If push comes to shove,
he thought.
The first of the zombies had managed to crawl through the window, raking its stomach open on broken glass in the process. Having its guts hanging out didn’t seem to slow it down.
“Daddy, are they going to hurt us?” Bobby asked.
Out of nowhere, came the sound of music in the distance. The melody was faint, but it triggered some childhood memory.
More zombies piled through the window, creeping toward them. The music got louder.
A jingle,
Jack thought. And then, suddenly, the Carver family was bathed in an intense white light.
48 hours earlier…
Kevin Singer was five months into thirty. And, for the most part, he was living the dream.
By the time he was twenty-three, his hair had gone prematurely gray. However, he had managed to keep his weight down. On his thirtieth birthday, which had been in late June, he had weighed in at 185, only five pounds more than when he was a senior in high school.
After graduating from Colorado State University with a BS in Biological Science in 2004, he had chased a girl back to Iowa (
Good Will Hunting-
style, was how he put it whenever he told anyone the long sad story), which had ended abruptly two months later after she divulged that she was getting back together with her high school sweetheart (
he’s my soulmate
, were the exact words she had used), leaving him to live in the squalid little trailer park (which he had always euphemistically deemed ‘cozy’ whenever she had talked about how depressing their living conditions were) and buried beneath a mountain of student loan debt.
In 2005, Kevin was barely making rent working at CWI Meat Processors, located a few miles outside the Trudy city limits. He had known after the first day that he wouldn’t last long. Seeing cattle slaughtered hadn’t turned him into a full-on vegetarian, but it had brought him close. Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to eat red meat. It had been during that time, when he had spent eight hours a day trying to focus his mind on anything else besides the task at hand, that his brain had floated onto an idea he’d had years ago when he was still in college.
He had been trying to cram for a big environmental science test, but instead he had spent most of the afternoon daydreaming out loud to his roommate about how he wanted to open up a comic book store. His roommate, a business major, had warned him of all the pitfalls of pursuing such an endeavor. “The markup isn’t that great,” his roommate said. “Profit margin is razor thin. Every book that sits on the shelf is eating into your bottom line. Besides, do you even
read
comics?”
Kevin had shaken his head and said, “Not since junior high, but I remember it being fun.”
“You don’t get rich having fun,” his roommate had said.
Kevin hadn’t taken it any further. Not because his roommate had had a point, but because a week later he had met Angela, and after he’d met Angela nothing else really seemed to matter.
Until she had torn his heart out and ran it through a blender.
He had carried that heartbreak for a long time –
too long
. Add a dead end job to that and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. On more than one occasion, he had wandered drunk into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and stared long and hard at the bottle of sleeping pills sitting on the second shelf; had wondered just how many it would take to send him out of the game for good. Fortunately – perhaps
serendipitously
– he hadn’t succumbed to these bleak thoughts. Instead, he discovered that his mind had held onto that old college dream, had only tucked it away for safekeeping.
Everything had moved fast from there. He had set up an account with the comic world’s major distributor, rented an 800-square-foot storefront, purchased furnishings and inventory, started a website, and opened the doors of Singer Comics to what turned out to be a less-than-eager public – all thanks to a couple of credit cards with spending limits based on income earnings Kevin had purposely fudged. It was like his daddy always said:
go big or go home.
So here he was, close to seven years later, and he had yet to see a profit. As it turned out, his roommate really hadn’t been kidding about narrow margins.
But, despite this, he was reasonably happy.
Kevin sat on a stool behind the display case, staring out the plate glass window, watching the snow fall. It was a lazy snow; nothing that would amount to much. The kind of weather that kept geeks indoors playing
Call of Duty
. A
Star Trek
rerun played on an old TV perched on a shelf near the partition that led to a small room where the back issues were kept.
Outside, an old boat of a car pulled up in front of the store, a cloud of exhaust pluming up from its tailpipe. A chunky boy of fifteen or sixteen, sporting a Mohawk that was dyed lime green, exited from the passenger side. He was carrying a cane with a brass knob at the top.
When the boy entered the store, Kevin said, “What did I tell you about bringing weapons into the store, Derek?”
Derek feigned confusion, scratching at one of the many pimples on his face. “Well, hello to you, too, Kev!” Derek seemed to live in a state of perpetual jolliness. It frustrated the hell out of Kevin.
Kevin motioned for Derek to hand him the cane. Reluctantly, Derek handed it over. Kevin twisted the top and pulled, sliding a two foot long blade from the cane’s lower half.
“It pays to be armed at all times.”
“I’m sure that’s true for you,” Kevin said, hiding the sword cane behind the counter. “You can have it back when you leave.”
“So, my good man, what’s on the agenda for today?”
“Talk normal.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Derek said, saluting. “So?”
Kevin pointed to a tall stack of comic books piled on one of the long folding tables at the center of the store.
“Again?”
“Bag and board ‘em.”
“When are you gonna let me do something more…
challenging
,” Derek said, pulling out a folding chair and sitting down in front of the table. He slipped a white board into the transparent sleeve, and then took a comic from the top of the stack and carefully slid it into the sleeve.
“As soon as you act like you can handle it,” Kevin said.
The truth was, most days Kevin wondered what he had been thinking when he had agreed to hire Derek; the kid wasn’t worth a shit. Awkward around people, attention span of a gnat, prone to forgetfulness, and Kevin couldn’t count how many times the kid had brought a weapon into the store; everything from a pellet gun to a samurai sword. He was lazy. And what was with that fucking hair?
Kevin had felt sorry for the kid, and had taken him in the same way one might take in a stray cat. Blame it on a temporary lapse in judgment. Now that he had made the decision, a part of him insisted that there was no turning back. Take in a stray, it becomes your responsibility, and he didn’t have the heart to give Derek the boot. He hated to admit it (and wouldn’t if anyone asked), but the kid had grown on him.
Not like you’re paying him,
Kevin thought.
All he gets is store credit. No harm, no foul
.
“You still going to teach me how to drive?”
“That’ll go faster if you don’t talk.”
Derek sighed.
“And when you’re done with that, you can sweep and mop the backroom.”
A customer entered. A short, middle-aged man with thinning hair and a round face. His eyes darted around nervously. Kevin was well acquainted with that deer-in-the-headlights look. Over the years, he had met enough geeks, nerds, and hobbyists that he could profile them almost instantly. This short, scared-looking man fell easily into the
Paranoid Type
category. The type of guy that probably worked at home or, if he worked in an office, he would occupy a high-walled cubicle. Probably worked in IT or programming; a job where he didn’t have to spend a lot of time interacting with other people. Most likely lived alone or with his mother, and preferred cats to dogs.
Kevin’s sales tactics varied depending on the category the customer fell into. For example, he had learned that with the paranoid type, you just left them alone and let them do their thing.
The nervous-looking man made for the wall of comic books without making eye contact.
Kevin glanced at Derek. Derek was already looking at him, and Kevin knew immediately what Derek was thinking. Kevin shook his head.
Don’t.
But either Derek didn’t notice or didn’t care, because a second later he sprang out of his chair and rushed over to the man.
“Anything I can help you find, good sir?” Derek asked, standing a little too close to the nervous-looking man.
The nervous-looking man shook his head and quickly shuffled off, browsing the shelves of comics, trying to put distance between himself and this pushy teenager who reeked of old sweat masked beneath cheap fruit-scented body wash.
Derek, who had become intimately acquainted with rejection over the course of his life, was undeterred. He caught up to the man and yanked a comic off the shelf. “This is a really great series if you haven’t tried it yet,” Derek said, holding up the comic so it was only an inch or two from the nervous-looking man’s face. “Good story. The characters are interesting. Go ahead, take it.”
The man shook his head again, glancing over his shoulder toward the front door, preparing himself for a speedy escape.
“Do you have a subscription box with us? That’s really the way to go. That way you’re guaranteed not to miss an issue.”
The nervous-looking man was shaking his head, so vigorously that Kevin thought the man’s head might swivel off at any moment. The man brushed past Derek and made a beeline for the door.
Derek chased after him. “Hey, are you on Twitter?”
The man reached the door, threw it open, and hurried to his car. Derek held the door open and called out, “Tweet me!” as the man jumped into his car and peeled out of the parking lot.
Derek let the door close. He turned to Kevin and said, “I think I sold him on a subscription box. He’ll be back.”
Kevin said, “Do me a favor. Don’t talk to the customers.”
“That’s cold, Captain.”
Kevin pointed to the unfinished pile of comics on the table.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Derek sighed loudly and resumed bagging comic books. “Can I change the channel?”
“If it’ll get you to shut up.”
Derek grabbed the remote and flipped through the channels, finally settling on CNN as the female news anchor was saying, “
Chinese officials declined to comment on the shuttle’s cargo, but have denied claims that the mission’s objective involved testing the effects of space on experimental viruses engineered in a government biochemical facility in Beijing. A massive search is underway, though experts speculate the missing shuttle most likely went down somewhere in the Pacific, and that odds of locating the ship are unlikely.
”
Derek switched the channel. “You’ve got one of your meetings tonight, right?”
“Who told you about that?”
“Rhonda told me about them. You should let me come to one of them. I know a lot about that stuff.”
“Not a chance.
Adults
only.”
“I’ve been thinking…”
“First mistake.”
“You like her, right? You should just go ahead and ask her out.”
“Shut it.”