Don't Dare Call Them Zombies : Books 1-4 (5 page)

BOOK: Don't Dare Call Them Zombies : Books 1-4
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“Yes.”

I now had two people on my mind: my mother and Jennifer.
I was not in love with Jennifer. I had given up on dating her long ago, but I was still attracted to her. She was a gorgeous woman with long dark hair and a smile that could melt anyone’s heart. Most of all, she was on my mind because I realized she may be all by herself; she could be trapped and totally isolated in that barbershop. I wouldn’t want to be in her position.

I tried to get her off my mind, since it would be a fool’s errand to try and go over there to be with her. It would be even more stupid t
o try and signal her to try and make it over here. Most likely, it would mean her death, and potentially the death of others.

“How long do you think we can last, Mr. Allen?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean how long can we survive in this store.”

“I don’t know. Maybe a long time, but maybe not long at all. It depends on if those things try to get in. The good thing going for us is that we have plenty of supplies: food, water, medicine, and almost anything else we could need. But if those freaks get in, it could be all over.”

We continued to discuss strategy and how we might survive the nightmare we were living through. Down below I saw a freak look up at me. He may have heard me. We both stepped back.

In an instant, a scream came from below, inside of the store. We scrambled to get back down into the store. Once back inside, we noticed screams were coming from the stockroom. I also heard yelling.

When I arrived at the stockroom I saw the man, who to me was still nameless, holding a gun at a group of
people that were surrounding him. His wife was beside him, and his child was clutching onto her leg.

“I don’t care if she is bitten.” he exclaimed. “I cleaned the wound and
she’s going to be okay. None of you are going to touch her.”

He waved the gun wi
ldly as three male customers and Mr. Humphries, apparently now sobered up, surround them.

“Look,
she’s sick. She’s sweating like a pig,” said Mr. Humphries. “She can’t stay in here. She will turn into one of those freaks and attack us. She’s a threat. We won’t hurt her, but we need to secure her somehow.”

The man cocked the revolver in his hand and pointed it directly at Mr. Humphries.

“I swear to God I’ll blow your head off if you come near my wife,” he said as he held on tight to his wife with one hand.

I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. I realized that if I did the wrong thing I could get shot. My heart was pounding.

“Get away from them! Right now!” I blurted out.

All eyes were on me.

“If she’s infected let her husband deal with her.” I said. “We know that when someone is infected they die before they come back. If she dies then we can let her husband do what he has to do.”

The man kept his revolver pointed at Mr. Humphries.

At that moment the lights began to flicker.

“Oh, hell,” I
heard someone say as the lights went out completely.

“Stay calm, everyone.” I said. “Stay calm, everything is okay. Someone, please turn on a flashlight.”

A beam of light turned on and focused on the man and his wife. The woman, already fatigued and stressed, collapsed next to her husband. One of the customers a few feet away walked towards her. The man pointed his revolver at the kneeling customer. In what seemed to take place in only a split second, the two other customers rushed him. They wrestled him to the ground, but he still had the six shooter in his hand. In the confusion a shot went off.

The gun blast was almost deafening. In a flash, the flashlight beam went off. Total blackness filled the stockroom once again, but only for a moment. Ms. Suzy
immediately turned on a battery powered lantern that was sitting on a table.

One of the customers, who had been wrestling with the man trying to protect his wife, had been shot. Blood gushed from his neck as he fell to the floor. The gunman was now sittin
g on the floor, next to his unconscious wife, in a state of shock. Being almost deafened by the gun firing so close to them, the two remaining customers had let go of him.

Mr. Humphries had backed up against the ice cream freezer door. He had a look of hor
ror on his face as he stared at the bleeding man. Jill, who had been a nurse many years ago, walked up slowly to the man who had been shot. She reached down to take his pulse and shook her head.

The man’s daughter was sitting next to a pallet of cereal cry
ing loudly, and Ms. Patty sat down next to the distraught little girl. She wrapped her arms around the girl and tried to console her.

Everyone seemed to be in shock. I walked towards the gun that was on the floor and picked it up. Once again, all eyes wer
e on me. I tried to think of something to say, but all I couldn’t. I started to mumble something when Richard, the produce manager, ran into the stockroom.

“The freaks out there are all riled up. They’re trying to bust their way in!” he yelled. “They can
hear the noise in here!”

“We need to make sure they don’t get in.” I said.

I looked at the women and children in the room, and realized they were in no condition to either fight or flee. If the freaks got back here, these people could do little to defend themselves.

Along with a mixed group of employees and customers, I ran to the front of the store where I could hear the sound of dozens of freaks banging on the windows. I tried to think of what we could do. There was no way to protect the glass from bein
g broken. It could be shattered at any time. If the freaks managed to shatter the glass, they could then start prying at the boards we had nailed onto the frames of the windows.

One option was to try and reinforce the boards
we had nailed up, but the hammering would just make more noise and attract more freaks. It would also make the freaks already at the windows more determined to get inside.

“What should we do?” Bobby asked.

I said that all we could really do was quietly put more stuff in front of the entrances to better barricade them. If we were very quiet the freaks may lose interest and forget about the noises they heard earlier. If they did get inside the improved barricade would at least slow them down.

We were puttin
g anything we could find in front of the doors when the first window shattered. Their moans, groans, and growls were louder now; much more terrifying. The situation was becoming more and more like something out of a horror movie. I kept on thinking to myself that this kind of thing was not supposed to happen; but it was happening now, and it was happening to me.

It seemed like the number of freaks trying to get inside were increasing. Suddenly, another window cracked. Moments later, it shattered and in a sh
ort time all of the windows had been broken. The sound of the falling glass was almost as ominous as their moans.

Hands were now trying to pry the boards off the window frames. Thankfully, we did a pretty good job putting them up. The spaces between each b
oard were small, and the freaks couldn’t get very good handholds.

“How long do you think we have before they break through?” I was asked by a tall black woman who had joined our effort.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “If they don’t stop trying to get in, I would guess maybe an hour at most, probably less.”

After moving every obvious item we could find to barricade the front of the store -- gumball machines, benches, displays of products, and even the lottery machine -- we decided to go back to the stockroo
m. We thought if we did that, perhaps they, the freaks, wouldn’t hear us and would give up. Bobby would stay behind and watch the door. He’d call out if they started breaking through.

I had just entered the stockroom when I noticed the emergency exit
door, in the back corner next to the bailer, was wide open. Mr. Suzy was standing next to the open door.

“We’re going to try and get out of here,” Suzy said in a low tone.

Chapter 4

 

I could see only darkness outside the open emergency exit.

I looked around the stock room and noticed Mr. Humphries and several other people who had been in the room were now gone. Several of the people who remained were stuffing product into bags, in preparation of their escape.

“They’re going to try and make their way to the transit coach in the parking lot,” the fat lady said while digging into a child’s backpack she’d obviously obtained from the sales floor. “If we cram inside it should be large enough to hold all of us.”

The image of the freak that had loo
ked up at me when I was on the roof flashed in my head. I remembered how aimlessly the freaks seemed to hobble about during the daytime. A sudden realization hit me.

Before I could say anything, Mr. Allen questioned the woman with the pudgy face, “How long
have they been out there?”

“About ten minutes I would suppose,” she stated.

A few of the men who had helped secure the front of the store peered out the emergency exit. Some of them were saying they thought that leaving the store was a reasonable course of action.

I paced back and forth until I noticed that the gunman’s wife was now conscious. She was sitting on a chair, in another corner of the room, holding tightly to her daughter. In the dim light she
didn’t look well. I noticed that either tears or drops of sweat were slowly rolling down her face.

“Their vision is best at night,” I said, turning towards Ms. Suzy.

Everyone seemed preoccupied with preparing to escape the store, so I spoke louder.

“Their vision is best at night! This
isn’t the best time to try and get out of here!”

Finally, I had gotten their attention.

“What do you mean?” Juanita asked, as she began to place extra batteries and a six pack of bottled water into a bag.

“For some reason their eyes are constantly dilated,” I said. “It g
ives them poor vision during the day, but it should help them see much better at night.”

I continued to explain that if we were to make a “run” to escape, we should do so during the day time. My words
didn’t seem to convince the small crowd of people hoping to pack into the coach and find a more secure location. Their argument seemed to be that staying in the store was suicide, because eventually the “freaks” would break in.

Suddenly, I realized there was a safe fall
back position the freaks couldn’t get to.

“I’m not leaving,” I said. “If the freaks get in here, I’m going up on the roof. Anyone who wants to stay with me is welcome to do so.”

There was a moaning from outside the emergency exit. I pulled the revolver out from my pocket, cocked the hammer, and pointed it at the door.

A slumping sound then came from outside; it sounded like a body collapsing onto the ground. A figure then appeared at the door.

“Don’t shoot! Put that gun down,” the customer exclaimed, as thick, dark blood slowly dripped from the large butcher knife he was holding.

I lowered the revolver.

“We need something to make noise to distract the freaks,” he said.

“How about this CD player?” Katie suggested.

“That will work,” he said.

The oriental
man, who introduced himself as Moon, quickly reviewed their plan with us. Mr. Humphries would go into the woods on the right hand side of the parking lot and turn on the noisemaker. While the freaks were distracted by the sound, two men would make a dash for the vehicle. Once the vehicle was started, they would circle around to the back of the store, near the emergency exit, and load everyone up. By that time, Mr. Humphries should have made his way back and would join up with everyone.

“You have the best n
oise maker of all,” Moon stated, as he looked at my revolver.

He was correct. The sound of the .357 revolver was very loud. It had almost deafened everyone in the room when the gunman had fired it.

I was not planning on leaving the store, but I realized that I needed to help these people escape. If that was the choice they were making, I needed to assist in every way I could.

“If anyone is planning on staying with me, start taking some supplies to the roof. Take as much food and water up there as you can
. Also, take a tent and some tarps. We’ll need a way to stay out of the sun tomorrow.”

No one responded. Would I be alone?

As I began to walk towards the emergency exit I heard Katie’s voice.

“I’ll stay with you.”

“I will too,” Ms. Suzy said, the glow of the lamp reflecting in her eyes.

“Then please hurry and start taking supplies to the roof.”

Moon and I cautiously ventured out of the emergency exit.

I clutched the revolver tightly as I remembered that I
hadn’t fired a gun in a little over a year. The last weapon I had fired was a semi-automatic 9mm Glock pistol my father had given me shortly before he moved to Utah. At the firing range I had been a decent shot with it, but I was out of practice.

BOOK: Don't Dare Call Them Zombies : Books 1-4
13.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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