“Someone shot them,” Jake was finally able to tell me.
I had figured that was what had happened when I saw the bodies, but I couldn’t have been sure. “The mom,” I told him then shook my head. “It makes sense. They were infected, maybe she wasn’t, and she put them out of their misery before taking off.”
“Most likely. She couldn’t stand seeing what the virus was doing to them.”
I closed my eyes, then swallowed hard. “The downstairs seems to be okay. I didn’t see any blood or signs of anything down there. Let’s leave them here and go back down. We can regroup.”
Jake nodded his head then stepped back, closing the door in front of us. He and I both knew we needed a break. We needed to think. We needed to plan. Even if it had to take place in a house of death. It was the only choice we had.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Coming back down the steps, neither of us said a word. The stairs moaned under the weight of us, but it was the only sound in the house. Cammy wasn’t wrong for saying we should hole up there. At least we were out of the elements and away from the bigger infected population.
If the wife had shot them and fled with whoever was left, I knew she wasn’t coming back. The sight of them, the guilt of shooting them and walking away would have been enough to make anyone never come back. It made me never want to venture back up those steps again either, and I never knew them.
Seeing adults with it was one thing, but little kids, that was a whole new level of hurt. Poor babies who never had a chance at life, stripped of everything before it even started. That crushed me.
Cammy took my hand when we were almost at the bottom of the steps and I let her. None of that was natural and all of it had been hard to see. She kept her feelings to herself, not wanting to add to all that was going on, but she didn’t have a very good poker face and I saw the shock, horror, and sadness every time I looked at her. I felt it too, but we had to suppress it if we were going to have a chance at making it out of this shit alive.
“Cammy, there is a closet by the bathroom. See if you can find sheets or blankets. There are two couches in the living room, and I think that is our safest place. We can move them closer together for protection. I am going to move that hutch in the hallway to block the front door. That only leaves the garage door. One way in. One way out.”
“Not a bad idea. As long as they don’t trap us by only having one way.”
“We can’t let them.”
She didn’t say another word as she took off down the hall. I lost sight of her for a minute and it didn’t sit well with me. When she didn’t come back and I couldn’t hear her, I stopped moving shit and went to go check on her.
“Jake, help!” she screamed before I got to her.
Picking up my pace, I raced to the small bathroom and flung the door open farther. Cammy was standing in the small shower with her back pressed hard against the wall. Her sickle was in front of her, but she was shaking so bad, I wasn’t sure she would have been able to swing it.
I pushed harder on the door when it wouldn’t open.
“Hold it there, Jake.”
“Hold what?”
“The door. Don’t move the door.”
She climbed out of the shower, held her weapon out in front of her, and made her way closer to me. With jerky movements, she locked eyes with whatever she was stalking and whispered for me to close the door.
I wasn’t going to do it with her in there and me out in the hallway. Swinging my body around as I shut it, I got inside before she could argue. What we came face to face with was the last thing I expected to see.
Without thinking, we both went after it. She swung her sickle and I came down on the head with my hammer. Blood splattered and covered us both before we had a chance to back away.
Bringing my hammer down over and over, it only groaned and grunted. My hammer stuck in the top of the head and I had to push down with one hand and pull it out with the other. The skull caved at the weight of my body and the hammer came out bringing chunks of brain, pus, and shards of bone with it. Cammy cut it one last time and managed to slice the throat. The spray of blood from that last cut covered us both. Her more because she was closer, but we both had it dripping from us.
Gurgling, the poor thing finally collapsed and died.
Even in the dim light of the single naked bulb hanging in the middle of the room, I could see the blood hadn’t looked right. No longer red but a creamy pinkish grey, it was a new symptom we hadn’t seen before.
“Where did THAT come from?” Cammy asked pointing at what was left of our uninvited guest.
“I don’t know. We checked the whole house.”
“Jake, does this place have a basement?”
“I didn’t think so. Most old farmhouses didn’t, but I think we better make sure.”
“He was only a kid. He couldn’t have been older than thirteen. Why would she have left him behind and not taken care of him?”
“Maybe he got sick as they were leaving? I don’t really know, Cammy. What I do know is we have to find out how he got in here, and we need to get the blood and stuff off of you.”
“You too. You are covered worse than I am.”
I went to the sink and flicked on the water.
It worked.
“This is a good thing.” I couldn’t help but smile at the one thing that seemed to be in our favor after the last few days of this hell we had landed in. With a roof over our heads, and water, there wasn’t much more we needed for the moment.
“I will wash right after we check again.”
She was more shaken up by what had happened in that bathroom than the rest we had been through. I couldn’t say I blamed her. It was one thing to fight off an adult, it was another when it was a child. We had to push past that though if we were going to make it out. They were already gone by the time they became aggressive. It wasn’t a child she fought off; it was a virus.
We looked all over the lower half of the house and in the back room, in the closet, was a door that led to the crawlspace. The door was open and fresh tracks of dirt led from there to halfway across the room.
“You stay up here and shine this down for me, okay?”
“Why can’t I go with you?” she whined.
“Because I need you up here. Shine this down and stay put no matter what happens, got it?”
“I get it, but I don’t understand it.”
“Cam, I need you to keep an ear out for any sounds up here while I am in the hole. If we both go down there, we are exposed. I won’t be long. Quick sweep and I will be back up. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I hated leaving her up there alone, but I wasn’t sure what was down there and there wasn’t any reason to trap us both.
There were only three small steps leading to the dirt floor of the storm shelter. The smell was musty and wet, but I couldn’t smell any infection or rotting corpses like we had before.
“Shine the light down here more if you can,” I shouted up.
I heard the light clunk, clunk of her feet hitting the top step and spun around. I calmed down when I saw her sitting up there and not coming any further. She did shine the light better though and I was able to take a better look around.
Splat.
I landed hard on the ground. The sound of glass shattering broke the silence. I felt a shard slice into my leg before I was able to sit up.