Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile (17 page)

I poked my head farther into the window to make sure it was clear all around. I was satisfied, so I crawled in. The first thing on my mind was the door and whether it was locked. I slowly walked over to the door, feeling the wood floor creak under my weight. After every sound I made, I stopped in my tracks and listened for any reaction in the hall or downstairs. I heard none. I reached up and checked the lock on the bedroom door—it was already locked from the inside. I then quietly checked the closet and under the bed and everywhere else bogeymen dwell. There was a burned candle and half a box of matches on the dresser.

I debated whether I should light the candle to conserve my flashlight batteries. After some thought, I closed the curtain on the bedroom windows and quietly hung extra blankets from the closet over them. I lit the candle and warmed my hands over its flame. My eyes eventually adjusted to the candlelight and I began to drift off into something . . . not sleep, but something.

I wasn’t sure how long I had nodded off, but the sound of thunder startled me awake. I looked down at the candle and noticed that it had not burned down that much. I walked over to the window and pulled the blanket aside, looking out into the field. The lightning struck, revealing a human silhouette off in the distance. I had no idea of the creature’s status or intent. I kept gazing out into the void—waiting for the lightning strikes to reveal the night. Eventually the shape went away, and I wondered if I had ever seen it in the first place.

It is still raining now and I’ve decided to use the bed. No noise
has come from the other side of the door but I’ll be sleeping with my weapon again tonight and probably every night for the rest of my life.

06 Oct

I awoke this morning to nothing but the sound of the wind outside. I needed to eat. I have three MREs left from the crash. I’ve only eaten bits and pieces of them since then. I think today is a good day to force more food into my system. My head feels a little better. The stitches itch but I’m trying not to touch. As I look out the window into the distance I can see no sign of the undead. It’s dreary outside and it looks like it might storm again.

I started to stretch my body out and get ready for the day when I remembered the most important thing in my life right now—the downstairs portion of this house. I let my mind slip for a second, for the first time in a long time. I forgot where I was. It seemed like I had been in this room for days, but it had only been one night. My mind relayed to my subconscious that the home was safe, that it was mine. Of course this was not the situation. There could very well be a dozen of them down there, standing in a dormant trance, unaware of my presence. They seem to go into some sort of strange hibernation when there is no food or stimulus near. I could imagine a whole family of them standing downstairs in a daze, waiting for the first sign of life to wake them into hunter-killer mode.

I tried not to ponder exploring the house until I had eaten some sponge cake from my pack. After eating, I gulped down some water and started thinking of excuses not to go downstairs and look around. I knew that I had to, because there were things in this house that could keep me alive. It wasn’t until the sun had crept through the clouds and was high in the sky that I decided to move on to the bottom floor.

I checked my weapon over and rigged my LED light to the suppressor of the MP5 using the duct tape I had in my pack. I pulled the slide of my Glock back a quarter-inch to make sure I could see brass in the hole. No part of my body was exposed as I reached out
with my left hand to unlock the door. It was stuck, probably from being in one position for months. I had to force it open, making a loud clicking sound. I placed my hand on the door, securing it as I listened. If the noise brought them, I would lock it and head for the hills.

I waited for at least five minutes, thinking I heard everything from the undead to a lawn mower to a foghorn. I released my hand from the door and reached down to turn the knob, presumably the first time it had been turned in ages. Twisting the knob, I readied my right hand to kill whatever stood in my way. The taped suppressor of my weapon was the first part of me to make it through the door. The blue tint of LED light lit up the upstairs common area as I panned my weapon around.

I kept wondering whether I had actually checked my magazine or if I had just imagined it. Pushing that thought out of my head, I advanced. I looked back at the bedroom door I had just walked through. There were old bloodstains on the door, as if something had beaten on it until it lost interest. These things know.

Swinging back around, I noticed something odd. There were white spots on the wall where pictures would have been. It’s as if the owners of the house made sure to take the pictures with them. I can think of a few hundred more important things than pictures to take. There were dead flies all over the floor, as common as dust. The upstairs floor was covered in layers of both, with no footprints to indicate recent activity. If there was something dead or alive in this house, it had never bothered to wander around up here. This was when I found out why. As I crept to the stairs, almost stepping down, I stopped and looked down at my feet. There were only two steps before they disappeared. Someone had taken them out. Below were the bodies of six undead, all shot through the head. It was starting to make sense. Whoever owned this place had probably taken out the stairs and bugged out to the second floor. They had most likely shot the ghouls and retreated out the bedroom window. That’s the best I could figure. That still didn’t explain the bloodstains on the door I had come from or how the things got into the house, but I hadn’t checked the whole upstairs yet.

I steered clear of the area of the floor near the damaged staircase and slowly made my way to the two closed doors at the other
end of the hall. The floor creaked as I walked, but I ignored the sound. I didn’t sense anything was here. The first door I came to was an upstairs bathroom. If the power had been on, it would have looked like any bathroom did before the dead came back. Everything was neatly in place, with dust-covered towels draped over the shower rod and a new bar of soap sitting in the soap holder near the sink. I swiped it up and zipped it in my leg pocket. I went over to the toilet and looked around. Nothing out of the ordinary but a weird little plaster mold in the shape of a toilet seat sitting on top of the toilet tank that read: “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie!”

For some reason I thought that was funny and chuckled there for a couple of minutes. Before walking out of the bathroom, I checked under the sink and found a plastic container full of various medications. I took a tube full of expired triple antibiotic and a roll of toilet paper and moved on to door number two.

I readied my weapon as I opened the door. It was pitch black inside, with heavy curtains over the windows. I panned my light around the room, revealing its disheveled condition. The bed’s mattress was flipped over and dirty clothes and trash littered the floor. Small rat droppings were spread all over the room, adding to the room’s “old book” smell. I was letting my imagination go wild before I went into these rooms, half expecting to see something horrible and demented. I was certainly happy not to find an old lady swinging by her neck from a light fixture in a failed attempt to kill herself properly . . . swinging by her purple neck, screeching out in a witch’s voice, “Be a sweetie and wipe the seatie!” Not today, thank goodness.

The downstairs remained unexplored, but I didn’t like the idea of climbing down there only to get my ass bitten off by a crafty ghoul. I doubt any of them are crafty, but I’ve seen them do increasingly weird things since they started reanimating. I suppose that alone is weird.

After careful consideration, I decided to take the small hand mirror from the upstairs bathroom and use the rigging tape to attach it to a broom handle from the upstairs closet so that I could get a better view of the downstairs without having to risk my own ass. I was at the top of the destroyed stairs on my stomach for
twenty minutes looking around with the broom mirror before I decided it might be safe enough to go down. The only thing that was out of the ordinary were the dead bodies on the floor below and an open door that looked like it could lead down into some sort of basement.

I was so paranoid of falling down into the bodies below that I tied my leg to the sturdy upstairs railing. I’d have hated to find myself facedown on a pile of corpses with more pouring out of the open door and no quick way back upstairs. Using the same dirty sheets I used to tie my leg, I made a makeshift rope ladder for my descent. Feeling more frightened than on my first day of school, I quickly climbed down and immediately sped over to close the open door.

Approaching the door, I noticed that there were definitely stairs leading down into the dark abyss. I didn’t care if those stairs led to a cache of M-16s and a year’s worth of food, I wasn’t going down there, not after what I’ve been through. I shut the door and scooted a large couch in front of it as quietly as I could. After I was certain that the basement door was secure, I began methodically clearing the bottom floor of any perceived threats. Closet by closet, nook by cranny, I made sure that none of those things were down there with me. I checked everywhere, making sure that not even a severed upper torso could be hiding in wait for me under a table, or in a downstairs shower.

Satisfied that the house was clear enough, I began searching for items that I needed. I went through the drawers in the kitchen, finding waterproof matches and three packs of AA batteries. My NVGs were again serviceable. Further investigation revealed an old box with two large rattraps inside. I took these traps, as I felt they were easily large enough to take a small rabbit or a squirrel when my ready reserve food ran out. In reality, I should have been hunting to preserve my nonperishables, and I may begin to do so as soon as I feel a little stronger.

In a downstairs closet, I found a black and gray hiking pack with “Arc’teryx Bora 95” embroidered on it in gold letters. The pack was clearly of higher quality and more comfortable than the one I was using and looked like it could hold twice as much. I walked over to the bashed staircase, careful not to touch the bodies
on the floor. After reaching up to shove the pack onto the second floor, I continued my investigation.

I walked around the lower level of the house, checking out the boarded-over windows and reinforced door. Propped up next to one of the windows to the left of the door was a long mop handle with an ice pick bound to the end. The pick was attached with skill, the twine holding it in place showing intricate knots that formed a pattern, holding the pick very securely to the end. Brown, dried blood covered the metallic end of this homemade spear. It wouldn’t be good for hunting an animal, but if you hit one of those things in the eye, or the tender part of the rotting skull, you could bring it down without a shot, saving valuable resources. I took the makeshift weapon and placed it on the kitchen counter. When I went back into the main area where I had made my descent, I heard a creaking sound. I sat still and it happened again. My main fear was that it was coming from the basement area. I walked over to the boarded-up door to take a look outside so that I could make sure I had a clear escape out the front door.

As I brought my eye level to the peephole the outline of a dead man projected into my pupil. I was terrified for a moment, just gazing at it, unable to look away. Its skeletal face was no more than a foot from me on the other side of the door. I wanted badly to shoot the thing through the peephole, but I would probably have missed and complicated things with the noise it would make splintering the wood. I couldn’t take my eye off this train wreck. The face was rotted, the milky eyes bugged out and the lips were gone. The thing seemed to stare at me through the door. It didn’t move a millimeter the whole time I watched. The creature must have been over six feet tall. Standing on my tiptoes, I tried to look down at an object in the creature’s rotten grip. I couldn’t quite make out what it was. I waited at the door, only pausing my peek to blink so that my eyes wouldn’t dry up. It didn’t budge.

My choices were limited . . .

I could either sneak back upstairs (by climbing the sheet) and call it a day or dispatch the creature once and for all at that moment. I chose to quietly look around the house for more supplies that could be of use before going back upstairs. Moving like a cat, I went back into the kitchen to check the cupboard. I caused a slight creak
in the floor as I crossed the kitchen’s threshold. I paused for a few minutes, listening—creak . . . creak . . . was the sound from just outside the front door. I dismissed the threat, half imagining the creature cocking its head from side to side, trying to decide if it had made the noise or if it was made by some tasty morsel on the inside . . .

Checking the shelves in the cupboard, I found six cans of chili no meat, two cans of vegetable beef stew and various other foods in advanced stages of decomposition. I shoved the cans into my pack and looked under the sink for anything of use. Under the sink sat an old rattrap identical to the two that I had taken earlier. Only the skeletal remains and shriveled tail of the long-ago-tricked rat were present. Satisfied with my find, I grabbed the mop handle with the ice pick and crept back to the improvised rope ladder, fighting back the unnatural urge to peek through the peephole again.

Using the mop handle, I carefully raised my pack to the second floor so that it would be easier for me to climb up. The pack was overfilled and too heavy so I wobbled a bit trying to keep it balanced. A can of chili fell out and hit the floor, making a sound so loud that it might as well have been artillery fire. I cringed as I shoved the pack up onto the second floor next to the larger empty pack. As I bent down to pick up the can of food, a loud banging sound erupted from the front door. The thing must have been hitting the door with something, as it sounded harder and louder than a bare hand. I shoved the can into one of the pockets in my vest and nearly jumped to the second floor.