Alex cringed. He never thought he would have to set foot in the building of his old employer again, but he couldn’t argue with Mr. Peterson’s logic. Wal-Mart was gigantic and full of supplies they were going to desperately need, if it wasn’t already looted. It was close to the exit for US-8. It was far enough away from the blast site to have survived.
Alex looked over the barrier at the highway below them, noticing that other than a randomly crashed car, the street was fairly clear.
“You’re right,” he agreed with Mr. Peterson. “We should stop there, but the trip will be a lot easier with a car. US 8 is still a long way down the road on foot. Ethan’s leg just keeps bleeding with this much movement.”
“We can search the homes,” Morgan agreed. “It shouldn’t be impossible to find someone’s car keys.”
“But-” Mr. Peterson started to argue, but the group was already walking across the overpass, toward the unhurt houses.
The streets were obviously victims of the initial outbreak of undead. Cars were crashed into telephone poles, trash was scattered across the street, doors hung open, and windows were shattered, exposing the insides to the hungry corpses.
The group made their way down the sidewalk quietly, smashing as silently as possible the three corpses that shambled across the lawn. Alex realized then that the quiet planks of wood were better weapons than the loud guns would have been. He wondered how many zombies gunfire would have drawn out.
The first two houses they passed had no car parked in the driveway, but the third garage was still closed. Alex ran up to the door and peeked inside the window, seeing a minivan parked inside. He held his thumb up in the air, silently motioning that his search was a success. The group hurried across the front yard, meeting Alex at the side door of the house. Alex pushed open the door, which was swinging freely in the breeze.
The sunlight that was barely breaking through the gray clouds above them had started to fade in the evening hours, and when they stepped inside the house the darkness was endless in its blackness. The two beams from Alex and Morgan’s flashlights clicked on, striking across the kitchen. The table was knocked over, and a fish tank lay smashed on the floor.
“Blood!” Morgan pointed out, seeing a splatter of red on the corner of the counter top.
Alex handed the flashlight to Ethan and stepped toward the entryway to the living room, peaking down the hallway that lead back to bedrooms. The entire house looked like it had been ransacked, yet nothing looked missing.
When he looked into the living room, he saw a man lying on the carpet. He motioned for Morgan to move forward and she was almost instantly moved next to him. Her plank of wood was at the ready as she pointed her flashlight into the room.
Alex stepped into the room, placing his foot gently down onto the carpet. He took two more precisely chosen steps, bringing him right next to the corpse. He held the piece of wood over him, ready to bring it crashing down on the body’s head. He kicked, instinctively taking an immediate step away as soon as he had touched the corpse.
The body didn’t move.
Alex glanced at Morgan and saw him shrug his shoulders. He kicked the body again. When there was no movement, he leaned down and poked the head with the piece of wood, noticing a giant butcher knife stabbed into the top of the man’s skull.
“I think he’s dead. Dead-dead,” Alex said. He knelt down, setting the piece of wood on the floor next to the body. His hands started digging in the pockets of the pants, but found nothing more than a wadded up dollar bill and some change. Alex kept his eyes on the body and stood back up, joining Morgan who was beginning to move down the hallway.
“We’ll search the cupboards,” Ethan said to Alex as he passed through the kitchen. Alex nodded at him, a look of great seriousness shadowing his eyes.
Morgan stepped up to the first door, which was closed and still looked secure. She wiggled the knob back and forth, realizing it was locked.
They checked the two bedrooms, finding them empty of any bodies. Drawers were overturned and clothes scattered across the entire room. After digging for a long time, they found no keys.
“The locked door must be the bathroom.” Morgan said, nodding her head toward the only door they hadn't opened.
“I guess we need to check it.” Alex looked around the dark kitchen, counting the few cans of baked beans the group had found in the back of the cupboard. “The keys have to be somewhere.”
When he and Morgan stood on either side of the doorway, Alex reluctantly slammed his shoulder into the bathroom door, trying to knock it down. Morgan held out her hand and stepped across the hall from the door. She leaned against the wall and lifted her foot, smashing her shoe into the door three times before the wood finally caved in, splintering around the doorknob.
A scream erupted from the bathroom and a skinny, older woman’s body leapt from the door, smashing Morgan against the hallway wall. The corpse’s mouth snapped closed, its teeth clicking together as Morgan managed to brace its head away from her own.
Alex swung the piece of wood in his hand, connecting with the corpse’s head. Decaying flesh helped the head tear clean off from the body. The head slammed into the wall before hitting the hallway floor with a low thump.
Morgan allowed herself to breath as she let go of the woman’s body, letting the bluish-black corpse crumple to the floor. Greenish pus-filled sacs on the skin broke open, releasing a tiny, dusty cloud of greenish gas.
“Sick. What is happening to their bodies?” Emma asked, turning her face away from the smell with her nose scrunched up.
“Look!” Alex beamed, stepping over the body into the bathroom. The woman’s purse sat next to the sink, some of its contents spilled across the counter. Morgan shined her flashlight on the pile of items as Alex dug through them. He heard the familiar sound of keys jingling together.
“Got’em!” Alex called out, holding up a ring of keys in the light.
“Thank God,” Mr. Peterson said. “Now let’s get out of here!”
Emma grabbed a grocery bag and filled it with the cans they had found. The group hurried out the door, scanning the driveway and street, half expecting it to be full of walking corpses again, but the dead had not returned.
Alex fumbled with the keys, trying three different ones before unlocking the garage door. The mini-van's key was easier to find, covered in molded plastic that made it feel bigger than the others. With a quick turn, the driver’s side door opened and Alex slapped the button for the power locks.
“Everyone, get in,” Alex yelled as he jumped into the seat and pushed the box on the sun visor, starting the slow crawl of the automatic garage door. The van started up and Alex pulled the shift lever into reverse before everyone was seated. “Everyone ready?” Alex looked into the rear-view mirror, watching everyone settle into their seats.
Ethan slammed the side door shut and said, “Yeah, let’s go.”
Alex pulled the van out into the street and maneuvered it around two cars that were smashed into each other. He pushed harder on the gas when they reached the 35W exit, seeing a wider open road in front of them.
A whimper rumbled in the van as everyone’s minds were given a moment to relax and catch up. The whimper came from Emma. The rest of the group felt nothing, their minds unable to grasp the severity of tragedy their lives had become.
Day 24
12:56 am
Even though the moon was nearly full, the world around them still felt endlessly black. With only the headlights of the van lighting his way, Alex was driving very slowly. Objects appeared in front of them, debris randomly scattered around the highway. He swerved around all three lanes, sometimes driving off the road to get around large pile-ups and overturned semi-trucks.
Bodies wandered amongst the cars occasionally, but they moved slowly and were easily outrun in the minivan. The destruction caused by the bombs became less apparent the farther north they drove. The destruction of the dead was still overwhelming.
Alex hat
ed to admit it, but the gray cloud that covered Minneapolis had made the world feel cleaner in some way. The monotone gray that became the color of everything was somehow preferable to the honest colors that they were re-entering. The colors of death, trash, and the occasional dried pool of blood
The world looked so shattered that Alex expected to find a giant crack somewhere on the earth, opening wider with every passing second. His mind felt as if it were seizing when he tried to comprehend how mankind was capable of such mindless devastation in such a short period of time. Being outside the security of the apartment was truly forcing Alex to face the reality of the world. It was a world he had been seeing from afar, always “over there,” safely in the distance.
Now the world surrounded him, strangling him with its endless vacancy. The hopelessness he felt truly scared him in its severity. The creeping approach of death hovered behind his shoulders, sending a breathy chill down his spine. He looked to Morgan, fearful she would sense his panic. A surge flooded to his lips when he imagined having to tell her they had no hope. He thought about how he would tell her he failed. How he would tell her they were going to die.
His lips let loose a single sob, and he realized tears were already running down his face. He wiped his eyes, focusing his vision on the road again. His grip on the steering wheel tightened, and he flushed the moment of emotion from his body with a deep breath. His body felt securely empty again.
“Do you want to go to your house?” Alex asked in a monotone voice. “We have enough gas. If you want. See if there’s anything left? I mean-”
“No,” Morgan cut him off. “I don’t care about that stuff. I don’t need anything from... from...”
She let her mind think about her possessions for an instant. Her house. Her things. She let herself mourn their loss for a brief shadow of a second before knowing, once again, that those things were meaningless. She stared past her reflection in the window, unable to look at her own image any longer. Covered in thick, white ash and only colored by bloody scrapes, she looked like she was already dead and just hadn’t accepted it. She wondered if this was how the corpses outside felt.
Past her image was a world that looked like she felt. Torn apart and damaged, it was as if someone had shaken the whole earth. She watched the view outside her window change from the white ash of Minneapolis, to the slightly more intact suburbs. The buildings still stood here, but so did the dead.
Alex swerved the van more, sometimes knocking into the corpses with a, “Well? Get out of the damn way!” exploding from his lips.
Morgan’s hope that the military had taken care of most of the zombies was lost. Seeing that the suburbs looked just as infected as Minneapolis lessened the chances that anywhere was safe.
She knew she couldn’t go much further. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to run for the rest of her life. She needed to get back inside. Her anxiety propelled the van down the road by itself.
When she glanced at Alex, and saw a single tear roll down his face, she felt guilty. She knew in her mind that he needed her. He needed her to comfort him. She knew she should reach out. Touch him. Her head turned, looking back out the window, her mind no longer feeling. Not even guilt.
Ethan sat in the back seat of the minivan. His eyes had glazed over, his brain not functioning enough to comprehend the images that washed past his window. He stared at a smudge on the glass, thinking about absolutely nothing. He stared, letting his thoughts be still. He felt his mind was unwilling to struggle any longer.
Mr. Peterson wanted to comfort his daughter, but he knew better. He knew she had to toughen up, and she had to do it fast. He knew she was too weak, and if anything happened to him, he didn’t want to leave behind a victim.
He had been hard on her because he knew the world would do the same. He didn’t want to raise someone who expected the world to treat her with respect and love and give her hugs and kisses. Mr. Peterson knew better. He glared at the outside world, his body tense with anger.
Emma tried to lean against him, but his body felt like stone, unmoving in its solidity. She cried to herself, finding herself scared of not only the world they found outside, but the all of her travel companions. She felt as if she was the only person left that hadn’t changed into an unfeeling monster that was only going through the motions. She thought of Omar and wondered if he would have changed too.
Alex slowed down at gas stations and convenience stores, hoping to find something intact and full of supplies. Nothing they passed was worth the risk of getting out of the minivan. Gas pumps lay on the ground, dry. Windows were smashed and the shelves inside had been looted weeks ago.
He knew that outside, they would no longer be gatherers. They would be scavengers.
The exit sign for Forest Lake appeared in the headlights and Alex gradually moved the minivan into the exit lane, dodging a man and woman standing in the road, neither of whom had arms. Only stringy pieces of flesh hung from their torsos.
Police cars were at the bottom of the exit ramp, barely blocking the road. Alex surmised that it was a barricade at one point, but had been broken through long ago. He nudged the minivan between the two cars, scraping the side of the van against the bumper of a squad car and then pressed on the gas, hanging a right toward Wal-Mart.
His old job.
He got the same sinking feeling when he saw the sign hovering over the parking lot as he did when he saw it on his way to work. It was the creeping feeling that the next eight hours of his life belonged to someone else. It was that same feeling that made him feel like he would need to become someone else for those eight hours in order to keep his job. He needed to become someone else in order to survive.
It did not take long for the street to become thicker with walking corpses. Alex kept the minivan at a speed fast enough to knock down any body that got in his way, but stayed as slow as possible, still relying on the headlights to reveal any cars, or debris that littered the road.
As the parking lot came into view, Alex shuddered at the number of zombies that had gathered outside the giant store.
“Oh my god.” Morgan gasped, pushing herself back in her seat away from the windshield.
“I’m turning around, this isn’t worth it,” Alex said as he yanked on the wheel, curving the minivan across the street, knocking over a group of the undead bodies.
“No! Wait!” Mr. Peterson yelled. “Look at the doors!”
The group stared out the window, trying to peer through the horde of zombies blocking the view of the front doors. There, across the sea of bodies, they saw two sets of glowing doors in the darkness.
“There must be people!” Ethan yelled out. “They have power!”
Alex continued turning the minivan, and made a 360-degree turn, speeding up as they came out of it. The minivan's engine whined as he floored the gas pedal, aiming the nose directly at the front doors. Bodies hit the van hard, getting knocked back into the bodies standing next to them. Soon corpses clung to the sides of the van, dragging behind the speeding vehicle. The bodies became so thick near the entrance, the tires bounced over corpses laying on the ground, throwing everyone inside around in their seats. As the minivan slammed into a group of four corpses, Alex slammed on the breaks, seeing the glowing doors twenty feet in front of him. Alex squinted his eyes, trying to peer inside the doors.
“If we’re getting out, we need to go now!” Ethan yelled, watching the massive group of corpses that filled the parking shamble toward the minivan.
Alex and Morgan leapt out the front doors of the minivan as the rest of the group filed out of the side door. Alex left the minivan running and dashed toward the front doors of the superstore.
Morgan helped Ethan while the Petersons were right behind Alex. The glass of the automatic doors was smashed open, allowing the group to slide through the frames of the doors one at a time.
Once inside, the group stopped, staring up at a wall of solid metal shelving units that towered in front of them. The wall was nearly fiftee
n feet in the air and completely blocked off the second set of doors. Bright lights shone from above the shelves, lighting up the entire entryway.
Everyone smashed themselves up against the wall and screamed over the shelves, turning around periodically to watch the advancing mob outside.
“Help!” Emma screamed.
“We’re alive! Let us in!” Mr. Peterson shouted in a hollow voice.
Alex turned around and saw the corpses walking across the parking lot reach the minivan. He knew there was no turning back.
“Everyone climb!” Alex yelled, grabbing a shelf high above him and lifting himself up. Mr. Peterson was the next to leap to action, grabbing onto shelves and starting his ascension next to Alex.
As Alex reached the top, he saw the zombies reach the front of the store and start filing through the doors, the broken glass tearing their flesh. When he looked down, he saw the group struggling to get up the wall of shelves fast enough.
Mr. Peterson had already lifted himself to the top, panic fueling the overweight man’s sudden climb. Emma was near him, but Ethan and Morgan were still quite low. Morgan was trying to help the nearly one-legged Ethan up every step.
“You’ve got to hurry!” Alex yelled, still at the top. Mr. Peterson and Emma began climbing down the other side.
Ethan sped up, but Morgan was struggling underneath him, still near the bottom of the wall. Alex could see her legs were still within grasp of the corpses that had almost reached her.
He looked down, his heart pounding in his ears when his mind realized that Morgan was going to die. His body shook and his fingers quivered convulsively as he tried to do something... anything to save her.
Ethan’s hand reached up, his hand open, waiting for Alex to help him over the top. Alex grasped onto his arm and looked him deep in the eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly, before he released his grip, letting Ethan fall backwards.
Morgan screamed as Ethan fell past her. His face was in silent shock as he landed on the group of zombies that were just reaching for Morgan’s legs. All the zombies that had filled the entrance to the store lost interest in Morgan and focused on Ethan, their arms reaching for his flesh. His body was torn apart in a hundred directions by the grasping fingers of the undead mob. His screams of pain were inhuman.
After Life Page 12