A Little More Dead (12 page)

Chapter
Seventeen

The Kohl’s security room upstairs was
much smaller than Paul imagined, lit up by a single computer monitor on a diminutive
desk. He looked down at his brand new black Adidas, and then turned to Sophia
and Wendy. Both women sat in plastic office chairs against a white wall,
modeling vacuous looks with folded arms and crossed legs. Then Paul noticed his
holster and gun were gone. His heart jumped. Spinning on his heels, he patted
his new Levi’s down like they were on fire.

“Here it is!” The computer screen cloaked
Dan’s face in an eerie glow. “Come check this out!”

“I left my gun downstairs!” Paul cried,
turning to Sophia and Wendy, both of whom seemed disinterested in his plight.

“Forget about that; you have got to see
this!” Dan replied, not taking his eyes from the old fashioned monitor.

Stupefied, Paul looked up from his naked
gun belt and, grudgingly, traipsed over to the metal desk, insides melting.
Even with his much lighter running shoes, his legs still felt heavy, like when
you get thick mud clogged in your shoes.

In the screen’s glare, Dan’s face looked
older, wiser. “This is so crazy,” he whispered, leaning on the desk and nodding
to the chair. “Sit down.”

Paul’s brow fell in the ghostly glow.
“How is this even on? There’s no power.”

“Must be running on some kind of backup
generator or something, but you are not going to believe this.” Dan shook his
head.
“As if we didn’t have enough to worry about already.”

Paul studied Dan through dubious eyes
before pulling back the desk chair. His face soured. “I can’t sit here,” he said,
staring at the chair, which reminded him of his kindergarten days. “It’s way too
small.”

Dan looked annoyed. “Trust me, Paul,
you’re
gonna
wanna
sit down
for this.”

Warily, Paul folded himself into the
tiny chair and slid it forward, producing a horrible screech against the
concrete floor that echoed loudly in the small room. His knees scraped the
underside of the desk, smearing rusty paint flakes onto his new jeans. Still
consumed by the gruesome shootings downstairs, Sophia and Wendy continued
staring at the wall with blank looks robbing their faces.

Dan pointed to the black and white
security footage. “Look, here we are coming into the store.”

Paul watched the four of them stand like
statues just inside the entrance, the setting sun casting their shadows onto
the tiled floor ahead of them. Paul remembered it well.
“Yeah,
so what?”

“Just watch!” Dan said, becoming more
agitated by the second.

On screen, Paul watched them appraise
the store’s situation. His eyebrows drew together. Even though Sophia stood
anchored to the floor while Paul rammed the cart into the jewelry case, her
shadow moved. His heart skipped a beat. Goose bumps rippled across his flesh. He
leaned in closer to the monitor and squinted through the glare. “What the hell?”

Sinuously, Sophia’s shadow slid across
the floor in front of them while Sophia stood scanning the store for signs of
trouble. Fear tightened Paul’s gut as the shadow reached up and pulled a long
skinny rope from the ceiling. Paul held his breath, heart hammering against his
ribcage. On the video, other than shifting in her stance, Sophia still hadn’t
moved. Yet her shadow did. In an exaggerated motion, it looped the rope around
its neck and that’s when things slowed to a crawl. Paul couldn’t catch his breath.
His pulse raced. The shadow cinched the slipknot tight and fell limp, toes listlessly
swinging back and forth across the shiny tiles while the girls pranced off
screen into the women’s department.

Paul forced himself to breathe. He could
hear his pulse thudding in his ears, palms slick with sweat. “How - How is that
possible?” he sputtered, shaking the monitor. “This has to be broken.” When no
one answered, he looked up to find everyone gone. He jumped back in the tiny
chair, knocking the desk over in the process. The computer smashed to the ground
in a thunderous crash. Sparks shot into the air. The room’s only door broke
open and Paul watched a man with a gold badge on his belt hobble into the room.
When he saw Paul he stopped. Small bloody handprints covered the man’s Dockers
and there was mud on his shoes. He smiled at the horror filling Paul’s eyes, revealing
bloodstained teeth hiding beneath his cracked lips.

Then he ran.

Fast as lightning.

Paul went for his gun, screaming when it
wasn’t there.

“Paul.”

The loss prevention agent smashed him
against the wall and bit down, shaking his head back and forth and tearing the
meat from Paul’s neck. Paul shook violently under the thing’s weight, unable to
escape his thorny clutches.

“Paul!”

His eyelids flipped back to find Sophia
shaking him in the backseat of the cop car.

“Are you okay?” she asked, staring at
him through worried eyes.

He wiped perspiration from his forehead,
noticing his new black Adidas and her new red jacket. The darkness outside the
car windows caught his eye next. “Where are we?”

“Oklahoma,” Dan said through the cage,
drumming his fingers on the wheel and swapping a glance with Wendy in the
passenger seat next to him.

Paul sat up straighter and rubbed his
eyes. “How long was I out?”

Sophia snuggled up against him.
“A couple hours.
You didn’t miss much.”

“You woke up just in time, chief,” Dan
said, pulling into the driveway of a small ranch-styled house and putting it in
park. “I’m exhausted.”

After clearing the messy house that had
to belong to a crazy cat lady, Sophia and Paul went out back for some fresh
air. So far, Oklahoma’s winter was much milder than Iowa’s but still left a
bite in the air at night. Sophia sat down on a picnic table in the backyard and
sighed, gazing at the sparkling stars above. “How much longer can we keep doing
this?”

“As long as it takes,” Paul said, taking
in the bright specks dotting the nighttime sky. The loss prevention agent’s
snarling face whisked through his mind. He blinked it away while pots and pans
clanged around inside the house behind them. Sophia scooted closer and took his
hand, content to just be in his company for now. It reminded him of home, where
they could watch a movie together on the couch or go for a bike ride around Gray’s
Lake without wearing guns and constantly looking over their shoulders. He could
tell she missed it too and he wanted to fix it. Wanted to drive them back to the
dream house with a peanut-shaped pool they just moved into and tell her it was
all just a bad dream, tell her it’s okay to go outside and water the plants
again, it’s okay to go to the mall and it’s okay to keep trying to have that
little one who will forever change their lives. He wanted to tell her this but
looked over his shoulder instead, thinking he just heard something.

Sophia exhaled a wistful sigh. “I still
can’t get over these stars.”

“I know.”

“You remember when we went camping?”

“You mean,
the
one
time we went
camping?”

She laughed. “Well, I didn’t think there
would be that many bugs.”

“You were so funny.”

“Well, those toilets weren’t funny.”

He smiled. “No, they weren’t.”

“I thought the stars were bright that night,
but
this
... This is breathtaking.”

“You’re breathtaking,” Paul said,
kissing her softly and breathing her in like smoke.

She squeezed his hand and pulled away to
find his big browns. “You say the sweetest things, Paul
Hessler
.”

He turned away, guilt springing from the
bushes and slashing at him with razor-sharp thoughts of Rebecca, who was, most
likely, too dead to feel anything right now. It seemed like another lifetime,
but hadn’t even been two weeks ago. He swallowed his own apprehension and
stared off into the night. This was a second chance and he was determined not to
screw it up. It wasn’t too late for them. It wasn’t! A shooting star scratched
the sky, leaving a glittering trail behind that faded back into the night.

She squeezed his hand. “Did you see
that?”

“Now we have to make a wish.”

Sophia met his eyes through the moonlit darkness.
“Yeah?”

He nodded and lightly traced the curves
in her face with his fingers, wishing he could go back in time and stop her
from going to that fucking seminar.

“What’d you wish for?” she whispered.

“It won’t come true if I tell you.”

“Oh come on, you can tell me anything.”

His heart broke. She deserved to know
about Rebecca, even in this mess they were in. He owed that much to her.
Swallowing dryly, he turned to face her, his gut wrenching. Her warm smile made
her eyes twinkle brighter than any of the stars above. He opened his mouth, the
words hanging on the tip of his tongue. She leaned up and kissed him again,
their lips meeting and parting in a slow moving waltz. Her tongue danced with
his, tasting of home. He drew back and stared into her eyes, voice dropping to
a shaky whisper. “I love you.”

“I love you more than anything in the
world and I don’t know what I’d ever do without you.”

He licked his lips, the moon peeking
over the house’s roof behind them, watching to see what he would do next. “When
you went to Minneapolis for that seminar…”

Her eyes thinned.
“Yeah?”

Paul shifted on the picnic table and
twisted the platinum wedding band on his finger.

Sophia lifted her brow.

“I…”

“Hey, do you guys know where the
Leatherman is?” Dan hollered out the back door. “I need the can opener!”

They stared at each other with smiles
inching into their cheeks.

“In the glove box,” Paul yelled back, not
taking his eyes from his wife.

“Gotcha, boss!”
Dan replied,
letting the screen door bang shut when he went back inside.

Paul shook his head. “Last people on the
entire planet and we still can’t get a minute of privacy.”

She rubbed the inside of his thigh.
“We’ll find a bedroom inside and barricade the door. I promise.”

His eyebrows went up and she grinned
back.

“Maybe set some traps.”

“For them or
me?”

“Both,” she said, kissing him again
before pulling away with a befuddled look on her face. “What were you saying
about Minneapolis?”

He cleared his throat and looked away.
“I-I was just going to say I hated being away from you that weekend.”

“
Aww
, that’s
so sweet.” Sophia rested her head on his shoulder and they shared a comfortable
moment he wished would last forever. But like everything else in this new
world, it would die too because nothing lasted forever. Not when they would
have to go back out there tomorrow morning because they needed more food or
water or gas or some bullshit he wished they didn’t need. No, now forever meant
a day, maybe two if they were lucky.

Chapter
Eighteen

DAY NINE

Paul steered the squad car off Highway
Nineteen into a small Texan town called Crockett. The setting sun made this as
good a spot as any to round up some prepackaged food and call it a night. With
the camping stove Dan found in the basement last night, they could heat up
soup, oatmeal, and coffee. As long as it was hot, they didn’t really care what
it was. Very little action crossed their path during the day’s monotonous trek
south. At one point, Dan tossed out the premise that perhaps the walking dead
were beginning to starve to death. As ironic as it sounded, who knew how long
those things could really last? That was the big question, wasn’t it? Who would
last longer?

Us or them?

Above the grocery store Paul pulled
into, stood a large rustic sign in the shape of a cowboy boot with the word
Beecher’s
running into the heel. After checking the backdoors – all metal and all locked
– he drove around front and turned off the car. They sat and listened, taking
in the handful of cars parked in the store’s barren lot. A white plastic bag
did lazy circles around a stray shopping cart, rising and falling with Paul’s
chest.

Sophia stared out the windows. “So this
is Texas?”

“Where the hell is everyone?” Dan whispered.

“Dead or hiding,” Paul replied dully,
making sure his guns were loaded and the safeties were off. He was getting tired
of the same questions day in and day out.
Where
is everyone? Why is this happening? Who’s responsible?
None of it mattered
now so who fucking cares. Paul wanted answers as well but just thinking about
it made his head hurt. He made a mental note to grab some aspirin for the
headache rotating behind his left eye.

Wendy slammed the chamber shut on her
gun. “Don’t forget to grab some toilet paper.”

They exited the Missouri State Patrol
vehicle and left their car doors open. New running shoes scraped against the
concrete in the quiet, pinching Paul’s nerves. Holding the shotgun at the low
and ready, his eyes canvassed the front while Dan and Wendy covered the rear.

“Hey, what’s the difference between an
Iowa zoo and a Texas zoo?”

The three glanced at Dan without
responding.

“In Iowa, the zoo has the name of the
animal on the cage,” he said. “In Texas, it has the name of the animal
and
the recipe.”

They hit him with blank stares and kept
walking.

He shrugged. “Get it?”

“Why do you even know a stupid joke like
that?” Wendy whispered, pointing her .38 at the ground.

“Long story.”
Dan stopped in
front of the store’s glass doors that no longer opened electronically.

“He dated a zoologist one time.”

Wendy looked at Paul, jaw dropping. “Are
you serious?”

“No,” Dan retorted. “He’s not.”

“Dan, I didn’t know you were such a
nature freak.”

Dan pumped his Browning with authority.
They turned away from the doors and shielded their faces as he unleashed a
thundering blast, exploding jewel-like fragments inside the marketplace. Paul
took a last look behind them before stepping through the doors, glass popping
under his shoes. The setting sun lit the place up through a westerly wall of
storefront windows, the stench overpowering. Covering their noses, reality
dropped back down like an anvil. It smelled like a morgue that lost electricity
weeks ago but nothing seemed out of place. The only thing to greet them when
they entered was a towering igloo constructed from dozens of white cases of
Diet 7-Up – only $3.99 each.

Paul’s throat clicked when he swallowed.
Anxious eyes swept the place from left to right and back again, adrenaline
pumping faster in the ghostly stillness dancing around them. The fact that no
one had broken into this place, or so it appeared, left a bad taste in his mouth.
If so many people were dead, why weren’t there more zombies stumbling around
like drunken sailors? Were they hiding too? And what was that fucking smell?

“Okay, I’m getting a really bad feeling
about this,” Sophia said, putting an arm over her nose. She dry-heaved a little
but didn’t puke.

“Probably just the spoiled food,” Paul
whispered, creeping forward.

Dan gripped the shotgun tighter and
followed.

Sophia yanked a bent metal cart from a
long stack while Paul kicked the igloo, knocking some cases of pop to the
floor. Several cans broke free of their cardboard constraints and rolled across
the smooth flooring. Some stopped in a small flower shop off to the side while
others hid under the rows of outdated carts. The silence returned, commanding their
attention. After a long moment, Paul nodded to the others and moved in. Sophia
pushed the cart with one hand, the pink gun in her other. One wheel spun
uselessly in the air as Wendy plucked items from the shelves and dropped them
into the cart. Paul and Dan covered them from behind, checking their six every
few seconds.

“Suddenly I’m not so hungry anymore,”
Wendy whispered to Sophia, wrinkling her nose as the stench worsened.

“Tell me about it. I already threw up
once today.”

Wendy furrowed her brow. “You did?
When?”

“Just before we left the house this
morning.” Sophia pulled a warm bottle of Gatorade from a shelf. “Think I ate
too much soup last night,” she said, cracking the seal and taking a long pull.

Bottled water, cans of soup, tuna, and
black beans eased into the cart with light plunks. Instant oatmeal, breakfast
bars, and cookies soon followed. Coffee packets, pickles, tortilla shells,
toilet paper, deodorant,
chap stick
and toothpaste joined
the loot. They skipped the moldy bakery and the coolers of rotten meats and
cheeses with their noses plugged and eyes watering.

Sophia plugged her nose.
“Must go faster.”

“Ooh, here we go,” Wendy said, snatching
the latest – and last – issue of
Us Weekly
with the most recent
Bachelor
on the cover. The man stood in
a silk suit, grinning all the way to the bank.

Paul leaned in between them. “This isn’t
a library, ladies.”

“I just want to grab a couple of books
real quick,” Sophia said, taking down a romance paperback.

Wendy leafed through the magazine’s
glossy pages.
“Won’t be much longer until this thing’s way outdated.”

Dan leaned his shotgun against a rack of
greeting cards and snatched a copy of
Guns
& Ammo
.
“Now
People
magazine is going to have
to have the Sexiest Man Not Alive award every year.”

Wendy and Sophia stopped flipping pages
and looked up.

He shrugged. “What?”

“Jeez Dan, you really know how to bring down
a party,” Paul said, pulling a thick copy of
The Stand
from a shelf.

Dan rolled his eyes and tossed the
magazine into the cart with the others.

It was breathtaking how the gravity of
their situation could suddenly come crashing down at the oddest times. It would
trip you up, punch you in the gut, and wake you from your hope, leaving you
drowning in a pool of swirling doubt. Paul’s eyes caught the cover of a women’s
magazine promising the latest spring fashion trends inside. Skimming the
taglines for budget getaways, the new
iPad
, workout
tips, and Easter meal ideas, he blew out a tired breath. There was nothing to
look forward to anymore. No more holidays, vacations, or family reunions. No
more celebrating a graduation or promotion with friends. Not even a relaxed
Friday night with dinner and drinks after a long week at work. Even if there
was something small to look forward to in this new reality – like a hot bowl of
soup or a cookie that hadn’t yet gone stale – gravity wouldn’t rest long enough
to let you look forward to anything for long.

Paul tossed the thick paperback into the
cart, smashing a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

“Hey!” Sophia said, setting the book off
to the side.

He squeezed past the girls. “Let’s keep
moving and get out of here.”

“I don’t know about you,” Wendy
whispered to Sophia, holding up a two page spread of the shirtless bachelor posing
on a white sandy beach. “But I wouldn’t care if this guy was dead or alive.”

“Oh my God, that is beautiful.”

“I can hear you,” Paul said over his
shoulder.

“I was talking about the ocean,” Sophia
replied, winking at Wendy.

Wendy ripped the centerfold out and
threw the magazine over her shoulder without looking. “Think I’ll hang onto
this, just in case.”

A blood-stained apron exploded around the
end cap, knocking Paul to the ground and sending the trooper’s shotgun sliding
across the floor. The dead and bloated butcher moved with surprising stealth
for a man who weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds, if not more. It
was like he was floating on thin air when he snatched Wendy’s long hair and
pulled. She screamed, dropping her gun and using both hands to claw at the meat
hooks locked into her tangled blond hair. Dan brought his Browning around and took
aim but hesitated, unable to get a clear shot. Sophia’s angle was just as bad
and Paul scrambled to his feet. The thing sneered at him, holding Wendy in
front of its festering body like a hostage. Paul sprinted over and planted a
foot into the butcher’s side. The thing stumbled back just enough for Dan to
pump a shell into him, violently jerking the corpse into a defunct cooler of
rotten eggs. The butcher took a handful of Wendy’s hair with him and she
screamed again.

The large man pushed free from the cooler
and slowly got to his feet, throwing Wendy’s hair to the side. Yokes mixed with
the blood coming out of his stomach and oozed to the floor in slow moving globs.
Paul drew his Beretta and stared down the sights, taking a moment to get a good
look at what they were up against. To say it was incredulous was an
understatement. Could a bad batch of flu-shots really have done this to so many
people? It was probably as likely as alien involvement and, at this point,
nothing was off the table. Looking at this poor bastard now – with his blood-stained
apron and peeling skin – anything was possible. He was clearly dead, but that
didn’t stop him from sneering. Paul’s index finger hugged the trigger, thin
eyes watching the man watch him back. It was like the butcher was daring him to
pull the trigger, defying Paul with his very existence.

The butcher growled, barring bloody
teeth nestled in blackened gums, and charged.

Paul inhaled a steadying breath, aiming
at the man’s pissed off face. “Fuck you, asshole.”

Sophia screamed like hell, delaying Paul
’s shot
. He pivoted around to see a tall pharmacist in a
shredded lab coat sink his teeth into Sophia’s shoulder. She threw her head
back and screamed again, firing two shots into the ceiling. That’s when things
went into slow motion. He yelled out her name and ran to her side, an invisible
rug slipping out beneath his feet. Inches turned into miles, seconds into
hours. He was nearly to Sophia’s rescue when the butcher tackled him into an
end cap of hot chocolate and mini-marshmallows. Paul crashed to the floor, bags
of marshmallows raining down on him as the butcher seized his ankle and pulled.
Paul stretched for the gun he’d dropped in the collision but it was just out of
reach. The heavyset man got to his knees and yanked, pulling Paul’s leg to his
mouth. Paul kicked him in the face with his free foot. The butcher gave him a
bloody grin and opened his mouth wider than humanely possible. But there was
nothing
human
about this. Dan blew
the thing’s head off with a round of buckshot, sending the butcher rolling sideways.
Sophia squirmed under the pharmacist’s death grip with a loud scream. Paul reached
his gun and took aim from his stomach, shooting the thin man in the leg from
the floor. The pharmacist stumbled and loosened his grip. Paul raised his aim
and fired, sending the tall man back flopping onto a table of cookies and
cupcakes, bringing the colorful display crashing to the floor.

“Come on!” Paul yelled, taking Sophia in
his arms and rushing her toward the front doors with her pink gun hanging
loosely in her hand.
“Back to the car!”

Wendy hesitated and then began pushing
the cart, trying to keep up with Paul and Sophia with Dan providing cover and one
wheel spinning uselessly in the air. A piece of pointy glass slit Paul’s forearm
as they dashed out the shattered front door. He didn’t notice and gently eased
Sophia into the back seat, blood soaking both of their new coats.

Dan popped the trunk and hurriedly
helped Wendy dump the cart’s contents inside.

“The
fuck are
you doing?” Paul screamed at them from the backseat.

Sophia pulled her hand from her
shoulder, eyes widening at all the blood.

“No, no, no!” Paul punched the cage with
his fist, instantly regretting his panic.