Jade pushed open the frail looking door, the rusted hinges piercing through the eerie silence. She had been trying to be quiet when breaking into this house but would have to hope nobody or perhaps more accurately, nothing, had heard her. She quietly advanced into the house, silently thankful that the lights were already on, the house clearly on some kind of closed loop power supply, as a result she didn't need to risk attracting attention with a fshlight or fumbling around in the darkness of the new moon.
As she looked around the house, she felt a familiar train of thought arise in her head: 'Why am I risking going out into the darkness like this at all, just to loot a house?' The answer to that, however, was rather simple. She quietly sighed as she answered her own question 'Family' she thought to herself. Jade and her family were desperate, they needed food, water but right now what she was looking for was medicine. The supermarkets, the pharmacies and anything with a high number of things that could be valuable were looted first and looted by already well organised gangs of survivors. Of course, these gangs of survivors’ bases were now deathtraps to anyone who wished to enter them.
Jade silently sighed before shaking her head and trying to bring herself back on track, realising her thoughts were going nowhere and were just distracting her from the nervousness she felt at the reality of what she was doing. She was scavenging alone which went against her family's normal policy of staying in pairs, desperation had however forced her to break this policy. It was risky but they needed the supplies, or rather the medicine, for her father.
With her nerves still high she moved silently into the kitchen, the minate floors of the house giving her no risk of a creaky floorboard as she tried to find some kind of medical cabinet. It was then as she rounded the corner into the kitchen that she saw a person out of the corner of her eyes. She jumped out of surprise and pulled her knife out of its sheathe as she quickly turned to strike and defend herself from them.
"Oh." She murmured aloud before having to hold back from ughing aloud as she realised what it was that had scared her: a TV that had been left on in the kitchen. It was completely muted with its subtitles on, pying the very much familiar emergency broadcast that was on loop; the soldier in the middle of the screen talking about what the public should do. Information that was very much out of date and pointless to her at this point.
Disregarding the TV and the shock it had caused her she sheathed her knife, shaking her head with a small smile on her face as she began looking around the kitchen, the nervousness from before having left her system. She swiftly checked the wooden cabinets and drawers and found some useful things, cooking supplies, some vacuum sealed foods, even some Jaffa cakes but it seemed there was no medical cabinet here. After grabbing the easier to carry foods and putting them into her backpack she began to move further into the house. These items weren't what she was looking for but a sweet snack was always a morale booster.
Soon she moved on to another room, trying her luck once again, hoping to find the house's bathroom for another chance at medical supplies. She soon came across a room that had its door closed and used one of the techniques she had developed for checking if she were alone. She softly knocked on the door, if there was anything inside, they would hear the sound and start groaning and snarling as they usually did. It was a fwless pn as the creatures, or to be more specific: the undead, couldn't resist making noise and moving towards any sounds they heard.
After waiting a short while and hearing nothing, Jade opened the door, smiling quietly as she found herself standing outside the bathroom. She quickly began to look for the light switch for the dark room, moving her hand to look around for the light switch on the side of the wall whilst she gazed into the room. She saw a packet of paracetamol beneath a wooden cabinet and couldn't help but mentally celebrate her find. She gazed at the cabinet as though in a trance like state hoping that there were more painkillers inside.
Eventually, after cmouring for the light switch for a few long seconds she found it, turning it on as she ran towards the cabinet, taking her backpack off as she opened it wide to grab any useful medicines she could find.
Her gaze nded upon medicine after medicine as she realised what a jackpot she'd stumbled upon. The cabinet had multiple boxes of ibuprofen, paracetamol and codeine; not to mention the other useful medicines she found, a couple of bottles of antibiotics, alcohol wipes and other first aid supplies. She couldn't help but stuff her bag as full as she could and it was because of this that she didn't hear the footsteps or the small noises made by the zombie coming up behind her.
She should have been bitten right there - dragged down and dead within seconds, undead within minutes. Too distracted by loot to realise her time had come. That is to say, she would have been if it wasn't thanks to the bathroom's mirror letting her see the zombie out of the corner of her eye. She spun around at the sight of the zombie, dropping her backpack onto the floor and yanking her dagger out of her sheathe. But before she could raise her arms, the zombie lunged forwards, its arms pinning hers as it gnashed and gnawed it's teeth towards her, mere inches from her face.
She struggled against the zombie's weight as it pushed against her, unconsciously pinning her in the corner of the room and against the cabinet. After about a second or so of trying to push it off of her and most importantly, keep it's face away from her; she managed to raise her knee up and push the zombie backwards, the creature falling over in the process as it fell over, dragging her down with it in the process and causing her to release the knife from her grasp as she fell.
Quickly, she made to stand up as the zombie crawled towards her, slowly standing itself up in the process. Looking around for the knife, Jade soon found it had ended up on the other side of the bathroom near the door.
With no time to reach it and the zombie almost upon her once again, she dashed towards the sturdy looking sink as she pced her hands behind her on it and all of her weight too as she jumped right as the zombie was about to reach her. With her weight on the sink and her legs in the air, she kicked her legs towards the zombie, using her hands to push herself towards it letting her kick it in the face and shoulders, the tough soles of her boots preventing the zombie from biting her as it was knocked backwards once again.
Using the time she had created from the kick she quickly recovered herself, using her hands still on the sink to help her rise as she dashed towards the knife. Grabbing it before turning around, only to find the zombie upon her once again. With nothing behind her this time she tried to dash as far to the left of the zombie as she could, her arms trying to push it past her and out of the bathroom. A desperate measure that succeeded and resulted in her being scratched along the length of her arm. She quickly looked to her arm and was thankful that she was wearing thick jacket that had stopped the scratch reaching her skin. Scratches had a chance, even if low, to transmit the infection if they broke the skin. The infection was a guaranteed death sentence to whoever caught it. Either way, with the zombie now outside of the bathroom she pushed the door closed, pcing her whole weight against it as she looked around the bathroom.
'How did it get in here without me noticing? Was it already in here? If so, how come it didn't respond to the knock test?' she thought, her gaze looking around the bathroom looking for how it could have snuck in before she felt a bang against the door. Then another as she quickly realised that it didn't matter how it got in, just that it had and she needed to deal with it or escape from here. She looked at the medical cabinet again, she'd managed to put most of the important things into bag that was now on the floor. She just needed to grab it and escape.
With that thought, she looked at the window. There was a small openable part at the top, but it would not be enough for her to escape through. Smashing the window and then jumping through wouldn't help either, as she’d just end up injured by the gss shards and the zombie would soon follow her out. Not to mention the noise would attract other undead if the noise of her fight with the zombie wasn't already.
Almost as soon as she realised that there was no escape to be had from the bathroom, she felt as the zombie accidentally pushed down the handle of the door, letting it finally start to force it's way in as well forcing her attention and weight back on the door. Nonetheless, she had never been the bulkiest person and a fight of weights was a fight the zombie was going to win. She tightened her grip around the knife as she prepared herself to fight or die.
It was then, with her heart beating harder than it had in a long time, that she took a deep breath and then ran towards the other end of the bathroom, letting the zombie into the room once again as it ran straight towards her. She let this happen before taking advantage of the full power charge of the zombie when she dodged to the side at the st second. She felt as the zombie's nails scratched along her back as she dodged out of the zombie's way; almost instantly hearing a loud noise as the zombie hit itself straight against the wall.
Hearing that the zombie had rammed itself straight into the wall, she turned around intent on taking advantage of this moment of vulnerability. She aimed her knife upwards, straight towards the zombie's skull before with all her strength ramming it forwards and into the weak sides of the still recovering zombie's skull. The knife pierced deep into the skull, killing the zombie instantly.
With the zombie dead she sat down exhausted on the ground. It had only been a minute since the fight with the zombie had started but it had felt to her like an eternity. It was then that she felt the pain along her back as she stood up and headed towards the mirror, removing her jacket as she turned around to look at her back and seeing a minor graze along her back. Seeing the graze hadn't pierced the skin and was merely red she let out the breath she hadn't realised she was holding, sighing in relief. Zombie scratches had a chance to be infectious even if they typically weren't, it was however better not to take the risk and thankfully, she didn't need to worry about it.
With the issue of infection out of the way, she walked up to her backpack, picking it up off the ground where it y, next to the zombie's corpse. It was then she noticed that the zombie had something over it's ear. With her curiosity sufficiently piqued, she looked closer and realised why that her test had failed. The zombie was deaf! It had a hearing aid of some kind in each of it's ears. 'No wonder it hadn't heard me' She thought. Looking around the room and analysing what had happened, Jade realised that it had only noticed her after she turned the light on and was already far into the room. As for how she hadn't noticed it? Now that she looked around, she realised had likely been in the shower block and she had been too focused on the medicine cabinet and too trusting of her test to check it. A mistake she would have to be sure not to repeat in future.
With the zombie dead though, she could now go home. Jade had got what she came for, medicine and even some nice Jaffa cakes. 'Then again.' she thought to herself. 'This house does seem especially well stocked and with the zombie that appeared to be the homeowner dead, there shouldn't be any other zombies in here' With that thought flowing through her head she began to stand up before looking up the stairs. After all, she'd be extra cautious now so what was the danger? Besides, she needed a new jacket after her previous one was torn by that zombie's cws so a further look around couldn't hurt. After all, even if she didn't find a repcement jacket, it would help Jade and her family with scavenging it fully ter on.
It was with these thoughts flowing through her mind that she looked at before deciding to begin ascending the stairs. Whilst she climbed the stairs she began looking around and could see pictures on the wall showing how happy the owner of the house had been before the outbreak. They had pictures of themselves skiing with what appeared to be either friends or family. Pictures of themselves clearly making the most of their life. For Jade however, it just made her sad to see and think about. Life had changed for her so much in just a few short weeks, it had changed back then for everyone.
Her thoughts went back to how this had all started. Some kind of disease in the middle of the US, the government over there tried to contain it only for it to spread like wildfire despite all the effort they put into containing it. Soon enough it was all over the world and there was nothing anyone or anything could do to stop it. Just a few weeks was all it took for those who remained to live on as their lives were turned upside down. However, she was very lucky, after all she still had her whole family, her Mum, Dad and her brother. Nobody else who still remained could say the same. That was, after all, why Jade was out here risking herself like this.
Pushing those thoughts to the side as she finished climbing the stairs; she began Looking around and saw there was a few different rooms she could enter. As a result of the earlier encounter she elected to be extremely cautious. Walking up to and then knocking on the doors to each of the rooms before she entered them. As she entered, she made sure to check all the corners of each of the rooms before looking around for anything worth scavenging.
The rooms were incredibly well stocked, one was a bedroom, the other some kind of storage room and the st one being an office of some kind. In the storage room she found a lot of useful tools as well as a few high-quality thick winter jackets, which would make bites and scratches harder to hit and breach the skin.
Looking them over, she saw a few different sizes and shapes but found her gaze pulled aside as she saw a thick leather biking jacket. It was in perfect condition and would be great for holding off wayward bites and scratches. She quickly began putting it on to repce her scratched leather one. Looking in a mirror before moving on.
She began looking into the office briefly, not expecting to find anything inside of use in there. she was however, pleasantly surprised to find a few useful survival manual and mountaineering books. Whilst the mountaineering was less useful, the survival books could possibly come in handy.
In spite of this though, she still left all the things in both the office and the storage room where she found them. she didn't have much space left and she mostly just wanted to make sure the rest of the house was empty of the undead and catalogue if there was anything worth coming back for which, now she'd explored the house, there definitely was.
Finally, she entered the bedroom which was where she found the best thing out of the lot. Currently her family only had a couple of backpacks. Jade had a school bag whereas her dad kept the bigger hiking bag. In here though she found a second hiking bag, which at a gnce she estimated looked even bigger than her dad's. As such it would definitely be a useful thing to have. As a result, it would even let her move more of the things back home in this scavenging run if she transferred everything from her school bag into it. Not to mention that finding it would likely put her in the good graces of her parents as she wasn't supposed to go out alone like this and hadn't told them she was going scavenging. The situation was dire though and she wanted to prove herself.
She moved towards the bed and began using it as a rest for the two backpacks, quickly unloading the medicines and food from the school bag before beginning to move the items into the new and bigger bag. It was however, whilst she was doing this that she heard a noise from behind her. It was nothing like a zombie nor was it movement like a person; it was a weird squelching noise like nothing she’d ever heard before. The noise had seemingly come from within the room and after her fight with the zombie, it set her on guard.
She pulled out her knife and began to look around the room, searching under the wardrobes and the bed, but found nothing. Whilst she had definitely heard something, she couldn't find it and it most definitely wasn't a zombie and in the room with her. she gnced briefly at the door and confirmed that yes; she had closed it. With the door already being closed, she shrugged as she concluded that she must have been hearing things as there was nothing with her within the room. To be safe however, she concluded that she should probably put something against the door just in case.
With that conclusion made, she then dragged a chair up against the handle of the door before she returned to the bed, sheathed her knife and went back to transferring the items from one bag to the other. It was then that she heard another noise behind her, much closer this time and not a squelching noise but a weird "scree!" of sorts.
she quickly turned around and saw something jump towards her face from the top of one of the wardrobes where she hadn't thought to look before. Her hands at this point were down by her sides, but they quickly shot up to try to fight off whatever was diving towards her face.
It was barely in time as just as they arrived in front of her face just as the finger-like tendrils of the creature caught themselves around the sides of her face, their grip quickly tightening as the creature moved to push itself fully onto her face. she was fortunate however in that her hands had barely gotten themselves in front of its path as it jumped onto her face.
She tried to shove the creature off. It was then that she saw a weird sucker-tongue thing in the center of it grasping towards her face. Immediately she began to panic as she mustered all her might trying to push it off but it's grip was firm. It had barely grabbed her seconds ago yet it already felt impossible to remove even in spite of her best efforts to force it off.
To make things worse, after another second of her trying to push it off she felt as it's tail began to wrap around her neck, her stomach clenched as she realised it would start choking her soon.
She began to thrash around, blinded by panic. Fear and the creature's flesh filled her vision. Stumbling around, her foot caught on the bed and she tumbled backwards onto it. The sudden fall and impact jarred her but gave her something to push against in her fight against the creature. She pnted her elbows firmly against the mattress of the bed, allowing her to muster her full strength. She used this advantage she had gained to rally her arms to give another strong push against the creature.
Jade thought she could almost feel the creature's grip breaking but in reality, despite putting all her energy into it, the creature had barely even moved and she was no closer to breaking its firm grip on her face. Upon realising she was losing the battle with the creature she was left with no other choice but to grab her knife and hope to stab it.
Her knife was on her right hip, it was her dominant arm and normally, that was ideal. In this case however? She needed that arm to help keep the thing away from her face. Her arms were already trembling, they were already fatigued after the fight with the zombie and now against this creature. With the creature's tail getting firmer around her throat she knew the fight to keep it off her face was a losing battle. Seeing her options rapidly dwindling, she knew she had run out of other choices so she desperately moved her dominant arm out from under the creature and towards her knife's sheathe. Desperately hoping her left arm would be enough to hold it off for at least 1-2 seconds whilst she grabbed the knife.
This hope however, turned out to be in vain as no sooner had her arm left its position than the creature began grabbing even tighter onto her face, seemingly having been waiting for her to tire herself out and her left hand, exhausted and unable to hold up against it, was forced out of the way as the main body of the creature made contact with her face.
It was here that any panic she felt before seemed like nothing, but a calm breeze compared to a storm as she felt the creature push its sucker-tongue thing into her mouth. Despite trying her best to keep her mouth closed and her jaw locked, it managed to force its way through, and she felt herself begin to gag as it's proboscis went down her throat.
She felt her hand meet the sheathe of her knife and she quickly ripped it out of the sheathe. However, before she could use it to try to stab the creature, her arm sckened and fell limp as her mind clouded and within a second of realising that she was suffocating; the world blurred and darkened as she fell unconscious.
