The Survivor Chronicles (Book 3): The Forsaken (26 page)

John had just registered the stench of decay when Carl slammed the door shut on whatever lay beyond. Carl pressed his face to the glass in the door and shook his head. "I don't see anything," he whispered.

The second the words left his mouth, something slammed against the door. John jumped and barely managed to suppress a shout; Carl brought his gun up and pointed it at the window as he took an abrupt step back. Rochelle stumbled into John, she knocked him back before he was able to grasp hold of her shoulders and steady her.

"Easy," he calmed her. "Easy."

Rochelle's nostrils flared, her hands trembled before her but she kept hold of her gun. She remained where she was as John stepped around her and moved closer to Carl. Carl had his gun focused upon the man inside but he didn't pull the trigger as the man's disfigured face traveled over the glass. John's upper lip curled in a sneer at the sight of the man's lipless face. Every one of his teeth was exposed as the skin around his lips had been torn off or rotted away. The bone of his jawline was exposed almost to his ears. John had no idea how the man could possibly still be alive but his eyes followed him as he moved.

"Dear God," John breathed. "Shoot him."

"The noise could bring more of them and it doesn't seem as if he can get out of there," Carl said.

Even as he said the words, the knob began to rattle. Carl seized hold of it and jerked it closed before the man could get the door open. A disgruntled, gravelly noise escaped the man as he jerked more forcefully at the door but Carl didn't release it. The man's pink, mottled tongue was revealed as he released a furious cry and smashed his hands against the glass with enough force to crack the window. John took a stumbling step away as the man pulled back again and beat his fists into the window. Glass sliced over his skin as the window broke away; blood swelled from the cuts, poured down the man's forearms, and splattered the concrete step. Rochelle let out a startled cry as the upper half of the man's body fell through the hole the broken glass had created in the door.

Carl tucked his gun away and pulled out his knife. The man was still hanging half out the window but he grabbed at Carl as he stepped closer. "Carl..."

"Stay back," his brusque command cut John off.

John grabbed hold of Rochelle and pulled her behind him as Carl dodged a swinging arm, seized hold of the man's hair, and lifted his head. Carl's face remained expressionless as he drove the knife through the underneath of the man's chin and into his head. Nausea twisted through John's stomach as the man's spastic movements finally, blessedly ceased.

Carl lifted his head to look at them. There had been no hesitation in his actions but John saw the flicker of remorse in his eyes before he wiped the bloody knife on his pants and slipped it into its sheath. Carl stepped forward to peer into the garage. John was dreading seeing what was inside, but he wasn't going to leave Carl to do it on his own.

Stepping into the garage, he spotted the remains littering the floor behind the Range Rover. From a picture in the master bedroom, he knew that it was a mother and daughter but there was no other way to discern this fact, not anymore. The man must have been content to stay here and feed on these remains until they had stumbled upon him.

"We'll search the basement now, but I think it's going to be clear," Carl said.

John nodded his agreement and followed him into the house again. They had just returned to the foyer when the distant explosion of a gunshot pierced the air.

Mary Ellen,

Mary Ellen cast one last glance at Rochelle before stepping into the house behind Peter. She silently prayed that she had made the right choice by staying with this group instead of joining her daughter. Carl and John would keep her safe, she was certain of that but she still wished they were together. She didn't want Rochelle around Peter though, and she wasn't ready to walk away yet.

Maybe she was being stubborn, maybe she was being stupid, but she was staying with this group for now. Peter was not Larry, the man she would truly like to stand up to was already dead, but she was beginning to feel a growing strength within her that she'd never experienced before. She should be afraid of the man she thought may be a walking time bomb across from her, she'd always been on edge around Larry, but she had no fear of Peter. She didn't know what she was going to do if Peter did explode, she wasn't going to shoot the man, but for once in her life she
would
stand up to someone.

Her gaze ran over the shadowed and narrow hall they'd entered. Given the size of the home, the hall had a surprisingly claustrophobic feel to it. Furniture had been crammed into every available space, so much so that some tables were actually stacked on top of others. She had to turn sideways in order to maneuver through what should have been a space about twenty feet wide in each direction.

"Crap," Donald muttered as he bumped into a table. The dozen or so china bells sitting on the table released a tinkling noise that set her teeth on edge. The last thing she liked hearing was any kind of bell tolling right now. Donald grabbed the table and steadied it before continuing past the boxes stacked against the wall.

"They must have been in the process of moving," Josh muttered.

Mary Ellen didn't know what they had been doing but she didn't want to be here right now. Peter stopped in front of a set of sliding doors and pushed them open. Her mouth dropped when she spotted the thousands of newspapers stacked in ten-foot high rows throughout the entire room. The musty smell of the old newspapers drifted over her but it wasn't an entirely unpleasant odor.

"Holy shit," Donald breathed as he took a step away from the newspaper room.

"Hoarder," Mary Ellen muttered. Her gaze flitted over the stacks before she turned toward the stairs that led to the second floor. There were boxes on the stairs but she didn't see as much clutter on the second floor as there was down here. It didn't matter though; this place was a mammoth deathtrap just waiting to bury them beneath the mounds of stuff filling it. Never mind what could be lurking within the assorted mess. "Maybe we should go to a different house."

"We're already in here," Peter responded but she couldn't see him as he'd turned a corner in the elaborate maze that had been created through the newspapers. She eyed the stacks surrounding her as she stepped cautiously into the room. The stacks appeared sturdy enough but even so, she didn't trust them.
Some of these newspapers probably go back thirty or forty years
, she realized. "Plus, if they kept all this junk they probably kept food too, and lots of it."

"I don't know," Donald said from ahead of her. "I've seen those hoarding shows; I'm not so sure we should eat the food they may have here."

Mary Ellen had watched ten minutes of one of those hoarding shows, once, before her stomach had threatened to revolt and she had hurriedly changed the channel. She thought Donald was probably right about the food situation.

Turning to the side, she was able to avoid knocking one of the piles over. There was something almost intricate about the design of the stacks, something deliberate.
Had the owners come in here to get lost in the labyrinth they'd created? Had this been some kind of escape for them?
She wondered as she tried not to touch anything, she was frightened she would set the stacks off like giant dominoes that would bury them beneath their crushing depths. The sick humans wouldn't be able to climb over top of the stacks toward them as most of the newspapers were crammed up against the ceiling, but they would never escape here if those things fell on them.

She heard another door sliding open, but she still couldn't see Peter as she edged her way around a sharp turn. She almost bumped into Donald as she rounded the corner but she caught herself before she plowed into him. Holding her hand behind her, she was able to keep Josh from walking into her back. Donald shook his head and muttered a curse as he peered into the room beyond. Mary Ellen still didn't smell anything overly unpleasant but she was worried they'd just found the room where these people had kept all of their cats, or every bit of garbage they'd ever accumulated.

"What is it?" she asked nervously.

Donald glanced over his shoulder at her. "My version of Hell."

Her eyebrows shot up as she tried to see around his back but it was impossible with all of the papers in the way. She glanced back at Josh, it was just as impossible to see behind him as it was to see in front of Donald. It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe in the stifling house. She could feel the beat of her pulse in her temples and had to fight the impulse to rub them as her head began to throb.

She started, and nearly screamed, as she caught the shifting black robes of what she swore was the Grim Reaper amongst the stacks. There were people that had stared down the throats of lions that hadn't felt as frightened as she did in that instant. She shook her head in order to clear it of the image of the reaper stalking them with his scythe at the ready. She thought she heard the rattle of his bones as an ominous laugh escaped him. They were trapped within this room, unable to flee from the steady pursuit of death.

When she opened her eyes and looked at the area again, she realized the robes were only a piece of a mostly buried curtain blowing in the breeze created by an open window. Mary Ellen pressed her fingers briefly against her forehead as she tried to calm the thunderous beat of her heart.

Grabbing hold of Josh's arm, she was able to step aside enough to maneuver the young boy in front of her. If those sick people did get into the house, or were already in here, they might not be able to climb over the stacks to get at them, but they could most certainly move through the stacks toward them. She wasn't going to let them get at the boy first. She nudged Josh forward when the curtain billowed again.

Josh's step faltered as he walked into the room beyond. Mary Ellen braced herself for rotten food, feces, dead animals or some other horror. Even prepared for all of those awful things, she still stopped dead when she entered the next room. She almost bolted across the room and out the opposite door at the same time that she fought the urge to spin and flee back into the maze. Her paralysis broke, the step she took back nearly made her bump against one of the hundreds of porcelain dolls filling every inch of the dozens of shelves, tables, and curio cabinets in the room.

Eyes, there were eyes
everywhere
and
every
one of them was following her as she turned to shut the doors behind her. They may not be able to see if those sick humans were coming up behind them but they'd be able to hear them opening the doors at least. She tried not to look at the dolls but her gaze was irresistibly drawn to them over and over again.

She swore the doll's heads swiveled to watch them as they looped their way through the tables and shelves holding them. There were Victorian dolls, china dolls, some dressed in vivid colors, and others with plumes in their hair and sticking up from their outfits. Others were in costumes such as chefs, astronauts, racecar drivers, artists, pilots, and clowns. There were
hundreds
of clowns all smiling at them.

Mary Ellen shuddered as the black, blue, green, brown and yellow eyes watched her walk through the room. She almost believed that they were silently communicating a plan with each other to get up and attack them. Dolls had never bothered her before, but now they creeped her out worse than those pictures she'd seen where some kind of ghostly figure or strange face was lurking unsuspectedly in the background. Those pictures had never failed to make her skin crawl and she was certain there was something lurking within this room.

She hated those dolls, but she couldn't tear her gaze away from them as she searched for a human face within the mass, just trying to blend in until they could rise and pounce on her back. She felt as jumpy as a cat on a pound of catnip as her eyes bounced around the room, even so everything remained still.

She heard another set of doors slide open and then a muffled curse from Peter. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what waited ahead. So far, everything had been crowded but astonishingly clean for the amount of junk in this house. She couldn't help but think it was only a matter of time before they came across something worse.

Please no bugs
, she pleaded silently as she followed Josh into another room. It wasn't until she spotted the oven beneath the containers piled on top of it that she realized they were in the kitchen. Taking a deep breath, she turned to close the doors before she really began to inspect the room they'd just entered.

Thankfully, there were no bugs but she doubted there was any food either as the large Tupperware containers sitting on the floor were stacked all the way to the counters. More of the containers were on top of the counters and piled to the ceiling. Looking through the clear containers, she could see that they were filled with an assortment of collectibles from small silver spoons to beer steins. Colorful vases were stacked within at least five other containers, and though she couldn't be certain, they appeared to be antiques. She spotted some Precious Moments figurines mingled in with what appeared to be the entire Hummel collection. Face after smiling face stared out at her from behind the clear plastic of the bins they had been stored in. She was beginning to agree with Donald's assessment of this place as she became certain that they'd just entered another circle of Hell.

She couldn't begin to imagine how much money was stored within these containers, within this
house
. She'd never seen anything like it and she was certain there were museums that would have liked to get their hands on some of the things being held here. Moving around the island that was packed with more containers, she spotted a trashcan by the backdoor. Empty Chinese food containers poked out the top of it, pizza boxes were wedged against the wall behind it.

"That doesn't bode well for food," Mary Ellen muttered as she looked toward what she assumed was the pantry. She wasn't even going to bother looking in the cabinets; she doubted any of the containers sitting in front of them had moved much since they'd been placed there.

Peter pulled open the pantry door and they all craned their heads to peer into it. Containers were stacked so completely inside that they reached the ceiling and were only an inch away from the door. Cobwebs danced in the breeze the opening of the door had created. It was the first sign of uncleanliness she'd seen in the house.

"Couldn't they have hoarded food?" Donald muttered as Peter shut the door. "Or at least something useful."

Mary Ellen didn't think they were going to find anything useful in this place but she followed them through the kitchen to another set of sliding doors. Though she knew nothing could be behind her, she still glanced nervously back as she waited to see what the next room would reveal. Peter's breath hissed out of him on a harsh curse. Donald said something unintelligible but the tone of his voice caught her attention.

Mary Ellen froze when she stepped through the next door. She'd thought the doll room had been bad but it was nothing compared to
this
room. No matter how hard she tried to stabilize them, her hands were trembling when she turned to close the doors again.

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to turn back to what she could only describe as a trophy room. A trophy room that she had never thought she would see unless it was in a nightmare or haunted house. Dead and stuffed animals covered nearly every inch of the walls, there were so many in fact that she couldn't even tell what color the walls had been. Deer, elk, moose, bears, wolves, marlins, and swordfish all stared at her as she took a step forward. Mixed in with the larger animals were squirrels, raccoons, crows, hawks, foxes, coyotes, and turkeys decorating the floor and branches from the fake trees placed around the room. The musky scent of preserved and mounted animals filled the room and caused her nose to wrinkle.

There was a cat perched on the armrest of a sofa; the sofa was the first place in the house that she'd seen to sit on. Across from the sofa was a TV with two ravens perched on each end of it. She'd thought the dolls eyes had been following her, but she couldn't shake the irrational
conviction
that the gold, brown, black, and hazel eyes surrounding her now knew exactly where she was. Even though all the animals were now missing their bellies she was convinced that they were hungry.

She stepped to the side as she tried to avoid a beaver perched on a log as she rounded the back of the sofa. The coffee table came into view, sitting on top of it was a small plate. There was nothing on the plate but the glass sitting next to it was still half filled with water. "This is the room they spent most of their time in."

"That's even more disturbing than the fact that they actually collected all these things," Donald said as he stopped beside the sofa. His fingers brushed over a book that was open and lying face down on the cushion. "I think they lived here alone."