This Would Be Paradise (Book 1)

by N. D. Iverson

  “Wow you’re an expert at that,” I taunted, and the look he gave me made me grin even wider.

  Ethan burst out laughing and even John coughed to cover up his snort of laughter. I felt like I had gotten my revenge, albeit petty revenge, but whatever. After a few seconds, the gas stopped flowing and we all peered down at it, as if by miracle our staring would make it run again.

  “I didn’t think this would work,” John sighed as he took off his hat and ran his hand over his head. For someone his age, he had a pretty good set of hair.

  “The tank needs to be higher for this to work properly,” Taylor pointed out.

  “I’ll do another look around for somethin’ with a hand pump.” At that, John jogged back to the garage for something more useful.

  The three of us just stood around, not saying a word. Taylor and I traded some more squinty eyed looks, while Ethan tried not to notice the tense atmosphere. I was about to say something about his rusty sucking skills when John emerged from the garage, this time with a device that looked like the bicycle tire pump we had back home; just with two hoses instead of one.

  “This should work much better. Must’ve missed it the first time around,” John announced as he placed one of the hose ends in the jerry can and the other hose running from the pump into the underground tank.

  The handle of the red pump was on the top and reminded me of the detonators in the Looney Tunes cartoons. After thirty seconds of using the pump, the gas started to flow again much to our relief.

  In the end we had half a dozen canisters full of gas which had better last us a while. Taylor reclosed the tank just in case we needed to come back for more gas in the future. There was still a good amount left; we just had to hope that no one else found our treasure trove of gas. John mentioned that gas does go stale, but desperate times meant we had no choice but to try it. We made sure the hand pump was placed securely inside the truck so we didn’t lose it.

  After putting the cans into the back, we reconvened in the truck. Taylor and I refused to acknowledge one another as we shared the back seat. We were walking distance from the Walmart and the area between only had a few infected roaming. The rest seemed to have disappeared for the moment which was a relief and worrying at the same time.

  The massive parking lot was abandoned except for a few cars neatly parked in a spot, a handful of tipped over carts and a manageable amount of infected. I’d say the place looked to be in pretty good shape, but I suppose looks can be deceiving. Ethan pulled up to the front door and killed the engine. We scoped out the place before we got out of the truck. There were three infected using the parking lot like their own personal walking track, but as soon as we had pulled up they started toward the noise.

  I unloaded my magazine to see how many bullets I had left; I counted seven. We clambered out of the truck to confront the three, but John shot them in a quick succession before we had the chance to lift our weapons up. Luckily he was still using his silencer; he wouldn’t risk shooting out here without one.

  “How long were you in the military?” Ethan asked, as he placed his put his pistol away.

  “Fifteen years,” John answered. “I’ve been stationed all over the world with my platoon.”

  “Got any ‘Nam stories?” Ethan asked.

  John chuckled, “I ain’t that old, son. That war ended the same year I turned old enough to enlist. But I got many other stories.”

  Oh joy, back-in-my-day stories.

  I walked up to the front doors and peeked inside. Since the power had been out for quite some time, it was no surprise that the doors didn’t part for me as I approached. The light from outside barely broke into the cart lobby, and I had to wipe away some of the dirt caked onto the glass doors just to see inside better. From what I could gather, there were no infected nearby, and the second set of automatic doors were wide open unlike the set I was currently peering through.

  “Come on and help me pry these apart,” I said, wishing they weren’t dead bolted.

  I stuck my fingers into the little slot where the doors met, and with Ethan grabbing the other side, we heaved. Slowly the doors parted for us as, squealing at the sudden use after being neglected for so long. If the doors weren’t locked, that meant anything could be in here. We gave the parking lot one last look to make sure it was devoid of infected and with our bags in hand, we reclosed the glass sliding doors behind us.

  Once inside, we flipped the dead bolts, which only required a key to get in, not to lock up from the inside. Then we did the same for the second set of doors.

  “Should we be locking ourselves in without checking the place out first?” I asked.

  “Even if somethin’ is in here, it would be even worse if anythin’ outside got in, too,” John pointed out. “At least we know the front is secured.”

  “For all we know, the back door could be wide open,” Ethan mentioned.

  “Good point,” John said as he took his gun from its holster. “Let’s check the perimeter first. Bailey and Ethan, you check the emergency exits and doors around the floor. Taylor and I’ll check the back.”

  “Splitting us up? That’s horror movie talk,” I said nervously.

  “We need to get this place locked down as soon as possible,” John insisted. “Which means we need to cover as much ground as possible, fast.”

  We all rummaged around in our bags for our flashlights and clicked them on. The sunlight coming through the front doors only shone so far. I pointed my beam all around to see if I could spot anything, but the immediate area seemed to be clear of infected. The smell of rotting food hung in the stale air, but if you breathed through your mouth, it wasn’t so bad. The grocery section took up the left side of the store while the non-food items took up the rest of the supermarket.

  The store didn’t seem to be in as bad of shape as I thought it would. There were carts here and there and some of the shelves were picked over, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary for this store. John and Taylor took off down the middle aisle toward the back, while Ethan and I decided to start along the left wall and make our way around.

  I made sure I was breathing through my mouth as the stench of rotten food got stronger. The produce section had created its own compost heap so we pretty much ran past that part. The first door we spotted was the one that lead to the back room. John and Taylor had that section, which apparently ran around the whole building in a U-shape. I pointed my flashlight along the wall while Ethan pointed his ahead.

  “Ethan,” I whispered as I spotted the first emergency exit door.

  It was closed; I could only see the light from outside trying to peek through the bottom. Ethan wiggled the bar handle to make sure it wouldn’t swing open easily. Once we were satisfied that it wouldn’t open from the outside, we continued on. At the careful pace we were going, it took us just under an hour to check the perimeter. We had made it all the way back to the entrance part, which only left the washrooms and the janitor’s closet.

  We rounded the corner of the women’s washroom. Ethan stepped in first to make sure nothing was hiding in the darken space. The sound of the creaking hinges rang out in the small space as Ethan pushed open all the doors one by one. I heard footsteps behind me and whirled around to see the half eaten face of a former employee. His blue vest was ripped and stained dark red. His decayed skin had taken on the same colors as his dirty vest. With a growl he launched himself at me, knocking both of us to the floor.

  I focused all my energy on keeping his discolored teeth away from me. The thing was relentless with his snarling and snapping. I turned my head to avoid the dribbling blood and saliva that the thing was spraying with every attempt to bite into me. I was about to yell for help when the body was ripped from me and flung across the floor, its arms flailing. Before the infected could get back up, Ethan stomped down hard on its head. The decayed skull gave way fairly easily to the pressure of his foot and soon a pulpy mess covered the white floor and walls.

  “You okay?” Ethan ran b
ack over to me and heaved me up.

  I gave myself a once over and nodded, “Yeah, I managed to keep him from biting me.”

  I was shaking slightly from the adrenaline and fear. For a second I thought I might throw up. The nasty, rotting smell didn’t help with that either.

  “You gonna be okay to keep goin’?” Ethan asked, seeing that I was slightly shaken.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said curtly and he let it go.

  I pulled out a handful of paper towels and wiped myself down, trying to dislodge the mess the infected had sprayed me with. When I was done, we stepped over the mess and checked the rest of the front area. So far, the peeping Tom infected was the only thing we had run into.

  “Should we go look for them?” I asked. “They’re taking a long time.”

  “Let’s head down the middle aisles on the way then.”

  As we passed by more empty lanes on our way to the back of the store, growling became the first sign that we were not alone in the center. I shone my flashlight in the direction of the sound and once it landed on the infected, I realized that had not been a good idea. The infected’s attention was now honed in on us and we took a few steps back. Ethan whipped out his machete as the thing started toward us.

  “Down here,” I said, pointing my light to one of the home accent aisles.

  Ethan nodded and we bolted toward the land of bathroom mats. The infected chased after us but I suppose it couldn’t see too well; it ran straight into the massive display of frying pans that was plunked down in the main throughway. The display was knocked over and the crashing noise was so loud that I cringed. That would surely attract anything that was lurking in here.

  “Shit!” I heard Ethan hiss behind me.

  The flashlight bounced all around in front of me as we ran, making it hard to keep a steady eye on anything.

  “Turn back!” I yelled at Ethan, stopping dead in my tracks.

  A handful of infected had managed to cut us off. Their mangled bodies created a blockade at the end of the aisle. Ethan yanked me back toward the way we had come with the six on our trail forcing us to keep moving. The first infected that had caused the noise was still trying to get itself untangled from the display, making more noise in the process. As we ran past its reaching hands, Ethan brought down his machete on the things head. One swing was all it took and it stopped moving. Ripping the weapon from the things skull, Ethan and I ran even faster away from the approaching crowd.

  It seemed like we had garnered the attention of every infected that was in here. Somehow we had not run into them during our perimeter check; they must have been hiding in the center aisles.

  “Maybe we can try to lose ‘em.” Ethan grabbed my hand and pulled me toward another aisle.

  We weaved through all the aisles, trying to shake the ones following us. I hoped this worked as well as it did in the truck. Finally, we had made it to the back of the store, but I could still hear the mass of infected approaching somewhere in the aisles near us. They hadn’t wandered off like I hoped they had. Having been trapped in here, they probably haven’t come across fresh meat in a while and the thought made me grimace. The shuffling and groaning was getting louder by the second.

  I looked over at Ethan, who had the exact same look of desperation plastered on his face as I did. Our eyes darted back and forth until we simultaneously spotted the set of scuffed plastic swinging doors that lead to the back room. Neither of us had to say anything as we bolted straight for them.

  Chapter 17

  We crashed through the doors like a couple of battering rams. I felt Ethan’s hand grab my arm, and then he yanked me to the left, just as I started to contemplate which direction we should go. The narrow back room was lined with jam-packed shelves as high as the warehouse ceiling with pallets of product sticking out dangerously, making the aisle difficult to run in. I heard the sound of the plastic doors swinging open again as the mini-horde pursued us.

  “Get behind me!” a familiar Southern accent rang out.

  We spotted John and his worn cowboy hat just around the west corner. Once we were clear of his line of fire, he raised his gun to eye level, as the infected approached in a crowded mass; some fell to the others insistent shoving and some to the littered alleyway. Muffled shots came from John’s raised weapon, and soon a blockade of dead infected clogged the passage.

  “Did you alert every one of those things in the store?” John asked us as he reloaded his gun.

  “They were hidin’ in the aisles,” Ethan said indignantly.

  “Where’s Taylor?” I asked, noticing it was just John.

  “Unloadin’ some of the pallets we found. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  We followed him around to the other side of the backroom. Taylor was slicing up one of the shrink-wrapped skids of product with a box cutter.

  “Found a whole bunch of protein bars,” Taylor beamed at his find. “Should last us a good while too.”

  “Now that we made sure the back is clear, we should move the truck ‘round back to load this stuff in,” John suggested.

  “Well, I’m sure as hell not lugging it all out the front door,” I said as I eyed our year supply of protein bars.

  Ethan and I headed back into the main part of the store, a lot more alert this time. We stuck close to the outer walls just in case there were more lurking inside the aisles. Luckily, we made it all the way back out and to the truck with no more infected, but I’m sure there were some left inside. We would just have to stay on our toes.

  The massive steel loading door squealed as John and Taylor tried to open it up. There was a manual pulley system as a backup that required two people to tug on the rusted silver chains just to lift it a little. Ethan backed the truck right up against the loading dock, which was about three feet higher than the bed of the pickup. Together we tossed the protein bar cases in the back in a matter of minutes.

  “We also found a flat of water and some dried goods we can use,” Taylor huffed as he lifted the wooden pallet outside and out of the way.

  We kept a wary eye on the back lot just in case some roaming infected decided to stop by. There was only one out there that we could see, so Ethan jumped from the dock and took the thing out with his machete, leaving a nasty stain on the tarmac. He grimaced at the mess that now coated his weapon and he flung it to the side to dislodge the decaying matter.

  “Now, should we just load up what we can find back here or look around?” John asked.

  “We’re here, we might as well grab all that we can,” I shrugged.

  I desperately needed new clothes and hygiene products. You would be surprised how rough living out in the sticks and washing on a scrub board, like a housewife from the 1800s, can be on your clothes. Plus, we needed deodorant, and trust me that was a necessity, not a luxury. John glanced down at his watch.

  “We don’t have many daylight hours left. Maybe we should make camp here?”

  A supermarket and now a hotel chain? Walmart really did have everything. Ethan looked around nervously. “This was supposed to only be a day trip. I don’t want the others to be worried.”

  “I’d rather spend the night sheltered than chance drivin’ ‘round in the dark. There aren’t streetlights anymore,” John reasoned.

  He had a point. If anything happened while we tried to get back in the dark, we would be even more screwed than normal.

  “Looks like I’m outnumbered,” Ethan sighed and I looked away guiltily.

  Normally I would take his side, but not this time.

  “All right then, let’s finish loadin’ what we can back here.”

  Between the four of us we managed to completely fill the truck bed with food products. Looks like any extra supplies would be crammed with us in the seats. John released the roll-up door while Taylor and Ethan stood underneath to gently place it on the ground. The last thing we needed was a big crash to alert more infected to our whereabouts.

  “Everyone got an idea of what they want?” John asked just befo
re we pushed open the swinging doors.

  We all nodded.

  “There can’t be that many more of them in here,” Ethan said, pointing to the mass of bodies that piled up where John shot them. “So do you each want to take a section?”

  I tried not to let my concern show on my face, but I was not happy with being sent on my own. We walked out onto the main floor, no infected or even a sound greeted us.

  “All right, Ethan and I will split up the grocery section. Taylor, you take campin’ supplies, and Bailey you take the pharmacy area. Grab what you can and bring it back here so we can load it all up at once.”

  As we were about to take off, Ethan stopped me and whispered quietly. “If you get into trouble, just holler, and I’ll be right there.”

  I was going to point out that the food and pharmacy sections were on opposite sides of the store but instead just nodded. Then I took a deep breath through my nose and clicked on my flashlight again, starting towards my designated section. All I could hear was the blood pumping in my ears and the sound of my feet quietly hitting the cold floor. I stuck with the main aisles to get to the other side. This way, I had a larger view path so it would be harder for anything to sneak up on me. I calmed my breathing, making it easier to listen for the sounds of infected. Looking to my right and left rapidly was starting to make me dizzy, so I opted for just looking straight ahead. I shone my light onto the wall and saw the giant red pharmacy sign like a lighthouse beacon.

  I realized I had not brought anything to carry all the supplies in other than the backpack currently resting on my back. Shit. I walked up and down the aisles and spotted an abandoned cart. I placed my flashlight down and holstered my gun so I could take the items out. Looks like someone had grabbed all the toys they could but never made it to the register with them. I shoved the boxes onto the empty spots on the shelf closest to me. I had a bad habit of doing that even before the outbreak.