100 Days in Deadland (part 1 of the Deadland Saga)

Violence (Chapter 15)

VIOLENCE: The Seventh Circle of Hell

Chapter XV

I’d traveled too far north.

Clutch’s farm was southwest of town. Camp Fox was southeast of town.

I never should’ve gotten close to Chow Town.

Without a GPS or compass, I’d let the woods guide me right to the backyard of a large two-story house in a row of cookie-cutter two-story houses in a newer sub-development for as far I could see.

“Sonofabitch.”

I walked past the play set and up to the patio door. Certainly, not all of these houses had zeds inside. I crossed my fingers. After looking inside and seeing no signs of zeds or violence, I rapped on the glass. A clamor erupted from somewhere deep inside the house.

I sprinted over a short chain-link fence and into the next yard. That was the good thing about zeds. They clung to the out of sight, out of mind philosophy and lost focus on their prey quickly if they couldn’t see, hear, or smell it. But once they’d homed in on a target, they could be damn near relentless.

I didn’t even knock at the next house. I could see overturned chairs, something dead and furry and on the floor, and a shape hovering at the kitchen window. I crept away from the patio door.

Finally, at the fifth house—one with a nice rock garden in its backyard—I rapped on the glass and waited and rapped again.

Silence greeted me.

Even better, the patio door had been left unlocked, and it slid open silently and smoothly. I pulled out my larger knife and stepped inside, carefully closing and locking the door behind me.

The air was stale and hinted of rotten fruit but didn’t contain the all-too-familiar stench of infection and decay.

I tiptoed across the open dining room and noticed drawers left ajar in the kitchen as though someone had left in a hurry. I bypassed the kitchen to the adjacent living room. No signs of struggle. Checked out the hallway, closets, a nicely finished basement, and upstairs. The master bed hadn’t been made yet, and several shirts lay strewn across the mattress. “Thank God,” I muttered and hustled downstairs. Whoever lived here must’ve left town as soon as the outbreak hit. If they got lucky, maybe they got to wherever it was they’d been headed.

Back in the kitchen, I turned on the faucet. Nothing, as expected. Before checking the refrigerator for liquids, I walked into the large walk-in pantry and smiled. Inside was bliss. It wasn’t fully stocked by any means, but a dozen or so cans of food, several bottles of wine, and a case of flavored water waited on the shelves. I went straight for the water, tearing through the plastic, and grabbed two bottles. I chugged the first down without stopping.

I leaned back against a shelf, careful to avoid the fuzzy green bread. There was enough here to last me a week, maybe longer. Since this neighborhood hadn’t been looted yet, the Dogs must’ve had the same idea as us when it came to Chow Town. The risk of drawing out a herd of zeds in this town was too high to take as long as we could still find food in solitary, secluded farmhouses with no more than a few zeds to deal with at one time.

It was a good reminder that I had to remain silent and unseen. I’d already stirred up zeds in at least three nearby houses. I could only hope they'd given up by now and gone back to lumbering around their homes. They could easily break out of the homes, especially through the all-glass patio doors. Clearly, they hadn’t had a reason to…until possibly now.