Swarm (Dead Ends) (22 page)

I found a few large sealable camp containers and filled them with anything that seemed useful. I filled a few coolers with ice and stuffed as much live bait as I could into them. I found several collapsible children’s fishing poles that looked as if they’d been there for decades, probably because they had. Every last carton and individual pack of cigarettes got its own bin. I wasn’t a smoker which meant that these things were worth ten times their weight in gold. People will do just about anything for a smoke. Nicotine, along with pain meds, would be as close as I could get to actual currency given the state of things. I pulled out the car keys attached to the peace sign key chain and looked them over. I needed to make sure that the patchouli-soaked Mystery Wagon sitting outside was actually going to be able to hold up for the hundred or so miles left to get to Ocean Shores. But I didn’t really want open the iron screen door, given the noise that had rattled the store in the past 20 minutes. There is no doubt that more of those things are out there. There’s no way they didn’t hear the slaughter. The problem was that Red’s store had horrible sight lines and windows almost completely covered with beer and cigarette advertisements from the Reagan Era. So much so that once the power went out, it felt like nighttime in the store. Pulling down the posters wouldn’t really help. The windows don’t look like they’ve ever been cleaned and the only sight lines they afforded were straight out onto the road. I couldn’t see the parking lot or the woods behind it at all.

I eventually found an old roof access panel that led to the top of the small store and afforded me great sight lines of the whole area. The parking lot looked clear and the road and everything else was abandoned. It was nice and quiet. Just the way I liked it. A rusty old ladder rested at the edge of the roof, looking like it hadn’t been moved in years. I picked it up, tested its integrity and after I was satisfied that it wouldn’t collapse on me like some Third World apartment building, I slid it down the side of the building. I thought it would be useful to have an alternate method of escape if one of the dead managed to sneak up on me while I’m loading the van as well as serve as a quick getaway for anyone else who might find themselves in this area, running for their lives. In my slight alcoholic bewilderment, I almost went down the ladder without thinking about the fact that the door to the store was still locked and if this rust-encrusted ladder shit out on me, I was screwed. I went back inside and loaded the camp containers onto a dolly that rested in the back room and unlocked the bolted iron screen door, carefully opening it and peering outside before wheeling everything out as swiftly and quietly as I could manage.

I unlocked the back doors to the van to reveal almost exactly what I had pictured in my mind when I’d first seen this eyesore. Purple shag carpeting, an explosion of tie-dye, the smell of granola and hemp oil barely covering the undertones of hash and homemade candles. I loaded the containers into the back and walked through to the driver’s seat, trying my hardest not to touch any of the floor to ceiling carpeting. I didn’t know how long the former owners had been camping so I figured I’d better start the thing up and let it warm up before I wanted to take off. I turned the key and it begrudgingly lurched to life, surprisingly not half as loud as I was expecting. I looked at the gas gauge and saw something I should’ve expected though. The tank was nearly empty. And with the power out, there was no way to fill it up. I turned the engine off and threw the keys into the windshield, resting my head and arms on the steering wheel.
Fuckin’ hippies
. I composed myself and glanced towards the only other car in the parking lot. A Prius hybrid which also required electricity to run. I thought about it for a second though and wondered if the kind of people who have these cars may be the kind of people who also stupidly put a spare key in a magnetized container and attach it the underside of their wheel well. My face lit up at the possibility. There’s no way the tank on that thing would be empty, especially not up here where there was nowhere to charge it. If I could manage to get in that thing, I’d get to the coast no problem. When I thought about it, it was actually the perfect car for a zombie apocalypse. At least until its battery ran out. It’s quiet, for one. I could probably drive right by a pack of those things without them being the wiser. And I remember test driving one out of curiosity back when they first became popular. I was surprised at how much torque they had. Those things could jump off the line like a Corvette, perfect for a quick getaway. Sure it couldn’t hold much in the way of supplies but it seemed like a small price to pay if I could get some miles out of it and maybe even sleep in it if I had to.

The large chrome door handle of the van fought me as I tried to open it. Just as I heard the click, I saw a man slinking out of the woods. It definitely wasn’t a zombie. He had dark brown skin, thick glasses, and the kind of attire that only tech workers think is appropriate for the great outdoors. The outfit alone probably cost him close to a thousand dollars. I assumed he was some tech millionaire from Amazon or Microsoft getting out of the office for the first time in years and “roughing it” with $200 boots and enough Gore-Tex to choke a river full of salmon. He looked around, hyper alert as his chubby little legs carried him closer to his car. I could’ve sworn he looked right at me but maybe it was more like right through me. When he was within about 30 feet from the car, he stupidly unlocked the doors with the key fob. An annoying beeping sound radiated from the Prius, announcing that it was unlocked and most likely turned on. I cringed as the sound resonated. A second later, one of those nightmarish hunters came barreling out of the trees, snarling and running at top speed. I wanted to get out and help but I just sat there, paralyzed by fear but intrigued in that train-wreck sort of way, to see how this would play out. Sick I know, but given the fact that I had left the guns in the store, I didn’t really feel like I had a play to make that wouldn’t fuck it up for both of us.

Panic set in almost immediately as the chubby man looked back at the monster steaming towards him. Doing his best impersonation of the first moron to die in every horror movie ever, he tripped over nothing in particular and thudded to the ground, his keys flying several feet in front of him, the pack on his back shifting to one side making it harder for him to get up. And still I did nothing, aside from carefully click the door shut and lock it, at the same time silently reassuring myself that I’m not the hero. Watching a chubby out of shape computer nerd who spends his life in a chair attempt to maneuver his own body weight back into an upright position is nothing if not comical. By the time he got his inertia under control, it was already too late. The hunter ripped out his throat before he even hit the ground. It was fascinating to watch this from afar. Seeing a human, or something like it, eat another human being with the same ferocity and hunger of a lion eating a freshly killed zebra.
Did they get full?
I wondered. If nothing else I could use this as a learning opportunity. I adjusted myself slightly in the captain’s style seat, looking away for only a second before looking back to see the hunter now sniffing the air, most likely detecting my presence. It continued searching the air, looking around until it spotted the van. Before I could react it was sprinting towards me. I didn’t know what to do so I did nothing. I just sat there, still as ever, hoping he would go back to his kill. But these things seem to be driven by mass destruction, by some ancient virus-borne Imperialism that tells them to leave no one unharmed. Either that or they just have really short attention spans. Something I can certainly relate to.

It hissed and drooled at the window, becoming angrier as its display of horror seemed to have no effect on the food source behind the glass. I hadn’t planned on continuing to be a human statue but it was too late to abandon the plan now. I was in too deep. And it almost seemed like it was working. Its agitation subsided and it lost interest, readying itself to go back, I thought, to the meal it had already created for itself. Instead it walked the length of the van. I watched it in the huge side mirror as it followed a scent trail, realizing too late that it was smelling me from the wide open goddamn back doors to the van that had completely slipped my mind. I glanced towards the ladder on the side of the store, trying to gauge the distance. Could I make it before that speedy little ankle-biter got to me? I wasn’t so sure. And the hunters seem smarter than the others anyway so even if I did make it, there’s a good chance they’ve refigured out by now what a ladder is and how to use it. I don’t think I’ll get that lucky twice. I only had one plan left. I looked intently in the rear view mirror, waiting for it to reach the open door, to realize just how close it was to sinking its teeth into me.

The suspension tilted slightly as it stepped up into the back. I fought every urge to open the door and run too quickly. I needed him to be further in for this to work. Once he was about halfway in, I gripped tightly onto the door handle and pulled it slightly until it was just about to unlock. Then I turned my head back, shocked for a second as I was reminded of the pain in my neck, and said “Boo!” which sent the hunter flailing towards me, his head banging onto the carpeted roof of the van as the excitement of another kill beckoned. That gave me just enough time to open the door, lock it and shut it hard. Then I raced to the back as it attempted to fight through the door to get to me. I managed to slide one of the camp containers out of the back before the thud of it hitting the ground alerted the hunter to my presence. I shut the doors tight as it thudded into the back of them, scratching and thrashing around. Quickly, I ran back to the store glancing at the man writhing on the ground, grasping at a wound that would never heal, fighting the last throes of inevitable death.

Inside the relative safety of the store, I went back and grabbed Red’s shotgun from his corpse. There was only a mild amount of blood on it, which I wiped off with a wad of paper towels. I loaded a shell into each chamber and made my way back out to the van. The chubby man grasped at his throat as he looked at me, his eyes burning with confusion and fear. As I approached he seemed to be pleading with me, maybe to patch the hole in his throat, maybe to tell him this is all just a bad dream. I tried to avoid making eye contact. That just made it harder to do what I had to do. I stopped about a half of a foot short of him as he reached into his back pocket. He pulled out his wallet with one hand, grasping at my boots with the other. The lucidity of imminent death seemed to overtake him and I wasted no time in choosing that moment to end his suffering and to avoid him turning into a chubby little hunter zombie that some poor sap wouldn’t take seriously until it was too late. The wallet fell to the ground, opening to reveal a picture of a family, of this man’s family. A beautiful wife and two daughters that would never see him again. I looked through the contents of his personal life. His name was David Singh and he was in fact a Microsoft employee and in a darkly ironic twist, an organ donor. Something made me put the wallet in my pocket, some sense of respect or closure maybe. I wasn’t quite sure. Maybe it was just the fact that there seemed to be a few thousand dollars in $100 bills pressed into the fold. It would probably be worthless but old habits die hard I guess. Even if it was just Monopoly money now, it still held weight, it still
meant
something.

I followed the path back to where he was first attacked and found his keys. I threw them in the center console of the Prius once I realized the car was already on. The readout said it had well over 300 miles left on the current charge. I looked towards the van and realized the hunter trapped inside was no longer making any noise. It was too quiet. And not the good kind. More like
calm before the storm
quiet. I jerked my head around in all directions, looking for any movement, praying that I saw none. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. I readied the shotgun just in case as I pulled myself out of the car, my long legs struggling to get out from behind the wheel. For the first time, I missed my old Mercury. It left a lot to be desired but it had great head and foot room and the bench style seats were beyond comfortable. I tiptoed around the perimeter of the van, making sure none of the doors had come open but I saw nothing. With a super-sized bit of hesitation, I stepped up onto the runner below the passenger side and peered in. The hunter was writhing on the floor, taking turns thrashing at the seats and grasping at his head and stomach. At least five jokes about the dangers of Indian food seemed to stream into my mind all at once. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. Maybe they did actually get full, who knows. Maybe when I opened the doors at some point, the inside of the van would be filled with zombie shit, sprayed all over the walls like some puppy expressing its unhappiness about being left in the car alone.

Whatever it was that was happening, I knew this was my only chance to kill him without some horrible form of collateral damage delaying my trip to the ocean any further. God, I could smell it now. My lungs yearned for the salty air. It’s all I could think about. It was the only concrete thing in my mind. The lone beacon of hope for something better, some miniscule scrap of normalcy. I didn’t dare open one of the front doors. It may have a little indigestion but the speed of the hunters I’ve seen so far is just so complete and animalistic. They don’t think. They just pursue. Also, I didn’t want to have to clean blood off of the containers that were still in the back. Laziness is a hard habit to break. I hopped off and went towards the back doors. I readied my unwilling hand on the handle, propping the shotgun on my leg with the other hand. I counted down from three at least 5 times before I had the balls to actually turn the handle. When I did, the thing only looked at me. My brain couldn’t process this odd display of docility so I raised the shotgun and fired. Cuts of meat studded with bone and brain coated the windshield, a Pollock masterpiece in a darker world. I lowered the gun, my eyes taking a few seconds to snap back into the present. The shock of what I had seen just before I pulled the trigger hit home. Did he plead for his life? Was he in the process of asking for help when the proper amount of pressure was applied to the trigger? I wasn’t sure now if I had imagined it. I wanted to press the rewind button but it felt as if I was processing a dream that succeeded in convincing me it was real. I didn’t know which one I believed so I decided that believing the one that wouldn’t make me go insane with guilt or confusion was the right course of action.