“Whoo,” Muriel breathed when she stood. She smiled at him, eyebrows arched. “I used to have to smoke some weed to feel like that.”
Brent chuckled.
They stepped carefully over Roo and the kid, made their way to the edge of the platform. Now that it was light out, the gap between the shelf and the partial floor looked trifling. Funny how wide it had seemed the night they’d tried to escape! In the dark, with zombies rampaging beneath them, that little gap had looked like the Grand Canyon.
Brent stepped across, waited for Muriel, and then they climbed to the floor below.
The back door of the loading bay lay flat on the floor. Brilliant sunshine angled through the open doorway. It was warmer out today than it had been previously. The storm had passed and the sky was blue and clear. Easter lilies had bloomed at the edge of the lawn directly across the alley from the supermarket. In the sunshine, each of the bright little yellow blooms was surrounded by a golden nimbus of light.
Muriel a step behind him, Brent crept to the open doorway and stuck his head outside. He looked up and down the alley.
“No chompers,” he said.
“Is the truck still there?” Muriel asked.
Brent looked to the east. There on the corner at the end of the alley was a large blue Ford.
“Yep,” Brent said. He withdrew his head.
Muriel looked at him anxiously. “Do… do you want to go up front?”
Brent pondered.
“There might be survivors,” Muriel said.
“Might be zombies, too,” Brent replied.
She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with her eyebrows raised.
“All right,” he relented.
They crossed the loading bay. The plastic strips that separated the loading bay from the interior corridor had been torn down. The plastic blinds lay sprawled throughout the hallway, covered in muddy footprints. Brent led the way, Muriel close behind him. The swinging doors were still intact.
“Be careful,” she said.
Brent leant his ear to the doors. Pushed through.
“Good Lord!” Brent gasped.
The interior of the supermarket had been destroyed, looked like the wreckage left over from a tornado or some other natural disaster. The main doors were torn off their hinges. The big display windows were smashed out (the slivers of glass jutting from the frames made them look like gaping mouths with sharp teeth). All the barricades the zombie crews had erected the morning the herd arrived had been torn asunder. The partitions were knocked over and lay in untidy piles of lumber and paneling. Tattered pieces of clothes and bedding drifted in the breeze.
Brent expected to see bodies, lots of mangled bodies, but there were none. There was dried blood everywhere-- on the walls, on the floor-- but not a single corpse. Not even a gnawed on bone.
Muriel followed him onto the sales floor, staring around in amazement.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s all gone!”
“Oh… my… God!” a croaking voice exclaimed.
Brent and Muriel started as a deadhead stepped from the manager’s office. It was the heavyset female zombie with the flat, jowly face. She aimed a pistol at them, squinting one eye. “How did you survive?” she demanded.
Brent put his hands up. A moment later, Muriel overcame her surprise enough to do the same.
“Look what I found,” the female zombie said, grinning toward someone in the office behind her. “Breakfast!”
Brent opened his mouth to speak and the woman’s head exploded. Blood, brains and bone fragments erupted from the left side of her temple. She dropped to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been snipped.
Harold stepped out of the office, brandishing his own pistol. He grinned at Brent as he holstered the weapon. “What a cunt, right?” he said.
“Harold!” Brent exclaimed. He started to embrace his friend, but Harold flashed his palms, warning him off. “Not too close!” he said. “I’m having trouble controlling myself… a lot of blood in here… the smell, you know...”
Brent stopped. “I’m glad you made it,” he said.
“You, too, kiddo,” Harold responded. “I saw the truck was still in the alley. I figured you and your friends got ate.”
“We climbed into the rafters,” Brent explained. “How did you survive?”
“I hid in your old bunkroom. Pulled some mattresses over me. Me and ugly over here. We just crawled out this morning. A couple chompers wandered in there, but we just laid real still and waited for them to wander back out.”
“Did anyone else survive?” Brent asked.
“Several,” Harold said. “You gotta get out of here now, kiddo. They’re roaming around town, rounding up anyone who got loose during the attack. They could be back any minute.”
“Well, come on then,” Brent said with a wave, turning toward the storeroom. “Let’s shit and git!”
“No,” Harold said.
“What? What do you mean? Come on, man! Let’s go!”
“I can’t go with you,” Harold said, and he gave Brent a funny smile. It was one of those smiles that were joyful and sad at the same time. The kind of smile you gave someone when they were going away for good, but you knew they were going to be happy.
“What are you talking about? Why can’t you go with us?” Brent asked.
“They’re not going to let me come Home. I’m not one of you anymore,” Harold said. “I don’t think I realized it until this morning. Until I came out here and… you know… all the blood… I was just trying to get us out of here. To save you. I never stopped to think…”
“Harold!”
“I can’t even trust myself around you,” Harold said. “It’s taking all I got not to run at you right now.”
“Harold…”
“You know what you smell like to me, kiddo? A big porterhouse steak with all the trimmings. Ain’t that a bitch? All I want to do right now is tear you open and eat your guts!”
Brent’s shoulders fell. “So this is goodbye? You want me to leave you behind?”
“No,” Harold said. He pulled out his pistol and held it toward Brent, grip first. “I want you to put me out of my misery.”
Muriel gasped and Brent’s entire body rocked back, as if Harold had thrown a punch at him. “I can’t do that!” Brent objected.
“You have to,” Harold said. “I can’t do it myself, kiddo. You know that. I’m Catholic. I’ll go to hell.”
“Harold--!”
“I don’t want to be this way!” Harold cried hoarsely. “It hurts, Brent! It hurts all the time! They give us drugs, but the drugs only dim the pain. They don’t make it go away. It hurts so bad I can’t think straight and all I want to do is hurt someone. Hurt them and kill them and eat them. It’s worse than being dead. It’s a living hell.”
“Harold…”
“Please!” Harold begged. “I’m already dead anyway. My heart don’t beat. My dick don’t work. What good is a life like this? I’m already dead, kiddo. I died that day in the woods.”
Brent felt tears running down his cheeks, but he didn’t move to wipe them away. He let his friend see them. He wanted Harold to have them.
“Please?” Harold said, one last time. “I’d do the same for you!”
“Okay,” Brent said. He stepped forward, hand out.
Harold placed the gun in Brent’s palm. He got down on his knees and clasped his hands, said a quick prayer. “See you when you get there,” he said.
“You, too,” Brent said, pressing the barrel to his friend’s forehead.
33. Ford
The report of the pistol echoed and died away. Harold, blood dribbling from the hole in his forehead, toppled onto his side. Brent looked at the gun in his hand. He wanted to throw it down, never wanted to touch a gun again, but they might need it. Better to hang onto it.
“Brent?” Muriel said behind him.
“He was my best friend,” Brent said, his voice toneless.
“I know, honey, but we need to go.”
Muriel had turned her head away when Brent put the barrel of the pistol to Harold’s forehead, but now she looked. She was pale, her lips a thin, downwardly bowed line. She held Brent’s arm.
“Brent?”
As if to underscore her statement, the distant hum of a car engine drifted through the gaping display windows. It seemed to be coming from the west. Whoever the driver was, he was putting the pedal to the metal.
“Brent!” Muriel said again, speaking, and tugging on his arm, much more emphatically.
Brent nodded. “Okay,” he said. He turned and followed her.
The gunfire had awakened Roo and Max. They peeked down from the elevated platform like a couple of lion cubs.
“Is it safe?” Roo said.
“Who’s doing all the shootin’?” the kid asked. He saw the pistol in Brent’s hand and said, “Hey! Where’d ya get that popper?”
“The herd has passed,” Muriel called up to them. “It’s safe to come down now.”
“And hurry!” Brent added. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
“Hurry? Why?” Roo asked, hopping across the gap to the top of the shelves.
“Some of the deadheads survived, too,” Brent said as she climbed down. “They’re out looking for escapees right now. If they come back and find us here…”
Roo climbed down a lot faster.
Max slid over the side of the platform, hanging by his fingers for a moment, then dropped. Everyone cried out, thinking his ankles were going to shatter when he hit the concrete, but he landed in a crouch and rose up with a proud grin. “What?” he said, scowling at their fear-struck expressions.
No time to scold him. Probably wouldn’t do any good anyway, Brent thought. “Come on,” he said as he jogged to the door. He stopped to peek out as everyone filed up behind him, then ran down the ramp and made his way to the blue Ford at the end of the alley.
There were only four of them now. They piled into the cab of the truck, Brent behind the wheel, Muriel next to him, the kid beside the passenger window, and Roo plopped down on his lap
“Oh, no!” Muriel gasped, staring down at the gearshift lever. She looked at Brent anxiously. “Can you drive a manual?”
“Of course, I can,” Brent assured her. “I’m from Tennessee.”
He handed Muriel the pistol to hold. She put the safety on carefully, like it might explode at any moment, then held it in her lap.
Brent examined the controls of the vehicle, trying to familiarize himself with its workings as quickly as possible. To tell the truth, he was a little disconcerted. It had been years since he’d driven an automobile. It had been so long that sitting behind the wheel of the Ford was like sitting behind the controls of some exotic spacecraft. He felt like he didn’t belong there.
Just do it, he encouraged himself. Like riding a bike.
He flipped down the visor and caught the key as it fell. Thrust it into the ignition slot. Gave it a twist.
The engine caught on the first try, thank God. He had expected the old truck to give him fits, maybe refuse to start at all, send them packing on foot. He depressed the brake and clutch, shifted into first.
“Rotter,” Max said, and they twisted around in the seat to look.
At the head of the alley, a thoroughly decayed deadhead was shuffling slowly but determinedly in their direction, dragging one leg. It was hardly recognizable as human, its flesh hard and glossy, like the mummified remains of some Egyptian pharaoh. It was sexless, missing an arm, a sad specimen of its kind.
“Must be a straggler,” Brent said, dismissing the harmless creature. “It can’t hurt us. It would take half an hour for it to even get over here.”
“Yes, but if there’s one, there may be more,” Muriel said. “Maybe a lot more.”
“We’re going,” Brent said, and he promptly popped the clutch.
The Ford died. Muriel looked panicked. Brent turned the key in the ignition—pleaseohpleaseohpleasestartagain!—and started the truck a second time.
This time he released the clutch a little gentler.
With a lurch, they started forward.
Max and Roo cried, “Yaayyy!”
“See,” Brent said, as he guided them onto the street. “I got this!”
“Why are you stopping at the stop sign?” Muriel asked.
“Oh, yeah!” Brent said, blushing, and pulled out onto the main road. “Sorry about that!”
34. America
Their journey Home passed mostly without incident.
Brent wasn’t familiar with the town of Manfried, but he and Harold had possessed an old road map, an atlas they had pored over countless times as they made their run for Home, and he remembered enough to get them from Manfried to the nearest interstate highway.
It was a short jaunt, just a few miles. Nevertheless, it took them nearly fifteen minutes to get there, as the road was buckled and there were clumps of weeds bursting through the pavement like tall green feather dusters. The first mile of road leading from the grocery store was also littered with broken glass and boards and clumps of mattress stuffing from the breeding facility. He had to steer back and forth to avoid the worst of it.
“They must have pushed it along ahead of them after moving on from the place,” Brent said, steering carefully around the wreckage.
There were bodies, too.
Well, pieces of bodies.
The pieces were barely recognizable as human, or even as originating from a living creature of any kind. But Brent considered that a blessing, as he did not know how he would react if they should come across an identifiable chunk of Maudelle, or Traci Hewlett, or Bernice Mitchell, or God forbid, one of the little ones, one of the babies the women had been allowed to keep. Brent did not believe he would be able to bear it if he saw one of the little ones… or maybe he would. When life gives you lemons, you don’t always make lemonade, you just get used to the smell of lemons.
It’s our fault, Brent thought as he steered around a clump of grass. A ragged sheet had gotten caught up in the weeds and was flapping in the wind. We let them in when we made for the Ford. We let them in the back door, and they tore the place apart.
He knew it would do no good to let that guilt tumble over and over again in his head, like rocks in a rock polisher. Nothing shiny was ever going to come of it. Yet he couldn’t help himself. He had always been very good at feeling guilty.
At least now it was justified.
About a mile from the facility they began to pass a few more zombie stragglers, creatures like the one in the alley who were too worn out or injured to keep up with the herd anymore. The kid wanted Brent to run them over. “Are you crazy?” Brent cried. “That would be like hitting a deer!” Brent steered around the creatures instead, and the kid had to content himself with yelling disparaging comments from the passenger window.
The withered deadheads groaned and swiped at the passing vehicle but could do little to impede them.
The onramp of the I-25 was on a hill. As Brent prepared to turn onto the ramp and get on the interstate, Roo spotted a great concentration of zombies in the plain to the east.
“Look!” she cried, pointing in that direction.
Brent hit the brakes and they just stared, amazed by the sheer number of zombies in the river valley. There were thousands. Tens of thousands. They covered the entire area, which must have been at least four or five square miles, before vanishing into a wooded ridge.
“It’s like a murmuration of starlings,” Muriel said quietly.
“A what?” the kid asked.
“A large flock of birds,” Muriel supplied.
“Ah.”
“They’re going east,” Brent said. “Home is north of here. I don’t see any tanks herding them along, either. Guess your friend Luke was full of shit.”
“Maybe not,” Muriel said. “He might have seen other Resurrects preying on the herd.”
“What do you mean?” Brent asked.
“Like Indians hunting buffaloes,” Muriel explained. “They ride out to the herd in their cars, stay at the fringe of the mass, shoot from their windows. Later, after the herd has moved on, they would just have to collect the bodies. It would be a good way to get some food. Efficient. Relatively safe for the hunters. To an outside observer, though, it might look like they were herding them along.”
Brent nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds logical. That’s probably what he saw.”
They watched the herd for a minute or so, then continued on their way.
They did not see any other survivors.
By nightfall they were halfway Home.
In the Before Times, the drive from Manfried to Peoria would have taken four, maybe five hours, tops, but Brent could only drive at any respectable speed in fits and starts. Here and there, the roads were in good repair and he could put the hammer down for a bit, but most of the time they had to creep along at about thirty miles per hour, threading in and out of abandoned vehicles and gaping potholes, clumps of weeds and fallen tree limbs. They passed a good number of wandering chompers, but no great herds and no meat patrols. Nearly a decade had passed since the Phage swept across the globe, and since deadheads could not reproduce like living men and women could, the world was becoming bigger and emptier every day. The undead were immortal only so long as they could feed.
“Someday there’s going to be more people than zombies,” Brent said. “And then the world will be like it used to be.”
“I hope not,” Muriel said. “I can do without politics and war.”
“And taxes,” Brent added.
Muriel laughed. “You know what they say about death and taxes. But hopefully we’ll do better next time.”
They stopped at a small roadside motel just before sundown, parking in the back so the Ford wasn’t visible to any passing vehicles. None of them wanted to stop, but Brent didn’t want to drive with the headlights on. “If there are any smart ones nearby,” he explained, “they’ll be able to see our headlights from miles away.”
Cattle (The Fearlanders) Page 21