As Jake moved, his eyes tracked in a tried and true manner. He scanned his surroundings then the ground in front of him every few steps. Moving like a “ninja” would quickly cease if stepped on a noisy “tattle tale” like broken glass or if he ran a nail up through his boot. As he moved, he let his senses work. For someone who had used to live in the Sacramento area, the absolute silence was unreal. There was no sound of airlines in the pattern for Sac International, no trains, no cars on the freeways or city streets. There were very little bird sounds, though more than a few birds about. Even the birds had learned that sound attracted Zs like little else would. The silence was a good thing from a tactical stance. Most Zs were not quiet. They groaned, shuffled, dragged legs, bumped into things, and stumbled about like drunks. If a Z was on the trail of something living, it’s howl could be heard at some distance. That howl would attract other Zs and before long, a herd would be on a single-minded hunt for some poor soul, or even a squirrel, that had gotten the attention of the Z. It often took days for the zombies to cease their chase.
In addition to the sound, Jake watched for movement. Some things moved naturally, like animals. People and Zs did not. Smell came into play. The Zs were really just pieces of slowly rotting meat, so they could be smelled at a distance at times. More than once, Jake had made the decision to bypass scouting a structure from the smell of death at the breach point. Either there were Zs inside or some purple-shirt-wearing church group had committed mass suicide. With all the horror Jake had seen in the previous few years, there were still things that bothered him to the soul. Dozens of healthy people drinking antifreeze in hopes that Jabba the Hutt would save their souls was one of those things.
Dogs. Dogs were one of the things that Jake feared. Untold numbers of dogs had run loose during The Fall. Large packs of feral dogs, whose keen senses kept them clear of Z hordes, would roam the countryside. They attacked with a viciousness and sometimes in numbers that seemed unreal. The military had standing orders to waste any dog packs on sight.
Focus! Jake snapped himself back into the moment. His mind had wandered as his body had droned on mechanically and instinctively. He found himself looking at a decent sized house that was relatively intact. No broken windows, no fire damage. He slowly moved around the perimeter of the house, which was a bit overgrown, but found little in the way of activity signs. He slowly made his way back to the front door and rapped softly on the door. He then took a knee and waited, watching “outboard” while he listened for sounds from the house. If a Z had been inside, the knock would have most likely sent the Z into a flurry of activity as it tried to find a way out of the house to the sound. After a few minutes with no sound, he slid his rifle around to his back. From his left side, he swept forward a pistol-gripped Remington 870 shotgun. The barrel had been sawed off just forward of the magazine tube, which made the gun very short. The shotgun was loaded with #4 birdshot, which was heavy enough to get through skull and tissue at close range but didn’t have the limited payload of heavier 00 buckshot.
With the shotgun in his right hand, he tried the door with the left. Locked. He let the shotgun dangle on the attached bungee sling and fished a small lock pick kit from his PICO. A little squirt of gun lube into the barrel of the lock and a minute of work defeated the lock. He carefully returned the kit to his vest before he pushed the door open. The door creaked uncomfortably loudly had he pushed it open as far as it would go. He covered swept the muzzle of the shotgun everywhere he could see, but failed to find any lurking Zs in sight. After a quick scan about inside, he stepped into the house. Once inside, he stopped and listened for several moments. He then pushed the door shut.
The house smelled old and dusty. It was a comforting smell that meant nothing had disturbed the house in some time. The house was dimly lit from the sunlight coming through the drapes of the various rooms. To counter the darkness, he pulled a Surefire R1 flashlight from his PICO and used it to light things up as he moved about. Four bedrooms, a large family/dining room, a kitchen, and a garage. All clear, but he stopped at the inner garage door. There was a sign posted on the door, addressed to “Sean,” that specifically said not to come out into the garage. The note said to read the note on the hall closet door.
Jake moved back slowly to the closet. The note there told “Sean” that his mother loved him dearly and his step-father could not be prouder of how the little boy had grown into a man. The note said that they had decided to take their own lives in the garage than become monsters. The closet held the step-father’s old seabag which had some basics, the canned food with the furthest out expiration dates, a medical kit, some maps, and two boxes of shells for the step-father’s shotgun. The note encouraged Sean to head to his aunt’s house in the mountains and ride out the storm there.
Jake pulled open the closet and found the seabag, closed up and intact. An over/under Browning double-barrel .12 gauge leaned up against the bag. He lifted the bag, which was fairly heavy from the canned foods it contained. The shotgun, fortunately, had a decent hunting sling on it. He carried those to the front door and set them down for a moment. His eyes tracked to the wall over and around the gas fireplace common of tract homes. Pictures. Pictures of a young single mother and her son. Pictures of a young boy and step-father on a fishing trip. Senior pictures and pictures of proud parents wearing matching college football jerseys with their son’s number. Sean and his parents. Jake turned and walked to the inner garage door.
He pulled the door open, which resisted slightly due to old packing tape around the door. The step-father had obviously wanted to keep the smell of death out to the house. There was hardly any odor. A couple years of hot summers and cold winters had contributed to the decomposition and a bit of mummification to the bodies. They had their backs to the door and faced the main garage door. They were sitting in folding chairs, the kind that you would take and set up on the lawn to watch a football game. Close to each other, what appeared to be the husband had his arm around the shoulders of the wife. A large portrait of Sean, kneeling on a football field in his uniform, was set up in front of the couple on a camping table. An empty wine bottle and two empty pill bottles sat on the table. They were wearing the jerseys with their son’s number. Jake closed and locked the door to the garage that had become a tomb. Jake stopped and picked up a writing tablet on the kitchen counter.
A few minutes later, Jake made his way out of the house and back to the “stop-n-rob” that his team had set up on the roof of. Toby dropped a rope down the roof access hatch and hauled the seabag to the roof. Jake wearily climbed up the roof ladder, burdened by the weight of his armor and on his soul. Once he saw that Toby had closed and secured the roof access hatch, he pulled the hunting shotgun from his back. He nodded to Toby, who quickly opened the seabag and began to inventory it. Jake began to pull off his gear.
“You took long enough.” Megan grumbled as she looked him over.
“Yeah, but I brought you a gift.” Jake handed her the shotgun, to which her eyes lit up. She had wanted a shotgun for building clearing for some time, but had yet to get her hands on her own. She quickly scurried over to Chris, who had been standing watch. In exchange for taking part of his watch, Chris went to work cutting the hunting shotgun down to something a bit more tactical. Meg chirped happily about the weapon the entire time. In the meantime, Toby had discarded about half of the load of canned food, which was past its’ expiration dates. They were left with some soup, some canned chicken and canned tuna, and a variety of canned veggies. The big score was a bottle of Tabasco sauce in the bag.