The Contaminated: Where Were You When The Pandemic Hit?

highways in the movies. You know, the highway is littered with abandoned cars and debris and dead bodies all in oddly compact lanes. Yeah it was not like that here, but it was much more eerie. Literally nothing was there, no working traffic lights, no working lights in general, no cars (especially abandoned ones), no signs of life. There was one bottle that was rolling across the roadway. One measly bottle was the current highway traffic. If you have ever seen a street that has had its power cut out, it is almost a blinding darkness but there are almost always lights at either end. That is how the highway looked, but with no lights at any end.

“Things nowadays are never ideal, Daryl,” Chelsea replied. “All that we can do is stick to the plan and keep moving forward. We’ll be okay, I’ll be sure of it,” she said sliding a hand up and down the barrel of her bat, petting it like a dog.

So I put my foot to the gas, lightly, and we began to move forward. I still had the instincts to look both ways before crossing the highway even though the traffic lights were out and my competition for driving space was a bottle. Needless to say, we safely crossed the abandoned motorway and were on our way to the superstore.

I noticed that I was driving the speed limit, then realizing that it did not matter, I moved faster.

“Hey!” Chelsea said. “Forty-five is the limit. You don’t want to get pulled over, do you?”

“By who?” I asked, raising my hands off the wheel then replacing them quickly. “It’s not like the contaminated police are coming after us.”

“Officer Chelsea will beat the shit out of you.”

“Woah tough guy, I mean officer! I’ll slow down, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to arrest me later,” I gave her a nudge on the arm.

She threw up her eyebrows, “Are you making obscene suggestions to an officer of the law? Oh you’ll get your just rewards.”

We laughed down the highway as we pulled into the abandoned parking lot of the superstore. The lot’s lights were out and the car lights were the only thing illuminating the night. Shopping carts were littered throughout the parking spaces, forcing me to loop and dodge lest I make a ton of noise by colliding with them. Little bits of debris littered the lot next to the carts. Boxes and flyers from a month ago that were constantly being pushed around by the wind remained in the parking lot as the only decorations. No signs of any contaminated.

I pulled into a handicapped spot, backing the car into it just in case we needed a quick escape, and it was way cooler to back a car into a parking spot. Chicks dig that. I figured the handicap parking spot was okay to park in as the contaminated greatly outnumbered us, we needed the handicap. After pulling the emergency break out of habit, I flicked the key and the engine sputtered out and shut off the lights.

We both grabbed our respective weapons, a bat for each, and a flashlight that we brought from home. Though I wanted to bring the wrench, my arm was still too damaged from the kitchen knife mishap, and I did not want to put too much pressure on it. The last thing I needed was split stitches while fighting a contaminated. They could spit blood at me and contaminate me, not my personal favorite way to go down.

The sliding doors were closed and there was no power behind them. I had to force them open, though if you have ever worked in retail you know that this is done with relative ease. Once inside the vestibule, we slid the doors closed again. We did not expect anyone to find us, but we were trying to avoid the off chance of a contaminated wandering into the store after seeing the car’s headlights illuminating the parking lot.

“Hey,” I whispered to Chelsea. “I have an idea. Just be ready to run.”

“What are you doing?!”

I lifted my bat and aimed. We needed to know if there were any contaminated in the store, and I really did not trust us sneaking around just to be jumped by one in the pitch dark. At least in the vestibule we had some of the night light, as little as it was, illuminating some of it, giving us the better chance at a fight.

The one handed swing of the aluminum baseball bat came down on a white steel support beam with a definitive ring. The noise echoed throughout the store and I did it once, twice, three more times, sending the obnoxious beat through every aisle. The buzzing echoed for at least ten seconds straight, sound waves bouncing off of walls and shelving.

“What are you doing?!” Chelsea yelled at me, furious. To be fair, I probably should have told her first. Oh well.

I looked down, smiling, “Checking for any contaminated, or anyone for that matter. We have the better position here to fight them so at least we can be sure that none are coming.”

“And what if there were, oh say twenty of the contaminated in the building?” she slapped me in the arm, the bad one. Ouch.

I guess I had not thought of that, “Well, we are close to the doors-“

“Oh yeah, because twenty or so contaminated chasing us down the highway in our illuminated car is really something that other contaminated wouldn’t jump on! Damn it we are practically driving a Christmas tree down route twenty! Think next time, please.”

“Well, nothing seems to be coming!” I yelled into the darkness. “Besides, I’d rather we didn’t get jumped while pulling canned green beans off of the shelf.”

She was still mad, “Just tell me next time.”

“Fine.”

We moved into the store, flashlights being the