Still, the lure of a safe place kept Ian and Grant lurking on the perimeter.
A teenager climbed out of the encampment, over the bed of a pickup truck and straight toward them in the woods. As he got closer, Ian recognized him as another friend of Grant’s.
“Markie!” Grant whispered.
Ian nodded in acknowledgment. He hadn’t talked to Markie much at school, but the two boys knew of one another.
“Hey, man! Shit!” Markie had a special handshake that he did with all of his friends and he and Grant performed the short collection of slaps, fist bumps, and shakes. “What are you guys doing out here?”
“Scoping out a place to stay. You?”
“Comin’ out to piss.”
Ian looked longingly at the store, of which he could only see the roof. The ring of vehicles was effective in keeping the dead out.
“You’d be safer if you rolled with us,” Markie said. He lifted his shirt to show a gold-plated gun tucked into his waistband.
“We don’t need guns to stay safe from the dead, Markie,” Ian said. The gun made him nervous. Markie with a gun made him even more nervous.
“You might not need protection from them, but Rachel can give you a lot.”
“Who’s Rachel?”
“She’s the baddest bitch you’ve ever seen and if you defy her, well, you die.”
“Why would we want to come inside then?” Ian asked. They’d just been kicked out of a drug store and they needed an easy place to stay, but this didn’t sound like it. It sounded like a repeat of the hell they’d just left. Same troubles, different players.
“You can come in, but only if you plan on staying for a long time. Rachel doesn’t take kindly to folks who just want to pass through. She has some weird ideas.”
“Like what?”
“She likes the chaos, the zombies. She’s happy the world has changed.”
“That is weird,” Ian said. He put extra emphasis on his reaction in the hope that Grant wouldn’t drag him inside of the death trap.
Luckily, Grant was already pulling Ian away by his backpack. “I think we’ll pass.”
Markie nodded. “Don’t say I didn’t try to help you out!” He shrugged and ran back to the store.
“Quit tugging on my bag!” Ian ripped free of Grant’s grasp. “What the hell?”
“You’ve heard the rumors. His dad is in a gang. I don’t want to get mixed up in that shit.”
“You don’t have to convince me. I think we should stay solo for awhile.”
• • •
“Funny how Grant led us into the motorcycle gang’s lair, but this was different.”
He knew the guys in the motorcycle club. It was absolutely different.
“They were guilty of just as many crimes and killings.”
You’re on trial here. Not them! Not Grant!
• • •
The boys were preparing to move on, as the day was turning to night, when they saw a woman exit the grocery store.
“That must be Rachel,” Ian said.
“She’s hot,” Grant observed. “Got that resting bitch face though.”
“Who’s that guy?” Ian asked. A man dressed in dark clothing and armed with guns and a blade was sneaking around the outskirts of the parking lot. He watched Rachel and the other men. Ian and Grant watched him take out all of the tires of the vehicle barrier with his knife.
“He’s serious, whoever he is.”
“We should leave. Now.”
“Stay quiet. This could benefit us.”
Ian was about to ask how, but then he realized a war between second and third parties might leave them the spoils.
They lay as low as possible as a gunfight broke out and even when the fight moved into the store, the boys held back.
More gunfire and then three people excited the store; Rachel, the armed man, and a tall blonde who looked like a Viking. Then, a grenade went off, taking the Viking with it.
After the explosion, and after the man who’d caused the fight collected the guns and left, the boys approached the store. Small fires burned in the lot, pieces of the larger man’s body hung on everything. Near the door, they came upon a smoldering corpse of a woman. Grant wanted to linger and take in the carnage, but Ian pulled him inside the store.
There, between two of the registers, they found Markie and a man Grant recognized as Markie’s father. A bullet to the brain had killed the older man as he held his son’s body. Markie had bled out from a stab wound and returned to life. His father’s embrace was too tight though, keeping Markie from roaming the aisles. He struggled to break free as a meal hovered over him.
Grant lifted the knife, wiped it on Markie’s pants, and tucked it into his own belt. “Shit,” he said, trying to avoid the biting mouth of his old friend. “His dad always watched over him. He must have been pretty broken up when he died.”
“Should we do something?” Ian asked.
“You mean, kill him?” Grant then saw the golden gun, discarded beneath the register counter. He checked the magazine. “There are a couple bullets left. Do you want to do it?”
Here it was, the opportunity Ian was hoping to avoid. He’d never killed anyone, living or undead. The golden gun, with a light smattering of blood from Markie’s father’s head on its muzzle, was held out to him. He couldn’t take it or a life.
“I can’t watch.” He backed away as Grant took no time in aiming at Markie’s forehead.
“A gun with one bullet isn’t much use,” Grant said before dropping it to the floor.
• • •
Is this really a mistake, not saving Markie?
“He wasn’t a bad kid.”
You hardly knew him. I think you should let go of it.
“Maybe you’re right. I’m carrying enough as it is.”
Now we’re making some progress!
• • •
“There isn’t a lot room in my pack,” Grant said as they perused the shelves for foodstuff. It was a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.
“We could swap some stuff out,” Ian suggested. “Get rid of some of the gross things that Thomas gave us.”
“You mean the canned artichokes, don’t you?” Grant knew just what pocket the can of slimy vegetable was in and he fished it out. A can of chili filled its place in the pack.
“What about these crackers?” Ian held up a partially collapsed box of Saltines.
Grant shook his head. “We’re not having a repeat of the communion wafers. They’ll dry out your mouth!”
“Is your advice in the apocalypse to pick wet stuff?” Ian laughed. Though the aisles were messy, the grocery store was a place of calm and near normalcy. It felt good to joke around.
“Yes, Ian. Pick wet stuff…like this can of pineapple slices.”
• • •
“I almost felt like Edith was going to pop out and make us pay for everything we took.”
Oh yes, Edith. A very special woman.
“We wouldn’t have had to re-kill Markie if Edith hadn’t kicked us out.”
That was your fault.
“Yeah. It was.”
…I BROKE THE RULES
The Walgreens presented itself as a promising looting opportunity. Whereas most of the storefronts had broken windows, its front windows were still intact. And though the specials advertised on the glass were outdated, Ian and Grant knew that the only numbers that mattered were the expiration dates printed on the cans and boxes inside. The one thing keeping them from entering through the front doors was the large “alive inside” spray-painted across the glass. The message should have kept them from entering at all. One should never make their presence known in the apocalypse! But they needed to eat and after what had happened with the bikers, they had to be cautious.
• • •
“I haven’t told them about the bikers yet,” Ian says with a hint of anger in his voice.
What happened with them directly affected your choices afterward. I
t’s worth mentioning.
“Okay, but don’t give anymore away. I’ll tell their story next.”
Whatever you say, boss. Back to Walgreens we go.
• • •
“If there really are people inside,” Grant said to Ian, “we should go in through the back. They wouldn’t be hanging out in the storage room, right?”
They tried the back door and surprisingly, it was unlocked. Cautiously, Grant led the way into the dark space. They made it halfway through when he ran into a stack of something set dead center in the middle of the floor. What sounded like empty cans clattered about the cement. Someone rushed into the room from within the store and shone a flashlight on them.
“Oh boys! Hello, hello, hello! Welcome, welcome, welcome!” a person said in a high-pitched female voice. She grabbed them and pulled them through a set of swinging doors. In the light, they could see that she was a middle-aged woman with long, curly hair and big eyes. She was wearing a light blue polo shirt, a multi-colored floral apron, and neon green Crocs. A small clipboard, also neon green, dangled from a chain looped around a fanny pack strapped around her waist.
Now, there are a whole handful of people you shouldn’t trust in the apocalypse: folks with more weapons than you, religious zealots, criminals, overly helpful individuals (they are always up to something), young children who have somehow managed to survive on their own and bubbly, wide-eyed housewives who don’t seem to notice that the world is dying around them. Edith MacAllister’s smile was so large Ian could see the woman’s back molars and her eyes so brimming with enthusiasm they looked as though they might pop out of her head.
She picked up the clipboard and procured a pen from her fanny pack. “What are your names?” she asked. It seemed a bit formal, like the first day of school.
“Ian,” Ian said and then he pointed to Grant, “Grant.”
“Ian and Grant.” She scrawled their names on the clipboard. I’m Edith MacAllister, but the family calls me Em.”
“Your family is here?” Grant asked. Few people were lucky to hold onto their family during the destructive first days of the plague.
“No, well, you know, the others here with me. We were all shopping when people started getting sick outside.”
“And you didn’t try to get home? Don’t you have a real family?” Ian asked. Grant hit him secretly. He could already tell that Edith was a little nuts.
“I’m sure they didn’t make it. But enough about them! Tell me all about you two boys!”
“My parents are…gone,” Ian said.
“And mine never gave a fuck,” Grant said dryly.
Edith cringed. “Anyway, enough with the sad stuff.” She reached her hand into a pocket on the apron and removed two slips of paper. “You are welcome to stay, but you’ll need to follow these rules.”
Grant and Ian took the lists, but when Grant started into the store, Edith stopped him.
“I need you to read the rules and agree to them before you come in any further. You can sit in those chairs by the door. I hope you understand.”
The rules weren’t what Ian expected. He thought they’d be simple, like “No Pets” or “Wipe Your Feet”, maybe “No Swearing”. Instead, the paper laid out the strangest set of guidelines he’d ever read.
• • •
You still have the list don’t you?
“I’m sitting on it.” Ian pulls a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “Here it is.”
You don’t even need to read it to remember what it says.
“Nope, they’ll stay with me forever.”
• • •
“Rule number one,” Grant read, “No one is allowed in the toy aisle after 8pm.”
“What’s in the toy aisle after that?” Ian asked. “Gremlins?”
Grant laughed so hard he spit on his copy of the list. “Rule number two: Never open the reach-ins.”
“That one isn’t too bad.” The milk appeared normal from where he was sitting, but he could imagine the spoiled smell of a dairy product left unrefrigerated for too long.
“Rule number three: All merchandise used or consumed must be documented for reimbursement to the company at a later date. Please use the back of this list. Additional paper can be purchased if needed.”
“Whoa, what?”
“That’s crazy.”
Grant pulled on a strap of his backpack. “We’ll use our own supplies first. I don’t even have any money on me.”
“Rule number four: No underage smoking, drinking or sex out of wedlock. This is still the real world.”
“Ha! Who wrote these?” Ian asked.
“From the look on Edith’s face when I said the ‘eff’ word, I’d guess she did.”
• • •
“I could deal, but Grant especially didn’t like the list.”
Number four.
“Yeah. Grant smoked off and on since he was ten. He didn’t like being told how to behave.”
Sounds like someone else I know.
• • •
“So, if you agree to the rules, I’ll introduce you to the others.” Edith shifted her weight from one foot to the other, eager to begin introductions.
A quiet and clean place to sit was all either of the boys wanted. They nodded and followed her deeper into the store.
“This is the group!” Edith exclaimed as she gestured to four people sitting and standing around the aisles at the center of the drugstore. She offered no names to either party.
Three women and one man nodded lazily. Not out of disinterest for the boys, but seemingly out of annoyance with Edith’s excitement over them.
“I’ll let you all get acquainted. I have some business to attend to.” She hurried off into an isolated corner of the store, down an aisle with the detergent and other cleaning chemicals.
“Does she maybe have a few screws loose?” Grant asked, directing his gaze at the one adult male, thinking he might be the most willing to share the dirt on “Em.”
“She’s addicted to smelling the detergents, especially the Tide. And sometimes she disappears down the Greeting Card aisle and cries over the sappiest ones.”
“Why do you stay here with Em?” Ian asked.
“First,” one of the women said, “We don’t call her that. She wants us to call her that. And second, have you been outside? She might be a little nuts, but she isn’t going to try to eat me.”
“Wait until the food runs out,” another of the women said, sending a hearty chuckle through the small group.
Grant was correct about the man, for he had more to spill on the wacky, self-appointed leader. “She took all the coupons out of the newspapers at the front. She thinks they’ll honor them when things go back to normal. I believe she has a rewards card too. But she tracks it like everyone else. She had to get a new notepad ‘cause she ‘ran out of room.’”
“Coupons expire, you know,” Ian pointed out.
“I guess common sense does too. Anyway, I’m Andy and this is Rosie, Brenda, and Jean. Pick an aisle, make yourselves at home.”
• • •
The boys spent two peaceful days with the Walgreens survivors, playing Yahtzee the man had “purchased”, tending to small blisters that had formed on their overworked feet with a first aid kit one of the women shared, and slowly and carefully dipping into their own food supplies, all while avoiding interacting with Edith if it could be helped. On the third day, however, Grant couldn’t handle the monotony anymore. He pulled a copy of the last Rolling Stone magazine to be published from the rack. He thumbed through it and was putting it back when Edith came rushing down the aisle. It was though she sensed when the products on the shelves shifted.
“Did you add that to your list?” she asked, pointing at the publication.
“No, I don’t want to keep it. I’m done with it.”
“It doesn’t work that way. This isn’t a library. This is aisle 15 of the Northgate Walgreens. You’ve bent the pages; gotten your greasy fingerprints on th
e pictures. They won’t be able to sell that to someone else when they reopen.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” He knew she wasn’t. Her face was deadly serious, but it only made him want to mess with her more.
“Write it down, hand over some money, I don’t care! But you best not leave it on the shelf all used and dirtied. It’s theft.”
• • •
Ian’s stomach growls loudly. It sounds like the hungry cry of one of the zombies. He turns over and lays his belly down on a fist.
Laying on it won’t make it go away.
“What else am I supposed to do?” Ian asks himself.
You never dug through Grant’s bag. He could have stashed something.
Ian quiets his mind and continues lying on his fist. Touching Grant’s belongings seems like a bad idea to him. They are piled in the corner of the bedroom in a sort of shrine to his dead friend. There was no other way to honor him besides respecting his things.
Honor him by honoring the expiration date on the can of pinto beans in his backpack.
Ian jumps to his feet, opens the closet door and runs to the cairn of fabric and gear. He stands before it, but still cannot bring himself to touch anything.
You’ll die, Ian. Grant wouldn’t want you to die.
A sensation creeps over him, one of being watched. The feeling you get when someone else is in the room, like the airspace has shifted to allow their presence.
“He’ll see me and he’ll get pissed off that I touched his things.”
There is no one here but you. Grant is dead, Ian. The beans are yours now.
Ian forces himself to turn around and face whatever demon stands behind him, but he only sees the partially opened bedroom door. He wraps himself in Grant’s sleeping bag. The beans are slimy, bland, and cold, but Ian savors every mushy bite.
Mistakes I Made During the Zombie Apocalypse Page 6
