Nips is the lookout guy, kind of his own clique.
“We need to lose Verne,” Fergi whispers to me. Her breath against my ear is kind of turning me on. If my dick didn’t feel like it was an ant hive right now, I’d for sure have full wood.
“How do we lose him? He’s going to have everyone with him. In his minivan.”
Teddy giggles. “What kind of asshole drives a minivan?”
Fergi shrugs. “If we keep him around, he’s going to get us killed. I can promise you that.”
“I don’t like the guy,” I tell her. “But I don’t see how we lose him. I mean, we need to come back here, right?”
She shrugs again, watching me closely. “I don’t know. Do we?”
“I thought so…”
“We could go absolutely anywhere,” she says.
Wow, she is one devious chick. And then I think about it some more. Once my balls and penis have been fixed, I’ll be tearing her pussy up like nobody’s business. And if we’re alone somewhere, I can just fuck her day and night. I’ll try out every goddamn sex position I’ve ever heard, seen, or even conjured up in my wildest imagination.
As if sensing my thoughts, Teddy grins at me. “Tell you one thing. You aint losing me, buddy. Friends til the end.”
***
We’re all huddled by the front door, nervous as shit. “Who’s taking point?”
Verne says.
“Point? What the fuck is point?” Teddy asks.
“It’s a military term,” Verne explains, as if to a child. “Forget about it.”
“All it means is the guy who goes up front. The first position,” Shep says.
“And the most dangerous,” Verne retorts.
“Maybe you should go first,” I tell Verne. “Since you seem to know the most about this stuff.”
He makes a face. “I mean, I
would
do it. But I think I could lead better from the middle of the pack. That’s what they do in the military. The captain doesn’t sit out front.”
“Oh, right. Silly me.” I exchange looks with Fergi.
Douche.
Is it wrong that I want to see Verne get his fucking head torn off by a zombie?
Maybe. But we’re all under a lot of stress, so maybe that explains the intense hate I feel for this dude.
Nips raises his hand. “I’ll take the lead.” He’s got a big claw hammer in his right hand. “If one of those fucking zombies tries to get me, I’ll smash his head like Gallagher does with watermelons.”
“Okay, then,” Shep says. “Let’s make a run for it on three.”
“One…”
“Two…”
“THREE!”
We open the door and start running. It’s just total chaos. The groups split in two, everyone trying to keep up and not get left behind. The zombies are pretty much all across the street, finishing off the old lady’s carcass. But when they hear noise, their heads lift up like dogs startled from picking at trash. Their creepy dead eyes stare at us, and a few of them slowly climb to their feet and start toward us.
“Shit, they’re coming!” Casey shrieks.
Now all of the zombies are moving toward us, like a herd of animals. Luckily they’re not very fast, but it feels fast enough if you’re only twenty yards away from the suckers.
I run around the driver’s side of my car and get in. My hands are shaking and my heart’s pounding. “Get in!” I scream.
But Fergi and Teddy and Shep are shouting back at me.
At first I can’t hear them because people are shouting all over the place. But then I realize I didn’t unlock the passenger doors. Shit. I hit the unlock button and they all scramble inside, slamming the doors shut. Huffing and puffing with total and utter fear, we all stare at one another. “This is fucking horrifying,” Shep says.
“I thought you were going in the other car,” Teddy says to him.
“What?”
“You were supposed to go in Verne’s expedition.”
“Like I give a flying fuck,” Shep says. “Have you seen the living dead out there?
I just wanted to get in someone’s goddamn car before those things ate me.”
“Let’s go.” I turn the ignition and put the car in drive.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Verne?” Shep asks.
“Fuck Verne,” I say, and we peel out onto the street, swerving to avoid a couple of zombies in the road.
Why did the zombie cross the road?
I feel like laughing hysterically, but am afraid they would all think I was losing my mind. And since I probably am losing my mind, best not to laugh.
I look in my rearview mirror and see that the others are now all in Verne’s van and it’s pulling into the street, following behind us.
Nobody says a word as we drive slowly down the street and keep our eyes peeled.
We have no idea what we’re going to encounter out here, but if we somehow get in an accident or get stranded, we could be literally eaten alive. Knowing this is keeping us pretty damn focused and quiet—especially me. The last thing I want is to be the equivalent of zombie road kill.
Turning onto route 27, on our way to the Super Shaws, we see a mass of people congregating around a gas station.
“Hey look, there are people at that gas station,” Fergi cries out, pointing.
“Maybe we should go there…” Teddy’s voice fades.
As we slow down, it becomes apparent that the people outside the gas station are just more zombies—probably a couple dozen of them. They’ve managed to break one of the glass windows of the gas station and now they’re streaming inside. It looks like some people had holed up in there when the crisis hit, but the zombies penetrated somehow.
Faintly, we can hear the screams of the dying. I speed up and get the hell away as fast as possible.
That broken window in the gas station is frightening for any number of reasons, not the least of which is because we assumed they didn’t know enough to break into Shep’s house. But maybe, eventually, they figure it out…
In the passenger seat beside me, Teddy’s shaking. Crying softly. “Fuck man.
Everyone’s just eating everyone else. Why is this happening?”
My hands are sweating on the wheel now. “Hey Fergi. Maybe this expedition wasn’t such a great idea.”
“Don’t go soft on me now,” she says, leaning forward in her seat.
“If we run into a big group of those things, they’re going to turn this car over and pull us out like opening a can of sardines.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Fergi says. “Just watch the road. We’re going to be fine.”
A man runs into the road as we pass by, waving a shotgun in the air and shouting something unintelligible. He’s dressed in long underwear, but his cock is hanging out the flap. He starts shooting the gun into the air. The booming sounds echo as we get further away.
Verne’s car manages to swerve by and just miss the crazy old coot by inches.
“They missed him by a cock-length,” I whisper, giggling to myself. My eyes go back to the road in front of me. We get to the Super Shaws without further incident. The lot is almost empty but for maybe five or six cars sprinkled across the lot. I pull up right to the entrance and park the car.
Verne’s van pulls up behind us and they all start filing out, like kids going on a field trip. Verne leads them inside, not even stopping to wait for us.
“What an a-hole,” Teddy says.
“He’s not that bad,” Shep says. Shep’s definitely not been himself since everything started. Usually he’s happy-go-lucky, like Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers—that kind of thing. But now he’s just pasty and his eyes are haunted. More like Vince Vaughn in the Psycho remake, the one that everyone hated.
“How are we going to handle this?” I ask. “Stick together or split up?”
“We should split up but make sure to meet back at the entrance with our stuff in fifteen minutes,” Fergi says. “And for god’s sake—we don’t leave anyone in there.”
“No. No way in hell would I leave someone.”
“Good.” She looks at me. “And don’t be stupid with your supplies. Get shit that we need.”
“I’ll tackle the pharmacy.”
Teddy smirks. “I bet you will. Any items in particular you’re planning on acquiring?”
“A little of this and that.”
“Oh, sure,” he says with dripping sarcasm. “Just this and that. Hopefully they carry Valtrex.”
I don’t bother to respond. Teddy loves to use shit like this to his advantage, but if the situations were reversed he’d do nothing but whine and cry about me busting his chops.
Besides, Fergi’s not paying any attention to us. She’s deep in thought. Her dark eyes stare at the ground, and for a brief moment, I actually have something stirring in my gut that I haven’t felt in years. Do I actually have a crush on this girl?
Impossible. That part of me broke a long time ago—eighth grade to be precise, when Jenny Clark broke up with me after giving me the best hand job of my young life.
“Let’s do the buddy system,” Fergi decides, after some thought. “Shep and I will go together, and you two take a cart and go together. See you in fifteen.”
Shep and Fergi dash into the store, pull out a cart, and disappear through the entrance. That leaves me and Teddy together, as always. “Come on,” I say, getting out of the car and looking around.
“This place is completely dead,” Teddy mutters.
“Just as long as it’s not undead,” I grin, walking inside and grabbing a big green shopping cart.
“Haha, very funny.”
“Don’t lose your sense of humor, Ted.”
“There’s not much funny about zombies eating people and us running around with hammers and wrenches to defend ourselves.”
I have to agree with him there.
We enter the supermarket, and its eerily silent, with gleaming floors and all the lights on. In the vegetables section, mist is still spraying over the carrots and lettuce and celery to keep it all moist and fresh. Everything’s normally functioning—but nobody’s here. No one stocking fruits, nobody behind the deli counter, no one at the registers.
“Man, it is creepy in here,” I whisper.
“Let’s hurry the fuck up,” Teddy says.
We discuss what to get as we head for the Pharmacy. It’s to the far left, in the front of the store. “Definitely penicillin, amoxicillin, codeine, all that stuff,” Teddy says.
I look at him as if for the first time. “You know your shit.”
“My dad was always sick with different stuff when I was a kid and I remember all the different meds he took.”
As we continue to make our way through the store, we hear people yelling to each other from various isles, and occasionally we see Martha go by carrying an armful of food, or Verne pointing and directing somebody to pick up a particular item.
I try the door to the pharmacy and find it’s locked. So I kick it open, the handle actually pops off and rolls in circles on the floor. We go to the shelves and start rummaging around. I have no idea what I’m doing in here. There’s stuff everywhere, it looks like someone else has already been messing around. Maybe staff robbed the place on their way out.
“How the hell are we going to find anything we need?” Teddy says, turning around and around, his eyes wide and confused. “I don’t recognize any of these names.”
“That’s because they’re being listed by generic name instead of the brand name,”
I explain, as I knock various bottles of pills around on the shelves, looking for stuff I recognize.
Teddy just keeps looking around, paranoid and jumpy. “Let’s just dump everything we can into the cart.”
“You do that, I’m going to find shit for my balls.” I start rummaging through everything else while Teddy sweeps bottles and ointments and random junk like diabetes kits into the cart.
I’m not even sure what I might have going on with my rash, but just in case—I get medicine for fungal infections, staph, syphilis and herpes. I figure I can just take a course of each medication, one at a time, until my rash clears up.
Finally, we’re ready to go. “I think it’s been close to fifteen minutes,” Teddy says.
“Okay, come on—“
Suddenly we hear a high-pitched shriek. I can’t even tell if it’s a man or woman who made that noise. All I know is I jumped about three feet off the ground when it happened.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Teddy whimpers. “Let’s go! Come on man!”
We start running.
“Help me push the cart, for god’s sake,” Teddy huffs at me as we run. “I’m falling behind, Danny!”
I go back and the two of us push the grocery cart together, our legs pumping in unison. There’s a chorus of screams coming from one of the isles, but neither of us can tell exactly where it’s coming from.
But whatever it is, I know it’s nothing good. “Someone’s becoming dinner, I think.”
Teddy lets go of the cart and turns to look back inside the store. “We got to load this shit in fast, then get the fuck out of here.”
“Definitely,” I agree. I open the trunk and the two of us start grabbing handfuls and armfuls of medicine, tossing it into the back of the car. Beads of sweat are forming on my head.
There’s more shouting from inside the store. Screams. Howls even.
“I’m going to piss myself,” Teddy cries.
“Just stay calm. If we see any zombies, we’ll get in my car and bounce faster than a check from M.C. Hammer.”
“You mean leave Fergi behind?”
I turn to him. “You want to risk your life for that chick?”
He stares at me. “We gotta wait for her, Danny. We said.”
“I know what the fuck we said. But I kind of like my intestines in one place, thanks.”
“What do your intestines have to do with anything?” He throws the last armful of medicine into the trunk and slams it shut.
“You never saw the original Dawn of the Dead? When the bikers get dragged off their motorcycles by the zombies, and the one dude gets his intestines pulled out of his stomach and eaten?”
Teddy shakes his head. “I only saw 28 Days Later.”
“Dawn of the Dead is like the classic zombie film.”
“I think 28 Days Later was the shit though.”
“Point is, we’ve seen what these fucking zombies do to people for real. I’m not putting myself in that position for some chick I barely know. As hot as she is.”
“We can’t leave her, though,” Teddy insists. He’s a stubborn fuck sometimes. “I think we should go in and make sure Fergi’s all right.”
I stare at Teddy, wondering if he’s one of those regular nitwits who suddenly becomes a fucking hero during wartime. “You’re serious. You want to go in there, knowing there might be a horde of zombies waiting to turn your head into mashed potatoes?”