Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle (8 page)

I shook my head.

“Then get what you need and hurry.  We’ll be fine.  Just do me a favor and check on your
trailer
cargo before you go back inside.  And if they have an electronics department, pick up some of those two-way radios.  They come in pairs, and tourists like to buy them.”

“Are you sure
you’ll be
–“

“Go,” she said, sternly.

She rolled up the window again and showed me
the Smith & Wesson
.  She’d
already
put Trina back on the floor beneath the comforter again.

I went to the trailer and reached down
to check the tie-downs holding Jamie
. 
She-It
was moaning now, a steady, low hum almost
, seemingly vibrating the bundle
.  If she was starving before, now she
had to be
near
insatiable
with hunger. 
I felt like a kid who had found a turtle.  I had no idea how to feed it or what it would eat. 

The truth was, subconsciously I knew what it would eat, but if that was how it was going to be, then my sister would die.  I would not be feeding her
that
. 
Ever
.

Satisfied
she was secure and harmless to the occupants of my truck
, I ran back to
the
store entrance again.
 
I saw two flashlight beams
in the distance
about a quarter mile away, but they
bobbed
off in the opposite direction.  I had no idea what percentage of the population had succ
umbed to this sickness or
whatever it was, but if it
was
just ten percent, it was
still
a huge problem.

I reached the door, held Gem’s
Uzi
out in front of me and kicked it hard.  The latch snapped and I pulled it outward, swinging it open easily. 
In
Florida
, a
ll doors, either commercial or residential, pulled outward.  Hurricane force winds could easily blow doors in if not, so this was an ordinance.  From the outside, they’re all pulls.

I
stepped inside the store and
swung the barrel of the rifle from
side to
side, moving toward the front of the store.  I went to the cashier’s counter which ran the entire length of that wall, from the side where the registers were located to the photo processing department on the far end.  Leaning
over
the counter and scanning the length, I saw nobody back there
, either crouching there
hiding
, or dead.  I almost instinctively called out, but I
checked myself.  No sense in alerting any of the
. . . I just didn’t know how to think of them yet.  The
infected
.

Moving along the front row, I found a
hinged access
flap and lifted it
to get
behind the co
unter.  I grabbed three or four of the cloth shopping
bags and some flashlights
hanging on pegs on the wall, and
took
handfuls of the right batteries for
the
m
. 
On instinct, I snatched four packs of Marlboro reds from the cigarette rack.  I’d quit years ago, but fuck it. 
My last worry right now might be cancer.
  I tossed six or seven Bic lighters in the bags, too.  No telling when making fire would become important again, besides lighting my smokes.

I scanned the length of the aisles as I moved laterally along the store, but saw no movement.  I laid the gun on the counter qui
ckly, then undid my belt buckle and pulled the wide leather
belt almost all the way off.  I
re-threaded it, feeding it through the handle loops of one bag on my right hip, then through my back belt loops and through the handles of the other two bags before re-buckling it. 
I didn’t need to try to shoot and hold bags, too.   I
hefted the gun again and
continued moving down the front toward the opposite wall from the entry.  That was where the
photo and
electronics department was.  And right where
Gem
said they’d be were t
he two-way radios
.  I grabbed two sets and threw them in the bag.
  Likewise, I took about ten two-packs of 9 volt alkalines and added them to my shopping bag.
 

I turned to head
toward the pharmacy when I
stopped dead in my tracks. 
They had been relatively quiet, but in my defense, James Taylor was playing over the speaker system in the store, so I might not have heard them over
Fire and Rain
. 
Three of them. 
Two women and a man – or
three
of the infected
that might have once been described
in
these
human terms
. 
Now, since the infection – since the
hunger
– their skin was yellowish gray, and the
veins, blue-black and very visible now,
ran like little roadmaps
under the thin opaque skin.
They were on top of a man who was dead
, and they were gnawing on him,
deep
into him
.  He was very dead.  There was almost nothing left of him
, but these were apparently very efficient eating machines, and felt he was still worth the time and effort
. 

While I can’t say it was steady, my
gun
was
pointed directly at them, and I stared.  I didn’t fire.  It was a morbid fascination.
  In the back of my mind, I thought:
How sweet.  They’re
sharing
.

I’m not entirely sure why,
because
there were other bodies around
, and each could have had their own
.  So why this one?  What was especially attractive about this flesh?  I
t appeared to have been a white man, but there wasn’t enough of him left to determine age.
 
His clothes looked blue collar, and there’s a certain diet associated with middle vs. upper class, possibly more meat and fried foods as you made your way down the food chain – which was a strange choice of words, I admit – from elitist wealthy to dirt-poor.    Could it be
his diet
just gave him a more irresistible fragrance?

All of this took place in a split-second in my head.  
I made a mental note of this
sharing
behavior. 
Something I might mention to the CDC
personnel
when we got
up
there, if anyone was there to meet us who might want the information.

My eyes
sharply focused
on the three diners, I stepped slowly backward until I was out of the aisle, then cut over by three
rows
,
reaching
the
body of the
man attached to the foot I’d seen from outside
the store
.
  In his open palm
, partially on the floor,
lay a gun.  It was a
9mm Glock.  I reached down and picked it up, and from my new angle, I discovered how he had died. 

With the Glock.  He had taken his own life at the sight of the creatures eating his customers.
An efficient single bullet to the temple.  H
is name, according to his nametag, was Tony.

Thanks for the gun, Tony. 

I looked behind and in front of me, then in both directions over the top of the aisles.  N
o immediate danger. 
I leaned the rifle against one of the
aisle-long merchandise racks
and popped the clip.  It was a 17-round clip and it was
missing
three
. 
One in the chamber, so he’d fired only twice.  So fifteen
rounds at ready.  I
shoved the pistol
into
the front waistband of my
pants and
fed the Uzi’s strap
back over my
shoulder, holding
it in firing position
as I made my way down the aisle again.  The pharmacy wa
sn’t necessarily what I needed.  Just half a
Benadryl
allergy pill would put Trina out long enough for us to get her away from the s
cary stuff, a
nd
that
included our
scary
conver
sations about the
scary stuff.
  Jamie had mentioned to me some months earlier that she’d used this amount for Trina’s allergies in the past, and she tolerated it well, though it did pretty much send her to la-la land. 

As I scanned the ceiling-hung signs to find
the location of
allergy medications, I heard it and froze.

Shuffling sounds came
seemingly from all directions, and all at once. 
I looked behind me at Tony’s body
, sprawled on the floor at the entrance to my aisle,
and realized there was no time to get back there.  I knelt down an
d aimed the weapon.

And
then they
appeared.  At the
opposite end of the aisle
.  Five of them.  Two
females
and three
males
. 
Meat and gore stained the front of their clothes, and I recognized a couple of them as the ones who had been dining in the far aisle.  On
ward
to fresh meat, and I suppose that was me.

As though confirming this,
they stared at me.  Gnashing.  Just like Jamie.  And
her neighbor.  It was as if
their lips would no longer cover their teeth,
maybe like t
he skin had been purged of all moisture, and the
now parched
lips
just dried out and pulled back
.  No matter, the teeth just
showed
, and it added to the visual horror of the presentation.
  And
to make matters worse,
their
black, dead
tongues flitted in and out intermittently as the gnashing went on. 
This group was
moving steadily toward me
, and not as slowly as I would have liked
.
  A fast shuffle.  Textbook zombie lore, but just a bit faster.  The difference between
watching INDY racing
on television and in real life.  You just can’t get a feel for how fast the fuckers really go.

I turned to
make a break
toward the front of the store
, but
stopped short.  T
wo more stood by that end of the aisle
, and they, too, stared at me.
  Were they operating like a wolf pack?  Working together to trap me?  They may not give me much credit, but had I been faced with this crap without a gun, I’d have leapt over the top of the merchandise rack and into the next aisle on adrenaline alone, and would’ve still had enough energy left over to run the Walgreens floor polisher for an hour or two. 

The two new zombies
didn’t
seem to care about Tony’s body.  They ignored it and started moving up the aisle toward me.  H
aving had only one encounter
with these things
before, and believing in my mind that Jamie
did
hear me, no matter
about her lack of response
, I tried an appeal.

I held the gun up, my finger on the trigger, and I talked loud. 
“
Look. 
I
want
out of here, and I don’t need to fuck anyone up in the process,” I
looked for signs of understanding, acknowledgement. 
It didn’t appear that was
going to be
the case.  As I stood dead
center, the seven infected
shuffled toward me
, their pace neither slower nor
faster
, and not one of them attempting
any negotiations
with me
. 

“Stop the fuck right there!” I screamed at the two coming up on my rear, but they kept sliding toward me, gnashing, flitting, and looking very hungry.

I
sprayed
the
Uzi’s 600 round-per-minute blast
at them
for a split second
, aiming low.  The rounds tore through their midsections, and nearly cut them in half.  They flew backward and dropped to the floor.