Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed Read Online Free PDF Page B

sniffed the air. Hearing
nothing, he shrugged off the pack and, with Max sitting on his haunches and
facing the hall to the left, closed the destroyed door and barricaded it with
an overstuffed loveseat.
    “Smells like mold,” said Cade, the running commentary
unnecessary but helping to pass the time. “Much better than death ... eh, boy?”
    He pulled the curtains to the living room window and
instantly the front room and kitchen was awash with flat white light cast off
the fallen snow outside.
    The nearby kitchen was small by most standards. It contained
the usual stove and fridge in white enamel, but no dishwasher. The sink was
filled with soiled dishes and contained an inch of water, the source of the
sour smell. In a drawer he found two packages of Duracell batteries, D and C
cells, four of each; not enough to satisfy that portion of the list, but a good
start nonetheless. He stuffed the batteries in the pack and proceeded to rifle
through the cupboards, spilling anything resembling a spice or seasoning into
the Kelty’s gaping top opening. A long winter was ahead of them, he figured.
The deer meat Tran had dried and squirreled away from the grazers in the
group wouldn’t last them long, and the considerable stores of beans and rice
Logan had stockpiled in the dry storage would get old real quick without the
added kick of the scavenged spices.
    In the cupboard were a few cans of various types of soups
and vegetables. Strike one. No cheese, Snickers, or chocolate. Done in
the kitchen, Cade shouldered the pack, pulled out Glenda’s personal list, and
saw that most of the items on it were the kinds of things you’d find in a
bathroom. So he walked past his four-legged sentry and down the hall, but not
before peering out the picture window dominating the wall above the back of the
sofa. He saw the Ford had collected more snow and was now two-tone, white over
black. Beyond the truck, still a number of blocks away, the cluster of Zs
trundled up the slight grade, seemingly leaning into the driving flurries,
looking every bit like they were on the verge of being stuck fast in quicksand.
    He turned from the window and padded down the hall to the
bathroom, which was only as wide as the tub/shower combo built into the back
wall. Compared to the front room this one was a cave, the outside light barely
penetrating the frosted window and opaque shower curtain.
    On the moldy tile floor was a pile of paper wrappers and the
slick backings from a dozen Curad bandages. An empty and partially crushed box
labeled “STERILE GAUZE WRAP” sat amongst the hastily discarded wrappers. The
sink was empty, but the previous waterline was a crusty reddish-black stripe,
and below it the white enamel was tinted pink. Cade was no Sherlock Holmes, but
it was clear, based on the evidence, that someone had cleaned a wound and
prepared a makeshift field dressing here.
    Feeling around the mirror, he found a catch. Pressing it let
the door swing away from the wall, which revealed the contents of a recessed
medicine cabinet. Three shelves. Lots of antacids and creams but only four
opaque orange bottles, all with childproof caps and instructions and
warnings—both in writing and portrayed by symbols—printed on the labels.
    After a cursory glance, and finding that only one of the
bottles contained some kind of a drug with a long multi-syllable name that
matched Glenda’s cursive, he tossed them all, along with the creams, into the
pack.
    The bedroom at the end of the single-wide screamed bachelor.
There was an unfinished lodgepole pine twin bed pushed against the outside
wall. A matching nightstand and dresser flanked the bed, which was lit up by
horizontal bars of light spilling in through the dust-coated venetian blinds.
Nothing he saw from the earth tone covers to the antler lamp on the nightstand
suggested a woman lived here.
    He rifled through the clothes left behind in the dresser and
crammed anything made from fleece or wool into the pack.