“What are we going to do, Jonathan?” The old crow croaked.
He didn’t answer her. He just looked me up and down as though he was trying to get a good read on me. I could almost feel his prying suspicions trying to squeeze into my impenetrable shell. Once he realized I wasn’t going to break, he turned to Jack.
Fuck! I thought.
“How about you, friend?” He asked standing up and walking towards the big man. “You got people chasing after you?”
Jack gave a look that might have well said, HEY LOOK, I’M GOING TO LIE TO YOU NOW! Then he put on an acting attempt that was twice as stiff as Keanu Reeves and not even half as believable.
“Er…Yeah…” He started. “There are a bunch of men…with guns…”
Bravo Jack.
Jonathan smiled at Jack’s lie because he could see it for what it was. He came back to me and placed the barrel of his rifle under my chin.
“There are no men out there, are there?” He smiled already knowing the answer to his question.
“Well…There are always men.”
Then, he turned back to his decrepit wife. “Restrain them.”
Now, you have to imagine the sheer size of Jack to really see the implausibility of this situation. A brittle old bag that looked like she might have witnessed biblical accounts first hand, using cable ties to restrain a man who had to dip his head and turn his shoulders sideways when walking into a normal sized doorway. His muscles seemed to have muscles, but what good did all that brawn do when he refused to act? Sure, there was a gun pointed squarely at his chest while she did it, but I have to imagine it would take more than one shot to bring down a man of that size.
“What are you going to do with us?” he asked as she tightened the plastic restraints.
“Nothing, dearie.” she purred.
“This is just a precaution,” her husband chimed in.
Jonathan may have needed to go to someone else to discover my lie, but I saw his for what it was straight away. My superior ability to read people told me that they were going to kill us. So why restrain us? Why not just shoot us while we were outside and unarmed? It didn’t make sense.
Sara was restrained without incident, and then it was my turn. The old woman’s hands were as cool as the steel that Jonathan placed against my forehead. I analyzed my options.
Option A: Grab the barrel of the gun and try to wrench it from the old man’s hand before he’s able to pull the trigger. Spin around and punch the old bat as hard as I can in her brittle hip and watch her crumble to the ground. Then watch Jonathan beg for his life down the barrel of his own gun.
Option B: Let the old lady bind my hands behind my back. See what they are doing and make a run for it when I get my first chance.
Now, while weighing my options, keep in mind that I am a realist. I know that the second my hand moves towards Jonathan’s gun, all he has to do is flex his finger, and everything that made me this glorious monster would be splashed all over the pool furniture display behind me. So I went with option B. Option A was just more fun to imagine because I really wanted to break this grandma’s hip.
She strapped my wrists together and then pushed me forward harder than I thought she could.
“You know, you don’t have to push me,“ I said, turning back to her. “I’m worried about your heart.”
She smiled and then pulled out a gun that would have made Dirty Harry proud. “I don’t like this one,” she sad to her husband.
“We can put him with the others then,” he smiled back.
“Others?” Sara asked. “There are other people here?”
“Well…There are always others,” he said, motioning us down the plumbing aisle towards the gardening department.
Rex pranced happily around us as we marched towards uncertainty.
“Asshole,” I mumbled to the dog as we stopped in front of the large electric double doors to the gardening center that were completely covered up with plywood.
Jonathan and Amanda pushed the unsecured plywood to the side, and we could see the others he was talking about.
The entire enclosed open air gardening center was packed with zombies. Shoulder to shoulder, shuffling, and drooling zombies. It looked like Jonathan built a double gate system leading out to the zombie infested section. A bright Home Depot orange metal staircase went from the sliding glass doors to the top of his second gate. The implications were immediately understood. It’s like a modern day version of walking the plank. Only instead of walking off a ship into the ocean, you step off a ladder into a sea of zombies. The zombies were completely silent until they could see the food inside staring back at them. The ones closest to the glass doors were the first to moan and alert the others that there was food close by. Before long, it was like a large choir singing a moaning death dirge. Or maybe they were all saying grace before eating. It’s hard to tell with zombies.
As I looked at the groaning hoard, I felt a poke in my back. I turned my head just enough to see Jonathan shoving his riffle into my spine to urge me up the stairs.
“You gotta be kidding me,” I said.
“‘Fraid not, friend. Maybe in your next life you won’t try and tell lies to strangers.”
“Next life? I never would have pegged you for a Bhuddist,” I said.
“Oh, I’m full of surprises.”
I looked over his shoulder to see Sara and Jack at gunpoint. Jack had his head turned, so he didn’t have to watch, but Sara looked right into my eyes. I was pretty sure she had gone into shock because she didn’t look like she was comprehending the situation. She stared at me blankly as her mind tried to make sense of everything.
Amanda waved and blew me a kiss as Jonathan jabbed me again with his rifle. I looked down and saw Rex licking the old man’s leg just above his black socks. Liver spots must be delicious. That fucking dog immediately jumped ship and sided with our enemies. The thought of him getting belly scratches and head rubs while I worked my way through the intestines of the undead somehow seemed unfair.
“Do I get a last request?” I asked solemnly.
“Probably not, but go ahead,” Jonathan answered honestly.
“I’d like to take my dog with me.”
Everyone’s head shot up. Even Rex’s. Look, if he was going to switch sides so easily, and turn against me, I would personally feed him to the first zombie I landed on.
Jonathan laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so.” He patted Rex on the head. “It’ll be nice to have a little dog running around here. Now, off you go.” He thrust his chin up towards the direction of the stairs. I looked around, and I could not find any other way out. Maybe the zombies were so densely packed in there that I could run across them like Paul Hogan did in the subway at the end of Crocodile Dundee. Of course, in that movie, the people in the subway were trying to help him get to his true love, not trying to eat him.
So I slowly walked up the metal staircase. The metal handrail was freezing, and my fingers could feel each chip in the paint as I approached the top. It was hard to hear anything over the moaning of the zombies, and I looked out over them to see if there was a weakness in their defense I could squeeze through.
Nothing.
I turned back around to take one last look at living people before I dove into my demise. Maybe I would try to body surf. I’ve never done that, and it always looked like fun. As I looked back at Jonathan, I saw his face change from triumphant excitement to excruciating agony. When I moved my gaze down further, I saw Rex still on Jonathan’s leg, only instead of licking, he had his jaw clamped down so hard on the old man’s calf that blood was pumping out at a rate I would have thought impossible for a dog that size.
Jonathan let out a scream and tried to shake the dog off, but Rex refused to relent. Amanda screamed and fired her gun at the dog in an attempt to kill the beast. Jonathan’s shaking leg was probably what saved the small dog. His old man liver spotted leg took the bullet where Rex was just a moment before. This was my opportunity. I ran down the stairs, and they
shook violently as I quickly descended. Once I made it back to terra firma safely I quickly assessed the situation.
Jonathan had dropped his rifle and was writhing on his back from a gunshot wound and a dog with a bite much stronger than he has any right to be. Sara was running down one of the side aisles and out of sight while Jack bent over, looking like he was trying to poop. The ancient Amanda was running full tilt towards her husband, which at her age was about the speed of an obese turtle with a heart condition. I lowered my head and stooped over to catch the old bag right in her hip with my shoulder.
Jackpot.
I heard it crunch like a bag of Doritos. Her momentum sent her spinning out through the double doors where she crashed into the stairs. She wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. The next thing I heard was a crack that sounded like a gunshot. My head bolted up to see Jack with his arms out by his side. His skin was red and bulging with every vain in his body. Two thick broken plastic cable ties laid on the ground beside him, and he let out a scream that I could feel in my ass.
Rex was growling in a way that I had never heard before. The chomping sounds he was making got progressively wetter and wetter. I turned to see the damage he was doing, and I saw that he was actually exposing the old man’s shin bone to the elements. I was shocked, but pleasantly so. Then I saw Jonathan making an attempt to regain control by pointing his shaking rifle at the small dog.
Now, this has nothing to do with paying the dog back for saving me, but I wasn’t about to let this disturbed old fuck kill my dog.
Well, not my dog, but this dog.
I moved quickly and kicked the dog out of the way just as Jonathan pulled the trigger and blew off several of his toes. Those must have been the ones who went ‘weeee weeee weeee all the way home.’
Jack was still in animal mode, he came running in and picked up the old man like he was cheap kindling. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that Jack picked the old man up over his head like a professional wrestler, and thew him outside and into the staircase that Amanda was trying to stand up against.
Now, here’s where the real problem began. Jack is strong. Really strong. He threw Jonathan against that ladder with enough force that the ladder actually moved back about four inches. That four inch gap was apparently enough for half a dozen zombies to get their arms through. As we watched, the four inch gap turned to six inches. Suddenly, it was eight inches. Then it was wide enough for the first few zombies to make their way through. Sara emerged with her arms free, and she held a hacksaw in her hands. She ran to me and quickly cut through the plastic restraints. Jack and I moved in synchronicity to push the glass sliding doors closed, but Amanda’s foot was in the way. It didn’t matter anyway because more zombies were making their way through. We quickly covered the doors with the plywood in hopes that the diners would quickly forget about the food they just saw inside. As we covered the doors, we could hear Jonathan and Amanda’s screams of pain as the zombies began to chew into their aged flesh. The three of us pressed our backs against the plywood as more and more zombies slammed against the doors.
Rex came prancing up licking his blood stained maw completely unfazed by our predicament. He stood on his hind legs and pressed his front paws against me happily wagging his tail. Then the question hit me.
Was his betrayal a ruse? Did he cozy up to the old couple only so that he could save my life?
I shook off the thought as the stupid idea that it was.
The glass of the door behind the plywood was shattered, and we could now hear fingernails trying to claw their way through. The wood began to buckle and crack.
“The shelves!” Sara screamed. “Climb the shelves!”
She was right. They were high enough to keep us well out of harm’s way, but then what? It’s not like there was an exit up there. The first hand to make it through the plywood answered the debate in my head for me. The shelves were as good as it was going to get. I grabbed Rex and we made a break down the nearest aisle. I could hear the wood clattering to the ground only seconds after we left it. I tossed Rex onto the highest shelf I could get him to, and then I climbed up as quickly as I could. Jack and Sara had already made it to the top by the time it took for me to get Rex from shelf to shelf.
I probably should have left him on a lower shelf. I don’t know why I felt the need to reward him for saving my life. But, I did it anyway.
We looked out and could see the entire store from our vantage point. Within minutes, the whole place was overrun with zombies. There had to be hundreds. How and why the old crazy couple were keeping them there was beyond me, but there were more than I could have imagined. I sat down next to Rex who was still licking the calcium deficient blood of dearly departed Jonathan off of his face.
“Well,” I said to everyone. “Make yourselves comfortable…I think we are going to be here for a while.”
Chapter 19
And so we sat…
The smell of those zombies milling about below us was unbearable. They were in every aisle just slowly shuffling like elderly people inside of a Golden Corral. They never looked up to see us sitting there, but why would they? Food was always right there on ground level screaming. It was never twenty feet high and bored to tears.
Could we die of boredom?
If so, then Rex would surely be the only survivor. He found a cockroach, and it might as well have been an Xbox. He played with it for hours. He would smack it around, pick it up in his mouth, and spit it out with a fresh thick coating of slime, and then he would gleefully wag his tail as the cockroach proved it was still alive. Occasionally, he would get so excited that he would bounce over to me and attempt to drag his cockroach tainted tongue on me, but each and every time, my reflexes broke world records to keep that from happening. But being the relatively dumb animal that he is, he took the rejection in stride and would immediately spin back over to play with his seemingly indestructible toy. After he finished playing with the cockroach, which turned out to be the reason he finished, I heard a slight crunch when he got just a little too aggressive with his toy.
“Is that a potato chip?” Jack whispered from the aisle across from me. He really had no idea what Rex was playing with.
“Yes,” I answered falsely to avoid any additional conversation.
“Are there any left?”
“No, Rex ate it and didn’t even share it with me.” Jack looked puzzled.
Then we sat in silence for a few hours. The zombies stopped their moaning once they realized there was no food to call for. The only sound, other than when a zombie would walk into a stack of industrial strength paper towels at the end of my aisle, was the occasional sleep fart from the tuckered out Rex. That was quickly followed by me taking a sharp breath in so I wouldn’t have to breathe in his filth. But, then a sound from the front of the store got everyone’s attention. The familiar squeak of the dog toy made Rex’s tiny head bolt upright before he had the chance to wake up fully. He sleepily stumbled backwards and fell on his side. The zombie who accidentally stepped on the plush toy let out a moan at the sound. Then the surrounding zombies moaned and began to move in on the toy. The zombies that surrounded them began to move in that direction. It was a chain reaction that followed throughout the entire store. Like water rippling out from a single drop.
Interesting.
After a few minutes, the action died down, no pun intended, and the zombies continued their silent shuffling.
“I have an idea,” I whispered across the aisle to Sara. “See if you can find batteries.”
“What kind?”
“Nine volt, usually.”
I’ll say this for Sara. She didn’t ask any more questions. She just nodded her head and began to slowly look up and down her aisle for any package that might have the battery I needed.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked.
“I’m trying to do math,” I said as I looked at the eight foot gap between my shelf and the one across the aisle. I had about four feet to try and get a runn
ing start to make it over the river of teeth and claws. As I looked and tried my best to imagine that I had been bitten by a radioactive spider, Rex walked up to the edge of the top shelf we were on and looked down at the sea of zombies below. He then looked up at me with an ‘Are you kidding me?’ look on his face.
I don’t know exactly what it was. Ever since I put Jackson onto that lawnmower, I’ve had a little feeling of invincibility. Sure, I thought I might have died earlier today when the recently retired assholes made me climb the stairway to heaven, but a part of me just wouldn’t accept that I could die.
The Inhuman Chronicles (Book 1): Inhuman Page 16