It only took a few moments to discover the culprit. Jeff smiled in spite of himself as he saw several shredded Fritos bags with small teeth marks on them. A rat, or perhaps a squirrel, had taken up residence in the abandoned store. He took a deep breath, trying to throttle back on the adrenaline. Gripping the shopping cart, he headed toward the pharmacy counter.
After a quick leap over the counter, he scanned the medications. It took a minute or so to find some of the drugs he knew would be useful. He tossed bottle after bottle over the counter at the cart. When he had cleared out as much as he could, he launched himself back over the counter. His cart filled, Jeff was about to head back to the front when he noticed more bloody footprints off to his left. They led to a swinging door marked Employees Only. It was next to the pharmacy and probably led back to the store’s stock room. He recalled a door outside near the drive through that must have served as a loading dock.
The debate in his head on whether he should risk taking a look lasted a scant two seconds. Leaving the cart, Jeff moved to the door. He flipped off the flashlight and stood and listened.
He held the flashlight like a club, but he doubted anyone was back there. They would have responded to all the noise his clumsy fall had caused. Then he remembered the menacing giant from the day before. The creature had been far too busy disemboweling his wife to give a damn about any distant noises. Jeff tensed but did not move away from the door. He knew he wasn’t prepared but felt compelled to take a look anyway.
Listening for another few seconds, he began to hear a low humming noise. It sounded like a machine—maybe a generator or a refrigerator. Staying to the side of the door, Jeff used the long barrel of the flashlight to push it open. When nothing burst through, he moved in front of the doorway to look inside.
The stench pounced, as if it had been waiting for a victim to assault. It was overwhelming. The combination of heat and the small enclosed area made Jeff feel like he had stepped into a crematorium basement where the furnace was kept burning day and night.
It was the stock room, as he had guessed. Racks filled with boxes of various shapes and sizes reached to the ceiling. The ones higher up had avoided the spray of blood, but those closer to the floor were saturated.
A cloud of flies rose angrily from their meal. The swarm, larger than any Jeff had ever seen in his life, was the source of the furious humming noise. After a few seconds, most of them settled down and got back to their meal, which consisted of blood and entrails splattered across the floor.
Jeff covered his mouth as he felt his gorge rising at the sight—and smell—of the torn bodies scattered throughout the room. They were devastated, ripped to pieces, but…
Eyes scanning the carnage, he caught sight of what he deduced was the reason these people had not succumbed to the virus. Next to a sprawled-out appendage lay a semiautomatic handgun.
The people who had hidden in the storeroom had been mauled so thoroughly it was hard to tell where one body ended and another began, but Jeff’s best guess was that they had formed some sort of suicide pact. Someone had pulled the trigger and put bullets in each of his comrade’s heads before turning the gun on himself.
The gun was drenched with gore, and he dismissed the idea of stepping over the slick remains to retrieve it. It was already enough of a challenge to hang onto the contents of his stomach as it was. Fighting the feelings of helplessness and remorse that threatened to consume him, Jeff turned to leave.
As the metal door swung shut again, he did not look back. He grabbed the shopping cart and pushed it toward the dim light of the entrance. His teeth clenched as he wrestled with a rising sense of anger. The world had become a madhouse—an endless supply of macabre images slowly eating away at his sanity, bit by bloody bit.
Jeff gripped the handle of the shopping cart tightly. Despite the anger and fear threatening to claim his mind, a crystal-clear thought cut through all the crap floating around in his head: he wanted to live. That was all that mattered. He knew he was smarter than those things trying to kill him, and there was no way, no how, he was going to end up like the poor saps whose guts were strewn across the storage room floor. He rolled his cart through the aisles, a grim smile plastered across his face. In that instant, he felt more confident than he had in weeks.
The smile faltered as Jeff neared the entrance of the store and he heard Megan screaming.
Chapter 16
Megan screamed again when the sliding door of the minivan opened. She turned, gun in hand, and Jeff was staring down the barrel of the .357 Magnum.
He raised his hands and yelled, “Whoa, it’s me! It’s okay, Megan, it’s me!” For an instant, he thought she was going to pull the trigger, but something like recognition passed over her face and she dropped her hand. She was clearly still freaked out.
A fist slammed into one of the windows, and Megan whipped around toward the noise. Jeff looked as well and saw blood caking the rear window where the fist had connected.
He could also hear the moans. The van was surrounded. The infected had crept out of their various hiding places: abandoned cars, dark shadows, and the other buildings where they had hidden from the blazing sun. That the dead had come for them did not surprise Jeff. What did surprise him was that Megan had not already started shooting.
Through the dirty window glass, he could see several figures moving slowly toward the minivan. Only a handful had reached the vehicle so far, but they were a gruesome lot. One that had found its way to the driver’s-side window made Jeff squirm. Its face had nearly been obliterated by the chunks of glass wedged into its flesh. One eye was split in half, the largest shard of glass jammed deep within the orb. Its other eye stared at Megan balefully as it hissed with all its shattered teeth and blackened gums on display.
“We need to leave now, Jeff!” was all Megan could say as she kept turning in her chair with the gun in front of her, as if not quite sure which grisly monster to shoot at first. The van was starting to rock back and forth.
Jeff turned back toward the shopping cart and scooped up an armful of items. “Help me with this shit and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
“Jeff...please!” He could hear the desperation in her voice and knew Megan wasn’t about to move out of the driver’s seat. She repeated the word “please” over and over, her voice rising. Jeff’s arms were a blur as he dug into the cart and tossed more of its contents into the minivan. The thuds of fists were becoming more insistent, like the sound of a hailstorm. He didn’t look up as he kept his hands moving from the cart to the van in rapid succession.
“JEFF. WE HAVE TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW!” Megan spit out the words as she attempted to turn the key in the ignition with shaking hands.
“Just one more second! I almost have everything!” Jeff grunted as he tried to grab hold of more than his hands could manage. Cans and bags of chips spilled onto the ground as he shoveled what he could into the van. A buzzing sound filled the air, and the van jolted as the engine turned over. Jeff recognized the noise and saw the automatic door beginning to close. He also saw Megan fumbling with the gearshift.
Dropping what was left in his hands, he dove through the closing door and heard the sound of metal on metal and squealing tires as the van shot away from the entrance of the drugstore. He grabbed an armrest and held on tight as Megan whipped the Odyssey around the parking lot. There were several loud thumps as the infected were pushed out of the way. The minivan bounced erratically and then corrected, stable again on four wheels. At least one of the bodies had fallen in front of the vehicle, and Megan did not stop as they rolled over it. The side door finally clicked shut, and the buzzing noise disappeared.
Swinging the steering wheel frantically from side to side, Megan avoided the larger clusters of bodies attempting to grab for them. Several more stiffs were knocked to the side as the van swerved out of the parking lot, hitting the small ditch surrounding it and popping up onto the street. Everything Jeff had just tossed on the seats scattered to the floor and went r
olling around the cargo area. He joined the supplies and landed ass-up on the floor. From his vantage point, he could see nothing and had a hard time crawling back to a sitting position.
“Calm down, Megan! We’re going to crash!” he tried to yell over the still-squealing tires and revving engine. Jeff could not hear his own voice as he grabbed hold of a seat to pull himself up. The van finally straightened out, and the disheveled man was able to slide into the front passenger seat. He was barely settled when Megan slammed on the brakes, nearly sending him through the windshield.
“Enough!” Jeff yelled, this time loud enough for her to hear as she gunned the engine and wrenched the steering wheel around to weave in and out of the stationary traffic. Megan jumped at the sound of his voice, but her eyes did not move off the road. She slowed slightly but retained her death grip on the steering wheel as the van darted around stalled cars and lunging bodies. As they moved farther away from the intersection, the cars remained an issue, but there were fewer ghouls to dodge.
“Ease up just a little bit,” Jeff tried again, placing a hand on Megan’s shoulder. She viciously shrugged it off, and he acted as if she had slapped him, backing away slowly. “Okay, okay. Sorry.” He leaned down and picked up the .357, which had fallen to the floorboards. “If NASCAR ever gets rolling again, I’ll be sure to sign you up.”
It did not elicit the smile Jeff had hoped for, but the intensity in Megan’s eyes seemed to drop a notch. Holding the wheel steady she reached over, and pulled her seatbelt on, which made him relax a bit more. Her driving was steadier as they weaved in out of the clog of vehicles and headed down the road. A random path of destruction continued from structure to structure, but the vehicles were starting to thin out as the survivors moved on.
The duo was silent as Megan continued to dodge the occasional persistent plague victim. She clipped a couple at first, but the few figures on the road were getting easier to avoid.
The sloping hood of the van had several sizeable dents in it that were splattered with something that looked far too thick and runny to be blood. Jeff was staring at the new paint job when the minivan swerved again, and he heard a muffled thud as another body went spinning off into a ditch, pirouetting as it was knocked away by the hit. He watched, fascinated by the creature’s single moment of grace before it fell and disappeared from view.
“Sorry,” Megan whispered. Jeff cocked his head to the side, unsure of what he had heard. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, glancing at her passenger for a moment.
“Screw that. You did great,” he smiled, relieved that the tension between them was broken. “I meant what I said: you drove this puppy like a pro. I would have probably smashed into one of those wrecks back there.”
Megan didn’t share the smile, but her chest puffed up slightly. They sat in silence for the next few minutes, content to look out the windows. As the van crept along, they saw fewer corpses, less of the infected, and a stretch of road with no more wrecks or abandoned vehicles.
“So?” Megan said after a while. She waited for Jeff to look at her before continuing. “Gallatin then?”
He nodded. Gallatin was due east and out toward the country. The town was a mirror image of Milfield, except it was smaller and still held onto its rural roots. There were plenty of trailer parks, farms, and big undeveloped plots of land out that way.
Jeff stared out at the surrounding landscape, which looked deceptively normal. The woods were a bit thicker along the stretch of road they were driving, the houses more spread out. As long as he didn’t look too closely, it was easy to pretend things had gone back to the way they were before the virus paid the world a visit.
They went over a rise in the road, and the daydream was shattered. The trees fell away and they were moving past another neighborhood no different from any of the others the two refugees had seen before. It was a mishmash of damaged properties and those left untouched. Several of the infected were milling about and turned to look as the vehicle rolled by. The sad wretches tried to follow but never got close, and Jeff watched them disappeared in the rearview mirror.
He gave brief directions to Megan. They would take one of the less-traveled routes with the hope that it would not be too congested with stalled traffic. It would lead them directly to Gallatin.
Jeff fiddled with the radio as they rolled along. He began with AM, pressing ‘seek’ and letting it run through the static. It lapped the entire band with no results. He switched to FM and repeated the process. There was nothing, not even an automated emergency broadcast. Those messages had been looped to play over and over, nonstop, when all the live broadcasts had vanished. Even the recorded voices had disappeared off the airwaves.
Megan reached over to turn the radio off. Jeff had already sat back and was staring off into space. He barely noticed when the hiss of static disappeared.
He snapped out of his trance a few minutes later when Megan slowed the car and turned left. The intersection was clear of traffic, though several cars and eighteen-wheelers sat on both sides of the road. There were huge crease marks on many of the vehicles, as if something like a bulldozer had pushed them out of the way. As he looked, he spotted no heavy machinery in the area. There were a few sideways skid marks on the asphalt, but no other hints as to what might have happened.
As they left the crossroad, Jeff dismissed the damaged vehicles and their possible meaning from his mind. He closed his eyes and began to drift off. It felt like only a few seconds later when he heard the van slowing to a stop.
Lifting his head, he glanced at Megan and then looked out his window to see what she was staring at. He was about to shake his head and tell her it was a bad idea to stop there when he saw the expression on her face. He looked a bit more closely at the building near which they were parked.
It was a small brick-fronted church with a wooden sign out front. There was little ornamentation to the edifice itself. The roof was pointed, and several long, narrow windows faced the road. A small indentation in the building served as the entryway, with its glass double doors still intact.
Beside the doorway was the one thing that differentiated the church from all the others they had seen on their short journey. It was a tall wooden structure, nearly as high as the doors themselves. From a distance, one might mistake it for a miniature steeple, but the sign out front made it clear what this decorative feature was.
The wooden sign in front of the church was decorated with a circular graphic and the words “Lighthouse Baptist Fellowship” painted in bright yellow letters on a brown background. A picture of a sea cliff with a lighthouse shining down on a rocky shore was carved below the lettering. There was a space for the “Message of the Week” underneath, which read: “Revelations 6:8 And behold, a pale horse, and he who sat on it, his name was Death. Hades followed with him. Authority over one fourth of the earth, to kill with the sword, with famine, with death, and by the wild animals of the earth was given to him.”
“Not very original,” Jeff smirked. Megan frowned but kept looking at the modest doors of the church. There was nothing grand about the place. No stained glass, no bell to summon the congregation, no statues of Jesus. Just a tidy little building with quite a few cars crammed into its small parking lot.
Jeff resisted saying anything else or asking questions. If Megan was saying a prayer for the dearly departed or reminiscing about the good old days, he could manage to keep his mouth shut while she did. He studied the church further and saw that there were no signs of attack around the perimeter or in the parking lot. The area looked clear of bodies. Relaxing, he decided to sit and wait until Megan was ready to get rolling again.
The peaceful scene exploded less than a minute later when several gangrenous congregants burst through the doors of the church, slouching toward them. There was a sharp intake of breath to Jeff’s left as it happened. He, on the other hand, felt surprisingly calm as more and more stiff forms poured out of the building. Most wore suits and what had once been pretty dresses before their owne
rs started to bloat, leak, and weep caustic fluids.
The first woman out the door was gussied up in her Sunday best with several silk flowers still stuck in the wispy gray hair that now floated above her skull like writhing snakes. The flowers retained some of their faux beauty, though they were smudged and smeared with caked grease. Stripes of gore mixed with the soft silken white petals, giving them a zebra-like appearance. She and those that followed limped toward the minivan over the burnt lawn of the church.
Jeff forced his eyes off the growing rabble and back toward Megan.
She was still looking toward the entrance, her eyes moist, though she wasn’t crying. He moved to block her view of the mass of corrupt forms moving toward them, but Megan didn’t even blink when he did.
When she spoke a moment later, her voice sounded far off, distant.
“We were told it would be safe here. They said we should come with them. Why did this happen? I don’t understand.”
“They were infected like everyone else.”
The bitter words caught Megan’s attention, and her eyes refocused on Jeff. She looked angry but also fractured and unsure of herself.
“God couldn’t protect them, Megan. No one could. If you had come here with them, you would have been infected too, no matter how hard you prayed.”
Jeff started to see the cold fire in Megan’s eyes that he had seen before. He wanted to shrink back, but something inside compelled him to push harder.
“God helps those who help themselves.” He jerked his head backwards, not daring to look at the onrush of bodies. “They were lambs led to the slaughter. Hell, it doesn’t even look like they barred the doors. They probably just kept on praying and thought the rapture was coming.”
Megan’s face went nuclear. “You coldhearted bastard! I had friends in there, not that you give a shit!”
Jeff returned the angry look, his peppered with frustration. “Megan, it doesn’t matter if I care! What difference would it make if I said I was sorry they were infected?” He paused, but realized he had already said too much. His face betrayed his regret for a moment and then shifted back to anger to hide his embarrassment. “I AM sorry, okay? Does that make you feel any better?”
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