ALL THE ROT AROUND US S01XE02
a cold, rotting claw gifted with the single-minded strength of death
Elly spun around, frantic, the blackness of the room a paltry foe compared to the Stranger approaching the front door.
She crept blindly towards the corner, crouching to feel in front of her, fingers picking up dust and grit on the slats of the wooden floor. When she felt the nylon sleeping bag, she grabbed Lenny’s arm and shook him awake. He let out a short bark of alarm before falling silent.
“Get up, we have to leave now,” she hissed. She could hear his fast breathing as they snatched up their few loose belongings and shoved them into their sleeping bags with fast, practiced movements.
They had learned quickly not to take many things with them to their sleeping spots after a necessary hasty retreat had forced them to leave behind valuable clothing and personal items. Lenny had cried for two days after losing his Gameboy, complete with carrying case and several games. Elly had cried over losing her dad’s pistol. After that, they started sleeping with most everything shoved into the bottoms of their sleeping bags, ready to go.
Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she felt for Lenny and grasped his hand, pulling him towards the back door. They stepped softly, but the old floor still creaked as they walked. Elly held her breath as she eased the wooden chair that was blocking the back door out of the way.
A soft knock at the front door made her jump. Lenny clutched at her arm, urging her to hurry.
“Hello, anybody in there?” A young man’s voice called out in a cautious tone, muffled by the thick wood.
Elly turned the doorknob and tiptoed out onto the back porch, leading Lenny silently behind her. The moon was just a sliver, the stars dotting the inky black sky. The soft glow from the streetlight up front allowed her to see clearly enough after leaving the total darkness of the cabin. It was a straight shot to the tree line, about 100 feet from the backdoor. She scanned left and right, raking the yard with her eyes for any signs of rotters.
Another knock, a bit louder. “I know you’re in there. I can hear you walking around. Please. I’m not going to hurt you.” The doorknob jiggled, but another chair jammed up underneath it prevented it from being pushed open.
Elly took exactly one second to weigh her options. The last people that she had encountered who started with ‘I’m not going to hurt you’ had hit her over the head and stolen her water purifier. She was lucky they hadn’t done worse. She wasn’t about to risk an encounter like that in the middle of the night. She wistfully wished she still had her dad’s pistol. Any gun, really.
A crow called from a stone’s throw away, making them jump. The bird was alight on the back of a rocking chair, sizing them up with one beady eye. She glared at it for a half beat. Not today.
“Come on,” she whispered to Lenny, gripping his little hand as she crept out onto the porch before darting down the stairs and across the yard. It had rained yesterday. The layer of leaf litter was soft underfoot, minimizing the noise of their footsteps.
She was checking over her shoulder for any sign of the Stranger when Lenny screamed, a long shrill thing that tickled the back of her jaw unpleasantly. She instinctively jerked, ripping Lenny behind her and falling into a defensive crouch. Her heart beat wildly in her chest. They were nearly to the tree line.
Elly smelled it before she saw it, a combination of rotting meat and raw sewage. She swung her head around to register the threat when her free arm was grabbed, fingers wrapping around her forearm in a vice grip. Her eyes locked on the hand that had her. She noticed that the fingernails were painted red, a garish red highlighted by the grayish-blue hue of the peeling skin that it decorated.
Her body jerked backward involuntarily, survival instincts roaring to the surface, and she tripped over something soft and tumbled onto her back. The hand was still locked onto her forearm, fingers digging into her skin painfully, and the dead lady came down with her. Her eyes locked onto rheumy orbs fringed with spidery lashes, sunken into a leathery old face caked with running foundation. She had died recently. Elly had always thought that makeup was overrated. This woman had been in the opposite camp. Her blue eyeshadow was relatively unmarred, the bottom half of her face smeared with gore, a morbid rouge giving her a distinctly clown-like appearance.
The rotter’s dentures clacked together insistently inches from Elly’s face, saliva falling in ropy strands. Elly’s left arm was trapped underneath her back, and her right arm was just barely keeping those uncannily straight white teeth from closing on her cheek. The rotter was much larger than she was, and death hadn’t wasted away any of her fat stores yet. She couldn’t get enough leverage to push her off.
Lenny was still screaming somewhere behind her. She wanted to yell for him to run, to get somewhere safe, but she couldn’t get the words out amidst the struggle. Her arm was rapidly tiring from holding the rotter up, the weight of it bringing those shiny white teeth closer to her face in increments. She flailed out with her legs, trying to wiggle to where she could flip her over. The teeth clacked closer, and she turned her face, trying to get more distance. A rock dug into the back of her scalp as she tried to gain more time, any time, kicking and throwing her weight from side to side, grasping for any advantage. The rotter slipped, and so did Elly’s grip, and the dead woman with the morbid rouge fell forward toward Elly, with nothing holding her back.
Elly opened her mouth and screamed, her heart taking off, feeling like it would beat a hole into the ground through the back of her chest. With everything that had happened, with all of the death around her, she still hadn’t thought it might happen to her. She wished she had told Lenny that she loved him more. What was the last thing that she had said to him? She couldn’t remember. And now she was going to die, here in the dirt, right in front of him. Just like mom. Oh, god.
Elly squeezed her eyes shut as she felt the hot, putrid breath of the dead woman on her cheek. This was it. There was an explosion, and a feeling of warmth spreading. The lady relaxed as her open mouth fell forward, lightly pressing her slick teeth into Elly’s cheek.
There was a high-pitched noise, long and ringing in her ears. Her throat was tight, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She realized that she was still screaming. She opened her eyes, cutting off the scream and drawing a ragged breath as the dead woman lifted her head and shoulders, preparing for another attack. Her eyes stung, seeing red, and she let out a fresh shriek, noticing another hulking shape approaching from behind.
The woman flopped to the side, head lolling out of the neck of her old gingham dress and settling into an adjacent pool of viscous blood and unidentifiable bio-matter. The other shape moved towards her and she kicked out wildly with one steel-toed boot, nailing it right in the shin.
It stumbled towards her as she scrabbled backward on her hands and feet like a crab. It cursed, pausing to regard her before turning to the dead woman and beginning to search the pockets of her dress and apron.
It had said something, it was searching… it wasn’t trying to tear her apart. Her mind registered all of these facts in slow motion, like she was not quite ready to believe that the mortal danger had passed. Survival mode decided when the danger was gone. Elly recognized the Stranger. She was grateful that he wasn’t a rotter, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t a threat.
She flipped over onto all fours and pushed herself up, searching around for Lenny. He wasn’t behind her. She spun, squinting, her bloody eyes burning, looking for any sign of her brother.
“Lenny!”, she screamed, not caring about making noise now. They had already made enough of a racket to attract any rotters in a 2-mile radius. Now they needed to hole up, and fast, before they started showing up.
“Lenny!!!” she screamed louder, her voice breaking. Her face felt wet. She wiped it with the back of her hand, and it came away smeared with blood and snot. He wasn’t in the yard. The Stranger was still searching the rotter on the ground.
She staggered up to the cabin, almost falling again when she tripped over her sleeping bag. She grabbed it, her mind a blur as she ran up the stairs to the back porch of the cabin.
“Lenny?” she called out, her voice echoing in the enclosed space.
“I’m here, Elly,” came a soft voice, hidden in the darkness. A quick search and she found him, hugging his knees underneath a small end table butted next to a dusty old bookshelf.
She sobbed with relief, pulling him into a tight embrace. She could feel him shaking. He was so small, so fragile. “Are you ok? Did it get you?” She didn’t give him time to reply as she held up his arms, looking him over for any signs of injury. Satisfied that he was in one piece, she scooped up his sleeping bag and grabbed him by the hand.
“C’mon, we gotta go,” she ordered, already executing a new plan of escape. They could beat the Stranger to the station wagon and leave him in the dust.
They ran to the front door. She grabbed the chair blocking it and tossed it out of the way, swung the door open, and ran headfirst into a tall, solid body standing in the doorframe.
“Don’t you want to say ‘thank you’?” the Stranger said.