You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 25

The worst part of the morning for everyone at the camp was the morning constitutional. Unfortunately, with no running water or indoor plumbing, the bathroom arrangement was a horrid shock to the system and probably one of the things Dani hated most about the apocalypse.

Aside from the ravenous cannibalistic corpses, of course.

The camp’s bathroom setup was simple enough: the survivors had cleared out one of the units, and some shelving and boxes enclosed the entrance, with some shower curtains strung across for some privacy. From there, everyone would do their business in an individual bucket that they’d have to empty later through a gap in the fencing at the western end of the lot.

It was the return of the chamberpot. Things really had regressed.

The closed curtain with a hanging air freshener on display indicated occupied space. For good measure, Bob had found a “Pawdon My Mess” sign out of some grandmother’s unit and hung it inside the unit. Dani had begun to despise the cloyingly sweet puppy on the placard. Everyone gave one another a wide berth when it came to ‘shit-central’ as Bob had taken to calling it.

Water was rare. Thankfully, sanitizer and toilet paper were comparatively less rare than water. The group had managed well enough, but soon they would need water beyond what they’d scavenged. Nobody had bathed in weeks; it had been at least a month since any rain had crossed the sky, and there was no luck with water catches beyond the promise they would eventually work when the weather would finally be on their side.

Dani stepped out from shit-central, holding the bucket away from her, glancing around. She hated this. Even worse, however, was the makeshift latrine on the other side of the fence, right next to Bob’s trailer. He’d been kind enough to avert his eyes as she approached with the bucket; she disappeared behind a pair of shelves he had set up as a privacy marker.

She drained the bucket down the pipe that drained into the caustic pit. As the shame sluiced through the pipe, landing with an audible plop, she gazed across the street. Thankfully, the lone ghoul she had spied hadn’t seemed to notice her. She watched it stumble aimlessly across the road. The last thing she wanted was a walking dead man falling into a pit of shit. It would be too much to bear.

“The pool chemicals have helped out quite a bit, keeping the rankness down,” Bob said as she stepped out, bucket lighter but no less traumatizing. “I wish we could have dug a bigger latrine, though,” he added.

Dani placed her bucket on the ground behind the shelf and glanced at the old man. “Please never talk to me if you see me using this spot. Please.”

He saluted her and turned his attention back to his book.

“Doesn’t the smell get to you?” She asked.

“It beats the dead.”

He had a point. Maybe.

“Tell you what, though, there is a reason I don’t open the back window of the trailer.”

Bob’s trailer, the one he lived in as the “security” of the storage business, illegally before the end of the world, had been parked against the metal-barred fence to shore up a portion of it. He hadn’t objected to the decision to dig the latrine next to him.

Hell, he helped dig the thing over the course of a day, dodging ghouls and taking shifts with Dani, Jimmy, and Edgar.

“Danielle. You got nothin’ to worry about. I don’t mind being here at this spot. It’s where all my books are.” 

Dani glanced at the bookshelves he had erected for a privacy wall, and sure enough, he seemed to have added to his library, somehow. The shelves rested comfortably beneath the pop-up he designated as a library. 

“Truth be told,” he rose from a salvaged recliner, “I have an idea and could use some help with this situation…” 

Dani reflexively nudged the bucket further back with her foot as he approached.

Bob put his hands on his hips and stared at his feet, a frequent gesture he made when working toward something. Generally, his instincts were good, and she was already intrigued.

“I didn’t find a shed or nothin’ in any of these units. I know it was a long shot, but I had hoped maybe some taxman or someone had bought one and never assembled it. If I had a shed, I could rig us up an actual head.”

“Head?”

Bob laughed.

“Sorry, old habits. Bathroom. I could rig us up a bathroom that can work with that latrine, especially if we dig it further and get some more of those pool chemicals.”

“No more shit-central?”

“Baby girl, we’re talkin’ shit-palace.”

Dani and Bob laughed a bit at this.

“If you can get me something from the Hardware Depot down the road… one of those sheds, I can repurpose that toilet we found last week, the one that was still boxed up.”

Bob paused and coughed a bit. It was deep and rattling, less of a sign of imminent danger or illness and more of his general age.

“Excuse me. I’d also need some pipes and all the plastic bins we can get our hands on, but… well… I think everyone would feel a hell of a lot better, and once the rains kick in, I think we could be doing pretty well for ourselves.”

Dani nodded. “That sounds doable. We’ll see when Edgar gets back about arranging a trip down the road.”

“Edgar is still out?”

“Yeah, scouting that place across the street.”

“He seems like a good guy. I hope he’s being careful.”

“Me, too. Though…”

“If you’re gonna say something about him having that gun on him, I get it, kid. I do. But you gotta also think about it from his perspective. Most of us here know nothing about one another.”

“I know, and you’re right. That’s why I am not making a big deal of it.” Dani reached into her left pocket and pulled out the copy of Dracula. “By the way, the kid is done with Dracula and wants to borrow something else.”

“Oh god, yeah, absolutely. Has she read The Hobbit?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“Well, take it to her.” Bob walked over to the shelving and scanned the rows until he found a small, silver-colored paperback featuring a mist-shrouded mountain on the cover. He handed it to Dani.

“Thanks, I am sure she’ll love it.”

“You know, you can take a book, too. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you only either working or hiding in that Airstream for the past week.”

Dani took that in for a moment, not registering it entirely until she replayed what he had said. She suddenly found herself on the back foot. It was a sudden, uncomfortable shift to be chastised for not reading given the circumstances, but self-consciousness won out, and she wheeled for an excuse. 

“I’ve never been much of a reader.”

“I can’t think of a better time to start. No more Simpsons.”

Dani sighed. “Yeah, okay. What do you recommend?” She paused, then continued, “And if you say anything Amy Tan, I’ll feed you to one of those dead things on the streets.”

“Not a fan?”

“No, just… had a teacher at community college in an English class who kept saying that I was going to love the book, and it was very relatable. Didn’t even understand I was fucking Korean. It was embarrassing.”

“Gotcha.” Bob scanned the shelves and, after a few moments, added, “Okay, well, how about this?”

Dani took the book from Bob. The cover was faded, torn in a corner, and the spine was so cracked that any of the text was now illegible. 

She scanned the cover. “Shane? Is this a western?”

“Yeah, not a fan?”

“Didn’t say that… I used to watch True Grit with my dad. A lot of John Wayne movies, actually. He was obsessed with the guy.”

“Yeah, we talked about The Green Berets a few times. Your dad was – is – a good man.”

“Yeah, pretty sure he is dead, honestly,” she replied, almost reflexively.

They were both silent after that. All that broke that stillness was an occasional caw of a carrion bird. They’d been so active the past few weeks, and it wasn’t pleasant to consider why. 

“Dani, it’s only been a month.”

“And look how bad things are, everyone is dead, in hiding, or is fucking with everyone else. I know my mom and dad. They wouldn’t make it. He was too trusting of everyone.”

“He was a good man.”

“So are you, but you can be a son of a bitch when you need to, Bob. He never could. Mom walked over him. I got away with all sorts of bad shit. I loved him, loved them, but I’m not holding out hope.”

“I’m sorry, kid; you’re probably right, but damn, I don’t like you going there so easily. The minute you’re broken, I think we’re all screwed.”

She took in a sharp, quick breath. How could she tell Bob that she had been broken before the end of the world? She was relieved to have that AirStream with that locking door so that she could just get away from everyone.

Everyone listened to her, spoke to her, but she refused to speak about what was going on in her head. She didn’t like that so many decisions about the camp had fallen to her when she wasn’t even sure she’d have a reason for living in a state of perpetual fear for much longer.

“I’m fine, really,” she replied.

The scars on her thighs throbbed – a brief instant of dull pain that ebbed into a dopamine flow of some sense of control, albeit briefly. She’d started cutting again; it had started up the day when she had to club her undead neighbors to pulp.

“Well, just give the book a try, okay?”

“Sure.” She wasn’t sure if she would.

A sharp burst of static made her jump, and she looked to the walkie-talkie that Bob had set on a box near his chair. Alicia’s voice rang out, “Dani, are you there? My mom’s leg is really hurting again, and I am not sure what to do.”

Dani walked over and picked up the walkie. “Sure thing. I’ll be there in a moment, okay?”

Another crackle, and Sandy’s voice came through: “I thought these were for emergencies?”

Dani couldn’t help herself. “Yes, we’re dealing with an injury, you’re just being annoying. Over and out.”

Bob snorted.

They’d managed to find four of the devices, and they had been very careful about using them. Come to think of it, Dani remembered, the fourth handset was in her trailer.

“I wasn’t aware Alicia had one. Did Edgar ask for one earlier?”

Bob had slumped down into his chair. 

“He didn’t, he said the sound might draw too much attention as he was scouting the place.”

Dani didn’t like that. She had already felt foolish for not using the walkies effectively days ago when Edgar had to make the pied piper run around the block to divert the ghouls. Nobody had remembered that they had them as they waited out the moment, and it was a complete shitshow. Since then, they’d been strategic about who had them… mostly. Sandy protested not having one, so she was ostensibly a “scout” in the second-story apartment above the office.

“He should have taken one. He could have taken mine.”

“Hey, I told him to grab one, and he said he wouldn’t want to risk it.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

Dani shook her head and began to walk toward the back of the yard. Still a shitshow. A shitshow she had been seemingly pushed into managing. She felt lacking.

As though it were a reminder, the couple of spots on her thigh throbbed again. She embraced the pain, briefly, until the sound of three sudden pops in the air caught her attention. Gunfire.

She had turned and seen Bob scramble to his feet, craning his neck to look through holes in the fencing to get an idea of what had happened. Dani jogged up.

“Across the street,” he said. “Sounded like gunshots, right?”

The sounds had erupted across the street where Edgar had been scouting.

“Sounds like he might have found somethin’, Danielle.”

Click here to read the next chapter of The Dead Life when it is available.

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The post The Dead Life #22 – Shit Happens appeared first on hpkomics.com.

You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 25

Edgar had been scouting the school district office for a couple of days now. His shifts at the Kim Family Storage rooftop perch across the street had allowed him to take in the layout and observe the local ghouls and their aimless wanderings.

The entire grounds seemed locked up – all gates had been padlocked shut in a hurry, except for one rolling gate that had nearly been demolished by a school bus that had burst through at some point during the chaos of the first few days of the dead. Now up close to that very same rolling gate, Edgar saw that the bus tires were shredded. Unmistakable brown trails of dried blood marked the dusty yellow surface on the outside and the windows from the inside. Behind one of the brown streaks, there was motion… one of the dead was still wandering around within, seemingly pacing up and down the aisle, content with a small domain.

Despite his size, he had managed to stay low on foot, crouching and crawling between vantage points around the block and always warily shifting his gaze around. When these creatures were not alert and moaning, they ran eerily silent. He had nearly had a close call as he crawled past the front office of the storage yard and did not see a ghoul walk out from between a pair of abandoned sedans in the road. That had been the first day of scouting, and it had rattled him so much that he shouted and alerted a few more in the area. He had fled back to the storage lot for safety, and he and Bob had picked up the trio of stragglers that had followed from behind the safety of the metal gate.

Edgar would not make such a mistake again.

Based on Edgar’s observation, the only point in and out that was walkable was the busted rolling gate, but that area also had a pair of nearby wandering ghouls in addition to the ghoul within the bus.

It was manageable, but what concerned him most were the sounds he had heard from inside the district office, echoing out between the buildings of the district campus. Periodically, there was shouting and the clanging of pipes and slamming doors, punctuated by a series of moans from the ghouls. He hadn’t heard these things until he had begun poking at the perimeter, and even then, it all sounded so faint.

Edgar was unsure of the disposition of the survivors, if he was hearing what he thought he was, but the clamor was great. He was sure it was more unknown people than he was willing to deal with on his own, especially given the incident with the police car. He’d been lucky with Bob and Dani, and lucky again with the new ones, Mary and Alicia. Sooner or later, luck would run out.

The good news was that the patterns the ghouls seemed to follow were aimless but also felt almost regular, as though they would reach some boundary, invisible or not, and reverse course. Today would be the day he would test that and work his way into the district grounds to see what he could find.

There was no rush. He wouldn’t push it. He wasn’t in a hurry to die. He woke up with a start more than once these past few days, remembering the swarm of ghouls clinging to his car a week ago – remembering the back seat of the car and the condition of the woman he was sure he’d known.

Edgar came in low, practically on his hands and knees, following along the side of the bus, out of sight of the closest ghoul ahead. When he was close enough, he squeezed himself under the bus. If it hadn’t been due to consistent starvation, he would have been unable to do that. The most fucked of blessings. He was still the biggest person in the camp, but he felt smaller than he had been before everything changed. 

He shuffled quietly on his belly under the bus and toward the front. Pausing, he watched desiccated feet shuffle back and forth; the sticklike legs were in tattered slacks, and one foot was socked but without a shoe.

He watched the ghoul’s motion until it came close enough. He pulled a small camping hatchet from the back of his pants and grabbed at one of the legs, tugging hard. Instead of dragging it under, the leg snapped off, and the ghoul fell to the ground. Black blood splattered, and Edgar quickly tossed the broken leg away.

“Fuck,” he whispered. He scrambled out from under the bus and grappled the waist and back of the ghoul as it thrashed. With an overhead swing, he brought the blade to the back of the skull with a sickening thwack, cracking the rotting skull open before the ghoul even made a sound. Pausing for a second to see if it was done thrashing, he scrambled to his feet to the other side of the bus, peeking out from the front, wary of any movement.

That hadn’t gone as planned. Edgar glanced down at a bus tire, noticing it was so shredded that it could not be an easy fix. He wondered about possibly replacing it, but realized where he was in relation to the bus. Sure enough, Edgar stood in front of the open door. He crouched and held silent for a moment. The ghoul inside must have been in the back because there was no sign of it.

He took his hatchet and flicked away some blood. He tapped the handle at the first step, crouching against the side of the bus. The wait was agonizingly long for the ghoul to spill forth, enticed by the sound. When the creature arrived, it tripped down the stairs, crumbling into a dusty, rotten heap. Edgar pinned it down on the ground with his knee on its back and gave it a couple of violent thwacks with the blade. All that was left of his handiwork was a oozy dark puddle and rubbery nuggets of brain matter, looking like the world’s worst plate of scrambled eggs.

He glanced around, and the other ghouls who “patrolled” this space had wandered off. There was a gap if he wanted to push.

The facility would take a long time to clear at this rate. With no ghouls in sight, and his exit seemingly opened behind him, he pushed forward, taking a low run toward the first building, which appeared to be the school bus depot.

The building was a small outbuilding combined with what appeared to be a large carport meant for bus maintenance. There was no sign of wanderers, so he ducked into the small office that seemed to operate as a dispatching area. The place was a wreck, but there were no signs of life except for some smears of blood on a table. Peering out of the office, he saw the school buses that occupied the large parking lot. There were three parked in the large lot, and a lone bus in the bay that appeared to be mid-repair. Other buses had been out on the job when the place had gone into lockdown, Edgar figured. But the remaining three were just what he was hoping to find – if they were still operational.

He turned his attention back to the small room. There were a couple of computers on desks, a couple of phones, a small table, and some chairs. Little else, beyond, but he checked behind the desks anyway. He was surprised to catch sight of a minifridge, but then realized what was in there had probably become little more than sludge.

Curiosity won out, however, and he crouched down, opening the door. The scent of rot punched him in the face, nearly knocking him onto his ass, but the sight of a sealed can of cola won out. He snatched the can up and slammed the refrigerator shut, gagging all the while.

After a few moments where he could collect himself, he studied his can of cola. It had picked up a little odor from the fridge’s contents, and he ineffectually attempted to wipe away any grime on his pant leg.

He turned the can over and saw it was a diet soda. He grimaced at the idea of a diet soda, but also realized there wasn’t much of the stuff left in the world in the long run. Sugar was sugar.

He checked the date on the label, and sure enough, it was good. Worried about what the can may have picked up from the condition of the minifridge, Edgar spat on the rim and then whipped the can as cleanly as he could with a corner of his shirt. He cracked the tab and took a sip of the sickeningly sweet cola. Content, he took it down in a couple of huge gulps.

He finished the last sips and set the can beside him. All this time, there had been no sound coming from anywhere outside of the office. He rose to his feet, glanced out the door, and turned his attention to the bus in the bay.

From what he could tell, the tires appeared fine. He saw the engine hatch was open and couldn’t eyeball much regarding the engine’s status right now. He made his way to the side of the bus with the door and nearly shit himself when he saw a body hanging down over the stairs.

If it had been a ghoul, it would have moved – but it was just a body. Was it the driver? Or was he a mechanic? Leaning in, Edgar saw that the man appeared to be neither. He wore what used to be a pale green dress shirt and a tie with brown slacks. The man didn’t strike Edgar as someone who actually had much to do with the maintenance or operation of buses. Based on the computers in the room, Edgar figured that the man had a dispatcher.

What was the story here? Edgar had been thinking a lot about the ghouls and bodies he’d seen, wondering about past lives and final moments. He knew why. That car had rattled him in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Since then, he couldn’t help but consider stories.

The body did not appear to have any major wounds from behind. Curiosity gave way, and Edgar grabbed the shirt at the collar and pulled the corpse from the doorway. He turned the body as best he could, and caught a leathery face frozen in shock and fear. He also saw a screwdriver jammed into the chest.

Edgar’s head spun with theories, but he settled on the story that maybe the dispatcher and the mechanic were fighting about something in the chaos. Maybe the mechanic ended it.

Edgar just wanted things to have some kind of reason.

Edgar plucked the screwdriver free and flicked the gunk from it. It was a longer piece of kit, and he figured it would be worth holding onto. Inside the bus, it was relatively clean, beyond the exposure to open doors and windows.

Yet, there were still no signs of what was wrong with the bus, if anything. The keys were in the ignition, but there was no clear way out without moving the bus from the gate or opening another gate. For now, he’d let this one sit in silence, but took the keys with him. It was lucky that the driver hadn’t taken the keys with him.

Edgar made his way to the closest building, which seemed to be some sort of administrative spot. The lot was dotted with other cars, which might be useful – he clocked each one and added it to the mental inventory he had been taking. He kept his creeping, crouched movements, ducking past wandering dead, and made his way to a glass doorway. 

The doorway itself was in good condition, but he noticed that things had been piled up against it on the other side, serving as a makeshift barricade. He saw some desks, chairs, and boxes. The handles of the doors had been lashed by what looked like a belt and jacket.

The barrier was just about waist-high, and fabric had been strung across to hide anything within, outside of the small slivers of space between the barricade and the fabric. Edgar wasn’t sure if the ghouls could see anything, but he understood the impulse. He’d considered lining the fencing with cardboard back in the storage yard.

Realizing he’d come this far already, Edgar kept out of sight and approached the door, placing his ear to it.

Sure enough, there were voices. 

Raised voices. 

Shouting.

Gunshots.

“Fuck, fuck.” Edgar scrambled away from the door, falling over a couple of times, dashing his way back toward the garage area, keeping as low a profile as possible. It was amazing he hadn’t drawn any ghoulish attention in the scramble so far. 

Sure enough, dreadful moans seemed to echo all around, and the sound of muffled gunfire from inside continued to pick up. He ducked around the corner into one of the bays and watched as shattering glass scattered over the walkway where he had just been, and office furniture and boxes tumbled out with a pair of people.

Edgar watched the two run for their lives, a man and a woman. Both were thin. The man, already bloodied and clutching an arm, seemed to shield the woman’s body. The woman’s shirt was torn, a breast exposed.

A third man spilled out of the same doorway and fruitlessly pulled a revolver trigger over and over. His face was covered in blood, and his steps were lurching. Out of ammo, he picked up his pace like a crazed beast, striking the first man on the head. He overtook the woman, grabbing her by the hair and throwing her to the ground.

Edgar saw him climb on top of her and club her with the revolver; the other man, who had been brained, quickly tackled the man with the revolver, clubbing at him.

Edgar threw himself out from behind the wall of the garage and ran toward the scene as the two men struggled over the woman, but four ghouls had begun approaching them from behind some parked cars.

“Watch out!”

Edgar waved and cried at them, but the two men played out their drama, ignorant of him. It was too late; the ghouls converged and fell upon the struggling men, tearing them apart.

Edgar watched in horror as greasy fingertips slashed at the gunman’s neck, and hot blood burst forth. In a second, another pair of hands grabbed at his scalp and began pulling out clumps of bloody hair. The gunman hadn’t been as fortunate with two ghouls falling upon him and sinking rotten, yellow teeth deep into the neck and shoulder. Edgar was shocked at how strong and quick the monsters moved at the prospect of fresh flesh.

Each man was stripped of skin and tissue by teeth and fingertips. He’d watch a ghoul take a bite and tear strips and ribbons of flesh free, only to see flesh roll out of open mouths, where the ghouls would then go back, sinking in their teeth even deeper. Edgar had never seen the things feed so directly. He felt like he was about to vomit, but Edgar swallowed down the acidic bile that rose in his throat and cautiously approached the group to see if he could at least help the woman.

The ghouls were distracted by their eating frenzy, and the sounds of the men’s screams masked Edgar’s heavy steps. As he was within a few feet of the gruesome scene, he noticed the woman moving. Her face, however, told a different story and amounted to little more than a bloody bowl – he swore he could see white teeth in a puddle of flesh where a face used to exist. The gunman’s revolver had smashed her nose and teeth, and she was drowning in her blood. Her gargles terrified Edgar.

He closed the gap between them and, tears in his eyes, brought the ax’s blade down on her face, smashing what was left of her head into three wet chunks. He cried as he put her out of her misery and, when finished, whirled around and smashed at the skull of the closest ghoul. His swing was wild and glanced off bone. He doubled down and struck again, sinking the blade deep into the ghoul’s temple.

Edgar flew into a rage, striking any head he saw in a pile, and after a few moments and a couple of near bites, had brained every single one of the ghouls and the men for good measure. He instinctively grabbed the revolver and absentmindedly pulled the trigger a half dozen times, hoping at least a single shot was left.

There was nothing there. He knew that.

But the compulsion was too great. 

He tucked the gun into his pants and noticed the commotion had begun to pull in a few stragglers. How had there been even more of these fuckers hidden away? He grabbed the long screwdriver from his belt loop and clumsily rose to his feet, winded.

This scouting trip had become a catastrophe. He wouldn’t chance the district office. It was time to leave.

Click here to read the next chapter of The Dead Life when it is available.

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The post The Dead Life #21 – Stepping into a Private Drama appeared first on hpkomics.com.

You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 25

It had been more than a week of relative calm for the residents of the Kim Family Storage – at least, by Dani’s count. The calendar that sat in the office was already a year old, and she had to maintain her own count until they found a 2000 calendar. From there, time was in their care. 

Since the police car, the group had kept a tight watch from the roof directly on the corner of Lyon and Acacia, careful of ghoul movements. Beyond small clusters, the streets had been relatively silent. Dani, Jimmy, and Edgar had managed to stack some boxes and some sideways shelves up top to keep anyone on scout duty out of direct view. 

It had been a pain in the ass to get that stuff out there, but it would work well enough for the ghouls. The problem was that any people who might see the strange stacks on the roof would probably get a sense of what was up. Bob and Jimmy had planned to create a small wall running along the perimeter in the future. Nothing much but something that would allow for crouched movement, and more to the point, a little protection from any trigger-happy passerby. But that was one of several projects that emerged as everyone decided it was time to settle in for safety.

Not just safety from the dead, either. The cruiser was a grim reminder that they were not alone.

The drug store raid had been a success, and the supplies had helped ease their minds and filled their bellies – at least relatively. Another run, this time to the dollar mart a couple of days prior, had borne a decent supply of canned goods. Best of all, the trip went on without a hitch. So much so that Dani and Edgar had even managed to fill some bags with supplies they couldn’t carry back then and hid them out of sight for a supply run that they had planned for tomorrow.

As for Dani, now, she sat in her trailer, enjoying the reprieve of privacy. In the time she’d been here with the others, there were several swaps and trades regarding the on-site RVs. With the arrival of Mary and her daughter, Alica, Dani had given them the larger one she had been staying in, opting for an old Airstream. Dani wasn’t much for comforts these days. A door and a mattress were about as much as she needed. And a door lock.

Her trailer was tucked just in front of one of the indoor storage areas, which was little more than a concrete structure with several small, closet-sized units. This was where the residents had kept the supplies, and Dani held the key and the watch. The decision to lock them away was not popular, but everyone accepted it.

Accepted by most, anyway. Sandy Gunderson had voiced her concerns over the lock for the past two days. Everyone knew Sandy had snuck a bag of goods while unloading the last supply run, but everyone kept silent. The less she had to complain about and the more time she spent in the apartment above the rental office, the better. Her contributions to the camp were frequent anxiety at best, sprinkled with offers to pray with anyone who would wold accept it. If Dani was feeling generous, she could maybe see Sandy as a camp cook, but Dani suspected that it was more out of Sandy’s perceived necessity for “non-ethnic” food.

It was not lost on Dani, and clearly not on Sandy, that except for Jimmy, their group was not very white. Dani remembered when she was a kid that Sandy had called her a “slant-eyed monster” when she’d accidentally knocked over some paperwork in the office. Mom and Dad had not been there to hear it, and it was something that Dani carried with her going forward.

Dani thought about this little wound and picked at it enough to let out some tension. “Man, fuck that bitch.” 

She shook her head and rose to her feet.

Dani stepped outside of her trailer. The Airstream was planted firmly against the concrete wall along the eastern half of the lot. She had mounted a pop-up canopy over the entrance and braced it with a chest of drawers, a cabinet, and a bucket of nails. Some lawn furniture and a ratty roll of astroturf turned it into a rudimentary outdoor room. It wasn’t much to look at, but the shade was nice. It could be a little too comfortable at times. She’d accidentally taken a nap in the lawnchair and hadn’t allowed herself that since. There always needed to be a lock between her and the monsters – she needed to be sure of that.

From her “covered porch,” she could see Mary and Alicia’s trailer, a couple of dozen feet ahead, parked much like her trailer against the wall. Alicia Macias was sitting on the RV’s roof, reading a book. She saw Dani and waved to her, and Dani responded in kind. 

She liked the kid. Mary, though, was out of sight, likely inside. The broken leg from the drug store was a mess. They had done as much for her as possible. Dani would check in later.

She wasn’t quite sure how to deal with Mary; her recovery was a source of frustration, and more than once, Dani had seen her looking, for lack of a better term, shellshocked and unwilling to state much about life before the day everything fell apart. As open as Alicia was, there wasn’t much there. What was clear was a missing father, and that could be for so many reasons.

But as Dani took in what she could, the reason was appearing more and more obvious, day by day.

Directly across from the Macias’ “residence” was one of the clusters of units where the shitty brown Cadillac of Jimmy DeWitt and Edgar Rosas usually sat. They had opted to claim six units for their own needs in that row. They had also found an additional awning and erected it in front of where the car was normally parked to provide a little outdoor cover.

Dani made her way toward Jimmy’s cluster but was caught off guard by how quickly Alicia had climbed down from the RV. The kid was agile.

“Ms. Kim, I saw a big crowd of those things in the neighborhood behind us.”

“How big of a crowd?”

“It was tough to count them all, but I saw at least ten on the street, between the houses. Not counting the ones in the windows. It’s so weird seeing them up in those rooms like that.”

“Good eye. I am glad you’re keeping an eye on this side of the place. I know Bob appreciates the help.”

“Oh, speaking of Mr. Clark, could you take this book back to him? I’m done with it, and I don’t want to get too far away from my mom right now.”

Dani took the book from Alicia. She flipped it over in her hands and noticed it was a torn and stained copy of Dracula. Well loved.

Alicia was staring at the book. “I liked it, but the vampire felt a bit too… well, real. You know?” She looked up at Dani.

Dani nodded. “Will you be borrowing a new one from him later?”

“Could you pick for me?”

Dani smiled. “Sure, I’ll pick up a repair manual.”

“Hah.”

The two stood in silence. The sounds of birds and insects brought a sense of calm with chirps and clicks on the light breeze. The January mornings were cold, but Emmet was very much a town in a desert in many respects, no matter how many orange groves had been there 80 years ago. It was a California cold, which was largely pleasant.

“Alicia. How is your mom?”

“Her leg is still pretty fucked up.”

Dani’s eyes widened.

Alicia shrugged. “I’m 14.”

Dani laughed. “I know. I know. Sorry. I was just thinking about how my parents would have flipped had I dropped the ‘f-word’ on them.”

“You can’t even say it now, Ms. Kim.”

“Fuck off, smartass.”

They both burst into laughter. After a few moments, Dani sent Alicia off. “Go ahead and check in on your mom, Alicia. Let her know I am gonna come by in a bit to see how she is doing.”

Alicia nodded and, after a brief moment, gave Dani a small hug. Dani initially felt surprised but returned the gesture by squeezing the girl’s elbow. She was a good kid.

Alicia wandered off, gesturing with a wave as she approached her and her mother’s trailer. Dani turned her attention back to the units claimed by Jimmy and Edgar. 

Jimmy and Edgar had opened four this morning. She saw that they had removed various boxes, which had been torn open. The contents had been strewn about in multiple piles, the two still obviously sorting through them. 

The presence of an overly furry lady’s coat on a coat rack caught her eye for a moment. She had no idea what animal it once was, but the fact that Jimmy or Edgar had perceived enough value to hang the coat up was pretty funny. From what she had learned about them, she expected that it was a Jimmy gesture, the more reflective of the two.

She made her way down the row, the main row that ran toward the front gate. Sure enough, she saw Jimmy, the slighter of the pair, standing at the front entrance. His hair had grown a bit longer, and he had a tangle of red curls starting to form. He was in sweatpants and a t-shirt salvaged from one of the boxes. As she approached, she noticed the neon-colored graphic of a boat with “Catalina Open ‘92” in stylized letters on the back.

She presumed nobody in their sanctuary had ever been to Catalina before.

“Where is Edgar?” she asked as she approached.

Jimmy looked back; his hands were on his hips, intently studying the buildings across the street. He pointed to them.

“Edgar is scouting that building, so we’re keeping the gate open when he gets back. I’ve got the car parked there so he can climb over. The dead aren’t great at hauling themselves over things, and Bob and I have our eyes on it.”

“Edgar is there by himself?”

“Believe it or not, that giant is very quiet.”

Giant didn’t even begin to describe Edgar. While only about 5’9”, by most estimations, he was thick, a seeming combination of muscle and fat. Edgar was like a wall. Dani was glad to have him around.

Jimmy was different. He was skinny, and his muscles were ropey. He looked underfed, and his unruly red hair had not only grown longer at the top of his head, but he was beginning to develop a rat nest for a beard. Dani would need to get him something to trim it next time they were on a supply run.

He was pretty wiry-looking when he first came to the storage yard, but since then, he seemed to have mellowed out. He had been enthused about the company and things to do. He was one of the hardest-working people she had met, always up to something to make the location more livable, and the first to assist in projects.

He didn’t even bother hiding his track marks lately. Dani had been puzzling out how long ago he’d kicked his habit and if the work helped him manage. Dani had also been sweating whether this would be a problem down the line. By Sandy’s pointed comments, it already was – for her – but Jimmy had been graceful in feigning ignorance.

“Any idea what he’s looking for over there?”

Jimmy scratched his chin vigorously, and Dani could hear the rustling of hair. “We saw that it’s a school district facility or something. I think they make food there, school lunches and shit… and there could be buses.”

Dani used to live around the corner, right across from the district buildings. She hadn’t paid attention to it at the time. But thinking back, she did recall a colorful mural on one of the walls – some design based on the work of a kid. She always just thought it was ugly and weird. 

She supposed she saw some buses there from time to time as well. It was shocking how disconnected she felt from the location across from her apartment of two years.

“Why are we interested in buses, Jimmy?”

He smiled. “Well, if we can hotwire them, we can take a couple of them and build a wall around the parking lot in front of us.”

Dani looked at the lot; they hadn’t been able to use it due to the necessity of fixing the broken gate.

“We could find a way to make another gate and have two layers of protection here,” she added.

“Yep. Maybe even park a couple of cars or a truck for supply runs.”

“It could also give us a chance to fix the gate. Really fix it.”

“Yeah. I feel really shitty about breaking it. I swear I’ll fix it.”

Dani took a few steps forward toward the rolling gate and shrugged. “You didn’t know anyone was here, and you’re doing what you can to help. Nobody is mad.”

Jimmy pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his sweats’ pocket and a book of matches from the other. He lit up and began to puff away. Dani watched him for a moment, and soon enough, he nodded at her, plucking the cigarette from his lips and offering her a puff. She enjoyed it. She handed it back.

“Is he going to be okay by himself?”

“If it were me, you’d be right to be worried. Edgar, though, fucker is built different. He won’t be long. Besides, I really, really want to get to the parking lot.”

“We have plenty of parking here for now; it’s a good idea, but we basically have all the time in the world now.”

“It’s the grass in between the parking and the sidewalk. The soil. I think I can get a garden going.”

Dani’s eyes narrowed. “No shit?”

“No shit. I was in 4-H in high school, and my parents shipped me off to a boy’s ranch as a kid. I picked up the knack for growing.”

Dani thought back to the day Jimmy and Edgar had crashed the gate of the storage yard. Dani and Bob had found marijuana packed up in one of the units belonging to Jimmy.

“So that weed was homegrown, I assume?”

“I can grow potatoes too.”

“I’m sure you can.”

Jimmy took a couple more puffs and handed the cigarette back to Dani.

“I have some ideas, though, I see it, but I need the supplies.”

“Do tell,” Dani urged.

“Well, I can build some garden boxes. We can plant anywhere with those in a pinch. But I need wood, wire, liners… soil bags… seeds; it’s a lot.”

Dani handed the cigarette back to Jimmy. “Hence, starting with that patch of grass to get something going,” he added.

“Makes sense,” she added, “thinking of loading up one of the buses?”

Jimmy looked over at the truck still parked against the front office’s windows.

“That moving truck would have been perfect. I hope we can salvage that if we close the lot.” He began to hand the cigarette over to Dani, but paused and took another puff with a faraway look. “I am thinking about a lot of supplies because I have a much bigger idea.”

He paused for a moment, perhaps worried he was going to sound crazy or something. He looked at her, his eyes a little wide and his eyebrows sloping outward, concerned.

“Dani, do you know what is next to us?” He gestured behind them as he spoke, back toward the southern part of the storage yard, “That area between us at the houses?”

“Not really. Just some dirt, right?”

“A drainage ditch for one, and a dirt alley with the railroad tracks.”

Dani remembered that a railway, long since abandoned, had run through part of Emmett for nearly 60 years. The railway was mostly something used back in the early 1930s, as much as she knew. Maybe it went back to the town’s founding. The tracks were an artifact of the day when the town was known for its orange groves. She saw where he was going with this.

“You want to seal the place up and grow back there?” she asked.

“It’d give us a lot more room than some boxes and a strip of grass in front of the office. We could line the road with a wall that could give us a direct path rather than needing to climb up and over a unit to get there. There may be enough buses to do that with one or two for us to use as transport.”

It was a good idea, but the project seemed like a massive pain in the ass, especially given the need to secure the area and move the goods. She understood why Jimmy and Edgar were interested in the buses. This was workable, but would take some doing.

“The problem is,” Jimmy continued, “that we can’t risk losing that truck in front of the office yet because we can’t reinforce the window frame. We don’t have anything else that can work to haul around the supplies I need.”

Dani thought about it for a moment. Jimmy offered her the last few puffs of the cigarette, but she politely waved it off, deep in thought. She thought back to the area around them and where they had been the past few weeks.

She remembered something about her flight from the apartments where she had lived before the bullshit went down. The place was around the corner and seemed so much further away when she first escaped. Now it offered a tantalizingly close solution.

“I know where we can find a moving truck.”

Jimmy’s eyebrow raised, intrigued. He dropped the cigarette butt and mashed it with the toe of his sneaker.

“Hell yes.” He beamed. “Fuck yes.”

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The post The Dead Life #20 – Home Away from Home appeared first on hpkomics.com.

You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 17

The cruiser screamed past the corner where they had paused. Dani had no way of knowing if the driver had seen her group. She felt uncomfortable about someone knowing where she was… someone she didn’t know.

The moans behind the party had grown louder in the ghouls’ approach. Edgar had slowed to a crawl at this point to keep the ghouls on the Cadillac. Now the car was practically swarmed. Dani couldn’t make out how many ghouls had begun to scramble over the surface. All she saw was a tangle of gooey, flailing limbs.

Jimmy had already begun to dash across the street. His gaze was planted to his left, down the street, toward the other group of ghouls converging on their location. Dani pushed her cart forward toward the side gate of the Family Storage – home. She just pulled up after Jimmy had already begun pounding on the gate.

“Bob! Bob, hurry up!”

Bob was rattling the chains that held the gate shut. “Hey Jim, what the hell was that? Was that a fuckin’ cop car?”

Jimmy stood at the cart, his knuckles white from his grip on the bar. Bob was still fumbling with the lock and chain. Jimmy rocked the cart back and forth, ready to charge the instant there was clearance.

“Yeah, guy buzzed us twice, and we’re pulling deadies. We gotta get Edgar in quickly with the car.”

“It’s really close, Bob,” Dani added.

The chain came loose, and the gate began to open slowly. Jimmy stepped away from the cart and pulled hard to assist Bob. Dani had already rolled her cart inside and to the right, just past Sandy.

“Where’s the car? Did you lose the car?” she asked.

Dani rolled the cart forward and ran back to the gate, pushing Jimmy’s cart in as he finished moving the gate back. Sandy had approached and glanced out toward the street, looking worried.

“Where’s the car?”

Jimmy snapped, “It’s coming along with a dozen of those dead fucks.”

Sandy glared at him for a second and then took several steps back, creating distance between herself and the gate.

Dani stepped back out onto the sidewalk and waved down Edgar. He accelerated slightly, shaking loose a group of the ghouls, who tumbled onto the ground like sacks of meat from a refrigerator shelf. Edgar turned the Cadillac to drive into the storage facility, but Dani stepped right in front of him, slapping the car’s hood. She felt uncomfortably close to the ghouls that were limping toward them.

She glanced at the two groups rounding the corner.

“Ed… you gotta lead them away.” 

Edgar threw his heavy frame through the driver’s side window and glared at her. “What? You’re kidding…”

Dani shook her head and slapped the hood again, pointing at the growing crowd. “That cruiser screwed us. There are too many for this gate.”

Edgar grunted and then slapped the roof of the car. “Shit. Fine. Stay low.”

He reversed the car and began the slow drive down the road. Dani dashed back past the gate and helped Jimmy slam it shut. She threw on the chain and closed the padlock.

Dani and Jimmy stood away from the gate. Jimmy turned to Sandy and Bob and gestured at them to stay quiet.

The ghouls began to pass in front of the gate as they followed the car. The gate, thankfully, had a green screen of woven plastic fiber to keep the group out of sight.

A couple of the ghouls, the closest ones, had slapped and rattled the gate, but the distant sound of Edgar’s horn pulled them away.

…

The wait was tense. The last of the ghouls, the ones from the second group, had finally wandered by after what seemed like forty minutes.

Sandy was the first to say anything. “They’re gone, now, right?”

Dani shrugged. “Seems like it.”

Bob was sitting in a lawn chair a few units down, reading a book. Jimmy paced back and forth between periodically unloading goods from the shopping carts. All the while, Dani had been at the fence, breathlessly observing the undead stragglers in silence. Their movements were clear, even seen obscured by the green fabric – jerky, uncoordinated, unnatural.

What were they?

…

Dani had lost track of time. The ghouls were long gone except for a few stragglers along the street. They’d managed to slide the gate open enough for her to squeeze out and peek up and down the street. She also had taken advantage of one of the nearby ladders after they’d closed the gate again. There was no sign of Edgar, Mary, and Alicia last time she had climbed up to the roof of a row of units. She was worried.

She had found another lawn chair and set it up near the gate. Jimmy was still messing with supplies, arranging them into different piles and groups. Bob continued to read. Sandy had wandered off to another unit and was going through boxes of clothing.

The sound of an approaching car echoed in the concrete canyon of the storage units. Dani rose to her feet and peeked out through a small gap between the fence and gate, and saw the Cadillac.

“Hey, let us in,” Edgar yelled, “I couldn’t shake them all.”

Jimmy had already dashed away from his piles of supplies and was unwrapping the chain from the gate. Dani helped him slide the gate open.

The car rolled in, stained with grimy, bloody marks from ghoulish hands, but all the passengers intact. Dani felt a sense of relief, but lost it the moment she spied a group of the approaching undead. It seemed to be about ten or so stragglers who fell out of sync with the roving horde earlier. 

Dani pushed the rolling gate with all her strength as Jimmy pulled at it. Within moments, the gate rattled shut against the pole, and Jimmy looped the chain around it as quickly as possible, slamming the padlock shut.

Dani and Jimmy both stumbled back as the first crash of the ghouls smashed against the fence, rattling it. Torn fingers wrapped around the exposed metal rods, and through the green woven plastic, dark red blotches spread unevenly across the surface.

In moments, the gore had washed over the green cover with a sickly brown color.

Bob was already helping Mary out of the car into his golf cart. Each of her steps was labored. Sandy stood by awkwardly, not helping, as was her typical state. 

Alicia came stumbling out of the back seat and moved close to her mother. Dani noticed a slight sneer on Sandy’s face, no doubt annoyed and having strangers in her midst again. And a child no less, Dani thought in mock horror.

Dani felt Jimmy grab her hand and pull her to the side, away from the gate and into one of the open units. She glanced at him, and he nodded toward the Cadillac, which Edgar began wheeling into position in front of the gate, backing into the open unit. Jimmy pulled away his hand quickly.

“Sorry.”

Dani shrugged.

After the car was parked in front of the gate, Edgar stepped out, his gun wedged into the band of his pants. Dani walked out of the unit and gave him a knowing look. Jimmy followed along. Edgar shrugged and handed the gun over.

“Sorry… must have slipped my mind that I had it on me.”

Dani smirked. Edgar smiled back. She turned to Jimmy, who looked nervous, still.

She tucked the gun into the back of her pants and walked toward Bob and Mary in the cart. The moans of the ghouls were heavy in the air.

“Hey, Bob. Sandy. Meet Mary and Alicia.”

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You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 17

By the time Dani’s cart had clattered onto the asphalt, her forearms were aching from having avoided the cart spilling over down the embankment. It took so much of her strength to keep the cart from tilting over. She rolled the cart forward, just off the curb, and in that moment, her hands loosened from the handle. The cart slammed into the Cadillac with a heavy crash. A rush of blood began to circulate in her now slack arms, and she nearly yelped from the sudden pain.

“Damn it. Sorry,” she groaned.

Edgar was idling nearby, having turned the car around. He rolled down the driver’s side window and leaned out as the cart bounced back from the impact. “You two start going. We’ll ride behind you and give you some cover.”

Dani glanced at Jimmy. He had already begun to push one of the carts down the street, which rattled terribly. The siren was long gone, so the loudest things around were the shopping carts and the Cadillac.

Goddamn it, she thought.

Dani grimaced and pushed her cart forward. She pushed herself to catch up to Jimmy. He began to pick up the pace, not quite a jog, but close enough. Dani picked up her pace, too. Edgar pulled the car out of park, and it began to roll forward, slowly, giving them a little distance, but still at a steady pace.

It was one block, but to their right was a trailer park, to their left was a back alley to a business park, and who knew if any ghouls had made their way to the crossing of Lyon and Acacia. Would they arrive at the cross street only to have that cruiser scream by their base?

Dani glanced behind her, just past the Cadillac, towards Orange Ave. Sure enough, dozens of ghouls had begun to converge on their position, hellish moans carrying on rotting, stinking wind. She gagged at the smell, pausing slightly to fight off nausea.

The pace felt glacial. Dani knew, logically, that she and Jimmy were pushing their carts as fast as they possibly could. But between weaving through debris, abandoned cars, and the consistent creep of Edgar’s Cadillac, things felt as though they dragged on. Their lives were dependent on Bob being able to get the gate open so everyone could get behind the safety of the storage yard’s walls, just before the crush of undead bodies arrived.

…

They had cleared about half of the block when the ghouls caught up to the Cadillac. The car bought Edgar, Mary, and Alicia protection, but greasy, shredded fingertips would slap and break on contact with the car’s body and windows. Even as the ghouls fell to pieces from violently ripping at the car, they were relentless, and in time enough of them could find some kind of handhold, or pile onto the car itself. Even if they could not get in, they could trap those inside. And who knew if the windows could stand up to a dozen flailing limbs indefinitely.

Edgar watched. Dani and Jimmy were pushing their carts as quickly as they could, but the ghouls were surprisingly fast now, as though the stimulation whipped them into a frenzy. He was worried their pace wouldn’t be enough. He did not want to be stuck in a car, covered in corpses.

Edgar glanced into the rearview mirror, past the exhausted Mary and her daughter, out to the street behind him. The bulk of the ghouls were far enough behind that it wouldn’t be a problem. The ghouls that had cut across the parking lot, however, had managed to stumble onto a shortcut. By Edgar’s count, he had about four ghouls right on top of his car. They couldn’t get in, and the windows were rolled up. He and the others were fine inside, but until he could lose the dead, he didn’t want to risk them coming close to the shopping carts.

Edgar dug around with a free hand at the back of his pants and drew the Glock he had hidden on him. He hadn’t separated from it since he and Jimmy had joined the group at the storage yard. He wouldn’t give up his gun for anything. He was thankful for that now.

He placed the Glock on the passenger seat and glanced back. The girl – Alicia, was it? – hadn’t noticed, warily eying the rear passenger window. She flinched when an oozing palm slapped at the glass. Edgar flinched, too.

He would need to pick the ghouls off, somehow, but he couldn’t drive and shoot. He looked through the rearview mirror and watched two of the ghouls fall to the ground. Now there were three immediately surrounding the rolling car.

Edgar couldn’t help but laugh a bit at the sight of the falling ghouls. He quickly turned his attention back to Dani and Jimmy ahead of him. Out of impulse, he scanned the area, a habit from driving back when the world had traffic.

Dani and Jimmy had passed an access road – a narrow lane between a building and a mobile home park with cracked asphalt full of potholes. Edgar glanced down the lane and saw a pair of ghouls stumble out – Dani and Jimmy hadn’t seen them. The ghouls stumbled toward the Cadillac.

“God damn it,” Edgar muttered.

Edgar cranked down the window, not all the way, but enough that he could fit his Glock and heavy hand outside. The two ghouls that had crept out from behind the building moved toward Dani and Jimmy. Edgar tapped the horn lightly, warning the pair. Jimmy glanced backward, puzzled. Dani pointed toward her left, and Jimmy turned to see the two undead wobbling down the sidewalk and nearly collapsing off the curb.

The ghouls seemed to regain their footing and continued their march. Edgar honked again, and the rotting chasers turned their attention to the Cadillac. They stumbled toward the driver’s side door with lurching, clumsy steps.

…

Jimmy wasn’t sure what the best course of action was. Their group was more than halfway home by now, but they were trailing walking corpses, and one pair arrived a little too close for comfort. Edgar has been riding slowly enough to keep the horde as a whole in check, but the other two made him wary. Where else might they emerge?

For a moment, he thought of shredded, oozing arms reaching out from a storm drain. Gnashing teeth from skull-like faces lolling out from hedges. He thought of broken fingertips digging into his arm from an abandoned car he hadn’t cleared. He thought of Dani being dragged around a corner by a tidal swell of rotting bodies. He thought of Edgar opening a door and some floor-bound monstrosity grabbing an ankle and sinking their broken teeth into Edgar’s leg.

He shuddered. They’d been unprepared for this supply run. Arrogant, even. The plan made sense, but the preparation was not adequate. He shook his head to clear it. No time now. He could evaluate everything that needed to be done once they were safe.

If safety was in the cards. He wasn’t sure yet.

Dani picked up her pace, and Jimmy followed suit. The sound of a gunshot ripped through the air.

Jimmy whirled around to see that Edgar had fired at one of the ghouls. A chorus of wild groaning followed from the trail behind the car.

Dani had turned back just as Edgar had taken aim and fired at the other attacker at the passenger side.

“What the fuck, where did he get the gun?” she asked.

Jimmy said nothing.

What could he say? Edgar had kept his gun hidden on him since they’d arrived at the Family Storage. Jimmy had said nothing. Safety first.

He snapped at Danielle, grabbing her attention. “Doesn’t matter right now, we’re almost there.”

Dani glanced between Jimmy and the Cadillac. She furrowed her brow. “A fucking secret gun? The whole time?”

Jimmy grunted and turned his attention back to his cart. This would complicate their stay. He had to think of something.

“Hey, we’ll have Ed lead them away for a bit and come back around, alright, when we get to the gate?” he asked.

Jimmy had hoped he wasn’t too obvious in giving himself time to smooth things over.

Dani cast a harsh glance and shrugged as she focused on the shopping cart. “Sounds like a plan.”

Jimmy slowed down slightly, just getting in range ahead of the front bumper of the car. “Ed, when we get to the gate, we’ll get Mary out – can you lead them away in the car and come back around?”

Edgar honked with the briefest of taps.

Jimmy jogged back toward Dani’s position, pushing the cart along. Dani seemed exhausted. He was fine with the weight; He’d worked on a ranch. As for the plan, it would need to work for now. He’d need to smooth everything over.

They were almost on Acacia, where they would need to make a turn. Dani and Jimmy began shifting their carts to the left, and Edgar slowed the Cadillac down a bit to give them room. Hungry corpses continued to moan and stumble after them all.

The whirr of the siren ripped through the air again, and Jimmy and Dani stared down the cross street on the right. The car was fast enough that trying to cross the street now would be dangerous. All they could do was helplessly watch the police cruiser approach their position with a trail of shambling, human shapes in its wake.

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You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 17

The sound of the police siren was the loudest thing Dani had heard in weeks, louder than Jimmy and Edgar’s clumsy attempt to break down the rolling gate just days ago. She stood in shock – unable to wrap her mind around what she was hearing. She felt a pain in her ears.

The world now was oppressively silent, only populated by a few hushed voices. Bob had called it “noise discipline” at the storage units. Dani had gotten so used to being quiet. She even cried quietly within her trailer, terrified that if she were just loud enough, errant, shambling corpses would be at her door.

Now there was this fucker in the cop car. They split the air with thunderous whoo-whoops, and every goddamn ghoul within a few blocks would be drawn to the noise. She couldn’t even laugh as loudly as she wanted at a dumb joke out of overwhelming caution.

She wanted to shoot the driver, whoever they were.

She glanced around at Jimmy, Edgar, Mary, and Alicia; they were also still, staring in the direction of the sound. The police car swerved into view, dodging abandoned cars along Orange Ave. It made no effort to slow down, and Dani assumed the driver had not seen them. She and the others probably looked like dead-eyed ghouls to the person speeding by at a reckless pace.

Dani felt her heart pound, and her stomach tighten. The ghouls in the area had turned to track the car that had sped through. She watched the dead bastards make awkward, lurching motions toward the intersection – despite the car being out of sight and the siren fading as it drove east.

But going east put Dani and the others in the path of the ghouls that were following the sound.

Jimmy glanced at Dani, his eyes wide. Edgar looked puzzled, having popped up, hand resting on the car’s hood. Alicia had partially leaned out of the car. She stared in the direction from which the cruiser had come.

Dani had already crept toward the street to get a look around the wall that divided the Walman’s shopping center from a bank next door. It was instinctual curiosity she had no control over, eager to get a glimpse of the fucking cop car. The weight of the iron poker in her hands did little to reassure her as she moved to gaze further down the road, where the car had been headed.

She stopped just short of the street and took a breath. She approached the wall and leaned against it. After a moment to steel herself, she leaned forward enough to look down the city’s main thoroughfare. Orange Rd. was actually a named portion of Highway 74 that ran to the mountains. The street was wide and wouldn’t afford much cover to anyone walking or driving down it.

She took a small step out onto the sidewalk, where the wall came to a cruel and sudden stop. An immediate stench wafted, and she was ready to move.

A ghoul swiped at her with a flailing stick-and-tissue arm from just around the other side of the wall. Dani dodged it and brought her fireplace poker down on the spindly limb, shattering it. It hung loosely, a bundle of rotting bone and meat, connected by a thin casing of leathery skin. The ghoul stumbled forward from the weight of the blow, and Dani quickly drew her arm back and down again, crushing the skull.

Her fears had been confirmed. A trail of ghouls was making its way down the street in the cruiser’s wake. This one had been pulled toward the street from the bank. Dani caught the last second as the cruiser had turned at another intersection. Dani looked back west at a mass of bodies moving in lurching, irregular steps down the road, toward the only other living people she knew. The fucker could have been dragging them for miles, now.

“Jesus.”

A pair of the undead, stumbling out of an enclosed motel courtyard, noticed her dispatching one of their own – maybe. She didn’t know if their brains worked that way, and she didn’t want to stick around to confirm it, either. All she noticed were shadowed, thin faces with open mouths and hoarse moans bellowing from between rotten teeth.

Dani turned around and started waving the rest of the group off. Her hand made wild arcs forward, pushing them on. She didn’t say anything, not wanting to attract more attention. She noticed one of the carts was already gone, and Jimmy was darting back up the embankment. She had been in the zone so much that she hadn’t heard the clattering cart.

Jimmy was already pushing the second cart down the embankment onto the street. Meanwhile, Edgar had climbed over to the driver’s side seat and was waving at Dani. His meaty hand slapped at the roof. “Vámonos!”

No sense in playing it quiet now. If she ever figured out who the asshole was in the cruiser, she’d crush his head beneath the wheel of their own car.

Dani nearly tackled the remaining cart and began wheeling it down the embankment as Edgar turned the engine. Jimmy had slammed the trunk, only managing to throw in the contents of one of the carts. They had to hurry. No time to pack

They’d need to push the remaining carts back to the storage unit.

Exposed, noisy, and pursued by dozens of greasy undead hands.

Was that even a real cop, anyway?

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The post The Dead Life #17 – The Bull in the China Shop appeared first on hpkomics.com.

Each image in this collection links back to the chapter where the originals were posted. You’ll be able to see them in full in their respective posts. This post will be updated as new images are added to existing chapters.

The Dead Life: The Gallery

About The Dead Life Chapter Images

Much like the Fang of Triseria chapter images, which were based on the Great Illustrated Classics, these images are meant to provide some additional visual interest to the story updates. In canon, these illustrations are drawings by Alicia, a survivor and are meant to be her relaying the story that she has heard from fellow survivors. The style references Pon and Zi and early 2000s teen and pre-teen illustration styles.

Anyway, if you are interested in supporting what I do, you can do so through donations on Ko-Fi. I also take commissions.

The post The Dead Life: Chapter Images appeared first on hpkomics.com.

You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 17

Edgar entered the stockroom, following the girl who had been pushing the empty cart. The stockroom was darker than the store was, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust as he stepped into the darkness. When he finally could discern anything, he noticed Dani standing, supporting the weight of a woman who had a limp, bruised, and battered left leg.

The teenage girl rolled the cart over to the other women, and Dani glanced up at Edgar expectantly.

“Can you carry her?”

“Sure. Who are these two?”

Edgar shrugged and made his way to Dani and the woman. Dani turned her face to the woman she had been bearing the weight of.

“Mary, this is Edgar. He is with me, he’s going to carry you, okay?”

Mary seemed apprehensive – likely alarmed by Edgar’s size – from what he could tell. She nodded. 

“Alright. But what about my leg?”

Dani shook her head. “It’s really going to fucking hurt when it dangles. I will splint it when we get back to our camp. It’ll be safer there.”

“Dani’s right. I am seeing a few of those dead guys wandering out there. Makes me nervous,” Edgar added.

Mary grit her teeth and nodded rapidly. Edgar stepped behind Dani and lifted Mary’s arm over his shoulder and the back of his neck and, with a sudden motion, scooped the woman into his arms. Mary let out a sudden scream, but covered her mouth with her free hand. 

“Sorry,” Edgar said as gently and apologetically as he could. 

Dani took a few steps back and turned to the teenager.

“Alicia, right?”

“Yeah?”

“I need you to push that shopping cart in front of the door back there.”

Alicia looked puzzled. “I thought this was to carry mom?”

“We need to come back to this place… I want to block off any of the doors with carts, so we know if something or someone came in here later.”

“Someone?”

Dani didn’t say anything further. Alicia shrugged and rolled the cart to the back door as she was told. 

Edgar began carrying Mary out of the stockroom. “Ms. Mary, we’ll get that leg looked at soon.”

“Thank you.” She winced. “Hurts like a motherfucker.”

Edgar snorted at that.

Dani hung back so Alicia wouldn’t get separated from the group. Edgar noticed Mary fidgeting and paused for a moment, allowing Mary to track her daughter as she did her task.

As Alicia rested the cart in front of the door next to the sliding loading door, it began to rattle violently. As the metal shook, a muffled moan could be heard from outside. She yelped and darted back toward the rest of the group as the door continued to shake.

Edgar watched this and had hoped the ghoul wouldn’t be smart enough to move around to the other side of the building.

…

The group of four made their way to the front of the store, where Jimmy was waiting, somewhat agitated, by two shopping carts of salvaged supplies. Dani noticed the nervous tapping of his right foot.

He spun around, shocked to see the group had grown by two more.

“Alright, so this is not what I expected out of a supply run,” he said. He adjusted a pair of glasses on the bridge of his nose. He looked good, complete. Dani noticed four other pairs hanging from the neck of his shirt. He looked like a dork, now that she thought of it.

Dani made the introductions. “Edgar, Jimmy, this is Mary and her daughter Alicia. They were trapped in the stock room. They were here maybe about an hour before we showed up.”

Dani grabbed a walkie-talkie from the cart and handed one to Alicia. “Found a couple of these; they have chargers, but I think they have battery backups, too.”

“Cool,” Alicia added, studying the new gear. She clipped it to a belt loop on her hip.

Jimmy looked the two new survivors over and turned his attention toward Mary’s bruised leg. He glanced at Dani and was about to say something, but she cut him off. “It’s a break, a nasty one, but we should be able to set it. No cuts or anything.” 

She made sure to emphasize the “anything” as she spoke – no need to worry about an infection just yet. Jimmy shrugged, seemingly convinced for the moment. Dani shoved a walkie-talkie at him as well. He nearly dropped it at first, but bounced it between his hands, juggling it for a few moments until he caught a good grip, drawing it to his chest.

Jimmy turned back and gestured to the carts – they weren’t exactly full, but it was still a rather nice haul. “I think we’ve done pretty well… we can stretch this. I am worried about getting back, though.” 

He pointed across the street, and Dani glared into the distance. Six ghouls were wandering in a parking lot. Right between them and Dani’s position was their car… right in the middle of the street.

She’d wondered how good their hearing was. She had thought about the noise she had made in the storeroom, and she wondered whether it had carried somehow. A low, steady moan echoed from the other side of the Walman’s building, and Dani realized it was the ghoul that was at the other end of the loading door. At least a ghoul – singular. She was not sure if there were more clawing at the door back there or wandering between the building and the wall that separated the different business parks.

Jimmy continued, “I think if we are very, very quiet, we can get this stuff loaded into the trunk. It’ll be a tight fit in the seats, but-“

Edgar shifted Mary’s weight in his arms, and she yelped as pain shot through her leg. Everyone shuddered and glanced back at her, alarmed by the sudden jolt of noise.

“It’s gonna be harder with Edgar having his hands full…” Alicia whispered.

Jimmy turned to the teen and nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

“Sorry,” Mary said sweetly.

Dani shook her head and looked at her, “It’s nothing to apologize for. We just need to think this over. Also, take this,” Dani handed over another walkie-talkie, “just in case.”

Mary nodded and clutched the walkie.

Dani weighed their options for a moment. The six ghouls in the parking lot were toward the far end of the strip mall, near a clothing store. A couple of ghouls could also be seen at the gas station kitty-corner to the drugstore. That was eight. Another small cluster across the street to her right had motion in the window of a liquor store. No telling how many lurked there.

Dani turned back to the group. “I think what we need to do is head out there quietly and open the doors and trunk. We can then have Edgar take Mary and Alicia to the cab, and then Jimmy and I can run the carts out and dump everything into the trunk as fast as possible. Scramble.”

Edgar shrugged his shoulders, but the motion moved Mary in his arms, and she grimaced from the pain that shot through her leg. He looked at her with a furrowed brow. “Sorry, Miss.” 

He turned his gaze to Dani and Jimmy. “That should work,” he added. “But there are three carts. You’ll need to rush a second trip. Or have me run back to do it.”

Alicia crept toward the entrance. “I can open the doors, if that will help?”

Mary glared at her. “Absolutely not!”

Everyone cast a hard gaze at Mary, chiding her for the sudden burst in volume. She flinched but continued, “I don’t want you out there by yourself.”

Alicia rolled her eyes. “Keys?” she asked, looking to Dani’s crew. “We need to hurry.”

“The doors are unlocked already,” Jimmy said. He tossed her the keys. “You just need to get the trunk.”

Alicia smiled and crept out the door. Mary began to wriggle in Edgar’s arms, but he held onto her tightly.

“Easy, Mary. Easy. We’ll keep her safe.”

Mary relented and fell limp. Dani and Jimmy rolled the carts into position as the girl made her way down the dried grass embankment. Within moments, she had opened the rear passenger door and then, climbing back out, moved to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk, ducking back out of sight from the ghouls wandering the lot across the street. She scanned the area quietly and waved Edgar over.

Edgar, ducking slightly to no effect given his size, carried Mary as quickly and gingerly as he could across the parking lot of the drug store and down the embankment. With Alicia’s help, he managed to load Mary into the back seat, but the process was painful and far from silent. Dani and Jimmy heard her whimpers and yelps all the way back at the Walman’s entrance, and stared at one another nervously.

Mary was finally loaded into the back seat, along with Alicia, after a few minutes had passed. Now, Edgar had crouched near the front of the passenger side. He scanned the area and nodded at Dani and Jimmy. He edged toward the front of the Cadillac, still crouched, his hand resting on the hood.

Dani saw him perk up and shift his gaze over the hood, west. Something nearby was making noise; he was the first to notice, then her. It was hard to tell what the sound was at first. It grew closer as she and Jimmy began to roll their carts out from under the drug store awning. Several high-pitched whoops echoed between the various plazas at the intersection where their drama was playing out.

The sudden sound of a police siren tearing through the air changed everything.

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You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 17

The “office” was just a small box of a room, not built into the original construction of the pharmacy, but rather a prefabricated addition. It was ugly, too; the walls were made of plywood treated to look like they were made of higher quality wooden boards, smeared with greyish paint, and the frames were exposed metal. It was a cramped, thin-walled cube slapped into a corner of a musty warehouse.

There was no sound beyond the clatter of the delivery door as Dani had approached the office, and she had begun to grow nervous. Had the ghoul wandered out into the store, or was it lying in wait? What about the delivery door out to the back alley? Had it pushed its way through, somehow? It was so goddamn dark, even though her eyes had adjusted to not having much in the way of electric lights for weeks now. The lack of knowledge irked her. The lack of control quickly became the worst part of the apocalypse. Too many ways for chance to fuck her over. She hated it.

She paused at the door of the office. Things were quiet, and the inside was darkened to the point where she would need to get closer to see inside. The door was ajar, slightly, and a foul stench wafted out from the crack of the door and the frame. She nearly fell back at the odor. She didn’t approach closer or dare put her face near enough to look through.

“Is it in there?”

The quiet voice of the teenager behind her made Dani jump out of her skin. She whirled around and saw the teen standing there, only a few feet behind, cringing slightly. Dani furrowed her brow and wildly waved her free hand to shoo the girl away. The girl acquiesced, her eyes wide, staring at the door to the office.

Dani took a step closer to the door and rested the point of the fireplace poker against it. She gave it a brief shove with the iron tip, but the door didn’t move inward much. Something was blocking it.

Shit. Shit.

She tried again, giving it a harder push, but the resistance was so great that the tip of the poker slid across the plywood and hit the frame with a clang. Dani retracted her weapon and took a step back, listening. Something began to move inside, and within a moment the door clicked shut.

“Did it just close the fucking door?” the girl asked.

Dani turned back at the girl. She shook her head. “Not on purpose… these things are dumb. Really dumb.”

“So it can’t get out?”

Dani shrugged as she gazed at the office. “Probably not, but I still need to get in there,” she turned back to the stranger. “Might be keys, walkies, maybe a gun.” 

As for the girl, she was a teen, probably no more than 14 or 15. Dani looked back toward her. 

“You should keep an eye on your mom for a few minutes. I’ll take care of this.”

The girl trudged away as Dani turned her attention toward the office. The first step was to open the door, but now there was definite shuffling going on behind it. She stepped over to the office window out front, away from the door, and within an instant, a bloody and rotted hand slapped against the thin pane of reinforced plastic that served as a window, and then the rest of the ghoul rolled into view from the gloom.

It was thin… most of these things were. Sallow skin hung loosely from its torso. The shirt was once a white button-up, but now it was mostly dull and grey with deep brown stains down the neck and chest. A moldy green and brown striped tie hung loosely from the creature’s neck. The face, or at least what hadn’t slid off from the skull, had the faintest trace of a mustache and the top of the head had thin patches of hair. On the hip was a walkie-talkie in a holster.

The ghoul was far enough from the door that she could open it and then step back to regroup. She ducked low, just below the window, and edged her way toward the door around the corner. She grabbed the doorknob and gave it a turn, only for it to rattle ineffectively. The office was locked. Of course. 

What were the options? She stepped back in view, and she watched the ghoul trace her movements at the window. It slapped at the plastic, which rattled loudly given the quiet of the storeroom. It wasn’t strong plastic at all, but breaking it down would be noisy. She scanned the area for a key but saw nothing. There was no choice in the matter.

That is when she heard the click of the doorknob.

The ghoul was still at the window, far enough away from opening the door, but somehow the knob had turned. Not missing a moment, Dani dashed over and kicked the door open. The plywood door slammed against the wall and the ghoul, who had been tethered to the knob by a lanyard and keyring on his hip, flew back into a filing cabinet and collapsed into a heap. Dani took two huge steps into the darkened office and put all her weight into driving the poker deep into the ghoul’s exposed eye socket. The ghoul flailed a bit as the poker stirred the brain matter within the skull, and after a few moments of vigorous stirring, it was now completely still. Gunk frothed from the socket.

Dani dutifully pulled at the poker from inside the skull, but it became wedged on bone, likely the orbital of the skull. She gave it another tug, but still no motion. Annoyed, she placed a foot on the former manager’s chest and grabbed the handle with both hands. After a mental count of three and a deep breath, she pulled with all her might.

The poker ripped free from the skull, arcing a trail of blood. brain and shards of bone in the air as she lost her balance. She herself only remained aloft because he foot had smashed through the ghoul’s chest cavity. The poker traveled full speed back behind her and rattled the tiny office’s window. Noisy vibration echoed in the storeroom. The poker’s hook lodged itself on the frame and rocked violently before clattering on the plywood floor. Dani studied the window, and just beyond, she saw the teen who was overlooking the chaos. Gore dripped down the plastic window frame in large, blobby chunks. Little ribbons of white matter trailed in the sloppy mix.

“Gross,” the teen said.

…

Edgar stood near the front entrance of the store, hanging back under the awning, staring out at the parking lot. His cart was as full as he could arrange. Anything that seemed edible or not damaged beyond being safe to eat was piled in. There was no order to the stacks, and he’d considered going through and making his assemblage less chaotic. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. That could be done from the safety of the storage unit.

Beyond the parking lot, he noticed a gas station on the opposite corner from the pharmacy. Survivors had clearly hit the place for whatever gas they could find. Was there any more left? He wondered. 

What had really caught his attention, however, was the sight of a ghoul tangled up in a seatbelt, attempting to escape the opened door of a sedan. The bastard didn’t have enough sense to unbuckle the belt or even twist its own body in such a way that it could free itself. It simply would extend itself and the belt as far as it could go before the belt automatically retracted, pulling it back into the car, violently. Each time a limb or its head would bash against the frame, at least from what Edgar could see from across the street.

Eventually, Edgar figured, the thing would eventually see itself free from the car, from the constant friction of the belt. Maybe it would saw through part of its torso.

“Fuckin’ crazy,” he mumbled.

“What is?”

Jimmy rolled his cart toward the door, not full, but still, a fair amount of medical supplies rattled inside. Edgar saw some prescription drugs in the mix as well. Interesting.

Edgar’s grip was firmly on his cart, so he nodded his head across the street. “Those things. I’ve been watching this dumb dude across the street trying to get out of a car.”

Jimmy set his cart aside and squinted into the distance. “How the hell are your eyes so good?”

Edgar shrugged. “How are yours so goddamn bad?”

“You saw my glasses got smashed, right, asshole?”

Edgar smirked. Jimmy paused a moment, staring into the distance, and then huffed. Jimmy paused for a second. He realized an opportunity.

“Fuck it. Gonna grab some pairs from the pharmacy, I think there may be a couple left.” He whirled around and made his way from the front entrance, “Be back in a minute. Watch my shit.”

“Make sure they look good, some nice bifocals, maybe,” Edgar said.

He turned to see Jimmy walking into the darkness, his arms raised above his head, his middle fingers raised higher still. Jimmy vanished into an aisle. Edgar turned his back to the entrance and continued to watch the ghoul. It snapped back again, the back of its head smashing into the door frame in what seemed like a puff of black mist. It slumped behind the door for a moment. There was no movement and Edgar wondered if it had finally bashed its own brains in.

A moment later, it rose from behind the door, wriggling and thrashing. After some struggle, it finally untangled itself from the seatbelt, taking strained, wobbling steps from the car door.

“There you go, good job,” Edgar muttered.

The ghoul hit the curb of the gas mart and smashed into a wall, scrunching up like a sack of rotten meat and sliding down the surface of the stucco.

“Hey, are you Edgar?” asked a whispered voice.

He glanced to his side at a teenage girl, whose brown hair was a tangled mess. She looked at him and shrugged. She made her way to one of the shopping carts in the corral and started to pull it loose from the others.

“Dani said you can help carry my mom to the car.”

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The post The Dead Life #15 – Manager on Duty appeared first on hpkomics.com.

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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