He found himself backpedaling away from the unblinking, dead gaze of the man. The man came at him, shambling. One of his flip flops came free, but the man didn't care. With one arm hanging at his side and the other reaching out for him, the man came on. Rhodri turned and ran, the revolver forgotten in his pocket. He didn't want to admit it to himself then, but he had already gone into full survivor mode. 26 bullets. That's what he carried into the dying city of Seaside, and he couldn't afford to waste a single one, especially if he could run and fight another day.
He ran up Avenue U, heading in the direction of the supermarket. It was the closest one to the lighthouse, a small, family-owned store he had been to dozens of times. The streets were empty of cars, besides the ones parked on the sides of the streets. Where usually there would be a dozen beach bum families walking down the sidewalk with ice cream cones in their hands, there were only a handful of people. Although, he supposed they weren't really people after all. He sprinted to the market, moving around the slow-moving people in the street, the ones with the bitemarks–– the zombies. He couldn't bring himself to fire on them. What if it was all just a big misunderstanding? What if the people were sick, but that's all? What if they were going to get better?
Rhodri pushed open the door to the market, and all of that bullshit fled from his head. On the floor, a man squirmed, punching at an old lady as she bit into the flesh of his arm. Blood spurted onto the linoleum in the dim light.
He knew the old lady. She ran one of the art studios in town, a spindly little place always filled with tourists with too much money in their pockets, looking to find the next big artist. Her name escaped him at that moment.
"Help me," the man on the floor said weakly.
Rhodri held the revolver in front of him. He didn't want to kill anyone. But if this really was what he thought it was, the woman was dead, and the man was too… he just didn't know it yet. Conscious of the shambling people he had left on the street, most likely still traipsing after him, he stepped up to the back of the woman and brought the handle of the gun down on the back of her skull. A normal person would have been knocked unconscious, and he could have gone about the business of helping the wounded man. But the elderly lady did not collapse in a heap the way any normal person would. Instead, she turned on him, baring bloody teeth.
She frightened him. Never, in all of the books that he had read, had the hero been frightened. But that's exactly what he was… maybe he wasn't the hero. Maybe he was the next victim. He stumbled backwards, backing away from the woman, his mind whirring as if a hurricane stormed through his brain. He wanted to turn and run, but he had come here for a reason.
"Back off, lady," he warned. But she did no such thing. Instead, she came closer. He only had two choices, attack the lady or go running right back out into the street with nothing to show for it. He spun the revolver around in his hand so he could use the handle as a club. He overrode that little voice in his head that told him this was all wrong, and he swung the revolver at the woman's head, putting all of his weight behind the swing. She toppled on her side, the top half of her body landing on the black rubber track that the cashiers used to draw groceries down the line. Without waiting, he brought the handle of the revolver down on the side of her skull repeatedly, his body quaking with revulsion at his own actions.
When he was finished, his hand and the revolver were covered in blood, and the woman didn't move. Rhodri's fear hadn't disappeared. If anything, it had only increased. He looked at the man on the floor. The man groaned in pain, clutching at his arm, and without the lady's head in the way, he could see the blood pooling on his chest. He had been bitten multiple times. Blood covered the floor, and Rhodri could see a spurt of rich red arterial blood coming from a bite in the man's forearm.
"Help me," the man said. His voice was weak.
"Use your belt. Cut off the flow of blood, or you're going to bleed out," Rhodri said. He was not a hero at that point, and he knew at that moment that he never would be. He stepped behind the counter and grabbed a couple of reusable shopping bags. He hurried past the corpse on the checkout counter and the man who might be dying on the floor, and he filled the bags with cans of food. He ignored the man's pleas for help. When he was done, he ran out the backdoor of the grocery store, hoping that the handles on the bags wouldn't break. A family ran by him, heading away from the highway, fear in their eyes, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. They didn't know where they were running, and they avoided him as much as he avoided them. He could have called out to them, offered them a place to hide and
