The contaminated came into full view around the edge of the building a second later, alone and wandering. It looked around the lot, at the green sedan, to the targets, to the sky, to the targets again. The milk jug was still leaking its contents onto the ground, making a splashing nose and attracting the contaminated.
“Mine,” Chelsea whispered to me, slowly raising her gun at the contaminated.
I looked around. There was nowhere to go if the contaminated charged at us. If Chelsea missed, we were potentially screwed, “Chels, no.”
“You can be jealous of my shot all you want-“
I put my hand on her gun, lowering it, “We don’t have an escape plan,” I whispered. “If something happened and you missed, we would be screwed.”
She understood and crouched lower. The contaminated was close now, standing over the milk jug, trying to figure out the situation. Its breathing was horse and hard, its yellow eyes glowing through the dusk.
I suddenly felt a tickle in my throat, then my chest erupted in a loud cough. I tried to muffle it in my shirt and sleeve, but it did little good. The contaminated hissed loudly now, its feet shuffling in our direction.
“HEY!” I heard Zach call out. The contaminated turned and hissed in his direction. Chelsea and I looked up to see Zach in the middle of the parking lot, shotgun in hand. The contaminated was moving towards him in almost a jog now, approaching faster than before.
“Die you shit!” I heard Zach yell before a deep bellowing of the shotgun shell firing off. Blood and skull was ripped from the body of the contaminated, but it did not stop moving. “What the fuck?!” There was panic in Zach’s voice.
“Let’s go!” I said to Chelsea as we leapt over the barrier.
Another shot was fired off, but the contaminated kept moving. “Just die!” Zach yelled, firing off another shot, quickly pumping and firing again. He took off the leg of the contaminated, but it kept crawling to him. With the monster fully hobbled by Zach, he had an odd look in his eye and pulled out his hunting knife. “Imma test sumptin,” He said in his best broken English. “Consider the following: if we shoot the head, nothing happens. If we shoot the body, nothing happens. Blood loss equals death. What about a spinal tap?” The knife whirled through the air as Zach‘s hand brought it down on the contamianed’s back, right through the spine. The creature stopped moving almost immediately and became fully limp.
“I think I found their weakness,” Zach said, smugly wiping the grime and blood off of the knife.
Chapter 21
We made it back home in one piece, thankfully. Two more of the contaminated showed up to the parking lot of the superstore, but we were already in the car and driving away as they got there. By the time we made it back to the house, it was already past five o’clock and fully dark outside. We pulled the car up the driveway and into the backyard to avoid any stragglers.
Chelsea had already taken some of the remaining hotdogs out of the refrigerator and placed them on the counter to thaw while getting out a pan to place them on.
“Well, that certainly was exciting,” Zach said to the quiet kitchen. The only other noise was Chelsea using a can opener to pop open a can of green beans, my favorite. “We can do that again tomorrow if you guys want to. During the light, this way we can see better and experiment with any of the contaminated that show up.”
“What do you mean by experiment?” I asked, plopping down on one of the kitchen chairs.
Zach shrugged, “I think that’s a bit obvious. I was using slugs in my shotgun, so there was no spread but better penetration for giant damage, but the contaminated that I shot didn’t really react to it. I don’t know if you noticed, but it went limp almost immediately once I stabbed its spine.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“But you have us using smaller caliber weapons,” Chelsea said. “Doesn’t that mean less damage? Assuming that we have to start aiming for the spine of these things.”
Zach had his mouth twitched to the side in thought, “Well, maybe. The ability of the twenty-two doesn’t mean that it cannot penetrate that far, but whether it will do enough damage to the spine once it hits. I’m really not a super expert once it comes to this kind of stuff. I can shoot and care for the weapons but I’ve never really paid much attention to total damage. My father was much better at this.”
“Well what kind of bullet will do the most damage?” Chelsea asked. “That is, if we want to get to the spinal column.”
“Well I have the three fifty-seven, but only one of those. There’s also my shot gun with slugs and birdshot. For that, we’d have to be up pretty close,” Zach said, making a distance marker with his hands. “I’ve also got a couple of nine mil’s, but I doubt that those would penetrate all of the way to the spine, along with the twenty-twos.”
“What about shooting them in the head then?” I asked. “We’ve been hitting them pretty hard in the head with blunt objects, and that’s seemed to work out pretty well. I mean – AH CHOO!” I sneezed vigorously into my arm. “Sonofabitch. I think I’m working up a cold. Just as I coughed when the contaminated was near us before.”
“Aww, poor you,” Zach said making a pouty face. “I’d call the wambulance, but I
