Free Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode by Em Garner

talk. It’s the gas inside him. The pressure of my hands as I dig inside the other pocket, finding the jumble of keys. I’m the one making him wheeze and moan. My hand gets stuck inside his pocket, my fist bigger coming out than going in. I can let go of the keys and get away from him, or I can yank.
    When I do, the corpse … settles. The stink is rich and thick and enormous now, and all I can see is the bulge of my hand in his pocket, and all I can think is, “He made sure his slippers were on. He made sure his slippers were on,” over and over, but as I tug and pull the keys free, the body’s feet shift on the floor and one slipper comes off.
    Gasping, the keys in my grip, I stumble back. The body slides sideways, head lolling. His hand falls away and his arm knocks into the table, which rattles the bottle and the glass for a moment before the whole table tips over and everything shatters.
    I’m not screaming, I’m whistling breaths in and out of my lungs through my clenched teeth. I don’t want Opal to hear and come in. I don’t want to breathe the air full of dead-guy germs. The world tips and turns as I push myself away from him, but the body moves toward me, shaking and sliding onto the floor, and I jump out of the way just in time, before it can land on me.
    I can’t move. The keys in my hand are hung on a key ring of plastic with a picture of a smiling couple inside it. It’s the guy on the floor in front of me—I know it—though in the picture he’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a ball cap. He’s smiling, his arm around a pretty woman with reddish hair. The names on the back are KEVIN and SANDRA. The sun’s shining on them both, and I don’t want to see their happiness because I know how terribly it all ended.
    Without even a second longing glance at the books, I back out of the room and close the door behind me. At last, I suck in great gulps of stale air. I want to scrub my tongue and the inside of my nose, but I settle for washing my hands in the tiny powder room that’s completely dark because there are no windows. I have to keep the door propped open with my foot, because it keeps wanting to swing shut, and I can’t deal with being in the darkness right now, even in a room too small to hide any monsters.
    In the kitchen, I open the back door and holler for Opal, who’s still playing with the dog. “I’m going to see if the feed’s in the basement. You stay there!”
    She gives me a curious look, probably at the shaky tone of my voice, but she’s too busy playing with the puppy to argue. At the kitchen sink, I wash my hands again, then rinse my mouth. I imagine the taste of that death smell still inside me, and for a minute I’m sure I’m going to barf.
    It never gets easier, seeing dead bodies.
    I saw a flashlight in one of the drawers when I waslooking for the keys. So I take it, then I unlock the door and make it halfway down the stairs before remembering the
Evil Dead
. I’m so stupid. Anything could be down here, ready to grab my ankles and pull me down, ready to swallow my soul.…
    Freaked out, I leap the last couple of steps to the concrete floor and turn, waving the flashlight, expecting to see the red eyes and bloody mouth of something horrible coming after me. All I see is a tidy basement cast in shadow, but it isn’t completely dark, because there are a few windows in wells.
    I see at once why he locked the basement door. Shelves and shelves of food and supplies. Cans, jars, bottles, plastic bins, neatly labeled. Camping gear. Jugs of water. Everything’s arranged so neatly, it’s like being in a grocery store, and for a few seconds, all I can do is stare.
    Every time I go into town, I risk getting pulled for a random screening, and I know the consequences of that. They’d be immediate and terrible. With this stuff, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting our rations. Or stretching them to last. This is better than the money I pulled from the purse in the closet,