Vaccination (7 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Allison and I came up on the backside of the mall. From where we crouched in the bushes, we could see the loading dock side of Target. Beyond that, Sears and Penny’s. The sporting goods store sandwiched between them. The mall had front entrances to all the stores. The back also had direct store entrances, as well.

The lot had parked cars, which was good. We’d need them. They provided cover. The roaming mass of zombies looked a bit overwhelming.

“There’s a lot of them.” Allison knelt beside me, one hand on my shoulder. “Look at ‘em all.”

“I can’t shake how it’s just like every stupid zombie movie I’d ever seen. They’re just, just roaming around. Like they are hungry for brains.”

“Don’t say that,” she said.

I didn’t need to say it. We’d seen it. Watched as people we worked
with, attacked other employees. We’d barely escaped work. A hard fought walk to the mall. These things, although maybe not craving brains, did seem interested in biting non-infected people to death. Bad enough in my book.

“We need to get to the mall. Can’t imagine the doors are locked,” I said. I looked around the lit lot. There was no visible clear path. If we did a serpentine between vehicles, we stood a chance.

“Bound to be more inside the mall, too.” Allison merely pointed out the obvious.

“We get in, and weapons are all to the left.”

“Just got to get across the parking lot.”

“It’s what I’m thinking.”

I watched what could be a group of four meander toward a Lexus. Couldn’t be more than a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty yards to the left. They didn’t appear distracted, however, they all seemed to lumber forward in the same general direction. That direction was away from us.

On the right, zombies weren’t as congested, but scattered. It was the same kind of slow and sluggish . . . gait. I counted ten, no . . . eleven. Twelve. Yes. I saw twelve.

“Look at him.” I followed Allison’s finger. Straight ahead. Just past a light pole. A guy ran toward us. He was a ways out, but running in our general direction. “Sick?”

“Looks it,” I said. The guy’s arms flailed,
pin wheeled. He looked like someone trapped in the midst of a swarm of bees. “What is going--”  
He wasn’t sick. Not a zombie. This became obvious as he screamed for help. Although my exposure to the infected was limited, I had not heard a single one of the creatures talk. They moaned. They grunted. They bit. They ate. That I’d witnessed. Talking, not so much.

“Help! Please! Please, God, help me!”

I didn’t know where he thought help might come from. I did know his screaming sure as shit attracted the unwanted attention. The creatures that had reached the Lexus turned, almost as one, and faced the running man. The expensive sedan forgotten, they moved -- a bit quicker, as if with more purpose -- toward the screamer. The other twelve also seemed to zero in on the man.

“What do we do?” Allison had a hand on her iron.

“What do you mean?”

“How do we help him?”

This time I planted my hand on her shoulder. “We’re going to the sporting goods store. He’s created a perfect diversion for us.”

Allison stared at me, eyebrows furrowed. “Chase, he’s a person. Not a diversion.”

“He’s an asshole. Why the hell was he screaming, why was he running--?”

Then I saw it.
Them
. No other way to classify it other than a herd. Not like cattle. Maybe a pack was a better description. Like wolves. Another fifteen, I don’t know, could have been as many as twenty zombies, rounded the corner by the Sears building.
Rounded
that corner like a New York Yankee rounding first, sprinting for second.

“Are you shitting me?” I said out loud. “This asshole's going to get all three of us killed. He’s running right for us.”

And closing the distance fast.

“Okay. Okay,” Allison stumbled. “So now what do we do?

Where do we go? We need to hide.”

I didn’t remind her that a mere second ago she was trying to get me to help the madman. Didn’t blame her. Maybe we could have saved him from a handful. The zombies in the parking lot had been slow movers. Everything changed with the new . . . pack added to the equation.

Hated to admit it, but part of me hoped the guy was taken down. It was a heartless thought, possibly a chicken shit thought, but there it was, swimming around in my brain. I needed to get to my kids. I needed weapons. I didn’t know this guy. He meant nothing to me. It was not much different from the training I’d received at work. One call at a time. Enter the job and don’t look back. Go on to the next call.

“Chase?”

I opened my mouth, about to suggest a solution, when they got him. One zombie from the pack leaped forward. It was a great tackle. Arms wrapped the running man’s waist, and legs, while its shoulder drove into the back, and down the two went.

The group was
on them instantaneously. A genuine dog pile.

“We have to go,” I said. “Diversion or not, this is our chance.”

Allison stared at the unfolding feast. Eyes wide. She didn’t respond, but followed behind me. We stayed low and ran as fast, and as quietly, as we could. We skirted the parking lot, staying out of the spray of lights.

I kept one eye on the massacre. Aside from the fast zombies, the slow moving ones were closing in. Couldn’t imagine there would be much meat left for sharing.

God, did I just think that?

What was wrong with me? There wasn’t much meat left. I shook my head. I needed to stop. Allison was right. That had been a man, someone probably with a family.
I had wanted to use his . . . screaming, as a chance for us to escape. That was terrible enough. I didn’t need to think of him as mere meat, too.

We made it to a caravan. We slammed our backs up to the side panel. We were out of view, could no longer see the man being devoured. Ripped apart. Hopefully, they not only could not see us, but had not noticed us, either.

“I was going to let him die,” I said.

“What?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. That man, I had no intention of helping him. None.”

Allison took my hand, gave it a squeeze. “We need to get into the store.”

She was right. Nothing I could do now. Maybe nothing could have been done, regardless. Still, I was pissed. Mad at myself. This was not me, not who I was. Not who I wanted to be.

Weapons.

The sporting goods store.

“Okay. Let’s get inside.” I stuck my head around the front of the van. Most of the zombies were staggering about in the general area. I closed my eyes at the sight of the fallen man. He’d be torn apart. Literally. Chunks of remaining lim
bs and pieces of discarded flesh littered and displayed in three spots in that section of the parking lot.

The pack of zombies stayed together. They were the ones that made me most apprehensive. They weren’t headed towards us, but they were headed back towards the mall.

“It’s now or never, Alley. You ready?” I asked.

“I guess,” she said.

I looked at her, and almost yelled. A zombie had snuck up on us.

It grabbed Allison’s hair and yanked her back and off her feet. . .

Chapter Fourteen

The zombie needed to reset his stance after dropping Allison to the pavement, before falling to his knees over her.

Allison let out a scream. Her hands clawed at his face, and her feet kicked out at nothing. She tried rolling onto her back in an attempt to scramble away.

I struggled getting my tire iron out of my belt loop. It was wedged. Panicked, I gave up on the lodged weapon, and reeled back with my leg and face-punted a solid kick to the side of the zombie’s head.

My boot knocked the thing sideways, but not off Allison entirely.
Its hands held fast to her hair and shoulder. I kicked again, this time, standing over it, clobbering the heel of my boot on its temple.

The drive pushed him down and off my girlfriend. I jumped up, and stomped down on his skull, and again and a third time. The fucker’s hands still reached out for Allison. She was up,
and out of reach.

“Chase,” she said.

“I got him,” I said. I managed to get the iron free. I raised it over my head and smacked it down onto his forehead. The brow split. Blood sprayed.

Allison tugged on my shirt. “Chase. They heard. They’re coming.”

I didn’t need to look around to understand. I knew what she meant. I knew we were now in trouble. “We need to get inside.”

We ran.

The slow zombies marched our way. I saw that. The fast ones, the pack of quick zombies, they had us in their cross hairs as well. Timing was essential and obvious. We needed to reach the doors to the store before the zombies reached us. It would be close, photo-finish-close.

My legs pumped as hard as they could. All I kept thinking was, don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip. I saw it in my mind though, tripping over my feet, falling to the ground, and being eaten by monsters that--by all intent and purposes--shouldn’t even be hungry anymore.
Gluttons
.

Allison ran alongside me. I heard three things. Us breathing, their feet pounding pavement--and that pounding of pavement getting
louder and louder.

Safety loomed yards ahead. Just yards. The way I bounced as I ran made the sliding doors seem to shake. It’s how my brain felt. Jumbled and loose, sloshing freely around inside my skull.

Then I heard, above our breathing and shoes pounding pavement, the groans. The moans. So loud, so angry. They sounded like a chorus of cries, like hundreds of fingernails raking across a chalkboard.

We were almost to the doors, to the sanctuary of the mall, but so were they.

I held my tire iron raised in the air as I ran. If any of those things got in the way, tried blocking those doors, I’d be ready.

Thirty feet from the
door, it looked like we’d make it. Once inside the store we could quickly scramble for more useful weapons.

Or could we?

The doors were automated. If we entered easily, so would they.

And then it didn’t matter. As we reached the doors, as the doors slid open, one of the zombies reached us. Blocked our entrance.

Allison stabbed the pointed end of her iron into the thing’s face. Through an eye-socket. I heard a pop. Saw juices fly. She didn’t even try to pull her tire iron free. She left it, jumping over the falling body and through the open doorway. I was right behind her.

The bad thing? The zombies were right behind us.

Inside the store, Allison went left, to where I’d said weapons would be located. I followed, hoping they’d be accessible. We wouldn’t have time to pick through items searching for what might work best.

“Grab something,” I said. “Anything.”

Anything. There was nothing. Hunter camo, deer stands, rain slickers, shoes. Where were . . . what? If guns were on display, they wouldn’t be loaded. Bows would be behind counters. I expected to raid the store, as if shopping without paying. I didn’t think we’d be chased into the store.

“Allison, get to the mall, run for the mall!” I shouted, as I changed direction. Down an aisle, I saw the mall.

“Guns,” I heard. She was behind me. I didn’t think she was following me. I didn’t want to look back. I didn’t need to see the zombies closing in on me. Didn’t want to see them trapping her in the corner section of the store where weapons were kept.

The boom echoed.

I chanced a look back, just as another shot was fired.

Shit. Only one of the zombies followed me.

The rest were on her ass. She’d never make it. She
did
have a gun.

A third shot resounded.

I stopped fast, snatched a composite hockey stick from the rack, and spun around. The slap shot was a wide arc cutting up through air and slicing the side of the zombie’s neck. The cut wasn’t deep, but the artery severed. Blood jetted from the wound as I pulled back on the stick and swung at its throat a second time for good measure. The thing dropped to its knees, and face planted onto the tiled floor. I stepped over the beast as blood pooled around its head.

“Allison!” I started toward the back of the store. Two more shots were fired. At least I knew she was alive.

“Chase!”

Alive and calling for me. I ran as if on ice, the hockey stick in both hands. Only thing missing, the pads. I’d of loved to have been decked out in some hockey gear.Zombies’ would have a hell of a time gnawing on my flesh through all of that gear!

Allison ran out into the main aisle. It almost got her slashed with my stick. It also almost got me shot. The handgun was aimed at my face. I ducked, and swatted the space between us, as if I could bat a bullet out of the way like a fly, had she pulled the trigger.

“I killed like five,” she said. Her arm fell to her side. The threat averted.

“No time to brag,” I said. They followed her. Fast. “This way.”

We ran back the way I’d just come. The body of the bloodless zombie sprawled out on the floor was a small hurdle. Jumping over him was not the issue. It was the sticky blood around
its head that became the problem.

Allison slid. A red smear trailed two feet out of the puddle. I clutched her arm as she fell backwards. It did nothing to stop the fall. She cried out as her shoulder popped from the socket.

“Give me the gun,” I said.

She wasn’t listening. I wretched it free from her limp arm, knelt beside her and nothing. Empty. I dropped the gun, scooped an arm under Allison and lifted her to her feet. “Run,” I said, needlessly.

Staying back, I swung the hockey stick at the next closest zombie. I was not lucky enough to slice an artery, but the stick did the job and smacked hard enough into the creature’s head to knock him off his feet. He went down hard. Sprawled out on the linoleum for the count. I straddled its body, raised the stick like an ax, and swung at his skull over and over as if splitting firewood.

“Chase!”

I almost couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. My adrenaline was surging through my body like crazy. I could feel it pumping through every limb. I hacked at the smashed head one last time, and the blade on the hockey stick lodged into the gash. I needed to step on its shoulders and pull with both hands to free my new weapon of choice.

Then I ran.