Dark Recollections (31 page)

Not gonna lie. Did not have a plan. I remember being all pissed off and getting angry and shit, but after a minute or so of sulking like a bitch I got myself together. I had already burned through too much fucking ammo in my opinion, but that just meant I was pot committed. I couldn’t fold without seeing the river and the river was inside the store.

I needed to kill everything inside without going inside. I was at a busted window, and had clear lines of sight to about ten of the zombies, so I decided to treat it like a firing range. I checked the parking lot for any zombies that might’ve wandered in behind me, saw it was clear, and started popping off the dead folk in the store. The expression fish in a barrel is pretty appropriate here.

I saw about ten, but shot nearly forty. After I went through all my magazines for the .22 there was still a few clambering to get though the window at me, and I stood there reloading as they slashed their own arms to ribbons reaching over the smashed glass in the frame at me. They left wretched streaks of dark blood and bits of muscle, skin, and ligaments all over the building. Watching them mutilate themselves with no regard for their bodies still creeps me out. They are so single minded and driven toward murder. The smell coming from the inside was stomach turning. After I reloaded the rifle I finished them off at ten paces like a gentleman.

I waited a solid five minutes before I attempted to get the barricades open. No go there. I peeked around inside the windows and saw they had the makeshift doors padlocked and chained shut, and I would either have to blast the fuck out of the door with the shotgun, or go through the window. I chose the window. Right nearby was the damn blanket that someone had thrown on the body from the accident on “that day.” Remember Mr. Journal? The moving blanket? I grabbed that, smashed the glass in the frame out, and threw the blanket over the frame. I climbed up and through, and switched to the shotgun.

Initially, I wanted to blow chunks. It was a motherfucking bloodbath. Blood was thick as pudding on the floor for Christ’s sake. There were dozens of dead by now, and some were still oozing stuff, and others clearly had oozed all their stuff at a prior date, likely just earlier that day, or perhaps a day or two ago at most. Last stand kinda bullshit. The grocery store Alamo.

I slowly made my way over to the produce section and walked down the front of the store, checking each aisle for anything moving. It wasn’t until I got to almost the very other end of the store that I saw something fucked up. Way in the rear of the shop I could see the door to the stockroom. Surrounding the door, scratching, clawing, pressing, was a small mob of zombies. Three deep at least.
 

Of course you know what that means by now. Something worth eating was on the other side of the door. Something living. I had enough shots between the shotgun and Sig to kill all the zombies gathered at the door. At this point though, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that. From my cursory examination of the aisles I knew there was plenty of stuff worth taking already without adding any additional danger to this trip. Of course my thoughts led me think I’d tip these zombies off to my presence if I tried to be sneaky, plus I just couldn’t leave these people, whoever they were, behind the door like that.
 

I crept down the aisle that was a straight line to them, and started shooting once I got to about 20 feet. Head level shotgun blasts are flat out terrifying. The spread of the pellets combined with the proximity makes for just a massive amount of damage. With just the shotgun I was able to drop all the zombies before I had to start backpedaling. Once they were all down, I drew the sword and finished the two or three that didn’t die. To be honest, I was sort of in a panic wondering what was on the other side of the door anyway, and I wanted these fucking things dead before I had to deal with that.

I think I’m psychic. No sooner than I’d yanked the blade out of the ear of the last zombie the swinging doors flung open, and a huge prick jumped out with a double barrel shotgun leveled at me. He was about five and a half feet tall, nearly as round as he was tall, and was wearing dirty bloody slacks and a button down shirt that was still buttoned and tucked in. It was spattered with blood, but it was still tucked in. His round belly hung over his belt sort of comically.

I also recognized him as one of the managers of the store. He looked scared out of his fucking mind. He instantly started laying into me with threats at 140 decibels.
 

“Move and I’ll fucking blow you away you motherfucking prick!” I think was the first thing he said. In response I just stayed frozen holding the sword. I think I even shrugged a little at him. Didn’t defuse the situation, pretty much made it worse. He took two or three steps at me, stumbled a bit over one of the zombie bodies I’d just stabbed in the head, and started going down. When he impacted the floor, half on a zombie, both barrels of the scattergun let loose, and he shredded a zombie torso into bits.
 

Double barrel shotgun. Ruh roh asshole. You’re outta bullets.

So I forget exactly, but I think I kicked him in the face three, or maybe four times. Not super hard, just really hard. Hard enough that he knew I was pissed at him, and he knew I could kill him, but not so hard that it did kill him, or knock him out. I put the sword away and grabbed his ass hard. I pinned him up to the wall in a sitting position and got right down in his face.

“What the fuck is your problem you asshat?” Was the first thing I said to him. At that point he pissed himself, and started talking incessantly through his busted lip and fucked up teeth. Turned out I probably kicked him too hard in the face. He could lose weight, but his face would be fucked up forever.

To paraphrase his conversation, he essentially said he had “hired” local people to protect the store. During the worst of the end of “that day” people started coming in and just stealing shit. He offered free food, water, and money to anyone that’d help him keep the store safe. About twenty folks joined in over the course of the day. They kicked everyone out, fortified the place with the barricades, and had a pretty good thing going. Late last night though, another group of locals came to get food, and a gunfight ensued.

Best I could piece together from Chubby McSmashface was that there were heavy losses on both sides. Most of the people died in fact. The zombies inside here were the people that holed up with him, and the dead outside were likely the majority of those that died in the assault. Once the first batches inside started going down… well, you can probably figure out what happened then. Dead bodies make zombies, and zombies bite people…

He and the single other survivor made it into the back room. He stayed at the door, making sure they didn’t get in, and his remaining Alamo buddy went to the roof to make sure they weren’t assaulted again. I’m guessing that was the shooter who tried to kill me on the roof. Shitty news was that the shooter had taken all their spare guns and ammo up to the roof, and that the ladder to access it was pulled up. Couldn’t get there from here.

I’d heard enough by that point. I understood his situation, even sort of agreed with his plan and whatnot, I just couldn’t give a fuck. He just leveled a shotgun at me, and to be honest, I fucking KNEW he was going to try and kill me if he hadn’t tripped. Thank God he was a nincompoop. Yeah that’s old school Mr. Journal. Trying to bring it back. Nincompoop. Try it out it’s fun.

I pulled his ass to his feet, picked up his shotgun, and flung it over my shoulder towards the front of the store, and told him to get his fat ass marching. If I so much as saw him again, he’d get all 12 gauges to the goddamn face. I can still remember his lip quivering when he took off running. I waited a few minutes until I heard him grunting to get out the window, making his final escape.
 

After that I checked the backroom. By then it was mostly empty. Usually grocery inventory was stored there, but it was long since gone.
 
I’m guessing they just restocked over the course of “that day” and by that point they had what they had on the shelves. Once I knew it was safe, I went shopping.

There was enough food in the store to fill three carts. Most of it was total shit, but I couldn’t afford to leave anything behind. Cans of generic beans, box after box of frigging Jello, luckily there was a few jars of peanut butter left, and there was a surprising amount of the organic aisle stuff there too. I guess even with the apocalypse occurring people still weren’t interested in eating healthy. Fuck em.
 
I’ll eat the shit.

I realized with a sort of dim anger that the prick I’d just let go probably had a key to the padlocks holding the doors shut. Whatever. From the inside it was easier to hit the hinges on the doors, which I did with the shotgun. Literally blew the doors off the hinges Mr. Journal. Funny stuff I assure you.

One cart at a time I sprinted across the parking lot and loaded it into my car. First cart was no sweat, second cart was no sweat, and just as I loaded the third cart into my car, things started getting sticky. Mr. Asshat manager was coming back. He was running right down the middle of Main Street, full tilt, with at least 20 more zombies following him. He didn’t make it though. He gassed out and collapsed right on the solid yellow line and had every single last one of those undead fall on top of him. His screams were long, and shrill. Hearing him die was not as satisfying as I imagined it would be. It’s not cool to go that way.

I got my car loaded as fast as I could, but they killed him and ate what they were going to eat very fast. It was about then that I realized that they don’t sit and eat for long. Once whatever they’re after is dead, they seem to lose interest. Eating is almost like a secondary thing for them, it’s just an effective weapon I think.
 
I don’t know exactly. Not sure about much anymore really.

I got in the Camry and started it. I backed out as fast as I could, but I backed up a wee bit too much. The ass end of the car plowed into the first handful of zombies that were coming my way, and the car backed up, and onto the bodies. Here’s my ground clearance story.

Bodies underneath cars with low ground clearance, mean the vehicle’s wheels make little to no contact with the ground. Wheels that aren’t on the ground cannot make a car go forward, or backward. I was stuck, parked on top of five or six zombies, with at least a dozen more right on their heels. So to do a quick callback to the pros and cons of ground clearance on vehicles in the post zombie apocalypse car market…. I highly suggest investing in cars with enough room underneath to drive over a dead body. End of callback.

I ran like a bitch. I ran like a sissy boy in a prison shower. I ran like the wind. I ran like Secretariat. I ran my ass right back into the grocery store. Now these motherfuckers can’t run, which is one of the biggest saving graces. They have two speeds: slow, and stop. Sprinting back to the store gave me the time to gather my wits, make sure my guns were loaded, and start to shoot.

Now like the moron I am, I left the shotgun, and the .22 in the front seat of my car. All I had was the Sig, and the two spare clips. I count my blessings here because inside earlier I managed to drop all those zombies at the back door without having to use the pistol. How fucking clutch was that huh? You know my being alive at this point is by the slimmest of margins, and largest piles of shit-ass luck.

Sometimes Mr. Journal… a little luck is all you need.

I opened fire once I got my wind back. It took me every fucking bullet I had to drop the remaining 15 or so zombies. In fact, when I started to run low, I switched to shooting at their knees to ensure I’d hit them and drop them. Their legs move less than their heads when they’re walking, and I figured I’d just kill them with the sword anyway. Which is just what I did. Empty gun sitting in my holster, I waded carefully into the pile of half-dead undead, and did what I had to do. Fuck my life right?

I started back across the parking lot when I heard this super ugly thump/crunch from behind me. I spun around and saw a twitching body right at the front of the store. I was totally like what the fuck? Then I realized it was the shooter from the roof. I had shot him, he had died up there, and in his IQ impaired zombie state, he walked off the edge of the roof trying to get at me. It must’ve been a good 40 foot drop, and he was pretty well dead for good when he hit. I got a good chuckle out of that. It also forced me to look in that direction, and that’s when I saw the rifle he dropped earlier.

I jogged over, saw it was busted to shit, and got pissed. However, in some freakishly bizarre twist of coolness, the scope on the rifle was pristine. Whatever, right? My .22 needed a scope, so I took the rifle, emptied the shooter’s pockets of ammo (.30-06 if you’re curious, which was cool because later on I got a good rifle in that caliber) and got back to the car.
 

All of the zombies underneath it were either pinned, or dead for good. I did need a different car though. I had to search pockets and parked cars for more than an hour until I found keys and the corresponding car. Totally hit a homerun though. Ford FOCUS! BOO YA!

World ends, free cars everywhere, and the best thing I can get is a Ford Focus? Really God? Really? All I’m saying is that something a little nicer would be pretty sweet, right? I shouldn’t bitch. With all the luck I’ve had so far I have zero fucking ground to stand on.

I had to push the cars out of the way in the lot to get the Focus into the road, but I did, and got the groceries moved about. I waved longingly and lovingly to the car that had served me so well, and I came back here.

What a shitty ass trip Mr. Journal. Shrug. I did get a lot of food. Even if it was just Spam, Beans and Jello. Of course it took two or three weeks for my split open chin to knit shut. Butterfly bandages and gauze and all that jazz. Still have a pink ugly scar along my jaw line from it.

Ta-ta for now big guy.

-Adrian

November 29
^th