Sven the Zombie Slayer (54 page)

The cat darted inside as soon as there was enough clearance under the rising shutter. Then the vegan did the same, helping the carnivorous man brace the shutter so that he too could enter.

From inside the Wegmans, in safety, they pushed the shutter down together.

Panting, Sven slumped against the rattling shutter, and the vegan shifted his gaze from Sven to the dim parking lot, looking at it through the shutter’s openings. The advancing shapes were unmistakable. The ghouls were coming, relentless in their mysterious need to pursue and capture their prey.

The vegan felt a particularly painful stab of hunger, even as he watched the approaching hell-spawn. “Is it okay if you introduce me now...so that I’m not shot by your friends? I really need to eat something.”

Sven nodded, pushed himself off the shutter, and began to lead the way into the supermarket.

As they turned down the row of checkout aisles, the vegan heard the shutter rattle—the first ghouls touching down. He and Sven both turned to look.

The shutter swayed under the pressure, screeching as the joints slid and bent. Without another word, they turned back to the interior of the supermarket.

Sven led the vegan down into the row of checkout aisles and to the right, into a small clearing next to and partially within the Wegmans section of books and magazines. There were sleeping bags and blankets arranged in the clearing. Large, open bags of potato chips, jugs of water, banana peels, and stacks of granola bars were all strewn about the sleeping bags and blankets.

A man and a girl were in the clearing, and both got to their feet when the vegan arrived, shooting alarmed, searching glances at Sven.

When the girl drew out a mean-looking knife with a jagged blade, the vegan stepped backward, knocking into a revolving DVD rack and almost upending it.

Sven put his hands up in a calming gesture. “It’s alright. He’s looking for a safe place, like we are...he uhh...he helped me with the burial.”

The man and the knife-wielding girl blinked at the vegan, but remained otherwise motionless.

The vegan was starting to feel even more uncomfortable, and now he was coming to the end of his lit cigarette. He knew that he’d have to light a new one soon, but he didn’t want to make any sudden movements in the showdown in which he now found himself. So he kept the cigarette in his mouth, now smoked down to the beginning of the filter.

Then he had an idea to defuse the situation. “I’m Randy,” he said through his cigarette. He gave a wave, too. “I’m a vegan—don’t eat meat...so won’t be trying to eat any people, that’s for sure.” As soon as the words left his mouth, it dawned on him just how uncouth they were. It wasn’t a day for jokes.

The girl scowled, but put her knife away. The man next to her, seeing that she had put her weapon away, nodded and said, “I’m Brian, looks like we’re all stuck here together. Let’s make the best of it.”

The girl still stood there, scowling and silent.

“That’s Lorie,” Sven said. “We’ve all had a rough day.”

The vegan nodded, took his cigarette out of his mouth, and stubbed it out on the outside of his box of matches—a questionable activity, he knew. Then he lit up a fresh cigarette, feeling relieved as he gave it its first few puffs.

Sven pointed at something on the ground next to Brian. “Anything on your iPhone? News? Anything?”

Brian shook his head. “It’s the strangest thing, nothing works, like the internet is dead. Still can’t place calls either. How can the internet be down unless something’s interfering with the signal?”

Sven looked perplexed. “Why would something be interfering with the signal?”

Then Lorie spoke up for the first time since the vegan walked in. “Because they don’t want us communicating with anyone, putting up YouTube videos of the infection, freaking out the whole world.”

That didn’t sit right with the vegan. “But the whole world might be like this, full of ghouls, then who would they be hiding it—”

“Ghouls?” Lorie exclaimed. “They’re not ghouls, they’re zombies. Sven, tell him.”

Sven shrugged. “Whatever they are, we don’t have enough information, about anything. And where’s the government to help us?” Sven turned to the vegan. “Randy, it’s not the whole world. I got a call from my mom this morning—she got through to me somehow—and she said it was just
Virginia
that’s affected. If it’s just
Virginia
, how else can you explain the internet being out except that they don’t want us communicating with people outside
Virginia
? I don’t know a lot about the internet, but I don’t think it can go out in one day, just like that.”

The vegan wasn’t sure how to process this new information. “Just
Virginia
? That doesn’t sound like the apocalypse at all. That sounds like...” He wasn’t sure what it sounded like. “How can it be
just
Virginia
?”

Everyone shrugged.

Lorie drew her knife, a ferocity suddenly in her eyes. “What’s that noise?”

Sven looked at the vegan. The vegan looked back, inhaling deeply of the cigarette. Before either of them could answer, a desperate voice called out from behind the vegan. “They’re outside!”

The vegan turned, and he saw a tall woman who was obviously pretty underneath her current distressed appearance. She had two guns slung over her shoulders, one of which was enormous. The vegan recognized that it was a revolver, but he had never seen one so big before.

Maybe in the movies, he thought, in Clint Eastwood’s holster.

Then the woman turned to the vegan. “Who’s this?”

“A friend,” Sven said, “he helped me bury Evan.” The vegan was grateful for that. Apparently the carnivorous man was sharp, having figured out that the fastest way to disarm his group to the newcomer’s presence was to involve him as an assistant in the burial. The vegan guessed that whoever it was he had said a prayer for...had been special to all of them, a victim of the localized apocalypse, or whatever it was.

“Okay,” the woman said. “What do we do about them? And where the hell did they come from?”

Lorie began to walk toward the Wegmans entrance where the shutter was rattling harder now, loud enough for all of them to hear. They all followed her, and the vegan tagged along, feeling hungrier than ever as he lit up his next cigarette. He stayed behind the group and watched each of them tiptoe toward the rattling shutter, stare through it for a moment, then retreat, face aghast.

“Where did they come from?” the woman asked again, when everyone had had their chance to take in the terror. She looked directly at the vegan with her large, piercing eyes.

The vegan put up his hands defensively. “I didn’t bring them...at least I don’t think I did. They came out of the woods. I came in from the road, from the other side. I was walking up 29 all day. The ones I passed along the way, they reacted to me, but I lost sight of them as I got farther. I didn’t see any keep up with me.”

“It’s not his fault,” Sven said. “They came when we were burying Evan, out of the woods, out of nowhere, like he said.”

“They’re all clumping up against the entrance,” the woman said. “What if they’re surrounding the place?”

The vegan didn’t think so. He peered outside and saw that the mass of ghouls was getting larger, clinging to the outside of the shutter. He could see more coming out of the woods, staggering toward the throng now pressing to gain entry. “They’re all just here in this spot, and new ones are coming, but only in this direction, like they can hear us, or sense us. It almost looks coordinated.”

“They smell us,” Lorie said, with a conviction that chilled the vegan. “Just how we can smell them. They track us and hunt us down and kill us. They don’t need anyone to lead them. They can find their own way.” She looked up at the vegan with wide, vacant eyes, then she went off down the row of checkout aisles, toward the makeshift camp.

“I think this’ll keep them out,” Sven said, pointing to the shutter as he stepped away from the entrance.

The woman with the big gun looked unconvinced. “Help me put these back again.” She walked toward a long row of shopping carts, and Sven joined her. Together, they pushed several rows of shopping carts up against the back of the shutter. The vegan wasn’t sure how much help that would be if the ghouls broke through, but he figured it couldn’t hurt.

Then the vegan couldn’t take the feeling in his stomach anymore. “Sven, if it’s alright, I need to eat something. I’ll just grab something off the shelf and come back, okay?”

“Yeah, of course, sorry I forgot all about that.”

Grateful to get away from entrance and to finally look for some food, the vegan limped hurriedly toward the interior of the store. He knew exactly where the organic section was—up through the produce section in front of him, and then to the left.

The vegan noted the state of the avocados as he passed by them—of a lower quality than the ones he delivered, but passable. He made a mental note to begin working on them soon. Maybe he could even introduce the wondrous fruit to his new friends, if they weren’t familiar with it already.

They were a good bunch of people, he decided, very civil, considering the circumstances. He hadn’t caught the woman’s name, but there would be time for that later.

Walking through the produce section, something on the floor caught the vegan’s eye. There were dry, reddish smears on the tiles—they looked too much like dried blood to be anything else. The vegan stopped, but didn’t come any closer to the dried blood. He took a long drag on his cigarette, bent over, and took another look, from the angle of the floor. There, kicked between two of the movable displays, was a bloody towel, apparently forgotten.

The vegan straightened, deciding to let it go—at least until after he ate.

He walked into the organic section, feeling lighter as he entered that familiar part of the store. He turned in at the correct aisle and made a straight course for the Newman’s Own Peanut Butter Cups in Dark Chocolate that he’d been fantasizing about all day. He picked up one of the small treats, savoring the crinkle of the plastic in his hands.

The vegan tore it open, took his cigarette out of his mouth, and began to scarf down the small peanut butter cups. He was overeager at first, and one of the peanut butter cups made straight for his esophagus, the vegan having forgotten to apply the chewing step to that one. Once the peanut butter cup had completed its painful journey into the vegan’s stomach, he made himself slow down as he ate. After several packages of the peanut butter cups, the vegan let out a satisfied sigh and put his cigarette back into his mouth. Apocalypse or no, the vegan’s stomach now told him that things were going to be alright.

Relishing the feeling of a warm, full stomach, the vegan half-sauntered, half-limped in and around the organic section’s small set of aisles until he found something else he wanted to eat. It was in the freezer, and though he was familiar with the frozen food’s brand, he had never tried this particular product before.

It must be new, the vegan thought, as he removed the package from the freezer. He turned it over and read the nutrition facts—no animal products, therefore suitable.

Carrying his prize, the vegan went back to the makeshift camp and sat down in a corner. He positioned himself so that he was close enough to be social, but far enough so that he was at an unthreatening distance. There the vegan unwrapped his frozen food item and began to eat.

102

Ivan liked to watch the new man from the moment the new man arrived. The new man smelled like grass and fire and burning. Ivan didn’t know why, but he liked the new man. The new man was good, and Ivan wanted the new man to stay. The new man had a shiny thing that he played with sometimes, and Ivan was curious about it. Now the new man had gotten something to eat. He was unwrapping it and—Ivan froze, terror and confusion riveting his body into place. Ivan steeled himself, approached the new man without getting too close, and hissed as powerfully as he could. The new man stopped what he was doing and looked down, made some noises, and then went back to unwrapping the food. Ivan hissed again, and again, and again, until his cat body hurt from it, but it was no use. The new man didn’t understand. Like the other people, the new man didn’t understand. Ivan brushed up against the new man’s legs, for the first and last time. Then Ivan ran away.