The Weight of the World

Chapter 4: The Zone

The place was dead. Quite literally. Starved dogs curled up in the streets. Blood smeared the road. Bones. Bones, everywhere. Trinkets, memories of a forgotten age. Not a light to be seen, but that of the moon and stars. Even those were buried beneath a blanket of cloud.

Joe kept close. He didn't speak, but I could see everything he was thinking in his eyes.

A burnt-out wreck of a car blocked a junction. Another car, the bonnet crumpled, was pinned beneath a traffic light. I thought I saw something fleshy in the driver's seat, but didn't stay to observe.

The crunch of glass underfoot vanished as soon as it arrived.

We reached the top of our street. As expected, the houses were dark. Between the fog and the absence of the streetlamps, it looked less like a domestic image and more like the Blackout. I half expected to hear the whine of engines and whistle of bombs. Joe didn't move.

His eyes were milky, staring. Like a deer in the headlights. His flared nostrils pumped in time with his chest. I stepped beside him, a hand on his shoulder. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I have to," he said, and stormed off. Without another word.

Tugged along like a wakeboarder, I felt the floor slide out beneath me. Agency gone, a leaf in the wind. He'd saved me a job, I guess. Thrown me in at the deep end, not left me to make the decision myself.

Avenue after avenue, the same story. Darkness and death. Not even rats scuttled away as we approached. The darkness was a blanket, it seemed closer to gas. Poisonous fumes infecting our lungs, blotting our eyes. It was all so unnatural. Eerie didn't do it justice.

Graveyards are eerie. This...This was like being in a grave. In a coffin. Beneath six feet of earth, entombed in a casket and left to the dark and the rot. I was certain Joe would hear my chattering teeth.

I'd only seen his back for ten minutes now, easily. Our home was fast approaching, the façade seemed...normal. No damage. No lights, as expected, but no obvious decay. The hair on my neck stood on end, electrified by the shiver down my spine. Something was wrong about this, more wrong than anything else I'd seen tonight.

Time to find out what.

The gate was ajar. With no wind to speak of, it did not stir. Joe put his hand on the cast iron, halting.

"Wait here."

I offered no protest. Trying to open my mouth left me stood, dumbfounded. My tongue was thick in my mouth, and even had I anything to say, I doubted I could have mustered the strength.

Misery fell like rain. Why was I here? What had I hoped to find? Joe should have known. Walk past the burnt-out remains of a thousand houses, and do you really expect the next to be any different?

Footsteps. Joe grew nearer, a shadow fallen over his face. Dread stuck its fangs into my heart. Joe pulled me to my feet, his face level with mine for less than a second. Enough to see the tears. The stench of death hung from him.

He didn't speak. All the way through the zone. Not when we passed the burned cars. Not when we passed the rubble. Nor the overgrown stores. Nothing. Not a word. On the return trip, as the fog began to thin, I noticed more.

Crumbled masonry. Shattered windows. Brown, flaking bloodstains across walls, across pavement, across the road. More disturbingly, I noticed something else. Shell casings, scattered like so much deadly confetti.

With the wall looming above us, I did briefly wonder how we would scale this scaffold-less side. An idea popped into my head, the only light in this dark land. "Joe, wait a second." He did halt, to his credit. I hopped the fence of the nearest house.