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I didn’t want to seem desperate and vulnerable in front of her, since I couldn’t get a read on her blank expressions, but honestly, I was desperate and vulnerable, and we both knew it. So I crawled over on my hands and uninjured knee, half-dragging my other leg behind me, until I reached the bottle. I opened the lid and gulped it down greedily, and nothing had ever tasted better or felt more refreshing as it coursed down my throat.
“You don’t seem to have hydrophobia, so that’s a good thing,” the woman commented.
“Hydrophobia?” I asked breathlessly between drinks of the water.
“Water aversion. Everyone who contracts rabies experiences it, and it happens roughly 30% of the time in those with zabies.”
“Zabies?” I looked up at her in confusion. “Did you mean rabies?”
She frowned at me. “No, I meant zabies. Rabies causes madness and death in mammals, and its bastard sibling zabies causes zombification in humans.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard anyone call it that before. But it makes sense, I guess.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and I offered her a weak smile. “Thank you for helping me.”
“I haven’t really helped you yet,” she replied flatly, and she pointed to the bucket to the side. “That’s for your waste. I’ll be back tomorrow to give you more water, if you’re not dead or a zombie.”
“I truly appreciate what you’ve done so far, bringing me out of the elements and sharing your water with me,” I said. “So I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but do you have any bandages you can spare? I’d like to wrap my knee to help with the pain.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line, but her dark eyes were unreadable. “I can’t spare any resources, not if you don’t make it.”
“What about bringing me my backpack?” I suggested. “It’s my own stuff. I can tear up my old shirts, and I have some things I can read, to help me pass the time.”
She was quiet for a moment, thinking, then she said, “Tomorrow. If you’re doing well tomorrow, I’ll bring you your bag. But I’m keeping all the weapons, including the machete and the matches.”
I bristled. “You went through my stuff?”
“I wanted to make sure it was safe to leave you alive,” she replied, unashamed.
The woman turned to go, but when I called after her with a plaintive, “Hey,” she stopped and looked back.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“If I let you out, I’ll let you know.”
“What should I call you until then?”
“You shouldn’t call for me, because I won’t answer.”
11
Lazlo
It wouldn’t be so bad if there were windows.
That had been my constant refrain when I was locked up in the stockades, and it was back again, now that I was chained up in a basement. If I could only see the stars or feel the sun on my face, it would make everything infinitely more tolerable.
In the stockades, it made sense. That was meant to be a punishment, with extreme isolation leading to disorientation and fear. They had even made the cells soundproof, so I had been entirely cut off from the world. There was no way to know how much time had passed or if anything still existed beyond those four walls.
Here, at least, in the strange woman’s basement, there was a sense of time. I couldn’t see outside, but light moved through a shelf of dusty boxes. There was likely a small window hidden behind all the clutter. Watching the light shift from red in the evening to the darkness of night was comforting. It kept me grounded here.
Like almost every basement I had ever been in, it had that musty underground smell. Even the clutter felt familiar. Cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another, labelled with things like “Holiday Decorations” and “Old Sports Equipment.”
The sounds in the basement, however, were not nearly as comforting as the sights and smells. It was an old house, and from what I could see, there appeared to be an ancient, rusted furnace in the corner, rigged up to newer electrical boxes and presumably renewable energy sources. Despite the upgrades, it still roared like a demonic engine every time it kicked on the heat, and after spending so much time around zombies, that kind of sound was particularly unnerving.
The house itself groaned and creaked often, so there was never complete silence. On top of that were the bouts of activity upstairs. Lots of heavy footsteps, belonging to many people or maybe zombies or horses, it was hard to tell, honestly.
I was sitting on the basement floor, with my back against the cold cinderblock wall, when it began again. With the rumbling noises upstairs, the ceiling trembled so much that the lightbulb on a string began to sway.
A cold sweat broke out on my neck, and my heart raced. If the zombies were breaking into this house, I couldn’t just stay down here, chained to the wall, and expect to survive.
