Pushing the thought aside, I made my way carefully across the front hall of the house, following the flickering glow of electric candlelight coming from the kitchen. I could see faint marks on the floor where someone, most likely Jack, had been drug through…

Someone jumped on my back as I crossed the threshold into the kitchen, presumably from some impossible perch near the ceiling. I staggered forward at the new weight as a pale hand shot into my view, swiping the gun in my hand onto the floor. That’s when I heard a woman’s voice hissing in my ear.

“Get him, Tommy! Now! Now!”

Tommy, the same dazed man I had seen a few days before, came charging out of the shadows with a fire axe. He still looked terrible and his eyes were glazed, but this didn’t slow his movements as he raised his axe to prepare for his blow. I didn’t have time to get the gun, and I didn’t like my odds trying to fight him off with her attacking me from behind. So I did what I had done just a few moments before.

I knelt.

The axe blow shook me even with the cushion of the woman’s body on my back. I screamed in pain as she dug her fingers into my neck before suddenly releasing me. It had been as I’d hoped—whatever Tommy’s status with the Rot, his reaction times and judgment had not recovered yet. I looked around and saw that Tommy was freeing the axe dispassionately from where he had buried it in his girlfriend’s back. Rolling forward, I grabbed the gun and moved into a crouched firing position before putting two rounds into his chest. As the echo of the second gunshot left my ears, he slumped down next to the woman.

I took a moment to check both of them, gun still at ready position. They were both dead, so unless the Rot could resurrect them…which I couldn’t honestly say was impossible given my ignorance…I was clear to move on. After a second of consideration, I grabbed up the axe and took off their heads just to be safe.

Their attack had made me more jumpy, and I struggled to calm my nerves as I went down into the cellar and then the tunnel at its far end. But there were no more ambushes, and while I hated being in the tunnel, I took that space of relative quiet as I moved forward to try and steady myself for what was coming. For what I would have to do. I approached several intersections of tunnels, always wary of some potential horror that might be spawned from their darkness, as they didn’t have a candlelit path the way my tunnel did.