There are more than just the fielders and basemen in that house – more of ‘them’ in the same uniforms pour out of the windows until it seems like there’s practically an entire baseball team, benchwarmers included, staggering to their feet and starting to follow the pitcher that’s clawing its way along the lawn towards him.

The woman who had threatened him was gone now, disappeared further into her house with naught but a despairing wail. That left him all on his own against Knox Country Knockers, pride of the tri-county area… or at the very least some very devoted fans of theirs who wore their colors during a disaster. Evan couldn’t tell you if sports uniforms were a good idea to wear in disasters or not. Maybe they’d be easier to run in and highly visible?

Putting aside the part of his brain that was preventing him from panicking by asking inane questions, Evan is pretty sure he couldn’t fight that many of ‘them’ at once like this. Taking out one or two at a time out of half a dozen seemed doable now that he’d, you know, done it, but this was more than a baker’s dozen of them in a relatively cohesive mob. He knows immediately that he couldn’t just run back to his house and lock the door, as they would simply break in and kill him inside of his house, or even worse, damage his gameboy!

A plan of running behind the house of the woman who’d threatened him to distract ‘them’ briefly came to his mind but he shook it away vigorously. No, he couldn’t do that. It’s wrong, no matter how hurtful what she said was. Besides, she had a gun so there’s a non-zero chance she’d see him, shoot, and then they’d both end up dead. He also couldn’t go banging on her door calling for her help because she didn’t seem the most reliable sort, and also because she had threatened him with an H&R Pardner Pump-Action Shotgun.

So he needs a new plan, one to deal with more than a dozen of ‘them’ as well as who knew how many others that might be around the area. Muldraugh had a population of around fifteen-hundred folks in it total; how many of them were out of town when the lockdown happened? How many of them tried to escape town when the killings started? Too many unknowns, too many uncertainties. He needssomething for the immediate situation,so he starts it off simple – turning to a ninety-degree angle from ‘them’ and speedwalking down the road. He can hear their howls and gurgling cries from damaged throats behind him, but just keepsmoving – he has no doubt that they will keep following him, but as long as he keeps a brisk pace and didn’t let them get close enough to trigger their lunging instinct, he was faster than them without having to run.

The knife is tucked into its sheath and the hatchet is kept in his hand; he’d be needing it, he wassure. He didn’t know how good ‘their’ memory was,so if he lead ‘them’ away, would ‘they’ be able to find their own way back? The ones at that woman’s house didn’t seem to know how to open doors, given ‘they’ were just beating on it, and the other ones just smashed out windows rather than open them. So ‘they’ were a little slower and less agile than a normal person, but also extremely aggressive and stronger than ‘they’ should be.

He doesn’t know. Hedoesn’t know for certain what ‘they’ were capable of, so he should assume the worst for now. He needs to think of them as an ‘enemy encounter’ and plan around it like that as the only thing he can do right now. He can outpace them at a brisk walk, but he doesn’t know how many more of them there are out there further past the little part of Muldraugh he’s been hiding in for these past three days. Given how loud the first day was, it’s entirely possible that the majority of the town’s population is now made up of ‘them’…

So he can’t run away from town. Not only would he not survive long without food, water and shelter, he also doesn’t have any idea where any of those can be safely gotten now. He knows from watching the news that the border is locked down and that ‘judicious force’ is being used to keep anyone from getting in or out, so he doesn’t get the feeling that hiking for the boundary is a good idea at this point, given everything that’s going on.

Keep walking. What he has to do is keep walking. Past his house, no matter how much he just wants to go back inside and play games and ignore what’s happening again. If he does that, they’ll just come in after him. He has to keep safe until the military can do whatever they have to so he can see Mom and Uncle Dean again and go home. The only way to do that is to keep the house safe from ‘Them’, which means he needs to keep walking. So instead of heading into his home, he aims for another house in the cul-de-sac.

Now that he’s out of his house and looking closer at the other homes, he can see what he couldn’t see before: torn down curtains, windows left open with stains on the sill, doorways ajar, cars gone from where they’d been. His summer destination wasn’t anything like it had been last week, like what it should have been. The signs of the nightmare had been there all along, but he’d avoided seeing them, avoided looking out anymore than he had to. But he can’t run away from it now, not when he needs to run away from ‘them’. He has a destination, a goal; the backyard shed of Mister Right-Next-Door, whose name he’d never learned but who had been a kind enough man to share his freshly grown fruits and vegetables with him, and to speak of his garden when they ran into each other checking for the mail.

The man’s garden had been his pride and joy, and while Evan admires it right now, what he admires even more are the man’s gardening tooll:shovels, hoes, rakes, hand picks, pruners, shears and more, all with longer reach and more use to him than his hatchet or knife were likely to be against this many of ‘them’. He needs to thin ‘their’ numbers and keep ‘them’ away however he could, and that shed is just the tool for that as well.

… As long as it’s unlocked, at least.

He’s picked up enough of a pace in his stride that he’s more than fast walking, but he’s not really running yet either. He can’t even call this a jog. What it’s doing is a great job of giving him enough distance between ‘them’ and himself to have all the time he’ll need to grab a useful tool and then get out. He approaches the door to the shed and tugs on the handle; unlocked, like he’d hoped. He opens it, but then reacts on recently-learned instinct as something within lunges at him – his arm is up and bringing the hatchet’s blade crashing into the side of one of ‘them’, one wearing Mister Right-Next-Door’s skin, but that isn’t enough to stop ‘them’. The blow staggers it though, giving him time to pull back and slam the hatchet home again, and then a third time as it falls to its knees. That sends it crashing back into the shed and gives him the chance to step in and close the door behind him, putting the lock back in place to give it a bit more durability.

No time to think, no time to think. He has to keep moving. He must survive.

The shed is dark and unlit save for the light coming in from the window opposite the door. Flicking the switch doesn’t do anything, so the bulb is probably burned out. He won’t have the time to search for everything he could use, but that’s fine; all he really needs are a couple of the larger shovels, and he’s able to find those immediately despite the relative gloom. The shed’s been kept in good and tidy order by its owner, making it easy to get done what is needed to get done.

The window is slid open and the shovels are deposited through it, just as he hears ‘their’ demanding cries and the first banging on the door. The door won’t last long, but that’s fine. He goes out the window with the hoe next, tugging the window down after him. He can’t close it all the way or relatch it from outside, but that’s fine since he doubts they’ll be able to figure out how to push it all the way back up. He’s out of sight before the latch on the door breaks, tearing off as shoddy metal gives way before solid wood and letting ‘them’ begin to pour into the shed, furious. He can tell more of ‘them’ are trying to push ‘their’ way into the shed, cramming as many of ‘their’ number in as possible. Good. ‘They’ know that’s where he went last and don’t know anything else. They aren’t thinking or planning or sending others around to look for him outside the shed.

He can do this. He can survive this.

He can win this. These things can be fought, and ‘they’ can be beaten.

As long as he’s smart. As long as he’s careful. As long as he’s quiet and he’s quick.

Evan drops the hoe down and grabs the round-tipped shovel, bringing it up in one hand and moving at a crouch to creep around the side of the building. All the noise they’re making inside makes it unlikely for them to hear him over each other just yet, but hubris is an insidious killer. Better to be safe than sorry, and so he creeps.

First around the corner of the shed after a careful peek. None of ‘them’ are rushing him, but he can hear and see movement from the other side of the shed. A quick glance doesn’t show any more of ‘them’ coming from any further out. That’s good. The trees and high fences around their little cul-de-sac must be acting as a decent sound break that keeps more of ‘them’ from hearing… that or ‘they’ were mostly drawn to the west side of town by all the noise and police sirens from yesterday. Either way works well for him whenit means he only has to deal with this many of ‘them’. An entire baseball team, more or less? How many people are on a baseball team again? Twenty-two? Twenty-eight? There’s a pitcher, catcher, three basemen, the short stop and three outfielders, plus extras and replacements up to a certain point, or something like that...

He probably should have paid more attention in gym, Evan idly supposes as he shifts to get a better angle on what’s going on. ‘They’ are all crowded around the entrance to the shed, most of ‘them’ pressed inside and others stuck in the entrance trying to get to where ‘they’d’ last seen him. He can hear things within the shed getting knocked about, knocked over and broken as it rapidly surpasses its intended occupancy limit. It should be tricky for ‘them’ to force their way out quickly with how much they’ve crammed themselves inside. They’ll manage it eventually, he’s sure, but until then he’s got the time and chance to do what he needs to. Taking the shovel up into a two handed grip, he stands up and moves around the corner at a reasonable distance, enough to give him full clearance to swing.

One of ‘them’ at the edge of the group clustered around the shed’s door turns as it notices his movement and gurgles. Evan responds by bringing his shovel around with all the strength he can manage, twisting his body as he swings it and savoring the ring as high-carbon steel slams into ‘its’ skull and sends it crashing to the ground. He’s learned too well already not to assume they’re down from just one blow and shifts his grip, driving the rounded blade edge of the shovel into the bridge of its nose and eyes with a full-bodied thrust. He doesn’t get distracted by the sounds or the mess, instead yanking the shovel back and stepping back three paces as its fellows who couldn’t fit into the shed turn on him with wet, ferocious growls from the depths of their throats. Those of ‘them’ within react as well, numerous complaints and bumps and bangs coming out of the shed as they attempt to move without coordinating with each other.

He only has so much time; prepping himself, he raises his weapon and steps in again, swinging full force at the head of the first to lunge towards him, as the other outfielder stumbles as it reorients towards him. There’s another clang as he slams the shovel home into the centerfielder and a crunch as he brings it down again on his head. He steps back just in time as leftfield comes at him, but he’s faster, more nimble, and more stable on his feet ashe hops and steps back a few paces, getting into his ideal space before unleashing another swing that slams into another skull. This time, it doesn’t bring ‘it’ down – it lunges at him, recovering from the blow faster than any of the others had before.

Evan brings his shovel up and widens his grip, holding it between the two of them for leverage as ‘it’ crashes into him and tries to take him to the ground, holding onto whatever ‘it’ can grip and biting at him with each chance ‘it’ gets. ‘It’s’ close, so close, but not enough to connect. Evan struggles with it, using all his strength to keep it and its freakish strength back. In a contest of pure power and stamina, he would lose… but this is a battle of not just strength, but wits.

The next time ‘it’ lunges for him, he steps back with one leg and pivots, letting the force of its attack carry it past him as it stumbles flailing ahead. Breath hissing through his teeth, Evan brings the shovel around and hooks it onto the foot of his attacker and yanks, taking away the last of its balance and sending it crashing to the pavement.

He doesn’t hesitate. This one of ‘them’, its skin was cleaner, its flesh a healthier tone, its wounds bandaged. He doesn’t know what that means, but he’s willing to make a bet that if ‘they’ look less dead than ‘they’ are stronger, more like a human, which is why he doesn’t waste time readying his weapon, instead rushing forward to slam his heel home into the back of its head to drive it, face first, into the curb it had fallen against. It jerks, twitches and then goes still. Evan smashes it in the head with the shovel one last time before turning to get back to the rest of his business.

Glass shatters as some of ‘them’ attempt to force their way out of the window, or at least that is what Evan suspects. If they were smart, they’d pour out single file or push each other out to get out faster, but so far they haven’t been smart and he suspects that isn’t going to change. Only one of ‘them’ has managed to pull themselves out of the pile up in the shed and is already starting to make its way towards him. It raises its arms and snarls at him, pulling back its chewed-off lips to further reveal gums and teeth.

It is, Evan thinks, the worst case of gingivitis he’s ever seen. It turns out those posters in the nurse’s office were all true! Who could have known?

Unable to help it, he lets out an abortive excuse for a laugh as he swings for this one’s pearly blacks and sends it crashing to the ground, beforeramming the shovel blade first into its open mouth and then slamming his foot down on the back of the spade to drive it deeper, finishing it off with a wet crunch. The shovel takes a yank, a yoink and a hefty pull to get pulled back out of the meat and bone of its latest victim as Evan takes a look at his latest oncoming threats. The infielders are all stuck in the doorway, but the catcher is coming around the side of the shed, its chest and belly torn up along with its uniform by the broken glass of the window, but it doesn’t seem to be bothered by it at all.

Evan begins to suspect that they don’t even feel pain, or at least have no notice of it. That’s unfortunate for them. Uncle Dean always said that pain is your body’s way of warning you something is wrong with you, just like how fear is how your instincts tell you something might be wrong with what’s around you. Lacking either of those is dangerous. Lacking both, Uncle Dean said, is a recipe for disaster. It’s why folks who go into the woods not ready for things to go wrong don’t come back out of the woods so often.

‘They’ can be fought. ‘They’ can be beaten. He knows this is the truth now. If Uncle Dean says it, then it has to be true. If they’ve got two huge weaknesses, then he just has to exploit them.

Without acknowledging pain, they don’t know what parts are about to break. Without feeling fear, they don’t know to be careful of him or his tools. Readying himself again, Evan takes his first steps forward without hesitation or fear. A sense of calmness is rushing through him he’s never felt before. Everything is clear to him right now. How to fight, how to win. It’s almost like something is guiding him from above.

A swing, a hit. Another swing, another hit. It goes to the ground and Evan drives the rounded blade of his spade into the back of its neck and, as before, brings his heel down on the back of the spade to drive it deeper, sending it away and putting the poor man to rest.

The sun looks like it’s almost in the same place in the sky. How long has he been doing this already? Has it been only a handful of minutes since he stepped out of his house, or has it been more? He isn’t certain. The only thing he’s certain of is what to do as one of the infielders yanks itself free… sans an arm that it seems to have left behind.

“I’ve got to hand it to you.” He can’t help the delirious wheeze that comes out of him he brings his spade up and drives it into the center of his new enemy’s head, destroying his eyes and letting the stupid thing try to force itself down the shovel before shoving it harder, sending it falling back to the ground and then driving the spade deeper into it with another kick.

His breathing was coming in something closer to heaves now. His body was burning, his muscles were aching, and Evan was aware of every ache and pain of it. He was aware of what could break, and he was afraid of what could go wrong. He was like that because he was alive. He wasn’t like ‘them’, and that was why he was going to win.

The next moments almost began to blur together, a montage of violent imagery and snarling mouths as he beat in heads and drove spades into skulls. At one point he lost his grip on it as one of ‘them’ yanked on their former fellow it was stuck in and he’d had to go back to using his hatchet on the next until he got his hands on the hoe and brought it down on the damned thief’s skull. That’d teach him to try and steal home!

It was laughter, thick, heavy, and horrible as it heaves out of his chest in sobs as he fights to live and survive. Tears stream down his face as he swings. His vision blurs, but not enough to foul his aim as he brings the hoe down on the last of them, the poor pitcher taking the hoe to the head once, twice, three times before the wood splinters and breaks where steel met wood.

His chest heaves. His eyes burn. He is alive. He is a killer. A killer of ‘them’. He stumbles back, sagging against the fence behind him and leaning on the former haft of the hoe as he stares at the carnage surrounding him. Down the lane in the distance, he could see the first handful of bodies he’d made. In front of him was the remains of the Knox Counter Knockers, or their greatest fans, he still wasn’t sure which.

“So…” His chest heaves, his voice cracks, and he grits his teeth as he forces himself to speak, because if he didn’t say anything else he might break like the hoe did, “So much for the home field advantage..!”

He lets out a whinge, one that reminds him of that poor dog that he’d seen struck by a truck and left to die. A despairing, trembling, terrified sound that shouldn’t be coming from him. He hadn't been able to help the dog, even when he carried it all the way to the nearest veterinarian back home. All they’d been able to do was ease its suffering.

He doesn’t know how these memories applied here, but they assaulted him vividly, the stench of blood and bile from back then only surpassed by the intensity of what surrounded him now. ‘They’ were all unmoving, and no longer were ‘them’. Now they were just bodies, bodies of people from Muldraugh. Some of them he recognized more vaguely than others, and some were unknown to him entirely.

A trembling hand drops the broken haft of the hoe as he forces himself back upright using the fence, as he struggles for words to describe what was going on or what he was even going to do. He recalls, distantly, the instructions of the military and how they had dropped a package that was perhaps only a few streets over, but he doesn’t feel like he had the strength to try anything like that right now.

He just wants to go home.

“I’m sorry, Mister Johnson.” Evan slurs his woods, coughing and clearing his throat before trying to speak again, “I, ah, I knew your name. You just seemed to love it when I called you Mister Right-Next-Door, so I kept doing it. And I’m sorry for using your tools without your permission, and breaking your hoe too.”

There wasn’t a response, but he wasn’t expecting there to be one either as he waits a moment. Birds were beginning to chirp again and bugs making their various noises as the sounds of summer returned to life.

“I’m sorry,” is the only thing Evan can manage to say again after that. “I’m so sorry…”

It was with a limp that he moved again. His whole body hurts, and he was exhausted in ways he didn’t know it was possible to be. The sun is rising in the sky and a glance at his watch tells him it was just about 9:22. He wasn’t sure how much of that he spent fighting, and how much was him trying to recover and get himself back together afterwards.

He pauses only to grab the haft of the spade and yank it back from where it had been buried deep. He refrains from licking his lips, too scared of the idea of licking blood or viscera to do so. Even so, it took him another moment to say what he needed to say before he moved on. “I’m gonna be borrowing this, Mister Johnson. Thanks.”

He needs to come up with something, a plan of action or even just an idea of how to survive this in the long term. But the first thing he needs to do is limp back home, which he does. He stumbles in and locks the door behind him, careful to do both locks, and then he makes his way to the kitchen and through that into the laundry room, which was also the room that lead out into the backyard. It was small, with just enough space for a washer, dryer, big plastic tub sink and a pair of drawers underneath it.

He strips his outer layers off and puts them into washing machine, puts his shoes in the tub and sprays them off with the cold water on full blast, getting mess and muck and viscera off of them before leaving them tilted up to dry. His arms were cleaned off from that, but he needs to handle the rest and for that he needs the tub, so he drags himself up the stairs in nothing but his boxers and socks, leaning on the rail for support.

Into the bathroom he goes, stripping himself down and setting the shower to a higher temperature than he normally would, and grabbing Uncle Dean’s bodywash instead of his usual because he wanted to be as robustly clean as it advertised it would make you. Once he’s in the shower, everything else is easy. The hot water doesn’t let anything like tears show and they were just washed away. The roar of the spray hitting the tub and tiles covers up any choked, muffled wheezes that might have been made. It was just him, the water, the bodywash and the shampoo that was shaped like a little fish that his mother still got for him and had since he was a kid and first saw it. He scrubs himself clean of the physical mess and made sure he didn’t have any cuts or anything he hadn’t noticed.

He was fine, in fact, and didn’t have any scratches on him. None of the blood was his after all. He didn’t slip or fall, but Evan finds himself sitting on the floor of the tub for a long moment anyway. Hot water crashes into his head and pours down his neck and body, leaving the heat to soak into his bones and soothe the aches and pains of all the muscles, save his heart.

He doesn’t say anything, as they wasn’t anything to say. Just the weight of what was happening and what he had done. What he would have to keep doing, and what else he would have to do in the future.

He didn’t have enough food left, and there were other things he would need. It’s not like ‘they’ would need it now, and… Mister Johnson always said he could come to him for help if he needed it. The military would come and fix things eventually, and he could pay for anything he took to anyone who wanted it then. Anyone who was still left to want it. There’s something about the hot water that made things seems so much clearer. All the red had spiraled away down the drain by now, leaving the tub clean and clear.

He stays in the shower a little longer anyway, just to clear his mind and come up with a plan. Make a plan and follow through, adapt as you need to. That’s what Uncle Dean always said, and he was always right about these things.

Stopping the water, Evan steps out of the tub and begins toweling off. His movements aren’t as swift and purposeful as he had been in the moment, but neither was he dragging himself through life under the weight of what he had done. He simply is moving, and that was all there was to it. It was all he could do.

Evan knew what he needed to do now. Carefully, and slowly, he needed to check on the other surrounding homes. Just because nothing and no one had come out of them didn’t mean that they were empty, after all. The houses that ‘they’ had come out of, and Mister Johnson’s home, were both places he could look into and feel reasonably certain that there wouldn’t be dozens of ‘them’ waiting for him. Since he had, you know, already beaten them.

He went and got dressed in new clothes and put on the boots Uncle Dean had gotten him for their work in the woods. Tightening his watch back onto his wrist, he could see the time was now 10:03, meaning he’d spent forty minutes getting clean after everything and resting in the shower. He wasn’t hearing any other noises from the rest of the house, so nothing had probably happened in the time between that was a major issue.

Still, hubris is an insidious killer. Evan remembered his lessons and thought his actions through. Before even going downstairs he checked carefully out of the upper story windows for any of ‘them’ wandering around, or any signs of activity in the other houses in the cul-de-sac. There weren’t any as far as he could see. The only signs of danger were the signs probably from the first day of this nightmare, signs subtle enough that they could be ignored, if you wanted to.

But Evan’s eyes were open now, and he couldn’t close them anymore.

He pulls the hiking bag he used for helping Uncle Dean with work out and throws it onto his back, latching it carefully and making sure it sat just like it was supposed to. He would only take what he needed, and nothing else; things that would go to waste otherwise, or were just too valuable for his survival to pass up. Heading back downstairs, he pauses a moment to consider his tools where he’d left them. He’d need to collect the rest of what was useful from Mister Johnson’s shed before… well, before it was too much to bear to do so.

The first thing he needed to do was to clean what he had though, of course. Back in the laundry room he moves the wash to the dryer and sets that to go about its business, before pulling his shoes out of the sink and setting them up to dry in the sun, undoing the laces as far as he needed to pull the tongue all the way down and pin it in place; hopefully that would avoid any soggy soles. That done, he sets about washing off the shovel with soap and then checking it for any signs of damage: the head seemed to be in fine shape, all things considered, andthe haft was looking wonderful as well, none the worse for wear from being used for unintended purposes. He’d leave it in the laundry room for now, and maybe move it to the closet later. His knife and hatchet were both in fine condition, meanwhile; these tools were made of excellent steel and from makers that Uncle Dean had picked from or recommended himself in their respective cases. They would take care of him as long as he took care of them as Uncle Dean taught him too. Clean and dry and store them properly. Your tools are your family in the game of survival, closer than anyone or anything else.

He sets his belt back on his hips and sheathes his tools of choice. His hiking bag has hitches and hangers on it for attaching other things onto, and enough storage capacity that he shouldn’t need to make too many trips. Just because nothing’s noticed the hullabaloo yet is no reason to be careless.Besides, that woman might be watching from her home too. He’ll need to keep an eye open and be careful about avoiding staying out in the open where she can see him. The last thing he wants after all this is to eat 12-gauge buckshot instead of canned peas for dinner.

Evan isn’t sure if making morbid jokes is any better than trying to ignore everything around him, but it’s not like he can go back to doing that so he’ll just let it happen as it happens. He’s as ready as he could hope to be, except for one final thing, sohe went to the closet and searched through it to find one of Uncle Dean’s bandanna cloths, all in various patterns. Grabbing the one with blue and grey squares, he wrapped it around the front of his face as a kerchief mask of sorts. It might not do much, but maybe it would help keep any foulness out of his mouth if something were to happen. It was just another layer of safety, and you always wanedt to keep as many layers between you and danger as you can.

Finally ready again, Evan peeks out carefully past the curtains for a final time and then steps out of his home once he’s sure the coast is clear. The birds are singing, the insects are chirping and the sun is shining brightly high on the sky. On days like these…

…Well, on days like these there should be a lot more than just those sounds. Instead the only thing he can hear is a damning sort of silence totally unlike the peace of the wilderness. An unnatural, hellish stillness that felt like it could choke him if he let it.

Shrugging his pack and tightening his straps, he steps off of the porch and goes to work. Mister Johnson’s place gets checked first. He starts with the shed, wanting to make certain that all of the bodies there are really bodies, and not just ‘them’ in waiting. It’s a cautious approach at first, even throwing a rock at one of them, but nothing comes of it. Once ‘their’ heads or necks are hurt badly enough, it seems that puts ‘them’ down permanently. At least, that seems to be the case. He’s not a scientist so he wouldn’t exactly what and why it was happening, but being confident enough about a way to defend himself was already a godsend.

He still grabs the spare shovel and pokes the bodies he was less certain of, but none of them react in the least, not even the one he gives a solid whack because he doesn’t like how solid its head still looks. He steps over Mister Johnson with a muttered apology and quickly takes stock of the room: there were plenty more things for gardening like buckets and mulch, and packets of all sorts of seeds and the like put here and there as well. More important to him is a stock of batteries and another radio so he could listen to more varied broadcasts and try to keep an ear out on the news while checking other channels for anything else; maybe even people on walkie-talkies?

The batteries and some of the other supplies like nails and a box of paperclips go into the backpack, as do some of the gardening tools that look to be more useful for defending himself than for gardening in the current situation. He doesn’t have the best expectations for the gardening fork, but the wickedly sharp-looking pruning knife and the weeding sickle could both probably be used if he needed to. The knife goes folded into his backpack, and the ‘kama’ has its blade wrapped up in cloth and then hung from his backpack. He considers the seeds again for a moment before dismissing them. It’s not like this was going to last long enough that he’d even have time to grow crops or whatever.

… Maybe, if he gets everything he needs and feels safe enough, he could bury these people for now? He could check for IDs or something and try to organize them for their families when this was all over. At the very least, it was better than just leaving the bodies to the crows and weather. He knows from Uncle Dean’s lessons that that’s a health disaster in the making.

Having taken stock of the shed and grabbed what’s immediately useful, as well as the buckets to store more water, since he’d already used the ones at home and Mama and Uncle Dean had both taught him the importance of storing water in a disaster just in case, Evan moves on. Next he heads towards Mister Johnson’s house. The front door is locked, but circling around shows him that the backdoor isn’t and lets him into a laundry room much like the one in Uncle Dean’s house.

He palms his knife and holds it steady as he moves into the house, the unfamiliar location bringing back that same eerie pseudo-calm he felt before, just a little bit. It was a sensation that was like being focused beyond any sort of normal focus, a state where you can take in all the details around you and react on pure instinct. Perhaps it was his ‘will to survive’ like Uncle Dean had talked about?

Mister Johnson lived alone and his windows were intact, but that was no reason to be careless. Who knows if he’d let someone inside to try and help them, only to become one of ‘them’ because of his kindness? Out of the laundry room and into the house proper he steps, moving into the kitchen. The stillness of the house is unnatural, and everything about it suggested a day going about normally. Vegetables on the counter, bread box left open, bits and suggestions of what Mister Johnson intended to do with his day on the morning of when all this started.

Evan knocks on the wall three times in a quick sharp rap and listens intently for a response… but there’s nothing but echoes and silence. After a few moments longer he balls his hand up into a fist and bangs on the wall twice, loud and booming strikes that practically batter against his ears. But again… nothing. ‘They’ seemed to be reactive to any sort of visual or audio stimuli, so the coast seems to be clear. Still, he’d keep his knife out just in case.

… Besides, it could be useful for getting pesky objects open that were being stubborn even if there’s nothing dangerous here.

From the kitchen he removes the canned foods and packaged goods that Mister Johnson kept. Some of it was home-jarred vegetables that Mister Johnson had made himself, but there were also baking chocolates and a selection of salts and spices that could be helpful. The fridge suggested Mister Johnson was also planning to go shopping when this all hit, but it had more left in it than his own did, so Evan would double back for them last.

He moves on, sweeping the rest of the house for signs of danger or anything else immediately useful. What he finds isn’t much at first; the bathroom provides him with a few bottles of painkillers, sleep-aids and some very nice bandages he would hopefully never have to use, while the living room TV is on at a low volume, speaking of some news going on outside of the Boundary at the moment. Apparently Republican senators were complaining about the situation and the handling of it.

He doesn’t think they’d be complaining about the handling of it if they knew what was actually going on inside.

Upstairs has another bathroom, this one with the actual bathtub he borrows toiletries, toothpaste and cleaning supplies from. Most of the other rooms show a long time of not being used. One room is what appears to be a mixture of a play room for children and a place for them to study and do homework. The walls are lined with pictures of a younger Mister Johnson, a presumed Missus Johnson, three children at various points in their lives. If he had to guess, Evan suspects that they had their first child young and then had two more back to back many years later. At least, that’s what he can guess from looking at the stories the pictures tell him.

There was a closet with some coats inside and such inside, as well as boxes holding records and likely precious photographs, so he left those where they were. He has no need for coats that didn’t fit or for stealing Mister Johnson’s memories for himself. Past that was a bedroom with a bunk bed as well as another single twin sized bed. Presumably the kid’s room, and then eventual guest room.

The last room iss Mister Johnson’s bedroom, and it is certainly a bedroom. In fact, it feels like that is all that it was. There isn’t anything else there even after a thorough check: no strange black stains on his bed to show he turned here, no mysterious warnings, not a journal left open to a page giving him some sort of clue. It was just a place where Mister Johnson slept and kept his clothing, and that’s all that was here. On his bedside table is bible, bookmark placed in it like he had been reading from it just recently. On a whim, Evan opens it to the marked passage.

“And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem,” Evan reads aloud, breaking the dead silence of this shell of a home. “Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth. Zechariah, 14:12.”

Evan considers that for a moment. He lets the thought marinate in his head and just rolls it about a little. Just a few moments of contemplation as it all washes over him. Then he flips the bible shut, leaving the bookmark in place, and sets it back down on the table.

This was just Mister Johnson’s bedroom. There wasn’t anything else in here, no cryptic hints or menacing clues. All just a bedroom and random happenstance.

So it was that he goes back downstairs to claim the contents of the fridge, pausing only to pop open a tin of candied pecans and to scarf down what was left as a reward for doing such a great job and not completely losing it. One house down, one more to go.

He doubles back to his own home on the way, sorting out and dropping off his carefully acquired survival supplies into their appropriate locations so he can stop clanking from carrying all those gardening tools and awkwardly bumping into things with the extra shovel; plus it lets the frozen foods stay frozen, which is going to be important to avoid wasting anything. Once that’s done, he sets about checking out the other building he’s certain is probably empty – which is the one that was full of the Knox Country Knockers.

It’s possible there still might be one of them inside, but it’s not likely for there to be a lot of them considering the whole baseball team came after him. If the entire opposing team is in there too, Evan feels he’ll be quite upset about it.

One thing he does is take a good long look from cover at the house the gun-owning woman was within. He still issn’t seeing her in her windows or any signs of her coming outside… but she could take a decent shot at him at any point if he just walked down the sidewalk to the place, and considering it’d be right across from her home…

Well, he decides to take a back route. It’ll be just like in The Sandlot, except he won’t be getting chased by a giant dog!

At least, he hopes he wouldn’t! That would be way more dangerous than ‘them’!

Out the back door Evan sneaks away, moving through the backyard to the high fence separating his backyard from his neighbor’s left door. It’s taller than he is.Heck, the fence is tall enough that even Uncle Dean would need to pull himself up to peer over it if he wanted to, since it’s probably about seven to eight feet high. Still, it’s not so high he can’t jump and grab the top to pull himself up, so he does, leaping up and looking around into the neighbors backyard. There isn’t anything around except for a child’s tricycle tipped ominously on its side and a slightly askew backdoor. His target is the house past this one, but he doesn’t know for certain if this house was safe. At least he doesn’t need it to be secure (for the time being) as long as he can get through to the building that houses his other objective.

With the coast clear, Evan hauls himself over with a bit more effort than he’d like to admit to and clambers down the other side. Nothing responds to the noise he was making, so he chalks one up for the ‘probably not going to get attacked’ side of the debate and scampers across the backyard to the next privacy fence, butbefore hecan climb over it, there’s the distinct crack of gunfire. He throws himself to the ground, arms up to shield himself from the fall and immediately feels silly as he realizes that the gunfire was quite distance from him, somewhere to the north side of town if he had to guess, many streets away.

The gunfire wasn’t just a one off, though, as it repeats – sometimes quickly, sometimes just one shot, until there’s a pause. He stays still for a long moment out of an abundance of caution before slowly climbing back to his feet, readying himself to clamber over the next fence. Hauling himself up, he sees the current state of the other side – a dog house in the backyard of this home, painted in the colors of the Knox Country Knockers in yet another display of team spirit. There was a lead attached to the dog house, one with lots of extra length so, even when it was hooked up, any dog would have full run of the spacious backyard and sideyards of the house. That led to a collar, and attached to that collar is something that Evan presumed was once a dog. That isn’t to say the dog was one of ‘them’ now, as that couldn’t be further from the truth. He can only presume it was a dog because there simply wasn’t much left to go off of besides a mess of decaying gore – so,it looks like ‘they’ attack animals as well as people too. At least that’s what Evan thinks this suggests, for lack of better explanations for evisceration.

He considers all this for a moment, looking over the scene, before he clambers up and over. There’s no immediate threats around him right now, but he’s more cautious than before. A sense of calm and focus returns to him as he creeps closer to the house; the back windows and sliding glass door are all shattered on this side of the house, just like they were on the front. He can hear the TV playing loudly on one of the sports channels, covering sports news: conveniently, they take a break from international sports to mention the Knox Country incident and how the Knox Country Knockers were playing at an away game and are all deeply worried for their families back home.

Evan supposes this answers whether or not they were the actual baseball team, at least. It’s nice to have one mystery solved.

“Hey,” he says in a normal voice, cupping his mouth with a hand as he tries to draw the attention of whatever might lie inside. There’s no response. This house isn’t just about finding supplies, though he’ll take those too, but he’s checking this house because a huge danger had been here, and he wants to make sure it’s gone. It’s not the knife in his hand this time, but the hatchet, as he moves forward. The living room is dark and menacing, lit only by the television. He can see packages, bottles and cans strewn about it, as well as a great deal of blood. The stench of it is thick in the air and it makes him thankful for the mask he’s wearing.

He uses his hatchet to clear glass out of his way, then steps inside through the sliding door. Nothing lunges at him immediately. He can see outside into the front yard from his new position, and into the kitchen from here as well – it’s a mess, surfaces smeared and knives missing from the block. There’s a body in the kitchen, a blade sharpener from the block buried up to the hilt in one of its sockets. It stares straight upwards, visibly decaying.

Not one of ‘them’ then, at least not any more. It’s slowly that he moves into the room, hatchet up and ready to strike at a moment’s notice if that’s what it takes to survive. He doesn’t hear any sounds of movement, save his own with the squelch of the wet carpet adding onto it. He’ll have to wash these boots off when he gets home, Evan thinks. Contamination risks and all.

He finds another body in the living room, or at least what’s left of a body. This one is human, or was at one point. It’s been stripped to the bone in almost every place, only tatters of its clothing still clinging to it in a bare few places. He can’t say whether it was a woman or a man, though it’s on the smaller side so he guesses it might’ve been a woman. He shifts to let more of the light in from behind him to get a look at the face, and he sees it turn its rictus grin skull to stare at him.

For a moment he thinks he might even be seeing something, a trick of his mind. But the eye still in its socket moves, twitching, and the muscles still attached to the jaw work weakly. This is one of ‘them’… but they ate it until it couldn’t even move itself anymore.

It opens its jaw, trying to vocalize, but its lack of a vocal cord or even most of its throat leaves that impossible.

Evan crosses the room, bringing his hatchet down right onto the face of ‘it’. He pulls it back and brings it down again and again and again, until there’s not even the slightest twitch or even a recognizable face anymore. Satisfied, he moves into the kitchen and does the same thing to the decaying corpse there, just to be sure. He feels more certain now, seeing that and doing this – ‘they’ can ‘survive’ wounds that would kill a human, even catastrophic failures like the loss of a limb or the loss of most of their flesh. As long as the head or neck are intact… no, as long as the brain or spine are intact, you can’t be certain that ‘they’ are actually gone. Evan thinks that’s how it works.

His grip on the hatchet tightens as he moves. The kitchen is clean, the dining room is clear, the bathroom is clear, the first floor is clear. Up the stairs he goes. Doors are broken down or into, up here. There’s blood on the stairs up, but no bodies at first. One bedroom shows nothing save for sheets and covers thrown onto the floor. Did the people become ‘them’ in their sleep? Another room, the bathroom, has a mess in the tub, but it’s not blood, and the stench coming from the toilet is fouler than the stench in the rest of the house. He checks for medicine he might need, takes it and moves on. The next room is a smaller bedroom, bunk beds but sparsely decorated. For guests rather than children, maybe? Luggage suggests so, and flipping the cases open reveals clothing that isn’t baseball themed.

The last room has an intact door, closed shut and locked. But the lock is on the outside of the door, not the inside. He knocks on it and waits, and then raps again to be sure. Then he pushes the door open to see what’s inside; a bedroom, and nothing else. There’s no bodies or surprises this time. What there is are posters on the walls and dark covers on the bed, bookshelves full of sci-fi and fantasy and more… and on the table was a television, and connected to that television was-

Evan had a Nintendo Entertainment System, the original one, not the super one. That was back home in Philly, though, and he only had his gameboy with him right now. But here, right in front of him, was the holy grail… or perhaps the devil tempting him. The Sega Genesis with its ‘blast processing’ and incredible power that the magazines and ads claimed made it look even better than the Nintendo, super or otherwise. They even claimed that ‘Sega Did what Nintendon’t’.

The house was clear, there was no threat. He should take only what he needs to survive and then leave. But Evan thinks about this house, about what happened in it, and what almost happened to him thanks to what came from it. He considers it. He rolls it over in his head and marinates on it.

It’s with a far fuller backpack, loaded up with a great deal of useful supplies for survival, that Evan returns home, struggling a bit more to climb over the fences as he tries to avoid damaging his load. His boots come off and are carefully washed, a massive amount of pop, chips and other pleasant things are stored in his cupboards, now much more healthily full, and a few more bits and useful things join his collection in a few other places. Most of what he got from that house was junk food, but he’s happy to have it.

So it is at 12:30, after watching Woody’s show on carpentry (recorded a few weeks ago), that Evan settles in for the rest of the day. There’s books on the book shelf to join his gameboy to keep him occupied when he needs it, there’s food in his belly from making some meat and veggie stew, and he’s got both radios going on different channels and has them in reach to swap them around if he needs them.

He is hydrated, fed, air-conditioned, and while certainly not ‘okay’ with what was going on, he was a heck of a lot more comfortable in this moment. So it is that he switches the TV over to Channel Three and tests out his newest tool for necessary survival: amazing blast processer sounds fill his ears and he stares at the absurd graphics that could only be called ‘turbo’ on the screen before him.

“Maybe Sega really does do what Nintendon’t,” Evan can’t help but wonder, as he guides a speedy blue hedgehog away into an adventure unlike any other.

-And that’s everything that happened today. I think I should try and find that package that the military dropped tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll have instructions and supplies inside of it that will tell me what I need to do to make it easier for them to help me. After that I’ll do… something, I guess. Maybe I should dig graves for the bodies? It’s probably better than just leaving them out and having who knows what happen. I’ll try to write more in you tomorrow, journal.