Jack dug around in his back pocket and fished out a tin of chewing tobacco. He ran his fingernail around the lid, slicing the paper seal. Marty watched him intently.
“Dip?” Jack offered, holding out the open can.
Marty shot a furtive glance in Beth’s direction, and then shook his head. “Thanks. No.”
Jack extended his offer to Beth as well. She declined with a wry grin. He took a pinch and packed it into his lower lip, spitting out the stray flakes. A gun boomed from somewhere deep inside.
“What the hell was that?” Marty asked. He took a step toward the door and plastered his face against the window, cupping it with his hands to eliminate the glare. “Guys! Look!”
Jack opened the door and stuck his head inside. There was no sign of the others. He held a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.”
A second later he yanked the door the rest of the way open. “Something’s wrong. I’m going in,” he said. “Keep an eye on the lot.” Marty grunted his acknowledgment.
The first thing Jack saw was the zombie corpse sprawled on the floor. He noted that it was a clean kill, the head caved in from a frontal assault, gelatinous chunks of brain oozing from a large fissure in the crown. He cocked his head, absorbing the sounds, the feel of the empty store. The gunshot meant something had gone terribly wrong. This was supposed to be a stealth raid.
He heard something. A rhythmic thudding echoed from somewhere in the rear, like someone repeatedly dropping a bag of sand on the ground. “Megan?” he called out. “Pringle?”
The thudding stopped. A second later, it started up again.
“What the..?” Jack took off at a run, choosing the aisle on the far right, directly underneath a line of dust- and grease-caked windows. As he rounded the corner at the rental counter, his legs suddenly flew out from underneath him, sending him sliding into a spinning wire rack of work gloves and safety goggles, knocking it to the floor with an earsplitting crash. He landed hard on the polished concrete, his head bouncing with a resounding crack. His flashlight blinked out on impact. He scrambled to get up, but couldn’t get his feet under him. He kept slipping on something.
Blood. Fighting the urge to vomit, Jack shook his flashlight to restore it. Light flooded out, and he saw the source of the blood. It was Kevin. He was on his back, tucked against the base of a shelf, his throat sliced from ear to ear, the last of his blood draining slowly across the floor.
Zombies don’t use knives. Jack got to his feet and touched his head, feeling for blood. Finding none of his own, he forged ahead. Kevin’s dead. No use stopping. Megan and Mike might still be alive. As he pushed through the storeroom door, the source of the thumping noise became brutally obvious.
Pringle hovered over Megan’s inert form raining blows down on her face. Peter Woo stood behind him, observing the beating with rapt attention.
Jack leveled his gun at Pringle and yelled, “Stop!” Pringle halted mid-punch and looked at Jack with wild eyes. A manic smile danced at the edges of his mouth. Woo slowly reached for his weapon, but withdrew his hand when Jack cocked the hammer on his pistol. Woo took a step back toward the door leading to the outside of the building.
Without changing his aim, Jack flicked his gaze to Megan. He bit back a surge of queasiness as he took in her face. One eye was swollen shut, buried beneath a bruise that seemed to grow as he watched. Blood coated her face from two split lips, and a ragged gash ran from her temple all the way to her left jaw. He could only imagine her agony.
He shifted his gaze to her chest to determine if she was still breathing. He counted. One…two… three. Finally, her chest rose. Jack let out a sigh of relief.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted at Pringle.
Pringle laughed a high-pitched, rabid cackle. “It’s none of your damned business. Now get back out front and do your job!” Megan coughed and spit up a geyser of bright red blood.
Jack tightened his grip on his pistol. “Get away from her. Now!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the handle on the steel door at the rear of the storeroom twist violently just before the door flew open, crashing against the wall with an earsplitting clang.
In the time it took Jack to process what was happening, three ghouls spilled into the room and descended upon Woo, who stood nearest to the door. They drug him to the ground and tore into his flesh with an insatiable ferocity. Woo screamed twice, and then went silent.
Two more undead slipped through, bringing the total to five. Pringle scrambled from the zombies, leaving Megan completely exposed.
Jack fired four times, dropping two of the zombies munching on Woo and hitting, but not destroying, the third. Pringle fired at the larger of the zombies at the door, dropping it with his first shot. His second shot went wild, ricocheting from the steel door in a brilliant cascade of sparks. And then his gun jammed.
“Shit!” he threw it aside and reached to his thigh, probably searching for the backup Jack knew he kept strapped there. Before Pringle could get off another shot, the third zombie near Woo rushed him and locked its teeth onto his forearm, ripping and tearing at the exposed flesh.
Pringle screamed and spun away, trying desperately to shake the creature loose. Jack took careful aim and put a bullet into the head of the remaining zombie by the door. Chunks of diseased brains splattered across a crate of small engine oil.
A cacophony of moans built outside the door, more zombies, drawn by the gunfire. Jack sprinted across the room and slammed the door shut just as another monster was about to step through. He flipped the deadbolt. Woo began to reanimate, and Jack shot him in the face before he could complete the process.
At that moment, Pringle managed to get his pistol up and under the jaw of the monster on his arm. He pulled the trigger twice, and the creature’s head exploded in a fine mist, glazing his face in a slimy coating of gore.
“Goddamn it!” Pringle waved around his mangled arm. “Look what that son of a bitch did to me!” Wary of Pringle’s next move, Jack nodded slowly. Regardless of Pringle’s intentions against Megan, he was a doomed man now, and Jack could see by the dull gleam in his eye that Pringle understood this as well. Pringle spit out a chunk of bone shrapnel and scrubbed the gore from his face.
Megan groaned, the sound answered by the incessant moans of the horde of zombies just outside.
“I don’t feel so good,” Pringle said woozily.
Jack wasn’t surprised. The zombie had plenty of time attached to his arm, and all of the motion would have served to accelerate the transfer of the infection from his blood to his brain. Pringle dropped into a cracked plastic chair at the far wall. His gun sat on his lap, his finger still hooked in the trigger guard. He snorted. Keeping one eye on Pringle, Jack took a tentative step toward Megan. As he reached her, he realized Pringle was crying.
He knelt down and whispered into her ear, “Hold tight...we’re getting out of here.” She groaned and tried to roll over. Pringle kept crying.
He scooped her from the floor and backed towards the door, taking care not to jostle her.
As he was about to leave, Pringle called out to him, “Jack.”
Jack eyed him suspiciously. “Yeah?”
“I—tell her I’m sorry…It wasn’t worth it…”
Jack looked down at Megan. Her eyes remained closed. She gave no indication she was aware of the events swirling around her.
“I will,” Jack said with a tight frown. “I will.”
Pringle pressed his gun to the soft flesh under his jaw, closed his eyes, and squeezed the trigger. The gun boomed, and the contents of his skull sprayed the wall behind him. His corpse tumbled from the chair, landing beside Woo in an undignified heap. Jack lingered at the door for a moment, surveying the carnage. Satisfied everything was over, he turned and made his way to the front of the store.
Marty and Beth were sharing a cigarette when he burst through the door. The parking lot was empty. The cigarette fell to the ground, discarded when they saw him and Megan.
“
Oh, my God!” Beth gasped. “What happened? Where are the others?”
“They’re dead. We need to go right now!”
“I’ll get the truck,” Marty said, racing off.
“I don’t understand...” Beth trailed off. She came over to Jack and began inspecting Megan’s wounds.
Marty pulled up and hopped out, leaving the truck running. He dashed around to the tailgate and unlatched it with a loud clang. “Put her in here. Beth was an EMT.” Jack nodded and placed Megan gently in the truck bed. Beth followed. With a last concerned glance, Marty returned to the cab. Beth whacked the side of the bed twice, and they took off with a roar.
Thirty-Three
Fire: The Collapse Page 33
