There! At the end of the room on a kitchen counter near a single bowl sink was a small white microwave oven. She stood in front of it for a moment as she studied it. It had a dial on it, not buttons like the one at home, and she found herself trying to figure out how to operate it. Trial and error worked and she figured out it would turn on automatically when she turned the dial.
With her Spaghetti-O's sufficiently warmed in her pink bowl, she found a table nearby and sat down to eat, only to realize that she had nothing to drink. Looking to the door, she realized that she would have to brave the horrors of the open store to find something, but it seemed worth it.
Moments later she returned with a small bottle of strawberry milk and sat back down. While she ate, she took the time to study the room and found herself staring at a comfortable looking couch. That might be a good place to spend the night.
Once meal time was done, she decided it was time for cookies!
Evening fell with four half empty packages of cookies on the table and a girl slouched in her chair with something of a belly ache. Looking down to her gray hands and arms, she wondered if her natural color would return. Her body still felt strange, different somehow, and she had no way to reason out why.
Deep into the night, her eyes grew heavy and she looked to that deep cushioned couch again. It was inviting and she was sleepy.
But, first things first. She cleared her table, put the cookies in a cabinet above the microwave, her unused cans of Spaghetti-O's beside them, washed her bowl and spoon and dried them with paper towels beside the sink.
The abandoned coat she had found near the lockers smelled a little funny, but she could stay warm beneath it. Curled up on one end of the couch and beneath the coat, she laid her head on her teddy bear and drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 2
The grocery store was home for the next few days. She had not even seen another zombie since arriving and felt comfortable and relatively safe within. There was plenty to eat, snacks, sodas… Everything she was not allowed to have at home. While she thought of her family often, she found ways to occupy her time.
She made frequent visits to the magazine rack, taking one back to the break room, reading it, and then returning it to the exact place she had taken it from. The book display also held some promise, but she had other magazines with many colorful pictures to look at, and the teen magazines turned out to be her favorites. The gadget aisle offered more amusement, though she did not stray far from the break room for very long.
Zoe had managed to settle into a new routine once again, one that was similar to what she had at home. She meticulously cleaned up after herself and made certain that the store outside of the break room also stayed in order. The only real problem she had was in the restroom. She could not look at her reflection in the mirror. Her gray skin and the darkening around her eyes made her look like one of the gray skinned people she had been hoping to avoid. Eventually, she covered the two mirrors that were over the sink in the lady's room with paper towels so that she would not have to see herself as she was. She had also tried to wash the gray from her skin, but to no avail.
One afternoon, days after finding the abandoned grocery store, she was on her way back to aisle twenty-nine for yet another can of Spaghetti-O's. It was eleven thirty and time to prepare lunch. With her ever present teddy bear under her arm, she took a can from the shelf, showed it to the bear and smiled as she turned toward the front and headed that way for something to drink from the coolers there.
Nearly to the check-out lines, she stopped as she heard the hiss of the front door closing. Frozen where she stood, she stared toward the front of the store with wide eyes, too afraid to move or make a sound. Listening hard, she could hear nothing for a few terrifying seconds, nothing but the pounding of her own heart.
A shuffle from the right drew her attention and her eyes panned that way, though she could not bring herself to move otherwise.
Now she knew she was no longer alone in the store.
Another noise reached her, a muffled moan that she knew to be one of the zombies. A quick breath entered her, then escaped slowly. Another shrieked slightly as the air passed through her throat and her chest heaved up. Panic and terror were welling up within the frightened girl and she dared to take a half step back. She heard another moan from the left and her head turned ever so slightly as she looked that way. She could see a few of the check-out stands in front of her, could see the front of the store, but she could not see any movement. There were shuffling footsteps to her right again and something in the next aisle was knocked over and she slowly retreated, her eyes darting about as she backed away. She knew she had to retreat to the back, but the door to the break room would not lock.
When she had backed about halfway down the aisle, she froze again as one of the zombies turned into the aisle, and she gulped a shrieking breath as he looked right at her. Like many others, his white button up shirt was stained black-red down the front. His skin was a darker gray and he had no hair. He was big, thickly made and moving with jerky motions as if he was having many of the same difficulties she was with her motor skills.
As he staggered into the aisle after her, she backpedaled away again, spinning around to run, but she ran right into another big zombie, this one in a tattered black tee shirt and blue jeans and her nose bounced off of his chest.
Zoe tried to scream, but nothing came out as she looked up into those pale eyes that had her in their sights. There were not even pupils that she could see. Her mouth open in a terror induced gape, she found herself unable to act once again as he grasped her arms in his powerful hands. Something snapped within her and she twisted with all her might to get away from him, backing away as he continued to advance, but she could not get away.
He moaned again and looked past her, then he moved her aside and kept walking.
Breaths still shrieked as they entered her and she watched the big zombie just walk by her and continue down the aisle. The other was still coming and she retreated again, this time looking over her shoulder before she turned to bolt away from them.
At the end of the aisle she stopped suddenly as she confronted two more, a thin man and a woman, both of whom were dressed like they had worked in an office building. Unable to think clearly, she backed away, her wide eyes locked on the man, the closest of the two, as he staggered toward her.
With a horrified, child-like cry, she wheeled around again and ran the other direction, toward the other end of the store.
There were no zombies to be found on this end and she stopped near the refrigerated bays just outside of the butcher shop window, retreating into the corner and grasping the cold metal of the meat displays with both hands.
Both of the zombies she had just evaded were still coming at her and they both seemed to be staring right into her. Looking down the aisle to her right, horror gripped her features as she saw two more turn into that aisle from the front of the store. Her attention snapped back to the other two and that child-like cry escaped her again as she saw they had been joined by the two she had encountered on the canned food aisle. Another woman zombie emerged from an aisle much closer to her, and turned toward her as well.
Zoe found herself cornered and her mind and emotions overloaded. She found herself crying, and as they closed in on her, she sank to the floor, dropping the can of Spaghetti-O's and hugging the teddy bear to her chest with both arms as she helplessly watched them close in on her. She drew her legs to her and tried to ball herself up as small as she could, her eyes darting from one to the next as they closed in on her.