Induction

“So, General Custer, what’s next?” I asked. The house we were crouching behind was the last before the main street. There was no way to see what we were up against without risking detection.

“Well, we’ve got one option again. Run for the back of the strip mall and hope this place has a back entrance.” Seth replied.

“Once again, your tactical genius astounds me. Well then, what are we waiting for?” I said. We mounted bayonets onto our carbines and got ready to make our move. We made the run without detection and any unnecessary flesh wounds. I did a little jig when I saw that the medical supply store did indeed have a back door. Of course, it was locked. Given our track record, I don’t know that I should have expected anything less. Seth eyed a small window next to the door and then looked me up and down.

“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.