Whatever It Takes Page 19

  Percival nodded. Carlos hadn’t exactly comforted him and certainly hadn’t banished the faces from his head. Those of his friends would remain, he was certain, but the more recent dead stung a little less.

  “That bein’ said,” Carlos continued. “It’s also a place worth protecting. I think anywhere that’s got the good of its people in mind is worthy of protecting. The guys at the depot? They didn’t have everyone’s best interest in mind. Hell, couple of ‘em didn’t want to do more than get some tail and play at being army.”

  It didn’t make Percival feel better to have shot the men at the military depot to have further confirmation that they weren’t the best of folk around. It didn’t make him feel worse either. “Might want to keep the story of your involvement there to a minimum when we get back. Some folk might not take kindly to what y’all were doing.”

  “But we are going to make it back, right?” Carlos asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  “That’s my intent at least,” Percival said. And it had been, all along. “Not that I’ve done a stellar job so far.”

  “How many did you leave with?”

  “Five, including myself,” Percival answered automatically. “Andrina, Karl, Nadia, and Sarah.”

  He felt Carlos’s hand drop onto his shoulder. “Sorry.”

  “Lost most of them and a few others we’d picked up along the way,” Percival said. “The world is a shitty place, but we don’t have to be shitty in it.”

  “Do you think Roy Joy’s still out there?” Sarah’s voice drifted quietly through the darkness.

  “He survived all by himself before we came across him. He may even be doing better than we are,” Percival said.

  “Did we wake you?” Carlos asked.

  “No.”

  “How’re you feeling?” Percival asked.

  “A little dazed and, or confused,” Sarah said quietly. Her flashlight clicked on and Percival shielded his eyes for a moment against the glare.

  “Your head wound bothering you again?” he asked.

  “No. Most of the pain and irritation of that is gone. Only time I get anything from it is when someone or something touches it.” Sarah walked toward them. “No. What really confuses me is listening to you two talk. ‘World’s shitty, but we don’t have to be shitty’? Why’re we leaving Roy Joy in that suburb then? Does ‘no man left behind’ not stand with us?”

  Percival’s stomach sank to somewhere between his knees and he stared at the floor. Weakly he said, “He did leave us.”

  “Doesn’t justify our action the other way around though,” Sarah said. Percival was vaguely aware of Carlos subtly inching away from them.

  “He does, or at least did, know the neighborhood. And I’d be willing to bet he’s nowhere near here anymore.”

  “I’m going to take a moment and call you on your bullshit, Percival.” Sarah stopped in front of him, hands planted on her hips. “He’s still out there and we left him, which is the long and short of this. Left him without a ride or friend.”

  “If you listened to him all of his friends are rotting corpses.” Percival folded his arms over his chest. He already knew he’d lost this argument, and didn’t rightly know why he was continuing to have it. “We’re going to end up going back in aren’t we?”

  “If you want to prove you’re better than the jackholes who shoot random people instead of zombies. Yes.” Sarah turned and stalked away from him, angling for the door with a chain threaded through it.

  “You know, yesterday I was scared of you for a moment. You were all cold-blooded killer without any emotion,” Carlos said as soon as the door closed behind Sarah. “Today? And likely for the rest of my life? She takes the cake.”

  “I know what you mean,” Percival said. “It’s one of the many reasons I love that woman.”

  Chapter 16

  Percival rechecked his M4. He was certain the magazine was just as loaded as before, but the action made him feel better. Just as he knew the three magazines in his pockets were loaded and his pistol still in its holster was ready to rock. He opted to leave his sledgehammer with the Humvee, taking the more versatile machete instead. They weren’t intending to stay very long, and hadn’t even packed bags with any more than the barest of essentials: ammunition, water, and some high calorie energy bars.

  It’d been a compromise not to drive the Humvee into the neighborhood. Especially since they already knew how difficult it would have been to navigate the large vehicle through the crowded streets.

  On foot was far quieter anyways. It would be easier to traverse the area unnoticed without the thrumming, humming engine of the military vehicle to give them away. It also meant they’d not have to worry about a horde forming up, or the horde that attacked them the day before coming around, because of the constant noise. They were sacrificing some speed, however, in favor of the stealth. Speed and cover for efficiency of movement and stealth.

  The trek from Humvee to the neighborhood was as quiet as Percival could have hoped for. The mass of zombies had thinned from the day before so only a handful of stragglers remained in the area. Percival led the charge, quietly dispatching the first of the zombies in any encounter.

  As they reentered Roy Joy’s neighborhood, they chose to skirt far to the edge of the backyards they had escaped through the day before. Finding Roy Joy was a priority, whereas hunting down whoever’d attacked them the day before was not. If they came across the people that had brought impromptu ruin on his group, Percival was willing to count it as a happy accident.

  An accident that would result in bullets being thrown and questions asked likely never.

  He crossed the threshold into the neighborhood proper, climbing a fence into the first backyard in a long chain of yards. He dropped down into a crouched position, bringing his M4 up so he could sight down the barrel. He mimicked what he’d seen in military documentaries and movies, pretending that he’d done this sort of thing before.

  Sometimes he felt as though someone only needed to ‘fake it until they make it’ to accomplish something. Keeping with the attitude that they would conquer any and every task placed between them, Percival led Sarah and Carlos into the next yard over. He carefully stepped over bodies they’d dropped the day before, maneuvering through scattered shell casings and toppled lawn furniture.

  At the second backyard, he stopped and looked to Sarah. “Which way from here?”

  She shook her head. “I dunno. I didn’t see which way he went when he left us yesterday.”

  Percival frowned. He didn’t want to go any further into the neighborhood and come across Karl’s remains in the next yard. He didn’t relish the view, as he knew that zombies ignored their own corpses but not those of people who died without turning. He didn’t think he could handle seeing his friend and teacher’s corpse so desecrated.

  “We didn’t come across him as we fled the scene, so to speak,” Carlos said without turning away from the alley he’d chosen to face. “Might put to reason he went directly away from the street and into a house opposite these.”

  Percival nodded. “Probably. Would’ve been the opposite direction of the action as well.”

  He didn’t add that it would also allow him to avoid entering yards that he didn’t want to. He turned and moved to the backside of the yard. He pushed through the hedge, shouldering into a new empty space. The yard was attached to a white paneled, two story home with a spacious rear deck. The yard had seen better days since the fall of civilization and was badly overgrown. The tall grass could hide any number of things, be it zombies, people, or lawn ornaments that could trip them up.

  Percival stepped gently through the grass, machete swishing through the growth. He cut a small path to the back porch, passing a fire-pit and couple of rotted out lawn chairs in the short trek. He reattached the machete to his belt as he climbed the stairs to the sliding glass door. He waited for Carlos and Sarah to creep up behind him as well before lowering his rifle and giving the door a solid tug. The door resiste
d his initial effort.

  Carlos stepped forward and motioned Percival back. Percival stepped back and turned to watch the yard with his M4 raised. He heard a couple dull thuds as Carlos delivered several blows to the glass door. After a few tense moments, Percival heard the door slide open.

  He kept watch on the backyard until after Sarah had left his side, then turned and followed her into a small dining room with a kitchen attached. He slid the door closed behind him, though he didn’t bother trying to relock it as Carlos had carefully, and surprisingly quietly, knocked the glass out around the handle to access the locking mechanism.

  “Color me impressed,” Percival said quietly. “We check the home, stay together, then see what we can see from the second floor.”

  His statements were met with nods from both Carlos and Sarah. Carlos spun and led the way through an empty doorway into a living room. Sarah followed and Percival drew up the rear. He could see the front door from this room. He pivoted to sweep the other entrances, a short stairwell leading down, and a hallway next to it leading deeper into the home, with his rifle.

  The living room was decorated with a faux leather couch that had seen better days, a wicker rocking chair, and a wood paneled entertainment system with a large, boxy television on it. A pair of rabbit ears even perched off the top of the television. A fine coat of dust marked just how long it had been since anyone had set foot in the home.

  Some neighborhoods were lucky and never saw looters. He moved to the front door as Sarah and Carlos turned to cover the other exits. On closer inspection, he found that the frame of the front door had been broken and returned to where it resided before someone, he assumed, had kicked the door in. Maybe some places weren’t lucky. He turned. “Basement, then hallway.”

  Carlos nodded, clicked on a flashlight, and led the way down into the basement. He rounded a corner as Sarah started down the stairs. Percival followed a couple steps behind her.

  Sarah clicked her flashlight on as she rounded the corner into the basement proper and Percival followed her lead as he stepped into the basement as well.

  The air in the basement was stagnant and dead. The telltale, wafting scent of death hung in the air. The stairs opened up into a large area that was mainly storage. Shelves lined the walls with dusty and broken jars or empty boxes resting on them. In the main space of the basement were steel shelving units of the sort Percival expected to find in a professional storage area, rather than the basement of a private home.

  The shelves were mostly empty, having had their contents thrust onto the floor when the building was looted. The source of the stench was a leathery corpse propped in the middle of the room against some of the shelving. The corpse had a single ragged bullet hole in the left of its chest. Brown blood caked the green and yellow Hawaiian shirt it wore. Percival could guess what had happened: the homeowner was shot protecting whatever had lined the shelves here at one point.

  If only death only came from those already dead. Maybe humanity would be able to push past this epidemic and survive the rolling waves of undead. He frowned and turned away from the dead person, sweeping his flashlight beam over the rest of the basement. He found nothing more than broken equipment and upturned boxes. If they had a goal of scavenging, they might have spent the rest of the day in the stinkhole.

  “Time to head topside and check the rest of the building.” Percival led the way out of the basement, climbing out of the darkness and stink of death.

  As he crested the top of the stairs and entered the living room, he took a moment to tug his motorcycle helmet off and took a couple deep breaths of the sweet, stagnant air, clearing his lungs and nose of the stench in the basement. For some reason, the decaying bodies of the zombies no longer bothered him, but walking around where a truly dead body resided still stuck to his nasal cavities and nearly induced a desire to vomit.

  He pulled his helmet back on, waiting for Sarah and Carlos to join him. Once they emerged from the basement, he brought his M4 up and led the way down the hallway, making a mental note of the upward stairs halfway down. He turned on his flashlight. He stopped before a pair of closed doors, one at the end of the hallway, the other directly to his left.

  Percival held up one finger, pointed at the door at the end of the hall, then a second finger and pointed at the door to his left. Carlos and Sarah nodded.

  He reached out and carefully twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open hard enough that it swept a full arc around and banged into the wall. That wasn’t something he’d intended to do, and was certainly louder than he’d intended, but it didn’t slow him from stepping across the threshold and into a bedroom.

  The queen-sized bed was unmade. The closet door, directly opposite of Percival, was open and the contents spilled across the floor. The chest of drawers, crafted of some dark wood, had forcibly vomited its contents across the floor as well. Percival sighed softly, turned and left the room.

  When he and his team had looted homes and apartments, they’d taken what they needed, but left the rooms intact. It seemed so disrespectful to the dead, or at least departed, to wreck a house as well as steal everything of use from it. Percival waited just long enough for Sarah and Carlos to finish looking in the bedroom before shouldering open the other door in the hallway.

  The small bathroom took even less time to search. Percival could see from the hallway that nothing nasty was hiding in the room. He turned away from the bathroom and backtracked to the stairwell. He climbed the stairs and shouldered his M4 as he entered another hallway. He could see an empty room ahead with another bathroom nearby.

  He moved the handful of steps required to look into the empty office as Carlos rounded the top of the stairs and started heading for the only remaining door. The office held a smashed computer tower and cracked CRT monitor and two bookshelves. The majority of the books from the shelves now decorated the floor. The bathroom, despite housing a bathtub as well as a toilet unlike the first floor, was equally empty.

  Percival turned, following Sarah as she closed in on Carlos. She reached up and patted his shoulder. He nodded without turning around and breached the last room. The final room must have been the master bedroom, holding a king-sized bed, an impressive, though broken, flat screen television mounted to the wall, and a standing armoire as well as a chest of drawers.

  Percival let his breath out slowly. The house was empty of zombies. He expected that it was void of anyone living as well. He slid his arm through his M4’s sling and moved forward to peer out the window and at the neighborhood they could see.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected to find. A few zombies milled around the street that had a couple stalled or abandoned cars on it. A couple of the neighboring houses had their front doors open. More than a couple had open windows. He didn’t see what he’d hoped to spot: Roy Joy, or at least some indication he’d come this way, or some other survivor that might lead him down an avenue of revenge. He reconsidered the last hope; amending it to merely hoping to find out if the survivors from yesterday had a means of controlling, or leading, a horde of zombies.

  He backed away from the window and moved to a different one, giving the front yard view to Sarah and Carlos while taking in the backyard. He could see the signs of yesterday’s combat still marring the other yards, and the spaces between the houses with corpses that no longer walked. He looked toward the space where Karl’d fallen, thankful to not see bits of his friend strewn through the grass. There were, simply, too many zombie corpses in the yards to spot the solitary one of Karl. And he knew he’d not be able to see Andrina’s from where he stood.

  He let out a soft breath, turning toward Roy Joy’s house. He stifled a gasp.

  “Sarah, Carlos, c’mere.” Percival slid the visor on his helmet up to have a clearer view. “Pretty sure I just saw someone move past a window in Roy Joy’s place.”

  Sarah moved up next to him and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “Where?”

  “Could it be a zombie shuffling aroun
d in there?” Carlos whispered his question.

  “Only if someone opened the front door,” Percival answered quietly. He pointed down at Roy Joy’s backdoor. “We closed his on the way out and it’s still closed now. See?”

  Carlos nodded.

  “Meaning if you did see something over there, means someone’s in there,” Sarah speculated.

  Percival nodded. “Might be Roy Joy.”

  “He didn’t exactly seem interested in going in there the other day. We practically had to drag him in.” Sarah politely stomped on the idea.

  “Doesn’t change that it might be him, Sarah.” Percival backed away from the window. He slid his visor back down. Something might have changed in Roy Joy since they’d first arrived at his former home. Or he may have chosen to visit the familiar place once more before leaving again. Regardless, Percival wasn’t ready to give up hope. Hope, while it had withered in his chest, hadn’t died entirely just yet.

  “Can I recommend we go in guns hot just in case?” Carlos said.

  Percival nodded. “That sounds like a wise idea.”

  While hope hadn’t died entirely for Percival, he was able to see the wisdom that was keeping a keen eye and fast trigger finger in this area. He didn’t honestly expect to run into the survivors who’d shot Andrina, as the massive horde was also gone, but there wasn’t any reason not to be prepared. He backed away from the window and led the way back downstairs and out the back door. He crept through the backyard and pressed through the hedges, leading the way to Roy Joy’s backyard once more.

  Roy Joy’s backyard hadn’t changed in their absence. The same zombies they’d put down the prior morning were still where they’d fallen. The backdoor was still closed.

  Percival moved in a low crouch across the yard. He drew up next to the backdoor and waited for Sarah and Carlos to join him before poking his head around the corner and peeking into the building that had served for a safe house for a night. Nothing moved in front of him, no shadows jumped out at him, no one shot at him. He held up a hand and counted down from three with his fingers.