THEM (Season 1): Episode 2 (2 page)

Just past the kitchen I came to a laundry room and a family room, both empty and devoid of movement. With the bottom floor clear, it was time to head upstairs. I took a quick peek outside to make sure Gabby was alright; she was still in direct sunlight, so for now she’d be as safe as possible under the circumstances. Once I was certain she was okay, I headed up the stairs with as much speed and stealth as I could muster.

The top of the steps opened into a hallway that forked off at right angles in two directions. Most folks tended to turn right when given a choice; I’d learned long ago that it paid to be unpredictable. So, I decided to go left and crept down the hall as rapidly as stealth would allow.

The hallway ended in three doors, and two were ajar. I nudged the closest one open with the barrel of the HK, revealing a child’s room decorated in pastels and princess posters. There was a small figure on the bed with the covers pulled up over its head. I drew my tomahawk and pulled the covers back with the spike on the back of the axe blade; the corpse was a small girl, maybe seven or eight years old, who’d died of a single gunshot wound to the temple. I was starting to get an idea of what had happened here. I sheathed the tomahawk and moved on, reflecting on the scenario that was revealing itself before me.

After the War and the subsequent occult species invasion, a lot of people decided that this was the final Apocalypse and simply gave up outright. But despite the apparent hopelessness of it all, there were also many families that attempted to hold out in isolation, thinking that if they just made it through then eventually they’d be saved. I’d come across scenes like this many times before; a family holds out for a while, but as hope turns to desperation they end up making some sort of death pact with each other not to be taken alive and turned. Eventually, something gets to them, whether an undead attack, or sickness, or just a case of the crazies, and some loony schmuck decides to follow through on the suicide pact, whether the rest of the family approves or not. I hated coming across these scenes.

Sure enough, the other two rooms on this side also had family members that were killed by a single bullet to the cranium. Moving to the other end of the hall, I found the same thing in a bathroom, but this time it was a woman in the tub with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was likely the mother, and decided to spare herself the torture of hearing her family suffer. I left the bath and turned to the final closed door, which I assumed was the master bedroom. Folks always seemed to retreat to what they felt was the safest place in the home to eat the last bullet.

I opened the door, and saw a corpse on the bed with a suppressed Colt 1911 in its hand, with old brain matter and blood spattered and encrusted all over the headboard. I walked over and took the sidearm from him, breaking a few fingers off in the process. I checked the slide for function and to see if it was still loaded. One in the chamber and two in the mag. The Colt would make a good replacement weapon for Gabby, if I could keep her alive to use it. I shoved it in my waistband and quickly checked for more ammo in the nightstand drawers.

Suddenly I heard a shuffling sound behind me, and turned to see a tall elderly deadhead in bloodied and torn flannel pajamas bearing down on me fast. The thing was already on top of me before I could get the barrel of the HK around, so I used the weapon as a barrier in order to put some distance between us. As I struggled to keep the deader off of me, the ugly bastard was snapping at me all the while and trying his best to take a chunk out of my arms. The old cuss smelled like mothballs and death, and was surprisingly strong for a dead octogenarian.

Out of options, I moved my left hand to the center point of the rifle and reached for the Colt in my waistband. It only took a split second for the zombie to use my lack of leverage to knock the rifle away and snap his mouth on my sleeve. I almost crapped my pants when I saw his mouth lock onto my arm, until I realized that the old man didn’t have his dentures in; the poor bastard was gnawing on my arm with nothing but gums.

Saying a silent prayer to thank God for old age and poor dental hygiene, I placed the barrel of the .45 on the thing’s forehead, watching it chew in vain as I squeezed down on the trigger. But right before I felt the trigger break, I remembered that we were all alone out here with night coming on fast. So, I released the trigger and just pistol-whipped the thing repeatedly until I felt its head cave in with a loud crunch. It dropped in a heap and I kicked it away from me, continuing past it into the master bath from where it’d emerged with the .45 at the ready to make sure there weren’t any more surprises waiting for me. Once I was certain that all the corpses present were blessedly and truly dead, I ran down the stairs two at a time to get Gabby inside so I could barricade us in before nightfall.

- - -

[2
]

I
got Gabby off the mule and carried her inside, gently laying her down on the couch to rest until I could get the house locked up tight. I also set the animals loose outside and shooed them off after unloading all our gear, which was a regrettable but necessary action. Leaving them tied up would only result in attracting all manner of undead nasties to the place, and it would also keep the animals from being able to flee if cornered. Sure, I could bring them inside, but horse hooves on tile and concrete made a lot of noise; even on carpet they’d be loud as hell. By turning them loose, at least they’d have a chance to run if danger came around, and chances were good they’d wander back come morning. That is, so long as they weren’t being pursued by a horde of the living dead.
Better them than us,
I thought, but I still felt bad about it.

Heading back up the steps, I noticed a pull-down attic door that looked promising. As far as I could tell this place didn’t have a basement or bunker, but for a temporary safe house, an attic could do in a pinch. If deaders came in the place, they’d never be able to reach us in the attic. And if one of the more intelligent occult species came in the place, the attic door would create a choke point that would make it easier to stage a strong defense. So long as I could keep Gabby quiet tonight, we might be okay.

A quick look in the attic told me that whoever built this place had built it right, as the attic floor was covered in plywood and the rafters were well insulated. I guessed that they’d probably intended to make it into another room at some point, before the Great War had put a dent in their plans.
Bummer for them, lucky for me.
I hauled Gabby up there along with some blankets for a pallet, followed by our gear. I also left the HK up there and left the Colt near my gear (cleaning it later would give me something to pass the time), and set to barricading the front door.

The back door was already nailed shut and secure, so I put the front door back in place as best as I could and started moving stuff in front of it. First a bookcase, then a china cabinet, then a sofa with a love seat stacked on top. Fortunately, the front entry faced a wall, so once I started stacking stuff against the door and wedging it against that wall we were pretty secure.

Once that was done, I wiped up a few drops of blood that had fallen on the steps when I was carrying Gabby to the attic, spraying it down with some bleach-based cleaner I found in the kitchen. Then I hauled the dad’s corpse to the stairs, and also brought grandpa out and laid them both over where I’d cleaned up the spill, hoping that the desiccated and rotting corpses would mask the scent of fresh blood. After scavenging the house for foodstuffs, I stuffed another body in an old sheet and dragged it all over the house, and then left it on the couch to cover the bloodstains Gabby had left there, again in hopes of covering our scent in case something did get past my makeshift barricade.

Scent really wasn’t an issue with zombies and ghouls; most of them operated on sound, so stealth and sound discipline were your best camouflage. However, a vamp could smell fresh blood hours after a wounded victim had passed; I’d actually witnessed them tasting the air like a lizard, tracking wounded prey for miles. They were nasty, apex predators with an ability to hone in on a blood trail like nothing I’d ever seen among the undead. That was what had me worried most, that if there was a nos-type hunting these parts we’d get found on account of Gabby’s gunshot wound. But if I was really lucky tonight, that mule would get wind of a deader and run off to the next county, taking the scent of Gabby’s blood with it.
If I was lucky.

And then of course there were the ’thropes to contend with, and I honestly had no idea how I’d fare if one of them showed up. All I had to go on were rumors and hearsay, since we’d never had even a single wolf down in these parts, not in all the eight years or so since the bombs fell and the world went mad. I’d heard they were fast, incredibly strong, and that they healed almost as quickly as you could hurt them. But if what I knew about the effects of silver on the undead held true for ’thropes, then I could at least take comfort in having several full mags of silver rounds for the Glocks and my HK handy.

As the sun was going down, I was ruminating on all this and heading back up to the attic to check on Gabby, when I heard something clatter in the house below me.
Huh.
I set the food I’d found down on the carpeted surface of the stairs, all of which consisted of some stale crackers and a jar of canned veggies that may or may not have been of questionable provenance. Listening for further sounds of movement, I drew my battle-axe in one hand and my Bowie knife in the other. The Bowie knife was ten inches of high carbon steel that I kept honed sharper than Stephen Hawking on Ritalin, and the axe was a modernized version of a Vietnam-era battlehawk, a military tomahawk that we’d used for breaching doors and busting heads back in the ’Stan.

Despite the neat hardware, if I got bum-rushed by a vamp I’d be truly and righteously screwed. Deaders were up and active by now, so whatever might be in here would need to be taken out quietly; that’d be a tall order if a vamp got in. But as much as I’d hate having to go hand-to-hand with a vamp, firing a gun at night in the Outlands was like ringing a zombie dinner bell; every deader in the area would be on you before you could say “uninvited.” I hoped to hell that noise was just a can falling over.

With a death grip on the tomahawk and Bowie knife, I crept down the stairs and moved in the direction I’d heard the noise. It’d sounded like it came from the kitchen, so I ninja-ed over to that area of the house, pausing around the corner to listen for anything moving. Not hearing a peep, I turned the corner with my blade forward and battle-axe high, only to see an old bulging can of dog food on the floor in front of the pantry. Letting out a sigh of relief, I walked forward to see if there might be any canned food I’d missed, and then realized that I had shut that door just minutes before. Senses on high alert, I pulled back the pantry door, took one peek, and then bolted toward the stairs just as fast as my moccasin-covered feet could carry me.

What I’d seen as I looked around the pantry door had chilled me to the bone; it was an open trap door, a miniature deathly maw that indicated someone or some
thing
else was in here with us. As I hauled ass to the attic, I mentally kicked myself for not being more thorough in my search of the house earlier. Just as I rounded the corner to the stairs, I heard the attic door close with a loud
BANG!
and knew I was going to be too late. I took the stairs two at a time and leapt off the top step to reach the pull cord for the attic door, yanking the ladder down and scrambling up it like a bat out of hell.

I cleared the top rung in a leap and dive rolled toward where I’d left Gabby. As I came up out of my roll, I saw an emaciated figure in a threadbare nightgown leaning over the kid’s still form, sniffing at the large amount of blood that’d soaked through Gabby’s dressing. The once-human thing before me was a ghastly caricature of its former existence. Its long brown hair was tangled and clumped with dirt, dried blood, and twigs; its face was sallow and pale, with sunken cheeks and horrid, leathery skin; and its bare feet and hands ended in claws that were as hard and poisonous as old rusted tenpenny nails.

As the details registered, one word echoed in my mind.
Revenant.

I acted on instinct, launching my tomahawk at it with all the force I could muster as I came out of the roll. Almost in slow motion, I watched the ’hawk fly end over end though the air toward the creature’s head, but at the last instant it snapped out a hand and swatted the tomahawk from the air with preternatural reflexes. I watched my battle-axe clatter away into the darkness as the creature snapped its head around to look at me. The rev’s cold yellow eyes blinked at me with indifference, and then it turned back to sniff at Gabby’s wound again.

Well, this is going to suck.
Going hand to hand with a rev was almost as scary as going toe-to-toe with a vamp. The problem with fighting a revenant was that they were highly unpredictable and hellaciously fast. They possessed a feral intelligence and were capable of low-level reasoning, so far as it served to achieve their drive to feed. Also, they were typically just as strong as a full-grown man, no matter their age or size.
Yeah, this was really going to suck,
I thought as I switched the Bowie knife to my right hand and launched myself at it
.

No sooner did I get within arm’s than I felt myself flying across the attic, the result of an incredibly powerful backhanded blow from the rev. I landed in a heap, and in the blink of an eye the thing was on top of me, straddling me in an effort to pin me down so it could finish me off and feed. I bucked my hips to get it off me, driving it forward so that its claws raked the plywood floor above my head. Once I had it off balance, I drove my Bowie knife into the thing’s back, severing its spinal column just below its shoulder blades. The thing cut loose with an unearthly howl and began clawing at its back, trying to remove the blade that I’d just sunk up to the hilt in its spine. I left it in, worried that if I removed the blade it’d heal and I’d lose my momentary advantage. Shoving it off completely with both hands, I rolled in the direction of my pack and snatched my golok machete from the sheath I kept strapped to my pack.