by S. P. Durnin
That had pretty much been the end of that.
Henry grinned. “I think I’m safe. Who else would’ve known what shade of hair color to grab for you back in Marshal?”
She considered his point. “Okay, I’ll give you that one.”
“There you go. Besides, you need someone to do all the heavy lifting. And for the occasional bit of fashion advice.” Henry was looking out the passenger window at the corpse of a lone creature that lay on the sidewalk. “I do kinda put up with all you guys, too. Who else has the patience to do that?”
Kat lost the battle against her budding grin at that point. The enormous man’s sense of humor had quickly endeared him to their group after his appearance that muggy summer morning, and it eased the stress that constantly having to be the funny girl put on her. She had a lot more to be concerned about these days.
A worried frown wiped away the lovely woman’s grin. She hadn’t wanted to lead their little group over the last months. That job had basically been forced upon her the night Jake was stabbed. Just after her best friend Laurel—his lover—had destroyed the Purifiers, zombie-infested refuge, and herself along with it.
The red-haired firebrand had been cornered on the facility’s roof while Jake, Kat, Rae, Penny, and the blonde Gwen were forced to flee into the power plant’s transformer yard. The teeming dead had been steadily assaulting the fence seeking a way inside to the trapped survivors and yet more had followed Laurel up through the building after their firefight with the Purifiers. When it became clear there was no way to save her, Kat’s friend had said goodbye to Jake bravely, pulled the pins from the grenades on her bandoleer, and then charged the oncoming creatures on the rooftop. The following explosion had been enormous. It set off a chain reaction which decimated most of the building from the top down as its support structure collapsed, floor by floor. Nothing within had survived.
That had been too much for Jake. He’d been struggling with the trapped women while ignoring the painful, gaping wound in his shoulder from a member of the Purifiers’ knife. The crazed writer was striving to shrug off their hands then fight his way into the rotting crowd beyond the fence, in a suicidal attempt to reach Laurel when it happened.
He’d screamed like the freshly-dammed when the roof blew and took the redhead from him.
The force of his terrible cry burst all the blood vessels under his eyes, sent his brain into momentary seizure, and had left him drifting in and out of consciousness in an exhausted state of shock. Kat ended up sending Penny, Gwen, and Rae out under the transformer yard’s rear fence, away from the oncoming infected, in an attempt to find other members of their group. They’d wanted her to come along, too. The trio had sworn they would come back for the catatonic writer once they’d found help, but Kat had refused to leave Jake’s side. To be fair, the grieving ninja-girl had just watched her best friend blow herself up and hadn’t been willing to abandon him there, all alone. Especially not since she’d just admitted to Jake, as he lay half-coherent and bleeding out onto the gravel, that she’d been in love with him since the night of the outbreak. When the dead managed to tear their way inside, Kat had dragged his still unresponsive form under the back fence—and forty yards further into the overgrown field beyond—before not being able to go any farther. She’d kissed his swollen and bloody lips then snuggled down beside him, pistol ready to end them both if the creatures discovered their hiding place, when their friends pulled off a last minute rescue.
As their diminished group fled the power plant, George had revealed they had taken Jake’s ex-stripper, ex-girlfriend—the now ex-tinct Nichole—prisoner. She’d been the one responsible for setting the Purifiers on their trail in the first place, zombified the young Karen Parker, tried to have her way with O’Connor when he’d attempted to trade himself for the girl, then had looked on gleefully as he’d been thrown into the transformer yard with some of the creatures to be eaten. When the madwoman had gloated over Laurel’s death—then laughed joyously about Jake’s own looming appointment with the Grim Reaper—Kat had kicked her nasty ass and thrown her from their vehicle to be devoured by the creatures on the road. The blue-haired, ninja-girl still felt pretty darned good about that. Nichole not being around any longer made the planet smell a bit nicer.
It was definitely a lot quieter as well.
It was a shame Jake hadn’t seen her knock the repugnant bimbo around, virtually at will, but he’d still been senseless and bleeding on their transport’s gurney while Rae worked on his injured shoulder. After suturing the interior of his wound, George’s female counterpart had found it necessary to sear it closed with her red-hot K-Bar knife in an attempt to stop the bleeding and save his life. He’d survived the agonizing process, but…
Kat firmly pushed that line of thought out of her head. Bringing the Humvee to a halt a block later at the doors of Jasper’s Drug Store, her team double-checked and readied their weapons. Henry still carried his machetes, but had accepted one of George’s SPAZ riot shotguns as well. Prior to meeting their party, the big man had seldom used firearms. If the infected were close, he normally chose to slice them up with his dual blades. He also carried a gigantic mace Rae had made for him from part of a tractor axle and some ten penny nails, and wielded it with great authority against the dead, deftly using it to turn them into zombie-flavored paste. Elle and the younger Leo favored suppressed M4 rifles, unless there happened to be a handy .50cal, along, with silenced automatic pistols as their backup weapons. Kat however, stuck with only a Glock and her katana. It was what she was most comfortable with and she was damn good with them now, so none of the group suggested otherwise.
They scanned the street in both directions, searching for movement. Any sign at all that they had some hungry, smelly, staggering company on the way to their position. There was nothing. No sounds at all, save the occasional bird, the buzzing of insects, and the ticking of the Hummer’s engine as it cooled.
“All ready?” She asked, pulling her pistol from its holster on her thigh and resting one hand on her driver’s side door handle.
“Good here.” Elle replied, thumbing the fire selector on her rifle to single shot.
Leo nodded. “I’m good, too.”
Henry gave her a thumbs up and Kat grinned. “Okay. Leo? You’re on lookout. Let’s go shopping people.”
The quartet stepped quickly and quietly from the armored vehicle, making sure to lock their doors. Hey, you never knew if there was another survivor around looking for some safe transportation. It would suck to hear your ride start up and drive away, while you were looking for feminine health products in aisle nine.
Besides which, Kat was still worried there could be some as-of-yet, undiscovered kind of “smart-ghoul” running around out there.
Upon their escape from Deputy Penny Carson’s previous survivor group—who were a bunch of sheeple if Cho ever met any—she, Penny, and Jake had witnessed a group of fifteen or sixteen zombies actually running. While they hadn’t been sprinting along by any means, the creatures most certainly were moving much faster than your average zombie normally did. That had chilled her at the time, and she’d discussed the frightening occurrence with Foster and Rae extensively since. While neither had any ideas how the ‘runners’ had come into being, both agreed they all needed to be much more cautious in the foreseeable future.
That, and it was still just common sense to lock your car door. Coming back and finding a zombie in the back seat could ruin your day, real quick.
After checking for any signs of occupancy through the narrow windows, the others fanned out around Kat while she pulled out her lock pick tools and began to work her magic on the door. She kept the slim case hidden in the top of her left, knee-high, biker boot. Normally, she’d conceal it elsewhere, but her wardrobe these days didn’t consist of many discreet hiding places. Currently, she wore a pair of tight, black, leather pants tucked into the tops of her boots, which hugged her lik
e a second skin. Kat smiled briefly as she remembered the look on Jake’s face when he’d questioned their flexibility. She’d done the splits while wearing them—right then and there—on the showroom floor of an abandoned motorcycle dealership.
Grab a few pairs of those, he’d told her with an appreciative gaze.
After months on the road the leather had become a bit scuffed, but they were still the best protection against a zombie nibbling on her ass (literally) that she’d come across. Besides, the addition of a four-inch “Hello Kitty” patch she’d sewn on the left buttock gave them her own personal flair.
She still favored belly shirts too, because she liked showing off her well-toned and flat-as-a-board stomach. The one she wore at that moment over her bright purple, Fredrick’s of Hollywood bra, had “Ninja do it in the dark!” emblazoned across the front. Kat also sported the steel-plated, leather arm bracers she’d looted a while back, when she, Jake, Elle and Leo had made a day-trip to procure their group a pair of motorcycles. That had been the same day they’d rescued the Barbie Duo (Gwen and the now deceased Donna) from a group of overly-amorous, redneck morons. They’d blown up the rear of a pizza parlor the aforementioned hillbilly rapists had occupied with an RPG.
That had been a fun morning.
Kat had adamantly refused to carry an Alice or Molle pack around, despite Foster’s repeated insistence (read; nagging) that she do so, however. It would totally ruin the look she was going for. Somewhere in between “Barbarella” and “Chopper Chicks in Zombie-town” she’d explained to him patiently.
George had just rolled his eyes skyward, thrown his hands up and grumbled, Why me?
She did concede to wearing a web belt around her slim waist—tastefully angled over one hip, of course—a pair of good-sized ammunition pouches and the thigh holster for her Glock. That seemed to make the aging fixer feel a little better. Not much, mind you, but a little.
Paused on one knee, she worked on the lock and brushed a few blue hairs back over her ear. Cho kept her hair dyed that color, even though she’d had the absent Gertrude give her a new “do.” Back when they reached Rae’s junkyard cache, she’d asked the older woman to take her from her previous “Kelly Hu in The Scorpion King” length to the “Keira Knightly pixy” look she currently sported. At the time, the pretty Asian thought she was just being practical. Short hair would be much harder for the odd, staggering corpse to latch onto, as opposed to her long, bright-blue mane. So off it came.
Gertrude did a bang up job as well. Kat had done her happy dance right there in front of the mirror—wearing only a towel—after the grandmother-ish woman had finished, and made it a point to be extra-special attentive to her from that moment on. She missed Gertie. Kat hoped they would find her, along with the rest of their companions, alive and well once they actually reached Pecos, Texas. Rae had tried repeatedly to contact anyone from the city again, attempting to reach any survivors and check on their absent friends. Her efforts had proven fruitless though.
Jake had loved the new style too. He’d told her it was sexy as hell, and blushed when he realized what had just come out of his mouth. Then they’d kind of made out on the hood of the Humvee Rae gave him. The one currently parked on the sidewalk behind her.
That had been a fun morning, too.
Kat finished moving tumblers around and the door of the drug store clicked open. She slid her lock picks into their hiding place then stepped back, allowing Sampson to enter the dim storefront first while she readied her pistol again. Elle followed right behind his broad shoulders, never still, eyes checking the gloomy expanse within for threats. Kat kept on the blonde sergeant’s heels as Leo put his back against the door frame outside and continued scanning the street.
The quickest way to assume room temperature in the Zombie Apocalypse was to get cornered by a pack of infected without a back-up plan, and the quickest way to get cornered? Don’t have a lookout. They’d done this drill many, many, many times in the basement under Foster’s cache, until the grizzled fixer was sure they had it down. When Henry found them, George had done his best at instructing the ex-football player as well. Without the resources of his previous home though; the firing range, the exercise equipment, a secure location with steel reinforced walls and a fourteen foot tall, double-thick security gate, they’d had to teach the big man on the fly. That meant he had to “learn by doing.” If he screwed up? One of his companions might get turned into a zombie’s after-school snack. Which was why, while he joked around with people during their downtime, when they were out in the grit and grime and blood and horror of it he was all business. Basically, Sampson “put his game-face on.”
“Nothing on the right.” he said quietly, and played range finder through the sights of his shotgun as George had instructed, “Moving left. Second aisle clear... Third aisle clear... Forth one has a single body on the floor, midway down. No others. Checking it now.”
The two women followed closely, careful to search their surroundings for any sign of danger and sniffing the air for the awful smell the mobile dead carried along wherever they roamed. Henry moved within six feet of the corpse and took a good look. It had been there a while.
“No threat. Bullet entered through the left eye and the back of its skull’s missing. Judging from the spray, and burns on its face, it looks like someone stuck a gun in its eye then pulled the trigger. Moving on.” He headed for the rear once more.
The trio checked the bathrooms stall by stall. They checked the small stockroom and office in the back. The made sure there were no creatures lurking anywhere within, not even inside the industrial sized trash can in the back room. Finally satisfied there was nothing else alive—or kind of alive—in the store, they split up and began searching for needed items. Kat had long ago termed it scavenging, as opposed to looting. She insisted there had to be someone actually left alive to take supplies from, before you were actually able to call it looting.
Henry and Elle went back to the pharmacy, then began matching bottles of painkillers and antibiotics against the list Rae had provided them. While no members of their party were injured or sick at the moment, it never hurt to have a supply of both on hand.
Kat hit the “feminine” isle to pick up a few things, but not for what she’d implied to Leo they needed. What she was there for would be far more embarrassing for him. She’d been the one tasked—unanimously, by the women of their group—to stock up on various forms of birth control. Condoms or even just the plain old “pill” if she could find it, thought she didn’t have much hope for the last.
Moving along the east wall, Kat began reading boxes off the displays after opening a Hefty bag she’d pulled from a roll on the shelf, all the while mumbling to herself quietly.
“Lifestyles? No...Crown? Definitely not...Durex? Maybe... Ah-ha! Trojans. Hel-lo beautiful!”
With that, she emptied the entire slot labeled Ribbed for her pleasure (spermicidal lubricant added). If she had to be the one nurturing the overall love life of their little group, she might as well go the whole nine yards. As an afterthought, she also grabbed a value pack of Angel Soft which held twelve double-size rolls. It never hurt to have extra when it came to that, either.
Elle and Henry finished their search, came from behind the pharmacy counter, and were headed back down the isle, their packs stuffed with everything from OxyContin to Epinephrine to Nyquil. Granted they hadn’t taken long at all obtaining what Rae requested, but the ninja-girl could’ve probably found the supplies they’d been looking for a lot faster. She had been a pharmacy tech in her previous life, before the zombie outbreak. She didn’t have any desire to search through the shelves in this one however, because she surely would’ve been reminded of the more pleasant and zombie-free existence they’d all once enjoyed. Kat debated about taking a bottle of the little store’s scant supply of massage oil, but tossed it back as the others approached.
She didn’t have anyone to enjoy
it with anyway.
As the pair drew near they all heard the front door open, then Leo called out quietly. “Guys? You might want to hurry.”
Cho went into Defcon 4. “Infected?”
The younger man shook his head as the three hurried to join him at the door. “Not yet. There’s a lot of moaning coming from the north though. I think we’re about to have some company.”
While the members their little party were used to encounters with the roaming dead after months of travel, that didn’t make them less susceptible to the fear any sane person felt at the sounds of the creatures gurgling cries. Sure enough, when Kat and the others exited the storefront, they could hear them. The things sounded as if they were really keyed up about something, and were clearly in hunting mode.
“You didn’t make any noise did you?” Elle asked.
“Of course not!” Leo looked pretty confused at the sounds coming from maybe a block away. “Didn’t whistle, didn’t hum. I haven’t so much as coughed since you guys went inside.”
“Whatever caused it, they sound pretty pissed.” Sampson loosened the strap on one of his machetes with one hand. “Maybe we should, you know, get the hell out of Dodge?”
Kat shook her head. “Zombies don’t get pissed, but Henry has a point. Let’s make tracks. Like, right now.”
She unlocked the vehicle and stood, pistol at the ready beside Leo, as Elle and the ex-linebacker loaded their packs in the rear. The moans of the infected were definitely getting closer. Kat checked the street leading south but saw nothing. The creatures were only coming in from the north and—seeing how she and her friends weren’t responsible for their excitement—there had to be something either running from them, or leading them. Kat shuddered as she had a vision of some kind of ten foot tall, overly-muscled, pus-skinned super-ghoul. One with glowing red eyes and a mouth full of shark-like teeth, wearing a necklace of human skulls.
