Shane and Larry glanced uneasily at one another and then moved on.
A breach became apparent in the wall, a break in the gray monotony blocked by a barred security gate. As they approached it a gut-twisting stench enveloped them, buzzing with flies.
Amid the tall weeds and sage, they found themselves wading through a litter of human remains, bodies chopped into pieces or set on fire. Things that were dead beyond question, dumped unceremoniously beyond the court’s perimeter for the scavengers to carry away.
The cloud of flies settled about them as Shane and Larry paused to peer through the steel bars of the gate.
The flanks of three separate trailers presented themselves, each set at a different angle, as if conspiring to block their view of the inner courtyard (or to hide the gate from those trapped inside), unremarkable except for a single bloody handprint slipping, weak-kneed, down a length of weatherproof siding.
As they stood gazing a shadow appeared, its shoulders stooped and its head drawn to an exaggerated point. It shambled up the side of the furthest trailer then hesitated, turning its head this way and that, moaning with a grim sort of longing, as if sensing them near.
Then with a gassy sigh it sank away, defeated.
Shane heard something whisper in the dry weeds behind him and turned, the shotgun barely in check, startling both Larry and the flies.
No one was there, not even a shadow, just an awful smell and pieces of flesh that had once been human.
They broke away from the gate without bothering to investigate any further.
29
A chain-link fence stood at the edge of the parking lot, filled with privacy slats which sliced their view of the store into narrow pinstripes. Gaps they had to move their heads from side to side to see through. What they saw was encouraging: the parking lot was all but empty. There were a few cars scattered about, their windshields smashed or parked at odd angles, but for the most part the superstore looked wonderfully approachable.
“What do you think?” Shane asked, his mind already made up.
“I think it’s better than we could have hoped for,” Larry decided, squinting through the links. “I see a few dead ones wandering around by the lawn and garden area, but it’s a long way from Summertides.”
Shane turned his head and several new figures came into view; half a dozen he’d somehow missed before. The slats in the fence had a tendency to play tricks like that, hiding and revealing like those magic motion baseball cards. Look at it one way and the batter’s in his stance; turn it another and watch him swing.
A woman in a torn blouse was pushing an empty shopping cart through a bed of marigolds; two or three teenaged boys were bumping clumsily against the door to home electronics; a balding man in a hunting vest was standing stock-still beside a teal SUV, staring into the window as if he’d just locked his keys inside, the remains of his left arm hanging from his vest like an empty sausage casing.
“Which way do you want to go?” Larry asked. “Home Electronics or Lawn and Garden? Home Electronics is a little further, but it looks clear to me.”
“I don’t think so,” Shane said doubtfully. “I just saw some kids by that big pillar.”
“Oh, yeah…” Larry nodded. “I see them now.”
“Which one’s closer to the pharmacy?” Shane asked.
Larry thought back to the two or three times he’d actually been inside and shrugged. “They’re both about the same, I guess; or rather, neither one. The pharmacy counter’s all the way in back.”
“Let’s take Lawn and Garden then,” Shane decided, picturing racks of hammers, shovels and axes just inside, which were bound to come in handier than CDs and digital cameras. He explained this rationale briefly to Larry.
“Good thinking,” Larry agreed, tucking his revolver back in its holster for the vault over the fence.
By the time he’d done this, Shane had dropped over the other side.
30
Ideally, they would cover the 60 or 70 yards to the entrance as quickly and as quietly as possible, without firing their guns or causing a lot of fuss that would attract unwanted attention. Unfortunately, the fact that the parking lot was nearly empty worked against them; there was no cover to screen their movement, which left them out in the middle of a flat black desert, with nothing but blind luck to watch over their progress.
The first twenty or so yards went beautifully, exactly according to plan…
Then Shane heard something that sounded stealthily like a car door opening — metal letting go of metal — and the next thing he knew a woman in a white blouse and denim shorts was charging their left flank, sobbing as her shoes slapped the asphalt.
Their guns swung up automatically, ready to cut her down before she got within twenty feet of them. To their great surprise, however, she stopped short and threw up her hands.
“Oh God, don’t shoot me!” she cried, her voice skipping like a stone across the parking lot, turning every head. “Please don’t shoot me! I’ve been trapped here for hours!”
Behind her, the door to the SUV was standing open, the one-armed man in the hunting vest no longer interested in its shaded interior. He was shambling after her, his gait slow and unbalanced, as if he hadn’t gotten used to the loss of his arm yet. The sounds coming out of his mouth spoke of a great need, of hours of patiently waiting for his quarry to be flushed out of hiding.
From all corners of the parking lot, his cry was taken up by others, all just as urgent, all just as needy. They began to draw in a tightening noose around the trio in the northwest corner.
The woman looked around in bleak desperation, terrified to find herself so exposed after hours of hunkering down in her minivan. She took a halting step toward the two men holding guns.
“For God’s sake, take me with you!” she pleaded, ready to turn back and lock herself in the SUV if they refused or maintained their silence. “Please, I’ll give you anything I’ve got, but don’t leave me!”
Shane nodded and she ran at them, sobbing with relief, her approach like a battering ram — a woman in her mid to late twenties, heavy in the hips and bust.
Possibly attractive, were her face not so distorted with fear.
“Get behind us!” Larry shouted, stepping out of her way before she knocked him down. “We’re going into the store! If you’re coming, stay close and keep your head down!”
“Thank-you!” she cried, choking on the ragged ends of her emotions, repeating the phrase over and over as if it were a kind of mantra to her, a delicate bubble of gratitude in which she somehow felt safe.
Shane felt her fingertips come to rest lightly on his back, as if she were assuring herself that the two of them were real, or else unwilling to let him stray out of arm’s reach. Her sobs were like a hot locomotive bearing down just behind him.
“All right, let’s go while we’ve still got some running room,” Larry growled, and the three of them ran toward the shaded entrance to Lawn and Garden. Two figures loomed in their path: a middle-aged woman who folded with a dull grunt beneath the butt of Shane’s shotgun and a man in a brown Fred Meyer apron with a savage shotgun wound festering in the hollow of his belly. He was more persistent than the woman and Larry put him down with the business end of his revolver.