“I like the way you make it sound so easy. We’ll just swing by the AutoZone and grab that battery. You want us to pick up some milk or anything on the way back?” Randy asked sarcastically.
“No, but you need to hurry up and get going. You need to leave as soon as the sun goes down so we can try and make it to Tampa tonight. The sooner we get there the safer I’ll feel.”
A few hours later Randy and Tony found themselves stomping through the flooded streets towards the auto store. As lightly as Kelly had thrown it out that they should go grab a battery they all knew what a risk they were taking. Anytime you left the shelter of a home to venture out into the streets you were taking your life in your hands. It was less than a mile to the store but out in the dark with the rain continuing to pour down it seemed a lot farther.
A thoroughly drenched Tony marched miserably beside Randy. Glancing at the man almost caused Randy to break operational silence. Tony looked like a drowned rat. He was wearing a hat, but the rain was still coating his face. His clothes looked like they’d just been pulled out of a washing machine. He looked like Randy felt. They made it out of the subdivision and headed for the store walking along the side of the street. A set of lights appearing out of the darkness up ahead had them jumping to the side of the road and hiding in the overgrown bushes.
They watched as a pickup truck cruised slowly by. The driver and passengers heads swiveling back and forth as they looked around in the rain. As hopeless as searching in these conditions were, it looked like the Brotherhood was trying it anyway. Randy swore to himself. He’d really hoped that they’d get more of a head start before searchers were sent out. He was glad now that Kelly had insisted on taking the van instead. Otherwise they may have just been caught out on the side of the street with all the kids in tow. They watched as the truck continued past them down the road.
Once it’d disappeared around the curve they stood up and continued walking stealthily down the side of the road towards the auto store. Randy hadn’t realized he could get any wetter but laying in the mud on the side of the road as the pickup drove by had soaked him to the core. He tried to keep his mind off how miserable he was by thinking of ideas on what they’d do if they ran into one of the Brotherhood patrols once they got the van running. It wouldn’t be too hard to pull up and shoot the driver if they acted like they were on the same side. Once the driver was dead then with a little luck, they’d be able to get the passenger also.
That plan may have been good enough for when it was just them cruising along but now with the kids being in the van with them, he wasn’t as willing to take those kinds of risks. Underwear squishing uncomfortably as he walked, he idly wondered how bad of a rash he was going to end up with. He shifted his rifle around on his back in a vain attempt to get less miserable. The rain had died down for the moment. Tony and Randy carefully picked their way across the road into the plaza the AutoZone was located in.
Holding his machete loosely in his hand Randy tried the front door to the store. It didn’t budge. He’d learned to always try the easy way first. Sometimes you got lucky. Beside him Tony was pressing his face to the window trying to see inside the store. Giving up on the easy way they took a few steps back from the front doors to walk around to the back of the store. Bashing their way through the front door glass was going to be a last resort because of the noise it’d make. Assuming they could even bust through it.
The alley behind the AutoZone featured a small aluminum overhang over a loading dock area. There were piles of garbage lying around in the alley and up on the stairs leading to the loading dock doors. Randy was really hoping they could figure out a way to lever those back doors open. They had a crowbar with them that may do the trick. They’d become pretty adept at breaking into buildings. The trick was to figure out a way to do it quietly. With that in mind they carefully made their way up the stairs.
Looking closer at the piles of garbage he’d seen in the dark from the alley Randy got a bad feeling. Tony was working the crowbar out of his bag and trying to wedge it into the doorframe to start prying. It’d be loud but not as loud as breaking open the glass in the front of the store. Before he could start prying Randy tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the closest pile of garbage on the loading dock. Tony looked closer and realized Randy was trying to show him the piles of garbage were really piles of Zombies intertwined with one another. It looked like they were trying to stay dry underneath the overhang. In the dim light from the moon that filtered down through the rain clouds it looked like the number of Zombies they were currently surrounded by was pretty substantial.
They could stick with the plan to pry open the door and hope the Zombies didn’t wake up or they could give up and look elsewhere. There were other places nearby but by the time they went and investigated those places it’d be even later. With the Brotherhood patrolling the streets they needed to get moving as soon as they could. The other course they could take was to walk around and smash in every Zombies head before they started screwing around with the door. They had machetes and a crowbar. There was just enough light to be able to make out where the Zombies heads were.
Tony stared at Randy waiting to see what the plan was going to be. They’d been fighting their way through this mess side by side for long enough now that they tended to be on the same wavelength. Randy nodded at the door and made an opening motion with his hand. Tony nodded and headed for the door with the crowbar out. Randy got himself in position to kill any Zombies who happened to wake up once the prying started.
Tony took out the crowbar and attacked the door trying to pry it open. The loud, grating noises he was making woke up a couple of the nearby Zombies who began sleepily climbing to their feet. The Zombies hadn’t woken up screeching. They looked more curious than anything else. Moving in a deliberately jerky fashion to try and blend in Randy got behind one of the Zombies at the edge of the platform. The Zombie was halfway to its feet when Randy brought the machete down hard its head. Warm blood from the cracked skull bathed his hands as the body dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Randy pried the machete out of the corpses skull and moved towards the next Zombie. This one was about the size of an eleven-year-old boy. The sex of the Zombie was impossible to tell in the dim light since the things face was covered in a nasty mix of pus-filled sores and a flaky black rash. It was also covered in filth from sleeping in the garbage filled alley. It was snuffling and moving its head around trying to determine where the strange noises were coming from. Randy swung the machete into the front of its neck so hard that he almost succeeded in decapitating it. The Zombies head ended up being held on by part of the spinal cord and a large strip of skin. With its throat demolished the small Zombie dropped to its knees before rolling over on its side to gurgle out the last of its life blood into the nasty alley.
One of the Zombies had figured out where the noises were coming from and reached out to touch an extremely jumpy Tony on the shoulder. Tony swung around with the speed of a well lubed Jack in the Box. Before the Zombie could let out a victory screech at confirming it’d located an uninfected human the crowbar in Tony’s hand dented in the side of its head. Randy jogged up the stairs to where a visibly shaken Tony was now shoving the blood and hair covered crowbar back into the door.
Randy took a long look down the stairs towards the alley. With a very worried expression on his face he put his mouth close to Tony’s ear.
“Hurry.” Randy whispered. He hated breaking operational silence but the alley behind them had started to come alive. None of the Zombies moving around were screeching or charging for them yet but it was only a matter of time. There looked to be a good dozen Zombies wandering around in the night now. All of them slowly making their circuitous way towards the door Tony was furiously trying to open.
Tony hadn’t even bothered looking behind him. He knew if Randy was whispering at him to hurry then that meant they were probably a few minutes from becoming Zombie chow. Randy was pre
pared to use his M-16 if the Zombies charged. He was really hoping he could avoid that option though. The sound of the gun would bring even more Zombies but if he tried to machete a dozen charging Zombies then he’d be too dead to care. He was silently praying now that Tony would get the door open in time.
A giant cracking sound from behind Randy told him Tony had managed to do something. Whether it was enough to get them in the building was yet to be seen. Randy hoped that noise meant they could get in the building and still use the door to keep the Zombies out. If not, then Randy made the decision to go full auto versus trying to hack his way through all the Zombies that were turning around to see what the loud cracking noise was all about. He looked over his shoulder in time to see Tony pulling on the door to get it to open enough for them to slip through. Randy followed quickly behind him.
Not quickly enough. One of the Zombies finally figured out there were a couple of uninfected humans hanging out right in front of them. That Zombie noticed the open door that was getting pulled closed right in front of it. The overly observant Zombie screeched. It was joined by the other Zombies who all rushed towards the closing door like they were a single organism. The unified screeching served to alert all the nearby Zombies that there was live prey being hunted. Echoing screeches began drifting to them on the night air as other groups of Zombies in the area caught wind that prey had been found.
“Time to find the battery and get the hell out of here.” Tony said.
“They have like a million batteries here. How the hell do we find the right one?” Randy asked.
“If you know the make and the model, we could type it into the computer and see what’s available. You know. If the computers worked. We’re idiots. Why didn’t we bring the old battery or take a picture of it or something?”
Randy was in complete agreement with Tony that they were a couple of idiots. They’d always taken a picture of the battery before, so they had a clue what they were looking for. They’d done this before. That was the sad part. How they’d just run out of the house headed for the parts store with no clue what the battery was supposed to look like was beyond him. The screeches outside were growing ever louder. For now, they seemed to be focused in the alley they’d just left. The door they’d pried open was able to be shut. It just wasn’t able to be locked again. The lock breaking was what the big crack had been. Hopefully they’d be out of there before a Zombie who knew how doorknobs worked showed up.
Tony came out of the back with two batteries and set them on the counter. Him and Randy looked at them doubtfully.
“We’ll make them work if they’re not right. You grab one and I’ll grab one. I guess we need to go out the front doors.” Tony said. They both grabbed one of the heavy batteries by the carrying handle and headed for the front doors.
The back door opened.
A Zombie must’ve channeled some deeply buried muscle memory and pressed the latch down on the door handle before pulling on it. Screeches echoed into the store. Randy and Tony sprinted with their awkward battery bundles for the front doors. Tony slammed into the glass first. He flung his battery as hard as he could at the large window beside the door with complete disregard for the fine print on the battery warranty label. The glass shattered leaving a big enough hole for Tony to get through after he knocked a couple of larger pieces out of the way. Randy followed right behind him as the screeches kept getting louder and closer.
They’d made it about ten feet into the parking lot when the first Zombie came through the hole in the glass after them. They weren’t going to make it home hauling these heavy as hell batteries with them the whole way. Randy pulled his rifle around and dropped his battery on the ground to start putting some of the pursuers down. He was thinking they could shoot the first few then once they had a bit of a gap run as fast as they could for the woods. It’d worked for them plenty of other times.
He lined up his first shot and put the Zombie down on the ground with a round through the forehead. He wasn’t trying to be fancy with the headshot the Zombies were just so close it wouldn’t do any good to try for shots that weren’t going to put them on the ground right away. They fired into the Zombies until the pile of the dead covered the hole. With screeches coming from all around them they turned and ran as fast as they could with their batteries towards the edge of the plaza and the anticipated escape into the strip of woods.
Halfway to the tree line headlights illuminated them. Randy dropped his car battery and spun around. Sweat was pouring down his face. His clothes were plastered to his body. The pickup truck they’d seen earlier was driving straight at them through the cluttered parking lot. A man leaned out the passenger window with a rifle pointed at them as the truck pulled to a stop ten feet away from them.
“Drop your weapons and get on the ground!” The man yelled with his rifle pointed at Randy.
Randy and Tony both whipped their M-16s into action and opened fire. The man started popping shots off at them. It felt like an eternity before Randy realized he’d run through all the ammunition in his magazine without being shot. He looked over and Tony was still standing as well. They walked slowly towards the pickup. The front window was spiderwebbed with the rounds they’d put through it. Randy opened the passenger door and dragged out the dead body of the gunner. The body of the man hit the ground ending up in an awkward sprawled-out pose. Randy and Tony quickly liberated the corpses of weapons and ammunition.
Miraculously neither Tony nor Randy had been hit in the brief but super intense firefight. How the guy had missed from ten feet away with a fully automatic weapon was anyone’s guess but that’s what’d happened. Zombies were sprinting towards their location. Without the need for words they dragged the other body out of the truck and hopped in themselves. Tony took the wheel and started driving them the hell out of there. They could head back home in style now. It’d been nice of the Brotherhood to bring them a truck, so they didn’t have to lug those damned batteries all the way back to the house.
The radio mounted to the dash crackled to life. “Patrol seven respond. Can you confirm the gunshots you heard are from the fugitives we’re looking for? Please confirm you’re at the plaza by the corner of Red Bug and Tuskawilla roads. Over. Sending back up. Over. Do not engage. Repeat. Do not engage.”
Tony put his foot down on the accelerator. He jumped a couple of curbs to drive past the Zombies headed towards the house where Kelly and the kids were camped out. Both Randy and Tony praying they’d be able to get there in time to get them out before the Brotherhood showed up in force.
Chapter 3: Roadside Assistance
The jeep started making a weird chugging noise a few miles down the road from where Kyler had left the mob of Zombies behind. Plumes of steam started coming up from under the hood. Not knowing what else to do Kyler rode the jeep until it made a sound like a Roomba being raped by a weedwhacker. The noise lasted a few minutes before the jeep drifted to a stop with the dashboard looking like a rednecks front porch at Christmas. Kyler got out and stood in front of the jeep wondering what to do next. He could already hear screeches in the distance as the Zombies in the area perked up at the strange mechanical sounds drifting to them on the wind.
He looked for the lever to open the hood then realized he wasn’t going to have a clue what do once he got the hood up. Giving in to the male impulse to always open the hood and stare at the engine regardless of your mechanical aptitude he pulled back on the lever to release the hood. Steam billowed out and burned his fingers and arms as he tried to find the lever to pull to get the hood to go all the way up. He stepped back from the jeep sucking on his burnt fingers. Giving up on the notion of somehow fixing the jeep he walked around to the back and dug through the items there to see what he could carry with him.
He collected all his weapons and a couple of boxes of ammunition. He grabbed all the water and food and shoved those in one of the small backpacks that were in the back. He grabbed a backpack that’d been filled with different bottles of medicine and
attached it to the other small backpack before levering both of them onto his shoulders. The packs were tight across his shoulders with his extra layers of clothing. He’d put enough food and water in the packs to make them pretty heavy. Ignoring the discomfort, he made sure his weapons were ready and started hiking down the side of the road holding a tire iron in one hand he’d liberated from the jeep.
The first Zombie he sighted after abandoning the jeep showed up a few minutes later. It was running down the center of the road towards where Kyler had left the jeep shooting steam into the hot summer air. He’d planned on just hiding in the woods and letting any Zombies he saw run right past him, but the Zombies camouflage uniform gave him pause. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d taken weapons off a dead cop or soldier. If they died with their weapons on and a full pack of supplies, then they’d wander with all that useful gear until they were struck dead at which point their supplies were up for grabs. To the victor go the spoils and all of that.
Instead of ducking into the woods Kyler stepped out into the middle of the road to meet the charging Zombie head on. He had more water and food than he could really carry already, but you could never have enough ammunition. He made out a haversack bouncing around on the Zombies emaciated shoulders as it ran towards him. He was hoping that sack was full of goodies. The kind of goodies that went boom.
Zombies! (Book 4): Nowhere To Hide Page 2