The Rising Dead (23 page)

It has to be done,
Gunner thought to himself.
There is no other way.

“Get ready to run to the front door,” he whispered to Max.

“Don't do anything stupid, Gunner,” she warned him.

“Don't stop until you’re in and the door is locked,” Gunner said calmly. “Whatever you do, don't wait for me.”

Gunner screamed again at the top of his lungs, catching them all off guard, as he prepared to rush toward his aggressor and turn the tables on him. Sensing what was coming next, the walking corpse opened his ragged, torn mouth and wailed back at them. He seemed to tense up, preparing to rush toward Gunner. When he took him down, the others would surely swarm them from all sides. It was a purely animal moment, devoid of logic or reason. It was kill or be killed for Gunner, and he was prepared to go out fighting. This had been his destiny all along and he damn well knew it.

The cowboy hat flew off revealing a huge, waxy bald spot in the zombies head as he lunged forward in an uncoordinated arc toward them. Before Gunner had a chance to react, the loud roar of an engine drowned everything out and froze the monster in its place. They turned in time to see Holt racing toward them in a big Cadillac with no windshield. He was easily doing a hundred miles an hour when he caught the stunned zombie cowboy in the legs with the grill, dragging him under the car and leaving little more than a nasty skid mark on the asphalt out of his decaying flesh.

The group watched in stunned silence as Holt hopped out of with only a crowbar in his hands and began to swing it furiously at the zombies that came toward him, crushing their skulls . . . and in one instance, knocking a man's head clean off and into the street.

Parker ran to his side, kicking over one of the zombies who had crept up behind him. Holt dispatched the unfortunate wretch with a double-handed, overhead blow that left the dead man's face squashed on the sidewalk in a mass of red, black, and squiggling white. Holt seemed to give it no more thought than a kid killing a June bug.

“Thanks, buddy,” Holt beamed. “I owe you one.”

“Where the hell have you been?” Parker asked in shock.

“I've been looking for you,” Holt said, unable to hide the sheer joy in his eyes. The rest of the group gathered around him. The advancing zombies were now on the opposite side of the street, across from the truck.

“How the fuck did you find us?” Max asked.

“Jesus told me where you'd be,” Holt said, turning to Travis.

“Wow,” Parker said.

“I owe you an apology McAnus,” he said, clapping him on the shoulder. His grin grew even wider.

“I'm not sure now is the best time,” Travis said looking uncomfortable.

“I haven't always been as nice to you as I should have been,” he lamented. “But I'm a warrior for God now. I promise you I will do my best to make it up to you in what little time we have left.”

“Looks like you've been batting a thousand,” Gemma said, kissing him on the cheek.

“It's good to have you back,” Parker said, looking genuinely hopeful for the first time since the outbreak began.

“I hate to break up your reunion,” Max said, “but we need to get inside now.”

“She's got a point,” Gunner said.

“What's the plan?” Holt asked.

“We're going to hole up in the automotive store over there,” Gunner pointed. “Try to wait out the storm. We just need to make sure it's clean first.”

“Looks good,” said Gemma.

“Looks can be deceiving,” Gunner said, walking ahead of them and into the store. They stood and watched as he disappeared into the doorway. A few moments later he leaned out and waved them on.

“All clear.”

One by one they made their way into the store. The zombies in the distance watched them go. Slowly the dead gathered together into one mass and began moving toward the store, sniffing the air as they went along, and licking what was left of their lips.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

“I can't believe this place is still standing,” Travis said.

“What do we do now?” Holt asked.

“First,” Gunner began, “we need to knock down a hole between each of the stores. It won't matter much were we go through on the camping supplies store but we're going to want to aim for the dead center of the liquor store.”

“I'm on it,” Holt said, picking up a car battery and waving it around.

“I'll help him,” Parker said.

“What can we do?” Travis said. Max and Gemma stood behind him.

“We need to board up the windows,” Gunner suggested. “I saw some plywood in the back. Someone grab a hammer and some nails and we'll get to work.”

They did as he suggested. Soon they had closed up all but the tiniest space in the windows, leaving a small gap to peer out from. Holt and Parker made short work of the liquor store wall. They struck more towards the back making a way through the storage area and doing minimal damage. It took them much longer to get through to the camping store. The wall was cinder block, which made it a great place to hide out but tough going busting down with a bat and battery. Parker had to talk Holt out of trying to use oil and the welder to break through. In the end they picked the mortar apart with his filthy crowbar.

Max and Travis boarded up the windows of both the extra stores while Gemma laid down and fell asleep next to the liquor store cooler. Gunner had come up with a plan to bolt hooks onto the sides of the front wall, then run chain through them and lock up the front door in case the hungrier ones tried to knock it off the hinges again, like they did at the his apartment.

“Fool me twice,” he grumbled as he snapped the heavy duty locks into place. “Shame on me.”

A small cluster of zombies had gathered outside, led by the hillbilly. They howled in anguish as they pulled uselessly on the front door of the automotive store and pounded on the windows. Holt laughed.

“That was easy,” he said. “Now to feast on convenience store snacks. Out of my way. I’m starving. You work up a mighty hunger in the service of the Lord.”

Holt turned and walked away, whistling to himself.

He’s cracked,
Parker thought, watching his old friend canter away.
He’s lost all touch with reality.
Did it even matter anymore? Parker wasn't so sure. He guessed they all needed a way to cope with the new reality that had been thrust upon them. Holt's way was as valid as any of theirs. Travis had love. Gunner had his conspiracy theories. Max had her anger. What did he have? Nothing came to him and eventually he did his best to put it out of his mind.

It took a while for them to settle in. No one seemed to be able to believe they were actually safe. It was the longest they had rested since the whole ordeal had begun. Outside, the sun set and more and more of the undead found their way to the store--but they had given up the relentless pounding on the walls, settling into a sad wailing as they ringed the strip mall like a memorial to the humanity they once possessed.

The electricity was still working and they took advantage of it, hunting around the stores for useful things and stacking them into a pile in the large open space in the middle of the automotive store. Soon it was jammed with sleeping bags, flashlights, and several automotive tools that looked like they might readily be used as weapons. Once they got their bearings, Gunner suggested they kill the lights.

“For all we know, it draws them in like bugs to a lamp,” he said. “We don't need to wake up to a thousand of them trying to shove their way in just because we were too chicken to use flashlights.”

They turned the lights off a few minutes later without discussion.

There was an employee bathroom with hot running water in the camping store and they took turns using it to clean up. Travis tried booting the old PC he found under the front counter, but it wouldn't load. A boxy cube that looked like it had been purchased over a decade ago, he wasn't sure it did more than process orders.

If I could just get online,
Travis thought.
I could check to see if there were any updates.

He hated feeling cut off from the rest of the world. It wasn't natural. Having lived so much of his life plugged into the web, he literally felt like he was going into withdrawal not having it at his disposal to answer his most basic questions. What had people done before it existed? How did you get news from people without technology? How would you know the weather? How would you know anything, really?

For one shimmering moment, Travis realized they were all about to find out. Given the extent of the outbreak, there was a pretty good chance he might never have access to the World Wide Web again in his lifetime. All those hours he'd spent learning one program after another, playing online games with friends, building websites and checking out social networking sites like Facebook, amounted to nothing. The thought that none of his online skills translated into the world post-zombie apocalypse brought on a fresh wave of sadness that settled over him like a wet blanket. In this new world he was small, weak, and virtually worthless.

“Any luck with that thing?” Max asked from over his shoulder, shaking him from his depressing train of thought.

“It won't even boot,” Travis said. “I'm pretty sure it runs DOS but it looks like the kernel file is damaged.” He smacked the large heavy monitor on the side and the green light of the aged screen flickered.

“Everything is down anyway,” Max comforted him.

“Yeah,” Travis said. “I was just hoping for some kind of cold comfort, I guess.”

She patted him supportively on the back.

“Let it go,” she said gently. “Just let it go.”

She reached down and unplugged the cord. The screen and monitor instantly went down.

Travis sighed, then got up and listlessly shuffled off without an argument.

Gunner located a portable propane cooking stove over at the camping supplies store, and set it up. He also found rations and brought out two packs of beef stroganoff, re-hydrating them with water and boiling them into something edible. Holt had ransacked the liquor store and found an embarrassment of riches in the form of junk food. He set the piles of chips, candy bars, pretzels, cookies, and crackers in the middle of the makeshift camp they'd created in the middle of the automotive store. Gemma had fallen asleep again shortly after moving over to join the group. It had been a long day for all of them and no one expected much of the pampered princess in the group. If she felt like escaping into dreams, so be it.

At least if she’s sleeping, she can’t manage to endanger all our lives again,
thought Max bitterly as she stepped over her. She still hadn't quite forgiven Gemma for almost getting her killed back at Thunderdome.

Gunner, Parker, Holt, and Travis devoured the small salty meal, sating the rest of their hunger with the junk food Holt had foraged. Max seemed to have lost her appetite. She grabbed a candy bar and ripped it open, but merely nibbled on it as she walked over and peered out the window. Sensing a shift in her mood, Parker tiptoed up behind her. Through the slit they'd left between the boards, he could see the dead careening around in front of the store. Only a few still stood right in front of the store. Most of them had left when they shut the lights out and used flashlights instead, proving another of Gunner's hunches. Off in the distance, Parker could see several zombies scurrying quickly in the darkness. A cat screamed in the distance and Max cringed. Parker put his hand on her shoulder and she surprised him by relaxing instead of tensing up further.

“It's just a cat,” he said. He realized how awful it sounded after he said it, but she didn't call him on it. Either way, a living creature was being devoured by a dead one. There was no nice way to put that.

“I never realized,” she said, not turning to look at him, “. . . I've kept myself so insulated from the real world with my blog and my sarcasm that I wasn't prepared for life. I've been sleepwalking the whole time.”

“There's no way anyone could be prepared for this,” Parker offered. “Even Gunner wasn't fully prepared for this.” Gunner shook his head at Parker. He wanted to get angry but it was true, and Parker had said it without malice.

“I've been into zombies
forever
,” Max said. “I've watched all the movies and played the games. But this isn't a game anymore. This is real. Those are real people out there. Some of them were my friends.”

“I know this is hard,” Parker said. “We've all lost people today.”

“They ain't people,” Gunner said coldly. “Not anymore. You can see it in their eyes. They aren't there anymore. It may look like someone you knew, but that person has passed on to whatever comes next. That's all I'm saying.”

“So many times today I just thought I was going to lose it,” Max said.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Parker said. “To be honest, I didn't think we were going to make it out of the command center. And if Holt hadn't showed up when he did, we probably wouldn't be here now.”

“I just kept telling myself that I had to make it,” Max said. “Everything seems so unreal. I mean,
zombies
? Come on, right?”

“They're real enough to me,” Parker said.

“It is what it is,” Gunner said. “In combat you learn to accept unthinkable situations really fast. That's what this is, a form of combat. You did well today. All of you. You survived because you turned off the need for answers and did what needed to be done to survive. Period.”

“Give it a rest, Gunner,” Parker complained.

“No,” Max protested. “It's good to hear. We need to hear it.”

They sat in awkward silence for a moment. The only sound was the endless moaning of the dead outside and the crinkling of plastic chip wrappers.

“What's going on?” Gemma asked, sitting up disoriented.

“Nothing,” Travis said. “You just drifted off for a bit.”

“Where are we?”

“We're still in the auto parts store,” Travis said. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I'm just exhausted.”

“We all are,” Travis sighed.

“I just want to go to sleep and wake up in my own bed,” Gemma said. “I want to wake up and have everything be back to normal again.”