Dead World: Hero

by D. N. Harding

  She took another step. And then another. And then another.

  Soon she was several yards from the corner of the building and a few feet away from the first door. The glass windows moving past her were display cases filled with small rooms of furniture arranged as if they were lived in every day. Much of the furniture was dark wood and leather, accessorized by occasional greenery and gold and glass. It was tasteful, Denise thought distractedly.

  The handle to the glass door that served as the entrance to the furniture store was brass piping that curved at the edges. It was mounted through the glass and served both those who entered and exited by the same door. She pushed gently on the handle. It didn’t budge. She pulled on the handle. It still refused to open. Her eye fell slowly to the stenciled white letters that informed customers of the stores hours of operation and then she caught herself.

  Staring blankly ahead as she cursed her foolishness, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. It was as sharp and clear as mirror. Before her stood a woman of about five foot and six inches tall who was in her late twenties. Her brown hair was tussled and unkempt. The left side of her face was nearly black with bruising and that eye was swollen completely shut. Her nose was swollen, but looked normal compared to the monstrosity that was her bottom lip. It looked like a large tumor lying against her chin.

  She had to quell an instinctive gasp when her eye took in the image of her body. She knew that she had to be bruised by the routine beatings they gave her for not performing as instructed, but she would never have guessed what she saw before her. Her neck and shoulders were covered in nasty bite marks — the work of Daryl. Old bruises were yellowish and splotchy. They marked her chest, hips and thighs like aged lichen on an oak tree. The darker blemishes were the result of recent assaults. Tears ran down her cheeks and burned in her wounded eye as she recalled the horror of those moments.

  Then she thought of the pretty girl with the black hair. She seemed so tough when she came bursting through the door with her machine gun. It was an inspiring sight. In fact, she had secretly hoped that the girl would have accidentally pulled the trigger and killed her when she was struck from behind. She wanted to die, then. She shook her head as she considered what the future held in store for the teenager. There were no police to call. There were no operators waiting for a 911 call. Justice had to be pursued in a different manner.

  Now she wanted to live. She turned her face away from the locked door and the image of her wounded body. The creatures seemed disinterested in anything other than what they saw in the window. She gave herself permission to move forward.

  The next door belonged to a closeout store. Past the glass foyer, she could see racks of clothing and her heart nearly skipped a beat. This is what she had been looking for! She almost screamed in frustration when she discovered the door was locked. She wanted to pound on it and demand to be given entrance, but she knew better.

  Glancing to her right, she noticed that one of the creatures had turned its head and was looking at her. The mob was no more than a handful of yards from her and she had one more door to try. The pleated metal handle of the entrance beckoned to her like the gateway to heaven and protruded from the glass door half way between where she stood trembling and the creature whose dead eyes rested on her.

  When the walking corpse stepped her direction several other heads within the multitude turned her direction. In her mind, she had only one option. The next door would either be open and she would live or it would be locked like all the others and she would die — horribly. The one thought that terrified her as she ran barefoot for the last door was realizing that the monsters running for her were not the slow moving kind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “D id you find Randi?” Jack asked when he and Steven emerged from the back of the store.

  “No,” Sheri said. “Just her stuff.”

  Jack looked the small group over again — just in case the sixteen year old was there and hadn’t been seen. He shook his head and then turned his gaze on Randi’s skateboard. “Something’s just not right.”

  “They’re leaving!” Steven shouted and pointed at the front door.

  The crowd of aggressive flesh eaters that had chased Carol and the kids across the parking lot were leaving. They had set their eyes on other prey.

  “Randi!” Sheri cried and looked desperately at Jack.

  “Blast!” Jack swore. He snatched the pistol from Carol and pulled one from the holster under his left arm. Checking to see that they were loaded and a round chambered, he ran for the crash gate. When he raised it, he turned to the Mason family. “Get ready to shut this gate behind me when I bring Randi through, Steven. Carol, there is an office in the back, up a narrow stairwell next to the water fountain. Get the kids up there and lock the door. Hopefully, I will be right back.”

  Jack stepped under the gate and then unlocked the base of the door that Steven had locked. Pulling it open, he peeked around the other door and looked down the front of the building. The crowd of zombies was disappearing around the far corner.

  A woman screamed. Jack patted the extra clips in his back pockets to see that they were still there and then burst from the door. In a few steps, he was at a full sprint heading for what he hoped was not Randi. With both pistols in hand, he turned the corner to find the crowd of zombies wailing and reaching their dead hands into the air toward a woman who had shimmied up a ceramic drainpipe.

  She was completely naked.

  Her bare feet were pressed to the stone just out of reach of the flesh eaters. She had a death grip on the ceramic pipe and her fingers were bleeding from being forced between the pipe and the brick wall.

  A quick assessment of the situation made Jack realize that the thirty or so zombies would not have long to wait before their meal fell into their lap — literally. She was losing her grip.

  Jack emptied both pistols into the skulls of the dead before they could register what was happening. He reloaded twice. When the woman finally fell, she landed in Jack’s arms. Her brown hair covered her face, but not enough that Jack failed to see that she had been beaten — horribly. The woman threw her arms around Jack and sobbed. She smelled as bad as she looked.

  “It’s alright. I got you now,” Jack said a little awkwardly. In the distance, he could see several more zombies of the faster sort heading his direction, but they were too far to catch them before they made it back into the store.

  Steven’s eyes went wide when he saw Jack carrying the naked woman in through the doors and under the gate. He couldn’t stop staring and had to be told to shut the gate behind Jack. The boy blushed as if he’d been reprimanded.

  “Go get your mother and then find me some blankets,” Jack said.

  “I’m here,” Carol said before Steven could move. Carol was looking at the woman like a viper eyeing a rival serpent. “Who is she?” The tone of her voice left no one with any doubt about her thoughts on the matter.

  “Don’t know,” Jack said and shrugged feeling strangely guilty. “She was on the verge of being eaten when I found her. She’s in pretty rough shape.”

  Eight year old Sheri Mason stepped forward with a blanket that she’s swiped from a shelf on her way from the office. She put it over the woman as Jack set her down on a mat near the front door. “There’s a camping display over there.” She pointed. “Put her in one of the tents that has a cot and I’ll be right back.”

  Jack and Carol watched the girl march off toward the First Aid kits with an authority that made them both want to do what she said.

  When Jack looked at Carol with raised eyebrows, she said, “You might as well do as she said. Someone’s got to be in control of the situation and it won’t be me.” With that, the redhead turned sharply and headed toward the back of the store. “We might as well stay the night here. I’ll be in the office catching up on my beauty sleep,” she said without looking back.

  Jack picked up the woman in her blanket. She had stopped crying and was lookin
g at him through her matted hair. Her right eye was swollen completely shut and her lip looked like a clam out of its shell. Steven was still standing there staring at the woman. “Steven, go get some sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  “But it’s not even dark outside,” the boy whined.

  “I know, but a little extra sleep won’t hurt you. Go on.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  Jack decided he wasn’t going to argue with the boy so he simply stared at him until he became uncomfortable enough to find someplace else to be. Reluctantly, the boy stalked off with his arms crossed and a fresh scowl on his face.

  “I thought I told you to put her in a tent?” Sheri admonished when she returned to find Jack standing there still holding the woman.

  Jack pulled his eyes from Steven’s direction and turned to follow Sheri. Most of the tents were the smaller sort, but the largest had two rooms and four cots in it. Jack was surprised to find that he could stand fully erect inside it. He set the woman on a padded cot in the back room and then stepped aside so that Sheri could get at the woman with her newly acquired medical supplies.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” Jack asked the eight year old.

  “I’ve been taking care of my brothers and my mom for a long time. If you must know, Jeffrey used to beat my mom pretty bad. He did it more than once. Who do you think took care of her then? Someone had to do it. Now, if you don’t mind, this is girl’s stuff. Please go outside.”

  Jack turned away after catching a look from the woman. She gave Jack a brief nod as she sat on the cot hunched over under the blanket.

  “Get me some more blankets, will you?” Sheri added as he stepped through the vinyl curtain separating the two rooms.

  * * *

  When Carol climbed the steps into the office that would be her private refuge for the night, she stood at the large window that overlooked the entire store. Her gaze would have burned a hole through the tent where Jack took the woman. It galled her that Jack was touching her when she had no clothes on. How dare she! It had to be her plan to get Jack to rescue her so that she could reel him in. It was plain as the swollen lip on her face: the woman wanted to be with Jack. Why else would she take her clothes off?

  Smoldering, Carol turned from the window. Her fists were clenched so tight her fingernails were cutting into her palms. The pain felt good. “Well, Little Miss Naked,” she said aloud. “You will not take from me what rightfully belongs to me! I was here first!”

  * * *

  The afternoon quickly turned to evening. Jack watched the sun go to bed and before long the moon and stars were shining clearly over the city. The interior of the building became so dark that everyone was forced to wear the LED headlamps as they prepared to spend the night in the store. Standing at the front door inside the gate, he could hear the caterwauling of the dead outside. There were none to be seen, but by the sound of it, they were out in droves.

  The squeak of a heel on the tiled floor and the flash of a headlamp behind him announced the arrival of a visitor. His first thought was that it was probably someone who should be in bed, but when he looked over his shoulder, the wet head and battered face told him otherwise.

  “So . . . how you feeling?” Jack asked.

  “Denise,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Denise. It’s my name.”

  “Oh. Denise. I like it,” Jack said feeling a bit uncomfortable. Her hair was wet and pulled back with a tie, which let him know that she had just taken her first bottled water shower in days. She was wearing a camouflage shirt and pants that fit her rather nicely. She even managed to find a pair of combat boots her size. What surprised him the most was that she was armed — wearing two pistols in hip holsters whose make and model were foreign to him. Across her back was an AK-47. She reminded him of a certain sixteen year old.

  Denise caught the look. “They will never hurt me again,” she said with more fire in her voice than she intended.

  “Who hurt you?” Jack asked.

  “Two guys I met several days ago. They seemed pretty nice and they had weapons. I found myself trapped in a Quickie Mart when a herd of the undead took over the area. I was so scared. I spent nearly a week hiding there watching the crowds of dead outside the store. I didn’t really know what I should do or where I should go.” Denise subconsciously touched her swollen lip gingerly. “Heck, I was getting lonely,” she continued. “That’s when Billy and Daryl showed up. I don’t know. Maybe I saw what I wanted to see. I just knew that I was better off travelling with them than wasting away in the back of some store.

  “The first day was great. We moved from place to place, across the top of what buildings we could and through other buildings that were mostly abandoned. It felt like an adventure, until we arrived here. The second night Billy made a pass at me and I turned him down. I wasn’t interested in a relationship at the time. I had enough problems getting myself together without adding the stress of another’s problems.” There was a long pause. “He didn’t let me turn him down again . . . or again . . . or again.”

  Jack could hear the pain in her voice. They had raped her. He turned his gaze back to the darkness outside. There were worse monsters out there than walking corpses. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  Denise looked sideways at Jack. He was handsome for being over forty, she thought. She wondered if he would be so nice if he knew that she was only free from Billy and Daryl because she had been swapped for another. Poor girl, she thought to herself. She still felt the shame for being glad that they had captured the teenager. She wished she knew the girl’s name.

  “Welcome to the family,” Jack said finally and gave her a small smile. “As long as you have those,” he nodded at her weapons, “Billy and Daryl had better be careful if you see them again. You know how to use ‘em?”

  “Yeah,” Denise said. “Spent a tour in Afghanistan.”

  “What branch?”

  “Army. I was a pilot. It’s amazing some of the things you can learn whether you want to or not.” She looked down at her weapons. “I’m not the best shot, but I have a steady hand.”

  “Maybe you can teach Carol and the kids.” After a moment, Jack sighed and added, “Never thought I’d be asking someone to teach children how to kill.”

  The two stood looking out the door quietly until Denise turned her eyes on Jack again. It was clear by his posture that he was exhausted. He must be so used to being the protector that he hardly had time to think about himself. “Hey, why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll keep an eye out. You can send Steven or Sheri to relieve me in the morning.”

  Jack smiled and then yawned. “It’s that evident, huh? Okay. You see that bullhorn there. Flick the switch to “siren” and we’ll all come running.”

  “Sure thing, chief,” Denise said with a little humor.

  Jack walked back down the main aisle toward the camping supplies. She will make a good addition to the team, he thought. Military experience could be a wonderful thing. When he looked up at the window near the ceiling, he saw a shadow of Carol standing there with her arms crossed. She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Denise standing at the front of the store. When she saw Jack looking at her, she turned away very slowly giving the front of the store a final glare.

  The kids were sound asleep in the two-room tent. Sheri’s First Aid Kit was open and its contents strewn about the floor. The little girl amazed him. She was like an anchor in a storm. She lay on the floor beneath Denise’s cot sound asleep. Charlie lay with his head across her belly. Even in sleep, Sheri had her hand on the boy. Steven, on the other hand, was sleeping on a cot in the first room. He had dressed himself in camouflage so that he looked like a little soldier — combat boots and all. He had a small knife sheathed on his left hip and a chrome pistol lay on the floor next to his cot. Jack picked it up. It still had its tag. It read: Walther PPK, .38 caliber. Pulling the slide back, he found the weapon loaded. Shaking his head, he slid it down
the back of his trousers. Things were different now.

  He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday, October 26th, 2017

  “W hy don’t we just stay here? I mean, we have everything we need to survive, don’t we?” Carol asked.

  “Yes,” Jack said, “for the most part. The problem is not that we don’t have what we need. The difficulty we may have is that this type of store will attract everyone who has managed to survive the apocalypse. Not everyone will have our best interests at heart.” He concluded the last statement with a pointed look at Denise. She nodded her agreement. “We need to be careful about who we permit to be around you and the children. There are worse monsters out there than the dead ones. Believe me.”

  “How do you know that she’s okay,” Carol asked, pointing at Denise. “She could be a spy for all we know of her.”

  “I know about as much of her as I do of you, and I wouldn’t dare think you a spy. So let’s give her the benefit of the doubt, huh?” Jack was trying to be patient, but Carol’s constant attacks on Denise were getting tiresome.

  “A spy for who?” Steven asked.

  “Why don’t I go keep an eye out front?” Denise said and stood up.

  “I’ll go with you,” Sheri said and beckoned Charlie to follow.

  The group was sitting around the pretend campfire in lawn chairs. Jack had called a meeting of the minds to discuss their next move. He was ready to make a try for the mall, but Carol continued to be difficult.

  “What we need is a distraction. It would have to be something like what they used downtown to attract all the dead before they sprung their trap and knocked the buildings down on them. Their bait included light and sound.”

  “Sounds like unnecessary work to me. I still think we should remain here. If others come, they can join us and make us stronger. There is strength in numbers, right?”