“Right.” I added a couple more.
“It’s against store policy.”
“Call a cop. If he can get here in five minutes, he can arrest me.” I took my credit card when he didn’t make an attempt to run it.
Pushing my cart down another aisle, I looked for some Sterno cans. When I found them, I grabbed as many as I thought I could carry. Now it was just a matter of getting out of the store.
I loaded as much as I could into the backpack, heading out of the hunting area as I packed. While I rushed to jam stuff in, I almost missed one important area. An upended rack held a wealth of camouflage clothing. I pawed through them quickly and found a Large. Holding it to my chest, I decided it would do all right.
People moved around me, rushing to find anything of use at the last minute. I felt like one of them, and cursed again that I didn’t go shopping earlier. A woman eyed my canned meat, and I stuffed it in my backpack with a scowl. A man stopped and stared at the guns in my cart, asking where I got them. I pointed him in the direction of the hunting goods, then made for the door.
The security guy who tried to hassle me on the way in saw my goodies and decided to get in my face. He was at the same door and had managed to regain some sort of control. I gave him the once-over, glad to see he wasn’t armed, except for a can of mace. I was willing to bet if he pulled it, I could take him down before he sprayed me.
“You pay for all that stuff, man? Mind if I see your receipt?”
“Yep. Forgot my receipt. If you hustle, you may be able to get it from the guy at the gun counter.”
“Okay, I’m gonna have to ask you to put that down.” He slipped one foot back, like he was going for a fighting stance. I studied his body language, marked striking points and his center of balance. I really didn’t want to hurt him. He was just doing his job, and, in his shoes, I would probably be doing the same. The only thing that stopped me from taking him to the ground was a scream at the entrance.
The blazing sun tore into the Walmart with a blast of heat, as the door opened for a guy covered in blood. A woman in a sweat suit was trying to get away from his grasping hand. The man was dressed in shorts and had on one flip-flop, but his shirt hung in tatters. He was missing an ear, and a gaping wound, probably made by a large-caliber gun, opened his middle. I should have been able to see the remains of his heart through the broken ribcage.
The woman stumbled on a pair of sandals that looked to be a full three inches tall. This put her height near mine. She had a tight body that a pink sweat shirt treated well. I took my focus off her chest and set it on the thing after her. It was one of them, that much was certain. I was shocked they were here already.
The guard reacted first by pulling his mace, running the twenty or so feet to the dead guy, and hosing him down with a full blast of pepper spray. The room started to reek of the stuff, and people coming in shied away from the smell as much as from the dead man.
Make that undead. I guess that is the proper term, after all. This guy clearly met a bad end then came back for more. He lurched forward, ignoring the mace, and struck out at the guard who had tried to stop me.
The man batted his hand aside, but the dead guy stumbled forward, and his momentum sent them both crashing to the ground. The guard let out a whoosh of air as he fought for his life. On top, the undead tried to bite him, but the guard struck the corpse a couple of times. No real strength to the blows—just fear and adrenaline forcing him to fight for his life.
Shock froze me in place. I had been about to fight the guard for the right to leave the store, maybe start a riot, when all of this went down. A couple of people screamed, and one man ran over to help. He grabbed the wriggling corpse by the pant waist and pulled. He was trying not to touch any blood, and I didn’t blame him. What if the disease spread that way?
He didn’t move the dead man very far, but the guard got a leg up, wedged between him and the dead guy, and pushed. The zombie rose into the air and fell to the side.
Rolling the other way, the guard coughed as he tried to stand. A girl helped him up; she was young and very brave. She had a splash of freckles across her face, and she smiled at me like we were old friends. I grabbed the zombie by the scruff of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. After marching to the door, I threw him into the road. He hit pretty hard, but rolled over and got to his feet.
Grabbing my cart of goodies, I pushed it ahead of me to keep the thing back. He grabbed hold of the front like he was going to leap over it.
A big pickup truck slid to a halt, and a guy in cowboy boots and a big brown hat stepped out.
“That one of the dead fuckers?” His voice carried a hint of Southern, but I was used to hearing that from some of the folks on the outskirts of Portland. Seemed like a clan of them moved from Texas and set up shop here a few decades ago.
“Yep. Dead as a doornail,” I replied as I pushed the thing back with the cart. Tired of the game, I let go of the cart. The zombie stumbled back, nearly fell over, and lurched into motion once again with me in his sights. I took a full stride and launched one foot in a full thrust kick that nailed the dead guy in the chest, just below the wound. The sound was sickening, as compressed guts and foul air shifted around in the walking corpse.
It had been a while since I had thrown one of those, but it was something I had done a thousand times. Good muscle memory, or just plain luck, was with me, as the creature flew back a few feet. It landed flat on its back and lay there for a few seconds, as if in a daze.
The cowboy moved around the dead guy and stared at the hole in his chest.
“Ain’t no damn way that guy can be alive. No way. His heart is gone!”
A couple of bystanders came over to look at the guy wriggling on the ground. They stood around as more joined us. One started talking in a cold, clinical voice about the wounds sustained and why he should be dead. He was a tall man, with a gray, receding hairline that rounded his head like a halo. Looked and spoke just like a doctor. All the while, the thing tried to find the motor skills to get back up. It snarled at the bystanders, and one of them, perhaps feeling brave, showed his teeth and snarled back. The others moved away with shocked looks on their faces. The guy held his hands out to placate the crowd and told them that he was just joking around, that he wasn’t some damn dead thing.
There was a scream behind me, and I spun around, expecting to see someone looking at the wounded man. It was a young woman, about twenty. Her face was etched with fear, lips peeled back as she let loose another howl for help. She ran, flat out on some sensible-looking sneakers, from another of the dead.
The man behind her was dressed in a biking outfit. He had on those shoes that lock into the pedals, spandex shorts, and a tight shirt. His helmet was askew, half-cocked on one side of his head, and the left side of his face was missing, like he had a really bad case of road rash. One arm hung limply at his side, and the opposite foot was broken at the ankle. He dragged it with each shambling step. His side was caved in, and, though it didn’t show, the damage was almost worse than the guy with the gaping wound. While we were distracted, the dead guy I had kicked managed to get to his feet and fall on one of the bystanders.
She screamed as he bit into her shoulder, pulling back a huge chunk of skin. His mouth darted back to the wound, like an animal going at a fresh kill. I stared in horror, just like the rest of the onlookers. There were five or six of us standing around like we had just been having some sort of community meeting when, absurdly, a woman was being eaten in front of our eyes.
I snapped out of it, stepped quickly to the dead man, and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck for the second time, yanking him off the woman. As he turned around, I pushed him down, not knowing what else to do. The axe was in the bottom of my cart, and could I really dispatch this guy with so many people watching?