Cursed Souls Blood, Brains & Rock'n'roll

Chapter 10 A very unexpected visit

How many flattering words deserve the man who was the first to think of digging a hole under his house, equipping it as a room and calling it a basement. How many secrets this underground realm can hide in itself. And as is well known, people are very fond of secrets, and even more fond of hiding these secrets from other people's eyes. And the basement in this respect is a faithful friend who will keep silent until his last breath. Well, or at least until someone comes downstairs for an old bicycle. In such situation, even the most courageous and steadfast basement can't prevent a vicious kidnapper of other people's secrets.

Of course, such convenient and extremely necessary nowadays thing as a basement was also present in the house 666 on Bachmann Street. There is no special need to describe it, because it was quite an ordinary basement, which lives its quiet and modest life until it is remembered. But this basement ceased to be ordinary after Julia was comfortably accommodated in it. Simon's original plan had been to get rid of her quickly by throwing her at the family's house door, but Rob had vehemently objected to this method of solving the problem. Still, even after Julia had lost a little of her living body tissue and become a little paler, he continued to have the warmest feelings for her. The only downside for him in treating Julia this way was that she was even less intelligent than before. Unfortunately, her ability to speak clearly was also lost, and to the outsider, Rob and Julia's conversation was a bit puzzling:

"Brains?"

"Argh, ghry..."

"Brains..."

"Ghrahs, arghhs..."

"Brains..."

Julia was doing quite well in the basement, and perhaps she even liked the change of scenery. It was quiet, damp-smelling, and no one was bothering her with questions about why there were open milk cartons in the department store refrigerator. The only inconvenience was the collar that kept Julia chained and prevented her from reaching the basement exit. Everyone had decided it would be best to keep Julia away from the door, since they suspected that zombies had an innate hatred of such structures, as well as an innate gift for slowly and gruesomely turning such structures into a pile of splinters. Otherwise, the basement was pretty nice. Simon had decorated the walls with paintings that Julia didn't care about, and Will had pulled up a chair that she never sat in anyway, since she mostly just stood there staring blankly at something in front of her.

In addition to creating a comfortable atmosphere in which Julia would feel that she wasn't a carnivorous dead man being kept in captivity so that she wouldn't do anything wrong, but just a slightly delayed guest, there was another matter related to her content. Any organism, whether living or dead, sooner or later gets hungry and demands a plate of something hot. Well, or cold and preferably something with a brain, as in Julia's case. Her roommates thought it would be too much trouble to start each day with a breakfast of a couple of hemispheres, so Julia ate mostly meat of poor quality. Naturally, as the meat purchases suddenly increased, the owner of the local butcher's shop took an interest in this. Fortunately, Rob's charm was able to convince him that all this meat was being purchased for a rare and voracious dog of a rare breed.

At Springwood's Department Store, Julia's disappearance almost caused a wave of uncomfortable questions. But when it was at last explained to the manager of the department store who was in question, he laughed out loud, but realizing that his employees were serious about the disappearance of one of their own, he put on a serious and businesslike look and said:

"I assume you're talking about Julia Walker, right?"

The people in the manager's office nodded affirmatively.

"The same Julia Walker who doesn't even know what her job title is?"

The heads nodded once more, but not so affirmatively this time.