Curiosity got the better of him. He continued walking up the stairs, glancing at all the photographs. Each one had the same smiling family, but he couldn’t find one photo of Victor. He finally saw a more modern photo of the young boy in the first family portrait. It definitely was not Victor.
Suddenly, the situation clicked in his head. Kyle was had. Victor led him into someone else’s home, not his. He bolted down the stairs, holding the Glock forward. He opened the door and continued running toward the truck. From his vantage point he saw the passenger side door completely open. Victor was gone.
Chapter Eighteen
“Fucking kid,” Kyle muttered under his breath.
He walked around in circles, staring at all the houses. He knew that one of them was Victor’s real house, but he didn’t have a clue which one. There were a few dozen of them, and each one looked just like the other.
On a hunch, Kyle ran toward the truck, hoping that Victor left behind some sort of clue or maybe even a note or something. Anything. He looked in the truck, but didn’t find anything that might lead him toward Victor’s direction. A feeling of dread and loneliness began to fester inside Kyle’s belly. He had to find Victor, just like any parent would retrieve their lost child.
“Victor!” Kyle yelled.
He continued to spin in a circle, looking at all the different houses, trying to find that one unique characteristic that would indicate the house he was looking for. “Victor!” he yelled again, but this time as his scream became part of the howling breeze. Kyle found what he was looking for.
The house directly across the street from him had a large window that looked out onto the front yard. The window was partially opened. Kyle hadn’t noticed if it had been already opened when they’d arrived, but looking at the size of the crack, he saw it was open just enough for Victor to slide his frame through.
Kyle looked both ways before crossing the street. There was nothing in either direction, just a line of houses that continued until the road banked down. The grass in the front yard was wet; he felt his shoes sink a little into the soft earth as he walked toward the open window. Surrounding the house were small patches of growing mustard grass. It wasn’t that uncommon for Kyle to see the yellow plant growing wild, but the amount here seemed excessive.
A blue curtain blocked the view into the house. Kyle moved it aside with the barrel of the Glock, to get a better look inside. It was dark and hard to see what kind of horrors lay beyond the blue curtain. He grasped the cloth with his free hand and pulled, which caused it to snap from its curtain rod and fall to the ground. Sunlight shone in to the room. Kyle pushed the window a bit more so he could enter. Victor was considerably smaller than he; he resembled a stick bug more than a teenage boy.
The window creaked as Kyle slid it open. It only traveled a few inches before something locked the window in place. It didn’t make any difference. Kyle was able to squeeze himself into the house.
It didn’t take long for Kyle to realize he was in a living area. The two couches were covered in plastic protectors and in front of them was a coffee table with a few stacks of books and magazines. There was no television in the entertainment center propped up against the right wall. Instead, there was a stereo system in the spot where a television usually goes. On one of the picture frames, Kyle saw a photograph of a young boy in the arms of an older woman. Both of them had huge smiles on their faces, the perfect images of what life was like before the Existing Dead. He stared at the photo, the glare from the glass casting his reflection. The boy in the photograph was Victor. He had the same dark hair, the same brown eyes, the same smile, the same joyful expression he had when something excited him. His eyes would squint and dimples would appear above his cheekbones. Kyle didn’t know if he’d be able to see that type of expression on his face again, not after everything that has happened to him, and everything else that might happen to him.
Kyle pointed the pistol forward and started to make his way left, where there was a staircase and another small hallway.
“Victor?” he whispered as he turned toward the hallway.
The brown carpet began to turn into tile as he entered the kitchen.
“Victor?” he said again.
He quickly did a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn when he heard a thump coming from somewhere behind him. It could have just been a common noise, the house settling, but Kyle decided to walk back to the living room and up the stairs.
Standing at the foot of the staircase, Kyle glanced to the top. The menacing gap stared back down at him as if he were at the entrance to a cave. He took in a deep breath and slowly began to take the stairs. The first few steps were silent, but as he approached the top, the steps began to creak under him.
“Victor?” he whispered. “Where are you?”
He reached the top and could barely see the weapon in front of him. He did, however, see to his left was a door. He put his hand on the knob and slowly turned. It popped open and the door slowly swung. There was a large window to the left of the room that was letting sunlight in. The room was filled with boxes, as if this room was used for storage.
Walking to one of the boxes, Kyle noticed what was inside. It wasn’t just boxes for storage. It was food. Tons of canned goods were packed into the boxes. It reminded him of all those canned food drives he was a part of every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sliding the closet door open, he spotted crates of bottled water, juices and even twenty four-packs of soda. Aligned on the wall with the window were a few white boxes with the words “Medical Supplies” written across them with a Sharpie.
“It looks like Morgan was prepared to wait it out,” Kyle said under his breath.
Kyle finished examining the boxes and turned to walk toward the door. There were a few more rooms he had to check, and hopefully Victor was in one of them. As he approached the dark entrance, he held the Glock in front of him, finger on the trigger, ready to fire at the first sign of danger.
He stepped through the threshold and immediately turned left to walk down the hall to another room. The house continued to creak under his feet as the door grew bigger and bigger. The coldness from the doorknob felt good on Kyle’s hot and sweaty palm. He had always been embarrassed by his sweat-gland problem, but this was no time for him to dwell on that.
The doorknob turned without a problem. He pushed the door open, revealing a dirty and overused restroom. The tiled floor was dirty, covered with black spots and sticky areas. Despite its poor maintenance, there were a few decorations that gave it a feminine feel.
There was nothing more to inspect about the room. It was just a small restroom with one very small window above the toilet. He turned to face down the hallway and saw the figure of a person watching him. Kyle didn’t waste a second and pointed the weapon toward the shadow.
“Who’s there?” Kyle said in a stern and powerful voice.
He saw the head on the shadow shake “No.” Then it spoke. “My mom’s not here.”
“Victor,” Kyle said as he walked toward him. “Why the fuck did you send me to some other house?”
“I don’t know.” Victor looked at the ground.
Kyle sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Your mom’s not here? Did you see all those supplies she has in that room over there?” He pointed toward the room at the top of the staircase.
Victor nodded.