Roy landed on the ground as softly as he could. It still made a hard thump. He saw a car coming on the street and ducked behind what looked to be a large propane tank. There were people everywhere. Not only guards but just women out and about. Being the only man, he'd be spotted in an instant. He had to move fast. He crept around the side of the house and saw the coast was clear to a line of trees. He still needed to plan his escape, but hiding in a small forest will buy him a few minutes. Just then he heard voices coming from around the behind him. He noticed a cellar door attached to the house.

He sprinted over to it and gave the door a giggle. Locked with a combination. He tried "0000". Pop! It opened up easily. He had learned that since everything went haywire, people had lost the instructions to most locks and didn't know how to reset them. He quickly opened it and jumped inside. He recognized the voices. They were two of the women that had captured him. He rushed down the stairs and hid around the corner. He thought it was weird that the light was on but ignored it. The cellar was pretty basic. It had a boiler and some shelves with rations on it and not much else. It had another set of ascending stairs which he assumed went into the main house. Suddenly he heard the voices getting closer to the cellar door. He quickly hid under a shelf. It wasn't enough, so he slid two sacks of rice off the shelf and put it in front of him. It wouldn't be long before they would realize he was gone. He was running out of time.

The cellar door opened and Barbra and Janet came walking down the stairs.

"All I'm saying is that if you had a choice between a factory that makes lemonade and a brewery that makes brandy, why would you choose lemonade?" said Barbra.

"Because I'm not a drunken psychopath." responded said Janet. "Here, help me with these cans." She grabbed a bunch of food off the shelf.

"Fuck, work, work, work! That's all I do! Hey, what do you think they'll do with that guy we found? He looks strong enough, why don't we get him to do some heavy lifting?"

"I don't know. He couldn't be older than 20. Young thing." she paused. "They'll probably do a ton of science stuff to him to find some sort of cure. Or force him to reproduce an entire generation of people." she said as she was going back up the stairs.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"You don't say…" mumbled Barbra close behind.

"It was a joke."

"I know that! I'm not an idiot! And I'm not a psychopath either!" yelled Barbra. "I'm a sociopath. There's a difference."

As soon as the door closed, Roy noticed he had been sweating. The water from his head stung his eyes and he wiped them clean. But then he noticed a small breeze coming from the bottom of the wall.

That's odd, he thought, why would a wall have a breeze? Just then the shelf and wall began to move and Roy quickly crawled under another part of the shelf. The wall was really a door! What the hell is going on? he thought. A woman walked out. "I'll be right back, I promise!" said a familiar voice. Roy couldn't make out who it was and when he tried to peek from under the shelf, she was already at the top part of the stairs leading into the house. Roy came from under the shelf and inspected the shelf to find the way she opened it. Then he noticed one of the cans in the back of the shelf looked newer than the ones in the front.

Grabbing it, he noticed that it wasn't a can at all, but a door handle. He knew going deeper into the house is the complete opposite of what he should be doing, but his curiosity was too strong. It could lead to a sewer hatch. If he found one of those, he'd be home free. It would likely lead under the moat and sewers were never guarded. Too dangerous for no reward. Luckily for him, zombies were not an issue. He pulled it and sure enough, the wall opened to a well-lit hallway.

It had red wallpaper with a black diamond pattern and the carpet was a nice burgundy shade. There were golden hanging lamps leading deeper into the hallway and at the end was a large glow. He walked down the corridor in awe and entered into a large study. There were books everywhere and there were a couple of padded chairs by a fireplace. It was beautiful, but something in there smelt foul.

MOAN! He jumped at the sound of a couple of moans coming from the corner behind him. Two men, one older and the other a teenage boy were chained to the wall. They just stared at him with haunting eyes, swaying their bodies back and forth. "What the hell are you two doing here?" he said to himself. He noticed that they had not rotted as much as most men. Barely any skin was peeling, and nothing seemed to be dislocated. He stared at their faces closer. He felt like he knew them from somewhere. "Well aren't you a nosy person." said a voice sternly. He turned to see Judy holding a large duffle bag.