"Hey Lucas, let's get fuck out of here man. Too many empties in the area for me." he turned to see Joseph coming through the doorway.
"See what I mean," looking down at the mess at Lucas' s feet he continued "it's not safe to be out here plus it will be dark soon and I sure as hell do not want to be stumbling through the woods at night to get home."
"Yeah it doesn't seem as though we are going to get anything else out of this place anyway let's get the fuck out of here."
Grabbing their packs, they started making their way to the front of the house when all of a sudden they heard a faint scraping sound coming from somewhere above them.
"I thought you checked up stairs?" Lucas whispered as he started to make his way to the foot of the stair case.
"I did, I checked every god damn room and closet. There is no way I missed anything!"
"Well let's make one last sweep just to make sure then we can head back home. The last thing we need is to have someone following us back and taking all out stuff or worse in the middle of the night."
The two of them started up the stairs, making as little noise as possible, when they reached the landing at the top Lucas point to Joseph to search the rooms to the right while he took the rooms to the left. He slowly opened the first door exposing a ransacked closet, taking quick stock of what was inside to make sure it was nothing they needed he closed the door and moved onto the next at the end of the hallway. He repeated the process of slowly opening the door revealing a small, empty room with another smaller door in the back corner.
"I already checked in there." Joseph whispered, jumping the shit out of him.
"Fuck man don't sneak up on me like that, it is a good way to get yourself shanked! Let's just have a quick look then we can head back home."
"I told you I already look in there, it's just full of a bunch of boxes." Joseph replied
Lucas glanced at him "just a quick look then we will get out of here."
They made their way across the room to the door and slowly pulled it open, inside was a small closet filled with boxes of old papers.
"Did you check behind those boxes Joseph?"
"Nope..."
"Well let's move some of these boxes and see what back there." Lucas said looking a little annoyed at Joseph
They quickly and quietly began moving the boxes from the closet and stacking them in the middle of the room. After getting about half of them out Lucas noticed a smaller door built into the back of the closet. He shot Joseph a sideways glance.
"Checked everywhere up here did you bro?" They finished moving the rest of the boxes out and stood looking at the newly discovered door.
"Whatever man let's find out where this thing leads and get this over with" with that Joseph stepped into the closet, drew his hatchet and pushed open the door.
Looking through the door was like starring into a void, it was complete darkness on the other side, Joseph pulled out his flashlight and shown it into the abyss. What lay beyond the door was a narrow, dusty set of stairs leading into an attic, the light reflecting of the floating dust particles made it look as though there were a blizzard raging beyond the door. Lucas and Joseph cautiously made their way up the stair case. At the top it opened up into a large attic spanning the length of the house, the area was littered with old dust covered furniture, empty boxes and old pictures.
"I'll take this side and you take that side and we will meet in the back." Lucas said
With that he headed to the left and began picking his way through the maze of boxes, checking for anything living or undead. Having come up empty he neared the back of the house and began looking for Joseph.
"Lucas over here!" Joseph's harsh whisper came from across the attic.
Making his way to where Joseph stood Lucas wondered what it was that Joseph had discovered and found him standing a few feet away from the emaciated body of a small boy. It looked as though the child had hidden away in the attic when everything went to heck. There were empty cans of soda, bottles of water and old food wrappers strewn around the area along with some blankets and pillows. As they stood looking at the awful scene before them the boys eyes snapped open, Joseph instinctively lashed out with his hatchet, aiming for the middle of the boys skull...