Eaters (31 page)

That was the ten thousand dollar question, wasn’t it? Cheryl decided not to tell him Mark’s story about the genetically modified dogs or the church lady’s story about the mosquitoes. Neither seemed to make complete sense, and she didn’t want to freak him out more with a bunch of theories.

They left the storeroom to tell the others about the President’s broadcast. As they walked out, Cheryl glanced back at Thing. The hand was still for a second then it thrust itself through the wall as hard as it could, reaching its fingers out towards her. She chided herself for the morbid joke that popped into her head.
Only Thing was willing to give her a helping hand…

The news from the radio eased the minds of some, but there were a few more prayer sessions before dinner. Liz headed each one, and her strain was apparent in her quivering bottom lip as she read the Lord’s Prayer. After her pleas to God to end this period of tribulation, the women gathered together to scrounge up an assortment of food for dinner. They ended up with a buffet of corned beef hash, bean burritos, hot dogs, Moon Pies, and the last of the ice cream bars for dessert. Jonah said they needed to unplug the freezer, because it would draw too much power if they had to run the generator.

The silence as they ate was unnerving. Occasionally, someone tried to make a lighthearted joke, and once there was a loud bang outside that no one bothered to investigate. The unspoken question in the group’s eyes was whether help would come before the food ran out. Cheryl tried to bolster spirits by telling them about the tank that she and Aidan had seen in Golden on a patrol mission to take out any infected it ran across, but she left out the part about the large group of Eaters that followed it. When she was prompted for more details about her experiences since the apocalypse began, she tried to be as vague as possible, knowing that there wasn’t any point in scaring them with graphic descriptions of zombies ripping people apart and gorging on them in a gruesome blood feast.

After the group had sated themselves, there was a lot of stretching and yawning. A couple of the women decided to turn in early for the night, and Liz got up to check on Mary Ann.

Norman slapped his belly. “That was a good Moon Pie. My wife never let me eat those. She said they’d clog my arteries. I guess that don’t matter much now if I’m going to meet my Maker soon. Hey, you two want to play a spot of Rummy?”

Cheryl and Aidan shook their heads.

“No thanks,” Cheryl said. She couldn’t imagine kicking back and playing cards at a time like this, but she almost envied this stoic group. While they were resolved that the end was near, and they would soon see the golden gates of heaven, she was still a jumble of nerves. It seemed dumb to just sit around and be doing nothing. They should be talking about defense methods and gun training, and working on fortifying the building to cover any weak spots. Somebody should be checking on Thing to make sure that he hadn’t made any progress in his quest to find a way in. After a second, she realized that Matthew hadn’t joined them for dinner and guessed that he might be in there, keeping an eye on the hole for lack of better entertainment.

She glanced over at Aidan. He was still rooted to his stool with an empty paper plate at his feet, twisting his knuckles back and forth and popping them, glancing frequently towards the storefront windows.

“What’s up?” she asked after Norman and the others began helping with the clean up.

He lowered his voice. “I can’t leave my bike out there all night.”

She wasn’t surprised at his concern. It was unlikely that anyone would steal it, and Eaters had no use for steel and chrome, but still, it was like an extension of him, and it was their only transportation. He wasn’t going to sleep a wink tonight not knowing if it was okay.

“We have to get it in. It’s still a little light out. If you cover me with a gun, I can roll it in and park it in one of aisles.”

“Should we ask Jonah?”

“I don’t give a fuck what Jonah or anyone else thinks about it. I want my bike in here.”

Down boy.
Apparently, he’d been stewing on this for a while. She wondered why it took him this long to firm his resolve about it.

“We won’t ask him then—we’ll tell him. I’d feel better if it was inside tonight too.”

“Let’s do it quick. It’s dusk, and I’d prefer not to do it in the dark.”

“Alright. Get my gun, and I’ll go find Jonah.”

A minute later, she spotted Jonah through the open door of the bathroom, washing forks in the sink. She cleared her throat as she approached to avoid startling him. “Aidan is bringing his motorcycle inside.”

A fork clinked into the sink as Jonah straightened up and seemed to register what she’d just said. “Oh…I don’t want to open that door.”

“It’ll just be for a couple of seconds.”

He dried his hand on a brown paper towel and stared at her. “I’ve seen them come close to that door. I haven’t wanted to scare anyone in here by telling them, but those things out there have tried the handle. It’s lucky you got in as easily as you did, because they lurk out there.”

“Well, Aidan is going to bring his motorcycle in if he has to break a window to do it. He won’t spend the night in here without it.”

Jonah stiffened and glanced into the hallway as if looking for an eavesdropper. “We’d better do it quick and not tell anybody. If Liz knew that I opened that door again, she’d give me a tongue lashing for the next few days and probably make it the next topic of a sermon. Can you wait a bit until most are playing cards or asleep?”

“It’s almost dark. We can’t wait.”

With a nod, Jonah followed Cheryl to the front of the store where Aidan was crouched, peeking through the gun hole in the window.

“I’ll do it quick,” Aidan said as he stood.

“You’d better. If we get caught, I’ll tell Liz you stole my key or forced me to give it to you.”

Cheryl laughed. She wasn’t afraid of Liz. After the catfight with the smoking witch at the sandwich shop and nearly being choked to death by her in the church, whatever Liz could dole out would be kitten chow.

Aidan handed Cheryl her gun then nodded in Jonah’s direction. “If it’ll make you feel better, you can cover me with your gun, too.”

“Nah. I’m really not that good of a shot. If I was, you’d be dead by now.” He went back behind the counter and came back with a bloodstained baseball bat. “This will be fine. Matthew saved our lives with it.”

Cheryl felt better with him wielding that since she didn’t really like the thought of Jonah standing behind her with a gun and shaky hands. Whatever his weapon of choice, it would be good to have him as additional backup, in case her gun jammed.

Aidan peered out again. “I saw movement by the far side of the road a minute ago, but nothing close by. Let’s do it now.”

Jonah sucked in a deep breath then handed the key to Aidan. He took one quick look through the peephole before shoving it into the deadbolt on the heavy door and opening it.

Cool mountain air rushed in, scented with pine and the sour odor of death.

Aidan darted out towards his motorcycle as Cheryl pointed her gun through the door. As he reached it and lifted the kickstand, the sound of Matthew’s voice startled her from behind.

“Hey, what’s going—”

“Back off, son,” Jonah said. “We’re just getting the man’s Harley in here.”

“But you said—”

His words were drowned out by a sudden growling and snarling near the dumpster. It sounded like dogs fighting, but Cheryl knew that it wasn’t dogs, or coyotes, or foxes—it was humans. Or things that
used
to be human.

“Hurry up!” she yelled.

Aidan started wheeling the bike backwards, then stopped to turn it around, so he could move forward with it instead. When he was halfway into the turn, a small shape ran out from behind the dumpster. Cheryl almost pulled the trigger, but stopped when she saw that it was a raccoon with reflective yellow eyes…carrying a human hand in its mouth like a hard won prize. The fight had sounded so vicious, she wondered if the creature was rabid, or infected with the disease.

He was almost to the door when another larger shape appeared from behind the dumpster.

“Aidan!”

He glanced over his left shoulder and saw the hulking form. She didn’t have a clear shot, so she backed up to make room for the bike to come in. The handlebars were a couple of inches too wide to fit straight on, so he twisted them sideways and struggled to push through while keeping the bike vertical.

Cheryl kept the gun pointed towards the open door as a loud moan sounded behind him. “Aidan, come
on
!”

He stopped with the bike halfway in the door.

She didn’t like the wide-eyed look in his eyes. She lunged towards him, knowing there was no way she could pull him in around the motorcycle.

The ghoul with only half a face was behind him. One of his rotten hands was on the back of Aidan’s bike, and the other had a hold of the back of Aidan’s neck.

With the gun on full automatic, she fired a quick staccato burst of bullets into his head. Blood and part of his scalp littered the pavement behind him. He wobbled for a moment then he went limp and crashed to the ground.

Aidan was still frozen. She grabbed one of the handlebars and pulled. “Come on!”

His green eyes suddenly electrified as he jerked to life and shoved the motorcycle inside the building. “He had a vise grip on me. I couldn’t move…”

“It’s okay. I got him.”

“Thank you,” he said, briefly putting a shaky hand on her shoulder and looking into her eyes so intensely that she thought he’d seen all the way through her to the wall on the other side of the store.

As she slammed the door shut and turned the key to lock it, Aidan wheeled over to a parking spot in front of an aisle filled with candy bars and gum. When she turned around, she saw that Matthew was now holding the bat; he was wild-eyed and ready to swing while Jonah cowered behind the cash register. Beyond them, the others stood silently near the back of the shop. Most of them looked frightened, but Liz’s eyes burned with anger.

“A word,” she said, looking straight at them then towards Jonah and Matthew.

Cheryl and Aidan exchanged a glance as a sheepish Jonah came around from behind the counter. Matthew followed, his lips curled up in defiance, but his lingering fear was still apparent by the raised hairs on his arms.

The others tried to follow them, but Liz waved them back. Once they were in the storeroom with the door shut, she didn’t waste any time. She pulled out a stiff finger and wagged it in their faces like a policeman’s nightstick. “You open that door again, and your welcome here will be rescinded. We’ll put you back out on your own and, the Lord help you, He’ll decide your fate.”

Their apologies did little to calm her down. Cheryl couldn’t help but look over her shoulder towards Thing. There was a different hand poking through the wall now. It was petite like a woman’s and had blood-encrusted nails and knuckles scraped bare, revealing the white bone underneath. After Matthew fired a warning at her with his eyes, she averted her gaze and tried to focus on Liz’s rant, realizing that she probably didn’t know about the hole in the wall. She imagined the woman taking Matthew’s bat to it and inadvertently smashing a larger hole, putting them all in danger. All it would take to close it up would be a board and a few nails. Cheryl wondered why Matthew or Jonah hadn’t done it already. She figured that the boy was amused by the entertainment, and Jonah was too afraid to get near it.

Liz stormed out of the room, leaving them to ponder their wayward ways like scolded children. After waiting a minute to make sure she wasn’t going to come back to say, ‘…and another thing…’, Cheryl said, “She’s right, you know. That was a risky move.”

Aidan held up his hand to stop her and shook his shoulders like he was trying to shake off a sooty layer of remorse. “I know, but if my bike was destroyed we’d be up shit creek even deeper than we are now.”

“I don’t think we should get too comfortable here. I don’t like this place. It doesn’t feel any safer than the cabin.”

“I know.”

“What are we going to do? We can’t give these people guns.” She imagined one of the little old birds with a rifle, accidentally blasting a hole in the ceiling and cracking a hip as the recoil tossed her back onto the hard floor. “Even if they could shoot, they’d probably be more of a danger to us than a defense.”

“Yeah. We need to be ready to bail. Start filling your pockets.”

“What?”

“There’s a lot of stuff here. Anything we can use. Food, water, matches…”

“We could just ask them.”

“If they said, ‘no’, they’d start watching us closer. We need to just take it without them knowing.”

She knew he was right. There were no rules anymore. Stealing, killing—it was all a part of survival. It was discomforting that their moral compass had swung so far south, but unlike this heaven-minded group, she intended to survive as long as she could, or at least until she had some closure about the status of her father. “I guess you’re right. There’s so much here, they’ll never miss most of it. I hate to say it, but I don’t think this place is going to hold for much more than a few more days anyway.”