Sophia shrugged. “You could say that about any disaster or tragedy. He never guaranteed anyone a free ride.”
Wendy blew more smoke across the room and turned to Dan. “How about you?”
“I used to.”
She tuned to Paul.
He snorted. “At this point, I believe in vampires and werewolves.”
Wendy laughed.
So did Sophia and Dan.
“At least it’s not vampires!” Dan said. “I’m so sick of vampires.”
“Me too,” Paul grunted.
“Vampire this and vampire that,” Dan said, passing a hand through the air.
Paul took a big breath. “All with their hair just perfect and the coolest leather jackets money can buy.”
“Hate the vampires!” Dan shouted, causing Wendy and Sophia to flinch.
“Hate the vampires!” Paul echoed. “Except the ones from True Blood,” he said, lowering his voice.
Dan stuck a finger into the air. “Those vampires were alright.”
“They were pretty good,” Paul said.
“I loved them!” Dan said.
Wendy and Sophia stared at them.
Dan nodded. “And boom goes the dynamite.”
Wendy’s face wrinkled. “What?”
“I don’t know,” Dan said, shaking his head.
Wendy laughed. “So you don’t believe in God then,” she said to Paul.
“His mom was the original church lady so he had no choice,” Sophia said.
A somber look stole over his Paul’s bristly face. “Was the original church lady.”
Sophia dropped her eyes to her hands.
“She really was too,” Dan said. “She actually had prayer knitting groups.”
“What?” Wendy gasped.
“He’s not kidding,” Sophia said. “Almost everything in her condo had a bible verse on it. Wall plaques, figurines, even the notepad on the fridge.”
“His mom was not playing around,” Dan said, crumpling up the bag of Bugles and tossing it behind the couch.
“Let’s just put it this way, the day after I graduated from high school I also graduated from Sunday School,” Paul said.
Wendy let out a short high-pitched laugh. “What? You graduated from church? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Paul nodded, thinking back to the commencement ceremony in his church’s old, musty smelling gymnasium. His mom had been so proud. Personally, he had just been glad to get it over with.
Growing up, his mom had literally forced him and his brother to go to church every single Sunday, and outside of three feet of snow on the ground there were never any exceptions. Neither had been crazy about wearing stuffy dress clothes and getting packed in like sardines on hard wooden pews. But the singing was the worst. He and Curtis would always chew gum to give off the impression they were singing along with everyone else. Then there was all the hugging and the clapping and the standing and the sitting and the hugging that made them cringe just thinking about. Curtis was uncomfortable hugging his own mom, let alone complete strangers. Paul laughed just thinking about it.
Dan looked over at him. “What’s so funny?”
Paul shook his head.
Even though church hadn’t been one of his favorite subjects, Paul had eventually gotten the message. With God’s help they would get through this and come out the other side. To what? He had no clue, but he had always believed there was a bigger plan for his life and maybe this was it. Or maybe he would just end up getting blind-sided by a walking stiff while busy raiding a vending machine for a bag of chips outside a dilapidated rest stop. Who knew? Probably a coin toss.
Paul glanced at a silver framed picture on a nearby end table. A man and woman held skis while a teenage boy proudly displayed a snowboard, all showing off their pearly whites for the camera with snowcapped mountains in the background.
“So,” Wendy said, turning back to Paul. “What’s your favorite bible verse?”
He slowly rotated his head to her. “Mine?”
She nodded.
He took a deep breath and released it. “Joshua 1:9.”
“And what’s that say?”
He paused to think, his eyes thinning. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Wendy took it in, staring at him through the soft candlelight. “Wow, pretty apropos for right now too.”
“Do you?” Paul asked.
“Do I what? Believe in God?”
“Yeah.”
“We used to have a girl named Star who would go around the club trying to bring all of us closer to God.”
“Star?” Sophia said. “A dancer?”
Wendy snorted. “Yeah. How crazy is that?”
“Right?” Dan said.
“Everyone always called her such a hypocrite behind her back, but she said it was the only way anyone would ever come close to getting through to any of us. Sunday was our one guaranteed day off of the week and no one was going to church after a long Saturday night of turning tips.”
“That’s pretty crazy,” Paul said, biting into an oatmeal pie.
“Said it was her cross to bear.”
“Couldn’t she have just put some fliers under your windshield wipers or something?” he asked, chewing the pie.
“Or put some bible verses on some dollar bills?” Dan grinned.
“Don’t be stupid,” Sophia said.
“So, do you believe in God?” Paul asked again.
“How can you? If there was really a God, there’s no way he’d ever let this happen,” she replied, looking down to her dirty fingernails. “I get how you have to go through certain hardships that test your faith, but this is a bit ridiculous. Don’t you think?”
No one answered.
“At this point, God is nothing more than a bad joke to me,” she said, grabbing another beer.
Dan sighed, got up off the couch and went down the hall towards the bedrooms.
Paul studied Wendy. He could see the wheels turning in her head. She looked like she meant it. After the life she had led, he wasn’t surprised. He was surprised she hadn’t figured out that maybe that line of logic was the reason for her perpetual pitfalls throughout life.
Dan came back, dragging a large mattress into the middle of the living room.
Chapter Thirteen
“Looks pretty quiet,” Paul said, squinting out the front window of the cop car.
Dan tried to block the sunlight by using his hand as a visor. “Doors aren’t broken out at least.”
A spattering of abandoned vehicles littered the vast Kohl’s parking lot. It felt weird to be looking at something that had been such a large part of everyday life before the spread. Something that had been so normal and so taken for granted, now looked so haunted and poisonous. Even the bright sunshine couldn’t wipe away the unimaginable horrors lurking in there.
Paul took a deep breath and released it. “Well, no time like the present,” he said, dropping the squad car into gear and pulling up to the glass front doors.
They had already rolled past the back doors and, as expected, they were all locked from the inside, rendering the bolt-cutters as useless as almost everything else was now. He put it in park and the four stepped out into the early morning sun, cautiously surveying their surroundings. It was another beautiful day outside.
The shot from Paul’s handgun shattered the glass door and echoed loudly throughout the eerie quiet. When it faded, they looked at each other and stepped through to the next set of glass doors. This time they plugged their ears, knowing the shot would ring out even louder in the entryway. It did. Paul led the way inside.
“We didn’t check to see if they were locked,” Dan whispered, following the others.
“Oops,” Paul said.
The Kohl’s store was even quieter inside than it was outside. There was no light music floating down from the store’s recessed
speakers in the ceiling, no humming from the heavy duty furnace, no carts on the move with a squeaky wheel and no chorus of blended conversations filling the stale air. They stood and listened. It looked like they were the first ones to step foot inside the store since the manager had shut the lights out, locked the doors and gone home with a persistent cough to get some much needed rest, never to return again.
Despite being chilly, Paul discarded his bulky coat onto the floor. “Say goodbye to this thing.”
The others quickly followed suit, shedding their thick coats for the last time.
Sophia grabbed a plastic beige shopping cart. “We’ll be right over here,” she said, pointing to the women’s section across from the men’s department.
“Make sure you stay where we can see you,” Paul said, pointing two fingers at his eyes then rotating them around to hers.
She smiled. “We will.”
“You know with those two, we’re not going to be able to fit back in the car,” Dan whispered, entering the men’s section and admiring a rack of leather bomber jackets.
“Tell me about it,” Paul replied, flipping through a bunch of bubble vests. “They’ll probably need another cart.”
Sophia inhaled sharply. “This is so cute!”
“Ooh, that is nice,” Wendy said, staring at the red pleather jacket Sophia was holding up by a hanger.
“I have to have this.”
Wendy grabbed a medium leather motorcycle jacket off a hanger and tried it on.
“That is awesome,” Sophia said, studying Wendy with a trained eye for fashion.
“Fits too!”
Sophia put the red coat on and turned for a better look in the three-way mirror outside the dressing rooms. “This is definitely a keeper!”
Both women yanked the tags off, kept the coats on and continued shopping.
Paul smiled watching Sophia from across the way. It was good to see her forgetting about their troubles long enough to have some fun again. A few days ago, he thought they would never have fun again. She deserved that. They all did.
“What do you think?” Dan asked, modeling a brown bomber jacket for him.
“Don’t you want something that’s waterproof?”
“I think I can afford both, let me check my wallet.”
Paul found a light weight waterproof jacket that fit perfectly. He threw a black bubble vest on over it and kept moving .
“This fleece is alright,” Wendy said, admiring it in the mirror.
“Throw it in the cart!” Sophia said, laughing and tossing a black pleather coat into the plastic cart.
“How much fun is this?” Wendy asked, taking the coat off and dropping it in with the others.
“Pretty fun,” Sophia said, too busy holding up a purple sweater to notice the lady standing just inside the entrance to the dressing rooms.
“Better grab some of these lighter gloves too,” Dan said, flipping through a rack filled with gloves and hats.
“That’s a good idea. It’s still going to be cold in the morning and at night,” Paul replied, coming over to join him.
“Oh yeah, these will work,” Dan said, trying on some tight leather gloves and holding them up for a better look.
“Let’s go check out some shoes!” Paul heard Sophia say in the women’s department.
“Oh brother, make way for the shoes,” he whispered to Dan.
“I told ya we’re not going to fit in the car.”
“I need some new jeans and underwear too,” Wendy said, looking around.
“I think we passed them over there,” Sophia said, carefully placing a running jacket into the cart.
The lady watched them with quiet eyes.
“Socks, don’t let me forget socks,” Wendy said.
“Oh trust me, I won’t.”
“We’re not going to be able to fit in the...” she trailed off, seeing the lady by the shadowy dressing rooms.
“The car?” Sophia said, laughing. “I know, we’ve got way too much stuff already and we’re just getting started.”
Wendy screamed and Sophia jumped.
Dan dropped the coats and gloves he was carrying and started running.
Drool oozed out the corner of the thing’s mouth. Its hollowed out eyes focused intently on Wendy, who swallowed and drew her gun from its holster. The thing noiselessly began shambling towards her. A Kohl’s name tag told Janet’s story. Under her name, it said manager.
With trembling hands, Wendy pointed the gun at its decaying face and it didn’t care, knocking a rack of trench coats to the ground as trudged closer. “Please stop,” Wendy moaned.
Paul and Dan came running up from behind the girls as the gunshot sent the thing flying backwards into a three-sided mirror. Shards of broken glass rained down upon the corpse, crumpled on the carpeted floor with a blood trail leaking from a small hole in its forehead.
Wendy stared hard at it with tears sliding down her cheeks, her gun still pointed. “I couldn’t do it.”
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Sophia said, holstering her still smoking weapon and coming to Wendy’s side.
“I couldn’t pull the trigger!”
“It’s over now,” Sophia said, gently taking Wendy’s arm and lowering the loaded gun.
“Holy crap!” Dan bellowed, seeing the mess on the floor.
“Are you okay?” Paul asked, looking at Sophia first, then to Wendy.
“We’re fine,” she said, still holding Wendy, who trembled in her arms.
“I couldn’t do it!” Wendy said again, dropping the gun to her side.
“It’s okay. Put the gun away,” Sophia said softly, helping Wendy carefully slide her gun back into its holster.
A high-pitched scream from behind made all of them flinch. The young girl was chubby and fast. She shrieked as she charged them. Dried blood surrounded her gaping mouth, displaying splintered teeth. She was fast and angry. With no time to draw his gun, Dan tried to kick her in the mouth, but didn’t catch her squarely. She grabbed him around his waist, snarling and snapping. Dan screamed and pushed on her forehead to keep her snapping bite away from him.
“Get it off me!” he bellowed, gritting his teeth and struggling with the growling child.
Paul yanked on the thing’s coat collar but it sunk its meat hooks even deeper into Dan. He squealed to the rafters, his eyes big enough to drive a bus through.
“Shoot her!” he roared.
Sophia came over and joined Paul in the tug of war. They jerked and pulled as Dan pushed and screamed. The tween’s broken teeth clamped down onto Dan’s new coat, ripping away a patch of leather.
“She’s eating the coat!” he wailed.
Paul gave one final tug, hurling the thing to the floor, where it rolled and jumped back up like a professional acrobat. It sneered and charged again. Paul kicked the mini-thing in the chest, like a cop would a locked door with a desperate fugitive hiding behind it. The former little girl flew backwards onto her butt and Sophia popped three shots into her. It didn’t get back up.
The four stood rigid, panting. Dan still had his gun pointed at the bloody little ZIP.
The thunderstruck silence amplified the ringing in Paul’s ears as his chest rose and fell.
Dan tiredly dropped the weapon to his side. “Man, it’s always something,” he said, examining his shredded coat. He looked back up to the others, the color draining in his face. “Am I bleeding? Did she get me?”
Chapter Fourteen
The security room upstairs in Kohl’s was much smaller than Paul imagined, lit up by a single computer monitor on a diminutive desk. He glanced down at his new black Adidas, and then turned to Sophia and Wendy. Both sat in plastic office chairs against a white wall, modeling vacuous looks with folded arms and crossed legs. Then Paul noticed his holster and gun were gone. His heart jumped. He twirled and started patting himself down like he was on fire, wildly looking all around the room, naked without them.
“Here it is!” Dan said, bent over the tiny desk,
his face cloaked in an eerie glow from the computer screen. “Come check this out!”
“My gun’s gone!” Paul cried, looking back to Sophia and Wendy, both of whom seemed disinterested.
“Forget about that, you have got to see this!” he said, not taking his eyes from the monitor.
Stupefied, Paul looked from his waist to Dan and slowly traipsed over to the desk. His legs were still heavy despite his much lighter new shoes. In the screen’s glare, Dan’s face was as serious as he’d ever seen it before.
“This is so crazy! Sit down,” he said, still leaning on the desk and not taking his eyes off the monitor.
Paul’s face twisted. “How is this even on? There’s no power.”
“Must be running on some kind of backup generator or something, but you are not going to believe this. As if we didn’t have enough problems to deal with already, check this out!”
Paul regarded Dan with antsy eyes and a gaping jaw. “What?”
“Sit.”
Paul pulled out the wooden desk chair and frowned. “I can’t sit here,” he said, looking at the crusty metal desk, which reminded him of the ones in his old elementary school. “It’s too small.”
Dan looked annoyed. “Trust me, dude, you’re going to want to be sitting down for this.”
Warily, Paul folded himself into the tiny chair and slid it forward, producing a horrible screech that echoed loudly in the square room. His knees scraped the underside of the workspace and mold colored paint flaked off onto the new jeans he had just slipped into downstairs. Sophia and Wendy didn’t notice, apparently still consumed by the gruesome ZIP team they had just wasted.
“Look, here we are coming into the store,” Dan said, anxiously pointing to the black and white security video.
Paul looked at the screen, where the four of them stood like grainy statues just inside the entrance, listening as the sun cast their dark shadows onto the bright tiled floor ahead of them. Paul remembered it all perfectly.
“Yeah so?”
“Just watch!” Dan said, becoming more agitated with him by the second and hitting the play button on a black box next to the monitor.
Paul looked from the box to the black and white video, where they tensely appraised the store’s situation. Then Sophia’s shadow moved, but she hadn’t.
COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES Page 8