“Not necessarily,” Dallas said. “This looks like a really small area, and there probably aren’t many people who live here at all. And the few people who do are probably on their way to the game.”
Pierce stepped in front of her and pushed the door gently. It swung open. “It’s unlocked,” he said. “Let’s go in.”
“Wait a second,” Ashleigh said. “Are you suggesting that we...steal?”
“It’s not stealing,” he said. “If we decide to get anything, we’ll track down a cashier and pay for it. And if we can’t find one...well, is it really considered stealing if it’s abandoned?”
“I don’t know. Something doesn’t seem right about this. Let’s go back to the car.”
“No way,” Dallas said. “This is a perfect opportunity to pick up some supplies we couldn’t get earlier.”
“Dal, this is dangerous,” Ashleigh said. “Anyone could be in there — a crazy person with a gun, someone who’s already stealing. Or someone could come along and think we’re stealing. And what proof would we have that we’re not? I mean, Pierce practically suggested it.”
“And what should we do?” Pierce said. “Go back to the car and melt? Hey, maybe when the zombies come, they can drink us up from the concrete. It’ll save them a lot of trouble!”
“What is your problem?” Ashleigh said. “It was just a suggestion.”
“Well it wasn’t a very good one. I don’t know about you guys, but I still say we go in.”
Ashleigh shook her head. “Fine, whatever. But when an angry mob comes after you, don’t come crying to me.”
“Not you,” Dallas said. “We’ll split up. Sam and I will go in this one and you guys can go to the ones down the street. We’ll get a lot more done that way, but we’ll still have safety in numbers. If you guys see a zombie, call me or something.”
Pierce snickered. “There’s a call I never thought I’d make. ‘Hey Dallas, how’s it going? By the way, some dude just tried to eat me. Please send help.’”
Fortunately, though, nobody protested, and they all dispersed in different directions. Once Ashleigh, Talia, and Pierce were out of the parking lot, Sam swung the door open.
The gas station was typical enough. Rows of canned goods lined the shelves of the sales floor. Drink coolers took up the entire back wall, and cigarette cartons dominated the space behind the register. To the left of the register was a mini café with photos of pizzas — only $3.99 for a personal pan!
“Hello?” Dallas called. “Anyone here?” But nobody responded. “They’ve got to be open,” she said. “The door is unlocked.”
She grabbed two baskets and went down the aisles, fitting as many cans in as she could after glancing over the directions. No use buying something they had to heat over a stove.
Sam eyed the end caps filled with sour gummy worms and Starburst. “Why don’t you focus on getting something that’s at least somewhat healthy?” Dallas said.
“Why does it even matter?” he murmured. “If it’s a zombie apocalypse and you’re going to rob somebody, why worry about robbing healthy food?”
“You’re not robbing it,” she said. “We’re going to find a cashier and pay for all of this.”
“Look around, Dallas. Do you see a cashier? We’re stealing. And if we get caught, we won’t need to worry about zombies because we’ll be in jail for the rest of our lives.”
“Zombies can still get us there,” she said. “Besides, they don’t give life sentences for robbing convenience stores.”
There was a crash from behind the drink coolers. Dallas shrieked and grabbed Sam’s arm, but then exhaled. “It’s just the ice machine. Come on, let’s go to the back.”
“What’s in the back? Did you not get enough mini ravioli?”
Dallas eyed her basket; she did have an awful lot of cans. But she shook her head. “Weapons. They’ve got to have something to slice all those pizzas with.” She set the basket down by an end cap and motioned for Sam to do the same.
“You’re going to fight zombies with a pizza cutter?” he said as he set his basket by hers.
“Have you got a better idea?”
The back door opened into a kitchen area and several shelves full of dry storage. There was an oven, but it wasn’t turned on and the room was unusually cold. Sam brushed by her and her arm tingled. He headed for the dry storage, but her eyes fell on a blade hanging off the edge of the oven. She immediately recognized it; at her pizza parlor job, they used blades like this one to slice the smaller pizzas. It was about two feet long and had a curved, sharp blade. It was clean and shiny and she picked it up, gripping it in her fingers.
On the other side of the oven was a prep table. It was cool and plugged into the wall; this must be where they topped the pizzas. To the right of that, near the entrance, was a cooler and a walk-in oven.
“How long can this stuff stay fresh?” Sam said with his head in the cooler. “I see some yogurt back here, and some cheese. Maybe we can take some of it and...”
There was another noise, this time from the front — and it wasn’t the ice machine. Dallas and Sam stood frozen in their spots. Dallas was sure she could hear Sam’s heart thumping a few feet away. Or maybe that was her own. She gripped the pizza cutter tighter and held it close to her head. As she passed back by the oven, she quickly punched a button and started the preheating process. Better safe than sorry.
Moaning drifted in from the front. Sam crept closer to Dallas, reaching over her shoulder and grabbing a knife from the dry storage area. She wished she had thought of that earlier — a knife made much more sense as a weapon. But there was no time now. The noise was getting closer.
The door creaked open and a young woman shuffled into the room, her face caked with blood and her white t-shirt stained and ripped in several places. She held out her green tinted arms and headed straight for Dallas. Dallas lunged forward and hurled the pizza cutter into the woman’s neck. Blood spurted from the wound and the zombie made a feeble attempt at screaming before falling to the floor. Dallas was still holding the pizza cutter; it slid out of the zombie’s neck as she fell, leaving her head half severed from her body. Dallas’s hands shook.
“Shit!” Sam said. “Are you okay?”
She nodded but her hands — and the pizza cutter — were still shaking. Sam put his arms around her and she returned the embrace with one hand, taking the pizza cutter and wedging it between them. She knew she was getting blood on their clothes but didn’t really care, and he didn’t seem to either. The first time she killed a zombie, neither of them had much time to react. Now, she allowed herself to take comfort in his arms, at least long enough to stop trembling. For that moment, they were the only ones in the universe, living or dead.
Dallas looked up. “You’re shaking harder than I am.”
He smiled. “I’ll be okay. Promise.” He licked his lips and parted them slightly. He dipped his head down, and Dallas raised hers.
There was a crash from the front, followed by more moans. Dallas quickly broke away and ran to peek out the kitchen door. A horde of about two dozen zombies stood outside the main doorway, pressing their bodies furiously against the glass. There was already a long crack in the glass, and God only knew how long before it caved. Dallas hadn’t seen any of them as she and her companions made their way down the interstate earlier. They must have come from the surrounding buildings — possibly, she realized with a shudder, drawn to the scent of human flesh.
She peeked her head out further and locked eyes with a blonde zombie. The zombie growled, and Dallas gasped. The zombie pounded on the glass even harder, and the crack split further. One final push sent it shattering, and the zombies pushed and shoved each other to get into the tiny open passageway. They were covered in scratches within seconds, but ignored their wounds as they continued to shove their way inside.
Why was Dallas so stupid? Why had her equally stupid friends agreed to leave the interstate? She did a quick sweep
of the kitchen but couldn’t find another exit. They were trapped.
Chapter Five
The hordes were coming, slowly but surely. The few already inside had spotted Dallas and made their way toward her. They moved slow, but it was only a matter of time before they reached the kitchen, and she and Sam had no place to go.
Dallas swung the kitchen door shut, but there was no latch to lock the hordes out. She threw her pizza cutter onto the dry storage shelf and pulled at the prep table; sure enough, it was on wheels. “Grab the other side,” she said to Sam. Together, they pulled the rectangular table away from the wall and toward the door.
“It’s not going to fit,” Sam said. The coolers on their side of the door prevented them from positioning the table directly in the horde’s path.
“Just do the best you can,” Dallas said. The plug snapped out of its socket as they shoved the table in front of the door at an angle.
“Got it!” he said. “That’s not going to hold for very long, though.”
“Shit,” Dallas muttered. There was faint growling from the other side of the doorway. She didn’t even know zombies could growl. Then again, twenty-four hours ago she hadn’t known zombies could exist outside of fantasy and horror tales.
The first zombie had pushed the door open a crack — as much as the prep table would allow, anyway — and stuck its arms, head, and part of its torso through in an attempt to gain entrance. A few in the back were clawing at their partners and pushing through. Chunks of severed skin and muscle covered the prep table, but they didn’t seem to notice.
The previous summer, Dallas and Talia had attended a concert in New Orleans. It was general admission — standing room only, and closeness to the stage depended on one’s ability to shove their way through the crowd. Dallas had managed to squirm her way to the front of the stage, where she was overrun by girls in high heels reaching out their arms for a brush from the lead singer’s hand. Now, standing on the other side of the prep table, she was that lead singer. She had spent years fantasizing about what it would be like to have people push each other aside to get to her on stage. But she never imagined her first experience as an in-demand performer would be for people who had risen from the grave wanting more than just a hand brush.
The lead zombie finally reached its entire body, minus a leg, through the opening, reaching for Sam with muscle drenched fingers. Sam hoisted himself onto the prep table, grabbed the zombie’s hand and sawed it off. The zombie cried out, the closest thing Dallas had heard to a zombie screaming. She felt sick.
The hordes continued to fight their way through, shoving the new amputee to the side. As its body fell to the floor, another zombie pushed its way up, simultaneously hoisting itself onto the prep table and reaching for Sam, who promptly stabbed it. The zombie wiggled like a beheaded cockroach for a few more seconds. But even as it stopped struggling and fell back into the crowd, more zombies made their way over the table.
There was a faint ringing from the sales floor, followed by shouting. “Did you hear that?” Sam called. The zombie he had been wrestling with fell to the other side of the prep table, rolling off and onto its back on the tile floor. It was inside the kitchen now, just a few feet away from Dallas.
The zombie was the same one Dallas had locked eyes with earlier. It was — or had been — a girl about her age, with blonde highlights and, underneath her various gashes and wounds, a deep tan. She was dressed in ripped jeans and a tight tank top. She had landed on her neck during the fall, and from the way it hung off her shoulders, it was probably broken. But Blondie didn’t seem to mind. She moved faster than the zombies in the horde — even as she rolled off the prep table, she got up quickly, rounding the corner and heading straight for Dallas. Dallas was now directly behind the walk-in oven, which had crept up to a satisfying one hundred forty degrees.
“Come on, Blondie,” Dallas muttered. The zombie headed straight for her and she kept walking backward, luring her to the other side of the oven. Blondie stopped in front of her, her teeth exposed by lip decay, and they circled each other, just like she and Tatum had done at the House of Blues. Dallas opened the oven door and felt the heat on her shoulders.
The screaming began again. “Dallas?” Sam called. Blondie didn’t react to his voice. “Dallas, do you hear that? It sounds like Ashleigh.”
But Dallas wasn’t listening. She grabbed Blondie’s shoulders and shoved her sideways into the oven. She slammed the door; Blondie howled and banged against it, but it didn’t budge.
Sam gasped, dropping down from the prep table. The growl of the zombies was now faint. “What did you do?”
“Relax,” Dallas said, “I’m just giving Blondie here a little tan.”
“You’d think she’d be used to it,” Sam said as Blondie continued to howl. “Even when she was trying to eat me I could tell she spent too much time at the tanning bed.”
Dallas scoffed. “Oh please. Did you see all that orange on her face? That was so a spray tan.”
They snickered, but their moment was interrupted by another crash from the front, followed by more screaming. There was a final shout, and then it was quiet.
“Did you hear that?” she said.
Sam nodded. “It was definitely Ashleigh. I think she said our names.”
“Dammit,” Dallas whispered. Sam looked at her, wide eyed, and she motioned for him to follow her, grabbing her pizza cutter on the way out. Sam was still holding his knife, now dripping with dark purple matter. They pushed the prep table aside, stepping over the zombies Sam had stabbed earlier, their bones crunching underneath them. When they reached the sales floor, Dallas gasped.
Canned goods and drink bottles littered the floor. Several of them had burst open, leaving a sticky mess in their path. Entire shelves had been overturned, blocking part of the path to the front. Sam climbed over a shelf and held out his hand to Dallas. She could have easily gotten over herself, but took it anyway.
But even more noticeable than the debris was the carnage. Two bodies of people she didn’t recognize lay at the front of the store, sprawled across the overturned display racks and beer cases. A few of the horde zombies gnawed at the corpse’s limbs, blood dripping down their chins and necks.
Several more zombies huddled by the drink machines around what she presumed were two more fresh corpses. She heard loud whispering by the doors; Talia and Pierce were standing outside in the parking lot. Pierce made hurried gestures, while Talia only stared at the zombies as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She probably couldn’t. Dallas didn’t see Ashleigh anywhere.
“Come on,” Sam said. “We have to go.”
Dallas ignored him. Her heart pounding and her palms shaking even harder than before, she raised her phone and started clicking the camera button. Fortunately, her concert attendance had also taught her to take decent pictures in less than ideal circumstances. The zombies didn’t look up as she snapped photos.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sam hissed. “Come on, we have to go!” He was already several yards ahead of her, carrying one of the baskets she had filled earlier.
She continued to ignore him and crept to an opening in the horde, where she spotted Ashleigh’s body sprawled on the tiles, her entrails in the grimy hands of the zombies. Her hand was curled tight around something. When the ringing started again and the zombies reached for Ashleigh’s hand, Dallas realized it was her cell phone.
Dallas almost dropped her own phone. Behind her, Sam swore again. He ducked and crawled back through the opening in the glass door. After clicking the photo button one last time, she slowly walked forward and followed him, holding her stomach.
Behind them on the exit ramp, several more traffic jam victims were headed their way. One of them was carrying a rifle, and most of them were in jeans and cowboy boots. They moved in a line and with purpose.
“Come on, let’s get behind the building,” Pierce said. They jogged around the corner, where Dallas stumbled to
the sidewalk and dry heaved on the curb. The pizza cutter slipped through her fingers, hitting the asphalt with a clatter.
For a moment, she thought it might never stop. She took a deep breath, only to have it expelled along with more bile she didn’t even know the origin of. She decided right then that there was nothing worse than dry heaving on an empty stomach.
She bent over and took several deep breaths, but they were interrupted by sobs. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and stumbled to the side of the building, where she leaned her head back against the stone wall. Footsteps echoed from the front and, when she looked up, her friends surrounded her. She inhaled again and the last of her tears fell down her face.
“Are you going to be okay?” Sam asked.
She nodded and he brushed her hair, slightly damp with tears, out of her face. Talia reached in the basket and handed her a soda, which she took gratefully.
“Look.” Pierce pointed to the parking lot. A few hundred yards away, the mini mob was approaching the gas station. The horde made its way out too, and they were about to come face to face. It reminded Dallas of her middle school days, when she and her girlfriends would play Red Rover at recess. Only the boys they played against were usually...well, alive.
The man carrying the rifle stopped in front of a zombie and began rattling off obscenities. The zombie attacked. The man tried to beat it away with the gun, but he was overpowered. Dallas turned away and heard a sickening scream, followed by the crunching of bones and snapping of ligaments.
When she looked up, the bodies of the gunman and his companions lay on the concrete, their blood spilled on the asphalt. Most of the zombies feasted on their flesh, but a few headed for the interstate. She watched the ant-sized people scurrying for their cars. Some of them headed for the woods, and some ran further down the road. Just the thought of what would happen to many of them made her want to dry heave again.
“Come on guys,” Pierce said. “Let’s get out of here while they’re distracted.”
State of Emergency Page 5
