Chapter Seven

We ignored the other houses on the block and raced straight to to the house with the cop car parked in front. I held my breath as I tested the front door and nearly pissed myself when it opened. The scent of bottled death wafted out, making both of us gag, but we had our answer. Not even zombies smelled that bad. This was pure death rather than undead.

"Wait out here," I told Hanson.

"No way!"

"The owner was probably bitten and blew his head off before he could change," I said. "If the smell is this bad from here, it's going to be even worse inside. There's no reason for both of us to suffer and my senses are dulled. I'll go in and search for the car keys."

It was a complete lie. My sense of smell was like my eyesight. It was better than ever. I simply didn't want Hanson to be exposed to whatever nastiness was waiting inside. There was a purity to him I wanted to keep intact as long as possible, whereas I felt I was already completely fucked. I had nothing else left to live for, except for him. He needed to be protected, because if he saw too much and gave up—so would I.

I think Hanson probably knew what I was doing—the unspoken worth I was placing on him—because he stared at me for the longest time before finally nodding in agreement. I took a deep breath of clean air out of habit, then held my breath and headed inside. The smell continued to permeate my nostrils, but it wasn't as bad once I stopped breathing.

It only took a few seconds to find the owner of the house. He was sitting in a recliner in the living room, still in his police uniform. I would have thought he was simply taking a nap if not for the splatter of blood on the wall behind him, visible in the flickering light of the TV. There wasn't any sign he'd been bitten, but I didn't intend to strip search him to find out if that was the reason he killed himself. It didn't matter. To me, he was just another guy who gave up without a fight.

It turned out, I didn't need to search the body for his car keys. The cop had put them in a bowl next to the television, likely out of habit. I took them to the door and handed them off to Hanson, being careful to block his view into the house, then I told him to check out the car while I went back inside to search the rest of the place.

There was a cold six pack of bottled beer in the fridge. I didn't give a damn if I was underage. I popped the cap on one and guzzled it while I looked around. There was no sign of a wife or kids. The garage offered a classic pickup gleaming with a fresh coat of wax and the spare bedroom held a home gym.

In the cop's bedroom, I found a lockbox, presumably with the cop's spare weapon in it. I hoped the key for it was on the keyring I'd given Hanson, although it might not matter if the guy had a biolock installed on the trigger. I'd noticed there had been one on the gun he'd used to suicide, which was the only reason I didn't try to retrieve it from his hand. I didn't know the first thing about removing or resetting the security gadget.

On my way back outside, I raided the fridge for another couple bottles of beer. Hanson raised his eyebrow when I offered him one, but took it without a word and tapped his bottle to mine in a silent toast. We spent a few minutes enjoying them while we relaxed. He sat in the driver's seat while I claimed the passenger side.

"Now what?" he eventually asked.

"Do you have any family you want to find?"

"Nope. They're all crooks and assholes. It's good riddance, as far as I'm concerned."

I turned in my seat and raised an eyebrow at him. "Crooks? I thought—"

"They were super-religious," he said with an understanding nod. "That's my cover story. It makes people more sympathetic than saying my dad is a small-time gangster hoping I'd follow in his footsteps. Military school is almost as good as prison when it comes to teaching the life skills a career criminal needs. He thought I was smart to come up with the idea, but I picked this camp for a reason. It's in the middle of nowhere. It would have made it easy to disappear the moment I turned eighteen."

"That's fucked."

"I know. It's why I spent so much time racking up merit points so I could get lessons at the gun range. I figured my family would eventually catch up with me and I might need to make a stand. Too bad my plans backfired. Those lessons got me a stint on perimeter duty and a ticket to this side of hell. What about you? Any family?"

"Mom's long gone. Dad lives in Santa Fe with my new stepmom. She's the bitch who got me sent here when I made it clear I wouldn't accept her as a parent. It's a real Cinderella story—two step-sisters and all, although Casey and Mindy aren't all bad. I think they hate their mom as much as I do."

"Santa Fe is on the other side of the quarantine line. At least you know they should still be alive."

"Yeah. I'm tempted to call and check, but I know my dad. He'll try to come after me if he knows I'm alive. It's better if he assumes I'm dead."

I sipped on my beer as we fell into a comfortable silence.

It turned out, there wasn't a whole lot to say at the end of the world.

The car had the answer to most of our prayers. Not only was there the CB radio, but the laptop installed in the dash gave us a secure line of information while also providing us a way to scour the Net. We could use the car to charge the cell phones, plus it had all the bells and whistles like a heavy flashlight with a built in charger, an emergency medical kit, and a rifle rack. We decided to discard the rifles when we discovered the rounds were salt pellets and bean bags. Their stopping power was useless for our needs.

Once the beers were gone, we opened up the dead cop's garage and plugged the car into the special outlet inside. It took an hour for the battery to fully charge, but we had a range of over four hundred miles when it finished. That doubled to eight hundred when we realized there was a set of backup batteries we could also charge.

Neither of us mentioned how lucky we were to find one of the few electric cars in the local police fleet. We didn't want to jinx it, especially when the trunk offered up two bags stuffed with riot gear—one for the cop and one for his partner. There were no shields, but we were happy with what we were able to get. We shucked off our uniform jackets and strapped on the tactical vests, then we traded helmets when his turned out to be slightly bigger than mine.

After a bit of messing around, we found the key to the cop's lockbox and discovered a lightweight pistol and a small box of bullets. The gun didn't have a biolock on the trigger, so we were good to use it. I went back inside to retrieve an extra belt holster from the cop's closet and I convinced Hanson to put it on. I prayed he wouldn't need to use it, but I felt better knowing he had the weapon available to protect himself.

It was all much easier than I expected, which rubbed me the wrong way as I raided the cop's kitchen and filled the trunk with non-perishable food. There wasn't a lot of food to work with, but I had a feeling edibles were the least of our problems. Everything had been handed to us on a silver platter. Our good fortune was going to somehow bite us in the ass, I just knew it, but rejecting gift horses wasn't a good idea either.

On a side note, the walk into town and all the moving around after our arrival seemed to help with my aches and pains. I didn't notice until Hanson pointed out how I'd stopped limping and I could stand with my back straight. I flexed my hands a few times, testing them out, and nodded in agreement when my joints didn't protest the action. They weren't even shaking anymore. It appeared exertion was good for me, even if it didn't raise my pulse.

"The next time you start to stiffen up, try doing some jumping jacks," Hanson suggested. I huffed a laugh, thinking he was joking, but I knew in the back of my mind he wasn't. We seriously needed a doctor to tell us what the hell was happening to me, assuming we could find one who wouldn't turn me into a lab rat.