He doesn’t think Jeff would have screwed them over, but he still clears the space carefully.
They creep through each empty room of what used to be a happy home. Family photos full of domestic bliss line the walls, interspersed with splatters of blood where he can only assume Jeff’s wife turned. A trail of red leads to the back door, but they don’t follow that. Instead, they continue to the last room at the end of the hall to find the nursery.
The ultrasound machine sits nestled among a plethora of baby items. They’re quick to stuff whatever they can fit in their bags. Soft blankets and diapers, bottles and books. Even a fish mobile that Wyatt knows isn’t practical.
They could use that bassinet, but fitting the machine into their tiny car will be a hassle in itself.
Emma smiles at a stuffed cat. “She’ll like this.”
“You two are both sure it’s a girl, huh?”
“Very sure.”
“You know how to tell?”
Emma raises a brow with a shake of her head. “There’s a way?”
The machine is the obvious answer, but odds are none of them will know what they’re looking at on the screen. So, he reaches for an old wives’ tale his mother told him long ago. “You take a necklace or a stone on a string, anything with weight to it, and hover it over the belly. If it circles right, it’s a girl, left, it’s a boy.”
Emma narrows her eyes, skeptical. “This works? You’re sure?”
“Swear it, I saw my mom use it with my aunt. Predicted it would be a boy, and she was right. It’s foolproof.”
“I’ve never heard of that. We have to try it! I hope I’ll have a sister, but I guess I could handle a brother if I have to.”
He pauses, shaking his head at the machine. “Okay, we gotta take it apart and hope we can put it back together again.”
There’s no chance he can carry the entire unit to the car. The wheels aren’t made to roll across dirt or grass, and the whole thing stands as tall as Emma.
He finds a butter knife in the kitchen to disassemble the screws. Shoves the smaller parts into their bags and straps the base to his back with a few belts. They’re halfway across the front lawn with their items in tow when a herd stops him cold. At least eight rotters have already seen them. Runners can’t be far behind.
All they can do is turn back.
The noise from a window shutter banging against the house on the second floor isn’t doing them any favors. It lures the dead in their direction. Wyatt watches through the curtains as eight rotters turn into more than he can count.
“They’ll leave eventually,” he whispers to Emma. “They’ll get distracted by something, we just have to wait them out.”
Waiting them out is a foolish choice, though. Three hours later, and the herd has only grown. They spill across the lawn and cover three adjacent yards, forming a sea of the dead between them and their car.
Wyatt paces the living room, regretting that they ever left Addison.
“They’re like dogs,” Emma peeks through the curtains. “I watched them when I was in the woods. I hid in the trees and saw them down below, how they’d sniff each other, especially the fast ones.”
He follows her line of sight to a runner with its nose plastered to one of its dead counterparts, giving it a sniff before moving on to the next.
“The slow ones don’t do that as much,” she continues. “But I figure it works the same, and they just don’t do anything as much.”
“You think they can tell what’s edible and what’s not by how it smells?”
Emma nods. “If we smell like them, maybe they’ll leave us alone.”
Smell like them, she says, as if it’s a perfectly logical and simple solution. Maybe it could be, if he were alone.
He can’t consider this when it’s his job to keep her safe. Walking through a herd covered in blood without actual proof that it’ll protect them seems like a surefire way to end up dead.
There were reports here and there before the power cut off about theories like this.
Most of it was bullshit, but he vaguely remembers a few comments on the dead being guided by scent. The newscaster who reported it got ripped out of his chair by the cameraman on live TV. That sort of thing sticks in one’s head.
