After The Fall: Forth Entry

2 full MRE

29 various can foods

5 pound bag of potatoes

4 things of garlic

23 full bottles of water

½ bottles of water

1 map

1 Pencil

1 M1911

2 Magazines

2 .45 caliber bullets

1 20 gauge pump shotgun (In serious need of deep cleaning)

4 20 gauge Shells

1 gun safe that I have to get opened

1 diesel powered generator

4 rolls of duct tape

Various packs of seeds

Various articles of male and female clothing

I found the owner’s of this house. At least, they may have been. After this long, it’s hard to tell. I decided that I would check the basement to make sure if there was anything useful. I found more than I’d have liked.

I treated the basement the same why I always do when going into a new area. I used the back of the hatchet to knock on the door upstairs, trying to draw the attention of any zombies that might be in there. Sounds like a bad idea, but it works. If a zombie hears it they get drawn to the sound. Meaning that, usually, they start making sound and bumping into shit. After not hearing anything I cracked the door and inwardly groaned. At the bottom of the stairs is another damn door.

So, I repeated the process. This time after listening for sounds coming from inside, I heard nothing. I pushed open the door and the first thing I noticed was how sickly sweet the stale air smelled. Then I saw the first body.

I am making an assumption on the body being male entirely on what was left. Most of the head was missing, a long with chunks of the body that had been…. Removed. He was laying beside a desk across the room from the door, shotgun still close to him. I barely had time to process what I was seeing when I saw the second body. This one a women. This one still moving. She was on me faster than I could react. Barely in the door she slammed into me, knocking us both back through the door. Stairs are a pain in this ass if you and being shoved backwards. Especially when you slam your ass bone into the edge of a step.

Of course I lost my hatchet when this happened. I managed to go between two steps and fall behind the stairs. So there I was. On my back on the stairs struggling with this decomposing corpse that’s snapping it’s teeth at my face. The only thing I could think to do. I forced her up enough to get my left arm across her throat to hold her back. Pulled my handgun and used one of my few precious bullets to tell her she needed to quit it.

After that, I was able to start piecing together what had happened in this basement. I’m not an investigator or anything, but it seemed pretty cut at dry. Looking at the women’s body she had been bitten on the shoulder. They escaped to the basement where the man shot her in the chest with the shotgun, guessing he didn’t know about the head thing or just panicked. He then turned the gun on himself and painted the wall. The women turned, took a few bites while he was warm. Then made her way over to a corner and likely hasn’t moved since.

Now, you may be wondering why she didn’t move towards the door or start making sound when I knocked. I may have mentioned before that zombies have the same strength they had before they turned. Well, turning doesn’t magically fix something that was wrong before. In this case, based on the hearing aid I found on the floor. She was either hard of hearing or deaf before she turned. It would be about my luck that the one zombie in this place would be immune to the way I move through building. If I survive this, I am going to have to change that.

Oh, and my hatchet is still inside the staircase. The walls were built up around the stair case but it was left hollow inside. I’m not even going to consider why the hell they would do that. Oh, I did grab the shotgun the man had used. Problem is, after he shot himself he managed to get blood and brain matter down the barrel. Where is still remains. This is going to have to be stripped down and cleaned, if it isn’t destroyed.

There is a pretty good size gun safe in the basement though. If I can find the combination, or get it open any other way, it might just get me out of this mess.

The scene in the basement almost directly imitates how we found our first shelter after leaving the dorms. It was just about as much of a mess as what was down there.

We had decided that if there were too many dead, and possibly living assholes, in the city then we would head out to a more rural area. We ended up getting pretty far out. Out where they stopped putting houses side by side for the most part. Small developments here and there but most of the houses were spread out. A lot of them were pretty close to the road too. We spent time going to certain houses that we saw along the way.

I’m not going to go into details about every house we searched that first couple of days. I will say that we found a good deal of useful stuff, most of which we left behind. We took food and drinks that we could fit. Spare clothing that seemed close to our size. Useful weapons, when we found them. Though, honestly we found very few guns. Two in total those first couple days. One was a hunting rifle the other a revolver. It’s too bad that this was more upscale rural and not redneck rural. Might have found more weapons.

Though, we also would have likely found more people also. Speaking of people, I should tell you more about the people that were with me during those days. This way you get a better understanding of who I am talking about.

First, DeShaun Marcus. DeShaun is a bit of a bigger guy. Not big as in fat, but big as in muscled. He was built like he should have been playing professional football. Come to find out he was at the college on a sports scholarship. For baseball. He was using his skill as a pitcher to earn himself a business degree. As the karmic balance would have it we found what he called “A Solid Lumber”. I wasn’t, and still not, caught up on baseball terms but they way he was looking at that bat made me think it was a good thing. Also found a few baseballs that he said was in good shape. I have to assume he was good at the game because he had a full scholarship. Also, I watched him take out a zombie with a fast ball from about 50 feet. It was insane.

Next, Carmelita Terronez. Carmelita, or Lita as she had us call her, was at the college majoring in Criminal Justice. Apparently she wanted to be a profiler for the FBI and a degree in criminal justice and psychology is what she needed. From what she has said about her past, which was very little during those days, her grandparents had come from Mexico with very little and worked hard. Her mother had worked even harder. All for her to have a chance to go to college. She is a tough woman too. Never afraid to get her hands dirty when shit hits the fan.

Last, but certainly not least, Samuel Hayward. Poor Sam wasn’t even a student at the college. He was there that day to visit his sister. He was working on her car while she was in class. Get this. Three of the four of us were students at the college and the one that wasn’t is the one that has the useful skill for the zombie apocalypse. Maybe I should have just picked a trade instead of college. It is what it is. He was giving her car an oil change when he saw the first of the chaos. He never did finish that oil change. He also never found his sister. Not in those days we were staying at the dorms. The story of when we did find her is going to have to wait.

For now, our first shelter.

We spent several days searching different houses out in the rural areas and every place we went to was empty, which was great. Looked like most of the people that lived out there either worked in the city or was just away from home when everything happened. Problem was they were either too close to the roads or had no water source. After three days we finally found the perfect place. A good distance from the road but not so far back as we wouldn’t know someone was coming up the driveway. The drive way also ended in a circle which is just convenient for unloaded a truck. There was also a creek that run behind the house. Also, instead of clearing all the land of trees, just the ones where the house was built and within about 100 feet of it had been cleared. Meaning it was pretty hard to see from the road.

From the outside it looked great. Inside, was a bit of a different story. Even from the driveway we could see movement inside. Several bodies moving past windows. We were about to give up the house, thinking people were in there, when one of the people past an open window. Then came tumbling out of the second floor. Sam and DeShaun were the first to react. They assumed, like Lita and I did, that the people were alive in this house. As they slid to a stop and turned to run back to the truck we learned different. The person that fell out had landed pretty roughly and with his leg at an awkward angle was dragging himself towards us. Snapping his teeth and growling.

As they ran back to the truck I stepped out with the hunting rifle intending to just pop his head like a melon, but Sam was a bit smarter about it than me. He made a good point that it would draw the attention of the others in the house, which ran the risk of damaging the windows. So DeShaun, using his new bat like a golf club, busted that melon wide open.

Then we began our task.

Sam, ever with a joke in his pocket, decided that to relieve the tension of the moment by knocking on the front door and yelling “Pizza Man”. It worked, we laughed. For a second. Then something started pounding on the door on the other side. Then something else. So yeah, Sam is the one that accidental taught us the knock on the door trick. DeShaun came up with the plan that Lita would open the door and get behind it, luckily for us it opened outward. Then as the zombies came out I would use the bat on one, he would use a baseball on the other. Sam would be off to the side incase a third one came out.

Lita protested this plan because he had put the woman hiding, but then he pointed out that she was the only one small enough to fit behind the door. It was essential that someone hold the door wide so they both get out without bouncing off the door. She conceded the point. I had an issue with this plan. The man that had thus far wielded the bat, had just handed it to me. Now, he was standing about 50 feet from the door tossing a baseball between his hands. What I saw next was just magical. Zombie kill of the week, easily.

Lita pulled the door open wide and got behind it. Two zombies, a woman and a child, came rushing out. As if it was bad B grade action movie everything slowed down to a crawl. I watched as DeShaun done the pitcher thing where they lift there leg and throw it down, turning so that they get more momentum from the pitch. A wind up he called it. That ball left his hand and as if it was on a lead, went straight towards it’s target. That baseball slammed into that woman’s head as if fired from a cannon. That woman dropped before she even made it through the door.

Leaving the child for me to deal with. This child, still in a pink dress, came straight at me. Almost like she knew it was my job to kill her. Small teeth snapping at me. I let her get too close and had to use the bat to push her back with the bat. First swing? Missed. Had to push her back again. Second swing? Lost most of it’s power when it hit her shoulder and knocked her down. For a single moment she wasn’t looking at me with those dead eyes. That was the moment I needed. The bat swung almost as if on it’s own. There was a sound like a watermelon being cracked open. I emptied the contents of my stomach right there.

There wasn’t another zombie so Sam and DeShaun began moving the three bodies into a pile to deal with later. Lita was saying something to me that I just wasn’t hearing. I just kept staring at my first intentional zombie kill. A fucking child.

After a few minutes we decided to get the rest over with. We moved through the house with the efficiency of someone that got their training from a video game. There were two other zombies in the house. Both adults. Both times the knocking worked. We knocked on every door in that house.

Now, here is where the similarities with the basement came into play. We found rat poison on the kitchen counter next to some drink powder, Kool-Aid I think. They poisoned themselves instead of living in this world. I can’t fault them on that. I’ve thought about it too.

Well, we got the other two bodies outside in the pile. Unloaded the truck of everything we had in the back. I swear I heard that truck groan with relief after it was unloaded. By dark, we were the new owners of a two story house. 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms. Nice large kitchen. Dinning room and living room with a fireplace. Fully finished basement looked like an entertainment area. It was a beautiful home.

Now we just had to hold on to it. That became harder than we thought after a while. Though, that is a story for another time. I’m going to go search the basement for anything that might get me in that gun safe, and get my damn hatchet back.

Connor