The Will of Instinct

After I returned to my apartment I dropped everything in the middle of the living room, released Marcus from his leash, and sat in my recliner to stop shaking.  I sat there for what must have been a few hours, and didn’t notice the time pass at all.

I know that I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life, and made more than my share of bad decisions.  I’ve learned from many painful experiences that I can be incredibly naive and inconsistently aware of what should be immediately considered life-threatening.  I’ve paid dearly for many of those mistakes, and the scars and broken bones are the least of it.  Looking back at that moment, at the minutes I spent in that closet, I realized that none of my past mistakes had provided me with anything tangible that I could use to prepare for the new world within which I was struggling to survive.

Eventually I realized that Marcus was asleep in my lap, and that his weight was cutting off the circulation to my left foot causing it to feel like I had pins and needles under the numb skin.  When I got up to stretch my leg and relieve the pain I was shocked to see that it was completely dark in the apartment.  Looking out the small gaps of my window I noted that the sun had set and dark clouds had rolled in.  Checking my watch, I found that it was after 1AM in the morning and nearly had to sit down again in shock.  I’d gone out into the other apartments early in the afternoon, and hadn’t spent more than thirty minutes outside of my own locked doors.

Had it really only taken that long?  Could everything that had happened to me fit into a half-hour?

I’ll never really know the answer to those questions as I’d lost all sense of time during the surges of adrenaline and fear, and had sat in shock for hours until Marcus brought me back to reality. The whole thing felt like it had happened to someone else.  I just felt tired and numb inside as I ran through the details of the event.

I’d never checked my watch while searching through the Twit’s apartment, and I realized quickly that I’d been nearly comatose since returning to my own.  I tried to shake off the numbness so that I could focus my mind.  The questions, doubt and guilt came storming back as the cobwebs cleared and thoughts of what I’d done that afternoon returned.

Why had the Twit been hiding in his closet under all those clothes?  What had happened in that apartment?  How had the blond been injured, and who had killed her?  Had he trashed his own home, and, if so, why?  What had kept him there, and why hadn’t he left?  Why was his front door opened if he was hiding?  Why had he remained quiet when he heard me searching his apartment, and why – good god why – had he attacked me?

I played through possible answers to these questions, but nothing really seemed to fit.  Maybe the Twit had snapped after having to shoot the blond in his bedroom.  Maybe there were other people involved and the Twit was simply left behind.  Maybe he’d been injured but hadn’t succumbed yet to the infection.  Maybe he thought I was a Z and finally decided to defend himself when I’d stepped on him.

None of those answers were really enough.  None of the possible reasons for what had happened seemed true or real.  None of them answered the question I was still hesitating to ask.

Was his death my fault?

I shuddered at the thought even as I had to answer honestly.  The reason didn’t matter so much as the result.

I’d killed a man.

It took me more than a few minutes, standing there in the dark inside of my apartment, to swallow the truth and control how it would make me feel.  The entire time Marcus sat at my feet, guarding against the darkness I couldn’t let get inside of me.  I know he can’t possibly understand what is happening, but in that moment he may have saved me.  It helped to be reminded that I wasn’t the only one depending on  my ability to adapt and overcome in order to survive in this new world.  A small heartbeat waiting patiently at my feet told me just how much I was needed.  I know he’s just a dog, but right then I wouldn’t trade him for all the gold in Fort Knox.

I rubbed his ears and then lit a candle so that I could clean myself up.  As I went through the motions of removing the dried blood from my face and arms, I realized that I might be able to grimly accept the fact that I’d killed another human being in anger.  I also knew that I hadn’t yet fully comprehended the changes that this acceptance would cause in me, and may never really know.  For the time being it was all still too new, too fresh and painful, and I needed distance from it if I was ever going to understand what had happened.

While I’d realized that I’d likely have to defend myself from Z’s if I was to survive, I’d never entertained ideas of what could play out when I encountered other survivors.  I’d just assumed that it was very much an “Us” vs. “Them” scenario, but my blood splattered clothes clearly defined a different situation entirely.  This new found perspective, however, wasn’t enough to forgive what had happened.

My response to the attack was completely unforeseen.  I’d always planned to retreat, to run when possible and live to fight another day.  Hell, I’d have preferred to avoid fighting at all, but that hadn’t been the result of this morning’s search.  I had stood my ground in the face of any preconceived notions to the contrary.  I could have tried to escape the apartment, but I didn’t.  I could have used the bat to break his arm and loosen his grip on my ankle so that I could high-tail it out of there, but I didn’t.  I could have just tried to knock him down so that I could run, but I didn’t.  Maybe none of those answers came to me in the heat of the moment because of my fear, and I’m only thinking of them with 20/20 hindsight.  Regardless, I could have done a lot of things to try and escape, but I didn’t.

I had attacked, and I had done so with a fury I was unaware I’d been capable of.

Maybe I’d just never had a reference to compare it to.  Truthfully, I’d never been a violent person, not in any real sense of the word.  I’d been in only a few fistfights in college while working as a bouncer for a bar frequented by locals, but that had been years ago and had only occurred because I was always working around drunken redneck townies who didn’t like students mixing it up with their old ladies.  Scuffles broke out and I was getting paid to put them down.  I didn’t drink on the job, and that meant the advantage was all mine when a drunk would stumble over to start screaming and swinging fists.

Those few fights had been brief and decidedly one-sided, and other than a few busted knuckles I’d escaped unscathed from them all.  Most of all, I’d never felt guilty about those fights because I’d been the one in control.  I hadn’t started them but I had ended them, and I only used as much force as was needed to get my point across.

That wasn’t how things happened in that small closet.  I’d lost myself in my anger and fear and had reacted with sheer violence.  I might justify my actions with the excuse that I hadn’t known that I was about to kill a living, breathing human being, but that wasn’t really the truth.  If I  was to be 100% honest with myself then I’d have to admit that in that moment, I just didn’t care.  I had lashed out with the intent to cause as much physical harm as I could.

It didn’t matter if I’d done that while believing I was only smashing the skull of a Z.  The intent was the important thing, the truth of the matter, and it was nothing I could find an excuse for.

A man was dead because of me.  Regardless of the situation that caused it, I’d killed him in a rage.  I don’t know how I can accept that about myself.  It’s a very hard truth, and it’s one I feel very naïve for having neglected to comprehend or prepare for.  I wish I could just chalk it up as another example of how I am ill prepared to exist in this new world, but that seems hollow and false and unfair.  My need for constant wariness, for vigilant attention to an environment now filled with an untold number of dangers from the undead was something that I was still trying to understand.  It was inevitable that I’d make a mistake.  Eventually, everyone does, only mine had inadvertently caused the death of another man.

I’d have to find a way to live with that, to accept what I’d done if I was going to continue to survive.

I crawled out of my dirty, blood stained clothes, blew out the candle and climbed into my bed.  Marcus jumped up beside me as I wondered about what I was becoming.  One question kept looming just around the corner, but I knew I didn’t have the strength to answer it before sleep claimed me.  I drifted off with it circling through my dreams.

Is survival enough?

The pale hand that reached out of the pile of clothes was latched firmly onto my leather booted ankle, and I could feel its grasp tighten as it tried to pull me from my feet.  I stepped back quickly and partially dragged the body from out of the pile when it refused to let go of my foot.  Clothes and shoes fell around me, slowing me down as I tried to get away.

My attacker was wrapped up in all the junk on the floor, looking like a mockery of an ancient mummy as it awkwardly tried to stand and a muted scream erupted from beneath the layers of clothing heaped upon it.  I screamed right back at it as I dropped my flashlight and the closet was plunged into spinning darkness as it rolled down the pile towards the wall.

The bat was in my hands and I could still see the outline of my attacker as it fought its way out of the pile.  It thrashed back and forth and nearly pulled me down as it refused to let go of me.

I reacted quickly, swinging the baseball bat with both hands as quick and as hard as I could at the dark figure.  All thoughts of escape were gone as I felt it connect, a solid hit that echoed up my arms and into my shoulders.  It made a hollow sound that reminded me of batting practice when I was a kid in little league.  My attacker stopped screaming and slumped sideways, finally letting go of my ankle.  Even though I was free of its grasp, I didn’t stop swinging.  I slammed the aluminum bat into it again and again even as it fell and lay on the piles of discarded clothes.

I was scared and angry and completely lost in my fear for my own life.  All I could think of was swinging the bat, of beating this thing into a pulp, of what would happen to me if I was bitten.  I know I tried to aim for the head, but I couldn’t really see what I was hitting in the dark little closet, so I just kept swinging.  I felt the impacts in my back and shoulders each time as I raised the bat and brought it down as hard as I could, my strength born of fear and rage.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, how long I kept swinging until my arms couldn’t lift the bat any longer.  I remember finally leaning against the wall, my chest pumping up and down as I breathed like a bellows, my throat sore from screaming and the bat held limply in my right hand.  My attacker wasn’t moving.  I don’t think it really had after the first swing, at least not that I could recall.

I forced myself to find the flashlight, finally pulling it out from under a jacket along the edge of the room.  The beam of tightly focused light showed me that my hands were covered in blood spray.  My clothes were the same, and I realized that the metallic taste of it was on my lips and in my mouth.  I turned the flashlight to the fallen figure across from me.

The body was covered in blood, just a broken and crumpled heap.

It suddenly clicked inside my head.

Blood on my hands.  Blood on the body beside me.  It had been bleeding while I beat it.  Z’s don’t bleed.

It wasn’t a zombie.

I felt my stomach turn over as my skin went cold and clammy.

I jumped across the small space between us and knelt beside the body.  I wedged the flashlight beneath my right armpit as I placed my fingers against his neck praying to find a heartbeat, cradling his head even as I knew there would be nothing to find.  No one could take that kind of beating and survive.  There wasn’t even a flutter under my fingers as I searched.  I put his head down, noting that my hands were covered in more of his blood.  I turned the flashlight over him in cold acceptance of what I’d find.

His face was almost completely destroyed.  The skin looked like bruised fruit, the skull cracked and leaking a mix of blood and gray matter onto the pile of clothes beneath him.  His right cheek was folded in and a pulpy eye was hanging limply from the broken socket where I’d likely connected with the bat on my first swing.  Even with all that damage I still could tell who it was.

It was the Twit, or what was left of him.

What the fuck had he been doing hiding in here under all these clothes?  Why had he reached out for me?  Why hadn’t he come out when he heard me searching through his stuff?  Had he been the one to trash his apartment?  What the fuck was he doing in here?

I got angry.  I should have been saddened, shocked at my own actions, shamed by my response.  In that moment, none of those emotions came to me.  I’d just killed a man in fear, and all I could feel was rage bubbling to the surface.

I punched the wall and the sheet rock crumpled beneath my fist.  I hit it again just because the pain in my knuckles was distracting, the hurt something I could recognize and focus on.  I sat there for a few minutes trying to make sense of it all, but it just didn’t want to stop spinning around inside my head long enough for me to make it all clear.

Finally I stood up, used a wad of clothes hastily grabbed from the floor to wipe the gummy blood from my hands and face.  I picked up my bat and wiped it off next.  I covered the Twit with a jacket and took a few deep breaths to steady myself.  I grabbed a few of the bags from the floor and headed back to the kitchen.

I methodically packed up all of the canned goods and even grabbed a few of the expensive knives from the cutlery block on the counter.  Everything went into my backpack or the bags I’d grabbed from the closet, and I was able to shoulder most of them easily.  As I left the kitchen, I picked up the case containing the compound bow that I’d left leaning in the hallway.  I quietly opened the front door, set the security lock as I walked out, and closed it all up behind me.

I turned back to my apartment in a daze, just putting one foot in front of another to get back into my home as questions flew around in my mind, questions that demanded answers about what I’d done and why I didn’t feel anything – anything at all.

It wasn’t a small bedroom, but it felt that way immediately as my light swept inside and the smell of decay washed over me.  The small body laid out on the bed made me feel cramped even though I was still in the doorway.  I focused the light on the bed, and realized that I’d found the woman who owned the hand in the living room.

She must have been twenty-something when she’d died, young and in great shape from what I could see.  Her arms were spread out away from her, as if she’d just fallen back against the pillow-top of the mattress.  She was maybe 5’4” and had striking platinum blond hair.  Her right hand was gone, the arm covered in a bloody bandage near the elbow.  She also had a dime sized bullet wound in her forehead, and I could just make out the skull fragments and dried blood and brain matter on the massive leather headboard behind her.

She must have been attacked and injured at some point, and when she finally bled out or the infection ran its course, she’d turned.  She’d become one of the Z’s, and I guessed that the Twit had put a bullet through her head to keep her from attacking him.  I didn’t think he’d have that in him, but I guess I was wrong.  We were all learning what we were capable of in this new world order where human beings were no longer at the top of the food chain.

I pulled the collar of my t-shirt up and over my nose to try and dampen the horrible smell that stuck to the room.  It didn’t really help, but I kept it up anyway.  I scanned the light around.  Each wall was dominated by large furniture, all cramped and too close together.  There was only a small area to move around the gigantic king sized bed, and barely enough room for the door to swing all the way open.  Thick blankets were nailed up over the single window just like they had been in the living room, though the bedroom seemed much darker because of the dark paint and furniture.

Oddly, the room wasn’t torn apart like the rest of the apartment.  The bed was still made, the pillows still arranged neatly behind the dead girl even though they were covered with the contents of her skull.  The closet doors were closed and the Twit’s personal effects were laid out neatly on top of the one large dresser.

All of the furniture was made of thick black wood with gold accents and handles.  There was a black and gold comforter on the bed covering what looked like gold satin sheets, and – I shit you not – mirrored ceiling tiles above reflecting it all back down at me.  This was the kind of over-the-top decor you only find in old casinos in Atlantic City or poorly funded porn.  I could just imagine the Twit walking around in here feeling like he was the king of the world.

What an asshole.

I checked the closet and found it neatly organized with a lot of designer label clothing, none of which would be of any use to me as I was at least eight inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than the Twit.  The dresser held more clothes than I’d ever owned, and an assortment of adult toys and lotions that would have made an aging prostitute blush.  What the fuck had he and this blond been into?

I didn’t really want the answer to that question, and I felt bad for even thinking of it with her dead body laying there on the bed.  As I thought about them, I started to realize that this was a really shitty place to die, and an even worse place to have to spend eternity.  No girl wants to be buried in her boyfriend’s low-rent sex palace, but I also knew that there was nothing I could do.  I’d have to lock her up in here and try to forget what I’d seen.  I certainly wasn’t going to move her body.  I had no idea if she might still carry the infection, but I knew it was transferred through bodily fluids.

Bites were the usual means of spreading the infection, but early reports also noted that some people had contracted the virus when organic material from Z’s had gotten into their eyes and throat.  How the fuck that had happened, I didn’t want to know, but it meant that I wasn’t touching this girls dead body regardless of how much I pitied her final resting place.  Even being in the same room with her was starting to creep me out, and I hadn’t taken a deep breath since stepping inside because of the smell.  I swear I was beginning to taste it at this point, and my stomach did a little flip as the thoughts of the infection worked their way through my head.

Having decided it was time to get away from the dead girl, I took one last look around.  Honestly, there was nothing in here that I was going to use.  Best case scenario, I’d burn all this stuff for heat if this winter was unreasonably cold.  Otherwise, I had no use for all this pretty-boy shit.  It held no value in terms of survival, and I wasn’t going to carry this stuff back to my smaller apartment just so I could have it.  The days of buying useless and trivial things, of keeping up with the neighbors were over.  There were probably thousands of dollars of clothes, cologne, furniture and bedding in this room, and now it was worth less than the worn machete strapped to my hip.

I moved out of the bedroom and closed the door.  I’d probably never know why he’d really chosen to lock that one room.  Maybe he wanted to lock her body away, to hide what he had done.  Maybe the Twit wanted to protect his expensive wardrobe and shoe collection because he thought he’d be back to pack it all up someday.  Maybe he was just a scared little prick who locked the door so that the dead girl wouldn’t be able to follow him even though he’d shot her in the head.

Whatever the reason, I closed the door on his bedroom and left it the way I’d found it. It was time to keep moving. Thinking about the dead was going to get me nowhere.  I had to think about keeping myself alive.  I had to finish up, and get back to the relative safety of my apartment, and I still had one more door to open before I was done.

The last door wasn’t locked and it wasn’t a third bed room.  It was a large walk-in closet that was filled with more designer clothes and shoes.  Most of it was all over the floor in piles having likely been thrown there by whoever had looted the rest of the apartment.  I didn’t spend more than 30 seconds looking around at the mess as it was readily apparent to me that I would have no use for any of the items.  I didn’t even want to dig through the mess to see if I could unearth anything worth saving.  Seriously, how many pairs of distressed jeans and black dress shoes does one guy need?  I could grudgingly admit that the Twit had always been well dressed, but what good would that do in the current world?

I left the closet and carefully moved past the living room making sure that the zombie was still absent from the window.  All I had left to do was check the kitchen for any items that might be of use.  As I walked in, I ignored the crunch and squish of rotting food under my boots.  The stench didn’t even bother me as much this time.  After the cloying scent of the dead blond the rotting food was a bouquet of roses in comparison.

I went through the cabinets and was surprised to find that most of the canned goods had been left behind.  There was nothing fresh on the shelves or in the refrigerator.  I guessed that the bread, fruit and other perishable items had been taken or were currently decaying under my boots.

Why had the canned items been left behind when they would be the last things to spoil?  The apartment had obviously been looted, and these were valuable food stores.  There had to be at least two weeks worth of vegetables, canned beef, fruit and even condensed milk on the shelves.  If I rationed all of this I could easily stretch those two weeks, especially if I mixed this in with my own waning stores.  It made no sense, but not much had since the outbreak.  I’d seen people do much stranger, much less easily explained things since then.  Leaving all this valuable food behind was the least of it.

I knew I’d never be able to carry most of the food in my backpack.  I needed some extra bags to get all of it back to my apartment, and I knew I’d seen some in the piles in the hall closet.  I could have gone back to my place to grab more bags, but once I left this place I wanted to just lock the door and be done with it for good.  I moved down the hall, checked that the Z still wasn’t outside the living room window, and entered the large closet again.  I swung my flashlight around and noticed some cloth bags with store labels on them near the back.  I stepped over and on the big pile of clothes and shoes to get to them.  I was halfway to the back of the closet when I felt the pile move under me and something grabbed my booted foot.

Not looking out the window after pulling down the dark blankets to let in some light ranks right up there on the list of things I should have known to avoid. I should have known to look at everything carefully, to check my surroundings whenever possible, and then to constantly recheck them. I have to know better. My heightened sense of danger should make me more alert. My adrenaline should speed up my responses and make me focus my attention with laser accuracy. It didn’t. I wasn’t use to being in constant survival mode yet. I was rushing to leave the living room and didn’t keep my eye on the ball.

Of course, it was in that moment that it chose to attack.

Bang

The loud rattling bang made me duck instinctively, hunching my body over as my muscles tightened and I flinched away from the sound. Adrenaline surged and I turned with fear beating hard in my chest to see the Z trying to get to me..

The large window rattled in the metal sliding track as it repeatedly clawed at the glass with dirt covered fingers. The Z was outside only a few yards away, reaching up against the glass, its milky eyes staring directly at me. I noted that his lower jaw and most of his left cheek were gone as he pushed his face against the glass. A crusted hole from his esophagus, bits of bone and a row of cracked yellow teeth were all that remained of his face beneath his nose.  It was covered in dried blood, most of which I guessed was probably its own, and dirt and leaves were stuck to the crusted wound.

I gagged and fought down the rising bile in my throat.  As I stood there it moved slowly, raised its arms again, and then slammed them back into the closed window.

Bang

The glass was holding, though the entire thing was shaking violently each time it brought its fists down. All the apartments had old single-pane windows in simple metal frames with only the smallest amount of insulation. The buildings were old and only moderately kept in good shape. Nothing was new.  Everything had been patched or painted or covered up at some point in time to make it presentable. Old apartment buildings all over Long Island were just like this, renting out ageing units under the label of “Luxury Apartments”. The only real luxuries provided were a roof over your head and a place to store your stuff. I’d rented here because it was cheap. I’d never planned to have to defend myself from the undead. Who knew if the windows would hold? I didn’t know if he’d be able to break the glass, and I sincerely didn’t want to find out.

Bang

I struggled in fear to move my feet, to take one step and then another. I felt like I was moving underwater, my limbs too slow and unresponsive. It felt like an eternity before I finally passed into the hallway and hugged up against the wall so that it wouldn’t be able to see me anymore.  I fumbled with my flashlight to turn it off and extinguish the tell-tale signs that I was still there.

Experience told me that you had to get out of their site to lose their interest. I turned off the flashlight and held the bat against my chest in a white-knuckled grip as I struggled to get my breathing under control. I was regretting not losing the extra 50 lbs. I’d been carrying around for years. The repeated fear driven adrenaline surges were wearing me down quickly.  It’d be just my luck to have a heart attack from the fright while hiding from the undead outside the window. Maybe someone would find my corpse here one day and wonder what the fuck this fat bastard had died of in the middle of all this junk and bloody carpet.

Fuck that. I wasn’t going out like that. I started to get angry, and I realize now that this is a normal response for me when it comes to dealing with stress. I hadn’t gone through so much anxiety and pressure before the dead started to rise, and at the time I wasn’t aware of how fear for my life can make me so damned angry. I’d come to know that I would run if I could, but I was also learning that I could fight if I had to.  If every organism has a flight or fight response, I started to figure out what mine would come to be that day.

I was pissed. I just wanted to find some fucking food, some supplies, anything that could help me to stay safe and alive in my shitty little apartment, and nothing seemed to be going my way. As if being alone in the middle of an undead apocalypse wasn’t bad enough, it had to add insult to injury? The first apartment I get into has to look like a scene from a Romero film, and now this fucking Z is banging on the window?

I shook with rage against the wall in that dark hallway for what seemed an eternity. Part of me just wanted to run, to hide and get away from whatever was chasing me. Another part, the biggest part of me, wanted to heft my bat and smash the zombie’s fucking head in until there was nothing left but a lumpy mound of cranial fragments on the ground outside.

The rational part of me – the part that knew that staying right where I was until the zombie lost interest, the part that knew either of the other two options would likely get me injured or killed – held on to control by the barest of margins. I stood in that littered hallway and waited, and control slowly began to return. The rage and fear were still there, but I wasn’t going to act on them. I had to keep my shit together, so I started counting seconds the same way I did as a child when I’d play hide-and-seek with my brother. It let me time the hits and to calm down my beating heart.

Bang

….One Mississippi….Two Mississippi…..Three Mississippi….Four Mississippi….

Bang

….Thirty Mississippi…. Thirty one Mississippi…. Thirty two Mississippi…. Thirty three Mississippi….

Bang

….One hundred six Mississippi…. One hundred seven Mississippi…. One hundred eight Mississippi…. One hundred nine Mississippi….

Bang

….Two hundred forty four Mississippi…. Two hundred forty five Mississippi…. Two hundred forty six Mississippi…. Two hundred forty seven Mississippi….

………

More than four minutes had gone by and the banging that came every few seconds had finally stopped. I’d prayed quietly that the window would hold long enough, and now thanked whatever god might still exist that the sound of breaking glass never came.

I released my grip on the baseball bat, my hands sore from clenching it so tightly. In the dim light of the hallway I could see that the dimpled lines of the tape on the handle were impressed into the flesh of my fingers as I stretched them to relieve their tension. I looked about the small space, bending down to quietly pull a piece of the broken mirror from the piles of junk left strewn along the edges. I was careful to avoid cutting my fingers as I raised it to the corner facing the living room.

I moved it slowly from side to side, taking in the entire length of the outlined window. The zombie was gone, only a smear of blackened filth left on the outside to mark its attack. I didn’t know if it was just right around the corner, if it had dropped to the ground beneath the window, or if it had moved on to find an easier meal to catch. I did know that I didn’t want to have it catch sight of me again and resume its attacks, so I waited a few more minutes just to be safe.

I was on the side of the hallway with the closed doors that I figured were the bedrooms and bathroom. As badly as I wanted to leave, that rational part of me knew that it would be best to search them, take what I could use, and lock this place up on my way out. I took a few more calming breaths and decided to go clockwise through them, starting with the door at the very end of the hall. I put my ear to the wood, listening, hearing nothing on the other side. I turned my flashlight back on, careful to keep it pointed straight ahead. I turned the knob and let the door crack open a few inches. Nothing happened. I held the flashlight in my left hand and the bat in my right as I pushed the door open with my foot.

My light illuminated a small bathroom in pretty bad shape. Just like the rest of the apartment, it had been ransacked. The contents of the vanity and cabinets were strewn about the floor and on top of the twin sinks. Unlike the living room, I didn’t see any signs of blood. The tub was filled with water, though nothing but near death by dehydration would have made me consider using it. I moved inside and began searching through the debris.

I immediately found a few rolls of toilet paper and without hesitation I pulled my backpack off and jammed them into it. Without the ability to make a quick run to the grocery store, I was running dangerously low on toilet paper. I didn’t want to have to start using newspaper or, even worse, pages ripped out of my books. I also found a bunch of prescription drug bottles lying in the left sink. As I popped them into my pack, I took note that apparently the Twit was big into pain killers and muscle relaxants. He also had the biggest bottle of Viagra I’d ever seen.

I grabbed most of the drugs and stuffed them into my bag, only leaving those with expired labels behind. I wasn’t going to mess with the expired stuff, but the rest might come in very handy at some point, and the prescription dates on the ones I kept were all still fairly new. I also grabbed some over-the-counter cold, flu and allergy meds and the last few razor refills from the opened vanity mirror. I never knew when I might need to get over another cold, and my beard was starting to get really scratchy.

I scanned around the bathroom one more time and realized that there wasn’t much else of use to me. I didn’t need any of the Twit’s expensive Egyptian cotton towels or his matching floor mats, and all the rest of the stuff on the floor had been broken or held no use to me without electricity. There’s just not much use for hair dryers, beard trimmers, and heated toilet seat cozies when the power grid is gone.

Everything I could use was in my backpack, so I zipped up, and slung it back over my shoulders. I moved quietly back into the hallway and shut the bathroom door. I turned to the next room on the right, leaned against the door listening for sound. Again, just like the bathroom and the front door, I heard nothing. I tried to turn the door knob, but it was locked. I knew that I could pop the simple lock with the survival knife I carried. This wasn’t a security lock, just the simple interior push-button locks that had been used in all the other apartments.

The question wasn’t whether I could open it. The question was, should I?

Was the door locked to keep something out, or to keep something in? There was only one way to find out, and I had to be sure this apartment was clear before I locked it all up behind me.

I leaned the bat against the wall beside the door frame and pulled out my survival knife. I easily inserted the blade between the door and its frame, and swept the lock in one try. The ease with which I completed the task was the byproduct of a misspent youth that I was very thankful for now. I opened the door a few inches and waited quietly, but heard nothing. I gave it a tap with my boot and it swung open effortlessly.

It quickly became apparent why the door had been locked as the smell of the dead body washed over me.