I couldn’t remember the guy’s name, nor could I remember if I even looked at his nametag when I went storming through the store. I was happy that he made it, though, but not so happy that he and his friends were about to shoot me.
“Really? You sure you know him, Pat?”
“I’m sure.” And the guy smiled at me.
There was a moment that passed, a moment when I felt my life hanging in the balance between life and death. Call it cliché; call it a sense of déjà vu. I had faced death more times in that one day than I had when I was enlisted and trained to take on the world.
The guy lowered the gun at last, and we both breathed a sigh of relief. He held out his hand. I found myself taking his in mine and shaking with a firm grip. We smiled like we were old friends, and just like that, the tension went out of the situation.
“You said you had some training? What kind of training?”
“I went out for Special Forces and almost passed.”
“Real badass, eh? Almost passed—is that like almost getting laid?” His voice had a hint of humor to it.
“It’s a long story.”
“How far did you get?”
“Right to the end. They called me back for a family emergency, and I was offered a chance to start over. But I didn’t take them up on it. Finished my tour and got out a year later so I could be with my girl.”
“Did she make it?” No hesitation, no dancing around the subject. This was a different world. If I had been asked that a year ago, it would have been met with a lot of skating around the question.
“Don’t know. So can you fill me in on what I’ve missed over the last few months?”
“Not much to tell. The world went to hell and was overrun by zombies.”
“I remember that part. Where did those other guys come from? They don’t exactly act like those undead things did when I left.”
“The ghouls. Yeah, they are a real problem. Damn things. See, the zombies didn’t take much to put down; they were dumb as a box of rocks. Make a bunch of goddamn noise and they come running, then we shot them or blew them up, or sometimes just set them on fire. We started to run out of ammo. Had to teach the survivors how to shoot with a purpose. It’s surprisingly hard to get Mom and Pop to blow people’s heads off, even if they are trying to eat them.
“Sure there are a lot of zombies out there, but the real problems started when people got hungry and turned to cannibalism. Hard to believe, right? But this ain’t the same world, ain’t the same damn world by a long shot.” He sighed and dropped his hood. His hair hung long and lank, and he had a halo around the top of his head where he’d lost a lot of hair. I imagined no one really cared for monthly haircuts anymore.
“See, eating people is bad enough, but then they started eating the zombie flesh—just a few at first. It changed the people that did it. Made them a weird hybrid, like they had half a brain. It didn’t affect everyone that way, though. Some it just made stronger and meaner. Now they drive the army of zombies before them, like some weird slave drivers. Messy business, all those half-changed people running around.”
“What’s with the green glow?”
“Don’t know. Something to do with the virus. It changes people’s chemistry, makes their blood toxic. Well, toxic in that it would change you into a damn ghoul if you got any of that shit in your system.”
“Is that the same for the creepers you mentioned earlier?”
“Creepers? Nah. Those are the people that live on the outskirts. The ones that don’t want to find a group to stay with. They prefer to go solo, so to speak. We call them creepers.”
Creepers. I guess I was one of them. I had been up in the woods for so long, it seemed the perfect name for the man I had become. Stuck in a cabin until I decided to creep back to society.
He turned and walked toward the entrance to the store, so I tagged along at his side.
“They moved from town to town gathering up survivors and converting them. They made them eat the flesh of the undead and, bam, they were magically changed into those things. But they ran into trouble when they got to this town. We had already put up the fence, and the back butts up to a forest, so we made the band of metal from all the stores around. We hit up Lowe’s, Home Depot. We gathered up so much chain link, seemed like we would have enough to cover the entire town.”
That thing? It didn’t look strong enough to hold any of them back. A few hundred storming it, and they would be overwhelmed.
Already a pack of them were streaming toward the fence near the entrance. There were calls all up and down the line, and men and women faded from behind trees, rusted cars, stacks of shopping carts, piles of trash, and just about anything that could be considered a cover. There must have been twenty or thirty of them, and they were all armed to the fucking teeth.
I expected them to start opening up at any minute with all the automatic weapons. It would make a hell of a mess. Instead, the leader, whose name I somehow managed to miss, waved at someone from the roof. A few seconds later, a scratchy sound came from the same direction, like an old LP was being played. As it sped up, it became a huge siren that whined at the sky for all the world to hear.
The creatures came at a rush when the sound howled across the parking lot and echoed up and down the street. Then the sound of a generator or motor started up along with shouts from the direction of the building.
The ghouls hit the fence and started climbing over it, and then over each other. One was just about to reach the top when the leader stuck his hand in the air and pulled it down. A crackling sound erupted from the other side of the building, and a low hum that made me want to bite through my gums sounded.
The zombies stuck to the fence were fried. The fence was apparently electrified, and it wasn’t that stuff they ran through animal deterrents—the little buzz that warns them to stay back. This was a full-on, nasty jolt that stuck many of them to the fence. Most were silent as they stood transfixed, like men and women at the Rapture. They shook and shivered, and the sound of crackling energy buzzed through the air.
They cut the power after about thirty seconds, and bodies slumped to the ground. Some remained stuck to the fence, but the others, ones that managed to avoid the fence, snarled and then slunk away. The smell of cooked meat made my nose wrinkle, but it also flooded my mouth with saliva.
“They never learn.”
The leader walked toward the entrance once again. I turned to Pat, the guy who had saved my life. Well, I guess it was a trade, more or less. He had a shotgun slung over his shoulder, and if I didn’t know better, I would’ve guess it was the same one I handed him six months ago.
“Come on, Erik, I’ll show you around.”
* * *
The leader’s name was Thomas, but he said he wasn’t really the leader. He had been a cop when the world changed, and he was used to walking onto a possible crime scene and taking charge. He said that people seemed to like that, to respect it, so when he started to organize the Walmart, they just kept him on.
The large store had two main entrances, but one was completely boarded up, so there was only one way in the front. The inside had been rearranged so that racks formed a maze at the door. The first few had somehow been welded together to make them reach to the ceiling. The back had racks, but on the front, they were flat and bare. I suspected that there was a shelf especially built on the other side, so gunners could sit up there and pick off anyone coming in. Pretty smart design. Then it was a veritable maze of shelves from here on that would funnel any invaders through a killing screen.
Once we navigated the maze, I found the area behind it to be neat and orderly. There was a section with a guard posted that had been set aside for food. Boxes and crates of canned goods were stacked high, as were giant bags of dog and cat food. Familiar brands like Purina, Iams—stuff that was obviously saved or set aside for the time they ran out of regular food. I found my mouth filling with saliva at the thought of something to eat. The emergency food on which
I had lived for the last few weeks, while nutritionally sound, left me feeling strange, like I was buzzing. It also tended to give me terrible diarrhea.
There was a large section of tents, where everything in the store had been shoved aside and people set up their little houses. There were batches of flashlights taped together that pointed at the ceiling to provide light. I saw a kid running between them, picking up each bundle and then shaking it violently up and down to recharge the internal batteries. Clever.
There was another section covered by white sheets that were run up on poles or hung from the ceiling. I got a peek inside, and there were rows of cots, ten or so, with sleeping bags on them—this must have been the triage area.
“We don’t have to use that much, scrapes and bruises mostly, but occasionally we get into it with the natives and people get hurt.”
“Bites?”
“We don’t let them in. Everyone here understands that if they are bit, they are dead. Most elect to take the quickest way out. Some don’t, and we take care of the problem.”
I didn’t comment.
A woman joined us. She was probably in her mid-forties and had long, auburn hair. She grinned at Thomas and pecked him on the cheek. Attractive, she possessed an air of self-confidence that I found suited her.
“My wife, Ella. Although we aren’t really married, since there is no one to marry us.”
“We just live in sin,” she said and then grinned at him. I found their affection for each other infectious, and wished I had someone. I had lived in a tiny cabin all alone for four months, and I craved attention. There were times up on the mountain when I would talk to myself, going so far as to hold entire conversations about what to make for dinner, like I was some deserted island loon.
They fed me a mix of something that was warm and, I was pretty sure, made at least partially from the animal food I had seen. Not that it mattered. I was starving, and I would have eaten a raw rabbit if someone handed it to me. They seemed tense around me. A few asked questions about the early days, and whether I had seen others when I escaped. They probably held out hope that some of their loved ones escaped as I had and were also hiding out. I pleaded exhaustion and went to find a place to sleep.
They gave me a cot that first night. I lay in the dark, listening to all the other people around me, and I could not sleep. I was so used to the silence and solitude of the cabin that I found any noise pulled me back from the brink of slumber. Of course, there was more to it than that. I kept going over my arrival, over and over. Standing on my car, adrenaline jacking my system to the max as I unloaded a shotgun at a guy who was trying to sink his teeth into me. His body blown backwards as the shot took him in the chest and turned his heart to mush. I saw the terror in his eyes even before I leveled the gun at him, like he was driven to attack, like someone was pushing him on. I saw the pain and fear in his gaze, and I responded by killing him.
I was also hurt. Bruises ached all over my body. I felt like I’d gone twelve rounds with a champ. Only I was a punching bag instead of an opponent.
The ghouls—they were something that should not exist. Zombies were unnatural enough to begin with. But men who ate the dead and became the monsters I had seen simply should not be.
How did the zombie virus start? The next morning, I planned to ask questions. I rose and put my jeans on, having opted to sleep in boxers and a t-shirt. The building seemed well insulated, but it was cold nonetheless, after coming out of the sleeping bag that had been like a warm cocoon.
* * *
I slipped on my boots, laced them up halfway, and then wrapped the laces around and tied them in front. Then I left the sleeping area and wandered. It was dark, but some of the flashlights had been left hanging down near the ground to illuminate a path. There were port-a-potties set up along the far right wall, which made it a long walk, but it kept the stench far away from the sleeping area. I passed countless bodies huddled in tents and on cots. Some moved, as people did what they had done for years when the lights went down. When was the last time I had been with a woman? There was Cheryl, a friend who took pity on me and took me to bed about six months after Allison left. Sex felt out of place with her, and, in the end, we agreed it was a bad idea.
We drifted apart until, after a few months, we barely greeted each other at the gym.
A sentry looked me up and down, and decided I wasn’t a zombie sneaking in to terrorize the store. I moved along an aisle, finding metal walls built up to hold in other supplies. A whole locker that was fifteen or so feet square contained an armory of weapons. They all looked army issue, and with the amount of fighting and chaos that had gone on at the outset of the ‘war,’ it was easy to guess that the stuff was probably left lying around on bodies or in abandoned vehicles. I saw a few M-16s and planned to ask about getting one, if the need arose. It was probably a good idea to slip that suggestion in Thomas’s ear in a few days, once he got used to seeing my face.
I walked to an enclosed area that looked as if it may have been a set of offices at one time. There were some padded mats, dummies, and punching bags in the corners. In the center of the floor was a large, black cushioned bag with the sand or water-type base. I walked to it and pushed. It didn’t budge, and I guessed they had some sort of pad underneath it so the thing would be harder to slide across the floor.
I took a tentative punch at it, and then another. I looked behind me, then closed the door so I could work out in peace and quiet. I slipped my shirt off in the cold, stretched my joints and tendons. I had tried doing basics in the cabin, but halfheartedly at best. If I were going to be any use to these people, I would need to loosen up and get the old moves back.
I hit the bag with a quick set of punches, moved past, and then spun around and launched a series of kicks, low and high. I worked a style I had learned from a guy I met in Thailand years ago. I leapt up and planted knees in the pad. Then I came down and slipped boxing into my impromptu workout.
I worked a form in the air—something like a kata but with fast whip-like strikes. Within a few attempts, I felt like I hadn’t forgotten as much as I thought I had. Then I worked the forms against the bag, and even found a rubber knife to incorporate into the session. I had always been good with knives—nasty things with razor-sharp edges that I could use as an extension of my arm.
I nearly knocked the bag over with a roundhouse kick, but it wobbled back to the surface of the floor with a heavy thump. Flowing from the kick into a straight punch, and then a series of close-in elbow strikes as I passed, I heard a noise behind me and came to a stop. My breath rumbled in and out like a locomotive.
I spun around, and a shape slipped out of the shadows of the room near the door. It stepped into the dull light from the hanging flashlights, and I saw that it was a woman. She must have been close to six foot, and had black hair that hung around her face in a bob. She tucked one side behind an ear as she walked toward me and the bag. Her features were fine—sharp little nose and pixie eyes that were hard around the edges. I would put her age a few years younger than mine, but she had a look of weariness that betrayed her years.
“Fighter, huh,” she said, as if commenting on the rain. Her body was slim and athletic. She had sculpted arms that hung out of a tank top, and I could see a vein running over the top of her biceps. Not a bodybuilder’s frame; she was just in good shape. I smiled at her as she walked past me toward a dummy in the corner. I let my eyes wander down her tight sweats, and couldn’t help but keep the smile on my face.
“Imprinting it in your memory?” She looked over her shoulder. I noticed she had sparring gloves on, and I wondered if she was good with them.
I didn’t know what to say, so I decided to just keep my mouth shut.
“That’s okay. This is a different world than the one you left. The rules have changed, you know.”
“How so?”
“All that petty bullshit—it’s gone. If you like someone or something, then you just take it. Like the goddamn ghouls; they think the
y can take whatever they like, and we won’t do anything about it.”
“They’re driven by a disease. They aren’t rational,” I pondered out loud.
“Piss on rational. They’re animals, and they deserve to burn. Each and every one of them.”
I didn’t press her on that. She grabbed a dummy and dragged it by the shoulders, after tipping it on its side. I moved to help, but she hauled it out and stood it up so that it popped up like a jack in the box, then she swung forward. Before it could right itself, she punched it right in the throat. The model recoiled, and she launched into a vicious assault that saw the life-size man fall back under a barrage of punches and kicks that impressed me.
I went back to work on my hunk of plastic, but every once in a while I felt her eyes on me, just as she surely felt mine on her. She moved with grace and speed, her hands darting in to strike with their sides as well as knuckles and fists. She pulled out a couple of interesting moves that had her whipping her hand around like a punch, but at the last minute twisting her hand so her first two knuckles pointed toward the floor, palm up, striking with the back of her hand.
I was tired. Sweat poured off my forehead and spread down my bare chest. It had been months since I worked out this hard. Certainly living alone in the woods, hunting, climbing, walking, working on the cabin, all of these things kept me fit to some extent, but there was nothing like a good thirty-minute balls-to-the-wall workout. I stepped away and looked around. There was an old water fountain on the wall, and I went to it and hit the button. Nothing came out, and I smiled at my action. This wasn’t a superstore anymore; this was a powerless hulk of a building that provided nothing more than protection and warmth.
Beyond the Barriers Page 8
