“It’s what I’m thinking.”
I watched what could be a group of four meander toward a Lexus. Couldn’t be more than a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty yards to the left. They didn’t appear distracted, however, they all seemed to lumber forward in the same general direction. That direction was away from us.
On the right, zombies weren’t as congested, but scattered. It was the same kind of slow and sluggish . . . gait. I counted ten, no . . . eleven. Twelve. Yes. I saw twelve.
“Look at him.” I followed Allison’s finger. Straight ahead. Just past a light pole. A guy ran toward us. He was a ways out, but running in our general direction. “Sick?”
“Looks it,” I said. The guy’s arms flailed, pin wheeled. He looked like someone trapped in the midst of a swarm of bees. “What is going--”
He wasn’t sick. Not a zombie. This became obvious as he screamed for help. Although my exposure to the infected was limited, I had not heard a single one of the creatures talk. They moaned. They grunted. They bit. They ate. That I’d witnessed. Talking, not so much.
“Help! Please! Please, God, help me!”
I didn’t know where he thought help might come from. I did know his screaming sure as shit attracted the unwanted attention. The creatures that had reached the Lexus turned, almost as one, and faced the running man. The expensive sedan forgotten, they moved -- a bit quicker, as if with more purpose -- toward the screamer. The other twelve also seemed to zero in on the man.
“What do we do?” Allison had a hand on her iron.
“What do you mean?”
“How do we help him?”
This time I planted my hand on her shoulder. “We’re going to the sporting goods store. He’s created a perfect diversion for us.”
Allison stared at me, eyebrows furrowed. “Chase, he’s a person. Not a diversion.”
“He’s an asshole. Why the hell was he screaming, why was he running--?”
Then I saw it. Them. No other way to classify it other than a herd. Not like cattle. Maybe a pack was a better description. Like wolves. Another fifteen, I don’t know, could have been as many as twenty zombies, rounded the corner by the Sears building. Rounded that corner like a New York Yankee rounding first, sprinting for second.
“Are you shitting me?” I said out loud. “This asshole's going to get all three of us killed. He’s running right for us.”
And closing the distance fast.
“Okay. Okay,” Allison stumbled. “So now what do we do?
Where do we go? We need to hide.”
I didn’t remind her that a mere second ago she was trying to get me to help the madman. Didn’t blame her. Maybe we could have saved him from a handful. The zombies in the parking lot had been slow movers. Everything changed with the new . . . pack added to the equation.
Hated to admit it, but part of me hoped the guy was taken down. It was a heartless thought, possibly a chicken shit thought, but there it was, swimming around in my brain. I needed to get to my kids. I needed weapons. I didn’t know this guy. He meant nothing to me. It was not much different from the training I’d received at work. One call at a time. Enter the job and don’t look back. Go on to the next call.
“Chase?”
I opened my mouth, about to suggest a solution, when they got him. One zombie from the pack leaped forward. It was a great tackle. Arms wrapped the running man’s waist, and legs, while its shoulder drove into the back, and down the two went.
The group was on them instantaneously. A genuine dog pile.
“We have to go,” I said. “Diversion or not, this is our chance.”
Allison stared at the unfolding feast. Eyes wide. She didn’t respond, but followed behind me. We stayed low and ran as fast, and as quietly, as we could. We skirted the parking lot, staying out of the spray of lights.
I kept one eye on the massacre. Aside from the fast zombies, the slow moving ones were closing in. Couldn’t imagine there would be much meat left for sharing.
God, did I just think that?
What was wrong with me? There wasn’t much meat left. I shook my head. I needed to stop. Allison was right. That had been a man, someone probably with a family. I had wanted to use his . . . screaming, as a chance for us to escape. That was terrible enough. I didn’t need to think of him as mere meat, too.
We made it to a caravan. We slammed our backs up to the side panel. We were out of view, could no longer see the man being devoured. Ripped apart. Hopefully, they not only could not see us, but had not noticed us, either.
“I was going to let him die,” I said.
“What?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. That man, I had no intention of helping him. None.”
Allison took my hand, gave it a squeeze. “We need to get into the store.”
She was right. Nothing I could do now. Maybe nothing could have been done, regardless. Still, I was pissed. Mad at myself. This was not me, not who I was. Not who I wanted to be.
Weapons.
The sporting goods store.
“Okay. Let’s get inside.” I stuck my head around the front of the van. Most of the zombies were staggering about in the general area. I closed my eyes at the sight of the fallen man. He’d be torn apart. Literally. Chunks of remaining limbs and pieces of discarded flesh littered and displayed in three spots in that section of the parking lot.
The pack of zombies stayed together. They were the ones that made me most apprehensive. They weren’t headed towards us, but they were headed back towards the mall.
“It’s now or never, Alley. You ready?” I asked.
“I guess,” she said.
I looked at her, and almost yelled. A zombie had snuck up on us.
It grabbed Allison’s hair and yanked her back and off her feet. . .
Chapter Fourteen
The zombie needed to reset his stance after dropping Allison to the pavement, before falling to his knees over her.
Allison let out a scream. Her hands clawed at his face, and her feet kicked out at nothing. She tried rolling onto her back in an attempt to scramble away.
I struggled getting my tire iron out of my belt loop. It was wedged. Panicked, I gave up on the lodged weapon, and reeled back with my leg and face-punted a solid kick to the side of the zombie’s head.
My boot knocked the thing sideways, but not off Allison entirely. Its hands held fast to her hair and shoulder. I kicked again, this time, standing over it, clobbering the heel of my boot on its temple.
The drive pushed him down and off my girlfriend. I jumped up, and stomped down on his skull, and again and a third time. The fucker’s hands still reached out for Allison. She was up, and out of reach.
“Chase,” she said.
“I got him,” I said. I managed to get the iron free. I raised it over my head and smacked it down onto his forehead. The brow split. Blood sprayed.
Allison tugged on my shirt. “Chase. They heard. They’re coming.”
I didn’t need to look around to understand. I knew what she meant. I knew we were now in trouble. “We need to get inside.”
We ran.
The slow zombies marched our way. I saw that. The fast ones, the pack of quick zombies, they had us in their cross hairs as well. Timing was essential and obvious. We needed to reach the doors to the store before the zombies reached us. It would be close, photo-finish-close.
My legs pumped as hard as they could. All I kept thinking was, don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip. I saw it in my mind though, tripping over my feet, falling to the ground, and being eaten by monsters that--by all intent and purposes--shouldn’t even be hungry anymore. Gluttons.
Allison ran alongside me. I heard three things. Us breathing, their feet pounding pavement--and that pounding of pavement getting louder and louder.
Safety loomed yards ahead. Just yards. The way I bounced as I ran made the sliding doors seem to shake. It’s how my brain felt. Jumbled and loose, sloshing freely around inside my skull.
<
br /> Then I heard, above our breathing and shoes pounding pavement, the groans. The moans. So loud, so angry. They sounded like a chorus of cries, like hundreds of fingernails raking across a chalkboard.
We were almost to the doors, to the sanctuary of the mall, but so were they.
I held my tire iron raised in the air as I ran. If any of those things got in the way, tried blocking those doors, I’d be ready.
Thirty feet from the door, it looked like we’d make it. Once inside the store we could quickly scramble for more useful weapons.
Or could we?
The doors were automated. If we entered easily, so would they.
And then it didn’t matter. As we reached the doors, as the doors slid open, one of the zombies reached us. Blocked our entrance.
Allison stabbed the pointed end of her iron into the thing’s face. Through an eye-socket. I heard a pop. Saw juices fly. She didn’t even try to pull her tire iron free. She left it, jumping over the falling body and through the open doorway. I was right behind her.
The bad thing? The zombies were right behind us.
Inside the store, Allison went left, to where I’d said weapons would be located. I followed, hoping they’d be accessible. We wouldn’t have time to pick through items searching for what might work best.
“Grab something,” I said. “Anything.”
Anything. There was nothing. Hunter camo, deer stands, rain slickers, shoes. Where were . . . what? If guns were on display, they wouldn’t be loaded. Bows would be behind counters. I expected to raid the store, as if shopping without paying. I didn’t think we’d be chased into the store.
“Allison, get to the mall, run for the mall!” I shouted, as I changed direction. Down an aisle, I saw the mall.
“Guns,” I heard. She was behind me. I didn’t think she was following me. I didn’t want to look back. I didn’t need to see the zombies closing in on me. Didn’t want to see them trapping her in the corner section of the store where weapons were kept.
The boom echoed.
I chanced a look back, just as another shot was fired.
Shit. Only one of the zombies followed me.
The rest were on her ass. She’d never make it. She did have a gun.
A third shot resounded.
I stopped fast, snatched a composite hockey stick from the rack, and spun around. The slap shot was a wide arc cutting up through air and slicing the side of the zombie’s neck. The cut wasn’t deep, but the artery severed. Blood jetted from the wound as I pulled back on the stick and swung at its throat a second time for good measure. The thing dropped to its knees, and face planted onto the tiled floor. I stepped over the beast as blood pooled around its head.
“Allison!” I started toward the back of the store. Two more shots were fired. At least I knew she was alive.
“Chase!”
Alive and calling for me. I ran as if on ice, the hockey stick in both hands. Only thing missing, the pads. I’d of loved to have been decked out in some hockey gear.Zombies’ would have a hell of a time gnawing on my flesh through all of that gear!
Allison ran out into the main aisle. It almost got her slashed with my stick. It also almost got me shot. The handgun was aimed at my face. I ducked, and swatted the space between us, as if I could bat a bullet out of the way like a fly, had she pulled the trigger.
“I killed like five,” she said. Her arm fell to her side. The threat averted.
“No time to brag,” I said. They followed her. Fast. “This way.”
We ran back the way I’d just come. The body of the bloodless zombie sprawled out on the floor was a small hurdle. Jumping over him was not the issue. It was the sticky blood around its head that became the problem.
Allison slid. A red smear trailed two feet out of the puddle. I clutched her arm as she fell backwards. It did nothing to stop the fall. She cried out as her shoulder popped from the socket.
“Give me the gun,” I said.
She wasn’t listening. I wretched it free from her limp arm, knelt beside her and nothing. Empty. I dropped the gun, scooped an arm under Allison and lifted her to her feet. “Run,” I said, needlessly.
Staying back, I swung the hockey stick at the next closest zombie. I was not lucky enough to slice an artery, but the stick did the job and smacked hard enough into the creature’s head to knock him off his feet. He went down hard. Sprawled out on the linoleum for the count. I straddled its body, raised the stick like an ax, and swung at his skull over and over as if splitting firewood.
“Chase!”
I almost couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. My adrenaline was surging through my body like crazy. I could feel it pumping through every limb. I hacked at the smashed head one last time, and the blade on the hockey stick lodged into the gash. I needed to step on its shoulders and pull with both hands to free my new weapon of choice.
Then I ran.
Chapter Fifteen
Greece Ridge Mall turned out not to be the sanctuary I’d hoped. Allison and I were now inside a mall with zombies, and no closer to saving my kids than we had been when on the road. There was no more time to kill. I needed to figure out how to get to my ex’s house, fast.
“We need to get out of here,” Allison said.
There had been a zombie movie I’d seen. People gathered and took refuge inside a mall. Maybe that had been part of the reason I’d thought to come this way. The weapons in the sporting goods store influenced the decision, sure. The difference had been that the zombies were outside the mall. Not shoppers and employees and . . .
“Mall security,” I said. “We need to get to the food court.”
“Security isn’t going to be able to help us,” she said.
We squatted by the Piercing Pagoda Kiosk. Right now, I didn’t see a single zombie in the mall’s aisles. Maybe they were all inside the various stores. Maybe the few we’d led into the sporting goods store were it. Wherever they were, I was thankful for the reprieve. I worked on calming my breathing, settling my nerves. “I don’t want security’s help. I want their guns. The keys to their vehicles.”
Arming mall security guards came not long after the town curfew. Teens under 18 were not allowed to be in the mall without an adult. It was meant to keep riff-raff to a minimum. Worked for a while. The gangs of teens had people 18 years old with them, and so by the mall’s own rules, could stay. And wreak havoc. And did in fact, wreak havoc. For some time, Greece Police kept a presence as well. Eventually, they needed to pull back. The town was too large to tie up officers patrolling the inside of a mall.
“But the roads. You saw how bad they were. We won’t get a mile in one of those pick-up trucks,” she said.
“Even a mile, driving, is better than a mile walking. Safer.”
She pursed her lips, nodded. She agreed. “Okay. The food court.”
When I had been a kid, this mall used to be two separate malls. A transformation took place in 1994. The two were joined. The extension that connected them was filled with additional stores, and at the center -- a huge food court was added. In total, the place took up over 1.6 million square feet. We were at one end of the mall. Had to go halfway, since the security office was located in the food court.
I lifted my head and peered around spinning displays of gold earrings and necklaces. I still did not see a single zombie around. “If we stay close to the center of the aisle, we have plenty of plants, and garbage receptacles and kiosks to hide behind. Looks like nothings out here, but we’re gonna move like the military, okay? I go, I check the area, and then you go -- moving past me to the next spot to hide behind. You check the area, then I’ll pass you and move on to the next spot. See what I’m saying?”
She nodded. “I get it. Like S.W.A.T.”
“Exactly. Like S.W.A.T.”
She had no weapon at all. I had the blood and brained hockey stick. I should give it to her. Would she be able to swing it hard enough to kill a zombie? Truth is, if I kept it, I’d have a better chance of saving her a
nd me, should another attack occur. That was just a fact. Or was it that I just trusted myself more than I trusted her? No matter. I was keeping it. Decided.
I took out my cell phone. No new calls. I sent a fast text to my daughter: Daddy’s coming. Stay where you are!
“Anything?” Allison asked.
I just looked at her. “You ready?”
She let out a breath of air that made her hair blow. “As I’ll ever be.”
“I’ll go first. You see anything, don’t yell. Okay? No yelling.”
She frowned, clearly not happy with so much instruction. I wish she understood, while I hoped to get us safely from point A to point B, my kids were the priority. She had to concede to doing things my way. No questions asked, or I’d leave her ass behind. It was that simple. I didn’t want to have to say it though. I just needed her to know it.
“On three?” she said.
“What?”
“You going on three?”
I closed my eyes for one long second, avoided shaking my head. “On three.”
“One, two,” she said, and then silently mouthed, “three.”
I stayed hunkered forward and ran around and past a Pagoda, and stopped at the table and three 7-foot poster stands that promoted the fitness center near the movie theater at the extreme opposite end of the mall. The posters provided excellent cover. I could stand and be hidden. I didn’t. I stayed low. I did a 360 and made sure nothing saw my short sprint. Didn’t seem like anything had. My heart was racing once again. The calming I’d done earlier, forgotten. The blood was pumping fast. My cheeks felt hot.
Inside Burlington, I saw two zombies. They wandered aimlessly amidst racks of marked down clothing. They looked hapless, and bored, resembling live shoppers as far as I was concerned. They seemed preoccupied with absolutely nothing. I had not attracted their attention.
The last thing I needed was for them to see Allison when she ran. I spun around, looking toward the Sprint store, and Abbotts Ice Cream. The west aisle was clearer, best I could tell.
I tried to use my hands to explain I wanted Allison to run on the opposite side of the Pagoda--not taking the same path I’d used. I snaked my hand toward the right, and waved her on.
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