by S. Ganley
In any other situation seeing two men on the side of a road in the middle of this suburban shopping zone with big scary looking guns she would have been scared to death, what she was feeling now was elation that it was just possible that even if they weren't part of some kind of rescue or response force they could at the very least offer her some measure of protection well beyond anything she could manage by herself. Gathering up all of her courage and keeping the reassuring piece of rebar tightly clutched in her hands, she slowly stepped out into the open doorway and made her way cautiously outside into the parking lot.
#
Movement in the door of the gas station's shop caught their attention and in a flash two rifles were raised and pointed ready to open fire. Garrett was a couple of steps closer to the store and in Calvin's line of fire, he would later learn that little scenario had likely saved Miranda's life because he had been about to pull the trigger but only stopped when he realized how close his fire would have been to Garrett if he had. The woman was younger than him, somewhere in her twenties, her clothing was disheveled and she looked like she had been through hell and back, but there was something in the beauty and innocence of her face that gave Garrett pause and forced him to take an extra second or two to study her more closely. She was pretty, that was the one thing that clued him in that he was not looking at a zombie. Of the creatures he had witnessed so far, even one that may have been attractive in life had such anger and blood lust etched into their face that any qualities which once could have been considered attractive were masked in a twisted face of pure evil. Then there were the eyes, instead of those lifeless dead eyes that seemed to be common with the zombies, this woman's eyes were alive and even over the distance he was viewing her he was sure he even caught a hint of a twinkle in the shine of her eyes. The final thing that convinced him without closer examination that she was just as alive as himself and Calvin was that she was walking slowly and cautiously out of the store towards them. Had she been among the ranks of the undead she would have charged full speed at them the second she became aware of their presence just like Carlos and the others around his home.
"Hold it", Garrett hissed to Calvin, "I think we've got another survivor here."
Calvin didn't reply and instead shifted slowly off to the side where he could have a better angle on the girl as well as the front of the store in case something started going bad. It was clear that Garrett was going to be taking the lead with the girl in this case.
She continued walking slowly towards them, Garrett noticed the length of rusted metal pipe gripped tightly in her hands and he smiled as he considered how desperate she must have been for some measure of protection to put her hopes on that small piece of metal. Given the alternative of nothing else, he probably would have done the same thing but also knowing how vicious the zombies could be as well as their incredible strength and ability to absorb the most inhuman levels of punishment, a metal rod was not going to do much in the hands of a woman who probably weighed close to a hundred and ten pounds and that was only with the five pounds of metal she was carrying. Garrett let her approach to a point halfway between the store and the front of his truck, he saw that her eyes remained riveted on the barrel of his rifle as he tracked her movements across the open parking lot. Finally, he lowered his rifle to signal that he was not going to shoot her and started walking towards her to meet her far enough from the truck so that if she did suddenly change demeanor and became a threat, Calvin could deal with her from his angle before she could reach Kimberly in the back of the truck.
"Hello." Garrett said simply.
She pulled her eyes up away from his rifle and stared into his, Garrett detected a certain release of tension as he spoke the single word of greeting. If she had been on her own all that morning and facing the same horrors that they had, he imagined that the sound of a friendly hello was more than enough to lift some measure of stress from her shoulders.
The sudden rush towards him caused him to lift his rifle and tighten his grip on the trigger but she was on top of him and cradling him in a tight hug before he could have gotten a shot off even if he had tried. He could feel her trembling and shaking against his body and heard the soft sobs as she fought to find her first words. Out of his peripheral vision he saw the smile that crept over Calvin's face as he lowered his rifle and watched the two of them from several feet away. Garrett didn't need for him to say a word to know that the man was back to thinking with his dick and it wouldn't be more than ten or fifteen minutes before he made some comment related to the girls chest or backside. He held her without saying another word for almost a full two minutes until her sobbing and shaking finally started to subside and she pulled back from him a couple of steps.
"I am so sorry about that," she sniffled, "I am just so happy to finally see someone else."
Seeing her up close like this, even with the puffy eyes, red cheeks and tear stains, he was captivated by just how pretty she actually was. It was the type of beauty that worked best when seen without layers of makeup or after hours of primping and prepping just as he was seeing her now. For the first time that he could ever remember, his heart actually seemed to skip a beat and he felt his own cheeks flushing with heat and he was sure that they were probably glowing red at that moment.
"No, it’s really ok, I understand, we have all been through a lot today." The situation was awkward as it was and he could think of nothing else to say except to offer an introduction, "by the way, I'm Garrett." He offered his hand.
She smiled warmly and took his hand to shake vigorously, "Thanks Garrett, thank you for coming, I'm Miranda."
Garrett pointed towards Calvin and introduced him and then explained quickly who their passenger in the back of his truck was while pointing out that she was sick and had not in fact been bit.
"Bit?" Miranda asked quizzically.
"I guess there are a few things we still need to discuss, but let’s not get into it here. This is pretty exposed, we stopped only to get situated and then were planning on trying to find some form of authority, police or military." He could see that Miranda was about to bust with questions. He really couldn't blame her, most of what he had learned so far came from the bits and pieces that Calvin had picked up the night before and what he himself had witnessed that morning. He had few answers and lots of questions himself, none of which he thought she would be any help with.
"Hey, Happy Hard-on!" Calvin shouted as his college frat side once again made an appearance, "let’s take this party down the road before some of the locals decide to come for lunch."
Without thinking, Garrett cast a quick glance down towards his crotch, he hadn't felt anything stirring but would have been mortified to see any tenting of his pants. Luckily it was only a mild attempt to embarrass him and there was no actual evidence of excitement on his part. Miranda had caught on to the exchange and Garrett's glance downward, she tried to look away and hide the little smirk that had come across her face, but Garrett caught sight of it before her head turned. He thought that as a good sign, but then again also pushed it to the back of his mind, this was neither the time nor the place to get into flirtations and anything else not directly related to keeping all of them alive for the time being. Despite Calvin's unconventional manner in getting his attention focused back on their situation he was right, the longer they stayed out there in the open, the better the chances were they would be spotted. With the smoke building up on the street back, they could no longer see clearly into the nearby intersection and there could be zombies approaching them from behind and they wouldn't know it until they were just about on top of them, it was time to get going.
Miranda took very little convincing to agree to leave with them and then when she saw the seating arrangements in the truck, quickly volunteered to sit in the back with Kimberly and look after her. She gently lifted the sick woman's head, slid underneath of her and then rested her head back on her lap. Before Garrett could climb in she instructed him to run into the shop and grab
a case of water from the freezer in the back, she wanted to wrap a cold water bottle in one of Garrett's shirt she pulled out of a backpack on the floor at her feet and press it against Kimberly's head and neck to help with her fever.
Garrett looked at Calvin who simply shrugged, "Id do what the little lady says, wouldn't hurt to have some water on hand as well. We didn't think to pack anything to drink."
Garrett was in and out of the store in under a minute, his arms full with the requested case of water and packages of wrapped sandwiches and donuts, whatever was on the way and easy to grab. He dumped the entire pile on the floor board behind his seat where Miranda could easily reach it. She flashed him a smile that once again caused a flush to start building up in his cheeks and he managed a quick smile in return before closing the door and climbing back behind the wheel before she noticed his blush.
"Ok, you’re driving, where to?" Asked Calvin.
"Unless anyone else has a better idea, I am thinking about skirting around the center of town, outside the traffic areas, and see if we can find any patrols or roadblocks.”
There were no suggestions from Calvin or Miranda and Garrett took that as an agreement to run with his plan. He dropped the truck into gear and pulled back out into the thick traffic, trying to work his way down three blocks to the start of side streets he hoped were less congested and would let him take a roundabout route out of that part of town.
Chapter 21
"Officer, officer." Kyle heard the voice and felt the shaking of his arm. He sat up slowly in the chair realizing that he had dozed off and wondering how long Shellie had let him sleep. He was about to ask her when he saw the fearful look in her eyes as she knelt beside him tugging at his arm.
"What happened?" He asked as he was still taking in his surroundings while recovering from what must have been a sound sleep.
She said nothing and instead pointed towards the front door where they had entered the building.
"SHIT," he exclaimed and slid down onto the floor beside her using the overstuffed lobby chair for cover. The far end of the parking lot was already partially full with close to thirty or more zombies and he could see even more converging on the complex from the football field just across the service road they had used to circle the buildings when they first pulled in. He wasn't sure how they had tracked them down, but he had little doubt that it was the two of them they were coming after. At the moment they seemed to just be moving around in an apparent aimless pattern, slowly closing in on the buildings but not appearing to know exactly where to look for them.
"What do we do?" Whispered Shellie.
Kyle considered their options, they could make a run for his car. The chances were good that they would make it before the first of them reached the front of the parking lot. They would then have to drive directly into the crowd to make it out of the lot, he didn't like that idea as he remembered how he had almost lost control back at the fire station when forced to do the same thing driving through even less of their numbers. If they wrecked the car trying to push their way through, they were finished, there would be no way to fight off that many of them once they swarmed the cruiser. They could run further into the building and hide somewhere to wait them out. If they could find an attic or somewhere else on the second floor that they could isolate, they should be able to keep themselves safely out of reach. The problem with that was that he had no idea how long these things would hang around and continue trying to reach them, for all he knew they were capable of staying on the hunt until hell froze over. His other concern was that right now there were already a lot of them, but if they went to ground in the building and the zombies stayed put to wait them out, there was a good chance that many more would be attracted to the same area. With that thought in mind he decided that their best option was to make their move right away while they were still only dealing with two or three dozen instead of being trapped by potentially hundreds.
"We are going for the car and getting the hell out of here, that’s what we do." Kyle replied. He double checked that both his rifle and pistol had a round in the chamber and were ready to fire and instructed Shellie to top off the load in the shotgun. Once they were ready, he stood and walked towards the door being careful to keep close to the wall and out of sight. There was no need to verify their presence until the last second.
It was only about a hundred and fifty feet down the sidewalk to the cruiser. When they had walked the path earlier on their way into the building it had seemed like a pleasant stroll along a grass and flower lined path. Now it looked like a mile long dash through hell as they watched the zombies continue to fill the distant parking lot and adjoining football field. For the moment they seemed content with just keeping to the far parking lot and none of them had started moving any closer to the building yet.
"Ok, I think this is as good as it’s going to get, ready?"
Shellie nodded her head in reply and Kyle pushed the door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He made it a total of five feet before he was knocked to the ground from behind. The zombie was a girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen, she was topless and wearing only a pair of stained and torn pajama bottoms on her lower half. She had been working her way around the perimeter of the building after coming from her neighborhood just beyond the sports center. The smell of nearby prey had her foaming at the mouth by the time Kyle stepped into view. She only weighed ninety some odd pounds and under normal circumstances Kyle could have easily overpowered her and pinned her to the ground. As it was, she had hit him with such speed, surprise and uncanny strength that his head had nailed the hard packed dirt next to the sidewalk hard enough that he saw stars before his eyes and went completely weak in his upper body. He was lucky though, another five inches closer to the building and his head would have smacked solid concrete and more than likely either knocked him out cold or killed him on impact. The girl had come at him with her mouth open and jaws snapping ready to tear free the first bit of flesh that she came in contact with, but she must not have anticipated her attack sending both of them flying to the ground and her first attempt at a bite overshot Kyle completely resulting in her chin bouncing off the dirt next to Kyle's shoulder. Zombies lost any ability their bodies had to register pain as soon as they died before their rebirth, but the impact on her chin did stun and disorient the girl for a moment and she lost the momentum of her attack. With his head still swimming in a daze, Kyle lashed out with his forearm and caught her across her naked breasts sending her tumbling the rest of the way over him and rolling several feet beyond where they had fallen. He worked his way up to his knees and turned back towards her just as she recovered and sprang at him like a cat pouncing on a mouse. This time her teeth connected with his chest and had it not been for the underlying bullet proof vest which he kept forgetting to remove, she would have contacted skin and been able to rip away a healthy mouthful. Her teeth sunk into the fabric of his uniform and buried into the vest, when she shook her head from side to side and pulled back away from him all she managed to gain was a mouthful of torn uniform shirt and a small strip of the outer layer of Kevlar that made up his protective vest. He had never personally been shot or stabbed in the line of duty and only knew of the protective qualities of the vest from training and stories from other officers, but for the first time that it served its intended purpose in saving his life he would have never imagined that it would do so against a bite from a half-naked teenage girl. Before she could turn back towards him and press forward for a second attempt to chew into his flesh he launched a solid punch that connected square on her temple and sent her rolling off of him again. Kyle's hand had just landed on the butt of his pistol and was about to draw it from its holster when Shellie stepped into view, without a second of hesitation she pressed the barrel of the shotgun into the girls open mouth and fired. The explosion of the shot obliterated the back of her head and embedded the remains in a shallow rut dug into the dirt by the blast as the exploding gun powder and buck shot escaped the crater in th
e back of her head. The upper half of her face from the top of the nose to the bridge of her forehead were all that remained intact and without the remainder of the face and more than half of the surrounding skull she suddenly looked as though she was wearing a poorly constructed Halloween horror mask. As her body dropped to the ground her eyes stayed fixated on Kyle as though she was still struggling to salvage some last spark of life.