by Jay Wilburn
Short Order pulled a plastic bag of socks off a peg and tore them open. He took off his shoes and began changing his socks for the ones he had discovered. He left the old ones on the floor with the plastic.
Doc shouldered the bag and his rifle.
He asked, “You guys want to search some more or forfeit?”
Short Order was tying back his shoes.
He answered, “I’d call it a push, but we’ll pretend you won, if that makes you feel better, Doc.”
Doc shook his head, “Jealousy is an ugly emotion, Shaw Porter.”
“It’s tough,” Chef said. “You are such a sore winner.”
We walked through the cash registers on the way out of the shelves. The slots for the cash trays were empty. I wondered if they had been taken too. People had still been grabbing money after the zombies came. Chef had said he saw people carrying double armfuls of the stuff with zombies chasing them down the street. I understood the concept of money, but didn’t understand this behavior. The bills in the closet at the Silver Bullet Diner had been turned over on the man inside.
I looked back at Doc. He was leaning over a rack next to one of the registers. The candy had been chewed through years ago by rodents. Bits of wrapper and foil were left behind. Doc pulled out the crumpled, water-stained cover of a broad, black-and-white magazine. He held it up. Chef and Short were still walking toward the doors.
Doc said, “Look, Mutt. My girl Kate was going to be in another movie, if the zombies hadn’t canceled Christmas. I would have seen that one. You realize there are probably prints of this thing sitting in cans in theaters all over the country that no one outside of Hollywood ever saw. Weird, huh?”
I looked down the front of the store past the registers and then back at Doc. He stuffed the magazine into the backpack behind him with the dead goose. He picked up his shaft where he had leaned it against the conveyor belt next to the register. I knew how conveyor belts worked too, but I didn’t see the value in having one that traveled three feet to carry candy and magazines.
Doc said, “Okay, I get you, Mutt. Let’s go.”
There was a gunshot near the front followed by three more from at least two different weapons. We started running. Then, there was a fourth. We reached a cooler marked ICE in red letters that was full of empty, plastic bags. That’s when the dead started pouring through the doors and tripping over the pile of carts.
***
I started to turn and run, but Doc grabbed my sleeve and held me.
He yelled, “No, Mutt, forward before they fill the place up. The others are outside at the truck. That’s our only way out. Come on.”
I didn’t agree, but I pulled my knife and followed him. I stayed close to his back as he swung his bar into their heads. Within seconds of the first couple falling, the ones walking deeper into the store began to turn and come back toward us. Others didn’t get the message and kept pushing through the bodies to head into the empty shelves.
The skin on their faces was torn and flapping as they plowed into our path. Doc kept swinging. He clobbered one in the nose sending green paste spraying into the monster’s washed out eyes. It spun and fell to the floor on its belly, but did not stop. Doc planted one foot back as he brought the shaft down on top of another cadaver’s scalp. Something came out of its ears as it crumpled in front of us.
The one on the floor couldn’t see, but was turning its head to the side to close its teeth on Doc’s Achilles tendon. I stuck my knife into its upturned ear. The creature was still pulled forward against my knife blade inside its ear canal toward Doc’s ankle with its teeth opened wide. As it did, my blade was pulled and twisted forward inside its head. Despite my best efforts, the creature levered forward over the back of Doc’s foot. Its teeth closed slowly as the body went limp. Its jaws stopped before they locked.
Doc stepped forward out of its mouth and I jerked my knife free of the zombie’s brain and ear drum.
We were hugging the wall on the right past the ice coolers as Doc swung against the crowd to the left. There were posters for missing children on the wall that we were tearing off with our shoulders as we slid closer to the open doors.
Doc elbowed one in the face as he spilt through the side of another’s head. I’m not sure if he did it on purpose or if it was a lucky accident. He turned the pole around and jabbed it into the creature’s ribs as it made another try at Doc.
Doc held the shaft like a lance and pressed forward. The aluminum sunk in until it hit a hardened organ or bone on the other side. The zombie wind-milled its arms swinging for us as Doc pushed him back into the others cutting a path through the mob entering the doors.
I slashed out wildly at the faces and hands reaching for me. I cleaved eyeballs, chopped finger tips, and split lips.
Doc’s zombie stumbled at the edge of the doors and fell to its back. Doc jerked the lance back out. It clawed up at him as Doc walked over it. He stomped his boot down into its forehead. The back of the zombie’s head bounced off the tile. He stomped down two more times. Green fluid exploded out of the back of its head on the last impact. I saw its eyes roll up as its arms fell away from Doc’s legs and crotch.
I pressed myself to Doc’s back as we moved forward. I tried to step over the body, but planted my foot in the center of its chest. The cartilage that connected at the center of the ribs snapped under me. Then, the ribs folded in and the lungs deflated. I felt the body collapse in three distinct phases before I stepped off awkwardly.
I held my hunting knife up as most of the zombies filed through the doors beyond us and continued unabated into the empty shelves beyond the registers. My eyes were focused on the knob above Doc’s backpack on the back of his skull. I felt bodies collide into my back as they tripped over the deflated body in the floor. I waited for their teeth to sink into my lower back or my thighs, but they did not.
We managed to escape the Super Max.
***
Light from the sun directly above us dazzled my eyes. I don’t know if Doc could see, but he was still moving forward. I had a brief flash of memory. I remembered climbing through an open window as zombies clawed at my back. They did not get me because my mother was holding their ankles as they reached for me. She was screaming in pain.
I turned around and looked blindly back into the store expecting to see her face that I still could not remember clearly. I just saw the dead pouring through the doors like we weren’t there. I started to wonder if I was already one of them until a fat, blue woman in a stained, flowered sundress staggered out with open arms, open jaws, and open wounds. She was not my mother.
I turned away.
Doc slammed the back cargo door of the truck that the zombies were also ignoring. He was whipping the pole around him connecting with hands and faces. He almost caught me on his backswing. He did not drop any of them and he wasn’t deterring them much either.
He pulled open the back passenger door. He grabbed my collar and hauled me through the opening and shoved me as he backed in after me. I fell over the jump seat and nearly landed on my own knife. Even if I hadn’t stabbed myself, getting scratched by the blade with zombie matter on it would have been the end of me too. He shoved me again as he slammed the door closed and started hitting all the locks. I held the blade away from me and stumbled around the seat.
We were the only two in the truck. Doc was looking through the plastic, window covers trying to see around the biting mouths and clawing hands.
Doc asked, “Mutt, did you see them go back in? Did you see them go back in the store around us? Did we miss them? Did you see?”
He reached up around the steering wheel and then looked back at me. He still had the backpack with the dead goose inside and his rifle strapped on his back.
Doc said, “Oh, God in Heaven, David has the damned keys.”
The truck began rocking from side to side on the shocks. It started slowly and then picked up violently. The truck lifted a few inches off the ground on the driver’s side and then drop
ped back hard enough to feel metal on metal somewhere in the wheel wells.
Doc said, “Arm up, Mutt. We are going to have to make a run for it.”
I shook my head harder than the truck was rocking. Doc went past me. He pulled the sword out and set it on his aluminum bar in the floor. He pulled out two more rifles and bags of ammo. He shoved a machete in my hands ignoring me shaking my head. I dropped the hunting knife in the floor. He pulled out two handguns. He made sure they were loaded and the safeties were on before he shoved the guns barrels first into my waistband. One of the barrels came to rest on the side of something I didn’t want to have shot. He grabbed another and did the same in his own waistband. He picked up my hunting knife and put it back in its sheath on my belt. He grabbed my chin to stop my head from shaking.
“Mutt,” he shouted in my face, “We didn’t come this far to be done here like this. We are going to get our shit together and we are going to make a hole through middle of them so we can get out alive.”
He let go of my face. He started shoving ammunition into his pockets and his pack. He started arranging other pouches on the floor next to the two rifles lying there.
He whispered, “We are going to pretend there is hope until there is.”
He pulled out another hunting knife from the back and took the time to undo his belt, loop the sheath on, and then buckled it back in place.
Doc said, “If we get to the point that I’m using this on zombies, we are in real trouble.”
I looked out at the hands pawing and pulling on the grills all the way around the truck. I had difficulty imagining what more trouble might look like.
He picked up one of the rifles and looked at me again. He put it in my hands and then picked up the other. He pointed at the ammunition pouches at our feet.
Doc said, “When this one is empty, trade me for that one and reload fast. When that one is empty, switch with me again. Repeat until we escape or we’re eaten. If you have a problem with my plan, say something now.”
I shook my head again.
Doc nodded, “I’ll take your silence as full support. I’m glad I picked you for my team, Mutt.”
He stepped past me and ripped the plastic cover away from the back driver’s side window. He placed the barrel against a snarling head and fired. The sound stabbed into my ears inside the closed cab of the truck. As one fell away, another stepped in its place. He fired again and again. He was careful to place the muzzle between wires in the grill before firing. He switched guns with me and kept firing. I reloaded with my ears ringing painfully. We switched again and then again. My eyes were burning and my nose stung when I inhaled. The truck lifted on the passenger’s side and dropped again. I couldn’t hear the shocks anymore. After we switched again and I got ready to reload, I felt the pouch was empty except for two shells. I tapped Doc’s shoulder and showed him. He nodded and yelled over the ringing in my ears.
He said, “When this one is empty, we go. Keep your nose in my ass.”
He fired until the rifle clicked empty. He dropped it. He grabbed up the sword and pole off the floor and pushed the door open. It went three inches and then stopped. He threw his body against it rocking the truck more, but it refused to give.
Doc spit. “The damned bodies are blocking it. Follow me out the front.”
He ran and unlocked the door. He looked back and saw I was still standing by the partially opened door. He reached back and grabbed a fist full of my shirt before pulling me into motion. We stumbled out the driver’s door and kept going without closing it.
***
They had hold of his pack immediately. He pulled free keeping the pack, but one of them came away with his rifle as we ran away. I looked back and saw a blistered woman trying to bite through the stock of the weapon. I hoped that she would catch the trigger and blow off the top of her own head or one of the others.
The pile of bodies by the truck looked like a wall against it. Others were crawling over the twisted bodies to get at us inside. One was on the roof trying to claw through the metal as we ran.
Doc swung the sword into the neck of the first body in our path. It sliced halfway through before it wedged on the bone. The zombie tried to swallow on the blade twice as it pivoted out of our path still reaching for us. Doc lost his grip as the zombie stumbled into the ones behind us. The point skewered into another zombie’s bare chest. They pulled against one another as they circled away from us with the sword.
Doc brought the pole around in time to knock one over. It hit the ground hard, but started crawling after us. I pushed Doc’s pack to get him to run faster.
We rounded the corner of the building into the arms of a larger crowd. Doc grabbed my shoulder behind him and pulled me sideways. He tried to head out into the parking lot, but they closed ranks as they moved from the storefront around us. He pulled me again as he fought his way along the side into the monsters that were forming a super pack around the Super Max.
The bar rang against the hard bone of the zombies in our path. Doc tripped and tried to go back the other way. They were clawing at my back. I could feel them through my shirt. I started pumping my legs and pushed him sideways toward the back of the building.
Doc yelled, “No, no, no!”
He pulled his pistol and started shooting the ones in front of us. He tried to jam the empty gun back in his pants, but dropped it. He reached back and pulled out one of mine. He thumbed off the safety and fired it empty too. This time he got it in his waistband without losing it.
He said, “I can’t believe I dropped it.”
We rounded the building trying to run along the back. We were about halfway down the length of service doors before the mob rounded the other corner. They were shoulder the shoulder from the building to the fence. I looked back to the same scene approaching from the way we had come. Doc started pounding on one of the service doors.
He yelled, “David, Shaw, let us in, if you are in there. Open the door!”
The door burst open. Doc took one step forward and then jumped backward when the body tumbled out after him. I brought the machete through the air in a harsh arc catching the top and side of the skull. The blade wedged in deep and the zombie dropped away from my hand taking the machete with it. Three more crowded each other as they forced their way out the door after their fallen friend.
Doc grabbed me and pulled me toward the mob coming from the other end of the building. I didn’t know what he planned to do, but we didn’t have much of a choice. Then, he pulled me in the direction of the fence. He pressed his body against the gate pushing it as far as the rusted chain and lock would allow.
I went through. On the other side of the gate was a line of railroad tracks cutting through the thick woods and bushes. Doc’s pack got hung in the space, but he pulled through tearing the material a little on both sides.
We crawled up the slope of white rocks until we stood on the wood cross ties. The other side of the tracks was solid green with vines and thorns between the tree trunks. We looked up the curve of the tracks toward the road and the broken cross bar. Some of them were stutter stepping down the line toward us already. The first of the store mob began clanging through the gate below us.
We started walking down the tracks the other way.
Doc huffed. “Keep a steady pace, but save energy. We can’t afford to tire out or turn an ankle. God, I can’t believe I dropped it. Damn it all!”
I pulled out my pistol and held it out to him. He shook his head and held out his empty hands. I didn’t get it.
He said, “I dropped old faithful, Mutt.”
He was talking about his pole. We should have felt bad for Chef and Short Order, but I understood his loss too. I put my gun back in my belt away from my front parts. Doc reloaded his from his pockets as we walked.
I glanced back. They weren’t close, but the ones following along the base of the slope were keeping pace. Some tried to climb, but fell and slid on the loose rocks. Others made it up and joined the line coming
after us on the track.
One near the front of the group on the tracks behind us tripped on the cross ties. His face landed on the rail and came up with a dent through the length of it as wide as the iron. He started to get up and then got kicked on to his face again by the ones behind him. He tried again and got shoved off the tracks into the rocks on the wooded side of the tracks.
We kept going carefully as we left the store and went into deeper woods along the tracks. Something was crashing and thrashing in the brush as we passed. We were beyond it before it ever came out of the cover. As I looked back, I saw a lanky, white corpse snap its ankle below its torn pants leg between the rail and the wooden tie beam. He pitched to the left and tumbled down the slope until his body vanished into the leafy vines below us. The others kept coming without him. I decided to keep my eyes on where I was walking.
The trees on our left began to open up revealing a neighborhood. Dead bodies began to emerge from doorways and out of open car doors. Others sat up in the grass or rose out of water gathered in various areas. Their skin was glossy and loose on their bones. A few that were already migrating down the street after the gunshots at the store or the moans on the tracks behind us turned and walked through the trees when they saw us.
As we walked away from the approaching neighbors on our flank, I saw one standing on the roof of a split level. He was looking out through the woods over the tracks. His skin was rotten and torn. It was scarred and festering around the bleached strands of hair on his scalp. He turned and looked as we moved away from his rooftop home. He leaned at us, but his feet would not follow. The tar and shingles under him tore loose from the boards and paper. They were stuck to his feet as he tumbled down the slope of the roof. His skin was unraveling around his ribs as he rolled. Two small bones were left behind as he fell on to the railing of his deck. His body broke apart with the impact. Hunks of flesh and hard organs fell away on each side of the railing. I lost sight of the head so I didn’t know if he was still looked for us once he lost his body. I refused to believe he had been on that roof since the zombies rose, but it was hard to imagine another possibility.
