I remember looking around at the others in the group and seeing that same nervous look on their faces. Derrick, Jacob, Amy, Shannon, Sandy, Cody, Adam and Kerri. Each and every one of them looked scared and when Cody asked if we were all ready to go I don’t think that anyone actually answered him. But we started moving anyway, led by Derrick armed with Paul’s handgun and a small hatchet, we followed. I followed. Right out onto the sales floor with a shotgun in my hand heading to what I only hoped would be a better place. But none of us could have been prepared for what we found.
The amount of noise coming from inside the building immediately told me that something had gone wrong. I looked around at the others and saw that they were all just as confused by what was happening as I was. We started walking toward the front of the store to inspect what was making the sounds but we should have known better. The closer we got the louder the noise became. That was when we saw just how wrong everything had gone.
There was a woman standing there just pushing her way through a rack of men’s shirts at the back of the clothing department. Her face was grey, her flesh scratched to shreds and her clothes ripped and bloodied. Panic started to set in and shouts of disbelief came from almost everyone. Derrick raised the handgun, took about ten steps forward and fired a round into her forehead at close range. As her corpse collapsed to the ground I finally realized what was behind her. The nightmare that had plagued me every night had come true.
There were dozens of them pushing there way through the store, through the clothing departments, down the aisles they came and they were heading right for us. The entire front of the store appeared to be full of them. The front doors had been opened and they had poured into the building just like we had imagined they would. They were everywhere knocking down racks of clothing and shelving units as made their way towards us. Our plan had prematurely been put into action and we weren’t prepared.
I stood there paralyzed with fear hoping that I would wake up and that it was all just another one of my nightmares. They were coming through the doorway wave after wave. That was when Jacob grabbed me by the shoulder and told me to run. We needed to move, we needed to get to the garage. If we could make it there we still had a chance. Cody raised the shotgun that he was carrying and took aim at a Zed that was getting close. But Derrick stopped him from shooting yelling something about conserving ammunition. Besides he wanted us to get moving, we needed to run.
Derrick was pushing us all towards the garage, trying to get us running. I reached out and grabbed a hold of Kerri’s wrist trying to get her attention. I could see that she had frozen up and that she had turned pale. Finally when she looked back at me she snapped out of it. I pulled her to get her moving and together we started to run for the garage. All of us tried to stick together as we moved down the long aisle that led to the far corner of the building. We tried to move as fast as we could but we could see that those damn things were everywhere.
I couldn’t believe how many of them had made it inside. Just as Adam looked back to make sure that everyone was still with us a zombie dressed in a hospital gown reached out and grabbed a hold of him by the shirt. Adam almost fell to the ground as the grip stopped him dead in his tracks. I was right behind him so I stepped up and stuck the Zed in the face with my gun, knocking him back and away from Adam. I helped him up and we continued to run.
As we ran past the aisles I could see them making their way towards the back of the store. They were in every aisle, they were around every corner and they were coming in droves. Some of them were following us, some were just roaming as those behind them pushed them forward and others were simply being guided by the layout of the store. Finally we were close enough to the door to see that the path was clear and I ran just a little faster hoping that our plan still had a chance to work.
Shannon was the first one to reach the door that led into the garage. But when she tried to open it the door wouldn’t budge. She started screaming about it being locked or stuck so Derrick pushed his way through us and gave it a try. He pulled and pulled but the door wouldn’t open. He tried to smash the glass window in the middle of the door with the hatchet but that glass was shatterproof. He was getting nowhere and that meant that we were stuck. I heard a gunshot come from just behind me. I turned around to see Cody shooting a Zed that was wearing a track suit and that was missing his left arm. He must have snuck up on us but Cody put him down quickly.
I looked around and could see that we were running out of time. Cody fired another shot at a zombie that was getting a little too close for comfort but with every shot fired I knew that we were drawing more attention then we needed too. I couldn’t understand why the door wouldn’t open. By that time Derrick and Adam were both kicking the door in an act of desperation. It didn’t make sense, the lock was on our side and nobody had locked that door since we had opened it to let Scott out. But that was when I thought I heard something through the terrible sounds of the Zeds and shouting. Then I heard it again a little more clearly that time and immediately I knew what it was. It was Paul on the other side of that door and he was mocking us.
He thanked us for such a wonderful plan and told us how well it appeared to be working. He had broken the lock and started shouting something about what he had done to the door. He had opened the door just like we had planned. He ran and hid in the garage just like we had planned. Only he had turned our plan against us and used us as the bait to draw the zombies into the store while he waited it out in the garage.
Kerri and Shannon were pleading with him to open the door, to let us in, to save us. I knew that it was pointless. He wasn’t going to open that door because I knew if I were in his position there was no way that I would have opened the door. After all we were going to leave him here to die. Now that the tables had been turned there was no chance in hell that he was going to show us any kind of mercy.
Derrick fired a shot at the lock on the door and I guess that doesn’t work as well as it does in the movies. It accomplished nothing and we were getting close to being surrounded. I heard two more shots come from the back of the group. Cody and Jacob were trying to hold off a small group of Zeds that were headed right for us. There were too many of them and they were coming from almost every direction. If we didn’t move quickly we were going to be trapped.
Cody started shouting at all of us that we needed to move. I agreed. Shannon pointed to the far side of the building. Her idea was that if we made it to the far side there might be a chance that the front would clear up as the horde pushed toward where we were and not where we were going. For that to work I knew that we couldn’t use the guns. We would have to rely on the hatchets for protection as we pushed our way across the back of the store.
Derrick stepped up and drove his hatchet into an obese zombie and kicked its corpse out of the way as it fell to the ground. That was just enough to clear a path for us and we ran through the opening and out into the main aisle that led to the far corner. It was a straight shot down one long and wide aisle that had displays of everything from paper towels to movies that lined the middle.
Two more Zeds appeared at the back of the closest aisle that ran perpendicular to the aisle we were running down. Derrick and Cody charged them and after a few quick blows from the hatchets the Zeds were on the ground and we were moving on. I never got used to zombies in such close quarters. It was absolutely terrifying being that close to them, knowing what they could do and how all it took was just one bite and you were dead.
We were running as fast as we could trying to stay as quiet as possible to avoid drawing any attention to ourselves. As we ran past a rack of DVDs I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look back just in time to see a young girl in a filthy little dress that was probably adorable at one point dive out from behind the rack of movies and into Shannon’s legs. I tried to scream to warn her but by the time the words came out, the girl had already knocked her to the ground.
The girl was no older then six, her curly
blonde hair was blood stained and covered only half of her head. The other half was missing everything including her scalp. The flesh where her cheek used to be was gone she was covered in dirt and blood from head to toe. Shannon had tripped and landed on her stomach but she seemed to be okay. She turned onto her back just in time to see the little Zed try and climb on top of her chest. Jacob grabbed the girl by the back of her dress, picked her up and threw her off to the side. But she got up fairly quickly and started heading for Sandy who was the closest to her. Cody stepped up and put his hatchet into the side of her head and that was the end of that terrifying encounter.
We moved on. I was starting to doubt that we had any chance of surviving. I looked to my right and could see that there were dozens of them still coming up through the clothing departments and there were dozens more that were still filing into the store from outside. That was when I turned around and ran right into Amy’s back. I had been so busy looking down the aisles that I hadn’t noticed that the others had stopped running. I almost knocked her over but luckily Jacob was standing right beside her and was able to grab her before she hit the ground. The reason we had stopped was a behemoth of a Zed that had appeared in our path and it was blocking our way to the corner. He must have been six-foot four or five and probably weighed about at least three hundred pounds. He was absolutely disgusting.
To get around him meant running down one of the narrow aisles and most of those were filled with zombies. It would have been like running through a gauntlet with little chance of survival. We couldn’t go back towards the garage that entire area was filled with Zeds and some of them were already starting to follow us. We were screwed.
He seemed almost too big to use the hatchets on safely. His giant stomach and his height would make it incredibly dangerous to even try to get that close to him. So Derrick went with the only option that he believed we had left. He took a few steps closer, aimed, and fired a round through the head of that giant but it didn’t fall at first. For a moment I actually couldn’t believe what I was looking at. But then just before Derrick fired his gun a second time the large mountain of a zombie collapsed to the ground. We maneuvered around the corpse and started to run again trying to create some space between us the group of Zeds that were closing in on us from behind us.
Finally we made it to the far corner of the store, but our original plan had already failed. More and more Zeds were heading for us, the gunshot hadn’t helped matters and now our only hope was that that most the zombies at the front had followed the sound to the back end of the store. Again we had what looked like a wide-open aisle that would take us to the front corner of the store. From there we would have to cut across the front to get to the front doors.
As we ran down what used to be the dairy and meat department a zombie fell out of one of the aisles on our right. The man reached out for us and fell face first on the floor right at Sandy’s feet. I took my hatchet and smashed in its head before it had a chance to get up. We kept moving. I could hear the sound of displays and shelves being knocked to the ground. The terrible noises they made, the clicks, the hisses, the moans filled the air and I could feel my heart beating faster as I started to panic.
If I was panicking then, what I was once we turned the corner into the produce department was indescribable. Our hope that the some space at the front of the store had somehow opened up was crushed when we saw the incredible crowd of Zeds that were still in the area. They were everywhere, almost standing shoulder to shoulder in some places and blocking our way to the front doors. Derrick pointed out a spot that was right in front of checkout areas where the crowd appeared to be a little bit thinner. If we could make it to that spot there was a chance we could push through to the doors.
We tried to stay close together as we moved across the front of the store and through the produce department. We used the tables of rotten vegetable and fruits to keep some separation between the zombies and us, moving in between the obstacles and making it difficult for the Zeds to grab a hold of us. A woman in a military outfit reached out knocking over a display of fruit bars and grabbed a hold of my arm. I pulled my arm free and drove the stock of the shotgun into her chest and knocked her to the ground, I kept moving with the group.
I heard someone fire his or her gun turning just in time to see a teenager missing a large portion of his abdomen fall to the ground in front of Jacob. I kept moving. A Zed wearing a reflective vest stepped out and grabbed Sandy by the shoulder. She screamed and dropped to the ground in a panic as she fought to pull away. The Zed fell with her and the two of them were on the ground and they began to wrestle. Cody put a quick stop to it when he drove the hatchet into the zombie’s head. Shannon picked up Sandy and we kept moving.
We had made it through the produce department but we were heading into the heart of the horde, and with Zeds in front of us, Zeds filtering out of the clothing department and the ones in the produce department following us I was starting to think that we were done for. Derrick kept pointing to the spot where he thought we would have the best chance to get through but we weren’t going to make there. There were just too many of them in the way and as we slowed down trying to be safe, the quicker they closed the circle around us.
I turned around just in time to see a Zed’s hand come reaching through a rack of dress shirts for the back of Kerri’s head. I didn’t have time to line up a shot so I fired the shotgun at the zombie’s legs. The force of the gunshot cut his legs out from underneath him and he fell to the ground hard. Adam stepped up and smashed in his skull with a hatchet. They were closing in on us and as their numbers grew all around us I realized that nobody had come up with a new plan. We were just standing there in that same spot with no idea of where we were going or what we were doing.
Cody started to shout that we needed to keep moving, we needed to get away from where we were standing. That was when Jacob decided that we should push right through the crowd of Zeds from where we were and try for the other side of the checkouts. It was an all or nothing type maneuver and I wasn’t the only one who protested. But Jacob didn’t listen. He fired a shot into the crowd right in front of him and then fired again, knocking down a few of the Zeds and then he charged right into the crowd swinging his gun back and forth as he tried to push the crowd back.
Seeing her husband charge into harms way Amy followed him despite Kerri trying to stop her. She fired a shot at the crowd and ran into to meet her husband. Cody saw that she was in trouble and followed right behind her and took out a Zed that Amy hadn’t seen reaching for her from behind. I fired a shot from the shotgun at a zombie that was closing in on Derrick. He had been distracted fighting off two Zeds with his hatchet and hadn’t seen that it was right behind him.
I could hear the gunshots coming from Amy, Jacob and Cody as they tried to push on. I could hear gunfire coming from all around me. It always felt like there was a Zed right behind me or next to me and whether there actually was or not I couldn’t stay focused on moving with the group. I was sweating, my breathing was off and I could feel the tingle of fear shooting through my spine. I fired again at the zombie nearest to me and actually blew away half of it’s head. I saw Kerri fire the rifle at a Zed in the distance and couldn’t understand why she had chosen that one as a target.
That was when I noticed that Jacob’s group had opened up some space for us and the area that we were originally heading for had opened up just enough that it actually looked like we could make it. The Zeds seemed to be more interested in the chaos that Cody, Amy and Jacob were creating then us, and Kerri had seen a Zed that was in our way. We pushed on. I drove my shotgun into the head of Zed that was close by and kept moving. Derrick was cutting through the crowd with his hatchet and his pistol and the rest of us followed.
Adam pushed a rack of various impulse items into a couple of zombies and they fell back into the crowd. That was when I realized that he was onto something. I positioned myself by a tall wire rack that used to be filled with soft drinks picked it up ra
ised it up about chest high, held it sideways and charged into a group of about six Zeds and pushed them all to the ground. I turned around and charged at another group of about three and knocked them to the ground. Derrick had seen what I was doing and called me next to him. He wanted me to push forward while the rest of the others followed in behind. I handed him my shotgun to hold and charged into the largest group in front of us. There must have been at least thirty of them standing there.
Derrick fired into the crowd, trying to keep my flank protected. I rammed into the four that were closest to me and tried to push them backwards into the crowd. Problem was that the crowd was too thick and they barely moved. Their hands reached out for me and started to grab at me from the other side of the wire rack. I pushed and pushed but they were overpowering me. Derrick was right behind me and began to open fire at the Zeds but it was useless. I dropped the rack, pulled the hatchet out of its holster and chopped the arms of the Zeds grasping at the air in front of me.
That was when I heard a woman’s scream. I turned around and looked at Kerri, then to Shannon and then on to Sandy. I should have known that it hadn’t come from that close to me. I should have realized that it had come from further away. I looked out deep into the crowd on the other side of the checkouts and saw that Jacob was in trouble. He had three Zeds hanging off of him and I could see the blood. I couldn’t make out where he had been bitten, but at that point it didn’t matter. We had lost him.
In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak Page 22