“Fuck, you’re sizing me up for that window, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Can’t get anything by you, can I, Captain Obvious?”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s just do this already,” I said as he wrapped the backpack around his hand and broke the window. Glass tinkled to the floor and we all cringed. Peering through the frame, I was relieved to find nothing moving in to take a bite from me and handed my pack to Adam. I reluctantly thought about Kat and my attempts to save her. I shook off the dark thoughts and shimmied through the window with my weapon at the ready.
I had entered a small office at the back of the store. There was a closed door on the far wall. A single desk and office chair furnished the room, a space that smelled like ass mixed with a sickly sweet aroma. A corpse sat slumped to one side in the chair. Candy wrappers and empty water bottles surrounded the chair. On further inspection, I could tell this was a man. His body was emaciated, eyes sunken in. He hadn’t bloated yet, so I could only guess that he died recently.
The lack of anything edible in the room made me suspect he died from starvation. I wasn’t taking any chances. I inched my way slowly around the desk and poked him with the bayonet. He remained still. Hmm, food for thought. At least we now knew that dying a regular death didn’t bring someone back. I guessed that sweet scent was the corpse. I found the smell of ass behind his chair. He’d evidently been using his trash barrel as a toilet. It was kind of like a train wreck. You don’t want to look, but you can’t stop yourself. I made the crucial error of looking in the trash. Maggots wriggled through it.
Much like vomit, maggots were another thing to add to my growing list of gross things Emma can’t handle. Once I had left a dish with leftover steak in the sink for a week. When I finally got around to washing it, it was crawling with maggots. My body gave an involuntary shudder as I remembered the scene. I dry heaved a few times, the sound coming out like hork hork. I backed away and counted to ten while I looked at the ceiling and gave myself a mental moment to calm my defiant stomach.
Adam poked his head through the window frame. “Hey, any day now. It’s not like there’s, oh I don’t know, zombies running rampant in the city trying to eat us, or anything. But hey, you just take your sweet time in there.”
I muttered a quick suck it under my breath and unlocked the back door. They closed it quietly behind them, and the four of us stood crammed into the tiny room. Lowell, closest to the corpse, leaned over the body. “What the… hork hork.”
Ha! Sucka! Justice had been served.
Seth put his ear to the door and we held our breath waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he looked back at us and shrugged his shoulders. I knew the layout of the store and directed each man to a specific quadrant. We opened our backpacks and prepared to shop.
The first thing we saw when we opened the door was a body sitting upright against the adjacent wall. It let out one of their trademarked raspy moans and reached one hand up to us like he wanted help to stand. Yeah right, buddy, I’ll help you up. NOT.
Seth dispatched it quietly with his blade and we eased down the hallway. At least I now knew why boss man had locked himself in the small office. No other threats were visible as the hallway opened into the store. Unless, of course, you counted the busted-in front windows of the store. Man, we just couldn’t catch a break.
Seth made his funny hand signals at us. I’d watched Platoon enough times to know that he was pointing us in our respective directions. On high alert, we made our way through the aisles, bagging, not only what was on the list, but whatever other supplies could come in handy. A moving shadow at the front windows caught my attention and I ducked down out of sight. Peering over the shelf, I spotted a zombie shambling by the window. I frantically looked around the store and was relieved to see the others had taken cover as well. We would need to stay away from the front.
Of course, the blood pressure monitors were lining the front wall. “Damn it.” Using the far wall for cover, I crept up and around the corner. I grabbed the first one I came to and was about to move back to the shadows when I saw Adam waving his hands at me. Fear was etched on his face and he motioned me to stay. I became one with the wall. My heart pounded so hard, I was sure whatever was just a few feet from me would hear it.
Adam relaxed and waved me on. Whatever it was, it had passed by like the last. Five feet away from the wall the machine wheels came to an abrupt halt and I lost my grip as it fell over. That damn machine was plugged into the wall. Who does that? I froze in fear, praying I hadn’t drawn any attention to us. If looks could kill, I’d have been a dead woman.
Three sets of eyes glared at me, and I just knew each of them was kicking themselves for letting me come. I gave them the shrugging oops, my bad face and tiptoed to the plug. Finally away from the window we came together at the hallway. We’d gotten everything on the list. I removed the monitor from its stand and tucked it into Lowell’s pretty pink pack.
Opening the back door, we found a clear path and made it back to the fence where earlier we’d had a good laugh at my expense. Déjà vu. We were winded again and stopped to catch our breath.
“What was that?” I asked
“What was what?” replied Adam.
“There it is again. It sounds like a growl.” I turned to find a dog emerging from behind a tree two houses away. Four more dogs flanked the first. Their fur was matted and I could see the outline of ribs poking through. They growled again, this time in unison. This was no day at the dog park. This group was out for blood. I bet they saw a big T-bone when they looked at us.
“Oh, shit. Run. Head straight through, all the way to the boat.”
And run we did. The pack was in hot pursuit. Thankfully, the two-house gap gave us a head start. The original group of corpses that had witnessed my graceful fall had stopped following us when we outran them. Now, however, they were directly in our path. We veered to the right and ran around the other side of the house. There were a few scattered loners in our path but we were running so fast they couldn’t get to us as we passed by. The dogs were closing the distance as we rounded the last house and jumped in the boat.
Adam set to work freeing the rope and we pushed off in time for the first of the dogs to reach us and jump in the water. The dog clawed at the side of the boat attempting to gain purchase and Lowell hit it with an oar. It fell beneath the water line and disappeared as we rowed away. The other three scattered back into the neighborhood as the undead began grabbing for them; yet another piece of good information. They went for animals as well as humans. Nothing was safe from these monsters. I made a mental note to watch Daphne at all times. I would not let her become zombie chow.
Chapter 21
Heaven Gets Another Angel
The next week was spent performing dry runs of the impending labor as a group. It would be all hands on deck when the moment finally arrived.
We were just finishing dinner when Noelle grabbed her abdomen and cried out in pain. She stood up and her pants were saturated with fluid. Her water had broke. I recalled a day long ago sitting at the beach with Brooke as she told me the story of her little brother, Mark. She had been out to dinner at Burger King when her mother’s water broke all over those plastic bench seats. I remembered being grossed out on behalf of the person who would inevitably have to clean it up.