The Zombie Virus (Book 1) (26 page)

I ran back to the pharmacy and bolted over
the counter with my basket of first aid supplies. I rinsed her
wounds with a bottle of sterile saline solution and applied
butterfly bandages to hold closed the cut and followed it with a
taped covering of sterile gauze. The bleeding had mostly subsided.
Her nose was broken, although it didn’t look too badly out of
place. I cleaned the blood from around it and put a bandage on the
cut across the bridge of it. Her swollen split lip I treated with
some topical antibiotic salve and a butterfly bandage. It was the
best I could do.

The infected were still trying to get through
my improvised barrier up front. Experience had taught me that
eventually they would muscle through the blocked door. We were on
borrowed time.

As I was pocketing two large bottles of
cephalexin and hydrocodone from one of the pharmaceutical shelves
Kera weakly called my name. I ran around to where she lay on the
ground. Her eyes were open and she was propped up on her
elbows.

I knelt down beside her and helped her sit
up. She leaned heavily against my chest. “How do you feel?” I
asked, pretty sure she was concussed from such a savage blow to the
head.

“My head hurts bad.” It came out as ‘My ead
urts ba’ due to her busted nose and mouth. She looked around at our
surroundings, trying to get her bearings and determine where we
were. “I feel a little dizzy.”

“You took a couple of good blows to the
head,” I told her. “You’re not going to be winning beauty contests
any time soon.”

She tried to smile, but only managed a
painful grimace. I was amazed at her fortitude. Most women— and
many men— would be crying and screaming in pain with those type of
injuries. My estimation of her instantly went up several
notches.

She looked around again. “Where are we?”

“Inside that pharmacy we saw. I brought you
in here after you were attacked. You gave me quite the scare.”

“Is that them banging?”

“Yeah. I put some stuff across the doorway. I
don’t know how long it will keep them out.”

I took her by the shoulders and looked into
her eyes, relieved to see that both pupils were the same size and
tracking together.

“We should probably get out of here. Do you
think you can manage?”

She nodded stiffly. “I think so. Where’s my
gun?”

“I had to leave it out on the street along
with one of the rifles and the packs.”

She gingerly touched the bandage on her
forehead. “How bad does it look?”

“It looks ugly, but you’ll live,” I said,
praying that I was correct. “I found some painkillers and
antibiotics in case infection sets in later.” I looked over at the
basket that I had dumped everything into. I would need to find
something better to carry that all in.

“Can we get our stuff from the street?” Kera
asked weakly.

“No. Maybe later.” I laid her back against
one of the shelving units. “Wait here for a minute.” She closed her
eyes. The heavy swelling around her bruised face looked extremely
painful.

I ran down to the main aisles and found a
section for school supplies. I grabbed the largest backpack they
had and threw some snacks and bottled water into it. A lot of the
food from the store had been plundered by the Loonies, thankfully
not all of it.

In a metal rack containing a variety of maps
and atlases I found a map of Virginia and stuffed it in a back
pocket of the pack. Closer to the storefront I peeked out the
windows that bordered the doors. There were Loonies out there, but
not more than maybe twenty. The ones who had been banging on the
metal shelving unit had ceased their efforts to bust through, at
least temporarily.

I wondered to myself why they had been so
persistent the last place we were holed up and not here. I looked
out the window again. The group of infected were gathered under the
shade trees that lined the sidewalk, trying to escape the heat of
the blazing noon sun. More and more they seemed to be in varying
degrees of undress. All were filthy. All were definitely a few
fries short of a happy meal.

I walked back to where Kera was propped
against the shelving unit. Her eyes were still closed. She opened
them and looked up at me when I set the backpack down next to her.
I started shoving supplies from the basket into the interior and
various pockets.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Not so good.”

I opened up a bottle of Tylenol and gave her
three capsules along with a sip from a bottle of water. She washed
down the medication, sucking down the entire bottle of water. She
didn’t seem to be nauseous, that had to be a good sign.

“That should help your headache. I’ll give
you some stronger stuff later. I think you’ll need it.”

She nodded her thanks and laid her head back
again.

“What’s the plan, Steve?” she asked
wearily.

“Those things are still out front, but there
aren’t a lot of them, and they’re not trying to break in at the
moment.” I looked back over my shoulder toward the front of the
store, then back to the battered girl. “We may as well rest here
for a bit until you get some of your strength back.”

The heat was already building in the store.
That alone would force our hand. I tore open a bag of peanut butter
crackers and offered some to Kera. She shook her head.

“My stomach’s not right yet,” she murmured.
Her ‘r’s’ were sounding like ‘w’s’ and I nearly laughed. I managed
to keep my composure and instead munched on some of the snacks.
“They’ll be here for you later if you want them.”

Her long, dark hair was disheveled and matted
with blood and grime. She swiped the mess from her eyes and looked
up at me. “Thank you for saving me again.”

“You would have done the same.” I smiled at
her. “Just relax for now. Let me know when you feel up to hitting
the road.”

I decided to try to find an alternative exit
point while she rested. At the back wall was a drive-up window for
people to pick up their prescriptions. The small window folded open
like those that many burger joints had for picking up food. A
mechanical lever opened and closed it. I looked out the open window
along the drive-up lane. I couldn’t see any signs of the creatures
from my limited view. If we had to, we could squeeze out this
window to escape. We’d been doing our fair share of squeezing
through tight spaces today.

The place also had a set of stockroom doors
set into a corner near the pharmacy. The doors were slightly ajar.
I switched on my headlamp and cautiously pushed open the heavy
door. The stockroom was dark except for where my light beam chased
away blackness. It was a small room compared to the one at the
Dicks, and I immediately spotted a loading door that I assumed
exited to the rear of the store on the opposite end. I strode over
to it and tried it. It was solidly locked and would not offer an
opportunity for us to escape through. Our choices were limited to
the front entrance or the drive-up window.

Kera was sleeping when I got back. Her face
was grotesquely swollen and was a kaleidoscope of black and blue
patches. I knew it had to hurt. At least the bleeding had stopped.
I sat down beside her and pulled her head onto my lap. She curled
up beside me in a deep, peaceful sleep.

The banging started again after about an
hour. It went on for about fifteen minutes before stopping. Kera
slept fitfully through it. She whimpered occasionally in her sleep
from the pain of her wounds.

I laid her head gently on the carpet and
walked down to the floor of the store. After a few minutes I found
what I was looking for, packages of instant cold packs. I grabbed
all that they had plus some of the instant heat pads. They may
prove useful at a later time.

I opened a cold pack and activated it,
holding the rapidly cooling pack to her battered face. Hopefully it
would help with the swelling.

Sometime later my bladder and bowels let me
know it was time to visit the little boy’s room. I had seen the
small unisex bathroom door up on a side wall of the store by the
photo-development section. I slid over the counter to the main
floor and walked toward the door, gathering some extra supplies for
Kera and me on my way.

After finishing my business (thank God there
was still water pressure) I washed up at the small sink with a bar
of soap and used a cloth diaper as a washrag. After applying some
deodorant I lathered my face with shaving cream from a container
that resembled a droid from that old Star Wars flick and shaved my
face clean of several days’ worth of growth. That alone made me
feel one hundred percent better, but the icing on the cake was
brushing my teeth. Oh, the glory of a clean mouth. I felt like I
could conquer the world now, or at least not kill it with my
breath.

I knew I still stank to high heaven and that
Kera was probably as rank as I was, but at least I was able to
mitigate the prodigious odors wafting from my body to some extent.
Hopefully we would be able to find someplace to bathe and wash our
clothes before too long. Deodorant and perfume would only cover up
so much before the rancid smells won out.

When I felt that I had restored something of
my humanity and was as clean as I could possibly hope to be, I went
back to the pharmacy and lay down next to Kera.

I lay there with my eyes open watching her
for a while. She was a very attractive girl when her face wasn’t
ravaged by raging Loonies. She was exotic looking with her midnight
black hair and alert crystalline blue eyes. Here we were, probably
some of the last humans on the planet, and I had no interest in
her. The hole in my heart from losing Holly was just too big and
ragged. I didn’t know if I could ever love another woman again.

My mind turned to the disease that was
quickly destroying the human race. Those already infected were
beyond saving, their minds so savaged by the virus that they were
worse than savage animals. Although for us survivors, there were
chances. I knew for certain now that we were not immune to the
disease and that the infected remained ‘hot’ well after other
diseases would burn themselves out.

I thought about how I might be able to set up
a rudimentary lab at the farm and obtain a horse or two to use to
develop a vaccine for the virus, something that would inoculate us
against this infection. I think, given time, I could do it. We
humans had a long way to go again, but I think we could do it if I
could just survive long enough. I wanted my boy to be a part of
that possible future.

I closed my eyes and relaxed. My mind drifted
to thoughts of my family and the sharp pain of loss that came with
it.

I don’t know when I fell asleep, but it was
early evening when my eyes cracked open again. I know I had dreamed
and that my dreams had been vivid and terrible, involving Holly.
Thankfully, they had not embedded themselves within my memory. I
shook off the melancholy that tried to insert itself with the
waking realization that many of my nightmares were in truth,
reality.

Kera was balled up on her side next to me,
the oversize shirt making her look like a small child. The cold
pack lay on the floor beside her bruised face. I shook her gently
awake and was relieved to see her eyes open. She sat up and looked
around. The bruising looked like it was subsiding some. Oh, the
power of youth!

My clothes felt mostly dry from this
morning’s foray into the town’s underground expressway, although it
wouldn’t take me long to get them soaked with sweat in this hot,
humid air. The air in the store was swelteringly hot.

“How do you feel?” I asked for the third time
that day and probably not the last.

“It hurts, but not as bad, kind of just a
dull throbbing.”

“Can you stand up?”

She grabbed a shelf and tried to get to her
feet. Instead she wobbled sideways like a drunken sailor and I
caught her before she fell. It didn’t look like my search for
Jeremy would be continuing this evening.

“Okay, okay. Sit down. Don’t try and
overexert yourself. Your head will tell you when it’s ready for you
to move.”

She looked up with a solemn expression on her
bruised face. “I’m sorry, Steve, I know you need to find Jeremy. I
don’t want to be holding you back. Maybe you can go find him and
leave me here for now?”

I smiled at her. “That’s not an option.
Besides, he said that they would wait through tomorrow for us to
find them. We have time.” Although my heart was saying we didn’t.
“We’ll stay here tonight and go find them in the morning.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m not going to leave you. We’re a
team now.”

She smiled at me through her busted mouth and
took my hand in hers. I gave it a squeeze and then stood up.
“Hungry?” I asked.

“Yes. And I have to pee something awful.”

“I’ll help you to the bathroom and while
you’re taking care of business I’ll see what I can scrounge us up.”
I walked her down to the bathroom, handing her the bathroom kit I
had put together.

She took it with a sly smile. “Trying to tell
me something mister?”

“Yeah, darling, you stink,” I replied half in
jest and winked at her.

She wrinkled her puffy nose and sniffed
loudly. “Eew, I think you’re right!” She laughed and disappeared
into the bathroom, her steps still unsteady.

I searched through the snack aisles of the
store to put us together some type of supper and made sure we had
enough to carry us over when we got back on the road. It was all
junk food. On a bright note, there was plenty of bottled water.

The evening passed slowly, with a scattering
of heart hammering dread thrown in whenever any of the infected
would get it into their heads to try to breach the entrance again
with their sudden pounding. It was often enough that it kept us
both on edge. We broke open an UNO deck that I found in one of the
aisles and played cards by candlelight until nearly midnight. We
finally curled up together on the carpeted floor with Kera
snuggling up against my chest and falling instantly to sleep.