“Wait here,” I whispered to Chelsea. I stood up, and felt her hand tug me back. I frowned at her before lightly pulling my hand away. There was fear in her eyes so strong that a blind man could see it. I patted her on the shoulder and lightly caressed her cheek with the back of my hand before moving away.
I went to the front windows, pulling the curtain back ever so slightly, just enough to peek outside. I saw our neighbor’s yellow house, and the darker grey one next to it, but nothing near them or the street. No, the sound was closer than that, probably next door, hopefully not at our door.
I moved silently to the side of our dining room. It was lined with a stained table across the middle of the room, six matching chairs surrounding it. My mother kept her fine china in the cabinet lining the wall adjacent to the kitchen doorway, and our computer desk stood at the far corner, next to the deck window.
I crept up to the first window at the side of the house, poking my nose above the casing just enough to see outside. The neighbor’s grey-blue house stood silently, nobody occupying it, and nothing occupying the outside either. Another hiss came, this time my attention was focused on the deck window. The house was playing tricks on me since we only had windows on one side of the house that I was on. This made it harder to pinpoint where the noise was exactly coming from.
I moved closer to the deck window. I grabbed the rolling chair with both of my hands and gently rolled it along the floor to allow myself some room to look out the window above it. Chelsea’s body moved out of the corner of my eye. She was crawling into the dining room on all fours, not making much noise, but she didn’t know where the floor creaked and groaned from aged weight.
I flung my hand up and gave her an annoyed but concerned face, hoping that would stop her from coming any further. She looked displeased by my refusal for her to come farther, but didn’t fight it. Instead she plopped down on her fine, round, uh – rear end, and folded her arms.
The hissing came back, along with another thud against something hard. It was outside my house, the contaminated, and was bumping into either the deck or the house itself. Fortunately, it wasn’t on the deck, as far as I could tell from the noise anyway.
I thrust my head up again, looking out into the back yard. I saw it, standing near the edge of the deck, almost rhythmically face planting its head into the corner of it. Its teeth were out, as if it were about to bite the deck for not moving. The whole mouth of the creature was bloody, as if it drank too much fruit punch Gatorade. Its body was an overweight male, and looked almost untouched other than the extreme paleness combined with the ghastly appearance and deep yellow eyes. Oh and the blood red mouth, that definitely set it apart from normal living people.
I made a swinging motion with my hands to Chelsea. She vigorously shook her head side to side, practically yelling me to death with her head motion. It did not deter me.
I beckoned her forward, until we were right next to each other. “I’m going to try and kill it,” I whispered. “It isn’t safe with that thing running around outside of the house.”
Her head jolted back, “What if it gets you?!” she protested in the loudest whisper allowed. “This isn’t safe. The marine guy told us to stay safe!”
“And letting a people eating contaminated to roam around the house, biding its time to break in when we least expect it is?”
She frowned deeply at me.
“I’ll be quick, I promise,” I whispered, pulling her into a reassuring hug. “It would probably be better if you got the door for me, this way I don’t have to worry about an escape route should it come to it.”
Chelsea nodded in agreement.
We shuffled over the floor and through the kitchen into the back mudroom which lead to the deck outside. I searched around the room to see my brother’s thirty-two ounce Rawlings baseball bat leaning against the wall. If there was ever a time where my brother’s laziness to not put away his things could ever come in handy, it was now.
I gripped the handle of the bat as Chelsea put her hand on the door. I nodded to her and she gave me a light kiss in response before ripping open the door.
I thrust myself out of the doorway and onto the deck, baseball bat in hand. The contaminated finally stopped running into the deck at my appearance, but began to hiss violently.
Never taking my eyes off of the contaminated, I quickly made my way to the deck stairs and into the center of the back yard. The contaminated slowly followed, its movement hampered by a strangely twisted leg.
I got into my full swing stance. Suddenly ‘whistle while you work’ popped into my head, somewhat inappropriate, as I thought, but a delightful notion all the same. I decided to whistle the national anthem to myself for the mere irony as the contaminated crept closer, its hissing releasing considerable amounts of spittle with every breath.
Closer…Oh say does that star spangled banner… Closer…for the land of the free…Closer…and the home, of the …closer…BRAVE!
Chapter 5
Loud noises of pans and deep dished pots rang throughout the bedroom. I was suddenly jolted awake and partially threw, partially fell out of my bed. My head
