Chapter 5
Ellie shut the door behind her as she heard Joel pushing the chair he was using to secure it back into place. They'd secured food now. That was their primary concern. Provided it wasn't spoiled they could use that and keep themselves going until morning. Now she just had to secure the house. She drew her pistol and kept it ready, her finger near the trigger just in case as she set off to start clearing rooms. She hadn't heard the infected come downstairs while she was with Joel, but she wanted to make sure there was nothing else that could be of use to her.
The first room was locked and she made a mental note to find a key later. But the second room was the one that yielded the most promising result. It was a craft room of some kind for the kids. There were strips of rag, used cans and jars, pairs of scissors and the occasional drawstring pouch lying all over the place. Everything that could have been tipped over had been. It made life harder and turned the room into one big scavenger hunt. She worked quickly to grab the stuff she could use and stuff it into her pockets and her backpack. But as she moved some papers, she discovered a book hidden among them in the chaos. For some reason it called to her and as she picked it up and flicked through the pages she realised that it was an art book. But on the back page, she realised one of the kids had written something. It was almost as though they'd done it spontaneously and then tried to hide it from their parents.
"Mom and Dad are arguing again. They left the room and left Marlene to watch us. Deanne is trying to distract the little one, but it's not working too well. She's too smart for it to work. They've been doing it ever since she showed up, but this is about more than her being here. It's about her sticking around. Mom wants her here. Says there's something called a Horde Migration coming and our house could be in the middle of it. He says we'll be fine. That God will provide. I might believe in God, but I'm not stupid. If he's put us in the firing line of a migration, then it's a test of sacrifice. We need to leave. We need to sacrifice everything we have here and the home that we defended even during the initial outbreak and we need to GTFO. Marlene doesn't believe in God and she agrees. She's seeing sense. But Dad's biggest sin is pride. I just hope it doesn't end up costing us everything."
Ellie dropped the book, staggering to her feet as the realisation hit her. She'd been right. It had been infected that hit the house. But she never could have imagined that the family had seen it coming. They must have stayed at the father's insistence. Clearly he'd never seen a horde migration. He'd grossly underestimated how severe their problem was. His family had paid the price.
"You bastard." Ellie muttered, her voice barely more than a hoarse whisper. "You could have stopped all of this. But you let it happen." With that thought weighing heavily in her head, she turned to leave the room. As she did, she thanked whoever might have been watching that she'd been trained to such an extent that her body acted faster than her brain. Before she could even process what she was seeing, her gun was up and pointed to the clicker that was in the doorway. She'd been so distracted that she hadn't noticed the noise of its clicking. Or had there ever been any? Was it so well acquainted with the house that the part of its brain that was still Marlene's father able to retain a mental map of the place? Yet another scary thought to focus on another time. Either way, she was glad that her gun was up and she was jumping back away from the danger before she even realised that the formerly human creature was there. Unfortunately, she also made enough noise to alert it to her presence. It immediately came alive, becoming a flurry of aggressive clicks and screams that were much more aggressive than the typical clicker. It seemed to only confirm her fears. There was no way she would have missed that no matter how distracted she was.
Not wasting a second, Ellie fired two rounds off. They directly hit the clicker in the face, causing its head to snap back from the force of the impact. But as it levelled its unseeing gaze at her and let out a low noise that was almost a growl but was formed from a series of low, rapid clicks. As she'd feared, her round had glanced off its fungal plates. It had barely even left a chip. The second round had struck it in the jaw, but while it had drawn blood it hadn't seemed to do much else. Clearly the fungus was spreading along the mandible bone and toughening it up like sub-dermal armour. Realising she wasn't getting anywhere fast, she tried to pull the shotgun from her backpack. The clicker heard the difference in noise and ripped one of the mycotoxin sacks from its body and threw it in her direction while she was vulnerable. The explosion of lung-destroying spores forced her back further into the room.
While Ellie was off guard and still trying to pull the shotgun from her backpack as she retreated from the toxin at the same time, the clicker took advantage. It let out a cry that was similar to a bloater and charged forward like a tank. Unfortunately for it, its apparent mental map didn't include furniture. It smashed into the edge of the table and- due to lacking the mass of a bloater- was sent sprawling into the left wall. At that moment, the shotgun finally came free. Ellie levelled it at the clicker's chest and pulled the trigger. It let loose a scream as the first barrel gave a harsh bark and ruptured two of the mycotoxin pouches stored there. It let loose an inhuman scream as jets of the same toxic spores started cascading from the wound at high pressure.
"Ha! So I can hurt you!" Ellie's triumph was short-lived as it flew into a rage, ripping several of the pouches off its body and flinging them. Her voice had just given it a more precise indication of where to aim and it threw them to great effect. She erupted into a coughing fit and had no choice but to retreat. She backed out of the room quickly and broke open the shotgun, ejecting the spent shell and slamming a new one in. After loading it up for the first time she'd had four spare rounds. This reload now took her down to three. With the shotgun seemingly the only thing capable of doing damage, that was far from ideal.
As she assessed her options, the clicker ran from the room. It was clicking madly and clutching at the wound she'd opened in its chest, pouring spores as it went. Seeing her chance to take it out, she raised her shotgun. Unfortunately, the cloud of mycotoxin spores was just too heavy for her to get a clear shot and she didn't want to risk shooting with so few reserve rounds. Begrudgingly, she found she had no option but to lower the gun. That thing's time would come. She'd made a promise and she intended to keep it.
Her quarry now gone, she turned her attention back to searching the ground floor. She opened the final door and found the cleaning cupboard. Or rather, what was left of it. The fire had clearly affected the room above and caused the floor to give way causing something heavy to fall through into the storage closet. The resulting heat had caused the cleaning products to explode and completely obliterate the inside of the room. The only reason the door was still attached at all was because the doors were all sturdy and old. They were a kind that just weren't made anymore and were built like tank armour. If it weren't for the cracks in the wall, she would have never guessed from the outside that anything had happened. It was only as she opened the door that the true extent of the carnage was revealed. She also noticed to her dismay that there had been a key rack on the wall to her right. The keys that had been there were all melted and bent out of shape. There was every reason to believe the key to that locked door was on there too. That was okay. If she got the chance, she would find another way to open the door. For now though, it didn't matter. She still had a lot more rooms to explore on the upper floor. And with the hole in the ceiling coupled with the debris seeming to offer a semi-sturdy way up, she now had a safer way up than the stairs. The clicker used the stairs. She reasoned that its mental map probably didn't cover the massive hole in the floor of one of the rooms and so she decided that using this option would avoid any risk of them meeting in the middle. With that in mind, she grit her teeth and began to haul herself up through the hole and into the floor above.