Those Lazy Sundays: A Novel of the Undead (3 page)

Andy, however, found this not unsettling, but curious. He walked to the other side of the counter by himself, inspecting the area where the clerk would normally stand. Finding nothing there, he looked across the store, scanning the aisles and the walls.  Spotting something, he walked back in the other direction. There was a small alcove next to the cold cuts cooler, with two doors side by side. One was marked “Restroom,” or more precisely, “estroo,” the R and M stickers having long since peeled off. To the right of that was a plain door with no markings. Andy grasped the knob of the unmarked door and turned. The door opened easily, revealing a narrow wooden staircase that ended at another door.

Cautiously, he ascended the stairs. As he reached for the doorknob, Sarah called out behind him.

“Andy, what’re you doing?”

He pushed the door open.

“Andy? What the hell?”

He looked over his shoulder.  Sarah stood at the bottom of the stairs, her hands on her hips.

“You can’t just go in there.”

“I just want to see if anyone is here,” he said.

She ran up the stairs and tugged on his arm, then gave him a scornful eye roll and head shake.

“There’s no one fucking up here Andy,” she said with a deliberate slowness. “Let’s just go.”

“Hang on,” he said, and passed through the doorway. Sarah groaned angrily behind him.

The floor of the upstairs was wooden, just like the bottom floor, but the ceiling was the high, vaulted barn roof, a mixture of graying wooden planks and newer, bright tan replacements. Various boxes and other items were stacked around the room.

“What genius put the storeroom on the second floor,” he grumbled, looking around.

A partition that reached only halfway to the ceiling divided the upper level into two rooms, though another closed door prevented him from seeing what was on the other side.

“Excuse me!” Andy yelled out again, taking a step forward, the old wood creaking loudly beneath his feet.

“Andy, nobody is here,” Sarah insisted. “Come
on
!”

He took a last glance across the room, wanting to see what was on the other side of the partition. He looked back at Sarah, who glared at him and motioned angrily towards the stairs. He was smart enough to know when to let things go, and he could tell her patience had already run out.

“You’re right honey,” he said, flashing a smile that only intensified her glare. “Let’s just drop a few bills on the counter and get the hell out of here.”

They descended the stairs and went back to the counter, where their friends were still waiting.

“Nobody having sex on the second floor?” Kyle asked.

“If there are, they’ve gotta be the stealth bombers of screwing,” Andy replied.

“So what’re we doing?” Kate asked. “Are we just going to leave some money… or find some place else… or just leave?”

“Let’s leave the money, and go,” Andy replied.

“Sounds good to me,” Kyle said, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. “This place is kind of creeping me out. Feels like a Friday the 13
^th
movie or something.”

After pooling their money and trying to get as close to exact change as possible (they still left a “tip” of a buck seventy-five), they left their cash on the counter and exited the store, the jangling of the bells the only goodbye they received.

 Kate opened the sliding door of the van and placed her purchases on the seat. She started climbing in, but abruptly stopped. She turned around and looked at Andy, who was opening the front door.

“Where’s Jack?” she asked. She gestured toward the empty seat in the back where their friend had been sleeping.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Andy said, and turned around, looking toward the store.

“What is it?” Kyle asked worriedly, glancing from Kate to Andy and back again.

“Jack went for a walk or something,” Andy replied. “Hey Jack!” he yelled. “Get your ass back here!”

They paused and waited for a reply. As Andy drew a deep breath to yell again, they heard Jack’s voice from around the side of the store.

“Check out this guy!”

Andy sighed and glanced skeptically at the other four, then began walking towards the direction of Jack’s voice. Kyle chased after him, the three girls shaking their heads at each other before following. They rounded the corner to the far side of the store, where Jack was standing. A lip of concrete continued around the side of the building, ending at a steep ten-foot embankment leading into an expansive meadow consisting of knee-high grass and some wilting flowers that had probably been spectacular in the summer.

Jack pointed into the field. His friends turned towards the field, and saw what it was that had grabbed his attention: at least a dozen figures were coming through the meadow towards them. They all walked strangely, some with a limp, some slightly hunched over, and others just slightly off-balance.

The six friends stared at the shambling figures without a word.

Kate broke the silence.

“What’re they doing?”

“I’m not sure,” Jack replied. “I’ve been watching them for a good five minutes. They’re just walking like that. Not really doing anything. Doesn't seem like they've noticed me either.”

“They look pretty fucked up,” said Andy. “Probably people from some hippy commune who smoked a little too much…” he brought his fingers to his mouth and mimicked smoking a joint.

Everyone else ignored him and continued to stare, mesmerized, at the bizarre scene. Two of the figures were getting closer, the details of their facial features and clothing becoming discernible. One of them was a man in what appeared to be a gray business suit. The other was a woman in jeans and a pink blouse or sweater.

“Let’s get going,” Mary said, alarmed. She turned towards the car.

“Hang on,” Jack said, “I'm actually kind of intrigued by this.”

“Hello!” Andy yelled, waving his arms wildly.

“Andy, knock it off,” said Sarah. “Mary’s right. Let’s go. We need to get back on the road anyway. I’d love to get home sometime before midnight.”

“Excuse me, sir? Hello?” Andy yelled again, ignoring his girlfriend’s plea.

“Jesus Christ, Andy!” Sarah said sternly.

“Seriously guys, we need to get out of here. Whoever they are, they seem pretty out of it.” Kyle said, agreeing with the Sarah and Mary. Not waiting for his friends, he started towards the van, Sarah, Mary, and Kate following behind, leaving Jack and Andy still standing next to the store, staring.

“Holy
fucking
shit!” Jack’s voice boomed from around the corner. His four friends stopped in their tracks.

They looked at each other worriedly, and then hurried back around the side of the store. Andy and Jack were both slowly sidestepping away from the embankment towards the parking lot. Joining them, the rest of the group looked into the field.

The man and woman were now close enough that their faces were clear – or what was left of them. The woman’s curly brown hair was matted with a dark, sticky maroon. A gash split across her face from the corner of her forehead down to her chin, revealing her cheekbone and jaw. Her mouth hung open, revealing an empty cavity save for a few broken teeth. The man was in better shape, sporting just a basketball-sized red splotch stretching across his white shirt, like a tie dye gone horribly wrong.

“I think I’m done here,” Jack said, almost whispering. “Whatever they’re on, I don’t want any.”

“Yeah…” Sarah agreed, backing away.

There was no argument from anyone this time. Even Andy was uncharacteristically silent. He simply nodded, and turned around. The six of them rushed back to the van, hurriedly got in, and locked the doors. In the rearview mirror, Andy watched one hand, and then a second, grasp at the cement of the parking lot from below, searching for a handhold. He put the van into drive and gunned it out of the parking lot, pulling onto the road without looking.

“Think we ought to call the police or something?” Kyle asked after a few moments of silence.

“About what?” Andy asked sharply. “A bunch of crunchy hippies fucked up on drugs? They’d have to lock up half the state.”

“I dunno man, that one chick looked like she was hurt pretty badly,” said Jack. “And they weren't dressed like hippies. I don’t know what is going on there, but they could be hurt, or they could be dangerous, or…”

“It couldn’t hurt just to call,” Sarah agreed. “Just let them know…”

“Yeah, guys, we can’t just do nothing,” Mary said.

“So call then,” Andy replied dryly.

He checked his mirror and pulled the van onto the road again.

Sarah dialed 9-11 and held the phone up to her ear. She was greeted with a busy tone.

She took the phone from her ear and looked at it, surprised. She dialed again.

Busy.

She tossed her phone on the dash and looked back at her friends.

“I keep getting a busy signal,” she told them, confused. “Someone else want to try? There might be something wrong with my connection or something.”

Mary reached into the back of the van and picked up Kyle’s gray backpack. She took his phone from the side pocket and handed it to him.

“Can you try calling?” she asked.

Kyle dialed the number on his phone and waited.

After a few seconds, he returned the phone to his backpack.

“Same thing,” he said.

“There’s gotta be some kind of serious accident nearby,” Jack opined. His voice sounded unsure. “They must be getting a lot of calls.”

Sarah looked over her shoulder at him and nodded slowly and deliberately, a non-verbal signal meaning “I get what you’re saying, but I know that you know that you know that you’re full of shit.”

“Try again in a few minutes,” Andy told them. “Whatever they’re dealing with is probably more important than a bunch of drug addicts.”

“You really think that’s what they were?” Mary asked softly. “Their faces were so…”

“I read this story about this guy who was high on LSD and chewed his own tongue off,” Andy replied. “People can do some pretty fucked up stuff when they’re high.”

“Okay,” said Mary, looking unconvinced.

They drove in silence for a few minutes. Sarah tried dialing the police one more time, to no avail, this time not even getting a signal.

“We’ll be driving through Allentown soon,” Andy said. “I’m sure they at least have a local cop. We can stop and rep… SHIT!”

He slammed on the brakes, snapping everyone forward even as the seatbelts locked them in place. The brake pedal vibrated under Andy’s foot as the anti-lock system activated.

A dull thump came from the front of the vehicle, and the van bounced up and down.

Andy guided the vehicle to the side of the road and turned on the hazard lights. The cab of the van was a symphony of gasping, heavy breathing and pounding chests as they all took stock of their own body parts. Kate was shaking visibly, and Kyle was clutching the “Oh Shit” handle (so-named since grabbing it usually led the passenger to yell “Oh Shit!” and potentially act on the phrase as well) so tightly that the veins on the top of his hand were visible and his knuckles were bright white. He leaned against the window, looking like he had just had a heart attack.

Without looking back, Andy unbuckled his seatbelt, threw open the door and jumped out of the van.

“Hey!” Sarah yelled, managing to get out a single word before he slammed the door shut. She unbuckled her seatbelt and chased after him.

The rest of them remained in their seats. Jack turned around and looked out the rear window.

A person lay on the ground several feet behind the vehicle.

“Jesus, we hit someone,” Jack gasped, looking out the back of the van. Kyle and Mary turned around and looked through the rear window, stunned.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” Mary squeaked, holding her hands over her face. “God, we just ran over somebody.”

Kate stared at Jack, not wanting to look at what she assumed would be a dead body.

Jack slid the door open and got out. Sarah and Andy were standing over the figure – a chubby man dressed in a pair of jeans and a tan polo shirt, lying on his stomach. Jack’s stomach churned at the sight of the man.  He could see that the man was moving, though the way he was moving gave Jack a bad feeling. The man looked twitchy, stiff, almost like he was having muscle spasms. He felt a shade of a relief, however, knowing that the victim was at least alive.

“Jeez Andy, what the hall happened?” Jack asked, exasperated.

“Fucking guy was just standing in the middle of the goddamn road!” Andy replied, his cheeks red. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand.

“I didn’t have a friggin’ chance to even stop. He was just standing there, right when we came around the curve!”

Sarah kneeled down and placed her hand on the man’s shoulder. In a flash, the man turned his neck and snapped.  Sarah screamed and jumped back, falling onto the road, landing on her right hand. The man on the ground continued snapping his jaw like a rabid animal.