Mechanical Failure, Chap. 6c (zombie apocalypse novel in progress)

~continued~

I woke with the dawn and my eyes went to the door. I was glad to see that the dresser was still right where I’d put it. Once I moved it aside, I listened at the door for several minutes. If the noise I’d made moving furniture hadn’t drawn anything upstairs, I was probably safe. I still opened the door with a weapon ready, just in case. This time it was my knife since I wasn’t sure I had room to swing the fireplace poker. The hallway was clear, as was the rest of the house. I climbed the stairs again so I could look out a window that had a view of my temporary gate. There was nothing on the other side of the car, but I couldn’t see over the RV well enough to say if it was clear. I watched for almost ten minutes before I saw movement. So they were still out there, waiting. That was fine. I had food and shelter, and I wasn’t bothered by the prospect of being trapped inside the neighborhood for a while. If I had to leave, I could always climb over a wall.

I started going through the other houses that day, taking both the knife and the poker with me. The hardest part was moving around the neighborhood without being seen. I didn’t want the dead on the other side of the car gate to have reason to hang around, and I hoped they’d eventually forget I was there if they couldn’t see me.

There were two zombies in the first house. One was a crawler, and I was able to take it out with a single blow to the head. I winced at the sight of the brain matter and wondered if I would ever get used to the violence and gore that was part of my world now. It had been months since I’d killed my first zombie, and it still wasn’t easy. I walked through the house as quietly as possible, but the second zombie was doing the same thing. Usually they made some noise, but this one didn’t. I turned a corner and there he was, grabbing for me with a loud moan. I was too close to use the poker, so I dropped it and pulled the knife as I backed away. He was tall, and I was going to have a hard time jamming my knife into his head without some serious risk. As I took another step back, I came very close to tripping over the crawler, who was probably the tall guy’s wife. Hit with sudden inspiration, I stepped over the body and kept moving back, leading the big guy forward. He never looked down, of course. They never do. They just keep coming, focusing on the meal in front of them. As I had hoped, he tripped over his dead wife and went sprawling, giving me the opportunity to shove my knife into the base of his skull.

Once I was sure they were both truly dead, I searched the rest of the house and collected everything worth taking. The supplies would have to be transported once I figured out where I’d make my home for the rest of the winter. All of the houses in the neighborhood were nice, custom homes, but I wouldn’t pick one that had been a home to zombies for several months. The smell always seemed to linger long after the zombies were removed, and I also had no idea if I had to worry about contamination. I decided not to risk it.

I had better luck on the second and third houses. Apparently the people who had lived there had either gone to the shelters or had left town, but the houses were empty. I repeated my earlier steps and ended up with a large pile of goods near the front doors of both houses. It was the fourth house where I really ran into trouble.

The family in the fourth house was still home, though they were no longer living. I could see them through a large picture window where they were clawing at the glass, and I counted six kids ranging from maybe six to nineteen. That’s just a guess, but I know the older two boys were big. Another thing about child zombies is that they tend to be faster than adult zombies. I learned that lesson the hard way.

~*~

 ~to be continued~