Nano Z (12 page)

Mack slung his hunting rifle over his shoulder and walked over to her. The girl was a little high on adrenaline, but happy. That group of meat puppets was the first that she took down all by herself. It was an accomplishment, and they both were proud.

***

The sun fell as Mack and Amber reached the outskirts of Hidden Valley, Colorado. In front of them was a neighborhood filled with homes surrounded by the pine forest. Only brief clearings in the trees and roadside mail boxes gave any indication that there were houses.

Like much of the country, Hidden Valley was quiet. Amber and Mack were sure there were meat puppets around them. But they didn’t see any. Nor did they want to stick around long enough that they would. They just kept walking at a brisk pace through the streets until night enveloped the small town. They’d hoped to reach downtown before the last gasps of daylight were gone, but that didn’t happen.

Shelter. We need to find shelter.
In Mack’s mind they needed to get indoors and do so fast. Days in the Rocky Mountains were not hospitable. Nights were even more so.

“C’mon,” kindly ordered Mack as he started walking up one of the nearby driveways. Amber predictably followed close behind. She raised one eyebrow as she noticed the partly deflated balloons attached by ribbon to the mailbox at the entrance.

They made their up the driveway. Both of them had their weapons trained on the woods that flanked both sides of the path. Their eyes adjusted to the dark and were able to see as much as they needed to. It was their ears that were on alert. Any attempts at stealth by meat puppets were thwarted by their own need to screech.

When they got close, Mack and Amber could see the house at the end of the driveway. It was huge. At three stories high and bigger than most department stores, whoever lived there before the outbreak was doing very well for themselves. The home was wide and long and had a minimalist modern design.

“Remember, stay close,” said Mack. He opened the front door and quickly raised his hunting rifle. Amber was behind him and turned on her flashlight.

There was a banner hanging above a staircase that lit up in the beam of Amber’s torch. It said: “Congratulations, Marie”. They both speculated in their heads as to what Marie was being congratulated for.

“You take the ground floor. I’ll check upstairs.” Mack slowly and quietly started up the staircase. Without Amber’s flashlight, it was a little hard to see. But he would make do.

This is a bit creepy.
Amber was reminded of the horror movies she used to love to watch. Before the outbreak she thought that being in a real life horror flick would be fun. That was before she found herself living in one.

Amber started with what she guessed was a dining room. It was very stylish in a pretentious kind of way. There were paintings on the walls that looked like nothing but simple shapes in primary colors.
Whoever lived here was a bit of a douche.

Was it her birthday? That’s a pretty shitty gi…there’s the presents!
On the table in the middle of the dining room were a dozen or so presents. They were all stacked up in a pile of colorful wrapping paper and pink bows.

Considering that there was no one coming for them, Amber decided to open up the gifts. The other rooms could wait. Plus there could’ve been something useful wrapped in the gaudy paper.

The first gift was a pair of tiny shoes, booties. They were so small that she could fit them in one hand. Was Marie a baby?

Amber moved on to the next present. Wrapped in ribbon and bow on the top of it was a card. Now that couldn’t possibly serve any survival purpose. Still, she was curious.

With her flashlight in her mouth, Amber opened the envelope. There was a cartoon character woman on the front. Her belly was swollen in a substantial baby bump. The woman looked happy. Above her was the word: “Congratulations”.

Amber opened the card. The light from the torch in her mouth shook. Inside was the same cartoon character woman. She looked aggravated and stressed. There was a kid running amok behind her. Written above was: “See you in 18 years.”

Unsatisfied, Amber threw it aside. She dug into the second present. It was a box. According to the pictures and writing on it, there was some contraption called a bouncer inside.

I’m wasting time.
Amber dropped the bouncer and moved on to the next room. It was large and her footsteps echoed throughout its open design. She checked every inch of the large room and found nothing useful except purses. And there were quite a few of them. A woman would only leave her purse behind if she was in a hurry. Glasses of flat champagne and wine on the room’s coffee table added to her determination that the outbreak reached Hidden Valley mid-party.

The small handbags housed some useless things like makeup and wallets. There were some breath mints and gum that Amber decided to take. She also took some “feminine hygiene products”.

Next up was the kitchen. The smell emanating from it wasn’t inviting, but Amber wanted to be thorough. Out of all the things human beings needed to survive, none were more important than food and water.

Amber didn’t expect to see any canned goods. Even the teen was smart enough to figure that any person that lived in a house like the one she was in wouldn’t be slumming it, eating out of a can. And any food that was there was sure to be rotten after almost half a year.

Speaking of rotten food, there was a large rectangular cake on the kitchen counter. Cockroaches crawled all over the moldy frosting. They scattered as soon as Amber shone her flashlight on it.

All around Amber were reminders of a world long gone. The time of parties and get-togethers were over. People were too busy trying to stay alive. Other human beings were a liability, a danger.

Amber didn’t even bother with checking the fridge. Instead she moved on to one of the three cupboards in the large kitchen. There were things like boxes of cereal and crackers that she and Mack could eat.

On the floor of the cupboard, Amber found what she was looking for. Still wrapped in a cocoon of plastic wrapping were bottles of water. The once abundant supply of H20 in a bottle had become scarce and precious in the months since the outbreak. And Amber just hit the mother lode.

The water was heavy but Amber managed to lift it up. She dropped it on the counter. It made a rather loud noise that got the attention of her big Viking protector.

“Amber!?” yelled Mack from upstairs. Sound carried in the open design of the house.

“I’m fine!” yelled Amber in response.

Amber moved on. She left the kitchen and went into what was previously an office or study. There were piles of mail and other papers on top of a dusty desk. What she gravitated to were the framed pictures.

She picked up one of the photos and shined her flashlight on it, revealing a young family. There was a man with glasses who looked to be in his mid-thirties, and next to him was his wife of a similar age. Between and in front of them was a little boy.

Hope you had it better than me, kid.
Amber put down the framed picture. She plopped down in the rolling computer chair behind the desk. A cloud of dust rose up, displaced by the sudden introduction of her weight.

Amber went through the drawers of the desk in front of her. They were mostly filled with bills, envelopes, writing utensils and office supplies. The only things of interest that she found were batteries that were compatible with her flashlight.

As she rose from the computer chair in the office, Amber heard the screeches of meat puppets. She turned and looked outside the sliding glass door that separated the study from the backyard. At first she didn’t see anything. Then she saw what looked to be a pair of red glowing orbs near the back of the long yard.

Concerned that she was looking at the eyes of a meat puppet, Amber got closer to the sliding glass door. Her eyes adjusted and she could see not only a human like silhouette around the eyes, but several more pairs of them. She jumped and barely managed to swallow her scream as a decayed bearded face appeared, inches away from the other side of the glass.

Fuck! Just as I was starting to like this place.
Amber slowly backed up towards the back of the office. The teen was enveloped by the shadows of the room.

***

Mack made his way upstairs. He kept his rifle aimed in front of him. In case anything jumped out at him he’d be able to blow them away without a problem. Even if he couldn’t, it gave him some piece of mind.

Much like the ground floor, the second story of the house was very open. There weren’t many walls that separated rooms. In fact the only one with a door was the bathroom.

What the hell did these people have against privacy? I couldn’t live like this.
He slowly explored the second floor. The first two rooms he searched were bedrooms.

There were no clothes strewn about or piled on the bed of the first bedroom Mack entered. All the drawers were closed. Nothing in the room was out of place. This reinforced the idea that whoever lived there left in a hurry. It resulted in an unavoidable sense of dread.

This isn’t a home. It’s a tomb.
Mack moved on to the second bedroom. From the playful wallpaper and toys, it was clear that the room was meant for a child. Much like the previous one, nothing was out of place.

Mack found nothing of use on the second floor. All there was were useless relics of a world long passed. He thought about how much money and thought was put into decorating the home. He thought about what a waste it was.

The stairs to the third floor were a bit unusual. They didn’t really fit with the design of the rest of the house. Naturally that juxtaposition made him curious.

In the middle of a hallway on the second floor was a narrow black metal spiral staircase. It led up to a hole in the ceiling that separated the two levels. And there was an awful smell that Mack knew all too well at that point: death.

Bad idea. What do you think you’re going to find up there?
Mack was about to start up the spiral staircase when he heard a loud bang from the ground floor.
Amber?

“Amber!?” yelled Mack. He hurried over to a ledge on the second floor, waiting for a response from his teenage charge.

“I’m fine!” yelled Amber in response.

Maybe something doesn’t want you to go up there. Then again, when have you ever truly listened to reason?
He returned to the spiral staircase.

The horrendous smell only got more pungent as Mack ascended the winding stairs. But he didn’t turn back. There was a chance that he might stay in the house for the night with Amber. If that was going to happen he had to make sure the place was safe. That meant no meat puppets.

There were no lights on the third floor. Nor were there rooms. It looked more like an attic or a storage space. On the farthest wall there were windows which must have lit up the floor on a sunny day. The moon provided just enough light for Mack to navigate. He maneuvered around stacks of boxes and random pieces of furniture. Despite stumbling a couple times, it was relatively easy to get around. Then he saw something near one of the windows.

Mack raised his hunting rifle. Barely lit by moonlight, he saw a dark shadow under one of the windows. It looked like a person slumped over, leaning against the wall.

A meat puppet?
Mack quietly moved closer to the body. He had to lift the collar of his shirt over his nose. Still, the smell was overwhelming. It took substantial willpower not only to keep going but not to throw up.

How
long
was this guy up here?
Mack looked down at a dead man under the window. His clothes were dirty and full of holes. The sorry state of his attire combined with his general dirtiness indicated that the man was some sort of drifter. The man was clearly dead. His mouth hung open, and the back of his head was a bloody mess. In one of his hands was a large caliber revolver. It didn’t take a detective to figure out that the man shot himself.

Poor bastard.
Mack stared at the dead drifter for a minute. Then his attention turned to the gun in the corpse’s hand. It couldn’t hurt to have one more weapon.

As Mack wrenched the gun out of the dead man's fingers, he heard a screech. It came from outside. He quickly looked out the window.

We can’t get away from these fucking things, can we?
In the dark woods outside the house were numerous sets of glowing eyes. Mack put his newly acquired revolver into the waist of his pants. He hurried through the rubbish of the third floor to the spiral staircase.

Mack was in such a hurry and panic that he tripped while descending the steps. Even though he took some bumps and bruises, he was okay. Without skipping a beat he got up and ran for the stairs down to the ground floor. The big man moved with such speed that he almost seemed to glide down them.

Through the small panes of glass that surrounded the front door, Mack saw more red eyes and shuffling silhouettes. It appeared that the whole house was surrounded. That didn’t matter. All that did was finding Amber.

Amber and Mack met in the kitchen. Both of them were wide eyed. Adrenaline pumped through their veins, supercharging their senses.

“What do we do? Do we fight them?” asked Amber. Her crossbow was at the ready.