The Dead (a Lot) Trilogy (Book 1): Wicked Dead

by Odentz, Howard

  “Chocolate,” said Trina.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Randy just grimaced.

  “So, Randy,” I said rather smugly. “What do you see?” I felt like a detective in a crime show showing a rookie cop the ropes.

  “Well,” he began, “it looks like someone wanted to get out of Walmart in a hurry.”

  “Do you blame them?” asked Trina. “It’s a Walmart.”

  I ignored her. “What else?”

  Randy studied the front entrance. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “The doors wouldn’t have been locked. Why break the glass?”

  “You tell me. What can’t poxers do?”

  He thought for a moment then nodded his head. “Poxers can’t open doors.”

  “Give the man a gold star.”

  “So,” he said. “Someone wanted all the doors open for a reason.” He knitted his brow and stared hard at the front entrance.

  “Why?”

  Another moment and he figured it out. “Someone wanted to clear the place out—another survivor?”

  “Probably,” I said. “There’s a lot of useful stuff inside, but first you have to get rid of the nasties. Remember, last Friday night, there had to be dozens of people shopping when everything went down—not to mention whoever was working. So they turned into poxers and got trapped. If you’re a survivor and need some supplies, but don’t want to risk being jumped inside, what do you do?”

  “You open the doors,” said Randy.

  “But what about the blood?” asked Trina as she stared warily at the stained ground.

  I grimaced. “Maybe whoever it was didn’t make it,” I said. “Good idea. Bad follow-through.”

  The whole scenario didn’t make me feel any better. So what if the poxers who were trapped inside had a way to get out? It didn’t mean they were gone. I still fully expected to find dead things among the shoe racks or in housewares. Maybe some little bit of their former selves made them choose to stay inside.

  “It’s dark in there,” said Randy, his voice trembling just a little.

  “Yup,” said Trina, sarcasm tainting her words. “Stating the obvious—good for you.”

  “Shut up, Trina. He’s trying to help.”

  “I didn’t ask for his help.”

  Randy grimaced. “And I didn’t ask to survive a zombie apocalypse, but I did. So do you want to stow the attitude, girlfriend, or do you want to trade barbs all day long, because I gotta tell you, I’m a lot older and a lot smarter than you. So what’s it going to be?”

  Woo hoo! Two points for Randy Stephens and another for making my sister’s mouth drop open.

  “Sorry,” she said. Wow, and she even apologized. I had to stop myself from feeling her forehead to see if she had a fever.

  Still, Randy was right. It was gloomy inside—gloomy and cavernous, just like any huge department store.

  “Look,” I exclaimed excitedly as I saw a double row of candy machines right inside the door. “Fireballs! I love fireballs.” I scooped up the dumbbell, definitely a twenty-five, and lobbed it at the row of machines. The glass on the fireball container smashed open, and little red balls spilled on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” he yelped. “They’ll hear you.”

  “That’s the point,” I said. “Never enter a building without making a lot of noise.” I reached down and scooped up a fireball, squeezed the plastic, and popped it into my mouth. “Never go to them. Let them come to you. Poxers are attracted to noise.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I’ll buy that.”

  “See what I mean?” I said and nodded toward the gloom. We had rung the dinner bell and our first Walmart shopper was heading straight for us.

  50

  WE STAYED MOSTLY out front, so the burning chunks would be kept away from the building. All we needed was another torch job. There’s nothing like a blazing fire to advertise to Diana’s people where you are. Been there, done that, didn’t want to do it again.

  At one point, Trina ran around to the back of the building to tell everyone what was going on. Then they were right there with us, hanging back, except for Prianka, Jimmy, and Bullseye.

  The others were scared. I get that. We, meaning us kids, had done most of the killing up until now. Why wouldn’t they be scared?

  Newfie attacked a little boy who had a mouth caked with dry gore. He looked to be just about the same age as Krystal. The giant dog basically tore him to pieces. It was nasty and gross, but I was proud of him. Meanwhile, Andrew dived and swooped and tore at dirty, smelly hair. At one point I think he even plucked a cloudy eye from the head of one of the poxers. I tried not to notice. Eyeballs freak me out. Having one scooped out of your head by a crow is like a double-freak—gnarly and nasty.

  I noticed Sanjay, unafraid, watching us as we took care of the poxers. He chanted his words each time one burst into flames and exploded, clutching Poopy Puppy tightly to his chest. The stuffed dog was taken once by poxers. Sanjay would never let that happen again.

  We lured the remaining poxers out of the store and as far from the entrance as we could, before burning them, their mouths gaping and drooling—the hunger on their faces making them look more obscene than they already were.

  When we were through, and the only things left were slick pools of fire, Randy Stephens started to cry in big, gasping, gut-wrenching sobs. He fell to one knee and buried his face in his hands. Eddie with the fake hair walked over to him and gently touched his shoulder.

  “You were great,” Eddie whispered to him, which was the truth.

  “Yeah,” he gasped. “I’m a great killer.”

  “You’re not a killer,” said Eddie. “You’re a hero.”

  I guess that was kind of true, except I wondered why adults who kill for the right reasons are heroes, but kids who do the same thing are freaks. That’s just how adults think, I guess. I caught myself staring at Bullseye. He was flushed and dirty. A couple of bullets had flown through the air, finding their marks in the legs of some of the poxers. They had dropped to the ground and we had burned them where they fell. Bullseye was a hero, too. When he caught my eye, I smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up. He nodded his head and tucked his gun back in his pants.

  All very touching, very Disney, but it only lasted a minute.

  “We need to get inside,” said Aunt Ella, “And we need to put those fires out. If we’re being followed or if there’s another helicopter, we don’t want any sign that we’re here.”

  Practical Aunt Ella—I guess she had to focus on something other than Uncle Don.

  Right inside the Walmart doors, Trudy Aiken found a fire extinguisher. My real guess is that she was actually looking for Twinkies, but stumbled upon the big, red canister first. She lugged it outside triumphantly, if not a little winded. Jimmy rolled up to her, plucked it out of her hands like it weighed about two ounces, and quickly zipped around the parking lot putting out any black pools of smoldering goo still burning.

  Finally, we all went inside and shut the inner doors behind us.

  We were in one of those mega Walmarts. The kind that carried everything you could possibly want, from televisions to clothing to chicken pot pies. I suppose if you lived in a place like Apple, there was no such thing as a mall. This was it. I bet the store had some sort of curfew for gangs of teenagers who came here to hang out on Friday nights. If I lived in Apple, this is where I would be.

  Without any lights, the Walmart was gloomy inside, but we could still see. There were enough windows in front for that. To our right was the grocery section. There was row after row of anything you could imagine. Also, there were banks of refrigerators and freezers with everything from milk to frozen pizza.

  Prianka had a puzzled look on her face.

  “What?” I said as I reached for her hand.


  “There’s no smell,” she said. “We’ve got a whole super market right in front of us but there’s no smell.”

  She was right. After a week without power, the place should’ve been ripe.

  “The freezers are still on,” said Randy. “Hear that?”

  “Hear what?” said Trina.

  “That hum,” he said. We all strained to listen. In the quiet of the store we could all hear a faint buzzing. “It’s the freezer motors. Probably the fridge section, too.”

  “How can that be?” said Aunt Ella. “There’s no electricity.”

  “Propane,” Trina and I said in unison, remembering the huge, white tanks out back. Randy said that big places in the country used propane as back-up if the electricity went out. I’m sure it couldn’t run the whole store, but it could run some things—important things, like the refrigerators and the freezers.

  “You mean there’s real food in there?” said Trudy, the saliva already glistening on her lips. “Like tater tots and french fries and those little bagel pizzas?”

  “Pizza,” squawked Andrew, and Prianka let out a nervous chuckle.

  “If we can find a hot pot I would love a cup of tea,” said Nedra Stein, but she didn’t make any effort to move. I think she was one of those ladies who expected things done for her. Maybe she was used to having a maid.

  Another sound accompanied the low humming of the refrigerators and the freezers. It was the painfully familiar, steady thrum of helicopter blades.

  “Move away from the doors,” I shouted at everyone. “Move back into the store.”

  The chopper passed by slowly, flying low to the ground as it followed the road. It was one of the big ones again—like the one that found me and Dorcas near the covered bridge, not a little one like what Cheryl The It was in or what dive-bombed us in the woods. The copter was followed by three jeeps and a truck, all the color of military fatigues. My eyes burned. Someone in one of those jeeps shot Dorcas. Someone shot her dead and probably didn’t think anything of it.

  “Murderers,” I seethed under my breath. Only Trina heard me. She stared at them as they slowly passed by the Walmart parking lot.

  “Murderers,” she agreed.

  We watched them go. I was positive they didn’t know they were looking for an ambulance and a van, and even if they were, both vehicles were parked around back. We were safe for the time being, and the knot that I didn’t even know was twisted inside my stomach let loose just a little.

  “We can lay low here for a while,” I said to everyone. “But not for too long. They aren’t going to stop looking for us.”

  Jimmy rolled up and put his hand on my back, but it was another’s voice who spoke. The words felt like a knife.

  “Then why don’t you turn yourself in and save the rest of us?”

  Someone gasped, I’m not sure who. Trina and I turned around to face the owner of the voice. It was Freaky Big Bird—Felice Lefleur. She stared at us with her beady eyes and her hooked nose and her stick-thin arms. Her lip curled as she spoke.

  “There, I said it,” she hissed. “I said what all of us are thinking.”

  “I’m not thinking that,” murmured Trudy. She had finally found that pack of Twinkies she was looking for and was eating one like it was a banana, with the plastic wrapping folded half-way down.

  “You leave my children alone,” hissed my mother, her hands balled into fists.

  “They’re my kids,” said my father. “Are you mad?” He stared at Felice with hatred in his eyes.

  “Mad? MAD? Yes I’m mad,” she bellowed. “I’m mad that I’m not in my own home with my cat and my goldfish and my ancient mother who sits in a wheelchair all day long and smells like dirty diapers. I’m mad that I had to watch that old woman turn into a zombie before my eyes and there was nothing I could do about it. I’m mad that we’re running, running, running with no place to go, all because of these two brats. I’m mad that they’re immune and I’m not. I’m mad that—”

  CRACK.

  Nedra Stein stepped forward and slapped Freaky Big Bird hard across the face. The sound stunned us all.

  “Shut the hell up, Felice,” she whispered to her so softly you could almost hear a pin drop. “If it weren’t for those two children, you’d be dead right now. They saved your life from that woman—that, that Diana.”

  “How do you know?” Freaky Big Bird cried. “How do you know? Maybe Diana was trying to heal us.”

  “From what?” murmured Randy. “Selfishness and stupidity?”

  High five to the tall guy—I was liking Randy Stephens more and more.

  “We’d be fine without them,” Freaky Big Bird screamed, her voice getting higher and higher. “We’d be fine without all of them—the retard and the cripple and that murderous child who has no business shooting a gun. And you,” she pointed at Prianka. “What are you doing with him?” Felice leveled a bony finger at her. “He’ll get you killed, missy. Mark my words—he’ll get you killed.”

  Prianka was still stuck on ‘retard’. I knew her well enough for that. The anger started to bubble up and spill off her like a volcano getting ready to explode.

  It didn’t matter, anyway. A poxer practically fell on Freaky Big Bird from behind a magazine rack. None of us saw him and none of us could stop him as he bit into her shoulder, tearing her thin skin like tissue paper.

  Blood splattered everywhere.

  51

  “I’M DYING,” Felice Lefluer screamed. “Oh, Lord, I’m dying.” The poxer chewed at the mouthful of flesh and muscle he had ripped free of Freaky Big Bird’s bony hide. His teeth turned red and blood dripped down his chin. For some reason I noticed that he was wearing a name badge on his filthy shirt. ‘Sales Associate’, it said. ‘Juan’.

  Part of me thought, just for an instant, that Felice deserved what she got and Juan deserved to choke on her, too, but no—I was wrong. Nobody deserves Necropoxy.

  Newfie began snarling and barking. Aunt Ella grabbed his collar with both hands and held him back.

  Felice fell to her knees, blood spilling out of her like a faucet, and Juan the poxer stepped forward again, opening his mouth wide for another taste of Freaky Big Bird.

  Bullseye pulled his gun out of his pants and fired first—just one time—and Juan simply had no face. His mouth was a sputtering hole. His nose disappeared in a gush of black goop. One cloudy eye remained where there had been two.

  Still, he staggered forward. Newfie growled and Bullseye steadied his aim and shot him again, this time in his thigh. The bullet made a ragged mess of gray meat and corduroy, and Juan’s legs buckled. He fell down right behind Freaky Big Bird, smearing the linoleum floor with what was left of his face.

  Then Bullseye stepped forward and leveled his gun at Felice LeFleur.

  “Help me,” she screamed as she clutched her shoulder. “It hurts. It hurts so much.” Tears spilled down her face as blood seeped between her fingers.

  “I don’t know what happened,” gasped Nedra Stein. “One minute I was reprimanding Felice and the next minute that thing was just there. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Bullseye cocked the gun but didn’t pull the trigger. “We don’t shoot people, Tripp—right?” I didn’t know what to say. Any second now, Felice LeFleur was going to be a monster. “That’s what you told me,” he repeated. “We don’t shoot people.”

  Randy Stephens pulled his father’s lighter out of his pocket and grabbed a box of tissue paper off a shelf next to him.

  “I got your back, kid,” he said to Bullseye. “You do what you need to do.”

  “Somebody DO something,” Felice wailed again. The blood poured down her sleeve and soaked her librarian’s outfit.

  I tensed, waiting for the inevitable. Necropoxy was quick. My mind went back to Tattoo Guy. The old bu
s driver had bit him and he had changed almost instantly. ‘I can feel it in me’, he had cried. ‘I can feel it in me’.

  But something was different with Felice. Something wasn’t right.

  “Tripp?” said Trina. She could see it, too.

  “Not changing,” murmured Sanjay.

  “Not changing,” repeated Andrew. “Not changing, not changing, not changing.”

  Felice Lefluer wasn’t turning into a poxer. Oh, don’t get me wrong, she looked horrible. Her face had gone white and her eyes were starting to roll up into her head, but that didn’t mean she was a poxer. That only meant that a monster had taken a hunk of meat out of her and she was probably going into shock.

  “Bullseye, wait,” I said.

  “Why?” he said. Both his hands were gripping the gun. Freaky Big Bird cried and cried, her eyes catching each of ours in turn, begging and pleading for help.

  Still, there were no signs of Necropoxy—not even a little.

  “She’s not changing,” I murmured.

  Walmart Juan flailed on the floor like a fish out of water. A slowly growing pool of black made an oily slick beneath him.

  Suddenly, Felice noticed the maimed poxer with his ruined face lying on the ground behind her. She yelped and scrambled to her feet, her hand still pressed against the place where she had been bitten.

  “Kill it,” she screamed. “Kill it. Kill the monster.”

  Randy Stephens looked from Felice to Juan and back to Felice again. “Which one?” he said. Under the circumstances it was a valid question.

  My father, who had stood like a statue through the whole ordeal, suddenly woke up out of la-la land and realized that he was the one with the medical degree. He raced forward to Felice.

  “Doug. No,” yelped my mom, but he was already there, pulling Freaky Big Bird away from Juan and instructing her to unbutton her shirt so he could inspect the wound.

  Eddie with the fake hair turned and made his way to the front door, swung it open, and grabbed one of the televisions that were sitting on the ground. He grunted as he lifted it up. Then he came back in, stumbled over to where Juan was flopping around on the floor, and dropped the television on his head. There was a wet, smacking sound as the two connected. Eddie lifted the television up and did it again. The third time, Walmart Juan stopped moving, hopefully for good.