"So let's go get some of those fucking nails andboard this place up."
Joan nodded her head, but didn't say anything. Theywalked back down into the basement, gathering nails, while the others searchedthe house. Clara was eying a pile of loose wood when she thought of something."Shit," she said.
"What?" Joan answered.
"I should have grabbed that bastard's cigarettesbefore we came inside."
"Uh-uh," Joan said. "Haven't you heard?Second-hand smoke will give you cancer."
Clara smiled for a brief second. There she was. That wasthe Joan she knew and needed, not that weak, almost frail creature that hadmade a brief appearance upstairs. She bent down to grab some loosetwo-by-fours, avoiding the rusty nails sticking out of them.
****
The sounds of hammering rang through the house, and timeseemed to stand still as the place heated up in the summer sun. Sweat pouredfrom their faces, and their bodies reeked of exertion. When they were done, allof the doors and windows of the first-floor were boarded up in some fashion.They sat silently, dining on the canned food of the old man.
There wasn't much there. It didn't look like the man haddone much scavenging. They found an empty box of ammunition to go with the riflethat they had taken from his body, but there was nothing else besides the toolsthey had found in the basement that could help them combat the dead. Lou andMort sat around in some of the old man's clean clothes. The women had slowlypicked through the clothes of the dead woman. It wasn't fashionable, but theywere clean, and that's what mattered.
In the old man's bedroom, they had found a journal, a sadtale of ignorance and suffering. While the dead banged on the doors outside,they took turns reading the journal in a small voice, savoring the olderentries and the images and pictures it brought up of a grandmother enjoying hergrandkids for the summer. They fell asleep amid the banging, with dreams of thesmell of baking cookies in their heads.
When they awoke, it was early. These days, no one everslept in. Mort, who used to spend half of his day sleeping underneath a bridgecould never seem to get more than a couple hours of sleep. When his eyescracked open, he stared at the popcorn ceiling until it began to move about asif it were cottage cheese floating on top of a gentle body of water. He largelyignored the sounds of the dead as they hammered on the wooden boards thatbarred the windows, the glass long broken.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes to find Katie sitting onthe sofa, absent-mindedly rubbing her belly. The look on her face sent shiversup his spine. Mort walked into the bathroom, a chore that he didn't relish.There was no water pressure anymore, no more flushing toilets. Everything just collected.Luckily, they hadn't eaten much the day before, but it was enough.
For a second, Mort thought about just using the bathtub,but though it was the end of the world, he just couldn't justify it. Hefinished his business, and stepped into the hallway. He climbed up the carpetedstairs of the house, worn in patches from years of abuse. He stepped into aroom that had the temporary feel of a guest room, blankets, bed, chair, but notmuch else. They hadn't boarded up the windows above, so he slid one open assilently as he could.
In the dark of the pre-dawn, he stepped onto the roof,feeling a sense of trepidation as his boot met the grit of the ceiling tiles.He leaned his body out, keeping low so that he wouldn't fall off the roof oralert the dead below to his presence.
The house they had escaped from was now nothing more thana smoldering pile of ash. One of the houses next door to it had burned down aswell, starting a chain reaction of burning houses. Smoke still filled the air,and it was tinged with the noxious elements of a house fire, including all thechemicals released by burning paint, cleaning supplies, and other things.
Blake's gun... it was in there somewhere. Mortfelt like an asshole for leaving it behind. Below him he saw the chewed up bodyof the house's owner sliding around on the lawn. He cursed the man. Why did hehave to stick his nose in their business? If he had just ignored them, theywould be far away from here, supplied, prepared, ready to move away from thespinning buzzsaw of the city.
The street was filled with the dead, grunting and moaningin the black morning. More trudged down the street, drawn by the glowing embersof the burnt up house, the still hot flames of a few burning houses, and thepounding of the dead on the house they were in.
Mort kept low and worked his way across the roof, movingaround to the back to see what that was like. Being on the roof made himnervous, and he took his time. The back yard was an overgrown mess, knee-highgrass and weeds, contained only by a low wooden fence, that looked as if itwere more rot than fence.
On the other side of that fence was another overgrownyard. That would be their way out. It was the only possibility. The dead outfront had been kept at bay so far by the wooden fence. The back yard was clear.Once the sun was up, Mort would wake up the others, if they weren't alreadyawake, and they would move out.
He sat on the roof and watched the sky lighten, goingfrom a black to a deep blue, and then transitioning from a light plum color andinto a blazing orange, that eventually made him squint his eyes. That way waseast. He turned and looked the other way as the sun illuminated the hills thatrose up around them. Smoke dotted the sky in the distance as the world cameinto focus and he waited to see what new hell the world would have in store forhim that day.
****
When Lou hit the fence, he heard it before he felt it.The wood cracked and gave way underneath his weight,
