Chapter Thirteen
“Do we turn around and find a different way back home? Or do we go knock and see if anyone is home?”
Ryder thinks to himself for a minute, and I don’t rush him. This decision could have either really good, or really bad consequences. On the plus side, we might get a new ally, a new pair of eyes and ears watching our place. On the negative side, we might get a new enemy, a new person to watch out for. This person might try to kill or rob us if we turn our back on them.
Finally, he sighs. “I think you should stay here, and let me check the house out first.”
“I don’t think so. There is no way you’re going up to that house alone. You can go up to the house, or you can turn around and head home. Either way, I’m gonna have your back on this. Now, what are we doing?”
He’s studying me intently, and I feel oddly self-conscious about it. After a minute, he nods once. “If you wanna come with me, you stay behind me at all times, and if I tell you to do something, you do it. Got it?”
“Yes.”
We slide along the side of the house, making sure to stay out of view of any of the windows. He ducks down behind the truck, and I follow closely behind. From our position behind the truck, we creep slowly up to the porch.
Ryder brings his rifle up, and steps into the open doorway, quickly scanning the room around us. Once he deems it clear, he nods to me, and I step in after him. I do my own quick sweep of the room, and follow Ryder down a narrow hallway.
There’s a loud thump, and we both pause in our tracks, guns raised. After a few seconds, Ryder motions me forward, and we slip into an open door that leads to a bathroom. There’s another door that’s left ajar, and we walk up to it, unsure of what we’re going to find.
A second thump is followed by a breathy moan, and Ryder frowns. “Are these people doing what I think they’re doing?” I ask, incredibly disgusted.
He motions for me to walk back the way we came in, but I’m rooted to the spot. Something else has caught my attention, and I’m truly hoping that it isn’t what I think it is. I take a step closer to the door, and listen.
There’s a lower, throatier moan, one that Ryder and I both recognize instantly. He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me behind his back, as if he’s trying to shield me from whatever we’re going to find in this room.
He kicks the door open, and we come to an abrupt halt in the entryway of a master bedroom. What we’re seeing is so disgusting, so horrible that I can’t even believe it. This isn’t possible. It’s too terrible to be happening!
There’s a recently infected woman tied to the headboard. She’s completely naked except for a handkerchief that’s been shoved down her throat to keep her from biting. But that’s not even the worst of it. There’s someone else in bed. He’s in his late thirties or early forties, with graying hair and a potbelly, but that’s not what I can’t look away from.
It’s the fact that he’s having sex with the captive zombie!
He pauses mid-thrust and stares at us. His mouth is open wide in surprise, and he looks like he’s unsure of whether to be ashamed, scared, or furious. There’s a brief moment where nobody speaks, moves, or thinks. Then, in a swift, fluid movement, the man snatches a handgun from the table and points it directly at my chest. His eyes narrow in hatred, and he takes a few deep breaths.
“You’re interrupting.”
Ryder inches closer to me. His finger curls around the trigger, but he doesn’t squeeze it yet. “What the hell is going on here?” he asks as if he doesn’t already know the answer.
“My wife and I are enjoying a private moment, and you’re ruining it.” His face is scrunched up tight in anger, and the hand that’s holding the gun is trembling so wildly that I’m not even sure he’ll hit me if he pulls the trigger. I’m not willing to take that chance though; I want to be as far from this room as possible.
“Ryder, let’s go.”
He ignores me, refusing to take his eyes off the man in bed. “You’re sick,” he hisses, turning his head to look at the woman. There’s a massive chunk of flesh missing from her stomach, and he’s laid a sheet across it, but it doesn’t help much. I can still see the outline of the bite wound, and it sends shivers up my spine.
The man climbs out of bed, and I keep my eyes above his naked waist. “She’s my wife,” he whimpers, suddenly not looking so angry and volatile. The gun lowers a fraction of an inch, and I let out the breath I’ve been holding in for some time. “I love her too much. I couldn’t just kill her.”
“She’s already dead! You’re keeping her tied to your bed. Why? So you can have sex with her whenever you want? You’re a monster.” Ryder sounds more disgusted than I’ve ever heard him sound before, and I wonder which of us this bothers more.
The man’s gun comes back up, but it’s pointing at Ryder’s chest now, and I realize what he’s doing. Ryder’s baiting him, trying to get the gun off of me and onto him. “Don’t pretend to be the heartbroken husband. You’re really just a sick pervert that gets his rocks off screwing his dead wife!”
The man lunges for Ryder’s throat, apparently forgetting that he’s holding a gun. Ryder steps to the side, bringing his knee up into the man’s stomach. The gun drops to the ground, and the man swears. He reaches for it, but Ryder grabs his arm and twists, dislocating the shoulder.
The man falls to the ground, where he lays in a crumpled heap. “I couldn’t save her…it was just too late…it’s all my fault!” He begins to sob pitifully, but Ryder isn’t watching him. He’s watching the woman that’s tied to the bed and, when I pick up the gun, he holds his hand out for it. I pass it over to him, curious about what his plan is.
“You need to put her out of her misery.”
What he says surprises me. His eyes are softer and more caring than I’ve ever seen them, and I realize that he doesn’t pity the man on the ground, he pities the woman in the bed. And I don’t blame him one bit, because nobody should be forced to live like this.
If I were ever bitten and turned into one of those things, I would hope that someone had the strength to kill me. I wouldn’t want to walk around like a soulless monster for the rest of time.
“I can’t,” the man whispers, barely noticeable above the moaning of his dead wife. “I just can’t do it. I love her too much.”
“You love her so much that you could let her stay like this?” Ryder snaps. “If I ever loved a woman so much that I could marry her, and want a life with her, I couldn’t bare to see her like this. And then to have sex with her in this position?”
I’m not sure whether he sounds more angry or more disgusted, but it’s definitely a mix of both. The gun in his hand is shaking slightly, and that tells me that he’s truly unnerved by this. Nothing ever shakes Ryder; at least, he doesn’t show fear or nervousness. I wonder now how many times he was scared out of his mind, but just didn’t show it.
“You have to do this. End her suffering,” Ryder says, practically pleading with the man now.
The man’s eyes harden, and he glares at both of us. “You can’t begin to understand!” he screams, getting to his feet. One arm is hanging uselessly at his side, and the other is clenched in anger. He doesn’t pose much of a threat, but Ryder shields me anyways. “You can’t understand because you still have the person you love!”
“I don’t love her,” Ryder says, taking a step forward. “But even if I did, I would never do this to her. I know that she would deserve better than this! And I certainly wouldn’t use her for sex.”
The man’s features soften, and he slumps again. He sniffles, wipes his face, and looks at Ryder pleadingly. “Give me the gun, and I’ll do it.”
Ryder nudges me, and I raise my own gun, just in case. The man takes the gun from Ryder, and turns away from us. He takes aim at his wife’s head, but the gun is trembling so badly I know he won’t hit her if he pulls the trigger. He takes a few deep breaths to calm himself, and then tries again.
With one last shuddering bre
ath, he turns the gun around, sticks the end in his mouth, and pulls the trigger. The back of his head explodes, coating us in blood and skull fragments, and I scream as the man drops to the ground, missing half of his face. I’m still screaming when Ryder takes the gun from him and shoots his wife.
When he turns to me, all I can see is the man’s blood that coats Ryder’s shirt and arms, and then I look down at myself. Bits of blood, brain matter, and bone coat my clothes. I slap at my arms, trying to scrape everything away, trying not to see it as I do. Right now, I don’t want to think about what’s sticking to me and soaking into the carpet, I just want to clean myself off.
Ryder drops the gun on the bedside table, takes a handkerchief from his pocket, and then grabs one of my hands. It’s trembling wildly, and he sighs. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says, gently wiping the blood from my arm. “I thought he might do it, and I should have warned you.”
I sniffle, and turn my head away. I can’t look at Ryder without seeing the two fresh bodies in the room, and if I look at them again I’m going to be sick. I swallow repeatedly to keep from retching, and Ryder pulls me closer. “Sam, I’m sorry,” he says again. I can look at him now without seeing the bodies, and it calms me down a little.
He forces me to take deep, even breaths until the shaking stops, and then he finishes cleaning my arms. Then I take the handkerchief from him and wipe my neck and chest, trying to get as much of the remaining blood as possible. When I pluck a bone fragment from the inside of my bra, I almost lose my composure again.
Ryder takes my hand and gives it a tight squeeze. “Are you gonna be alright?”
I nod slowly. “I’ll be fine. I just need a few minutes.”
My heartbeat slowly evens out, as does my breathing. It takes a few minutes, but I’m finally at the point where I can calmly look around without fear of being sick. When Ryder is sure I’m not going to freak out or start screaming again, he leads me from the bedroom.
He sits me down on a couch while he goes through everything in the house, searching for anything that might be of use. I wait impatiently, sipping occasionally from a bottle of water, wanting nothing more than to be back with the others so I can wash myself, crawl into bed, and sleep until the end of time.
Ryder comes back with an extra flashlight, six more batteries, two boxes of matches, and the man’s gun. There’s a box of ammo in a desk near the door, and Ryder tosses it into the duffel bag along with the other stuff. Then he nods to me, and we head back to the others.