“Whoever lived here wasn’t doing any of that in a Camry,” I said, “but I’m thinking we crack open his garage and see what he’s hiding in there.”
“Ho-ho, shit,” Billy giggled. “Wouldn’t that be something?” He grabbed his shotgun and hopped out of the truck; walked around to the bed to dig around. Finding the crowbar he was looking for, he began to stroll up the driveway.
I opened the passenger side door and struggled briefly with my new rifle as I swung my legs out (Billy had so far neglected to show me how to detach the sling’s swivel studs, so I had just left it hanging off my chest the whole time). Finally situated on the ground while managing not to shoot myself, I closed the door to the truck and followed.
Billy made a straight line for the roll-up garage door, planted his feet, and positioned the crowbar just past his hips like it was a shovel that he was going to use to take a scoop out of the driveway. Before he could swing, I said, “Wait.”
He was actually mid-swing by the time I spoke, so he had to arrest the downward motion of the very heavy steel bar, grunting out a “Christ!” as he did. He straightened, placed the tip of the bar gently on the concrete, and crossed his arms over the top to lean on it. Thus composing himself, he said, “Yeeess?”
“What if someone’s in the house? What if someone still lives here?”
“What…seriously?”
“We’re here, right? We survived.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah, fair point. It may be the end of the world, but good manners never go out of style.” He shouldered the crowbar, turned, and walked to the front door.
At the door, he leaned the bar against the wall. He then placed his shotgun next to it. He looked over his shoulder at me. “That gun’s safe is on?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Take it off.” He knocked on the door.
We stood there a few moments, after which he knocked on the door again. Glancing down at the wall, he pushed the doorbell button. There was no discernable sound from inside the house and Billy muttered the word “dumbass” under his breath.
We waited another few minutes. Billy finally looked back at me with his eyebrows raised in question. I nodded that we were good and backed up to give him some room. He hefted the crowbar.
I expected him to slam it into the door or perform some other act of violent destruction, but he did the exact opposite. He placed the flat tip of the bar into the crack of the doorframe where the bolt would be, gave it a shove, and began to pry at the crack almost daintily. I was shocked. I had no idea how much noise he had been preparing to make with the thing over by the garage door, but the only sound he produced here at the entryway as he tickled the door was a mild grinding. I half expected him to raise his pinky off the bar as he levered it around. After about five minutes’ worth of work, he had destroyed enough of the jam, the door, and the deadbolt that the whole thing swung open easily.
“Hello?” Billy called into the home. The lack of response carried a psychological weight with it, as though the air in the house was pushing back against us. He set the crowbar aside and shouldered the shotgun. Not looking back, he said, “Muzzle, Little Sis. Don’t point that at anything you’re not ready to kill.” He lifted his own muzzle and passed the threshold.
The inside of the home was unexpectedly tidy. Having been conditioned to find disarray in all things, the cleanliness of the front room was off-putting. I had to force back the urge to look back out the front door and confirm that it was still the same fallen world outside. We made our way from room to room, Billy always in the lead. We stayed in each location long enough for him to clear the area and look in all the closets before moving on. At one point, Billy reached out and tapped my right elbow lightly with his hand and whispered, “Not so high, Little Sis. Makes it hard to maneuver. Pull ‘em in tight to your ribs.” I did as he suggested, noting immediately how the new position felt easier for my shoulders to maintain.
As we moved toward the back of the house where the master bedroom was, a foul, rotten smell became apparent, becoming more oppressive as we went deeper. I don’t really know that I can do the experience justice through description; it was the smell of rotting meat and sweet, cheap perfume. As we approached the final door at the end of the hallway, I was holding my rifle one-handed by the grip and, with my left hand, holding a tail of the flannel shirt up over my mouth and nose. I had to breathe slowly and shallowly to avoid gagging.
Billy worked the knob on the door and swung it open. Inside, there were two bodies lying in the king-sized bed. Vast expanses of bone were visible among soupy ropes of red, meaty tissue. They were both glued to the mattress by brown pools of congealed liquid and surrounded by a tornado of flies. I just had enough time to make out that something white was moving along their surface before Billy bellowed, “Gah, sonofawhore!!!” and slammed the door. He and I both stumbled back down the hallway, coughing and gagging.
We made it back to the front room, turned right, and exited straight out the front door. Outside on the doorstep, Billy leaned over and placed his hands on his knees while coughing violently. I leaned against the wall of the house and tried to teach myself how to breathe normally again.
A few minutes later, still bent over and panting, Billy said, “That was pretty much the worst thing ever. Can we just leave now?”
“I’d love to,” I said, “but we haven’t seen inside the garage yet.”
“Ah, God damn,” he coughed and spit into the bushes. “Excuse me,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Ready?”
“No,” he grumped and walked through the front door.
We both engaged the safeties on our weapons and let them hang as we walked in. Billy indicated off to the left, and I followed. I could smell that rotting odor as soon as we stepped in this time; subtle but still there. I don’t know how we missed it the first time around.
Once in the hallway, Billy tried the handle on a door on our immediate left—what we were both sure was the garage access. It opened into a dark garage with the bumper of something large and grey just visible. There was a spool on the front of the bumper with a coil of steel cable.
Billy pulled a flashlight out of his back pocket, turned it on, and shined it at the vehicle. It lit up what may have been the most gorgeous Jeep I’ve ever seen. Along the side of the hood in black and red letters was the word “rubicon.”
“Holy shit,” Billy whispered. “Jackpot. Nice wor—Hey, where are you going?”
“Keys!” I called back as I went back inside the house. I had a panicked image of having to go back to the master bedroom to fish in someone’s pants to get the keys—I didn’t think either of us could do it. Luckily, I found a set of keys hanging from a wall hook in the kitchen. Confirming that the largest one on the ring said “Jeep” on the side, I grabbed it and returned to the garage.
Billy was just rolling up the exterior door as I came back out. When he took his arms away, it began to roll back down, so he pushed it back up into place. “Good, you’re back,” he said as I approached. “Would you look around and see if you can find anything to wedge this open? There isn’t enough tension on the springs to hold it in place.”
I started digging around, conscious of the fact that he was standing there exposed to the outside world with his hands extended high in the air. After what seemed like way too long, I said, “I’m not finding anything.”
“It’s okay, take your time. This thing isn’t heavy; the springs take up most of the weight of the door. I can hold it here with a finger. Look for something like a long piece of wood, or maybe even some rope.”
A few more minutes and I finally found an orange extension cord. “I found this,” I said, holding it up for him to see. “Does that help?”