Land of the Zombies Read online

  Ben and Terry ready their weapons while I lean forward and try the door handle. Locked.

  Terry grins, this means he gets to show off. He pulls a screwdriver out of his bag and gets to work on dismantling the door handle. I have no idea how he does it, but all those years working at building houses, Terry found a way to bust into a door handle from the outside. We were so impressed the first time he did this that Terry always gets a little giddy when he gets to show off this skill, which isn’t very often.

  Part of panic is that people forget to do things like lock doors. And this is why I’m more on edge than normal.

  We head into the house, slowly checking each direction. Greg joins us inside. No signs of a struggle anywhere. Greg slowly closes the door and locks the newly remounted door handle. This house is only one story, which makes it quicker and easier to check, but leaves me more nervous. The zombies aren’t very coordinated and seem to have a lot of trouble with stairs, so a second story gives us a quick escape path if we need to. Fortunately, we haven’t had to use that option in any of these houses yet.

  “What’s with this place? No sign of a panic anywhere.” Greg has a perplexed look on his face.

  “Check this out!” Ben is holding a piece of paper he found on the dining room table. “‘Dear Carol - Thank you so much for watching the house while we’re on vacation! You can leave the mail here on the table, and we left plenty of food for you, so go ahead and pig out!’ And blah blah blah, some other instructions. ‘Love Rita and Derick.’ Looks like this shit hit while these people were on vacation. That’s why it doesn’t look crazy and the front door was actually locked.”

  A big smile crosses my face. “And there’s no mail on the table. That means Carol never got here, so there should be lots of food!”

  Everyone gets big smiles and we head for the kitchen. Immediately our hopes drop. There’s a distinct smell of rotting in the air. And a distinct trail of fluid coming out of the bottom of the fridge.

  Greg chokes back a gag.

  “Damn it!” Terry looks furious. “I guess all that food they left for the house sitter was in the fridge. And a pretty shitty fridge at that.”

  We all step out of the kitchen and agree that we just need to get through the cupboards fast. We pull our sweatshirts up over our mouths and run in.

  Within a few minutes, we’ve managed to fill each of our bags about halfway with pastas, canned food and unopened bags of cereal. Not the finest bounty, but it’s enough to feed us for a couple of days. We’re happy to get this from one house.

  We grab a few shirts and some pants from the homeowners’ closets and head out. Greg spray paints a big X on the door to indicate we’ve cleared it, but also adds a small C below it to indicate that we’ve left some clothing inside. If something happens and we need more clothes, we know where to head.

  We move on to the second house on the block. We follow the same routine: Greg watches the street to warn us if something comes. Terry goes to the front door, I go left and Ben goes right. I attempt to look through the window that is largely blocked by a curtain. The glare on the window makes it tough, but I am able to just see in.

  “Shit.”

  I motion Terry and Ben over to me. “What is it?” I point to the window as an answer and Terry take a look. I can see the color flush from his face. He steps back and Ben does the same thing with the same reaction.

  Inside is the house’s living room. The big TV has been knocked off of its stand and is shattered. There are movies and CDs strewn about. But the worst part is that lying on top of it all is a body of what appears to be a woman. Or at least it was a woman. You can see the long blonde hair at the top of the bloody mass. If we thought the last place was sickening, then this place is going to make us all throw up. At least in the last house, the smell was largely contained in the fridge.

  Greg has joined us and peeked inside. He has a worried look. I know he doesn’t want to go in, but I remind him that we all agreed that we need to go in. Even if not for the supplies, if one of those zombies is inside and somehow gets out, then it’s a danger to us all. We’re better off being proactive about taking care of it now.

  Terry tries the door and finds that it’s unlocked. We head in toward the left. Toward the body. It takes and effort not to gag, but we know that at least one of those things is in this house somewhere. We all stay as quiet as possible to not draw any extra attention to ourselves. Terry makes it to the window first and pulls the curtains open. Now with a good view, we can see that this woman’s midsection was nearly devoured completely. Her face is actually somewhat intact, but something clearly took a couple of bites there.

  Everyone is staying silent, but Ben motions toward the floor. There is a large blood streak leading away from the body. This woman was clearly attacked here and pushed into the TV before being eaten, so even if this is her blood, she did not drag it into this room. I take the lead and slowly follow the trail. It leads down a poorly lit hallway. It turns away from the window, so only a little bit of light is shown down the way. Ben pulls out a small flashlight that had been attached to Julie’s keychain. He shines it on the floor, and we follow the blood trail down the hallway.

  We pass a closed door on our left. The creatures are apparently terrible at opening doors, so this one clearly went past here. The trail is thinning out, you can see the actual imprint of its feet now. Ben shines the light farther down the hallway, and we can see that the trail has ended at an open door. The thing must be through that door.

  I tug the sleeves of the jacket down a little bit to try to protect as much of my skin as possible. I try to steady my hand as I prepare to turn the corner. I trust these other men to cover me, but I’m still terrified.

  I’ve killed more of these creatures than I can count, but finding them indoors always shakes me a little more. The creatures that were locked inside early on haven’t been exposed to the sun and the elements, so their flesh isn’t as dry as the ones we find outside. They’re still a bit clumsy, but it still only takes a small bit to risk getting infected.

  I swallow the lump in my throat and make the turn. I nearly throw up.

  As many of these creatures as I’ve seen and killed, I’m still not ready for what I see. I can only imagine what happened. The creature is sitting on the floor in the corner, its belly clearly full and bulging. The remains of a large German shepherd are lying next to it. The creature lunges forward, and unable to stand, it falls onto its fat stomach, which causes it to roll sideways.

  It reaches for me and drags itself forward, its teeth snapping and a terrible hissing sound coming from its mouth.

  “Jay!” Ben’s shout snaps me back into reality. I take a step to the side to give myself room and bring the baseball bat down on the creature’s head. It stops where it is, arms outstretched, and its head slumps down.

  “Holy shit! What happened in here?” Ben is trying to take it all in. The floor is soaked with blood around the dog’s body.

  I just shake my head. “I don’t know. It looks like maybe the dog attacked this thing. Maybe defending itself, maybe it was hungry. Who knows? But it looks like it managed to cause enough damage to the leg to leave this thing unable to stand. I imagine it fell on the dog, or managed to grab it in defense. And stuffed itself.”

  “And he was still going for you, even after eating that lady out there and this dog. I guess there is no end to their appetite.”

  “That’s assuming this thing is the same one that killed that lady.” Terry’s observation snaps us back into focus.

  Fortunately, we manage to scan the rest of the house pretty quickly and without incident. There isn’t a lot of food, and there aren’t more than a couple of shirts that we take.

  Ben is mumbling something that sounds like “All that for nothing,” when Terry stops us.

  “Wait, what about this door?” It’s the closed door that we passed in the hallway.

  I turn back to him. “Oh, I just assumed that was a hot water heater or som
ething.”

  “What sort of hot water heater is stored behind a door with a lock?”

  I hadn’t really paid attention to the lock, but he had a good point. That didn’t make any sense. “I’m not sure how I feel about this. We haven’t faced any doors that have locks like that on there.”

  This door had 3 locks on top of each other. It certainly looked like it was meant to keep people from going in, but not like a teenager’s room, where they might lock the handle to keep their parents out. This was a serious lock, there had to be something good behind those doors.

  Terry knocked on the door. “This door is solid. I think the wood is covering some other material. It’s like a panic room or something.”

  Terry pulls out his screwdriver and studies the locks. He’s trying to figure out how he’s going to get these locks off, but they’re quite a bit more secure than a standard door handle.

  “Wait!” I head back down the hall to the room with the dead zombie and the dead dog. I shake my head slightly, I still can’t get over this concept of a “dead” zombie. I give the body a couple of pokes with the baseball bat, just to make sure. When I’m sure the thing isn’t going to be moving and grabbing me, I slowly kneel down and check his pocket. First try, I got lucky. I pull out his set of keys from his pocket.

  I take the keys back down the hall with me and set about trying the locks. It doesn’t take long to figure out which are the right keys, as they’re bigger than a standard house key.

  We get the door open, and it leads down into a basement. A very dark basement. Ben looks to the living room and gets a little smile. He walks away for a moment and comes back with a couple of scented candles that were decorating the room. He also managed to find some matches, so we light up the candles and head down into the basement. The room isn’t large, more like a storage pantry, and we can see that everything is covered in dark canvas, almost like material from a tent. After a quick survey of the room, Terry points to some drapes hanging. They’re heavy and thick, but we can see a slight line of light at the bottom. He heads across and pulls the blinds, exposing some small windows, letting in far more light than the candles were providing.

  I blow out my candle, but take a moment to sniff it before I set it down. Cinnamon. I sigh a little at the thought of visiting my parents at the holidays. I’m pretty sure they’re dead. Or undead. We were never super close, but it was nice to visit at the holidays, it reminded me of younger days when I didn’t have the responsibilities of being a grownup.

  I know I need to focus down here, so I shake my head back into reality and scan the room. The room is just a simple rectangle, and all of the canvas looks pretty undisturbed, but we still need to check for any zombies down here. The doors may have been locked, but we don’t know what was down here when the doors were shut.

  The other candles have been extinguished. Terry reaches for the first corner of canvas. Ben and I ready our bats. Greg looks like he’s about to cry. I can’t blame him. Not that long ago his biggest concern was finding some beer for the Friday night party, and now he’s in some strange basement with dead people upstairs, and dead people walking around outside wanting to tear him apart.

  Terry counts down on his fingers. Three, two, one. He flings the canvas back.

  “Holy fucking shit!” Subtlety was never Ben’s strong suit. Laid out on the table are three military grade tactical shotguns and two smaller guns. I don’t know for sure, but based on what I’ve used in various military video games, I’m thinking these are a couple of Uzis, or something similar.

  We throw caution out the door and start pulling up the rest of the canvas pieces. Dust fills the air, along with our shouts of excitement. At least Terry has the sense to get us under control. He shushes us all, and we know that as exciting as this find is, we need to keep it down. The noise attracts the zombies, and although we haven’t seen any in this neighborhood, it doesn’t mean that the sound won’t carry and attract them here.

  We survey what we’ve found. In addition to the three military type weapons on the first table, we find two hunting rifles and four pistols on the next table. The third table has several large hunting knives and a big machete. The type you see in the movies when some group is hacking their way through the jungle.

  There is a cabinet with lots of ammunition for each of the weapons, as well as water purification kits and a couple boxes of military freeze dried food. There are also three big camouflage jackets that look like they’re water resistant.

  “Whoa. Check this out.” Greg is in the corner of the basement and has found a belt with four grenades attached.

  He slowly backs away, but it quickly becomes clear that nothing is going to detonate. At least not right now.

  Our bags are already nearly full of clothing and food from the other homes, so we decide to prioritize. We load up the knives and as many of the freeze dried meals will fit in our bags. Ben, Terry and I each put on one of the jackets on top of what we’re already wearing. We’ve found an assortment of holsters, so we each strap one on and carry a pistol. The hunting rifles have straps, so Ben and Greg each sling one over their backs, and Terry and I each grab a shotgun. We decide that we can afford to leave the rest behind, and come back when we’ve got more space.

  We’re already probably overloaded, which is a terrible thing if we encounter a group of zombies, but we are so excited about the weapon haul that we ignore the danger.

  Everything else will be left where it is, and we’ll come back another day to gather what’s left.

  That night we had ourselves a little party. Everyone is excited to hear about what happened. Of course it’s a saddening when we’re describing what had happened to the woman and the dog, but everyone has begun to get a bit jaded about that sort of thing. We’ve all seen death, and when it comes to the zombies, it’s generally gruesome. Even Don seems to perk up when we’re telling him about the stash of weapons we found. He asks to see them, and does a quick check over the weapons.

  “Someone took really good care of these. They’re all well oiled and in great condition. Whoever you got these from really knew what they were doing.” He pauses and gets a sheepish grin when he sees that everyone has stopped talking and is staring at him. “What, you all thought I was just a useless mope?” His attempt to make light of the situation seems to be his way of apologizing for not really helping out with the group, and his way of telling us that whatever funk he was in, these weapons have helped him break out of it.

  “I never got along well with my parents, so when I was 18, I signed up for the military. I spent seven years in the service.” This certainly explained why he seemed to know so much about the weapons we found. Greg piped up and told him about the grenades. We had left them behind since we were all pretty nervous about handling an explosive like that.

  “If I had to guess, I’m sure they’re still good. If you found them in the same place as these guns, I can’t imagine that they weren’t given the same care.”

  We all agree that Don will go with us when we return to the house. We agree to wait a day so he can show us how to properly handle the weapons.

  Ben and I had signed up for some weekend shooting lessons, so we were familiar with how to handle a handgun, and Terry seemed to be comfortable with a small firearm as well, but Don clearly had more knowledge about the larger weapons than all of us combined, so we agree that it would be wise to get some instruction from him.

  We return to finishing our food, and even mix up some freeze dried ice cream. Carrie seems especially excited about this. Sometimes I forget that she’s just a kid, and I imagine that she didn’t have much room for ice cream in her athlete diet that she followed.

  After we are all finished and sitting in one of the upstairs rooms, reality seems to set in. And now that Don has joined us back in the real world, he’s the one who seems to have all the insight.

  “We can’t stay here. You guys have nearly cleared the neighborhood. You said there’s what, maybe four or five more
houses left to clear?” I nod. “Well, these military rations will go a while, and Maria’s got some vegetables ready to harvest, but in the grand scheme of things, we don’t have a lot of food. And it’s not like we can hunt around here. The only thing I can imagine finding around here is a pack of dogs maybe, and if we see them, then they’re probably hungry and will be hunting us. We need to move on.”

  This is a reality that we had all discussed at some point or another in the last few weeks, but had never really thought it would come this soon. As well secured as this house is, we all sort of knew that it was only temporary.

  Ben goes to looks through a desk, and manages to find some pens and paper. We start trying to make a list of what we’ve got. Both vehicles have full tanks of gas. Don’s minivan can hold six people. He’d taken one of the seats out to make more room for athletic equipment, as he was used to driving his daughter and some of her teammates to various sporting events. Terry’s truck can hold six as well. He’s got a big dual cab truck, so we have plenty of space for all of the people and equipment in our group.

  The problem is extra fuel. We can go for a while on the fuel in the vehicles, but we’ve only got an extra three or four gallons of gas. We can gamble and hope to find fuel in vehicles along the road, but that seems like a big risk.

  Once again, it’s Don who is the voice of reason. “We should check the rest of that house. If you had just found these guns, I might have thought this guy was some sort of nut, but the whole picture makes me think he was preparing for disaster. He had freeze dried food, he had water purification systems. We ought to scour the rest of that house, I bet he’s got extra fuel and survival supplies.”

  We all agree that our best bet is to spend the next day resting a little and learning how to handle the big guns, then the next day we’ll head for that house. We’ve got plenty of food to last for a few days, so we’ll go back and look for any other sort of supplies the guy might have left, then bring back the rest of the food. We’ve already got the house cleared, so it’ll go a lot faster, and we’ll have more time to explore, since we won’t be checking the rest of the houses on that street that day.