by Gibb, Lew
She watched Clay struggle with the door for another few minutes then rested a hand on his shoulder to get his attention without talking. He stopped and looked up at her.
“I think we should just break the glass,” she whispered.
Clay nodded and looked thoughtful for a few seconds. Then he dug in his pack and pulled out one of the empty duffel bags they’d brought to carry supplies. He wrapped it around the axe head, then wound up like he was swinging for the cheap seats. The big swing made Rachel wince. She’d imagined something with a little more finesse—maybe punching a little hole near the lock or using some duct tape to hold the glass together. Jerry had shown her a YouTube video of firefighters chopping a windshield out of a car in one piece with their axes. But she didn’t get a chance to bring the point up.
The bag did a great job of muffling the initial strike. Unfortunately, the shattered glass hit the ground with a sound like a two-year-old rocking out on Christmas morning with a new drum set. They both flinched and Clay shrugged and darted a nervous glance up the street. Then they ducked through the jagged opening. Rachel thought she heard distant zombie screams as they clicked on their headlamps and made their way toward the back of the store.
Clay’s axe was also effective against the prescription counter door. It splintered after three blows to the area around the knob. They pushed the door aside and entered the area enclosed by floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with large bottles of medications.
“The local drug addicts seem to have forgotten about this place.” Clay grabbed a Gatorade-sized white bottle and read the label. “Morphine.” He rattled the bottle’s contents then held it up for her to see.
“You can bet it won’t be long.” Rachel was sure she heard screeching outside.
“One thing about addicts, you can depend on them to keep trying to feed their habits.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Rachel said. At least this time she would have someone competent to cover her back if they did show up. “Let’s load up and get the hell out of here.”
The morphine went into the bag along with antibiotics, Percocet, Codeine, and anything with a name she even vaguely remembered hearing Jerry mention. When the first bag was full, they filled another. The street value of everything had to be significant. The medicine they had might be even more valuable now that there wouldn’t be anyone making more.
Rachel wasn’t sure they’d gotten everything; Jerry had talked about so many different drugs over the years, she just couldn’t remember them all—she hadn’t always paid complete attention when he talked about medical things—but what they had would be a good start until she met up with him.
The last thing into the bag was a box of chemical ice packs Clay found on the way to the front of the store. “I wish your husband had thought to give you a ‘best drugs to have for the apocalypse’ list.” Clay wiggled his eyebrows and winked.
“You think you’re joking. I’ll bet you a million dollars Jerry’s friend Bob has one. Although it’s probably in his head.”
“Is he one of those guys with boxes of ammunition in his basement and a hundred rifles?”
“Not like some of the extreme preppers. I just learned that word, by the way.” She thought about how weird those conversations about the apocalypse had seemed just a couple of days ago versus how pragmatic they were now. “He’s a smart guy who likes to be prepared.”
“I hope he likes me.”
She smiled. “I’ll put in a good word for you.” The possibility of seeing Bob again seemed so distant she almost couldn’t imagine it happening. Her mind kept glitching back to a picture that hung on the wall in their living room of her and Bob and Jerry with their arms around each other on top of Quandary Peak. She smiled at the memory as she crouched to duck under the front door’s push bar. Clay grabbed her jacket and yanked her backward.
Rachel caught sight of movement in the street just before Clay pulled her behind a display of Twix bars. He fixed her with a hard look and pointed outside.
She popped her head up over the display. Wall-to-wall zombies filled the street, sort of disorganized and milling about—until, with that eerie school of fish synchronization, they turned as one and headed straight at her.
Rachel’s eyes widened. Neither she nor Clay had made a sound. Then she turned and ran. “Back door!” she yelled. “Before they surround us!” She’d seen an emergency exit next to the pharmacy counter and remembered the stainless-steel paddle with the warning about the alarm sounding if anyone touched it.
“Right behind you,” Clay said. The pills rattling in the duffel bags each of them had slung across their chests nearly drowned out his voice.
Rachel hit the big paddle with her hip and burst into the alley behind the pharmacy.
There had to be worse things than setting off the alarm, but Rachel couldn’t think of one over the piercing wail that seemed to be coming from inside her head and stabbing through it at the same time. She had considered whether the alarm would even sound with the electricity being out, but it must have had a battery backup.
Clay pounded the box with his axe, but the damage was already done. She couldn’t see any zombies, just dumpsters pushed up against the backs of the buildings, but a chorus of screams that sounded like they were close echoed the alarm’s call. She and Clay started for the nearest end of the alley.
Zombies began pouring around the corner in front of them.
“Damn!” Rachel yelled, and turned to run the other way.
A wall of zombies materialized there, too.
Without saying anything, she and Clay turned back the way they had originally been going.
A zombie with an urban camper’s dirty tan burst through the pharmacy’s rear door and crashed into Clay. He latched onto Clay’s sleeve with both hands and opened his mouth wide.
Rachel’s gun was in her hand without her thinking about it. She shot the attacker through the eye and slammed into him with her shoulder. The zombie let go of Clay and flew back into a guy in white shorts and a t-shirt who was trying to get through the doorway. They went down in a tangle. Rachel tried to slam the door shut, but it was blocked by squirming limbs.
Clay headed up the alley. “Less this way!” he screamed.
Zombie screams filled the air like the cacophony of a flock of geese taking off. The zombies were all bunched up on the same side of the alley as Rachel and Clay, leaving a strip of daylight between the mass and the opposite building.
“Fake left and go right!” Rachel yelled.
The bodies were so tightly packed, she barely had to aim. She centered the sights at chest height on the ones at the inside edge and pulled the trigger.
She took two shots. Hesitated less than a second. Took two more. Waited. Took two more.
Five zombies dropped with three double taps, forming a makeshift barricade along the outside edge of the horde and keeping the gap between them and the wall open.
Rachel kept firing, didn’t have to shift her aim between shots. She just had to wait for the dead ones to drop out of the way. A pair of zombies went down with the same bullet. But before she knew it, her pistol’s slide locked back. She fumbled a new one from her pocket on the run and kept firing.
The horde was changing direction, following the food and starting to converge on the middle, but Clay added his own fire to hers, and the wave didn’t break and the sliver of light at the end of the alley, barely wide enough to squeeze through beckoned.
A zombie grabbed Rachel’s arm, but before she could react, his head exploded, and her face was coated in wetness. Rachel gritted her teeth and tried to pinch her lips shut as she blasted a final wild-eyed woman and squeezed out into the street.
The attackers were more spread out but still filled the space between buildings. Rachel dropped the nearest two zombies, then had to change magazines again. Something grabbed her from behind. Rachel stabbed over her shoulder, aiming where she thought the attacker’s face would be. Her knife hit something, and the hands rel
eased, making her stumble toward the approaching zombies.
Clay stepped past her and shot the nearest one, a balding guy wearing only a pair of garish flowered boxers, then lowered his shoulder and blasted through the next two that crossed their path. His pistol was empty, the locked back slide making it look deformed and awkward in his hand. They had only found two magazines for the nine-millimeter Beretta he was using. They’d need to find more somewhere, although the way things were going, with more zombies attracted to each barrage of gunfire, it seemed like they might never be able to carry enough ammunition.
As the obstacles ahead became fewer, Rachel thought they might have a chance. She stabbed a zombie left-handed as she raced by, then sheathed her knife and slammed a new magazine into her pistol. Sweat stung her eyes, and her shirt stuck to her lower back. She changed a look behind her. Fuck. The trailing zombies were keeping up. Now that there was more space to run there was also room for the chasers to dodge their downed comrades and keep coming without slowing down. A knot of about ten faster than normal ones dogged her tail, within arms reach. Rachel to emptied the new magazine into the trailing mob. Six or seven in the front rank fell but were replaced immediately. Rachel’s hand shook as she slammed her last magazine home. Clay pulled his axe out of a fallen zombie’s head and pointed left at the next corner. Rachel holstered her pistol as they sprinted away, resolving to save her ammunition for a true emergency.
Clay and Rachel continued to fight on the run, dodging when they could, chopping and stabbing when they couldn’t. They made a wide circle around the area where Cindy and her family were waiting and ran deeper into the neighborhood west of the business district. Between them, they killed so many zombies Rachel lost track of the number. Whenever it seemed like they were thinning the horde, another group of eight or ten would zero in on the screams of the pursuers, not to mention the random individuals that popped out of doorways and from behind cars. Twice they were almost swarmed by a surprise attack, but she and Clay worked well together and managed to escape without being bitten. Finally, when Rachel felt like they had been running for hours, they rounded a corner, and the street ahead looked clear.
“Not too much farther,” Clay said.
Rachel was panting so hard she could only nod. It felt like they might be about eight blocks away from the house. They couldn’t head straight in. Clay seemed to have the same thought, and he led them on a zig-zagging path for a few more blocks.
She felt like it was time to dart into a backyard when a new mass of about twenty zombies appeared from between two houses.
“Shit!” Rachel said in a harsh whisper. It felt like someone had dropped a couple of kettlebells into her duffel bag. “Can’t catch a fucking break.”
The leader was a tall skinny guy in a Geek Squad uniform. A pair of blood-encrusted circles were just visible on the front of each thigh of his khaki pants. It made Rachel wonder where his kids were as she angled for the opposite side of the street. Had he killed them before he’d turned?
After another block, she looked back to check how close the new pack was. Geek Squad’s head exploded. Red mist coated the following zombies. She was trying to process what had happened when another of the pursuers fell. Someone was shooting very accurately. Another fell silently. A pair of zombies tumbled over their fallen comrades, but most of the pack flowed around the obstruction. She didn’t have time to think about what learning zombies might mean.
Rachel resumed her sprint and the horde dwindled over the next block as the leaders were picked off by the invisible sniper. Rachel caught a flash of light from a porch toward the end of the next block. A man in camouflage gear was lying on the deck. A thick cylinder poked through the railing. It flashed every second, like Morse code and now she could hear the dull thunk of the shots since “silencer was a misnomer” as Bob had told her one day at the range—because of course he had one, several actually—and had proceeded to demonstrate with a nine-millimeter pistol fitted with a “sound suppressor.” The sounds coming from the porch were louder than Bob’s pistol, but not by much. And the shots probably weren’t drawing any more zombies than the dwindling screeching.
With a half block to go, there were ten zombies left. She and Clay slowed and split up, one of them on each side of the remaining pack. They stepped in and took out two at the same time. Rachel stabbed another one through the neck then glanced over her shoulder, hoping she was out of the line of fire.
The rifle flashed, and when she turned back, there were no live zombies left.
She and Clay jogged toward the sniper’s house.
Clay eyed the bearded and cammo-clad man just getting to his feet with suspicion. “Not that I’m ungrateful,” he said out of the side of his mouth, “but are we jumping out of the frying pan here?”
Chapter Sixty
“Jerry, I am very impressed with your pantry,” Maria said.
Everyone was scattered around Jerry’s living room, munching on egg-and-cheese burritos with rice, lentils, and cilantro pesto. Maria seemed not to be bothered at all by cooking on a pair of camping stoves. One was his, and the other belonged to Tina. She’d brought it over the night before when they’d realized the gas range would no longer work. Jerry didn’t understand how Maria did it, nor how Rachel did it. He could never seem to get the temperature right and couldn’t seem to make a pot of oatmeal without burning it.
“It’s all Rachel,” he said.
Being married to a chef and caterer meant they had plenty of staples, like rice, pasta, and oatmeal, but also more unusual things, like two different kinds of quinoa, multi-colored lentils, large bags of dried beans, and their refrigerator doors full of exotic sauces Rachel was working on. It looked impressive but it wouldn’t last with all the people they needed to feed. Jerry was reminded of something Rachel had said during one of their apocalypse discussions. After telling him again that she really didn’t want to survive, she’d mentioned that catering kitchens would be good places to raid for food. Not many people knew about the industrial and shared kitchens all over the city. A couple were located not too far from his building, a few blocks on the other side of the baseball stadium.
Even though he wasn’t a big baseball fan, baseball was the reason he lived where he did. The construction of the baseball stadium downtown in the mid-nineties had been one of the catalysts of an amazing transformation of Denver's downtown. Around the stadium had sprung bars and restaurants, and then followed apartments and offices and most recently a multi-billion-dollar renovation and development of the area around Denver’s Union Station.
He chided himself quietly. His mind was really wandering. He needed to focus on what they were doing instead of what some tourist bureau promoter would write in a brochure for out-of-towners.
“So, everyone, what’s our next move?” Jerry asked, looking around at the group.
Tina and Tracy looked like they hadn’t expected to be asked their opinion. Zach looked thoughtful.
Alberto spoke up. “I think we are not going to be making any long journeys for quite some time. It took you three days to get here from just the south end of town. We need to find some weapons, then secure our position and prepare for winter. It will be here sooner than we expect.”
Alberto’s assessment matched Jerry’s. While what Jerry really wanted was to go looking for Rachel, he realized the idea was unrealistic. The group agreed with Alberto but had some additional thoughts, and the debate lasted nearly an hour before Alberto called for a break. Jerry had only meant to plan what they should do that day, but apparently, the relative safety of their current position made them start to think long-term. They brought up all kinds of plans—everything from trying to make it to one of the coasts and getting a boat to an island to heading up to Alaska where, hopefully, the zombies would freeze, and they could live out their lives in peace.
To Jerry, none of their plans seemed feasible given their current lack of information about what was happening elsewhere. He assumed things were pretty muc
h the same all over the country, if not all over the world. Although he was anxious to move on to the stronghold occupied by his friends, he recognized that unilateral action was out of the question. The group was sympathetic to his dilemma and even agreed the fortified fire station sounded like a good place to move to eventually. But they couldn’t resist the security of his and Rachel’s building and the fact that the zombie population downtown was much less dense than what they’d seen in the suburbs. Plus, the Vigils, Tina, and Tracy all had family and friends in the area and wanted to do what they could for any that remained alive.
They decided that they needed to take things in steps and start with scavenging food from Jerry’s neighbors to hold them for the next few days at a minimum. He hoped the lack of cars in the garage would translate into fewer zombies lurking inside. They also needed silent weapons for Tracy, Zach, and Tina. After that, they would think about making forays to locate various friends and relatives whose residences were closer to downtown.
The process of clearing the building was pretty straightforward. They would start by knocking on front doors. If there was a zombie inside who screamed and pounded on the other side, they would draw a big red X on the door and move on. If no one answered, they would enter any unit whose door was unlocked and leave the locked units for later. Jerry had thought there would be more than a few of these since the building’s front door required an electronic fob. He and Rachel rarely locked their door unless leaving for an extended absence. But it turned out only two other people were as lax about security as they were. Or, perhaps, fleeing the apocalypse was considered an extended absence.
They did find two more uninfected people. One, an active and gregarious retired film studies professor named Artie who had moved to the city when his wife died of cancer the previous year. He’d had no desire to live the rest of his life alone in their suburban house nor in a retirement community. “Too many old people sitting around waiting to die,” he said. “Best decision I ever made, even with all the zombies.”