Shit.
We raced across the store, scrabbling for our weapons. I had a machete now, the poky cone thing abandoned in the backroom.
We slowed when we got near the front windows. The parking lot was filling with them. I could see Lana in the van, already on the street, honking as she tried to lead them away from us.
“Block the doors!” I yelled, racing to the doors, which obligingly slid open as I neared. I shoved at them trying to get them to close. When they finally did, I tipped the card rack over to keep it from opening again. Dan did the same thing on the other side, using the pitchfork he’d found.
“My kids,” Jean said. “Evan, our kids.” She clutched at him as we watched the crazies swarm the front of the store, as we watched the van disappear from view.
Dan looked about as horrified as they did, but he was the one who stepped up and said, “They’re okay. They’re in the van and they’re moving. We’re the ones in deep shit. Lana will get them away and wait for us down the road like we planned.”
Stay safe, Lana. Please stay safe.
“We need to find another way out of here. Remember the one with the rock?” Dan directed the question at me. As if I’d ever forget the one with the rock. The one I still believed might not have been one of them. I nodded though, because now wasn’t the time to argue.
“Come on. Now! Let’s get back. Maybe they haven’t seen us yet.” Isaac tugged at Dan’s shoulder, then mine. “Let’s go. Get back.”
We ran through the store to the loading bay where we’d piled our stuff. The door to the storage area was on a swinging hinge and there was no way to lock it against them if they got inside with us.
“Help me move this in front of that door,” Evan said. He and Isaac got on one side of a heavy shelving unit, Dan got on the other and I was in the middle. It shrieked along the floor, practically guaranteeing the crazies would hear it outside, but we needed to be sure they couldn’t get at us all at once.
That done, we pushed another in front of the first one, then packed supplies into backpacks from the camping aisle. I hated leaving anything, but maybe we could come back for it if we could figure out how to lure the zombies away.
Please let Lana be safe.
The words were a litany in my head as I finished packing another backpack. We had food and water enough to outlast a siege, I hoped. How long would it last? How long could Lana and Ivy hold out on their own? If we didn’t come out in a day or two, what would they do? They couldn’t live in the car, not with all the kids.
Those questions and more were going through the heads of the others too, especially Dan’s, Evan’s, and Jean’s. Their kids were in more immediate, obvious danger than mine, but I understood the fear in their eyes.
“What are we going to do? We can’t stay here,” Jude said. I’d forgotten about him, to be honest. He was a lot quieter than his brother and tended to hang in the back protecting his girlfriend rather than entering into the fray. I didn’t entirely blame him.
“We have to wait them out,” Isaac said. “Remember at the farmhouse? We stay quiet, they eventually leave. We just have to wait them out.” His eyes slid to Evan and Jean and away, as if he worried they would protest.
They didn’t, just huddled together in a miserable clump, praying.
Dan sat in a corner with his head pressed against the wall, eyes closed. I didn’t know if he was praying too, or if he was just doing what my brain was doing, chanting, “Please be okay.”
They had to be okay. This mess had already torn through us. Did it really have to keep going? Not satisfied with ripping, it had to destroy us utterly?
I sat near Dan and pulled out my phone. I texted Lana hoping I’d get an answer, but every time I tried to send the message, my phone would buzz and a message would pop up that said, “Send failed. Try again.”
“Fuck,” I whispered, and tucked my phone away, ignoring my desire to thumb through the pictures I had of Lana and the boys. It would waste the batteries and the charger was in the SUV. Maybe I couldn’t call Lana or text her on it, maybe that was now a thing of the past, but I couldn’t bear the thought of letting it die completely. What if I never had the opportunity to charge it again?
A few hours later, Isaac volunteered to slip out the back door and scout the parking lot. He’d let us know if the crazies had moved on or if we needed to figure out a different plan. He had a rifle and the machete and brushed off Paisley’s fretting. “I’ll be fine. No worries. Going to peek and that’s it. If I see any of them, I’ll run back here, no worries.” He smiled at his brother and then he was gone, running alongside the back of the building, looking rather like a badass hero in an action movie.
Jude shut the door and we waited, nervously, for his return.
25
Now
The rooms are picturesque … if rooms can be called that. And they can’t enjoy them because Will is sick, is dying, and she will have to end him when its time.
Right now he shivers on the bed with the ruffles and the fluffy pillows, under a painting of a St. Bernard with a barrel under his noble chin. The TV is hidden away in a cabinet so as not to screw with the aesthetics of the place.
She has a medical bag open on the nightstand and has
