Toby shook his head and stuffed another handful of potato chips into his mouth.
Jeff helped Danny to his feet. He gave his friend a fresh gauze pad out of the first aid kit and pushed him in the opposite direction of the Owens brothers. This put Danny next to the mother, Rachel Rooter. Danny smiled his crooked-teeth grin and raked his gaze up and down her body.
Jeff rolled his eyes. Time to get the conversation rolling again. “We can’t stay here.”
Criswell reached into Toby’s bag without asking. “Why the hell not? We have food and power. And how long after we step outside that door do we become zombie fodder? Not saying they’re zombies. But there’s no other word I can think of at the moment.”
“He has a point.” Sammy fired a staple along the edge of his makeshift curtain. Ka-chunk. “Where would we go?”
“They’ll eventually get in,” Jeff said. “Either we leave and try to get to a safer place or just wait until they find a way in.”
Or maybe, he added silently, I can get Paula back to the airport and fly out of this mess.
Danny tore his eyes off the red-haired mother. “Jeff’s right. Maybe we can find a hold-up where they’re not gathering.” He gestured at the foam curtain. “We don’t see them; they don’t see us.”
The talk progressed as Sammy continued his chore—ka-chunk, ka-chunk—and leadership fell to Jeff. Everyone started looking to him, waiting for his opinion. All except for Criswell, who objected to everything. Jeff didn’t like the arrangement, but it was better than leaving things to the S-TOC or some hotheaded kid with a caveman club.
He eventually voiced the airplane idea, but Criswell nixed it. “If we can get to a car, then why not just drive out of this hell hole?”
Danny winked at Rachel Rooter. “I’m an airline pilot, by the way. Big bucks.”
Jeff pointed at the checkout counter. “Sammy, is that your only phone back there?”
“No, I think Toby went to get my cell phone in the back.” Sammy smiled. “He’s too poor to have one.”
A moment later, Toby walked up the aisle, holding the cell phone. “No reception. I’ve also tried the CB and the Internet doohickey. Nothing.”
“Shit.”
“FM radio’s working, though. I got me the Boss Man Mike Show.”
Jeff sat up straighter. “And? Do they know what’s going on?”
“No. He just says to lock ourselves in and don’t get near…them.”
Sammy harrumphed. “Well, that sure is fuckin’ helpful. See, if I were in charge, I’d—”
“Shhh!” Danny held up a hand. “Does anyone hear that?”
Jeff held his breath and listened. Someone was crying.
“Oh.” Danny shrugged and reached for the first aid kit.
When no else moved, Jeff followed the sobbing sounds to the back of the store. There, he found Jimmy Owens consoling his little brother, who sat against a stack of Coors Light boxes.
“It’s okay. Mom’s in a better place now. She told us to run, and that’s what we did.”
Holy shit. Jeff realized for the first time how young Justin looked: entering puberty, judging by the smattering of zits on his chin. And he’d just lost his mother. Jeff didn’t know what to say to them, so he stood by and listened.
“They tore her apart, Jimmy. I don’t wanna die.”
“Hey, listen to me. I won’t let anything happen to you. You are not going to die.”
“What about Dad?”
“The phone lines are down.” The older brother looked to Jeff for confirmation, and Jeff nodded. “I’m sure he’s fine. The house is nowhere near the cemetery or hospital. He’s probably gonna sleep through this whole thing. And even if he was awake, he would want us to keep moving. We promised Mom. Right?”
The boy nodded.
Leaving them alone, Jeff wandered back to the front of the store. He wasn’t sure what to think of the Owens brothers. A while ago, they’d been ready to lynch Danny out of blind fear. And now they were just a couple frightened kids who’d lost their mother.
The way the older brother tried to stay strong for the younger reminded him of himself at that age. The Trents had been a single-parent family, Mama working shitty waitressing jobs to support them. Jeff and his younger brother worked, too, when they weren’t at school or playing on its raggedy ass sports teams. They earned scratch by pumping gas at the Gas ’N’ Sip—back then a plain old Texaco—or by delivering newspapers, chopping wood, or becoming janitors once they were old enough. Jeff always looked out for that little runt. Protected him from bullies when they were younger, yanked joints out of his lips when they were older. Eddie, thank God, latched onto a devout Christian woman during one of his junkets to a New Orleans Mardi Gras and was now a professional fisherman down there. She kept his ass clean and in line.
Eddie. Shit, their high school janitor jobs at the airport made him think of Mac. And Mac was lying dead outside right now.
It was Mac’s old man who interested him in airplanes. Mac Sr. was a greasy mechanic who looked like Santa Claus and smoked like the chimneys Santa slid down. Most days, after Jeff finished scrubbing toilets, Mac Sr. gave him lessons in airplane mechanics and finally in piloting. Jeff’s piloting career soon took off into the wild, fuckin’ blue yonder.
Mac. He would mourn for him properly when he could.
Weariness stabbed across the bridge of his nose and up into his forehead. It’d been one hell of a long day, starting with the flight from Atlanta, and it wasn’t getting any easier. Again, he wondered what was causing all this, and again, he came up with no explanation other than the meteor that almost killed him today.
At the front of the store again, he looked up from his feet to see Criswell waiting, arms folded across his paunch. “Well, fearless leader?”
“Well, what?”
Bewildered, Jeff looked to the others for support, but no one was paying attention. Sammy and Toby were busy peeking through the foam mattress curtain at the zombies outside. Danny was talking to—or talking at—the red-haired mother, who leaned against the checkout counter and studied her ragged fingernails. (“And then there was this time Jeff and I were laid over in Vegas. You ever play blackjack with a one-armed man?”) Her daughter stared blankly at the dead bugs in the fluorescent ceiling lights. Jeff glanced at the insects, glad that not everything was rising from the grave tonight.
Criswell cleared his throat. “I assumed since you walked off that you were forming a plan to get us out of here.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Well, in that case, I guess you’re not the leader anymore, and my plan is in control.” Criswell rubbed his hands together and turned to the others. “Hear that, boys? We’ll stay here where it’s safe. End of discussion. Now who wants to break out some booze?”
“Now wait a minute—”
“No, you wait. I’ve been pushed around ever since I arrived in this toilet of a town, and I’m done with it. I’ll do what I want.”
The Owens brothers walked up the aisle, Justin wiping his red eyes. Jimmy the greaseball hesitated before picking up the log he’d dropped on the floor. To Jeff’s surprise, he handed it to Danny. “Sorry for wanting to kill you.”
“No problem. Happens all the time.”
Jimmy nodded and turned to Jeff. “We’re with you. We stay, we die.”
Criswell rolled his eyes. “Oh, terrific. Are you and little bro gonna direct traffic for us?”
“Huh?”
“Maybe ask the nice zombies to stay a few paces back while we waltz out of here.”
“Hey, man. What’s your problem?”
“Idiots. And lots of them.”
The last person Jeff expected to interject was Rachel Rooter. Without looking at him, she handed him a key ring. It was festooned with racing car charms and a metal stencil of her name. “Here’s the keys to my van over by the Gas ’N’ Sip. It should fit all of us.”
“Shotgun,” Criswell said.
Jeff stared at him. “A
re you fucking kidding me?”
“No, I mean, shotgun.” Criswell pointed at Toby, who had pulled the shotgun from behind the checkout counter.
Toby’s smile needed a few extra teeth. “It’s for burglars.”
“Big ones,” Danny said.
Toby handed the gun and a handful of shells to Jeff. “Figured it might help.” He sneered at Criswell and walked off.
Jeff hadn’t used a shotgun in ages—wasn’t sure offhand how to load it—but Criswell was glaring at him. He’d figure it out later. “All right. The front door isn’t an option. Maybe it’s clear around back.”
Sammy walked up and casually took the gun and two shells from Jeff’s hands. He cracked the breech and loaded them into the side-by-side barrels before handing it back. “I’ll go with you to check it out.”
“Jimmy?” Jeff caught the young man’s eyes. Time to start trusting him. “You look after everyone until we get back.”
“Okay.”
Danny pulled a second piece of firewood from the Aisle Four display. With a wink and a grin at Rachel Rooter—who still wasn’t looking at him—he handed it to Jimmy. He propped his own on his good shoulder like a baseball bat and followed Jeff and Sammy to the back of the store.
“Coming, Criswell?” Jeff called.
Criswell stayed where he was. He locked eyes with Jeff and tore open a fresh bag of potato chips.
Good, Jeff thought. Now maybe we’ll get something done.
***
Sammy led the way through the first store room. It was piled floor to ceiling with metal shelves and more junk than Jeff would’ve thought possible. He didn’t see much in the way of normal grocery store stuff. Just mounds of antique junk: clocks, children’s toys, mildewed shower curtains, boxes full of VHS tapes, discarded furniture.
“Just what in the hell—” Danny began, but Jeff shushed him.
Through another door waited the interior half of a loading dock. The garage door was down and the lights off, so the only illumination came from a window high on the wall. Jeff couldn’t make out much more than the shapes of boxes and handcarts. Sammy navigated them as effortlessly as a rat.
Danny grunted as his hip banged into a box. He caught it before it could topple over. “Awful dark in here, Sammy.”
“Sorry. The light busted earlier today, and I haven’t had time to get to it.”
Jeff wondered if the blue energy might have had something to do with the busted light—and with that realization, a theory began stitching itself together. The meteor, the waves of blue light, the zombies. Was the meteor broadcasting the blue light and causing the zombies?
He headed toward a promising gray rectangle in the corner. “I think I found the door.”
“Yep, that’s it.” Sammy pulled out a key ring and unlocked it.
“We open it on three?” Danny said.
Jeff took a deep breath. “Right. One.”
Before he get to two, a shape detached itself from the darkness. Sammy screamed as it leapt onto his back.
“Aw, fuck!” Danny swung his log. He hit Sammy instead.
Jeff raised the shotgun, but then Sammy and the zombie wheeled into him. They all fell into a tower of boxes by the door.
The boxes must have been packed with bricks. When one landed on Jeff’s head, the loading bay’s darkness became absolute.
Chapter 12
KELTON
The last fucking thing Kelton expected to find in Lucy Grimm’s laboratory was a zombie charging at him. A real, honest-to-goodness zombie, like from Night of the Living Dead, which he’d watched over twenty times. And yet here one was, its autopsy incision a meaty curtain flapping open to reveal gizzards the color of old hamburger.
He raised his gun in time to shoot it in the forehead and stop it cold. It was probably the smoothest draw-and-shoot of his career, better than anything he’d managed at the firing range. He did it without thinking, and for a second he reveled in it. Shoot it in the head was Commandment Numero Uno in zombie movies, and by God he’d done exactly that.
The impact threw the creature’s head backward. The rest of the body would soon crumple.
Except it didn’t.
The zombie merely straightened its neck again as pink liquid dribbled down from the hole in its forehead. Then it smiled.
Kelton knew he should run. But he couldn’t move.
The zombie stood six feet tall, towering over them. If shooting them in the head didn’t work, what did you do? Kelton searched for a target, taking in the tattoos at the three points of the autopsy Y. He wondered if he should hit the flaccid penis dangling halfway down the thigh.
Wires and sensor pads fell out of its body as it stepped forward.
Lucy pointed. “In the heart. In the heart!”
Kelton took aim at center mass and fired again.
The zombie froze mid-step. Its face contorted. And then it collapsed.
Kelton gulped, feeling a sudden dryness in his throat. “Dead guy,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.
He shot the zombie again for good measure.
***
Five minutes later, he finally relaxed enough to reload and holster his weapon.
By that point, Lucy had explained the cadaver and its purpose—and re-explained it when Kelton was able to think clearly again. She’d also rehashed her findings about the sinoatrial node-like signal coming from the abandoned elementary school and how that led to the snap guesswork about shooting the zombie in the heart.
“I thought the heart might be like a radio receiver, still in touch with whatever sent that energy pulse. So I thought, ‘Take out the receiver.’”
As she talked, she rummaged through a desk in an adjoining office. The metal plate on the door said DR. THEODORE ROBERTSON. Kelton leaned against the door jamb, arms crossed, and kept an eye on the former zombie lying on the floor. It wasn’t moving.
He wondered if Myra Applewhite had been right after all about her nieces causing this. They’d certainly been in the middle of the incident at Henry Rooter’s. But that was also speculation and couldn’t help him right now. He needed to take a cue from the scientist here and focus on facts.
Like shoot ’em in the heart.
“I should call this in.” He reached for his cell phone and then paused as a terrible image came into his mind of Nilbog’s sprawling cemetery. “Uh, how many zombies you think are out there?”
“Not sure.” Lucy laughed as she opened and slammed shut desk drawers. Her voice had a strained, hysterical quality to it, but no wonder. “How many corpses with intact hearts are in town?”
“What a minute. Isn’t there a morgue or something on this campus?”
Lucy raised her head from her task. She swept her blonde bangs out of her eyes and looked toward the corridor. “Yes, on the other side of this building.”
“Of this building? Shit.”
“Don’t worry. The lab’s doors are pretty solid.”
“Yeah, but are they locked?” Kelton returned to the main room. He began inspecting the hallway door. No deadbolt in sight. “What are you looking for in there, anyway?”
When she didn’t answer, Kelton peeked his head back around the corner. “Lucy?”
She was turning a Sherlock Holmesian pipe over and over in her hands, appearing thoughtful. “Nothing. I just thought he might have some cigarettes.” She returned the pipe to Dr. Robertson’s desk and left the office.
Kelton smiled. She seemed like such a lab geek—a human robot—that it was nice to see something human. “Former smoker?”
“Yeah.”
“I get the craving too when I’m upset.”
“What do you do about it?”
She looked so hopeful that he didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. I masturbate to old pictures of Paula. Instead, he touched his gut. “I eat. As you can probably tell.”
Lucy laughed, more relaxed sounding this time, and that was nice, too. It was the second nice thing about this whole shift.
The first had been the chocolate doughnuts at the courthouse. How many lifetimes ago was that?
“So, about those locks.”
“What locks?”
Kelton gestured to the lead-lined hallway door and raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, that door doesn’t have a lock.”
“So you mean there’s no way to prevent zombies from just entering here from your morgue?”
“It’s an anatomy lab, not a morgue. And we have no proof zombies can operate doorknobs.” Lucy turned away and shook her head. “My god, are we actually having this conversation?”
Kelton stared at the metal bulb of the doorknob to the hallway. He knew—just knew—this would be the moment when he’d see it rattle and open. Another dose of perfect irony on a night already full of it.
When nothing happened, though, he jogged over and drew his gun. He took a deep breath and pulled the door open.
The hallway was empty. Silent, too. For now.
He closed it and looked around for a barrier. Settled on a two-drawer file cabinet.
Lucy helped him drag it into place. “I think this is silly.”
“You haven’t seen what’s out there. They’re killing people. I thought they were all drugged-up rioters, but see now they were zombies.”
Lucy stared at him. “Really? Killing people?”
“Really.”
“Okay. Let’s go examine the data again.”
“No, I think it’s time we left. This place isn’t as safe as the police station.”
“What? Kelton.” Lucy gestured at her equipment. “I can analyze what’s happening here. Don’t you understand? I can feed information to the police.”
Kelton bit his lip. Shit, she had a point. “Can’t you take your findings with you on a floppy disk?”
“A floppy disk? Yes, and I’ll just load it onto your Commodore 64. What decade are we in, Kelton?”
“Huh?” He knew she was making fun of him, but he didn’t quite understand. “So, is that a yes?”
“No. You want my help, then protect me here.”
He looked between Lucy Grimm and the file cabinet barring the door. “Okay, but I need my shotgun and all my spare ammo.” So he could sound a little bit smarter, he added, “And my forensic kit. Since we have a dead body here and all.”
Plan 9- Official Movie Novelization Page 11