Shit.
I raised my pokey cone and tried to get pumped up for the oncoming onslaught. A couple of them were whimpering, the cashier singing some ditty just under her breath so I couldn’t tell what it was. A guy in the back kept saying, “Help me, Daddy. Please?”
I hated that they talked, even if it rarely made sense. It made killing them harder because they seemed more human, less zombie.
The cashier stumbled forward, her mouth open in a snarl of hunger and that was the cue for the rest of them to come at us.
Teeth, fingers, and the smell. Dear goddess the smell. Gagging didn’t make me feel badass and it took away from the power of my pokey cone strike. I managed to hit the cashier in the eye, but the tip of the cone glanced off, tearing a fleshy, wet hole in her milky white orb. I gagged again, then felt a hand on my arm. I screeched and jerked my elbow away.
It was Dan. He swung his club low, hitting her in the back of the knees. She went down with a crash. “Now!” he shouted at me, turning to catch another in the shin.
I stepped forward and rammed the cone home before I could think about it. As I yanked it free, another one came at me, this one an old farmer in dirty jeans and boots. His shirt was half torn off his body and his scrawny chest was covered in bites. I swung the cone at the side of his knees, and he skidded sideways a step or two but didn’t go down. I swung harder and felt the impact through my arms and into my shoulders. It hurt like hell but he went down—I didn’t have time to take him out because a third was grabbing for me, its dirty, broken fingernails scratching at my coat. I shoved her and she staggered back before lunging at me again. “Eat! Hungry! Eat!”
The farmer grabbed my ankle and I went down on a pile of bodies, the girl on top of me, her jaws snapping. I managed to get my forearm under her chin which kept her teeth off my skin, but I couldn’t get her off or roll because I didn’t know where that damned farmer was. “Help!” I shouted, realizing as I did that I sounded like one of them. It shocked me into silence, and so I struggled with the zombie until Isaac whacked her hard in the forehead with his bat. Gore splattered. I turned my head quick but felt something wet and gloppy hit my cheek.
Another whack sprayed more goop. I shoved her hard and then rolled, praying I was rolling away from the farmer and not into his grasp.
When I gained my feet, gasping, the others had managed to dispatch the remaining crazies, even the farmer. “Is it near my mouth? My eyes?”
Dan shook his head, putting his hands on my upper arms to calm me because I was on the verge of a panic attack. I had no idea if this shit would infect me if it got in my mouth and my vision narrowed as the fear overtook me.
“Dee,” he said sharply. “It’s okay. I swear, it’s not near your mouth. On your cheek and about an inch under your eye. There will be a bathroom here. It’s okay.”
Something in his voice got through the terror streaming through me. I stilled and focused on his face and his eyes were on mine.
“It’s okay.”
I nodded, nodded again, then froze because I didn’t want the damned goop dripping into my collar.
“We just have to make sure there aren’t any hiding or trapped somewhere. But there are paper towels up front by the register, so we’re going to get it off you there, okay?”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Sure thing. Come on.” We went inside in a tight cluster, none of us exactly ready for another encounter. Dan helped get the woman’s brain goo off me and then I wiped myself down with hand sanitizer that I found by the register. When that was done, we went through the whole store, going up and down every aisle to make sure there weren’t any hiding. The backroom storage was next, and it was creepier because it wasn’t as well-lit.
We found two more of them back there, which Evan and Isaac took out. I wasn’t sure I had the strength or will to shove my weapon in anyone else’s eye socket today, zombie or not.
We found a dozen gas containers and a several large containers to hold water. We used shopping baskets to carry all the food we thought would be helpful—much of it was candy, though they did have an aisle with basic canned foods and a few cooking supplies. We also took a lot of the camping gear, tools, oil and other things for the vehicles, and more. We were all a bit giddy with excitement from the haul. When we pulled in, we’d noticed a couple trailers for sale too, which had decided us on stopping. We could hitch one to the SUV and one to the mini van. Filled with all our loot, we’d be set for the long haul. And if we managed to fill all these gas cans with gas, we wouldn’t have to risk our lives filling up at gas stations.
Things were finally looking up.
We made our plans for getting things loaded, sorting through our finds to figure out what we had to have and what we could leave behind if we didn’t have room.
We were halfway
