How It All Ended

Chapter 6

I'm damn near out of everything. I haven't seen the outside for two weeks. It's been raining the last two days, pretty damn heavy. It finally let up this morning. All I see is gray in the basement, and it feels as if the walls are closing in on me.

I looked at the close to empty bag of food beside me and said, "You have to do it, Dom."

I was going to go up and venture out there days prior, but something happened outside. It was pretty close to my house, too.

I was about to disassemble my barricade when I heard a couple of gunshots. I counted around five pops. I hurried back down my steps and stood there, listening. As I perked an ear up, not only did I hear shots, I heard some yelling and screaming.

"Maybe it's Rich?" I wondered. "Screw it, go up."

But I just couldn't do it. I was too terrified to do so. I just sat down on my bottom basement step.

More shots. More yelling.

I sighed, "Damn."

But now, I have no choice in the matter. Well, I do have a choice: Stay in my basement and starve, or venture up and out to try and find food.

I took a deep breath. "I have to go."

I walked up my basement stairs and began tearing apart my barricade. Before I exited, I made sure to take the shovel Rich had given me so I had some kind of a weapon should someone be lurking around the upstairs.

"Here we go," I muttered to myself as I opened the basement door.

The smell of stale air hit me as soon as I opened the door and stepped into my kitchen.

"Oh damn," I groused. "Someone open a window."

Then I remembered: my broken living room window. After staying in my basement for two whole weeks, I was stunned that nobody had entered my house.

When I looked out of my front windows, that pickup truck was gone, but the two decaying corpses remained. And I could smell them. I looked away and stifled a few gags.

"Ah, shit is that awful," I muttered. And I had to walk out into that.

Before I did anything, I sat in my kitchen to formulate a plan. I needed food and water mainly. I figured that my best course of action would be to try and get into my neighbor's houses. I wouldn't have to venture out too far since the homes were close by.

"I'm not a damn burglar," I thought. But then I realized that there were no authorities around to try and stop me. I decided to try my next door neighbor Benjamin's place. Maybe he'd even be home, hunkering down as I had been. I got out of the kitchen and grabbed my things: the shovel and my small, fold-up backpack.

When I was back out in my yard, I could smell the faint odor of something burning off in the distance. "This sucks," I said under my breath.

My neighbor Benjamin had a very tall privacy fence. I grabbed the top, pulled myself up, and peered over the gate. Benjamin's driveway was empty: either he took off in his truck, or someone else did. I dropped down into Ben's yard and walked around to the side door of his house.

The door was locked. "Should I just knock?" I decided against it. I didn't know who was around that could hear me.

I tried looking in the windows, but I couldn't see a damn thing.

I sighed, "Crap."

The only place that I knew of that might be open was the Anderon's house. But, I did not want to see what was left of Richard lying there dead on the kitchen floor. And, I didn't want to run into that group that attacked us.