After 30 Days

Forty-Three Day 60

I tried to tell myself that you got used to the smell.

We'd pulled the front door closed because it seemed too dangerous to just leave it open, but the smell had seemed to intensify without the fresh air coming in through the open door. Eating had been a chore because everything that I'd put in my mouth had tasted like the air smelled. When I'd finally broken down and suggested that we find another place to sleep the guys had all overridden me. By then it was getting dark and they all agreed that it was safest to stay put. They were probably right, but that didn't make the prospect of sleeping in the foul smelling house any more pleasant.

At some point during the night I must have stopped noticing so much , and had collapsed onto the couch for some sleep. The last couple of days had finally taken their toll and I didn't wake up again until the sun was coming up. The first thing I noticed was the pounding headache that threatened to split my skull. The second was the growling that was coming from somewhere near my feet.

Instantly awake, I popped open my eyes and searched for the source of the sound. The sensation of relief when I found Rex standing on the end of the couch didn't last long. The big dog was standing over my feet, his own front feet up on the arm of the couch and staring hard toward the dark hallway. Another nearly silent rumble came from his chest and his lips peeled back enough to show the tips of white fangs.

"Shh," I warned the dog as I struggled up off of the couch. The knife that was always within reach had been under the pillow that I'd been using and I grabbed it as I looked around the room. The guys were all gone. 

It was early morning, judging by the light that was coming into the room from outside. The small breath of fresh air that was coming in  through the broken window pane had a chill bite to it. When he jumped down from his perch on top of the couch, the dog made a muffled thump that seemed too loud in the silence. A noise from the kitchen made Rex's ear flick in that direction, before he focused on the dark hallway again. 

I was momentarily torn, unsure which direction to turn my back on. Something was making noise in the kitchen behind me, but the dog seemed far more worried about whatever he thought was lurking silently in the hall. Another low growl from the dog made up my mind. Getting a better grip on my knife, I crept toward the dark hall. Just before I stepped into the gloom, Rex darted ahead of me and went to the closed door that I knew led into the small bathroom. 

I glanced over my shoulder, hoping that one of the guys would appear to back me up, but no such luck. The guys were all still gone, and it was just Rex and I. Trying not to panic because I didn't know where they would have disappeared to, I steadied my breath and took another step into the hall. One disaster at a time was all I could manage.

Rex had stopped outside the bathroom door and had his nose jammed into the small crack under the door. He wasn't growling any more, but his stiff posture made it clear that he didn't like whatever was on the other side. I drew up next to the dog and tried to hear whatever had him so worried. A small shuffling sound came from behind the closed door, followed by the crinkle of paper.

Several seconds of sillence followed, then more shuffling noises. Trying to control my breathing I reached for the door knob. My hand was shaking slightly. I exhaled slowly and grabbed the cool door knob.

The door suddenly pulled out of my hand and swung open. My back collided with the far hallway wall as I jumped back. The sunlight coming in through the bathroom window made it hard to see the features of the figure that was coming out of the room.

I was face to face with Marcus, and he looked just as startled to find me staring at him, as I was by his sudden appearance. Drawing up short, he muffled a curse and then glared. "You startled me," his tone was less than friendly.

"Yeah, well, same here."

Already pushing his way past me, he didn't pay any attention to my retort as he went back into the living room. Clear on the other side of that lit room, Shawn came through the doorway of the kitchen with a worried expression on his face.

"Everything ok?" he asked me when he noticed me standing in the hall. Marcus brushed past him and went into the kitchen without a word.

"Yeah," I told Shawn. I looked into the bathroom and noticed the empty wrapping off of bandages and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the sink. There was a smear of fresh blood in the shape of a fingerprint on the white rim of the sink basin. That explained some of the noises that I'd heard. "It's fine."

"Ok. I thought I heard a thump."

That had been the sound of my back connecting with the wall, but I didn't tell him that.

"Sam and I have been figuring out the best way to take as much of this food with us as possible," he told me. "Want to come eat something before we leave?"

Nodding, I looked into the bathroom one last time, still not quite convinced that Marcus had been the only thing in there. Rex didn't usually growl at the man. But the bathroom was small and didn't really offer any hiding places unless you wanted to try cramming yourself under the sink. I wasn't sure that even I would fit under there, so the bathroom really was empty now, but I still felt a little bit of unease. Pushing the feeling down, I turned and went into the kitchen.

                                                                                 * * * * *

I was seriously sick of walking.

Skirting around the outside of the town that we had come up to, we were doing our best to avoid the zombies. There were enough of them that they could easily become a problem if we let our guard down. Luckily, they all had been the slow, shuffling variety so far, and they were avoidable so long as you didn't let them see or hear you.

The problem with this strategy was that it made it harder to search for a working car. We must have walked several miles as we wove through the buildings on the edge of town. There were plenty of cars, but they had clearly already been abandoned by someone else, or there was no sign of keys for them. It seemed almost incomprehensible that there could be so many vehicles around, but none of them were going to be of help.

I was starting to get frustrated by our lack of progress when Sam whispered, "There's a repair shop over there. There might be cars still inside."

I followed the direction he was pointing and saw it, the corner of what looked like a small car repair shop. It wasn't big, but maybe there would be a car still locked inside that we could take.

I was never going to get used to the trash that was now strewn all over the streets of every town that we came to. Garbage, abandoned belongings, zombies, and occasionally body parts were the new normal. I cringed as I stepped over an unidentifiable chunk of flesh laying in the middle of the street. Fat flies buzzed around the dried pool of blood that it sat in the middle of. Marcus had been lagging behind the group and he almost stepped in the mess as he hurried to catch up.

The guy had been in such a bad mood that no one bothered to ask him if he was ok, just shot meaningful glances at each other behind his back whenever he did something that displayed the fact that he was not fine. He was starting to give me flashbacks to Devon and the way our friend had died from a cut to his leg. As much as I didn't like Marcus, I didn't want to see anyone else die like that either. I hoped he wasn't getting an infection, but the gray color of his skin seemed to say otherwise.

We had to cross the empty street to get to the repair shop. We had been avoiding moving into open spaces, but there didn't seem to be any way to get to the building that we wanted without doing just that. Moving fast, I hoped that we would get away with the move just this once, and that we would find what we were looking for. 

We were almost all of the way across when I heard the snarl of a zombie behind us.