While Shane swept right, Daryl swept left and scanned the two closed doorways in the hall. There was another closed door in the half-wall across from those rooms, and then an open entry way at the end of the hall. To Daryl's immediate left, where a staircase might have been, was a black ramp like you might find on an inclined treadmill, but wider. A silver railing lined one side of the ramp, which led to the rail of the second-floor balcony. Along the balcony were three rooms with closed doors. Another closed door was in the hallway perpendicular to the balcony. There might be one or two more rooms down that hallway that Daryl couldn't see from here, but if so, nothing was lurching out of them.
"Clear right," Shane said.
"Clear left. What I can see anyhow. Reeks in here." It smelled worse than rotting walker flesh.
"Something awful," Shane agreed.
They took a step past the ramp and into the living room, which opened on a kitchen to the right. The living room housed a large screen, flat TV above the mantle of a "fireplace" that looked like a blank TV screen with heating vents along the top and sides. The kitchen had a flat, black electric stovetop on an island, an oven topped by a microwave in the corner, a refrigerator, and a deep freezer – all stainless-steel in color. The breakfast nook housed a four-person table. On the table sat a coffee mug next to a bowl with a spoon still in it. That walker might have been the only person living here, Daryl thought.
The furniture looked like something taken straight out of a Jetson cartoon – scooped-out, high-backed, dark blue chairs around a glass table in the kitchen, weird, free-standing dark purple lamps that looked like modern art pieces in the living room, an angular coffee table, a bizarrely shaped, deep, high-backed sofa, and chairs with footstools that looked like golf tees balancing on a thin, puke-green industrial carpet.
"The décor leaves something to be desired," Shane observed.
"Ugly as sin," Daryl agreed. "Doors first."
They crept toward the first door along the downstairs hallway and found it ever so slightly ajar. Daryl remained poised with his bow while Shane kicked it the rest of the way open.
Daryl swept in quickly, but there was nothing inside but an unmade king-size bed with a silver canopy, two oddly angular end tables with two drawers each, a writing desk, and an open closet, empty except for some silver hangers. On one of the end tables lay a gun still in its holster, a small black flashlight, a curled, black belt, and a ring of keys.
There was an unbuttoned, dark blue, short-sleeve shirt flung over the low footboard of the bed. Daryl crept forward to investigate. The shirt sported a golden tag that read Lloyd – Fun Kingdom Security. "Think Rick was right. Security guard. Died in his sleep. Turned."
Rick had told them, their second night at Fort Benning, the awful news Dr. Jenner had whispered into his ear at the CDC – they all had the disease in them. They would all reanimate when they died.
Daryl lay his crossbow down on the bed for a moment, grabbed the holstered gun, and clicked it to his left side. He already had a handgun holstered on his right side.
"Oh, so you're calling dibs?" Shane asked. "You know Lori needs a handgun."
"And Carol needs a good holster. Work it out later." Daryl lifted the keys and rattled them. "Bet this will get us into the shops and restaurants without having to bust in." He dropped them into a pocket of his pants.
"Where are the rest of his clothes?" Shane asked. "He was bare ass naked."
"Probably in the drawers. Can look in all those later. Got to clear the rooms."
They moved onto the next room, which was locked. The keypad above the doorknob had a sign that read: "Enter your four-digit code."
Shane entered 1-1-1-1. The keypad flashed green and the lock clicked.
"How the hell ya know the code?"
"These things are usually 1-1-1-1 until you set them."
When they swept into the bedroom, they found it empty of life. The queen-sized bed was neatly made-up. There was a tall dresser and a vanity with mirror and chair. An open closet housed extra sheets and blankets on the top shelf.
Opposite that bedroom in the half halfway, behind where the faux fireplace stood in the living room, they found a bathroom. The stainless steel pedestal sink had a high, curved, space-age looking faucet but no knobs. Shane waved his hand under the faucet, and clear water flowed. "Water's working. For now." He stepped further inside the bathroom while Daryl kept an eye on the hallway.
Daryl glanced inside when he heard a loud suction noise followed by a woosh.
"Toilet flushes," Shane reported. "It hardly uses any water. It's like one of those airplane toilets, you know?"
Daryl didn't know. He'd never flown on an airplane. But he'd seen them on TV.
The walk-in-shower had no door, but a curved tile floor with two drains. Shane read a sign on the wall that looked like one of those informational signs in a museum, and then pressed the green button beneath it. A silver curtain slid automatically shut across the open shower, and the water sprayed on. A robotic voice from a speaker on the ceiling above asked, "Set temperature?"
Shane slapped the red button. The water stopped, the curtain rattled as if shaking itself dry, and then it automatically pulled open again.
"Fancy," Daryl murmured, and they both continued down the hallway, which emptied into a large dining room where a hutch housed silver plates and mugs and clear glasses.
"Guess silver is the color of the future," Shane observed.
A light purple glass chandelier of varying odd shapes hung above a long, white, oval-shaped dining room table with four open egg-shell shaped chairs on each side and two on the ends. Daryl's eyes flitted about the wall for a light switch and fell on the green button. Holding his bow with one hand, he slapped the button, and the light came on. A voice from above asked, "Set brightness?"
Daryl slapped the red button, and the light went off. There were more red and green buttons by the window. Without reading the sign, he supposed those opened and lowered the blinds.
Another hallway extended to the left of the dining room, probably running below the perpendicular hallway in the balcony above. They scanned it, saw no signs of life, and crept down it to find another bathroom –similar to the first – and an open, doorless display alcove that had museum-like exhibits describing the "future of green technology" and how the House of the Future was built to self-sufficiently provide water, electricity, and sanitation "off-the-grid." They didn't spend time reading the exhibits or pressing the various buttons. Instead, they turned back, passed through the dining room again, and then through the open doorway on the other end, which spilled into a walk-in, doorless pantry with – no surprise – silver wire shelves.
The pantry was well stocked as if in expectation of guests who never came because the park never re-opened. There were bags of chips, pretzels, and other snacks; cannisters of cereal, oatmeal, grits, and cream of wheat; bottles and cans of juice, water, and soda; pancake mix, syrup, granola bars, Pop Tarts, and more. On the upper shelves were toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, and various toiletries (tampons, sanitary napkins, toothpaste, toothbrushes, etc.) in case the guest had forgotten theirs. That was probably an extra charge, Daryl thought.
"That guy ain't lived here long," Daryl said. "Hasn't eaten much."
"He looked pretty decayed, too," Shane agreed. "He couldn't have been too fresh. He must have settled in for the apocalypse and then kicked off within the first two or three days."
They walked out of the pantry back into the kitchen. Daryl opened the refrigerator and examined the contents –beer cans and bottles, pint-sized cartons of curdled milk, and rancid burgers and hot dogs the security guard had probably taken weeks ago from a food joint somewhere in the park. Shane gagged at the stench, and Daryl shut the door quickly.
In the deep freezer, tossed in haphazardly, were more burgers and hot dogs, which would probably still be edible for another month or two, assuming this freezer hadn't lost power at some point for several days and defrosted and refroze, which it didn't look like it had. There were also several dozen ice cream treats - ice cream sandwich bars, Strawberry shortcake bars, bomb pops, and – Daryl's personal favorite – those sugar cones stuffed with vanilla ice cream with peanuts and a drizzle of hard chocolate on top. He'd have to get a few of those before the kids ate them all.
"Upstairs," Daryl said as he shut the freezer door.
When they reached the inclined ramp, Daryl put a tentative foot on it and began to walk upward. It seemed an awkward substitute for stairs. Suddenly, the ramp was moving, thrusting him forward. He pinwheeled for balance, holding onto his bow with one hand and seizing the silver rail with the other as the ramp pushed him up.
"Sorry," said Shane, riding up behind him. "I guess that's what the green button does."
Having reached the top now, Daryl slapped the red button on the post of the balcony and the conveyer belt stopped. Shane walked up the last bit of the unmoving ramp.
"Future must be full of lazy ass fucks," Daryl muttered.
"It's a good way to move boxes, though," Shane noted. "I guess it only goes up. Not down."
The hallway had that same puke-green industrial carpet as the living room. Why was the future so goddamn ugly?
"It reeks up here," Shane observed. "Even worse than downstairs." He entered 1111 into the first door's keypad again. On the sound of the click, Daryl stared down the sights of his bow, and Shane quickly threw open the door. As Daryl rushed in, he swung his bow toward the shadow of movement.
He had almost fired before he realized it was only a black-and-white mobile of triangles and circles, spinning soundlessly round and a round above a crib.
In addition to the crib, the bedroom housed a king-size bed and a small sitting room with two armchairs and a table, beyond which was the open closet, empty except for sheets, blankets, and pillows.
Shane clicked the spinning mobile off and stared silently into the crib. He bit down on his back teeth. "Guess this room will be Rick and Lori's."
Daryl didn't comment. He crept down to the next door and waited for Shane to open it using the same code. It was another empty bedroom, but instead of the pea-green carpet, it had linoleum floors with a pattern containing rows of spaceships and pictures of astronauts. The ceiling was painted dark blue, with dozens of those glowing star stickers plastered across it. There were two sets of full-size bunk beds against opposite walls, big enough for most adults, but clearly designed with children in mind. The bunk beds were shaped like space shuttles, scooped out slightly with mattresses sunk down, leaving foot-high sides around all but the opening.
"$450 a night?" Daryl asked. "For this bullshit? Are you fuckin' shittin' me?"
"Well, that's just $100 and…something…per person per night for this room," Shane said.
"$112.50. And that's before tax. They don't even have TVs in the bedrooms!"
Hell, he'd once spent seven days at a $329-a-WEEK extended-stay motel with Merle that had more to offer than this place. It at least had a TV, and it only had cockroaches instead of walkers. They'd been sleeping in the truck for a week before that, after getting kicked out of Merle's ex-girlfriend's trailer. They'd had a good, short-term, cash-under-the-table job building fence on a ranch, and so they thought they'd splurge for a few days on a place with beds and a shower. A week later they were back in the truck. Living with Merle wasn't much different in or out of an apocalypse, he supposed.
They moved on to the next room, which had a queen-sized bed and a trundle bed that slid out from beneath it when they pressed a green button. This would be good for Carol and Sophia, Daryl thought. Carol would have her own bed, but Sophia would be close by on the trundle and feel safe.
When they left that room, Daryl looked down at the industrial carpet and noticed the dark reddish-brown drip-like stains in the puke-green threads. Blood. He glanced at the silver railing of the balcony and found dried, splotched blood there too, in the shape of what might be a partial handprint, if palms had no life-lines. That was a walker handprint.
"Careful," he hissed in a low voice as he crept along the trail down the hallway, which he turned. He ignored the two closed doors in the hallway for now, because the hallway dead-ended into a room he hadn't been able to see from below. The room to the door was wide-open, and the blood trail led inside.
The two men crept over the dripped splotches. As they entered the open doorway, the stench hit them like a palpable wave. They both gagged, threw their heads back, and then regained themselves without vomiting. Shane pulled up his shirt over his mouth and nose.
Daryl slowly lowered his bow as he beheld the horrid scene.
"Jesus Christ," Shane murmured in disgust.
On the bed lay a gnawed on, picked-over skeleton with only a hint of sinew still clinging to its bones. Blood stained the white sheets and faux-wood linoleum floor. The body had at one point been handcuffed by its wrists to the rails in the headboard, but the bony hands had slipped out once the flesh was all gone. Rope had been used to bind the body by its legs to the footboard of the bed, but it was frayed, perhaps from being gnawed along with the flesh it surrounded. That walker had been feasting on this one body for months.
Daryl walked to the pile of clothes on the floor and kicked them around. There were the security guard's blue uniform pants, his white undershirt, and his boxers. There was also a pair of black dress slacks, a woman's blouse, and a woman's bra and panties – the latter of which looked like they had been cut off. Daryl looked up and saw the open knife resting on the end table. "Fucking rapist asshole," he muttered. "Probably had a heart attack while he was doing it. Died, turned, and then ate her alive."
"Jesus Christ," Shane repeated.
Daryl crouched down and picked up the ID badge among the clothes. It pictured a smiling, thirty-something, red headed woman. Kylie Masterson, Park Manager. They'd likely both been working in the empty park when everything went to shit, and Security Guard Lloyd had decided no one could stop him from doing whatever the hell he wanted. "Sick fuck."
"We don't know that," Shane said unsteadily. "It could have been mutual. Some women like a little…you know, light BDSM. And then he just had a heart attack. Like you said. Like in that Stephen King novel. Gerald's Game."
Daryl stood from his crouched position. "Ain't nothing 'bout this looks light."
"I'm just saying we don't know. They could have been lovers before everything went down and then they holed up here together and they were having sexy fun time. We just don't know."
Shane didn't want to know, Daryl thought. That was all right. Neither did he. And the kids shouldn't know.
"The kids don't need to see this," Shane said, as if reading his mind. "Or Lori." He looked around the room and added, "Or Andrea," almost as an afterthought.
Daryl suddenly felt sorry for Andrea. Even after everything, Lori was still first in Shane's thoughts. Old habits were hard to break, Daryl supposed. "Let's check the last two closed rooms."
One was another bedroom, this time with two full-sized beds, and a stand-alone wardrobe. The last room, with no keypad, was a bathroom, much like the two downstairs, but with two pedestal sinks and a larger shower.
"Seven bedrooms, with twelve beds, and only three bathrooms?" Shane asked. "I guess the future doesn't have any teenage girls."
[*]
When they came back outside, the slain walker had been thrown into the bed of Daryl's pick-up truck, to the side of some boxes. "Figured we'd drive it outside the gates," Rick explained. "All clear in there?"
"Come here a sec, inside," Shane told him.
Rick exchanged a glance with Lori and then disappeared inside with Shane and Daryl, who explained what they'd found. "We'll clear her out, the mattress and sheets too," Shane said. "Most of the blood was contained in that room. The walker dripped a little on its way out across the hallway at some point. We'll clean the railing and scrub up what we can from the hall carpet. While we're doing all that, you take the women and kids to a restaurant or something in another section of the park. Have lunch or something. Just keep them out of sight while we take care of it."
Rick nodded. "I'll send T-Dog in to help you.".