Darkest Days: A Southern Zombie Tale (18 page)

“I need bullets and you two bastards need weapons.” Rick growled at the holy man.

“Aren’t they closed?” Mark innocently asked. His mind refused to let go of the natural order that he was used to. If a shop was closed, that was that. No entry allowed.

“Are you retarded?” Rick asked incredulously. “I’m going to break in.” He stated as if it were a daily routine. “Do you think the law matters now? People are killing and eating each other. As far as I’m concerned, it’s every man for himself.”

Mark obeyed even though he was fearful, not of the constant threat of attack, but of being an accomplice to breaking and entering with theft. He pulled the car over and Mark and Martin followed Rick. The trio faced the shop with some trepidation.

Breaking the stillness around them, Rick stepped up and shook the locked entrance. The metal bars reinforcing the glass door rattled, causing enough racket to draw an unwanted audience. Becoming impatient, he smashed the glass with the butt of his rifle, causing shrill alarms to sound. Now they were definitely the center of attention.

“Hurry up.” Martin urged him on, seeing that the hungry dead had started moving their way.

Rick muttered a curse and pointed the barrel at the lock.

Martin yelled in protest, “No!”

The lock was built into the final, vertical steel bar. Ironically, a padlock would have provided better protection to the business than the imbedded one. The bullet flying out of the hollow steel cylinder smashed into the lock, springing it open. However, projectile bounced back and the ricochet blasted a messy wound in the preacher’s forearm. Mark Willis swayed to the left, then to the right before his knees buckled under him. The sudden pain overloaded the man’s central nervous system and he fainted. Martin caught the falling man and lowered him gently to the ground.

Ignoring the stifled cry, Rick disappeared into the dark interior of the shop. The sounds of someone quickly and sloppily rummaging around floated out the now open door.

Martin whispered into Mark’s ear. “Listen man, I’m going to put you into the passenger seat and I’ll drive. Do you have a first aid kit?” He waited for an answer, but Mark only whimpered in response.

Martin continued to speak in a soothing voice as he sat the preacher in the car. “I’ll look for something to bandage that.” He reached over the man and pulled the keys from the ignition. The boy had to act quickly. More than the religious man bleeding to death, Martin worried about the creatures converging on the car. His peripheral vision picked up ghostly movement in every direction.

He ran around the vehicle and stuck the key into the chrome lock on the back. The trunk came open revealing the treasure of a blanket, filthy with spots of oil. “Better dirty than dead.” He slammed the lid and jogged back around to the driver’s door. Half in the car, he tightly tied the blanket around the injured arm. The effect struck the boy as comical. With the forearm several times larger than the upper arm, he could not help but be reminded of an old Popeye the sailor cartoon. The lighter moment shattered when he heard Rick scream an inhuman howl and the sound of a gunshot accompanied by a brief flash inside the store.

***

Moments after injuring the preacher, Rick cautiously entered the shop, tiptoeing once he had crossed the threshold. He ran his hands across the walls vainly searching for a light switch, but finally gave up. The streetlamp outside provided illumination enough for the lead boy to see the outline of obstructions ahead. He peered into the first glass case, spotting eight handguns on display. Immediately behind the counter, a rack held several rows of shotguns and rifles lined up and begging to be used. He smiled and rummaged through shelves, finding a large nylon gym bag. With the opening unzipped all the way, he tossed in boxes of ammunition. He chose mostly .22s (being a popular gun most children grew up with in those parts), picked out several boxes of 12 gauge shotgun shells, and finally a little handgun ammo.

Laying the rifle across the counter top, he smashed open the glass case and stole four of the pistols, making sure they were compatible with the shells that he’d taken. Hurriedly, he chose a fifth and loaded it.

As soon as he slid the clip back in, a dark shape sprang up and seized his rifle. Rick dropped the pistol, his hands darting out to grab the stolen weapon. Rick had a sufficiently strong grip and avoided losing the gun, but had to wrestle with an unknown assailant. Like hand to hand fighting in the trenches, he broke free momentarily and used the butt of the gun to beat the creature in the face. The swing connected with a cheekbone and the dark shape fell into the gun racks, spilling several models of bolt-action rifles.

Rick forgot about the handgun dropped in the scuffle. Since he already had the rifle pointed in the general direction of his assailant, so he aimed at the bulbous outline of a head. As the Adrenal gland dumped its juice into his system, his thoughts raced through a catalog of his survival of the fittest rhetoric and he inarticulately shouted like a victorious animal. He squeezed the trigger, causing the former adversary’s head to explode outward.

Only seconds later, Martin appeared in the doorway. “Are you alright?”

Rick met his gaze with a crazed bloodthirsty look. “Yeah, I wasted that fucker!” He spoke as the alpha-male, like a man who had just conquered nations. “Take the ammo.” He commanded.

Martin accepted the bag but followed with a statement. “You shot the preacher.” He tried to sound stern.

Rick ignored him. “I’ll get a shotgun for you. You don’t even have to aim. The shot spreads.”

“You shot him!” The boy exploded in anger.

“He’s not dead.” Rick rationalized. “I’m saving us! Without weapons, we’re fucked.” He said finally, “Take that shit to the car.” His voice carried a weight of dismissal and Martin quietly took the bag to the preacher’s Malibu.

Rick slipped back inside to grab the shotgun he had promised Martin. He chose one at random and knelt down to examine the body of his victim. Behind the counter, the light was sparse so Rick reached out and felt the skin. It radiated warmth. Dead bodies were usually cold. He shrugged his shoulders and stood up. Moments later they had sped away, leaving the body of the shop owner indistinguishable from the plethora of other casualties.

***

Bryant walked through his mother’s house (empty but still wrecked). Splatters of congealed red liquid decorated the walls. Glass and ceramic knick-knacks only existed as pieces spread across the floor. The first house that they had searched showed less extensive damage. That comforted the young man very little of course. He found no signs of his mother, no body or anything. As he aimlessly stepped through corridors that he remembered from a childhood that seemed a lifetime previous, he made sure that Cara always stayed within arm’s reach. He was convinced that he had now lost everything worthwhile in life except for her. He made his new goal ensuring her survival. That goal helped distract him from a loss that mere words could never impart to a person who has never experienced it. As terrible as he felt inside though, he knew that he could not cry at the moment. If he did, it would be later behind safe walls where he could properly grieve.

Cara stepped over a pile of assorted glass shards, holding one of her boyfriend’s pistols in front of her like a charm against evil. Her heart sank when she examined the state of the house. Bryant’s mother was dead. True they had found no body and true she had never met the surviving parent of the love of her life, but the pain on Bryant’s face made her wince. Cara had never lost anyone close to her and had no idea how to console him. The love she felt for Bryant paradoxically caused her an intense pain as she watched him suffer. She wondered if he thought about his mother walking the streets of this sleepy town hunting victims like the one she had previously been. Even worse, what if they came face to face with her? Could Bryant kill the savage that bore the outer shell of a family member?

Bryant’s voice caught her attention. His face disguised his pain well, but the voice sounded choked and constricted. “Let’s go. Maybe we’ll have better luck with your parents.”

As they walked back to the truck, the radio announced that the police station had been overrun. The DJ tried to be passionless but every listener could sense the churning of emotion within him. “Armed survivors are fleeing to a new location. As soon as we receive word, we will pass it along.” He was worried just like anyone else who still had a pulse.

***

In the eighties, a retail store called TG&Y resided as the largest store in a strip mall just north of downtown Fayette and a few blocks south of the hospital. In the late eighties, the location became a Wal-Mart. In the late nineties, the expanding corporation decided to make it a Wal-Mart Super center. To effectively complete the transition, the store had to relocate. On the extreme north of town, past the Gutherie Smith park, even past Bevill State Community College (Brewer campus), the company built the new location on the highway leading to Winfield, almost out of the city limits. A large graveyard sat across the road facing the front of the store. Behind the outlet of the retailing giant, acres of cotton and other local crops rustled as reanimated corpses made their way to the brightly lit parking lot. They swayed back and forth as lumbering steps brought them closer and closer to more meat - fresh meat.

Inside the receiving area, an associate with a dark blue smock loaded boxes of merchandise onto a cart to pull to the sales floor. The young man’s ears picked up at approaching footsteps. A loud thump emanated from the bay doors where deliveries were accepted. Outside, someone began an impatient rapping on the segmented metal door, designed to roll straight up on tracks like a garage door.

“Hold on, I’ll get a manager!” He called out. “Damn, those truckers are pushy.” He complained as he walked to a phone. He hit the page key and waited a second. Suddenly, his voice boomed out of every speaker in the warehouse-sized store. “I need a manager to receiving for a truck driver.” He repeated the message once more and hung up. The speakers switched back to playing non-offensive pop hits and easy listening. He resumed his stacking of merchandise but the arrhythmic banging continued. “God damn it!” He shouted at the door. “He’s on his way!”

Behind him, a throat cleared and a polite voice addressed him. “Language, please.”

“Sorry, chief.” The stocker’s face flushed red.

The manager was in his thirties and hated his life. In a rapidly growing company, he couldn’t get promoted. Regardless of whose fault his lack of upward mobility was, he loathed being stuck in the Podunk operation that was Fayette. The stores sprouted up across the globe, but somehow he never made the leap up. He treaded water. The pounding continued, distracting him from his self-pity and the manager wondered if he would have a confrontation with the truck driver. Most managers considered the drivers spoiled and more than one salaried associate had lost all control of his or her temper.

After turning his key and sliding the door up on the mounted rails, he was accosted by hands shooting through the opening and gripping his clothes. Multitudes of rank bodies piled through on top of him and then he started to scream.

A fat man with several stab wounds on his torso ripped open the manager’s shirt and bit into the soft pudge of his belly. The cannibalistic attacker then ripped the meat free by swinging his head back and forth like a dog with a chew toy. Others had already begun feasting on his extremities. A regular customer of four years bit off two of his fingers, while a five-year-old boy with a vacant stare ripped out a handful of hair and chewed on the bit of scalp still attached. The manager’s last thought was rather asinine for the unusual occurrence he was now a part of. “Who’s going to mind the store now?”

The associate watching decided that now would not be the best time to carry his cart out to the shelves and instead started climbing the storage bins. Hand over hand, he scrambled up the dark green steel racks towering up to the ceiling. Before making it six vertical feet, greedy hands found his ankles and jerked him down. His fingers slipped from the higher tier he had just been ascending and he tumbled down. Mercifully, he cracked his jaw on a beam as gravity once again proved its dominance. The excruciating pain from a broken jaw caused him to pass out thereby missing what would have otherwise been an unpleasant last few moments.

The demons tore through the store, attacking everyone. People grocery shopping and counting on everyday low prices met an army of eating machines. Those who died with a brain intact stood up and began killing, causing the horde to swell. One cart pusher, who happened to be riding the clock inside, ran to the sporting goods department and smashed the revolving gun case with a can of spray paint that he found in an abandoned shopping cart. The act cut his hands, but he got his gun. Unfortunately the trigger lock, placed on all the displayed guns for safety, would not come off. When the sporting goods cashier with the key screamed as her eyes were gouged out by cold dead hands, the cart pusher decided to use the gun as a bludgeon swinging it to and fro as he made his way to the garden center. Running through aisles while being chased by undead creatures that wanted to eat him and made the associate feel a lot like Pac man lost in his maze pursued by ghosts. Two doors flanked by a cash register opened into a greenhouse. In this direction, the boy of eighteen could only see three monsters circling from behind the building. He ran for open air, sprinting between rows of plants as the break in the chain link fence beckoned him outside to freedom.

A squeal caught his attention and slowed him down. He spotted the forklift roaring through the parking lot at the machine’s top speed. The deranged driver had raised the metal forks to the height of the average person and made a game of trying to spear the emerging creatures with the metal slats. A handful of zombies chased the forklift in circles but the operator changed direction, clipping one with the edge of the blades. Taking a turn too swiftly, the several-ton machine abruptly toppled. The man’s upper body tried frantically to crawl forward before he noticed his lack of progress. When he glanced back, he saw his legs disappear under the steel body. His crushed lower half robbed him of his will to live. His watering eyes perused the area to see who would get him first. Briefly, the driver’s eyes met the cart pusher’s from across the lot.