Where was Margaret?
And why did I care? She was never an easy person to be around, so maybe it was a good thing she went her own way. I looked over at Houston and I could tell he was thinking the same thing. I looked over at Ghost and expected him to feel the same way, but he didn’t. “We might need her later,” was all he gave in way of explanation as he walked past me to look outside the camp.
“Wait for me!” Jesse shouted as she jumped out of her sleeping bag. “I want to help look for Margaret too!”
“Maybe you and Danny should stay here,” Houston said with concern.
“Danny can stay here, he’s just a kid. I’m ten years old! I’m almost one of the grown-ups!” It’s cute when she talks like that, but how could she be of any help? She was terrible at noticing the obvious in the best of times.
“Okay, Jesse,” Houston said. “Let’s try a little test to see if you’re ready to be part of a search party. On a scale of one to ten, how focused are you?”
“Squirrel!” Jesse replied.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Houston said in amusement.
“No, seriously, there’s a squirrel! And it’s running straight at us!”
She was right, there was a squirrel. It was heading straight for us and running like it was being chased by something. And it was, by Margaret. Or more accurately, it was being run off by Margaret. She didn’t seem to even notice it was there; she was too excited and out of breath to notice any Disney characters scampering about in front of her.
“You won’t believe what I just found!” she cried. She ran up to Ghost to deliver her news, a sure sign she had finally accepted him as the leader of the group.
She came to a hard stop when she saw the Grateful Dead rotting away in the distance. “What the hell are they doing here?” she shrieked.
“What do you mean?” asked Nemesis with one eyebrow raised. “We thought they were with you.”
“Wait…what? Oh, whatever! I don’t have time for this. Pack up your stuff and come with me if you want shelter and showers. Or you can stay behind with that lot.”
We didn’t need encouragement to ditch the dead—anything was better than hanging out with corpses—and I could really do with a shower. The past couple of days without made me smell like I’d been tongue-bathed by Naked. We hastily packed up our things and slung our slightly larger packs onto our backs.
It wasn’t long before Danny was asking for a piggyback ride from his father because his leg was hurting. He was small for a five year old, and I forgot that he was doing twice as much walking to keep up with us. I felt bad for not offering to carry him before. Houston shouldered Dan and Danny’s packs and we carried on.
And the dead followed.
Nemesis was the first to notice. “You’re right, Houston, they really are like groupies.”
“What do they want?” asked Jesse.
What do they want? They had trouble keeping up with us as they shuffled and shambled along, but no matter how far ahead we got, they were still there. I felt grateful they weren’t able to keep up. The last time I had a close look at them, I noticed something crawling under their skin, and that made mine crawl as well. I thought back to the Bodies We’ve Buried book about the Tennessee Body Farm and remembered what it said about the stiffs left out in the sun. The insects that feast on the dead like to work under the skin and leave it intact so they’re not exposed to heat and light while they get busy. Ugh. I wish I hadn’t read that. Ignorance would have been bliss.
Ghost offered up his theory after a few moments. “I think they’re like Oxpeckers.”
Mouse giggled at this, the first non-crying sound she’d made since we picked her up. “Ghost, not in front of the children!”
“It’s not a dirty word,” said an irritated Margaret. “They’re one of the species that participates in mutualism.”
She definitely lost Jesse and Danny with that. I remembered that term from sixth grade biology, so I knew what Margaret was talking about, though I don’t think that would have stopped her lecture. “Oxpeckers live off the backs of Rhinoceroses. It gets a meal by eating the rhinos’ Parasites and the Rhinoceros gets an early warning system when the bird senses danger and flies away.”
“I can see why they need us. We’re living storage units for their kind. We’re an investment for their future. In fact, we’re the only guarantee they have a future!” Houston said bitterly. “But what do they provide us?”
No one wanted to answer that. “So much for Mutualism,” he mumbled.
All notions about our decomposing fan club came to a halt when we crested the next hill and saw the shining suburb below us. No dome covered this brand new looking community. There were no fences surrounding it. There were no watchtowers, no guards, and no soldiers. It sat there, untorched and untouched in the middle of nowhere.
It looked cold and inviting at the same time. I was troubled by the lack of life on its streets but drawn to the thought of a shower and a real bed. “Do you think it’s safe?” I asked Ghost.
“Do you feel fear?”
“I don’t feel fear, I feel unease. You know, it’s like something isn’t right. It looks like a nice bit of civilization but…”
“What are you talking about?” Margaret asked, exasperated. “I find you safe and clean shelter in a solider-free neighborhood, and you turn your nose up at it!”
“It’s probably one of those newly-built housing complexes,” said Dan. “They were going to sell peace and scenery to retirees, but their clients all died before they had a chance to inhabit their homes. I say we go for it.”
I looked behind me at the mass of rotting flesh that was closing in on us while we stood there deciding. I really did not want them to catch up to us. The thought of being near enough to see their complexions propelled me forward, and the rest followed without a word of protest. The closer we got the faster we ran, until we were practically flying down the hill, with the exception of Dan, who carefully made his way down with Danny still clinging to his back. The kid was starting to sweat, which was weird because it was still as cold as a lawyer’s heart. I hoped he wasn’t getting sick.
We went into the show home first. I half-expected to be greeted by an over-eager salesperson, but the place echoed with emptiness. It had furniture and the requisite plastic food and TVs, but no pinstriped fake-tan estate agent graced its entrance. I was happy to see there were lights on because lights meant power.
“This complex must have been finished during the summer,” Houston said. His voice echoed around the cavernous front hall. I could imagine a sleazy salesman pointing out the “Marble foyer decorated in neutral colors and graced by cathedral ceilings!”
“Why do you think that?” asked Mouse.
“Because the air-conditioning is on full-blast. It’s turned this place into a meat locker.”
He was right. It was much colder inside than outside. I found the thermostat in the Touches of Classical European style combined with American Craftsman accents! Front hall and tried to put the heat on, but the temperature gauge remained stubbornly stuck on thirty Fahrenheit. “That’s odd. Why would they keep this place so cold? Wouldn’t that drive all the customers away?”
“Maybe their customers were old people and they were trying to preserve them,” Jesse said with a smirk.
“Or they realized they would have to put this project on ice until life got back to normal. The cold dry air would keep the insides from deteriorating,” said Ghost, which made more sense.
We started to explore the property on our own. We split up Scooby-Doo style, not because we could cover more ground that way, but to get a break from each other. We didn’t think twice about doing that because nothing in the show home felt dangerous. It was clear no one had ever lived here, and it wasn’t terribly exciting to look at, despite the five bedrooms, each with their own private bathroom! Hardwood floors throughout! Dynamic floor plan! Incredible attention to detail! Chef’s kitchen with granite countertops! We turned on the faucets and showers, but all their fixtures seemed to be frozen on the “Artic Assault” setting. We gave a happy start when we saw a hearth in the master bedroom, but it turned out to be a gas fireplace minus the gas. This place was too cold to stay in.
We silently stepped outside and looked over the rest of the complex. All we saw were more homes on Lush lots with professional landscaping and ground sprinkler systems! in a similar style to the one we just explored.
“Uh, who’s been mowing the grass?” asked Nemesis.
Good question. “They probably send a gardener out once a week to keep this place in shape. You know, in case the customers come back,” Dan guessed.
“Or they could be making a bid to the government to turn this into the next domed community,” Ghost mused. That made even more sense than his first theory. “Let’s see if we can find a house with hot water and electricity.”
“Should we split up again and look?” Mouse asked nervously. She seemed to be hoping we wouldn’t be doing that again.
“No,” replied Ghost. “I know it would save a lot of time, but KC’s right, something out there doesn’t feel right.”
We went up and down the streets, each of us taking turns carrying Danny on our backs to give his father a break. Danny kept saying his leg really, really hurt and he was crying by the time it was my turn to carry him. The kid felt hot as hell, which drove the cold out of my bones but filled me with worry. I knew we should stop and look him over, but we needed a place to stay to check him out.
The smell of rot was in the air again, even though there were no signs of our undead companions. It was different to anything I had smelled before, and it made me queasy in a way the corpses did not.
Every door and window we tried was locked. It took us only ten houses of this useless searching before we decided to get a rock from the Professional Landscaping! and break a window with it. Houston found the biggest rock he could and held it high over his head, ready to smash in the strip of window that flanked a front door; but he stopped when we heard Margaret shout, “Wait!”
“For what?” Houston asked.
“Someone just switched the light on in that house!” She pointed down the street to one of the few homes that was as big as the show home, but different Tuscan Style Villa! in design. She was right. “I looked down that street just minutes ago and there were no lights on. Well, now there is.”
“Let’s not get our hopes up,” said Ghost. “It looks like a show home for the second half of the community. It could be on automatic timer.”
“And just as cold as the last show home,” I added. “But we should try it anyway.” I didn’t care if it was cold, I wanted a place to put Danny down and see if there was anything we could do to help him. He was feverish and becoming more and more of a dead weight, but at least he had stopped scratching.
We approached the home cautiously and stared through the windows to see if there were any signs of life. There were none. If it wasn’t a timer and someone had turned the lights on, they were already gone.
Or hiding.
We tried the door and discovered the first unlocked house since the show home. That didn’t make us feel any better. We entered the same Marble floors! Cathedral Ceiling! front hall like we did before. This time we remained huddled together, collectively questioning if it was okay to go any farther.
“Is it safe?” asked Mouse finally.
“Why don’t the rest of you stay here while Ghost and I check this place out?” said Houston.
“I’ll come!” Margaret called out as they started to go down the hall. That really surprised me and by the slump of Houston’s shoulders, disappointed him. The rest of us held our breath while their shoes made muted taps on the Hardwood floors throughout! the rest of the house.
Daniel pulled his overly-warm son off my back and cradled him in his arms. We weren’t talking, just looking. This place had more ornate, Italian style furniture, and a lot of it. It also had overly fancy gold-filigreed mirrors, which only made things seem spookier. My eye kept darting back and forth between each oversized mirror, looking for some figure to appear in one of them. I didn’t see a person, but my visual sweeps did pick up on something that made me want to cry out in warning. There were magazines on the table, faint butt prints on the brown leather sofas, and a pair of shoes—men’s size large—by the front door. The room was getting warmer by the minute. I may have been hearing things, but I could swear I heard the gentle buzzing of a housefly. And if that wasn’t unsettling enough, a coffee maker in the kitchen sprung to life, filling the air with the rich aroma of gourmet-fresh ground roast. It should have been a comforting smell, but in this context it was terrifying.
At this moment we were all Goldilocks. And we were not alone.