Zomb-Pocalypse 3 Read online

  The zombie growls and reaches across the cart, trying to swipe at me. Silas moves quickly, popping him right between the eyes. The zombie stinks, and I’m surprised we didn’t smell him well before I ran into him with the cart. I glance down at the gummy mess he’s made on the edge of the cart and wince. Silas shines his light down on the zombie. He’s wearing the iconic blue vest and happy face sticker of a Wal-Mart employee. “I guess now we know we aren’t alone,” Silas says, and it sounds super creepy the way he says it, making goose bumps pop out all over my body.

  The shelf beside me is loaded with paper towels. I tear open a bag and use some to wipe the zombie goop off the cart. Silas and my Dad watch me in silence, though I can feel their judgment. “I don’t want it to leak onto our stuff,” I defend myself, and Dad nods like he agrees, but Silas just rolls his eyes at me. I toss the half-used roll into the cart and dump the garbage on the floor. There is a rotting corpse down there, a little paper towel won’t make any difference. We keep moving and, even though we were being cautious before, we are a thousand times more careful now. Across the store, we hear a clattering, like something falling off a shelf, and we all stare in that direction before Silas pushes us to keep moving.

  “What if they need help?” I whisper, and Silas shakes his head.

  “I’m sure they would have yelled out,” he says stubbornly, making perfect sense, and I give in and start pushing the cart forward again. “The middle is usually the food area,” Dad says as he steers us towards the middle section. I can tell he’s right by the smell of rot that permeates my nose as soon as we get close to the rows of large freezers with glass doors.

  “Let’s skip this part and head to dry goods,” Silas suggests as we skirt around the rotting vegetables and meat. I can still smell it from the next aisle over, so I pull up the bandana at my neck to try and block out the stench. Silas reaches into my cart, pulls out a little jar of Vicks, and dabs it on my bandana. The smell of menthol permeates my senses, and I take a deep breath of relief. I won’t be able to smell the zombies now, but we really couldn’t before anyway, with all the other things that are rotting in this store. Silas dabs some on his own bandana and offers the tube to my dad. My dad doesn’t have a bandana, but he dabs a little under his nose with a nod of thanks, and Silas tosses the small container into the cart. I hadn’t realized this neat trick before, but I promise myself, if I survive this grocery trip from Hell, I’m going to carry some with me from now on. I reach into the cart and pull the bottle of Vicks out—why wait—there are at least seven other bottles in the cart, so I slip the container into my pocket.

  I hear Silas snort in amusement at my antics, but I ignore him. We’ve reached the cereal aisle and I run forward and grab my favorite box, adding it to the cart. “That is fine, but we need stuff that is going to last longer,” Dad tells me.

  “Like what?” I ask when both him and Silas pass right by the cereal.

  “Like this,” Silas says, reaching down onto the bottom shelf and grabbing all the boxes of oatmeal and piling them in the cart. I make a face.

  “I’m not really a fan of oatmeal,” I can’t help saying.

  My dad opens his mouth to reproach me, but Silas beats him to it. “Are you a fan of starving to death?” he demands, making my dad’s mouth lift at the corners in humor for a minute before he gets control of himself. Like many times before, I ignore Silas and keep moving.

  “Sugar,” Silas says, pointing to the shelf, and I stack in several bags while Silas and my dad keep an eye on either side of the aisle. “Okay, what else?” I start to ask, but end my question with a scream when a hand reaches out from the bottom shelf and grabs my ankle.

  “What in the hell?” Silas says as he shines the light down at my feet. The light doesn’t help waylay my fears. It illuminates a rotting gray hand clamped firmly around my ankle. The arm is covered in bite marks in so many places that it’s almost skeletal. The zombie has his grip on my hiking boot, so I’m not super scared of getting a scratch, but I know that the longer he holds on, the more my chances increase. Dad is moving in, a horrified look on his face, but I know I’ve got this. I lift my free foot up and stomp down hard on the zombie’s arm. It takes a couple tries, but finally the bones snap and the zombie’s grip loosens. I shake him off and step back, and Silas uses the end of his flashlight to knock a couple of the boxes out of the way, revealing the sorriest looking zombie I’ve ever seen. It looks like he was chewed pretty badly, like really bad, as he’s actually just a torso with more holes in him than a block of Swiss cheese.

  “Yikes,” Silas says as he uses his foot to kick the zombie off the bottom shelf. The zombie is weakly swiping at us, with no real effort, and Silas doesn’t even waste a bullet on him. He takes a page out of my book and stomps his skull. I look away when his skull finally gives and his liquefied brains spill out onto the floor.

  “Jesus, you two,” Dad mutters under his breath, and I think he’s finally getting the picture that Silas and I can actually take care of ourselves. We keep moving and throw a bunch more stuff into the carts, canned goods, power bars, and most of the staples like flour, powdered milk, and sugar. Our carts are loaded and difficult to push as we start to loop around and head back towards the front door. It hasn’t felt like we’ve been here all that long, but according to Silas’ watch we are approaching the second hour. We haven’t seen any other zombies. Even though I refuse to relax my guard, I do calm down a little as we go along and nothing happens.

  We wind our way back to the front and find that Barry and Regg—I still can’t think of the Sergeant as Chad—are already back. They have backed the truck up through the doors so the pickup box is hanging into the first set of doors. Silas winces when he sees the doors snapped closed against the sides of the truck, though I guess in a world filled with zombies, appearances aren’t that important anymore. Barry and Regg have the box filled three quarters full with the gear they’ve collected.

  “Finally,” Barry snaps when we arrive, and I can’t help making a face. I don’t really know him, but from what I’ve seen so far, I’m definitely not a Barry fan.

  ”You guys got a pretty good load,” Regg says, overriding Barry’s negativity, and I shoot him a grateful smile.

  We add some of the stuff from our carts to the pickup and then it’s full. Silas and my dad hold both doors open while Barry pulls the truck back out into the parking lot and Regg backs one of the cars inside, and then we carefully let the doors slide back shut against the side of the car.

  There is limited elbow space, so I keep my distance while Barry, Regg, and my dad pack the car. I turn my flashlight back into the store and pan it around so I can check everything out. The clothing section is on the left, and I take a couple steps towards it. There are a lot of people back at the cabin that don’t have the proper wardrobe for the upcoming winter. “Where are you going?” Silas asks right in my ear, making me jump, and I give him a slap on the arm for sneaking up on me.

  “I was thinking about grabbing some clothes,” I tell him, and he chuckles.

  “You’re such a girl,” he says, and I cast him an annoyed look.

  “For the others,” I clarify. “It’s almost winter, and nobody really has the right clothes,” I remind him. Silas, Ryan, and I do, but we were on the road and were able to pick through that camping store—the others weren’t nearly as lucky.

  “I’ll come with you,” he says as he walks back to grab another cart. I look back at the carts that still need to be loaded and know that we need to hurry. Dad would never leave without me, but I don’t need a lecture from Barry. I see Silas talking to my dad and pointing towards the clothing section, which isn’t that far away. After a moment of indecision, my dad nods, which is huge in itself. My dad must like what he’s seen of Silas so far to trust my safety to him. Silas jogs towards me with the cart.

  “We don’t have very long,” he tells me, and I nod, I’d already figured as much.

  I rush into the clothing aisle, not reall
y liking how closely packed the racks of clothes are. A zombie could be right around the corner. I glance over at Silas and see that he has his gun out and is scanning the area with his flashlight. I grab bags of socks and underwear without checking the sizes, there will be something that will fit everyone. Next we find hats and mittens and toss them in the cart too. “We should head back,” Silas says and I nod, even though I don’t have half the things I’d wanted. On our way back we take a different route and come across a display of winter coats. Silas helps me throw a huge load of them into the cart and then we rush back. They are loading the very last cart and I push mine up into line. Barry sends me a scowl, but Dad gives me a smile.

  “This will be great, thanks, Jane,” he says, and I beam at him. I watch as they load the coats and things into the back of the car, and the thought occurs to me that we didn’t get anything for Sunny. I look over at Silas, who looks at me when he sees me staring.

  “What?” he asks hesitantly. He already knows that it’s going to be something.

  “Sunny,” I say, and a look of understanding crosses his face. He glances at the others who are almost finished.

  “Stay here,” he hisses at me, but I shake my head.

  “You’re not going alone,” I tell him stubbornly, and he looks like he wants to argue but knows it will do him no good and will only waste time. So he nods, and together we jog off into the darkness. I have never been in this Wal-Mart, but they are usually all set up the same, and I already know that there wasn’t a kids section on the side of the store that we already explored. We take off towards the back corner of the store where Regg and Barry explored.

  Silas is running ahead of me when he suddenly trips, flails forward, and hits the ground. I stop running instantly and reach for the gun at my waist, even as I shine my flashlight down on the ground to see what he tripped over. I have to resist the urge to scream as I see a pile of spilled dog food bags with a body in the middle. It was a man, and there is something odd about him.

  “He wasn’t a zombie when he died,” Silas says as he picks himself up and leans in closer to examine the corpse.

  “How can you be sure?” I ask, even though I can see with my own eyes that the man doesn’t have the usual sickly skin color. He is pale and white, on account of being dead, but his skin isn’t rotting off.

  “Fresh blood,” Silas mutters as he points to the still-spreading pile of red coming from a wound on his head. My skin breaks out in goose bumps, and I wonder what happened.

  “This must’ve been that loud noise we heard,” I suggest, and Silas nods.

  “Most likely,” he agrees as he reaches over and grabs my hand, forcing me to step around the body and keep going.

  “I wonder what happened,” I say again, unable to get my mind off the corpse. Silas shrugs.

  “We can ask when we get back, but we have to hurry,” he says, snapping me out of my thoughts. He’s right of course.

  We take off at a jog again, this time being more careful about what’s in front of us, and I start to see the telltale sign of bright pink racks of clothing. Silas searches around until he finds a bright pink snowsuit with matching hat, mittens, and boots, while I grab her a couple packs of clean underwear and socks.

  “Let’s get the hell outta here,” Silas says, and I can’t agree more. We start racing back towards the front when Silas skids to a stop. There is something different about the dead man and the dog food up ahead. Two zombies are hunkered down over his body, ripping the meat from his bones and chewing it noisily. Silas puts his hand up and holds it in front of me like he expects me to go running up to the zombies, not fricken likely!

  One of the zombies looks up and growls when it spots us. The zombie lumbers to his feet, excited by the prospect of fresh eats, and lets out a moan that is drowned out at the end by the sound of shouting and the scrape of metal on metal. The zombie pauses and looks behind him, in the direction of the others, like he isn’t sure which way he should go. “Silas,” I say, not really sure what I’m asking him. Silas raises his gun and shoots both of the zombies in the head and then he grabs my arm and pulls me along.

  When we get closer to the front, I notice that the light coming in from the front doors is much dimmer than it was before. Silas pulls me to a stop before we can go running out into the scene before us. A strangled cry escapes my lips when I see my dad standing in the entrance, the sunlight practically blocked by the zombies beating against the outside of the glass doors. Dad is struggling to pull the second set of doors shut, while three zombies claw, trying to bite and scratch him.

  I start running without a thought in my head, other than saving my dad. Thankfully, Silas doesn’t even try to stop me. He’s right beside me. Their moans and growls are deafening. When they see Silas and me, they only increase their efforts, pounding and trying to break the glass. I pull out my gun, but Silas quickly slaps it down. “You can’t fire towards the glass; if you miss you’ll crack the outside doors.” He warns me, passing me an extra knife from his belt. I don’t even hesitate before jumping into the fray. All I can think about is that my dad has to be okay, or I’ll be responsible for his death, and I’ve killed him over a meaningless pink snowsuit.

  Chapter Five

  “Get out of here, Jane!” Dad manages to shout at me, even though he’s huffing and puffing from the exertion of trying to hold back the zombies.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I fire back as I slide my knife through the eyeball of the zombie that is causing the most trouble. He stops his rabid attack on my dad and falls to the floor, jerking the knife from my hand. I’m not going to waste time reaching through a zombie-infested doorway to get it back, so I pull my own knife from my belt—the crocodile Dundee knife—but Silas pushes me out of the way and spears the next rotten face that pokes through the doors. My dad winces when he slices the zombie down an inch from where his tired arms are trying to hold the two doors together.

  Unlike me, Silas doesn’t lose his knife and he’s ready for the next walking corpse. He nails the zombie through the eye, like I did, and then the threat is gone, well not really, there are at least fifty rage-filled zombies beating against the outside of the glass doors, but we have at least dispatched the three trapped in the middle.

  Dad sags against the door and draws a shaky breath of relief. “You should’ve run,” he lectures me sternly, but I can tell he isn’t really angry.

  “We all need to run, now,” Silas tells us as he eyes the strain the zombies are putting on the glass, and the small network of spider-web cracks that are erupting from beneath their pounding fists.

  “Were you bitten or scratched?” I ask my dad, my adrenaline spiking again at the prospect. Dad shakes his head.

  “I honestly don’t know,” he admits, and I feel my heart sink.

  “We will have to find out later,” Silas snaps as he kicks one of the corpses out of the way and slides the second set of doors together with a snap. “That won’t hold them long,” he says, just as the glass gives way in a big sheet and falls to the floor. The zombies start forward, not caring about the glass shards that still hang from the door and tear and cut at their flesh. It’s horrifying to see. I watch a fat zombie in a housecoat walk past a piece of glass and it cuts along her cheek, releasing black ooze from her rotting, papery thin flesh. When her eye ball gets poked out by the glass, I actually shudder “Move it, Jane,” Silas barks in my ear, giving me a shove to snap me out of it.

  The zombies are just reaching the second set of doors when I turn and follow Silas and my dad. “Do you have a plan, son?” my dad asks, yelling to be heard over the moans and the sound of shaking glass as a hundred fists pound against it with a hungry fury.

  “We need to find another way out,” Silas says as he leads us back the way we came when we went and got the snowsuit.

  “What in the hell is that?” my dad asks when he sees the dog food, corpse, and two dead zombie tableau up ahead of us.

  “That is a good question for Barry,”
Silas mutters as we move past them without stopping.

  “I have a lot of questions for Barry if I ever see him again,” Dad mutters, and that snags my attention.

  “What..?” I start to ask, but Silas and my dad both shake their heads at me.

  “Time and a place, Jane,” Silas mutters as he grabs my elbow to help steer me around a bin of discounted running shoes. Behind us we hear glass breaking, and the volume of the moans increases—the dead are inside.

  “It’s okay,” Dad murmurs, reaching over to pat me on the shoulder, “We have a head start.”

  His words are a tiny bit reassuring, but I know if we can’t find another way out of here, all the head starts in the world won’t help us. We will be trapped in here with a plethora of flesh-eating zombies.

  “We need to stick closer to the wall, so we’ll be able to find a door,” Silas whispers as he leads us deeper into the dark store. He has his flashlight on, and it’s even more terrifying than it was earlier. Now I know for certain that the light is attracting every zombie in the store, hell bent on eating us. We come around a shelf and Silas walks right into a zombie that was lurking at the end of the aisle. I clap my hand over my mouth to keep from shouting. The flashlight illuminates his sickly, rotting skin and chipped teeth, and Silas shoves the zombie back with all his strength. The zombie goes down, sliding across the floor, leaving chunks of skin and other nastiness. Silas doesn’t give him a chance to shamble to his rotting feet. He follows him down and plants his knife into the base of his skull. “Keep moving,” Silas barks, letting out a little puff of breath, and I know that he was startled by that zombie—we all were.

  We follow the wall for what seems like forever. It’s agonizing jumping at every shadow, but in reality it’s probably been less than five minutes. Silas stops suddenly and I nearly bump into the back of him. I peek around his shoulder, worried he’s run into another dead head, but his flashlight is shining on a set of double doors.