The Zombie Virus (Book 1) (23 page)

“Can’t we just break it open?” Kera had
silently walked over to kneel next me.

“Sure,” I replied, a little too testily. “If
you don’t mind fighting every Loony in this store.”

I shined the light around the area
surrounding the cash register hoping to see a set of keys. There
were none in sight. Breaking the glass was just too much of a risk
with those creatures sleeping only a few dozen yards away. The
handguns may as well have been locked in a safe.

The long guns in the racks were also
inaccessible. A thick steel cable ran through all their trigger
guards. We would have to make do with the firearms we had brought
with us.

As quietly as possible we chambered rounds
into our long guns, then stood up and, keeping the light cupped in
my hand to limit the escaping illumination, walked over to the blue
steel double doors.

Kera had her shotgun at the ready while I
tried the latch release and quietly pushed one of the doors open. A
dark stockroom stretched to our left and right with boxes and other
merchandise stacked neatly in designated sections, some to the
ceiling high overhead. I motioned Kera in and closed the door
behind me, listening as it latched shut.

I un-cupped the light and scanned the large
room with it. Shadows jumped and stretched, but I didn’t see any
evidence that the infected had ever been in here. We cautiously
walked around its length, making sure the loading dock doors at the
back were secured shut and that the trash compactor leading to the
outside dumpster was sealed.

“We can crash here tonight.” I said, relaxing
a little bit.

Kera grimaced slightly and was squeezing her
legs together. “I gotta pee,” she said sheepishly.

“I wouldn’t try to make it to the bathrooms
out on the floor. Just go over behind those boxes by the loading
dock doors.”

“Okay. Will you shine the light over there
but not look?”

She hastily strode toward the large garage
doors. I kept the light pointed in her general direction as I
looked at the racks and boxes that lined the room. There had to be
stuff we could use here. There was also a water fountain against
the front wall that still dispensed warm, but clear water.

“Better?” I asked when she approached after
relieving herself.

“Better.”

“Come on,” I gestured with the light, “let’s
see what we can find in here.”

We quietly searched through boxes and
shelves, tearing open boxes and packages looking for anything
useful. We each collected a sleeping bag and small day packs, plus
some cheap LED headlamps to supplement my good handheld one which
was getting near the end of its battery life.

We also lucked into several boxes of trail
mix and almost immediately sat down and tore open the top of the
cellophane bags, stuffing our faces with the mix of fruit and nuts.
I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I smelled the mix.

After wolfing down a bag and a half,
illuminated only by one of the cheap lights sitting upright on the
concrete floor, I lay back on the rolled sleeping bag.

Kera was daintily picking through her second
bag of mix, pulling out the chocolates and raisins. Overhead there
was dead silence. The storm had pulled away and only the occasional
burst of thunder could be heard far in the distance.

Thoughts of Holly began creeping back into my
mind, threatening to cause the grief that I had been suppressing to
burst forth again. I forced my thoughts to return to my son, and to
my plans for finding him. I stood up and walked over to the double
doors that led out onto the retail floor and the horde of sleeping
Loonies. I looked around for some way to secure them better and
settled on a wooden pallet, wedging it against the door.

It made me sad to think that we had all been
together just hours ago the last time we did this. I walked back to
Kera and sat down, untied my combat boots, removed my sopping wet
socks and laid them aside. My feet were bleached white and wrinkled
from the moisture.

I took a pair of sweatpants that I had pulled
out of a nearby box and walked down to the garage doors and
relieved myself against them, then removed my holsters, BDU pants,
boxers and ruined tee-shirt and donned the sweats. I was already
feeling warmer. I carried my wet clothes back to our makeshift camp
and hung them up nearby to drip dry. Kera had changed into an
oversize set of sweatpants while I was away and had crawled into
her sleeping bag.

I made sure the rifles and handguns were
ready and in easy reach and slid into my bag. I reached to switch
off the light.

“Leave it on, okay?”

I crawled deeper into the bag and fell nearly
instantly to sleep.

There was a loud noise. I don’t know how long
we had been asleep, my internal clock told me it was early morning
although there was no indication of this from the darkened
stockroom. The small flashlight must have drained the batteries
sometime while we slept because my eyes opened to pitch blackness.
Had there really been a noise that had wakened me or was it a
dream? My right hand slipped out of the warmth of the sleeping bag
and closed around the cold steel of one of the Colt rifles and I
lifted it onto my chest. I held my breath, listening.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when a loud
banging reverberated through the large space. Someone or something
pounded twice on the garage doors of the loading docks.

“What is it?” Kera asked in a small,
frightened voice, sitting up next to me.

“I don’t know,” I replied, my hand finally
finding a band of one of the headlamps. I thumbed the switch,
bathing her in its beam of white light, causing her to cover her
eyes with her arm. The banging started up again, this time more
urgently. I pointed the light down toward the doors.

“Do you think it’s someone like us?” she
asked hopefully.

“I don’t know.”

I unzipped my bag and stood up into the cool
air, holding the rifle by its handgrip. I slid the light around my
head with my other hand and started walking toward the doors.

“Wait for me!” Kera shuffled out of her bag
and grabbed her shotgun and the headlamp she had looped around its
stock. We both padded barefoot across the cold concrete toward the
large corrugated steel doors where the pounding continued.

A thin veneer of light leaked under the
door’s threshold, letting me know that it was daytime outside. I
glanced at my watch, 0720 hours. I could see a shadow moving from
under the door.

“Who’s out there?” Kera called, making me
flinch.

Whoever was outside froze for a moment at the
sound of her voice, and then the pounding began again in earnest,
accompanied by a loud, wailing growl. It was a Loony. Kera sucked
in a sharp intake of breath when she heard the growling.

“Fuck!”

“Well, I guess they know we’re here now,” I
chastised her.

“Well, Steve,” she replied snidely, “did you
have a better idea on how to figure out if they were friendly or
not?”

I had to admit that I didn’t.

More shadows were moving around outside and
the chorus of fists on the metal door increased in tempo and
number. The door was rattling loudly as more and more hands began
beating against it and soon its twin was receiving the same
treatment.

“Do you think they can get through?” Kera
asked, sounding like a scared child again.

“I don’t think so,” I answered honestly. I
walked over to an exit door that probably opened onto the loading
dock and made sure it was tightly closed.

“Let’s get out of here,” Kera said, spooked
by the tumultuous drumming on the doors.

I started backing away from the doors. “Yeah,
let’s.”

We hurried back to our makeshift camp and
stuffed our sleeping bags into the small daypacks along with some
extra trail mix. My clothes were still damp, but I needed the
pockets and all the supplies that were in them, along with the
holsters they supported. I dressed as quickly as I could, wet boots
and all. I shoved the handgun into my hip holster and donned the
pack and the two rifles.

Kera dropped the sweatpants around her ankles
and stepped hurriedly into her stained white shorts, pulling them
up and buttoning them. She then pulled the sweatpants up over her
shorts and slid her bare feet into her muddy tennis shoes. She
threw her pack over her shoulder and was ready to go, rolling back
and forth on the balls of her feet in her urgency while she waited
for me to finish.

We rushed over to the double doors through
which we had entered the stockroom from last night, the lights from
our headlamps bouncing crazily off of walls and boxes as we ran.
The garage doors were shaking so violently with the beating they
were taking that I was afraid they would come off their tracks.

We reached the doors and I tossed aside the
pallet that was jamming them closed. I pushed open a door and shone
my light out into the aisle beyond it. The shadows were alive with
movement and as I turned my head I illuminated a group of infected
who were traipsing through the store looking for the source of the
noise that was echoing through the building.

Seemingly as one they turned toward my light
and several let out a menacing snarl then sprinted down the aisle.
I pushed Kera back into the stockroom and slammed the door just as
they hit it from the other side. The latch held it firmly closed,
but it still shook from the force of the body ramming into it. Soon
the growls and wails from beyond the door joined the chorus of
those behind us.

“What now?” Kera screeched in panic, backing
away from the door.

I leaned my body against the door to help
brace it. “Grab the pallet!” I ordered her, feeling my heart
trip-hammering in my chest.

She rushed to where I had discarded the
pallet and dragged it over to me. We jammed it back under the
doorknobs.

“Shit!” I spat out, running my hands through
my hair nervously.

“H-how many are out there?” Kera stammered
fearfully.

“Enough,” I responded. I backed away from the
door and brought one of the rifles around to the ready then shined
the light around the dark room. “We need to find another way out of
here.”

I started walking around the perimeter
letting my headlamp illuminate the walls, Kera keeping pace with
me.

“How about that door?” she asked, indicating
the loading platform door with her light beam. The door was
separated from the loading dock garage doors by about ten feet.

I considered it for a moment. “Too close to
the other doors, we’d never get away.”

We continued walking, looking for any way to
escape.

“There!” I yelled over the din of the fists
pounding on metal. I pointed the light toward a skeletal metal
ladder attached to a side wall that climbed up to a hatch in the
roof high overhead.

We reached the base of it just as the
stockroom door crashed open, sending the splintered remains of the
wooden pallet skidding across the concrete and into a pile of boxed
goods. The infected poured though the opening and into the room,
turning toward our light-beams and immediately giving chase. Their
growls increased in crescendo as they dashed toward us.

“Go up!” I screamed at Kera, pushing her
toward the ladder. I turned with the rifle and without aiming I
fired off a handful of rounds at the rapidly approaching Loonies.
The fireballs that erupted from the end of the barrel with each
shot temporarily blinded me, nevertheless through my ringing ears I
heard several bodies fall to the floor. I cinched the rifle to my
body and followed Kera up the narrow ladder, trying to blink away
the bright spots in my vision.

Kera was at the ceiling, her arm securely
through a rung of the ladder while she pushed vainly at the dark
trapdoor in the roof. I climbed up and over her legs, careful not
to lose my grip and fall into the horde of creatures now mobbing
around the foot of the ladder twenty feet below.

“I can’t move it!” she cried in desperation,
struggling against the door.

I couldn’t see very well past the pack on her
back and the shotgun hanging in my face. I glanced down at the
enraged mob below us. Several had their hands on the rungs and were
trying to pull themselves up. Their bodies were pressed too tight
together and they were clawing and clinging to each other trying to
get up the ladder to their prey— us. Just as one began climbing
another would grab hold of it, trying to climb past and both would
be dragged down. We were running out of time and options…
again.

“Can you scoot to the side of the ladder so I
can get by you?” I asked her as I tried to do the same. She twisted
to her left and nearly fell when one of her tennis shoes slipped on
a rung. She let out a loud squeal before her foot found purchase
again. She hugged herself to the side of the ladder tightly, not
looking down.

The Loonies grew more agitated at her cry and
renewed their efforts to pull themselves up. One finally broke free
of the mob and began climbing after us.

I deftly moved to the opposite edge of the
small ladder from her. The full pack and two rifles strapped to my
body made it an even more precarious move on the narrow metal bars.
I crawled up the edge of the ladder until I was even with Kera. Her
face was sweating in the warm air near the ceiling and I my hands
were becoming slick with sweat also.

I glanced down and saw the Loony, a heavy set
middle-aged woman naked from the waist down, nearly halfway up the
ladder. Holding myself to the rung with my left hand I drew the Sig
and pointed it down at the climbing woman. She was looking up at us
as she climbed, her mouth pulled wide in a rictus, toothy grin,
snarling.

I shot once, the sound was deafening near the
ceiling. The bullet slammed into her shoulder at the juncture of
her neck and she toppled backwards into the crowd below, crushing a
tall, thin man when she landed.