“What?” Jane interrupted. “How dare you say that? You’re taking his side now?”
“I’m not taking his side, I just—”
“You just what?”
“I just…”
Mercifully, Brian stepped between Jane and Sven. “Alright, we’re all really upset right now, but this isn’t solving anything. Jane, I’m sorry but we can’t just go pushing people out to be killed. We’ll all keep watch and be careful around Milt.”
Jane glared, but said nothing.
Maybe she’s finally seeing some sense, Sven thought.
“Right now,” Brian went on, “we need to see about…about the kid’s body. We can’t leave him here like this.”
Abruptly, Lorie stood up, her face pallid and red from crying. “I can’t believe he’s dead…I can’t believe you shot him.”
Jane turned to the girl. “I…”
“I know,” Lorie said. “You had to, right? You had to?”
Jane didn’t say anything.
Lorie turned to Sven, and he found it difficult to look her in the eye. “Will you? Will you?”
“Yeah,” Sven said. “I’ll bury him. I’ll do it now, that’s what he deserves. Something proper.”
Lorie nodded, and then Jane led her away.
After they were gone, Sven and Brian found some blankets and a pair of shovels. They wrapped Evan’s body and wiped up most of the blood.
“I’ll help you,” Brian said.
Sven shook his head. “I want to do it alone.”
“What? Why?”
“You should stay here, watch over everyone. I don’t like the way we left things just now. Not with Milt, with Jane, with Lorie, with anyone. This is all going wrong. Just keep an eye on things okay?”
Brian looked uncertain, or perhaps unwilling.
“Ok?” Sven repeated.
Brian sighed. “Okay.” He put his shovel down next to the blood-sopped towels with which they’d wiped the floor. “And you’re right. Everything is going to hell.”
Sven picked up Evan’s wrapped body. “Everything’s already there.”
Chapter 96
The vegan was halfway through his fourth pack when he saw it. The silhouette of the Wegmans was unmistakable, representing a certain reprieve from the soulless ghouls. The vegan scratched at his handlebar moustache with his free hand, fingered the cross at his neck, and redoubled his hobbling.
Dusk was rapidly enveloping the road, and the vegan didn’t want to be stuck on the open road at night, his companions the hungry ghouls that had been unleashed on the sinning planet.
After what seemed like fifteen more minutes of limping, the vegan turned right onto Monument Drive, the access road into the Wegmans parking lot.
He walked up the drive and around it to enter through the vehicle exit, cutting through to the Wegmans entrance without going all the way around through the rear of the parking lot. As he entered the lot, the vegan noted that the low, spasmodic drone he had become used to that day—the irregular scraping of the zombies trapped inside their cars—grew louder.
The sound was unsettlingly stronger in the Wegmans parking lot than it had been anywhere else on the vegan’s route that day.
It had to be on account of the large number of cars parked there, he figured, and because he hadn’t stopped off in any large parking lots until that moment.
Tapping at his cross with a finger, the vegan reminded himself that he would grow used to the louder scraping, and that the ghouls were trapped, immobilized.
I have to focus on the positive, he told himself, and looked up at the finish line toward which he’d been striving for so many hours now. The vegan savored the sight of the Wegmans edifice looming like a glimmer of hope over him. He had made it to safety at last.
It felt like a safe place, in part because the vegan shopped at this particular Wegmans regularly, appreciating its relatively wide selection of animal-free products.
The first thing he planned to do once inside was to find a Newman’s Own Peanut Butter Cup in Dark Chocolate, and devour it. In spite of the absurd amount of cigarettes he had gone through on his journey, the vegan was famished.
As the vegan hobbled toward the familiar Wegmans entrance, he caught sight of something in the parking lot that unnerved him.
It can’t be, he thought. He tried to make out the shapes in the increasing gloom, then, hesitating for a moment, he turned his back to the Wegmans and its promise of a wide range of Newman’s Own products. He faced the center of the parking lot directly, and began to advance at a slow limp.
The ghoul smell—the now-familiar harbinger of the damned—grew stronger as he approached. It was a strange smell, remarkable in its complexity and impossible to pin down. The vegan tried to sniff out its components, but his mind blanked when he tried.
When he got to the very edge of the pile, the smell was so strong that the vegan had to breathe completely through his lit cigarette, instead of mostly through it, as he normally did.
Cringing with fear and wondering why he’d consciously made himself walk up to the pile, the vegan turned around. He felt some relief at having the pile out of sight, though he also felt worse in a different way, now that the soon-to-be-moonlit ghoul parts were behind him.
Looking back toward the Wegmans, the vegan noticed something that he hadn’t seen on his hobble toward the center of the parking lot. There was a crusty trail from the dead ghouls that led to the Wegmans. Curious, the vegan began to follow it, tracing its path with his eyes. He followed it all the way to the curb in front of the Wegmans entrance.
There he looked down to where the trail broke in a sloppy multitude of directions, and spotted something else that he hadn’t noticed before. Lying at the point where the curb met the street was a mop, the business end of which was crusty, seemingly with the same stuff that made up the trail.
It struck him that the crust had once been a thick, stinking liquid...the power source of the ghouls.
The power source of the ghouls? The vegan caught himself, wondering what the hell he was thinking about.
It’s too early into the apocalypse to be losing my mind, he told himself. He stomped out his cigarette, dug out a fresh one, and lit up.
Then he looked at the mop again. The mop head’s grey yarn looked stiff with the crust, a mass of sticking scabs waiting to be picked off. The vegan shuddered and stepped closer, looking down at the thing. An acrid odor hit him, weaker than that emanating from the pile of ghouls, but unsettling all the same. He took a step back, considering the mop, and took a hard pull on his cigarette. Then he followed the crusty trail back to the pile in the center of the parking lot.
So I won’t be in the Wegmans by myself, he thought. And why should I be? What had I been expecting anyway? That I would come here to hide and be the only person to have that idea?
Still, it wasn’t ideal. People always made things so complicated. People and their stupid ways. If only Rainee were still here, the vegan reflected. Rainee was good people, as the saying went, and of course, as often happened to good people, Rainee had fallen prey to the unknown ghoulish agenda, had become a part of it.
The vegan took another hard pull and told himself to stop it. Then he made himself peer into the ghoul pile’s depths. The moon was becoming more visible now in the dimming light, and it began to play off the ghoul parts, glinting off them, as if whispering its ancient, evil orders...commanding the parts to rise and—
Looking at the pile was an exercise in fear, the vegan knew, but he thought that if he looked at it long enough, the fear would melt away. The ghouls could become ordinary if he only looked long enough...they were there for a reason, part of God’s plan, part of—
He gulped and shrank back from the mangle of dead ghouls and ghoul pieces. He turned and limped hurriedly to the Wegmans entrance. His heart sank as soon as he looked up, and he fumbled a carton of cigarettes, letting it slip out from under his arm. The familiar doors of the Wegmans slid open
, but beyond them, the shutter was closed.
All of a sudden, as if the sight of the shutter had enhanced his hearing, the vegan began to hear dragging noises in the semi-darkness.
Were they here? Were they surrounding him at this very moment? Panic began to gnaw at the vegan, because he knew that he didn’t have much strength left, regardless of how many more cigarettes he smoked. He needed rest and animal-free nourishment.
This was supposed to be my respite, he thought with increasing anxiety, this was supposed to be the end of today’s journey.
Then he remembered the mashed ghouls in the parking lot and cursed himself for being so dim-witted. He realized it was probably the same people that had battled the ghouls in the parking lot who were now inside the Wegmans. Maybe he could join them, maybe they would be welcoming.
So long as they didn’t brandish tire irons at him, he didn’t care what they were like, and in his current state, a tire iron didn’t seem strong enough a disincentive to keep him out in the haunted night.
The vegan reluctantly released the carton of cigarettes still clutched under his arm, setting it on the ground next to the one he had fumbled. He approached the shutter and reached out, about to shake the shutter and holler in to whoever might be inside.
He froze, his hands inches from the shutter.
Through the openings in the shutter, the vegan caught a glimpse of movement. He peered in, and saw that someone was coming straight toward the shuttered entrance, holding a wrapped bundle. By the look of the man with the bundle, the vegan knew at once that he was not a vegan, or even a vegetarian. This was a carnivorous man if the vegan had ever seen one.
What the vegan saw next brought on a ripple of terror that made him into an even more rigid statue of fright. The carnivorous man had not one, but two tire irons strapped to his belt, and he was getting closer. It would only be a matter of seconds before the carnivorous man was there, looking the vegan up and down, sneering, taking a tire iron in each hand, and...
Stop it, the vegan told himself, carnivorous though this man may be, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he uses his tire irons for evil.
The vegan regained the use of his muscles and crept sideways, scuttling away from the shutter. He wondered if the carnivorous man had noticed the sliding doors open, but it seemed that the carnivorous man, being preoccupied with his human-shaped bundle, had not.
Human-shaped? Then it hit the vegan like a pile of hard, unripe avocados. The bundle was human-shaped! The carnivorous man with the tire irons was a killer, and probably a close friend of the tire iron brandisher that the vegan had met earlier that day.
Aghast and disconsolate at the discovery, the vegan crept toward a far outer corner of the Wegmans, stole behind a large tree, and prepared for the worst.
His forgotten cartons of Luckies sat in front of the Wegmans entrance, as if asking to be let in.
Chapter 97
Holding Evan’s wrapped body in his outstretched arms, Sven walked solemnly to the shuttered entrance. At one of the checkout aisles on the way, he gently placed the dead boy into a shopping cart. Sven pushed the shopping cart to the entrance, and began taking apart the make-shift barricade now set up before it.
It was painful work because of his injury, so the disassembly of the barricade was punctuated by bolts of searing pain that shot up from his chest and down from his neck.
Every few moments, Sven glanced at Ivan, who was sitting a safe distance away from the clattering shopping carts, watching. The cat had insisted on coming along, and Sven wasn’t going to stop him. Ivan was turning out to the best of them at this morbid game, dropping useful hints and warnings based on information that it seemed only cats could glean.
Now, with the path to the shutter clear, Sven lifted it and pushed the shopping cart out.
Stepping into the twilight, he at once began to have second thoughts. Putting the body into the freezer was a better idea as far as practicality went—as far as survival went—but it didn’t seem right. It seemed the kind of thing that Milt might do.
With one hand gripping the cart, Sven turned and began to lower the shutter. Ivan slunk out through the diminishing crack and stole off a little ways, until he found a spot that he seemed to like.
Then the cat looked at Sven, his green eyes glowing in the dusk. Sven pulled the rattling shutter down all the way, then he turned back to the cart, and, with a heavy, apprehensive heart, gave it a push.
The cart snagged unexpectedly, and Sven walked into the cart’s handle.
Ivan meowed as Sven winced in pain.
“You saw that coming didn’t you?”
Ivan meowed, probably in agreement.
Sven walked around the caught cart, resolving to pull it, figuring that one of the cumbersome wheels had turned sideways or gotten caught in a sidewalk divot. When he got to the cart’s front, he was startled to discover that both of his theories had been incorrect.
The front wheels of the shopping cart had driven over an open carton of cigarettes, and had caught inside the carton’s cardboard flaps. Next to the open carton lay a closed carton.
Sven whirled around at once, realizing after he did it that whoever had left the cigarette cartons probably hadn’t done it from inside the Wegmans.
Was there someone on the roof? Was someone spying on all of them from outside? Had the zombies taken up smoking?
Sven freed the shopping cart’s front wheels and pushed it gently down the ramp from the sidewalk to the pavement of the parking lot.
It was getting far too dark for comfort. He didn’t want to leave Evan’s body sitting so unceremoniously in the parking lot, but now Sven had to go back inside to warn the others. They had company, and that meant they were all in danger. Unless...unless Sven could spot the cigarette bringer now, outside, and nip the problem in the bud.
Sven scanned the parking lot before him.
It was quiet save for the intermittent scratching of the zombies trapped in their cars. The scratching had grown weaker as the day wore on. Sven hoped that was a good sign, maybe this whole disaster was winding—
He saw a faint glow at the far end of the parking lot, off in the trees behind where he had met Brian and Milt. There was someone there.
A thought dawned on Sven as he began to push the shopping cart nonchalantly in the direction of the glow. Then he stopped, screeching the cart to a halt. He was suddenly certain of what was going on.
It was a trick. The glow was a distraction to get him away from the entrance, so that whoever was trying to get in could get past Sven. It was a group of marauders, come to kill them and take over the supermarket. Sven was sure of it. His mind kept flashing on a zombie movie where a gang of raiders on motorcycles broke into a mall to dish out havoc on the humans hiding there. Their purpose was anarchy, destruction, rape, murder.
All of that was happening now, already, this early into the zombie outbreak.
People are crap, Sven thought, knowing it to be true.
He shifted his grip from the cart’s handle to the shovel, but remained careful not to make any sudden moves. He turned around slowly, surveying all that he could in the moonlight. There was no sign of the rest of the marauder pack.
Sven looked down at Ivan. “What do you think?”
The cat was silent.
Now Sven wasn’t sure what to do. If he approached the glow, he would put enough distance between himself and the entrance to let someone inside. Then again, Jane and Brian were in there, and they weren’t exactly unarmed. Maybe the irregular glow was just a firefly, or a group of them. Sven kept the corner of his eye fixed on the glow, trying to be subtle about his vigilance.
It was time for a decision. Creeping around in the darkness in a world now ravaged by zombies was not something to belabor.
Sven decided.
He would neutralize the threat at once, return to the entrance to secure it, and proceed from there.
With one hand gripping the shovel and the other gripp
ing the shopping cart, Sven pushed the cart slowly toward the glow, glancing back every few paces at the Wegmans entrance.
When he was close to the far end of the parking lot, within twenty feet of the glow that he now made out to be moving and flitting about—just like a firefly might—Sven let go of the cart.
He held on to the shovel, scraping it off the top of the cart. Sven walked toward the glow, no longer trying to be subtle about it. The glowing thing pitched suddenly, and Sven saw the outline of a man, then Sven was running toward him, intent on one thing only—killing the intruder.
Sven leapt over the curb into the wooded area where the glow was. The shovel was down to his side, ready to be swung. The blow was going to be lethal, he was set on that.
Then he saw the man clearly, trying to crawl backward, trying to get away. He looked like a lookout, like a diversion. The man was small, frail, and haggard, and he was exactly what the marauders would use to deflect Sven’s attention from the break-in. The man was too small to do any damage on the offensive.
Sven wasn’t going to let him get away.
Sven swung the shovel, aiming at the lower part of the man’s head, at the jaw area.
He swung with all of his strength.
The impact of the shovel blow jarred Sven as it traveled back up the haft of the shovel, dissipating in his arms and upper back.
The glow had been extinguished.
Chapter 98
The vegan’s body lay in the dirt, motionless. The cigarette he had been smoking—the cigarette that had given him away—now lay snuffed out and bitten through next to his leg.
The carnivorous man must have realized then that he had struck only the tree behind which the vegan had been hiding, because the carnivorous man raised the haft of the shovel upward, its point over the vegan’s heart.
The vegan reacted, rolling sideways just as the point of the shovel ripped into the earth where he’d been lying less than a second before. He scrambled into a backward crawl toward the parking lot, scraping his hands against the rocks and twigs in the dirt.