Take the All-Mart! (15 page)

“A zombie baby?” Trip asked.

Bob smiled proudly. “He’s gonna be an associate, just like his dad. His little sister, Denise, we won’t know for another year when the specialization kicks in, but her mom’s already hoping for security. Made her a little badge and everything.”

“Weird.” Bernice took another sip of beer.

“What’s so weird about it?” Bob asked. “We have lives here. Good lives. We don’t get sick. We live practically forever... and the All-Mart provides everything we need.”

“See, there you go.” Trip raised an eyebrow at Bernice through the rear view. “However this thing ended up being here — let’s just say it sprang up spontaneously from the desert — it’s a good thing. And if any one individual played a minor and quite accidental part in it, they should probably get a medal or something.”

Bernice scowled at him. “Or a good punch in the temple. With brass knuckles. Or one of those spikey things.”

Rudy shot Trip a sideways glance, and Trip cleared his throat, tapped on the GameGear display. The wireframe showed miles of shelves around them, with a few dozen blue dots scattered around. “Anybody else thinkin’ it’s odd we haven’t seen any security? Zombie — you weren’t kidding about the Voice knowing we’re here, right?”

“The Voice knows everything,” Bob said. “Because we tell her everything.”

Trip twisted around, put his arm up on the back of the front seat, and smirked at Bob. “So why hasn’t it sent somebody to convert us? Or fetch us like it did Roxanne? “

“In all my time here, the Voice has never asked that anyone be brought to it before today. Your friend must be special.”

“Special how?”

“The Voice didn’t say. Only that it wanted her.”

“And it didn’t want us?” Rudy asked.

Bob shook his head at Rudy. “It didn’t say anything about you — but that’s normally how it works. The Voice doesn’t get involved. Us associates are programmed to convert any people we come across by force-feeding. But since the All-Mart is so big, and there’s only a few thousand associates, the food’s all laced with conversion nanochines, too. So, even if by chance somebody doesn’t run across one of us, they’re going to eat eventually, and join us. Everyone just sorta joins us, one way or another, and the Voice doesn’t have to intervene.” His face darkened. Not with blue spiderwebbing but with remembered dread. “If the shoppers don’t get them first, that is.”

“‘Get them’?” Trip asked.

“Shoppers are... you just want to avoid them, okay? Every day I thank the Voice I was converted into an Associate and not a Shopper. They’re ravenous. Like animals. They’re programmed to consume, and that’s about it. They’ll go into an area and pick the shelves clean — and then when they are, they’ll then turn on each other or anybody else around, non-converted and Associates, even their fellow shoppers, doesn’t matter, until the shelves are restocked. Unless Security’s around. They won’t mess with security.”

“So, anywhere there are a couple thousand of them just standing around, we shouldn’t go anyway near, then, I take it?” Trip asked.

“Definitely,” Bob said. “Even Security runs the other way when there are more than a few dozen in one place.”

“Man,” Trip said, twisting back around to gesture out the windshield. “I wish you’d told me that about thirty seconds ago.”

CHAPTER 14: LADIES WEAR

The
Wound
shot out of Sporting Goods into a forest of mushroom-shaped clothes racks freshly stocked with women’s casual business attire. Thousands of shopper zombies — clothed in rags and slobbering — jockeyed for position around the racks, grabbing anything they could reach, tearing and ripping at their fellow shoppers just to get at the cheap gray pantsuits.

“Dear Shatner...” Not taking his eyes off the scene out the windshield, Rudy swallowed and reached for the double-barrel sawed-off on the dash. “It’s like a piranha feeding frenzy.”

“They’re... horrible.” Bernice turned to look at Bob over the pile of beer jugs. “Is that what happened to the Mother Superior and the others? Are they shoppers now?”

“It’s all based on the population of the All-Mart when you’re converted — what you become depends on what the All-Mart needs to keep the population in proportion. Two percent of the population needs to be security. Eight, associates. Ninety percent, shoppers.”

“Ninety percent?” Bernice’s shoulders drooped. “Then they’re probably...”

“Yeah,” Bob said. “Odds are. But they won’t be shoppers, yet. Everybody starts out as a wanderer.”

“A wanderer?” Rudy asked, cracking open the shotgun to make sure it had fresh shells.

Bob nodded. “The All-Mart’s nanochines need a good day or two to really integrate with their host. So while they’re working on that, the host just walks around, more or less aimlessly, definitely mindlessly, picking idly at shelves. Some wanderers can travel dozens of miles before the nanochines fully kick in and transform a wanderer into their ultimate form.”

Bernice sunk back into her seat, looking out the window with a sullen, thousand-yard stare.

“You gonna just drive through them?” Rudy asked Trip, noticing with an alarmed raised eyebrow that the
Wound
was still roaring straight ahead.

“You got a better idea?” Trip closed his eyes to focus on the
Wound
’s sensors. “The field’s pretty thick with ‘em, but it’s also about two miles wide. We go around, we’re just losing more time — and who’s to say they won’t just chase after us, anyway?”

Rudy twisted around to ask Bob: “If we go around, will they follow us?”

“Not as long as they have merchandise to fight over,” Bob said. “And even if they didn’t, they’re slow and aren’t allowed to use weapons of any kind, so they’re no threat unless we stop and they can swarm us.”

“See, Bob says it’s perfectly safe to drive through them.” Trip smiled close-eyed at Bob in the rear-view. “Way to be a team player, Bob.”

Bob frowned. “That’s not exactly —”

“Bernice,” Trip said, interrupting him, “Bob’s getting uppity.”

Without taking her eyes off the window, she jammed the tip of the shock baton into Bob’s side. He convulsed, slumping back.

Rudy sighed. “Look, it’ll only take a couple minutes to drive around. It’d be safer.”

“Safer?” Trip scoffed. “This thing’s practically a tank.”

“Sure, but what if the car breaks down and we get stuck in the middle of them out there?

“When has the
Wound
ever broken down?”

“There’s always a first time,” Rudy said. “Why tempt fate? Just drive around.”

“Fate can suck it.”

“You just want to run over zombies, don’t you?”

“Think they’ll crunch or squish?” Trip twitched and the
Wound
leapt forward, her adaptive tires softening for traction. “People might want to hold on to something,” Trip announced just as the
Wound
slammed into the nearest zombie at eighty miles per, flipping it over the hood and roof like a slobbering, gnarling rag doll.

The
Wound
plowed deeper into the forest, the clothes racks and zombie horde thickening. The zombies remained focused on their shopping frenzy, most not even noticing the oncoming car until they were bowled under or knocked aside.

Trip sat back and opened his eyes to light a cigarette as he rammed the
Wound
through a rack, two dozen shoppers swarmed around it, bashing at each other for the last orange-cream sleeveless blouse. Zombies went flying or were churned into pulp under the car’s wheels. “Man, this is a great show. Where’s some popcorn when you need it?”

A severed zombie head splatted against the
Wound
’s windshield. Rudy threw his arms over his spike-helmeted head and in the back, Bernice screamed. Bob grunted in disgust.

Trip shot him an arched eyebrow in the rearview. “What, did you know him?”

Bob glared at him, visibly straining against his bindings. Then convulsed in pain, Bernice snapping the sparking tip of the stun baton against his temple.

Rudy cleared his throat. “You know...”

“Oh, Vishnu’s late Sunday dinner,” Trip sighed. He threw up his hands in exasperation at Rudy. “Every time the heads go rolling — without fail — you chime in with the party-pooping.”

“Knocking ‘em around some, I’m pretty sure karma can forgive since they heal so fast... but killing them? That has asteroid repercussions written all over it.”

Trip scowled, and twitched. The
Wound
slid left, avoiding the next cluster of zombies. “We’re almost past ‘em all, anyway,” he said, purposefully not acknowledging Rudy’s appreciative grin.

The
Wound
slid around another cluster of zombies and into the periphery of the clothing rack forest, the racks already picked cleaned and empty. Both his eyes and the
Wound
’s sensors told Trip the shopper zombies were all behind them, for now. He aimed the
Wound
towards a run of empty shelves, slotting it between racks. He twisted around to smile at everyone. “That wasn’t so bad —”

A crack against the windshield and his head snapped around to see a zombie, clinging to the
Wound
’s roof, whacking the windshield with an elbow.

“We really need to put a sensor up there,” Trip noted when Bernice’s screaming and Rudy’s even more girlish yelp died down. He smirked at Rudy. “Well, that one’s definitely attacking us,”

Rudy shrugged, caught his breath. “Could be argued it’s acting in self-defense.”

“Shut up,” Trip told him, then twisted around to ask Bob: “Thought you said they couldn’t use weapons?”

“Its own elbow isn’t technically a weapon,” Bob pointed out.

Trip grunted and turned back to Rudy. “Can it break through?”

Rudy shook his head confidently. “The windshield’s half-inch thick polymer. A sledgehammer couldn’t get through it.”

The zombie brought its elbow down again, this time near the hole the Magnum’s rail-gun shot had left in the windshield. A sharp
crack
, and faint fissures a half-inch long appeared around the hole.

“Oh, yeah...” Rudy cocked his head to the side and stared, curious, at the hole. “Forgot about that. Structural integrity’s gonna be a tad less integral than normal.”

“Well, do something about it,” Trip insisted.

“How am I supposed to patch it while we’re —” Rudy stopped as Trip pointed his cigarette at the shotgun in Rudy’s lap. “Duh, yeah. On it.”

Rudy rolled his window down, then, taking the shotgun with him, wriggled up through.

The shopper zombie looked like she was in her eighties, thin blue-white hair flapping in the wind. She was sprawled out over the roof, the gaunt fingers of one hand clenched tight against the lip of the windshield. She was just barely keeping herself from flying off while still — somehow — managing to bring her free arm’s elbow down, again and again, on the windshield.

Rudy pointed the shotgun at her head, put his finger over both triggers, and closed his eyes. “Sorry about this...” he mouthed.

A snarl, and the shotgun was suddenly moving on its own — and trying to get away from him.

Rudy’s eyes snapped open. The zombie had grabbed the barrels with her free hand. She yanked it back and forth, attempting to wrestle it out of his grip.

Without thinking, Rudy clamped his teeth down on her wrist, tight. The zombie howled, let go of the shotgun. In one motion, Rudy let go of her wrist, pointed the shotgun at the hand keeping her on the roof, and fired both barrels.

The hand disintegrated in a puff of blue blood. The zombie let out a scream of pain and protest as she quickly slid from the roof. Rudy watched her bounce off the trunk and away, then slid himself back down through the window.

“Well, that’s all taken care of,” he said, settling back into his seat and putting the shotgun gently up on the dash. Grinning, he swept his eyes over everyone’s faces. They were uniformly wide-eyed, staring back at him. “Hey, don’t everybody thank me at once...”

Bernice raised a trembling finger, pointed at his mouth.

Rudy crunched his brows together in confusion, wiped his fingers over his mouth. He looked at the fingers. Stained with fresh blue zombie blood. “Oh, this?” he asked, wiping the blood off on his t-shirt. “It’s just blood. Had to bite —”

Trip’s hand clamped over the top of Rudy’s head and twisted it around to face the rear-view.

Rudy took a good look at himself. The faintest of blue-glowing spiderwebbing was just creeping out from around his lips. “Aww, crap.”

“Baton!” Trip ordered, holding his hand out over the seat back at Bernice. After a moment’s hesitation, she slapped it into his upraised palm, and he swung it around into Rudy’s armpit, activating it.

Rudy convulsed. And kept convulsing, his eyes rolling to white and his teeth chattering until Trip was convinced the spiderwebbing had fully retreated. Only then did Trip shut the baton off and toss it back to Bernice.

“Get it under control or next time it’s to the balls,” Trip said.

Rudy slumped back in his seat, gasping for breath. “Working on it,” he panted feebly, twisting his nipple through his t-shirt. “Just need to adjust the ol’ factory.”

Trip nodded at him warily, then smirked into the back seat. “Ok, so from here on in, we drive around shoppers.”

“Yeah, excellent idea.” Rudy banged his forehead against the dashboard. Dazed, he sat back, offering Bernice a reassuring grin. “Just giving the chems a head start.”

Bernice didn’t return the grin. “Stop the car.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Trip asked. “We’ve barely put a mile between us and them.”

“Please. Stop. The. Car.”

Trip shook his head at her through the rear-view. “Sorry, need to make more ground. Just hold it.”

“I don’t have to pee...” she said, then clamped her mouth shut and her hands over her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out.

Trip twitched and engaged the brakes.

Before the
Wound
could fully skip to a stop, Bernice was pushing on the back of Trip’s seat and pushing her way out of the car, running hunched over for the front of the
Wound
. Trip shut the door behind her, lit a cigarette. He smirked over at Rudy. “Well...”