The front door of the farmhouse is not hard to get through. One well-placed kick by Lavish is all it takes for the rotted wood to come flying completely off the rusted hinges. My fingers anxiously trace the cold steel body of my pistol as we venture into the dark home.

The hardwood floors creak and groan as they bear weight for the first time in possibly decades.

“Wow, Rekill,” Lavish breathes. “Isn’t this crazy?”

I agree with a wordless nod.

The inside of the farmhouse is in a much better condition than the outside. Other than some mild water damage and a few critter nests, it actually looks almost untouched. There’s a thick layer of dust that blankets every single horizontal surface. I take my finger and draw a smiley face on one of the shelves.

Family portraits and decorations hang up on every wall of the home. Just from looking at them, I can tell that the family consisted of five people: a father, a mother, two daughters, and a young son. A chill goes down my spine as I idly wonder where this family is now.

Lavish treks on further into the home, where he’s greeted by a small kitchen. He pokes through the fridge and cabinets curiously.

“I hope you’re not digging for snacks,” I joke lightly.

Lavish frowns. “And what if I am?”

Lavish pulls out a box of what looks to be some kind of fruit. The faded packaging tells me that the fruit is supposed to be a peach—but the actual thing looks nothing like the picture on the packaging.

“Lavish, eating that will kill you faster than an R-Zomb ever could,” I say.

“I’m not going to eat it!” Lavish says. “But what if we hypothetically took it back to the base? Do you think we could find a way to copy the genetic code of the seeds?”

“That really isn’t the mission here,” I remind him.

“I guess you’re right,” Lavish says, putting the decayed fruit back into the fridge. “It’s just so crazy how people used to have access to any kind of fruit they wanted.”

“I bet they were spoiled by it,” I laugh. “They probably took stuff like that for granted. I know I would have.”

There’s nothing else interesting to discover on the first floor of the farmhouse, and so we carefully climb the stairs. Lavish tests each one carefully before climbing up it, not trusting the house’s architecture enough to go charging recklessly forward.

Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and an old office. I turn left into one of the bedrooms while Lavish examines the office.

“Wow, look at this outdated thing…” I can hear him say from behind me.

The bedroom I happen to walk into likely once belonged to the family’s son. The walls are painted a powder blue color, and space-themed decorations cover the walls and ceilings. Stuffed animals are stacked high on the boy’s bed—they’re sagging a bit, but nevertheless, they still keep a diligent guard over the room even after all these years.

I can’t help but feel a little jealous.

I mean, I’m an adult now, so I guess I should be over this—but I can’t help it. I envy this nameless boy for having the kind of childhood that I could have only dreamed of. I walk forward and sit on the boy’s bed. It’s a little dusty and the mattress is stiff—but it feels homey in a way that my bed in the Bunker never did.

I close my eyes for the briefest of moments, trying to imagine my life as the boy of this long-gone family. What would my days look like? I imagine myself playing games, and organizing my toys by shape and color, and running outside with no fear of R-Zombs, or toxic air, or anything like that.

“Rekill! Come here,” Lavish calls, snapping me out of my trance.

I stand up and follow the sound of his voice. He’s in the bedroom across the hall—the one that probably belonged to both of the girls. It has two twin beds on either side, and is decorated with plastic knick-knacks, printed out pictures, and fake plants.

“What’s the purpose of having flowers in your room if they’re not even real?” I frown, picking up one of the plastic plants. There’s still a barcode sticker on it.

“Maybe it was a status thing,” Lavish offers with a shrug. “Or maybe it’s just a girl thing?”

“Maybe.”

Lavish pauses for a moment, then asks, “Have you ever thought about them? Girls, I mean.”

“Girls?” I can’t help but laugh a little bit. “I mean, sure. It’s not like I’ve ever even seen a girl that wasn’t one of our moms, though.”

“I bet they’re soft,” Lavish murmurs dreamily. He traces the edge of one of the girls’ vanity dresser drawers. “You think we’ll meet any in Artip?”

“Maybe.” I shrug.

Honestly, I have never thought too deeply about girls. It’s not as if the thought of them isn’t appealing to me—I think having the opportunity to fall in love with a woman would be amazing. But even now as a grown man, I find the concept of their existence to be abstract at best. Like I said, the only examples of females that I’d ever been exposed to were mine and Lavish’s moms.

“Come on,” I say, partly because I want to keep moving and partly because I want to get my mind off of girls, “We’ve got one more room left to search.”

“Yeah,” Lavish says. He seems somewhat unwilling to part with the girls’ room, but he leads the way into the last room of the house: the parents’ bedroom.

The moment he steps into the room, he lurches forward. He rips his mask off briefly to vomit.

“Lavish!” I shout, ducking forward to help him.

“No!” He snaps back, trying to use his arm as a barricade to keep me from seeing the contents of the room before me.

But it’s too late—I’ve already seen it.

My heart stops.