I reached the deli’s door in a few quick seconds and opened it with the tingling of little bells hanging off of the door. I was greeted by that fresh deli smell, or not at all. It smelled of ruined and rotten meats. The air was thick with it and I saw why. A body lay behind the counter next to the register. There was an entrance hole in its head, but the exit wound was facing the tiled flooring. Dried blood washed all around the body as flies still swarmed to it. I estimated that the body had been here for at least four weeks, as that was the last time that the military was here, and I had not killed this person.
Combining with the beautiful scent of the rotting corpse, the meat behind the deli counter was swelled and a lovely shade of green and always pleasant whitish cream mold. Though the refrigerators were still running, there is only so much time before any meat goes rotten. A shame, really, I could have frozen some of the meat to save. Chelsea and I could have had a hopping barbeque with some of the different meats there.
I quickly made my way over to the freezers, which smelled considerably less horrid as fresh air was constantly being pumped through to keep the food cold. There were a few boxes of ice cream, whipped cream (that could come in handy…), and little else with actual nutritional importance.
The open refrigerator had hotdogs in them which hadn’t yet expired. I grabbed four packets of twenty hotdogs each. I could freeze them, so at least we could have some variety in our meal, albeit that variety would be hotdogs and for a very long time.
I found a few loaves of bread that had no mold on them, yet, though they were a day or two past the expiration date. I took two of these and made my way down some of the other aisles.
Finding the chocolate was easy. There was a whole rack of it and in great variety. I threw a bunch into my bag, now bulging. There were also a few packets of pasta which could be nice for a romantic dinner, if we were able to have one.
I zipped closed the pack and looked to my watch. I had already been twenty minutes. Damn, I thought that I had made better time.
My baseball bat was leaning against the door of the deli which I grabbed and pushed open the door, bells chiming with my exit. I was greeted into the outdoors from my expedition by a hissing freak with a red mouth.
We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, a very long moment. Its yellow eyes gazed into my own, as if it did not know what to do with me at first and was deciding that. The moment made me imagine the contaminated standing over my dead body, cutting it up with a fork and knife as it ate away. I think that I would be okay with that sort of death.
Fortunately my reflexes kicked in and I leapt forward, bat in hand. Without a second thought, my Rawlings bat flew through the air, colliding with the skull of the contaminated creating a hissing red vortex of blood. I stood above my kill and hit it one more time for good measure.
“HA!” I yelled in triumph, not realizing that yelling in an abandoned town was the exact opposite way to remain stealthy and unnoticed, resulting in an angry hissing to my right.
I looked down the street to see two of the contaminated running right at me. They weren’t moving very fast for a run, more of a light jog. Regardless, it left an imposing sight upon me.
My first reaction was to run down the street and back into my house, but that would lead them right to my home. Two contaminated houseguests were not something that I was looking forward to. Instead, I waited until I was sure that they could see me well enough to follow and hopped back into the deli. I made my way to the back of the store as I heard two thuds colliding with the door. Fortunately, this confirmed my suspicions that the contaminated could not use conventional means of opening and closing doors. Unfortunately, they could still use unconventional means, and the door was made of glass.
They broke through on their second try, shattering glass across the deli’s tile flooring. One stumbled over the doorway but the other stepped right over, onto the fallen contaminated and into the deli.
As it approached me, I found the back door to the place. It had to pass behind a wall to get to where I was, creating a blind spot for me to lose it. Once it approached the edge of the cooler, blocking its view, I pushed open the back door. Little did I know that the security system only worked on back doors that day. No, no sirens went off when I stepped through the front door, but the back door is guarded against the armies of hell.
Needless to say a blaring noise shot through the town and echoed through the surrounding hills. I didn’t care about stealth anymore, my cover was fully blown. Not bothering with the street, I made a full sprint through backyards until I hit my street, coming out directly across from my house. I think that the alarm may have actually helped me get away in the long run. The noise would have attracted any contaminated roaming in the near area to that point. My mistake may have made
