Anno Viventes Mortuae Ch. 03

Leer had taken two steps when the sound of a gunshot roared from somewhere closer to the rear of the house. That would be Maria, but it wasn't her rifle. A second report from her pistol followed a couple seconds later. Then quiet. He glanced back to where Draga still stood and was mildly surprised to find her steadfastly watching the stairs. He nodded to himself and continued quickly down the hall.

One more doorway on the right opened into a bedroom. It took him a moment to find the switch, which thankfully revealed nothing particularly dangerous. A bed in the far right corner, left unmade. Womens clothes strewn across the floor from an open closet. Before leaving the room, Leer crossed to an open window to close and lock it.

The next door was the back door of the house, where the hall turned off to the left. He checked that it was locked, gave it a yank. Solid enough for the time being. He caught a faint movement down the hall to the left, began to raise his rifle when Maria flicked a switch and light flared on overhead. She waved her left hand breifly in greeting. Leer could see the light glinting on high velocity spatter on the front of the womans jacket. Her rifle was slung over a shoulder and she held her .357 in her right hand. A look at her gunbelt told him she had reloaded after firing.

"You alright?" he asked, pulling the shades down his nose to get a better look at her. There were no obvious signs she had suffered any bites or scratches.

"Fine." she sounded shaky. "It just surprised me. I cracked it with the rifle butt without thinking, let go and pulled the pistol. Stuck it right up under his chin. Then put another one through his neck even though 'is ugly head was already half gone. He didn't even get a chance to touch me, so you can stop eyeballin' me like that."

Leer waited, decided she was done, nodded. "Good. Whats on that side of the house?"

"Hallway. Bedroom. Has it's own bathroom. Nothing special. Well, and a mess of headless zombie in the bathroom doorway." she added the last bit in an apologetic tone.

"No open windows or doors to the outside?"

"No."

"Fine. Go tell Locke the ground floor is clear and I'm taking Grey upstairs with me."

While Warren and Maria double checked that all the doors and windows on the ground floor were secured, Leer ran Draga through the basics of clearing rooms upstairs. There were two bedrooms, a small library and two long rooms being used for storage. The inner reaches of these storage rooms were hidden in the mounds and stacks of boxes, bags, crates and miscellaneous loose items. To Draga's great relief, they found no more 'infected'.

A special lock box with a contoured, felt padded interior lay open on the bed in one of the bedrooms. It obviously once held a handgun and a number of bullets at one time. Judging by the size, a .45.

"Somebody made it out, huh?" Draga observed.

"Good luck to them." Leer muttered, glancing under the bed.

Leer had them search the upstairs rooms top to bottom before going back downstairs. Twenty minutes later they were stuffing what useful swag they had uncovered into a large duffel bag from a bedroom closet. Maria leaned into the doorway, cigarette between her lips, revolver again in her hand.

"Thought maybe you two really had decided to enjoy some privacy." she smiled when they looked up. "No more dead heads?"

Leer zipped the duffel bag and stood. "No." As an afterthought, he pulled a blanket and sheet from the bed and draped them over Draga's shoulders. The pillows he tossed at Maria, who quickly holstered her sidearm and danced about to catch them without knocking the cigarette from her mouth.

"Ah, marricone!" she laughed.

Back downstairs Warren had evidently been busy. The sofa was moved back several feet, almost touching the bookcase against the wall behind it. In the space between it and the coffee table Warren had laid out their sleeping bags. He had also started a fire in the little fire place, despite the storm not having killed the power yet. As Leer and Draga set down their packs, blankets and things, Warren returned from tying strings of empty soda cans to all the doorknobs.

Having turned off all the lights in the house and drawn all the curtains, they lit one table lamp, setting it on the coffee table. Draga and Maria dumped their respective bedding burdens on the couch. Leer and Warren drug arm chairs up at either end of the table and the women knelt on the sleeping bags. Draga smiled to herself for a moment, imagining a group of pirates gathering around a table to divvy up pillaged treasure. She blinked away an image of Maria in a peasant blouse with an eye patch, flourishing a cutless, when Leer began lifting things out of the duffel bag.

While Leer set things out on one side of the table, Warren began handing out food. It wasn't exactly a balanced meal, but they were too hungry and tired to be picky.

From upstairs Leer had garnered fishing line, a pair of like-new boots, a package of latex gloves, a half full bottle of prescription antibiotics, batteries, several pairs of boot socks and an unopened pint bottle of cheap vodka. When her hands were free, he handed the boots to Draga to try on. A pair of the boot socks went into each of their packs. The bag, with the rest of it's contents, went under the coffee table to be sorted in the morning.

Not interested in looking for clean shot glasses in the dark kitchen, Leer cracked the seal on the vodka and lifted the bottle.

"Cheers." he said unenthusiastically. He took a swallow, grimaced, breathed out fumes. He held the bottle out to Maria, who knelt closest to him.

"Still cutting loose, eh?" she finished a fruit cup and set down the empty plastic. Taking the bottle she lifted it as Leer had, smiling. "To our survival... and getting out of the rain." She tipped the bottle up. After chugging down a couple fingers worth, she brought the bottle back down, dribbling a bit down her chin. Her eyes watering, she grabbed a canteen to chase the vodka with some water. When she had finished and set the canteen down she noticed Draga cracking up and joined her, laughing at herself.

Handing the bottle to Draga she fished cigarette and lighter from a pocket. She stopped herself at the last second and made quite sure she had cleaned herself up and wasn't breathing fumes before sparking the lighter. Draga held the bottle, still trying to stop giggling. Finally she lifted the bottle, glancing around at her companions.

"To... good company... in which to live or die..." she favoured Warren with a sly smile, "...and George Romero, for giving us some mental preperation." With that she managed three swallows before setting the bottle on the table, squinting and coughing on fumes. Smiling sympathetically, Maria handed over her canteen.

Warren, smiling mildly, lifted the bottle, waiting for Draga to regain her composure.

"Interesting times." he intoned solemnly before knocking back a swallow.

Leer chuckled, shaking his head. The women booed good naturedly, laughing again.

"Bad taste, Brujo," Maria admonished around her cigarette.

While they finished the meal, they found things to chat about to fill the silence. Leer mentioned the library upstairs to Warren. Draga began teaching Maria a couple basic phrases in a Romani dialect. Warren and Leer discussed a basic plan of action for the following day. The proposal to spend a day relaxing in the house and waiting to see what the weather would do was met with enthusiastic support. They would sort through the leavings in the kitchen and better search the rest of the house for anything useful after a leisurely nights sleep.

Leer took the first watch. The others left their long guns on the coffee table, taking their handguns to bed with them. Draga stripped down to her new OD green skivvies, laying blouse and trousers in a crumpled mass atop her shoes. Unable to bring herself to sleep in the blankets from upstairs, despite the sofa being quite comfortable, she slid between the familiar sleeping bags on the floor. Maria followed suit, coiling her gunbelt and laying it on the floor next to where Draga had set her Sig, before sliding in next to her. After pulling it back next to the couch, Warren stretched back a bit in a recliner, not bothering to undress.

Sated, warm, with the rain outside and the faint crackle of the fire nearby, the three were soon fast asleep.

"Good morning?"

Draga stirred, slowly moving to rub the sleep from her eyes. Blinking them open she saw that Maria was watching her over a shoulder. It dawned on her that she had ended up spooning Maria. It also occured to her that they could both do with a shower. She rolled back a bit, smiling sheepishly.

"Morning." She stretched her arms over her head, yawning. She caught the smell of freshly brewed coffee and inhaled deeply. Sitting up, she saw that Leer sat cross legged across the coffee table from them. He had one of their rifles in pieces on the tabletop, cleaning and oiling it. He pointed with what looked like a little green toothbrush at two steaming mugs on their side of the table.

"Locke served coffee. He's playing short order cook in the kitchen now." He began reassembling what turned out to be Marias M-16. "One of you might check to make sure he's not burning the house down."

Draga, remembering the increasingly unstable state of reality leading to her current situation felt a bit unnerved by her companions' seemingly lackadaisical behavior. She glanced around as if expecting Infected, standing ready to bang on the windows and doors on cue. Then she noticed Leers sidearm on the tabletop, within inches of his hand. She relaxed some, accepting one of the mugs from Maria.

By early afternoon they had all eaten and showered. Having wrapped themselves in sheets or towels from a linen closet, they put all their clothes through the washer and dryer. An armload of canned food had been distributed amongst their packs. It was still drizzling rain intermittently, but the clouds were not so dark as the day before.

Draga voiced concerns about the possibility of contagion lingering on, among other things, their makeshift togas. Leer reminded her that if it were that easy to catch, she should have contracted it after her close call the evening they met. Warren further suggested that there was a fair chance one or more of them happened to be resistant or immune to the infection. She assumed they were just trying to ease her mind, until Leer told her she should try to find some suitable clothes, or at least some extra socks.

While they were at it, the four of them decided to give the whole place a more leisurely looking at now that they were a little less stressed. There was little of use they hadn't already discovered. While the others hunted around Leer checked the radio. There were emergency broadcasts looping on a couple local stations. The others were all down.

Switching to AM he got all sorts of chatter. When Warren and the girls eventually made their way back to the den Leer gave them a rundown of the latest news. It was largely redundant. Stay indoors. Lock your doors. Kiss your ass goodbye. That sort of thing.

The National Guard had been called in. The rather low percent who answered the call and showed up were dispatched to key points. Hospitals, power plants, exits and entrances of major cities. Those in more rural areas were attempting to round up survivors. Major cities on the East Coast had reportedly deteriorated into hellish death traps. Since the spread of the disease on the West Coast had not progressed as far, it was theorized that ground zero was either on the East Coast or had arrived there from overseas.

Technically martial law had not yet been declared, but it was generally agreed that it was only a matter of time. The Navy was locking down all port activity. Airports and major bus lines were likewise frozen. Army and Marine Corps units had been scrambled to assume control at Customs lines on the borders with Canada and Mexico, as well as to defend the CDC and similar facilities which might prove useful in fighting the Infection. Units from every branch of the military were being shipped into the capitol, minus a percentage which had already gone AWOL.

"Weather is supposed to clear up tomorrow. All in favor of crashing here again tonight and leaving in the morning, rain or shine?" Leer posed.

Three hands rose.