Eden 01 - Eden, page 21
“Come on, Harris.” Bear motioned to him, and the other man followed.
Buddy walked off in the opposite direction with Davon.
“Al,” Bobby said, “you keep an eye on things up here.”
“No problem.” Al popped himself up onto the counter between two cash registers. He leaned back and looked behind the counter, made sure nothing lurked there. And not a thing did. When Bobby and Stephanie disappeared down another aisle, Al reached into his coat and pulled out his flask.
Goddamn, that whiskey tasted good.
Stephanie followed Bobby past an aisle of greeting cards, gift wrap, and bows.
Harris and Bear moved their flashlights back and forth as they walked.
“Look at that,” said Bear.
At the end of the aisle they were in, where another intersected, boxes of female hygiene products were scattered across the floor. Some of the boxes were open. Tampons and pads lay all over. Many of the pads were soaked with blood, as if someone had tried to stanch a wound with them.
Bear whistled. “Let’s keep our eyes open.”
Markowski’s flashlight beam fell on the zombie at the end of the aisle. He saw it standing alone next to a display of batteries. Batteries were on his list anyway, so he walked toward the zombie, making as little noise as he could.
In life she must have been hot. She had her back turned to Markowski, so he got a good view of the low-cut jeans, the whale tail thong peeping out. Her skin was ashy and gray, but he could still make out the tramp stamp tattoo. Some kind of bullshit sunrise, the rays radiating across her waist and up her lower back.
“Hey, sexy.”
It turned and moaned at him.
“Oh, baby, you’ve seen better days.”
Its halter top was torn open, revealing the remains of a mutilated breast. Someone had done a number on its face as well. One eye was missing and most of the teeth were knocked out. Looked like it’d had its head stepped on a few times.
Markowski didn’t wait for the zombie to stagger toward him. He moved in, grabbed it by a shoulder, and spun the thing around. He reached down, grasped the thong at its lower back, and tore the underwear up and out, ripping it free.
“Goddamn, I always wanted to do that!”
As the zombie turned to face him again, Markowski thrust the baseball bat like a pool stick, cracking it hard in the forehead. The thing went down and started to shake on the floor.
“Believe me, darling . . .” Markowski unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock. “I ain’t taking any pleasure in this.”
He relieved himself on the seizing zombie.
Al Gold worked at keeping his buzz going. He didn’t buy all that shit people said about alcoholism being a disease. No one chose cancer, but he chose to drink. He’d stop drinking when and if he was ever goddamn ready, or when the alcohol ran out. No one was making it anymore. Like insulin. Al wondered how many people had died because they couldn’t get that or other medications they needed.
He got the shakes in the morning until he took that first slug of whiskey, but he had long since stopped caring that the others would notice. His housemate, Davon, he didn’t say anything about Al’s drinking, and Al didn’t say anything about Davon’s pot smoking and porn watching.
Al popped himself up off the counter and panned his flashlight up and down the bank of registers. The candy bars and chewing gum all looked intact. He thought how everyone could go for some chocolate once in a while and decided to fill his knapsack with candy. The others would be stocking up on the vitals.
Hope they like Hershey’s. Al dumped boxes of plain chocolate bars, chocolate with almonds, and peanut butter cups into his bag. Some of the stuff had a shelf life of two to three years, so he figured it was all still good to eat.
He spotted the box of peanut chews under the licorice and knew he was in luck. He’d enjoyed peanut chews since he was a kid. As he dumped the contents of the box into his bag with the others, Al spied a spiral notebook closed on the counter.
“What’s that about?” he asked aloud.
Davon was jittery. “You hear something?”
“It’s all that weed you be smoking,” said Buddy. “Making you paranoid.”
“Being paranoid has kept me alive up to now.”
“Can’t argue with that. Just keep an eye open and let’s fill up on these cans.”
Buddy and Davon had found the grocery aisle of the pharmacy. There were several shelves of canned items and packaged foods. They steered clear of the wrapped breads and boxes of moldy cookies and cakes and instead tossed cans of vegetables, soups, and meats into their bags.
“SPAM,” said Buddy. “I never thought I’d be eating this stuff.”
“What’s wrong with SPAM?”
Stephanie Evers looked back at her husband as she knelt, rummaging through her pack, trying to make room for more toilet paper. Bobby was an aisle down, loading up on over-the-counter pain medications, his flashlight aimed in the opposite direction so nothing could sneak up on him. Stephanie thought about how it would be easier if they could just take a truck or van, fill it up with all the stuff they needed, and drive it back into Eden. They had been able to do that once or twice, until the streets began to swell with all those zombies. The last van expedition that’d gone out hadn’t come back.
She wondered what had happened to those people. They were probably dead. No way they could survive for long without shelter on these streets. Stephanie imagined there were hundreds of zombies pressed against the riot gate they’d come in through. Getting into stores was the easy part. Getting out required a distraction.
What was that?
Stephanie jerked her head to the left and stared toward the end of the aisle, bringing her flashlight up at the same time. As the beam lit it up, she thought she saw an arm pass, swinging like someone walking might do.
She trained the beam there and listened. Nothing. The only sounds came from her husband working down the aisle.
Still . . .
Stephanie wrapped her hand around her pistol. It was a .380 and she’d had plenty of practice with it. She stood with the pistol and the flashlight and looked back at Bobby, but he wasn’t paying attention.
“Bobby!” She whispered to him but he didn’t hear her. She didn’t want to call out in case there really was something there.
Stephanie started forward slowly, carefully, the pistol extended ahead of her, ready to shoot anything that popped around the corner.
“Bingo,” said Bear.
Harris had climbed over the pharmacy counter and opened the door to allow the larger man in. Around them loomed shelf after shelf of prescription items.
“You got that list?” Harris asked.
Bear produced it from under his leather vest, unfolded it, and shined his light on it.
“Harris, you keep an eye open. I’ll find this stuff.”
Harris walked the aisles behind the pharmacy counter, bathing each with light from the flashlight. There was no one to be seen. Nothing to be heard either, aside from the rattle of a pill bottle as Bear picked it up and examined it.
Al Gold opened the faux marble notebook and examined it. Someone had written Journal of My Life and their name on the first page. There was a month and a date, both coming after the outbreak. He leafed through it. There were only twelve or fifteen pages written in, but the person who’d kept it wrote small and neat in cursive.
This should be interesting, he thought.
He looked around and then opened to the first entry.
December 2
I’m going to keep this journal or diary or whatever the hell it is for as long as I can. Whether I make it or not, those things don’t eat books, so maybe someday people will find this and use it to make some sense of just what the hell has happened to us.
I really don’t know where to begin. There are twenty-five of us hiding out here. The news said to stay put, but there hasn’t been any news in a few days. We pulled the gates and locked them from the inside—they don’t seem to be able to break the locks, thank goodness for us—and have been holed up in here since.
Al yawned. Boring. He took another swig from his flask and turned to the last page of writing to see how this story ended.
Harris shined the light on the closed metal door. There was a dead bolt on his side of it.
He had agreed to accompany Markowski and Bear on this foraging mission only when Buddy had said he’d go. The more he got to know the men, the more he thought he’d misjudged Bear. The man had badass written all over him, but he wasn’t made of the same stuff as Markowski. Or, if he had been, he wasn’t any longer.
Bear didn’t laugh at Markowski’s crude jokes the way others did. The others—like Bianaculli or Bert or even that young guy, Thompson—they laughed at Markowski’s garbage because they were afraid of him. Bear didn’t laugh. Harris thought it was because Bear didn’t find Markowski humorous or frightening.
Markowski seemed to have a hard-on for Buddy. The little comments and looks, busting his chops, jig-this and jig-that. Buddy did a good job ignoring it for the most part, but he and Harris had talked. Harris wondered where Bear would stand when things went down. Whose side? He’d hate to have the big, tattooed biker to contend with.
Harris pressed his ear to the door and listened.
Where did it lead? Outside? Maybe a basement?
He shifted the Colt Python to his left hand and took the flashlight in his right. It looked like the door opened toward him on the left, and he’d want to shine the light down the stairs or wherever it was he was going to be opening it up onto.
He used the thumb and forefinger of his right hand to twist the dead bolt and tried the door again.
Stephanie reached the end of the aisle and moved the light as far to the left and as far to the right as she could. Dust motes fluttered in the light.
She stepped out of the aisle. There was a film-processing counter in front of her, stretching down to the pharmacy. She thought she could see some light in that direction.
No zombies. Just to be sure, she walked around the end of the aisle she had just stepped from, giving herself a wide berth, and shined the light up the adjacent aisle. Empty.
Now I’m seeing things, she thought and went back to her knapsack, setting the .380 down on the floor, picking up a four-pack of Charmin Ultra Soft, thinking of the old Mr. Whipple commercial, hearing her husband coming up behind her—
“You know, Bobby—”
She turned, but the thing upon her was not her husband.
February 7
I don’t know what is going to happen now. First they got through the door down in the basement and then one of them bit Cheryl. Mark got bit too, but no one is going to fuck with him. He’s got a gun, the only gun in this goddamn place. He already shot the store manager, dumb-ass was stupid enough to go near him when he said not to, tried to get the gun away from him. This place is insane.
We did what we could for Cheryl but when it looked like she was dead we opened the door and tossed her down into the basement with all the others. Thing is, she wasn’t dead. We had to listen to her scream and cry as those things in the basement got her. With that door to the outside open there’s no telling how many of them are down there. Christ, we should have just done what Burns said, wait for her to come back, bash her fucking brains in.
Somewhere in the dark store, Stephanie screamed.
“Oh shit,” muttered Al Gold, tossing the notebook down and hauling ass up an aisle, yelling for Markowski as he ran, for Bear and for Buddy, for anybody and everybody.
• • •
The door slammed into Harris, flying open under the weight from the other side. He lost the pistol and fell backward, dumped on his rear. He managed to hold onto the flashlight and directed it upward—
Zombies avalanched through the doorway, a tangle of arms and legs, massed at the top of a stairwell, with more behind them. Harris braced his feet against the metal door and pushed, fighting the weight pressing against it.
“Bear!” he yelled, losing the battle, the door inching open.
Stephanie Evers brought her arms up to protect her face as the zombie jumped on her, howling like a banshee.
Bobby Evers ran toward his wife, the beam from his flashlight jolting up and down. Fear coursed through him. Steph’s light rolled about on the aisle floor and all he could make out was a struggle, an undead thing on top of her.
“No!” Bobby screamed, reaching the two of them, not thinking, leveling the .30-.30 hunting rifle he carried and firing it.
The zombie reared up and turned, its mouth bloody. Bobby shot again, and the bullet punched out the back of the beast’s head in a shower that streaked the cartons of plastic-wrapped toilet paper.
“Stephanie . . .” Bobby dropped his rifle and knelt with his wife. She was wheezing and there was a hole in her throat from which blood bubbled and squirted. She was trying to say something to him, and as he watched and held her the color in her face waned and her life seeped out between his fingers.
“No, baby, don’t die on me,” begged Bobby, trying to stanch the blood with his fingers, “Don’t die! Don’t die! I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”
The wound in her neck had been caused by his first round.
“Oh-Christ-Oh-Jesus-Oh-Mary-Mother-of-God-I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry . . .”
Bobby failed to notice the bites on his wife’s hands.
Harris lost his battle with the door at the same moment Bear materialized behind him. The door flew open, spilling zombies out onto the floor, while others staggered through the opening, a decomposing booker leaping into the air, intent on landing on Harris.
Bear grabbed the thing by its throat in midair and slammed it into a wall of shelves, hundreds of pill bottles scattering over the tiled floor. His hand still around its neck, Bear whipped it against the next wall of shelves like a child’s doll. He squeezed his hand, the muscles in his forearm tensing, and Harris watched in disbelief as the man tore the thing’s head from its neck.
Harris scrambled, found his Python, and fired from his back, aiming around Bear’s legs—the man-mountain was standing there, blocking the aisle, swinging his pipe in the enclosed area, and busting heads—at the faces of the zombies thrashing on the floor, at the heads of the ones appearing at the top of the stairs.
“Let’s go, Harris.” Bear threw the cylinder with all his might and the pipe caught a zombie across the chest like a clothesline, knocking it from its feet.
Bear reached down and dragged Harris up with one hand, freeing his Mini-Uzi at the same time. The Mini-Uzi looked like a toy pistol in Bear’s big paw, and he fired it in crisp, controlled bursts, ripping holes in the necks and faces of the nearest undead as he backed away from the door, pulling Harris with him.
Bear let him down and Harris holstered the Python, cross-drawing his twin-9s and following the big man.
“Get my bag!” Bear shouted, opening the door to the pharmacy section.
Harris scrambled behind the pharmacy counter, finding Bear’s bag, aware that the undead were pouring out of the basement as if someone had loosed a faucet of them. He pulled the zipper closed and launched himself headfirst over the counter, knocking down a display with pamphlets on health insurance plans.
Bear pulled the door to the pharmacy closed behind them. It had a waist-high glass window, and the zombies started to rattle against it as he reloaded the Mini-Uzi with a fresh stick.
Harris considered himself lucky that he didn’t break his neck as he lay splayed on the floor, scrambling to get up. Zombies started to try to pull the same move he’d just made, albeit much more slowly and even less gracefully. As they clambered over the counter from the other side, Harris fired his 9-millimeters. The limp zombies were pushed out of the way, dragged down by the ones behind as groans filled the air.
“Oh shit,” Markowski said, reaching Harris and Bear. “You guys throw a party and didn’t invite me?”
“Markowski! Bear!” Al Gold reached them, out of breath.
“One minute, Al.” Markowski picked his targets with his FAMAS bullpup assault rifle and blasted them as Harris reloaded his pistols.
“No, Markowski, there’s too many of them . . .” Gold nearly stumbled over his words as he tried to get them out.
Buddy and Davon reached the group and dropped their sacks, bringing their weapons up and firing.
For a moment it looked like the humans would be successful in repelling the undead. The rips of Bear’s Mini-Uzi, the pops of pistols, and cracks of assault rifles fired on semi-auto, seemed like they might drive the beasts back. But the supply of zombies wasn’t dwindling. If anything, there were more moving about in the shadows of the pharmacy. The glass portion of the door broke and a dozen arms reached through.
“Let’s go!” Buddy snatched up his saddlebags, slinging them over his shoulder, and jetting down an aisle.
The others shouldered their packs and followed, reloading on the run.
Markowski pulled the pin on a thermite grenade and handed it to one of the reaching arms. The zombie took it, its arm disappearing inside the doorframe.
“Oh shit!” Markowski half laughed as he turned and ran. The explosion knocked him off his feet, and halfway down the aisle. He brushed himself off, found the FAMAS assault rifle and flashlight, and shined the halogen lamp back the way he’d come.
The blast had taken the door off the frame and zombies poured through onto the main floor, burning and bellowing as they came.
“Oh, we’re in some shit now!” yelled Davon. “Stick near me, roommate!”
Al Gold looked over his shoulder and decided that’s exactly what he would do: stick to the younger, bigger guy like glue.
“Markowski!” Buddy drew their attention to a side door.
“Where’s that lead?”
“Let’s find out!”
Buddy blew the lock off the door with one barrel, and Bear followed up with a kick when they reached it. Bright sunlight poured in. The six of them shielded their eyes from the sudden change in light and burst out into a deserted alleyway. Davon pushed the door closed behind them and leaned against it.
