The house had an empty, lost feeling about it. Our feet scraped and echoed a little too loudly on the floor, the rustle of our clothes grating and garish as we entered the foyer. Empty wine bottles occupied nearly every tabletop, the redolent scent of sour grapes heavy in the air. Dust covered everything, even Lola’s clothes. It looked like she had not changed them in a while. Despite the lush décor, I felt like a sane person walking into a rundown asylum.
“Perry, my husband, he’s in the basement,” Lola said. “I can’t … I can’t go back there.”
“Why not?” Tyrel asked. “What’s wrong with him?”
She shook her head, arms crossed tightly under her chest. “I don’t know. He went to Houston last week, said he was going to find his parents and bring them back here.”
“Did he?” I asked.
“No. He came back alone. Said he couldn’t get to them, there was too much rioting. There was a bandage on his arm, bleeding through. I tried to get him to change it, but he acted funny about it. Wouldn’t let me touch it.”
“Anything else wrong with him?” Tyrel asked.
“He was upset about his parents, but otherwise, he seemed fine. Then a few hours later, he started feeling sick.”
“What were his symptoms?”
“Fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, runny nose, coughing. Like he all of a sudden came down with a bad case of the flu. Started shaking really bad and talking funny, kind of delirious. I wanted to drive him to the hospital, but he said that was a bad idea. Said the hospitals were overrun with those things.”
As Lola talked, a low sinking feeling began to weigh in my stomach. I remembered the newscasts and the emergency bulletins about the infected, and what to do if someone was bitten by one of them. Tyrel and I looked at each other, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing.
“Ma’am,” Tyrel said. “did your husband happen to mention how he got the wound on his arm?”
“No. I asked him, but he told me not to worry about it. Said it was nothing.”
“Mrs. Torrance-”
“Lola,” she interrupted. “Please, just call me Lola. Not ma’am or Mrs. Torrance. It makes me feel like an old woman.”
Tyrel held up a hand in apology. “All right then, Lola. Can you tell me how your husband ended up in the basement?”
Her bottom lip began to tremble. “He sealed himself down there, said he had to do it before it was too late. Went out back and got some old boards and a hammer and nails from the tool shed. I heard him hammering, putting planks over the door. He told me where to find his gun.”
At that point, she put her hands over her face, slumped to the floor, and began wailing like a child with a skinned knee. Tyrel hesitated a moment, then knelt beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. For a while, he whispered gently to her, trying to calm her down. Pity and more than a little embarrassment drove me from the room.
In the kitchen, a few steps past the doorway, I heard a sound that had not been audible from the living room. It was coming from a door on the opposite side of the kitchen next to what I assumed was the entrance to the garage. I stepped closer, straining my ears.
Thump-scraaaape. Thump-scraaaape.
“Hello?” I said, voice pitched low. When I spoke, the noise stopped abruptly.
“Hello? Mr. Torrance?” A little louder this time.
A low moan came from behind the door, making the hair on my neck stand on end. It reminded me of a sound my father once made in his sleep in the grip of a nightmare. I had been very young then, but the plaintive, agonized, un-self-conscious raggedness of it never left me.
My instincts told me to back away, but instead, I raised a hand and knocked gently. “Mr. Torrance, can you hear me?”
There was a moment of silence, then a tremendous THUMP that rattled the door on its hinges and sent shockwaves along the kitchen wall. Dishes rattled in a cupboard somewhere to my right. I stepped quickly back in surprise, my right heel catching the corner of a chair leg. I tried to catch my balance but wasn’t fast enough and sat down hard on the ceramic tile floor. At some point, my right hand drew my pistol and leveled it at the door, but I don’t remember consciously doing so. A second or two after the THUMP, I heard the same wailing sound as before, but louder now, anguished, enraged, and unmistakably predatory. The noise continued in ululating waves, punctuated by continued crashes against the door. THUMP … THUMP … THUMP …
Footsteps sounded to my right. I looked over to see Tyrel standing in the doorway, rifle leveled, finger not yet on the trigger. “The fuck was that?”
I kept my aim steady on the basement door as I stood up. “I’m guessing it’s Mr. Torrance.”
Tyrel approached slowly, eyes wide, but not in fear. His gaze was swift and calculating, absorbing and processing information for split-second decisions. His gait was even and steady, hands firm on his carbine, the barrel steady as a rock as he walked. I had a strange moment of pity for the people he had faced in combat, or at least their families. I doubted the combatants themselves were still among the living.
Lola followed close behind him, one hand on his broad back to steady herself, cheeks streaked with tears, the skin of her face pale and sickly looking. I did not think it was a good idea for her to be in the kitchen with us, but then again, it was her house.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
Tyrel took a couple of deep breaths, watching the door. The thumping was loud, but the door seemed to be withstanding it. He lowered his carbine and stood up straight.
“Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. Lola, is there another entrance to the basement?”
“There’s a storm access on the other side of the house, but we keep it locked.”
“Do you have a key?”
She walked over to a decorative set of key hooks on the wall beside the back door and came back with two keys on an aluminum ring. She held them out to Tyrel, then stopped and pulled her hand close to her chest. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Take a look at your husband and see if there’s anything I can do for him.”
“Do you think you can?” The desperate hope in her voice made my chest tighten.
“I don’t know,” Tyrel said. “But I can try.” He held out a hand for the keys. Lola hesitated before handing them over.
“You might want to stay in the house until this is over, Lola.”
She nodded and shuffled back to the living room. When she was gone, Tyrel turned to me and jerked his head toward the back door. “Come on.”
The backyard was spacious, boasting a large brick patio, top-of-the-line grill, outdoor fireplace, wooden terrace strung with party lights, and a pool and a hot tub to my left. Both had a thin layer of algae across the surface along with several weeks’ worth of leaves and enough ashes to color the water gray. The lawn had been left untended and un-watered, the longish grass brown and yellow interspersed with a few surviving islands of green. There was a sprinkler system, but it looked like no one had turned it on in a while. Without water, the lawn had dried and withered in the baking Texas sun. The dying lawn led down to a narrow strip of sandy beach as wide as the property, with the carefully crafted lines of something manmade. Soft waves lapped lazily at the rocks along the edge of the shore.
“Over there,” Tyrel said.
I looked where he pointed and saw slanted wooden shutters butting up against the exposed portion of the house’s foundation. It looked like a tornado shelter only smaller, barely enough for one person to fit through.
“Too narrow for stairs,” I said. “Must have a ladder.”
“Probably right.” Tyrel walked over and inserted the key in the padlock holding the shutters closed. A quick twist, and he set the lock aside.