Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
Making our way down the road, we stare at the windows of the small farmhouses that we pass, but there’s nothing here that sticks out. If it didn’t hurt so much to walk, I would get out and search every one of them myself, but Greg doesn’t have the patience to stop and Lexi is expecting a billboard pointing directly to Jason. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I know that she’s wrong.
Light is dying and what we had to work with is now passing us by. The storm is practically on top of us when I look out on a farmhouse that has been completely burned down or at least collapsed in on itself. It’s hard to tell at this point in the dying light, but I know for certain that we won’t find any answers there. Greg isn’t saying a word and Lexi is smoldering with anger. I’m afraid that if it starts raining again the water will come in on the dash and kill the electrical system in the truck. I don’t know how they work, but I’m sure the instruments inside of the truck aren’t meant to be soaked with water.
I look in the distance and see two barns, one of them looks like it’s collapsed in on itself, either by a fire or just by the age and decay of the structure. I look at it and wonder what the barns are doing all the way out there. Maybe there’s another farmhouse out there. Maybe that’s where Jason is hiding out. I look at them and watch as we pass in front of yet another farmhouse. It’s blackened by the growing darkness, and the gloom overhead only makes it worse, cutting off any light that the moon might offer us right now. As I stare at the looming structure, a lightning bolt rips across the sky and shreds the darkness, revealing for a second something that should not exist. I look at it for a moment in one of the pitch black holes where the windows are high above the house. I catch my breath in my throat, waiting before I say something. I look at that hole, praying that another flash of lightning will answer my question for me, but it doesn’t happen. We’re moving away from it and I know that I need to speak. If I remain silent, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, no matter how long or short it is.
“Stop,” I tell Greg immediately. “Stop, go back.”
I feel the truck gently come to rest just as the patter of rain on the roof tells us that time’s up. We need to find shelter before we continue any farther down this line of inquiry. Greg looks over his shoulder at me and then beyond me, through the window. Without asking me a single question, he puts the truck in reverse and starts going back the way he came. I don’t doubt that it’s incredibly frustrating to be going back the way he came yet again, but he’s a good man.
The house comes into view again and I look above the sprawling porch and the awning over it. I look at the dark window where I thought I saw something. It couldn’t possibly be what I thought it was, but the hope is enough to make me want to grin with delight. It’s a fool’s hope, but it’s my hope right now and that’s all that matters. We only have one headlight, but I want him to shine it on it. As we stop in front of the house, it’s as if the gods or God knows what we’re searching for, that we’ve finally found what we seek.
It’s unmistakable. I look up at the window and in the flashing light of the storm, I see something that comes directly out of the past. I look up and I see the green of leaves and I feel like we’ve found the Garden of Eden. Greg looks up through the passenger window at the house and we all stare in utter disbelief. We found plants, but what could that possibly mean?
Chapter Nine
We are all transfixed by the sight of the plant up in the window. We stare in absolute disbelief, but we are silent, unwilling to break the mirage that stands before us. If it’s not true, and some collective hallucination, then we all want to remain here with it for a few seconds, just to be here in this moment, looking up at a dark window, hoping to God that it’s not just a fraud, that it’s not just our eyes playing tricks on us. I realize that I’m smiling, staring up at the window as the rain tinkles on the roof of the truck, setting a soundtrack to our disbelief.
All this time that we’ve been out on the road, I look up at the window and realize that there have been no potted plants in the world, nothing alive and enduring in the recesses of abandoned homes. Plants were something that vanished long ago with everything else. None of them have endured this madness and right now, I’m questioning whether that plant up there is real or not. It could just be a fake plant sitting in the window, meant to lure idiots like us who are too desperate to see green for our own good. If it’s a trap, it’s a very good one. Who wouldn’t stop for it?
The house looks like a fortress. I don’t know why we didn’t recognize it the first time we rode past it, but there it is now, sealed up like a large coffin. It’s locked up tight. I stare at the boards across the window, keeping everything out and everything in. I look at the front door and wonder if it’s barricaded on the inside. I want this to be the house we’re looking for, but there’s something about it that makes me doubt it. I look at that house like most people might look at the face of God. If it’s real—if it’s actually something tangible for us, then we’re in luck, something that none of us know what to do with anymore. Luck usually just comes in the form of bad rather than good. I feel cautious about all of it. It’s dangerous to think about.
“We should check it out,” Greg says in a voice that sounds distant, curious, but hesitant about all of this. I think his voice perfectly sums up how we all feel about this right now. As I look away from the house, I feel sick with my nerves on edge. If we do check it out and it’s a trap, I’m certain that this will be the end. If we have a chance though, to find something green, it would be worth it just to look at it. I want to feel it, to touch a leaf and see what it’s like to feel plant life again.
Greg turns the keys in the ignition and the truck roars to life. The headlight that we still have shines out across the abandoned yard that is thirstily drinking in the rain with great eagerness and gluttony. As he pulls the truck around the house, we all stare out the windows at the building. It feels like we’ve been sitting in that truck for over an hour, staring at the boarded up windows, staring through the darkness and the rain, waiting for a sign of life. Greg kills the engine almost immediately, ending the beam of the light before we draw the attention of others in the area, bringing them down on us as they eagerly search for the source of the light. No, we’re playing it safe right now. I keep a hand on my wound, instinctively holding it as we all look at the house, silently waiting for some sign that there’s movement inside. We don’t say a word. We all just stare at the house, hoping that something will happen that will change our minds.
All the windows seem to be boarded up, hiding anything that could be inside, waiting for us. If this is indeed where Jason is hiding, then it would make sense that he’s adapted to the climate of the world, to the growing situation of desperation. If they have endured as much as we have, then he’ll know that light and movement draw attention, and attention means death. He would have come to terms with this long ago. He’s had over a year to deal with this kind of situation. I look from window to window, wondering why just the one window is open. Why doesn’t the house have more windows open? It feels so strange, so dangerous. I look at the boards and feel uncomfortable.
This house is seriously defended. He used two by fours to build barricades over the windows. This house is sealed up tight so that no one can get into the house. He wanted to keep something more than those roaming cannibals out of the house. They couldn’t pry off those boards. Turning my head, I look at a shed out back, it’s large and looks like it’s part of a greenhouse. Whoever lived here must have had a nice yard. It has that kind of feel to it, but whoever was here before now, they definitely had their worries.
There are three bodies in the mud behind the house. They’re barely sunken into the churning earth that seems to be swallowing everything that gets caught in the drifts of mud during the storms. One of the bodies has a shovel planted in it, which makes me nervous just at the sight of it. Who would kill a man with a shovel, but who’s to say that it’s a man in the first place? There’s a lot of terrible things out there in the world and I’m not so certain that men are part of it anymore. The world is populated with horrors that seek to destroy and maim all that’s left of the world and maybe the man with the shovel implanted in him is part of the problem.
There are two other bodies that draw my attention. They’re away from the dead man with the shovel planted inside of him. In the darkness, I can tell that one of them is a man, though he has decayed highly, or perhaps something worse has happened to him. Depending on how long he’s been dead, he might have had some help from scavengers lurking in the area. It’s so strange that humans would be what survived all of this and are the scavengers now, feeding off the dead. The bugs, the birds, and everything else that turns desperate in the world has long since vanished. Maybe they moved on to better lands, if there’s any left.
The second body is not a man, I know that much just from looking at it. Whoever it is was wearing a dress that looks like it’s brown, but that’s probably from being out in the elements. Maybe it was white when she was wearing it. Or maybe it wasn’t a she at all, just a man who liked wearing dresses and decided to do whatever he wanted at the end of the world. It would make sense, that’s his choice after all. Whoever they are out on the lawn, I can’t help but wonder who they might have been when they were alive. Maybe they were the people who originally lived here and were drawn out of the house before being ambushed and killed. That would have been a sad, miserable fate, but their fate is sad no matter what happened. I look at them and feel like I might possibly be looking at Jason. Maybe one of them was the fabled Jason, and died in the middle of some confrontation. Maybe my father sent us out here without knowing that Jason had died and now we’re looking at the ruins of what he left behind. What if the fate of the world is in there, alone and abandoned without someone to take over?
If that’s the case, then I’m thoroughly screwed. In fact, if this is Jason’s stronghold, then I’m completely screwed no matter what. There’s no medical staff here, no military presence, and there’s nothing to point to the possibility that the world is moving toward a better place. I look down at my hand on my stomach and know that my fate is sealed. I’ve known it was sealed since it happened and I told myself not to have hope, to be a realist, but somehow I’d let hope slip through. How could I not? If this is Jason’s place, then I’m officially looking at my own grave. It’s not a house or a fortress, it’s a mausoleum that I’m going to be inhabiting soon. I’m not happy with this fate. I’m not happy in the slightest. I’m looking at my own death here and it’s in physical form. No one should have to so darkly look upon their own demise. There should be happiness in it. There should be hope. I look at the house and realize that there’s a small measure of hope in my end. There had been a plant upstairs after all.
“It looks like we can get into the basement,” Lexi says, pointing to the cellar doors. One of the doors is open slightly. I don’t like the look of an open door. Everything about it screams ‘trap’ and I’m sick of traps right now. I’m sick of always being in danger and I just want to go see the plant without having to worry about clearing rooms or searching for hidden killers. Is that too much to ask?
Lexi grabs Charlie and picks up the last pistol that we have with any number of bullets in it. I rummage through the scraps left in our box of bullets and load the last that I can into my Sig. I have three rounds, enough for us to kill three people. I don’t have much faith in that. If there are zombies near, there will definitely be more than three out there. They always draw more with them, forming hordes rather than just tiny pods of them. I throw open the door of the truck and painfully swing my legs over the side of the seat before dropping down onto the sodden earth. The shock of the impact ripples up through my body and nearly doubles me over with pain. I’m worthless in my condition. I’m not going to help anyone, but there’s some safety in numbers. Besides, if they get into a truly desperate situation, I can think like Noah.
I picture his ruined face in the depths of my mind before he charged into that farmhouse days ago. I see the determined look he had in his eyes before charging the front door and slamming it shut. There’s so much beauty in the soul of a person’s sacrifice. It means so much to give one’s life in the effort of keeping others alive. It makes everything more precious and more purpose-driven for those who remain. Those who struggle with the weight of surviving often aren’t looking at things rightly, in my opinion. Death is a gift and gifts should be cherished and savored, not held onto begrudgingly and bitterly. That’s squandering what you’ve been given. But what do I know? I’m a dead woman and the dying and walking dead usually have different logic from the living. Things are clearer for me and I entertain the idea that clarity might not mean what I’m seeing is right. So I remain silent. I keep my thoughts to myself and close the door behind me.
I step over the dead bodies in the lawn. In the days since their death, they’ve started to barely sink into the earth, which makes me think that they didn’t die too long ago. But the fact that they didn’t die long ago also makes me think that we may not be alone here. Their faces look like they’ve been picked clean by scavengers, while there is still flesh clinging to some of their bones that has hardened and blackened in the harsh sunlight that has glared down on their remains. I look at them and feel no sympathy or mercy for them. They’re dead. If anything, I envy them. I’ve chosen the long road and right now, I don’t think that it’s worth it. I should have bled out. I look at Lexi and Greg who are taking the lead, looking into the darkness without a flashlight or any source of light. They’re walking blindly into a cellar. They don’t need me. They would be just fine if I was dead.
The way Greg walks is cruelly comical at best, painful at its worst. I look at his staggered limping and I think that I should tell Lexi how to get rid of the leg in the event that I drop dead before dawn. She should at least know how to try and save him. If she amputates the leg properly, he might be able to survive with her, to help her out until she and Charlie find safety of some kind, whatever that means in this world.
“I can’t see a damn thing,” Greg grunts angrily, swinging open the second door, hoping that the light will sneak down inside. “We should wait until dawn.”
“And where are we going to wait?” Lexi calls back to him angrily. “We need to get inside.”
“I’ll go first,” I volunteer for them. They look at me, both of them have protests written on their faces and in their eyes, but I know that my logic is sound. They know it too. They look at me and nod slowly, understanding that I’m going to go no matter what they say and that I should be the first to go. I’m almost dead. If there’s something waiting for me down there, then it’ll just be the dead girl who dies. Greg looks at me with sad, painful eyes. I haven’t seen that look before and it hurts, but I shrug it off. I can’t focus on the inevitable end. I have to do this. I have to do it for them.
The one thing that gives me boundless amounts of hope is that there are definitely no zombies down there. They’re not subtle or complex beings that would set a trap. When they hear food, they come running for it, grasping for it with their fingers and with their jaws snapping, clacking ravenously as they seek their prey. If they were down there, they would have come roiling up through the cellar doors, arms stretched out and tackling Greg. I walk past Lexi and I brush past Greg, who gives me a look that tells me I need to be careful. It’s almost laughable. Where was he earlier today with that look? I could have used it before going into the house. I smile bitterly at the thought. Like I would have listened to him.
I take the slippery, muddy steps one at a time and slowly enter the darkness. It’s like I’m walking into a cave and there’s nothing that offers even a tiny source of light except for the dark night behind me which seems warm and welcoming compared to the inky black that I step into. My feet hit the cold, concrete ground and I listen for sounds of movement. Right now, all I can hear is the patter of the rain outside and my own breathing. I don’t think there’s anything down here with me, and if there is, it’s being incredibly silent.
It would be a lie to say that I’m not afraid, but fear doesn’t mean much to me right now. My body is as good as dead and they can have it if they want, so long as they don’t hurt Lexi or Greg. Just take me and leave them alone. I want to shout it to the world around me. Take me, leave the others alone. Blindly reaching for the wall near me, I feel a light switch and flip the switch. It doesn’t do a thing. I don’t know what I was expecting it to do, but I was hoping it would give us something. Running my hand along the wall, I feel the dust and cobwebs from the abandoned house. As I walk painfully along the wall, searching for something that might shed some light on this place, I hear a loud crash as my legs slam into a table.
“Babe?” Greg calls to me nervously.