by R. M. Smith
As he got closer, he saw that they weren’t trying to help someone.
He saw that they were actually feeding on him.
Quickly, he ran back into the gym. He ran over to a set of bleachers. “Help me move this shit over there in front of the doors!” he yelled.
Other men came over. They moved a heavy set of bleachers, blocking the doorway. It was the only way in or out.
“We’ll be safe here now,” Ski said. “Let’s just wait this out. Shouldn’t be long til help arrives.”
However, it was two days later when they finally were able to sneak away from the gym.
I told them I survived a plane crash. This added to Cindy’s disbelief of my story. I also told them about Norm, going to Seattle, meeting Tara. I told them how Tara was killed on the highway. I told Ski about the yacht – how I had to figure out how to maneuver it.
Mindy and Cindy were talking amongst themselves. Mindy turned to us and asked “Hey what about Richland? We could go there, right?”
“Richland?” Ski said, “That’s more than 150 miles from here. What’s in Richland that makes it worth going there?”
Mindy said “Paranoia.”
“Para…what the fuck…” Ski took off his baseball cat scratching his shaved head. I heard him scratch it.
Mindy said “That’s where he said he lives. I had planned to meet him one day.”
“Ok hold on. Who or what is Paranoia?”
Mindy blushed a little. “He was a guy I talked to on Go4 chat. His real name is Ben Hanscomb.”
“Ok wait a minute. You want to drive 150 miles through a zombie-infested countryside just to go meet some dude you met on Go4?”
“They had a real relationship going, Mike,” Cindy said. “They were talking about getting together before all this happened.”
“How do you know if this fucker is even alive? When was the last time you were talking…or excuse me, chatting with him?”
Mindy said “During Sam’s softball game.”
He looked at me. “What do you think Dan?”
I said “I have no plans either way. I’m just trying to survive here.” I didn’t want to say anything about the voices I heard on the radio – at least, not yet. I had only come this way just to get away from tsunami threats – but now that I’d met these new people, I basically put the military base out of my mind. Something about the voices on the radio really didn’t fare well with me, anyway.
“Well I think going after this Paranoia dude will be nothing but a wild goose chase. I mean Mindy; do you even know this fucker’s address?”
Mindy said “I have it on my cell.”
“K what is it?
She thumbed her cell phone on. “5285 Mockingbird Court. It’s in West Richland.”
I kind of laughed a little. “Your cell still has power?”
“Yeah Ski lets me charge it in the cigarette lighter.”
Damn I wish I had thought of that!
“No service though?” I asked.
“Not since all this happened.”
I wondered why the pole shift caused cell phones to stop working, but then figured that if indeed the world had flipped, we would now be under the satellites of Australia…if the world had flipped north to south, that is.
And if we did flip north to south, I would think that instead of summer, we would be in winter now….but it wasn’t cold outside. It wasn’t making much sense at all.
Needless to say, I really didn’t care where we went as long as we survived, had shelter, and had food. Was it luck that brought me to this group or just a random push in the right direction? I didn’t know, but our trip to Richland was unforgiving, as usual.
I don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t be.
We headed south to Richland.
Ski did a good job weaving in and out of stalled cars on the highway. Cindy kept on telling him to keep the speed down. He kept shrugging her off though.
As we drove, the conversation was pretty light. Ski kept his DVCD player going the whole time. It made it difficult to have a good conversation. He played the music almost too loud, but at least it was decent old rock n roll.
Ski and Cindy both had taught grade school in Airway Heights. Mindy didn’t have a job but was in line for an interview to become an airline stewardess at Continental.
As we drove, I observed my fellow travelers. For a while I watched Ski driving, his left hand on the wheel, his other firmly grabbing a shogun that he had somehow jammed between the seats. The shotgun was standing straight up, barrel up. He would only take his hand off the barrel of the shotgun to adjust the volume on the DVCD player. He would turn the volume down if he had something to say. Most of the time he kept quiet. I would notice him glancing back at me a lot of the time in the rear view mirror. I could tell by his facial expression that he wasn’t afraid or concerned about me; he was just making sure I was listening to the music.
He had a cleft chin. I pictured him with his baseball cap, a white t-shirt, shorts with a whistle strung around his neck yelling at kids in the gym, telling them to run their laps. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that he had a kind of superhero’s face, but he was a ruggedly handsome man with a shaved head. He had exactly straight white teeth when he smiled.
Cindy rarely ever stopped looking out her side of the jeep. Sometimes her head would keep a beat to a song on the cd, but she didn’t look at Ski at all. I didn’t know if she was older or younger than Mindy, but I could tell they were sisters. Her long dark hair would blow in the wind, too. Sometimes she brushed it out of her pretty face, but she never looked back at me or even at Ski. I wondered if she and Ski were arguing. They didn’t seem to have a couple’s chemistry…or maybe she was on her period. Then again, with the way the world had changed and so many people had died, maybe she was just in her own state of mourning. After all, she did just find out that her parents were probably dead. She seemed to have a short temper, and she didn’t act like she trusted me.
Mindy was next to me on my right in the backseat. Sometimes she would sing along with the songs. She had a pretty singing voice. She was also much prettier than her sister – actually prettier than most women. Her face was clear of any blemishes. Her eyes were a striking blue. She had a very easy going personality.
As we came into the small town of Connell, Cindy started talking about being hungry. We all agreed to stop. There was a Harvest Foods grocery store in town that Cindy shopped at from time to time. It was next to a Michael J’s Family Restaurant. If the grocery store didn’t yield anything, we decided Michael J’s might be the ticket. There had to be some fresh food in one of them. Ski parked the Jeep right at the front doors of the grocery store. There were a few cars in the parking lot. A few others were parked in slots further away from the store. Employee parking, I thought. Ski pulled the shotgun from between the seats. We all went into the darkening store.
It was starting to get late.
There was enough leftover daylight coming through the front windows for us to make out our surroundings. Most of the aisles were empty of food. The whole place had been looted. There weren’t even any empty boxes on the shelves.
Cindy said “C’mon there has to be something!”
“I’ll check in the back,” Ski said.
“Be careful. You don’t know what’s back there.”
He smiled an I’m-not-afraid-of-anything smile as he went through some swinging doors. We heard some rummaging around. He came back out holding a lit flashlight. “I found this,” he laughed.
“Any food back there?” Cindy asked.
“I saw some crates. Let me go see if I can crack some open.”
“I’ll come with you.” I said.
“We all will,” Mindy added.
Ski swung the door open for us as we went in.
Other than Ski’s flashlight, it was completely dark. It looked like the whole stocking area had been looted as well. There was a crate with some leftover lettuce leaves under it, a few ripped open bags o
f rice, and some unopened cases of soda; but there was no real food. There was also a smell that reminded me of either rotten eggs or meat that had been going bad, but as far as I knew, the smell was old. It wasn’t from the lack of being frozen for a few days; it was an older smell, maybe even rotting wood?
The crates that Ski had seen were all open. Inside we only found wadded up balls of old newspaper.
There was a set of double doors. These took us back outside onto a loading dock.
Back inside, Cindy pointed out a set of metal stairs leading up. We all went up the stairs together with Ski in the lead. Beyond a wooden door with a glass window, we found the manager’s office. There was a great deal of dried blood on the floor. The manager was slouched backward in his chair, a bullet hole in his head. Blood had dried down his face. It had dripped and dried in his long hair. It looked like he had committed suicide when things had gone bad. He looked like a young kid, maybe 17 or 18 years old. He didn’t have a weapon. Ski looked all around the floor and through the manager’s desk, but he didn’t find a gun. I looked in the fridge for any food, but even it had been looted. The only thing inside was an empty milk carton.
Then someone from just outside the office door said “Well lookie what we got here!”
He sat as his desk, looking long and hard at the pistol as he turned it over and over in his hands. He knew that he would never get away with murder, but he couldn’t think of any other way to end the nightmare he had come into the night before.
Four bullets. One for Rodney. One for Debra. One for any cop that might show up; and one for him. What was the sense of going on after what had happened? He plugged three bullets into the gun. He put the fourth in the top right-hand drawer of the desk for later.
That’s for later when the cops come calling, he thought.
The night before, his wife Debra told him that she was cheating on him. She told him “I’ve been fucking him while you’ve been at work. You work too long, Bob. All you do is spend all of your time counting at that goddamn store. It’s a fucking grocery store, Bob! And while you’re counting your fucking groceries, I’ve been fucking Rodney!”
This morning after he got the bad news from his wife Debra, Bob Lawrence, 18 year manager and co-owner of the Connell, Washington Harvest Foods grocery store, invited Rodney Clay to come up to his office. Rodney was the 17 year old kid with bad acne and long hair. Rodney was the kid who started working at Harvest Foods only two months ago. Rodney was the kid who asked to get off work early so many days – he rarely worked a whole shift. Rodney was the kid he was planning on firing if he didn’t get his act together and start working like a regular working man – or kid - should.
He’s been asking to get off work early so he can go to my house and fuck my wife! Bob thought.
“Come on in, Rod,” Bob said as he heard the kid knock on his office door. “I got something we need to talk about.”
Rodney came in.
Bob asked him “Why don’t you sit at my desk. Huh? I think you deserve some recognition for all of the hard work you’ve done for us these past few months.”
Rodney nodded with his whole body, his hair swinging. “Ok.” He sat in the chair, actually lounged down into it like he was getting ready to watch TV for a few hours. He folded his hands in his lap.
“Rodney. I know what’s going on. I know you and Debra are having an affair.”
Rodney sat up quick, shocked. He was about to call Bob a liar. Instead Bob put a bullet through Rodney’s head.
Debra was at home. She would probably still be in bed. She rarely got up before 11 o’clock. It was only nine now. He would just go home, look at her lump in the bed, and shoot her. No problem.
He did just that. Point blank into the back of her head while she slept. BLAM!
With that done, he stuffed the pistol into the back of his belt. His mind turned once again back to his work. Inventory. The numbers were off again on the inventory for some reason.
As he pulled back into the Harvest Foods parking lot, his left elbow jockeyed out the window, the world shifted. His car jerked sideways. He tried to over-correct the yank but the car leaned, teetered and fell onto the driver’s side. Bob’s arm was pinned under the car. The vehicle’s weight caused his arm to roll out of the socket. Bob shrieked. The pain was so immense. He climbed out of the car, screaming, blood pouring out of his open wound. The pain took over all of his body functions. He was mindless. All he could think of was the pain. The pain! The pain! Oh God the fucking pain! Suddenly, someone was on him – trying to tackle him? Trying to hold him down so he wouldn’t run around, getting his heart-rate up? Then a bite to the neck. Sharp. Painful again.
He struggled away somehow. He headed for the store. Running through it, he saw chaos, groceries everywhere, shelves knocked down, lights overhead swinging. People fighting, screaming, lying dead in the aisles. All of this was blur to him. In his office, there was a first aid kit that he knew would not do justice to the damage of his arm or the blood he had lost – or the maddening headache that had started pounding deep in his skull. Maybe he should have someone call an ambulance for him? Marge the check-out girl would call them. Marge would do it.
He passed out, lying on the floor of his office in front of the desk where the kid he murdered now slouched.
When he came to, he didn’t know how long he had been out, but he was weak. His whole body shook. The whole floor was puddled in dried blood. He needed help. Help badly.
Where was Marge? Hadn’t he told her to call the ambulance?
God he was hungry! He had a hunger inside that he never knew could be. It was fiendish. He could eat anything. He could eat flesh! Fuck the pain, he wanted to eat, god dammit. He crawled over to his fridge. Nothing in there but an old carton of milk. Damn why didn’t he keep this thing full of food?
He managed to get up. He slowly made his way down into the grocery store. The whole place had been looted. Where was everyone? Marge. Where was Marge?
He saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. Someone was heading up to his office.
The pistol was still jammed into the back of his belt. He yanked it out.
He needed to stop them before they found Rodney.
When I first looked, I thought a dead had spoken to us. It was a man completely covered in blood from the right side of his neck all the way down to his belt. His neck was torn open. Blood was oozing slowly from the rip. There was a large bruise in the direct center of his forehead. The man stumbled toward us, a pistol pointing at us in his shaking hand.
“Lookie who’s been going through my stuff,” he painfully laughed. “You guys lookin for food! Huh? That what you’re lookin for? What ya doin in my office?”
Ski’s flashlight was stabbing the man into brightness in the dark room. He had a limp. He was wearing a white collared shirt with a black tie that was now half-soaked with blood. He only had one arm. The other had been ripped from his body.
We all were shocked at the sight of him. We didn’t say anything.
He shouted “I said are you after my fucking food! Huh?”
I said quietly “There isn’t any.”
He quickly pointed the gun at me. Blood bubbled from his neck. “You ate it?”
“There wasn’t any when we got here,” I said quietly again.
BLAM!
Ski shot the man with his shotgun.
The man bellied backward as his back blew out. His body fell backward onto the blood covered floor with a thud. Ski quickly ran over to the man grabbing the pistol.
“Empty” he said. “Fucker was playin us.”
“But what happened to him?” Mindy asked. “He looked like a zombie!”
“That’s what I thought too,” I said. “He looks like he got away from a group of them or something. His arm’s been bitten off.”
Ski shone the flashlight down onto the man. With our closer inspection of him, he did look like he had fought a bunch of deads off. His legs had been bitten through his trous
ers. It looked like his left arm had been ripped off, not chewed off, and his neck was deeply bitten into.
He stirred.
“The hell?” Ski said.
The man tried to stand up but he was having a hard time with it. Cindy went to him, offering to help him stand.
The man grabbed Cindy’s arm roughly.
“Hey!” she said. “Let me go!”
“Let her go!” Ski shouted.
The man didn’t let go. Instead, he raised her arm to bite it.
Ski kicked the man behind the kneecap. The man went down, still holding Cindy’s arm, still trying to bite her.
Ski put the shotgun to the back of the man’s head. “Let go, fucker,” he said.
The man bit down, but missed Cindy’s arm by inches.
Cindy was able to break free,
The man snarled, reaching around for someone else to grab.
Ski shot the man in the back of the head. His head blew apart, brain and blood splashed against the far wall.
We all stood there, out of breath.
“You didn’t have to kill him…” Cindy started.
“He was a fucking zombie,” Ski said. “He was trying to eat you!”
“But, I was just trying to help him…”
“You can’t help a fucking zombie,” Ski said. “They don’t want to be helped. All they want is your flesh.”
“And your brains,” Mindy added.
Ski looked at her, a smirk on his face. “This isn’t Night of the Living Dead, Mind. This isn’t comic book stuff – or movie stuff. This is real.”
“They don’t want our brains?” Mindy asked.
“Looks to me like all they want is our blood.”
I nodded. “Yeah, they only go for flesh. I haven’t seen any eating brains.”
“You’ve seen a lot of them, then?” Cindy asked, hands on her hips.
“Quite a few,” I said. “The plane crash was surrounded by them. None of them were eating brains. Then down on the highway a couple deads tried to bite me, but none ever reached for my head. All I’ve ever seen them go for is flesh and blood.”
