The heavy head of it spun around in the air like a pendulum and landed squarely on the top of her skull.
Like someone pressing the Off button on a TV remote, her picture instantly zapped to black. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she collapsed onto the floor. She was out cold.
When her eyes opened, everything was dark. She tried to open her eyelids even more, thinking that they were being stubborn and she was still staring at the back of them; that's why it was dark. Then it dawned on her in a cold and brutal horror that she was looking at the store and that the waning sun that had been peacefully shining through the window when she arrived was now gone. It was dark now and she didn't know how long she'd been out for.
She rolled her head around on the floor and it felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. She pinched her eyes shut in pain and saw little golden stars in the corners of them. Her head ached on the top and on the back that was now uncomfortably resting against the floor. She started to remember something striking her from above, and she realized the pain on the back of her head must have been where her head smacked the tiled floor.
Then she remembered what startled her in the first place and caused her to knock into the shelf.
And then the sound or the feeling or whatever it was that scared her came back, and this time she wasn't imagining things.
Soft footsteps came from somewhere behind her.
Her heart jumped and she rolled her head upward on the floor, painful as it was, and tried to get a look at whatever was moving. She was lying parallel to the aisle and she caught a brief glimpse of something as it passed by at the end of it, highlighted faintly and only for a moment in the moonlight now coming through the window.
Sarah held her breath. She thought that whatever it was had seen her, and she desperately started patting around on her hip for her pistol. She pulled it out of its holster and cringed as the metal audibly skittered along the tile. With great effort, she rolled over onto her stomach and inadvertently let out a grunt.
Silence came over the hardware store and the footsteps stopped. Where they had last been, she couldn't tell.
She stretched her arm out, pointing the pistol toward the end of the aisle with the window. She mentally struggled with herself, wishing very strongly that she had two arms. She laid the gun on the floor in front of her and reached behind her, feeling around for the mini flashlight in her back pocket and never once taking her eyes off the end of the aisle.
The store was still silent and she cursed it. Though they terrified her at first, now she wanted to hear the footsteps, just to know where they were, just to know what she was dealing with.
Her hand felt the shape sitting on her butt and her fingers wiggled around like worms, trying to find the opening to the pocket. As they found the cool aluminum sticking out the end of it, she prayed that it hadn't been cracked in her fall. Her fingers tightened around it and pulled it out. She turned it over in her hand, trying to inspect the front of it in what little light there was coming through the window, and she could hear something rattling around inside as it turned, like something was broken. She gripped it firmly in her fist and pressed her thumb on the button on the opposite end of it.
The light came on. It flickered, but it was on. She kept it pointed at the floor at first so she didn't alert whatever was with her, then she pulled her hand back and slipped the flashlight into her mouth, biting down on it with her teeth. As soon as it was secure, her hand shot out faster than she had intended for the gun and picked it up. She aimed it down the aisle and she thought that her hand was shaky, but then she realized that the light in her mouth was what was shaking and that her whole body was trembling.
The flashlight cast a cone of visibility toward the window, lighting up the shelves on either side from the floor to halfway up their height.
And still the footsteps remained silent.
Sarah knew she had seen something, but it passed too quickly for her to discern what it was. She wanted to stand up and try to make her way for the exit. She hoped that nothing else was banged or broken in her body, and she steeled herself against the possibility as she began to move her legs and torso.
She turned over and managed to sit up, not feeling anything out of place. Her head was pointed in the other direction now and the light from the flashlight in her mouth shone down toward the other end of the aisle.
A zombie stood there, staring at her. There was only a moment's pause before it came after her, its diseased, gray arms flailing at its sides like a madman. The light reflected off its milky eyes, creating a terrifying image of two perfectly round, mindless orbs fixating on her as the zombie closed in. The speed at which it moved and the lack of hesitation told her that it was a scratcher.
Sarah fired off a couple shots from the gun in a panic, both of which missed. In her haste to stand up, she bit down so hard on the flashlight that it dented the casing. When she was on her feet, she scrambled backward, taking potshots at the scratcher before turning and fleeing down the aisle.
She tried glancing back and seeing how close it was, but her head didn't turn far enough for the flashlight to highlight anything other than the shelves and racks directly beside her. She reached the end of the aisle and intended to head for the door that she'd come in earlier, but after being knocked out she was disoriented and didn't know which direction was which anymore.
But knowing that the scratcher was closing in, she darted right and slipped into another aisle. When she was in the middle of it, she slowed down and turned, backing up and waiting for the scratcher to come around the corner. She held the gun up, listening, but then she noticed that there were no footsteps. The scratcher that had just been tearing after her wasn't moving anymore.
Confusion set in and she spun around in circles, looking to both ends of the aisle she was in, suddenly feeling trapped.
Why did it stop? They didn't do that. They just kept coming.
But here she was, alone in the dark with silence holding lease.
Her teeth began to chatter and before she could stop it from happening, the flashlight slipped out of her mouth and fell on the floor. The clatter was deafening in the stillness. The flashlight rolled across the tiles, moving the light with it, until it bumped into the base of a shelf on one side of the aisle. Sarah started to pick it up, but then she saw the scratcher come into the aisle in front of her, highlighted in the light. But it wasn't running; it was slowly, even cautiously, walking. And this time there was something in its dead eyes aside from the mindlessness. It almost seemed like curiosity.
She held her hand still, wrestling with herself about what to do. Then she slowly backed away from the flashlight into the darkness. She aimed the gun at the zombie and eased away from it step by step, as quietly as she could, as she watched it do the same toward her.
At first the scratcher seemed to look past the flashlight into the darkness, directly at her. Its neck craned at various angles like a bird, like it was trying to get a better look. But as it got closer, its attention seemed to turn down to the flashlight. Its gait slowed even more until it seemed to be mesmerized by the object sitting next to the shelf on the floor.
Sarah backed up until she felt herself softly bump into a wall, then she shifted to the side, keeping most of her body behind the end of the tall shelf at one side of the aisle, still holding her gun on the scratcher.
When it reached the flashlight, it stopped.
Sarah couldn't understand what was happening. Why wasn't it running for her? She knew if it got much closer, it might be able to smell her.
Then something happened that Sarah hadn't expected at all: the zombie bent down and picked up the flashlight. She thought it was just going to hold it in its hand and inspect it, but instead it pointed the flashlight down the aisle toward Sarah and began creeping forward, like it knew how to use it.
This wasn't a scratcher; it was something else.
Sarah ducked out of the light and backed away from the aisle as the glow grew a
nd the strange zombie got closer. And past the light, beyond all the aisles, Sarah saw the store's entrance. She wanted to make a break for it, but the light was getting smaller and more focused on the wall in front of her and she knew that the zombie would be rounding the corner at any moment.
She turned around and trotted to the back of the store as quietly as she could. The only thing she could see in front of her as she passed an occasional window was a red door with a round window in it that looked like it led to some kind of storage room in the back of the store. She thought about whether she should try and find an exit through it or if she should head down one of the aisles next to her and try to sneak around the zombie.
But then a bright light washed past her and highlighted the door in front of her, and she knew that it had already seen her.
The zombie groaned in a grating, guttural fashion. It almost sounded more like the rising growl of a jungle lion than what she was used to coming out of the undead.
She looked back at it just in time to see those glowing eyes peering from the darkness behind the flashlight's intense glow. And then the zombie ran. And so did she.
The red door burst open as Sarah shoved her way through it, and she found herself in a room that she didn't know how big it was or what was in it or if it led to anywhere, because it was pitch-black.
Hammering footsteps echoed behind her.
Sarah turned and shoved the door shut. There was no latch mechanism and no way to actually shut it or lock it; if the zombie wanted to come in after her, it was up to her to stop it.
The zombie sprinted with the flashlight in its hand. She could see it through the window in the door, and in the next second, leaving her no time to think, it slammed into the door. Sarah's body weight had been against it, but the force knocked her back into the darkness. She stumbled into something and lost her balance. Her arm instinctively reached out to break her fall and she inadvertently squeezed off a shot from her handgun, which briefly lit a small spherical area in the room, highlighting old bags and boxes and junk stacked up in a haphazard fashion. Her body fell against a stack of salt bags and she managed to push herself back up to her feet.
The zombie had stumbled back from the door as a result of the opposing force of Sarah blocking it, but now it lunged into the door again and shoved it wide open.
Sarah lurched forward and drove her shoulder into the door as the zombie started to enter the room. She slammed it into the zombie's shoulder, pinning the not-so-mindless corpse between the edge of the door and the frame. They struggled against each other, and the door was shoved open and closed by a few inches to a foot repeatedly, the zombie wiggling itself in a little bit more each time.
Finally, when the door was shoved open again, Sarah backhanded the zombie with the handle of her gun, knocking it back just enough to shut the door on its neck. Its head was the only thing poking into the room now and a sickeningly mushy crunch sounded as the door crushed its throat.
Sarah held herself against the door as hard as she could, and she brought the gun up and aimed it at its face.
But the zombie managed to swing one of its arms through the gap in the door and grab her gun. They both struggled, each one trying to gain control of it. She could faintly see its eyes turn to her in the darkness. It looked right into hers as though there was something behind the scummy white murkiness.
The gun slowly turned in Sarah's favor as she used all her strength to overpower the zombie. She pulled the trigger and the gun went off, painting the inside of the doorway in its viscera. It immediately slumped down to the floor and it looked almost like something from a cartoon, like its head got caught in an elevator door as the elevator started to go up.
Sarah backed away from it and fell into the salt bags, just staring at it, stunned. She watched it for a while to make sure it was dead, then she opened the door and grabbed the flashlight, using it to take a good look at just what the hell this thing was.
For all intents and purposes, it looked like any other zombie. But she knew that there was something going on. More experiments were being done in that base, and now, as much as it scared her to admit, they must have been making new zombies that were... smart. With the speed and power that the scratchers already possessed, this terrified her. They had to end this now.
She took the flashlight and the tools that she came for and she made a hasty retreat into the night, not once looking back at the hardware store.
15
THROUGH THE FLAMES
Carly was sitting on the bed next to Tommy when Sarah came in. She twisted around and her eyes lit up at the sight of her.
"Where were you? What happened?" Carly asked, her voice wavering as she tried to hold back tears.
Sarah leaned in the doorway and there was a heaviness under her eyes that looked ugly in the dim candlelight. "I just got caught up," she said. "I'm fine."
Carly tried to decide if she should get up and go to her, but just then Tommy rolled over and grabbed her arm.
"Water," he rasped.
His skin was still very pale and he looked like death warmed over. But yet he managed to prop himself up on his elbow and sip from the cup that Carly brought him. He cleared his throat and his eyes moved across the room languidly, as if he was discovering how to use them again.
"How are you feeling?" Sarah asked, stepping into the room.
Tommy pulled his elbow out from under him and his head plopped back on the pillow. "I'm... I'm okay," he said, staring at the ceiling. "Thanks for getting me back. I'm sorry I let you down."
Carly opened her mouth to console him and tell him it wasn't his fault, but Sarah said, "Use your head next time, otherwise you're going to get more than yourself killed."
Tommy nodded to himself as much as his muscles would afford. He knew there was no room to make mistakes, and certainly no room to feel sorry for himself.
Sarah sauntered over to an armchair in the corner of the room and sank down into it. The muscles in her body experienced utter euphoria at a chance to rest after an extremely long day. But she couldn't rest for long.
"We have to go soon," she said.
"Yeah, I know," Carly replied. "Are you going to be okay to go? What happened out there?"
"I'm fine," Sarah repeated. She thought about the events that occurred in the hardware store and was still running them through her mind. "There was this zombie I ran into. It was... different."
"Different how?"
"I don't know, just different. It seemed more like a human than a zombie."
"What? What do you mean?"
Sarah put her face in her hand. "I don't know. Maybe I imagined it. But it doesn't matter right now. I was out longer than I wanted to be, and we have to get going. We need that code now."
Carly nodded uncertainly, but got up. She set the cup of water on the nightstand next to Tommy and told him to rest, then she and Sarah headed for the hallway.
"Hold on," Tommy said weakly from behind them.
They stopped.
His face was a little twisted as he raised his head and looked at them. "Don't go," he said.
Sarah regarded him with half-seriousness, then turned to leave again.
"Wait! I don't know what it is, but I got a bad feeling about tonight."
"We'll handle it," Sarah said.
"Let me come with you," he pleaded.
"You're in no shape to do anything. Get some rest."
He looked at them with the same tension in his eyes, but then his head fell back on the pillow and he relaxed, not knowing what came over him. He pulled the covers up to warm his bare shoulders, and the women left, Carly suddenly feeling uneasy at Tommy's words.
The bitter-sour smell of feces and urine cut through the waning stench of dried gasoline. Carly pinched her nose and Sarah ignored it. The soldiers sat in their own filth, huddled against the back wall of the storage building, just the way they had left them. They were both sleeping, though their naked bodies periodically shivered and their teeth chatt
ered.
Sarah nodded at Carly and Carly leaned against an oil drum and turned on the flashlight, aiming it at the two men's faces. Sarah picked up the bucket of water and splashed them again.
The soldiers jerked awake and desperately fought against their restraints, trying to pull themselves away from each other but still being bound together by the rope. Their heads and eyes spun in all different directions, trying to discern what was happening before the grim memory set in of why they were there. They squinted against the harsh light and both turned their eyes to the floor.
Sarah had retreated behind the flashlight before they realized where they were, so to them they hadn't seen anyone. And Sarah kept it that way intentionally for a good long while. They asked who was there, then the tougher one started taunting them.
"They're gonna find you!" he said. "You think you can hide from the boss? He's got eyes everywhere! Everywhere!"
His words echoed around them and they rattled Carly, but Sarah was unfazed. He kept talking for a while, trying to fill the void. But then when there was still no answer they eventually began to plead, then they fell into quiet whimpers as the coldness of the water on their bodies got under their skin and made them shake, more in fear than discomfort.
Then Sarah said at last, "The code."
"Hey, fuck you lady!" the tough one shouted.
One footstep echoed, then another one a few seconds later, then another one, following this pattern. They were deliberate and extremely effective at heightening their fear. Their eyes searched the blinding white light, trying to find movement. Finally, just as the footsteps started to drive them mad, a dark silhouette cut into the light and a vague form started to take shape. They saw Sarah, who stopped in front of them. Though the front of her was still mostly shrouded in shadow with the light gleaming all around her from behind, they could make out the hard look in her eyes, the uneasy way that she leaned forward, like she was about to start in on them, and the hammer in her hand.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 5): Scourge of Evil Page 13
