Everyone Dies in the End #57

Todd

The reached the far edge of the store and the silence was broken. Broken by a sound so alien, so strange, that at first none of the three recognized it. Susan was the first to identify the lilting echo; of course Susan was the first.

“It’s laughing. It’s a little girl laughing.”

In front of them stood a thickly picketed white fence, surrounding the back yard of an equally white house. In better times, Todd guessed, the storeowner lived in the house. Now… well now it looked as if the storeowner still lived in the house. The exterior was clean, the porch was swept, the lawn mowed. Mowed? Who the hell cut their grass? And the house had windows. Not the shattered kind that dominated the apocalyptic landscape, but real, honest to goodness, whole, glass pain windows. Again the laughter, like chimes in the still air. Todd glanced at Susan and Arty. They had heard it too.

Susan nodded toward the gate set in the picket fence. “She’s in there.”

Todd motioned toward the gate and snugged the shotgun against his shoulder. “Open it.”

“Really, Todd?” hissed Arty. “A shotgun? It’s just a little girl.”

Todd glared back. “It sounds like a little girl. You don’t know what the hell it is.”

Arty held his gaze for a long moment, but then without another word he pulled his 9mm from the back of his pants and took a shooter’s stance. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves overhead.

Susan looked at the two, frowning, the breeze tousling her black shaggy hair, shadows shifting over the black pentagram on her cheek. “You two are pathetic.”

Todd smiled. “But pathetically alive.” He gestured toward the fence with the barrel of the shotgun. “The gate?”

Susan stepped forward. “Whatever.”

            The dull black latch was the lift type, and when Susan did, it squeaked. Todd felt his buttocks tighten.