They drove under the undead police officer, wonderingjust what had caused someone to hang the man. Here and there, wrecked automobilesand trucks dotted the road. They even saw one SUV sticking out of the front ofa house, as if it had just plowed straight into the living room. Underneath itstires, more of the dead squirmed and waved their arms. The streets were alivewith movement, however, none of it was alive.
Joan wondered if there were more survivors out there,huddled up in these homes, just waiting for someone to come and save them. Sofar, every encounter they had with other humans had ended in guns being pointedat each other... encountering the living was becoming as dangerous asencountering the dead.
The Jeep's body rang as one of the dead clanged off thefront fender, even as Joan swerved to avoid it. In her mind, she couldn't stopthinking two words over and over again. A cure. A cure. A cure.
She began to think of the dead as patients again,unfortunate members of the human race who became infected before humanity hadthe proper amount of time to find a cure. She jogged the Jeep left to avoid aone-armed man, long brown hair hanging over his eyes, shuffling about in saggyjeans that showed off his hip bones.
There was no way a cure would help the already dead. Ifthere were a cure, the world would go into an impossible cleanup mode, one thatwould take decades, if not an entire century to clean up. But she would bethere. She would be there from the very beginning, helping the kid surviveuntil they could find someone that could take the kid's blood or DNA and turnit into something that would save humanity. It would be an honor.
They skidded to a stop in front of a Walgreen's. It was anewer building, and the darkness inside could only be glimpsed through thefront doors. The rest of the building's walls were plain, gray cinderblock,devoid of personality.
They didn't stop to watch. They hopped out immediately,trusting fate. They could see nothing through the black doors of the building.As they approached, they noted the shattered glass on the ground. It was not agood sign, as it meant two things, possible dead inside and the possibilitythat the pharmacy had already been raided.
Mort was the first at the door, his machete in his hand.Clara and Joan, by no means marksmen, stood at the rear with the rifles intheir hands. They understood the principles of shooting, and Rick had shownthem how to work the rifles, but they had yet to actually fire the things. Theywould rely on the strong arms of Lou and Mort.
Into the building they went, standing in the entrance tothe Walgreen's waiting with their hearts thumping in their chest while theireyes adjusted to the darkness. With their ears, they strained to hear anything,the clomp of shoe on tile, the toppling of merchandise as the dead movedthrough the store. There was nothing, only the scrape of shoes on asphalt fromthe direction they had come. The dead were out there. The clock had begun, thecountdown to extinction moving in on wobbly ankles.
As his eyes adjusted to the shadows, Mort picked out asign in the back of the building that said "pharmacy." They stuck tothe walkways around the outskirts of the store. They were wider,less-cluttered, and provided more room for a swinging machete. They had seennone of the dead, but they knew they were only a few minutes away at best. Andonce they reached the store, there would be more.
Product lay scattered all over the floor of the store,and the survivors grabbed stuff as they walked by. A bag of chips, a soda, somecandy, anything that would provide sustenance and keep them alive. When you sawfood, you grabbed food. That was the key to survival. Grab it when you can.
Clara eyed the colorful packs of cigarettes with longing.Though she would have bet money that Rick or J.B. would have been smokers, shewould have lost. When she had asked them for a smoke, they had just looked ather like she was crazy. The other possibility was that they were holding out onher. One does not simply give away cigarettes in the zombie apocalypse. But themedicine, that was priority number one. She wasn't going to screw things up forthem just to get her nicotine fix.
Mort pushed discarded food items and things that had nouse off to the side with his boot, sliding his feet along the tiled floor. Theshelves were messes, and the pharmacy had clearly been raided as all sorts ofitems were scattered on the floor. They stood outside the pharmacy, lookinginside. The good news was that they wouldn't have to make any noise breakinginto the rectangular room. The door had already been busted down. The bad newswas that all of the medicine had been knocked off the shelves, creating a pileof white boxes with red-orange warning labels on the ground.
"Shit," Joan said as she stepped into thepharmacy. "You guys guard the door. I'll try and find what we need."Joan sat on the ground, picking up boxes and holding them close to her eyes.She had to angle the boxes in order to catch the last rays of sunshine as theybent around the merchandise-light racks. She threw the boxes on the ground,discarding them one by one.
Clara stood behind her, the rifle in her hands. Mort andLou stood in the aisle, bouncing on their toes and gripping their machetes tightly.
Come on, girl, Joan admonished herself, willingherself to kick it into high gear. One or two of the dead were fine, but if this became a block party, they had precious few options for escape. She beganto get flustered, as she picked up another box. It was as if each bellow of thedead were a screwdriver that ratcheted up
