CHAPTER ELEVEN
Iwake with a start, my heart pounding in my chest. The familiar specter of my mother’s dying body lingers in my mind before it clears, and I realize I’m in another house, and the world has indeed gone to shit.
It would seem Enzo never came home, and it’s pitch-black outside, meaning I missed dinner, and he never came to get me. With a pulse of worry, I pull myself up with a sigh and glance around, but nothing here is going to reveal the mystery of where he goes every night. Wherever it is, it can’t be good.
With a painful stretch for my aching muscles, I get up and venture to the living room, hoping he crashed on the couch in his anger, but the room is equally quiet, and with nowhere else to look, I scope out the extra bedroom down the hall to no avail.
“Where are you, Enzo?” I ask with a sigh.
I’m afraid to leave because curfew is at dusk, and I don’t want to know the penalty for disobedience, but I’m also scared not to know. I need to find Enzo.
It’s for this reason only that I walk back to my room and pull on a black hoodie that covers my face before I search the kitchen for weapons. Luckily, since the ones I brought in when I came are still in the motel room, the homes were left as is and I grab a knife from the kitchen, then circle back and grab another.
I set out into the darkened streets with a heavy-duty flashlight, but I don’t want to use it unless I have to, so my only light comes from the stars shining brightly overhead. If I weren’t so grim, I’d take a moment to admire the sky, now fully visible without smog and city lights to dull it.
I’m not sure where to look, but I figure Shepherd’s home is a good place to start. If my experience is anything to go by, he isn’t ashamed to do business in his fucking parlor. So, I head that way, taking back roads and hiding behind bushes when necessary. I keep my footsteps soft and take my time. I don’t need fatigue or noise to hinder my progress.
There’s no one about, beyond an occasional sentry, and with my less than stellar hiding tactics and slow pace, it takes me a good twenty minutes to reach Shepherd’s home.
As before, a soft light shines in his front window, confirming that he is at least still awake and a shiver slides down my spine at the reminder of what I’m potentially walking into.
Since I can’t just knock on the door, I make my way down the side of the house, where it’s dark. My heart is pounding out of my chest at the proximity to Shepherd, but I power through grimly, peeking into the first window I come across. It’s dark, and I can’t see anything inside.
My first obstacle is a concrete block wall barring access to his backyard. It’s all I can do to keep my trembling limbs from giving out, but I’ve come too far to go back, so I brace myself and crawl less than gracefully up the side. I’m panting by the time I lift my leg over and straddle the wall, facing an equally dark backyard, save a window on the side of the house that casts enough light for me to see the ground below.
Carefully, I ease my other leg over the side and allow my body to drop the few feet to the ground. The slight crunch makes me cringe, but nothing moves in the dark, and with a deep, albeit shaky breath, I ease my way over to the window and hunch below it. I can hear muffled moans and groans, and I’m afraid to look inside because I’m not sure I want to know what that sound leads back to.
Contemplating my options, I sit for a few minutes, screwing up my courage before turning and facing the wall and crouching on my heels. Ever so slowly, I inch my head up so that just my eyes and the top of my head breach the window.
At first, I can’t describe what I see, just a mess of writhing, naked bodies. Slowly, though, it comes into focus, and I see a man fucking another man receiving oral sex from someone under him. The moans and groans are from pleasure, which is good, I guess.
Bewildered, I’m staring at the sight blankly before I realize Enzo is the one fucking the man, his pelvis slapping against the man who raises his head and reveals himself to be David.
Shocked, I drop back to the ground and put my hands over my eyes. What the actual fuck. Enzo is fucking David in Shepherd’s house? Why?
I guess it never occurred to me he might be gay.
I turn back and peek one more time, trying to identify the man on the floor sucking David’s dick, but I can’t see anything except his back, and I don’t recognize his ass.
Fuck. I feel like I need to cleanse my eyeballs or something. I can only surmise that Enzo is being forced to do this. At least, I hope he is because surely he knows David is the one who locked me in that room and left me for dead. He wouldn’t pursue someone like that, would he? Hell, maybe he would, and I just don’t know him or his motives at all.
A commotion erupts in the room, and I raise my head once more at the noise, gasping when I see David growling and eating the man’s face, the one who was previously giving him head. His vicious teeth pull thick, blood-stained strips of skin from the man’s skull before he chews it slowly.
Once I can tear my gaze away from the horror, I see Enzo standing with his back against the wall. Strangely, there’s no urgency to his movements as he drags his pants on. But his face is hard, his eyes bleak, while he watches David finish off his meal.
David goes for the man’s jugular, and his cries fall to a low gurgle. It’s only once the screams are cut short do I realize the racket David was causing.
Enzo exits the room, leaving the door open, and I glance at David once more, looking for any sign of a bite. I see nothing, and his body is pretty wide open for perusal at this point.
Shouting from the front of the house has me bouncing away. Shit. I need to get out of here because after that man became zombie food, I can’t imagine they won’t search the perimeter. With a pounding heart, I crouch by the cement wall and listen for noise, and when I hear nothing, I pull my ass back over the wall.
Adrenaline is running haywire through my system, giving me the strength to push up and over in one move, and I drop to the ground on the other side with a slight echo.
“What the fuck is going on?” I hear someone roar from the house. “Holy shit!”
“Search the damn house,” someone says, probably Shepherd.
Footsteps approach from the side of the house, and I freeze. Fuck, I don’t want to be found out here, but I drop my head in defeat when the footsteps grow closer and a light flicks on over my head.