Adam broke from the mob and shuffled toward the highway. A few undead took notice and followed him. They, in turn, attracted their own followers and so on like a chain of magnets pulling iron stragglers. By the time Fitzpatrick made it to the intersection, he had thirty acolytes in tow. Thirty escorts to accompany him home.
Alvin and Noah didn't see much of one another throughout the rest of the day. Noah spent his time scavenging, organizing and reorganizing supplies, discarding some things he now doubted as useful, and picking up other items he had overlooked. Alvin was lurking somewhere, Noah knew, but he didn't care where so long as the creep stayed away from him. Noah was thankful he would only have to see Alvin once more, at daybreak. They had agreed that it would be best to leave the store together before going their separate ways.
As the light from the skylights dimmed, Noah lay back on a faux leather recliner atop an elevated furniture display. He sharpened his machete on a mill file he'd found in the hardware department. What would he really do if Abby confirmed his suspicion? Could he really kill another man, a living man? He wondered. The only thing keeping him from snapping into a rage was the naïve optimism that Alvin was telling the truth. Perhaps he really hadn’t touched Abby, and the little girl in the produce aisle was the result of some undeniable, deviant urge brought on by months of celibacy. Either way, Alvin’s perversion had unleashed a revulsion in Noah that could never be undone.
Noah awoke the next morning to an alarm bell of paint cans toppling onto the floor a few aisles away. He bolted upright and the mill file fell onto the stage, making a clunking noise.
The sight of a corpse shuffling down the aisle confused him. He was about to hop down and kill it when he noticed another one further down the aisle. Noah looked in the opposite direction. Three more were headed his way.
“Damn it,” he said to himself.
Noah grabbed the rifle and slung his backpack over his shoulder. He crept across the display, weaving between the furnishings. He snuck past the three that were heading toward him before hopping off the shelf and darting into the corridor that led to the loading dock.
Perhaps if it weren’t so early, if Noah hadn’t been groggy and confused, then the soft glow of dawn coming through the round porthole windows at the end of the hallway would have signaled that something was wrong. But for whatever reason or combination of thereof, Noah forgot that he’d shut the garage door the day before.
As he pushed open the doors of the loading bay, his heart jumped into his throat. The garage door was wide open. The car alarm was silent. Three corpses meandered around the platform, and at least thirty more aimlessly milled about outside. They moaned and advanced. The pack of living dead on the ground also took notice and some of the fresher corpses began climbing onto the loading bay.
Noah’s breathing sped up as he took a few steps backward. He ran back down the corridor into the store. As he pushed open the doors, he was surprised to find six corpses there to greet him. There were too many to take out with the machete, not without risking a pile-on. Noah put the rifle to his shoulder and shot the nearest two in the head. As the echo of gunfire faded, it was replaced by a cacophony of moans and the arrhythmic clomping of shoes throughout Walmart. They were everywhere.
Terror seized Noah. He spun around and ran back into the hallway with the dead close in tow. At the other end of the corridor, the three corpses had already pushed through the loading bay doors. He took out the first few that entered, but as soon as he shot one another filed in. If that weren’t enough trouble, the door leading back to the store creaked open as more dead entered.
Noah ran to the center of the hall, establishing a fifteen-foot buffer zone in both directions. His hand trembled as he pulled a box of rifle rounds from his pants pocket. A few shells clanked against the tile floor as he hastily reloaded. Noah looked to one end of the hall and then the other. Throngs of dead were closing in from both sides, their ranks growing so thick that they blotted-out the light coming through the doors.
His fingers tightened around the grip on the rifle stock, imprinting the hand-etched crisscross pattern into the meat of his palm. A variation of this moment had haunted his dreams many times before, and each time, after waking up beaded in sweat, he vowed he would never let those things eat him alive—not if he could help it.
Noah swallowed hard. With one hand on the forestock and the other on the grip, he awkwardly positioned the rifle muzzle beneath his chin. In his dreams the dead moved like a slow-burning fuse, and he always had time to reflect, but, in reality, the moment was unfolding too quickly. And maybe that was better. He took a deep breath. Three… two… one, he counted in his head. “I’m sorry, Abby.”
Just as he was about to press the trigger, Noah caught sight of a spherical shape protruding from the wall a few feet away. A doorknob. He moved the muzzle away from his chin and tried the knob. It wouldn’t turn. Noah aimed the rifle at the latch and fired. The door inched open.
Noah darted inside and slammed the door. The entry led to a large storeroom that had been converted into a makeshift office. Beside the entrance stood a green file cabinet. Noah pushed it onto its side, barring the door.
Muffled moans sounded from the hallway as the door
