Class of 2013 - 15

Chapter Fifteen

The Suburban suitably loaded, Lea and James were collected by Timothy, and we convened in the parking lot to discuss the plan. It was a straightforward talk, and for likely the first time since we’d all begun working together to survive, there were no arguments. We all knew that this mission was important, and that this time we needed to be serious. There would be no laughing, or horsing around, or any sort of nonsense this time. The day before Chien and I had slain a great number of the living dead in the area, and while we hoped that this would mean their numbers would be relatively low… there was no way in which to be certain. In truth, the gunfire echoing through the city might have attracted even more of the foul creatures than had actually been there upon our arrival last time. Time would tell. We certainly hoped for less.

Piling in, Lea got shotgun this time and James and Chien took the back. We’d be backing up to the doors this time around without anyone getting out of the SUV. Chien and James would open the doors from the back, and lay down fire against any of the ghouls that might so happen to be just inside. From there, with the doors already locked, Lea and I would climb over the front seat and into the back in order to help Chien and James clear the immediate area – assuming that they needed the aid. Once done, James and Lea would go for the stairs that led up to the store’s control room.

I’d never been inside it before, but from times when I had gone inside the store and bothered to look through the glass, it appeared that there were monitors and various sorts of things up there. I supposed it was for controlling lights, doors, and the security cameras littered throughout the store. Lea would likely break out the windows (or shoot through them, either way) and use the room as a sniper perch. James would remain in the room with her, shotgun ready, in case any of the zombies decided that going after our sniper would be a grand idea. Chien and I would go past the stairs, toward the bakery, and begin clearing the store out from right to left. Once that was done we would be free to raid and pillage to our little black hearts’ content.

Leaving the parking lot, we were all quiet as I drove. This was a rare thing for the lot of us; almost unheard of considering that when we were all together, we usually had something to say. At the very least, James usually told jokes. There was none of that, not now, and it was simple to see why. This was an actual mission where we would really have to work together, and if we screwed up, one of us might die – and we knew this going in. This was different than before. It was different from when Chien and I first went out. It was different from the trip to Menifee. It was even different from the raid on Big 5. How? This time we were going into a place that was actually very likely to have zombies in it, with the actual intent of clearing it out. Moreover, we were also going to be plugging the place up so that unless we all scrambled into the Suburban, we had no way out of this place. Once we started this, we were going to be sealing our own tomb; willingly, at that.

Glancing into the rearview mirror, I caught sight of James crossing himself. I couldn’t tell if he was doing it for a real religious reason, or if he was just humoring himself and the situation. I’d never known any of us to be all that religious. James was Catholic, but only really because of his mother having been one. Chien had gone to a Catholic school before transferring to the Baptist one that I had gone to. Lea had never seemed to have much faith in religion of any kind. I had once been very religious and Bible beating (for a little kid), especially when it came to Chien when I found out he didn’t believe. As I got older and began to learn more though… there was just more and more evidence for science added on that I finally dismissed all the religious nonsense. The last straw was when they tried telling us that the Earth was a mere six thousand years old. I knew that was complete bunk.

Chien, Lea, and I didn’t really prescribe to religion at all. Chien had just never believed it. Lea had seen enough to know that it wasn’t likely. I had learned enough to know that a lot of things that theistic religions of all kinds said was hypocritical and illogical, and thus didn’t believe out of reason. James… I wasn’t really sure about. He seemed somewhat agnostic to me. He didn’t come out and say that he didn’t believe, and he would never fully commit to the idea that there was an all-powerful being watching us from the heavens. He wouldn’t dismiss the implausibility of its existence though. In a way, I suppose, he was the most politically correct about it all. He seemed to believe in respecting someone’s religious views so long as they didn’t hurt anyone. I was the exact opposite. I was an antitheist and a freethinker. I really must thank Richard Dawkins. His debates were the finest.

Reaching the crest of the bridge, we all looked down curiously in an attempt to see the parking lot out front of Stater Brothers. What we saw gave us some hope; there were only a few zombies mulling about outside right now; most of them having probably wandered in at random since our last trek to this area. Following the same basic path that Chien and I had taken the first time, we moved into the parking lot and then headed for Stater Brothers. It was now that I noticed more about the parking lot that I hadn’t last time. It was frozen in chaos. There were vehicular collisions dotting the area, mangled remains littering the asphalt, and all sorts or things strewn about – from groceries to articles of clothing and random items; from shoes to umbrellas.

Taking my focus off of the parking lot’s macabre scenery, I moved the SUV up to the front of the store, only to find that the double doors we intended to use were already locked shut and blocked. So much for that part of the plan.

“What now?” Lea asked.

“Simple; we go in the other entrance. It’ll probably work more to our advantage anyway, as it’s closer to the stairs to the control room.” I replied, and turned the Suburban to head to the other doors. Once there, I backed the elephant of a vehicle up to the doors, watching as they opened, and squeezed the rear of the SUV inside. Setting the emergency brake, and everyone locking their doors, I motioned to James and Chien. “Alright guys, it’s your show now.”

Without hesitation they readied their weapons and peered out the back windows. There was a small crowd of zombies not too far inside, which likely meant that there were going to be even more further in. Once they were ready, they moved up behind the back doors and Lea and I climbed over the seat and into the back to get our weapons ready. Once everyone was ready, Chien opened the back doors and he and James rushed out, blasting zombies left and right. The rest immediately had their attention grabbed and turned toward them, but the barrage of shotgun and Ruger fire didn’t cease.

Lea and I were soon out next, but as we joined in the slaughter of the living dead, we shifted focus. Instead of the ones directly in front, the fire was concentrated more toward the ones between where we stood and where the stairs were. Now and then we’d take a shot at one that was getting too close from the other side, but just enough times to keep them at a comfortable distance. Once the path was mostly cleared, Chien gave Lea and James the word to go, and they rushed toward the stairs – James first with Lea bringing up the rear, as he had the heavier close range firepower with the shotgun. Meanwhile, Chien and I refocused on the zombies ahead of us and used our Rugers, cutting them down one after another in rapid succession. The aim wasn’t careful or expert, but we made sure to aim for the head, and we got a kill each time we pulled our rifle triggers.

As we handled the dwindling initial horde, Sam led Lea up to the control room, blasting two zombies along the way and then, when the door was locked, he blew the handle off. Once they were inside there were two more zombies, and each of those was finished off with a quick blast. The first simply crumpled, but the other was close enough to James when he fired that it was blown out of one of the tinted windows of the control room and dropped to the ground below. He then went back to the door as Lea got setup next to the already broken window, and he leaned on it to keep it shut as he reloaded the shotgun. Chien and I worked our way toward the bakery, picking off zombies as we came to them, and it soon became easy with Lea helping us from above. She was as good as, if not better than, having artillery support.

The work was quick, messy, and precise. First we cleared the bakery – pretty easy considering that there were only three zombies in there. Lea covered the open refrigeration aisle that was in front of the bakery, along with the display area that had tables of bread and cookies. Any zombies got near that area and they were instantly ended. James shouldered his shotgun and took out the Colt .45 he had. Thanks to the argument we’d had earlier, I hadn’t had the chance to give him his promised reward from a couple days ago or the two Peacemakers we’d found at Big 5. Had I had the chance, I’m sure he’d have had those instead… or maybe alongside. Semi-auto in hand, he opened the door and made his way down the stairs to the ground floor, popping off any zombies that were nearby and might head in their direction.

Bakery cleared out, we watched as Lea cleared the last of the zombies down the refrigeration aisle and then dashed down it toward the rear storage. Being that it was another section of the building, we wouldn’t have Lea’s cover, but she could take out any zombies in the main section of the store that wandered too close… or just gun down whatever the closest zombie to the storage area was – even if it was halfway across the store. Moving into the back, Chien and I found that the area was darker, though not horribly so. We could still see decently. At first we didn’t see any zombies, but after some whistles, shouts, and banging on walls they started to come out in disgusting reanimated droves.

Both our weapons came up in a flash, zeroed in on the zombies that were closest to us. Chien got off three shots before he had to reload, but I only got one off. In the time of his next two shots I had already begun replacing my magazine, and when he realized that his was empty he began to replace his. By the time that his was out, mine was in, and I was shooting again. I managed to pop another three before Chien was able to start firing again, but he quickly caught up with me. We ran out of ammunition again, but by the time that we did there were only two zombies left. A look at each other and we reloaded the Rugers – though we decided not to use them. Instead, we slung them over our shoulders and took out our melee weapons with wicked grins. The two zombies that were left were finished off with quick strokes of bokken, and brutal efficiency of baseball bat.

Back in the main section of the store, Lea was cutting down the zombies in the store with timed, typewriter-like efficiency. Five shots across, reload, and restart on the end closest to the storage access. James was at the bottom of the stairs, going back and forth between checking to make sure that the zombies couldn’t get around the Suburban, and making sure that none were getting too close to Lea’s sniper perch in the control room. The Suburban was a sufficient blockage, and any zombies that dared get too close were quickly dealt with. However, while Lea was doing her typewriter thing, there was a small horde starting to form opposite the control room center, a few checkouts over, and they were headed toward the stairs. If they got to them, they might be a problem. Recognizing this, James went back up the stairs to talk to Lea.

As she reloaded, James walked in and began speaking. “Lea, we got a horde forming.”

“I saw.” She said gruffly as she reloaded, wincing a bit as the butt of the Remington moved against her shoulder.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Storage and bakery are clear, and I’m sweeping out the aisles. Go ahead and go apeshit.”

“Yes, Ma’am!” James grinned at that and rushed back out and down the stairs in time for the thunderous bang of the Remington 700 in an enclosed area to resume. In the store the damn thing really did sound like a cannon. He didn’t bother about the noise though, instead he headed for the zombies; shotgun over his shoulder while wielding the slicer in his right hand and the Colt in the other. James and I had both been born ambidextrous, but because of our parents we’d ended up right hand dominant – though this suited us just fine. It meant that we could use our right hands perfectly, but could also use our lefts to great effect.

Getting close, as his aim wasn’t quite as good with his left hand, he gunned down seven of the ghouls with the semi-automatic, and cut down the remaining four with the slicer. Seeing that there were another four nearby, but not grouped together, he took them out as well before heading back to his position and reloading the Colt. Then he heard Lea shout from above.

“James!” Her voice came and he looked up to the busted window, “I’ve got the aisles nearly finished up. Head over to the card section and clear it out. I don’t hear Roy and Chien shooting anymore, so they’ll be out soon and we can all finish off what’s left near the fruits and freezers. The three of you will have to clear out the back area where the fruits are kept.”

With a quick nod, James headed for where she had told him to go – cards; coincidentally, that’s also where the alcohol was kept. The portion of it that was next to the fruit display was full of racks of wine, bourbon, champagne, and other sorts of booze. Interesting, wasn’t it, that you could pick up a card for your sweetheart that was just so perfectly placed next to racks of things to inebriate her? Good going America.

Tucking the pistol and slicer away, he brought the shotgun off his shoulder once more and leveled it at the three most closely packed zombies and fired. Two were dead instantly, and the last one took a couple steps more before it dropped like a sack of rotting potatoes. The next four shots took out a total of seven zombies (and would have been eight, had the eighth not been shorter than the one that it was next too and only gotten the top of its skull blown off). Instead of taking the time to reload the shotgun, he swung it over his shoulder and went back to the pistol and slicer combo that had worked so wonderfully before. A quick swing of the slicer ended the zombie that had its upper skull missing, but also made James pause.

Nobody had really bothered to notice before, but the liquid coming from their skulls was becoming less and less red. Now, one would expect that from some sort of reanimated dead flesh, as they seemed to somehow be, due to the fact that the blood inside them would go bad. However, this wasn’t the sort of action taking place. There was blood in there, red blood, blood that seemed to be new and carrying oxygen – though even that was changing. Slowly but surely the red blood seemed to be replaced by black and green – and that was what mostly came out of the skull as it was emptied when the zombie fell over. There was plenty of red in the veins running through the flesh of the brain, but black and green was heavily present as well. Overall, when mixed, it gave off a strange, disgusting type of dark brown color.

The shrieks of a couple zombies not more than a couple feet away brought him back from his moment of zoning out, and he saw them starting to horde next to him as they came out of the other three card aisles. Now the time had come to really tear into them. The pistol rose on instinct, and seven shots rang out in rapid succession; killing the seven closest zombies. Without thought for it, he dropped the empty pistol and grabbed a full wine bottle. Now, of course, that might sound like a mistake as glass bottles broke easily.

There was a keen difference between that line of common sense, and reality. The bottles shown being broken over heads in movies, and hence why it was thought that they would readily break so easily, were both usually empty and weak to begin with. The bottles in movies were made to be broken. Bottles in reality, even empty ones, didn’t break so easily unless you hit them just right – and to break them over someone’s head usually took more than enough force to knock them out. A glass bottle full of liquid being used to hit a fleshy target, even one as hard as a human skull, was still about as strong as a club and could do a great deal of damage. In fact, if you hit someone hard enough to break a full, sealed, glass bottle… you’d probably kill them.

Without pause, he moved toward the crowd of zombies, and basically did what Lea had told him to do earlier. He went apeshit, and tore through the horde like a Midwestern cyclone through a trailer park. The zombies were left in about that state, too. Once he was through and there were no zombies near him, he cracked open the wine bottle, raised it up and then did something that made Lea, in the control room, pinch the bridge of her nose. He tilted his head back and began to chug it. By the time that he was finished, the wine bottle was empty, and as soon as it was, he threw it end over end into the back of a zombie’s head a few yards away, shattering the bottle – and actually managing to kill the damn thing.

Lea just muttered to herself. “He’s so gonna feel that later.”

Of course, as for now, he was feeling completely awesome. Considering what he’d just managed to accomplish, he had the right to feel that way. Looking back he saw the corpses of twenty zombies, and only seven of them had bullet holes in their heads. That in mind, he blinked and then went and grabbed the pistol he’d tossed down earlier; taking the time he now had to reload both it and the shotgun before he had to go into combat again. By the time that he was reloaded, Chien and I had arrived on the scene, having come down the rear of the store near the deli and opening up on the zombies on that end. Lea was working on the zombies in the middle, and James began to work on the zombies on his end. It was over in a couple of minutes, and we all moved to the fruit storage area.

Before going in though, I looked in Lea’s direction and motioned toward the other storage entrance. Then I motioned up, motioned to my eyes, and pointed toward the direction of the parking lot. To finish, I motioned in the way that most people likely associated with trying to get truckers to use their horn. She got the message and I saw her put a thumbs up out the busted window. A few seconds later her rifle barrel left the shattered window and then her head of full raven hair could be seen bouncing down the stairs. There was a brief pause in the sound of metal clanking movement, the sound of something being dragged out of the back of the SUV, and then the sound of metal clanking again. Then I looked to Chien and James, who were both looking at me. I sensed that Chien was just giving me the look because I hadn’t spoken. James really might not know understand what I’d told her to do.

“What the fuck was that all about?” He asked as he looked at me.

“There.” I pointed to the storage area. “Up.” I pointed up. “Eyes.” I pointed at my eyes. “That way.” I thumbed over my shoulder now. He just raised a brow. I sighed and repeated the motions. “Storage area. Roof access. Watch the parking lot.” I spoke flatly this time.

James grinned at me cheekily. “I know that, Chubbs. I just wanted to see if I could get you to do that a couple times.”

I rolled my eyes… and then smacked him upside the back of the head. Of course, I immediately heard Lea call out from across the store. “Be nice, Roy!” Glancing over in surprise, I saw her standing across the store next to the storage access, ammo box slung over her shoulder, and sighed; then called back.

“Yes, Lea!” Of course, my voice was less than enthusiastic. Even still, she smiled primly and walked into the storage area, 9mm pistol in hand.

“I love that girl.” James grinned broadly.

“Shut up, Romeo.” I glared at him lazily, and Chien just snickered to himself at my inexpensive expense. “Are you two ready now?”

In an instant the laughing and smirking and grinning and glaring all stopped – firm nods quickly replacing them. This was it; the final push. Shotgun and two Rugers loaded, pistols and melee weapons at our sides, and (as far as Chien and I went) scoped rifles on our backs, we headed into the back. What we were immediately met with surprised all of us. The store had held plenty of zombies, and the rear storage on the other side of the store had a good amount of them, but the fruit storage had more than twice the number of them. Why they had all gathered in here, I couldn’t fathom, but as we began shooting it didn’t seem to affect them at first. That is to say, the ones that didn’t die from being shot didn’t seem to care about the noise until it had gone on for a bit. Thankfully that let us all quickly reload.

The only thing back here that was different was that it was more humid due to the misters that were meant to keep veggies fresh – that and the dim lighting. I couldn’t think of what exactly was causing their slow reaction timing, but once they got riled they came on as quickly as they normally would. Guns up, we fired into them as they came toward us – Chien and I focusing on the right and left sides, and James in the center. He didn’t even need to aim. Just point at neck level and fire, and he’d usually get three. Hell, he was able to kill more in five shots than we were able to do with ten. However, when the rifles and shotgun ran out of ammo we didn’t bother to reload. Instead, we shouldered the guns and pulled our pistols – Chien and I swapping out a semi-automatic and a revolver to have equal shots between us.

James was lucky to have that Colt hand cannon; when he started shooting it the bullets went in the front, out the back, and into another zombie behind. He was taking careful aim too to try and ensure this, while Chien and I emptied the magazines in the semi-autos we had and then pulled the revolvers out to use. Strange as it seemed, despite having fewer shots than us, James was actually keeping up as far as score went. We all had twenty-six so far from this storage area. Pistols empty, we tucked them away and pulled out our melee weapons of choice. A couple minutes later the area was cleared, at least of the living dead. Now it was just filled with the dead-dead. Looking around, we reloaded the semi-automatics and began to move through the area, checking to make sure that the zombies we’d slain were actually finished. All of them were.

Next we started looking for what might have brought them all back here, and soon enough we found a blood trail that led up to a stack of crates. Atop said stack was one of the store’s employees. She wore what the deli workers wore, and in one hand was a loosely held and bloodied meat cleaver. Next to the stack of crates were the corpses of a few zombies that had been dead a while – with damage to their craniums that told us she’d done it. The strange thing, at least to us… was that she was dead… and human. A quick lookover told (though it was now wrapped with her apron) that she’d been bit on the ankle, likely while she was climbing the crates, and that meant that she should have died pretty soon after the bite; that’s how it seemed to work. Of course, as I was looking at her ankle, I glanced up to her hand that was down behind her (as she was curled on her side, and it actually took standing on another crate for me to see). What I saw made me tilt my head, and slowly I reached forward to move her hand.

“What is it, Roy?” Chien asked. He blinked when I held up the empty vodka bottle that she’d been holding. The seal was on the crate next to her, and there was a little blood on the bottle – though it looked more like blood splatter, rather than from her own wound.

“Seal is up here too. It was closed until she was up here. Looks like she brained a zombie with it. Probably the one that bit her.” Chien nodded and I continued. “She must have been completely wasted if she drank this whole…” I paused once more.

“If she drank the whole bottle, yeah. She probably would have been. Maybe she didn’t really want to be conscious when the moment came?” James half shrugged.

“No… Well, maybe… but…” I looked at the crate near her wounded ankle. The blood wasn’t dried quite right. There were blotches in it. “…I think she was using it at first in a medical application. I think she was cleaning the wound; trying to stop the infection… I wonder if she even…” I leaned back and took a breath, bracing myself for what I was about to do. Quickly then I leaned forward, sniffing at her mouth a bit; behind me I heard my friends groaned. It certainly smelled horrid, but I confirmed what I suspected. “Only a hint of alcohol on her. If she’d died fall down drunk, it would be a lot heavier still. She had a last drink, probably to calm her nerves, but… she wasn’t drunk. Might not have even been tipsy, depending on how she held her liquor.” I looked to her ankle. “She doused the wound with the vodka to try and clean it, and then wrapped it as tight as she could with her apron. The bleeding just wouldn’t stop.” I shook my head then and stepped down off the crate, glancing back at her. “She did everything right, but the bite must have hit a major artery. She ended up dying here, fairly sober, and surrounded by reanimated corpses.”

They both were staring at me when I turned to look at them, but it was Chien that spoke up. “Okay, Edgar Allen Poe, if that’s the case, why isn’t she one of them? The first victim we witnessed was bit on the artery in his neck; massive blood splatter. Why did he turn, but this woman bled to death?”

James cut in at that moment. “Think she could’ve actually cleaned it with the vodka?”

I was quiet for a moment, looking at the woman’s body. There wasn’t another mark on her person besides the injury to her ankle. Aside from that, she looked like she’d been healthy before she died. “…It’s the only real difference. Mr. Malone was bit on the neck, died, and got right back up a few minutes later. It looks like she got bit on the ankle, doused it in vodka, downed some of it, emptied the bottle one way or another, wrapped her ankle with the apron to try and stop the bleeding… and then just bled to death. The severed artery was what led to her demise; not any kind of infection.”

Then Chien spoke again. “So let me get this straight… we can fight off zombification… with booze…”

“Well… yeah. Basically.” I shrugged a little, and there was a brief pause as Chien and James looked at one another for a brief moment.

Then all at once we bolted for the liquor.