Moving into the middle of the street, Kaige tilted her head slightly, looking off to the side of the road at the old burger joint that stood there. She didn’t want Logan to see her wiping her eyes, but her nose gave her away.
“I’m sorry you have to go through that alone, Kaige.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Kaige turned her head, giving him a small smile. “None of us should have had to go through the things we have. But the only thing that keeps me going is believing that there is some reason for it.” She explained to him as they walked down the middle of the road, even as they talked their eyes kept a watch on the landscape.
“That’s a good way to look at it.” Logan admitted, although he wasn’t sure that he believed it was true. He didn’t know what to believe if he was being brutally honest with himself. Logan wasn’t brought up in a religious household, so he didn’t know anything about God or the bible, only that many people gave in to the concept of a being that looked after them, but for whatever reason that allowed terrible things to happen and people said that it was because of humans free will and how God couldn’t or rather wouldn’t manipulate free will. Logan didn’t fully understand it, but he wasn’t against the idea either.
“After Walter died, I started to think that I might be the only one left until I saw Tobey or rather, he saw me. I thought maybe that my mind was playing tricks on itself when I caught a glimpse of him, but even if I was going crazy, I’d follow that feeling to the end of the world and back just to prove I wasn’t alone.” Kaige said, seeing the Dollar General coming into view up ahead of them. “And now, here we are.” Glancing around, Kaige noticed that the street was almost clear here, there wasn’t as much traffic, which made her curious to know whether or not a car could somehow be maneuvered through the area, even if they did have to park and walk back a certain distance. Most of the cars on her street were all parked on the side of the road or in driveways. Her car was stuck in the garage and after not being cranked for so many months she had to wonder whether it would crank at all.
“There it is.” Logan pointed as they walked up the sloping driveway. It was a small strip mall. There was a Dollar General, a beauty supply store, Cash for Gold, Title Loans. Jogging up to the door, Logan gave it a test. It was open.
Pausing, Kaige stopped just at the door and looked around. She didn’t see anything, but she was looking at the carts abandoned in the parking lot. Walking over to a car she grabbed one as Logan held the door open for her.
“I have an idea.” She told him, a smile breaking out across her face. “Go grab a cart.” Nodding over to one that was turned over on its side next to a neon green Toyota. “We pack as much as we can into the duffle bags and our backpacks, but then we fill the carts up and just push them home.”
Logan’s hazel eyes grew wide as a smile of his own broke out over his face
“Kaige you are fucking brilliant.” Holding the door open for her to push the cart inside, he ran over and grabbed the cart that was laying on its side and wheeled it up to the door as Kaige held it back open for him.
The interior of the store, what little they could see of it was dark and looked trashed, but that could have been said for the store in general. Kaige had never been inside when it wasn’t a total mess no matter how hard the employees tried to keep it clean. It was a busy store and for good reason.
Wheeling her cart around the register Kaige headed straight for the cigarettes, opening one of the duffel bags she pushed the door of the glass case open and started unloading the shelves, she didn’t even pay attention to what kind or brand she was grabbing. Kaige emptied as much into the duffel bag as she could before zipping it back up and tossing it into the cart where she usually dropped her purse and clicked her flashlight on.
“Logan?” Kaige whispered, while she hadn’t been afraid of drawing attention to them when they were outside, the lurking fear of someone or rather one of the undead wandering around the store did scare her because of the darkness.
“I’m over here.” Logan whispered back, shining his flashlight so that she could see him. Wheeling the cart over she found him standing next to the cookie isle. Kaige had completely forgotten about little treats like this.
Shining the beam of her flashlight over the packages and boxes, they probably tasted old as hell, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter as she looked at them.
“Which ones are your favorite?” Kaige asked in a hushed voice, she felt like Charlie Bucket going to visit Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
“All of them.” Logan said, reaching up to the top shelf and grabbing three boxes of the Clover brand chocolate coconut cookies that were supposed to be the cheap knock offs of the Girl Scout Samoa cookies. Kaige loved those, Kebbler put out a cookie like them too, and they were a little softer, slightly chewy, but God they were delicious. Grabbing boxes of Chips Ahoy, Keebler, and Oreo she lifted up the duffle bag and lined them up out of the way of other important things they had to get.
“I’m going to head back and get the water.” Kaige said, about to turn her cart around when Logan caught her by the arm.
“Wait, I’ll come with you. I don’t like getting split up in this place, the doors weren’t locked, so we never know what might be in here with us.” Logan explained.
Kaige nodded up and down quickly agreeing as she’d had the same eerie feeling since they came inside, it could have been nothing, but she also wasn’t brave enough to chance that her instincts were wrong.
Steering the carts towards the back of the store, Kaige kept the beam of her flashlight straight ahead of them, scanning the isle for anything that might move in front of them and stopping when she reached the back wall. Swallowing, she stepped forward, looking around the corner, nothing but end caps and a wall of soft drinks greeted her as she pushed the buggy a little further down until she reached the bottled water.
“Let me get them, you keep a look out.” Logan told her, leaving his cart and partially shielding her body with his own as he grabbed a twenty-four pack of water and hefted it into the bottom of the cart, then another before he did the same with his cart.
Kaige could easily say she didn’t like it in here, she’d always been nervous going out scouting on her own, but she felt hyper aware of her surroundings now with Logan here with her. She didn’t want to become two more people that never came back. She wanted to get as much as they could as quickly as possible and get back out into the sunlight where they could better see what might be coming for them.
“Okay, what next?” Logan asked, brushing dust off of his hands.
“Let’s grab a couple palettes of this Powerade.” She motioned, grabbing two bottles at a time until the bottom of her cart was full. “This should be enough for a little while, just so Tobey has something with flavor to drink.” Kaige nodded quickly before she glanced down an isle and saw boxes lining the shelves. They may not get everything on the list today, but they could make a big dent in it. Hurrying down the aisle, she saw boxed mashed potatoes and grabbed as many from the shelf as she could, lining them all up methodically into her cart while Logan did the same with boxes of noodles, Mac and cheese, and stove top stuffing. Looking around, she saw more cans of soup and began to pile them all into the cart. It didn’t particularly matter what kind it was.
“I wanted to get some oatmeal.” Kaige whispered.
“Ok,” Logan nodded as they both made their way around the isle. Luckily oatmeal was down the same aisle as the hot beverages and Logan cleared the shelf of coffee and hot chocolate while Kaige filled what little space was left in her cart with instant oatmeal boxes and cream of wheat.
“Alright, let’s get out of here.” Sniffing Kaige looked around, something gray caught in the beam of her flashlight before it moved. “LOOK OUT!”
Logan whipped around just as the corpse lunged at him, it’s weak movements no match for Logan as he threw it back against the shelf. It stumbled, feet sliding on the dust coated floor before it fell to the ground, the hooked end of L
ogan’s crowbar meeting its nose and gushing into the flesh in a black rotten spill of blood that made Kaige gage.
Breathing heavy, Kaige spun the flashlight around, looking around, but she didn’t see anything else.
“Kaige... look at this.” Logan called her attention back to the creature lying on the floor. Holding her breath, she stepped closer and Logan added his flashlight to hers as they stood staring at the dead zombie on the floor.
“What is that?” Kaige asked, squinting slightly to see it better. “It looks like,”
“Ice.” Logan finished for her, pulling the neck of his shirt up over his mouth, he crouched down, using the crowbar to turn the dead woman’s head slightly. “You think she got caught in the storm?” He asked.
“Could be, but wouldn’t she have thawed by now?” Kaige asked, looking at the blue and white crystals that had formed over the side of the zombie’s face, then the muted gray flesh, all puffy and swollen like biscuit dough that was left out too long, small pocket holes where the skin had caved in on itself. Kaige couldn’t remember seeing one that looked like this before, most looked gaunt like the skin was literally hanging off of the bone.
“I dunno.” Logan said, shaking his head somewhat. “Look here, around the icing, it looks like her skins turning black, like she got frostbite.” He told her before he stood up straight, wiping the end of his crowbar off on the ragged pant leg of the dead creature.
“Come on, let’s get out of here and back home before anything else happens.” Kaige said gently tugging on his arm.
Logan pushed his cart ahead of Kaige’s in the hopes that he was keeping her out of the line of fire. They didn’t know if that was the only corpse in the abandoned building.
The sunlight never felt so good on her skin as Logan and Kaige pushed their carts out into the light of day and began to wheel their supplies back to the apartment.
“Logan did anything about that zombie seem weird to you?” Kaige asked once they were a couple blocks away from the store.
“Like what?” He questioned, not sure what Kaige considered weird when it came to the walking dead.
“Well, we both saw the way its face looked. Normally they look all boney and gaunt, you know? This one was still thin and gross, but between the ice and the frostbite, it’s face seemed swollen, like a big bowl of mushy gray oatmeal. It was slow too.” Kaige concluded almost as if she was talking to herself.
“They’re all slow, Kaige.” Logan commented unsure where she was going with this.
“I mean this one seemed even slower than the test. Like it was so weak that it could barely move.” Kaige explained to him what she was seeing in her mind. With the danger behind them, Kaige had time to replay the event in her mind’s eye. In a strange way, the zombie almost seemed sick, even if it was already dead.
“Maybe the cold got to it?” Logan suggested as they pushed the carts down the middle of the street.
“Could be. It just seemed strange, obviously they are slow moving, and in a group, they are incredibly dangerous because one trip and you're dead, but this one was really slow and so was the one that I killed on Pinnacle Mountain Road when I found you and the rest of the group. Just strikes me as odd is all.” Kaige sighed somewhat, frustrated that she couldn’t see the answer when it felt like it was sitting right there in front of her face.
“Who knows.” Logan shrugged, disinterested with the how and the why of the actions of zombies, he just didn’t want to get eaten by any of them. Picking up the end of his cart pushing it up onto the sidewalk of their street, Logan turned, helping Kaige get her over the curb without tipping the whole cart over and spilling their supplies into the street.
“Hey, let’s not tell Megan about the zombie.” Kaige said, putting her weight behind her buggy now as they began the slight incline up the sidewalk. “I hate lying and all but telling Megan that we ran into one of them would just set her off into a whirlwind of worry.” Kaige grunted softly, seeing the gate up ahead of them, feeling her calves begin to burn slightly.
“No, I totally get it.” Logan nodded up and down quickly as the two of them fell silent, focusing all their energy on pushing their carts up the sidewalk.
“Where do you suppose we could find solar lamps, if they make them?” Kaige asked, thinking about her list. Thus far, the two had only secured supplies that they could eat and while that wasn’t a bad thing, Kaige had thoughts on what could help make their lives a little easier.
“Sporting goods stores, like Sportsman’s Warehouse or Bass Pro Shop. Places like that.” Logan commented, opening the latch on the gate and pushing his cart through, making enough room on the sidewalk to help Kaige get her shopping cart through the gate and up to the door of the apartment before he went back and closed the latch.
“I’d like to find one and see if we can get some solar stuff, it’d be great if we could save some of the batteries in our flashlights since we only use the lanterns at night.” Kaige told him while she got the keys out of her pocket and unlocked the door, propping it open so that it wouldn’t automatically close on them.
Tobey must have been listening to their return because as soon as the exterior door opened, and his head popped out of the apartment door.
“They’re back! They’re back!” He shouted, hurrying down the steps beaming as he investigated the carts before his arms were loaded and he was helping carrying things inside.
“I guess he missed us.” Kaige laughed a little bit as she and Logan hefted the cases of water up the stairs and sat them down in the hallway out of the way so that no one could trip over them.
“He missed you.” Logan corrected her, giving Kaige a teasing smile as Megan and Tom came to help them unload the rest of the groceries.
“That was fast.” Megan commented. “I thought for sure that you two would be gone long, and you brought back so much.” She said a little surprised as she looked at the palettes that were laid out on the kitchen table in Megan and Tom’s unit.
“We wanted to get more, but this was all we could push.” Logan smiled, covering the fact well that they’d been scared out of their wits by a half dead already dead person who may or may not have had a bad cold due to the ice storm that blew through just a few days ago.
“I’m just glad that the two of you made it back all in one piece.” Megan told them before Tobey found the Powerade and was trying to twist the cap off making little noises that sounded like the incredible Hulk’s son.
Smiling, Kaige was happy to come back to someone other than an empty apartment. Kaige knew that she was lonely before, she just didn’t understand how lonely she was. It wasn’t until there were people for her to care for that she noticed how much better it felt having people to talk to. Once upon a time Kaige enjoyed having a little bit of peace and quiet, alone time as it were, but after truly being alone, it wasn’t as grand as she used to feel like it was.
“You were worried for no reason.” Logan insisted, his eyes drifting to Kaige for a moment. Their agreement standing, they would never mention their encounter with the zombie in the Dollar General if for no other reason than they knew that Megan would never let them hear the end of it and spend the entire time they were gone worried. They had already lived through that before, Kaige didn’t want to add more anxiety to their lives and instead perhaps she could somehow help Megan find peace in the fact that each time they left the house, they had no news of the deadly dead that took over their world.
It was difficult to explain, but Kaige knew that it was better this way.
Going over the supplies Kaige and Megan began to put everything away after it was divided amongst the residence of 74 Court Drive. Once that was done Kaige looked at what was in Tom and Megan’s cabinets and felt sure that it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t going to last a week, not with a growing boy and Tobey had already suffered enough. Now that there seemed to be a food supply that didn’t consist of one can of cold soup a day, Kaige was sure that it was going to go fast.
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