraits hanging from the wall. Not a single picture held anything technological, much less something that might require a few miles of cable. He shook his head.
“Something’s not right here,” he said quietly.
“Duh?” Sarah answered him. “What happened in the game room?”
Percival shook his head. He intended to answer her, but not right that moment. “Let’s clear the house first.”
Sarah frowned, the view clear through her hazmat helmet. She didn’t like the answer, but didn’t seem to have a counter for it either. “Fine.”
Percival nodded, turned around and pushed open the right most door which led to a bland, and empty, half-bathroom. He quickly backed out, and moved through the other doorway, leading into a kitchen. The kitchen looked used. Fresh paper plates littered the countertop and resided in the trash and a pan sat in the sink. A sink that shouldn’t have had running water for a month or more.
He frowned and turned. A small dining room was attached to the kitchen. It too lacked a long abandoned feel, seeming to have seen use within the last week instead of a month or more ago. He left the kitchen/dining room combination and returned to the strange living room.
“Someone’s been here,” he muttered quietly to the other two. Carlos was near the door in the stairwell, examining the thick black cable.
“What was your first clue?” Sarah was primed to head upstairs and took the lead after Percival had rejoined them in the living room.
Carlos shrugged at Percival and took the second position behind Sarah leaving Percival to draw up the rear. He followed them up the stairs as quietly as he could, breaching a second story hallway that revealed a pair of bedrooms and a bathroom.
The first bedroom had a second cot set up in it that didn’t match the Transformers décor of the rest of the room. The second, which also had a window that faced the street, had the bed moved from the center of the room to the side. A stool was positioned before the window and set far enough back to comfortably sit behind a long rifle and use the window ledge as a shooting platform.
From this vantage point, Percival could see most of the neighborhood street, including the alleyway where he and Andrina had snuck forward to take a look at the horde. Percival had the distinct feeling he’d come across where the shot that’d killed Andrina had been fired from.
It seemed that whoever had resided in the building, until recently, had moved on. He led the way back out of the bedroom and returned to the living room. He chose to check the door beneath the stairs and discovered a dark stairwell leading into a basement. He clicked on his flashlight and descended the stairs carefully. In the basement he discovered a small generator with a heavy, black cable coming out of it and running up the stairs.
The rest of the basement held a variety of stores from old chinaware to pickling jars. A couple empty jerry-cans that still reeked of diesel were discarded next to the empty generator. He took a seat at the foot of the stairs and looked at Carlos and Sarah. “What’s going on here?”
Sarah shook her head. “Someone set up shop here and it’s just a lucky coincidence we didn’t check this house when we initially came through here. What happened in the game room?”
“We were attacked and I shot someone,” Percival said quietly. “Miss Delores Finnen of the Army.”
Sarah frowned more. “Seriously?”
“More legit than the folks I was with at the depot,” Carlos said.
Percival nodded. “She seemed more… together than the depot group. And had a pair of tags on her even.”
“She say anything about what was going on?”
Percival shook his head. “She was tight lipped despite being in the process of bleeding out onto the carpet.”
“And you left her there?” Sarah asked. Her pretty features were twisted into a look of awe and shock for a moment. They then quickly took on a look of quiet fear as the sound of the front door opening above them split the relative quiet.
The footfalls that Percival could clearly hear drummed a symphony of doom. Someone, he suspected some Army unit, was back at their field house and he didn’t expect to exactly be welcomed with open arms.
Chapter 17
Percival immediately crouched down and killed his flashlight. He was silent as he could be and yet painfully aware of the noise his, and his companions’, breaths made. At least their heartbeats wouldn’t give them away. Percival was nearly convinced that his pounding heart would draw attention from whoever’d come in.
Initially he’d heard three distinct footfalls, but more had followed and now he wasn’t sure just how many people waited above. More than three, less than seven. Maybe. He could hear some voices above him, but nothing distinct. All of them were male, but that didn’t mean everyone who was up there was speaking.
He took a deep breath and held it as though that would help him overhear some clue as to who had crashed their investigation. He twisted to look around the basement as his eyes adjusted to the darkness allowing him to make out vague shapes. If whoever was above came charging down the stairs, he’d have the advantage. Assuming they didn’t bring a light source.
If they were truly lucky, the intrusive group above would leave the basement unsearched. If that were the case, the small side door on the stairs didn’t appear to actually lead anywhere, Percival, Carlos, and Sarah would be in for a long, dark day and night waiti
ng the people above out.
He swept his gaze around the basement as the vague shapes faded into stark outlines and hard edges of black and not quite black. He singled out the lithely humanoid shape he assumed to be Sarah and bent low, pushing one hand on the floor ahead of him as he moved forward.
Moving agonizingly slow, he crept across the basement. He moved in such a manner to avoid bumping anything that might topple over and create a cacophony of ruckus noise that would draw unwanted attention. After minutes that seemed like hours of slow movement had passed, he rose to a full crouch beside Sarah.
“What the fuck?” she asked. She kept her voice pitched to the barest of whispers and Percival had difficulty making her out even in his proximity to her. He smiled despite the grim situation they were in. He lifted his visor.
“I want to know the same thing,” he answered. He did his best to keep his voice just as low as she did. “No idea who is above us.”
“Someone with tech,” Sarah barely murmured.
“Maybe the Army buddies of the woman in Roy Joy’s house.”
“Let’s hope not. They didn’t seem to be too terribly friendly.”
“Understatement of the year,” Percival grunted. “Hopefully if they’re the guys with the tech, they didn’t bring it with them.”
Almost as though his words were some tail end of a summoning ritual and harbinger of doom and bad timing, the door at the top of the stairs opened with a cascade of creaking noise. Light from the upper floor filtered down giving more than enough light for Percival to make out many things in shades of gray rather than lines of black.
“What? Hey you want it running again, I need to go turn the generator back on,” a gruff male voice shouted from the top of the stairs. It sounded as though the owner of the voice smoked three packs a day. “Your battery ain’t gonna last forever and the relay only works with external power.”