by Guy James
When the cleanup was done and Sven and Jane had recovered from their nausea, they figured out how to work the entrance shutter and lowered it. The sliding doors still opened and closed when they came near, but the shutter would keep the uncoordinated zombies out.
Sven pushed several rows of shopping carts up against the back of the shutter for good measure, and that made Jane think of Evan...of being trapped inside the supermarket with Evan, who was now most of the way—
“Hey where’s Lorie?” Sven asked.
Jane shook her head. “I don’t know, I haven’t seen her in a while. On that note, where’s Milt?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like this setup. It seemed like a great idea when we were driving up this way...but I don’t trust that guy. He seems so unpredictable to me.”
“I don’t trust him either, but what can we do? Kill him? We’ll have to keep a watch—a patrol.”
“Between you, me, and Brian, one of us can be up at all times. That way we won’t be surprised by the zombies, or by Milt if he decides to go crazy on us. I’ll go tell Brian.”
So Jane stood there, and watched Sven walk away to tell his friend. She put her hand on the grip of the .460 XVR, knowing that it would always be there for her, and hoping that Sven would be too.
93
Ivan was watching the boy from a safe distance, tilting his furry head this way and that, curious about why Sven kept the rotten boy around. It was as if Sven couldn’t smell the bad smell, as if Sven had no idea about the rot...the terrible, sickening smell. But then Sven must have been able to smell it, because he was killing the rotten people everywhere they went. Why was the rotten boy allowed to remain? The smell was so bad. What about the woman, couldn’t she smell it? Why couldn’t she? Soon the rotten boy would begin to move, to try to spread the rot into the others, and they would have to run again, or fight, fight and kill the—There was suddenly a stale, fusty odor in the air that drew an instinctive hiss from Ivan. It wasn’t the rot. Ivan skittered away from the smell and turned his nimble body around, using his tail to keep balanced in the hairpin turn. A big man was coming, moving slowly and with great effort, wheezing and out of breath. Ivan flattened himself out, ready to pounce. But the fat man wasn’t coming to Ivan. He was coming to the rotten boy. Ivan would’ve hissed a warning if it were Sven. Ivan even would have clawed at Sven if it were he that was approaching the boy in this particularly late stage of the rot. But with the fat musty man it was different. Ivan didn’t care about stopping him. The fat man wasn’t rotten, but the fat man was soft, not like Sven. The fat man didn’t like Ivan, and Ivan knew it, could smell it. The fat man, Ivan decided, would get no warning. Then the fat man had something shiny. He was holding the shiny thing next to the rotten boy. Then...then? The fat man stood there holding the shiny thing, over the rotten boy. Then the fat man plunged the long shiny thing into the rotten boy. Then...then? Ivan knew at once that the fat man didn’t understand. That wasn’t enough. The rot was still there. Why would the fat man do that? The rot. It was there. It was still coming. The bad death was still coming.
94
Lorie was creeping around the inside perimeter of the Wegmans.
I could get used to this place, she thought, it’s definitely big enough for me. She was holding the hunting knife in her hand now, making no effort to conceal it. She had no intention of letting go of the knife, not then and not even if it made its way into a zombie’s brain. She would pull it back out and reuse it. Use and reuse.
I will not be left without a weapon again, Lorie told herself.
She revised her circular route when she spied a red-faced Milt trundling out of the candy aisle, chocolate stains running down his chin. She stopped short of the far aisle and stood before an open refrigerator, feeling the cold air spill out onto her. She ignored the fat man as he waddled past her in his slipper-clad feet, grunting and muttering something about wizards and the apocalypse and zombie children.
The guy was a real creep, and Lorie wondered if he could be sectioned off at some far end of the store, or in an aisle—the candy aisle perhaps—so that she didn’t have to see him. It was worth giving up access to all the candy in the store for that.
Lorie shuddered Milt’s lingering creepiness off her and took a bottle of water from the refrigerator, savoring the feel of the cool, wet plastic against her palm. Instead of putting the knife down to open the bottle, she hooked it into her back pocket, then opened the bottle and gulped the cool water greedily.
Surprised when the water stopped flowing, Lorie lowered the bottle from her mouth and realized that it was empty. It hadn’t felt like more than two sips and the thing was empty already. She scanned the refrigerator for another drink.
Anything would be more refreshing than the water, she thought, and decided on a large orange-colored Gatorade. She picked it up, opened it, and downed half of the drink before coming up for air. Then she took the hunting knife in her hand again, and began up the aisle, open Gatorade bottle in one hand and forward-facing hunting knife in the other.
She was a predator, meticulously stalking her prey. She just hadn’t chosen the prey yet. Then, glancing into an aisle of frozen foods as she passed it, Lorie decided that she wanted some fruit. Fruit was good fuel. It was light and kept the energy up, and it was one of Lorie’s snacking staples at track meets and in training.
I’ll start with a banana, she thought, realizing how light-headed she felt, that should help steady me on my feet.
Then something in a dark corner of her mind lit up. It was a connecting cable—a mental one—that ran between her desire for a piece of fruit and something that the creepy Milt had said.
Fruit and, fruit and? What was it? Fruit and...
Lorie realized what was bothering her, dropped the half-full bottle of Gatorade, and broke into a run. It was the remark about zombie children, and maybe it was the way Milt had waddled past, more dignified than before, as if he’d done something, as if they should all be honored to be in his presence.
She ran, hunting knife pumping up and down in her right hand. She veered into the produce section, using her left hand to lean on a shelf to stop herself from toppling over. She couldn’t see anyone there, and slowing to a walk, Lorie approached the center of the produce section, feeling cold apprehension gripping her more tightly with every step.
Lorie’s blood turned cold when she saw him.
Evan was so still, so quiet.
Lorie didn’t even need to see the thick red puddle forming at his left side to know—she felt her face contort with anguish and a sob choke its way out of her throat—to know that Evan was gone.
She wiped at her eyes and mouth, feeling confused. Why was he dead…and why was there blood pooling around him? How could that have—what could have happened to…
She stepped closer, her body resisting every movement closer to Evan, as if she could deny the fact that he was dead if she just stayed away from his body, as if she could turn around and he would become whole again.
She tried not to look at his face as she got closer, she didn’t want to see it, to let it in, to admit to—
Then she screamed.
95
Sven had taken the first watch. He, Jane, and Brian had decided that they would switch off in four or six hour shifts depending on how they felt. Brian offered to do a later shift, since he claimed that he was well-rested. Sven wanted to get his own over with, and didn’t much trust himself to stay alert into the night. Jane didn’t care which shift she got.
So they agreed that Sven would go first, followed by Jane, followed by Brian, and then the cycle would repeat itself. As he left Jane and Brian to fiddle with the radios and television sets, trying to find a signal, Sven wondered how many repetitions of their watch cycle there would be before the zombies went away...assuming the zombies ever did go away.
How long would they be hiding there? Was it really hiding? It was more like being trapped than hiding. Sven knew that he was assuming a lot. He was a
ssuming that he and the rest of his group could survive long enough. What if they were overrun?
With that and other similar thoughts churning in his head, Sven began his patrol by marching straight to the store’s organic section. The shotgun hung loosely from his right hand as he wandered up and down the aisles, searching for some much-needed protein.
He found a packet of Golden Valley Natural Organic Beef Jerky, gently set the shotgun down on the floor, and took the packet of beef jerky off its rack. He tore it open and withdrew a dried piece of meat. Sven looked at the jerky, turning it over in his hand.
Then he raised the jerky to his face and smelled it. His body began to spasm with nausea, and it took all of Sven’s will to keep from throwing up. After he had drawn enough shuddering breaths to calm himself somewhat, he took another piece of jerky out of the packet, having dropped the first one in his bout of spasms.
I have to eat, Sven told himself, it’s been all day, and I’m hurt. I need to keep my energy up.
His stomach growled as he held the dry, ragged piece of beef jerky in his hand, but he couldn’t make himself eat it. His stomach felt like it was growling at least as much from revulsion as from hunger, so he decided the jerky wasn’t appropriate right then, and he would find something else.
He gingerly set the jerky down on a shelf next to some Cheddar Bunnies, picked up the shotgun, and backed away. He knew he was better off eating something. It would help to settle his stomach. Maybe some cinnamon cookies or ginger snaps, or something with peppermint in it. He knew all of those things were good for settling one’s stomach, knowledge garnered from his friendship with Brian.
It’s good to know a holistic supplement dealer, Sven thought.
But that didn’t change the fact that no matter how much he knew he should eat, and no matter how much he stared at the scrumptious foods in the organic section, the lump in his throat remained in place with finality. The way his body was feeling right now, eating just wasn’t an option, regardless of the muscle loss that might result.
Despondent, Sven left the organic section and began to wander about the store aimlessly, looking for signs of the monsters that had taken over his beautiful town and stolen his appetite in the process.
And soon my muscles, Sven thought, soon the zombies will have those too, starving my hard work into oblivion.
He wandered into a back section of the store that was set off in a recess. The section was a series of bins filled with nuts, candy, and other dry goods, punctuated by an excessive number of weighing machines.
Sven walked over to one of the weighing machines and looked at it. It was the fancy kind where you could not only weigh the product you were buying, but the machine spat out labels to plaster onto your bags of gathered goods. Sven wondered how often people cheated, printing out a label for a bag with two pieces of chocolate, plastering it on, then adding fifty more pieces of chocolate. He decided that if the system was still in place, there probably wasn’t all that much cheating.
He sighed and looked about the bins. Sven didn’t understand how people could do that to themselves, eating garbage and living with the consequences.
With that in mind, he picked up a pair of chocolate eyeballs and began rolling them around in his left palm like a pair of Chinese Stress Balls. The chocolate eyeballs were poorly wrapped, and left brown smears on Sven’s hand, and he decided that they were a poor substitute for the silver pair of Baoding Balls that he had at home.
Sven continued to look at the eyeballs in his palm, no longer twirling them now, and suddenly found himself putting the shotgun down and unwrapping the eyeballs.
Once the eyeballs were unwrapped, he took one in each hand and began to squeeze them, watching the peanut butter dribble out. Why he was doing this he had no idea, but it made him think about his and Brian’s decision not to burn the bodies, to leave them in that putrid pile in the parking lot, to be taken care of by the elements.
Some of those bodies were sure to have empty eye sockets. Maybe the chocolate ones could—Sven shook himself away from the insanity.
I really am losing my mind, he thought, jungle hallucinations and now chocolate eyeball fantasies.
Throwing away the crushed chocolate eyeballs and picking up a fresh pair to unwrap, Sven wondered if leaving the bodies out there had been a mistake. What if rotting zombie corpses attracted more zombies?
He and Brian had decided not to burn them for two reasons. First, they didn’t want to risk catching the Wegmans on fire, flushing themselves out of their new hideaway. Second, they didn’t want to risk attracting any unwelcome human attention…or any at all for that matter.
Sven shrugged and tried to get his fingers unstuck from his palms. Maybe the pile would reassemble itself and attack the Wegmans. The way the day was going, that wasn’t so unlikely.
Sven had squeezed most of the peanut butter out of his ninth chocolate eyeball when he heard the scream. He picked up the shotgun with a sticky, chocolate and peanut butter-covered hand and set off in a run.
Now, as he ran toward the front of the store, Sven’s mind began to flash on the possibilities. Milt could have done something terrible. The surly, waddling beast had stormed off after Sven and Brian brought the unconscious Evan in, and who knew what he’d been up to since? How could Milt be so insensitive as to expect them to leave Evan outside to die…next to that pile of zombies in the middle of the parking lot? Milt was probably capable of anything.
Jane could have accidentally shot someone in the midst of her compulsive gun cleaning, munitions counting, and disassembly and reassembly of her new best friends.
Lorie could have purposefully stabbed someone—if that was the case, Sven hoped it was Milt that she had stabbed…and Sven knew he would forgive her.
Evan could have…maybe it was something to do with Evan. That seemed the most likely possibility. The boy had been much worse when Sven last saw him, probably close to death or...
If the scream wasn’t on account of any of those possibilities, perhaps the zombies had already arrived, surrounded the Wegmans, and were now trickling in through an access point that Sven should have spotted and sealed before leading Jane and Lorie inside. How could he live with something like that? Knowing that he was responsible for the deaths of—Sven cut the thought off, comforting himself with the notion that if the zombies were inside, he wouldn’t have very long to live with his shame.
As he ran, feeling the uncomfortable, more unnerving than painful crunch in his ribcage with each footfall, he tried to tell himself that it had been a good scream, that Lorie and Jane and Brian had finally gotten the radios or TVs to work and help was on its way. He tried to tell himself that was it, but he didn’t believe it.
Reflecting on the possibilities as he slowed, Sven knew it could only be something terrible. He was fairly certain that it was Lorie who had screamed, and that girl wouldn’t be screaming over nothing.
“Lorie!” he shouted. “Where are you? Lorie!”
Her scream—if it had been her scream—still hung in the air, and the air in the place seemed to grow colder the closer Sven drew to whatever it was that…
He burst into the produce section, last to the party. He no longer needed an answer.
Standing next to a disheveled pile of loose cherries, Sven felt the air choking him, closing tighter around his throat.
Lorie, Jane, and Brian stood motionless over Evan’s prone body. Sven took two steps closer, hearing each of his footfalls in the stony silence. He saw the puddle growing out of the boy, engulfing him. Sven’s entire body went rigid, as if gripped by ice. The air grew even colder, closing yet tighter around his throat.
“I did it,” a calm, nasally voice said. It was Milt’s voice.
Sven whirled, feeling air rip its way into his lungs, and then he saw Milt, standing before a vegetable refrigerator, glaring in their direction.
Carrots, cilantro, parsley, dill, kale, and collards framed Milt’s enormous body—a strangely disturbing sight.
“My hand was forced,” he said, unable to keep a wheeze out of his voice. “He was beginning to turn into one of the undead, and then he would have destroyed us from within. It was a heroic act.”
Silence.
There was an eerie calm in the air.
Ivan padded in, passing in front of Milt and describing a wide arc around the produce section before coming up behind Sven. Ivan pawed at Sven’s pants a few times, then leapt onto an empty display that claimed to hold Yukon Gold potatoes. Ivan crouched low and puffed up his tail.
Glancing at Ivan, Sven could see Ivan’s muscles growing taut on his lean frame.
Then Lorie pounced.
She burst toward Milt, raising the knife she’d been carrying around since their departure from the gun shop. Her face was a tear-streaked snarl and then—
Abruptly, there was a tearing sound, and Lorie’s body lurched and caught. She was motionless for a split second, a look of confusion flowering on her face. She looked down, and the confusion wilted into terror.
Then Sven looked down, aghast at once at what he saw.
Evan’s hands had burst through the sleeping bag, and now were wrapped firmly around Lorie’s left shin. The boy’s hands were partially flayed, apparently having been ripped up by their journey through the sleeping bag’s durable, insulating material.
Evan moaned as he pulled Lorie toward him, gnashing his teeth and wriggling around in the sleeping bag that still had him wrapped from the midsection down.
Lorie screamed, and she brought her knife up, but then brought it down to her side. She didn’t stab at Evan, or even at his hands. Instead, she dropped the knife and began trying to squirm free.
Sven had begun to move toward the sleeping bag, intent on freeing Lorie, when the shot rang out.
Evan’s body went limp, though his hands still clung to Lorie’s shin. Lorie continued to struggle away from Evan, looking dazed and uncertain.