“It's getting late; they shouldn't have been gone this long,” Avi grumbles as he paces back and forth in the living room of the abandoned house.
Despite the state of the overgrown, brown lawn, the inside of the house suffers only from some spiderwebs and a thick layer of dust. Under that dust is a fair amount if IKEA furniture; cheap stuff, but in good condition.
Judging by the pictures on the wall, Sara Elaine figures that this house must have belonged to a young couple. A quick look through the house for ay other survivors reinforced the idea for her since she found a dust covered nursery.
Sara Elaine wonders what happened to the people that lived here. Had they had fled to Mallville when the world ended, or left town? Perhaps they had been out of town when it happened. She had heard about that happening; wasn't that what happened to a couple of people in the group that she had escaped with?
She wonders if the couple and their baby are still alive.
“Relax, Avi,” Sara Elaine says from a spot on the brown sofa; she is trying to hide her anxiety to not feed into his, “Maybe they had to go farther to find some food. This house was obviously hit by the scavs.”
“How can you be sure?
“None of the windows or doors were broken, and the food's all gone.”
“Maybe those bikers took it,” Avi suggests, still pacing.
“They'd have trashed the place.”
“Alright, maybe the people who lived here took it with them when they left?”
Sara Elaine shakes her head, “If they had evacuated, there would have been a mess in the bedroom; clothes on the floor and stuff.”
“Maybe they were neat people; maybe they figured that things would get better, and they didn't want to come back to a mess. Maybe it was the fucking Rapture, and they were the only ones taken!”
“Well I doubt their food got Raptured with them.”
Avi stops pacing, and turns to face Sara Elaine, “Don't you mock me!”
“Then calm down!” Sara Elaine yells back, “Ken and John will be back when they get back. If the scavengers came through here then they probably had to go a few blocks to find any food.”
“We shouldn't have let them go. We should have kept going; gotten out of town.”
“It was your idea to hide here. You said you saw other people, and you freaked out.”
“We don't have any weapons, what if they were bikers, or security officers? Some of them were just shooting anything that moved!”
“I think the fire probably has them occupied still,” Sara Elaine points past Avi, and out the window at the black smoke rising into the sky in the distance.
“We need to get moving again; get out of this city.”
“I think we should have stayed with Tara and the others.”
“Are you fucking kidding? She was part of Alex Cody's group! She was, like, his second in command! She probably set off that bomb!”
“If Cody intended to blow Mallville up, why fight for it in the first place?”
“I don't know, the guy's a psycho; bald freak.”
“I still think we should have stayed with her.”
“No, she wants to try and set up here in town. With all the people who died there, this place is going to be overrun with zeds. No, we need to beat feet out of Covenant.”
Sara Elaine rises from the couch, and crosses the room to where Avi has started pacing again, and places a hand on his shoulder; he shrugs it off and continues trying to wear a rut in the carpet.
“Everything okay in here?” Brea asks, poking her head through the doorway from the front hall.
“Yeah, were fine; Avi's just trying to give himself a heart attack.”
“So no sign of John and Ken yet?”
“No, and it's getting dark. They should have been back by now,” Avi snaps.
“Did you find anything?” Sara Elaine asks.
Brea shrugs, “I found a bunch of baby clothes in the nursery, and I found this,” Brea steps into the room, revealing that she is wearing a long, leather trenchcoat. She twirls in it, first one way, then the other, “Pretty sweet, eh? I mean, it's a little big, but it's warm. There were a couple of other coats in there too, if you want to check them out, but it looks like the former owner of them was a bit shorter than you, Sara Elaine.”
“What about for Avi?”
Brea shakes her head, “There's no way any of the guy's clothes are going to fit him; the guy musta been a stick figure. Ken could might be able to squeeze into some of it. I did find other stuff though, hold on.”
Brea steps out of the room, and steps back in a moment later carrying a golf bag and a gray plastic case.
Avi stops pacing, and looks at the coffee-skinned woman with an arched eyebrow.
“I found some golf clubs, a baseball bat,” she pulls the bat out from between the golf clubs in the bag, and then drops it bag down.
Brea leans the golf bag against the wall, and holds up the gray case, “Then there's this,” she flips open the clasps on the case, opens it, and holds it in front of her to reveal a silver Beretta with a black grip and three black clips nestled into gray foam, “I guess when they scav'd this house, they were only looking for food.”
Avi's eyes widen, “Perfect!”. He starts towards Brea, but Sara Elaine steps in front of him.
“Avi, have you ever even fired a gun?” Sara Elaine asks,
“No, but how hard can it be? You just point and pull the trigger.”
“Yeah, no,” Sara Elaine says, “I think John said he used to go hunting; lets wait until they get back, and let him take a look at it.”
“They're not coming back,” Avi says suddenly, “They're dead.”
Sara Elaine stares at Avi for a moment, blinking rapidly as words pile up in her brain. She eventually managed to spit out a, “What?”
“They ran into something out there, and got killed. We need to get moving or we're going to be killed too. We need to get out of town.”
“Avi, it's almost full dark out there.”
“That's just it though, it's dark; no one will be able to see us.”
“And we won't be able to see them either. What if we walk right into a group of zeds?” Sara Elaine asks.
“We'll shoot them; it's simple.”
“If it was that simple, don't you think the army would have done it? Where are we going anyway?”
“We'll find another place; some place like Mallville. Come on, this can't be the only city where people built a stronghold; there are probably lots of people hiding out in malls and stuff all over the place. We just need to find one that's not in an area that's heavily zed infested.”
“You mean like here? We haven't seen a single zombie since we left the group.”
“They're all attracted to the mall right now, and there's probably hundreds of new ones inside; people killed in shootouts, killed by the explosion, newly infected. I'm telling you this place is going to be overrun in a matter of days!”
“I don't know, Sara Elaine, maybe Avi's right,” Brea says, still holding the gun out in front of her, “I mean, we should wait for John and Ken to get back, but then we should go. We should keep moving until we find somewhere safe.
Sara Elaine turns, the last of her fake composure falling away, “Are you both losing your minds? It is night time in the middle of winter, and he doesn't even have a jacket! We have a single gun, which none of us knows how to shoot, and what, twenty bullets? Thirty? This combined with out arsenal of sporting goods should make us capable of defeating the hordes of the undead, something the damned military couldn't do, right? Where are we going to go tonight that is any safer than this?”
“Maybe once we get out of the city we can find someplace that hasn't been cleaned out yet; someplace with food, or another group of survivors to join up with,” Avi explains.
Sara Elaine's eyes bulge, “We already had a group that we joined up with! Remember, the woman with the curly brown hair who led all of us out of the burning building? You said it wasn't safe with them.”
“Tara Laramie is dangerous.”
“Everything is dangerous. This is the end of the fucking world, in case you hadn't noticed,” Sara Elaine starts pacing now, putting her hands to her face, “Oh my God, you're an idiot. I thought you were just scared, but no, you're an idiot! I can't believe I let you convince me to come with you. I thought you had a plan.”
“I do!”
“Yeah, walk around in the dark without any winter gear, poorly armed, hoping we find some group of survivors other than the one we left today. A group that doesn't shoot us because we're not a part of them, or just because they think we're the undead because who else would be stupid enough to me wandering around in the dark?”
“Are you okay?” Brea asks, closing the gun case, and placing it on the floor.
“No, I am very much not okay. You know what, you guys go, but I'm staying here. In the morning I am going to go back to Tara's group and beg them to take me back.”
“Sara Elaine, honey, calm down.”
“No, Tara may be dangerous, but you're going to get us killed. I'm sorry, Avi, but we would be safer in a larger group. The five of us versus a world of zeds have no chance; none. We have the survival skills of suicidal lemmings. The only thing I can think of that is worse than your plan is running around naked in the park while screaming 'fresh meat here, come and get it' until something comes and kills me.”
Brea puts her hands on Sara Elaine's shoulders, and gently forces her over to the couch. The panicked woman drops down onto it, kicking up a small cloud of dust that is barely visible in the fading light.
“Sara Elaine, you need to calm down,” Brea says calmly, but forcefully, “We can't lose our heads. You're just scared.”
“Yes, yes I am. I'm cold, I'm hungry, I'm tired. I've lived through the end of the goddamned world twice this year, and there's still a few days left for it to happen again. What if Avi's right? What if John and Ken don't come back? What if it's just the three of us? We need to get out of here, but we can't go on our own. Our chances would be better with Laramie's group.”
A noise at the back of the house draws all of their attention. It sounds like someone rattling a door.
Brea smiles, “See, there you go, John and Ken are back with supplies. Once we've all eaten something, we can discuss all of this rationally.”
The sound of the back door crashing open is followed by the sound of breaking glass.
Even in the low light, Sara Elaine can see fear sprout on Brea's face. Something in her own mind clicks, and and a sense of cold purpose blooms inside her. All of her fear, panic, and emotion evaporates. She can't see Avi's though, because he has stooped down and is opening the gun case. She hears him slip one of the clips into the gun, and pull back the slide.
“John? Ken?” Brea asks the darkness before Sara Elaine can clap a hand over her mouth.
Footsteps in the hallway, coming towards them, towards the sound of Brea's voice; uneven, shuffling footsteps. If it's John or Ken, it's not the version of them that left shortly after they took shelter in the abandoned house.
The shape of a man fills the doorway, and the stench of filth and death fill the room. Avi grits his teeth, steps forward, holding the handgun in front of him, and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens.
She'll decide later that it was too dark to really see it, but Sara Elaine sees to look of panic on Avi's face and he pulls the trigger again, and nothing happens except that he allows himself to get within arm's length of the zed.
“The safety!” Sara Elaine says commandingly, all the panic gone from her voice, “The safety is on!”
“How do I-” Avi starts, but finishes the sentence with screaming as falls onto him, its teeth digging into his cheek as they fall to the floor. Sara Elaine sees the shadow of the gun fall from Avi's hands as his arms flail.
Pushing off of Brea, Sara Elaine quickly crosses past Avi and his attacker. She grabs the gun from the floor, flicks the safety with her thumb like she has see in the movies, puts the barrel against the zombie's head, and pulls the trigger. There is a firecracker like pop, and the zombie slumps over, falling off of Avi and onto the carpet.
Avi's screams turn to sobs, “It bit me! I'm bleeding! Oh God, oh God!”
Sara Elaine looks down at the shadow of her wounded friend as he lies on the floor, making no effort to get up.
“We should have stayed with the group,” Sara Elaine says calmly, coldly, as she aims the gun, “I'm sorry, Avi, but I've seen people turn before, and I can't watch it happen to you.”
“What?” Avi asks, “What do you mean? You don't-”
Another firecracker pop, and the room is silent except for the sounds of the two women breathing.
Sara Elaine turns to the silhouette of Brea, who is standing by the couch with her hands over her mouth, “Grab a weapon. I'm going to go find a jacket, and then we are going back to the group.”
“But-”
“But nothing. I am not losing all of my friends today. Hurry up; we need to go.”