Cherish Applebottoms's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

The truck roared down a dirt road for miles. Behind them, the swamp darkness was like an eclipse with screeches fading. Marcus kept both hands on the wheel and did not slow until the mutants fell out of hearing and sight! Cherish kept her eyes on the rearview mirror and took a sigh, while gripping her crowbar. Lisa held Derek's machete across her knees. She had not let go of it since the barn. As Derek’s fate played in her head! Then the trees broke open, and through the mist a battered two-story house leaned in the field ahead. With a shack in the back. A couple of broken windows but the doors looked intact and fortifiable. Cherish made Marcus stop. He cut the engine off. They stepped out with Lisa holding an intense glare of rage in her eyes! They walked the porch. Two doors. One for the kitchen in the back and one in the front, the house had a good view with not too many blind spots around the home. "This could work," she said. "If it's empty." A low growl answered from inside. It wasn't empty. She pressed her ear to the door Marcus counted his rounds in his pistol’s magazine and whispered, I’ve got 7 rounds left. Cherish whispered "We can't shoot," she told them. "Gunfire brings the whole swamp back. We clear it quiet. Room by room. The gun is last resort!!" Lisa nodded and gripped the machete. Marcus holstered the pistol but kept his knife loose. Cherish and Lisa went in together through the kitchen, quietly opening the door and doing a sweep of the house. Lisa cut down the first zombie that reached out from under the kitchen table, a mutated woman that reminded her of the one from the barn! Another came at them as soon as the sound of her machete rang out, but Cherish instantly hit it with a swing of her crowbar, first to its left leg to slow and knock it down, then bashed it until it went still. Marcus tried the front door but it would not budge open, as if it was being blocked, so he slipped through an open window in the office room. A zombie lunged from the hall as he left the office, a boy with one eye gone and long teeth snapping. "Fresh meat," it hissed. He struggled with it for a few seconds from the surprise, but quickly pinned it with his knife to the wall! Marcus quickly fended another off that ran towards him from the dining room! As another almost caught Marcus, Cherish quickly stepped in. Cherish swung. The crowbar cracked its skull sideways and it dropped. "Wack-a-mole," she smiled. Marcus smirked. Upstairs was worse. One ran downstairs as they approached, leaping but being struck by Lisa until it stopped moving. As soon as they reached upstairs one ran out and attacked. A mangled woman came from the child’s bedroom and another from the far right bedroom! Cherish and Marcus took the first one down, and Lisa, like a swift ninja in the night, swung her knife into its head then chopped it clean off like a samurai with the machete. Marcus and Cherish stared at each other, impressed! As Cherish attempted to clear the master bedroom, from its bathroom a thing with too many arms unfolded from the dark, limbs dragging on the tile, flesh hanging loose. It grabbed Cherish by the ankle and yanked. She hit the floor hard. Her crowbar skidded under the bed. The limbs wrapped her leg and pulled her toward its teeth. As it groaned for flesh "Marcus!" She tried to shout but couldn’t. Marcus came running in due to the thud he heard as Cherish fell to the ground. He didn't waste a round. He drove his boot into its skull, once, twice, until the grip loosened. But it lunged toward Marcus now. Cherish reached for her crowbar under the bed and finished it herself. Five quick blows. It stopped moving. But its body twitched. She lay there breathing. Marcus reached down and pulled her up. "You," she said. "Don’t get so sentimental on me." He held her eyes a second. "You got me and I got your back." It was the closest to trusting each other he'd offered since Anna. She took it. The house went silent. Cherish stood in the wrecked front room, chest heaving, and looked at the two doors and the wide field beyond the broken glass. No gunshots. No swarm coming. "This is it," she said. "We hold here." After clearing and fortifying the home Cherish realized Lisa was missing “Lisa,” she called Lisa did not answer. She stood at a shattered window, staring past the field at a low shack half-sunk in weeds. Her hand still gripped the machete. "Lisa?" Cherish said. "Something's in there," Lisa said quietly. She wiped Derek's blade clean. "And it did not look like what we are used to." And she walked out the door alone, toward the shack, before Cherish could stop her. Marcus ran out after Lisa toward the shack only to find corpses that had been torn apart. But still they were safe. FOR NOW!