Decay: A Zombie Story

by Dumas, Joseph

  She didn’t look at me and simply rubbed my back for a moment and said, “Just be careful.”

  As she walked away, I began to feel that I was acting a little overconfident as we looked ahead to this trip. After all, Joey was near us this whole time, no one here had been as far as the grocery store.

  We had no idea what things looked like there. Her little pep talk made me realize that we would have to go into this trip expecting the unexpected and keeping our guard up. I think we both still felt confident, but we weren’t going to lose our surroundings.

  MIKE

  Peter and I piled our things into the car as Joey stood outside with us. It was a cloudy morning as we prepared to leave. Though, it was hard to tell if it was going to be a rainy or stormy day.

  This would certainly add an extra element to our planning for the day.

  I observed the gray sky and smelled the air, searching for that scent of incoming rain. Jen and Tara joined their significant others by the car.

  Tara immediately latched herself onto Joey. I can’t blame her… If Ellie was here, I don’t think I’d let go of her for a second. Joey’s safe arrival had given me new hope that Ellie was alive. She has to be.

  Peter then gave Jen a hug and kiss in such a way that I knew we were leaving.

  I hopped in the passenger’s seat as Peter was far more familiar with the area than I was. A moment later, Peter grabbed Joey’s keys and got in the car. Jen came up to the car. “Be careful you guys,” she said.

  We both nodded and said we would as Peter put the key in the ignition and started the engine. Then, we proceeded to slowly pull the car out of the parking lot, taking it pretty slow as the car had sat idle for quite some time.

  Jen, Tara and Joey watched us for a moment as we drove away from Fix-It. Then, they turned around and headed back into the store. As we continued on route, the skies worsened and a fog started to settle in.

  I could finally see the incoming rain as I started to search for a button that would cover the roof of the convertible. The interior had been enduring the weather since it was parked at the store originally so it wasn’t a huge deal. But, the cover would keep us from getting wet—and while I wasn’t scared of rain, I did want to keep from catching a cold which would greatly exacerbate the situation.

  However, Peter caught me looking around curiously and pressed a button. As the collapsible roof began to extend over our heads, he said, “Was this what you were looking for?”

  I laughed. “Yes, thank you.”

  We continued on our way as the fog greatly thickened and it seemed to become much darker outside. Peter turned on the lights—high beams and all. Soon, we drove beyond the area of the gas station and into the previously unknown territory.

  Things looked no different—abandoned cars, trash and various items strewn about, and some bodies lying in the road. Many bodies had been picked apart as if a vulture had feasted on them for dinner.

  Moments later, I found out my thoughts were correct about the picked apart bodies as we came upon several vultures ripping apart a corpse in the road. However, these vultures were not the avian kind—they were the A. Phagy kind, the formerly human kind, clawing and gnashing at the bloodied remains in the road.

  As we drove by the herd of vultures, several of them looked up and reached towards the car while some could not be taken away from their meal.

  As they reached their bloody hands in our direction I noticed that the tips of their fingers were torn apart with no evidence of finger nails and little of flesh. The bloody and bony stumps wiggled in our direction as Peter tried not to look at the vultures and slightly pressed on the gas a little harder.

  Soon, we headed into a more thickly settled area of businesses. Peter told me we were heading through the heart of downtown. I felt a little uneasy about how thickly settled the population of undead may be as we passed through. Peter slowed down as we approached several cars abandoned in the road. We navigated between them like a suburban maze.

  Eventually, we came to a complete makeshift roadblock of cars that had collided into one another. We stopped and looked for a way through. As we stopped, several undead slowly poured from the front doors of businesses and in between buildings. Quickly, Peter cut the wheel and drove onto a shallow curb. We drove half on the sidewalk and half on the town common. As we drove through, the car spat up mud and dirt as it tore apart the slightly overgrown grass like a bad lawnmower.

  As the undead seemed to follow our car, we finally reached an intersection and got out of the common. We bounced the car back onto the road and quickly increased our MPH until the growing horde of undead faded away in the fog. “I hope that isn’t a sign of things to come,” I said.

  “I wonder if I should kill the lights,” Peter said.

  “Do it.”

  Peter turned off the lights and it became slightly more difficult to see through the thickening fog. However, if we couldn’t see, there was a great chance that the infected and decaying eyes of the undead wouldn’t be able to see us very well either.

  PETER

  As we drove through the impenetrable fog, we passed several silhouetted bodies stumbling around. Without lights on, we simply came and went without them being able to tell what just passed them.

  While we were driving, I considered telling Mike about the dream I had, but thinking about the state of him and his daughter made me just sit in silence as I did not want to put that idea into his head.

  Soon enough, we turned onto the road of the grocery store and Mike began getting our things ready to go. The rain spat from the sky as thunder boomed in the distance.

  Eventually, we pulled into the store parking lot, with a dozen cars parked in various spots. The store looked dark and made me wonder if somewhere along the line this area had lost power, which would make this one smelly trip. I pulled the car right near the store entrance and put it in park. Then, I took out the walkie-talkie and pressed the button. “Come in Fix-It,” I said.

  “Pete?” Jen asked on the other end.

  “We’ve arrived at the store,” I said.

  “Any problems?” she asked.

  “Lots of infected people downtown. Also, the weather seems to be picking up,” I explained. “What about there?”

  “We’re all fine,” she said. “Get in and get out.”

  “Copy that,” I said as I looked into the dark store.

  I put down the walkie-talkie and we grabbed a couple of flashlights that we had almost forgotten to throw in the car. The rain started to come down heavier and the thunder booms got louder as we picked up the pace and got our gear together.

  “We’ll each grab a cart,” I said. “And we’ll stick together.”

  Mike nodded as we stepped out of the car. As we each wielded a gun, shovel, and flashlight, we approached the doors only to find that they had been barricaded by dozens of shopping carts.

  They wouldn’t budge as we realized there could very well be people alive inside. However, after pushing the doors for a moment, we realized that the doors were not actually locked—only barricaded. Also, many of the shopping carts were covered in what appeared to be dried blood.

  “What the hall happened?” I asked quietly.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “We should try to push our way through,” I said to Mike.

  Mike nodded as we set our gear down next to the doors. We then shined our flashlights into the store and looked around for a moment.

  As we verified that nothing was moving in our general vicinity, we began pushing against the doors, slowly and barely budging the lineup of shopping carts.

  Eventually, we pushed the door open a little more than a foot. I tossed the gear inside and squeezed through the opening. Mike quickly followed as I tried to pull the doors open further from the inside.

  Once both inside, we examined the makeshift barricade and looked at the massive amount of dried blood covering several of the carts. After careful analysis, Mike brought up the idea th
at perhaps a number of workers—or whoever—locked themselves inside the store after one of their own had been bitten.

  Then, perhaps, the infection spread within the confines of their hideout. After counting the number of cars in the lot, we figured that had to be at least thirteen people inside—possibly four or five times that number if the cars were full or if people without cars had attempted taking refuge there as well. And, if Mike’s theory was correct, those thirteen could all be carrying the disease and ready to tear us apart.

  The store was very dark and smelled terrible because of the rotting food and drink products. I wanted to puke at the thought of all the rotting meat, fruits, vegetables and dairy—especially the meat and dairy. The odors really reminded me of the horribly rotten burger I’d dreamt about. It made me queasy to think about, and smell, the decaying food.

  While we took in the front end of the store, Mike suggested that we make some noise and draw out whoever may be hiding throughout the aisles and stockrooms.

  I wasn’t too keen on the idea of calling for these things, especially considering how many there could be lurking in the darkness. At the same time, I didn’t want to run into them while looking for groceries.

  As we explored the front of the store and considered Mike’s call-out-the-beast(s) idea, three infected began stumbling towards us out of the aisles.

  “Too late for my plan,” Mike said in a frustrated manner.

  We each put our guns down near a register and readied our shovels—more typical protocol. One of them spotted us in the dark; the other two were headed in our direction, but seemed more disoriented—almost as if they had just awoken with a bad hangover.

  They moved slowly and we decided to do the same. I approached the one that spotted us. Mike stood back and shined the flashlight directly at the ghoul. I walked towards the illuminated infected from the side and in the dark. It stared at Mike, nearly salivating at the potential meal.

  Then, as the creature’s wrinkly lips curled around its teeth, I swung the shovel like a Louisville slugger and nearly hit a home run, crushing the skull of this fiend and sending his corpse to its final resting place. Immediately, Mike looked at the other two loiterers and found that they had seen us and were heading this way. Both of these two were sporting grocery store aprons and nametags.

  One looked like a high school worker—probably a few years younger than me. The other was an older lady, maybe in her forties. As the youngster approached me, I read his nametag, Marc. I then realized that he was a bagger—a nice kid who had helped me the last time I was in here. He asked me about community college and if I thought he should go in a couple years.

  As the decaying version of Marc approached me, I found myself saying, “I’m sorry” to him. Then, I proceeded with typical protocol as quickly and swiftly as possible. Marc’s body fell to the ground and I turned away as Mike took the same action with the other worker—Linda.

  Running into the familiar bagger boy really put a bad taste in my mouth. Mike could tell too as he began asking if I was okay. I grabbed my gear and a shopping cart and told him we should just make this quick. I didn’t think about all the people I had become familiar with at this store and how I might run into several of them today.

  MIKE

  This was turning into a tough trip, tough and uncertain. Peter seemed quite bothered after dealing with the undead store employees upon our arrival here.

  Aside from the corpses strewn about and some knocked over displays, the store looked like it hadn’t been touched as far as looters went. However, another way to tell that some things hadn’t been touched in a while was the terribly rotten smell—probably meat and dairy products that had likely been sitting out for days without any refrigeration.

  We both headed towards the aisles with our gear and empty shopping carts. “Water is up here,” Peter said hastily. We approached and found a decent amount of cases of bottled water. Then, we each loaded a few 24-packs into our carts.

  We then heard some sounds emanating from the back of the store. “Shit,” Peter said nervously. “Let’s get the canned food and meds.”

  I nodded and followed him quickly a few aisles over to the soups section. We grabbed chili, baked beans, chicken noodle, clam chowder, creamed corn, baked potato, and creamy tomato.

  After loading up, Peter said the medicine and pharmacy were at the back of the store—where we heard the suspicious noises. We readied our flashlights and shovels and headed back that way.

  Meds were important, even just the simple over-the-counter pain relievers. We couldn’t bear any of us getting sick and becoming a burden to the rest of the group right now.

  So, we moved quickly and quietly towards the back. Peter led the way and did catch a glimpse of a couple infected several aisles away from the pharmacy. He seemed to intentionally look away and began to move faster. “Let’s get it and go,” he said impatiently.

  As we made it to the pharmacy, we completely cleared out the shelves in front of the counter, tossing bottles of all sorts of O-T-C drugs into our nearly-full shopping carts. As we loaded the drugs into the carts, Peter insisted we go behind the counter and check for antibiotics. So, we did just that. At first, it seemed to be abandoned until we checked down one of the back aisles.

  Standing there in a white lab coat with a reddish-brown dry stain of blood poured down the front was an undead pharmacist staring into the shelf motionlessly, almost as if the thing was looking for someone’s medication. A moment after spotting the creature, it slowly turned to us as if it were waking from some kind of slumber. Its death stare fixated on us and I raised my shovel into the air. As I was about to swing at its head, Peter yelled, “Get back!”

  I leaped back, thinking someone or something was near me. Then, the shelf that the former worker was staring at began to tip. Peter had pushed it over, knocking bags and containers of pills all over the place and trapping the undead against the wall. I quickly and blindly scooped up as many of the meds as I could and we both ran out of the section as the falling aisle created a loud crash and would surely attract the remaining undead.

  We ran back to the carts and moved quickly away from the pharmacy as I thought of the irony of that worker suffering such a fate while being surrounded by life-saving drugs. Apparently, this virus or disease or whatever was far beyond the capabilities of pharmaceutical treatment.

  As we rushed back, several undead were coming in our direction—well over a dozen. Many seemed to come from the deli area, where it certainly smelled the worst. Some also seemed to come from aisles.

  Peter quickly turned down one of the aisles in the middle of the store—the soda aisle. He ran into the aisle and ended up face-to-face with an undead stock boy. “Go around,” he said as he rammed his cart into the stock boy, pressing him into the shelves. As the undead stock boy was trapped, I passed by swiftly.

  Peter tried to pull his cart back and get away from him, but the stock boy reached relentlessly for Peter and simultaneously grabbed the cart. Peter then pulled the cart with all his force and sent the stock boy tumbling to the ground and the shopping cart rolling away from Peter. As Peter reached for the cart, and more importantly, his weapons, the stock boy began to stand—cutting Peter off.

  “Shit!” Peter screamed as he backed away from the undead worker. Then, two more undead began coming down the other end of the aisle. Peter suddenly reached into his pocket and tossed the car keys to me. “I’m not leaving you Pete!” I shouted to him as I grabbed the keys and shoved them in my pocket. He continued backing away as the stock boy reached for him. Quickly, Peter checked the other approaching undead and realized he didn’t have much more room to back up.

  Then, he quickly grabbed a twelve-pack of soda and smashed it directly into the stock boy’s cranium, then proceeded to throw it down onto the ghoul, bursting several of the cans in the pack. At this point, the other undead were getting dangerously close to him, so I began heading over there with my gun in hand.

  Peter ran in my
direction and said, “Don’t waste it!” as he continued running. We both grabbed our carts and took off towards the front of the store. We stopped by a wall, knowing we couldn’t move the shopping cart barricade in time to escape the remaining undead—of which there were many. He pushed our carts to the side and went through a door marked: EMPLOYEES ONLY. The door was next to a large mirror that looked quite warped. The reason it was warped was because it was a two-sided mirror.

  We entered the office and were relieved to discover that it was a small room and very easy to tell there were no stowaways. There was also a door leading outside where the workers could take a smoke break or something along those lines.

  This was a prime exit for us, but we needed to get our shopping carts from outside the office. As we turned back to grab them, the two undead employees from the soda aisle were stumbling around in front of the double-sided mirror.

  “Shit,” I said quietly.

  “I don’t think they know where we are,” Peter whispered to me.

  “Maybe they’ll keep moving along,” I said.

  One of them walked towards our shopping carts while the other walked up to the mirror. It stared directly at us without knowing it and let out a monotonous moan for a moment. We stood on the other side of the mirror staring at the creep. The creep still wore his uniform and the latex cleaning gloves he had on were covered in dry blood.

  His face was dry and wrinkly with large bags under his eyes and a gash in his cheek. His blank stare seemed to penetrate the mirror as he continued his steady moan. I held up my gun as the sight of this thing began to send shivers up my shine. Something clicked and his stare intensified as if he heard us. His moan grew louder and his lips curled over his blood-stained teeth.

  “Fuck it,” I said firmly as I raised my gun.