Eaters

by Michelle DePaepe

  Aidan handed Cheryl her gun then nodded in Jonah’s direction. “If it’ll make you feel better, you can cover me with your gun, too.”

  “Nah. I’m really not that good of a shot. If I was, you’d be dead by now.” He went back behind the counter and came back with a bloodstained baseball bat. “This will be fine. Matthew saved our lives with it.”

  Cheryl felt better with him wielding that since she didn’t really like the thought of Jonah standing behind her with a gun and shaky hands. Whatever his weapon of choice, it would be good to have him as additional backup, in case her gun jammed.

  Aidan peered out again. “I saw movement by the far side of the road a minute ago, but nothing close by. Let’s do it now.”

  Jonah sucked in a deep breath then handed the key to Aidan. He took one quick look through the peephole before shoving it into the deadbolt on the heavy door and opening it.

  Cool mountain air rushed in, scented with pine and the sour odor of death.

  Aidan darted out towards his motorcycle as Cheryl pointed her gun through the door. As he reached it and lifted the kickstand, the sound of Matthew’s voice startled her from behind.

  “Hey, what’s going—”

  “Back off, son,” Jonah said. “We’re just getting the man’s Harley in here.”

  “But you said—”

  His words were drowned out by a sudden growling and snarling near the dumpster. It sounded like dogs fighting, but Cheryl knew that it wasn’t dogs, or coyotes, or foxes—it was humans. Or things that used to be human.

  “Hurry up!” she yelled.

  Aidan started wheeling the bike backwards, then stopped to turn it around, so he could move forward with it instead. When he was halfway into the turn, a small shape ran out from behind the dumpster. Cheryl almost pulled the trigger, but stopped when she saw that it was a raccoon with reflective yellow eyes…carrying a human hand in its mouth like a hard won prize. The fight had sounded so vicious, she wondered if the creature was rabid, or infected with the disease.

  He was almost to the door when another larger shape appeared from behind the dumpster.

  “Aidan!”

  He glanced over his left shoulder and saw the hulking form. She didn’t have a clear shot, so she backed up to make room for the bike to come in. The handlebars were a couple of inches too wide to fit straight on, so he twisted them sideways and struggled to push through while keeping the bike vertical.

  Cheryl kept the gun pointed towards the open door as a loud moan sounded behind him. “Aidan, come on!”

  He stopped with the bike halfway in the door.

  She didn’t like the wide-eyed look in his eyes. She lunged towards him, knowing there was no way she could pull him in around the motorcycle.

  The ghoul with only half a face was behind him. One of his rotten hands was on the back of Aidan’s bike, and the other had a hold of the back of Aidan’s neck.

  With the gun on full automatic, she fired a quick staccato burst of bullets into his head. Blood and part of his scalp littered the pavement behind him. He wobbled for a moment then he went limp and crashed to the ground.

  Aidan was still frozen. She grabbed one of the handlebars and pulled. “Come on!”

  His green eyes suddenly electrified as he jerked to life and shoved the motorcycle inside the building. “He had a vise grip on me. I couldn’t move…”

  “It’s okay. I got him.”

  “Thank you,” he said, briefly putting a shaky hand on her shoulder and looking into her eyes so intensely that she thought he’d seen all the way through her to the wall on the other side of the store.

  As she slammed the door shut and turned the key to lock it, Aidan wheeled over to a parking spot in front of an aisle filled with candy bars and gum. When she turned around, she saw that Matthew was now holding the bat; he was wild-eyed and ready to swing while Jonah cowered behind the cash register. Beyond them, the others stood silently near the back of the shop. Most of them looked frightened, but Liz’s eyes burned with anger.

  “A word,” she said, looking straight at them then towards Jonah and Matthew.

  Cheryl and Aidan exchanged a glance as a sheepish Jonah came around from behind the counter. Matthew followed, his lips curled up in defiance, but his lingering fear was still apparent by the raised hairs on his arms.

  The others tried to follow them, but Liz waved them back. Once they were in the storeroom with the door shut, she didn’t waste any time. She pulled out a stiff finger and wagged it in their faces like a policeman’s nightstick. “You open that door again, and your welcome here will be rescinded. We’ll put you back out on your own and, the Lord help you, He’ll decide your fate.”

  Their apologies did little to calm her down. Cheryl couldn’t help but look over her shoulder towards Thing. There was a different hand poking through the wall now. It was petite like a woman’s and had blood-encrusted nails and knuckles scraped bare, revealing the white bone underneath. After Matthew fired a warning at her with his eyes, she averted her gaze and tried to focus on Liz’s rant, realizing that she probably didn’t know about the hole in the wall. She imagined the woman taking Matthew’s bat to it and inadvertently smashing a larger hole, putting them all in danger. All it would take to close it up would be a board and a few nails. Cheryl wondered why Matthew or Jonah hadn’t done it already. She figured that the boy was amused by the entertainment, and Jonah was too afraid to get near it.

  Liz stormed out of the room, leaving them to ponder their wayward ways like scolded children. After waiting a minute to make sure she wasn’t going to come back to say, ‘…and another thing…’, Cheryl said, “She’s right, you know. That was a risky move.”

  Aidan held up his hand to stop her and shook his shoulders like he was trying to shake off a sooty layer of remorse. “I know, but if my bike was destroyed we’d be up shit creek even deeper than we are now.”

  “I don’t think we should get too comfortable here. I don’t like this place. It doesn’t feel any safer than the cabin.”

  “I know.”

  “What are we going to do? We can’t give these people guns.” She imagined one of the little old birds with a rifle, accidentally blasting a hole in the ceiling and cracking a hip as the recoil tossed her back onto the hard floor. “Even if they could shoot, they’d probably be more of a danger to us than a defense.”

  “Yeah. We need to be ready to bail. Start filling your pockets.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a lot of stuff here. Anything we can use. Food, water, matches…”

  “We could just ask them.”

  “If they said, ‘no’, they’d start watching us closer. We need to just take it without them knowing.”

  She knew he was right. There were no rules anymore. Stealing, killing—it was all a part of survival. It was discomforting that their moral compass had swung so far south, but unlike this heaven-minded group, she intended to survive as long as she could, or at least until she had some closure about the status of her father. “I guess you’re right. There’s so much here, they’ll never miss most of it. I hate to say it, but I don’t think this place is going to hold for much more than a few more days anyway.”

  Upon leaving the storeroom to begin their stealth mission, they saw some of the prayer group members lining up at the bathroom. Others were laying blankets down on the floor near the coolers.

  They found Jonah still at the front counter with his head in his hands like he was either resting or praying. He looked up at the sound of their approach.

  Aidan covered their quest with an innocent-sounding question. “Do you have any toothbrushes and toothpaste?”

  “Sure,” Jonah sighed. “Second aisle on the right. Help yourself, I think there’s some left.”

  They walked to the aisle, and Cheryl wondered if her eyes looked shifty as they darted from side to side, casing the supplies. There was almost nothing in the store that wouldn’t be helpful if they were on the road or stranded somewhere
for a long time: all the food and beverages, the first aid and emergency supplies, even simple things like a sewing kit or a nail file could come in handy. However, she knew that the duffel bag was heavy enough with the guns; it was important to pare down their loot to a bare minimum, so it didn’t become more of a burden. Also, the more they stole, the more likely it was that they’d be caught and booted out.

  They borrowed a blanket from the stack that Liz offered then paced up and down the aisles like they were looking for the toothbrushes and a place to sleep.

  Stealing supplies was difficult with the round convex mirrors in each corner. All anyone had to do was glance up into one and see them pocket things like a handful of candy bars, a Swiss army knife, or a bottle of lighter fluid. Nevertheless, they kept grabbing supplies every chance they got and only took things that they thought they might really need. Cheryl saw Aidan tuck a pair of binoculars into the back of his jeans and cover them with his shirt. He was so smooth about it, she wondered if he’d shoplifted before.

  Once they’d copped a few necessities, Aidan took his blanket up front and said he was going to hang out with Jonah for a little while. Cheryl worked on setting up her blanket in the middle aisle where the ladies were bunking for the night.

  Matthew came up just as she was trying to figure out how to roll the edge of the Indian-patterned horse blanket to use as a pillow. “I was just looking outside. There’s more of them now.”

  Cheryl wasn’t surprised. She knew that there had probably been many meandering along the road or in the trees, and the sound of the gunfire had drawn them. “Are they trying to get in?”

  “Not really. They’re just kind of wandering around the parking lot. It’s like they’re drawn to the area, but they don’t know why.”

  “I don’t think they give anything much thought. It’s all instinct.” She saw a package of napkins on the shelf next to her and decided to use it for a pillow. “You should stay away from the window. If one of them sees you looking out—” As she leaned over, a Snickers bar fell out of her front pocket.

  “And you should be sure to grab some Ace bandages and beef jerky as long as you’re loading up tonight.”

  Cheryl felt her face turn red. She hoped he was the only one who had been watching them. “You know, we’re not going to stay here long. A couple days maybe. Then, we’re going to hit the road again.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your shopping spree. Can’t blame you for wanting to bail. I’m just stuck here with all these living corpses out of fuckin’ bad luck.”

  “Matthew?” Liz’s voice called from the back.

  “Guess it’s my curfew.”

  “She’s pretty strict with you, isn’t she?”

  “I know, right? That doesn’t mean I always obey, though.” He gave her a salute and walked away.

  Nice kid, Cheryl thought. It was too bad for whatever was probably going to happen to him when this imperfect ark started to sink.

  The two older ladies, Doris and Nancy, were already curled into fetal balls on their blankets. Juanita kept fussing with her makeshift bed, talking softly to herself in Spanish.

  Cheryl suddenly realized that this aisle had been occupied earlier in the day. She turned to Juanita and asked, “Where’s Mary Ann?”

  “Como? Oh, poor dear. I think she wiggled under one of the shelves in another aisle. I guess she’s trying to sleep until this nightmare is over.” Juanita made the sign of the cross over her chest.

  Cheryl looked beneath the shelves on her left and right. The space under them was filled with dust and didn’t look large enough for Mary Ann to fit. Had she crammed herself into a dark corner somewhere? A closet? It was a little disconcerting to think of a somnambulist walking around while they slept. She hoped the woman snapped out of it soon, but that was only if she didn’t turn into a screaming idiot once the reality of their situation hit home.

  Lying down like the others didn’t seem like an option; she was just too wound up. So, she decided to hang out with Aidan. A few seconds later, she found him leaning against the front counter, arguing with Jonah.

  “We should reinforce the windows.”

  “They’ve held well so far,” Jonah said.

  “That doesn’t mean crap.”

  “Even if the boards were torn off, I can’t imagine those dead things being able to move the steel shelves. Some of them have flesh that is so rotten, they’d probably rip their arms off in the attempt.”

  Of course they could. Cheryl knew that the first Eater that had broken into Aidan’s cabin had torn away the timbers from the windowsill and smashed the glass. The injury to his dead hands hadn’t slowed him down one bit. She silently wished Aidan luck convincing someone that hadn’t seen such a thing firsthand and decided to let the two men haggle it out as she left to see if the bathroom was free.

  Aidan raised his voice. “Don’t underestimate them. They don’t feel any pain. They can barrel through damage that would put a normal human being in the ER.”

  In front of the bathroom door, she found Norman and Matthew going at it too.

  “God?” Matthew taunted “You really believe this is God’s doing? What happened to your Rapture then? Why are you still here?”

  “You little heathen. We ought to throw you out there.”

  “I’m sure that would give you some brownie points upstairs.”

  Both of them had clenched fists.

  Liz walked out of the bathroom and broke it up. “Knock it off you two. Things are bad enough. We don’t need a brawl in here.”

  Cheryl took her turn at the toilet then decided to head back to the front of the store. Aidan and Jonah seemed to be at an impasse as they stood facing each other with folded arms.

  “I want my gun,” she said as she approached them.

  Jonah glanced at the duffel bag behind the counter. “It would make people in here too nervous to have you walking around with—”

  Cheryl got in Jonah’s face. “I’m not asking you.”

  Aidan backed her up. “Let the lady have her gun.”

  Jonah shrugged with resignation and waved a limp hand, allowing Cheryl to go behind the counter.

  She found her AK in the bag. “Thanks. Now if I just had my Snuggie, maybe I could rest a little.”

  Ignoring her sarcasm, the men resumed their tussle about how to make the building safer. Cheryl headed back towards her makeshift bed, pausing at the end of the aisle to wonder if the ooooohhh sound she heard was the wind outside or a choir made up of rotting throats moaning a single note.

  Back on the blanket, she lay on her side and curled up with her gun, cradling it between her knees. Juanita was just a foot away, lying down with her hand covering her face like a mask, and shallow breaths heaving the front of her striped blouse up and down. Cheryl wanted to talk to her and was wondering if she was asleep when the store went pitch black.

  She gasped out loud.

  “Don’t worry,” Juanita whispered. “We turn the lights out at night to keep a low profile.”

  Cheryl thought about the sandwich shop. They’d turned the lights out there too, but the smell of the putrid meat drew trouble anyway. Just the scent of human blood and flesh was probably enough to draw them for miles. This group was starting to reek too. She knew they had been doing sponge baths in the sink, but it wasn’t enough. There was no air conditioning in the store, so the heat was making them all stink of sweat.

  The things knew that there was some sort of prize inside this big box. Why hadn’t they made more effort to get in? She tried to push the question from her mind, not wanting it to be the last thing in her head as she fell asleep. She focused on memories instead like the few blissful nights camping with Mark before this apocalypse started; fishing for trout for their dinner in the mountain lake, roasting marshmallows over a campfire, making love under the stars. For three solid days, they hadn’t had a care in the world. In retrospect, it was the best gift that Mark had given her, even if she didn’t realize it at th
e time.

  Norman’s snoring on the next aisle jolted her out of the pleasant thoughts. Then she heard Nancy flopping around, letting out a short scream in reaction to some event in her nightmare. Somewhere nearby, Liz whispered to herself, saying nonsensical stuff like, “On Saturday, I’ll make fried chicken and have the Taylors over for dinner; the bake sale for the church is coming up too, maybe I’ll make that caramel brownie recipe…or the shortcake…”

  Cheryl listened to the nasal sawing and the babble until her eyelids grew heavy. As the line began to blur between consciousness and horrible reality again, she reminded herself that she’d had precious little sleep in the last week, and this might be her one night to power sleep just a few hours to make up for the deprivation.

  Minutes later, her eyes snapped open.

  There was a sound on the roof like the pitter-patter of a pair of rats doing a tango back and forth. Then it turned into stomping. Heavy thuds. Human (could they still be called human?) feet plodding up above, back and forth, retracing their steps, then circling around. Searching.

  They were trying to find a way in.

  Her fingers tightened around the gun as she thought about the fact that the Eaters outside had probably licked the bones clean from all the corpses and were desperate for fresh meat. She didn’t doubt that they could find their way into a steel safe if there was flesh inside.

  She thought that she and Aidan would have a day, maybe two or three to figure out their plan, but it didn’t seem like the dice was going to roll that way as the noises above grew louder. The others around her were stirring now and starting to mumble amongst themselves in hushed syllables of paranoia.

  Juanita whispered, “Cheryl, you have a gun, yes? You a good shot?”

  “Usually.”

  “I have a grandson in Pueblo. It’s his birthday next weekend. Do you think I’m going to make it to his party? This can’t go on much longer, right? The police will come, yes?”

  The last policeman Cheryl had seen was back in Golden several days ago. He was the young man who’d made a Rambo-like effort to wipe out a group of hungry Eaters in the park, but there were too many of them. He’d been overwhelmed as they swarmed over the car.