Running with the Horde

by Joseph K. Richard

Bones.

  I would have thought I was far past any sight that could turn my stomach but I was wrong. I have an extremely active gag reflex.

  Charred bones from a lot of bodies covered in ash and soot. I couldn’t tell if they’d been healthy or turned before they were burnt. Either way something bad had happened here. Something I should probably have gotten to the bottom of before going into the store but I’d left my CSI kit back at my house in New Brightown.

  That itchy feeling spread like a rash to my brain compelling me to jump on the bike and get the hell out of there. Instead, I held my nose and said a quiet prayer for the folks who’d been burned in the dumpster. Then I hopped down and did a silent jog to the side of the building. I am proud to say I only glanced back twice to see if anything had crawled out to chase me.

  An entire run around the large building took me twenty-five minutes. I stopped to quickly check all the doors and the iron gates on the garden center. They were locked just like the vans and the trucks. On a positive note, cautious use of my flashlight revealed all the vehicles to be empty, my earlier notion of being watched was proving to be unfounded.

  I couldn’t shake it though. That’s the nature of paranoia, I still thought I was being watched. I considered shining my light into the dark interior of the store but decided against it. If there were people hiding inside, they might be responsible for the contents of the dumpster and I wanted no part of that.

  When I was almost back to my starting point in the back of the building I came upon the fenced in enclosure that held the building’s regular dumpsters. The gate was padlocked but the fence was easy enough to climb. Once inside I found that entrance locked as well.

  I was just about to head to the front to take out my frustration on the glass doors when my light picked up the bottom of a ladder ten feet off the roof. I thought it was worth a try to see if there was a way in up there.

  I could reach the ladder if I climbed the dumpster and got lucky with a jump. My first attempt earned me a slightly twisted ankle, preventing any additional attempts.

  While massaging my ankle against the side of the dumpster, I was chagrined to notice it had wheels. I sighed and went to the other side and began pushing. It was heavy but moved easily enough. I lined it up under the ladder and climbed on top again. The bottom rung was just above my head.

  The movies always make these types of activities seem so easy. I suppose maybe it is for some folks. For me let’s just say it was fortunate I could do at least one pull-up. I needed that one plus a desperate half of a second pull-up. My exercises were partnered with some rather dramatic leg kicking and a lot of grunting just to make it high enough to freely climb the ladder. I am sure I looked like a real boob to whoever it was that was watching me.

  The roof was empty and full of all the things you would expect to see on a roof like that. This included a little brick enclosure that led to the stairwell inside the building. I was disappointed but not surprised to find this door locked up tight too. After a cursory examination of the rest of the roof I concluded there were no air vents I could get myself stuck in or sky lights I could fall through.

  Disappointed, I sat down in a little alcove next to the brick wall of the stairwell to feel sorry for myself. It was beginning to look like I was going to go away empty handed. My only other choice was to smash the glass in the front doors and go in that way. If there were people inside, I would be caught and murdered immediately in a bloody gore fest.

  The place felt deserted. It seemed so desolate and empty, yet those vehicles parked by the doors were very off putting. The color and blacked out windows reminded me of the SUV Steven had been riding in the day before, where they the same group?

  Then a light bulb turned on in my head. There was no way I was going in but I could sure send in a delegate!

  I pulled my stocking cap down lower over my face and drew on my hood. I huddled as deeply into my parka as I could, trying to achieve a measure of warmth and comfort. Between my coat and the alcove I was able to avoid most of the chilling wind. I closed my eyes to try and ping a member or two of the undead.

  At first there was nothing, just a sea of eternal blackness. Then a single blue bubble appeared to the north. I focused on that bubble, drawing nearer to it until at last I was connected. The more I concentrated the stronger the connection become until I could feel that familiar vibrating energy.

  It would have been a simple thing to summon the zombie to the store but while I was at it I figured experimenting with a little networking wouldn’t hurt. I jumped to my new host but did not try and use its senses to view my surroundings, instead I looked for more zombies. At first there was nothing. I was concentrating so intensely I could feel sweat beads forming under my hat and I was afraid I might accidently shit my pants.

  This was silly, I was trying too hard. I was trying to complete a mental exercise not pass a cantaloupe through my butthole. I held the connection with my mind and just relaxed, feeling the tension leave my body. Just like that I was aware! The dark room I created in my mind lit up with blue dots like on a sonar dashboard. I connected to those dots through my original zombie and soon I had twenty of them hot-footing it for the store.

  Most were coming from quite a ways off so I knew it may take a while for them to arrive. I opened my eyes and removed my hood and hat to dry my sweaty head the best I could. It would really suck to catch a cold from being stupid.

  At first I really didn’t register the sounds of men talking and vehicles moving around the parking lot as something out of the ordinary but then I remembered I was sitting on the rooftop of an abandoned superstore in post-apocalyptic Minnesota.

  I was instantly awake and army crawling from my nest to the edge of the roof. Three large military transports had arrived to offload a bunch of heavily armed guys dressed in military fatigues. Some fanned out to form a perimeter around the semi-trucks. Others were getting ready to enter the store.

  A man was giving last minute instructions to the group preparing to enter the store.

  “…clear for days…noise….we need…fast and silent…”

  I got the gist of it. Get in and get out before the dead came to eat them was the basic message. I was irritated and scared, this was throwing a wrench in my plans.

  Another man hopped out of the driver’s seat from one of the transports and jogged up to the group as they gathered around the rear entrance to the store. He said something to the boss in a loud whisper, the boss’s reply was almost a shout.

  “Fucking Jones! I told you already you ain’t going in with us. You’re lucky I let I let you come at all after yesterday! Get your ignorant ass back in the fucking truck before I have you hog tied and left in the parking lot!”

  Fucking Jones was clearly pouting on his way back to the truck.

  I turned my attention back to the group now quietly entering the store. They must have had the keys.

  This situation had just gone from bad to worse.

  I skulked back to my hiding spot and pulled out my gun in case someone noticed the dumpster had been moved and decided to come investigate the roof.

  The first of my zombies had arrived. I had them gather in silence behind an old produce truck abandoned in the northeast corner of the parking lot.

  My plan was to have five zombies smash the glass and breach the store, four would distract the men inside while one would get the things I needed and get out of there. The rest, and I had already called for more, would act as reserves in case I needed them.

  I suppose I could have waited the men out but if they were filling three semis, they could be a while and I didn’t have all night; the magic of Christmas only lasts until Christmas morning.

  The men had been inside the store for ten minutes when I felt I had enough zombies queued up behind the truck to begin. When I snuck over to the other side of the store it didn’t appear any men had been positioned to guard the front but I could see lights from very bright flashlights occasionally shining over the glass
in the front doors.

  I sent two zombies to scope out the north and south sides of the building, hiding them behind landscaping trees. Looking through their eyes I could see two guards on each side nonchalantly guarding their areas. They were not expecting trouble.

  The five zombies I selected to breach the front had managed to successfully navigate themselves to the front entrance without attracting attention. They were currently hiding behind the van, ghastly and silent, awaiting further instruction.

  In this mode I had discovered they were virtually robotic. I was monitoring the heart rates of the guards I could see and they were all maintaining a steady rhythm. I took complete command of the biggest of the breaching zombies. This guy had to have been a bouncer or college football player at some point in his life but was rotund in his middle age when he’d been turned.

  This was the first time I’d done this on purpose, it was entirely different than just using their senses. There was a moment of pure unfiltered physical pain during which I almost screamed but I was able to collect myself and turn off the man’s pain receptors. It was no wonder why Linus Peterson had been so hysterical locked in his little brain cell.

  I had moment of panic when I thought I had lost myself and would not be able to return to my own body but then I sensed the link and found the bridge was still there. I could be back to myself in the blink of an eye.

  My temporary body had seen better days. At some point, it had been shot in the chest with a shotgun. The man’s tee shirt had once said Pepsi but now only the P and the I were still visible. A sizable chunk of its right ass cheek had been bitten off with a matching hole in the sweatpants it was wearing. Sweatpants, I should mention, that were a size too small. I flexed my new muscles.

  Tendons snapped and skin ripped but I could tell the man had been as strong as an ox. I stepped casually around the corner of the van, the other zombies following behind me. I spotted a steel ash tray just off the right side of the door. I picked it up and raised it over my head, spilling ash and stale butts on those behind me. I heard a grunt and assumed that was the zombie equivalent of yelling hey.

  As fast as my stiff zombie legs could carry me, I charged at the doors and smashed the steel can into the glass as hard as I could.

  The crash echoed through the store as I stepped through a hailstorm of glass. Jagged shards sliced through my bloodless limbs like razors through bed sheets.

  The other zombies were right behind me as we breached the front foyer of the store. A wide-eyed man was standing in front of us with his mouth agape, his gun forgotten in the cart behind him.

  This unofficial greeter stood there frozen in shocked terror as I plowed into him like a tackling dummy. He flew backwards into several carts, unconscious before he hit the ground. I snagged his rifle from the cart and a radio I found on his belt.

  It belched out sound as I regrouped my zombies by the customer service kiosk, “BREACH! Converge on the front entrance! Converge on the front entrance!”

  The thundering sound of footsteps raced in our direction, I jumped to a short fat zombie wearing a plush white jumpsuit. Rather, it used to be white, someone had cut the man’s throat, staining the front of his clothes red. I figured he wouldn’t be much good in a firefight against armed men but he would serve my purposes as gift gopher. I took the rifle from Lurch and sent the rest of the zombies to meet the men, they were more than eager.

  Rifle at the ready in my new pudgy fingers I set out at a slow trot for the sporting good section. The sounds of gunfire and confused shouting met my ears. I hid in the darkness behind a display of beach balls and jumped outside to check on the guards. As I feared, they were moving to flank the breach from the sides of the building leaving only two guards in back to guard the trucks. I quickly sent my reserve zombies to outflank the flankers and try to keep them busy.

  I hopped back to my chubby buddy just in time to see two soldiers sneaking quietly past my aisle on red alert with two carts full of guns and ammo from the sporting goods section. I snuck up behind the rearmost man and struck him hard over the head with the butt of my rifle.

  He dropped to the ground out cold, his gun clattering to the linoleum. I was pointing the rifle at the lead man when he spun to face me, shining a tiny flashlight in my eyes.

  “Drop it,” I said as I squinted at him but it came out sounding like glurkish.

  Apparently having your throat cut was tough on your vocal cords. The man could not decide what to do as he wavered between shock and terror.

  “But you’re…you’re a...”

  “GLURKISH!” I shouted as I gestured at him menacingly with my gun and took a step forward. He screamed in panic, threw his light at me and dashed away in the darkness, I heard him trip into a display case in his haste to get away.

  I jogged the rest of the way to the sporting goods section.

  The radio was quite active during those chaotic minutes, someone in charge issuing orders and screaming commands. I was jumping from inside to outside issuing orders of my own. Gunfire was heavy in the store until it petered off slowly but a major firefight could still be heard outside the store.

  “Sir! They’re everywhere out here! They seem to be flanking our position on both sides. Sir…Sir…they’re coordinated or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Davis, I swear you better stop fucking with me. We’re up to our eyeballs in shit in here!”

  “Sir, I repeat, (a pause as Davis was probably firing his weapon) they are most definitely coordinated and more coming from the north and south corners of the property.”

  More gunfire as the man in charge tried to process this information.

  “Sir, orders?!! What should we do?!! Sir?! ARRRGH!!”

  Then a brief belch of static. The sound of gunfire was deafening as the men in the transport trucks were mowing down zombies with two large mounted machines guns.

  “Fall back! Fall back to the front entrance of the store! I repeat fall back! Jones do you copy?”

  “Here, sir,” came a harried reply.

  “What can you see?”

  “Sir,” the man was breathless, “the men are retreating to the front of the store but there is a large crowd out here. We drove around to provide them cover but we are basically cutoff and are going to have to bug out. Davis is down sir. We radioed base for reinforcements but it sounds like they may be awhile. I suggest you find higher ground until we can get back.”

  I spotted the Daisy Air Rifle I wanted. The men had taken the real guns but had little use for an air rifle. The glass door for the counter was still ajar, I pulled the rifle out along with a few boxes of pellets. I grabbed a gym bag from the next aisle over and shoved the pellets inside. The rifle had a convenient strap that I looped around my shoulder. The gym bag went over my other shoulder and I headed for the toys just a few aisles away.

  The gunfire slowly faded only to be replaced by a series of very loud crashes. The men were barricading the broken front windows with anything they could get their hands on. The boss or the captain or whatever he was came back on the radio giving orders to the largest group of men up front to hold their positions as long as they could while a few others swept the inside of the store again looking for stragglers.

  I very clearly heard the man I had recently threatened with a gun speak into the radio in a soft shrill voice

  “Sir, I know how this will sound, but I’m not crazy and I’m not making this up,” he began.

  “Wilson, where the hell are you?”

  “Sir, I am hiding in automotive. Lanskey is down but not dead yet I don’t think. I am going to try and go back for him. But listen, sir, a zombie got the drop on us with a rifle.”

  “I’m not following you, Wilson. Did you put the zombie down?”

  “No, sir, I’m telling you he had a rifle pointed at me. He bashed Lanskey over the head with it. Put him out cold. I’m pretty sure he wanted me to drop my gun. He spoke to me but I couldn’t understand him.”

 
“So what’d you do, Wilson?”

  “I…I ran sir.”

  “You fucking coward,” he sighed deeply into the radio, “You were obviously dealing with a human holding a rifle. Clearly we didn’t get everyone when we secured this place originally and he’d been living here since.”

  His tone indicated he was speaking to a small, dim child.

  “Now go get Lanskey and bring your dumbasses up front. I tell ya, Wilson, if I wasn’t short on soldiers I would throw your sorry ass to the zombies and cheer while they had you for supper.”

  “Sir,” he whispered, “no offence to you but I’ll stay where I am. I’m no doctor but I know healthy people can’t walk around with their throats slashed open wearing half of their bodily fluids on their shirts. Don’t take it personally, sir, but go fuck yourself.”

  “That’s fine, Wilson,” came the eerily calm reply, “But next time I see your ass, its shoot on sight. You cool with that?”

  Wilson chuckled gravely into the radio, “Yeah, that’s cool, sir.”

  I was feeling pretty confident Wilson was going to stay parked where he was. I actually hoped he would help Lanskey and make it to somewhere safe. Wilson had grown on me during his little tet-a-tet with his asshole boss.

  Besides, I had a strong feeling that good old regular human beings were now tops on the endangered species list and I had no desire to kill any that I didn’t have to.

  The toy aisle was just as orderly as the rest of the store and loaded with choices. It took me a few precious minutes to locate a Sparky Speaks dog. Of course the batteries were not included but were conveniently located the next aisle over.

  I stuffed the toy, the batteries and a roll of red ribbon into my bag. I was getting used to my chubby little zombie’s stiff arms and limited range of motion. With the bag secured on my shoulder next to the air rifle I crept softly toward a side exit door.

  I stood in the dark shadows near the door and listened for the men but all was quiet. I took a quick glance outside the building and was surprised by the number of undead that had amassed there over the last few minutes.