Dead World (Book 1): Dead Come Home (14 page)

Mike started to nod, but something made him freeze. Joseph slowly turned when he realized Mike was looking past him. A woman, obviously injured, staggered toward the EXIT door. She gasped and whimpered with fear and pain. Two more figures charged down the aisle and tackled her to the floor. She didn’t scream, but only let out a pleading grunt as she disappeared under her ravenous attackers.

“Wait here and watch the door. We’ll make too much noise trying to lug that cart around. I’m going for the hammers. We’ll make a beeline for the door when I get back,” Mike said.

Before Joseph could protest, Mike slipped away with feline stealth. Joseph crouched behind the cart and waited. He kept one eye over his shoulder to make sure nothing came up behind him. He hated himself for it, but he found his attention focused on the two that were feeding.

Maybe getting to a cop isn’t such a good idea. After all, where the hell are they? I might be better off staying with Mike. He might be completely psychotic … but maybe that’s not such a bad thing, given the situation.

A hand touched Joseph’s shoulder and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He immediately spun around, bringing up the butt of the bat. He stopped just short of jamming it into Mike’s face. The former Marine took firm hold of Joseph’s forearms.

“Whoa, easy, killer,” Mike whispered. “Decent reflexes, even if they were a little late. At least you didn’t scream. Come on, let’s go.” Joseph relaxed and Mike released him.

They scooted the cart up and Mike peered around the corner. The pair that was feeding seemed fairly preoccupied with devouring their kill. Mike wondered if they would pay them any mind at all.

Animals don’t attack a new prey if they are feeding on a kill. But these things aren’t necessarily animals, so I can’t exactly be sure whether that rule is going to apply here.

Mike looked at Joseph and gave him the universal “stay quiet” and “follow me” gestures.

“When the doors open,” Mike told Joseph. “You haul ass for the parking lot. If either of those two gets up, I’ll handle it. Just don’t stop moving.”

Before Joseph could say anything, Mike sprinted up to the automatic ENTRANCE door and drew his pistol. The doors slid open and one pricked up his head. Mike raised the pistol.

Joseph saw his chance and pushed the cart towards the door as fast as he could without losing balance.

Mike stared into the eyes of the feeding madman, keeping his pistol trained between his target’s eyes. The feeding monster did not attack, but only growled strangely as he continued to chew on his macabre meal. Joseph flew past Mike’s back and pushed the cart over the threshold with a
clack-clack
.

* * *

Joseph hit the parking lot without slowing down. The parking lot was horribly quiet. Mike soon joined him and they kept running, past the body of the man that attacked them earlier, straight toward the Blazer.

Mike had the keys out and pressed the unlock button. He stopped and opened the glass hatch of the rear door. Joseph quickly began throwing everything in the back. He soon kicked the empty cart out into the parking lot, sending it careening into someone’s abandoned car. Mike closed the glass and headed for the driver’s seat. Joseph ran around to the passenger side and jumped in.

Mike slammed the truck into gear and exited out a side driveway next to the outdoor lumber yard near the back of the building. He turned left through the small break in the median and headed toward the
Wal-Mart
that had recently opened behind
Sutherlands
, the one he hadn’t noticed on the way into town. Mike drove through the parking lot and coasted past the entrance.

“I’m not going in there,” Joseph said when he saw the large and, apparently, fresh smears of blood on the automatic sliding glass doors.

“Don’t blame you. If that blood means one of those things got in there, it’ll be a slaughterhouse inside. We’ll go somewhere else,” Mike said, driving through the parking lot back toward the road.

He stopped the truck in front of a bright yellow crotch-rocket. A full-faced helmet hung from the handlebars and another from the passenger foot peg. Mike slid out of his seat, walked around the front of the Blazer, and grabbed both helmets. He walked back around the front to the door, sat back in his seat, reached over his shoulder, and put the helmets on the back seat.

Joseph looked more closely at the bike and could see it had been dropped recently. He saw motion between two cars that sat one row over. The person was most likely the owner of the bike, as he was wearing a black, Kevlar-padded rider’s jacket with matching yellow trim. A second person stood up, blood smeared over most of her face and clotted in her hair. It was too far for Joseph to be certain, but he was pretty sure the woman had been shot or stabbed in the chest at some point. He wondered if they had been mugged earlier that day.

“Does that look like a stab wound there on her chest?”

“Could be. Most of the ones I have dealt with so far looked like they’d been mauled or maimed in some way,” Mike answered, easing the Blazer out onto Southwest Parkway. He drove as sensibly as possible as they approached an accident in the street, just before the upcoming intersection at Taft Boulevard. They were both surprised to see a uniformed Wichita Falls Police Officer directing traffic. Mike slowed down to ask for a detour route. He followed the traffic cop’s instructions to the letter.

Joseph didn’t volunteer to get out and stay with the police … and Mike didn’t ask him to.

“The one you dealt with … it had a wound, didn’t it?” Mike asked.

“Yeah. He had complained about a bite last night. Wait … How did you know I’d dealt with one already?” Joseph said, eyeing Mike.

“You said you didn’t have much of a chance to look at the body like you did in my Ma’s living room. Stood to reason you’d killed one,” Mike said almost gently. “Who was it?”

“A guy from work. Funny thing is, the more I see, the more I am starting to think it wasn’t really
him
, if you know what I mean.”

Mike drove them to the
Albertson’s
grocery store at the corner of Southwestern Parkway and Kemp. Once again, he parked more than halfway out in the parking lot, away from other cars.

“We need water and canned goods, basically anything loaded with preservatives and won’t spoil,” Mike said getting out.

“Right.”

They took two carts from the nearest cart return. Mike kept the gun and a hatchet tucked into his waistband, concealed beneath his un-tucked shirt. Joseph laid the
Louisville Slugger
in the shopping cart’s child seat. The pair entered the store calmly and, after seeing how calm the store appeared at this point, decided to split up.

It wasn’t until Mike had disappeared from sight that Joseph became aware of the heavy, copper smell in the air. He scanned the area and noticed blood had pooled in several places on the floor. Some of the lights were out as though one of the circuit breakers had tripped. He hated the fact that he could hear one or two of them feeding somewhere in the store. He hated it because there was the possibility that they would run into zombies and would have to fight for their lives. But he found that he didn’t mind the sound so much as he had at
Sutherlands
because, oddly enough, it somehow made him feel better about not paying for the stuff they were taking.

Joseph went straight to the canned goods aisle. He was startled to see an infected person standing in the middle of the aisle, drunkenly swaying to and fro. He wrapped his right hand around the smooth handle of the bat and braced himself. The thing noticed Joseph and immediately charged. He calmly waited, bracing the cart with his left leg, gripping the bat with both hands, until the mangled man lunged over the length of the cart. Joseph took a half step back and brought the bat arcing up under the thing’s chin. The blow was solid, if not fatal. It fell straight back. Before it had a chance to get up, Joseph stepped around the cart and brought the bat down on its face. After a few twitches, the corpse went limp.

Joseph returned the bat to the child seat. He maneuvered the cart as close as he could to the shelf and quickly began to transfer everything that was easily reachable into the cart. He set each item into the cart as quietly and speedily as he could. Every third can, he took a second to listen and scan both directions of the aisle. He worked his way quickly down the aisle, grabbing a little bit of everything. He didn’t even bother looking at the labels.

Another infected person, this one female, suddenly rounded the corner at the back end of the aisle and sprinted towards him. Jagged ribs protruded through her torn flesh and entrails hung out of her gaping side. Joseph cursed as he stepped around the cart to get the bat. The middle-aged woman slammed into him with the power of a NFL linebacker just as he reached it. Joseph jumped forward with the force of the impact. He landed sprawled out on his stomach and fumbled to retain his grip on the bat. The woman was already on all fours and scrambling toward him. He rolled onto his back with the bat over his head.

The woman latched onto his leg and dragged herself forward, mouth open. She bared her bloody teeth and reared back to chomp into his leg. Joseph didn’t scream, though he wanted to. He kicked the woman in the face with his free leg. At the same time, he sat up and swung the bat in an overhead arch. The bat crunched down on the back of the woman’s skull, bouncing her face off the floor with a heavy thud.

Joseph kicked at her hands, freeing his leg. He scooted back and got to his feet. The woman moaned and feebly tried to get back up. Joseph brought the bat across in a perfect golf stroke. He heard a strangely satisfying crunch, and the woman stopped moaning.

Keeping the bat in hand, Joseph now went back to “shopping.” When he reached the end of the aisle, he turned around and headed back to the checkouts at the front of the store. Mike was already there, waiting with a cartload of water and other bottled drinks.

“Run into trouble?” Mike asked, noticing the thick, glistening coat of blood on the black bat and the new spatter on Joseph’s clothes.

“A little. Let’s bag this stuff and get back to the truck,” Joseph said, checking over his shoulder.

“Keep watch,” Mike said, pulling Joseph’s cart toward the bag carousel. He started scooping cans out by the armload and dropping them into plastic bags. Joseph turned his back on Mike and put the red-tinged bat on his shoulder. He watched and waited, listening to the random moans of the things as they shuffled about the store floor.

Joseph heard a scream from somewhere in the back. He was sure there were more of those things in the store, and they were probably moving toward the screams. Something bumped into one of the registers farther down the line.

“Mike, buddy, please tell me you’re about done,” Joseph said as three blood soaked people staggered from the door of a side office. “Mike! Drop what you’re doing and grab your hatchet.”

Mike looked up and saw the three things about to charge.

“Screw the rest of this stuff. Let’s take what we’ve got and get back to the truck before these things trap us in here,” Mike said.

Joseph sidestepped past the first cart to where Mike was standing. He started pushing the cart loaded with water and bags of groceries. Mike pulled his gun out and back peddled out of the store with Joseph.

The three things tried to climb over one another and the abandoned cart.

“Joe, move,” Mike said, grabbing the hatchet with his left hand.

Joseph started at a near sprint toward the Blazer. He saw a trio of normal people walking toward the storefront. He slowed down a bit so Mike could catch up.

“Ya’ll don’t want to go in there,” Joseph yelled.

Mike backed into Joseph and kept pushing. Joseph took the hint and started hurrying toward the truck again. The people continued toward the door. Joseph could clearly see they weren’t armed.

Joseph looked over his shoulder in time to see the automatic doors slide open. The one that was coming out of the door looked like the whole front of his throat had been torn out. Blood stained the front of his shirt. He grabbed the young man closest to the door and bit his face.