Jenny and I push deeper into the treehouse, every step dragging against the heavy silence. The boards creak and moan, but no voices answer. Only the smell of blood, stronger now, guiding us like a noose tightening around the throat.
The first horror comes at the end of the hallway. A closet door hangs crooked on its hinges, jagged holes punched through the wood. Gunfire. My heart drops before I even look inside.
Theodore's bulk fills the back wall, his wide frame slumped sideways, head tilted unnaturally. In his lap, his gun rests unused.
Ava is also crumpled against him, her already orange hair a matted shock of red, blood streaking down her small chest where the bullets tore through. Her eyes are still open, glassy, staring right past me.
My heart beats faster, perhaps faster than I've ever heard it beat before. Jenny also peers through the closet door for just a moment before recoiling back, her hand against her mouth.
Staring at Ava's body, I feel something inside. I just can't tell whether it is fear, sadness, regret, or even sympathy.
Her body is so small…
Turning back, I walk through the rest of the hallway, passing a bedroom and bathroom before reaching the room containing the remaining chaos.
At the very end of the hall, inside the kitchen, furniture is overturned, glass shattered, blood sprayed, and bullet holes through the wood.
Elias lies twisted, bruised and broken, his thin arm still clutching a kitchen knife slick with red. Dorian sprawls beside him, chest torn open, his shotgun still clutched in both hands. Smoke residue clings to the barrel.
Between them, a stranger's corpse bleeds out on the boards. His throat and shoulder are shredded, no doubt due to Dorian's shotgun tearing through him at near point blank range.
"Seems they got one." I say quietly, stepping over the stranger's body and kneeling down.
"Dorian probably used Elias as bait, trying to lure the intruders close enough to use his shotgun."
I grab the stranger's pistol, examining it just for a moment before putting it back down.
"Seems a little more modern than our old revolvers." I comment, looking back up at Jenny.
Her hand still covers her mouth and says nothing, only staring back at me.
Standing back up, I move past Jenny and back down the hall. "Two of them aren't here, they probably escaped."
Jenny doesn't respond. She just follows.
I can't help but wonder what she is thinking. Is she distressed? Is she scared? Right now, she seems so unreadable.
Me on the other hand? Hell, I'm not even sure how I feel, but I most definitely feel some heaviness deep inside.
"Do you know where they could be hiding?" Jenny asks as we climb down the ladder.
"I think I might."
Helping Jenny onto the horse, we ride further south, passing trees, animals, and different rock formations.
The horse's hooves thud against the soil in a steady rhythm, a heartbeat that carries us away from the hollow silence of the treehouse. The smell of blood still lingers in my nose, clinging stubbornly even as the wind rushes past us. Jenny clings to me once again, somehow holding on harder than before.
The forests seem to thicken at first, shadows swallowing us whole as branches and leaves close in overhead.
We ride for only a short while, before the trees begin to thin, the light growing both stronger, and harsher.
The rhythm of the horse's hooves changes as dirt becomes sand. A salty breeze hits my face, cool and sharp, carrying with it the cries of distant gulls. The forest falls away behind us, swallowed in shadow, and before us the beach stretches wide, golden in the rising light.
The ocean tide is low, and beautiful, a sharp contrast to the corpse filled beach that we ride upon. Someone fought with the infected here.
I eventually bring the horse to a slow halt.
"It seems like we have company." I say, staring at both Layla and Zane who sit upon the porch of my little hut. Jenny stares at them for a moment before sliding off my horse, landing on her two feet. Following her lead, I do the same.
"I'm glad you two are still alive." I say approaching them at the porch.
Zane is the first to stand, his huge figure the same size as the hut itself.
He wears large, and heavy blackened armor that covered his body like a metal shell, leaving only the head exposed. In his right hand, he holds a massive axe, the blade being the size of my torso, its edge pitted and dark with the blood of infected.
He grunts. "I assume you have seen what has happened at the treehouse?" He asks, his voice deep and tired.
I nod, taking in the view of the corpse covered beach around me.
"I assume they attacked after y'all got back yesterday?" I ask him, taking a moment to look at his new gear.
"Yes. But I have no idea how they could've followed us. You all had them pinned down for a long time while Theodore and I escaped." He says confused.
I sigh. "Well, that doesn't matter now." I say brushing past him toward Layla. She still sits on the step of my door, tears streaming from her eyes, dripping onto her new silver armor.
"You okay?" I ask.
She doesn't respond, her tears just continue.
I look back at Zane, but he is already mingling with Jenny.
I don't know what to do.
My first thought is to comfort her, but how does one do that?
She looks down at my feet, whispering a quiet sentence.
"Where were you?"
I pause.
"What do you mean?"
"Where were you when we were attacked, where were you last night?" She continues, her voice full of fear and anger.
"I went a bit north." I tell her, crouching down beside her. She doesn't seem to like my answer as she pushes me backward onto my buttocks.
I hit the sand hard and stare up at her. Her face is wet with tears, voice shaking with anger.
"Fucking north." She mumbles wiping her snot.
"Do you know what it felt like?" she whispers, her voice low, shaking. "Hearing them outside. Hearing Elias scream. Theodore shouting for us to hold on. Knowing any second that door would break…" She shakes her head, tears blurring her eyes again. "I've never been that scared in my life."
The confession hangs in the salty air, fragile and jagged.
I stare at her, at the armor glinting with tears, at the rifle trembling in her hands. Part of me wants to reach out, to tell her it's okay, to tell her I understand. But instead, something colder curls up inside me.
All around us the corpses rot, the echoes of our people's deaths still clinging to the boards of the treehouse, still thick in the air I breathe. And yet, here she is, drowning in her own fear, her own terror, her own tears.
She wasn't crying for them. She was crying for herself.
I care not that she was scared, but I am mad over the fact that she let that fear control her. That despite her teammates dying, she seems to give no care for them.
Selfish. That's all I could think as I watched her break down, her words still ringing in my head.
"I was scared."
That's all she had to say. And somehow, to me, that was worse than silence.