Kent bent over and hugged Robert, "I know Rob, I know. But we have other kids to live for, other kids to help, we have to move on, get them safe, we have to. C'mon, get up. We can't stay here."
"I can't go. You know I can't go with you. Not with this!" he held up his bandaged arm, the white gauze was already drenched in bright red blood.
"You are not dead, we'll find someone to take care of you, we'll get it…" Kent's voice trailed off and he too started to sob.
The crying was painful to Katie's ears, she had compartmentalized her grief at losing Randy, put it away in a small little room buried deep within her brain. She had locked the door and turned the painful, numbing grief that threatened to destroy her into a cold anger for revenge. She would go through what Robert was suffering….but later, not now. A single tear appeared at the corner of her eye and she wiped it away angrily, turning before the group behind her could see her weakness.
"What do we do?" Kent's voice asked her, "What do we do?" he repeated when she didn't answer him. "Hey, military woman! I am talking to you! What can we do?"
Katie looked at Kent, then at the blood, which continued to drop out of Robert's arm. She then looked up and down the street, not seeing any activity she crouched down and set her gun on the ground, pointed towards the bleeding man.
"He is bleeding a lot. Maybe he bled out the infection."
"You don't sound very convincing." Kent said.
"You want convincing? What do you expect? He got bit, he is going to die. He is going to come back as one of them, same as Sam. I am not a doctor." she pointed at Robert and shrugged, "He bled a lot, maybe the infection didn't get inside him, like it did with my partner. Maybe he will recover. If he doesn't bleed to death."
"I can feel it in me." Robert said through his sob.
"That's blood loss, I doubt you feel the infection." Katie said. Her voice was doubtful though, she recalled Randy saying the same thing.
"You've seen this before." Kent accused.
Katie nodded.
"What did you try?"
"There wasn't much to try, we washed him up real good, we had antibiotics, we had bandages, and we were in the field. He died." Katie looked away 'What the fuck does he want from me?'
"Shoot me."
"Shut up, Robert, you don't know what you are saying."
"No, you shoot me, Kent. I would do it for you."
"You aren't even dead! You're being unreasonable."
"I can't do it myself. I am not that strong."
"How could you ask me to do that? I wouldn't ask you to do it! Not while there is a chance."
"You heard her!" Robert screamed, "There is no chance!"
"We don't even know who she is, she could be lying."
Katie shrugged, this little gathering reminded her of her own family all too much, the constant bickering, leading to screaming, then someone yelling at someone else to kill them. She smiled bitterly at her dark sense of humor, Randy would have got it. The two men continued to argue until Katie got tired of it, she picked up her shotgun, stood up and walked across the street.
"Where are you going?" Robert yelled when he saw her walking away.
"Over there." Katie said without looking back while as she pointed to the house in front of her. It was a home just like any other on the block, except it was all buttoned up. She hoped that meant there was a car in the garage and keys somewhere inside.
"You can't leave us!" Robert said.
Katie half turned and answered over her shoulder, "I'm not. I'm just going into the house. When you get done calling every zombie around us down on our heads, I will come back out." muttering under her breath she continued, "Or I will just drive away in a nice Suburban by myself."
The kids looked embarrassed and torn, half wanting to go with Katie, half wanting their dads to stop bickering. Family loyalty won out and they stayed in the street to watch the two men argue. Katie approached the door and banged on it, calling out, "Anybody alive in there?" She waited a full count of sixty, then banged again, "I am coming in, if you are in there and don't want your door broken down, you have about ten seconds to open up." Nothing. Katie turned sideways and slammed into the door, it only took two tries to break the frame holding it shut.
'Surprising, how easy it is to break into a house if you don't care that other people can see the damage.' Inside the shades were drawn shut, with only a little light seeping into the front room from the kitchen.
A smell of decay wafted passed her as Katie stood in the doorway. In the street the argument was reaching a new height. 'Decay means dead-dead, not living dead.' thinking this to herself she shut the door as well as she could behind her and scanned the room. There weren't any bodies lying around, or moving either. 'Upstairs, in the bedrooms. I bet you five Randy, that is where I find the family, all suicided.'
She took the stairs two at a time as fast as she could, just in case there was a smart zombie lying in wait. The stairway opened into a loft like area that overlooked the main room, there was a bathroom directly in front of her, two open doors down a short hallway to her left and a closed door that screamed 'Master Bedroom' across the loft room to her right. The door was ornate and oak. Not good, hundred year old oak, but the newer faux oak door that was lightweight, yet still cost a few hundred more than standard doors and looked nice.
"I could just leave it. I know what is in there. Dead people. I don't have to go in." Katie said out loud. She put her hand on the doorknob, or latch rather, it looked and felt like some sort of brushed nickel. 'Nice.'
It was also locked. Pressing her ear to the side of the door she listed for a moment, but only heard faint yelling from the street. With a heavy sigh she shouldered this door too, breaking a chunk out of the frame on the first hit. The stench of rotted flesh rolled over her, but the room was pitch black. Katie backpedaled and crouched down pulling her pack around to the front of her to get her flashlight.
Nothing came crawling out of the black doorway. Katie left her pack on the floor and turned on her light, the beam was almost painfully bright. From her position outside the door Katie could see a set of feet lying on the carpeting, the rest of the person was out of sight behind the bed. What she could see of the body gave her the impression it belonged to a corpse, not a zombie. The feet were gray and swollen; the flesh of the ankles was tightly bound by the cuffs of a pair of men's sleepwear pajamas.
Before she stepped in Katie moved to the far right side of the door, the angle gave her a better view of the rest of the room as she approached. She knew she had to go in, if the couple had car keys they would be in here, not someplace sensible, like the kitchen. 'That is how my luck runs. I kinda hope I am right, otherwise I am going through a whole lotta gross for nothing!'
It was a family of five, the wife and children were tucked into the king sized bed, the man lay on the floor beside them. Katie's eyes were drawn to the rifle the man had, a thirty ought six. 'Respectable, maybe he was a hunter.'
She reached down and picked up the rifle, which had fallen beside the man and was out of the bloated rot of his remains, as she was bent over she heard a faint sound, as if someone were continuously squeezing water out of a sponge. 'Maggots.'
Even as sealed up as the house was, flies had gotten in. 'I don't even see any flies around, but I can hear their babies in the bodies.' Standing with the gun, she looked around for any ammunition and spotted a case on the desk, next to a set of keys. 'Bingo!' Katie grabbed the ammo and the keys and run out of the room.