Staying for a while

  After i unlock the door, we walk into my garage, it has changed a little. there are now farm tractors parked infront of the big bay doors. Someone welded plates onto the door for the tractor's bucket to sit on, adding strength. The cars that were in here must have been moved out behind the garage. Infront of the other regular door i see a tractor with a snow plow, keeping it from being swong open. The windows that are five feet off the ground have been boarded up from the outside with what looks like lag bolts. The garage was turned from you basic redneck repair station, to your basic redneck world war three bunker.

  "Damn you father has been busy." Kyle says.

  "He had help, none of this was up when I left for your place."

  We then walk up the stairs, when i remembers seeing my fathers other garden tractor to the right of the door i walked in.

  "Lets go put that tractor infront of the door."

  We walk down and take the tractor out of gear, and roll it over infront of the door, where we put it back into gear. Then we continue into my house. I expect to see my mother in the kitchen making something. Or my father in the living room, emassing weapons, or down stairs creating them. Connor in my room sleeping, anything. But there was no one.

  "Damn, where the hell is your family?"

  "F**k if i know."

  I walk into my room, i find a gun and a note, i was happier with the gun.

  "Stay here we will be back in a few days." I read it out loud to kyle.

  "What the f**k are we going to do for a few days?"

  "Don't ask me, i didn't leave my son in a house with nothing for a few days."

  "we could go scavange supplies from your neightbors."

  "Sure, Let's do that tomarrow, i'm beat." I grab the gun my family left, it was the AR-15, and Five, Thrity round clips. I load a clip in and set the gun next to my bed. "There is a cot set up for you, feel free."

  "Ok." he lays his gun on the floor next to his bed, i leave the room and walk to the basement. The windows are not boarded up here which is wierd, why board up the harder to get to, but not the ones that are ground level? I see that my father was down here at one time, his usualy neat work bench has a gun case on it. "How the hell did i almost forget? i walk to the other part of my basement and see the gun case, closed and locked. "I know the combo to you!" i whisper, i turn the knob to the five numbers it needed, then i turned the big handle, and with a thunk, i had axcess to a large number of short range, to long range weaponary. i reach in and grab my shot gun, i've used it many times for hunting and trap. and i reach in and grab my fathers Remington 280, this gun was a beast, the bullet traveled so fast that between twenty five and two hundred yards, the bullet didn't arch, it kicked like a mule but it was a great gun. with the 9-20 power scope, this gun was ment to beable to shoot things before you could see them. i close the case, but befor i lock it, i reach back in and grab my fathers .357 magnum and three bricks of ammo, one for each gun. i walk up stairs to find kyle laying in his bed but not sleeping. I give him the pistol and set the two gun on my wall. It has started to look like an armory. i load the .280 and my shotgun, i place my new tomahawk, katana and Ka-bar next to my bed, and sleep with my pistol under my pillow.

  "Good night"

  I receve a grunt in return

  When i wake up kyle is already up and somewhere else. I get up and instantly felt liberated. No more worring about if what i wear is cool. No more running out of pockets because my jackets weren't cool. No more getting put down for not dressing well. This was now a world of form fallowing function. I decided that my camo pants would go well with my old army jacket, i put on my sleep pants before i put on my camo pants, not only was it because my sleep pants were soft, but because there was a chill in the air. when i realized this i looked out the window. what i saw startled me. the trees were bare, winter was close. I put on my gray thermal shirt and my woodland camo jacket. i put on a military webbing, buckle it. and slide the 1911 in the holster, i clip my ka-bar into the strap that is at chest level. after fooling around for 3 or 4 minutes i find a perfect way to attach my katana to my back, all you have to do is slip it between a few straps and feed one through the belt loop.

  With my stomach rumbling, i decide that it is time to get something to eat. i walk into the kitchen to find kyle chowing down on a bowl of cheerios.

  "Grab some man, the milk is still a little chilly." He grunts between bites of food, so i get a bowl, some cereal and milk, and stand in quiet while we eat. about half way through my bowl kyle isw finished.

  "You like a f****t."

  "Pot calling the kettle black?" i say through a full mouth, so much for being liberated.

  "ehh, what works works, right?"

  "hell ya, ready to go loot?"

  "when ever you are I am." he hefts up his shotgun and i'm done with my bowl so i walk back into my room and grab the AR-15 and walk out. Lets go. i sling it over my back. but before we walk out the door i run back into my room and grab my keys and the tomahawk. finding space for it on my belt right behind my holster. When we are in the garage i grab my fathers canvas bag and a few burlap sacks for the stuff we find. we wheel the tractor back and open the door. there were a few infected, not too bad, and kyle and i took them out easly with a few cuts and slashes from knifes and hatchets. and we walk north towards the nearest house, my brother and i used to play with our neighbors all the time untill we were about fifteen, then our attention turned to two things, cars and girls.

  when we approch the house it is clear no one is home. the cars are missing and the doors are closed and locked, the curtains are all pulled shut, but i know where the key is hidden. we walk up to the front door and under the plant pot that is on the front steps i find the key and i slip it into the door and into the small little cottage.

  "hello." I say hoping for a responce. but recieved nothing. "kitchen is to the right, i'm going to explore the other rooms for anything that can be useful. i listen to kyle grab canned goods and other unparishable items. i walk to my left into the living room, look around, i know that there isn't much in here but it never hurts to look. I shuffle through the drawers on the corner tables. then i look throught the book case, again nothing. then i decide to move on to the dining room. again, not much of anything, but i pick up a flask and a bottle of whiskey, i put it in one of my pockets and keep on my way. i drift up the stairs and into the bed rooms. The first bedroom belonged to the girl who lived here and i don'e even bother. But the second room belongs to Ben, hee loved to play any sport known to man, base ball, basket ball, you name it. i walk into his room and look in his closet and i immediatly see a few baseball bats, i grab them, 2 luisville sluggers, one was a 30" bat and the other was a monster, i remember him telling me that he had to special order it, it is a 36" Hickery bat, this thing weighs about 34 oz. i set the 30 inch back and keep hold of this one, i give it a few test swings. Other than the three or four second recovery time it was perfect. then i move on to the master bedroom, i find nothing other than there were no bed sheets on the bed. just then i hear the floor creak at the top of the stairs, and i move to the right of the door and bring the bat up, ready to swing and pulverize what is at the top of the stairs, i listen and i hear kyle still downstairs grabbing cans. I let out a little whistle and i hear a moan. it walks, i gan hear it getting closer, i take a step foward a few steps and look down the hall. it is Shay, the girl who lived here, but she is not with us. when it sees me it lets out a moan and steps in the door. When it gets with in range i swing and send the bat home, it hits and makes a sound similar to hitting a base ball, just a bit more grotesque. i send blood clear to the other side of the room. next thing i see is kyle up the stairs with his pistol pulled.

  "Damn. sent that ball over the fence."

  "Ya..." i Trail off. tears started to roll down my cheeks and his smile faided,

  "S**t man, i didn't know, i thought that it just wandered in here...didn't know it was a resident..."

  "Don't worry about it." I walk past kyle into her room and grab a sheet. then i walk back into the room and cover her body up, but as i cover her head, she grabs me and trieds to pull me in, but i am stronger and pull myself out of her grasp. i pull my pistol, and send a bullet home into her skull. I fall against a wall and slide down and start to cry, i killed someone i knew for the better part of my life. well i killed their "New" self. while i sat there one thing made itself clear, feelings can have no part anymore, feelings almost got me killed, they are a liability now. I reach down, looking for the flavor of full flavored cigarette to calm me down, when i grabbed my back and pulled it out, the pack was bent in half, no cigarette in the world could survive that, so i throw it aside and walk down the stairs.

  "Time to go?" i ask kyle

  "Sure, let's go home, i've had too much excitement for today." We walk out the door and almost took a s**t in my pants, what stood infront of us was what could be called a group of death. It was made up of dozens of infected, I turn into the house and run up the stairs, kyle is behind me, we leave the door open because we need to let them in to kill them and there is only one way up here, throught a wall of burning lead. i grab my AR off my back and aim it down the stairs, the infected moved with a good amout of speed, some walked, others speed walked, and some jogged. the first one in the door got a hallow point 5.5g nato in the face, and dropped like a burlap sack full of sand. the next one in the door was at a nice jog and in my haste i shot it throught the neck, but didn't hit the spine, i shot again , aimed dead center of the head, but i just clipped the top of it's head. now i forsaked the gun and grabbed my tomahawk, and knife, and brought the ka-bar up and stabbed it in the chest, and the tomahawak came down on it's shoulder, it reaches down an grabbs my hand and the ka-bar and pulls it out. The thing starts to try to stab me with a jab to the gut, but it misses, and my tomahawak brings a killshot on it's head, splitting it, as it falls i grab my ka-bar and kick the dead guy down the stairs. he act's like a bowling ball going down a track, it knocked every infected down the stairs.

  "And f**k you b***h." i taunt, grabbing my pistol from my side and shooting The Dead that are trapped under the bowling ball. then i continue shooting the ones comming through the door, untill my mag is empty, when i retreat up the stairs to grab my AR, the fight ends in about 2 minutes, kyle and stephen-1, dead-0.

  I reload me pistol with the last clip i have, and my AR is completely out of ammo. i Walk down stairs into the garage with kyle fallowing me, i grab a bottle of 10w-30 from the wall and walk back into the kitchen where i grab a towel and wipe down my knice and tomahawk, the give them a nice coat of oil. then i go into the drawer underneath the cutting board on the island and grab the diamond sharpening stone, and we begin to walk back to the house, when we get there, i unlock the door and walk into the garage, roll the tractor infront of it, then remember to reach over and lock and dead bolt the door. when we get into the house i go into my room and grab my survival radio that was a chrismas present from my parents a long time ago. and flick it on after charging it with a few cranks. the radio is static on every band of FM, so i switch to AM, i know that i will get AM because AM reflects off the atmosphere, so i hear chinese and other languages as we flip to untill we run acrost an american channel based out of calarado, we listen to the man, and i grab the sharpeningstone and put a fine edge on my ka-bar, and my tomahawk, then i take out the katana, remembering what i read in a history book , the best way to sharpen a sword is with a piece of sand paper turcked into your belt and the other end weighted down on a table. This is because this way makes the edge round into the point, making it have less friction while cutting, i just oil down the razor-sharp sword and put it back into it's sheath. Then we begin the task of breaking down these guns, but in 3 minutes they are broken apart and most of the way clean, after a few brushes and wet and dry patches, these guns are as clean was we would want them.

  "You see that thing that i killed at the top of the stairs?"

  "ya...Still trying to understand that."

  "What is there to understand, it grabbed the knife and tried to stab me."

  "They are smart little fuckers ain't they?"

  "not all of them, only a few, i feel like if the infection was able to take them with-out fighting the body too hard, the infection could save some if not most of the brain."

  "I see what you are saying, but who wouldn't fight the infection? Sick people?"

  "The way i see it, yes."

  "Damn."the radio died and we sat there in scilence for a few, thinking about what that may have meant to our survival. before the sun set i walked into the kitchen and went into the bags we got, found a can of spam and some bread, i went down stairs and started up the wood stove we have, and cooked 2 spam sandwitches. then i put the fire out and went upstair and gave kyle a sandwitch. we ate in scilence and after the sun set there was no light to do anything so we went to bed, i think we both felt on edge, like tomarrow the world may end. the thing is, it already did.