There wasn't much to think about or gather when it came to the first two houses that Lynette and I searched. These families weren't all that prepared for the end of the world; aside from some canned vegetables, minimal food storage, and basic first-aid supplies, there wasn't much that we felt compelled to take. At first, Lynette took what money and valuables she could. Eventually, I convinced her that it was better to leave her pockets empty for things we knew would be valuable, such as those little things of hand sanitizer that you can attach to a purse or belt loop.

The first two houses were fine. It was the third that was different, more stressful. It seemed to be a hoarder house at first; the living room was piled high with newspapers, books, and still-boxed appliances. There were blenders piled high on the coffee table. The only low points in the room were the overfilled ashtray and the recliner tucked into a corner.

Before we walked in, Lynette pulled a bandana over her mouth and nose; I did the same. We took them from one of the previous houses. We made sure to spray them down with what little Lysol was left in a can we found under someone's sink before using them. It probably would have been better if we were able to find a washing machine or something. There wasn't one of those, though, so the disinfectant spray was going to have to do.

Even though I couldn't see her mouth, which was probably grinning wildly, I immediately clocked the delight dancing in Lynette's eyes. It was like the Christmas lights on the wall in her dorm room. While we normally met up at the suite-style dorm I shared with Peter, Lewis, and Drew Bai, I spent a considerable amount of time in her room, as well. I had seen pretty much every inch of her space, analyzed every poster and painting, and read the spine of every book on the edge of her desk.

The dynamic of the group was particularly odd. I was friends with Lynette first, because of a fateful day where she stepped on my student ID card at the commissary and offered to eat lunch with me before we went to the one class we were both a part of. She ended up coming back to my dorm to study for an exam a few weeks later and, just like that, she bonded with Peter and Lewis. At first, Hannah (Peter's girlfriend-- remember her? She's the one who got us into this whole mess) didn't appreciate that Lynette was so close to Peter without dating anyone else. Time passed, though, and things changed.

Lynette spun on what little ground she could like the protagonist of a Christmas movie during the first snow of the season. I couldn't help but grin and laugh good-naturedly at her antics.

"There's so much here that we could use!" Her voice was breathy with excitement.

"Like... three blenders?"

"Yeah! We could swing 'em, like whips!"

I shook my head. "You have the weirdest fucking ideas, Lyn."

She stopped spinning (it seemed unrelated to what I had said) and stood, facing the only real exit in the room that would allow us to go further into the house. From there, I could see that the path carved out of the clutter branched off in two directions.

I could tell what she was thinking, so I asked, "Do you want to stay together, or...?"

"Nah. It's probably abandoned." Lynette squared her shoulders. "You go upstairs, look for the same shit as always, plus any shit you think would be useful-- deodorant, toothpaste, toilet paper. Whoever lived here probably has plenty of it."

"Or they have a bunch of useless shit, like a pile of goddamn blenders."

"I mean, everything here may be trash. It can't hurt to look, though." Lynette reached around me and picked up a blender that had been taken out of the box. It looked like one of the blades was broken but, other than that, it was fine. She cradled it like a baby; the glass pressed against the exposed flesh of her arms. "I'll take the rest of the rooms in the other direction, plus the basement-- assuming there is one."

I nodded, even though that seemed like a horrible idea. When people split up in mysteries and horror movies, that's when the bodies begin to fall. Still, Lynette was the one in charge here and I didn't want to argue with her.

I climbed the stairs slowly, but two at a time. It wasn't out of caution; it was out of necessity. There must have been a dog in here at some point because the bottom of the banister was covered in excrement (I hoped it was from an animal and not a human). The stairs themselves were just as messy as the rest of the house and I didn't want to slip. Falling down these steps and landing into a pile of something (I didn't care to think about what could have been in the large piles all around the house) wasn't something I was particularly inclined to do.

The upstairs portion of the house was even worse than what was happening downstairs. It was darker. Not a single window was capable of letting in any light due to the height of the things pressed up against the blinds.

There were three rooms up here. The first was practically useless. It was a craft room that was full of scraps of paper and more filth that I didn't care to catalog. The second was a little more useful; it was a bedroom with an attached bathroom. Yes, I grabbed the unopened boxes of toothpaste from in there, and, yes, I indulged myself and took every bottle of nail polish I could find. I liked it, and I knew Lynette did, too. The most interesting part of the room, though, was the sword above the bed.

This had been a stately and wonderful room, once. Now, its smooth mahogany surfaces were covered in papers, boxes, and piles of clothes. I sighed, climbed up onto the bed (how anyone slept in here, I didn't know), and snatched the sword from its plaque. I jumped back down just as quickly. (It would have been a cool move if I didn't, unfortunately, roll my ankle upon hitting the ground.)

Now, I wasn't exactly trained in swordplay. Everything I knew came from a high school production of She Kills Monsters. I wasn't even a part of the cast for that. I was on lights. That's how little I knew. Still, I vowed to myself that I was going to use the hell out of this sword.

That left the third room. I set the boxes of toothpaste onto the ground near the stairs, turned, and faced it. It was at the end of the hall, shrouded in the same darkness as the rest of the house. Somehow, it seemed more foreboding than it did everywhere else.

This was it. This was my last chance to turn back. There probably wasn't anything interesting in there, either, so it wouldn't matter if I didn't check it out, right? Right? My morality and sense of dread wrestled for dominance; in the end, morality won and I walked into the room at the end of the hall.

I expected the same things that I saw everywhere else: more mess, more shit, and, overall, more of the same. Instead, I was greeted by a nearly-clean floor and an elderly woman in a rocking chair. Sure, the floor was messy but, compared to the rest of the house, this was the aftermath of a Mr. Clean commercial.

As soon as I saw the woman, I was taken aback. I rushed to say, "Oh! Sorry! I thought this place was abandoned."

She didn't answer. She didn't even turn to face me.

It was a tense moment, standing in that doorway, ready to close the door and retreat down the stairs. All I could hear was the beating of my own heart; my long, anxious breaths; and the gentle rocking of her chair on the dirty, shit-stained cream-white carpet and the floorboards beneath it. It took me a moment too long to realize that she wasn't breathing.

She was probably a zombie, I reasoned. She was probably dead already, in which case she wouldn't mind my intrusion into both the room and the drawers near her. I stepped further into the room, one foot in front of the other, acutely aware of the noise of every step and of every groaning piece of wood under my feet.

As I tried to squeeze past her (why did she set up her chair right in the doorway?), my heart climbed its way up into my brain so that all I could hear was its pounding. I wasn't going to attack her unless she attacked me first; I knew that all it would take to kill her was a simple decapitation.

Of course, as soon as my leg nudged her rocking chair, she became a whirlwind of motion. The old hoarder woman grabbed onto my arm, gripped it with her bloody, splintered fingernails, and tried to pull my hand toward her mouth. In an absolute panic, I swung the sword, trying to remove her arm from mine.

I lobbed off the entire hand by accident, sending black blood across my face, my lasses, and the wall in an arc. The fingers continued to dig into my arm, though, scratching into the flesh there. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this kind of pain. In that moment, I knew: her hand would continue to move, and she would continue to try to bite me, until I severed her head from her body-- or, rather, severed her spinal cord.

It may sound wimpish, but I was absolutely screaming. I was freaked out! Can you blame me? This day had been so hard and there was a real-life fucking zombie trying to eat me.

I didn't have sympathy for this woman who had probably gone through intense hardships and mental health issues before being infected with a virus that changed who she was and killed her. All I had was fear. It was fear that made me shake my hand so violently that hers fell off of mine and scuttled back up the side of her chair. It was fear that made me back up into the dresser as the old woman launched herself from her rocker and began to crawl toward me, gnashing her teeth into a gross, enameled pulp.

I kept screaming, and I kept trying to fend her off with the sword, determined to stay alive or give way my location (I wasn't sure which.)

The sound of footsteps from down the hall was barely audible; Lynette rushed in and, in one clean motion, leaped at the zombie and shattered a glass blender over her head. She brought it down again, and again. The blades hit the back of the zombie's skull and, eventually, the bone cracked. Lynette was covered in gore and she still wasn't done.

The zombie was still moving. There wasn't time for me to sit there, paralyzed, catching my breath. I wanted to leap into action, but I wasn't sure how.

Then it hit me (not literally). "I'm going to plug it in!"

"Do it, then!" Lynette didn't look up at me. She was entirely focused on pinning this zombie woman to the ground and ending her life.

The blender sprang to life as soon as the plug touched the outlet. I couldn't hear much of anything over the sound of the blade whirring, and the skull bones cracking and splintering. Lynette drove the spinning blades deeper into the cavern of this dead woman's skull, aiming for her brain.

"Her spinal cord, Lyn!" I yelled over the noise, still holding the plug (I wasn't sure why, please don't ask). "You have to sever it!"

With grim determination in her eyes and shoulders, Lynette directed it downward, toward the place where the brain connected to the rest of the peripheral nervous system. I was grateful for the facial covering, and I'm sure Lynette was, too. There was no point in getting this much blood, bone, and throbbing human gristle into our mouths while Lynette hamburgered this lady.

Eventually, it was over. The smell of iron, rotting flesh, and bile was evident in the room. I wasn't sure where the bile came from. I didn't puke. Lynette seemed to be incapable of it. Once again, I was grateful for the bandanna over my nose. It masked some of the smell.

Lynette sat there for a moment, shoulders and chest heaving as she lurked in the aftermath of what she had done. I unplugged the blender. The sound stopped, revealing only silence.

"Are you okay?" I asked, very much ignoring the still-throbbing, still-oozing-blood wounds on my forearms.

She hesitated, then nodded slowly. "Yeah," she said, eventually. "I guess."

"This is a lot. Are you --"

"Let's just get the rest of this bullshit out of the way." She stood up, wiped something from her face (it was a mixture of black zombie blood, bone marrow, and tears), and dropped the blender. "Let's just go."