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Kelly spins around, as if hoping his eyes had deceived him earlier and Doctor White actually went in the opposite direction. But of course she’s not there. A moment later, a scream pierces the air. It rises, peaks, and then fades away.
“Holy fuck, where’d that come from?” Reggie cries, scanning the houses in the direction they’d seen Doctor White go.
Kelly grabs Reggie’s arm, silencing him. There’s movement in the shadows, telling him the scream has already alert the dead. He can’t even call Doctor White without drawing their attention.
“We gotta move, brah,” Reggie whispers. He starts to turn and sees more of them lurching in their direction. “Too late.” He pulls the machete out of his belt.
A figure flies out through the door of the house they’re standing in front of and stumbles down the porch steps toward them. The sound of the door slamming against the wall ricochets off the silent houses across the street and makes both boys jump. “She’s gone!” Doctor White wails. Her face is streaked with tears. “Cassie! My daughter’s gone!”
“Jesus Christ!” Reggie hisses. “She’s going to—”
“Look out!” Kelly shouts at her. She doesn’t see the infected undead emerging from the overgrown bushes beside the porch. She cries out her daughter’s name again and stumbles out to the street. She sees the boys and heads in their direction, still yelling.
“Crap,” Reggie says. He runs straight for her. Then, right as she reaches out for him, he swerves at the last moment, flying past her, and swings at the dead man. The top of its skull lifts away, spins across the yard like a Frisbee, and clatters onto the neighbor’s driveway. A grayish green powder puffs out of the opened skull, right into Reggie’s face. He backs away, coughing and sputtering.
The walking corpse takes another step before dropping.
“I fucking hate the dried up ones,” Reggie says, retching. “They taste like Brussels sprouts.”
Kelly grabs his arm. He’s already got Doctor White with his other hand and is trying to pull her back toward the house she’d just left. But she just collapses where she stands and buries her face in her hands. He tries to lift her up, and she’s dead weight. “We need to get inside. Now! There are too many here!”
Reggie beheads the next undead, then reaches down and tucks her under his arm. She doesn’t even seem aware of the boys or the dead now zeroing in on them.
“Front door’s blocked!”
“This way,” Reggie grunts, and heads for the side of the house, where he’d noticed a second door. It’s locked, but all it takes is a stiff tug and he’s got it open. They’re in the garage. He sets Doctor White down on the floor and leans her against a car. “Check inside,” he snaps, after Kelly’s secured the door they just used. He points toward the back corner of the darkened garage. Beyond the inner door is a hallway leading into the house.
“All right, stay here with her,” Kelly says. “I’ll be right back.”
He’s gone for a couple minutes. It feels like an eternity to Reggie, but he can hear Kelly opening and shutting doors and, more importantly, no worrying shouts, so he knows Kelly’s okay. Meanwhile, Doctor White is still incoherent. She’s fallen onto her side and is weeping. Reggie’s grateful that she’s not making so much noise now.
“Reg?”
He looks up over the trunk of the car. Kelly’s standing in the doorway. He gestures grimly for Reggie to follow him inside. “Just you,” he murmurs.
“Stay here,” Reggie tells Doctor White. “I’m just going to check on something. I’ll be right back.”
“Have you found my daughter?” she asks, sitting up.
Reggie glances over, and Kelly shakes his head.
“This is where you left her?” Reggie asks. “Inside this house? Are you sure?”
Y-yes,” she says. “But she got out, and now she’s gone. I don’t know where she is now!”
“We’ll find her, okay? Just stay here for a second. I promise I’ll be right back.”
“No, I’m coming with you,” she hiccups. She grabs his shirt and pulls. Reggie figures it’s not worth arguing with her, so he grabs her arm and helps her to her feet.
Kelly scowls, but leads them back into the darkened house without a word. The hallway feels oppressively narrow to Reggie, sending shivers up his spine and giving him that same claustrophobic feeling he’d had back in the tunnel under the wall. They enter a small living room illuminated only by the failing daylight coming in through a dusty sliding glass door. There are dark stains on the couch and floor. Reggie doesn’t need a forensic expert to tell him it’s blood. And he can tell it’s somewhat fresh, because he can still smell it. What used to be a coffee table now sits in pieces scattered all over the floor. He wonders what happened here and whether it has anything to do with White’s missing daughter.
Kelly steps over to the sliding door and waits.
“What is that?” Reggie asks. He steps closer and his eyes widen when he looks down. “Is that—? Wait, that can’t be—”
“It is,” Kelly says, nodding. “At least I’m pretty sure it is. Head’s missing. Animals might’ve gotten it. But the clothes... They look the same. Same jersey we picked up in that sports store.”
“Pretty big coincidence that we’d find him here, in this house.”
“Tell me about it.”
Doctor White pulls Reggie away. “Who is that?” she demands. “You know this person?”
“Stephen,” Reggie says. “Worked for the Coalition. He’s the one who brought us here from LaGuardia.”
“Well...” Kelly begins. He knows it was he, himself, who had really led the group to the wall knowing full well they had to get inside the arcade. Maybe it had been Stephen’s intention, too, for his own nefarious reasons, but Kelly knows in his heart he’s really the one to blame for everything that happened after their initial break in. That said, he doesn’t know how Stephen could’ve ended up here, inside the very same house Doctor White had locked her own daughter away in a dozen years earlier. As Reggie had said, it’s a huge coincidence.
“Stephen?” she says, confused. Then she gasps. “Halliwell’s son, Enoch! I— I don’t understand. How...?” She spins around. “He must have let Cassie out! She must have attacked him.”
“I don’t think so,” Reggie says. “He would’ve turned.”
“Kind of hard to turn without a head. Besides, he was probably immune, like Jessie.”
“Why would you think that?” Reggie asks.
“He was Jessie’s brother.”
“Wait, what?” Reggie cries.
Doctor White shakes her head. “They were only half siblings. Enoch wasn’t immune, only Jessie.”
“Who the hell is Enoch?” Reggie demands.
“Stephen. He was Father Heall’s— Halliwell’s son.”
“Then how the hell is he Jessie’s brother?”
“Half brother.”
“Long story,” Kelly says. “I’ll tell you later.”
Doctor White’s face has turned pale. She reaches for the handle to open the door, but Kelly bats her arm away. “We don’t know if he’s... dead.”
“I’m pretty sure he is,” Reggie says. But just to be sure, he bends down and gently raps on the glass. Stephen doesn’t move. “See? Dead. Not having a head tends to do that.”
He straightens up and yanks the door open. The putrescent stench of rotting flesh rolls in, forcing them back. “Gah!” he cries, reeling back. “Dead and rotting! Give me Brussels sprouts any day over that shit. Jesus Christ!”
“Shut that door,” Kelly snaps.
But Doctor White forces her way between them. She steps over the threshold, over Stephen’s decapitated body, and out onto the back deck. She’s no longer focused on the rotting corpse, or even seems aware it’s there. She staring at a spot deep in the shadowed back yard. “Cassie?” she whispers.
“Close it,” Reggie says, choking. “Oh, fuck that’s bad!”
But then he sees it, too, the tiny figure standing beside the crumbling shed, right up against the fence. The dress she’s wearing appears tattered and covered in filth. The fabric around the collar is torn and falling off her pale, bony shoulders.
“Cassie?” Doctor White repeats, louder this time.
As if hearing her mother, the dead girl lifts her head and steps forward into the last patch of sunlight in the yard. She’s got things clutched in both hands. It takes a moment for the boys to recognize the shape of a floppy toy rabbit, its stuffing escaping from a tear on its side. It takes an even longer moment to make out what’s in her other hand.
“Is that...?” Reggie whispers, shuddering.
“My baby,” Doctor White says, and steps down onto the first step.
“Dude,” Reggie says, turning to Kelly. “I think that’s Stephen’s skull.”
