When she finally quieted, when the sobs fade, she scrubbed away the tears with her sleeve, though more promptly fell. “What are we going to do?”
I had no idea. “Would you like to say a few words?”
Her lip trembled. “Yes, but I don’t think I can. Let me sit here for a minute. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She sat back down by the bed and bowed her head, her hands clasped but hanging loosely between her thighs. She sat there for a long time, not making a sound, not even crying.
I wasn’t religious, had never been, but I offered up my silent wish to whatever might be listening that these three people had found their peace and that their loss wouldn’t destroy the woman sitting quietly nearby.
When Ivy was ready, she stood and held out her hand for the nail polish remover. I gave it over and she poured it on the lower half of their bodies, the sharp, acrid smell rising in the air. When she was done, she waved me down the hall, then flicked open the lighter and tossed it onto the bed.
There wasn’t the whump of light and sound that I expected, but their clothing caught and soon they were burning. Ivy watched for a minute more, then turned and followed me out of the trailer.
No one spoke and Ivy didn’t acknowledge anyone as she slid into the SUV.
“We getting gas next?” Evan said in a whisper after Ivy’s door closed, and I nodded. We’d planned to fill up when we got here and hoped to get more gas containers as well. None of us had dared think about what might await Ivy, or what waited for all of us, when we got to where we needed to go. And here we’d found the worst case scenario, with no guarantees that this wouldn’t be the way it ended for all of us.
We stopped first at a farm and hardware supply store that sat under a giant water tower on the west side of town. There were a few of them in cars and we took care of them first, not wanting to risk having any shamble up behind us. The roads around the store were clear, though we could see from our vantage point that the streets farther into town teemed with the dead. If they heard us, they’d make their way up here and we’d be screwed.
I hoped we wouldn’t be here long enough to have to worry about a siege.
The outer doors slid open easily enough and we stood in the entryway watching what we could see of the store. There was a cashier in a green smock standing at the register, looking for all the world like a normal human. At least, until she turned, and we saw that the flesh on one arm had been stripped almost to the bone. She started singing as soon as she saw us, and her song brought more of them, looking ratty and torn. Bite marks were by far the most prominent wound, though a couple of them had stab wounds and one was missing huge chunks of his neck, as if someone had gone at him with a knife. There were discarded weapons on the floor stained the dark brown color of dried blood and a few bodies, their skulls caved in.
“There are a lot of them. Is this worth it?” I asked. I wasn’t sure it was. There were seven of us, not counting Lana, Ivy, Owen, and Evan and Jean’s two kids, all of whom were in the van with one of the rifles. Dan had given Lana a crash course in firing the damn thing. Ivy hadn’t responded when Dan tried to include her, though I didn’t think it was because she was still mad at him. She’d gone away in her head. I hoped she’d snap out of it if they needed her, though I wasn’t too worried about them. Their doors were locked, and Lana had the keys so if things got dicey, she could drive off and meet us down the road.
I was worried about us.
“Think of all the weapons in there. And ammo.” Isaac had a two-handed grip on a baseball bat he’d had in his trunk. We’d decided against guns in the store—too close and too loud.
“There’s food too,” Dan said.
“Evan, Jean?” I asked.
“I say we do it. Only problem I see is them rushing us once we open the doors. We need to block them somehow so only one can get through at a time.”
“Here,” Jean said, and grabbed one of the snow shovels sitting outside. She snugged the scoop into the side of the door and let the handle fall back against the track on the other side. When she got close, the automatic door slid open, but because of the shovel’s placement, it was only an inch or two. “Shit.” She reached for the shovel, and the first zombie hit the door, fingers poking through the space.
Jude had the machete, and he stepped forward, banging on the glass. “Come here, asshole. Come get me.”
“Get me,” the zombie hissed back, pressing her face against the crack. He shoved the machete into her eye socket, pushing her back, but not stabbing through to her brain so she was back in seconds, calling to him, her eye oozing clotted blood.
He grabbed the top of her head and shoved with the machete again. This time it sank in a couple inches. He grunted and pushed harder and finally she stopped struggling and dropped to the ground. He untangled his fingers from her hair and stepped back, looking squicked out. “That’s harder than they make it appear in zombie games.”
The rest of the crazies had reached the doors, and they
