The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (21 page)

The nights were already dipping below
freezing and the days warming up to barely above that. The first
snows could begin falling in the mountains any day now. They would
have to be prepared. Katy and Dontela wore men’s boots that were
massively oversized on their small feet; their original clothes and
footwear had been nowhere to be found around the camp. Even the
multiple layers of filthy socks that they wore would not for long
keep their feet from sliding around in the shoes and developing
blisters. Poor Jane only had on several layers of socks with pieces
of tire rubber duck taped to them, as the only remaining pair of
boots pulled off their dead captors had been monster sized and
useless for her small feet. They would need to find proper footwear
for the three girls and also winter outerwear for all of them for
the cold winter days looming ahead.

They walked at a slow pace to accommodate
Jane’s shuffling one. The rising morning sun lifted higher into the
clear, cloudless blue sky, heating the morning frost and sending
tendrils of steam rising lazily into the air. In the valley below,
white layers of fog were sitting like a fluffy blanket over the
bare fields.

Steven’s stomach grumbled, reminding him of
their lack of breakfast that morning and the meager meal of stale
nuts with a handful of boiled rice that they had shared the night
before.

Finally, after ten or fifteen minutes of
walking they spied a house fifty yards or so off the road on the
hill by the southbound lanes. Two cars sat silently in a gravel
driveway next to the brown, wood-sided home.

“I bet we’ll find something to eat in there,”
Katherine stated, eying the house with thoughts of refrigerators
stocked full of culinary delights.

“Maybe,” Kera replied, eying the house with
different images of what could be in there haunting her
imagination.

Steven pointed to the ditch between the two
road surfaces and told the girls to get Jane into the depression
amongst the tall dead grass. “Kera and I will check out the house.
You two wait here with her.”

The group crossed the road and the two girls
lay the woman down in the grass and then sat down next to her.

“Don’t eat all the good stuff,” Dontela
remarked. “You don’t want my hungry ass coming up there and finding
y’all finishing the last of their doughnut supply.”

“If there’s food you’ll be the first to
know,” Steve replied dryly. “Wait here until we call for you, and
for God’s sake keep down and quiet. And keep an eye out on the road
for anything out of the ordinary.”

“Chill, dude, we got it.”

“What do we do if we see something?”
Katherine asked, awkwardly unslinging the 30-30 hunting rifle.

Steven had found out that she didn’t ‘much
believe in guns’ as she put it. He had told her that if she
expected to survive on the road she would have to start accepting
their reality and more to the point, becoming very intimate with
them.

She had reluctantly agreed to carry the rifle
when they left the camp.

“If it’s a Loony, shoot it and kill it!” Kera
said, emphasizing each word. “If it isn’t, just point your guns at
it and wait for us.”

Steven nodded. “Yeah, what she said.”

They left their packs with the three women
before crossing the road toward the seemingly abandoned home.

The house sat up in a flat clearing on the
side of a hill behind a line of leafless trees separated from the
road by a dry creek bed. Kera and Steven approached the house
cautiously over a small bridge that spanned the creek, carefully
choosing their steps to be as quiet in their approach as possible
while watching the windows and areas around the house for any
movement.

Steven pointed to the walkout basement where
a sliding glass door faced the road. Kera nodded and headed toward
the basement, her Saiga hung low and pointed at the doors. Steven
kept even with her, his Colt AR shouldered. They reached the glass
doors and took up positions on either side.

Steven signaled Kera that he would look in
and for her to cover him then swiveled to the front of the door.
The morning sun was pouring through the glass door, illuminating a
large family room decorated with beige carpet and matching
furniture.

Nothing moved inside.

“It’s clear.” Steven said. He tried to slide
the door open, but it resisted his effort.

Kera reached around him and rapped on the
glass with her knuckles.

Steven raised his eyebrows and glared at her
with an expression that asked, “
What
the
fuck
?”

She shrugged her shoulders at him and then
knocked on the glass again louder. Nothing stirred in the room.

“I don’t think anyone is home, lover.”

“Well, if they were they sure know we’ve come
visiting now.”

They walked up and around to the front door
which stood completely ajar. Leaves covered the entryway in a
carpet of browns and tans.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has been through
there in a while,” Steven remarked.

Without hesitation, Kera stepped past him and
through the threshold into the house. Steven sighed and entered
behind her. The house had a musty, abandoned smell to it and mildew
stained the walls with patterns of black splotches where moisture
had invaded through the open door. The leaves had blown in as far
as the living room where they lay scattered and dry on the carpeted
floor, crunching loudly underfoot as they walked through the short
hallway.

They searched the entire floor, finding no
signs of recent habitation by the previous owners or any others.
Animal scat in several rooms pointed to an invasion by forest
denizens at some point.

Steven located the stairs that led to the
finished basement. “Wait here, I’ll be right back,” he told Kera
and descended into the darkness.

Kera walked to the kitchen. It looked like an
animal had torn through the place leaving a trail of trash and
broken tableware across the floor. She opened the cupboards trying
to find something edible. When she came to the two door
refrigerator/freezer standing closed next to the stove, she knew
better than to open it and assault her nose with the putrid smells
it was sure to contain.

She heard a light thump behind her and spun
around with a gasp, her finger seeking the shotgun’s trigger as she
raised the barrel. The sound had come from behind a pair of folding
pantry doors recessed in a wall near the entrance to the kitchen.
She took slow, steady steps toward the doors, her free hand
reaching out to the knobs.

She thought she heard a scratching sound from
behind the door and hesitated with her hand on the knob. It didn’t
repeat itself.
Maybe
I’m
only
hearing
branches
rubbing
against
the
roof
, she told herself.
I’m
acting
like
a
frightened
teenager
.

She took a deep breath and yanked the door
open.

They flew out at her in a blur of motion, an
avalanche of boxes and cans tumbling to the floor behind them. She
screamed shrilly and fell backwards with them on top of her, the
shotgun slipping from her grip and sliding across the floor to the
length of its sling.

She screamed again and swiped at the two
field mice that in their terror were clinging to her shirt with
tightly clenched little claws.

“Eeew God!” she cried out one more time,
dislodging them from her shirt and sending them sliding halfway
across the kitchen floor before they could regain their traction
and scurry through the scattered trash and disappear in a blur of
brown fur around the back of the refrigerator.

Steven came tearing around the corner looking
for a target through his rifle’s holosight. He saw Kera lying on
her back on the dirty linoleum floor and ran to her while trying to
determine where the threat was located.

“Where are they?” he yelled.

She pointed toward the refrigerator then
started giggling. He stared at her wide-eyed as her giggles turned
into uncontrollable laughter.

“Wha—?”

Kera rolled on the filthy floor in fits of
laughter. “M-m-mice!” she managed to blurt out.

Steven’s shoulder slumped and he let his
rifle drop loose on its sling. “Mice?” he asked, starting to laugh
too.

She nodded and when she looked at him she
burst into another fit of laughter, tears rolling down her face.
“Mice,” she acknowledged.

Steven sat there with his arms around her
laughing along with her until he realized that she wasn’t laughing
anymore, but silently weeping. She gazed up at him with tears
streaming down her face and her nose bright red.

“I
am
just a frightened teenager,
Steve.” She sniffled softly. “I don’t want to have to be scared
anymore.” She slipped her arms around his neck and hugged him
tight.

It wasn’t a mother-lode of food, nevertheless
they did find a days’ worth of canned goods if they rationed it
carefully. Steven thought there would be plenty more houses and
food to sustain them along their hike. What was really helpful were
several pairs of women’s tennis shoes in the bedroom closet. One
pair was a little ratty, however they fit Dontela perfectly. The
other shoes, a newer pair, Dontela tossed to Katherine, who sat
down and pulled off her too large reeking boots and tossed them
aside. The shoes were also large on Katherine; however an extra
pair of clean socks from a dresser drawer made them a tolerable
fit. They also found a pair of canvas slip-on moccasins that went
onto Jane’s feet with plenty of room to spare. They scrounged a
couple of heavy winter coats from another closet, along with some
miscellaneous clothes for the girls. Dontela was ecstatic to find a
few boxes of maxi-pads under the bathroom sink.

“It’s almost time for Aunt Flo to come
visiting,” she told them with a grin. After a cold meal and
bathroom breaks, they set out on the lonely highway again as the
sun reached its zenith in the crisp October sky.

They hit several other houses on the way to
the interstate, adding to their food stores and other supplies with
each stop. At one home they found the rotting remains of the
inhabitants, who had turned and then been trapped within their own
home. From the condition of the remains it looked like one of the
Loonies had turned to feeding on the other to sustain itself. They
had been drinking the water in the toilets and when that had been
completely consumed they must have soon thereafter died of
dehydration.

The group of survivors chose an old and
isolated split-level home overlooking Interstate 64 to spend the
night. The house was locked up tight, forcing Steven to smash open
a small casement window by the door to gain entry. The interior was
well kept and clean, and gave the appearance that the owners had
just up and left recently. There were a few cords of split wood
stored in an adjacent woodshed so they were able to get a roaring
fire going in the central fireplace and chase away some of the deep
chill that penetrated the home. The cupboards were bare of any
food, although they had liberated enough from other homes that they
were able to have a hot meal that evening. There was no running
water, however a pitcher-pump well in the back allowed them to fill
a galvanized steel bucket and heat it in the fireplace to wash and
cook with. The three bedrooms each held a bed that looked and felt
like heaven to the four survivors. With the doors locked, they went
to bed that night feeling safer and more human than they had in
nearly a week.

Despite the comforts of a real bed, Katherine
was having trouble sleeping. She woke up sometime after midnight
and tossed and turned for an hour before finally slipping out of
the bed dressed only in an oversized shirt and wooly socks. She
left Dontela softly snoring, deep under the heavy covers of the
twin sized bed, and quietly crept out of the room. She pulled the
door so that it softly latched behind her then tiptoed down the
hall to the bathroom to pee. When she was finished she flushed the
toilet using well water in a plastic two-gallon bucket that they
had set there specifically for this task, and then splashed some of
the cold water on her face. She stood there in the dark, relishing
the solace of the quiet room before deciding to go sit in front of
the fire to try and relax. Maybe the comforting warmth of the
crackling flames would allow her to settle down and fall back to
sleep again. As she headed to the living area of the house, past
the foyer, she heard a faint noise at the landing at the bottom of
the stairs, like the muffled sound of cloth falling to the
ground.

She stopped in her tracks and stared hard
into the darkness of the stairway. Was there a large shadow in
front of the door? The darkness shifted and swirled but was
otherwise impenetrable. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips
as she shifted her head forward to try and see. She took a
tentative step down, holding her breath as her hand searched
instinctively for a light switch, finding it, then catching herself
before flipping it. A nervous frown broke across her shadowed face
and she anxiously swiped back strands of loose hair from her eyes
after she realized what she had been about to do. It had been out
of the pure habit of one who is used to always having electricity
on demand. She let out her breath and took another step down the
carpeted stairs.

There it was again, scarcely a hint of noise,
so low she wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it.

She felt a cold breeze gently blowing through
the broken window below rustling her thin shirt and causing her
nipples to harden embarrassingly beneath the fabric.

It
was
only
the
wind
, she thought to herself and giggled out loud.