It was quiet.
That was a good thing. A great thing, really. She still crept around the room, wielding the knife in front of her. The setting sun shown through the boarded up windows, littering the room with dusty beams of light. She was thankful as she finished casing the first floor of the little house. A living room covered in a carpet of dust, a den, a tiny laundry room, and the kitchen were all clear of the dead and undead.
She eyed the stairs warily. She was always extra cautious when there were stairs involved; it was easy to get trapped upstairs. She had learned that the hard way.
She moved up them slowly. She was always light on her feet, but some creaky floorboards were hard to avoid. She waited near the top, her eyes adjusting to the dark hallway. There were two closed doors and two open ones. The one directly in front of her appeared to be a bathroom. It also appeared to be empty. She moved fast as she double-checked the bathroom, confirming its vacancy.
Her heart leapt in her throat as she heard the faint but distinct sound of a heavy foot shuffling a little. She was always paranoid, but she moved to the other open door with her knife held with white knuckles. Her hands itched for the gun that was shoved into her waistband, but she knew gunshots rarely led to anything good and bullets were hard to come across. She was almost to the door when she heard the noise again, this time it was followed by more clumsy footsteps. She braced herself into the wall, barely hidden from direct sight from the room. One of the undead shuffled forward, moaning, as it smelled her proximity. Before it could turn its head towards her the knife was thrust through its temple. The body crumpled to the floor in a sickening heap, and she waited, listening for any more sounds.
After a minute she walked into the room to see that it was a now empty bedroom. She then checked the other two rooms, finding another bedroom and a master bedroom. The house appeared to have belonged to a family of three before, judging by the dust-coated pictures on the wall. She tried not to think about the little girl that must have occupied the room filled with dolls and various shades of pink objects.
She looked out the window, checking for any movement outside of the isolated house. She then went back down the stairs and began going through the usual precautions she took. She heaved the dusty sofa in front of the front door, never trusting just a deadbolt.
She made her way to the back door in the kitchen and stood in front of it, looking around the room for anything that would hold it shut. She looked to the small table and chairs that occupied the room, and doubted their ability to hold a door shut for more than a second. She never had mastered the wedging of a chair against a door. She pulled her pack around and dug down to the bottom of it, bringing out her last resort for times like these. The cluster of little bells had been found a few weeks ago in a situation just like today's. She held the bells in her hand tightly to stifle the little noises and carefully hung them on the door handle. She was satisfied with the bells, they were enough to alert her, but not loud enough to attract outside company.
After she was relatively happy with the security of the temporary home, she began moving through the kitchen looking for anything she could consume to fill the empty void that had been in her stomach for more than a few weeks. She pulled anything out that was of value and placed it on the kitchen counter.
After every possible place was checked she moved on to the other rooms, looking for anything that could be of any use. She moved quickly, well aware of the vanishing light. Aside from a few blankets that she threw on the ground by the stairs, there was relatively little. No weapons that outdid her trusty knife and backup gun. No medicine to ease her aches and pains.
The onslaught of her fever began to take over once the important tasks were done. The pounding in her head started pulsing, shivers overtook her body regardless of the layers she wore. She carefully and quietly packed the small amount of the goods into her backpack, save for a few cans of beans she would make a meal out of.
Before the world went to shit she was never prone to sickness, but now she felt as though she would never be healthy again. What with all the running and malnutrition she knew it was inevitable.
The fever had been strong for more than a few days, the only reason she was still moving everyday was because she knew the dangers of holing out in a suburban house like this for more than one night. The undead would find her, or worse, the living. The people that came into these houses would not help her. They were looters, people who would only take and leave you for dead, or worse. She had learned that the hard way.
She ate her small meal in the darkness, covered in her new, dusty blankets. She kept her ears open for any small noise, ready to bolt if needed.
She wasn't some strong survivor, the only reason she was still alive was because of luck and her amazing ability to flee from danger. In the past few months she had ran more than she had in four years of cross country and track in her high school days. She couldn't even shoot anything with her gun unless it was within five feet.
Her luck was running out though. She needed to find a place to hole out for longer than a night, a place with a steady supply of food and shelter. A shower would be nice too, but that was a dream long given up on.
She slowly drifted off to sleep, ears still open, as always.
XXXX
She woke up in silence, the morning sun grazing over the room through the cracks of the wooden boards. She could tell it was midmorning, much later than she ever allowed herself to sleep. Every morning she was waking up later and later, something that was becoming progressively more dangerous. She stretched out the ever-present kinks in her body and rubbed her sore eyes awake.
She shoved her new blankets in her backpack. The need for warmth had become more and more pressing every night, and finding the blankets were a small treasure among the other useless things.
She pulled out the worn map, and examined all the crossed off areas. These were either mass graves or were ruled by the undead or groups of the living she didn't plan on meeting. She had been slowly edging her way around the city, moving south hoping for a warmer winter. Suburb by suburb she had silently made her way to the edge of her map, although it felt like she was at the edge of a cliff. From here it was just a guessing game.
After checking the house's surroundings, she eased her way out of the back door, shoving her bell security system into her bag. She crept out of the neighborhood, unseen by the few dead that meandered the area.
Now they seemed to stay in packs, so she was relatively safe unless she saw one of those. If she was spotted by a pack of the undead, she knew her chances almost diminished to nothing, especially in her condition.
She slowly made her way down the side of the highway, dipping into her water reserve every now and then.
The mental checklist started up. She needed to find a new map, water, long-term shelter, and medicine to name a few. The list may have changed every now and then, sometimes it was shorter, most times it was longer, but it was always there. She was always searching for something, and most times it was the difference between life and death.
Like always her ears and eyes were open, scanning the area around her, but she felt herself drift off into the old world. She saw the cars driving past her; maybe an airplane would fly overhead. The air wouldn't smell like death, the world would be a little greener. She almost smiled thinking about it. Her dad's beat up old Chevy pickup would drive her way to pick her up. She walked backwards looking at the truck. It seemed a little too real as it became more than a red dot in the distance.
The fantasy quickly faded away as the sound of a muted engine came closer. She quickly bolted into the trees to her left, never losing sight of the road but hopefully out of sight of the road.
She squatted behind a tree, as the sound got louder, peaking out towards the road. The truck was almost identical to her father's, maybe more of a burgundy and the bumper was a little beat up, but it brought back some all too real memories of that night.
She was lost in her thoughts when she heard more than one groan behind her. She quickly and efficiently pulled out her knife. A small group of the undead was descending on her; maybe five or six, she never counted anymore. She dove forward and plunged her knife into one's skull and pushed it into one of its companions.
She was already exhausted. She had fought this many before, but with the ability to move away quickly, and she hadn't been sick. With the car coming towards her she couldn't run and pick them off separately. She didn't want to use her gun, for fear of attracting more undead or the occupant of the truck. So she took her chances and fought them off where she was.
As her knife left the eye socket of one, another toppled forward to take its place. She backed away, tripping over the root of a tree. The body came down on her and she fought to keep it teeth from sinking into her. She shoved the knife through its head and heaved it off of her as the others moved forward for her.
Without thinking she did what she did best, she ran. She ran into the road, where the truck had to swerve to avoid hitting her. It screeched to a halt as the remaining undead made their way out of the trees towards her. She pulled out her last result, always aware of how many bullets she had. Four in the magazine and one in the chamber. Not enough if she wanted to make it out alive. She aimed at the first of the undead as it stumbled forward. She pulled the safety back and fired, hitting it in the chest. She aimed again, this time satisfied when the target fell. She heard the truck door slam shut but filed it away as she aimed her gun at an approaching undead. She shot and missed completely, backing away as it drew closer to her. She heard a gunshot unlike her own, and to her amazement the corpse fell to the ground.
She turned to the stranger and allowed herself a moment of awe at the charitable act before she turned back to her task. Another gunshot sounded and the last of them fell. The stranger and her both took a quick look around making sure no more monsters were approaching out of the trees.
When she realized her back was to the stranger she quickly turned and pointed her gun at him. He was tall and built like he could withstand anything. His face might have once been soft and boyish, but either this life or the last had made it harder.
"Hey, Hey" a southern accent rasped. He slowly put the rifle on the ground and raised his hands. "I'm not gonna hurt you."
"Prove it," after weeks of silence, her voice sounded like a stranger's. She was visibly shaking, the nausea getting stronger with her exertion. Her vision started blurring and her knees were getting weaker. The ground was fast approaching her before everything went black.