Corn, Cows, and the Apocalypse (Part 1) (2 page)

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Clean Up in Aisle Five
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I couldn’t help but smile as we rounded the final leg of our journey into my hometown.  The sign at the city limits had long since been vandalized, but the remaining motto still held at the bottom: power and progress.  It was an excruciating reminder of how little power mattered, and how useless our progress had been.   

             
With a town of just shy of 20,000 glimmer grim, we couldn’t actually live in the city limits.  Not all the bodies were animated, but you never knew where an attack would come from, so it was just best to avoid the most populated areas.  However, we still needed supplies and we had picked clean the surrounding small town grocery stores. 

             
So into my home sweet home we went, to pick up our stock for the week.  That’s where I came in.  I was the third sidekick, Lenore Evans.  (My dad had a thing for Edgar Allen Poe.  If I would have been born with jet-black hair, I’m pretty sure I would have been named Raven.)  Aside from guarding horses, the job of the third sidekick is essentially to gather supplies, cook, clean, and when necessary be bait. 

             
Devin pulled the truck into the grocery store parking lot and let the engine run while he hopped out of the cab with a cluster of fabric grocery bags looped over his arm.  (Yes, we were still green in the new world.)  He came to the back of the truck bed and put down the tailgate.  I came to the edge and he raised his hands for me as if I was a child too small to jump down.  The truck had a high clearance, but nothing I couldn’t handle.  His insistence on helping all of us down however, was not about necessity.  It was his modernized version of chivalry. 

             
I crouched down and put my hands on his shoulders.  He grabbed me around my waist, lifted me off the truck, and set me on the concrete.  “Hmm, you’ve lost weight.”  He winked at me. 

             
I probably hadn’t lost any weight, but it’s what every girl wants to hear after a big strong man puts his hands around her.  “I stopped eating just for you, Devin.”  I teased.

             
“Not too much though.  I like to have something to grab.”  He teased right back.   

             
I bit my lip trying not to smile as big as my mouth wanted to.  “Where’s the list?”  I changed the subject so my cheeks wouldn’t redden.  I had a mad crush on Devin, but I was way too shy to act on it. 

             
He wasn’t the type of guy that pursued women.  He was too pretty to ever have to lift a finger to get what he wanted.  August had always told me that he was not the exclusive property of anyone, and I should make my intentions known, but I was still stuck in the old world tradition of one man, one woman.

             
Our under populated world had left male-female relationships open to expansive definitions.  Justifiably for reasons of comfort, reciprocity, and sanity, Devin freely offered himself to any woman willing knock on his door.  It was the knocking on the door part I hadn’t quite worked up the nerve for.

             
Devin pulled a paper list out of his back pocket and handed it to me.  I gave it a quick once over before I stuck it in my front jean pocket and took the bags from him. 

             
“Why don’t you pick me up some lube while you’re in there?”  He requested.

             
“What kind?”  I asked before I fully understood what he was asking for.

             
“Whatever kind makes you wet, baby?”  He grinned and hopped up on the tailgate. 

             
I just shook my head and walked off.  There was no point getting hot and bothered now.  Not when I had work to do. 

             
I was the poster child for sidekicks if I do say so myself.  Sure, I was a glorified personal assistant/housekeeper, but I was damn good at it.  I knew what brand of potato chips to avoid because they gave Haden the shits.  I knew that August loved Fig Newtons, but only the name brand version.  I even knew that Devin preferred the super thick and soft toilet paper. 

             
Knowing about his toilet paper preference did take the edge off the massive crush I had on him, but only enough to keep me from embarrassing myself when he gave me attention.  I may have barely qualified for the description
sexually active
before the apocalypse, but I wasn’t stupid.  I knew I wasn’t the type of girl who could sleep around without tipping the scales of like and love.  I’d like to say that it was because I was a romantic, but I think it was because of my profound neediness. 

             
I raced through the aisles, shopping with the proficiency that was generally required when we stopped anywhere in town.  With thousands of potentially animated grim, I didn’t have the luxury of reading nutritional labels. 

             
I picked out the right number of canned vegetables to last us a week, and the right number of canned fruits to keep us from eating every last fig newton before the end of the day.  Canned tuna and salmon were our meat staples, along with the occasional can of SPAM, which as it turns out, was a refreshing change to fish. 

             
I spent of good deal of time experimenting with canned potatoes, and found that I could conjure a meal that was reminiscent of a steak dinner.  With the additions of canned soup, jarred sauces and pasta, crackers, nuts, and dried fruit, I had enough to keep us appeased for another week. 

             
As I dared to cross by the putrid butcher section with my cart full of food, something caught my eye.  Bearing in mind that corpses were randomly splayed around the store, I wasn’t disturbed by the many inactive bodies that I had passed up to that point.  However, three bodies,
standing
behind the meat counter
was
very disturbing. 

             
I did a double take as I passed and picked up speed with my cart.  Three heads turned and watched me run through the back of the store. 

             
Really disturbing
. 

             
“Shit, shit, shit, shit.”  I rambled as the cart skidded around the corner of an aisle with me behind it.  I picked up speed toward the front doors.  Before I reached the end of the aisle a glimmer grim stepped out to block my path.  “Shit.”  I slid behind the cart, letting my body weight slow down its momentum.  I looked back and the original three entered the aisle behind me.  I was trapped.  “Shit.”  I couldn’t think of any way around them, aside from climbing the shelves, which I expected would result in me falling down in an avalanche of creamed corn. 

             
I moved forward hoping I could at least defend myself against the singular grim.  August had been desperately trying to teach me self-defense, but I was so bad at it.  Aside from being uncomfortable with physical confrontation, I was apparently the weakest female ever.  I was average height, average build, which was a nice way of saying I was kind of short, and kind of scrawny.  

             
I picked up one of my pre-packed grocery bags and gripped it by the handles in one hand as I pushed my cart with the other.  The grim at the end of the aisle limped toward me.  I was relieved that he was a new possession.  It took demons a couple weeks to get the hang of running the bodies.  You could always tell the bodies that had been possessed for several weeks or even months.  They had no trouble walking, running, and God help us, talking.  They usually didn’t speak an understandable language when they did, but it was still unpleasant and so wrong to hear. 

             
The grim darted at me and I mustered the very smallest amount of courage and screamed out a ridiculous war cry as I swung my canned vegetables at the creatures head.  The grim fell over with a dry dent in his skull. 

             
I turned, prepared to celebrate my triumphant blow, but one of the other grim tackled me.  I shrieked and fell back against the speckled white floor tiles.  My head hit and I saw stars that matched the glittery skin of the man that was growling on top of me. 

             
His hands reached to my throat and he started to strangle me.  He leaned his face close to mine and opened his mouth.  I had never been so close to a grim, so I didn’t know if he planned to eat me, molest me, or just kill me. 

             
Either way, I was scared shitless, and it takes none of my pride to admit that I screamed like a little girl.  The creature withdrew, somehow offended by my noise.  It only lasted a second though, and he was back in motion to bite, kiss, or whatever me. 

             
Before I found out what its intent was, a bat crashed into his skull chipping pieces of crystalized tissue and bone away.  The remaining face hissed at my heroine.  August introduced it to her other weapon of choice. 

             
With a quick choreographed swipe, August’s samurai sword cut through the neck of the glimmer grim.  The head dropped to the ground and the body flopped back on me.  I pushed it away and stood up.  I was so glad that the bodies never bled.  The crystalized features that gave them their first nickname went all the way through.  They were essentially mummified, only they weren’t desiccated so much as frozen…but without the cold.     

             
“Grab the cart.”  August said holstering her sword. 

             
“There’s two more.”  I pointed out surprised that she hadn’t noticed them. 

             
“Those are yours, come on.  Move fast.”  August ran ahead while I pushed the cart behind.  I looked back and saw the grim gaining.  I couldn’t understand why she didn’t just finish them off.  That’s what she did. 

             
When I say that she is the heroine, I mean that she always saves me.  Anytime I’m in trouble, I am saved by her.  Even when the circumstances seem completely unrealistic to expect her to be there, she is there.  It’s as if she were psychically linked to danger. 

             
Where scrawny third sidekicks face mortal danger, she will be there.              

             
I pushed the cart onto the pitted concrete of the parking lot.  August was already in the truck bed having jumped the near three foot height with the help of Devin’s proffered knee.  She grabbed my bow and arrow from our collection of weapons and got it ready. 

             
I cursed thinking how stupid it was to do an exercise like this when I was in real danger.  Devin gestured for me to get on with it.  I rolled the cart to one side and ran to him.  He lifted me just as I pushed off the ground. 

             
As I arrived on the tail gate, August handed me my loaded bow.  The grim were nearly to the truck.  Devin looked back at them anxiously as he handed Haden the grocery bags.  I shot one arrow into the first glimmer grim.  It was a dead on bulls eye to the heart.  It wasn’t enough to destroy the body, but it did disrupt the link with the demon, resulting in the appearance of
killing
the grim.  August handed me another arrow and I hit the next grim in his eye.  I reached for another one, and hit him in the other eye before he fell to the ground. 

             
“How the fuck do you do that?”  Haden glared up at me as she pulled the last bag of groceries in.  “You can’t hit a barn with a bullet, but that flipping thing, you’re a surgeon with.” 

             
Devin slammed the tailgate harder than necessary.  “I think the word you’re looking for Haden, is,
thanks
.” 

             
I couldn’t help but smile at Haden’s annoyance, but she was right.  Aside from my youth camp instilled skill with a bow and arrow, I was virtually useless with weapons and fighting. Incidentally, it was also the only outdoor related talent that I had, and I had never shot a living creature, outside of the glimmer grim, which by definition and debate, weren’t living. 

             
Devin jumped into the cab to drive us home and I sat down against the back on the cab to enjoy the rest of the ride without my layered chestnut locks whipping me in the face.  August sat down beside me and put her hand on mine. 

             
“That was really good, Lenore.”  She said proudly.

             
I shrugged.  “Thanks.”  I often wondered if August would have even considered letting me into the group without my one small talent.  She was so determined to teach me, as if I was a liability to her if I couldn’t defend myself.  That was probably true, but at what point do you just admit trying to squeeze water from a stone is a waste of time. 

             
“Just ignore her.”  August said nodding to Haden who was sitting on the wheel well pouting.  “You know how much she likes to be the center of attention.”

             
“Yeah, I know.  I just wish she’d let me have my little corner of the stage.  It’s all I have you know.” 

             
August’s eyes flickered over my face reading more than just my expression.  “You are so much more than a corner.”  She said earnestly.