Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3)

by S. P. Durnin

  “There’s a bit of intestine at the top corner,” Cho informed him helpfully.

  Jake glared at her, then pressed the button for some windshield wiper fluid.

  Kat didn’t notice his irritation. She sat beside O’Connor, humming absently, mood brighter than the sun still beating its way into Jake’s head. Evidently happy about their need for a road trip, the blue-haired, young woman began tapping on the door-frame, quietly singing ‘Gonna Rock This Town” by her favorite rockabilly band: Stray Cats.

  Though he continued to scowl against the pain in his skull, Jake noted for the first time that Kat had a very pretty singing voice.

  “There it is. On the left.” Elle sat forward, then pointed out between O’Connor and the ninja-girl rocking out in the front seat.

  For the most part, Vanita Costco was like all the rest previously reaching across the nation. The now-dark company logo rode a huge sign that would never again blaze out the presence of bargains-in-bulk, solid concrete walls, and single point of entry/egress right in front if you discounted the few loading dock doors. One difference was—unlike the other thousand-and-one retail locations the survivors seemed to have passed during their journey—this one seemed to be intact. It showed no signs of damage from the exterior—meaning looters hadn’t broken in, wrecked the mega-chain location as they’d emptied the shelves then burned it to the ground—save for a few old bloodstains on the walls out front, and O’Connor saw that the steel security gates were even down within when he rolled to a stop before the entrance.

  “Well that’s new, isn’t it?” Beatrix glommed the cube of Hubba-Bubba Kat passed her, and the pair of women began happily chomping away. “When’s the last time we saw a store that didn’t look like Bourbon Street on the day after Mardi Gras?”

  “Never. Let’s check it out.” Jake shut down the Hummer and hopped to the pavement, making damn-sure that his crowbar was secure along his spine and his M4 had a full magazine.

  Cho moved up beside him as Elle and Bee watched for any threat, but they found playing rearguard was largely unnecessary. There was nothing. No movement. No creatures. Nada. The only sounds any of them heard were the high-pitched calls of avian life, the buzz of insects, and the rustle of what little stray trash littered the discount warehouse parking lot.

  O’Connor looked about and his brows lowered into a frown. “Anybody else see that?”

  Kat was puzzled. “What?”

  “I do.” Bee tracked her own rifle from left to right, slowly taking in everything nearby. “What do you think, a week maybe?”

  Jake nodded. “If that. No offense, but how come you noticed?”

  “Hi! I’m Beatrix. Have you met my Uncle George?” The green-topped girl asked him with amusement.

  “Point taken,” Jake conceded. “Elle?”

  The blonde’s eyes searched the asphalt below their feet. “Closer to five days judging from the loss of definition, and taking in the effects of nature on the tracks.”

  Kat looked down.

  Something none of them could have noticed as they’d approached the warehouse, was that there were numerous, faint tire tracks in the grit before the front door. Glancing quickly about, she could’ve kicked herself for seeing the other signs of recent living activity. The lot was free of other vehicles for one. There were some cars—totaling fifteen in all—in the field next door, but at first glance Cho had mistakenly believed they’d been there since the outbreak had begun. Now, there was no mistaking the fresh ruts their tires had left in the soft earth when they’d been moved. Next was the lack of clutter within the parking lot. Nearly everywhere Jake’s party had traveled through in the past showed a healthy about of clutter, but the lot looked like it had been cleaned of stray trash and wreckage?

  “Someone’s policed the area.” O’Connor gazed intently at the front door. “A lot of someones, if you want to be exact. It would take fifty or more people to pick up a space this size, at least with any kind of speed. More, if you didn’t want it to take all day.”

  “Any chance they’re still inside?” Bee was noticeably hesitant about entering the structure now.

  Elle shook her head. “Nah. If someone were here they’d have at least one vehicle sitting around for a quick getaway, just in case a horde came a-calling. I’m guessing whoever it was that paid this place a visit, they were on a supply run.”

  “Let’s take a look.” Jake hefted his rifle, then motioned to the blonde sergeant. “Elle, find yourself a good vantage point. Give a call if trouble shows up.”

  Since their battle with the Purifiers, Foster had insisted at least two members of every scouting/scavenging party carry his hand-held secure radios. Jake’s companions currently had a pair: One for Elle, and the other stuffed inside a pocket of his tactical vest.

  “I’ve got just the spot.” Elle trotted across the pavement to a nearby fire engine seventy yards distant, and then vanished a-top the hose bed at the rear of the truck with her Long-Arm rifle.

  “Alright girls.” Jake pulled the charging handle on his rifle, then strode for the door with Kat and Bee in tow, “Let’s go shopping.”

  * * *

  “Oh man! Clean-up on aisle five.” Beatrix covered her mouth and nose with one hand.

  While Jake was focused on retrieving items from the list Rae had provided him that morning, he felt very much like doing the same.

  Inside, the Costco stank to high heaven.

  That wasn’t caused by rotting bodies or even decaying foodstuffs, but by the near-overflowing toilets beside the store’s front entrance. As they opened the door, a nauseating aroma assaulted the trio’s nostrils with such force that it nearly knocked them to their knees. Kat actually pulled her black zukin—the lower half of her ninja mask—from its pouch at her belt, then secured it tightly over her mouth and nose before deftly picking the lock at the base of the security gate. Once inside, it was simple to pinpoint the source of said gut-churning scent. That was because the stink of piss and feces swelled to almost unbearable levels as they moved past the bathrooms. Bee lost the battle with her stomach and moved quickly to vomit into a handy waste can. As the green-haired girl upchucked loudly, O’Connor and Cho strove to keep their own stomach contents down while taking shallow breaths. Through their mouths.

  “Holy…” Kat managed, “How could anyone stay in here with that smell?”

  Jake swallowed against the pressure in his throat. “If the alternative were being torn apart by those things? You’d be surprised what human beings can tolerate in the face of certain death.”

  “No way. I’d rather die.” Beatrix finally got control of her gag reflex once more, and scurried quickly past the toilets to join them within the store proper. “I don’t think I’m going to be eating dinner tonight...”

  “Let’s not talk about eating, shall we?” Kat pointed at her zukin. “Barfing while wearing one of these isn’t something I want to experience.”

  The thought of doing so made Jake cringe, and he shook his head to drive the image away. “Stay focused here, ladies. Since the security gates were down, there likely aren’t any of those things in here, but—”

  “Maggot-heads.” Kat interjected.

  O’Connor sighed. “Fine. There likely aren’t any ‘maggot-heads’ in here, but we can’t assume we’re safe and we need to make this little outing as brief as possible. I can’t see checking the whole store considering it’s just the three of us. So, we stay together, cover each others backs, and—”

  Cho grinned behind her mask. “You go first. I’ll watch your butt. I mean back.”

  “Me too.” Bee smiled without the least little bit of shame. “I heard about your strip-tease when you guys rescued Allen and Maggie. Since I wasn’t there to see it, I think—”

  “As I was saying,” Jake said firmly and gave them each a scowl. “We all stick together and take it aisle by aisle, until we
find what Rae needs for the buses. With any luck we’ll be able to grab a wheelbarrow or carts to move the smaller stuff, but I don’t have a clue how to get her a pair of freezer doors. Those things literally weigh a ton.”

  “If you’re in such a hurry, how are we going to locate the rest?” Bee moved up beside him as they passed the checkout lines. “This place is huge!”

  Jake pointed up a thumb up at the sign above his head, one of the many listing what each aisle contained.

  Bee raised one eyebrow. “Hey, that’s pretty smart! Kat’s right: there is a brain in there, isn’t there? You’re not just a big ol’ hunk of man-candy.”

  Turning his head slowly in her direction, Jake gave Cho a level look. “Really?”

  “Hey, don’t blame me.” His unamused gaze slid off Kat like water off a duck. “You’ve got a great ass. It’s not my fault other female members of the population—or rather, the remaining female population—notice. Cause if zombies noticed your ass, that would just be creepy. Now that I think about it, I guess they do. Kind of. I mean, they want to eat anybody they see, and they aren’t picky about where they start chomping away so technically-”

  “Stop. Please. Just stop talking.” Jake turned back to face the aisles again and headed down the nearest, mumbling under his breath. “Christ. I’m the Rodney-fucking-Dangerfield of the Zombie Apocalypse...”

  As they moved quickly—but carefully—through the dim store, Kat snagged them a trio of carts from the nearby corral. Each pushed one along as they searched out a pair of generators for Rae and, of course, O’Connor got the one with a bum wheel. It pulled to the left as he rolled it along, so he had to torque his wrist to the right painfully to compensate.

  “What kind are we looking for again?” Bee bent at her waist to read the model specification on a nearby box.

  O’Connor became momentarily distracted by the sight of Bee leaning over, rear protruding pleasantly as she did so. He found it once again necessary to agree with his long-time, absent friend Allen Ryker. Beatrix Foster was smoking hot. The face of a naughty cherub, big blue eyes, green hair done up in an anime-style pair of long ponytails, and if her measurements from the bust down were anything but thirty-eight, twenty-four, thirty-four, he would eat his hat. George treated the young woman as if she were still a clueless teenager, but she was twenty-two and had almost completed her college coursework when the dead rose. Jake had no doubt she knew precisely how make males went ‘goggle-eyed’ and began howling at the moon.

  After managing to pull his own eyes back into his head, before either of the women noticed, he said, “Rae wants ‘Kohler Power Force PK500-ESs’. She said something about them having a high output, but I don’t know how much.”

  Bee straightened up again. “There are two versions of that model. Which ones do we take?”

  “If it were important I’m sure ‘Brainiac’ would have mentioned it. Let’s take that one there and Jake can grab the other.” Kat told her.

  She squatted to help Foster’s niece lift the heavy container into her cart and O’Connor’s eyes nearly did the ‘Looney Tunes’ thing again. For the hundredth time, he noted how tight leather pants over a nice set of female extremities made his own feel two or three sizes too constrictive. Focusing on thoughts of puppies, baseball, and Christmas, Jake muscled the second generator into his cart.

  They didn’t really help, and he wished for a pair of pants that were a bit roomier in the crotch.

  You need to get laid. Jake’s back-brain told him from the vaults of his mind.

  Now is not the time, he thought back. And shut up.

  The inner voice continued to berate him. Did we join a monastery when I wasn’t paying attention or something? For God’s sake, will you look at those two? When was the last time you…?”

  O’Connor firmly slammed the mental door in his head closed on the voice and attempted to concentrate on not giving himself a hernia. The damn generator was heavy as all hell. He could still hear the voice in his head raging as it pounded on the door in his mind—all the while calling him names and making unflattering references to his parentage—but at least its comments were muffled.

  Wardrobe malfunction concealed behind his shopping cart, Jake followed the sway of female hips the opposite end of the store. The aisle opened up mid-way to the rear into a display patio showcasing yard care items such as grills, lawnmowers, outdoor furniture, and some monumentally ugly fountains. Cho giggled, along with Foster’s niece, upon seeing a herd of sickeningly cute gnome statues, but O’Connor thought the grinning, little porcelain figures were creepy. They all looked a little too happy with their red caps and Santa Claus beards. He had a sudden mental picture of a horde of zombie lawn gnomes ravaging helpless pink waterfowl and chuckled.

  “What put such a big grin on your face?” Kat asked him, obviously curious.

  After explaining the source of his amusement, both women simply stared wordlessly at Jake for almost a full minute.

  “Wow.” Beatrix shook her emerald-topped head. “You’re a dork. Cute, but a dork all the same.”

  Kat nodded and, after giving him a rueful sigh, followed the younger woman farther into the lawn and garden area. O’Connor plodded along at the rear while trying to think up a suitable comeback, but had nothing. He was actually so deep in thought that he nearly hit the backs of both ladies heels when they came to a sudden halt, just shy of the dining set displays.

  There were five dead people sitting around one of the picnic tables.

  None of the corpses were of the mobile variety, for which Jake was grateful, because three of them were quite small. Even with the bodies’ advanced stage of decay, as they approached the sad group, he could tell the youngest had only been perhaps eight or ten years old. Two were adults—male and female, judging from their clothes—and had died holding each other on one of the wicker loveseats surrounding the table. The other three were arranged close before them in a semicircle, each rotting in an overstuffed patio chair.

  O’Connor moved past Beatrix and Cho to absorb the scene. The remains of a meal sat half-eaten upon plastic plates at the table in the center of the ring. Cans of tuna and potted meat, Vienna sausages, crackers, barbeque chips and cheese-puffs, fruit snacks and juice boxes, and a few bottles of wine were scattered a-top the “genuine hardwood slats.” What remained of an impromptu birthday cake—made from long-dried Rice Crispy Treats and melted chocolate bars—with nine candles, sat amidst the cans and discarded food wrappers. Jake moved to visually examine each of the bodies in turn.

  “None of them were infected.” he said, as Cho picked up one of the opened juice boxes. “I’m not seeing any bite marks or bullet holes on the bodies either. It’s like they just got comfortable and died.”

  Bee’s eyes were wet. “All of them? How-?”

  “Diphenhydramine. A lot of it.” Kat held up a depleted Unisom packet. There were at least a dozen open boxes on the table. “It’s an antihistamine that temporarily blocks histamine action, that’s believed to cause alertness in a person’s central nervous system. Most sleep aids have it.”

  Bee still looked confused.

  “Sleeping pills. They overdosed on over-the-counter sleeping pills,” Kat told her. Dropping the empty packet to the table, she moved to the expired adult corpses. Without so much as cringing, Cho pulled a stained page of notebook paper from the male’s hand and began to read.

  “For whoever finds this.

  My name is Karl Hanson. Myself, my wife, Maria, and our three children Nicholas, Fay, and Olive have been here for nearly two months. I managed to steal the keys from one of those things outside who was the store manager. Who used to be the store manager, Bernie Williams. I worked here on the dock for 7 years before the zombies. He was a selfish prick, so I knew the bastard would be around. Probably tried to get here to hide himself. He had a wife, but there was no sign of her.

  We stayed away
from the front doors so those things wouldn’t know we were in here and decided to wait for help. There was plenty to eat, water, even stuff to keep the kids amused. We thought someone would come, eventually. But no one did. I managed to get one of the short-wave radios working so we could find out what’s going on. The people broadcasting all say the Army has pulled back past the Rocky Mountains,

  We’ve been left here to die.

  Olive is sick. Really sick. Her temperature is over 103 and she hasn’t eaten much in the last week. I think it’s the flu. I can’t be sure, but she’s getting worse and I don’t know what to do. Nicholas has it too, but is coughing a lot more and is short of breath, so it might be pneumonia or something.

  We can’t make it to the mountains. It’s too far, I don’t have any guns, and there are so many of those things.

  Maria and I talked about it yesterday and we can’t watch our children die, one by one. There’s no hope of rescue and no way for us to escape, so we’re going to crush pills into the kids drinks after Olive’s birthday party tonight. That way…”

  Cho put the letter down.

  “How could they!” Bee demanded, clearly horrified. “They killed their own kids!”

  Jake glanced at the eternally slumbering family. “They were alone. Trapped. I can’t say I blame them.”

  “What?” Kat’s head snapped around towards him.

  “Any one of us might have done the same. Think about it. If George didn’t have the Mimi hidden away below his cache, we’d have been trapped in Ohio and eventually starved to death. In a situation like that, it’s better to choose how you go out.”

  The expression on Kat’s face conveyed her disbelief and shock. “There’s always hope! We’ve made it out of some really tight spots, haven’t we? They could’ve grabbed an abandoned car, tried something!”

  “Like what, hopped in the Astro-van and headed for Denver? The Maggot-heads,” he waved one hand at Cho, “would’ve torn it apart like tin foil.”