The sound he had heard earlier from out here was louder now, and he was certain that it had to be a truck or car of some sort. It was a ways off but loud, and Edward looked around for the direction it came from. He thought he could see it driving down the road toward the store, a rusty-red speck. He smiled, although the expression hurt his cheeks. Whatever the hell had happened here, whatever was wrong with him, at least he was not alone.
Edward looked back over his shoulder at the entrance and saw the dead thing that had been following him shamble out into the open, with at least one more visible inside. Edward took a few deep breaths in anticipation of running again, but after a few seconds it became apparent there was no need. Instead of coming for him the creature shuffled over to the one that had been outside, and it stopped. If there had been eyes in the first thing’s head, eyes that weren’t glazed over with thick cataracts, Edward would have thought it was staring at the second one. The third one came out and approached the other two, and the three monsters stood there, not doing anything other than swaying slightly in the gentle breeze.
Edward couldn’t help but lose his earlier fear as he watched them. None of them looked terribly hostile. The more he watched them the more he realized just how different they were from the ones he’d seen the day of the cookout. Those had been freshly dead and reanimated while these had obviously been in their current states for a long time, but that wasn’t the most important difference. The ones he had originally seen had looked bloodthirsty and ravenous, going after any living thing that moved in a slow and unstoppable wave. These three… well, if he were forced to describe their behavior, he would only be able to call it “minding their own business.” It was completely unlike what he would have expected from the undead.
Edward heard something that sounded like a whoop of delight from behind him, and he turned in time to see the truck turn at a high speed into the parking lot. It was a standard pickup truck, a Ford, although it looked like it had seen better days. Even through all the trauma he had just been experiencing, Edward still felt a part of him fill with disgust—he was a Chevy man, through and through. It was a recent model, as far as he could see from here, but it still looked ancient and decrepit. The paint job was mostly gone, leaving only the color of rust, and there were multiple dents in the doors. The engine sounded sick, like it was in desperate need of some tender loving care. That wasn’t too surprising, though. What else would they expect from a Ford?
There was one thing very different about the truck, though, and it gave Edward pause. In the bed of the truck, held down with chains, was what appeared to be a large cage. It took up the entire bed and was perhaps six feet high, but it looked significantly newer than the truck. There might have been a person in the cage, but it was hard for Edward to tell. The truck was moving fast and didn’t have much in the way of shocks anymore, so whoever sat in the cage was being rattled and tossed around. For a moment Edward’s heart beat irregularly. For some primal reason he couldn’t explain, that cage made him more fearful than the three undead things just a short distance away.
Someone in the truck whooped again, and the truck turned so it was headed straight for the west entrance. Edward thought he could make out two people in the front, one of whom was leaning out the passenger side window with a pair of binoculars in hand. As the truck sped closer the passenger disappeared back through the window for a moment. When he came back out seconds later he had a handgun and fired several times at Edward.
Edward screamed and ducked, then did his best to stay low as he ran back for the cover of the entrance. As he passed the three undead they all turned their heads at the truck, and their previous calm demeanor completely disappeared. All three made snarling noises and started their slow shamble towards the intruders. Maybe, in whatever passed for minds among their kind, they hadn’t perceived Edward as a threat or as something they might want to eat. These newcomers, however, were apparently fair game.
The truck skidded to a halt on the far side of the first wave of ruined shopping carts, its driver’s side facing the entrance. Edward ducked inside behind a tipped over claw-grabber machine and peeked out to watch whatever the hell was happening. The passenger side door opened and then slammed shut, and the man who had been in the passenger seat came around the front of the truck. He was tall and lanky with a knitted cap on his head, and he wore a wide, ridiculous grin. He was probably in his late teens or early twenties, judging from the spotty facial hair on his cheeks and chin. He raised the gun and pointed it at the nearest of the three creatures coming toward him, and Edward did his best to make himself small behind the broken machine. He hoped it was dark enough this far beyond the entrance that the kid with the gun couldn’t see him, but he prepared himself to run deeper into the store, just in case.
Before the kid could squeeze off any more bullets, however, the man who’d been in the driver’s seat got out and slammed his door. “Damn it, Charlie, you can be a real fucking psycho sometimes!”
“What?” the kid, Charlie, said. “I was only shooting at the fresh one.”
“We can get still get cash for a fresh zed just like we can for a rotter.”
“Not as much. So what’s wrong with using it for target practice?”
“What’s wrong is I’m the one in fucking charge and I have the motherfucking truck. So if you want to continue getting a cut for what I bring in, then you will do what I fucking say, got it?”
The driver didn’t appear too worried about the three monsters moving right for him. As they got within twenty feet of him he merely backed away, apparently confident that he could move far faster than any of them could. The driver was a few inches shorter than Charlie and had about fifteen more years and fifty more pounds on him. Both of them were in jeans and t-shirts, although their clothes were dark with dirt. Neither of them looked very clean.
“Right, right, got it,” Charlie said. He tucked the gun into the belt of his pants and then went back around to his door. While he opened it and rooted around behind his seat, the driver walked around to the back of the truck, still moving away from the undead. The undead snarled and held their hands out to grab for the man, but they were still too far away. The driver, however, didn’t look too comfortable with how close they were getting.
“Would you hurry up already? These three are starting to give me the willies.”
“I’m fucking trying, just hold on for a minute,” Charlie said. “The prod got wedged in behind the seat again.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to be more careful with that thing? If you break it then I can’t exactly bring in any more zeds to pay for another one.”
“Would you relax? Jesus, I’m not going to break it.”
As Edward kept his eyes on the driver he finally remembered the person he’d seen in the cage. After a few more seconds a head came into view from inside it, and now that the truck was closer he could tell that it also belonged to one of the undead creatures. The cage had a padlock on it, and the driver pulled out a key but didn’t open the lock yet.
Charlie cursed one more time as he gave something in the truck one final yank, and he almost fell over when the rod in his hand came free. The rod looked like a Taser at the end of a long metal pole, and although Edward had never seen one before he figured it was probably some kind of cattle prod. “Got it, Ringo,” Charlie said.