With Kelly awake Randy looked over at Tony. The man’s head was back against the cooler section at a painful looking angle. Drool was trickling through his scroungy looking beard down to this neck. The Corona bottles had been set down carefully beside him in a circle with the wine bottle sitting in the middle of it. So now Tony had become OCD on top of working on becoming an alcoholic. Randy knew the stress of what they went through on a daily basis was enough to break pretty much anyone. He just didn’t care. The end result was they needed to find and protect their kids. On top of their kids Randy needed to protect Kelly. If Tony was going to become a hindrance to that then they’d have to have a conversation at some point.
A few loud noises from upfront had Randy trying to carefully move to take a look over his shoulder. Kelly had moved so she could try to look down the aisle on her side. Randy saw a flicker of movement to his right and whipped his head around to spy Tony moving into position on the aisle adjacent to them. Hungover or not Tony was moving smoothly and had weapons out and ready to go. It looked like they could postpone having any conversations about the alcoholism any time soon. It was the end of the world so as long as you were a functional alcoholic who really cared. It was highly unlikely Tony would live long enough for liver damage to become a concern anyway.
The snuffling sounds continued coming from the front of the store. Then the sound of feet slapping rapidly across the floor as the Zombie ran down the aisle a few aisles over from them. When it got to the end of the aisle it’d easily be able to see them. Without even thinking about it they all slid around to the insides of their aisles to avoid being seen. The sound of the feet slapping on the floor stopped and the snuffling noises started up again. The loud sound of items from the shelf being swept to the floor filled the room. A startled Kelly slapped her hand over her mouth after emitting a quick squeal at the sudden unexpected noise.
A loud snapping sound was followed by more items hitting the floor and more loud noises. The snuffling was suddenly right on top of them. Randy looked straight up and saw the Zombie was standing on the top of the shelf right above them gazing around. It jumped to the next shelf and kept looking around trying to see if it’d actually heard anything. Randy popped Kelly in the shoulder with his elbow and got to his feet as quickly and quietly as he could. Once he was upright, he pulled his knife and stabbed it overhand as hard as he could into the back of the Zombie’s thigh. Before the Zombie even had time to acknowledge the pain Randy pulled hard on its good leg.
The Zombie smashed down into the items on the top of the shelf. It’s legs and lower torso dangling over the edge of the shelf. Kelly was whacking at the monster with her machete scoring lots of hits. Blood flinging back from the machete blade every time she pulled back to strike again. The Zombie was scrambling to turn over so it could get at them when Tony started hitting the top of its head with a claw hammer from the next aisle over. He struck until the skull caved in. Bits of brain and blood stuck to the top of the hammer falling to the ground like ketchup covered clumps of biscuit mix.
Kelly stopped swinging the machete once the body stopped thrashing around. She was covered in blood. The dingy white tile floor had a big puddle of blood on it. Tony came around the corner covered in blood as well. Randy worked his knife out of the things leg and stuck it back in its leather sheath after wiping the excess blood off on his pants leg. They froze when they heard another series of crunching sounds coming from the front of the store. Realizing that if they didn’t go seal up the front of the store, they’d be dealing with this until nightfall. The three of them began quietly moving up the aisle towards the source of the noise. They left three sets of blood-soaked footprints on the dust covered white tile behind them.
They paused about ten feet from the end of the aisle and listened to the sounds coming from the front of the store. It sounded like it was just another single Zombie who’d come through the hole to see the inside of the store. They needed to kill it and seal up the hole without attracting any more visitors. Tony motioned to keep moving to the end of the aisle. As he turned to wave to them a waif of a Zombie appeared at the end of the aisle. Long stringy blond hair hung down from an emaciated face. Exaggerated cheekbones stuck out of the sore and scab covered face. The eyes were coated with some sort of thick yellow pus that seemed to have congealed in place.
They all froze in place as if the Zombie wasn’t going to see them squatting ten feet in front of it. Randy looked intently at the things face. The eyes really were completely covered in the yellow pus. The creature was snuffling and starting to take some tentative steps towards them. Its mouth hung wide open as it took small stumbling steps in their direction. The Zombie was so covered in sores and dressed so plainly it was impossible to discern the sex of the creature. It could’ve been a heroin model twenty something woman or a gangly teenage boy.
They all stayed squatting. Weapons in hand waiting to see what would happen. With no warning the Zombie screeched at them in a high-pitched voice and charged them. Tony stood and swung his hammer in a sideways arc that pegged the creature hard on the side of its head. It leapt and carried Tony to the ground wrapped in its embrace. Randy jumped on its back and grabbed the dingy blond hair pulling backwards as hard as he could. He looked like he was trying to pull the reins back on a bronco at a wild west show. The creature bucked and tucked it’s head up to try and roll over and get at Randy.
Kelly hacked at its throat. She hit it in the face with the blade first causing the pus to explode out of one of the eyes. It squirted outwards along with the warm blood that poured from the cut. Her second strike landed on the Zombies throat and shut it up permanently. The voice box was ripped apart by the deep penetration of the machete. Kelly swung again and hacked deeper in to the neck finally killing the Zombie. Randy dragged it by its hair off of Tony and shoved the cooling body against the cash register.
Tony stood up drenched in blood and goo with a disgusted look on his face. They all looked and smelled like they’d been rolling around in a slaughterhouse. The scraping sound of the vending machine outside the front door being moved around caught their attention. They rushed over to the front of the store to see if they could figure out a way to block the broken door and stop the steady stream of unwanted guests.
Randy stopped and looked through the broken glass door. He saw what appeared to be a bloated Zombie trying to squeeze through the narrow gap afforded by the vending machine in the entryway. Tony raised his hammer and slid through the frame of the front door to position himself behind the vending machine. He raised the hammer in preparation for smashing in the things head if it made it through the crack. Kelly evidently had another idea as she raced through the hole in the door sliding past Tony to position herself right in the path of the mass of moving flesh trying to get into the store. She put the machete horizontally against the ribs of the giant Zombie and pushed as hard as she could.
The machete pierced the skin sinking deep into the Zombie. The Zombie let out a loud bellow of pain and started thrashing around. Its massive hand swatted Kelly to the ground. She left the machete in the monster’s side and crawled back through the front door. She stood up picking pieces of glass out of her palms with little facial tics revealing the pain she was in. Randy moved over beside her to see if he could help her at all. Tony stayed at his post behind the machine as the thrashing Zombie slowly bled out. He’d been ready to bash in the things head if it managed to make it through.
After making sure Kelly was ok Randy went and peeled back the posters from the window by the door to look outside. He looked out towards the street for a minute then waved Kelly and Tony over to take a look for themselves. Outside the drug store they were in was a gas station on the corner. On the other side of the street there was a large Publix shopping store in a big plaza. In the parking lot of the Publix and in the parking lot of the gas station there were Zombies randomly wandering around in packs of twos and threes. There were also a fair number of single Zombies moving around.
&
nbsp; Those were scary enough but once you looked past them towards the road and saw the group these wandering Zombies were a part of that was the bone chilling part. The road looked like a river. A river of Zombies flowing down it. They couldn’t tell where it ended and where it began. They immediately recognized this must be the herd that’d had them trapped on the roof the day before. They watched as the herd continued to pass for another ten minutes. As the herd started thinning out the other Zombies in the parking lot and around the area left to join back into it. Randy and the others walked back to the back of the store to talk.
“Good thinking on killing that fat one in the gap. Blocked it up so none of the others can get in.” Randy whispered as soon as they were far enough from the doors that he didn’t think their voices would carry. The last thing they wanted was the herd heading back their way.
“The fun part will be getting out. I want to roll out of here as soon as the suns been down for an hour. We can be at our house in thirty minutes to get started looking for the kids.” Kelly whispered back. Randy nodded in return. That wasn’t giving the Zombies a lot of time to settle down for the night, but it was a decent chunk of time given how excited Kelly was about getting to their house. He wasn’t about to try and tell her they should wait longer. If it looked like the coast was clear an hour after sundown then they’d head out.
“In the meantime, I suggest we find the baby section and use as many moist towelettes as it takes to wipe this gunk off.” Randy said.
“There’s not enough moist towelettes in the world for me to ever feel clean again.” Tony said. Randy looked at him in the dim light and nodded. They were all covered in nastiness. There were some socks and underwear and touristy t-shirts for sale up by the counter they could use to freshen up a little bit. They had minimal clothing in their packs since they’d tried to shove as much firepower in them as possible. Tony had joked about not needing fresh underwear until after the firefight. If you wasted space on underwear before the firefight you may be too dead to care about feeling fresh after the fight. Lifting his pack now Randy noted it was depressingly light. They’d managed to run through most of their munitions already.
They spent some time freshening up then took turns peeking out the front windows. The Zombies had mostly cleared out by the time nightfall rolled in and covered the parking lot. Kelly took one last, long look and announced it was time to dig through the big, fat dead guy at the front of the store. She was the one to announce it and the one who was in the biggest hurry to leave but she definitely wasn’t the one she thought should be doing the digging. She stood aside as Tony and Randy squeezed through the front door to take a look at the bloated, bloody mess stuck between the red box and the wall.
“I don’t know if it’s the texture or the smell that’s worse.” Tony whispered. His complete disgust at what they were about to do outweighing his ability to maintain noise discipline. Randy just nodded as he reached out to poke at a dirty, pale, white roll of flesh covered in half-dried blood. They pushed and pulled on the over-sized cadaver without getting anywhere until Kelly showed back up with two bottles of Wesson oil. Fighting down his urge to vomit Kyler detached his mind from what was happening. He couldn’t believe his life had reached the point where lubing up an obese cadaver to try and escape from a building in the middle of the night without being seen or heard by Zombies was an actual thing.
It worked. The body slid right out in a big flabby mess once they’d gotten the oil rubbed in all over it. Tony added a little bit of puke to the pile when the body made some disturbing noises while being pushed. The corpse cork popped they turned and went back into the store to give any curious Zombies who may have heard the noises a few minutes to show up. Randy and Tony both changed into new t-shirts and went through another couple bottles of hand sanitizer along with an enormous quantity of moist towelettes. Randy was sure he was never going to feel clean again. Every inch of him felt covered in the Wesson oil mixed with the other random bodily fluids that’d been leaking everywhere.
Kelly finally stopped the two of them from scrubbing themselves with moist towelettes. She continued to maintain noise discipline but even in the darkness they could both feel her attitude radiating over them. She needed them both to man up and quit trying to remove cadaver flesh from underneath their fingernails long enough to start working their way over to the house. Neither of them was happy about it. Tony rebelliously squirted some more sanitizer on his hands, but they began to make their way to the front of the store.
There was no sign of any activity in the parking lot. The moon was barely visible through the clouds. Kelly led them across the street past another plaza towards the road that would take them to the subdivision they were looking for. They moved quickly and quietly. There was no room for playing around when you were out in the open like this. Each of them had a blade or a hammer in their hand. Guns were all neatly holstered up. As close as the herd was if they had to draw their guns, they were screwed.
In the end it was very anticlimactic. They jogged down a side road to the gated entrance to their subdivision. The gate had been wrecked by a car crashing into it, but the pedestrian gate was working fine. They passed through the gate and headed for their house. Tony followed along behind them trying to be extra vigilant. It was obvious Randy and Kelly were just focused on getting to their house and seeing what was there. The moon came out from behind the clouds as they jogged revealing a nightmarish scene in their front yard.
The black Elantra was sitting in the middle of the driveway with a desiccated corpse handcuffed to it. Their other cars were missing. The road around the house and the driveway were littered with dead bodies. Kelly barely noticed all the dead bodies as she rushed into the home though the front door. Randy following closely behind her noticing out of the corner of his eye that the front door was barely hanging on by a single hinge and there were bullet holes stitched across it. Tony hurried to catch up. Randy freaked out for a second when he lost track of Kelly. Looking around he spotted her sitting down on the ground reading something. She looked up at him with her face covered in tears and a huge smile. She held out a sparkle glue covered letter to him.
“Our little girls are alive!”
Chapter 16: Bride School
Caitlyn woke up in the back seat with her head in Ali’s lap. Ali was running her fingers through Caitlyn’s hair and making soothing noises. Caitlyn sat up and looked around. Her head pounded from being slammed into the floor of the vehicle they were in. She could taste blood on the inside of her mouth. The man in the seat in front of them gave Caitlyn an exasperated look. One of the man’s eyes was blackening up pretty good. Caitlyn vaguely remembered tagging him with her elbow before she’d been stomped right out of the fight.
“We’re sorry about your little sister. It was too late to go back. Why didn’t you tell us she was in there?” The man asked.
Caitlyn ignored his question and continued to look around the inside of the van. She didn’t see anything that was going to help her. She wasn’t sure what she’d been looking for anyway. A loaded M-16 someone had accidently left on the floor would’ve been nice. With no loaded weapons lying around in easy reach she focused on the man asking the questions.
“Where are you taking us?” She asked him back. She ignored his earlier question.
“We’re taking you to the refugee camp. Once you’re there you and your sisters will be processed and assigned a destination. You’ll also spend some time learning your new roles.”
“What are you talking about?” She asked him. Her head hurt and this guy was talking crazy. Zombies covered the countryside. This guy and his friends had nothing better to do than hunt down survivors.
“You’ll find out in the training. It’s hard to explain it all without giving you some background first. It’s a dangerous world now but we’re fighting to make it a better place. I can tell you’re a fighter.” The man smiled and patted his black eye.
“I’m just not a big fan of being kidnapped
. You people and your organization killed my little sister. You want me to just forget that?” Caitlyn was mad now. She hadn’t realized how far she’d leaned in to yell at the guy. He moved back from her to avoid the spit flying out of her mouth. He was also probably worried about her head butting him or doing something else they hadn’t constrained her from being able to do.
“Why don’t you just focus on keeping the other ones alive?” The man snapped back. He’d dropped the act of trying to be her friend. It obviously wasn’t getting him anywhere with her anyway. “Lean back in your seat now or I’ll knock you back in it.” He finished. He moved forward and bared his teeth at her. He had his fist cocked back to slam into her face if she didn’t comply.
“Woah!” A smiling man moved into the seat next to the overly aggressive guard. The smiling man moved the angry man gently over to the side and told him he’d handle the girls from there. Then he stuck his hand out to Caitlyn to see if she’d shake it. Caitlyn stared at the hand like he was handing her a dog turd on toast. The man withdrew his hand but kept the big fake smile plastered on his face. He handed Caitlyn and Ali each a water bottle.
Zombies! (Book 3): Violence Solves Everything Page 15
