The Zombie Chro [99] - Collapse, Tales of the Zombie Chronicles

by Mark Clodi

  “You told me that. I am gonna get more video games, then candy, before it all goes bad.”

  “It is all bad already, but your bones are still too thin. So am going to find some canned pork if I can, nothing says 'fat' like canned pork. We stick together, and we'll do my shopping first.”

  “Can I bring my gun?”

  “Can you? That shouldn't even be a question, always bring your gun. But you don't go firing it unless I tell you to or unless something jumps me.” Bubba thought back fondly on the many trips the two had taken together into the woods around the industrial park. If it weren't for the fact that they had to return to the park to sleep every night he could almost imagine they were living a normal, zombie free life. They had not seen any zombies in the woods and they had ventured as far to the North West as the edges of the swamps, almost half a day's walk. Today's trip was a last run for food, Jed hoped for some canned potatoes to go with the three deer the men had finally managed to bring down yesterday. The other men were busy finishing up the carcasses while Bubba and Hon made the run into town.

  Bubba hopped out of the truck first, his shotgun at the ready, once he was out Hon slid over to get ready to go out the same side, then both of them froze, silently watching for movement. They had learned that the smarter zombies tended to attack as soon as people had gotten out of their vehicles. Nothing happened and after twenty seconds Bubba sidestepped and swung his gun around to cover the back of the vehicle, while Hon climbed out, shut the door and watched the front. Hon couldn't see too well past the height of the truck, but he ducked down to look under it, looking for moving legs of the undead.

  “Alright, I think we are clear, but we'll need to be careful in the store, it has been a good month since we've been this far out.” Bubba sniffed the air and looked up the gray sky, “And we better go quickly too, this might be the first snow, not another rain.”

  The men had all agreed that once it started snowing they would limit their activities outside of the industrial park to avoid leaving clear tracks back to the base of operations. Bubba pulled a Coleman lantern out of the back of the truck and handed Hon two flashlights, one large and one that was very tiny as a backup. Hon tucked both of the lights into pockets, the small one went into his jeans and the larger one fit awkwardly into his oversized coat. He was shivering in the cold air outside of the truck.

  “Cold?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bet 'yer glad I made you wear the heavy jacket, huh?”

  The boy nodded somewhat sullenly, prompting Bubba to laugh and give him a quick hug. “Let's go before you turn into a Popsicle.”

  They made it into the store and Bubba paused to look around at the carts arrayed in a line across the entrance way, they were exactly like he remembered the men leaving them a month ago. They left signs at every place they had scavenged on the theory that zombies or other people would move what they had left around, thereby alerting the men of possible danger.

  “Looks good, but let's not get too cocky.” Bubba slid the loosely spaced carts together to create a passageway and stepped up to the inner set of doors, which were closed. He took a crowbar from his belt and inserted it between the doors, forcing them apart. The two went inside and grabbed another cart that had been strategically placed before proceeding twenty feet into an open area they had cleared a month ago.

  “Well it is pretty dark in here, but I think we will just stick to the hand lights, unless it freaks you out?”

  The building was of a newer design and had natural light that came in from windows in the roof, because it was a dreary day the lighting was somber at best.

  “I'm okay. We aren't gonna be here that long anyway.”

  “Nope, let’s go get the canned goods.”

  The inside of the store had already been looted, there were goods all over the floor, clothing, cans of food and other detritus, include more than a few corpses. Bubba pushed the cart around the debris slowly taking care to look down each aisle as they approached it, Hon watched behind them, making sure not to ever point his flashlight directly at the door they had come through; flashing lights brought unwanted attention.

  There was a surprising amount of canned food left and Bubba found the meat he wanted and grabbed a couple dozen cans of 'canned bacon' that the men had overlooked before. “Canned bacon? I have never had bacon that I didn't like. Fresh, pre-cooked, canned, this will be a treat!”

  Hon looked disapprovingly at the cart, Bubba had it almost full and he was concerned about the amount of room left for his stuff. Bubba followed the boy's gaze and looked a little guilty, “Aw don't worry video games don't take that much space. Lets head over there now, before we need two carts.”

  The electronics section was across the store from the food, but the journey was uneventful. Looking in the video game cases Hon was trying to find titles the men didn't have already. The looting had reached even this far edge of the store and the two had to stand in broken glass to look inside the cases.

  “Pretty picked over isn't it?” said Bubba, Hon hadn't been with the men when they came before and none of them had checked the electronics section. “You'd think people would have gone after the food, not this stuff.”

  “Yeah, I guess we don't need much room in the cart for it.”

  “You were thinking we would get a cartful weren't you?”

  “I was hoping.”

  “Well look around there might be something, remember to check the Sony stuff and the handhelds, maybe there will be a game or two to get you through the winter.”

  The men mostly played games on the popular Microsoft console, so Hon had been hoping to pick up a few new games for it. The boy ended up finding a couple racing games he didn't think they had and he found about a dozen games for the handheld systems which they all had as well. He got at least two copies of every game and threw in an extra controller for each system as well.

  “We already have extra controllers, Hon.”

  “I know, I just, well, we don't want to ever run out.” He managed to get the items he had into the narrow spaces left in the cart.

  “Let's go through the sporting goods aisles, just in case.”

  Hon nodded and they set off past the toy section, with hardly a look that direction. Sporting goods included the camping gear and it had been thoroughly looted, the shelving was toppled over in places and packages of stuff were everywhere. Bubba and Hon poked through it and only came away with more survival blankets that the kid loved so much.

  “Done?” asked Bubba as he turned the cart towards the front doors.

  “Done.”

  “Say Hon, do you think those things really make you invisible to the zombies?” Bubba had meant to bring this up with the boy for a while and now seemed like a good time.

  Hon shook his head 'no' and shrugged his shoulder, “No, I just like them.”

  “You lying? Ain't nobody here but us, no one to know.”

  “I ain't lying.”

  “I wouldn't tell anyone.”

  Hon bit his lower lip and looked up at Bubba, “You think it's stupid huh?”

  “Well, I don't know what to think. You could be right for all I know. Why do you think the blankets work?”

  “I think the silvery stuff blocks them.”

  “I kinda know that. I mean why do you think the silvery stuff blocks them? What happened to make you think that?” This was edgy territory and Bubba knew it. Hon did not talk about where he came from, who his parents were, where he lived or what had happened before the men ran into him.

  “Well...I...” his voice dropped to a bare whisper, “I had one and I got away, no zombies even came after me. Not when I had one of those blankets.”

  “Yeah? Why'd you have a survival blanket with you?”

  Still whispering the boy said, “We were camping.”

  “Oh. I didn't know you liked camping or anything.” Bubba was puzzled, Hon, of all of them, knew next to nothing about the outdoors. Everything was new to him; things Bubb
a had learned about the woods before he even went to school were things Hon had no experience with at all.

  “We were just in the backyard. I never went real camping.”

  “Oh. Who'd you camp with?”

  “My sister. We had a tent in the back yard. I got the blanket last Christmas. It came in a sardine can survival kit that my grandpa gave me. Before I met you guys I didn't know people did real camping.”

  Bubba walked along quietly for a few minutes, wondering whether to press for more information or just be happy with what he had. Finally he said, “Geez Hon, you missed a few things growing up. I was camping on my own when I was eight. I used to go out to my grandparent's house and put up a tent wherever I wanted on their land, they had forty acres, which is plenty big when all the neighbors had that much too. I hardly ever saw anyone out there. Sometimes my friends would come over and we'd spend the week messing about, just coming up to the house for food when we ran out. About a mile from the house was a river and a mile the other way was the swamp, so we fished and swam the days away.”

  “Oh.”

  “I am not saying you had it rough or anything, you know video games better than we do so I know you must've had those and you came through this whole zombie thing pretty good too, so I know you got brains in your head. Plus you must have been camped out for a while there, it was about three months after the zombies came that we ran into each other.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well I guess things changed, there won't be any more people going off to camp by themselves for a long time, if ever now.”

  “Probably not.”

  The two were at the front doors where they had come in, the carts were exactly as Bubba had left them, but he still looked the area over closely, going so far as to flash his light down into the cart corral off on one side and the redemption center for cans and bottles on the other.

  “Nothing. You wanna get the carts for me and I will push the doors back together?”

  “Yeah.” said Hon, who started moving the carts, “Bubba?”

  The man's head whipped around and his shotgun came up to point at the front doors.

  “No it's not that. Snow.”

  “Shit. Sorry.” Bubba didn't like to swear around the boy, “We better get moving or Jed will tear into us when we get back.”

  Nodding the boy hurriedly moved the carts back into place after Bubba pushed theirs through the opening he had made moments before. They closed the outer doors when they left and quickly wheeled the cart to the truck where they spent very little time getting it unloaded. Hon ran the cart over to an empty parking space and hopped into the passenger door, neither of them was being too careful about looking for faster moving zombies. Once the truck started the heater quickly warmed up the cab and eased Hon's shivering.

  “Better?”

  The boy nodded, but didn't say anything.

  “Good. You're too thin, a boy should have a little meat on his bones and you should still have some baby fat on yours.”

  “I'm not a baby!”

  “Naw?”

  “No! Just skinny. Who wants to be fat anyway?”

  “Well no one I guess. But how're you gonna attract the ladies when you look all skin and bones like you do?”

  “Ladies? I haven't seen a girl in...well a long time.”

  The two bantered as Bubba eased the pickup down the road back towards the industrial park. Behind them two thin trails were left on the road that were quickly covered by the falling snow.

  Chapter 5

  Their tracks were not covered quickly enough as it turned out. The zombie who had been watching Bubba from the side of the strip mall watched Bubba drive away and waited until the truck was out of sight before he moved to follow it. Xavier was smart, by zombie standards. He had learned he was what some of the living called a 'super zombie'. He had killed and eaten enough humans to regain his mental clarity. That wasn't all though, he was far better physically than he ever had been while he was alive. As far as humans go, alive or dead, he wasn't much to look at. Xavier stood long and lean; his sinewy body was clad in military combat boots he had taken off of a soldier he killed. His pants were tight black leather, cinched on with a thin belt. Xavier was not wearing a shirt, the cold didn't bother him in the slightest and his two small nipples looked like blue dots on his underdeveloped chest.

  Turning, he gestured with one hand at the other zombies gathered behind him, “Ya'll stay here, find me some fun-fun if you can. I will find out where this yahoo is going. He didn't get that shit to take with him on a long trip, I bet he has a nest nearby. I'll find him and we'll get him when we need to. Maybe there will be others.”

  The group behind him milled about uncertainly until Xavier put some mental force into them to back up his orders. He had learned how to control those under him with an iron fist. He didn't trust any of them and liked them even less. Once he felt sure they would do as he said he started to follow the tracks the truck had left. Turning to the road Xavier started to run, losing the snow that had gathered on his shoulders as he picked up speed. The tracks were fresh and Xavier was running fast.

  Bubba was driving back slowly. He was more concerned with keeping the truck on the road and avoiding the stalled and abandoned cars along the route home. Hon put in a cd from a country singer the boy liked and both were singing the long dead musician's songs as they slowly drove along. Hon had folded up the survival blanket and put it in the extended cab behind them, resting his trusty bat on top of it to hold it down.

  Before Bubba turned onto the main state highway to get back home, Xavier caught sight of them again. The zombie concentrated, trying to discern how many people were in the truck, his vision turned from one equivalent of normal to one which could detect the swirling life energy that attracted all zombies to feed.

  As the truck made it onto the highway, it picked up speed, but it was driving perpendicular to Xavier now and the zombie closed fast enough to see what he needed to see, he slid to a stop to let the truck get out of sight again before it continued. Xavier's normal eyesight had let him see the food piled in the back of the truck. It never ceased to amaze the zombie how stupid the humans were, after waiting another minute he started following the truck again more slowly.

  There had to be more humans for the amount of food in the truck, but why would they only send one person out to gather it? The most effective groups Xavier had tracked and destroyed always worked in pairs or teams of three or more, never solo. Maybe this guy was taking care of old people or some invalids? Or better....children. Nothing beat children.

  Except me, before I kill the little bastards and eat them. Shrugging his slightly blue tinged shoulders, Xavier continued to follow the truck before the tracks were completely covered by snow. It really doesn't matter anyway. They all eat the same.

  Chapter 6

  "Cutting it close there Bubba." said Jed when they got back to the industrial park.

  "Yeah we knew it would be close. Fifteen minutes from now no one will know we were out." The snow was really coming down and the men were working to unload the truck together, "You get the meat done?"

  "Yeah, good enough anyway. Steaks tonight I think we need to stay in after this, no more running outside, not until we absolutely have to."

  The men had been hording food and fuel for the winter, so they would not have to go out once the snow fell. Going out in the snow would mean leaving tracks anyone could follow. The men were not neophyte survivors and had fought enough of the 'smart' zombies to know leaving tracks would be tantamount to suicide. Steve and Greg both said, "Yeah." as Bubba nodded his assent, "We will do it like we planned, I hope it ain't a long winter."

  Hon was inside, tending to the meat cooking on one of the grills while the men unloaded, he was looking forward to getting into one of the RV's to eat, not only was he hungry, but he was also cold. The men finished unloading and Jed came over and ruffled Hon's hair with one hand while he plopped four big cans of the potatoes down on the ply
wood counter they had set up beside the grill. "Looking good Hon. Get these opened and in a pot too. Then go get on a bigger jacket you're turning blue."

  The boy opened the cans and dumped the contents into a large blue speckled pot then went into the trailer he shared with Bubba and rummaged through his clothing, looking for something warmer to put on. Bubba came in and asked, "Need a better jacket?"

  Hon nodded.

  "Get one from the office, you don't have anything big enough or warm enough here."

  "I gotta go turn the meat and potatoes."

  "I'll do it you need to get something warmer before you freeze. It sure got cold quick. I'll heat some water too."

  "Okay." Hon and Bubba moved out of the trailer, Jed came over as Bubba was flipping the steaks.

  "Hon get you to do his work for him?"

  "Nah, he was freezing and couldn't find anything to wear in the trailer, I sent him to the office to grab a coat, maybe having two of them on will keep him warm. I am making coffee."

  "Ah gotcha, I was going to suggest eating out here an' firing up the oil drum, but I think we better stick to you and Hon's place tonight. It got cold quick didn't it?"

  "Dang right, must be a helluva storm we are going to get." Hon came out of the office and shuffled quickly over to the grill.

  "Sorry Jed. I couldn't find a..."

  "S'alright. Bubba told me. That jacket gonna work for you?"

  The boy shrugged in the two jackets he was wearing, then let his arms fall by his side, where the sleeves covered his hand completely. "I guess so. They are big, but I like it."

  "Well then it is yours, ain't it. Bubba we shoulda got some larger kid clothing, his pants look like he is going to go wading." Jed reached out and pulled up one of Hon's arms, "Well look at this Bubba, the kid is just skin and bones! We're supposed to be fat and sassy going into winter, there's not gonna be nothing left of him by spring!"

  Hon jerked his hand back and dodged Jed's playful swing at his head, the man's other arm came around fast and planted a single finger on the boy's forehead with enough force to rock the boy's head backwards.