Chapter Text
“Okay, this is it.” Rob introduced the small group to the new temp house.
“It looks…” Sayo couldn’t pin a finger on the feeling.
“Rotted,” Alex finished the sentence. Which was odd considering the house looked fairly new. But everything in this town was rotted and decayed. The outside was crawling with vines. There was a garage off to the side, large enough to fit two decent sized cars. The wide driveway was cracked and overgrown with weeds. The doorknob looked rusted shut, and the porch appeared as though one wrong move would send you right through it. There were different signs, plants, and patio furniture littered across the porch, thrown around by storms and too abandoned to be maintained. It honestly looked like some of the houses Alex used to deliver too. Rob’s dog Scout growled at the place, hiding behind Alex’s legs; he didn’t like it much either.
“Yeah, but I scoured the house with Nikki. It’s niceish on the inside, and there’s no skeels inside. So right now, it’s out best bet. Not sure how long since…” as Rob put his hand on the banister, it fell away at his touch. “Just…be careful.” He instructed, heading up the front porch steps carefully. The four behind him followed, Nikki’s foot falling through a step with a loud crash that echoed through the forest, she put her hand up to her hijab to keep it from falling off.
“It’s speeding up,” she mumbled, inspecting her foot for any cuts once she got inside.
The inside of the house was new enough, but the decay definitely reached it. The white granite counters covered in pink fiberglass as parts of the roof caved in, some disgusting brown liquid leaking from the second floor, and the faux leather couches looked like moths had been eating away. There was a gas fireplace that looked like it could be in decent condition, but it would take some investigating to be sure. On the second floor, there was a large hole over the kitchen and over the master bedroom bed. The bed was soaked through and covered in leaves, feathers, and mildew. Windows had been smashed in, glass ground into the carpet, suggesting that there had been other scavengers before them. Sayo covered her nose at the smell. The walls looked clean and neat. By the looks of it, this house only had a few months to a year before the skeels could completely take over.
“Oh god…” Alex opened a linen closet to reveal a small boy’s body stuff into it. The boy looked malnourished, a fortunate sign for them but also looked incredibly decomposed. In his hands was a small stuffed rabbit that was being eaten by moths.
“Food’s rotten, but that’s normal. No one around, but the bathroom is covered in blood. And there’s a severed hand but I don’t want to think about that.” Rob spared a glance at the corpse before the girls grouped back up with them. “So, for now, I think the living room would the best place to camp for the night. It looks like the floor is gonna come out any second.” He shifted his weight, letting the floor make a concerning creaking noise to prove his point. “We also need to burn him before the decay gets him. If it hasn’t already.”
“Poor thing,” Nikki said, unable to look away from the child. An alert went off on her phone and she looked back at Rob. “My prayers…”
“Go ahead. We’ll pack up. You can get the boy’s bedroom; it looks the neatest.” Nikki nodded and ducked into the room, taking her prayer mat with her. “Sayo, help me take this stuff downstairs to set up camp. Alex, go look around, see if there’s a cellar or something for food. We’re running low here.”
Alex nodded and made his way back outside, carefully avoiding the step that Nikki fell through. As he circled around the house, he could hear the skeels screaming in agony for their loved ones. It was getting dark; he wouldn’t survive out here for long if he got caught. If it weren’t for the threat of a surely painful death, the sunset would be almost beautiful amongst the bare trees. Even the plants don’t last long against the decay and skeels, destroying everything in their path. He made note of the garage in the back; with a budge like this surely the owners had some kind of generator.
There was a cellar, strangely enough unlocked. He prayed under his breath that others didn’t get here first and take all the food, but that would be a long shot. He carefully went down the stairs, a flashlight only lighting a short distance. There was a putrid smell of death. The good news was, there was food. There was a wet, heavy breathing coming from Alex’s right, as quick shuffling movements came upon him. He shot one round into the skeel just as the female one appeared over her partner. She was able to tackle the scavenger and started to scratch at his face before a knife went through her throat, her red eyes going dark as her skeletal form went limp and silent. Rob shoved her off Alex and helped him up.
“What were you thinking? It’s too late for that!”
“They just caught me off guard, okay? I didn’t have time for a knife.” Alex brushed off the dust and wiped off the oily blood from his face. Rob made some kind of noise and motioned for Alex to follow him back up after grabbing a few cans they knew was safe.
Nikki had returned, her mat sat neatly against the sofa, and she was reading her copy of the Qur’an that had probably seen more adventure than any holy book needed to. Sayo was able to get the fireplace going and was now journalling something. Scout was lying in front of it, warming up and drying off after having to brave a creek and getting treats. Sayo’s journal helped her to keep her sanity and not be counterproductive to the cause. Which was…what exactly? Alex wasn’t sure. It changed so much, at first it was to find survivors, then somehow Sayo was able to find information that there could be a way to stop the disease. So now there was that unrealistic objective on top of everything else. “Found the boy’s parents. They were turned long ago; he must’ve been hiding from them.” No one said anything.
The screaming got more intense as the group tried to sleep.
Only Alex couldn’t. The figure was back, same as always. The others couldn’t see it, and it was a familiar enough face that he shouldn’t be scared of it, but it was the same as when he first saw the damn thing. It stood by the lit fireplace, watching silently, with a horrible wide grin on its face. Its eyeballs looked like it was melting and its long black, pointed, fingers were gripping the brick fireplace. As long as Alex kept eye contact with it, it wouldn’t get closer.
A man’s shout pulled his attention away, and by the looks of no one stirring, it was another hallucination. Alex just closed his eyes and laid down, holding an old torn white bear tightly as he tried not to open his eyes, knowing the figure would be right there. It couldn’t touch him, but it didn’t make it any less terrifying to see that.
It was finally around five in the morning, when the sun finally started to peak over the trees, did the boy finally get to sleep. Right around when Rob woke up, saw that he was still asleep, and ordered the girls to be very quiet as they got up and got ready for the day.