Ron

Ron's backyard was like the alleyway he had come through to reach it. Underutilized and unkempt. There was little outside of too-high grass, a few bald patches in the lawn, and an oak tree in the corner not dissimilar to his own backyard. Unless there were zombified snakes in the grass, it seemed safe. The backdoor was, thankfully, unlocked, so he wouldn't have to break into the home of his possibly alive and jumpy friend. Ron probably had a weapon somewhere, so it would suck if Jack was shot while trying to check in on him/steal his ride.

Jack opened the backdoor to see a mudroom with a second door connecting to a passageway leading further into the house. He had been friendly with Ronald, but not enough to spend time as a guest inside the man's home, so he obviously didn't know the structure of its rooms. Many of the homes in his suburb had been built similarly, but they weren't carbon copies of each other either, so while he could use his house to estimate where general rooms may be, it wouldn't be a perfect match.

"Ron?"

He whispered into that passage. No response… Which made sense given that he was whispering. There was no real middle ground between speaking to attract a living person and speaking to attract a zombie. They could either hear you or they couldn't. Jack kept his mask on his forehead, but shouldered his shotgun and pulled out the pistol in his pants instead. If things went poorly, he'd need maneuverability in the cramped space more than power. Finally, he stepped inside the house, keeping the pot lid in his off-hand outstretched between him and the unknown.

"Ron?? It's me. Jack… Your neighbor?"

He spoke a bit louder. This time with enough volume to allow anything close to hear him. Still no response. He ventured deeper into the dark hallway leading further in. He passed by a few closed doors but left them closed. With one possible exception (one of the doors in the neighborhood had been opened normally during his lawnmower trick) most of the undead couldn't open them, so it was safer to clear the open space first. It didn't take long for the hall to come to a fork, one path continuing straight and the other opening to the the right. Everything was getting darker as he moved away from the light outside. He couldn't see reliably down either route, and didn't want to fumble to for a light switch. Something in Jack just told him not to.

He had stopped calling for Ron at this point. He had multiple directions in which something could come at him and he couldn't afford to get flanked by the large man. Ron was heavy, but these things seemed to be surprisingly quiet when they wanted to be. And… if Ronald was still kicking, why would he be sitting around in the dark? At best, he'd be hiding upstairs, but the worst case was seeming more and more likely.

The right path seemed like it would cover less space, given the rectangular shape of the house. His current path was going towards the long end of the rectangle, while the one to the right led towards the short end. Jack nearly crawled around the corner, anxiously watching for anything waiting to jump on him from behind it. He found himself in a large space mirroring his own living room, except darker due to the thick velvet curtains blocking the windows, the largest facing the backyard. Moving these aside, light crept into the space, showing another exit towards the front of the house. In the room itself, there were organized rows of entertainment equipment, all dwarfing his in quality. The TV was bigger, with the newest gaming systems and apparatus. The couches were made of a fine leather and had more design to them. There were multiple speakers, maybe for a surround sound type of function? Ron really was (had been) a material boy.

"Ron!"

With his back to a wall and enough light to see forward, Jack felt safe enough to try calling for his sort-of-friend one last time.

At first there was nothing.

However, after a few minutes of strained silence he heard a shuffle and a clatter to the front of the house. Jacks mind immediately flashed back to the tiny zombie's sudden rush. He threw the pot lid to the floor and gripped the pistol with both hands. Ronald's body would have lot more mass than the boy, so would likely be harder to push but easier to shoot. The right choice would be to steady his aim. With baited breath he gazed rapidly between the two entrances, gun aimed halfway between them.

Moments passed. The room silent as if waiting with the same urgency, waiting for an inevitable and bloody conflict. Another clatter, now clear, from the same direction. Then a crash. Jack felt time slow down, adrenaline hitting his bloodstream. He drew the pistol up and aimed at the entrance he felt closest to the noise. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale… Exhale… He had to allow himself to blink. Nothing jumped at him after the gap in his vision. More moments passed with laxing tension before he heard yet another clatter, at the same apparent distance as all the rest had been. Whatever it was, it wasn't coming for him.

Jack wanted to call Ron one more time, but his trope-sense stopped him. That would be a total first-person-to-die-in-a-horror-movie move. Jack had to be better than that. He waited for another crash to call out, again at the same distance, before creeping forward while primed for a quick retreat at any moment. Thinking through each step, so as to reduce any noise from his advance, it took him a bit to reach the entrance, Jack's only comfort was that the sounds kept coming. Upon reaching the entrance, he could identify that all of the noises were originating from a room with an entrance to the right of a short hallway to his left. One that should be near the front wall of the home. That hallway was the darkest yet, but the entrance to that room was emitting an inviting curtain of light.

Jack again snuck down this new hallway towards that portal, jumping internally at every new clatter and crash. In these moments, for the first time, he felt like a true intruder in someone else's home. A violator of a private sanctum. But as always, nothing happened, his crimes unpunished as he reached his destination. His back to the wall of the entrance of this final room, Jack took the briefest moment to inhale before spinning around, gun raised, to peer inside.

It had been a kitchen. Key word "had". Now every cupboard and counter were ripped asunder, torn to pieces or shattered, with any soft material covered in bite marks. The floor was covered with a combination of wooden and plastic bits, torn food wrappers, scattered silverware, smashed ceramics, and bloody bits of fur (Jack realized later that this may have been the remains of Ron's unfortunate old pup, Skamp). The refrigerator was open, door mangled, hanging open by a single hinge. Rolling in front of its exposed interior was Ronald's animated corpse.

He had been big in the past, but he hadn't held a candle to this. This thing was three times his former size, most of it bloated, tearing stomach. One of his legs was broken, but this thing likely couldn't have walked either way. Instead, it was using its arms to forcefully drag its mass forward at a glacial speed.

It was eating. It couldn't stop eating. Right now it was trying to ingest the metal, removable shelf of the refrigerator, jamming it repeatedly into a mouth torn open at each side to be 2-3 times wider than normal. Judging by the number of teeth it had knocked out, it had attempted to do this sort of things many times to different levels of success.

Jack had held a lot of respect for Ron. He had done his best to treat those around him with respect and had brought light to every conversation lucky enough to have him. But he could now see that something had been broken in Ronald, something deep and necessary. It had probably taken a huge amount of will to hold himself back, to keep from being... this. But as an undead he didn't have any will left.

Jack raised his pistol. Walking forward to aim at the back of Ron's former head. He swore he saw the bloated thing look at him. For the briefest moment, he swore it made eye contact. But only for a moment, before the seemingly short arms on its swollen frame again started to shove some new morsel, a jar, down its throat.

Jack pulled the trigger.