“Anyone else?” Mrs. Williams picked up a list from the counter and handed it to Princess. “If you’ll shop for the groceries, we’ll get the clothes. I’ll need everyone’s sizes.”
The others chose to stay at the house and said they’d wait for our report. Princess, Moonshine, and I took the sedan to the closest grocery store that we found on the maps left in the rental and pulled into the full parking lot. The grocery store was your typical corporate monstrosity located in a large strip mall that blended both well-known big box names, with independent surf shops and gifts stores, and as there were just three days until Christmas it seemed every person in a fifty mile radius was completing their lists.
“This will be like shock therapy for being normal again.” Princess grabbed a cart from the corral as we passed. “Grab another,” she said over her shoulder.
Moonshine pulled out a cart. “So a blonde, an Asian, and a black walk into a store,” he said, as we followed her toward the automatic doors.
I literally jumped when the doors swept open and Moonshine looked down at me. “Robots,” I explained. “Automatic anything is never going to be the same again.”
He nodded.
A big blast of warm air flowed over us as we moved from the one door, across the area where the shopping carts were stored and kids cried in front of metal machinery holding gumballs, candy, toys, and temporary tattoos, and through the next automatic door into the store. “I never knew it could be so stressful walking in a grocery store,” Moonshine said.
“I thought about tearing the list in half and splitting up, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Princess said, heading toward the produce section, avoiding oncoming traffic, and looking at the list. “Okay, we need apples, potatoes, onions, broccoli, celery, cranberries, spinach, and green beans.” She grabbed a bag of apples, Moonshine went for the potatoes, and I headed to a mound of green beans.
As I was stuffing the beans in a bag I felt I was being watched and glanced over to see that an older lady had stopped, blocking the flow of shoppers, and was staring at me with her mouth slack. I smiled and nodded as you do when encountering strangers in stores during the Christmas season, and she did not respond. She neither smiled, nor averted her eyes and continued to glare. I turned, finished my task, and glanced back at her. She was still gawking. I pushed the cart forward, grabbed a couple bunches of broccoli, and when I glanced back the ogling woman had moved on. I breathed a sigh of relief and caught up with Moonshine and Princess.
“Meat,” Princess said over her shoulder, as we moved our carts forward in a single file line. “Two turkeys, pork chops, ground beef, chicken breasts, and a couple roasts.”
“I’ll get the turkeys.” Moonshine wandered off into the crowd.
I grabbed several packs of pork chops and ten pounds of ground beef, and then Moonshine returned with the turkeys, dropping them in my cart. “Do I have a booger hanging out of my nose?”
I looked up at him and shook my head.
“Do I look funny somehow?”
“No, why?”
“Dude was staring at me like he’d never seen anything like me, with his mouth open and this blank expression.” He shook his head.
“I had a lady doing the same to me, weird.” I was ready to go and we’d only just started on the long list.
We worked our way through the store and I noticed a couple other people who just stopped what they were doing and gawked at us. I looked us over, we appeared normal, and there was no blood, guts, or zombie juice dripping off of us. We’d left our duct tape super hero costumes at the cabin, and were not carrying any weapons. We were all dressed similarly in sweaters, flannel, and jeans, just like most of the shoppers we encountered, and as far as I could tell there was no reason that we should draw such strange attention. Not all customers looked at us or acknowledged us in any way, though, and most seemed preoccupied with whatever was on the screen of their cell phones or keeping up with their children.
We reached the end of the store where the dairy products were kept, and I was staring in the freezer with the door open trying to decide between chocolate chip and cookie dough ice cream, and finally deciding on both I shut the door and nearly jumped out of my skin. A woman was standing on the other side of the frosted glass with her mouth open and expression blank. “Excuse me,” I said and tried to get around her, but she didn’t move, it was almost as if she was in a trance. I was wedged in as another customer was trying to pass, and the woman continued to glare, and for a moment I felt like the fifty deadheads back on the street in Arlington were surrounding me.
Finally, whatever held the woman captive, let go, and she went back to her shopping as though nothing had happened. I glanced over at Princess and Moonshine and knew that they had witnessed the event. “Is that everything?”
“Yeah, lets get out of here.” Moonshine grabbed my cart and began pushing it quickly to the checkout. While waiting impatiently for the cashier to ring up two full carts it happened a couple more times, a woman at the next lane over stopped mid swipe with her credit card in her hand, and a bag boy froze as he was handing groceries to a customer. The customer didn’t really seem to notice the lag time and took the bag without a second glance. By the time we made it out into the busy parking lot, and then nearly got hit by a car, we were in survival mode.
“What the hell was that all about?” Princess pushed the cart aggressively toward the sedan parked in the far lot. “I’m used to people looking at me funny, hell, the dreads got stares all the time, but I have never experienced anything like that except this last week in Arlington.” She stopped abruptly three cars away from ours. “Are they zombies? Are they about to zombie out?”
“Come on.” Moon took the buggy and finished the distance to the car. He opened the trunk and began tossing things in haphazardly and Princess grabbed the eggs before he tossed them. “Let’s move.”
We left the carts in the lot, and although I thought about returning them to the handy corral, all I could think of was how far the walk was and how exposed and unprepared we were for an attack. With audible sighs of relief we climbed in the car and locked the doors.
“Did they see something in us? We’ve been talking about how we have been changed, have we changed so much that other people see it in us?” He backed out of the space, pulling through the lot as quickly as he could without causing an accident. We rushed home hoping to share our experience with the others, but everyone was gone except Sully who sat on the deck wearing a coat against the chill and reading a book, a bottle of whiskey on the table beside him.
He stepped inside and helped put away some groceries. “How was the world?”
“Weird, people were staring at us, like zombies,” Princess said and shook her head. “I don’t know, weird. Where’d everybody go?”
“They went to look around town, said they wouldn’t be gone long. What do you mean people were staring like zombies?”
“Something is bad wrong, dude. They would just stop whatever they were doing and stare.” Moonshine mimicked the blank, slack-mouthed look. “And not just for a second, but for seconds.”
“You know how sometimes you’ll be lost in thought and find you’re staring at someone? Yeah, not like that. When that happens you smile or nod or acknowledge that you were being an idiot, these people just stopped and stared and then kind of restarted like they weren’t even aware of what had happened,” I tried to explain how odd it had been.
“How many people do you suppose were in the store?” Sully sat down at the counter that separated the kitchen from the main room.
“It’s Christmas, it’s a big store, and it was pretty packed. Over a hundred I’d guess,” Princess said.
“How many staring events happened?”
“Maybe six.” I counted. “Yeah, at least six different people stopped and glared.”
“Okay,” Sully stood up. “Less than ten percent. Let’s see what the others have to say when they get back.” He walked back onto the por
ch and settled down with his book.
“What does he know?” Moonshine said.
“God, I hope he’s not about to turn back into logical Sully, I didn’t like that guy.” Princess watched him through the glass.
“Zombie Sully was cool as hell, though.” Moonshine laughed.
“It’s true,” I said. “I wish they’d hurry up and get back.”
Sully was still on the deck and we were sprawled out on the furniture flipping channels on the TV when we heard a car pull in and the three of us met Mrs. Williams as she was stepping out of the Jeep. It was obvious right away that their trip hadn’t been any better than ours, especially when Sarah ran from the car and jumped in Princess’s arms.
“You’re safe, you’re home.” Princess carried Sarah up the stairs and we followed with the packages.
“We went to Mitchell’s Department store and it was crowded, very crowded, so we split up, Connie and Rebekah went to the ladies, and Sarah and I went to the men’s department. There was Christmas music playing and I usually enjoy this time of year, but people seemed, I don’t know,” Mrs. Williams paused and searched for the right word, “out of it, distracted. A lot of them had their phones with them and you get used to them just stopping in front of you and blocking your way as they zone out, but the people I noticed didn’t have phones and they would just stop and stare into space. And Sarah said some of them gave her a bad feeling.”
“There was a sound, too.” Sarah lifted her head up from Princess’s shoulder. “But it wasn’t a squeeee like the zombie sound, it was more grindy, like a bbzzzzzzz.”
“I heard it too, but it was more like I felt it.” Rebekah said. “Like she said it was grindy, it’s hard to explain.” She stacked pairs of mens jeans on the couch by size.
“At first I thought it was loud in there, it’s Christmas, there were a lot of people, music was playing, but then a lady started talking on her cell phone and I realized the people around were all quiet. I didn’t see or hear anyone carrying on a conversation or laughing, it seemed the loudness was in my head.” Connie stacked flannel shirts by size and placed them beside the jeans. “Maybe that’s what they mean by grindy, like a buzz in your head.”
“Bbzzzzzz,” Sarah demonstrated.
“I had trouble concentrating, too. I had a list, I knew what we needed, but I would find myself zoning out, not staring into space, but it felt dream like. You know how in a dream you can be eating an ice cream cone one second and then the next you’re on a battleground and it’s completely normal because it’s a dream? Well I was looking at packages of underwear, and the next thing I knew I had left the lingerie department and was standing in front of a wall of jeans. I looked down in my cart, and I had picked up the underwear, but I had no memory of it or of moving on through the store. I can honestly say that that has never happened to me before.” Connie dumped the packages of undergarments on the couch and began separating them. “It was quite disconcerting.”
“Tell me about the bad feelings you had,” Princess asked Sarah.
“It wasn’t like when the monsters were coming, and it wasn’t like when the men in black came.” She screwed up her face searching for a way to describe the feeling. “We went to the zoo once, and Bekah and I were looking at the lions. There was glass between the lions and us, but when one of the lions roared and I saw how big his mouth was, I knew he could eat me with only one bite. I knew he couldn’t get through the glass to get me, but it was still scary. It was like that.”
“So it was like deadheads on the other side of the glass instead of lions?” Princess raised her eyebrows.
“Yeah, kinda,” Sarah climbed down out of Princess’s arms and opened one of the bags that held clothes for her and Rebekah.
“Well, they weren’t staring into space at the grocery store,” Moonshine said. “They were staring at us like they were in some kind of trance, like the zombie trance. As weird as it sounds I wondered if they knew what we had done in Arlington, I wondered if they could see it on us somehow.”
“I know, I kept checking to make sure we weren’t armed, or didn’t have blood and guts on us, or hadn’t mistakenly worn our zombie fighting suits,” I said.
“How many of these zoning out events did you see,” Sully asked Mrs. Williams.
“Three or four. Yes, it was four times.”
“And Sarah, how many times did you get the bad feelings?” Sully said.
Sarah admired the red velvet dress she held against her chest and answered without looking up. “Four.”
“What do you know, dude?” Moonshine pulled the tags off a shirt with his teeth.
“Nothing yet. We’ll see how the others made out.” He picked up a cardigan sweater with leather patches on the elbows and smiled at Mrs. Williams. “I take it this is for me?”
“I couldn’t resist.” She smiled.
Princess looked at me and winked. And for a moment all the stress, fear, paranoia, and uncertainty fell away and for a moment everything was right and in focus and for a moment I think we all felt hope. For a moment it was Christmas and we were one big and happy family. But the moment was brief and reality rebounded as the rest of our group returned from town and reported much the same things we’d experienced.
“Will and I went to the library, I wanted to get on the computer especially after what Binks had said about all our media being controlled. I wanted to see what I had missed or if I’d find different things in a search from the library than I would a search from here on the wi-fi.” Rotten opened a beer and sat on the couch. “Anyway, the computers were busy, surprising how many people were there, lots of kids, so I picked up the local newspaper. There was an article about the most recent earthquake and how it had been felt all the way to the coast, not as strong as the Blacksport earthquake that was felt in five states. It mentioned that several families evacuated from the outlying areas of Blacksport and Freemont had relocated here after they lost everything in the disaster. There was also a phone number and website where you could donate to help them get back on their feet.”
“I just wandered around.” Will held up a t-shirt with a superman logo on the front. “I don’t think this will fit Sully.” He laughed. “There was some kind of weird buzz in there, like all the white noise in a building from the lights, computers, printers, and all the electric stuff was tuned to the same irritating frequency, it was grindy.”
“Bbzzzzz.” Sarah twisted back and forth, still holding the dress, and watched the ruffles dance around her knees.
“Yeah, like that.” Will picked up a batman t-shirt and smiled. “Thanks, y’all.”
“I only saw one person acting like they were in a trance, but I was reading the back issues of the paper,” Rotten said. “And then a computer freed up and I got on. I was searching back in the news to see what we’d missed and there wasn’t as much coverage of the first earthquake as we believed, so Binks was right, all that looping and continuous footage was just for us inside the dead zone. Out in the world there were a lot of articles for one day and then not much of nothing; we were replaced by a shooting in LA. A cop shot a kid in the street. Over a hundred thousand people dead and it had the nation’s attention for just a day or so. Oh, and remember those videos we watched at Grady’s? Those zombies all over the world videos? Yeah, none of them exist, except one clip and it’s from some B horror flick no one’s seen before. ”
“I think I saw a couple people zoning out, but it was hard to tell with the people sitting at the computers because they usually have that zoned out look.” Will picked up the backpack set with his clothes and checked out the pockets.
“We had people staring at us,” Beth said. “Had me downright jumpy.”
“We just walked around downtown, there weren’t a lot of businesses open, I guess they close in winter, but we got some coffee and went to the drug store.” Highland dumped a half a dozen prepaid cell phones on the counter. “I saw the girl serving our drinks freeze up for a couple seconds at the grinder, and anoth
er lady in the drug store stopped and stared at us with that blank look.”
“I been thinking and my question is why zombies?” Sully said. “We haven’t really talked about it, which is odd in itself, but we did see some kind of spaceship take off the other night. It was the aliens after all, Michael.” He smiled. “So why zombies? If mean if they wanted to kill us it sure seems that they possess the capability and the technology to kill everyone of us, but instead they turn us into zombies?” He shook his head. “I think the zombies are just a waste product left from the real experiment, which is to create a perfectly controllable human and I think they know how, but it doesn’t work with everyone. I suppose whatever is inside of us that makes us human rebels, so maybe they get one or two from every five hundred zombies and then maybe they just seed them back into society for future use.”
“It is weird how we’ve barely mentioned seeing a mother ship appear, float, flip, and disappear.” Rotten agreed. “That sure doesn’t happen everyday. And when I saw the damned thing was shaped like a pyramid, you know, the most used example of the illuminati conspiracy, I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Such a ridiculous cliché and I felt they were rubbing it in my face. A pyramid.” He sighed and rolled his eyes.
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