Saga of the Scout

by Cliff Hamrick

  They pulled into the parking lot of the pharmacy. It was a large building that stood alone inside a small shopping plaza, with a couple of fast-food restaurants.

  Across the street was a far larger shopping center that contained a few chain restaurants, a beauty supply store, and a large hobby supply store. Ethan remembered many boring trips to stores such as that with his mother as she spent far too much money on craft supplies that would sit unused for months until she threw them away.

  The parking lot of the pharmacy was remarkably empty. There were only a minivan and a car, which appeared to have been parked and then abandoned once the insanity began. The glass of one of the automatic doors into the pharmacy was broken in. Someone had gotten there before them.

  Madison turned off the engine of the SUV, and they sat in silence for a moment. She looked over to him. “I don’t hear anything, do you?”

  He shook his head and paused for a moment longer but could only hear the sound of the wind blowing through the nearly empty parking lot. It seemed that the weather was shifting.

  “No, but we should still be careful. Someone might still be inside.”

  She nodded, and they drew their pistols before entering the store. Ethan squatted down and inched his way through the broken glass door, careful to not drop his knee into the thousands of tiny shards of glass that dusted over the floor. Once he was inside, he paused to look and listen.

  The building was dark, and the air was stifling. With no air conditioning, the atmosphere inside the large room was thick and humid.

  He was glad that he left his sweatshirt in the SUV. The all too familiar smell of rotting meat hung in the air. The only light in the store was ambient sunlight coming in through the windows at the top of the walls around the ceiling, which cast bluish shadows onto the store.

  He stood next to the checkout counter. All of the cash registers had been broken open, and change spilled out all over the floor. Someone thought that cash might still mean something someday. A wide aisle stretched from the checkout counter back to the actual pharmacy. He could see it. But to get to it, he would have to pass by rows of shelves that stood taller than him. The ransacked refrigerators off to his right were empty of all of the beer and wine.

  He held out his gun, ready to shoot any raider or looter that might charge at him or Madison.

  The store was quiet except for the sound of crunching glass under Madison’s shoes as she came through the same broken door. She stopped for a moment and scanned the store. She held her pistol in her right hand and her baseball bat in her left.

  Once she decided it was safe, she turned her attention to the door itself and used the manual release to slide it open Though the store seemed empty, they still spoke quietly.

  “Let’s get the medicine first, and then the rest of the stuff,” Ethan said.

  Madison nodded and pushed one of the small shopping carts to the back of the store while Ethan led the way, checking down each of the rows of shelves in case anyone was hiding there. The shelves were empty or oddly untouched.

  Someone had come through the store and looted all of the alcohol, much of the candy, and most of the diapers. But the stationary section and cleaning supplies were completely untouched.

  They reached the pharmacy section and discovered where the smell of death came from. A morbidly obese man lie on the floor from where he fell out of his mobile scooter, which laid on its side next to him. Apparently, he was waiting for his prescription when the world went mad. Ethan couldn’t tell how he was killed, but his bloated face looked like old roadkill, complete with flies and maggots. They turned their backs to the body to avoid the sight of him.

  Madison pushed the cart next to the counter and put her baseball bat inside for safekeeping before they climbed over the counter to search through the shelves of drugs. Ethan felt a little overwhelmed by the number of bottles with names that he could not pronounce, much less identify what was inside.

  From the other side of the pharmacy, he heard Madison call to him. When he went to her, she stood at a desk with a computer. Next to it was a phone connected to a landline.

  “Do you want to try and call your mom?”

  He walked over and looked at the phone like it might bite him. “Don’t you want to try and call your family?” He wasn’t sure why he was stalling. He remembered listening to his mother’s messages the night before, but that seemed like lifetimes ago.

  She shook her head. “Can’t. I don’t know anyone’s number. They were all programmed into my phone, and who knows where that is. Probably still sitting in the back seat of Hannah’s car.”

  He reached out for the receiver and held it to his ear. He sighed when he didn’t hear a dial tone. He wasn’t sure if the sigh was from disappointment or relief. “It’s dead. Maybe next time.”

  She shrugged a little. “Maybe we can find another phone with a landline. Or you can grab one of those chargers up front. You might be able to recharge your phone at camp.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He set the receiver down and looked back at the shelves of bottles. “Penicillin is an antibiotic. What else?” he asked her.

  She moved through the rows, and her eyes scanned over the names of the bottles. “Amoxicillin. They hand that out like candy at the student health center. One time I had to take Cipro for a UTI.”

  “What’s a UTI?”

  She smiled at him. “Urinary tract infection. Girl problems. But it's an antibiotic, too.”

  He didn’t want to ask more about girl problems, so he moved to a different section to check the shelves. There, he found a large bottle of amoxicillin next to many other bottles with similar names.

  “Hey, I think I found them.”

  She joined him, and they gathered up armfuls of bottles. They didn’t even know which ones were antibiotics, but they assumed that if they were together on the shelves, then they might be similar drugs. They agreed that Andrew and the nurse could sort it out later.

  They dumped the bottles into the shopping cart and looked for pain medication. Ethan found a small safe mounted under the counter in the back. A keypad on the door would unlock the safe if one knew the code.

  “I bet that’s where they keep the pain meds,” Madison said. “A lot of people would steal those. They gave me some hydrocodone when I had my ACL surgeries. The meds didn’t stop the pain, but I felt so good that I just didn’t care.”

  “Well, maybe we can come back for those. I don’t know how we're are going to open it.”

  They stood in front of the safe, looking down at it like it were some buried chest with treasure locked inside, when they heard the sound of shoes crunching on glass as someone entered the store.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Ethan and Madison froze at the sound. As they listened, they heard one set of footsteps crunch on the broken glass, then another and another. The steps were slow and deliberate. They were looking for someone.

  The SUV parked in front, and the open door was a signal to anyone paying attention that someone was inside the store. They may have even been watching it just for this kind of moment.

  Ethan drew his pistol from his belt and crouched down to peek over the pharmacy counter. With all of the shelves blocking his line of sight, he could not even see the front doors, much less who had entered them. Madison drew her pistol and crouched down next to him.

  “Do you see anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head. A part of him hoped that it was just people from the stadium that were also on a supply run. But he had to push that thought aside. Optimism didn’t have a place in this new world.

  “We should just wait until they leave,” she suggested.

  He shook his head while his eyes scanned for any sign of who had come into the store. “No. They know we’re in here. They are looking for us. And the front door is the only way out.”

  She looked around the pharmacy and saw that he was right. There were no windows to crawl out of and the only door led into the store. She cocked ba
ck the hammer of her pistol and watched with Ethan over the counter. Eventually, he saw it, the movement of shadows in the darkened store. There were three. Two crept up first. Hunched over like animals and peering around every corner, Ethan saw a man and a woman searching for them.

  The man had been well-dressed, in a dark business suit over his fit frame. But now, it was tattered and torn, smudged with dirt, and stained with old blood. After days of not shaving, the man’s face was covered in a dark, patchy beard which matched his black, tangled hair.

  The woman may have worked at the pharmacy. She wore a white polo shirt with the CVS logo over her breast and black pants that seemed to fit a little too loose as if she had lost weight recently. Ethan wondered if the changed people ate. He never saw them do anything except kill.

  The man carried a meat cleaver, and the woman held a butcher knife, which were both covered in old and fresh blood.

  Strolling through the store behind them was a raider. Tall, lean, and muscular, he strode through the store with nothing to fear. He wore dirty leather pants and was bare-chested, rough scars visible across his chest and arms.

  He did not wear a mask, and his long black hair clung to his greasy neck and shoulders. He casually looked around the store while deftly flicking a long, curved knife in one hand.

  They were approaching the pharmacy counter where Ethan and Madison were hiding.

  Ethan quietly cocked back the hammer of his pistol and held it ready. He then looked Madison in the eyes. He could see she was frightened but prepared. Ethan noticed he wasn’t afraid. Cautious, but not afraid.

  He mouthed the words, ‘on three,’ and she nodded to him. He mouthed the countdown, and on three, they both stood up, aimed their pistols at the crazy people, and pulled the triggers of their pistols. Nothing happened but two loud clicks.

  The two crazies were surprised at the sudden appearance of Ethan and Madison. They stood shocked for a moment until they realized that the guns misfired. They screamed their defiance at the pair behind the counter. The raider stood behind them, with a knowing smirk, still flicking his knife.

  Madison reflexively threw her pistol at the well-dressed man’s head as he charged at her. It hit him with so much force that his head snapped back, and there was a loud pop as something in his face broke.

  He reflexively dropped the bloody meat cleaver and clutched his mouth and nose. Blood streamed over his fingers. The woman paused as if she didn’t know how to react. Perhaps she had never seen anyone fight back before.

  Seeing a more effective and surprisingly more familiar weapon, Ethan dropped his pistol and slid over the pharmacy counter. He dove forward to grab the meat cleaver. Crouched down, he spun the cleaver around and slammed it into the man’s leg, chopping him at the knee.

  The well-dressed man spit blood as he screamed and fell over like a tree. He rolled onto his side, clutching his knee while his lower leg sprung out painfully in front of him.

  The woman looked down at the man as he vomited from the pain. Then she looked at the raider. For the first time, Ethan saw fear on a crazy’s face. The raider, no longer flicking his knife, reappraised Ethan.

  The raider said, “Kill him! I’ll get the girl.”

  It just barely registered to Ethan that the raider spoke English rather than in the harsh guttural language he had heard them all speak before.

  “Ethan!” Madison cried out at his dangerous move. She grabbed his pistol from the counter and threw it at the raider. But he had seen this trick before and dodged out of the way. The pistol flew past his head and bounced off shelves behind him, scattering bottles of vitamins.

  The woman regained her courage and screamed as she charged at Ethan. She stabbed the butcher knife down, but he rolled backward, avoiding it narrowly.

  He bounced back into home health care goods, canes and incontinence supplies fell around him. She continued her attack, which was slowed by the debris on the floor and gave Ethan time to scramble to his feet. But he was moving farther away from Madison.

  The raider strode towards the counter, the only thing blocking him from Madison. He shoved the shopping cart away, which rattled loudly against the tipped over scooter on the floor.

  She glanced around, but the only weapons left to her were pill bottles. She threw them with all of the force her arm could give her, but the bottles either missed the raider entirely or they bounced uselessly off his hard chest. He smirked at her.

  Ethan could see the raider moving towards Madison, but he had to deal with the crazy woman in front of him. She slashed her knife back and forth at him. He was easily able to dodge back and to the side away from the sharp edge.

  He grabbed one of the aluminum canes from the stand against the wall. He used the hook of the handle to twist around the woman’s arm as she stabbed at him. Her wrist bound for just a second was all he needed to chop the meat cleaver into the top of her head. The sharp edge cut deep into her hand as she tried to protect herself before the cleaver stuck into her skull.

  “Ethan!” Madison cried out as the raider climbed over the pharmacy counter. She ran as far back as she could to get away from him. She stood in the far back corner near the computer desk where she picked up the keyboard and held it in both hands in front of her. She hoped that it would at least shield her. The raider held the long, curved knife as if it were an extension of his hand.

  He lunged forward and stabbed down at her. She tried to block his attack with the flimsy plastic keyboard, but he was too strong. His blade came past the keyboard, and the tip cut into her right shoulder at the base of her neck. The sudden pain in her throwing arm caused her to lose her grip on her only defense.

  Hearing Madison screamed out in pain, Ethan pushed the woman aside and left the meat cleaver stuck in her skull. He ran past the well-dressed man who was lying unconscious on the floor and towards the pharmacy. The raider loomed over Madison as she knelt trapped in the corner. Blood created a growing stain on her shirt from the wound. She was going to be slaughtered. Ethan grabbed the aluminum baseball bat from the shopping cart and slid over the counter, wielding it like a batter ready to swing.

  “Leave her alone, asshole!”

  The raider looked over his shoulder at Ethan, a confused look in his eyes. Ethan noticed Madison looking at him with the same confused expression on her face as she held her hand on her shoulder to stop the flow of blood running down her chest.

  The raider turned to face Ethan, his knife held close to his chest and his other hand out and ready to shield him from Ethan’s attacks. For a heartbeat, they both stood there facing each other, neither knowing what to do next.

  The raider decided first and lunged forward to stab at Ethan. The raider’s attack was so fast that Ethan could only reflexively jump back out of reach. The raider swung the knife around and brought it down to stab at Ethan just as he had Madison. But Ethan held the bat up to block the blow. And rather than let the blade hit him, Ethan twisted the bat around to push the raider’s wrist away from him.

  With the arm holding his knife crossed over his chest, the raider couldn’t block Ethan as he slammed the handle of the baseball bat into the raider’s mouth, breaking off several teeth. The raider took a couple of steps back and looked at Ethan, blood drooling from his open mouth. The expression on the raider’s face shifted from confusion to fear.

  The raider regained his resolve and stepped forward again. He turned the knife to slash up and across Ethan’s torso in an attempt to gut him. Instead of jumping back or blocking, Ethan brought the bat down onto the raider’s arm. The crack of breaking bones was loud, and the raider’s arm bent in an unnatural angle as the knife flew out of his hand.

  Ethan disregarded the pleading look in the raider’s eyes just before he swung the bat and crushed the raider’s skull, spinning his body around before it fell to the ground.

  Ethan dropped the bat with a loud clunk on the carpeted floor and ran to Madison, who slid down the wall to sit on the ground. Blood from her wound seeped thr
ough her clothes and turned her pink sweatshirt into a dark maroon.

  “Oh, my God! Are you alright?” Ethan asked, and he pressed his hands to her shoulder to stop the bleeding.

  She winced in pain. “Ah! I need to get back to the stadium. It won’t stop bleeding.”

  He pulled off his T-shirt, the same one he had been wearing since the day at the wildlife ranch, and pushed it against her shoulder to help catch the flow of blood.

  He helped her up and walked with her through the store. Once they reached the SUV, she got into the passenger’s side. “I’m not going to be able to drive. Looks like you’re driving lessons are going to come sooner than we thought.”

  He nodded. “Alright, but wait here. I’m going to get the stuff. I don’t want to leave empty-handed.”

  Before she could protest, he went back into the store. She rolled up and windows and locked the doors while she waited. Ethan gathered up the pistols and baseball bat and tossed them into the shopping cart with the antibiotics.

  Ethan picked up the raider’s long, curved knife and looked down at it. It felt perfect in his hand. Balanced, sharp and strong. It was beautiful despite its wicked design. He glanced down at the raider, who laid still on the floor, and then back at the blade before sliding it into his belt.

  Ethan then completed their mission. He walked quickly through the shop scooping up as much of the first aid supplies as he could get into the shopping cart. Once it was full, he ran out of the store and lifted the whole cart and put it into the back of the SUV. Then he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the key. It didn’t start.

  The engine churned and churned, but it would not start. Madison looked worried as she could see that he was doing everything right, and the SUV started right up less than an hour ago at the stadium.

  Eventually, the engine strained and finally rolled over and started. They both sighed with relief and smiled at each other.

  Ethan looked over the other controls, and they all seemed to be in a blur. He knew he was supposed to do something with the gear control but didn’t want to mess up and have the engine stall. Who knows if it would start again?