In the last room, he found a crappy set of display casesfilled with toys, some of which he recognized and some which he didn't. Therewere no weapons or anything useful at all... unless you counted the littleplastic bobs gripped in some of the action figures' hands.
Lou walked back through the hallway and into the kitchen,stopping briefly to check on Mort who was still on his knees trying to get hisbearings back.
"You alright?" he asked from the kitchen.
"Yeah. I'm alright," Mort said.
Lou let it go at that. Mort's voice had said that he wasn'texactly alright, but he would make it through. Bugging him about it would justmake things worse. Lou began flipping open the cupboards in the kitchen.
He found a good amount of food in cans. Single guysalways had food in cans. He looked around for a garbage bag or something tocarry the cans with. He opened up the cupboard under the sink, and immediatelyshrank back, wishing that he hadn't. A swarm of flies escaped from underneaththe sink, buzzing around his face. He wanted to throw up, but he put his handover his face, grabbed one of the paper bags under the sink and slammed thecupboard closed. He scooped the cans into the bag, and then walked to thebathroom to check on the toiletries. He didn't expect much from a single dude'shouse, but some toothpaste and some mouthwash would go a long way towardsincreasing morale.
He was in luck. He even found some floss and an unusedtoothbrush. Lou ran his tongue across his chipped front teeth. They had clackedtogether when they had jumped off the roof of the gift shop, and he had come upspitting gritty pieces of enamel onto the asphalt. He felt their new roughnesswith his tongue, annoyed by the unfamiliar shape of his teeth. It would beimportant to brush. He doubted there were any dentists around to fix him up ifsomething went bad. He pulled the toothbrush out of the packaging and shoved itin his own pocket. Never had the phrase finders-keepers been more accurate.
Lou handed the bag of goods to Mort, and they sprintedacross the street to the house they were occupying. Across the way, Lou thoughthe saw a flash of movement coming from the house with the blood smears all overit. He put it out of his mind. It was probably just another of the dead,brushing up against the curtains.
When Lou stepped inside the house they had claimed astheir base, he noticed the wide-eyed fearful looks of Joan and Clara."Hey, easy as pie," he said, not sure if that was actually how thesaying went.
His words seem to relax them, and they gathered aroundmarveling over everything that they had found in the other house.
"Maybe we should check all of these houses,"Clara said.
Joan slapped her on the arm and said, "You'renuts."
"Why?" Clara looked around the room."There's not a lot of those things out here. Maybe we shouldn't be soquick to get out of here."
"Uh-uh," Lou said. "There's not a lot ofthose things out here now, but when they start running out of food, there's awhole dead city just a few miles down the road. What is it? Like six miles fromPortland to here?"
"About that," Joan said.
"That's too close for me," Lou said.
Mort added, "You and me both."
"Maybe you're right. Did you find any smokes?"Clara asked, ditching the idea of settling down in the burbs.
Mort and Lou shook their heads.
"Damn."
With that, they bedded down in the living room, stickingtogether, despite the fact that there were other rooms. Privacy, a once prizedcommodity, was now something that they feared unconsciously. All except forKatie, who got up off the couch every now and then to go to the bathroom andlook at her belly in the mirror.
Chapter 20: After a While, Wild Dogs
There was a problem. Of course, there always was. In thegarage, they had found a nice SUV with half a tank of gas. Their supplies fitin the SUV, but now it wouldn't start. To make matters worse, the garage doorwouldn't open.
Clara shone her flashlight at the garage door, trying tofigure out the mess while Lou and Mort tried to remember how to jumpstart acar. Neither of them had ever actually owned a car, and the ideas weresomething of a mystery. They had found no instructions when they found thejumper cables in the back of the four-door sedan that sat slumbering next tothe SUV. Katie claimed to never have done it before, and Joan hadn't either,both of them having relied on the kindness of strangers to do the job for them.
Clara had always had Courtney there. He would know how todo this in a heartbeat. Courtney had always been mechanically inclined, so muchso, that he had never intended to leave his job at a local bike shop, whereevery day he solved problems like this. He could open the garage in aheartbeat. He could have the SUV running in no time. But now, here they were,three women who had never done the work themselves, and two men who had neverhad a pot to piss in, let alone a garage door to open or a car to jumpstart.
Clara's examination of the garage revealed metal railsand a track with a chain wrapped around it. Hanging above the SUV was a metalbox, probably the thing that made the chain turn and raise the door. Withoutelectricity, it was worthless. Dangling from the automatic garage door's enginewas a red cord. A-ha! Got you, motherfucker!
"What are you doing?" Joan asked as she climbedon top of the SUV, the metal buckling underneath her weight. She reached forthe red handle and pulled on it. There was a clang as the garage-door-openerdetached from the track. The clang sounded impossibly loud in the dark garage,only a little bit of light spilling in from the open door that led to thekitchen.
"I think that
