Generation Dead - 07 (18 page)

“We got y
our
back,
”
Jake said, winking a Julia.

I grinned and went back to where I had first encountered my gruesome friend.  I took the corner wide this time, not looking for any errant behavior, I just wanted to get out of this crazy place.  I was starting to wonder if we were ever going to get out of this place.

One look down the hallway and I knew it wasn’t going to happen.  Not unless we decided to open up with our guns.  If there was one zombie down there, then there was at least thirty.  And the ones closest to me, which were about twenty feet away, slowly turned and started their inevitable shuffle in my direction.

I looked back at Jake and Julia. “Moving
on,
”
was
all I said.

Julia and Jake cleared the corner and then hurried to catch up.  We normally didn’t use our guns unless we absolutely had to, and then it was not something we did on a routine basis.  Ammo was plentiful for us, but we had been trained for so long in gun-less fighting that it didn’t make sense to start shooting now.  Besides, Jake and I weren’t
the
great
est
shots.  Dad used to kid us, telling us the safest place to be when we opened fire was to be near the target.  He had room to talk, being able to zap a zombie at fifty yards with a pistol, six hundred with a rifle.

We moved into Macy’s and immediately we we
re sweating.  There were dozens of
places for a zombie to hide, so many corners that I was nervous as hell.  I tried to s
teer wide of most of them
, but there were so many it was almost a wasted effort.  I took to holding my axe out in front of me, figuring that a zombie might grab it first, giving me some kind of warning before it attacked.  It didn’t help that it was really dark in the store, with glow coming from the back that caused freaky shadows.

Jake sidled up next to me. “Can’t say this is an improvement,
brother,
”
he
said as he peered over a cosmetics counter.  “What’s this stuff?”

Julia glanced over. “Mom said it was for looking pretty.  You want to look pretty?”

Jake shrugged.  “Thought
already
I did.”

I moved away, since there was nothing I could add to that conversation.  At the center of the
store,
there were some funny-looking stairs that led to a black hole.  I couldn’t see anything past the first fifteen stairs and it was all blackness.

I looked at Jake and he just shook his head.  “No goddamn way.
Uh, uh.”

Julia peered in and suddenly she sucked in her breath. 
“Oh God.”

I looked down and saw what had to be a hundred pair of glowing eyes staring up at us, several moving towards the stairs and a couple already on the way up.

Suddenly, I was mad.  I had been chased from one end of this mall to the other, with literally nothing to show for it.  Down in that pit was a mess I could do something about, and do it right now.

I pointed towards the door.  “Get over there and make sure nothing gets in my way.”

“What are you going to do?” Jake asked. “Come
on.
Let’s
all just get the hell out of here.”

“Aaron, what are you going to do?” Julia tugged at my arm.  “Let’s get out of here, come on!”

“Cover the
door,
” I said, drawing my swo
rd. “I’ll be there in
a minute. Trust me.”

“Aaron, you’re fucking nuts!  You can’t go down there!” Jake was nearly frantic as the first zombies were just a few steps away.”

“Move it!” I snarled at the two of them.  They both looked at me
as if
I was about to commit suicide, and I can’t blame them, considering what I must have looked like.

They ran to the door, and stood inside the foyer, keeping a barrier between themselves and any surprises that might be wandering around.  I could see Julia biting her lip as she does when she’s nervous. I would have winked if I thought she could see me, but it was too dark where I was. 

The first zombie reached the top of the stairs and I promptly kicked it in the chest, crashing it into the one behind it and causing a domino effect on the stairs.  In just a few seconds, I had managed to halt t
he progress on the stairs.  The
zombie
s
struggled to regain their footing
, and the ones pushing from behind didn’t help the ones trying to get to their feet on an uneven surface.  Many of the zombies fell down again, and some of them didn’t get back up.

I didn’t wait to see if they’d make it to the top again.  I knew there were other zombies in this place and causing a ruckus here would just at
tract them.  So I went over to a
rack that had a lot of strange pieces of clothing. 
Long strips of brightly colored cloth in various patterns and shapes.
  They tapered from one end to the other and had little points on either end. I could not imagine what the heck they were
for, but
it didn’t matter because they were perfect for what I had in mind. 

I took out my small bottle of kerosene and squirted a good amount over the fat ends of the strips.  Taking the small ends in my right hand while my left flicked as lighter, I made a blazing torch in a couple of seconds.  The store was lit up from one end to the other from the flames and a quick glance around showed me I wasn’t alone and would have company very soon.

I swung the strips wide and flung the flaming brands out over the black hole, and the orange flames illuminated the walls as they floated down.  The fifteen or so strips landed on the head and shoulders of several zombies, and I could see our original estimate was way off.  There had to be at least two hundred of the nasty things down there in the basement.

The flames caught the clothing and hair of the zombies they touched, and set off additional fires.  In a short while, there was a lot of fire coming out of the pit, and we were in serious danger of suffocating if we weren’t able to get out.

One zombie from the main floor came at me and I used my blade to hack off the heads of a couple
more
zombies that clearly needed a lesson in physics.  The meeting between flesh and sharpened steel always favored the steel.  I walked away from the burning pit, and I was happy to see that the walls were catching fire.  This place would be free of zombies if the whole thing went up.  As it was,
I would
be happy if that pit of gross was eliminated.

Another zombie was clawing at the glass that separated it from my brother and Julia, and a second was working its way around a perfume counter to join the fun.  I waited a second for the
perfumed
one to get
closer;
a female wearing what looked to be a very decayed fur coat.  Her hair was completely gone, but for some reason her lipstick was perfect.  Go figure.  I backhanded her with the sword in the neck and watched her bald head bounce away and into a rack of pants.  She managed to get a bite into the pants and swung there like a small dog hanging on a rope toy.

My activity caught the attention of the zombie at the glass, and it c
a
me at me faster than I thought it would.  It was a teenager, which meant it was going to be faster than your normal
zombie was
.  I didn’t have enough time to do anything other than bring my blade to bear and the stupid dead thing impaled itself on my sword. 

Stuck,
its
arms flung around in an attempt to grab me.  I used the sword like a throwing stick and flung the zombie away from
me.
It slammed into the glass, causing a crack near the floor.  The zombie got up, but this time I was ready, and in the mood to show off a little.

The kid came again and from the middle ready
position,
I thrust the blade forward and up, catching him in the chin and shoving the blade through his skull to where the point stuck out from the top of his head.  He was dead instantly, but as I
withdrew the blade, I swung quickly and managed to sever his head as he fell to the floor.

I wiped my blade off on his hoodie and stepped through the door, grateful for some air that wasn’t filling with smoke.  I coughed my hello to the two of them, and we all went out the door to the sunshine and fresh air.  I had to remember to burn off any residue on my blade, so I didn’t sheath it.

Julia looked at me like I was crazy, and Jake just stood there watching the smoke fill the store, while burning silhouettes stumbled around causing more fires.

“Aaron?” Jake asked.

“Yes?”

“Nice work.  That last kill was pretty cool.”

“Thanks.”

“Let’s get the heck out of here.”

I looked over at the horde of zombies that was hanging out by one of the entrances.  They were the reason we had run into the mall in the first place.  They had cut us off from out ride and we had nowhere else to go.

“Good plan.”  We ran over to the truck and hopped inside.  I secured my big blade in the rear.  I didn’t want to put it in
its
sheath because any virus on it could transfer to the sheath, and I would just
be
putting it on the sword every time I sheathed it.  God help me if I ever scratched myself or someone else and I thought that blade was clean.

We drove away from the mall, and we could see smoke rising from a hole in the roof.  Maybe the rest would go, who knew. 
However,
on the upside, we’d managed to kill quite a few zombies,
which always favored the living

In the truck, we we
re silent.  We hadn’t yet picked
up the object we had been hired for, and we’d already wasted a day.  Not a good start.  We’d spent the morning getting up to this point, and the noon hours running around a mall, evening was coming on and we were going to have to spend the night somewhere. 

“Remind me why we were near that mall?” I asked.  I had thought about it and couldn’t come up with a decent answer.

“Julia’s
idea,
” Jake said, stealing a glance at our silent partner.

“I’m sorry! I just wanted to get some new clothes!  Mine are getting faded, and we don’t live near enough to a big community to find something for me.”  Julia pouted and crossed her arms.

“No harm done.  We’re just another day out.  It’s not like we had any pressing matters at home.” I tried to play mediator, but I don’t think it was going well.

“Fine.
  I’ll just let my clothes fall off of me.  Happy?” Julia threw that out there as a challenge.

I didn’t expect myself to say anything, but I did. “I’d be happy.”

Julia started slightly and stared at me for a second before locking her eyes on the road ahead.  A slight pinkish color worked its way up her neck and settled on her cheeks.

Jake laughed.  “Good lord!  You’re going to get yourself killed,
Aaron
.  You must have learned your sense of humor from Uncle Duncan.”

I didn’t say anything, as that wasn’t such a bad compliment, all things considered.

Chapter 29

We pulled into the capital just as the sun was going down.  There was still a decent amount of activity, but a lot of people had been getting up at dawn and hitting the sack at dusk for so long it was a habit hard to break.  Dad always joked that it took a zombie apocalypse to get a full night’s sleep
finally
.

Jake and Julia delivered the collected items, this time it was a set of china and some strange glassware that I found out later was called Depression
glass
.  It didn’t make me feel any
different,
so I didn’t understand that at all.

We met up back at the truck and Jake was in kind of a foul mood.  I didn’t want to get into it with him, so I asked him what was wrong.

“Nothing.
 
Everything.
  I don’t know.”  Jake was in rare form tonight.

I turned to Julia and she answered for Jake. “Jake informed the man who paid us that it wasn’t a tough trip, and there wasn’t any activity in the area at all.  The man said he knew that, he just felt like having someone else go get his stuff for him. It was worth the money to
not
have to go, he
said,
” Julia explained.

That made Jake’s mood clearer.  I knew he was looking for something, anything else, and this would contribute to the feeling.  I didn’t know what else to tell him.

“I’m sorry,
Jake,
” I said.

That seemed to have an effect. “Not your fault, Aaron.  It’s just a sign of the times.  Maybe this
was
the signal we
needed
to get out of this collection business and get into something more permanent.  Something that actually makes a contribution to the
country,
”  Jake
said, looking out over the river.