The pile of garbage by the freezers shifted and a fat rat came running straight at Drew. He danced backwards almost pulling the trigger on the charging rodent. The rat turned to the left at the last second and disappeared down a different aisle. When Drew jumped backwards to avoid the rat, he unknowingly leapt out of the way of the crawler who’d been stalking him since he entered the building. The lithe young infected man hissed quietly in anger as it missed the prey that’d wandered into his lair. He spun around on all fours to try again and was mesmerized by a beam of light coming in from the window.
A startled and confused Drew lined up a shot at the suddenly stationary crawler and blew a hole through its head. Hearing something behind him Drew whirled around to find a wide-eyed LeBron standing behind him with his rifle aimed in the general direction of where the crawler had been standing. Drew started to put his rifle down then remembered how the crawler had snuck up on him. He whirled back around and motioned for LeBron to help him clear the store. They didn’t see any more crawlerz. They did find a few more dead bodies and lots of supplies to lug out to the truck.
“We may run out of bullets and gas, but we have enough Vienna sausages to get us to Canada and back.” Yue announced with a slightly disgusted look on her face.
“I never knew there were this many flavors available.” LeBron added with a slightly sickened emphasis on the word flavors. Drew completely missed the sarcasm. He loved the little miniature sausages made of god knew what parts of what animal. Bart was a Vienna connoisseur as well.
“At least we have Yoo-Hoo to wash them down with.” Yue said smirking.
“I guess high blood pressure and a gradual descent into morbid obesity are the least of our worries right now.” LeBron said pulling out the cutters from the toolbox in the trunk. The store had tarps in it which they were going to use to make themselves some windows for the Expedition. They’d actually considered trying to tie a freezer door to the front of the truck to serve as a windshield. They gave up on that idea when they couldn’t figure out how to keep it there at high speeds. Duct taping a freezer door to the front of the thing they were riding in at eighty miles per hour just didn’t seem like a great idea. Instead they were all wearing cheap sunglasses now to shield their eyes from the wind and debris that’d be whipping in.
“Should we check out the other places?” Yue asked.
“I don’t really see why. We’re pretty much stocked up now. Unless there’s a gun store or we can figure out how to turn the pumps on and get some gas.” Drew said.
“We could siphon the gas if we had a hose. Then we’d just have to find cars that still have gas in them.” LeBron chimed in. Drew and Yue questioned him a little more about that idea since they’d both heard of people doing that too. It turned out LeBron also had no real idea of how it worked. He’d just seen it in a movie. It was decided if they could find a hose then they’d experiment to try to figure out how to do it. Bart had gone back to sleep at some point during the excitement or they would’ve just asked him. It seemed like something an old cop would know how to do. The rest of them had about the same idea of how to do it as of how to hotwire a car. It looked easy enough on TV.
Yue traded spots with Drew so she could continue to check on Bart as they headed for the interstate. Drew had only driven about a mile when Yue yelled for him to stop. Drew slammed on the brakes as Yue yelled for someone to get her a t-shirt or a towel or something. LeBron pulled a t-shirt out of the stack they’d taken from the tourist junk in the truck stop. Looking in the rearview mirror Drew saw Yue wiping their dad off with the shirt and cleaning up around him.
“What happened?” Drew asked craning his neck to see what was going on. He’d brought them to a hard stop on the side of the road. The smell of brunt rubber emphasizing his reaction to Yue’s panicked cries to stop.
“Dad just yacked all over himself.” LeBron said trying to help Yue get their dad cleaned off.
“I’m fine. Hand me the towel.” Bart mumbled trying to grab the t-shirt Yue was using to wipe the puke off him. She gently pushed his hand down then worked on getting him out of the shirt he was wearing. She needed to change it since it was covered in vomit. They had the big pile of spare shirts now so the only thing that’d suffer would be his sense of fashion.
She had his shirt half off when he spewed again. This time he full on exorcist spewed. It was like he opened up a fire hydrant of chunky watered-down spam. Yue had no idea where it’d all come from. She couldn’t remember him eating anything that looked like the hot steamy stuff now dripping out of her vomit-soaked hair. She shrugged aside her natural disgust and focused on trying to help her dad feel better. LeBron had the back-passenger door to the Expedition wide open in an attempt to air out the interior.
Working together they got their dad cleaned up with a new shirt on.
