Chapter 6

Chapter Six

The highway cut through the hills, turned a light brown by the dying grass. The boys trudged down the center of the cracked asphalt overgrown with weeds, pulling behind them a rusted, red wagon, which contained their supplies. Among the canned foods and bottles of water and jumbles of odds and ends were toys including a Rubik's cube, a Nintendo Gameboy and the board game Life with a box that was tattered and worn.

The boys wore hooded sweatshirts that were pulled low over their baseball caps, and each wore eye gear to protect themselves from the blustery wind. Simon had on tinted skiing goggles that covered half his face, and Isaac wore aviators with a spiderweb of fractures. And beneath it all, the howling and whistling of the rushing air, were the faint, rhythmic squeaks of the white-rimmed wagon tires as the boys leaned into the wind and pushed on.

When the boys rounded a bend, a surge of wind knocked into them and pushed them back a few steps. Isaac turned to Simon and shook his head. He pointed at a large rock, and they headed towards it with bowed heads. As the boys stepped off the road, a gust hit the wagon broadside and blew it violently over, spraying its contents in a wide skittish arc.

Simon was about to run after the items but Isaac stopped him.

"Leave them!" shouted Isaac as loudly as he could. "We'll get them later!"

Simon nodded and the brothers made their way to the large boulder where they crouched closely together and waited.

The wind withered later in the day, and the boys spread out in search of their scattered items. Isaac saw a flash of white near the crest of a hill and ran to it. When he got there, he was relieved to see it was one of his notebooks in a relatively clean condition. He picked it up and climbed to the top of the hill to survey his surroundings but dropped immediately to the ground and motioned Simon over.

"Let me see the binoculars," Isaac said.

Simon gave him the binoculars, which were red and blue with a plastic body and plastic lenses, the kind found in bargain bins of toy stores. Isaac peered through the tubes and focused as best as he could on a farmhouse in the distance. It was in a large clearing with a neglected field that spread to the hill on which Simon and Isaac lay. The image was blurry, and it was hard to discern any details through the scratches on the lenses, but Isaac could see no movement around the house.

"Should we go look inside?" asked Simon.

Isaac lowered the binoculars. They had encountered a few farmhouses the past few days they had been on the road, just like this one, where they had been able to replenish their supplies. But the thought of going through any enclosed space, not knowing what would be waiting behind a closed door was always unnerving.

"I guess we have no choice. We lost half our stuff," Isaac said. "But remember that last farmhouse we were in? You thought you heard something and you started screaming and running around like an idiot. Remember that? You can't do that anymore, do you understand?"

"You don't have to keep telling me. I already said sorry for that. And besides, you started screaming too, don't you remember?"

"That was only because you started screaming first, dummy." Isaac could see that his brother was beginning to fume. Before everything changed, he might have pushed further until his brother became furious or started to cry, but he knew that he could no longer be that way. "Just try to stay quiet. That's all I'm saying," he said. "Alright, you know what to do if we have to make a run for it, right? Just go anywhere until you're safe. It doesn't matter where."

"I know," replied Simon, still annoyed.

"Alright then. Let's make that rock where we were just at our meeting point. If I'm not there, just wait for me."

Simon stared silently at the ground.

"What is it?" asked Isaac.

"What if… what if you don't come back?"

Isaac paused. "I'll come back."

"But what if you don't? Dad didn't come back after he said he would. What am I supposed to do then?"

"Don't think about that kind of stuff, Simon. It's not good for you."

"Promise me that won't happen."

"How am I supposed to promise something like that?"

"Just promise."

Isaac had imagined what he would do if something had happened to Simon, but the thought of it brought a crushing heaviness and fear like peering into a black and endless pit. He had wondered too what Simon would do if left alone. He would be frightened, more frightened of what his mind would conjure than anything this land of dread and spite could hold.

Someday soon, he would have to tell Simon what to do in that situation, to give him hope and a purpose. But that would have to wait until he, himself, knew how this could be done.

"I promise," he said.

The farmhouse had two stories. Its white siding had chipped in several places, revealing gray wood underneath, and the screen on the aluminum door had come loose and curled at the edges. Isaac and Simon opened the screen door and stepped into the dark kitchen. The smell of all these houses were the same - stale sweat on old clothes.

On the linoleum were dried boot prints. Crusted dishes lay in the sink, and the drawers and cabinets were agape, empty and lifeless. Simon and Isaac made their way into the house, stepping lightly as had become their custom during such moments. The furniture in the living room had been pushed to the side or upturned, and broken glass littered the blackened carpet. They stopped at the foot of a long, narrow staircase with mahogany wainscoting and striped wallpaper.

The boys had seen houses in similar condition, but something was different about this one. Isaac couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. It could have been the dark stains on the carpet or the impression on one end of the sofa or the mirror that was the only thing aligned in this mass of clutter. Being in the house felt to Isaac like those times when he was younger and had to walk down the darkened hallway to the bathroom, and the murkiness of the night felt suffocating, for he knew that there was something in the shadows watching his every move.

He was about to tell Simon that they had to leave when heavy, deliberate footsteps fell from somewhere, deep inside the house, one fall heavier than the other as if whatever it was suffered from a limp. Isaac quickly turned towards the kitchen, but the footsteps were now coming from that direction. Isaac caught Simon's glare, and they began to climb the steps to the second floor gingerly. Halfway up, Isaac stepped on a board that creaked, and the boys froze.

The footsteps left the hollowness of the linoleum floor and moved into the living room and became muffled by the carpet. Isaac felt the urge to run, but he kept still and prayed that Simon would do the same.

The footsteps stopped in the living room, and a deep thud filled the silence as something heavy was dropped to the floor. Over his shoulder, he could see the back of a large man in jeans, t-shirt, and muddy work boots. He was kneeling and bending at the waist, bowing, but then came the sounds of teeth tearing into flesh, and the smell of decay.

Isaac caught Simon's eyes again, and he motioned to the top of the stairs. Simon nodded quickly. Isaac remembered his father teaching him how to control his fear - focus on the next step and take it. So that's what he did. He lifted his foot, and he took the next step, and the one after that. But the next one, when placing his weight, a creak sounded and the chewing stopped.

"Run!" Isaac shouted.

The boys sprinted up the stairs and down the short hallway to the farthest room. They pushed against the door and ducked inside as heavy footsteps came up the stairs after them. Isaac shut the door. A small bed with a bare mattress lay in the corner and parts of broken toys were strewn about. On the wall was faded wallpaper of balloons and merry-go-rounds. And off to the side was a door. Isaac opened it and rushed inside with Simon. They were in a small closet with a pile of clothes on the floor and empty hangers above. The boys crouched and covered themselves with the clothes just as the bedroom door opened.

In the movies they had seen, the footsteps outside would slow to a methodical cadence, and a shadow would cross the sliver of light underneath the doorway, but here, in this faraway place, so different from anything they had known, the footsteps came to them without hesitation and the door opened, and through the gauzy material that covered his face, Isaac could make out the dark outline of the beast that was blocking out the light.