100-Days-in-Deadland(80)

I tiptoed across the open dining room and noticed drawers left ajar in the kitchen as though someone had left in a hurry. I bypassed the kitchen to the adjacent living room. No signs of struggle. Checked out the hallway, closets, a nicely finished basement, and upstairs. The master bed hadn’t been made yet, and several shirts lay strewn across the mattress. “Thank God,” I muttered and hustled downstairs. Whoever lived here must’ve left town as soon as the outbreak hit. If they got lucky, maybe they got to wherever it was they’d been headed.

Back in the kitchen, I turned on the faucet. Nothing, as expected. Before checking the refrigerator for liquids, I walked into the large walk-in pantry and smiled. Inside was bliss. It wasn’t fully stocked by any means, but a dozen or so cans of food, several bottles of wine, and a case of flavored water waited on the shelves. I went straight for the water, tearing through the plastic, and grabbed two bottles. I chugged the first down without stopping.

I leaned back against a shelf, careful to avoid the fuzzy green bread. There was enough here to last me a week, maybe longer. Since this neighborhood hadn’t been looted yet, the Dogs must’ve had the same idea as us when it came to Chow Town. The risk of drawing out a herd of zeds in this town was too high to take as long as we could still find food in solitary, secluded farmhouses with no more than a few zeds to deal with at one time.

It was a good reminder that I had to remain silent and unseen. I’d already stirred up zeds in at least three nearby houses. I could only hope they’d given up by now and gone back to lumbering around their homes. They could easily break out of the homes, especially through the all-glass patio doors. Clearly, they hadn’t had a reason to…until possibly now.

No matter. I planned to be back to the farm by dark, which was only an hour or so away.

I closed the kitchen blinds and patio shades to hide my movements.

I grabbed a can of fruit cocktail and looked around for a can opener. “Of course,” I muttered when I noticed the power opener on the counter. Rather than wasting time hunting around for tools, I opted instead for a jar of peanuts while sipping a second bottle of water.

Finished, I grabbed my knife off the countertop, and headed back up to the master bedroom and adjacent bathroom. I peeled off my clothes caked with sludge, blood, sweat, and dirt.

Without water pressure, a shower was impossible. Instead, I grabbed a half-empty bottle of shampoo and soap from the shower. I dipped a washcloth in the tank behind the toilet and thoroughly scrubbed myself. After I’d used nearly all the water in the tank and made a mess of the floor, I grabbed a tube of Neosporin and Band-Aids for my palm that still oozed blood.

Leaving the wrappers on the counter, I headed into the walk-in closet and sifted through clothes until I found a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt that fit. I hurriedly dressed, fastened my belt and weapons, and ventured to the garage. I tapped lightly on the door and heard nothing in response. This time, rather than going slowly, I threw open the door and scanned the three stalls.

I sighed with a smile and leaned back against the wall. Not only was the garage clear, but a Ford sat in one stall. After a quick sweep under the sedan, I opened the car door and a beeping tone reverberated throughout the garage, energetically telling me that both the keys were still in the ignition and the battery wasn’t dead. I turned the battery on and found that the car still had over a half tank of gas. I turned off the battery and patted the dash. “You’ll do just fine,” I said as I hopped back into the house.

It took me several trips to carry all the food to the car. After another search of the house, I found a baseball bat. By then, the sun had long since set. Without knowing the roads—and roadblocks—in this area, I did one final sweep of the house before settling in for the night in an upstairs bedroom facing the street.

Even though there was no way zeds knew where I was, I didn’t sleep well. After an especially violent nightmare of Clutch being attacked by zeds, I shot awake as dawn was just beginning to light up the street.

I went down on a knee to look out the window, and fell back on my butt. Now, at least twenty zeds milled around the street below me, sniffing the air, as though sensing prey in the area. Their sheer numbers could crush the car with me in it.

I cupped my head in my hands. How the f*ck…

After watching the herd for over an hour, I accepted the fact that they weren’t going anywhere, and I changed my bandages and ate cereal out of the box.

And waited.

Their numbers never changed throughout the day. Some came, some went. Zeds shuffled in lazy circles as though waiting for food to come to them.