“I guess not,” she whispered when her head didn’t explode. It was almost… disappointing that she was still alive. She buried the thought in her head, swimming from the heat, lack of food and water, and the constant fear with each step she took.
To keep her mind off of it she checked and rechecked her weapons and she walked directly to the fence and stared at the gas station. If the owners were going to kill her they didn’t have long-range weapons. She guessed that they’d make their way down the fenced-in road soon enough. Best see what the lay of the land was like until the confrontation.
The pumps were still intact, although sand and debris had been flung up and around them. The road itself was nearly obliterated with the natural elements as well. When Darlene noticed that the windows were unbroken and the main door complete she smiled.
Hopping the fence was no easy task in her physical state but she managed it. Her jeans had become snagged on the barbed wire and one leg was shredded. Darlene had to stop at the top and keep her head from swimming and dumping her face-first to the ground. She’d lost way too much way too fast and her muscle mass was being depleted at an alarming rate, but the alternative was much worse. She breathed in the salt air as she approached the gas station with her Desert Eagle drawn.
She hoped that the owners weren’t inside.
The windows and doors had been covered from inside with cardboard. So far, so good.
The front door was locked as she suspected. She walked slowly around the building, trying to catch a glimpse of anything inside but there wasn’t even a crack.
The bay doors to the garage area were chained and padlocked from outside, the large windows covered as well. When Darlene got to the back she glanced at the house but didn’t notice any movement. For the moment there was no pursuit and no gunshots.
The back door leading into the garage was unlocked and she hesitated before turning the knob all the way and opening it. Caution made her stare intently at the door frame for tell-tale wiring or booby-traps. She didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
Six nights ago she’d come upon a camp of the living, nestled between a smoldering bowling alley and a dilapidated fast food restaurant. They had somehow dragged a damaged car into the gaps at either end and positioned guards with rifles to watch. She was pondering whether or not to reveal herself and perhaps join them when she tripped over a wire. Luckily it wasn’t attached to explosives but simply to rusted cans. When it clanged the alarm three shots had rung out in quick succession in the general area that she was moments before.
The undead in the area began moving toward them. Darlene had beat a hasty retreat, dodging the undead until she could escape into a used car lot and hide in the flatbed of a Toyota Tacoma until she fell asleep. The next morning there was nothing left of the group except for blood and a few scraps of food.
“Fuck it,” she whispered and turned the knob. It didn’t explode, no shrapnel flew from a hidden gun, and no green glop fell from the top of the door. Silence greeted her as she stepped inside and shut the door behind her.
It was dark and she waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. She held her machete out just in case something dead was moving on her in the blackness.
The garage area was empty save for some grease stains on the cement floor. She hoped that a red tool setup was present so she could find a few weapons: big wrenches, hammers or even a saw. Her machete was getting dull from so much use. She’d need to sharpen it or find another weapon sooner than later.
Even though she could now see that the room was empty, she took her time and stalked around. Maybe something was hidden in a dark corner.
The only thing she found was the door leading into the rest of the gas station. It was also covered with cardboard, which she found odd. Covering the windows leading to the outside made sense.
This door was also unlocked. Again, she checked it for wires before turning the handle completely. Darlene noticed her hand was shaking. Her nerves were shot and she wondered for the hundredth times today whether all of this was worth it or not. She was physically and mentally exhausted, each day another trial and tribulation.
Darlene composed herself and shrugged her aching shoulders. “Get over it, bitch. Time to kill something.”
The knob turned easily enough and she swung the door open, leading with the Desert Eagle. The first thing she noticed was the hum of the coffee makers, then the lights glowing from the soda coolers, and then the two men sitting at a table playing cards.
“Deal me in, boys,” she said and realized how stupid and cliché it was. Darlene didn’t care. The coffee smelled like heaven and she hoped they had cream and sugar.
Three
“Holy shit,” was all one of the men could say before Darlene was upon them, holding the gun to his head.
They were both middle-aged but clean. They smelled of deodorant instead of shit. They wore coveralls and baseball caps, clean sneakers and they were clean-shaven. Darlene hadn’t shaved in God-knows how long. I could scare them with my damn bush, she thought.
They stood in this pose for at least two minutes, Darlene with the gun to one’s head and eyeing both. She had no idea what she was going to do at this point. She was too tired to take them both on and knew as soon as she pulled the trigger on the first one the second was close enough to grab her.
“Can I help you?” the second one managed, hands in the air.
“You can start by getting me a cup of that coffee.”
He smiled slightly. “When was the last time you ate?”
“None of your fucking business. Move before your lover here gets his brains splattered on the floor.”
“Yes, ma’am. Just relax, we can work this out.” The man took three strides to the coffee pots. Darlene pressed the gun to the other’s head and tried not to let him see her hand shaking.
“Never tell a woman to relax.”
“Sorry,” he said as he turned. He had a small-caliber pistol in his hand.
Darlene pulled the trigger on instinct and it saved her life. The explosion of his partner’s head wasn’t expected and his shot went wide. Darlene shot him in the stomach and he fell to the floor.
When she heard him moaning she swung around the table and leveled the gun at his head. “Move and you die.”
“Too late, I think. You bitch.” He tried vainly to cover the blood pouring from his midsection. His eyes were already glossing over.
She went to him, standing over him with the gun. “I can end this now or leave you here to bleed to death.”
“Doesn’t much matter,” he choked out the words.
“Oh, but it does.” Darlene leaned closer. “All I wanted was some fucking coffee.”
He actually laughed at that, and began coughing and screaming in pain.
“Shut up.”
He complied.
“It’s your choice.”
“Kill me,” he managed.
“Who’s at the house?”
“No one.”
“Liar.”
“I swear. Joe and I were the last two left. The others turned about a week ago.”
“Then why were you sitting here playing cards?”
He coughed blood. She repeated the question.
“Why the fuck not? We had enough food and drink here, and the house was overrun with dead fuckers. We trapped them inside and came out here. What else could we do?”
“It doesn’t look like there’s a ton of food left in here.”
He tried to roll onto his side but she threatened him with a kick and he stopped moving. “The bulk of the food is stacked in the house. There’s enough food and water there to last a lifetime. Fucking Gary fucked up. Why did he have to go out and explore? Fuck.”
“How many in the house?”
“Eight.”
“What about that fucker I met before?”
“Who?”
“The asshole with the lazy eye.”
He shook his head. “No idea who you’re talking a
bout. We’ve been cut off from everything since this shit started. We were smart enough to raid two Publix in the area for supplies.”
“How is the power on?”
“Shit, the whole grid never shut off. You got power from here to St. Augustine. Fuck,” he said and squirmed on the floor. “Shoot me.”
Darlene pulled the trigger without preamble and shot him in the head. She hoped the fences around the building would keep the undead out. She was sure they had heard the commotion and gunfire.
At this moment she didn’t care. All she wanted was a sip of the coffee. She poured a cup, added powdered creamer and chipped off a chunk of hardened sugar from a bowl, and held the cup to her nose. She remembered this smell, although she knew the coffee was stale, it had been burnt, and watered down. As soon as her tongue touched the hot brew it sent a ripple through her body. She remembered having a favorite coffee mug, a taupe one with an old, grumpy woman on the side. Below her it said ‘…not before my first sip…’ Darlene started to weep softly as she took a seat and held the cup with both hands.
Four
The undead had heard the gunshots. They came in twos and threes, walking across the channel and standing at the fence, dripping water and body parts. Darlene counted at least twenty at one point, all directly in front of the gas station and bumping against the fence as they tried to move forward. She kept quiet and watched them through a small hole in the cardboard covering the door. After an hour most of them moved off in random directions.
Darlene chewed on her fifth and final beef jerky strip. The two men had minimal supplies. They could have survived about a week on the snacks. Four cans of soup and three vacuum-sealed packs of noodles. Darlene admired what they’d done: the coolers had been cleaned out, and the spoiled milk and flat carbonated beverages replaced by various sizes of containers of water, crammed onto the sliding shelves and stacked inside the coolers themselves. She estimated about three hundred bottles of water, enough to get her through the next six months or so. Not to mention that the faucets in the bathroom still spat water and she could easily refill as she drank.
The candy was all spoiled or stale, and she had enough cigarettes and tobacco products to get lung cancer. Despite what she’d heard, the Twinkies were actually hard. With the air conditioning still working nothing smelled, but there were only a few items that were still edible. The beer had been either finished off or raided a long time ago.
Darlene found some pink women’s razors and shaving cream and ventured into the bathroom to shave and wash up. There was plenty of soap and deodorant stacked neatly under the sink, as well as washcloths and ibuprofen bottles. Before attacking the jungle that was her legs and privates she popped three pills and swallowed them with tap water. They scratched down her dry throat.
Her clothes were peeled off and dispatched to the far corner. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they had suddenly stood and made a run for it. Right now she’d give anything for a bra that fit and undies that didn’t have rips in them.
As she applied shaving cream she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in air conditioning. “You never get used to the smell of the dead or the smell of your own filth,” she whispered. Soon the floor was stained with shaving cream, hair and dirt.
On a whim she checked the store for makeup but found none. She went back into the bathroom and finished, scrubbing her face with most of a bar of soap. For the first time in too long she stared at herself in the dirty mirror and cringed. Her cheekbones were sunken, her eyes puffy and red. Her once-lustrous hair hung in knots, her lips chapped and her chin bruised.
Darlene had never been a skinny woman – she preferred thinking of herself as curvy – but now she was downright anorexic. She guessed that she was hovering at around one hundred and five pounds, a far cry from the healthy one-fifty she normally carried. Her body was sore, black and blue covering her legs and arms, and she could spend a week counting all of the cuts across her body.
She stopped looking at herself in the mirror while she gathered her clothes and began the task of washing them under the hot water from the tap. The dirt and grime filled the sink and she noticed for the first time all of the holes and rips in her jeans and T-shirt. She’d need to find new clothing before she had to make her way naked in this dead world.
Sometimes you forget about the things you no longer have, she thought as she eyed a stack of toilet paper rolls. She was going to enjoy her time here, at least until the food ran out. Then it was back into the wild and fending for the next meal.
Later, after a dinner of cold chicken noodle soup and three bottles of water, she took both bodies outside. She didn’t have the strength to bury them but figured that tomorrow she would have to. They yielded little in the way of supplies: the keys to the store, house keys she assumed were from the house up the road, a pack of gum, two pocketknives, and a dead cell phone. The small-caliber gun was empty; he’d used his last shot. She left the gun on the ground where he’d dropped it.
Darlene tossed the cell phone around in her hand and laughed. It was funny what people still clung to, even when they were of no practical use. She reached into her pocket and fingered her keychain. Her house key, her car key and the key to her dad’s house were there, all useless. Yet she had them with her at all times.
She peeked outside again but there was nothing hanging around the fence. She knew they were out there. They were always out there. The glow from the coolers was enough light to see by, so she didn’t have to stumble around in the dark.
Behind the counter were two pillows and three blankets, which Darlene hadn’t used in months. Darlene curled up on the floor, wrapping herself in one of the blankets and stuffing both pillows under her head. It wasn’t the greatest of comforts but it beat sleeping in trees, under porches and in cold abandoned buildings. Her body, newly cleaned after weeks of dipping into dirty rain water or rivers and oceans, felt relaxed. Her mind was racing and she hoped that she could sleep. How ironic would that be, if I finally get a decent spot to sleep on, and I can’t?
She woke with a start and fought back an imaginary attacker. It was just one of the blankets that had wrapped around her legs. Her Desert Eagle, never far from her grasp, was put down on the ground next to her. While the floor had been better than being outside, her back hurt and she had a pounding headache.
By playing with the coffee machines she figured out a safe way to make two packs of the noodles and a pot of coffee for breakfast. After eating she cleaned up the store, getting everything of value together on the counter and separating the items into plastic shopping bags. In the cooler she found four cardboard boxes that could hold two dozen bottles of water each, but she had no idea how to then transport them.
Three hours later she had run out of work to do and knew that she had been stalling. She didn’t want to go outside and dig two graves for the men. A part of her didn’t even care about doing it, but she felt compelled. They had been alive, after all, and it would be proper to bury them and say something.
Back outside the sun was fierce, with no clouds in the Florida sky. The two bodies were right where she’d left them. She wasn’t surprised, but then again not much could surprise her at this point. If they had been dancing or missing when she’d come outside it wouldn’t have shocked her. In fact, it now disappointed her that she’d have to bury them. She needed a shovel, which she didn’t have.
The house up the road was quiet. She wondered if they had a shed out back, and if she could keep enough distance from the house in the event that the undead inside could escape. There were no zombies outside the fence in the immediate area. Darlene decided to chance it. The sandy road leading to the house offered nothing save a few old footprints.
By the time she reached the bridge she was drenched in sweat. “I need another bath,” she whispered. From here the grounds were overgrown with weeds poking through the sand. The dirt road was dusty and rutted from long-ago traffic. The front yard had, at one time, been landscaped. A section
of stone wall ran the length of the driveway to the left, now showing wear in a spot and leaning back. A line of short bushes had been planted on the right, now all stunted and dead.
The house loomed before her in the midday heat like a creature ready to pounce. The windows had been boarded hastily from outside, the front door jammed with two rocking chairs and nailed shut.
Darlene was holding her breath as she put a hesitant foot on the first step. “Go around to the back,” she whispered. She didn’t need to be going onto the porch; she already knew what awaited her inside. She felt like the stupid chick in every horror movie that ignores the scary noises downstairs and goes into the basement, clad in her underwear, and then is amazed when an axe is sticking out of her head.
She put her full weight down on her foot. Not a sound. The wooden steps were solid. Gingerly she made it up the remaining four steps and stood at the front door with her Desert Eagle in hand. She didn’t have eight bullets left – three in the Desert Eagle, three in the Sig Sauer 226 - or even know if he had been telling the truth about the number inside. Maybe it was one and he wanted to scare her away. Maybe there weren’t any dead inside and the house was filled with food and drink, piles of clothing and form-fitting bras and panties with the tags still attached.
The next step forward and the boards creaked.
Darlene fell back when the banging inside started, right in front of her. It sounded like a hundred undead were inside, slamming against the wall. The windows and door shook with the impact.
Scared and ashamed at how easily she’d been rattled, Darlene ran from the porch and around to the back, in search of a shed and a shovel.
Dying Shortly Volume 2 Page 3
