Dead: Winter (18 page)

Kevin waited and watched as the two disappeared around a corner. There was a small voice in his mind that said it might not be a good idea to have Shari out wandering the area without him, but since it was clear that Valarie had taken care of herself these past months, she was in good hands.

After a quick check of the building, he determined that the best way in was going to be through the front window. He would deal with Valarie’s reaction later.

Looking around, it was easy to find a rock. He hated the idea of how much noise he was about to cause, but it couldn’t be helped. If this place hadn’t been hit by looters, there was a good chance that he would be returning to the country club with quite a haul. The truck was parked behind a collapsed billboard on the edge of town. It would be nice if he could return with a full load.

Hurling the rock, the window shattered in a deafening crash of glass. After knocking away a few of the larger pieces that dangled threateningly around the edges, he stepped back and waited for the three shadowy figures heading his way to arrive.

The first was a man in his fifties. Kevin figured him to be Mr. Redd. His once dark skin now had a nasty greyness to it. The filthy bandage on his hand gave away the cause of his d
e
mise. On his heels was a portly Hispanic woman, also in her fifties. Her wild white hair added to her ghastly appearance. She had one leg wrapped from ankle to knee. The dried blood that had seeped into the bandage was likely the only reason it r
e
mained in place. The last to come from the shadows of the gaping entry to the store was a girl no older than ten. Her torso was tilted drastically to the left where a good portion of her mi
d
dle had been torn open and feasted upon.

Never one to take things for granted, Kevin waited for the trio to reach the broken window. As they made their awkward a
t
tempts to climb through, he did away with each. Once we was certain all three were dispatched, he pulled the bodies out into the street. He was about to climb in and look around when he heard a crash from somewhere back in the dark recesses of the store.

Without any sort of light source, he would be relying on the minimal light coming through the windows and doors. The fact that the sky was heavy with dark, ominous clouds that promised some snowfall if his guess on the temperature proved correct gave little relief. He decided to step inside. Perhaps it had simply been something knocked off balance by one of the zombified occupants that finally toppled. If he could look down each of the short aisles, then he was certain he would be able to see if there was any danger.

Climbing through, Kevin could almost hear him and his old band of movie enthusiasts warning that he not to go inside. He felt a tinge of fear start to grow in his belly as he walked past the checkout counter.

There were six aisles. To his left was the produce section with a few islands of rotting fruits and vegetables visible. The entire store reeked of decomposing food mixed with the identif
i
able stench of the undead. Hopefully the salvageable items wouldn’t be so permeated with the smell that they were unus
a
ble. He’d kept a bar of his favorite soap in his sock drawer back in the days before zombies. He liked how it made them smell. He’d already discovered that clothing had to be washed and aired out for several days if it came from a “zombie-rich” env
i
ronment. He didn’t relish the idea of brushing his teeth with zombie scented toothpaste.

As he moved along the front of the store and checked the aisles one at a time, he also made an o
b
servation of what was down each aisle. On the plus side, it was obvious that this place had not been looted. And the zombies trapped inside hadn’t knocked over too much of the merchandise. By the time he reached the far aisle, he was becoming convinced that the noise must’ve been something that had been knocked askew when the three zombies came to the front of the store.

Then he saw it.

Missing most everything from the middle of the chest on down, the female zombie in the sho
p
ping cart flailed its arms at him. That movement caused the cart to swing around to the left. The zombie craned its neck to try and find Kevin and let loose with a series of rasping groans.

There was simply no scenario that Kevin could imagine that put this half-eaten body in a sho
p
ping cart. He pulled one of his metal spikes and came up behind the creature. Grabbing it by the hair, he yanked its head back and drove the spike into its eye.

With that bit of unpleasant business finished, he went back to the front of the store and grabbed a cart. Making his way down the aisles he began scooping the shelves clean. He didn’t care to look through or sort anything. All of that could be done when they returned home to the country club.

By the time he’d filled every cart in the store, he had all but one aisle completely cleaned out. In a stroke of luck, he found the keys to the front doors in a small office in the front of the store near the checkout counter.

He was pushing the last of the carts out to the sidewalk when he saw Shari and Valarie coming around the corner. A moment of inspiration had come while he was busy em
p
tying the store of all its goods. He hoped it would work. It was instrumental in his plan to get Valarie to accept what was ha
p
pening.

“Kevin,” Shari called as she stepped over and around the several zombies now crawling along the street drawn by all the racket.

“Find anything useful?” he asked as he rolled the last shopping cart out onto the sidewalk. He kicked aside one of the creepers that reached for his leg.

“The farm has a bunch of stuff that I don’t know what to do with,” Shari replied. “I found a small shed with boxes that had packages of seeds. They didn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen in the store, but the labels were really clear as to what was what.”

“Did Mr. Redd open his store?” Valarie pushed past Shari and hurried across the street with an expectant look on her face.

Kevin caught her by the shoulders as she reached the broken window; which, upon seeing, her expression changed from cur
i
ous to worried in a hurry. She tried to peek around him and get a look inside. Fortunately, he had already moved the bodies to the back of the store and behind the useless meat counter.

“Mr. Redd isn’t here,” Kevin said. “But since we needed supplies, I had to get inside.”

“He ain’t gonna like you breaking his window,” the girl said as she shook her head sadly.

“Well I am gonna leave my credit card on the counter,” Kevin announced. He produced a blue plastic rectangle from his pocket. “This will cover all the damages.”

Several of the undead had closed on the trio now. Kevin took Valarie by the hand and motioned for Shari to follow. “So, we have a truck nearby. Would you like to come with us, Val
a
rie?”

“But I can’t.” The girl stopped suddenly, pulling her hand free. “I’m the Princess of Sage Farm. I have to stay.”

“She has quite a set up at the farm,” Shari offered. “There are jars and jars of food. I found a su
p
ply room with a small cannery. I guess the owners had a really good business. And for one person, I’d say she has enough food to last at least another year.”

“I have to stay here,” Valarie repeated. She was looking at the ground for the most part, but Kevin noticed her eyes kept drifting over to Shari. He had a flash of inspiration.

“But, Valarie,” Kevin turned back to the girl, “don’t you want to come with Shari? I bet she will let you sing all of her songs with her anytime you like.”

The girl’s head popped up. Her eyes were bright and the biggest smile he’d seen in a long time lit up her entire face. “Could we
sing
Whispers
?”

“We can sing any song you want,” Shari said, stepping past Kevin and taking the girl’s hands in her own. “I bet Kevin can even find me a guitar before we go home.”

Valarie pushed one of the creepers that had caught up with them away with the toe of her tattered sneaker. She looked around and her eyes filled with tears.

“Nobody is getting better are they?” she whispered through a quiet sob.

Shari glanced at Kevin for an idea of how to answer. He gave a slight shake of his head. She turned back to Valarie and brushed away her tears.

“No, they aren’t.”

“I wasn’t a very good princess,” the girl wept.

“Valarie,” Shari hunched down a little so that she could look up into the girl’s downturned face, “you were the best princess in the whole world. You took care of all the sick people when ev
e
rybody else ran away. You did very well.”

“Can I say goodbye to my meema before we go? I know she won’t understand if I just leave without saying goodbye. She is sick, but I know she still loves me.”

“Yes,” Kevin said, stepping up and nudging away another creeper that was trying its best to get up on the curb and get at them. “Then you can help Shari and I put all the groceries in the truck and come live with us.”

“I guess I’m not a princess no more,” the girl sighed, shru
g
ging out of her sash.

“I think I know a place that needs a new princess,” Shari said with a wink back at Kevin.



“We can’t go that way,” Kevin sighed as he shifted the truck into reverse.

Up ahead, a massive mob of undead poured down the hill of the pasture to the right of the country road. It briefly reminded him of a story he had seen once about a stretch of road in Cal
i
fornia where tarantulas crossed in such big numbers that it caused cars to skid out of control as if the road was co
v
ered with ice.

“Look at all the people!” Valarie leaned forward in her seat. “Do you think that they know Shari is here?”

“I doubt it,” Kevin said.

He looked in the side view mirror and backed up, turning hard on the steering wheel. It was going to take a few attempts to get them turned all the way around. He was only mostly sure that they would be turned all the way around before the leading edge of that mob, that were obviously now headed their way, reached the truck.

“Uh oh,” Shari whispered. Coming out from the mostly ba
r
ren trees were at least another hundred walking dead.

“What the hell are so many doing out here?” Kevin asked nobody in particular.

“I think they know you have Shari in the truck,” Valarie insisted, folding her arms across her chest.

“Everybody hang on tight,” Kevin hissed as he jerked the wheel to the left and sent the truck c
a
reening through a rickety wooden fence.

The truck plowed through a jumbled mess of knocked over garbage cans and other debris that had accumulated in the front yard of what had probably once been a very beautiful little home. Fire had gutted half of the place and it looked like looters had picked through whatever was left,

He made a snap decision and decided to veer left down the burnt side of the house. Of course that put the zombies on his side and the house on Shari’s so it was probably more instinctive than he rea
l
ized.

Blowing through the fence that had once sealed off the back yard and been high enough to pr
e
vent passers-by from seeing in, he swerved to avoid a sturdy looking play structure and a hardy black walnut tree with a tire swing still dangling from one drooping branch. The back fence was already knocked over in one spot and revealed a gently rolling field of waist-high grass.

Kevin judged the angle of the hill and was confident that the truck could make it. He’d heard a lot of jostling in back, but that couldn’t be helped. If they even made it back with half of what they’d found, this would be a great haul. He goosed the acceler
a
tor and took the field at a slight angle.