DISEASE

1

Casey's frazzled nappy hair is held back tightly. The elastic has seen better days. A few thick, kinky strands stick to her face and threaten her dark brown eyes. Sweat drips from her brow as she pinches a match between her dark fingers and wipes her forehead with her arm, careful not to drip on the empty matchbox she clutches. Vaguely, her lungs call from somewhere far away, begging for oxygen.

The match flares, and the sound of the strike is lost as a loud crash shakes the wall she leans against. It rattles her teeth, and flakes of plaster float down, dusting her shoulders. Her hand trembles, a strand of firecrackers clenched in it. The fuse sparks and then catches as she brings it to the fire.

Casey tosses the explosives into the next room.

She breathes, her chest filling with the stench of decomposing flesh. Nearby lays a rotting body, a lifeless lump, head smashed into the dust-laden area rug beneath it. Grimy, broken pictures of the family that once lived here smile down from the walls. They are frozen, forever grinning approval at all that may transgress under this roof.

Casey is pushed into motion by the roar of gunpowder disintegrating cardboard shells. She grips the door jam and peers into the adjacent room. Inside, a disheveled man roots through a hoarder's paradise of broken furniture, searching for the source of the noise. This is Casey's cue to flee.

Against the wall leans a worn and splintered baseball bat. Blood slowly thickens on the wood, clotting in cracks and crevices and tufts of hair cling to it, visible by the early morning light. They're from the dead man. Casey curls her fingers around the bat and creeps toward the back of the room as quietly and quickly as she can.

Aged floorboards creak underfoot. Broken glass crackles. She timidly shifts her weight with every step, picking her way around a broken flat screen and a mouse-ridden couch. She skates a foot around a crushed frame on the floor, avoiding the crinkle of a moldering marriage certificate that has escaped.

An overturned desk lays cockeyed in the corner. When she finally reaches it, Casey thrusts her hand underneath and gropes for the small, clammy hand, which grips hers back. She yanks and Alex's blond hair catches the light as he soars to his feet. Tears cut deep rivets through the grime and dirt on his pale, nine-year-old face.

The wall shakes again, raining more plaster.

Casey remembers seeing a back door in the house. It's the only way out that doesn't cross paths with the man they just escaped. They creep through the main hallway into the kitchen. She's holding her breath again, an unconscious reflex.

The man in the other room continues to tear through piles of garbage and broken furniture. Once loved items clang and clatter, hitting walls and falling to the floor. The Tanners used to live here. It says so right out front on their still intact mailbox; bills sit inside, unpaid for over three years. Credit card applications and sales flyers now a rotting memento of times past. The man with the putrid face does not mourn them. No one does.

SQUEEEEEEEK!

Casey's stomach drops and her gaze ratchets to her foot. Next to two long-abandoned dog bowls her toe jabs through a thin excuse for a shoe and her foot presses a rubber newspaper: The Daily Growl.

"Shit."

The man in the other room peers sharply into the darkness. His eyes are swollen and bloodshot. One orb is so overinflated that it bulges from its peeling socket. Rips blanket the dulled cornea, and try as it might, the eyelid is unable to close. Black, clotted blood forms dried rings around his neck. Flake by flake, it falls to his chest, as though his jowls are the world's most profane croissant. His lips peel back in a snarl.