SUBURBAN JUNGLE: A Post Apocalyptic Zombie Survival Thriller (Chronicles of the Undead: Book 2)

by Jaime Hernandez

  Frank, Junior, and Maggie stepped forward first, so the four of them focused on the six zombies while Anna, Michelle, and Emily kept watch. They didn’t want to get too bunched up in the aisle. Maggie reached for an emaciated middle-aged woman that had several bites of flesh missing from her arm. As she grabbed the woman, it stumbled forward and clutched Maggie’s shoulders with both hands, and its teeth came dangerously close to grazing her face. Maggie managed to plunge her knife deep into its eye, and it dropped to the floor. Max was face to face with an enormous man, even bigger than Frank. “Shit,” he swore. He should have let Frank have this one. He kicked one of its knees which caused it to lose its balance. As soon as it was down, Max thrust his knife through its ear. Junior twisted and turned, taking down two of them before Max had even gotten a good look at them. Frank caved in the skulls of the last two on the left with relative ease.

  They went back to the end of the aisle then continued their search. They made it past the water aisle and to the tire section before things took a turn. There were at least two dozen zombies in the tire and automotive area. Max hadn’t accounted for the tire shop attached to the corner of the store and the wide-open garage doors. “Everyone spread out,” Max instructed the others. “Michelle, keep watch in the middle, so nothing sneaks up on us from behind.” The long aisle that ran down the middle of the store, effectively splitting the place in two, had been free of the dead from what they’d seen so far, but they hadn’t cleared the other half of the store yet. Michelle stood with her back to the others, trusting that they would protect her as she made sure no surprises came from the other side.

  Junior dashed through the crowd as he thrust his knife. He was fast and wiry, so he killed the zombies in his path as he made his way to the big doors leading to the tire shop. When he reached the automatic door, it took every ounce of strength he had in him to force it closed. With the power out, the door was stuck in the open position, and he needed to make sure that no more of the dead came in through the door.

  “Junior, watch your back!” Emily yelled suddenly. Junior turned just in time to fight off a zombie that had been less than a foot away. He plunged his knife through its ear as adrenaline coursed through his veins. He had been seconds away from being bitten, and without Emily’s warning, he would have been a dead man. He tried to shake it off and got back to killing the other zombies.

  Anna cringed as a dead hand grazed her hair and shoulder, thankful that she had chopped her hair off or else she would have found herself entangled in its hand. She angrily thrust her knife through the dead man’s eye and turned to face the next one.

  Frank’s ax got stuck in a zombie skull. He pulled on it a couple of times, but it wouldn’t budge. He quickly grabbed the knife from his belt and took out the closest two zombies. Then he turned back to his ax and let it fall to the floor with the dead body. He leaned down, and with one foot on the zombie’s chest, he used both hands to rip his ax free from its head. He refocused his attention on a zombie walking toward him.

  Emily grabbed a young child by its hair and forced her knife through its ear, then turned to its sibling and did the same. Her area was briefly clear, so she looked to see who might need help.

  Maggie stayed pretty close to Michelle to be sure none of the dead could sneak up on her from behind. She killed several zombies as one after another shuffled toward her. She looked around and saw that they were finished. Everyone looked a bit winded, but all of the zombies were dead on the floor.

  “I’ve got half a dozen coming this way,” Michelle said with her back to the others. Maggie and Max were closest, so they helped her take them out.

  “Holy shit,” Max said as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I had forgotten all about the tire place.”

  “We all did,” Frank said. They all looked around to make sure everyone was okay and ready to go because they still had to clear the other half of the store. Everyone took a moment to gulp down some water and get prepared for whatever was coming next.

  Chapter 33

  Day 6

  “Michelle, do you mind staying in the middle again?” Max asked. “Just in case any of them moved around and got into the side we already cleared.”

  “I’m on it,” Michelle replied.

  The store was enormous, and clearing it out was taking a lot more time than they had expected. Because of its size, the areas they had previously cleared could end up with another stray zombie or two. They moved to clear the other half of the store but did it from the long, wide middle aisle. The first few aisles were empty, but then they started finding small pockets of the dead just as they had on the other side of the store. If the dead weren’t slow as hell, they probably would have all made it to the group by then since they had made a lot of noise killing the zombies around the tire area. It was a painstakingly slow process, but they finally cleared that side of the store and met back up with Michelle.

  “What about the restrooms, breakrooms, things like that?” Frank asked. He wasn’t sure if they should clear every inch of the place or not, since the water was on the far end that was fully cleared.

  “Fuck, better safe than sorry,” Max said. “What about the storage room and loading docks?”

  “I think we should make sure those doors are sealed off,” Anna said. “No need to go back there and clear them. If the loading dock doors are open, we could attract a hell of a lot of attention from any dead that might be out back behind the store.”

  “Agreed,” Emily said. “Let’s get this done.” She was running on pure adrenaline and didn’t want exhaustion to take over before they finished.

  “Hell, there’s a bakery section, customer service, lots of places for a stray zombie or two,” Junior said. “Let’s stick together, make sure every last area gets cleared, then do what we came here to do.”

  They were nearest to the bakery, so they went there first and found a zombie caught up in some boxes in the back. Junior killed it then they moved on to the storeroom that ran the width of the rear of the store. Max leaned in toward the door to see if he could hear anything on the other side. “There’s something back there, but I can’t tell how many,” he said. Max looked around at the closest shelves hoping to find something heavy to block the door. “That big ladder ought to do it,” he pointed to the ladder that reached the top of the highest shelves. “Let’s push it in front of the doors and lock the wheels. The dead won’t be able to push it away, and if they try, we’ll hear them.”

  Frank and Junior pushed the ladder in place and turned the wheel locks. It was heavy and wasn’t going anywhere. To their left was a doorway leading to the public restrooms and the employee breakroom. Maggie put her ear to the door but couldn’t hear anything. “I can’t tell if it’s empty or not. If any zombies are back there, they must not be anywhere near the door,” she said. They lined up to clear the area. Maggie opened the door while Frank, Max, and Junior walked through.

  “I hear something in the bathroom,” Frank said. He looked and saw that the door had to be pushed to be opened. “Never mind, they’d have to pull the door open from the inside, and we all know they aren’t capable of that.” A quick look at the breakroom showed the same. There was no need to clear out the rooms if the zombies were trapped inside of them. They left the hallway and went back inside the store. Together they headed for the customer service area to make sure there were no surprises waiting for them. Two zombies were moaning and reaching their arms out over the chest-high counter, but they couldn’t seem to find the door. Frank made quick work of both of them with his ax.

  They walked past the registers and found a crawler moving at a snail’s pace. Emily was closest, so she bent down and thrust her knife through its ear. As they neared the front door to grab pallet carts to carry water, they realized that the front door was still stuck open. It was possible that a few zombies might have entered the store while they were clearing it out. “Damn it,” Max said. “We should have had someone keep watch at the door.” He looked out to
the parking lot and saw only a handful of zombies in the distance, and they didn’t appear to be interested in the store.

  “Okay, Maggie and Michelle, you two keep watch up here while we get the water,” Max started. “That way, nothing gets in here without us knowing about it. Keep an eye on your backs in case any of them already came in. If a lot of them start coming toward the door, call one of us on the radio.” Of the seven of them, he wanted the five with the most muscle to get the heavy cases of water. Maggie and Michelle were both tough and very capable when it came to killing zombies but probably had the least physical strength of anyone in the group. “Everyone else, grab a cart. We’ll pile them high then unload them into the trucks.”

  With that, everyone else grabbed a pallet cart and made their way toward the water aisle near the rear of the store. Halfway there, Max stopped, and the others stopped behind him. There was a lone zombie in the aisle to his left. To be that far into the store already, it must have gotten in shortly after they started clearing the first half of the place. The zombie was a mess. It was a young blonde woman nearly naked from the waist down with strings of flesh hanging in the little spot where the shoulder meets the neck. Another chunk had been torn from the thin flesh around her collarbone, exposing bright white bones. Dried blood ringed her mouth and stained her chin. Her long hair was matted with bits of grass and dirt as if she’d taken a tumble on somebody’s lawn. Max grabbed her by the hair and stabbed his knife through her ear. He looked back to everyone else and said, “Let’s go.”

  The rest of the way to the water aisle was still clear from earlier. Once there, Max decided not to take any unnecessary risks. “We need someone watching our backs here. It’s going to be noisy grabbing the water,” Max said. He turned to Anna. “Want to be our lookout? Then we can just focus on loading up and not worry about watching our backs.”

  “Sure,” Anna said. She didn’t mind keeping watch, and someone had to do it. She stood a few feet away from the others so she could easily watch both ends of the long aisle.

  They could hear a faint thumping sound from another part of the store. Max motioned for everyone to stop again so they could listen for it. The thumping sound was joined by more thumping. “Shit, I think it’s coming from the storeroom. They heard us moving around or at least heard you guys push the ladder in front of the door,” Anna said.

  “Are you sure that ladder is going to hold?” Emily asked nervously as the noises multiplied and grew louder. “It sounds like a lot of zombies back there.”

  “Fuck. Anna, watch our backs on this end,” Max said. “Emily, watch from the middle aisle. If they manage to break through the door, you’ll see them. We’ll still have plenty of time to get out of here if there’s too many to kill.”

  There was more water than they could hope to fit inside the three trucks. Max, Frank, and Junior began loading case after case onto the large carts. They grabbed a bunch of gallon-sized containers knowing that they would be easier to use for things like cleaning up. They had stacked enough drinking water to last quite a while. Anna kept watching her end of the aisle while the men finished with the water.

  “They’re through the door,” Emily called out from her place in the center aisle. “The ladder didn’t hold.”

  “How many are there?” Frank asked as he brought up his ax.

  “I can’t tell for sure, but I think there’s less than it sounded like,” Emily answered.

  “We should see if we can take them out,” Junior suggested. “That way, we know it’s safe to come back here, and it’ll be easier to clear the store next time.”

  “Alright, let’s do this,” Max said. “But if there’s too many of them, we’ll just grab the water and go.”

  As the five of them headed toward the storeroom doors, Anna quickly called Michelle on the radio to let her and Maggie know what was going on. As they got closer to the doors, they saw half a dozen zombies slowly shuffling out. All of them were dead on the ground in less than a minute. In front of the doors was a large open area before the start of any of the aisles. They all looked around but didn’t find any zombies other than the ones they had already killed. The zombies thumping on the door had echoed loudly through the store, making it sound like there were a lot more than there was.

  Max bent down to look at the ladder. He was deeply troubled that the dead had managed to push the doors open when the ladder had been blocking them. Looking at the wheels, he noticed that the wheel locks were broken. They hadn’t realized it earlier because they appeared to have locked, but the wheels had still moved freely. The zombies had just enough momentum, pushing up against the doors, to slide the ladder about a foot to the side. That was all the space they’d needed to get through. “The wheel locks are broken,” Max told the others.

  “We might as well at least take a look in the storeroom,” Frank said. “If there were more, they probably would have come out with the others.”

  “Yeah, it’d be good to know for next time,” Junior said. “If it’s bad, we’ll lock up the doors with a chain and leave them.”

  “Anna, Emily, keep on the lookout while we head back,” Max said. “Make sure no surprises sneak up on us from this end.”

  Max, Frank, and Junior started into the huge room at the back of the store. There were ample skylights, giving them good visibility, and by the darkness at the rear of the room, they could tell that all of the loading dock doors were closed. No stray zombies would be making their way inside that way. As they made their way further into the enormous room and past pallets stacked high with all sorts of bulk goods, they heard the telltale sound of zombies shuffling around. They slowly and carefully covered the room in a grid pattern while staying together. They found the first zombie in a store uniform tangled up in plastic from a partially unwrapped pallet. Its eyes locked on the three of them as it struggled to break free to indulge in a meal. Frank quickly took it down with his ax. The second zombie was just around the next corner, his raspy moan and shuffling feet giving them advance warning and making it another easy kill. The storeroom was very organized, and it didn’t take long for them to make their way through it. They’d only found six zombies in the whole place.

  “People must have cleared out of here fast when it all started,” Junior said. “I was expecting a hell of a lot more than that.”

  “Me too,” Frank said. “I’m glad we’ve got it cleared. It’s going to be pretty safe next time we come here for supplies.”

  “If we can seal off the front of the store, we’ll be in great shape,” Max said. “Let’s double-check everything on our way back to make sure we didn’t miss any.” They headed back through the storeroom, making sure they looked everywhere. The place was so clean and neatly laid out that there weren’t many places a zombie could hide. Confident that the large storeroom was completely clear, they went back to the double doors where Anna and Emily were keeping watch. “We’re all good. There were only half a dozen left back there,” Max told them.

  “Well, let’s get back to the water,” Frank said. “I’m not even sure we can fit this much into the trucks. I think we ought to take all of this out there, then see if there’s any room for more. And we know we can make another run back here to get more later on.” They all moved back to the water aisle, where their carts were sitting piled high, ready to go.

  Just then, the radio clicked, and they heard Michelle’s voice. “We’ve got about a dozen or so getting close to the trucks and another half a dozen a little further back,” she said.

  “On our way,” Max replied. They pushed the cumbersome carts toward the front of the store while Anna continued to watch their backs. They saw the dead getting closer to the entrance, but none had made it near the door yet.

  “Let’s take care of these now before they get any closer,” Frank said. Anna kept an eye on the store behind them while everyone else approached the dead. They naturally fanned out to help keep the zombies spread out. Michelle was tiny, but she was lethal. She took one down before a
nyone else even had a chance to try. To her right, Maggie killed a thin teenager, and he dropped to the ground. Frank started heavily swinging his ax and took out three in quick succession. Junior jumped into the middle of the group of zombies, thrusting his knife until the three closest to him were down. Emily and Max had each taken out two while Michelle finished off the last one. The half dozen or so that had been further away in the parking lot were slowly shuffling toward them and had just started to enter their kill zone. They all went to work, and within thirty seconds, the zombies were on the ground dead. Max was about to speak when suddenly Maggie let out a blood-curdling scream.

  Chapter 34

  Day 6

  Max’s blood ran cold when he heard Maggie’s scream. Everyone turned toward her as quickly as they could. Two dead hands locked around her calf from behind, and a zombie’s teeth were starting to clamp down on her leg, almost as if in slow motion. As the teeth came close, all she could think to do was to throw herself forward to buy herself a few precious seconds. She landed hard on her hands and knees then tried to kick the zombie in the head with her free leg. It was a damn crawler that had come out of nowhere and grabbed her from behind. Michelle was the closest to her. She grabbed the zombie by the back of its hair, pulled it backward, and thrust her knife through its ear. With it dead and no longer a danger, she tried to pry its hands loose from Maggie’s leg but couldn’t get them to budge. Frank towered over her even when bent over and used his great strength to pull the fingers free.

  Everyone was scared. Max, Frank, and Junior’s minds flashed back to when Jesse was bitten, and Max had desperately searched his arm to see if the teeth had broken the skin. Anna gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. Emily shook her head in denial then turned to focus on the parking lot. Someone had to keep watch while they checked on Maggie. Michelle sat close to Maggie on the ground in an attempt to calm her as Max came over to examine her leg. He grimaced when he saw that two teeth were caught in her jeans.