This is the fourteenth chapter of the zombie serial The Dead Life. You can learn more about the story over at the project hub. This series originally ran on Haunted MTL but is being edited and updated in the lead-up to new installments to continue the story.
You can read the prior chapter here.
Day 17
The darkness within the building, even with the daylight pouring in through the windows in dusty beams, broken or otherwise, was intimidating. It was that strange adjustment between light and dark, when passing from one into the other, where one’s eyes needed to adjust. It was a momentary lapse in vision, and it made Edgar nervous.
Edgar took point, carefully stepping on the layer of broken glass at the building’s entrance in an attempt to muffle as much of the crunching as he could. There was little to be done, and he paused, frustrated. He finally gave up and made his way in toward the carpeted floor, wincing at the steady cacophony of glass beneath his feet.
The store had the overwhelming scent of mold and mildew. Presumably, the store had been open to the elements for only a couple of weeks, but decay had settled in quickly. Edgar watched a light cloud of spores and dust puff into the air as he stepped onto the carpet. Dani and Jimmy entered, and the three of them overlooked the darkened aisles and endcaps. Many of the shelves were bare from a combination of looting and spillage onto the aisles. The signs of wild animals were pretty clear, too. Dani swore she saw shining eyes in the darkness, forcing Edgar to crane his neck trying to observe them. He saw nothing.
That didn’t mean there was nothing there, though.
Jimmy grabbed one of the carts and wriggled it from the collection between the entrance and exit doors. The sound of clashing metal gave everyone pause. They all held their breath, wary of any telltale moans of the undead, but heard nothing in response. Jimmy shrugged and grabbed another two carts from the tangled rows.
“I figure we can load up everything we can, fill the car, and then stash these elsewhere for another time. Sound good?”
“That can work. Just grab anything helpful,” Dani added.
She glanced around, seeing shelves just behind one of the checkouts near the entrance. She leaned over the counter, sat on it, and swung her feet over. From behind the counter, she grabbed a couple of boxes and waved them at her companions, who had been watching in silence.
“Does anyone smoke?”
She shook two cartons of cigarettes that made a satisfying, thunky rattle – the boxes were a bit dusty, but still full.
She smiled. Jimmy smiled. Edgar smiled. If there were a ghoul here, they probably would have smiled too.
Dani began stacking whatever boxes and packs she could find on the counter. “I’ll grab anything I can find here.”
Jimmy grinned at Edgar. He looked like a fucking dork. Edgar couldn’t help but laugh to himself as he grabbed one of the shopping carts, which looked overly small compared to him. Not that he was incredibly tall, but his thick frame tended to dwarf anything near him. He suddenly had a picture in his mind of a Shriner in a little car and smiled at the image.
He began to wheel his cart away, but turned back to Dani and Jimmy. “I’m going to hit the food aisles. See what canned stuff is left.”
Jimmy nodded. “I’ll go to the pharmacy and grab everything I possibly can – whatever prescriptions are there.”
Dani began to toss boxes and packs of cigarettes into her cart. She nodded to the other end of the building. “I’m going to poke around in the stockroom, then. Maybe that didn’t get hit as hard by scavengers.”
“Wish we had some walkies or something,” Edgar added.
Dani nodded as she dropped an armful of stuff into her cart. “There may be some in the back. We’ll see.”
The three survivors wheeled off in search of supplies.
…
Jimmy grabbed everything he felt was potentially useful from the shelves leading toward the pharmacy itself. Mostly off-the-shelf supplies and medications. He weighed the importance of antacids in his mind, shrugged, and threw the few remaining bottles into the cart. Why not? Cough drops, too. Cartoon vitamin chewables were fair game. He even snatched up several bottles of fish oil pills. You never know… Hell, he even kept a lookout for the horny goat weed.
No signs of condoms. The “Jimmy hats,” as Dad used to say. Jimmy hated that – his dad always saying Jimmy was named for them after getting through one of them. Asshole. Those were probably near the front, at the checkout. It was the most embarrassing place he could think of. Back when you had to ask for the prophylactics from some teen or old lady working minimum wage at a job they hated.
He didn’t have plans for the condoms. Though at that notion, Dani’s ass resting on the checkout counter flashed in his mind. Well… you never know, he thought to himself.
He had also found a pair of canvas totes in the seasonal aisle on the way and had them slung over his shoulder. He could stand to carry a couple of bags of goods if the cart proved too full.
Given the state of the store, that was highly unlikely. Pickings were slim. Bandages, cough medicine, and typical medicine cabinet supplies were certainly diminished. Painkillers were virtually non-existent. He did manage to find a couple of bottles of aspirin and some ointments. Anything, at this point, was a stroke of luck.
What Jimmy hoped was that he could convince Edgar of the plan to stay in Emmett. The idea of heading to San Diego was a lost cause. It had to be.
He stopped pushing the cart when the wheel hit a metal shelf that had been pried from the shelving frame. The clang made him wince, but he heard nothing after. He bent down to clear the shelf and caught a glimpse of a feral cat resting further along the bottom shelf in the aisle, hiding between a couple of bottles of hydrogen peroxide.
“Hey, how are you, little guy? Little lady? Can’t ask to see if you got balls, that’d be rude, right?”
He set the loose shelf against the unit and turned his attention back to the cat.
“You gonna help me out? Got a place to stay?”
The cat’s eyes were wide and scared. Clearly, the world had not been kind to it since the dead rose. Jimmy wondered if the ghouls were eating animals. He hadn’t seen anything like that yet, but it was always possible. They didn’t seem particularly picky. He felt sick to his stomach for the cat.
Then it got worse. He thought of his sister. He shook his head. He didn’t want to consider it further.
He thought for a moment about trying to take the cat with him. There was no point, not now. Maybe he’d bring a towel and a plastic carrier from the storage units next time he came back to the store.
Not that there’d be a guarantee the cat would be there, though.
He sighed, clicked his tongue, and gently reached for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. The cat yelped and hissed, swiping at his hand but missing. Jimmy instinctively retracted his hand. There was no sense in dipping into the peroxide, yet.
He extended his sneaker out toward the bottle and knocked it onto the ground. The cat leapt out from the shelf and darted down the aisle with a dramatic howl, knocking down a wire rack as it rounded a corner. The rack clattered loudly as it hit a shelf and then the floor.
“Goddamn it.”
He shrugged and grabbed the peroxide bottles, placing them in the cart.
He wondered what goodies awaited behind the pharmacy counter.
…
Edgar dutifully grabbed whatever non-dented canned good he could find. He remembered something about dents spoiling the food from his Abuela. Any box, or plastic, crinkling package, or aluminum case found its way into his cart – provided it looked potentially edible. And yet his cart was maybe a third full by an optimistic estimate.
Still, it was more food he had seen in days, and if most of it was good, they’d eat well with a little rationing. Not that he had intended to stay all that long. He considered the dented cans once again, but stood by his original decision to leave them be. If they were good, they would keep for next time.
Edgar had already gathered that Jimmy was adamant about sticking around town; San Diego was a “killbox,” he argued. Edgar wondered what the skinny redheaded fuck knew about “killboxes.” Edgar’s Papá had been in Desert Storm. He’d seen some real shit, Edgar knew more about the idea of a killbox second-hand than his little tweaker friend ever did.
Edgar peered down at a burn-mark on his hand. He knew a lot about the results of a killbox. His Papá’s anger was ever-present.
That was why San Diego was important. Papá was there, with Mamá, Tía, Abuela, Angel, Mari, María… La familia. They were around. Papá had to keep them safe. He was a tough son of a bitch. Tough, but he loved his family and would protect them, even if he had to force them with a strong hand. That’s why Edgar was as tough as he was.
Edgar grabbed a couple of likely stale single-serving bags of tortilla chips from a pile of broken bags and loose chips. A nearby rat squeaked as he ripped the bag away. Edgar snorted.
“Good times for you, eh?”
The rat did not respond.
He wheeled his cart further into the next aisle, which seemed to formerly hold all sorts of sodas and drinks. There weren’t many cases and bottles left. He prayed a silent prayer for beer.
Edgar agreed that there was some sense in Jimmy’s plan. The Family Storage had proven pretty safe, and there was certainly room for them. The plan to reinforce it, based on some of Dani’s talk, also seemed like a good idea. But that was fine for everyone else. They didn’t have their own people waiting for them.
Edgar paused for a moment, staring at a can of soda that was standing alone on a shelf, a thin layer of dust dulling the shiny aluminum top. What was it about the soda? He stared at the can a moment longer and realized he had seen it just a few minutes ago in the car. It had tumbled out of the bag in the passenger seat and onto the floorboard. It remained there, undisturbed for weeks, next to the thrashing, undead mother.
He thought about the car, what the woman’s final moments must have been like. He thought about the baby in the back. He could have sworn he’d seen something move under the overturned child’s seat.
Edgar’s breath caught in his throat for a moment, and he let out an ugly, half-choked gasp. He felt tears coming on and quickly wiped his eyes with his massive forearm. He punched himself in the side of his head for good measure.
“No llorar.”
After a brief sniffle, he glanced ahead, his eye caught but the most glorious sight he could ask for. There was beer afterall.
“Amén.”
…
The stockroom seemed mostly untouched. Most of what was inside was still packaged as it had been when it had arrived. Dani was excited about the potential of it all. Perhaps they could bring back a moving truck and fill it later on.
It seemed in the panic, people grabbed at the shelves but didn’t think to pry away the shrink wrap and tear into the cardboard. Their loss.
The small forklift in the stockroom also seemed promising. Maybe that could be useful back at home. She had no idea if it ran on gas or electricity, but the ability to move large things around might make it easier to build a reinforced wall at the storage yard.
This trip turned out to be a lot more successful than she had hoped. It was just a matter of planning and-
The thunk of a cardboard box onto the concrete floor broke Dani’s concentration. She spied the box, slightly bent and battered, and looked up the high shelves that made up the wall of the storeroom. On the second tier, maybe about eight feet from the ground, she spied the source of the disturbance.
A wide-eyed woman and a teenage girl stared at her. The girl’s brow was furrowed in concern while the mother’s eyes were shockingly wide and bloodshot.
Dani took a step back, taking in the scene. “Holy shit, are you two… okay?”
Neither responded. Dani looked into the mother’s eyes and tried to follow her gaze. Dani hadn’t noticed anything alarming until she felt the weight of the fireplace poker in her own hand.
“Oh, right,” she whispered.
Dani bent down, placing the poker on the ground and scooting it ahead of her with her foot. The scraping of the metal on the concrete was uncomfortable in the echoing stockroom.
“Look, I am just here on a supply run. Do you need help? Do you have someplace to go? My name is Danielle, but you can call me Dani.”
Dani waited for a response. The girl looked at her mother for a moment, who sighed and finally blinked.
The girl spoke first, her voice was low and hoarse.
“We’re trapped here. There’s one of those things in the store, and my mom’s leg is really hurt.”
Dani glanced around the stockroom.
“I haven’t seen anything? Maybe it wandered off? How long have you two been in here?”
“I think about an hour,” the woman replied.
Shit, Dani thought. Something could still be here.
Dani kept her distance, not wanting to intimidate them. She raised her hands in an open gesture like she was surrendering.
“Where did you last see it?”
“There’s an office around the corner,” the girl whispered.
Dani peered behind her and saw the corner that led to the presumed office. She turned back to the two women and held her finger to her lips to signal them to keep quiet. She picked up the poker from the concrete as carefully as she could.
She was worried about the noise that she had already made. Surely if something was there, it would have been alerted by now. It could lumber out at any second.
She sighed and started toward the corner. The loading doors ahead rattled slightly, probably from the wind. Or maybe a ravenous ghoul just on the other side.
It was hard to tell these days.
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I believe I would have soiled myself at the woman and her daughter there bud. Holy crap.
Yeah, almost feral eyes just staring at you from a shelf in a darkened room would be terrifying.