“There’s at least one in there,” I said quietly to Nate. He just nodded. “I’ll open the door and give her a whistle, and you brain her when she comes out.”
Nodding again, Nate took his halligan in both hands and once his grip was firm, he gave the signal he was ready. Pushing open the door and suppressing a gag at the rancid stench, I grabbed a pack of baby wipes from a nearby shelf and rammed it under the door to jam it open, gave a low whistle to get the thing’s attention, then stepped back to await her bumbling shuffle out of the shop.
She did not bumble. She did not shuffle.
I couldn’t help but gape in frightened confusion as the zombie unerringly worked her way around from the back of the counter through the gap. It was almost like she was using a rope to guide her, with just a few bumps into the counter as she worked her way along until eventually reaching the gap. I’d expected a much longer wait as she aimlessly tried to walk through the obstacle – as these things are invariably dumb as shit - or thought I might have to go into the building and try and bait her out from behind the counter.
Instead, her head snapped round, milky eyes locking to me like a targeting system, and her lips peeled back in that silent snarl of hatred that I usually only see in that heart-stopping moment before these evil bastards make their final lunge for you.
Nate noticed it too. I glanced at him, my mouth and eyes wide, to find a more inquisitive expression of concern etched into his weathered features. We shared a brief look of, “What the fuck?” before our attention returned to the undead steering herself around all obstacles with minimum delay, filled with a purpose and urgency we’d never encountered before.
That’s when I noticed the second undead emerge just behind her, initially hidden from sight by my restricted view of the interior. The second one was massively out of place and truth be told, looked like your quintessential smackhead. Thin as a rake, dirty clothing too big for their withered frame, a mouth of rancid teeth and rotting gums, and a stench that was more than just the alien corruption of the undead. There was a sickness to the creature’s stench that pervaded the area around it, a miasma of filth and decay carried through from a life spent craving their next hit of poison to be flushed through their weakening veins, forgoing anything resembling personal hygiene. It was a cloying and fetid odour that infected the senses.
The pharmacist’s gore-coated mouth matched the bloody chunks missing from the smackhead’s calf, forearm, and neck, and it didn’t take much analysis of the evidence to figure out what happened there. When the world was going to shit, the twitching addict, free from the fears of law enforcement, went to fill his boots with the good stuff. The only wound the pharmacist had was the broken neck, so I reckon she must have tried to fend off the dirty druggie, was pushed into a fall and caught herself on the counter in some way, snapping her neck. Instant death.
Meanwhile, her killer started sweeping the shelves clean, probably with accomplices, considering how much stuff was actually missing. Too focused on their treasure trove of prescription drugs, they didn’t click to the fact of just how fast the dead turn. The first they would have known of it was when Dr. Death took a bite out of Twitchy McFilth’s calf, then climbed up him, or dragged him down, chewing on his arm and finally his neck. Exit accomplices in a panic, leaving plus two zombies into the world, stuck in a tiny village pharmacy as a new undead partnership. Waiting.
Back to the situation at hand, Dr. Death and Twitchy both moved with chilling purpose through the wreckage of the pharmacy’s interior, soundless roars of hatred behind snapping teeth. They moved differently. Not faster per se, but smoother. Meaner. You might even say… focused? They were both locked on to me like they had laser sights and the way they looked at me, with those sightless eyes coated in that sickly film, caught my breath for a moment and I instinctively took a backwards step. I just wanted to be away from them.
Nate, calm as ever, waited for the pharmacist to step out into the open then dropped her in one smooth arc, the halligan’s spike biting deep into her temple and cutting her strings. She went from silent predator to lifeless husk in the blink of an eye. Not even trying to wrestle with the halligan, Nate released his grip, drew that mini-sword from his hip and let Twitchy lunge as he exited the store, stepping aside and letting the undead addict topple over the woman he had no doubt murdered. As soon as the smackhead smashed teeth first into the concrete – a sound that I will never get used to – Nate had one knee between its shoulder blades, pressing it to the ground as he pulled back its greasy mop of lank hair and smashed the knife through its eye. Emotionless, efficient, and so very Nate.
“You saw that, right?” I asked him, fighting for breath.
“Aye,” answered Nate, wiping the blade on the corpse, then standing to wrangle the halligan out of the pharmacist’s skull.
I’ll not lie, it shook me. A lot. I’ve gotten somewhat used to the lunge as they draw near, but holy shit; this thing was on it from the get-go. That thing wanted me dead. Somehow, the creature made it feel personal, and that scares me, however stupid a thought it might be.
“What the fuck was that Nate?” I asked, even though I knew he didn’t have the answer. “Both of them moved like
