By the time he finished clearing the store the sun had began to sink behind the city. He watched out one of the second floor windows as the sun continued to set. The undead seemed to have made their way back to the parking lot of the store. Everywhere he looked outside of the parking lot was filling with even more of them.
As he searched the store for people he went back and gathered up supplies to bed down for the night. He even found a propane hot plate to warm up a can of stew he had in his bag. The warm stew tasted better than he had remembered a can of stew ever tasting before. Maybe that was just because of how hungry he was and how grateful he felt to have warm food to eat. Apparently it was the little things that meant the most in the world now. He had food in his stomach, a roof over his head and enough supplies to get him back on track with his mission.
Paul had set up his camp near the firearm section in case things got crazy, he wanted to be near the ammunition and guns. He rolled out a sleeping bag near one of the windows next to the gun cases. He laid there staring out the window up into the night sky. The night sky seemed to be the same as it ever was and even though the world around him had fallen into a nightmare the sky was the same. The stars still shined and the moon still rose as the reign of man came to an end. Paul had to shake those thoughts from his head. It made him feel so small in the grand scheme of it all but he didn’t want to concede to the idea that mankind was done and gone.
The thought of those monsters outside taking over and wiping out mankind made his heart race with anger. He got up from the sleeping bag on the floor and grabbed a .30-30 repeater rifle and shot out the window he had been staring out only a moment ago. As the glass exploded out of the window in front of him he no longer was focused on the beauty of the night sky. His focus had returned to the ugly reality stumbling around outside the store.
All the power in the city seemed to be out now but the moon and stars seemed to cast enough light that he could make out the silhouettes of the zombies in the parking lot. He didn’t need to see their faces; all he needed was to make out the shape of their heads. Then he could put a bullet through it. He fired round after round and then reloaded again and repeated this over and over as he watched the undead drop in the parking lot. The whole time he was firing he was consumed by the memory of everything he had lost and a tear ran down his cheek as Abby filled his mind again.
“I’ll kill every one of you bastards,” Paul yelled out into the night sky.
No matter how many zombies he dropped it didn’t seem to satisfy his rage or need for vengeance. He knew that no matter how many of them he destroyed it wouldn’t bring back Abby but that wasn’t going to slow his need to kill.
The last round he fired off found its target in the forehead of another zombie. Paul set the rifle down and collapsed to the floor on his knees. His heart was still racing as he tried to calm his anger. He knew there were still endless numbers of undead out there in the night and no matter how many he took out he wouldn’t get Abby back.
For every zombie he took out there was millions if not billions more out in the world. The mission ahead of him seemed like one he couldn’t win. As quick as that thought had entered his mind it was gone again. Paul knew it wasn’t about winning, it was about revenge and he knew it was going to be time to leave the city soon.
Before Paul had put a bullet through David’s head he had told him about rumors of a base out in the desert. It was where the men that started this were hiding out. Those men that had ended the world were now hiding like cowards in the desert from the nightmare they created. If they wanted to hide from the world they created then Paul would bring the world to them and destroy them with it.
First thing he had to do was come up with a plan to leave the city and then he needed to figure out where he was going after he got out. That was all that filled his head as he lay back down on his sleeping bag and eventually drifted off to sleep.
Twenty-Two
The next week was spent gathering up supplies and getting ready to make his way out of the city. The first thing he needed was a vehicle to take him and his gear out on the road. There were a few vehicles out in the parking lot but nothing seemed quite right to him.
He decided he would gather up everything he wanted to take with him from the sporting good store out into the open area at the center of the store. There was camping gear, fishing equipment and multiple weapons stacked up. As the next couple of days passed the pile grew larger and larger. Paul had found some machetes along with a compound bow and a hundred or more arrows that he wanted to take with him. He also took all the ammunition and firearms down to the center of the store. There was also enough food and water to last him six months or more if he rationed it right.
All that was left was to decide what vehicle he wanted to take and where he was going once he left. The following day he set out of the store to continue his search for a vehicle, he had with him a machete and two of his hand guns. The machete was going to be his weapon of choice for as long as he could hold out without having to use the guns.
There were large groups of undead everywhere in the parking lot as he exited the building. He would cut down each zombie he came near as he made his way across the parking lot. The handguns remand in their holsters the entire time across the parking lot. The mission at hand was to find a vehicle and that would be even harder if he attracted a lot of attention. So for now he would be have to be satisfied with only taking out the zombies that he was close enough to take out by hand.
As he made his way across the parking lot he hid behind several cars but they were all smaller compact cars. None of the cars he found in the parking lot would be big enough or powerful enough to carry all his gear and get through the hordes of undead throughout the city. The last car at the edge of the parking lot was another two door hatchback that wouldn’t work for him either.
He looked back at the store and saw the path of undead he had cut down on his way to the edge of the parking lot. There was actually a trail of bodies that he could trace back to the store and that made him grin a little.
He turned his attention back to finding a vehicle as he ventured out of the parking lot. Across the street he saw a used car dealership sign that said it was one block over. He headed over to the buildings lining the street and slowly made his way up the street to the dealership. The dealership was on the other side of the street he was on. As he made his way out into the street in front of the dealership he was surprised by what he saw.
This block had sustained a great deal of damage and there were buildings lying in rubble up the street in both directions. It seemed like every other building had been hit with explosives or was riddled with bullet holes. Whoever had been there before put up a fight and Paul wondered if it had been David’s men that had done all this damage. They certainly had the weapons and knowledge to do this much damage but at the same time he noticed that the gun fire and damage seemed random.
There didn’t seem to be any uniformity to the fight, it looked more like people firing off into every direction either in a panic or simply just trying to destroy everything they could. David’s men would have swept the area and been precise with their search and destroy tactics. This was chaos in the street not trained men searching an area for supplies or survivors. Paul looked around at the damage one more time then got back on track and headed to the dealership.
Some of the cars in the lot of the dealership were covered with bullet holes and others looked as if someone had lit them on fire either by accident or on purpose. Paul made his way through the cars until he saw the one he wanted parked at the back of the lot. It seemed to shine as the sunlight reflected off it, it was as if it was trying to catch his eye and draw him to it. The truck was a black newer model four door extended cab Ford F150, it was lifted and equipped with large all terrain tires. There was even a hard top bed cover on it that would keep his gear protected from the elements as he traveled. Paul walked to the truck and tried the handle but it was locked, he figured it
would be but wanted to check just in case it happened to be unlocked.
The sales office was at the center of the lot and some of the windows had been blown out already so Paul wouldn’t have to break in. The only thing he had to worry about was whether he would be able to find the keys to the truck in the broken walls and glass that filled the offices.
It took him about thirty minutes to dig through and search enough of the offices to finally find the lock box that the keys were stored in. During his search he also had to take out three zombies that had wandered towards him while he dug through the broken building.
He knelt down next to the lock box that was about the size of a medicine cabinet. The cabinet had a slot on the front for a key to fit in but Paul wasn’t lucky enough for the cabinet to be unlocked and he didn’t see a key for it anywhere around him. He tried to pry it open with his knife but the door on it didn’t want to budge at all. If he wanted the keys out of it then he was going to have risk drawing attention and shoot through the lock.
He drew out a .38 snub nose revolver that he had tucked into a holster around his ankle. It only took one shot into the lock and a little prying with his knife and the box was open. There were close to twenty sets of keys inside the box but after a minute he was able to find the ones labeled F150. They were the only set in the box that was labeled F150 so he was betting they were the ones he needed.
Paul was back at the truck, he slid the key into the lock and to his delight the door unlocked as he turned the key. The truck door opened and as he began to step into the truck he heard footsteps rapidly approaching from behind him. He drew the 9mm from the shoulder holster and turned to face whoever or whatever was running towards him.
The scene he turned to face took him by surprise as he watched a young woman with a child cradled in her arms running towards him. She was yelling at him as she got closer “please help us!”
She just kept repeating it as she tried to carry the child and run at the same time. Paul could tell that her small frame was struggling to keep up with the weight of the boy in her arms. Paul then saw what she was running from; there was a large horde of zombies coming up behind her. She was still about fifty feet away from him so Paul sprinted to meet her and took the boy in his arms.
“Come on we need to get you guys out of here,” Paul said as he turned to run back to the truck with the boy in his arms and the woman at his heels.
“Get in,” Paul yelled at her as they made it back to the truck.
She climbed in through the driver’s side door and Paul handed the boy to her and then Paul got behind the wheel. The truck fired up and Paul was on the gas and out of the lot a few seconds later. He plowed into a few zombies as he exited the dealership and then was back out on the street.
The boy was unconscious in the woman’s arms when Paul looked over at them. The boy had short brown hair and looked to be about five or six years old. The woman had brown hair also and Paul was guessing she was somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties. She had soft hazel eyes and looked to be attractive if not for the large bags under her eyes and look of defeat on her face.
“Is your son bitten?” Paul asked as he turned his attention back to the road in front of him.
He had to steer through rubble, dead cars and the undead as he tried to figure out the situation and decide his next move. The woman hadn’t answered his question yet so he asked again “has your son been bitten?”
It took her another few seconds to finally snap back to reality and answer him “he’s not my son; I found him hiding in a dumpster. He had nobody to take care of him. So I took him with me.”
She seemed to be drifting off again into her head as she spoke but Paul needed to know if they were bit or not.
“I’m sorry he had to go through that but I need to know if you or he are bitten,” Paul said calmly as he tried to get her to follow his lead and calm down.
“You’re safe now; I’m not going to let them hurt you. I need to know that you aren’t bit,” Paul said again.
The woman seemed to be gathering her composure a little more and then turned her head to look at Paul.
“Thank you for saving us. We aren’t bitten,” she finally answered.
“What happen to him?” Paul asked as he looked over at the boy.
“He fell and hit his head when we started to run,” she said and then paused.
“There were men gathering outside of the grocery store we were hiding in, we’d been in the store for a few days before they showed up. They showed up this morning and started banging on the door trying to get in. I yelled out that I had a gun and that they needed to find another store,” she finished saying and then paused for another moment to gather her thoughts.
Paul kept his focus on the road as he listened intently to her story.
“After I yelled out to them I heard one of them say something about taking me back to their boss. They started banging harder on the window at the front of the store and then one man fired his gun and broke through the window,” she said as she looked down at the boy.
She looked back to Paul and said “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this, for all I know you could be one of them.”
Paul kept his eyes on the road but responded to her “I don’t know who they are but I assure you I’m not one of them.”
“You don’t look like one of them; they looked like convicts and bikers. I just don’t know who I can trust anymore,” she said.
“You can trust me I…,” he began to say but stopped as he heard the roar of motorcycles coming up behind the truck.
The four men were flying up the road in pursuit of the truck and they looked as she had described them. They were rugged looking men who could easily pass for convicts or bikers. Paul wasn’t sure what their intentions were once they caught up to the truck but he knew for sure that he wouldn’t let them have the boy or the woman.
“On my God that’s them, they found us. They’re going to kill us,” she said with panic in her voice and a tear running down her face.
“I promise they won’t get you,” Paul said.
He turned a corner in an attempt to lose the men but halfway down the next block he had to hit the brakes. Gathered in front of him was a wall of the undead.
“What are we going to do? I don’t want to die,” she cried out as more tears streamed down her face.
“I need you to get in the backseat with the boy and buckle him in and buckle yourself in,” Paul said as he stared down at the men now parked at the end of the block watching him.
They were trapped in the truck between the bikers and the undead. He turned his attention from the bikers and back to the undead on the other side making their way towards the truck.
She just sat there crying and acted like she hadn’t heard what he said so he spoke again “I need you to focus now, if you want to live then I need you to do what I ask. Now I need you to get in the back seat with the boy and put your seatbelts on.”
“Okay,” she replied and climbed into the backseat with the boy.
They were both buckled in so Paul turned the truck around and headed back towards the bikers.
“Duck down in case they fire at us,” Paul said as he drew his 9mm and lowered the driver’s side window.
The four men were lined up across the road as Paul barreled towards them with the gas pedal pressed to the floor. He held the gun in his hand as he reached out the window and began to fire at the men. The older man with a long white beard spun around as Paul caught him in the shoulder with a bullet. The other three scrambled to get out of the way when they realized that Paul wasn’t going to slow down and he wasn’t going to stop shooting either. Paul clipped the back end of one of the bikes as he flew past them. The men frantically drew their guns and began to fire at the truck after it passed.
Paul didn’t let off of the gas until he had travelled another block down the road. A moment later he was forced to slow down because of a mess of cars scattered across the road.<
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Two of the bikers were back on their motorcycles and were coming up the road. Paul threw the truck in reverse and backed up to turn down an alley he had seen out of the corner of his eye. He turned down the alley and floored the gas pedal again as he made his way through the alley. There was a chain link fence up ahead of him but he didn’t plan on slowing down.
The truck blasted through the fence and Paul cranked the wheel hard to the left and sent the truck sliding to the side. Once the truck found its traction again Paul hit the gas and drove down the road.
He was a block over but now headed back the direction he had been going before he ran into the wall of undead. It was only another minute before he saw the two bikers coming up behind them again but he could now see the sporting good store in front of him. He had to end the chase soon if he wanted to get back to the store without the men following him and finding out where he was staying.
The truck came to a stop in the middle of the road; Paul put it in park and stepped out into the road. The bikers were headed towards him still and they were coming quick. He raised the 9mm up and found one of the men in his sights, he fired and watched as the man slumped back and tumbled off of his bike. The bike slid down the road until it slammed into a car that was parked off to the side of the road.
Paul had the other biker in his sights as the bike began to slow down. The biker apparently had lost his will to fight as he tried to turn the bike around. The man was forced to stop and roll his bike back when his escape was hindered by another car parked in the road. Paul was ready to fire and put the man down but he lowered his pistol when he realized what was about to happen.
Love, Revenge and Zombies Page 18
