by T. Gault
“They keys are still in the ignition! Get in and drive!” I hollered to Matt as I pulled the man into the bed of the truck and Matt fired two shots into the quickly advancing crowd.
Matt turned toward the truck and sprinted for the driver’s side. I pulled the tailgate and the camper window shut just before the first of them slammed into the side of the truck. I felt the body of the truck rock side to side, and I watched as some of them inched their way around the outside of the truck toward the camper widow.
“Get this thing moving Matt!”
“I got it. I got it,” yelled Matt.
Just as the truck jerked forward I heard the passenger’s side window shatter. I turned and saw several pairs of gray, rotting arms reaching into the window. Matt gunned the gas and all but one pair of the arms vanished from the window. The last set of arms had grabbed onto the inside of the cab and left the lower portion of the hitchhiker hanging from the broken window. The window that connected the bed to the cabin was locked from the inside and the decaying figure was dragging himself further into the cabin.
“Open the window! I can’t get a shot!”
“Just hold on, I’ve got this sack of crap!”
I felt the truck swerve to the right and—with a violent thud—the man was no longer hanging from the window. I looked behind the truck and saw the remains of him splattered and broken on a telephone pole.
“If you had opened the window, I could have shot him. What were you going to do if that didn’t work?”
“I would have opened the window and told you to shoot him,” said Matt as he looked into the rear view mirror with a smirk.
I chuckled to myself for a moment and shook my head. The man we had pulled from the car lay sprawled out in the bed of the truck. He was once again unconscious. I rolled him over to check for obvious injuries from the wreck. Not that I had any medical training to help him if he did. More importantly I was looking for bites. If my theory was right I didn’t want to be caught off guard. He appeared to have a bump on his head and maybe a broken left arm. I wasn’t sure if it was broken but it was black and blue. He was alive still, though, or at least he had a pulse.
“Where is this Sports Authority we’re headed to?” yelled Matt.
“Up ahead on the right, just passed Todds Lane,” I replied.
As we continued passed the Peninsula Town Center I noticed the power must have been working because the signs were lit up. We also passed quite a few of the wandering sick people. As Matt slowed to navigate his way around another crash, I noticed some movement next to a row of shrubs. A light brown sleeping bag flopped back and forth. I could see a torn area around the area the legs would have been. That portion of the bag was stained with dark red almost black around the hole. On the other end of the bag a bearded man’s head was sticking out. The beard was almost the only recognizable part of his head. His nose, ears, cheeks, and most of his scalp looked like they had been torn off of his head. In spite of all of the damage his body had obviously taken, he was still moving.
We saw a bunch of cars, trucks, vans, and those hybrid things. Most of them were either smashed into one of the others or just another vehicle in the parking lot where a road used to be. One vehicle caught my eye, a brand new BMW M3. It was black, had alloy wheels and tinted windows. The kind of car I could never afford. Oddly enough I found myself wishing I had the kind of high-paying job that it takes to buy a car like that. But as we drove past the BMW I noticed the blood streaks on the driver’s side of the car and what looked like the keys on the ground next to the car. A high-paying job and a high-class car hadn’t stopped the sick people from killing the owner of that car. Then I thought about the keys being on the ground. On any other day that car would have been stolen a long time ago.
“Hey, this is it right here, right?” said Matt while he pointed to the right side of the road.
“Yeah, that’s it.” I lifted my eyes to scan the front of the store.
The front of the store didn’t look so inviting, and it looked as though we weren’t the only ones who had thought to go there. The parking lot wasn’t very crowded but there were cars all around the front door area. Some of the vehicles were literally on top of each other. There were bodies on the ground all around the vehicles, but unless the sick people could also drive cars, someone had shot at least one of the drivers before he could get out of his car. The bullet hole in the front windshield of the SUV looked to be from a very large weapon. It also appeared that the window, the man in the driver seat, and the seat itself were not enough to stop the large-caliber bullet.
“Someone inside doesn’t want company,” said Matt as he nodded toward the front of the store.
“Yeah, let’s see if there is a back door,” I responded.
“You still want to try for this place? I mean did you see the front of the store? They are not going to just let us in the back door because we ask nicely,” exclaimed Matt, looking in the rearview mirror.
“Well, we need ammo and we need to plan for somewhere to sleep tonight. I know we have the pawnshop as a fallback, but you remember how we left it? What if we can’t get back inside?”
“You’re right, but we need a plan. First, we need to see what kind of nuts we’re dealing with. Then we need to see if they can be reasoned with.”
“Okay, if that doesn’t work, we leave. We didn’t make it this far to get shot by a psycho sales clerk.”
Matt drove the truck around to the back side of the store and slowly approached the back door. There were no windows on the back of the building, only a set of metal double doors. We left the truck near the corner of the building facing Todds Lane. Our new passenger was still passed out in the back. Matt reloaded his pump shotgun and put the last of his ammunition in his pants pockets. He was ready. I made sure the Glock was loaded and put my extra magazines in my pants pockets. I slid my pipe sword in between my sweatshirt and my book bag. I was ready. We stayed close to each other and stayed up against the white painted bricks of the back wall of the Sports Authority. Matt was in front and I watched behind us.
It was amazing how quiet the Peninsula Town Center area was. With no one racing through or honking at slower motorists, every little rock I kicked or stepped on echoed off of everything with a sustain I never thought possible. Matt stopped all of a sudden.
“Why’d you stop?”
But just as the words came out of my mouth I heard another set of footsteps. I looked over Matt’s shoulder and saw a heavy-set female stumble past the edge of the building. She looked to have been about 35 or so. She had a large gash on her stomach. She did not appear to have been infected for very long; she was still dripping blood from the gaping wound. She didn’t seem to have noticed us yet. We didn’t know if there were many more in the area, and all it took was one to get all of the others running.
“Quiet. She’s not coming this way, just let her keep walking,” whispered Matt, as he again started moving forward.
We both kept our eyes trained on the figure as she staggered into the bushes surrounding the back lot. We finally made it to the back door, and when Matt reached out to pull the door handle, we both held our breath.
“Locked.... It’s locked,” said Matt in a very putout voice.
“Well I can understand why,” I said as I shrugged my shoulders.
After a brief pause, I looked back at the truck and back at Matt.
“What do we do now?” I whispered as I again looked back to the truck.
“Just get back to the truck. We’re sitting ducks out here, especially if one of them spots us,” said Matt as he gestured toward the truck.
I turned and began to inch my way back to my truck. I heard whispering from behind me.
“What?” I whispered back to Matt.
“That wasn’t me. I think it came from just inside those doors,” Matt whispered quickly, as we both looked at the door and started moving back toward it.
“There it was again. Just stand still. I bet we can hear it wel
l enough from here to understand it,” whispered Matt as quietly as he could.
“You think they’re still out there? How many do you think there are?” said Voice #1.
“Shut up! They might hear us and get more to come. We’re runnin’ out of room in that dumpster. Then I don’t know what we’ll do with‘em,” said Voice #2.
“There are people still held up inside,” said Matt.
Just as Matt spoke, I looked over at the dumpster. We weren’t sure how it was that we had not noticed either the arm hanging out of one side of the dumpster or the large pool of blood under it.
“How do we know that we can trust them?” I quickly whispered.
“In our situation, I don’t think we have much choice,” said Matt, looking back toward the door.
“Okay, but if anything smells fishy about them, we get back in the truck and leave. They might be criminals or something. They don’t seem to have much trouble dealing with dead things,” I whispered.
“Keep your eyes open for more of them,” said Matt as he leaned toward the door.
I turned to face the parking lot at the rear of the store and held the Glock ready to shoot. Matt turned back to me and asked, “Are you ready?”
“Go,” I replied.
Matt thumped his knuckles on the door.
Knock - knock knock knock knock - knock knock
“Here they come!” said Voice #2.
“No wait. That noise had a pattern. They can’t do that,” said Voice #1.
“Is someone out there? Do that again if you’re out there,” whispered Voice #2.
Matt repeated the knocking pattern.
“Hold on, let me unlock the door. You guys sure you ain’t dead?” said Voice #2.
I heard the door unlock and Matt reached for the door handle. The door inched its way open before Matt could reach the handle.
“Come in slowly,” said Voice #1.
Matt began to creep into the doorway and I started to follow. Just as I started to see the origin of the two voices, I heard a much more disturbing sound.
Clunk. Clang. Thud. I looked back toward the truck just in time to see the guy we had rescued fall to the ground from the tailgate. He quickly got up and loomed around in a panic.
“Get over here!” I loudly whispered.
The crash victim began to stumble his way over to me. Just as he passed the edge of the rear wall of the store, one of them ran up from that side of the store and grabbed him by the arm. I brought up the Glock and leveled the sights at the pale older black male. But then I remembered what had happened the last time we started shooting outside.
“Get it off of me!” the man began to yell.
I shoved the Glock into my pocket and pulled out my pipe sword. I ran as fast as I could toward the struggling pair. The ruddy looking guy we had saved managed to shove the slightly mangled corpse to the ground just before I could get to him. I grabbed hold of the man’s right shirtsleeve and pulled him back toward the door. As I approached the opening, I heard a loud BANG and my ears started to ring. I saw Matt lean out of the doorway and bring his shotgun up. BANG I saw Matt shooting at something to my right. I quickly glanced over my shoulder just as one of them reached out to grab my book bag. I threw my stumbling tagalong toward the door and spun around. I brought the dull blade of my sword down across the right forearm of my attacker. The rotting flesh gave way and I heard the decaying bones snap.
I looked into the face of the creature and the only emotion I could identify with the look on its face would be...fear. Not fear of me, or Matt’s shotgun, just fear. The creature looked hopeless and yet had an endless purpose. I glanced past the shoulder of the former thirty-something lady and saw a large crowd advancing. I shoved the woman back and I knew that she would only lunge back at me, so I reared back with my sword and smashed the blade into the top of her head. Again I heard the bone crunch under the force and the woman fell to the ground as though she had never been moving. The unsharpened blade of my sword became lodged in the oily rotting scalp of the infected female and I nearly lost my grip on the handle. I quickly stomped on her face and yanked my weapon free.
“Get in here now!” Matt yelled at me.
I turned and sprinted for the door. I wasn’t counting on the two- or three-inch rise in the threshold to the door and slammed my left foot into it as I entered the store. I tumbled onto the concrete floor and slid into the feet of a six-foot-solid-looking Italian with dark hair.
“Smooth,” he said with a New York accent.
I heard the door close behind me followed by pounding and screeching.
“You guys could have told me that there was a step there,” I stammered as I started to get up and dust myself off.
“Sorry man, I didn’t really think about it. I always just step right up over it when I come in this door,” said a voice with a southern twang from behind me.
I turned around and saw a five-foot-ten-inch redheaded country boy standing next to Matt. We all looked at each other for a couple of seconds in silence.
The red headed teenager began to laugh loudly and slapped his leg.
“I told you there were still normal people out there,” he said as he pointed at the New Yorker.
“My name is Sidney Coleman, but please just call me Sid. My mama is the only person who calls me Sidney,” he said with a grin on his face. The grin quickly faded and he looked down at the floor.
The slightly older-looking guy looked at me and then at Matt and said, “I’m Jim. Not Jimmy, James, Jimbo, or Jaime...just Jim. Come on guys, I think I might have something to show you.”
“Who’s he?” Jim said, nodding toward the guy I had shoved into the door. Matt and I looked at each other and Matt looked at the young man.
“What’s your name?” said Matt very coarsely.
The obviously scared nineteen- or twenty-year-old was now sitting with his back against one of the large stacks of pallets and his head between his legs.
“Curtis Barfield,” said the young man in a very low tone.
“His name is Curtis,” said Matt as he turned his head to look back at Jim.
Jim grabbed a very large hunting rifle off of a stack of plastic crates by the back door and walked toward the front of the store.
“Hey, you guys got to see this. I never seen anything like it in my life,” said Sid with a very excited tone in his voice.
Matt turned and looked at me and the look on his face was asking me what I had gotten us into.
“C’mon Curtis,” said Matt as he began to walk. We all followed Jim and Sid up to the front of the store. Jim stopped at a room marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY.”
“I’m not sure where you guys come from, but I’m from New York and I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Jim as he opened the door. Jim walked to the far side of the room and sat down in front of a very old looking computer. He wiggled the mouse and the obsolete machine blinked to life. He pulled up the camera system and began to rewind the video.
“What are we going to be looking at?” asked Curtis, sounding very confused. Matt and I both looked at him to ask where in the world he had been. It seemed that it was going to take a few minutes to get the tape to whatever it was he was going to show us, so I stepped out of the office to take a quick glance around the store, to see what we were dealing with.
The inside of the store somehow felt even bigger than I thought it would. I had always wanted to stop by the store but had always been too busy with school. I could see the row of five registers from the security room and could see the gun section on the other side of the store. I looked up at the front doors and realized that we may not be as secure in this building as we thought. The front doors had been shattered. I couldn’t tell if the cause was the gunshots or the vehicles all crowded around the doors. It appeared that Sid and Jim had moved some things up to the doors to keep the unwanted guests out. I couldn’t see the whole pile from where I stood but it looked like a canoe, a four-wheeler, and a couple of shelves.
It felt odd standing inside of that store. It almost felt like I was just another customer on a regular shopping day.
“Here it is,” said Jim from inside the security office.
“It’s not the clearest video but you’ll get the idea,” said Jim as he clicked the play button.
The first few seconds were nothing more than Sid fronting and facing a few shelves up by the front door. Then a middle-aged male came into the store and quickly walked out of the camera view. It looked like he came back to the front of the store with a box of bullets. But then he just walked right out the front door. Sid jumped up from the aisle he was working on and ran after the man out the front door. A couple seconds later Sid ran back into the store and ducked behind the registers.
