Once she yanked the door open, Alex craned to see past the group. In the light of day, the mess inside the house was much more noticeable, even from six feet back. Red and brown and black footprints smeared the floor, surrounded by shards of bloody glass. Filthy handprints covered the walls.
But there were no mudmen. Just pieces.
Nicole pushed the door open. “Coast’s clear.”
“Isn’t it ‘ghosts clear’?” Alex asked.
“That ... makes no sense,” Nicole shook her head as she watched the group pass into the house.
Alex muttered as he entered. He almost gagged when he saw a head, alone on the floor. He quickly looked away from it, worried that it had looked back at him, and headed for the kitchen; Kaitlyn and Hannah quickly followed, avoiding the mess of body parts in the living room.
The kitchen was a virtual grocery store after the meagre provisions they had found at the community centre. Bottles of juice, soups, canned fruit, vegetables, meat, pasta, crackers, cookies, jam, butter, and a great deal of once-frozen goods. They also found matches, candles, batteries, and, thankfully, a can-opener. Alex mentally thanked Bob and Florence for grocery shopping the day before the mudmen showed up. He wondered if he knew them; if he had ever seen them around stores or going for walks.
How many of the mudmen are people I’ve met before?
“Hey,” Kaitlyn said, shaking him out of his thoughts, “I said that’s pretty much all we can get from here. Did you hear me?”
“Uh, yeah,” Alex said, staring at the broken back window. “I was just checking out the backyard. Making sure that the ghost is clear.”
Hannah followed his gaze out the window. She ran to it, pulled herself up on the counter and shouted, “We have to go to my house!”
Kaitlyn said, “We have a plan to get out of here pretty quick, so—”
“My daddy is over there! We have to go get him!”
“Hannah, we can’t! We have to—” Kaitlyn broke off because Hannah was already crying.
“What’s going on in there?” Nicole shouted from the hallway.
Alex and Kaitlyn said nothing as Hannah continued to cry.
Alex took a deep breath. “I’m going to check next door!” he called into the hallway.
“What?!” Nicole shouted, “No! You can’t! You have to—”
“Well,” he called back, “I’m going, so ... bye!” He ran out the back door and across the yard. He didn’t look back; he knew that if he did, he’d realize how stupid this was and turn around. So, he kept his eyes locked on the house in front of him. Hannah’s house.
“Oh my God,” he heard Nicole say behind him. “What the hell is he—”
“He’s going to see if Hannah’s dad is okay,” Kaitlyn told her.
He didn’t hear anything else from them. Either they had closed the door, or he was too far away. Whichever it was, he was on his own again. Just for a minute.
He hoped.
“Hello?” Alex called, as he walked through the back door of Hannah’s house. It wasn’t broken open, which he thought was good, until he realized that it was likely open since the girls fled. So probably no one was there ... or someone was there who didn’t care that the door was open for mudmen to come and join them.
No more shouting.
He walked through the kitchen, checking cupboards on his way, but Hannah meant it when she said that her dad had cleared everything out. If the school hadn’t burned down, all of the Moores’ food and then some would have been theirs for the taking. In the front hall, he was faced with another open door. This one was propped open by the body lying in front of it.
He readied his weapon, but it was clear that this one was dead. To make sure, he gave it a solid poke in the shoulder. When it didn’t move, he felt safe. He turned just in time to see a still-moving mudman stumble down the stairs.
It landed on him.
Alex’s board became a shield as he writhed on the floor, keeping the thing’s chomping face away from his own. It drooled sickening, thick, discoloured saliva. He wanted to scream, but it might get in his mouth, so he clamped his lips shut. He wrestled with the mudman—mudwoman in this case—before he realized that it wasn’t actually that strong. He rolled it off him with a shove and quickly got to his feet. It looked up at him, on all fours, still drooling and growling. Its eyes were that weird, white, filmy colour, and it had a wound on its shoulder, but otherwise it—she—looked almost normal.
That would only make it harder.
Alex whispered “sorry” as he brought his board crashing into the creature’s head. It dropped immediately.
Once he caught his breath, he called up the stairs once again. “Hello?” His weapon was ready in case another one came down on top of him. “Anyone up there?” When he got no answer, he looked around the hallway—bloody foot and handprints all over the walls, floor, even smeared on the ceiling.
But there were no people. Hannah’s dad wasn’t there.
A few minutes later, Alex trudged back across the yard, coated in black goo. He turned in circles, to get a better view of the area. He wasn’t going to get ambushed by two mudmen today. The door flung open, and Kaitlyn and Hannah stood there waiting for him. He felt upset that they had closed the door, ensuring he was on his own while he was outside. He also felt relieved that it was over.
“What happened?” Kaitlyn asked, backing away from him as if the black stuff were toxic.
Crap. It almost definitely is toxic. He was about to hit the grass to stop-drop-and roll the stuff off, but the girls looked eager to hear his story. Worry about it later. Act cool.
“Mudmen over there,” he panted at the door, unable to act even remotely cool. “Two of them. One was still ... ‘alive,’ so I—”
Kaitlyn looked
