What We Left Behind (13 page)

If my flashlight was working, I’d be able to see her facial features, but all I can see are dark strands of hair draped over her face.

The room is clear, apart from the closet and the body lying on the bed. And I’m acutely aware how utterly unprepared I am for life outside the commune. The room is
not
clear. I creep back to the door, trying not to jump at the shadows. My heart races, pounding in my throat.

Water cascades down the stairs onto the landing.

I catch a glimpse of someone walking past below. I lean over the railing and half whisper, half call out, “David. I found a dead body.”

David walks back into view on the edge of the collapsed rubble. He’s little more than a dark silhouette. Rain drips on the back of my head.

“How do you know it’s dead?”

I don’t, but I don’t have the courage to say that. I shrug my shoulders, unsure if he can see that gesture or not.

“Give it a prod. Kick its leg or something.”

“I’m not touching it,” I reply in a hiss.

“Did you see a bullet hole in the forehead? Any skull injuries?”

“No,” I reply in a whisper.

“Check again. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t turn your back on it.”

My eyes go wide as I realize the open door is about four feet behind me and a foot or so to my left, just out of sight.

A floorboard creaks behind me.

I freeze, standing as still as a statue. The hair on my arms stands on end. My legs begin to shake involuntarily. I’m about to pee. My heart is pounding its way out of my chest. I try to stand still. I’m trying to keep my trembling hands under control as I’m in danger of dropping the gun to the floor below. My teeth chatter.

Another floorboard creaks, only it is a long, slow creak that sounds like a groan.

It’s cold, but I’m sweating.

Water drips down from above.

I’m going to die.

Zee is stalking his prey, waiting until he’s close enough to pounce.

I spin around, keeping myself against the railing.

A dark figure looms in front of me.

I bring my gun up, holding it with both hands, wanting to aim for the center of his forehead, but Zee is too close. He bats my hand away.

The gun fires.

I miss.

My fingers are wet. With the recoil, I lose my grip on the gun and it falls over the balustrade. It clatters on the marble floor below.

“No!” I scream as dark hands grab my shoulders.

Zee lurches out of the darkness. His fingers are firm, holding my shoulders rigid.

His fingers? Wait, the zombie on the bed was a she. I’m confused. I try to grab the second gun tucked beneath my belt when Steve says, “Hey. You need to be more careful where you point your gun.”

“Steve?”

I blink, struggling to make out his face in the dark.

“It’s okay. It’s me.”

I hit Steve on his chest, pounding on him with my fists as I cry out, “Don’t do that! Don’t sneak up on me. I could have killed you!”

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

David comes bounding up the stairs in response to the gunshot. He shines his flashlight on us, saying, “Will you two quit goofing around?”

I want to scream at him, but I refrain and point at the master bedroom.

“There’s a dead woman—in there.”

This time I’m sure it’s not some fear-induced hallucination. I saw her lying there.

Steve and David walk into the master bedroom. They’ve both got their guns and flashlights trained on the woman. She doesn’t move.

“If she’s a zombie,” David quips, “she’s deaf.”

That’s not funny.

I have nothing to say.

This is serious.

David moves around the bed while keeping a wary eye on the closet. He flashes his light into the pitch-black room. Clothes lay strewn on the ground, torn from their hangers.

I follow David. He walks around in front of the woman. He hands me his flashlight and I keep the light on her face as he leans forward. Slowly, gingerly, he reaches out with one hand and sweeps her hair away. There, in the center of her forehead, is a single hole from a small caliber bullet.

I sigh with relief.

There’s no blood on the pillow or the sheets. She must have been shot in the bathroom and placed here afterwards. Someone cared about her, even after she turned.

“Dead,” he says, like I need some kind of official pronouncement. I’m not stupid. I can see the bullet hole, but given the shenanigans of the last few minutes, I understand why he said that. David slips his gun into his holster.

“OK, help me with her,” he says.

“Help you?”

“Yeah, we’re sleeping here tonight. We might as well be comfortable.”

David wraps her in the bed sheet. He opens the sliding door and grabs one end as I grab the other. Steve keeps his flashlight on us, but I’d rather he was the one hauling the body. David and I carry her out on the balcony and unceremoniously dump her over the edge. She falls to the ground with a thud. She may be a dead zombie but it feels like we’re being cruel to a person.

Part of a gutter and downspout on the far end of the balcony have come away and rainwater pours onto the floor, spraying us with a fine mist.

We go back inside and David asks, “Did you find anything useful?”

“Camping equipment,” Steve replies. “An old gas cooker and a gas lantern.”

“I found a gun,” I say, handing David the pistol.

“Awesome,” David says. I’m not sure what type of gun this is, but it’s small, perhaps something a woman would conceal in her purse.

We walk back onto the landing and Steve points at the items he’s piled up on the sideboard below the painting. He had to have made several trips back and forth from the floor above. He must have walked down the stairs while I was leaning over the balcony talking to David. I should have seen him. I was so terrified I only heard what I wanted to hear—Zee creeping up on me. I feel like such a jerk. I could have killed him.

“OK, let’s get this stuff downstairs,” David says enthusiastically.

“I think I’ll rummage around a little more,” I say for a couple of reasons. I feel stupid having reacted the way I did. David was right. The house is empty. I don’t want to be seen as too fearful to be useful or shying away from my responsibility. Besides, I’m more than a little embarrassed. “I’m going to look through the bathroom drawers.”

“Okay,” David says, already walking down the stairs.

“If you need anything,” Steve says.

I smile and wave, but my smile is fake. I’m determined I won’t need anything. I shouldn’t need to be rescued from the monsters of my own imagination.

I walk back into the master bedroom feeling like a fool. The darkness doesn’t scare me any more. I pick up my flashlight from the bathroom sink and turn it on. It works perfectly. Of course it does, I think. The light seems brighter than before.

“Hazel, Hazel, Hazel,” I mutter to myself, realizing how much simpler life is when your rational mind isn’t on vacation. The darkness is dark—nothing more, nothing less, nothing sinister.

With the grace of a herd of water buffalo stampeding through the jungle, I ransack the drawers. There are all the usual things you find in a bathroom—tweezers, a hair straightener, a lint brush, hair ties, clips, cotton balls, and nail polish, but it’s the toothpaste that gets my attention. Toothpaste is a treat.

There’s a full bottle of shampoo in the shower. The towels hanging on the railing are a little musty, but they’re soft to touch.

“Damn it,” I say to the darkness. “I’m going to have a shower and freshen up.”

The darkness doesn’t reply, which is good.

Back in the bedroom, I find fresh underwear, shirts, shorts, and a couple of sweaters in the drawers of a dresser. The clothing is a little baggy, but it’s clean and, surprisingly, the clothes don’t smell bad. I riffle through the drawers and find a small bag of potpourri in the corner. The scent has faded, but it has kept the clothing fresh.

“See,” I say to myself. “This is what we left behind. Decency.”

I close the door to the room, put the clothes out on the bed, and strip down before stepping out onto the balcony with the bottle of shampoo.

There’s a chill in the air, but I don’t care. Goosebumps break out on my skin.

Freezing cold and naked, I step under the shower of rainwater coming from the broken downspout. A torrent of water hits me like it’s spraying out of a fire hose.

This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Actually, no, almost shooting Steve is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. This barely rates, I decide.

I step to one side and begin rubbing shampoo through my hair. The smell is wonderful: coconut and papaya.

Soapsuds slide over my shoulders and down my skin. I rub my fingers under my armpits, across my belly, down my legs, and then step back into the waterfall cascading from the broken gutter.

The water doesn’t feel as cold anymore. The rain has eased and I can face up into the shower of water, feeling it wash over my body. I stand there for a few minutes, trying to pretend the water’s warm, but it’s not.

It feels good to be pelted with a constant stream of water.

I run my hands through my hair one last time, giving my scalp a good massage, and then step out of the freezing cold rainwater. I’m shivering, but I don’t care. It feels great to be clean.

The sliding door opens as I walk toward it and I’m mortified to see Steve standing there in the dark. He seems confused at the sight of me dripping wet and naked. In a flash, I cover my breasts with one arm and my groin with the other.

“What the hell are you doing?” I blurt out as though he’s done something wrong. Steve’s done nothing wrong. He came looking for a silly girl doing something crazy on the balcony. God only knows what he thinks of me now.

Steve is flustered, embarrassed. He looks away. Stepping backwards, he bumps into the bed and shuffles awkwardly to one side mumbling an apology.

I grab my towel and wrap it around me. I’d like to dry myself off and warm up, but at the moment privacy takes precedence over comfort.

“I am so sorry,” he says, backing off around the bed and heading for the door. “I thought you—I thought you might want company.”

“You were going to come out there with me?” I ask as he reaches for the doorknob.

“No,” he stutters. “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant, to help you look through the bathroom drawers for—”

He stops.

I laugh.

Steve is lost for words. I can see he’s trying to find something to say that will make this better but he’s drawing a blank.

“Stuff,” I offer.

“Yes, stuff,” he says emphatically, opening the door. He still can’t bring himself to face me.

“It’s okay,” I say, my voice softening as I recover from the shock of running into him while naked. I think we were both surprised to see each other, but probably him more so than me. I know my reaction has mortified the poor boy. Here he is—wanting to be a gentleman and help a damsel in distress—and he’s walked in on me stark naked, showering outside in the cold rain. He would have never guessed that before he opened the bedroom door.

I grab the clothes from the bed and scurry into the bathroom, but I can’t go more than a few feet away from the doorway without stepping in dried zombie blood. I’m forced to stand on a thin strip of tiles right by the open door. I could close the door, but given I’ve told Steve it’s okay to stay, that seems rude, and besides, it’s pitch black. He can’t see a thing. I hope.

“It’s fine,” I say from almost out of sight in the bathroom. “You don’t have to go. Really, it’s okay. Stay. Please.”

Steve doesn’t answer. I take a risk. I pull the towel away and rub my body vigorously, drying myself off as quickly as I can. Water drips from my hair so I wrap the towel around my hair and roll it into a turban.

I slip the T-shirt over my turban head, wondering what I look like struggling with the narrow neck opening and wishing I’d thought this through a little better, but I feel compelled to hurry. Steve still hasn’t said anything, and I feel as though there’s no time to reverse the order. Oh, please don’t peek around the corner, I think, desperate to get dressed. I pull the shirt over my chest and slip on some underwear and a pair of shorts. My bra can wait.

Looking around the corner, I can see Steve’s standing there with his flashlight pointing at the ground.

“Won’t be a second,” I say with mock cheerfulness in my voice. I step back and work my bra on without taking my shirt off, slipping my arms back and forth through the sleeves. Crazy. In the darkness, he’d never see anything anyway, but that doesn’t matter. I feel like I’m getting dressed under bright spotlights with thousands of people watching.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” he says.

“Oh, good,” I reply with a fake casual tone, finally emerging from the bathroom. I adjust my lopsided turban and try to look relaxed, pretending nothing untoward happened.

Steve shines his flashlight at me.

“Haze,” he says kindly. “You look great.”

I smile, picking up my dirty clothes along with my shoes and socks.

“But your shirt’s on backwards.”

After dumping everything back on the bed, I slip my arms inside my shirt, allowing me to turn the shirt around without taking it off. Then I pick up my old clothes again. Finally, we head downstairs. I catch a glimpse of Steve’s face when his flashlight reflects off a mirror in the hallway. His cheeks are red, but he’s grinning.

“What’s so funny?” I ask as we round the stairs.

“You.”

I give him a little poke behind his ribs. It’s playful, nothing harsh, but it makes Steve jump. He lets out a fake yelp. He must be thinking,
of all the people to survive the apocalypse, I end up following this weirdo through a zombie-infested city
.

A thin layer of water covers the marble floor downstairs making it slippery. Being barefoot, I almost fall on my ass, but somehow I stay upright.

“It’s just like ice skating,” Steve says, taking the crook of my arm to help me keep my balance.

“Ice skating in a shallow lake,” I reply.

David has a fire going in the fireplace. I can feel the warmth as soon as we walk into the room. The carpet by the marble entrance way is soggy, but further into the lounge it’s still dry, which is a welcome relief.