The following Monday, the telephone had shot him out of a deep sleep. He’d reached for it on the third ring and was surprised to see her body curled up into a ball, sleeping peacefully. He’d picked up the phone on the second ring without even looking to see who it was.

  When the phone call ended, his excitement roused her awake. She’d smiled up at him with sleep crusted eyes, sat up and stretched until it hurt.

  After she’d asked what all of the fuss was about, he’d said, “They’d mistaken me for another guy who applied for the job. They want to me to start tomorrow.”

  A celebration was in order, both emotionally and physically. The past forty-eight hours had altered his life in a way he’d never thought possible; thought it was the kind of stuff that happened to other guys or to the people in movies. Now that he had the girl and the apartment, he’d finally completed the trifecta that connected him to The American Dream. And there wasn’t anyone else he wanted to share that dream with but with the love of his life and the future Mrs. Colin McCoy.

  Today, however, was different.

  He didn't deserve to think about her, so he shrugged the memory away and went back to the tasks at hand. He wiped himself down with a packet of disposable cloths and tossed the used ones into the white plastic grocery bag sitting under the steering wheel. He slipped into a pair of jeans, brown hiking boots and a dark-green Harley Davidson tee-shirt he'd snagged from a department store in West Virginia.

  Clean and refreshed, he gazed up at the A-frame again. He still had a delivery to make but he still had time to go look around if he wanted to. If he needed anything, it was now or never.

  He stepped off the boat, thumbed a fresh clip into his Colt and fastened the headlamp onto his forehead. He marched up the hill until he found a narrow wooden staircase snaking along the hillside and followed it toward the back of the house.

  When he reached the top, he clenched the railing with both hands and climbed over onto the veranda. The breeze carried the sharp pungent smell of dried blood and hot decaying flesh across the veranda. It stung his nostrils, tickled the back of his throat and left an acidic aftertaste dancing across his tongue.

  He winced, thumbed back the hammer of his Colt and scanned the mess scattered across the veranda. Polished oak tables and chairs, half obscured by overlapping tablecloths, lay stiffly along a blood-soaked carpet of broken class and flattened food. A chain of dead bodies strewn in between the fallen debris lie under sticky pools of dried blood and chunks of brain matter, their faces disfigured with death.

  He didn't have enough bullets to finish them off. It looked like someone had saved him the trouble.

  Large, tinted windows stretched along the patio above a small concrete staircase that led to a pair of gilded glass doors; the river's penny colored image was reflected in the glass. The cafe's logo as plastered across the right-side door below the shadowy image of a rangy-looking cowboy galloping across a desert plain on a wild stallion.

  Snippets of human conversation once mingled with the sweet smells of barbecue. Now, it was just another free meal for the birds to pick through until they had their fill.

  The view was great from up here.

  He stepped around the bodies, crunching bits of glass under his boots, and peered around the side. A few family sedans, a rusted blue pickup and more dead bodies (resting under dried pools of blood) littered the parking lot. Sighing, he shook his head and stepped inside.

  Framed photos, hunting trophies and vintage flyers from the days of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans dotted the knotty pine walls. A few deader bodies were either strewn across the green felt floor beside the front door or slumped over the polished wood tables and booths provided. Blood winked in the carpet of soft-pink sunlight pouring through the windows; the ceiling fans had already spun their last breaths and were now laced with thick fingers of dust as the neon signs were as dead as a promise.

  A curved mahogany bar sat on the far left corner in front of a tall mirror-backed shelf stocked with dusty glasses and half-filled liquor bottles. The blue gray sunlight tossed weird shadows across the floor, framed the red-leather cushioned stools and caught tiny dust-motes swirling through the air. He’d have killed to have a set up like this back home in Madisonville.

  He scanned the lobby until he found a pair of skinny metallic batwing doors on the southwest corner. He sauntered across the lobby past an old woman with spongy gray hair sitting inside of a booth, her pear-shaped body slumped over the edge of the table. She wore a bright red pants suit and two tiny gold earrings that winked back at him.

  He was halfway across when he heard a loud shuffling sound. He paused, snatched a quick breath and perked his ear toward the other side of the lobby.

  He heard it again, only this time it was coming from his left. He pivoted on his heels, raised his Colt in a two-handed grip and crept toward a white metal door with pin-sized holes along its frame. A black name plate fixed to the front of the door said OFFICE in bold white font.

  He tapped the door with the toe of his left boot, held it open and stepped inside. A cloud of noxious odors wafted across his face and stung his nostrils. He cursed himself for not bringing his bright yellow bandana he’d always used to ward off certain smells.

  He flipped the button on the headset, splashing a cone of harsh halogen lights across the marble-green corridor lined with white-painted brick walls. He drew the front of his tee-shirt across his nose to block the stench and proceeded down the hallway. When the door clapped shut behind him, emitting the loud click of metal on metal, he spun around and checked for movement.

  When he found that there was none, Colin proceeded down the corridor. Beads of cold sweat collected inside of his pits, trickled down his sides and coated the back of his neck. He wasn’t happy that he was traipsing through a darkened hallway without any knowledge of what to expect because foolish stunts like these had gotten a lot of stupid people killed.

  He always had his wits about him, too and that was something the others didn’t have. He still felt a little vulnerable in a way but that feeling never lasted too long.

  He reached the end of the corridor and came to a large office area. On the left were a pair of metal filing cabinets and an overstuffed brown couch; a pair of tall plastic green plants bracketed both the couch and the cabinets. He saw something moving along the corner of his right eye and brought the headset around to see what it was.

  A tall heavyset man was hunched over a large wooden desk. His short dark hair stuck up from his head in tight black spirals. His dingy gray slacks and pin-striped work shirt were covered in bright red bibs of blood; a large brown stain streaked the base of his spine. His shoulders and arms worked with a certain purpose that drove a spike of cold fear deep into the pit of Colin’s stomach.

  The man paused, raised his head and spun away from the desk. Colin snatched his breath, sucking a cloud of noxious odors into his lungs, and tightened his grip on the Colt’s checkered black grip. The man’s left cheek had been torn open, revealing a wall of broken bone, blackened gums and rotten teeth.

  A young skinny woman with pale skin and long blonde hair that looked almost white in the glare of Colin’s headlamp was slumped over the desktop. Her oval blue eyes had a pleading gaze, her face twisted into a mask of frailty and horror. Her thin pink mouth drooped open in a slack-jawed grin where loud screams of panic once spewed.

  She wore a black knee-high skirt, a bright-red work shirt with the café’s logo stitched along the left front, fishnet stockings and thick-soled brown leather shoes. Her throat had been scooped clean out, leaving a large gaping hole behind. Blood coated the dead man’s rotting gray hands, dripped off his cuticles and spread a large puddle across the floor around his feet.

  Blood sprayed out the back of the man’s head and splashed onto the edge of the desk. A second geyser, this one a torrent of blackberry sludge, leaked out from the top of her skull and dribbled onto the floor.

  There was nothing he could do for either one of them but this; it is what it is. Colin dropped the man with two shots to the head, took two steps forward and put the dead woman out of her misery. This was the part that most people despised but for him it was as customary as hitting the SNOOZE button on your alarm clock.

  Colin exhaled, lowered his pistol but not the headlamp. He wiped the film of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, licked a drop of from his upper lip and took two deep breaths to ward off the smells of gunpowder, blood and spent bowels.

  He raised his pistol in the same hand-over-hand grip and sauntered toward them. He stepped around the desk by making a wide circumference around them and skulked across the room.

  He approached a second pair of black-rubber and metallic batwing doors standing on the far-left corner. He held his breath, tightened his grip on his pistol and stepped in. He stepped inside of a spacious kitchen with pea-green tiled walls and a brown tiled floor; the florescent fixtures along the ceiling were coated with dust and cluttered with the withered hulks of insects who fled from human interaction long before today.

  A large stainless-steel gas stove coated with years of grime sat on the left next to a large three-sided deep fryer the size of an old Buick brimming with black oil speckled with dead insects. The two-headed stainless steel serving shelf sat in the middle, strewn with old yellow order slips tacked along the edges and flapped like quivering lips. A halo of flies hovered above the three-sided metallic sink sitting on the far-left cluttered with soap-crusted dishes, their incessant buzzing droning softly in his ears.

  He peered over to his right, beyond the two-headed shelf and glanced at something lying on the other side of the room. A tall heavyset man with dark hair and a gristle-gray beard sat on the floor with his back pressed against the wall. He wore a white shirt and stone-washed jeans under a long dingy white apron; a white bandana with thin black curlicues shrouded his large oval head.

  His chin resting on his shoulder, he gripped a white-handled kitchen knife inside of his right fist. Large crusts of blood rimmed his left eye socket which, like the blonde girl in the other room, had been scooped clean. Blood coated the left side of his face, dribbled off the corner of his chin and onto the front of his apron in oddly sporadic bibs.

  The customary odors of spices, herbs and oil mingled with the familiar smells of blood and rotten flesh. Tiny dust motes danced in the cone of light spewing from Colin’s headlamp.

  Colin scanned the kitchen, sauntered toward the middle of the room and glanced at something out of the corner of his left eye. He peered at a massive stainless-steel walk-in freezer with an industrial metal door, its shovel-shaped hinges glinting in the glare from his headlamp. It was flanked by a pair of vintage ice-cream machines covered in rancid globs of curdled ice cream and large blood stains that gave them a fleshy-pink color.

  He would kill for a milkshake right now. He snickered and shook his head, knowing that he would never do anything like that.

  He skulked away from the fryer toward the freezer, his mind flooded with images of the treasures waiting for him inside. He hoped the generator had still managed to keep everything cold after all this time.

  The last thing he wanted to die from during the zombie apocalypse was food poisoning. When news of this find reached the others, he’d be more famous than the new I-Phone. An idea came to him out of nowhere.

  Maybe I shouldn’t tell anyone. Would it be wrong of me to keep this to myself?

  When he grasped the door handle and wrapped his fingers against the sleek cold metal, Colin heard the sound of broken glass.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “WHY can’t I go with you, guys?” Pixie Matheson said. “It’s not like I can’t take care of myself. I can carry a few extra items that we might need.”

  “I’ve already stated why I don’t want you to go.”

  They sat inside the living room of Two-Forty-Five Mulberry Lane, their arms laced across their chests as an uncomfortable silence suffocated the house. There were things that needed to be said but no one wanted to say anything because it wouldn’t make a difference.

  “Why are you just standing around here?” Dominic Perry said. “I thought we already decide who was going to go?”

  He leaned his right shoulder against the doorway separating the living room and the dining room, his pale doughy face creased with confusion. Thin ghosts of white smoke drifted from the tip of the cigarette dangling between the first two fingers of his left hand and dissipated in thin air. His tall heavyset frame was silhouetted by the shafts of afternoon sunlight streaming through the cracks in the boarded-up windows.

  Deputy Teresa Quintero said. “Nobody wants to listen to a damn thing I say–”

  “You’re not even a real cop.”

  The voice came from the big overstuffed couch sitting on the opposite end of the room where Malik Jones and his girlfriend Pixie Matheson were. He sat in the middle of an overstuffed green couch, his small muscular black frame nestled against her tall frail body. He wore knee-length basketball shorts with a brand-name logo on the left leg, white Converse sneakers and a maroon Cleveland Cavaliers jersey; the gold ring on his right hand and the thin gold necklace dangling down across his chest glinted in the sunlight.

  Malik said. “You cops always think you’re running the show even when you’re not.”

  Pixie nodded and crossed her ankles. Malik brushed his right hand across her left knee and gave her knee cap a soft reassuring squeeze.

  “I don’t care what you think of me, Malik.” Teresa said. “I don’t expect you to have respect for me even if this shit wasn’t going on. All I’m saying is if we’re going to do this, we need to do it the right way.”

  Pixie leaned forward and said, “And it always has to be your way.”

  Teresa shook her head and sighed. She could’ve mentioned that if they had their way about it, they’d be upstairs having sex at all hours of the day and night but she decided not to. She was just relieved that Pixie had actually gotten dress today even if it were only for this little meeting.

  Cool air drifted through the house in gentle soothing waves but failed to cool the bright red splotches spreading across her cheeks. The more she thought about her situation, she remembered one of her grandmother’s old sayings.

  “You know what the problem is.” She’d say. “You got too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.”

  Was she right?

  Now that she’d been here with these two for the past five months, she got to thinking the old lady had a point. She inhaled, drawing a cloud of cool air deep into her lungs and glanced around the house. She could imagine herself living here with an attractive, doting husband and two wonderful kids.

  The place had once been a frat house some time ago before everything went to Hell in a handbasket. A wooden L-shaped staircase descended along the right-side wall and led toward all six second floor bedrooms. The main hall stretched past the living room located on the far left, the dining room on the far right and the kitchen sat in the middle and stopped at the back of the house.

  The walls were egg-shell white; long colorful rugs lay across the sleek hardwood floor. A glossy oak table with straight-back wooden chairs sat below a cheap gold chandelier decorated with three white-ceramic bowls sitting on large ceramic plates bracketed by polished silverware. An overstuffed brown couch with a black and orange Afghan draped across the back sat in the living room in front of a pair of large boarded-up windows overlooking the front porch on a knitted green rug that had seen better days.

  Teresa leaned forward, drew back a small breath and braced the polished wooden banister with her left hand. She rose up onto her feet and swallowed, her throat dry and abrasive from raising her voice twenty minutes ago. She ironed out the wrinkles in her khaki brown uniform with her right hand and strolled over to the living room couch.

  She brushed a strand of dark hair away from her forehead with the back of her left hand, tucked it behind her left ear and sighed. The sunlight slipping through the cracks between the boarded-up windows framed the thin blue drapes and caught the tiny dust motes floating through the air. She refused to storm out of the room because then she would’ve given them the joy of getting under her skin.

  It wasn’t the first time she felt like this. Instead of admitting defeat, she’d wielded a suit of armor and cast aside all doubt. She’d been raised to be strong, assertive and authoritative in times when cowardice and nonsense came into play.

  When she noticed the way Pixie had rested her hand upon Malik’s arm, she known how her mother Elena had felt after her father Luis had left for his shift at The Milton Ridge Sheriff’s Department.

  Although Elena was a stay-at-home mom she failed to hide the uneasiness expression on her face whenever her father left for work. Yes he was a cop and he was not only protecting his family as well as many other families in greater Milton Ridge but she dreaded the day she would get that phone call that said something had happened. It was the one thing she’d despised about his job but she still loved Luis with every beat of her heart.

  After a horrendous car accident claimed Luis and Elena’s lives, Teresa was taken in by her uncle and her two cousins, Ricardo and Jesus. They tried their best to dominate her in everything and failed every time; she’d grown up in a male-dominated world inside of a male-dominated home but she never stopped her from doing what she wanted to do.

  She’d joined the academy straight out of high school, although her uncle had objected the decision and thought she should’ve gone to college instead. Her father had been a cop and his father before him and therefore she’d spent a majority of her childhood looking up to them.

  When she’d graduated from the academy, she knew her parents would’ve been proud of her for picking up where they left off. She’d brushed aside the old-fashioned persona that a woman was nothing more than a maid who gave birth and kept her mouth shut. Her mother might’ve been submissive enough for that particular kind of life, but not her.

  As an officer of the law, she’d had no problem talking to the other officers during morning briefings. She’d read a book about public speaking and learned a multitude of ways to talk to the other officers with a minimum of fuss. Whenever the other officers got into the room, she was privy to their occasional guffaws and practical jokes.