We walk together in an odd-shaped cone, silent. Occasionally, Justin will clear his throat and toss a cigarette to the ground. He lights another within seconds, and the cherry-red speck becomes a beacon in the darkness. He stomps out a match, filling the air with that charred sulfur smell.
I'm reminded of Dad so strongly that a smile spreads across my face. For a minute, we are back out on the porch, and he lights them up, almost an entire pack in a sitting. He could blow smoke rings better than anyone I ever met. I remember chasing them across the dead, crunchy grass.
Was Dad feeding my mom the virus? Is he capable of something so malicious? I've never seen him intentionally hurt anyone. That's what makes Mandy's story so far-fetched; in my eyes, Dad couldn't hurt a fly.
Stephen taps me gently on the shoulder after about thirty minutes of walking. He trains his flashlight beam down a hill to our right. Roofs of houses line the dark street in a neat row—a subdivision. A quick glance at the street sign tells me that this place is called Standifer Circle.
"Is this it?" I whisper up at Stephen. It doesn't look ominous or zombie-ridden. I walk in ahead as he nods.
Stephen grabs the gun on my back, and the strap pulls me back. "Stay with the group," he growls. "It doesn't look like much. But if you get attacked, you'll appreciate the four of us being here."
We descend the hill, and the houses cast even more moonlit shadows against the broken asphalt. The houses themselves seem alive almost. One can hear noises coming from inside—banging on walls and rattling around. It doesn't help that the world out here has gone dead silent. Nothing but the wind to brush past our ears.
None of the houses have windows. Few have doors; some have holes in the roof. As we walk down the road, I notice that some of the houses have a message on the side in red spray paint: "Infected Nest- Do Not Enter." A shiver jolts down my spine. I've never seen a late stage Infected, spare my own mother and in pictures. I'm not sure that I really want to.
Stephen stops walking and pulls out a folded piece of paper. He flattens it out and shows it to me.
"House numbers," he says, reading my mind. "We have the houses marked if there's a nest, and the blank ones are deemed safe. This map helps us keep track of which houses we've already scavenged."
The map has about twenty squares drawn on it; each one has its own number. A third of the locations are marked with a black x. Another third are circled. The remaining, I assume, haven't been checked.
"What will you do when you're finished with this neighborhood?" I ask, straightening out.
"Find another one." He shrugs. "Lots of houses in good 'ole Dunlap. Lots of people for the Infected to ruin."
He walks ahead, leaving me to let that sink in. Clare nudges me forward with a rough hand. I mumble an apology and jog to catch up with Stephen.
Most of the house numbers are hard to see from the street. After some grumbling about squinting, Stephen explains why we can't just shine his flashlight up that way ("Do you want to wake up the zombies?"). We don't stop for another seven houses.
"We ain't been in this one." Stephen puts his map away and motions to the numbers nailed to the houses once-white plastic siding. 214. "You're up, kid."
I gape over at him. "Wait, what?" There's a note of fear in my voice that even I didn't expect. "You're sending me alone? There's no telling what I might find!"
"Exactly." He runs a hand over his hair, which is short and choppy. "Don't be insulted, but it's safer if we send you in first. If you run into an infected, it might bite you, but you'll be fine. A bite for one of us could be fatal. You volunteered for this. Don't wimp out now."
I look back at the house and grimace. My stomach is tied up in a million knots, all of them twisting in different directions. For the hundredth time tonight, I regret every decision I made that led to this.
A hand falls on my shoulder, and I follow it back to Isaac.
"We're right behind you," he says, gently. "It'll be fine." His voice alone calms a few of the nerves. I swallow the rest and nod.
"Thanks." I turn towards the house, take a deep breath, and walk ahead. I swing my gun around and hold it tight against my chest.
Every step towards the house echoes on the sidewalk. I chew on my thumbnail anxiously. The house itself is quiet, but the door hangs open, broken halfway off its hinges. I step onto the porch carefully, testing each foot carefully to make sure it won't fall in on me.
As I push through the front door, the darkness continues. Moonlight falls through the windows of the porch, but this light doesn't spread like the dark does. Curtains blow in the night air. My body shakes. Goosebumps trail down my back and arms. There's still no noise, though.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," I whisper with a low laugh. Moving on just the pads of my feet, I search every corner of the living room and then move on to the kitchen, two bedrooms, and the bathroom. I even push back the tattered shower curtain. Roaches scatter, and I squeal.
Still shaking off disgust, I poke my head back out the front door and wave to the others. Stephen motions the team in.
"All clear?" He props both hands on the door frame. I nod, step out of the way, and watch everyone walk in casually.
Stephen and I stand guard at the door while Justin and Clare rake boxes of food into the duffle bags they brought. Sometimes, Justin will motion to get Clare's attention, waving his hands for a minute before tossing whatever he had over his shoulder. They'll share a laugh before going back to work. I get lost watching them communicate. His words are a mixture of hands and figures, occasionally his entire body. She replies in the same way. I'm stunned; I've never seen anything like it.
"Something else, ain't it?" I startle at the sound of Stephen's voice beside me.
"What?" I ask, shaking my head.
"The way they talk." He motions to Clare and Justin. "It's sign language. Clare's deaf."
That explains so much. I open my mouth to ask if he knows any, but something hits the floor. I assume it's Justin throwing more food. Seeing Stephen's hand up to quiet the team, though, is worrying. Isaac pulls out his earplugs and unfolds his arms.
Another thump echoes through the room, and Isaac's gaze shifts to another door across the room. None of us moved that time, so it must be something else in the house.
"Did you check everywhere?" Stephen asks me.
Another scrape, something that sounds like a groan. I chew on the inside of my check.
"I think so," I whisper. I'm really not sure, though. I don't remember.
"You gotta be positive, Jay."
"Well, I'm not a hundred percent."
Stephen groans and signs something to Justin and Clare. That answers my question about whether or not he knows sign language too. They go back to digging through the cabinets, this time with a renewed speed.
"You're going downstairs to check it out," Stephen says to me, "because we need to know what to label this as. If there's an Infected here, and I label it as clear, it could cause problems in the future. Take care of it."
He opens the door and shoves me towards it. A set of steep stairs grin up at me in the narrow darkness. Now I'm positive that I didn't check this place thoroughly. I never would have gone down there alone. Not even moonlight shatters this thick dark.
On my right is a wall; on my left is an empty expanse. Eyes still adjusting, I slowly walk down the steps. The temperature drops several degrees, and I watch my breath curl away from me. The cold seeps through my jacket until I'm shivering for real. Even the handrail is icy.
The thumping has stopped, but it's morphed into a scratching. I've heard that sound a million times in the compound— a rat. Could I be so lucky? Probably not.
At the bottom of the stairs, a door sits cracked open. Past the slit, something breathes heavily, wheezing and groaning.
Not a rat. Definitely not a rat.
"Infected!" I yell back up the stairs. "Get out!"
I launch myself back up the stairs, but my foot catches on the bottom one. By the time I've got my footing back, the door behind me flies open. The body of an Infected fills the frame. He's gaunt in the face, yellowed skin littered with holes that show browning bones. What I can see over my shoulder isn't much, but it's enough to send terror coursing through me.
Another twist of the virus was that it didn't create the zombies that everyone thought it would. We had all seen movies where undead men and women dragged themselves across the ground in a half-limp, slow enough that someone could easily outrun them.
Our Infected aren't like that.
Before I can even decide which leg to move first, the man grabs my ankle and jerks me back towards the room. My forehead slams into the wooden steps, and for a second, stars dance in my vision. The man pulls me down the steps in jerks, much slower now.
"Isaac... Help..." I reach back up towards what I think is the door above me, but my voice is nothing more than a whisper. My head spins in pain. "Stephen..."
Ollie's words flash through my head like a marquee.
Her immunity is a powerful strength, because she doesn't have to fear the Infected.
I feel like I might be sick. My heart pounds in my ears; my hands are drenched in sweat. I couldn't hold a gun properly in this state if I wanted to.
I have nothing to fear. I have nothing to fear. I have nothing to fear.
Repeating it doesn't give me any extra strength, though. I barely see the door above me open as I'm pulled the rest of the way into the room.
A breathtaking stench fills mouth and lungs. It's enough to inspire me to start fighting back. I kick against his grip and grapple for something to hold on to. The man lets me go, and I roll over onto my back, arming myself in the process.
The Infected towers over me. His eyes are completely red from the veins covering them. His skin seems to be both yellow and gray at the same time, and monstrous, purple veins protrude from its surface. His hair grows in patches on his head, but it's matted and greasy. His chest rises and falls as he stares down at me. Drool rolls from between his jagged, gapped grin.
I could shoot him right now, before he had a chance to kill me and go upstairs. It would be easy; he's only two feet away from me.
But I can't get the thought out of my head that this Infected was once a man. He might have been someone's father, brother, husband, son. He's another victim of the virus, an unfortunate citizen who didn't evacuate soon enough.
And maybe ... maybe all of his problems came from my father.
My vision blurs, and I blink away a tear.
"Jay! Shoot him!"
Isaac's voice comes from the door behind me.
"Come on! Please!" He's all but screaming at me, panic laced in his voice. There's also desperation, though. I've never heard that much from someone before—even when I was literally climbing down walls to rescue Infected.
The gun in my hand is still raised, but I can't fire it. It's too heavy. I shake my head and start to cry harder. The weapon trembles in my hand.
The man in front of my leans down and drags a clawed hand down my leg. His nails split my jeans and tear through the exposed skin. I howl in pain and scamper backwards away from him. He follows after on all fours, screaming to mimic me. All I can do is watch as I hit the wall behind me and press up against it.
Suddenly, a gunshot clears the air. It's a clean shot—straight through the Infected's head. He slumps down over my legs, twitching but dead. I quickly kick him off. The smell of a freshly fired gun drifts down over me. Isaac pants overhead.
Breathless, I look up at him. He stands frozen on the spot, gun still poised on his shoulder. His chest rises and falls with the speed of someone having an asthma attack. After a minute, he lets the gun fall, and the clatter fills the empty room. Isaac drops down to his knees beside me, trembling worse than I am. He shakes so hard I'm afraid he might hurt himself.
"Isaac," I whisper, throwing my arms around him and pulling him towards me. I press him up against me, hoping the pressure calms him down. It doesn't stop the shaking, though, and now we're trembling together. "It's okay. You did it. You saved me."
I'm about to lift him up and away from the body when I see something rise out of the shadows behind him. Yellow eyes shoot open. A female Infected lurches towards us.
My bleeding leg. I woke her up.
Still squeezing Isaac, I whisper into his ear, "Where is everyone else?"
"Outside. I sent them outside."
I grind my teeth. There's no one left to save us. I can't ask Isaac to do that again for me.
By now, the female breathes down Isaac's neck. He knows she's there; he's holding his own breath. My guns behind me, but Isaac's is somewhere out of reach.
The Infected grabs Isaac's collar and jerks him away from me. A strangled yelp slips out of his mouth as he's pulled across the floor.
Her immunity is a powerful strength.
Grabbing my gun, I lunge at the Infected. My tackle lands around her middle, and we are both thrown across the floor. She loses her grip on Isaac and instead grabs for my throat. As I fumble to find a way to push her off, her mouth finds my throat, and I hiss in pain as sharp teeth dig in. Her nails dig into the skin of my arms.
Any normal person would be infected by now from the bite to the throat. The virus entered my bloodstream seconds ago, and I already feel it. I'm dizzy and sweating, but that could be from anything happening. We thrash around for a second before I find myself on top of her, knees over her arms. I muster every bit of strength I have and push her flat against the concrete floor.
Isaac starts yelling in panic behind me, but that isn't all I hear. His words are lost in the muddled mess of my brain. The haunted little girl's screams echo between my ears; Duncan's whimpering cry seeps into my skin. The sounds of the compound rush back to me as well, the clicking of machinery, popping of guns, dragging of the doors. It's a menagerie of everything I'm afraid of.
But there's also the bleating of sheep. Howard's nasal laugh resurfaces from a dark corner in my memory, followed by the sound of soda cans opening. I hear Isaac's cry of joy as we soar away from Compound 4 and my father telling me he loves me. Dad's constellations dance in my vision, smoke like spiderwebs spreading between them.
My immunity is a powerful strength.
"Not today," I say, pressing the gun against her temple. I squeeze my eyes shut as I pull the trigger.
Her body goes limp under me, and I scramble away from her. I can't open my eyes until I turn myself completely around. When I do, though, I jump at the sight of Isaac standing right in front of me. Dirt mixes with streaks of tears on his cheeks. He isn't shaking, but his earbuds are back in now, bright orange in the darkness.
When he reaches for me, I fall into him, sobbing and shaking. Reality quickly sinks in. I killed someone. Or rather something. My hand took another being's life.
Did it really, though? The Infected was already dead. ...right?
Isaac holds my head against his chest with one hand and strokes my back with the other. "It's okay," he whispers. "It's over. We did it." He pulls away for a second and cups my face in his hands. He forces me to look up at him, snotty and crying. "You're safe now."
A sob of relief and hysteria bursts out of my mouth, and I collapse into Isaac again. My body doesn't seem to know how to function when I'm this tore up. Eventually, Isaac wraps an arm under my armpits and swings me up into a bridal-style carry.
Lips still whispering calming words into my ear, he carries me up and out of the house. I bury my face in his shirt and breathe in the comforting familiarity of compound-issued soap and crayon wax.
I've never felt safer and more at home than I do in his arms.