“You know, back in the part of Jersey where I was from, we didn’t have this,” Sadie said, feeling the ghost of a long forgotten fear thrill inside of her. “The numbers of zombies just exploded and just came blasting out of New York City like a tidal wave overwhelming everything and everyone. There wasn’t much fighting around us. We just hid. Everyone who was smart hid.”
“My dad made us hide,” Jillybean said. “I was ascared all the time and I know he wanted to run. We had all our stuff packed up and he kept waiting to find out where was safe and then one day the radio said that there were monsters in King of Prussia—that’s what means a place, not a person. He said that we were surrounded.” Jillybean sat there for a moment, her eyes as wide and unblinking as an owl’s. “That’s when my mom went crazy, I think.”
“Okay, no more of that talk,” Sadie said, “it’s too depressing. Did I ask if you had taken your medicine yet? Oh, right, I did. Either way, there’s the Walmart and it looks…” Her face twisted. From the outside, it looked as though it had been looted right down to its last Bumble Ball. Every window had been smashed in and there were at least two spots where the walls had gaping holes in them.
Jillybean whistled at the destruction. “Man-o-man, I wonder what went on in there? I hope they gots all the stuff we need. This town is giving me the creeps. It just seems deader than most.”
It did have an odd desolate feeling to it and when Sadie got out of the car she had her shotgun ready to go. There was no need. The Walmart had more corpses than most cemeteries, however none were moving and most were little more than bleached bone.
“There was a fight here,” Jillybean said, explaining the obvious, or at least that’s what Sadie thought. “They fought for as long as they could and then they all killed themselves.” She held up a skull with a hole in the side of it. Only then did Sadie notice the ring of bodies. Jillybean climbed up on one of the checkout stands, her magenta cowboy boots looking oddly gay in a place of such death. “They were surrounded and they fought until…”
Sadie could picture the terrifying battle and feel the tremendous fear that had to have permeated the store. It had to have been like an invisible storm filling the air. Had there been an order given? Or had someone’s courage failed completely? If it was the latter, had the one suicide sparked the rest? Had there been a race not to be the last one pitted against the horde?
“Let’s just get what we came for,” Sadie said, swallowing, tasting the air. It had the tang of decomp lingering on it. Her stomach rumbled, but not for a good reason.
Despite the destruction, or perhaps because of it, this particular Walmart was better stocked than most. Jillybean found three drones, fourteen iPads, six cameras, thirty pounds of batteries, two Bumble Balls, a laser pointer and more tools than an eight-year-old could use in a lifetime. Once more came the question: where to put it all.
“Easy, we passed a Home Depot on the way here,” Jillybean said. “If it’s anything like this place they’ll have a dozen welders, ha-ha!” When Sadie didn’t show the slightest exuberance, Jillybean shrugged. “I can make a box kinda thing on the roof. Shouldn’t take very long at all.”
“Then let’s do that first and come back for all this junk.”
Jillybean made a humph noise at the word junk as she went back to the Camry, which was parked in the street right in front among another fifty or so cars. It looked as though the locals had tried to form a wall around the store, something that might have gained them ten more minutes of life.
Sadie slid her shotgun into the back seat and as she straightened up, there came a loud barking. It had been a long time since she had heard the bark of a dog and perhaps that was the reason she was initially fooled. In shock, she spun and saw a strange, furry, brown creature bearing down on her.
Her first impulse was to go for her gun, however the sling got caught up on crate of detonators that Sadie had insisted be stored away from the rest of the bombs. Next, she tried to scramble inside, however because the doors didn’t open all the way, she was caught by the creature as she was trying to slither inside.
It bowled her right over and landed on top of her. Before she knew what was going on, she was pinned, her arms held down by the weight on her. Jillybean desperately tried to unbuckle her seatbelt and reach for the .38 in her pocket at the same time, but Sadie saw she was going to be too slow.
In the second before the creature lunged down at her with its jaws gaping, she saw that it wasn’t a dog or a wolf, it was a man, wild and shaggy. And very crazy. She could see the crazy in his eyes and then all she saw was his teeth and all she felt was his hot breath on her face.
Chapter 20
Sadie Martin
Had she been someone else, the shock of going from a simple shopping spree at the local Walmart to lying on her back with a monster of some sort pinning her down might have spurred her on to a fit of strength or a moment of pure lucidity where the mind would see, in the split second left, the perfect way out of the horrible situation she found herself in.
But she was Sadie. Speed and bravery were the only things she excelled at and neither were in the least bit helpful and so she tried to knee the guy in the balls. It didn’t work. Her knee was too close to her target and she couldn’t get any power behind the blow.
Then his mouth was on her face—licking her! She had been so tense, expecting the bite of a man halfway to becoming a zombie, that when the tongue slid up her cheek she went from being stiff as a board to almost paralyzed. Only her eyes moved, following the man’s tongue as it came at her again and again.
With the fourth or fifth lick, he got her right on the left eye and everything went blurry. Then Jillybean was there with her little .38 pointed at the man. “Uh, sir? Could you stop that?” she asked, gesturing a bit with the revolver so that he could see it.
He stopped the licking, but the dog act went into full force. A joyous whine escaped his throat and he tried to crawl over Sadie to get at Jillybean, who could only back up holding the gun in front of her. He ignored the gun as if it wasn’t there.
Sadie tried to stop him by grabbing him around the waist, only it was then she noticed that he wasn’t wearing pants and the shock of that caused her to lose her grip. Jillybean took off around the Camry and jumped into the passenger seat. The man scrambled at the door, raking it with dirty fingernails. He didn’t even try to touch the door handle.
While he was scratching away, Sadie should have got into the Camry as well, but she was so afraid that Jillybean hadn’t locked the door that she hopped up and charged around the car. “Get away from there!” she yelled. Even though he was bigger than her, she wasn’t afraid. He didn’t have a weapon except the little dangly thing between his legs and that seemed to have been forgotten by him.
She just didn’t want to deal with that tongue again. Once was enough for her…but not for him. When he saw her, he barked once and charged, his mouth open. He was definitely crazy, but not so crazy as to try to crawl after Sadie as she ran around the car. His mode of ambulation was a strange gallop in which he held his arms crooked in front of him, more like a praying mantis than a dog.
As exuberant as he was, he wasn’t very fast and after running once around the car, Sadie climbed up on the hood and then to the roof. Although he easily could have, the dogman did not try to follow. He got up on his “hindquarters” and scratched at the metal armor, barking the entire time.
“What the hell?” Sadie muttered after watching him for a few seconds. Louder, she flung out her arms and cried, “Get the hell out of here!”
Jillybean cracked the door and used it as a ladder to get up onto the top of the Camry with Sadie. “Okay, that’s crazy,” she whispered. “I know everyone calls me crazy but that is really, really crazy.”
“I wonder what happened to him,” Sadie whispered back.
Jillybean shrugged. “Maybe the monsters ate his dog and he feels bad. Maybe he was like this before. Hey, Mister, what’s your name? Huh? What’s your name
?” The dogman only barked louder. “He’s going to get the monsters on us. Hey, Mister, sit!”
The dogman immediately sat—really, it was a modified kneel, but it was still amazing. “Holy crap!” Sadie said. “That’s nuts. That’s…hey, I’m going to get him to roll over.” Jillybean stifled a giggle behind her hand. “Here we go. Mister, roll over.” Just like that he rolled over. “Holy crap,” she said again.
“Hmmm,” Jillybean murmured. “Do you think he’s safe? He could have hurt you, but he didn’t.”
“Are you suggesting that we keep him? No way, this is worse than if he was a real dog.” Sadie hid her mouth behind her hand and whispered, “We don’t know who he is or what his problems are. You just said that he was really, really crazy. And yes, he didn’t hurt me just now but what if he thinks he’s a werewolf when it’s a full moon? Or what if he thinks he’s a zombie at night? We don’t know and we can’t know.”
Jillybean raised an eyebrow. “We just came from a place that took us in even though they knew what kind of person I am. They knew I’d done a million things worser than act like a dog.”
Sadie closed her eyes shut in frustration. Yes, taking in the dogman was the right thing to do and it was Christian and giving, but…she opened her eyes and looked up to the sky. “It’s a guy who thinks he’s a dog! Dear God, why didn’t you send us a soldier or someone with a lot of guns? Hell, you could have sent us Ryan Reynolds. That would have been good.”
“Who’s Ryan…”
“Just an actor from the movies. Okay, you want this dog-guy? You’re going to have to clean up after him. If he poops in the car, you’re going to have to clean it up.” Jillybean was both shocked and disgusted, and yet she still nodded, only without any enthusiasm. “Okay then, keep your gun ready. I’m going to go pet him.”
Going slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves, Sadie slid down off the front of the car. The dogman whined and shook his butt. “Aw jeeze,” Sadie whispered. “If he pees himself, this is over. Do you hear me, Jillybean? I know what I just said but we’re not going to keep him if he’s nothing but a man-sized poodle.” A thought struck her and she giggled. “We could call him puddles.”
Jillybean looked as though she were on the verge of another lecture about the “right” thing to do and say. Sadie waved away the argument with a cranky shooing motion and said, “Okay, not puddles. Here we go. Stay, stay, be good.” She slowly reached out a hand and touched the man’s wild bush of hair. That he stank to high heaven was the first thing she noticed. The second was that he was much younger than she would have guessed. Probably not much older than she was.
He tried to lick her fingers. “That, that is pretty gross. I’m just saying, maybe don’t do that. You can bark and all that but no licking me and definitely no humping my leg, do you hear me? Any leg humping and you’re out.” He barked happily in response.
“I think he’s kinda cute,” Jillybean said, coming down from the car with her hand out. She didn’t seem to mind having her hand licked.
“Then you can bathe him. He’s not getting in the car until he’s clean. He stinks and that’s the nicest way I can put that. And this pelt is sick. It’s like he’s wearing roadkill.” At least part of him was human and thinking. He had made a crude cloak out of some large animal; elk, Sadie guessed.
Jillybean started to shrug, suggesting that she didn’t have a problem with that, but then she remembered: “I gotta make the roof rack thing. It’s important.”
Sadie began spluttering. “But, but you…you just said you were going to take care of him? Bathing is part of the deal. You know that it was implied as part of our bargain.” Sadie was in high dungeon until she pictured Jillybean trying to bathe the man, and his man parts. “Son of a bitch! Never mind. I’ll do it. Give me your gun.”
While Jillybean drove the Camry to the Home Depot, Sadie went back into the Walmart with the dogman. He galloped circles around her, uncaring that he was scattering bones with every step. She was more dignified and stepped lightly through the remains until she came to the cleaning aisle. As expected, it was basically untouched.
She picked up a new toilet brush and some dish soap that had the fading picture of a lemon on it. In her gut, she knew that normal shampoo wouldn’t cut it with the dogman. She was all set to leave when another idea struck her and she strode to the far corner of the store where the pet supplies had been sold.
The dog food had all been taken long since by some desperate soul, however there were leashes and collars, some of which were quite large. She even considered taking one of the large metal crates, imagining him in one, riding on top of the Camry with the wind blowing through his long hair. “But what would Jillybean say?” She sighed and once more started out of the store hesitating again.
“I should have made a list,” she whispered. The dogman needed clothes. The thing he had on was disgusting. With her arms loaded with a pair of jeans, a shirt, socks and three pairs of underwear, the soap, collar, brush and leash, she went down to where the Wenatchee River emptied into the Columbia.
There was a park with wide open spaces and of course the dogman took off, chasing after a squirrel. “He ran away, Jillybean. There was nothing I could do. Sorry.” It sounded like a fine speech, only the dogman came bounding back seconds later.
“Just get in the water,” she grumped. Unexpectedly, he only splashed around in the shallows. “Perhaps he can’t swim,” she said. Cautiously, she went closer to the river’s edge and saw that it wasn’t all that deep near the bank. He shouldn’t have been afraid. She tried to order him into the water but he only stared at her with dull, uncomprehending eyes—just like a real dog.
“You want to be a dog? Well, then fetch!” She picked up a stick and threw it. The dogman didn’t hesitate. He charged full bore into the river, struggled to catch up with the stick and then came out of the water with the damned thing in his mouth. “Right when I needed a camera,” she whispered. “Neil would have gotten a kick out of that.”
He dropped the stick at her feet and then barked, eager for more. “Now for the hard part,” she said. “Sit. Lay down. Good boy.” Step one was getting the pelt from around his shoulders. It was easier than expected; she had him sit up and she lifted the foul smelling thing away. He began to shiver. “It’ll just be a moment,” she said as she doused him with the lemon-scented soap.
Then came the scrubbing and he was very dirty, dirty in a way that a grown man shouldn’t be dirty. “Why couldn’t you have been a cat, instead?” she asked through clenched teeth as she scrubbed the area of his crotch. The bristles weren’t kind to him, but in truth nothing else would have sufficed. Because he was so miserable looking, she washed his face and hair by hand.
He was happy to get back in the water, though he was freezing by the time he came out clean and very human looking. She had forgotten to grab a towel and it was hell on her trying to get him in his “people clothes.” He kept biting the sleeves of his shirt whenever she turned away.
“I should have gotten one of them cones. Or a choke chain. Stop it!” The only way to distract him was to keep throwing the stick. She must have thrown it a hundred times by the time they came to the Home Depot, where Jillybean had driven the Camry right through the open bay doors. She sat atop the car surrounded by a crowd of forty or fifty zombies who were scraping at the armor or trying to climb onto the hood.
She was very calm about the situation perhaps because she had already erected three sides of a metal box that was about fifteen inches tall. She was trying to get the front side in place but every minute or so a zombie would somehow make it to the hood and from there it was only a short scramble to get at the near defenseless girl.
Her defenses amounted to a leather apron, thick gloves, and a heavy welder’s face shield. And she wasn’t exactly without a weapon, either. She had a gas fed welder’s torch. Because of the blinding light of the torch, the zombies were very confused as to what exactly they were attacking. They could tell a human was on
the car by the arms and the movement, but as they came right up, the welder’s torch was like a hypnotist’s watch and they just stood there, staring at it, their retinas slowly burning out of their eye sockets.
When one was somehow able to get past the glare, they would climb up and Jillybean would, calmly or so it appeared from where Sadie stood, send the fire straight into the thing’s face. Its hair would go right up and its eyes would, almost simultaneously melt and burn. Invariably they would stop going forward and would usually topple off into the crowd.
Then Jillybean would go back to welding. Already there was a haze of foul smelling smoke drifting through the store. She was perfectly safe and yet the dogman charged at the zombies. Those that could still see turned ponderously to the slobbering, semi-human.
Even with his clothes: jeans and a now torn flannel shirt, he didn’t look exactly human. His hair was a mane, more like a lion’s that any man’s and his beard was wild and bushy. His normal human features were basically hidden. Still, a good dozen zombies turned away from the Camry.
“Holy crap!” Sadie exclaimed flinging away the useless collar and leash, and the even more useless stick. She had stuck Jillybean’s pathetic .38 in her back pocket and as she tugged it out, the dogman ceased his barking. He let out a yip of fear and took off to his left with the zombies stumbling after. He went down the plumbing aisle and Sadie, not wishing to be seen, ran down the next aisle over where she was surrounded by lights and lamps and chandeliers of all sorts.
She could see the dogman stop and it looked as though he was actually waiting on the zombies to catch up. Now, Sadie saw that he was leading them away, purposefully. “That’s not quite a dog move, but I’ll take it.”
The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice Page 21