Zombie Falls (A Gravity Falls Fan Fic)

Intruders

"Hello?" My sister yelled to the empty living room, startling me. I smacked her mouth shut with my hand and froze, hoping Mabel's noise wouldn't attract anyone. After a long, terrifying minute, Mabel began to wet the palm of my hand with her damp and slimy tongue. I flinched back and retreated my hand. Wiping her saliva on my shirt, I let out a grunt of disgust. "Ew, Mabel!" I said in a loud whisper. As I continued to rub off the access slime on my hand, I then told her, "I can't say that I didn't miss that, though."

To my surprise, no one seemed to be home. It looked like we were in the clear. The house was split into sections. The kitchen, when entering through the front door, was on the left of the staircase. In between the both, was the living room, which had the most ancient television I had ever seen, antennas and all. Parallel to the TV was a worn, faded, yellow, love seat couch that appeared to belong to the rest of the collection of the couch on the porch to the other entrance of the house. Next to the couch, a filthy, neglected fish tank and - what seemed to be - a gigantic skull head of an odd creature that was once used as a side table to a bunch of Pit Cola soda cans. What really caught my attention was the closed door next to the staircase with a sign saying, "Employees Only".

As I kept my gun up, I told Mabel not to go far just in case someone was actually in the house. Along the way to the door, I had almost forgot to whisper to Mabel to "Keep it down." She gave me a smile and thumbs up in return.

I tried to get my heart to stop thumping and my breath to steady and be silent. I didn't know for sure if anyone was here, but I couldn't help feeling like someone was. Still, I felt the need to check the corridors to confirm my curiosity. Just like the exterior of the house, the interior had peeling, stained wallpaper and other features that made it look neglected and not in its best condition. This house obviously hadn't been taken care of - even way before the apocalypse. I continued on until the door to - what looked like - an abandoned gift shop. It was difficult to know for sure what some of the items in the shop were because of the darkness and my eyes couldn't adjust. The windows, from what I could make out, were boarded up multiple times so that it blocked much of the outside world from being welcomed in. So, without the natural light of the sun setting along the landscape, the house was plunged into the darkness. It didn't help to know that a bunch of taxidermy animal eyes were in the room, practically watching me from the walls above.

The table I had bumped into gave me a jump scaring fright. To catch myself, I reached for the surface of the wooden desk and tried to silencd my breath, from which had only gotten louder. It had become so loud and heavy, in fact, that I was worried I might attract someone or something that was already living here. If anyone was here, I would have definitely caused a frightening disturbance. I waited anxiously until my lungs relaxed and my heart rate slowed to keep moving around the room.

Despite the animals corpses that were glued to different animals, there were other things in the shop, too. At one point, I found a row of hats - hats with the decoration of a pine tree on the front. Though, because of the dark, I couldn't tell what colors the hat was. I assumed it must have been white with a dark blue color. Replacing my old cap with the new pine tree one, I realized the new cap was a much more comfortable fit, considering my old one was getting too small to even fit me anymore. "Hm, perfect."

My sister's terrified call could have been heard from the outside of the house as well. I could tell by they way she attempted to sound calm that she didn't want to scare me. Unfortunately, I was. Her voice may have held a composed state, it was also mixed in with fear. "Dipper?" She called. "Dipper?"

Along with her own voice, was an old man's. He had a muffled vocabulary from where I stood in the house, yet, startling. "Mabel? Hang on! I'm coming!"

"Please." I could hear my sister trying to reason with someone. My suspicions were confirmed when a man's raspy voice spoke up, loud and clear.

"I said, 'get out', kid! You could be infected!"