by David Rogers
They got back outside without incident, where the Dogz who were on the Guard team waited. The teams were Bobo’s idea, and the situation here at the Kroger was making Darryl quite glad for the division of their available manpower. They had some people designated to do nothing but load and haul stuff, the Grabbers. They were all armed, but that was the only thing they were supposed to be responsible for; getting things back to, and in, the vehicles.
The Escorts went everywhere the Grabbers did, and protected them. And while those two groups were off doing the looting, the Guards stayed with the vehicles. They were supposed to make sure the vehicles weren’t messed with; either the things loaded in them, nor the vehicles themselves.
Most of the convoy vehicles were hot-wired, and couldn’t easily be shut off or started back up unless you were, like EZ, an accomplished car thief. So it was especially important to not leave the vehicles alone where someone could just hop in and be gone in seconds.
Darryl watched the doors with EZ and Tank, making sure no one coming from inside the store could bother them without warning. Behind him, the other Escorts fanned out a little to cover the Grabbers as they transferred everything from the carts to the convoy. It took about as much time as it had to get the carts loaded, then Big Chief called out, and they headed back in.
“More cans?” Darryl asked. The aisle hadn’t been empty when they’d left it.
“Yeah.” he heard Jody reply.
“Hope them assholes is busy somewhere else.” EZ muttered.
Darryl agreed, though he didn’t say anything. When he turned into the aisle he half expected to see the men there, but they weren’t. Darryl moved back down to the far end and resumed his guard position there while the Grabbers started grabbing. That trip cleared most of what Jody said was worth taking from the shelves. She insisted some things were a waste of time, like canned broccoli, since few people would willingly eat it.
After dumping the rest of the cans into the vehicles, their third trip headed over to soups, where they applied more Jody logic as they cleared most of that section as well. A few things, like split pea, were ignored, and Darryl couldn’t blame her. Split pea soup was nasty stuff. After that, they took every bit of sugar and tea and coffee they could find, which actually wasn’t as much as Darryl would have expected. Well, at least as far as tea was concerned. All the tea in the store fit into only two carts.
Some of the convoy vehicles were starting to get full, at least as far as weight went. Darryl knew that when you were dealing with things that were heavy, like canned goods, weight usually mattered more than space. Bobo had most of the soups and bagged sugar loaded onto the ‘flat beds’, saying that would leave room for things that were lighter, and more likely to blow around, in the more enclosed vehicles.
While two Grabbers stayed behind briefly to do a little load shifting, the rest of the Grabbers went back into the store with the Escorts. The next several loads they hauled out brought boxes of crackers, cans of shortening, and jars or bottles of oil. They brought out flour and rice, two whole carts that were the sum total of all the spices, along with a lot of salt, in the store. A lot of peanut butter and jelly, crammed into left over cart spaces. One trip of nothing but dried pasta.
Darryl got confused when Jody finally directed them to make a pass through the refrigerated section. She was the one who had said the clubhouse was running out of cold storage, after all. But he didn’t have to say anything, one of the other women who was on the Grabber team raised the question.
“We got some coolers, and can get some more if we need to.” Jody said as they walked. “We can rotate ice packs between the coolers and the freezers to keep stuff cold enough. At least until we can get it cooked in the next day or two, and then as long as we eat it pretty quick it’ll be fine.”
Darryl shrugged. All he knew about cooking was that he liked to eat it. He led the way through the dairy section, where they found no milk or cream remaining, but plenty of cartons of eggs and packages of cheese. They came back through the bread aisle just as an experiment, but as Darryl expected there was nothing left there either.
“We done?” he did ask when they got back and started adding the cold stuff to the loads, mostly packing it into the van.
“Almost. One, two more trips.” Jody said as she handed eggs over to Little Chief, who was kneeling inside the van and stacking things quickly but carefully.
“What else can we take?” 2C asked, sounding somewhere between exasperated and curious.
“We ain’t get anything out of the powered drinks section yet.” Jody pointed out. “Or you wanna drink boiled lake water until things get better?”
“We got the tea and coffee.”
“Yeah, but we got kids with us. Plus that’s where they store the milk.”
“Milk was all gone.” 2C protested.
“Sure, all the cold milk.” Jody grinned. “But there probably still lots of powdered milk left, and maybe some of boxed milk that’s good at room temperature until you open it.”
“An we need to grab at least a couple of carts of stuff like soap, razors, that kinda shit.” Bobo said.
“Tampons.” Jody nodded.
“I don’t need to know the details.” 2C said hastily, which brought a couple of laughs from some of the Dogz. 2C, short for 2-Cool, was named that because he maintained an aura of being cool and confident no matter what was going on. Apparently even he was unable to handle specifics on female hygiene without flinching though.
As it turned out, there wasn’t as much milk on the shelf as Jody had apparently been hoping. They were able to fit all the powered and boxed milk in the store into one trip, and still had room left over for a detour on the way back through the hygiene section. One cart of soap, another of shampoo, and a two more of various items seemed to satisfy Jody.
The convoy was now basically full. The trucks, which were all little light trucks like Ford Rangers and Nissan Frontiers except for Big Chief’s F-250, were sagging on their shocks. So was the van, though the SUVs were holding up a little better mostly because their interiors limited what could be packed in somewhat. Only the Home Depot trucks seemed to have available weight remaining, though in their case they were nearly out of room in the makeshift ‘beds’ their flatbeds had been converted into.
As the drink powders and packages of bathroom items started being loaded into the vehicles, Bobo caught Darryl’s attention with a shout. When he looked around, he saw Bobo gesturing to him. Darryl went over and stood sort of sideways, so he could keep an eye on the store doors.
“Take two Escorts, Vivian and another Grabber, and go clean out the pharmacy best you can.”
Darryl stared at him for a moment, a little confused, then managed to get his tired brain to catch up with Bobo. “The pharmacy? Uh . . . yeah. Okay. What we need?”
“Vivian works in a doctor’s office, so whatever she thinks y’all should get.” Bobo shrugged. “But make sure you get a lot of stuff for pain and infection.”
“Just two carts?”
“Yeah, just two. That ought to be plenty. Don’t take too long neither, just fill up and get back out here. We’ll probably we waiting on you.”
“Okay.” Darryl said, reaching out and grabbing Smoke by the elbow as he went past with an armful of soap. “Dump that in a car and come with me.”
Smoke eyed him for a moment, then changed course and dropped all the soap into the back of the closest truck. “I need a cart?”
“Yeah.” Darryl said, looking for Vivian. He was about to shout when he saw her in the ‘airlock’ formed by the store’s sets of inner and outer doors. She already had a cart, and was looking at him expectantly. He nodded and headed that way. EZ and Evil were near the doors, covering them as well as the sidewalk to either side.
“Yo.” Darryl pointed at them as their heads came around. “Come on, we gotta cover these two on a quick trip inside.”
“What we getting?” EZ asked as Smoke went around Vivian and grabbed an empty cart
from the rows parked inside the ‘airlock’.
“Drugs.” Darryl answered. “Bobo say we need some.”
“But we already got drugs at the crib.” Evil protested, looking confused. “Needles done brought his whole stash, and Stony an Psycho got some too.”
“No fool, medicine.” Darryl said, scowling. “Like from the pharmacy.” He watched as EZ led the way in, Vivian close on his heels, then looked back to Evil. “They bring any weed?”
“Shit yeah man.” Evil laughed. “I thought you knew.”
“Naw, I was busy guarding for Bobo.” Darryl shrugged. He stepped back into the store behind Smoke, who was following Vivian. Darryl covered the right side, glancing frequently behind himself, as Evil covered left.
The pharmacy was clearly visible from the doors, off to the left a little with a sign that loomed above the store’s shelving. It looked unmolested, though some of the over-the-counter items in the shelves surrounding it looked as disordered and picked over as a lot of the rest of the store did. The frosted glass windows on the pharmacy counter were closed, and when Vivian tried the door over to the side it rattled without opening.
“Locked.” Vivian announced.
Darryl scowled again, giving the door a quick look. It was wood, or at least he was pretty sure it was wood. He hefted the shotgun, trying to decide if it would be better to try and shoot out the lock or hinges, or just kick it in. EZ spoke before he could make a decision. “Naw bro, like this.”
The biker reversed his shotgun and hammered the stock sharply against the closed customer window. It fractured with a fairly loud tinkle of breaking glass, but less loud than a gunshot. EZ gave Smoke a look. “Need a hand getting up and over the counter?”
Smoke shook his head, but he did move down to get away from the pile of broken glass before heaving himself up and walking, bent at the waist, over to the broken window. He eased through, dropped down, and tried the door from the inside. It swung open with a click.
“Presto.” EZ said smugly, moving past the open door and taking a watchful stance.
Vivian shoved her cart at Smoke, and pushed his in next when he grabbed hers and pulled it through. Darryl turned his back on them, listening as he kept a look out.
“What we want?” Smoke asked.
“Anything with codine, codone, or ‘cet on the label. Like Percocet.” Vivian answered, sounding distracted. “Or if it say it for pain. And anything that say it an antibiotic or for infection, or if it have ‘cillian on the label, like penicillin.”
“Fuck.” Smoke said. “How I gonna know all that?”
“Damn–look.” Vivian said. “Here . . . everything on this shelf. And . . . that one too. Grab all that while I look for more.”
Darryl heard pill bottles began rattling into carts as Smoke obeyed. It seemed to take forever, but he knew it had to be only a minute or two, before he heard Smoke speak again. “Okay, they empty.”
“This one, this one, and this one too.” Vivian said.
More bottle rattled and thumped into the carts. Darryl saw a few people looking at the trio of Dogz standing guard on the pharmacy, but none of them made any move to step closer. They just kept looping around the aisles with their own carts, grabbing whatever it was they thought they needed.
Darryl wondered how successful the other looters were going to find their trip, now that the Dogz had showed up and cleaned out what Jody said were the best things to take. The store wasn’t empty by any means; there was still meat and lots of fresh produce, for example. And cereal, he remembered, and the potato chip section hadn’t been completely gutted when the Dogz had went by it. He supposed you could live a while on cereal and beef, if you had too. Until the beef went bad, then it would just be dry cereal.
He shook the thoughts off as he saw the same trio of men from earlier, the ones with the expensive pistols, appear near the front of the store. All of them were pushing their carts, now packed full of various things. The first two were watching forward, but the third, the one who’d confronted Darryl, was looking in his direction. His eyes made contact with Darryl’s, and the biker was sure he saw the man smile at him. It wasn’t the kind of smile that was a nice one.
Behind him came a rather large sound, like an entire shelf had just been cleaved off into one of the carts. Pills shook like seeds in gourds as they bounced and pinged around inside their bottles, tumbling into the cart. Darryl blinked and involuntarily started to turn, then caught himself and stayed on watch. He saw the three men from earlier head through the doors at the front of the store.
“Good.” he grunted softly.
“What?” Evil asked.
“Nothing.” Darryl shook his head. “How it going in there?” he asked, raising his voice some.
“Almost done.” Vivian called back. “Okay, there room, so take all this too.”
“Hey, where you going?” Smoke protested.
“Taking this half cart out front and look for first aid stuff.”
“Fuck.”
“You fine.” Vivian said. “Everything from here to here, in the cart, then come on out.”
Vivian came out of the pharmacy a moment later, dragging a cart half full of pill bottles with her. They weren’t the little orange bottles the pharmacy normally gave you either; these were bigger, in different colors or shapes, holding what had to be at least a thousand pills per. There was also a rather thick hard bound book with a title on the spine that included the words ‘drug’ and ‘handbook’. It was in the cart where a kid would normally sit.
“Hey, don’t wander off.” Darryl said as she started past between him and EZ.
“I ain’t going but right here.” Vivian said, pointing at one of the little aisles right in front of the pharmacy, where all the over-the-counter stuff was kept. Darryl frowned, but stayed in position as he watched her push the cart in between the short shelves, stop, and lean down out of view. Behind him came more loud sounds of shelves being rapidly cleared.
Darryl started having to ward off the urge to fidget. The clock in his head seemed to be running long. He looked toward the front of the store, half expecting to see one of the Dogz standing there making ‘hurry up’ gestures, but no, none of his brothers or anyone else who’d come along on the looting run were visible there. Vivian was tossing brown bottles that seemed to be heavy into her cart, moving quickly.
He was about to say something when he heard Smoke’s cart moving. Turing his head, he saw the biker pushing it out of the pharmacy, full nearly to the top with bottles. Darryl opened his mouth, but before he could say anything he heard gunshots from outside. At first it only sounded like one or maybe two guns going off fairly quickly. But in moments he heard more than that. A lot more than that. There was a lot of shooting happening.
“Shit, that’s it, we rolling.” Darryl said, flexing his fingers on the shotgun and starting forward.
“I–okay.” Vivian said, throwing a last pair of things in her cart and moving around to its handles. Leading the way, Darryl walked quickly past the silent and dark registers, peering anxiously out through the windows along the store’s front wall. There was still shooting, though not as much now. It sounded like it was back down to one or two guns firing. Tank was covering the doors, but he was the only one.
Suddenly angry, Darryl went through the ‘airlock’. There should be at least one other Dog watching the doors with Tank, but the big biker was alone in observing Darryl’s little group emerge from the store. The other Dogz Darryl could see were looking forward, in the direction the convoy vehicles were facing. Some Dogz were already in the vehicles, though he saw guns in a lot of hands as they peered at the disturbance.
“What’s wrong?” Darryl asked loudly between another pair of shots. They were pistols, he was sure now. He couldn’t see who was doing the shooting, but it was coming from the front of the convoy, on the other side of the lead Home Depot truck.
“Sick people.” Tank said shortly.
“You mean zombies?” EZ asked.
Tank shrugged. “Whatever. Heard Bobo telling someone to get away, then he told them to stop. Guess they didn’t.”
Darryl scowled and opened his mouth as he turned his head toward one of the Escorts in view who was staring forward instead of where he was supposed to be looking. Before Darryl could say anything a man yelled in pain up near the front. Darryl frowned, then grabbed EZ by the upper arm and leaned in close to make sure the other man heard him.
“Cover the fucking doors with Tank.”
“It’s cool.” EZ nodded, turning.
Darryl jogged forward. “Guard where you’re supposed to be guarding.” he yelled. “Stop all looking in the same fucking direction.” He had to grab a few more of the Escorts and Guards to get them to listen, but by the time he’d made it up to the front he was a little happier. Still pissed, but less than he’d been seconds earlier. There was a reason people were supposed to be watching in different directions.
When he got to the lead truck he saw Little Chief slumped against the steering wheel. There was blood on his shoulder and neck. Mad had the door open and his t-shirt off, having wadded it up into a makeshift bandage he was pressing against Chief’s arm. Darryl spared that a single glance, wondering how in the hell Chief had managed to get hurt while sitting behind the wheel, then checked forward.
Five bodies were sprawled out on the pavement. Oddly, even though they appeared to have been shot a bunch of times, there was almost no blood. Not on their wounds, nor on the ground around or beneath them. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. It was less gory, but it seemed . . . wrong. Wasn’t killing supposed to be messy, like that was part of the price you had to pay when you did it?
“Bobo.” Darryl heard himself ask. The older biker was standing next to the Home Depot truck’s front wheel, his battered Beretta in his hands.
“How’s Little Chief?”
Darryl glanced inside the truck. Chief was sweating as he climbed out of the driver’s seat, trying to fend off Mad’s attempts to keep the makeshift bandage in place. But he looked up at the mention of his name. “Hurts like a mother fucker.”
