Tommy looked stunned that Justin would have had the capability to be able to program the weapons and Justin could tell what was coming next.
“How did I do it? It was pretty simple really. Jeff at the Nest had some scrap biometric scanner parts from old laptops. I integrated them into the grips, complete with a USB adapter. A little bit of programming and a few scripts later and now you have customized weapons security system!”
Tommy, with his jaw dragging the floor, simply stood up and handed his weapons over to Justin – mission accomplished.
“What about my Glock?” I asked.
“We’ll have to get to that one once we get back,” he replied, “just don’t let that one fall into the wrong hands.”
“I don’t plan on it.” I replied.
Tool motioned to the group that we were nearing our first stop as we travelled north. We opted to start with Marine City and work our way north, rather than travel too far and have to work our way back. If we got enough supplies, or needed a hasty retreat, it would be better not to stray any farther than necessary.
Elly and her crew went east into Canada, taking the inlet along the north side of Walpole Island. We opted to travel farther north, docking in the heart of Marine City along the seawall near the intersection of Pearl and S. Water.
As Jamie worked on the mooring of the boat, we discussed who would be staying behind with it. Justin wanted to try out some of his new optics out in the field, but it was agreed that he and Tommy would stay behind to secure the boat. The rest of us (Tool, Jamie, Eric and I) would hit land and load up on whatever we could scavenge.
Out of everyone, I was the most familiar with the area and knew that we weren’t too far from some old eateries and an old pharmacy. There was a channel that ran through the downtown, which gave us a pretty decent barrier from the land to the west. There were only a few ways over the channel, which created natural choke points for anyone trying to get across to Marine City. The more I went over the landscape with the group, the more it looked like an appealing place to try to colonize if we should lose the island or need to expand our base of operations.
Unlike Harsens Island, there wasn’t an abundance of open land. This could work both for you, and against you. There was no place within the downtown for large crops or farming, but it offered plenty of shelter. The city would be more defendable for a small group than the island, as the seawall would keep out the bobbers and act as a natural protective barrier.
The tall buildings would allow for greater observation of the area and provide great sniping positions. It would be much easier to live in a four story building as opposed to a sprawling ranch – the higher the elevation, the greater the safety when it comes to the undead roaming about. The down side was that if you were pinned in, there was no place to retreat to – except to the roof and hope for the best.
We made our way down the street, taking cover along the building fronts and checking doors. The first few businesses were locked up tight and the entire area was like a ghost town. The smell of death was heavy, which was a good indication that we needed to keep our guard up. Silence meant nothing, but the unforgettable stench of death was a great early detection system when it came to zombies. It would have been handy to have had one of the canines assigned to our team. I should have brought that up with Steve and Elly before we left.
There was an old restaurant across the street from where we were at and we agreed to split up. Tool and Jamie would cross the street and check it out, while Eric and I continued south along the east side. We came to a storefront almost directly across the street which read “The Sugar Factory”. Eric glanced in the front window and immediately began giggling like a school girl.
“What is it?” I asked as I watched Tool and Jamie enter the establishment across the way. They disappeared from sight through the front doorway as I turned to see what Eric had found.
“Look!” he said, pointing excitedly into the window.
I’ll be damned if it wasn’t another one of those gigantic gummi bears sitting in a display case. In fact, they had a whole assortment of oversized gummi treats. There was obviously more to this fad than I gave Justin credit for.
“We’ve gotta get that,” Eric said, “and that, and that!”
“Hold up,” I responded, steadying him with my hand on his shoulder. Eric was so excited he was physically shaking.
I heard a faint grunting noise and motioned for Eric to remain still.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, to which he nodded in the affirmative.
Eric reached over and pulled on the door latch – it was open. I looked back across the street to see if there was any sign of Tool or Jamie. All was quiet from their end.
I didn’t feel comfortable with entering the candy store. After all, there was nothing meaningful to be gathered from going in and we needed to push up to the pharmacy. My first objective was to get Eric and I some distance from whatever was making the noise and join up with Tool and Jamie. It was obvious we weren’t alone and I didn’t want to get into a battle while two of our teammates were in another building unaware of our potential visitor. I wanted as much distance as possible between us and whatever was making that noise.
As I turned to advise Eric, I caught a brief glimpse of ass crack as he turned the corner into went into the store. The odor of rotting flesh and who knows what came quaffing out as Eric swung the door wide open. I pulled out my tomahawk and rushed in behind him. Before I could even get a word out, Eric was opening the display case and filling his backpack with the giant gummi bear and a giant gummi worm.
Then the noise came again. This time it was accompanied by a shuffling noise. There were stand up displays that blocked my view to the back of the store, but the pungent odor of sour milk mixed with rotting flesh was stifling and was so strong I could almost hack through it with my tomahawk. It was then that I realized that, with the power being out, the coolers holding all of the ice cream they had once offered for sale were full of spoiled goods. The glass display for the ice cream was a living landscape of maggots and flies. There was a half door that separated the sales floor from the back room, which was covered in dried blood and hanging entrails. Something had been here, and it looked like it was dragged over the counter to its demise.
The screech that followed stopped me dead in my tracks. When one of those things lets loose with a howl indoors, the reverberation of sound hits you to your core. If you have ever been tased or shocked by electricity before, you have experienced 1/100th of the sensation you get when a zombie calls you out. Eric and I both ducked behind a display case and took up a defensive position.
I saw the fingers first as they gripped the top of the half door, followed by a thud that almost rattled it off of the hinges. The rotting feet were now visible from the space under the door, which seemed to indicate what was there. Then the fingers disappeared again, only to be replaced with another howl and the entire event replayed itself.
“Holy shit! It’s a kid!” Eric yelled as he zipped up his backpack.
“Move it!” I yelled to him as I turned for the door, only to be facing a glowing pair of yellow eyes from the other side of the glass. I jumped back as a hand smashed through the glass pane and a large zombie fell through the opening.
This poor slob had to be pushing half a ton, as he slid down through the broken opening – wedging his body in the process. Broken shards of glass from either side cut through his shirtless midsection, opening his abdominal cavity just above the hips like a sideways guillotine. Yellow globs of fat, followed by masses of decaying entrails, were ejected from his sides and spilled out around him.
The fat bastard just blocked our only exit and the midget was keeping us from reaching the back. Eric moved toward the half door and quickly retreated back to my position by the front door, as the wailing crescendo became almost deafening. We were getting pinned in.
“They must have been running a fucking day care in here,” Eric hollered above the noise, “it
looks like a zombie version of the lollipop guild back there – maybe a dozen or more!”
I looked back to see a wave of yellow eyes milling about behind the counter. There was definitely no way we were getting out the back.
I pulled out my sidearm and put the doorstop out of his misery with one shot to the back of the head. I leapt onto his back, sliding him farther down the doorframe as I made my way over his corpse by using it as a human land bridge. I dove to the ground and came up with my weapon at the ready, thankful for the sunshine and fresh air. Unfortunately, the large mass of movement visible at the end or the block told me that the alarm we tripped was calling out the locals.
“Eric!” I yelled, “Jump out!”
Eric attempted the same maneuver as me, but the additional entrails that I had forced from the corpse as I stepped off caused him to slip and lose his balance. He came down onto the downed zombie like a hammer on a carnival bell ringer. The force of Eric coming down on the corpse forced excrement and fluids to come shooting out of the zombie from every orifice.
“Why?” Eric yelled as he tried to get up and off of the body. He looked like a drunk trying to get out of a deflated moon walk, “Why are all the zombies naked - for fucks sake, why?!”
“Good news,” I said as I helped him up and nodded towards the end of the street, “they’re not!”
“Fuck!”
We were running in the direction of the restaurant when Tool and Jamie exited with their packs full of non-perishable goods. The wailing of the junior zombies and the oncoming locals replaced any need for us to explain what was going on. We needed to get somewhere safe and defendable. Eric and I still hadn’t gathered anything yet, but since Tool and Jamie had full backs we agreed it would be best to retreat back to the safety of the boat.
Eric and I held the rear as we made our way back, firing off rounds into the pack of oncoming zombies. It never failed to amaze me how things could go from peacefully quiet to shit in the blink of an eye. You’d be someplace that you could swear was safe, only to be overrun by zombies less than a minute later. As we reached the seawall, Tommy was cranking the engine over.
“Are you fucking serious? You weren’t even gone for a half hour!” Tommy yelled as Justin helped catch the packs that were being thrown to him.
Tool jumped over and took the helm while Tommy grabbed his ACR and posted up portside. Justin was freeing us from the seawall when a runner came screaming from around a building to the south. He was a tall and slender zombie, who definitely had a runner physique even in death.
As Tool throttled the engine and we began pulling away, the zombie took an Olympic long jump from the edge of the seawall. It was terrifyingly humorous to watch as he seemed suspended in mid-air with his arms windmilling in a valiant attempt to gain altitude. Justin brought up his shotgun, shooting him in the right shoulder near the collarbone. The shot nearly severed the right arm off, spinning the zombie backwards.
If not for that shot, he may have made it onboard. The combination of the impact of the shot, and Tool hitting the throttle, slowed his forward momentum and resulted in him slamming into the aft decking. He slid down into the churning waters above the props, which sucked him down instantly and into the path of the blades. The result was something like a zombie salad shooter.
Like lemmings off of a cliff, the zombies were now dropping off of the seawall and into the water. The surrounding waters around that premium landing zone would be treacherous now with all the bobbers. We still hard work to do and I was hopeful that our attraction of the zombies would benefit us by forcing them to gather where we were – not to where we were going.
I hollered to Tool to take the point to our south, which would lead to an inlet that would bring us on a course back northwest. We would be flanking the horde from behind and be closer to the drug store that was southwest of town. As we travelled along that route, things quieted down a bit and the serenity returned. In the distance, you could still hear the shrill cries of the zombie kids in the candy store. Hopefully that would attract them away from where we were headed.
The smell of death and decay was still heavy in the air as the wind carried a slight breeze off of the mainland. The putrid smell was something that was part of our landscape now. It would be interesting to see how our first spring would turn out next year – if we survived the winter. I found it hard to imagine that nature could produce enough spring flowers to mask the lingering odor of the dead around us.
We docked at one of the channel homes, which looked like it had recently burned to the ground. I wondered how many of these were as a result of people refusing to give up their property to the undead, or if they were casualties of a systematic response to eliminate the controllers as Tommy and Andrew had pointed out earlier.
Tommy and Justin stayed with the boat, guarding the supplies as we ventured out on another scavenging run. We had a few blocks to travel on land to get to the old CVS just outside of town. As we made our way between the houses, we came across some skeletal remains and various body parts that had been cast aside and left to rot. They were vivid reminders that the dangers we had just escaped were still very close and capable of returning.
As we crossed the last street, we met little resistance but could see dozens of zombies milling about just a few blocks away. The front windows to the drug store were all fogged up but intact. The front door was locked from the inside. There were blood stains and fleshy bits strewn about, as if someone tried to seek refuge but was violently denied. There was a trail of blood along the front of the doorway that disappeared around the corner. We weren’t about to follow it.
Tool and Jamie began working on the door, breaking the lock and prying the sliding doors apart. As the gap widened, there was a rush of warm and humid air that forced its way outside. The stench of rot and decay was heavy and stopped us in our tracks. It looked like it took everything Eric had not to vomit at the stench, but he held his ground and kept it together.
As we stacked up and entered the building we found the interior to be in complete disarray. Display shelving was overturned, ceiling tiles had fallen to the ground, and there was blood everywhere. There was little that appeared salvageable and the deeper we ventured into the store, the worse the odor became. We agreed that we should try to scope out the pharmacy area and get our hands on whatever we could before calling it a total loss and retreating. Tool and Jamie secured the doors behind us to ensure that we weren’t going to get flanked.
As we made our way to the back, the sound of rushing water became more prominent and there were ghastly shadows being cast on the walls from what little light was getting through the windows and reflecting off of the water on the floor. We moved slowly and methodically, using the remaining standing display cases as cover as we went. The sound of rushing water almost drowned out the sloshing sound of feet as we came up on about a half dozen zombies near the pharmacy.
I readied my tomahawk as we coordinated the target assignments via hand signals. I wasn’t looking forward to the noise and the extreme echo that would be created if we had to pop off rounds inside. I had the growing feeling that my tomahawk just wasn’t going to cut it. As we moved closer in, the floor was like a sheet of ice. The flooded floor mixed with blood and bits of flesh made for a cautious crawl with each step more hazardous than the last.
“OH SHIT!” is all I heard from behind as Eric went ass-up with a splash and a thud, landing flat on his back and squeezing off a round just over my shoulder. If I hadn’t turned at the sound of his voice, I think that round would have caught me in the back of the head. The screeching and howling that followed made me almost wished that it had.
The ringing in my ears from the shot Eric let loose was being quickly replaced by the approaching undead howls. That, along with a healthy dose of spoiled food and rotting flesh for my olfactory nerves, was giving me a nauseous feeling of vertigo. As my senses reached a point of overload, I gained a profound respect for people who had suffered through panic attack
s. I wished that my fears and emotions were all in my head and weren’t part of a reality rushing down aisle 5 to take a bite out of me. I reached into my pocket, grasping my relief in the form of a handful of painkillers. I gulped them down my dry throat in anticipation of what was coming next.
As if on cue, a mass of glowing eyes that resembled a swarm of fireflies came rushing from around the corner at the end of the isle. In a hurry to feast, the undead coming our way lost their footing. It was an eerily funny scene, like the one in the hallway from The Breakfast Club, as the zombies slid past and lost their footing on the wet floor. They came crashing down in a pile of decaying flesh across the floor.
I had paused to brace myself for the onslaught, but Tool was already rushing his way past me towards the death pile. He brought up his shotgun and began blasting away, extinguishing the yellow glow worms gazing at us before they had a chance to get back on their feet. As he broke to the left, working on reloading, I broke to the right and found the slower stragglers still making their way towards the rest of the group. The fact that the yellow illumination came from various distances was not as haunting as seeing them gaze at you in hunger from different heights. I was thankful for the lack of lighting at this point. I really wasn’t interested in seeing children that had turned. Unfortunately, the height difference makes hitting your target all that much more difficult – unless you use the shotgun method that Tool was unleashing on our sliders.
Either the pills were kicking in quicker than I thought that they could, or the blast from Tool’s shotgun was numbing my senses, because the shot from Eric’s pistol next to my right ear snapped me back to reality. One by one the yellow lights ahead went out and the screeching subsided. When it was finally all dark again, we closed distance between us as we posted up at the end of the aisle.
“Where’s Jamie?” Tool yelled.
“Right here my brother!” he yelled back from behind, covering down in the aisle behind us, “I figured somebody had to watch our backs in case Eric fell again!”
Zombie Reign (Book 4): Redemption Page 4
