Nearafter (D.E.A.T.H. bk. 1)

Chapter Twenty-Two: [Sam]

Samantha knew there was something wrong with John's house the moment she stepped onto his lawn.

For one, the door was wide open. More than open, really, as it hung from only one twisted hinge. Something, or someone, had broken in.

Samantha approached the house with caution. She still had the pair of grenades that John had given her. She held onto them as if they were something precious that she was afraid to lose, but they were useless if a pack of those things decided to rush her. They were last-minute martyrdom devices that seemed to work well enough. She just hoped that it wouldn't come to that.

It was near nightfall, and what little sunlight remaining in the sky passed through the house's broken windows in orange shafts. Everything looked the same as when she and John had left to search for her mother.

Her mother.

Samantha couldn't stop thinking about her. The look on her face, the way it lit up when she'd called for her and made a run for it. In that moment everything was right, for a moment, until it all was not. And John... There was suddenly a tightness in her chest and a pain in her throat. She felt the tears coming and held them back. Crying would change nothing.

There were footprints in the living room, multiple footprints, a stampede of them. Samantha approached with caution knowing that they couldn't all be Brent's. They led down the hall to the gate at the end leading down to the basement, except the gate was no longer there. It had been torn out of the wall, pushed until it could no longer hold and now it lay bent and twisted on the floor of the bunker. There must have been a legion of them.

She crouched low at the top of the steps and called down, quietly, into the basement below.

"Brent?"

There came no reply, but she didn't honestly expect to hear one. In her gut she knew that Brent was gone. She hoped maybe that he got away, but she knew better.

Standing now she flipped on the lights and started down the stairs, making sure to step only on the second and fourth before reaching the floor. She had to step over John's bulldozer-proof gate. She turned the corner into the conjoining room and nearly slipped in a puddle of blood. Brent's blood probably. The room was a wreck. The pile of survival supplies were scattered across the floor. The tables along the wall had been tipped over and the computer monitors had been smashed in and broken. A single stripe of blood painted the floor from the back corner to the doorway where Samantha stood. Her eyes were blurry with tears. First John, and now Brent. And her mom was still out there somewhere with those things, and with that creepy goth kid. She realized then that she was alone, really, truly alone.

Still, there were things that she needed to do and she couldn't stay here long, not with night approaching. Wiping the tears from her face she picked a bloodstained army surplus duffel bag from the mess on the floor and stuffed it full of whatever else she could salvage. Weapons mostly and ammunition, water, packages of saltine crackers. Afterall, once she and her mother were safely out of town, they'd get as far away as possible, but she didn't know if this, whatever was happening to Medessi, was happening in other places, too. She'd rather be prepared for whatever else the world had in store.

The pair of grenades that John had given her both went into the bag last, along with Brent's cell, which she also found among the mess on the floor. She didn't know what exactly compelled her to keep his phone. It's not as if he'd be needing it back once she happened across him, if she ever did. She'd more than likely be running away from him or mowing him down in the road with John's truck. There was no doubt in her mind that even now he was already one of those things.