Death's Awakening

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Karmen

Three days later, Karmen stood in the middle of the large walk-in closet. She shook her head in disappointment. There was absolutely nothing wearable in there.

She reached for the closest rack and started pulling shirts down the rod one at a time.

Noah's dad had nothing but brown suits in here. The same brown suit in variation, over and over again. She didn't see a single t-shirt or casual polo. Nothing. There was a stack of plain white undershirts in one of the middle cubbies, but when she pulled it out and held it over her body, she shook her head. She looked inside at the tag. XL. Great. It might as well have been a tent.

She opened the drawers looking for boxers, but those were way too big too. They just slid right down and she wasn't about to wear a fifty year old man's boxers with a belt. Yuck.

She thought about asking Noah for clothes. Most guys thought it was sexy when a girl wore their clothes. But both Noah and Parrish had been keeping to themselves the past few days. No one was really talking to each other.

She needed her own clothes, and that was that.

She'd been wearing the same white tank top and pink shorts for the past four days. She'd washed the same pair of underwear four times in the sink. She was done. She needed fresh clothes. Noah and Parrish had ganged up on her last time she'd mentioned it, saying it was too risky for her to go over there. They didn't care that those things only came out at night. No, they swore it was too dangerous because there was no way to know if one of them had wandered into her house.

But she knew she'd locked all the doors. There was no way one of those things had gotten inside. It wasn't like they had keys or anything.

She'd made her mind up, and she didn't care what they had to say about it.

In fact, she wasn't even going to tell them she was going. They'd just talk her out of it or try to scare her. But it was ten in the morning. There wouldn't be any infected wandering around this early, especially when the sun was shining as brightly as it was today.

Karmen tiptoed down the hall and listened in at Parrish's door. She was in there playing Mozart again. Her favorite sleeping music. Parrish had been staying up at night, watching the rotters walk back and forth under the street lamps. Then she'd sleep half the day away. It was weird.

But with Parrish asleep, it was the perfect time to go out.

Noah was downstairs in the basement. Again. She'd seen him sneak off down there sometime around eight this morning, which usually meant he wouldn't show his face until lunchtime. She had no idea what he was doing down there all the time, but whatever it was, at least he was out of her hair for now.

The guy was weirder than she ever knew. Hot, but weird.

No one would even know she'd gone. All she had to do was figure out the easiest way in and out of the house. The front door was too barricaded to ever go out that way. There had to be at least fifteen boards across the front. But the back only had five. She could remove those boards and make her way around the back of the house, through the back gate.

It seemed better than trying to squeeze through one of the windows.

The garage door was out because it would make too much noise going up and down. The back door was her best choice.

She grabbed the hammer and went to work, being as quiet as she could as she pulled the nails from the boards.

It took longer than she'd planned, but as soon as she had all the boards removed, she unlocked the door and walked out into the back yard. She stood on the steps for a few seconds, letting the summer breeze warm her skin. She'd been in that house way too long without any fresh air.