“Can we please get moving!” he hissed when Maddy started pawing through the remains of the pharmacy for pain pills that were more potent than Tylenol. “In case you forgot, we have a mission.” It was hard for him to believe he had to beg them to keep the looting to a minimum.
“Just a minute,” she said without looking up as she scanned the bottles. “You don’t know what it’s like. The pain is gnawing. It’s endless. Right Bryce?”
Bryce was making himself another sandwich, this one bigger than the first. “It’s worse when you think about it,” he said, spreading mayo with his fingers. “You got to focus on something else. Man, I could use some spicy mustard.”
Griff’s lips pressed together into an angry frustrated smile. Victoria caught the look. “We could leave them here and come back for them. Or send help for them. Or not. Maybe they’re not important.”
“No. They’re important.” More important than some pretentious, privileged housewife, he didn’t add. He held a great deal back as he gazed about at his group. Jayson was sipping away at a bottle of pinot grigio. Mr. Harriman was fussing with a buckle on his wife’s backpack and complaining about his arthritis. Tessa was standing off to the side, looking tiny. The little girl was still in a state of shock. Her eyes slipped in and out of focus.
“They better be important,” he said under his breath as he went to the front. A zombie was across the street. Even with thirty cars between them and a gun in his hand, Griff felt a stab of fear.
The zombie slowly moved on. By the time it was out of sight, the group was ready to go. After a quick peek up and down the street, Griff stepped out, glass crunching under foot. Victoria jostled to go next. In case they had to run, she didn’t want to get stuck behind the cow or the geezers. She pulled Tessa through next.
Maddy was about to follow Tessa but stopped half in the store.
“Wait a sec,” Maddy whispered. On the air was a soft, distant rumble. It was the sound of engines large but new. There was also a hum that made her nervous, though she couldn’t tell why. “Agent Meyers. Hey! Something’s wrong.”
There was. They weren’t following him. Otherwise everything seemed about as good as could be expected. In the predawn light there were only a few zombies in sight and they seemed to be so ripped up that they were hardly a real threat. “Whatever it is we’ll be better once we’re inside the store. We can talk about it then. Look, it’s right here.”
Maddy poked her head out and saw the boutique. It was the next store, forty feet away. Its window was already shattered, as well. They’d be back inside in seconds…if it weren’t for the glass. Three layers of socks weren’t going to protect her feet from the shards sprayed across the sidewalk.
Mr. Harriman nudged her from behind. “Go or get out of the way,” he grumped in a low voice.
“Just hold on for a moment.” She thrust out her mop and with a few swishes of it she was able to follow the others outside, where she felt vulnerable and exposed. They were being watched. It was more than just a feeling to her. Meekly, she stared around, and although she couldn’t see the watcher, she knew there were eyes on them.
She tried to tell herself that it was nothing. There were still millions of people in the city. How many thousands were lurking in the tall buildings that loomed around them? How many were cutting through the park across the street where the shadows were still as deep as midnight, or hiding in the bumper to bumper cars?
Of course, they were being watched. It would’ve been a surprise if they weren’t. So why was she unnerved? She couldn’t say, which made her hesitation pointless. Almost as if the eyes were chasing her, she scurried up the street and slipped through the broken window.
It was dark inside the store, and quiet. The looting here had been on a much smaller scale. The people who had broken in had come for very specific items, none of them related to survival.
“We have ten minutes,” Griff said. “You hear me? This is not going to be a shopping spree. Victoria will help Maddy and I will help Bryce. The rest of you; if you’re not here when we’re done, we will leave you behind. Victoria, do you know where the men’s section is?”
The women’s department was clearly marked, and all around them. Victoria gestured deeper into the store. “Upstairs.”
An odd look passed across Bryce’s features. Victoria was dragging Maddy away before she realized what it was. Bryce was embarrassed—he didn’t shop in the men’s section. He had the build of a fourteen-year-old boy. Maddy couldn’t spare much in the way of sympathy.
“What size are you?” Victoria asked.
And there was the reason why. Maddy was a petite-plus, plus, plus which made shopping something of an ego nightmare. “If you can get me some shoes, I’m a size eight. Something soft, okay? Like Uggs?” Maddy was partial to Uggs since they were roomy.
Victoria had something to say about Uggs, Maddy could tell, but the woman kept it to herself.
The moment Victoria was gone, Maddy hurried to the Plus-sized section and began working her way through the pants. They were always the hardest to find in her size. She didn’t bother looking for jeans; they’d have to be tailored to fit right. As her circumference was greater than her height, most of her pants had to be tailored. Tops were easier; she could roll up the sleeves.
Maddy had three outfits picked out in minutes and rushed to the changing rooms just ahead of Victoria.
“I got you two pairs. Eight and Eight and a half. What about uh, you know, undergarments?” Victoria was glad the curtain hid her face. She was a petty woman and was sure she wouldn’t be able to hide her revulsion if Maddy asked her to go hunt down g-strings.
Maddy’s ears went red. She had heard the hesitation in Victoria’s question. “Agent Meyers said we only had ten minutes so I think I better pick some up later. Maybe see if they have a coat? Just in case it gets cold.”
“It’s already cold,” Victoria muttered. Maddy heard but said nothing. She was too stunned at her appearance to reply. The outfit she had tried on first: a grey sweater and a pair of soft joggers were draped on her as if she had picked out clothes two sizes too large.
“Are these tagged wrong?” She pulled off the top and inspected the size. It was a 24. She tossed it aside and grabbed a woven V-neck blouse in black. And it too hung on her like a sheet. “No way.” With eyes grown wide, she stared at her reflection. There was no denying it, she was smaller, by a lot.
In growing excitement, she rushed out of the dressing room and grabbed an armful of clothes in various sizes. She chose a new dressing room and began throwing clothes on and pulling them off until she found her new size.
“I’m an 18.”
“Is that a good thing?” By her tone, it was obvious Victoria didn’t think so.
Maddy stepped out of the dressing room wearing black leggings and a navy-blue blouse that was long on her wrists. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I was a 24 yesterday.”
Victoria stepped back, eyeing Maddy. She did look slimmer, though it was hard to tell since she had been wearing a blanket for most of the night. “Six sizes in a day? That’s not possible. Unless there’s something wrong with you. You and that guy were in a hospital, weren’t you?”
“Yeah but that was…”
“Was what?” Victoria took another step back. “What was wrong with you?”
Maddy could only shake her head. She had no idea what had happened to her and Bryce. The only thing she knew for certain was that she hadn’t been given LSD. “I don’t know.”
“Are you going to become one of them?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Chapter 18
Victoria dropped the coats and backed away.
“I’m not contagious,” Maddy told her, though in truth she had no idea. The only thing she knew for certain was that Agent Meyers hadn’t changed one way or another and Bryce had been skinny to begin with. It wasn’t exactly a scientific study. “Maybe it was all the sweating. How much water weight can a person lose?
”
Neither knew and neither made a guess. In an odd silence and with something like an accusation in her eyes, Victoria skirted around Maddy and hurried back to the front.
Maddy collected her gun, sighed once at the remnants of her gown, and followed after, though not as quickly. She couldn’t pass a mirror without pausing. This wasn’t vanity, it was amazement. She even attempted a smile, something she rarely did when looking in a mirror. For most of her life, mirrors were something to avoid.
At the front of the store, she found an equally stunned Bryce Carter. He hadn’t lost weight, in fact he looked oddly bigger now that he was wearing actual clothes: blue jeans and a soft grey sweater. At the corner of his mouth was a bit of mayonnaise, all that remained of the sandwich he had made himself. Maddy pointed at his lip.
Absently, he wiped it away. “I got taller,” he told her.
“I got skinnier,” she answered. “A little bit.”
Griff stared back and forth. It was more than a little bit. She wasn’t exactly skinny, but she was noticeably smaller. And Bryce looked less like a runt. He walked up to the scientist, remembering the first time they had met in the elevator back in Boston.
Yes, he was taller.
“Magnus did this,” he stated. “I just can’t see why. For fun? Because he could?”
Victoria stood well back, holding Tessa close. “Maybe he gave them a different form of the zombie virus. A subtle one so no one notices. Then when they get in with the FBI or whatever, they turn.”
“We should get masks,” Mrs. Harriman said. “Why don’t we have any masks?”
Her husband ignored her. “Did you say Magnus was behind this? All of it? I knew it! I knew it was one of them rich pukes.”
“Did they have any masks back in the pharmacy?” Mrs. Harriman said, ignoring her husband in return. “I bet they did. Dear, run back and get us some masks. Oh, and some Lysol, the spray stuff. You know, for the germs.”
Mr. Harriman had picked up on one word: “Outside?” He said it like outside was a foreign country and definitely a shit hole of a country. “We can make masks. We wrap our faces with scarves and…”
Something out the window caught his eye. It was one of the dead. It had been a skinny Puerto Rican kid, barely a teen with a mustache that was so thin it looked drawn on. One of his arms was missing; there was a ragged length of skin hanging from its shoulder, black and crusty on one side, pale and marred by teeth marks on the other.
It was missing an ear as well. In its place was a wet, black hole. Its nose was fine. The creature was sniffing the air as it came closer to the break in the glass. Then it stuck its head inside and the sound of its snuffling grew. No one moved. Other than Jayson, who sat on the counter, the nearly empty wine bottle on his lap, they all stood like manikins, frozen in odd poses.
“Hunaahhh,” the creature said. “Hunnnnahh.” It nodded and turned to look out across the crowded street. “Hunnnnahh!” It was loud now.
“It’s like it’s calling someone,” Maddy whispered. She pointed at Bryce, and then to the pole he’d been carrying around.
“You want me to kill it?”
“Duh.”
It was turned away, and it was small, and it only had the one arm—these were the deciding factors that allowed Bryce to grab his pole. His boots were so new that the treads squeaked on the still polished floor. He had to tiptoe through the displays until he was at the last counter. From there, he had a good view of the street. Although it was not yet sunrise, the dark was not so deep and he saw the dead were filling the park.
“Hunnnnahh!” It was something of a moose call, but it did the trick. The dead turned to the one-armed Puerto Rican zombie. A few began to crawl across the cars. One hopped up easily and began to leap from hood to hood.
It was Bryce’s demon.
Bryce ducked down behind the glass counter as it dropped from the last car. It shoved the Puerto Rican zombie away and stuck its dark head through the gaping opening in the glass. It sniffed as the other one had. Then it grinned as it turned its fearsome gaze on Bryce.
Taking hold of the pipe in both hands, Bryce stood. He couldn’t feel his feet. His legs just seemed to end somewhere beneath his shaking knees. Fighting the skinny, one-armed teen was one thing, the demon was too much. It was still too human, and at the same time it was too much of a monster.
It started to step through the hole when Griff suddenly appeared. The thing darted back as Griff went for his holstered gun. His hand was slow. He had found a black leather jacket to ward off the cold and the zipper got caught on the tag. The demon stood back from the glass, shaking its head.
“What the hell?” Griff muttered, keeping his voice low. “It just gave you a look. How the hell do these things give anyone a look?”
Bryce had seen the look. It was contempt. He thinks I’m afraid, Bryce thought. He thinks I’d hide behind Griff…and he’s right on both counts. “Maybe some of them can still think.”
The demon could do more than give looks. It put its head back and screamed into the sky. It was part battle cry, part summons. The scream sent a shiver up Bryce’s back and he jumped when Griff slammed a hand down on his shoulder.
“We gotta get out of here,” the agent said, pulling Bryce away. The street was flooding with the dead. The two raced back to the group who were gearing up, throwing their backpacks on, and grabbing their mops. In the face of so many zombies, these “weapons” were pathetic and their wielders even more so.
They didn’t need to be told to run. In a near panic, they were darting in and around the clothing displays, heading for dead escalators. Griff was the youngest and strongest; he went down first, followed closely by Victoria and Tessa. Jayson, the bottles in his backpack clanking loudly pushed down next. He was a nightly drinker, but a full bottle on an empty stomach had him lightheaded and he stumbled down.
By then zombies were pouring through the hole in the glass and racing after them. Mr. Harriman had his wife go in front of him, and then, in a fit of foolish chivalry, he insisted that Maddy go next. Bryce was last. He waited at the top of the escalator, holding the pole as the dead came on. Both the Harrimans were having trouble on the odd escalator stairs. At the top and bottom the steps were uneven, while in the middle they were high and sharp.
Bryce looked back and saw Mr. Harriman only halfway down and moving with a gimp, favoring his left leg. “Hurry, God damn it!” he yelled. There was no reason to be quiet now. The zombies had spotted him and were tearing through the aisles of clothing, crashing into the displays and the racks without care. Feeding was their one desire; nothing else mattered.
The one-armed zombie had been trampled, as had any that failed to get out of the way of the bigger faster beasts. Bryce edged to the stairs, desperate to run. He was close to panicking, close to racing down the stairs two at a time and trampling Mr. Harriman who was taking forever, mincing his way down.
“Oh God,” he whispered, glancing at the pole in his hands. Against so many, it was next to useless. He dropped it and darted to one of the circular racks that was hung with a swirl of jolly green and red Christmas sweaters. With his adrenaline pumping, the rack was surprisingly light and he drove it forward at the onrushing creatures.
Amazingly, he was able to knock the first one down as he smashed the rack into its chest. Then two more went down, flailing and snarling, tearing at the sweaters. This was the high point of Bryce’s battle. His momentum was checked by the creatures crowding in.
A second later a firefighter with dead eyes and no fingers left on either hand struck the rack with its beefy shoulder and hurled Bryce backward. The firefighter fell over one of the zombies, but two more took his place and pushed Bryce to the edge of the metal stairs. He was just thinking about his pipe when the heel of his new boots kicked it and it went skipping down the stairs.
Now the only thing between him and death were a rash of ugly Christmas sweaters. He strove against the rack with all his strength, and held out against the m
ight of a dozen zombies…for three seconds. Then he was smashed backwards, but only for a few feet, then the legs of the rack hit the sides of the escalator.
This gave him a breather and he looked back to see Mr. Harriman was nearly down. When he turned back, he saw that one of the smarter zombies was lifting one end of the rack.
Bryce fled down the stairs screaming, “Go! Go!”
The rack was heaved up and thrown to the side, then a river of grey flesh poured down the escalator. In the narrow confines of the stairs they fell over each other, and fell over each other some more, and kept falling. But they were so mindless that this barely slowed them down.
With hands grasping at his heels, Bryce made it down with Mr. Harriman only steps ahead of him. For some insane reason, Mrs. Harriman had waited for him while everyone else was racing away. They were going to die and die horribly.
“Get the hell outta here!” Bryce screamed as he shoved Mr. Harriman. He reached for his pipe, thinking he would give them a ten-second head start…if he could. The dead on the escalator were in no position to fight. They were piled five deep in places and any of them that managed to get to their feet remained upright for only a few seconds.
Bryce began beating at the pile with his pipe, crushing heads with each blow. And still they came on, body after body, too many for one man to stop even a fraction of them.
He had given the Harrimans thirty seconds; however when the first beast managed to get to its feet, Bryce knew he was out of time. With the zombie hot after him, Bryce turned and ran. It was a fast one and in a straight sprint would’ve run Bryce down.
There was nothing straight about their sprint. They wound in and out of the racks of clothes. When he could, Bryce pulled down displays to slow his pursuers.
“Bryce!”
It was Maddy, waving an arm. She was holding open a door off to his right. With every step, he was heading away from her and likely towards a corner where he’d be trapped. He juked hard to his right and it looked like a tidal wave of clothes sweeping towards him as the zombies broke in a long line, crashing through the racks and upending tables.
Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling Page 14
