Fountain of the Dead (8 page)

Sam put the radio on his dashboard and scratched his dog’s head. The dog’s ear perked up at something and he let out a soft growl.

“Easy boy.” Sam peered out the windows to see what the dog was hackled about. “There’s nothing out there.”

Tony turned the Jeep around, pulling a U-turn on the highway, now driving north on the southbound side. He was still amazed Frank let the vehicle out of his sight. Tony knew if anything happened to the Jeep it would come out of his hide. There were fewer functional abandoned cars on this side and the bridge into Boston had been cleared. When the truck towing the trailer had turned, he followed suit.

They drove north to the 95 exit and sped past. They slowed pulling into Wilmington. Tony pulled the convoy over at the first gas station they saw. He scratched his head trying to remember if they had hit this place. It was so close to the city they must have. And if they didn’t every other poor bastard had to have wandered passed did. 93 was a busy highway back in the day, both sides lined with industrial parks.

Across the street was the entrance to one of them. Closed now for many years, there were rumors people had holed up in the old complexes, but no one dared explore them. The massive buildings were a mystery. Most of them had their own cafeterias, which meant dry stored food; also water from toilet tanks and whatever was left in the pipes. If no one thought enough to explore, it could be someone’s mansion. Or loaded with walking corpses and deadly traps.

“Why here?” Sam said coming from his vehicle.

“I have a hunch. Not a Vegas hunch. But a hunch.”

“Let’s hit it.” Sam waved and whistled.

They piled out from the vehicles. A hand written sign was taped to the pumps that read “No gas.” Tony tried the handles on all of them regardless. People had used similar tricks after Night Storm hit and it kept some away. The last pump in the line spit out gas.  Tony stopped and listened; if the pumps were working there was electricity someplace and that meant a generator. But there was no hum or pulse that he heard. If there was power inside the station, there had to be an emergency generator someplace. Which meant someone was keeping it fueled.

He signaled to Sam to pull the SUV up; Tony filled the tank while Danny kept watch from the back of the truck. The pick-up moved in next; Danny hopped from the bed and filled the tank. What was left went into the Jeep. They filled fuel cans from the diesel pump for the generators and stowed them in the truck bed. Whatever gasoline was left went into red, plastic canisters.

Tony pointed to Sam and Danny. “You two watch the front. I want two more around back; everyone else in the store.” They ran to the front of the store, checked for locks on the doors and looked through the glass windows. Nothing moved inside. The windows were dirty, loaded with dried, empty spider webs. Sun bleached posters and ads lined the insides of the panes. There was little room to see though. Above the door was an old video camera, with no power to it. There were others around the pump stations. Tony stepped through the door, making sure the dog was still in the front of the Jeep, not someplace the mutt would be in the way. Sam watched over that dog like it was his kid. He nodded to the others and went in.

* * * * *

The back end of the station / convenience store was an abomination. Bodies were stacked five high and seven deep almost the full length of the back access road; the backdoors were inaccessible. Some of the corpses were wrapped in plastic and sheets; others left open to the elements. The buzzing drone of insects was deafening; birds had pecked at the bodies and left the foul meat. Sam turned and threw up on the cracked asphalt. He took a step onto a yellow painted speed bump and held his arms out for balance.

“You ok, old man?” Danny asked.

“Yeah, I never get used to the stink,” Sam said and covered his mouth. “Especially so much of it.”

Danny patted him on the back and then went back into watching-out mode. “We should take some gas and burn these bodies. Where do you think they came from? The parking lot was empty.” They both looked at each other. Sam pulled up the collar on his shirt to cover his mouth and nose. He looked like a pathetic cowboy bandit from a spaghetti western. The cloth did little to filter out the stink of the bodies stacked like cord wood.

“Better question, who stacked them here?” Danny asked. Sam turned to the rusted access ladder on the building and Danny scampered up it, without thinking.
A few years ago, I would have been up that ladder like that,
Sam thought. Sam shook his head thinking how young Danny must have been with the storm hit. He couldn’t be more than six or seven years older than Micah. The roof was a barren waste of cracked paint, rusted vents and old tar with loose gravel. Danny looked over the side, shook his head and flew equally fast down the ladder.

“Nothing.”

“Look at it this way, Danny if anyone was inside, they know we’re here now.”

“You’re an asshole, Sam.”

“Maybe, kid. At least I didn’t give away our position. You know twenty years ago, I could have scrambled up that ladder to the roof,” Sam said.

“Twenty years ago I was in diapers.”

“I wonder if someone was stacking corpses from one of those office buildings.” Danny said pointing over his shoulder.”

“We’ll never know.” Sam patted Danny out back and they started for the front. Sam let the collar of his shirt slip down around his neck and his spit several times to get the taste of puke and corpse out of his mouth.

* * * * *

Tony stepped into the store, in an instant he knew something had rotted. The refrigerated cases that held meat and milk and various juices were wide open, the others sported empty shelves and ruined glass doors. Shattered glass lay on the floor like the remnants of an ice storm. Tony gave a quick scan to the aisles; almost everything had been stripped clear. Tony looked up to the ceiling and readied his guns when he heard footsteps on the roof. He brushed some of his dark hair away and continued through the aisles. Sam’s dog looked in patiently from the outside.

The convenience store had six aisles; the outer walls were refrigerator units. Tony went to the end of a row and walked past an empty display for canned nuts, checking for anything salvageable. The freezer cases had defrosted; black and white speckled tiles were water stained and coated in mold below them. He covered his mouth, whatever the smell was, was behind the freezer case.

A wooden pallet that held stacked boxes of Soda was mostly empty, bullet casings covered the floor and when he looked closer, Tony saw the bullet holes in the walls and in the shelving units. The remaining cans and bottles all had holes and the fluids left inside wasn’t a viable option. The entrance to the refrigerated cases revealed a doorway that led to cold storage and a walkway to fill the shelves from behind; if anything was left it would be back there. He took a deep breath and opened the metal latched door.

* * * * *

Gerry walked to the front of the store, rifle out and ready to unload on anything that got in his way. Out of reflex, he opened the register; it was empty save for a handful of coins. All the cigarettes, gum, and matches all long gone. He grabbed a couple DVDs and stuffed them into his shirt, not bothering to look at the titles. Small displays at the front that normally held travel size toiletries were broken and thrown aside. The peg board in back of the register had a hole in it and the metal pegs were scattered across the floor.

“This place is picked clean,” Gerry said. “Someone had a real party in here.” The others nodded to him. He grabbed the last three pairs of sunglasses from a spinner rack and went down each aisle looking for canned food, paper goods, snack foods, anything at all. He reached for a bag of beef jerky, checked the expiration date and tossed it on the floor. Gerry signaled for the rest of the party to fill white plastic shopping bags with whatever was left. “We’ll sort through it all back at the camp.” Gerry looked at the rack behind the counter and spied the scratch tickets. He grabbed the end of a reel and took a handful for Tony with a smile. Then the gunfire started.

* * * * *

Tony eased into the freezer unit. The stink of rotted meat was strongest back here. He stepped past cases of old cold cuts; even with all the preservatives, there was no chance for anything edible. There was bread in bags that looked like blue-green clay. If the freezers hadn’t cut out this would have been a treasure trove.
THE treasure trove.
The kicker was the two bodies, one a clerk with his throat chewed out, the other, the undead that did it. The clerk managed to jam a metal rod through the zombie’s eye socket and out the back of its head before he died.

Tony heard the groan ahead of him, in back of a pile of boxes. It looked like someone had tried to barricade themselves in back of cases of Coke and Root beer. He moved forward stepping over the corpses and doing his best not to breathe. From in back of the wall of soda, he saw movement. He leaned over the boxes and fell backwards, stumbling over the corpses landing on his back.

The first dead plowed through the boxes trying to get to Tony, soda cans erupted and sprayed foaming liquid. It wore a store vest; one eye hung by dried veins and muscles from the socket, the other eye dull grey. It lumbered forward and before the third step, a bullet ripped through its skull it fell face forward, inches from Tony’s lap.

Tony struggled to his feet when the other two came out. They were, or had been customers dressed like tourists, the fronts of their shirts stained with blood and gore, meat dangled from their teeth. They had a fresh kill. One got caught up on the body on the floor, went down hard. Tony punched and kicked at it until he got his gun free. It crawled up the corpse, using its legs for rails, inching closer to Tony. He pressed the barrel to the top if its head and fired. A backwash of damp brain flew backwards and splattered against his face. Without wiping at his eyes, he got up and put the rest of the clip into the last one, coming up behind.

Gerry crashed through the shelving looking at what he needed to kill. He eased up before colliding with Tony. Tony grabbed a bottle of warm water from a plastic wrapped box and poured it over his face and head. The blood and brain ran off his head in thick streams.

“Catherine would shit twice if she saw you doing that,” Gerry said.

“Well she ain’t here, is she?” Tony answered and wiped his eyes clean. In back of Gerry a spinner rack squealed as it slowed turned.

“You okay, hoss?” Gerry asked and slapped him on the back.

“Yeah, find anything?”

“Some snacks, a bag of jerky, a couple scratchers. I’ll have them pack up everything that’s was left.”

Tony stepped around the “barricade”; a small man was on the floor in a puddle of blood and gore. His mouth was working but no words came out. Tony nodded at him and put a bullet through his forehead. “You can thank me later.” He surveyed the rest of the storage area and pointed to Gerry.

“Get your lackeys back here and lug this stuff out, without the brain matter please.” Tony stepped through the door into the aisles. “You three get in there.” Tony went for the door and stalked outside. He finished cleaning his face with the last of the water.  Gerry tapped him on the shoulders and handed him the scratch tickets.

“You’re an asshole, Gerry. Sure as shit stinks one of these is a winner. Now that I can’t collect.” Tony walked over to the pumps and leaned on the back of the jeep. He fished the key out his pocket and scratched the tickets.

“Old addictions die hard,” he whispered and dropped the first losing ticket.

* * * * *

Catherine sat on her couch; the laptop lay dormant on the coffee table. Meredith was next to her and Micah on the rocking chair in the corner. Grace waited for the nod to start up the computer. Catherine looked around the room at all the young faces and sighed, for the first time in a long time, feeling her age.

“Fire it up.” Grace reached across and opened it up; the cover squealed a little when opened. She powered it on and waited for a few minutes. Grace waited anxiously while the boot screen flashed and the system loaded drivers.

“Does it have enough battery or do you need me to get the generator going?

“We should be okay; we only used it for maybe 10 minutes and it was fully charged.” Grace said. When the login screen came up they searched for a server, finding the only available one, Boston and Crenshaw’s. Micah rocked nervous in the chair, tapping his foot with each creak against the floorboards. He took out a journal and tapped a pencil against it.

“Micah, you’re freaking me out,” Grace said. He shrugged and put the book away and tapped his feet instead. “Micah,” Grace said sharp. “Please stop.” He stood up and sighed and paced instead. “You ever wonder why he doesn’t talk?” He ripped out a page of paper from a random book and scribbled on it.

“You can ask me, I can understand you, and I can hear you.” He waited until they read it, crumpled it into a ball and threw it at the girls, then went outside.

“You both need to understand, he was from Boston and he saw his parents killed on Night Storm in the city, so any dealings with them gets to him,” Catherine said.

“I thought Sharon was his mother?” Meredith said.