Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie (12 page)

I had a little notepad in my pocket with a list of the clothing sizes each person wears. We need to get something for Jeremy so he can get out of those high water sweatpants and into something more respectable. I gave him a pack of the new underw
ear I'd picked up at Super Walmart on crazy day, so he's good in that department.

We d
on't need anything for Caleb because he's all set with clothes in his own size and a bunch more in the next three sizes up. I think Caleb has the best wardrobe of us all.

Carisa has a bunch of "new to her" clothes because she's the s
ame size as "Momma," but I want to get her more things just in case she feel icky about wearing "Momma's" clothes. Jason has a lot too. "Daddy's" clothes fit him and he doesn't feel icky about wearing them.

I had a list of Nana and Pop's medications along with a list of things I'd written down from my "Nurses Guide to Medication Dosages" book. We knew we were gonna grab any medication we found and research it later, but I wanted to make sure we got the ones we need most of all. I was praying we'd find at least one pharmacy that hasn't been looted.

Mick and I led the way in his little Chevy S10.

Jason and Marisa were in the
Jeep Cherokee right behind us. Jason was armed with Mr. Winchester and a nice big Bowie knife in a pouch on his belt. Marisa had Walther P22 along with her own Ka-Bar knife. They also had a nice basket of muffins and thermos' full of whatever.

We felt like we were a force to be reckoned with.

At the end of our street is a pretty large pull-off that belongs to the county. They keep gravel, rock, and roadwork equipment there when they're workin' down this way. The crossroad is the road that heads straight into town if you turn right, and straight to the Interstate if you turn left. There is a little teeny little town called "Nickel City" right past the Interstate ramps. If you blink, you'll miss it.

The pull-off is on the corner of our street and the main road. Town is about five miles from this corner.

We saw a group of three motorhomes and a white Chevy truck with an attached pop-up trailer parked at the pull-off. There's a camper on the bed of the truck. Two motorhomes look old(ish), worn, and dusty. The third one is bigger, and dusty. The ground was clean around them.

There's two
motorcycles parked near the white truck. No one was outside, but it looked like they've been cooking over a fire pit with a homemade wooden tripod over it. There's a cast iron pot hanging down a piece of rope from the center where the wood meets. The tripod is lashed together with some sort of rope.

Four or five lawn chairs
are sitting around the fire pit and a rectangle fold up table with no chairs around it is up against the side of one of the motorhomes. There's a 55 gallon barrel and a small charcoal grill sitting beside the table.

We decided to stick to our plan
and didn't stop to knock. We need food and meds more than we need neighbors at this time. We'd check those motorhomes on our way back from town.

I knew of five big pharmacies and several little locally owned "Mom & Pop" pharmacies. This tow
n is infiltrated with pharmacies for such a small population.

We have about 15,000 folks in the city limits and another 18,000 or so out in the county and smaller towns. We decided to try Walgreens first
, because it was the closest. Then, we'd head to the CVS and Rite Aid on the south side of town. We'd continue on to CVS and Rite Aid on the north side if we needed to.

We saw no one on the five-mile ride into
town. The streets were deserted and about half the houses we passed had a vehicle of some sort in the driveway. Only a few houses looked completely empty. Right as we went past the first shops and businesses, I saw my second HDI. The first was Unky Bo at Caleb's house, remember?

Suddenly, a huge mass appeared
, standing on the road in front of us. She seemed to come out of nowhere. I figure she came out from behind one of the cars lining the street.

Mick had to slam on the brakes to keep from plowing into her. We came to a screeching halt and I heard Jason come to a screeching halt behind us.

There was an unbelievable amount of flesh standing smack dab in the middle of the road. I didn't want to look, but I couldn't tear my eyes away.

She was a large, fat
, woman in her previous life and was wearing a faded housecoat with a faded nightgown underneath. Her once fat legs stuck out from the bottom of the housecoat. The skin was sagging down around her ankles and her bare feet were black, with numerous chunks of skin missing. Oozing thick, black fluid was coming from the wounds.

Her hair was halfway full of those big pink rollers that you need to use bobby pins with. The parts of hair where rollers had fallen out were curled in perfect, medium sized spirals and were bouncing around as she moved.

She had big black eyes that had no depth, just darkness. The fat on her dirty face was hanging down both sides and almost reached the base of her neck. Her mouth was bloody, and when she opened it to howl, we could see that the teeth she had left were covered in blood, maggots, and black goo. One side of my brain asked "how can there be maggots in the middle of winter?" The other side kept searching for a reasonable answer.

She shuffled up to the front of the truck and started banging both fists on the hood. Each time she landed a fist, the cut and scraped skin hanging
from her arms moved like ripples on a lake.

Chunks of her hands and fingers began sticking to the hood, and pieces of meat were flying off to land on the street below. She reached up and ripped a big, saggy
, flap of skin off her jowl. She looked at it, licked it, and then flung it to the ground. Thick black fluid began oozing from her new injuries. She was howling so loudly that I wanted to plug my ears and crawl down on the floorboard, but my eyes were fixed on her and I couldn't pull them away.

Jason was out of the Jeep, behind the driver side door, yelling at Mick to "SHOOT 'ER, SHOOT 'ER!" Mick opened
the door and stepped out, standing behind the protection of the door. He raised the Benelli and took aim.

The shot hit her smack in the face.

Almost her entire face disappeared with the pellet facial she had just taken, and she stood glaring at us from fleshless eye sockets for three or four seconds before she dropped to the ground with a loud splat. I opened my door, leaned out, and called Ralph.

We climbed back into the vehicles and locked the doors. Mick looked back, put it in reverse, and turned the wheel so we could go around the sprawled out body. I saw movement at the side of a building on our right. I didn't say a word but started bouncing in my seat and frantically pointing.

There were two HDI's coming around the side of the building with their arms stretched toward us like they wanted a big ol' hug. I think they were father and son, but I really didn't want to hang around and find out. I screamed for Mick to "get us the hell outa here," and he slammed it in drive and floored the gas pedal.

We kept heading int
o town proper. We had a mission and Mick was not about to abandon it. I looked in the side mirror so I could check on Marisa in the Jeep behind us. She was sitting in the passenger seat, as still as a statue.

Mick and I didn't talk. We were both quiet and trying to silently talk ourselves into believing that we "didn't see what we just saw." It didn't work, and I had to tell him to pull over in front of a little jewelry boutique so I could call Ralph again.

We made it to Walgreens and pulled in the parking lot. There were four cars there, but the remaining spots were empty. Mick pulled the truck right up beside the front door. Jason and Marisa parked directly behind us.

Glass from the windows was laying in shattered piles on the sidewalk in front of the building. Mick and Jason got out
to check the inside of the building before allowing Marisa and I to get out of the vehicles. They came back about five minutes later and said we could go in, but not to expect much because the place looked like it had already been looted.

There wasn't a crumb of food left in the place. Marisa and I
began grabbing soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and other hygiene items, but there wasn't much of that left either.

The aisle with the paper goods was a mess
, but there were several unopened packages laying on the floor. I grabbed as many toilet paper packages as I could find and went to toss them in the bed of the S10. Marisa was behind me with an armload of paper towels and a pillowcase full of baby wipes. I threw the toilet paper into the truck bed and turned to head back in.

I paused before re-entering because I thought I
’d heard something shuffling between the truck and the building. I looked to my right.

About five feet in front of me was an HDI who wanted me for breakfast. I was just in time to dodge a grasping hand.

He was wearing a white lab coat, and he looked "fresher" than the lady who attacked the front of the truck, but he was scary as hell and his eyes were black and flat. I felt his hand brush the sleeve of my coat and I almost wet myself. I kicked out at him, and my foot connected with the side of the truck. He kept coming. I almost fell to my knees from the pain, and he would have had a handful of my face if I hadn't crouched down to grab my screaming foot and ankle.

It threw him off balance. He fell forward and slid down between my body and the side of the truck. He was partially underneath the truck and was pushing his body back around to come at me again. He got a hold of the door handle and pulled himself back up.

I had backed up a few feet, and was pawing frantically at my holster, trying to get my Glock and take him down when he suddenly stopped moving and stood completely still. I looked closer and saw a big ol' Ka-Bar knife sticking out of his right eye socket. He fell to the ground in a heap.

I looked for Marisa and saw her standing off to the side, shaking like a leaf, with an empty
Ka-Bar pouch on her belt and a Walther P22 dangling from her hand.

I couldn't help myself. I screamed "you missed one!" into the building toward Mick and Jason. They dropped everything and came running out of the store with guns in the air.

When he saw we were okay, Jason gathered the still shaking Marisa into his arms and began walking her back to the Jeep. I stopped him long enough to ask her if she was okay, and she nodded her head up and down. I asked if she had been scratched or bitten and she shook her head from side to side. She said "I couldn't shoot 'cause I was afraid I'd hit you." Jason, Mick and I all assured her that she had done the right thing.

She burst into tears and pulled me in for the tightest hug she's ever given me in her life. I was clinging to her and crying along with her. After a
minute or two she let go of me and Jason continued walking her to the Jeep. He opened the passenger door and put her inside.

He stood there
, talking quietly with her for a few seconds, and then he shut the door and headed back to Mick and me. I heard the locks of the Jeep doors click down as Jason was walking toward us. He came up beside us and said "let's get this done," in a solemn voice.

Mick raised Sam Colt and pointed over the pickup bed. He took out an elderly lady who was infected and shuffling toward us. She fell to the ground, and Mick turned and headed back into the building without a word.

I wiped my eyes and decided to head straight back to the pharmacy counter to get any medicine I could and get out of there as fast as my weak, trembling legs would carry me. There was only one thought on my mind - get Nana and Pop's meds and get out of this place. Lucky for me, the glass across the front of the prescription drug area was already broken.

I climbed over the counter and headed to
ward the drug shelves. There were no narcotics or drug-addict favorites left in the place. I tried to calm myself by focusing on my list and the task at hand. It was difficult, but after several minutes I was fully into my work and concentrating on finding the right medications.

The drug shelves were arranged much like a grocery store. The medications were stored in sections, with each secti
on related to a specific need, company, or related disease. Several shelves were completely empty. I walked the aisles, finding bottles here and there, until I came to sections that were hardly touched. There were a lot of medications in the mix and I didn't know what most of them treated, but I took them anyway.

I was able to get two industrial sized bottles of Nana's blood pressure medicine and three 100 count bottles of Pop's Celebrex. I
also got a 100 count bottle of Nana's diabetic medicine along with two, new in the box, glucose monitors.

The antibiotic shelves
were missing about a quarter of their stock and were across the aisle from the empty narcotic shelves. I swept my arm along the shelves and landed what was left into one of the plastic pharmacy bins they get their daily deliveries in. When I bent to pick up the bin, I saw a bottle that had rolled under the shelf, so I grabbed it. It was a small, half full bottle of Lortab. I didn't have time to see what strength or count they were. I threw the bottle in the bin with the antibiotics, said "ha ha, you missed some" to some invisible drug fiend.