The noise of something crashing against the door woke Cody instantly. The disorientation of sleep kept him from figuring out what was happening for a couple of long seconds. Where were they?Why was he laying on the floor? He saw their make-shift barricade shake when the door was hit again and reality snapped into focus.
"Zack! Wake up now!" he yelled as he shook his brother's shoulder.
"Huh? Whatyouwant?" Zack slurred.
"They found us. The zombies. I don't know how but they did." Zack snapped to and threw the blanket off. He ran to the window and looked out and didn't like what he saw in the early morning light. He could only see about ten feet of the steps from his angle but there had to be at least twenty zombies crowded in that small space.
"There's a bunch of them out there, Cody," he said as the furniture they'd hastily stacked against the door began to slide across the floor. "They're trying to pull the same shit they did with the fence in New York."
Cody went to the other end of the small apartment and looked out the window and saw an empty alley with a Dumpster below their window. "This way, Zack. There's no ladder but we won't have much of a drop." His brother joined him at the window. "Just make sure you land on the closed lid and not the open one."
"No, really? Thanks for that, Captain Obvious." They turned to grab their clothes and gear and stopped cold when a mangled arm reached through the crack in the door and seemed to be waving at them. It would have been almost comical if the gap in the door wasn't growing faster by the second and more and more of the zombie followed its arm into the room.
Cody went for his pants but Zack stopped him and pointed at his shoes. "No time for that now. Put your shoes on. We can get dressed later." Cody nodded and slipped his feet into his shoes and ran back to the window and began struggling to pull it open.
"It's stuck!"
"Break the damn thing then!" Zack threw his brother a bat and the sound of glass tinkling to the floor filled the apartment. "Now let's go!" He grabbed a handful of their clothes and tossed them to his brother, who threw them outside.
The doorway was now wide enough for a zombie to wander through and Zack wasted no time joining Cody at the window. Cody jumped and slid off the lid and Zack was about to follow when Cody's eyes widened and he yelled up for Zack to grab the bag with the address book.
"Shit," Zack mumbled as he turned away from the window. The first zombie was through the door now and closer to Cody's pack than he was. Grunting, Zack lifted the mattress from the floor and ran directly at the zombie, knocking it backwards and out of the way. He gave one last push and let go, pivoting on his toes and snatching the bag up in one fluid motion and went for the window. The bag went first and he heard it land on the concrete. Zack was right behind it, bouncing off the Dumpster's lid and landing beside his brother.
"You didn't get the other bag?"
"Hell no I didn't get the other bag, Cody. I barely got that one," Zack shouted, kicking Cody's pack a few feet across the concrete with his shoed foot.
"Okay, okay. Sorry. You got the one that matters. We can get-" Cody was interrupted as a zombie came to the window and promptly fell out and landed with a resounding boooom in the Dumpster. A second and then a third did the same and Cody couldn't suppress a grin. "Wow."
"No kidding. Let's go before they get lucky and land on the lid," Zack said as one of the zombies managed to stand up only to be crushed by another falling from the window. "I wish I had that on tape," he laughed. Zack scooped up the backpack and Cody got their clothes and the boys high-tailed it down the alley. A few blocks away the stopped in the middle of the street and caught their breath, Cody bent over at the waist and Zack squatting down on his haunches.
"I used to have nightmares like this," Cody said after he got his wind back.
"About running from zombies?"
"No, about being in the middle of the city in just my underwear." Cody told him and Zack snickered.
"I'd have nightmares, too, if I still wore Hanes."
"Whatever," Cody said as he took his shoes off. Zack did the same and the boys redressed as much as they were able with half their clothes still in the apartment. Zack was missing his shirt in addition to his shoe and Cody was sockless and without his usual undershirt.
"Number one on the list of things we're doing today," Zack said as they started walking again, "is get new clothes."
"Let's get out of the city before we go shopping, Zack.
The boys put block after block behind them, having to dodge zombies every few streets, until they came to an on-ramp for the I-90 expressway.
"What do you think, Zack? It should be a lot faster than winding our way through the streets."
"Yeah, I think you're right."
They walked up the ramp and merged into the dead traffic. Cody was right; it was faster. There weren't anywhere near as many overturned vehicles and other debris and there were significantly fewer zombies. As far as they could tell, the only downside to being on the freeway was the lack of shade. It was barely past mid-morning but Cody's shirt was already stuck to his back. Zack wiped an arm across his brow and flung the sweat to the pavement.
"Pass me a water bottle, Cody," Zack asked about three miles into their walk. Cody dug one out and handed it over.
"Go easy on it. We only have one more after that until we find more."
"I bet we can find more up here," Zack said, heading for the nearest car. He stepped away just as quickly when he saw that nearly every square inch of the interior was covered in blood and gore. He gently steered Cody away when his brother came over to help him look. "Maybe not in this one. We'll keep looking."
"Speaking of looking, look over there." Cody pointed to the horizon and Zack saw a long line of dark clouds heading their way.
"We're going to get soaked, aren't we? That's awesome," Zack said sarcastically. They kept plodding along, hoping they'd reach the next off-ramp before the storm broke over them.
"We could take cover in one of these cars, Zack," Cody said when they could see the rain a few hundred yards away.
"No way. Cars might be safe in a thunderstorm but I don't want to be in one that's surrounded by zombies. We'd never get out." Or they'd find their way in, he added to himself and shuddered.
"Good point." The water fell on them seconds later, washing the sweat and dirt away as it soaked them to the bone. It fell so hard that they could barely see the green reflective sign marking the off-ramp. They picked up their pace and hurried to the exit. The boys started around a jack-knifed semi trailer and didn't hear the sounds of shuffling feet and moans on the other side over the pounding rain.
Zack cleared the trailer first and was face-to-face with a half dozen zombies. He watched as the nearest one reached out for him in what felt like extreme slow motion. Zack saw the dirt and dried blood under the thing's ragged fingernails as they neared his face.
"Zack, why'd you stop?" Cody asked as he ran into his brother's back. He looked up and saw the scene and gave Zack a shove to the side. "No!" Cody yelled so hard his voice cracked.
Truth be told, Cody Martin had never been in a real fight in his entire life. He'd been in the occasional scrape with his brother and had a scuffle or two in school over the years, but he'd never thrown a punch. Until now. The bat was in his left hand and it might as well have been on the moon for all the good it would do him there, so he balled his fist and threw a punch and was a bit surprised when he connected with the side of the zombie's head. He spun the thing around and out of the way long enough to clear the trailer and get some fighting room.
Cody pushed the hair back out of his eyes and switched the bat to his other hand. He spared a quick glance back for Zack and saw that he was seconds away from joining the fight. Cody lashed out with the bat and caught the closest zombie in the shoulder, gritting his teeth as he heard something break with a sickening crack. The zombie staggered away under the blow and fell to the ground. He hit the next one dead in the chest and watch as it awkwardly pinwheeled its arms before falling backwards.
"You've gotta hit them in the head, Cody!" Zack yelled as he swung and smashed the top of a zombie's skull in. "They'll just keep getting up if you don't."
"Not that easy with a bat, Zack," Cody said over the rain.
"We just need better stuff. Now come on, we can get past the rest of them."
Cody spared a glance back at the two he'd knocked down. His brother was right. One was nearly to its feet already while the other was trying to manage getting up with only one arm. He felt Zack's hand on his shoulder and moved on when he got a little push. They made their way down the rest of the ramp, taking care not to walk too close to anything that could hide a zombie-filled ambush.
Once they reached the bottom it was clear they'd bypassed the rest of downtown Boston and were now in the outskirts of the suburbs. They paralleled the freeway for a few blocks as they walked through the remains of a massive fire. Many of the buildings were still throwing heat off as they passed and Cody surmised that this was probably the fire he saw the previous night. Wet ash had piled up like mud on parts of the sidewalk.
Five blocks that felt like twenty later, they stepped out of the fire zone and were walking past an industrial park when Zack perked up. "Do you see what's up there, Cody? Houses."
Cody couldn't see much but the ground ahead of him through the downpour so he didn't answer immediately. A few dozen steps further he came to believe Zack was right. "I see them." The boys trudged on and felt their steps get a little lighter when they saw the first driveway leading from the road.
"The blue one," Cody told his brother, pointing a few houses past the first.
"Why? It's further away."
"It's bigger than the others. Probably more bedrooms. Better chance of finding stuff we can use and clothes we can wear. Besides, it's not like we can get any wetter."
"True." Zack led the way to the front door and tried the knob. "Locked," he said.
"Let's try the back before we go breaking windows."
"Sounds good." Zack was ready to create his own way into the house and was surprised to find the door open when he pulled on it. He looked back at Cody and shrugged before putting a finger to his lips as he stepped inside. They stood silently for a ten count in a laundry room before deciding they were in the clear. Cody locked the door behind them.
Zack toed his shoe off and and worked his soaked jeans down his legs. He looked around and saw a stack of towels neatly folded on a shelf. He grabbed one and looked at his brother. "If you don't want to be embarrassed, I think you should turn around for a few seconds." He tugged at the waistband of his boxers when Cody didn't understand. Cody blushed and turned his back and Zack stripped the rest of the way and wrapped the towel around his waist. "Done." He returned the favor for Cody and they left the laundry room.
They entered the kitchen and checked the cabinets as they passed, finding them far from fully stocked but equally far from bare. They continued their exploration and found the living room and its perfectly useless giant flat screen as well as a hallway and a flight of stairs.
"Yeah, there were kids here, Cody. Check out the 360," Zack said, pointing to the xbox console. Cody nodded in agreement.
"I'll take the hallway if you want the upstairs," Cody told him after Zack was finished rooting through the stack of games.
"That's fine." He stood back up and headed for the stairs.
Cody shivered as he walked down the hallway and he couldn't convince himself it was just from the cold rain. He felt weird walking through a total stranger's house. He poked his head in a door and saw a master bedroom. He kept going and found an office and a library. He walked past the shelves of books and ran his fingers on the bindings, nodding his approval at the titles.
Meanwhile, Zack had climbed the stairs and found the kids' bedrooms. He looked around and guessed one had belonged to a boy somewhere around six or seven, another boy close to their age, and a third...some sort of girl. All the pink in the third room made him want to gag so he closed the door back. He returned to the middle room and set about trying to find something to wear other than a towel. He went back downstairs a few minutes later in shorts and a t-shirt and two shoes.
"Try the room in the middle, Cody," he told his brother as he came from the back of the house. The clothes are a little small on me but they should fit you fine. These shoes though, wow, they're tight but they'll work for today."
"Thanks." Cody told him what he'd found before starting up the steps.
"Hey, you didn't happen to see a gun while you were back there, did you?"
"Not out in the open but I didn't dig in any drawers or closets. I figure we have a few hours to kill until this storm blows over."
Cody went up the stairs and entered the center room. He looked around, taking in the room. Basketball and band posters covered most of the walls and the desk by the window was covered in basketball trophies and pictures. Not able to stop himself, Cody picked up a picture of a dozen smiling, sweaty boys standing in front of a basketball goal, each holding an index fingers in the air.
After comparing that picture to a few others on the desk, Cody determined who's room he was in. He looked around again and felt sadness for a boy he'd never met as he realized the kid would never get a chance to see...whoever those men on the posters were...play again or listen to a song by any of his favorite bands. He wondered what happened to the boy and the rest of his family. Did they escape to somewhere safe? Were they out in the middle of it all when the outbreak occurred? Cody let out a hitching breath as he studied the snapshot. He didn't know how long he stood there staring at it, only that it was long enough for Zack to come looking for him.
"Hey, you okay, Cody?" he called softly from the doorway.
"Oh. I'm...good. I'm fine. Just got distracted for a bit."
Zack knew his brother well enough to know better but he didn't show it. He was on the verge of cracking and Zack wished he'd not come looking for him. It needed to happen and it was just a matter of time before it did. He could only hope it wouldn't happen at a bad time. "I just thought I'd come up here and tell you that I, um," Zack paused, pretending to look at the wall for a second while he made up an excuse, "oh, Nine Inch Nails. Nice taste. Anyway, I found a basement. I figure we'll scrounge up a meal and then check it out."
"Yeah, that sounds like a plan."
"You find some clothes and I'll raid the cabinets. See you in a few." Zack said as he turned and left. Cody put the picture down and went to the dresser to find something to wear.
Zack had stacked a bunch of cans on one of the counters and was busy opening them when Cody came down. "You know, I never knew I'd miss something as stupid as an electric can opener."
"Tell me about it. What'd you find?" After days of rationing the food they had in their hotel suite, the lunch of cold ravioli, soup, and crackers and a dessert of surprisingly not stale cookies filled them. Zack leaned back in his chair and patted his belly.
"Ready to check the basement?" Zack asked as he burped.
"Gross. And maybe one of us should stay up here and keep watch. Just in case. The worst thing I can think of is getting trapped in the basement."
"I can think of worse things but you're right. You want to stay up here?" Zack had a pretty good idea that Cody did. For whatever reason, this house was weirding him out.
"That's good with me," his brother answered. "Just don't take too long." He dug their sole flashlight from the pack and handed it to Zack.
"Be back in a few," Zack told him as he headed for the steps. "Don't forget to call out if there's a problem." Zack didn't wait for Cody's reply and turned the flashlight on and descended into darkness. He took the stairs carefully, flashing the light around everywhere at once. Every shadow was a zombie and each creak was a moan. By the time he reached the bottom, the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end.
"Okay, Zack. Calm down. There's no one down here." A voice in his head asked how he knew that fact. "Because I'd smell 'em, that's why," he told the voice and it quieted down. He scanned the room and saw an entire corner filled with exercise equipment that had become clothes racks. A couch filled one side of the long wall and another big television filled the other side. Slightly envious, Zack passed them by and headed for the door at the end of the room.
"Holy crap," he mumbled as he took a long look at the stacks of boxes. "Mom would be in heaven right now." A dozen boxes labeled as XMAS stood next to another ten or so with Jeremy's Winter Clothes or, and this made him laugh, Mom's Old Knitting Shit. "Betcha Mom didn't write that," he said to himself and grinned. He spent another few minutes looking at a fantastic amount of crap before giving up. Zack turned around and his feet got tangled in an old rug and he slipped. His arm flailed out and he managed to pull some of Jeremy's Winter Clothes down on himself. He yelled out as a box hit him in the forehead.
"You okay?" Cody called from the top of the steps, his voice shaky.
"Yeah, I'm good. Just managed to knock a bunch of boxes over. Cody told him to hurry it up if there wasn't anything worthwhile down there and Zack said he would. He pushed the boxes off his body and stood up. He happened to shine the light down on a box and saw a glossy glimmer from an open corner. "Hello, what have we here?" he said as he opened the box the rest of the way. And laughed. Underneath a messily folded sweater was the largest stash of porn Zack had ever seen. "I like this Jeremy kid," he said under his breath as he folded the box's flaps closed, making a note to come back down here before they left as he traipsed back up the steps.
"Find anything interesting down there?" Cody asked him when he got back to the kitchen.
"You could say that," Zack laughed. Cody gave him a quizzical look and he elaborated. "A couple of light raincoats we can take with us. I found another backpack, too."
"And you didn't bring them up here why?"
"Because it's still raining out there, that's why. Unless you're in a hurry to get soaked again." Cody admitted that his brother had a point.
The boys spent the next hour going through the house room by room. They put together a decent amount of food from the various cabinets and the pantry, a set of nice binoculars, a couple changes of clothes, and a large but lightweight duffel bag to carry it all in, but no weapons.
"How is it possible that no one in this city owns a gun?" Zack asked after they'd taken the parents' room apart.
"We've only been in the suites at the hotel, two apartments, and this house. That's hardly the whole city, Zack."
"Well, yeah, but we haven't seen a single one in the street or in a car, either. The survivors always find a gun by now in the movies. And don't tell me this isn't a movie. I know." Cody smirked at his brother.
"We'll find some. There's got to be a gun shop somewhere."
"If we find a gun shop, we're going to be extra careful, Cody. Super careful."
"Why? More movie knowledge?"
"Actually, yes. Will you just trust me on this until we find one? If we find one?"
"If you want me to, Zack. Yeah, I'll trust you."
"Good."
They messed around and killed another hour while the rain pounded itself out. Cody flipped through books in the library while Zack made a second trip downstairs to grab the raincoats and his secret cargo, managing to find a heavy-duty flashlight in the process. The sun finally broke through the grey clouds and within minutes they could see steam starting to roll up from the ground.
"Why couldn't the zombies happen back in like March?" Zack groused as they prepared to leave. "It would be a bunch cooler out there."
"There might be two feet of snow on the ground and that would be even worse," Cody answered as he pulled a red hat he'd liberated from upstairs on his head.
"Never knew you were a Pistons fan, Cody," Zack said as he shouldered his new pack.
"I didn't know I was either. Are they a baseball team?" he looked at Zack and saw him shaking his head. "No? Football? Hockey? Basketball?"
"There you go. Fourth try's the charm."
"Are they any good?" he asked as they walked out the back door, instantly regretting it as Zack started talking about sports. He did his best to tune Zack out and concentrate on their surroundings as they walked. After all these years it was a skill he still had not developed well enough. Cody suffered seven blocks of Zack's nonstop monologue before he stopped it.
"...and they'd foul the shit out of Michael Jordan every chance they had back then. He'd get the ball and-"
"Zack, hush. Look." Cody pointed down the road where a shape was coming out of the steam and heat haze.
"Is it a zombie?"
"I don't know."
"Well how about you use those fancy binoculars that you have hanging around your neck and take a look, Cody?"
"Oh yeah." Cody pulled them to his eyes and turned the center knob to focus. "No, not a zombie. Looks like a grandma pushing a cart."
"A normal person? Finally!" Zack exclaimed with a small fist pump. "It's nice to know that we're not the last people on the planet after all."
As they closed the distance with the other figure, Zack saw Cody was right. It was an older lady, not yet elderly but a far cry from her thirties, pushing a shopping cart filled with supplies. A ridiculously large sun hat sat atop her head and she was wearing a dress that looked like an old curtain. They waited until they were about twenty feet away before calling to her.
"Hello, ma'am, are you okay?"
"Get back!" She shouted at them and stopped her cart. "Get away!"
"Ma'am?" Cody questioned. "Is everything okay?"
"I can see the plague on you. I can smell the infection on your breath. Get away from me!"
Cody and Zack exchanged glances before Cody tried again. "We're not infected, ma'am, I promise. We haven't been bitten." They walked a little closer, showing her their arms and legs and even pulling up their shirts. "See?"
"Lies!" the grandmother shouted as she began to dig in her purse. "Boys your age are always full of lies. I can see the rot on your faces, boys, but you'll not be biting me. Oh no you won't." Both boys froze as she finally managed to pull a large handgun from the bag and aimed it at them with her liver-spotted hands.
"Run, Cody!" Zack yelled as he pushed his brother toward the rows of houses. "Go!" A loud boom broke the quiet of the neighborhood and Zack felt the bullet rush inches past his face and heard glass shatter somewhere near. They'd almost reached the side of the house when she fired again but thankfully wasn't as close with her second shot. The boys ran across backyards and down side streets until they'd put almost a mile between them and her. They finally stopped on the back steps of another house, completely out of breath, and sat down on a porch swing.
"What the hell was that, Cody? She shot at us. Shot at us." Zack was furious.
"I think she was crazy, Zack. All this might have pushed her over the edge."
"I don't care why she did it. All that matters is that she did. Damn it, I can't believe she shot at us. We aren't even infected!"
"I know, Zack, I know," Cody told him, trying to calm his brother down.
"See, this is why we need guns, Cody. So shit like this can't happen."
"Wait. You mean that after all this, after all the death and destruction we've seen, you mean to tell me that you'd have shot her?" Cody looked at Zack in disbelief. Zack looked back at him like he was a moron.
"Cody, I don't know if you've been paying attention for the last week or not but the world we knew is gone. Absolutely gone. There's no police anymore. There's no Army anymore. No Marines, no Air Force, maybe a Navy but they aren't here so they don't matter. There's no one left to protect us from the zombies or the crazy people but us. So to answer your question, hell yes I would have shot her. Right in the face. Right between the fucking eyes. But to do that, I need a gun."
Cody was stone silent for a few minutes. "You're right," was all he said when he finally spoke.
"Look," Zack said to him, "I wasn't trying to be mean but I think you needed a little dose of reality check. It's ugly out here now and we've got to look out for each other. You're all I have left now, Cody, and I'm not about to let some crazy bitch take you away from me, okay? I'll bury whoever's left in this entire city before I let that happen." He wrapped an arm around Cody and pulled him close. "Okay?"
Cody nodded into his chest and finally let everything go. He'd stayed strong for Zack when they were in the hotel room, stayed emotionally stable during their week of hiding in the suite. He'd seen Zack through his little moments along the way after they left the Tipton. He'd been hanging on by a thread by the time they'd reached the house earlier, the vileness of his city and all that had happened in it wearing on him like a great weight. If Zack hadn't come upon him when he had, Cody would have had his breakdown in the mysterious boy's bedroom.
But he was having it now. Zack held him just like Cody had held him more times than he wanted to remember over the past week. He placed a hand on his brother's back and gently rubbed and whispered quiet encouragements while Cody cried himself out. Cody leaned further into him and Zack began to slowly rock the swing.