by Smith, S. L.
Isherwood could help but smile, despite himself. Everybody else broke out into laughter. It was a great sound to hear, and increasingly rare in these last days. It was even better to such a group laughing, Isherwood thought darkly to himself, because the volume helped drown out Justin’s screeching.
“Okay! I’ll admit it.” Isherwood said, also trying to return order to the group. “But even so – we don’t know how much time we have before something happens to Wal-Mart’s supplies. It may already be heavily picked over. I’m also worried about fire breaking out along Hospital Road. Plus, it will be target number one for other raiding parties, if there any others. And –”
“Whoa! Down boy.” Patrick said. “You’ve already convinced us, man.”
“I agree,” said Monsignor, seated at the head of the table. “Besides, I’m running short on .308 centerfire bullets for my Winchester. I think I’ve got only two.”
“And I’ve already told you what I could do with a bowfishing bow and arrow set.” Sara added. “I doubt the fishing equipment will be picked over.”
“You know,” said Patrick. “There’s even a chance – I heard a rumor when everything was going down the tubes. I think they locked up Wal-Mart because of all the looting. If we’re gonna raid that sucker, we’re gonna need bolt-cutters for sure.”
“Probably a blow torch, too.” Aunt Tad said, looking at Jerry.
“What?” Jerry grumbled, as people started looking at him. “I can’t hear half the things you people are saying.”
“Blow torch!” Tad said over-enunciating so Jerry could hear. “To get into Wal-Mart!”
“Oh yeah,” Jerry nodded agreeably. “Got a whole kit back in my shed. Acetylene tanks, too.”
“We could swing by Delaware Ave easy,” Isherwood nodded.
“And if y’all are talking raids on Wam-a-lart and the car dealerships,” Jerry went on. “We oughtta be talking about a trip to John Deere, too. We need to get plantin’ now. Plenty of dirt to till inside this fence, but ain’t nobody gonna wanna do it by hand.”
“Too many top priorities!” Isherwood said, shaking his head. “Well, sounds like we’re gonna need a starter raid for supplies before we can get into Wal-Mart after all. If we’re going back to Delaware Avenue for Jerry’s torch, might as well clear the perishables out Langlois grocery, too.”
“Better get all the canning jars they have, too, especially quart size and bigger,” Gran added. “Sounds like Tad and I are going to have a lot to do, but we’ll get these new ladies, Chelsea and Denise, and the kids to help us, too. We’ll make short work of it.”
*****
The younger men and Jerry again left the women and children inside the church grounds, while they rode down Main Street to Langlois’ grocery. Monsignor again took up his rifle perch on the second floor of the rectory. Gran and Tad busied themselves with mapping out the eastern edge of the church yards into a large vegetable garden. They planned to leave the back of the church grounds, the ten or acres of open land on the north side, for crops that needed more space like corn and potatoes.
“Things must’ve gone down even faster than I realized,” Isherwood said, staring at the locked sliding glass door of Langlois’ corner grocery. They had parked along the sidewalk outside the grocery store, and were fanning out around the store, one quadrant at a time, clearing out the surrounding houses, yards, and side streets.
Main Street continued past Langlois’ grocery and along the northern bank of False River until it ran into Waterloo, around the corner of which they had snagged the two cars the day before. For the next mile or so, Main Street was still lined with white houses flying American flags from white porches surrounded by neat green lawns, azalea bushes, and white picket fences. There were several sprawling plantations along the way, as well. At the end of the line but still before Waterloo, after the houses again gave way to green pastures and pecan orchards, there was Wickcliffe Plantation, Isherwood’s ancestral home.
“Why you say that?” Patrick asked.
“Because the sliding glass door isn’t smashed and there’s no sign that anybody even tried to force it open.” Isherwood answered.
“Maybe they all went through the back door like you.” Justin added.
“I guess, but it seemed like I was the only one coming and going.” Isherwood answered. “By the way, the fresh fruits and vegetables aisle might be a scary sight.”
Patrick looked at him with a wry grin. “I just popped a zombie in the face, and its eyeball exploded back on me. Some of that fetid eye juice almost got in my mouth, too! And you’re telling me rotting cabbages are gonna scare me?”
Isherwood didn’t even try to respond. He was doubled over laughing. Patrick was chuckling, too. “Alright, guys.” Justin said, smiling. “Let’s get on with it. This whole block only had about a dozen zombies. Looks like Uncle Jerry’s going on ahead without us, anyway.”
Jerry was trying to pry the sliding door open with a crow bar and cursing a blue streak.
“Hey, Uncle Jerry.” Isherwood tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s just go in the back entrance to keep this door intact.”
“Fine,” Jerry said, letting the crowbar rattle noisily to the ground. “I was about to smash this stupid glass in – glad you stopped me.”
The main section of the grocery store was a cinder block building without windows. Without electricity, it was a dark and dank place.
Isherwood led them into the store through the back. The door was a standard lever-entrance steel door. They just had to push on it to open it. It stood behind a little fence, though, so it would be odd for a zombie to accidentally run into it – odder still, for it to stay open long enough for more than one to slink through.
“I think the backup generators must have kicked in daily for a while until the gasoline gave out,” Isherwood explained, “Because the freezers were still working for a long time after the electricity gave out. It the meat is still cool in the back, I say we take as much as we can. The women can cut it into chunks and can it. What d’you think, Uncle?”
“We’ll smell it fast if the meat’s spoiled. Otherwise, it’s just aging the beef. A good freezer – like they got in here – will keep the cool for a long time after shutting down.”
They could hear Justin’s stomach start to growl. “I was just starting to think about that sound hamburgers make when you throw them on a grill.” He explained.
“The problem’ll be butcherin’ without those saws they got.” Jerry was still talking out loud as they went about checking and clearing the store for zombies.
“Sonofa! Whoa!” Patrick called out, before a quick BLAM! BLAM! The pistol shot was near-deafening in the closed space.
“You okay, Patty O’Holligan?” Isherwood asked.
“I’m fine.” He answered from somewhere near the front corner of the store near the glass door. “The thing was probably drawn to the sound of Uncle’s crowbar from before. Can somebody help me drag this thing outta here? Don’t want to draw any antsies!” Patrick finished his request with an effeminate flair.
“Just unlock the sliding glass door and toss that thing into the bushes.” Justin offered. “Beats dragging that bag of filth back through the whole store.”
“An excellent idea, sire.” Patrick sniveled jokingly, and busied about like a hunchback or Igor. Isherwood noted that the fear of the last days was beginning to slough off his friends, as Patrick grew sillier and Justin more focused. They had always balanced each other, as long as he had known them.
Isherwood heard Jerry pulling out the pin and yanking on the lever of the large walk-in freezer they had passed when entering the store. “Burrr!” Jerry yelled from inside. “Oh yeah, this’ll do just fine. Just fine, indeed!” Isherwood heard him saying to himself as he hurried to the back to join him.
“Don’t open the door too wide,” Jerry barked at Isherwood.
Patrick and Justin followed them into the freezer after another minute. Justin had holstered his pistol, tradi
ng it for a bag of chips and a can of bean dip.
“You didn’t waste any time,” Isherwood teased him.
“Mmm,” he gurgled from a packed mouth. He mumbled out another sentence, sloshing around the bean and chip paste.
“What’d he say?” Isherwood asked.
“I think he said ‘The taste of civilization’.” Patrick answered. “Gross.”
“Eat up,” Jerry said from inside the freezer. “It’s gonna take every ounce of meat we got to move this meat.” Inside the long freezer which ran the entire length of the back of the store, they stared in wonder at a long rack holding about twenty sides of beef from frosted steel hangars. Shelves ran along either side filled with hundreds and hundreds of pounds of deli meat, whole chickens, hams, prepared dinners, stacks of bacon, boxes and boxes of meat paddies and sausage, as well as every kind of seafood imaginable.
“We’re gonna need a lot of jars.” Justin mumbled from a slack jaw.
“And salt.” Jerry nodded.
“Yup,” Isherwood. “Dehydration is out for now in this humidity.”
“Does this mean we’ll need to take a visit to the car lot?” Patrick said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Remember, I’m still out a Tahoe.”
“That gives me an idea,” Isherwood said with widening eyes.
“I’m sure it does,” Justin grumbled with a mouth still sloshing with bean dip.
CHAPTER TEN: NO FREE MEALS
“Before we get too far ahead of ourselves,” Isherwood told the others. “I’m gonna scout out our exit strategy.” There was already an old zombie hag raking a bony fingertip against the sliding glass door.
They had closed the freezer door for now and had filled up shopping carts with all the remaining uncanned fruit and vegetables, as well as all the canning jars the store had.
“Let’s just roll it all back in the carts.” Patrick argued. “There’s not room enough for it all in the bed of Justin’s truck.”
They heard the door scrape open, as Isherwood left to make a quick scan around the building. However, the door slammed closed almost immediately upon opening. They heard Isherwood cursing under his breath as he came back to the main part of the store. “Surprise! We’re surrounded.”
“How the hell?” Justin threw up his hands. “There weren’t any around, except that one chick at the door – ” He stopped suddenly, still pointing at the door.
“Like rats,” Jerry cursed.
“It appears our little friend at the door brought her whole sewing circle along, too.” Isherwood remarked grimly. “Either door, we’re busting in on a group of six or more in close quarters.”
“Can you get up on the roof of this place?” Justin asked. “If they’re close enough, we’ll just poke some holes in their heads. If not, we’ll use the guns. No problem, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I think I saw a ladder by the deli meat slicer – it should lead up to the roof.”
Jerry elected to stay inside the store with his feet flat on the ground, thank you very much. “Suit yourself,” Justin said, as he wriggled through the small opening in the roof, following Isherwood and Patrick. Before climbing up himself, he lifted a couple frog gigging poles up through the hole and a sledge hammer for good measure.
The sun was almost directly overhead now. The morning had drained away quickly. “Luckily,” Isherwood said, peering over the side of the building, “there just bunched at the two doors. I can’t believe none of them pushed open the back door.”
“Gig’em,” Patrick winked at Isherwood, as he leaned over the three foot or so of wall that rose above the tarred flat roof. The top of the wall was at most eight feet higher than the heads of the zombies. “Uh, hold my feet, okay? They’re farther down than I thought they’d be.”
“Bam!” Patrick said, making his own sound effects, as he plunged the metal-tipped wooden pole into the skull of one of the zombies below. There was an odd stretch of silence from Patrick, interrupted by the moans of the dead below that had taken notice of the man hanging over the side of the building. “Dang, it’s still going. I know I pierced the skull.”
“Probably didn’t do enough damage to the brain. Give it another whack.”
“Bam!” Patrick said again. “Bam! Bam! Fourth time’s the charm.” He cheered as he pulled himself back over the wall. “Wow,” he said, catching his breath.
“Good job, Bam Bam.” Justin said, taking the second pole and handing it to Isherwood. “Your turn, Pebbles.”
After a few more rounds of this with Isherwood and Patrick taking turns and Justin holding their feet, there was a mound of corpses piled up against the exterior wall. It had been easier going as the zombies mounded up on each other, getting closer and closer to the top of the wall.
“There’s that one last short booger that not even Isherwood’s long arms can reach.” Justin observed. “Distract him with the pole for a sec, okay?” He asked Patrick, and walked back over to the roof access hatch they had crawled through. “Hey, Uncle!” He called down. Moments later, Jerry opened the door and dispatched the diminutive zombie with a meat tenderizer.
They climbed back down from the roof and took care of the old hags’ sewing circle from street level. Next, they rattled their shopping carts out the back door, not really caring what might hear the noisy baskets. They loaded what they could into the bed of the truck for Jerry to drive back, and decided to wheel back the rest in the buggies. Justin, for his part, mounted the two frog gigging poles through the front of his cart like devil horns.
It was only a few blocks back to the church, so they decided to drop off their groceries and then go back to Delaware Avenue for Jerry’s welding supplies. There were a few stray zombies wandering around in front of the courthouse and Raymond’s pharmacy, which were easy enough to take care of as they passed. Isherwood thought he saw Patrick kill Raymond the pharmacist, himself, but Patrick didn’t recognize him from the commercials.
“Dangit,” Justin cursed, as they passed Ma Mama’s Restaurant. “Glad I brought these giggin’ poles. Ain’t no free meals in the zombie apocalypse.”
The shopping carts rattled to a stop a block from the church, and the blue Chevy truck stopped behind them. They were at least thirty zombies banging against the fence and blocking the south gates of the church.
*****
“Guys, we better conserve ammo until we can get to Wal-Mart.” Isherwood said, holstering his pistol. “Besides, the guns will only draw more zeds.”
“Wish they weren’t blocking the road.” Justin grumbled, pulling the frog gigging sticks out of his shopping cart. “We could just peg their heads with these from inside the fences.”
Isherwood walked back to the truck, and pulled a baseball bat from the bed. “If we just stand our ground, they should only come three or so at a time. Hey, Uncle Jerry – why don’t you stay in the truck and watch our backs, okay?”
“Want a gigging pole?” Justin asked Patrick.
“Nah, takes too many holes to bring ‘em down. I’m gonna use this.” Patrick drew out the six-pound mini-sledge hammer out of the shopping cart like Excalibur.
“Not if you knock ‘em – POW – right in the eye. Besides, Donatello was my favorite ninja turtle.” Justin smiled boyishly, slinging around one of the sticks. “What I wouldn’t give for a lightsaber, though.”
“You’d just slice off your own head.” Isherwood said, planting his feet and getting into his Ted Williams batting stance, while he twisted the Louisville Slugger in his grip. He took a few practice swings.
“Well, at least the wound would be cauterized, idiot.” Justin popped back. There were lined up with Isherwood to the left, because he could switch hit, Patrick in the center, and Justin to the far right. They kept buildings to either side of them to keep from getting too spread out and to protect their flanks. The shopping carts stood between them and the truck, and Jerry angled the truck into place long-ways behind them to protect their rear.
“Good point,” Isherwood agre
ed. “Here they come!” It happened that the first zombie, though it was angling for Patrick, stumbled instead over to Isherwood. Isherwood pivoted on his back foot to swing the bat right-handed, and yelled, “Got it!”
Thwack! Isherwood swung the bat, hitting the zombie about an inch behind its right eyebrow. The skull collapsed inward, crushing what was left of the frontal cortex.
“Nice,” Patrick nodded. “Maybe a double?”
The three men didn’t say much more as they got down to business. Justin took on the next zombie. He only managed glancing blows scraping against the thick bone around the brow. Then, he hit pay dirt. He planted his foot behind him so that he was perpendicular to his target. He bent his knees, lowering his center of gravity, and exploded forward. He thrust the pole straight into the zombie’s eye socket, and there was an audible clink as the metal tip clanged against the back of the skull. Justin pulled backward quickly, as well, in one fluid motion.
“Nice one,” Isherwood called out.
“Watch out for the eye juices,” Patrick added, as he whirled the mini-sledge down through a zombie skullcap. “You see that? Broke straight through the back of the skull, and the skin is unbroken. Clean kill, no contaminants, no juices.”
“Thanks, Danny Tanner.” Justin said he reared back, readying to thrust his gigging pole. “Wwwwake up! San Francisco.” He said, again thrusting the pole straight back into the skull.
“Idiot,” Isherwood laughed. He took a moment to wipe his mouth on his sleeve before pushing a zombie backward with the top of his bat. He again squared up, waiting for it to regain its balance and swung as its head slumped forward into the strike zone.
It was all over in less than ten minutes. Isherwood wiped the gore from the face of his Timex. “Gah, 2pm. We better hurry if we’re gonna unload and make it back to Delaware Ave for the torch and pick up what’s left of my chickens.”
“Well, let’s get going.” Jerry barked. “A man can get old sitting in a truck all day.”