Chapter 10: House of the Dead
*Thump*
The sound of a car door being closed woke Eli from his sleep. The early morning sunlight shining through the living room window made him squint and rub his eyes as he groggily sat up from the stack of woolen blankets serving as a bed. His eyes adjusted to the brightness as he looked around the room, taking in his surroundings. His protective gear was laying on the blanket next to him, and the supply cases had disappeared from where they had been the night before. Julie walked in from outside, noticed he was awake, and crossed the room to sit on her knees beside him.
“Good morning, honey. How did you sleep?” She asked as she passed him a bottle of water and a small, brick-shaped object enclosed in the vacuum-sealed packaging that was standard for wasteland survival supplies. Lancaster militia loved their vacuum-sealed packages, using them for anything and everything they could.
“Mm. Morning, mom. I haven’t slept that good in…months? Years? Way too long.” He said, peeling open the package to reveal the oatmeal, soy protein powder, and peanut butter ration bar. This was the only type of protein bar the militia ever supplied, and it tasted absolutely terrible.
“Hehe, well, after your…enthusiasm last night, and your insistence on taking first watch, I’m surprised you didn’t sleep longer.” She gently patted his thigh and kissed his cheek while he ate an unsatisfactory breakfast. “So, I guess we should talk about it, huh?”
“Oh, um, sure.” He quickly finished the last bite of his too-dry food and rehydrated with half the water from his bottle. “Well then, I’ll start. I don’t want to play games here, so I’ll just say it clearly. I love you, and I’ve wanted you for years. I’m willing to to whatever it takes to be with you, even if it means everyone in Lancaster condemns us and we have to leave town together. But let me ask you; what do you want this to be? How do you see our relationship from now on?”
He shifted his position so he sat facing her, staring into her beautiful gray-blue eyes as he spoke, a sense of determination in his voice. With a reassuring smile, Julie reached out to hold his left hand, squeezing it firmly in her own.
“You know…. mama has always loved you, sweetheart. The day you were born was one of the happiest days of my life. You were such a sweet, kind, shy little boy, and mama loved you so, so much. But then, my sweet little boy was taken from me. I’ve never felt so scared, so angry, so helpless. It was a miracle that I found you; that my baby boy was safely returned to me. Only, even though you were back, the son I knew was still gone. You were like a whole new person, a stranger, but still, I loved you.”
She softy stroked his cheek and took a deep, contemplative breath before continuing.
“Then I watched you, the new you, as you grew up. You were still a sweet boy, but you were more mature, more confident. You were so determined and reliable, it was hard to believe you were just a child. I don’t know when it happened, but I started to see you as a young man instead of my little boy. Eventually, you got taller and started looking more like a man, and that’s exactly how I saw you, as a man. Before I knew it, I began to love you not only as your mother, but as a woman.”
She bit her lower lip in that cute way that Eli found so irresistible.
“So, what do I want our relationship to be? I’m not sure. I’ll always be your mother, and you’ll always be my sweet baby boy, but that’s not enough for me anymore. I want a romantic relationship with you, but I don’t want to lose our family relationship. The one thing I do know, for sure, is that you’re the only man I want to be with, to spend my life with.”
Her pretty blue eyes were misty, filled with a mixture of anxiety and longing, as she waited for his response. Eli leaned closer and placed his lips on hers, giving her a soft kiss to ease her anxiety.
“Well then, I guess this means we want the same thing.” He gave her a warm smile as he stood, offering a hand to help her up as well. “Now then, let’s get going, we’ve got work to do.” After helping his mother to her feet, he started equipping his protective gear.
Julie began collecting their bedding while they talked, folding all the blankets and placing them in an easy-to-carry stack. “Work? I thought this was the only place we had to clear.”
“It was. But, remember those uniformed Ferals? I think they were part of a militia, or mercenary group, from another settlement. Something serious must’ve happened for so many of them to be out in the Wastes. We should scout the area, see what we can find.” Finished gearing up, he collected his water bottle and empty food packaging, then walked to the car, Julie following behind him with the stack of woolen blankets in her arms.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” Julie put the blankets in their case, which she then stored in the back of the roller. “But I’m driving. You somehow manage to hit every pothole in the road when you drive, and I’d rather not be bounced around in my seat right now. Mama’s still sore from last night.” She winked playfully while rubbing her lower abdomen, then went around to the driver’s side of the car.
“Heh. Yeah, um, sorry about that. I just got a little… too excited, I guess.” Eli climbed into the passenger seat and looked into the back, making sure Julie had already loaded their weapons. Sure enough, everything was in the back seat.
Now that I think about it, I really did go a little too hard on her last night. Shit, four times in one night? That’s a new personal record for sure. Well, it has been a long time since I’ve gotten laid, after all. More than seven years actually. So it’s understandable that I got a little overexcited, right? Wait. Wasn’t the last time….before the bombs? Holy fuck, I hadn’t had sex in over three hundred years! Damn, I don’t know if that’s sad or impressive. Let’s just say it’s impressive. Yeah, totally not sad, definitely impressive…..and a little sad….
Julie slowly drove through the little neighborhood, making a grid-like search pattern as they looked for anything out of the ordinary. Apart from the Feral corpses left in the area during their fight the previous day, the streets were completely barren. They had almost reached the opposite end of the neighborhood when Julie stopped the car and pointed to the house on their left.
“Hey. Look at that.”
The dilapidated, ranch-style house had obviously been the site of a battle. The weathered brick walls were riddled with bullet holes, and the putrid remains of a dozen rotted Feral bodies were laid out across the yard, half-buried by the red sands of the wasteland. The house’s roll-up garage door had been ripped open from the center, jagged edges hanging outward, as if someone drove through the door from inside while it was closed.
Whatever happened here, someone left in a hurry.
“We should check it out.” Eli said, twisting in his seat to grab their weapons.
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.” Julie veered their car over to the side of the road and parked in front of the house. Eli passed her the machete and one of the pistols, keeping the other for himself, along with the hunting knife and assault rifle. She killed the engine and they exited the vehicle, ready to begin their investigation of the scene.
Ugh! It smells fucking horrible! Desert sun, plus rotting bodies, equals worst smell ever. There’s just no getting used to the stench, no matter how many times you deal with these ugly dead bastards.
Walking across the front yard, Eli weaved his way between the bodies, noticing how they were filled with gunshot wounds, as if whoever did the shooting couldn’t aim for shit.
He drew his knife from his belt as he approached the front door, readying himself for whatever might be lurking inside. Glancing over to his right, he saw Julie draw her machete and disappear behind the far corner of the house, doing a sweep of the building’s exterior. The sexy blonde was a true professional.
Eli stayed low and quiet as he crept through the doorless entryway, holding his knife in a tight reverse-grip near his chest. The stench of rotten meat was way more intense inside the house, stinging his nose and causing bile to rise from his stomach into his throat. The floors were covered with dozens of festering corpses, some of which wore the same mysterious uniform of khaki pants and sleeveless green shirts. Hundreds of empty bullet casings, of various lengths and calibers, were spread out among the bodies.
What the hell?
Crouching down next to one of the uniformed corpses, Eli pried a large-caliber pistol from its stiff hand. He sheathed his knife, dropped the magazine from the gun into his left hand, and pulled back the pistol’s slide to check the chamber.
Completely empty. Mag too. But this is odd…..the other uniformed Ferals had been stripped of their gear, so why the hell do these bodies still have their weapons? Were there two separate groups of them?
Eli saw a shadow moving across the floor and looked up to see Julie entering the front doorway. He held up the pistol to show her what he found, pointed to the body beside him, and her eyes narrowed in understanding. They nodded to each other before Julie moved deeper into the house to continue clearing the interior. Eli placed the empty gun, along with it’s empty magazine, on the floor and drew his knife again. He then moved in the opposite direction from Julie. After checking every room in the house, the pair reconvened in the front room.
“Clear?” Eli sheathed his blade when they met up.
Julie slid her machete into it’s case as she looked around the room. “Clear. This is too weird though. I’ve never found anything like this in the Wastes before. We should radio this in, let HQ know what we found.”
“Yeah, good call. Will you go do that? I want to grab these weapons and empty casings, no sense in leaving them here.” He gestured to the floor around them.
“Of course, sweetheart. I’ll bring an empty bag from the roller after I make the report.” She leaned closer to put a hand on his chest and kiss his lips, then she walked away, out the door and toward the car.
Ugh. that would have been a lot more pleasant if we weren’t surrounded by decomposing bodies.
Eli went about collecting weapons from the seven uniformed corpses in the house. It was a pretty nice haul of five pistols, a bolt-action rifle with an attached scope, a pump-action shotgun, three tactical folding knives, and a military hatchet with a polymer handle and rubber grip. He didn’t bother trying to remove the holsters from the corpses, mostly berceuse he wanted to touch them as little as possible, but also because they had plenty of holsters back at headquarters anyway. Unfortunately, the only ammunition to be found were the three shells left in the shotgun. He had just finished piling everything together in the front room when Julie came back in, carrying an empty canvas backpack from their supplies.
“We need to leave. Something’s wrong at home. There’s no response from HQ, and that’s never happened before, not even once.” She tossed him the backpack then gathered up the rifle and shotgun, since they wouldn’t fit in the bag. Guns in hand, she turned on her heals and quickly walked back to the car.
“Shit…”, he crouched down and began stuffing the small pile of weapons into the pack, “….the fuck is going on?”
With the pack slung over one shoulder, he jogged out to their vehicle. Julie was already in the driver’s seat, waiting for him with the engine started and ready to go. He threw open the passenger door and dropped the pack onto the floorboard, tossed his assault rifle into the back, then slid into the seat and yanked the door closed.
Julie barely waited for the door to shut before making a U-turn from where they were parked. She sped down the road, away from the corpse-filled house, as fast as the potholes and cracks would allow. Anxiety clouded her face as she drove, and she nervously tapped a thumb against the steering wheel. Eli absentmindedly rubbed his jaw while wondering about the implications of radio silence from Lancaster.
They rode in tense, stressful silence for a few hours, periodically attempting to make radio contact with Lancaster. Every attempt was a resolute failure, only serving to heighten their unease, which steadily grew into full-on worry. As they were nearing the end of their journey, Eli could see billowing, black smoke rising from the horizon.
No….
They continued getting closer, their worries shifting into fear. The trails of smoke made dark gray clouds that were swiftly carried away by the wind.
No…..
As they followed the broken road up, toward the apex of the hill separating themselves from Lancaster, Eli’s fear was causing his heart to hammer against the inside of his chest.
No……
At the top of the hill, they got their first glimpse of what awaited their return. The entry gate was smashed inward and lay flat on the ground. Several houses and buildings along the main street were reduced to flaming heaps of broken rubble. Rusty old cars were speeding through the streets and circling the outskirts of the town. A mountain of dead bodies, hundreds of human bodies, was piled-up in the center of Lancaster, stacked higher than the surrounding houses.
“No!”
