A Little More Dead (11 page)

Gently, Sophia ran an antiseptic wipe
over the wound with Paul looking over her shoulder. The man set his jaw, shallow
breaths making his chest pump faster. Sophia glanced back at the others. “It’s
not a bite. In fact,” she said, her words tightening in her throat.

Paul’s eyebrows dipped as he watched his
wife pull something from the wound.

Pinching it between her fingers, she
held it up and turned it in the gray light. “Tree branch,” she said, flicking
it into the ditch.

Paul released the breath he’d been holding
and ran a hand down his grimy face. “Where do you live? How far back are we
talking?”

The man’s eyes widened. “Thank you so much.
You will be in my prayers until the end of time.”

Paul barely had time to spin around when
a bearded man in denim overalls sprang from the woods. Sticks and branches
splintered beneath the obese man’s boots, and, at the speed he was running,
there was no time for errant shots. “Oh shit!” Paul slid the shotgun into his
shoulder as Sophia peeled her gun from its holster. They each got off a single
shot. The man’s enormous head jerked backwards, his large feet sliding out from
beneath him. Paul could feel the ground shake when the man landed on his back
and stirred up a cloud of dust. Dan and Wendy exited the car in a hurry, guns as
drawn as their faces. The four friends kept their weapons trained on the thing’s
bloated body, staring in horror at the mess that used to be the man’s face.

Paul slowly looked up. “Holy
shit,
did you see how fast that guy was?”

Dan stared at the dead man through
disbelieving eyes. “Just like the repairman back at the farmhouse and that
redneck at the gas station. Those guys were both fast as hell too.”

Sophia’s voice came out in a shaky
whisper. “The fat ones are fast.” She looked up at the others. “How can that
be?”

“I don’t know,” Dan breathed, lowering
the shotgun.

Paul shook his head. “Maybe it’s a
muscle mass thing.”

Wendy gestured to the dead man with her
gun. “There is no way that guy ever ran that fast before a day in his life. So
why now when he’s dead?”

 
Two
crows landed on some branches above, cawing and watching.

“And the plot thickens,” Dan murmured,
scanning the woods.

“Sir?”

Everyone followed Paul’s gaze to the man
sitting in the buggy with his head leaning back and his eyes closed.

Paul crept closer, walking on pins and
needles, shotgun leading the way.
“Sir?
Are you okay?”
He stopped in front of the buggy and reached out, making
Benji
stir.

“Paul,” Sophia whispered.

Paul shook the man’s arm and his head
rolled limply to the side. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth and a
small bible slipped from his bony fingers to the mud-covered buggy floor.

“
Sonofabitch
,”
Dan said, a deep-seeded frown carving lines into his face. “We never found out
where he lived!”

Chapter
Fifteen

They watched
Benji
and the buggy fade down the interstate back to where it came, keeping a close
eye on the woods out the corner of their eyes. Paul tilted his head to one side
and cracked his neck. They tried to free the horse but
Benji
would have none of it, choosing to remain with his master instead.

“We never even got his name,” Dan said
glumly.

“
Benji
.”

“No, the guy’s
name.”

“Oh,” Paul said, loading a shell into
the shotgun.

Wendy tucked the .38 into the small of
her back. “I wonder what kind of food he had.”

Paul looked to the dead man in overalls
on the side of the roadway.
“Probably a lot of friendship
bread and Shepherd’s pie.”

Dan watched the buggy navigate a curve
and disappear from view. “I don’t know what that is but it sounds delicious.” Back
in the cop car, they shut their doors and locked them. Dan turned the key one
click in the ignition, making the dashboard ding. He stared straight ahead,
surveying the road before them, hesitant to find out what would be waiting for
them around the next bend.

“I’m never getting out of the car
again,” Wendy said from the backseat.

Dan glanced at her in the mirror and
started the car before he lost his nerve. Paul secured the shotgun in the
dashboard mount and fastened his seatbelt. Missing out on the food and
ammunition seemed so trivial in the face of such mayhem but it hurt just the
same. They rode in silence for a while, unable to rise above the gloom and doom
following them wherever they went. Every so often, Dan would sneak a peek at
the lovely Miss Wendy, unable to stop himself. Then she would bust him and he would
try the radio again.

Not even static.

As dead as
everything else.

Paul massaged his temples with two
fingers on each hand. It was insane, as they motored down some barren interstate,
how they ended up on this road trip from hell, the four of them against the
world. Two weeks ago his biggest problem was trying to find something to watch
on Netflix. Now, everyone wanted to eat them. He wondered what it felt like to be
pinned down
and slowly picked apart.

“I’m getting hot,” Sophia said from the
backseat, pulling off her coat. “Can you turn down the heat?”

“We’re getting low on gas,” Dan replied,
turning off the heater.

Paul nodded up ahead. “Get off at this
next exit.”

☠

Siphoning gas from an abandoned Ford
Expedition was a breeze. Finding it parked in a strip mall with a Kohl’s store seemed
nothing short of a miracle. Paul returned the siphon-kit to the trunk and got
back inside the car.

Dan promptly locked the doors and took a
long survey of the land, the snow nearly gone. “Where the hell is everyone?”

“Maybe they just vanished into thin air,”
Wendy suggested, coiling a strand of hair around her finger.

“Wouldn’t there be piles of clothing and
cell phones everywhere?”

“Alright, here’s the plan,” Paul said, turning
to face them. “We get in and we get out.”

“Ooh, brilliant plan, Paul!” Wendy smiled.
“Did you think that up all by yourself?”

“You know what?”

“Paul,” Sophia said in a low voice,
cutting him off.

Paul made sure his safeties were off and
pointed. “Pull right up front.”

The store, which used to appear so
normal
and every day, now looked haunted and poisonous. A spattering of vehicles
littered the lot, more than likely belonging to the customers and employees who
never made it out alive. Dan drove closer, noticing one of the glass doors
already shattered. “Hope there’s something left.”

“Only one way to
find out.”
Paul popped his door and climbed out.

The others followed, not bothering to
shut their doors. On cue, the cloud cover broke, sprinkling them with moving
pockets of sunlight.

“I have a bad feeling about this,”
Sophia said.

Paul pumped the shotgun. “Don’t say
that.”

“Maybe we should find a Macy’s.”

He gave her a dismissive arch of an
eyebrow and kept going. Triangular shards of glass rimmed the edge of the
broken front door like shark’s teeth, twinkling in the setting sun. Paul
stepped through first, careful not to snag his coat on the door’s pointy teeth
guarding the entrance. Glass popped beneath his winter boots. He stopped just
inside the double doors and covered the others as they entered the store,
sniffing at the musty smelling air. It didn’t take long to figure out the walking
dead smelled like spoiled milk.

The Kohl’s store was even quieter inside
than it was outside. No light music raining down from the recessed speakers in
the ceiling, no hum from the heavy-duty furnaces, and no carts with squeaky
wheels and fussy children. They stood shoulder to shoulder and listened, the
sunshine stretching their shadows across the tiled floor before them. Regardless
of the broken front door, it looked like they were the first ones to step foot
inside since the manager turned off the lights, locked the doors and never
returned.

Paul removed his bulky coat and threw it
off to the side, already feeling ten pounds lighter. “Say goodbye to this damn
thing.”

The others followed suit, shedding their
thick skins for the last time.

Dan stared at Wendy’s massive breasts
pushing against her thermal, his shotgun clutched in both hands. She gave him a
coy wink and Paul rammed a shopping cart into a long jewelry case, shattering
glass onto the watches inside. With weapons at the ready, they stood united, a
wall of resistance to every angle someone could come flying from. The
tension-filled silence weighed on Paul’s lungs, squeezing his chest like
heartburn. When no one sprang from a rack of half-priced Valentine’s Day
sweaters, Sophia grabbed another cart and started pushing.

“We’ll be right over here,” she said,
pointing to the women’s section.

“Make sure you stay where we can see
you.”

She waved at her husband, an impish smile
on her lips. “We will,” she sang out, followed by two maniacal laughs that
echoed throughout the store as the girls strolled off with an empty cart that
wouldn’t stay that way for long.

“You know we’re not going to be able to
fit back in the car,” Dan whispered, admiring a rack of bomber jackets.

Paul flipped through some bubble vests.
“We’re going to need a truck.”

Dan’s wide eyes slowly rose. “We should
hit a car lot next,” he whispered gravely. “Oh my God, I’m finally getting a
Corvette.”

“You’re too young for a mid-life
crisis.”

“Not anymore. I’d say the average
life-expectancy just dropped to thirty-five, which means I’m about ready to
retire.”

“In that case, we should get you a
walker.”

Sophia inhaled sharply, drawing Paul’s
gaze to the women’s department across the aisle. “This is so cute!”

“Ooh, that is cute,” Wendy agreed
,
admiring the red
pleather
jacket
Sophia was holding up. “But I
have
to
have this.” Wendy slipped into a tight-fitting girly motorcycle jacket and
searched for a mirror, pulling her hair over her shoulders.

Sophia studied Wendy with an eye trained
for fashion. “That is so you.”

“And it doesn’t smash my boobs!” She
paused. “Well, that much.”

“Ha! I wish I had your problems.” Sophia
slid into the red jacket and joined Wendy at a three-way mirror outside the
dressing rooms. The short coat fit tight, showing off her hourglass figure.
“This is definitely a keeper,” she said, turning this way and that, her long
ponytail bouncing behind her.

Both women kept the jackets on and
continued on their shopping spree.

Paul couldn’t help the smile he felt playing
on his lips. It was good to see her forget their troubles long enough to have
some fun again. A few days ago, he was certain fun would become a thing of the
past, like
Hulu
and Starbucks.

“What do you think?” Dan asked, modeling
a brown bomber jacket.

“Don’t you want something that’s
waterproof? There will be a lot of pop-up storms around the ocean.”

Dan checked his wallet. “If you loan me
forty bucks I can get both.”

Paul grunted and found a lightweight
windbreaker with a perfect fit. He threw a black vest over it and kept moving, feeling
like he could swing the shotgun around much faster now.

“This is pretty.” Wendy held up a purple
sweater.

Sophia tossed a pair of thin gloves into
the cart. “That looks really warm.”

“Feel this.”

Sophia rubbed the soft material. “Ooh,
I’m getting one of those too.”

Wendy threw the hanger to the side and dropped
the sweater on top of the gloves, surveying their haul with hands planted on
her curvy hips. “How much fun is this?”

“So fun,” Sophia replied, too busy holding
up a black sweater of her own to notice the tall skinny lady standing just inside
the shadowy entrance to the dressing rooms.

Chapter
Sixteen

Paul leaned his shotgun against a table
covered in folded jeans and found a pair of black Levis in his size. He tossed
them in Dan’s cart, his handgun banging against the table. “You think
Benji
found his way home?”

Dan looked up, a pair of jeans clutched
in his hands. “I doubt he could make it that far. That horse looked spent.”

Paul replied with a faint nod, trying
not to imagine Hannah and James holed up in their house with bloodstained
mouths when
Benji
came home with their dead husband
and father slumped over inside the buggy.

“I’m putting on all new clothes before
we even leave.”

Paul rifled through a stack of blue
jeans next. “That’s a good idea.”

“Let’s hit the shoes!” they heard Sophia
say in the women’s department.

“I need some new underwear too,” Wendy
said. “Mine are getting…”

Sophia set the sweater into the cart, eyebrows
knitting together as she looked up. “What’s wrong?”

Wendy screamed and Sophia jumped back,
knocking the cart to the ground with a
clang
.

Paul dropped the Levi’s to the floor and
left his shotgun leaning against the table, pulling his Beretta on the run. He
bolted from the carpet to the shiny tiled floor, feet sliding out beneath him.
Arms wind-milling, he slid to a stop in the women’s section where red drool oozed
from a tall woman’s mouth. Her hollowed out eyes watched Wendy shakily draw a
.38 from the small of her back. The dreadfully thin lady spread a playful grin
and shambled from the dressing room shadows. A Kohl’s name tag told Janet’s
story.

Paul was wrong.

The manager never made it out alive.

With trembling hands, Wendy pointed the
gun at Janet’s decaying face, but Janet didn’t seem to mind. She trudged closer,
carelessly knocking a rack of springtime raincoats to the floor. “Please stop,”
Wendy moaned, taking a step back.

“Shoot it!” Paul yelled, taking aim. He
hesitated with his finger on the trigger, giving Wendy a small window of
opportunity to get her third kill. She would need the practice on moving
targets. They all would. Shooting a tin can on a fence post didn’t have the
same effect on your breathing as shooting someone who used to be a mother of
three and now wants to eat your flesh. Breathing changed everything.

A gunshot sent the thing flying
backwards into the three-way mirror. Janet crumpled to the floor with shards of
glass landing in her thin brown hair.

Wendy stared hard at the blood trail
leaking from Janet’s forehead, gun still pointed at the manager’s face. “I-I
couldn’t do it.”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Sophia said,
holstering her smoking weapon and rushing to Wendy’s side.

“I couldn’t do it!”

“It’s over now,” Sophia said, gently
lowering Wendy’s gun.

Dan scanned the mess on the floor
through wide eyes. “Hole-lee shit!”

“Are you okay?” Paul asked, examining
Sophia and Wendy.

“We’re fine,” his wife answered with Wendy
trembling in her arms.

“I lied about the girls behind the bar,”
Wendy sobbed. “I couldn’t shoot them and, eventually, they just went away.”

Dan shook his head, eyes glued to the
dead woman on the carpeted floor. “Why didn’t she come out when you rammed that
cart into the jewelry case?” He looked up to find Paul’s dilated eyes.

Paul stared back at him with no reply, a
bad feeling washing over him like a cold dark cloud.

Sophia traded a look with Paul that four
years of marriage allowed him to read loud and clear. They had to be more
careful. Just when you thought it was safe, it wasn’t. Precedent meant nothing.

“They’re getting smarter.” Dan used his
boot to nudge the woman’s floppy leg.

“We could’ve been killed,” Wendy
murmured. “And it would’ve been my fault.”

Sophia pressed her lips together. “It’s
never anyone’s fault. Not now.”

Wendy seized her by the wrist, a wild
look in her eyes. “You saved my life.”

Sophia peeled Wendy’s fingers from her
arm. “And you better stick around long enough to pay me back.”

Paul stared at the small bite mark in
the dead woman’s arm, wondering what the last thing she did as a human being
before some dead thing sent their pointy teeth into her skin. Returning
unwanted clothing from the dressing room to the sales floor? Unpacking the new
spring line of dresses? Texting her husband to let him know she’d be home late
and that she loved him? If there was electricity, he’d locate the security
office and rewind the surveillance footage to find out. A part of him had to
know. Then he wondered what the last thing he would do before the inevitable.
It was only a matter of time.

Here’s the writing.

Here’s the wall.

A high-pitched shriek made Dan scream. A
chubby little girl came fast from a rack of sweat pants, stringy red hair
swinging across her angry face. Dried blood encircled her splintered lips and
darkness coiled in her eyes. No time to shoot, Dan swung the butt of the twelve
gauge around but didn’t catch her squarely. Undeterred, the girl’s purple arms slithered
around his waist and constricted, popping a loud groan from his lips and
slamming him against a wall of flannel shirts. Dan dropped the shotgun and pushed
against her forehead to keep her snapping teeth at bay. “Get her off me! Get
her off me!”

Unable to get a clear shot, Paul yanked
on the girl’s hair but it ripped away in his hand.

Dan cried out to the ceiling as she
wrung the air from his lungs. “Shoot her!”

Paul grabbed the back of the girl’s coat
and Sophia joined in the tug of war. The red head’s teeth clamped down on Dan’s
arm and tore away a patch of leather. He screamed and Paul gave one final tug,
hurling her to the floor. She rolled to a stop and sprang to her feet, a grin
slicing through her freckled cheeks. The color drained from Paul’s face as he
witnessed the impossible. This girl couldn’t be older than eight or nine yet
had the strength of a full grown man and the speed to match. “What the fuck?”
he whispered coldly, aiming at her snarling face.

She charged again, digging Hello Kitty
boots into the tiled flooring. Matt and Mike dashed through Paul’s mind just
before he put two rounds into her chubby cheeks, sending her crashing onto her
side. Silence rained down from the vents above, their uneven breaths the soundtrack
to Paul’s racing heart. She was so damn young and he wasn’t sure which hurt
more: The dead look on her face or the fact that he just put it there.

“Did you see how strong she was?” Sophia
whispered as if more may be lurking in the shadows.

Dan peeled himself off the wall and
rubbed the back of his head. “Oh, I saw it. She almost crushed my lungs.”

A far-off ringing stung Paul’s ears, his
chest rising and falling beneath his new vest.

Dan examined his shredded jacket, pulling
the sleeve back and checking his arm, which appeared to still be in one piece.
His large eyes rose to find their anxious stares. “So you guys about ready to get
going or what?”