Continuing to awkwardly crawl down the aisle he used his hands to feel his way along. There was a ton of crap lying on the floor. It dawned on him if he managed to get in the right aisle, he might be able to find some kitchen knives. He’d ditched the baseball bat about five seconds after he started crawling down the aisle. He just couldn’t see himself trying to fight a crawler in total darkness by swinging away like Babe Ruth when he couldn’t even stand up without help.
He could totally see himself slicing the throat of a crawler who happened to be lying on the floor taking a nap though. Based on the stuff he kept finding on the floor he was on the drink aisle. Trying to beat a crawler to death a with a two liter of some nameless soda didn’t seem as great of a tactic. He continued crawling for a few minutes before he stopped to think about it. It wasn’t like there was going to be some magical place at the end of the store for him to hide. He was deep enough in now that he should be good.
Crawling over to the shelving he began quietly working the bottles off the bottom shelf. He set them down neatly in the aisle where he’d be able to get to them once he crawled into the cubby hole that he was carving out for himself. Once he was done methodically clearing off the shelf, he crawled in to hide. He was paralyzed with fear for a moment when he thought he saw a young boy lying there staring at him with those crazy crawler eyes. The vision faded away as the moment of paranoia passed. Once he’d recovered from the icy fear that’d gripped him, he got situated for the day behind a wall of soda. It was going to be a long day.
A few aisles over Drew walked quickly down the aisle he’d randomly chosen holding his baseball bat out in front of him. He was using it like blind people use a cane to ‘see’ what’s in front of them. He was being careful to avoid all the crap covering the ground. When the flare went off, he saw the outline of a face staring at him. In the sudden reddish glow the infected and the uninfected stared into one another’s eyes for a split second. The bat was already halfway to the crawlerz head before it‘d registered that the man in front of it was uninfected.
The bat connected with a solid thunk to the side of the beast’s head. Drew immediately winding up and striking again. In quick succession he beat the monster’s face into its skull. Breathing hard Drew was thankful for the birdshot being sprayed into the building. The noise covered up the sound of him going all Babe Ruth on this thing’s face. Drew jumped over the body and ran further down the aisle. Seeing that he was on the dog food aisle he quickly built himself a little fort on one of the low shelves and dived in.
Billy painfully sprinted down another random aisle with his bat held out in front of him. He heard the flares and the shotgun blasts. The whole store lit up like a haunted house from the eerie shadows cast by the flares. Billy was petrified. That fear drove him to run faster. Even with his messed up ankles and his whole body still reeling from the beating he’d taken the night before he ran as fast as he could. Adrenaline pumping though him he stepped on a family size can of Beefaroni. The can rolled taking his foot with it. The back of his head hit the floor hard enough to knock him back out again.
Jeff had worked in one of these stores when he was in high school. When he’d heard LeBron say to hide, he’d immediately thought of the employee breakroom. In the darkness he’d stumbled across the manager’s office instead. The door was locked. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to break down the thick wooden door he turned and ran his hands along the wall until he found the restroom. He went in and carefully checked every inch of the room with his bat to make sure there weren’t any surprises. Oddly enough the men’s room smelled much better than the rest of the store. Probably because it hadn’t been housing a bunch of the unwashed infected, rotting produce and maggoty meat.
Outside in the parking lot the party was in full swing. More people continued to arrive. Pretty much everyone in the different pods had sent at least a few people over to represent. Tommy ordered a few men to go around the back of the store just to make sure the ‘contestants’ weren’t able to figure out a way to escape. He had three men setup a guard post at the front doors. If any more crawlerz came busting out he wanted them to be put down right away. What’d happened on other occasions was also an issue they had to be ready to deal with. They’d sent plenty of people into the store who’d come sprinting back out ten minutes later as surgers.
Tommy was expecting at least one or two of the ‘contestants’ to emerge as surgers. By the flickering light of the road flares he’d been able to tell the store was well stocked with the crazed crawlerz. Between the flares and the noise he’d made shooting into the store the crawlerz inside should be buzzing around like the bees in a hive that’d just been dropkicked. He didn’t get why he hadn’t seen a single one of them come out as a surger yet. A nagging sensation that they were going to make a fool out of him crept into his head.
He decided to give it fifteen more minutes then they’d clear the supermarket themselves. Once they’d cleared the store they’d find and waste the four who were causing him all these headaches. It’d been fun messing with them, but it’d just gone on for way too long. He’d go ahead and torture and kill them the old fashioned way. Assuming they survived the assault.
Chapter 23: Food Fight!
LeBron considered opening one of the sodas he was lying next to. He was worried the hissing noise from opening it may attract crawlerz though. He was thirsty but he wasn’t quite that thirsty yet. His first thought when he heard the booming of automatic weapons fire was that now he could open a soda without having to worry about it. Halfway through a big gulp of a very warm, very flat orange drink of some sort it occurred to him that this gunfire was different from what he’d heard earlier. It also dawned on him that flat soda didn’t make a hissing noise when you opened it.
This didn’t sound like some crazy guy blasting away just to stir stuff up. This sounded more like a concerted effort to clear the crawlerz out. The only reason they’d be working on clearing the crawlerz out would be if they’d deduced what LeBron and the others planned on doing. LeBron mentally slapped himself in the forehead. Of course Tommy would’ve expected to see a couple of surgers come running out. The crawlerz might have killed them when they were thrown in the store. At least one or two of them should’ve turned though. As newly turned surgers they’d have ran straight out the front doors to throw themselves teeth first at the men in the parking lot.
In the extremely limited time he’d had to come up with a plan LeBron hadn’t thought through all of the ramifications. The store was brightening up as the bikers tossed in enough road flares to let them see what they were fighting. The crawlerz had no fear of the road flares. LeBron lay still thinking feverishly about what they needed to do next. He’d have killed to have the ability to text the other three guys. After all the trouble Tommy was going through to make sure they hadn’t escaped LeBron was pretty sure the next part of this event was going to be them hanging by the neck until dead. Assuming they didn’t get shot by the men working to clear out the crawlerz.
At the front of the store Tommy was trying to coordinate the men moving in to clear out the infected. The men weren’t all part of the same club. Most of them were representatives from the other clubs. They weren’t used to fighting alongside one another. It was a lot more like herding cats than commanding a group of fighting men. Tommy had dispatched his best men to go deliver the message to Weathertop. He wasn’t expecting them back for a couple of days at least. That group was the cream of the crop as far as warrior stock went within the Living Zombies. The least special of the special operators on that team had been a member of an elite SWAT team before getting busted stuffing his pockets to give himself a little Christmas bonus.
Tommy realized it was a mistake trying to clear the store with this random batch of revelers within a minute of the first shot being fired. They’d been partying in the parking lot. This crew took their partying seriously. Drugs and alcohol had been prevalent in very large quantities over the last hour. Tommy was waiting for the gunfir
e to quiet down so he could pull them back out. He needed to figure out who was sober and give them better instructions than just having them go in and kill everything they saw.
Tommy came to that realization about ten seconds too late. One of the men who’d been chasing pills with tequila accidentally shot the guy standing next to him. That caused some pandemonium to break out as everyone jumped out of the way of the man who was now waving his gun around drunkenly saying it was an accident. The man he’d shot picked up his pistol and shot back killing the original drunkard.
Everyone was so enthralled with watching that little drama unfold that they momentarily forgot about the insane killing machines lurking in the shadows all around them. The crawlerz sprang out of the shadows like lions pouncing on their prey. Where there’d been a line of thirty men ripping the place apart with automatic weapons there was now just a rampaging mob being ripped apart by the insanely fast infected. Tommy turned and ran out into the sunlight. He started yelling at the men outside to form a firing line on him.
Only a few men joined him. Everyone else was staring in horror at the front of the building. The sound of guns going off had ceased. Now it was just a cascading wave of silence emanating from the dark gash on the front of the concrete wall. The smashed storefront looked like a womb waiting to give birth to monstrosities. With no warning the surgers came running out.
Tommy decided the better part of valor was living to fight another day. Abandoning the two men still trying to hold the line Tommy ran for the white pickup truck the prisoners had been transported in. Whipping open the door he was relieved to see the keys hanging out of the ignition. Ignoring the gunfire and screams coming from all around him he started the truck and got the hell out of there. Two of his men were able to leap in the back and ride out with him. What a complete and total cluster.
The parking lot emptied rapidly after that. The surgers took off running after the vehicles that’d peeled out. A few surgers came to life and shambled around the parking lot. In the store everyone remained where they were. With the people outside leaving the crawlerz began to slowly spread back out in the store to wait for the sun to go down. On the soup and pasta aisle Billy woke up. After laying still for a few minutes working out what’d happened he painfully slid into hiding on the bottom of one of the shelves. He had no idea how he was supposed to find the others or even how he’d know when it was safe to come out.
The only one with a view of the front of the store was Drew. He didn’t have a direct line of sight, but he could tell that it was still sunny outside. He lay there waiting for the dog food bags to be tossed out of the way and a crawler to sticks it’s face in his. He lost track of the number of times he thought a hand touched one of his feet. Eaten up with worry for his brother and Jeff he did his best to focus on keeping his breathing under control. There was nothing they could do until the sun went down.
Jeff sat on the cold tiled floor of the bathroom listening as a battle raged in the front of the store. He intuited that Tommy had figured out they were hiding and was moving in to make sure they were eliminated. When the gunfire dwindled down to nothing Jeff thought that was the end for them. If all the crawlerz had been killed, then the next twenty minutes would be a deadly game of hide and seek. When he heard the muffled sounds of shooting coming from the parking lot his hope was reborn. If there was shooting in the parking lot, then the push the bikers had made into the store must not have been successful.
Jeff wargamed scenarios in his head for how they’d be able to escape from the store come nightfall. If the bikers really had been run off by the crawlerz then there should be a surplus of weapons at the front of the store. If they managed to get extra lucky there’d also be some vehicles in the parking lot with keys in the ignition. If all the stars aligned properly, they very well could be in a vehicle driving down the highway again once darkness fell.
Of course that meant they’d be driving around after dark. In the best scenario Jeff could imagine they’d be put into a position where they’d be dead within an hour. You couldn’t cruise around at night and expect to live. It was an apocalyptic fact that the crawlerz would come for you. They’d spent plenty of nights in the backs of trucks in the middle of nowhere and still woke up to the infected doing their best to get in. It was like the crawlerz were mosquitoes and the noninfected were porch lights. During the day it didn’t really matter if the light was turned on or not but once it got dark that light would be crawling with bugs.
Jeff decided not to look the gift horse of Tommy’s men getting run off in the mouth. The probability of dying later was still better than the certainty of dying he’d been facing less than twenty minutes prior. The universe had conspired to give them a chance at survival. It was up to them to take it. First things first Jeff really hoped someone had hidden somewhere that they could tell when the sun went down. Sitting here in the bathroom he’d lost all track of time. Cracking open the door to try and take a peek towards the front of the store would probably catch the attention of every crawler within a hundred yards.
Despite the rampant fear and huge amount of stress Drew was under he still managed to nod off. When he let his eyes close, it was only going to be for a minute. When his eyes opened again, it’d been more than a minute. Forcing himself to be focused and controlled in his movements he slid over to look towards the front of the store. He could no longer make out the yellowish halo of light he’d been able to just barely see before. He assumed that meant night had fallen. He just had no idea how long it had fallen for. For all he knew it might just be a little cloudy outside.
Thinking about how ironic it’d be if he happened to have woken up in the middle of an eclipse Drew slowly worked his way off the shelf he’d been hiding on. He had no idea what he was going to do after he got off the shelf. He had to do something though, so he did what’d worked well for him in the past. Instead of freezing up and just staying put he focused on accomplishing one thing at a time. First, he had to get off the shelf without making too much noise. Once that was done, he’d figure out his next step.
Standing in the aisle after painstakingly crawling off the shelf he realized he didn’t really have a next step. Unless you counted walking around in the dark until he ran into a crawler and was killed. With no real choice in the matter Drew decided to try the walk around in the dark until a crawler killed him plan. It beat the stand in the middle of the aisle doing nothing until a crawler wandered by and killed him plan. At least he’d get some steps in for the day this way. Not that he’d managed to keep his fit bit on him.
One foot in front of the other Drew walked until he was at the end of his aisle. Everyone except Jeff had taken off in the other direction. Turning that way when he got to the end of the aisle, he continued strolling around the store in the dark expecting to be ripped apart at any time. Jeff had taken off for the front of the store. He was thinking they’d find him in a bathroom or breakroom or something. As to where he might find LeBron or Billy, he had no idea. He was thinking he’d just walk around and hope they noticed him. If that didn’t work, he’d head for the front of the store to find Jeff.
Breaking out in a cold sweat he worked his way up and down the aisles. When LeBron hissed at him, he pissed his pants a little bit. Not that he’d ever share that little bit of trivia with anyone. LeBron worked his way out from behind the soda bottles when Drew repeated the low volume hissing noise. LeBron knew someone had heard him and was standing in the aisle. Hopefully it wasn’t a crawler repeating what it’d heard like an oversized demonic parakeet.
In the darkness they communicated with quick whispers in one another’s ears. At the risk of attracting the infected they decided to stay together while they went down the rest of the aisles checking for Billy. If they didn’t find him then they’d head to the front of the store to look for Jeff. The front of the store was where they were also hoping to find weapons. The store had sounded like someone was filming the final gun fight scene from the OK Corral before the crawlerz had cha
sed everyone out. There should be a decent number of abandoned weapons strewn around up front. The bikers who’d been turned wouldn’t have walked around holding onto a pistol.
Drew hadn’t bothered going immediately to the front of the store to try and find a weapon. If they had to start shooting in here, they were dead. If the crawlerz sensed them in here, they were dead. It was nighttime and they weren’t protected by thick walls. They were in the middle of a city they were completely unfamiliar with. A city covered in crawlerz. One misstep and they would be ripped apart. Drew felt like if he swallowed a piece of coal, it’d come shooting out his other end as a diamond he was under so much pressure.
With every step Drew was positive he was going to bump into one of the infected. All it would take would be to nudge one and the rest would know via groupthink. It’s not like they knew for sure the crawlerz were going to exit the store at night to go run through the streets of the city. For all they knew there were five crawlerz quietly stalking them in the pitch black aisles. The infected could be standing in the corners just waiting to hear a noise. They were rolling the dice by walking around looking for Billy.
Drew was a hundred percent ready just to walk out if they couldn’t find the guy who thought it was a good idea to get his entire face tattooed. When he’d done it, he’d probably thought he’d be dead in a month or two. That was a real possibility considering the missions he was being sent on. Drew wondered how often Billy looked in the mirror and asked himself why the hell he’d done it. He was going to look like a complete moron if he lived to be eighty. Sitting around with his saggy skull face.
Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails Page 20