Chef was stepping back in to check on us.
Doc asked, “Anyone need to drop a possum before we leave?”
“I’m good,” Chef said, “Let’s go.”
“Mutt?” Doc said holding out a roll to me.
I shook my head and walked around the counter.
Doc turned back to Chef, “You sure you don’t want to leave a Chef Sharp special or two?”
Chef laughed. “No, Doc, I’m good.”
Doc followed Chef out the door. He held the door for me as I came out too. Doc looked back inside one last time.
He said, “Thanks for the grub, Bub. Take it easy, Toby. The Silver Bullet satisfied its customers once again.”
He let the door close on the hydraulic arm. It gave under the pressure and closed more quickly than designed. The bell gave a strangled clank as the door slammed.
We drove away without attracting attention. It occurred to me as we were driving away that we had not actually looked in the grease traps like Doc had said. I wasn’t exactly sure what the real reason was for stopping there. Despite the mysteries within the Silver Bullet Diner, I really wish we had stayed there that day.
***
Chef pulled off the road again as we crossed over a single set of railroad tracks that curved across the road in front of us. The red and white striped cross bar was in the down position, but most of the wooden plank had been broken off and splintered along the side of the road. It was rotting away, but there were still striped splinters on the dirt shoulder.
We drove into the parking lot of a large building that looked like a warehouse. The sign said Super Max. There were tall, lamp posts hanging over the empty spaces. Straight lines of thin grass were growing through cracks in the lot that seemed to outline square segments under the pavement that were splitting apart.
We pulled around to the empty metal frames of the bank of doors on one side. Chef circled by and then backed up to them.
“That is an unfortunate name for a store,” Short Order said.
Doc laughed. “Maybe for the people that had to come here to work every day.”
I didn’t get it.
Chef said, “I’m thinking about a shopping spree challenge. We can use anything in the truck for dinner tonight, but we get ingredients from here too.”
Doc pursed his lips. “Oh, I think I’m going to cook a moldy sofa, a bloody smock, and a zombie biting my ankle out from under an overturned shelf.”
Chef continued. “We should team up. Doc, I enjoy kicking your smartass too much to team up with you. Do you want Short Order or Mutt?”
Doc said, “Mutt for sure. He doesn’t bitch nearly as much as you two … or me either, I guess. Also, it would be better trash talk if you had said my ass was dumb instead of smart.”
“What if we only find moldy sofas and ankle biting zombies?” Short Order asked.
Doc said, “Don’t cook them or sit on them.”
We got out of the truck. Doc considered the sword, but took his aluminum bar instead. He took a rifle. Chef got a machete and a pistol. Short shouldered a rifle too. I just took the hunting knife. Chef and Short grabbed boxes. Doc dumped utensils out of a pack and took it.
As we were walking in, we heard moans behind us. Everyone turned. Doc looked up. It was a row of geese in the sky calling and flying on the rise over the parking lot above us approaching the building. As they came toward us, Doc lifted the rifle sight to his eye and started tracking them.
He whispered, “The honking dead.”
Chef said, “We may not want to fire a shot off if we’re-”
The gun reported loudly and one of the birds fell out of formation. It tried to fight for air with its good wing until it vanished over the top of the building.
Doc lowered the rifle and cursed.
There was a sound of shattered glass out over the building. Inside through the opening, we heard the glass raining down on the tile floors.
“Good, Doc, real good,” Short Order said, “We were on our way to a zombie-free morning for once.”
“This sort of talk is why I stuck you with, David,” Doc said.
“Why?” Short snapped again. “Why risk it?”
“I want goose,” Doc said, “and I want to kick your dumb asses in this challenge. The bird fell inside, so I count him as an ingredient.”
Chef said, “Well, I guess whoever gets it first cooks it since it is inside for the shopping spree.”
“You wouldn’t,” Doc said.
Chef ran in.
He yelled back, “You fired the starting gun.”
Doc ran after him.
Short looked at me and said, “I hope that shot wasn’t the dinner bell.”
We walked in after our partners.
Carts were piled next to the doors. They were smashed and crumpled in ways I couldn’t explain. The registers sat silent and empty. They seemed to go on for a mile. I couldn’t imagine that many people shopping at the same time.
Deeper into the store we saw food had been on the right and moldy couches had been on the left. The coolers were smashed open down the line. Tables and platforms were stripped bare. There was the open carcass of a deer lying in the middle of the floor where the produce would have been.
We walked up a few aisles and saw empty and partially collapsed shelves. We didn’t see Doc or Chef.
There was shouting to the left. I turned and looked between empty pegs and cracked, cardboard shelves. I couldn’t see them. There was a broken skylight above the area.
Short Order tapped my shoulder and waved me toward them. We walked over frayed carpet and stepped over yellowed papers glued to the floor. We came out in an open section that still had a few items wrapped in plastic and the broken shells of other things I couldn’t figure. There was broken glass below the sunlight coming in from above us.
Doc had the goose’s body by the neck and was stuffing it in his pack. Chef was looking up at the dirty panes that were still in place.
Doc said, “Good luck on the challenge, Chef. You get to choose from rotten deer and broken glass.”
“Yeah,” Chef said, “Let’s just get out of here.”
The bird suddenly started flapping and Doc dropped the bag. Chef laughed and backed up from the flailing bird. Doc held the bird down by its neck with one boot. He lifted the heel of the other and stomped down on the goose’s head crushing it. Chef stopped laughing. The bird began twitching and flopping under Doc’s boots.
Doc said, “Huh, that normally works great with zombies.”
“Jesus, John,” Chef said looking away from the scene.
The bird finally stilled and Doc started stuffing its decapitated body into the bag. I couldn’t stop picturing it with duct tape over its beak even though its head was mostly gone. He picked his aluminum bar back up off the floor as he stood.
Short Order pulled a plastic bag of socks off a peg and tore them open. He took off his shoes and began changing his socks for the ones he had discovered. He left the old ones on the floor with the plastic.
Doc shouldered the bag and his rifle.
He asked, “You guys want to search some more or forfeit?”
Short Order was tying back his shoes.
He answered, “I’d call it a push, but we’ll pretend you won, if that makes you feel better, Doc.”
Doc shook his head, “Jealousy is an ugly emotion, Shaw Porter.”
“It’s tough,” Chef said. “You are such a sore winner.”
We walked through the cash registers on the way out of the shelves. The slots for the cash trays were empty. I wondered if they had been taken too. People had still been grabbing money after the zombies came. Chef had said he saw people carrying double armfuls of the stuff with zombies chasing them down the street. I understood the concept of money, but didn’t understand this behavior. The bills in the closet at the Silver Bullet Diner had been turned over on the man inside.
I looked back at Doc. He was leaning over a rack next to one of the registers. The candy had been chewed through years ago by rodents. Bits of wrapper and foil were left behind. Doc pulled out the crumpled, water-stained cover of a broad, black-and-white magazine. He held it up. Chef and Short were still walking toward the doors.
Doc said, “Look, Mutt. My girl Kate was going to be in another movie, if the zombies hadn’t canceled Christmas. I would have seen that one. You realize there are probably prints of this thing sitting in cans in theaters all over the country that no one outside of Hollywood ever saw. Weird, huh?”
I looked down the front of the store past the registers and then back at Doc. He stuffed the magazine into the backpack behind him with the dead goose. He picked up his shaft where he had leaned it against the conveyor belt next to the register. I knew how conveyor belts worked too, but I didn’t see the value in having one that traveled three feet to carry candy and magazines.
Doc said, “Okay, I get you, Mutt. Let’s go.”
There was a gunshot near the front followed by three more from at least two different weapons. We started running. Then, there was a fourth. We reached a cooler marked ICE in red letters that was full of empty, plastic bags. That’s when the dead started pouring through the doors and tripping over the pile of carts.
***
I started to turn and run, but Doc grabbed my sleeve and held me.
He yelled, “No, Mutt, forward before they fill the place up. The others are outside at the truck. That’s our only way out. Come on.”
I didn’t agree, but I pulled my knife and followed him. I stayed close to his back as he swung his bar into their heads. Within seconds of the first couple falling, the ones walking deeper into the store began to turn and come back toward us. Others didn’t get the message and kept pushing through the bodies to head into the empty shelves.
The skin on their faces was torn and flapping as they plowed into our path. Doc kept swinging. He clobbered one in the nose sending green paste spraying into the monster’s washed out eyes. It spun and fell to the floor on its belly, but did not stop. Doc planted one foot back as he brought the shaft down on top of another cadaver’s scalp. Something came out of its ears as it crumpled in front of us.
The one on the floor couldn’t see, but was turning its head to the side to close its teeth on Doc’s Achilles tendon. I stuck my knife into its upturned ear. The creature was still pulled forward against my knife blade inside its ear canal toward Doc’s ankle with its teeth opened wide. As it did, my blade was pulled and twisted forward inside its head. Despite my best efforts, the creature levered forward over the back of Doc’s foot. Its teeth closed slowly as the body went limp. Its jaws stopped before they locked.
Doc stepped forward out of its mouth and I jerked my knife free of the zombie’s brain and ear drum.
We were hugging the wall on the right past the ice coolers as Doc swung against the crowd to the left. There were posters for missing children on the wall that we were tearing off with our shoulders as we slid closer to the open doors.
Doc elbowed one in the face as he spilt through the side of another’s head. I’m not sure if he did it on purpose or if it was a lucky accident. He turned the pole around and jabbed it into the creature’s ribs as it made another try at Doc.
Doc held the shaft like a lance and pressed forward. The aluminum sunk in until it hit a hardened organ or bone on the other side. The zombie wind-milled its arms swinging for us as Doc pushed him back into the others cutting a path through the mob entering the doors.
I slashed out wildly at the faces and hands reaching for me. I cleaved eyeballs, chopped finger tips, and split lips.
Doc’s zombie stumbled at the edge of the doors and fell to its back. Doc jerked the lance back out. It clawed up at him as Doc walked over it. He stomped his boot down into its forehead. The back of the zombie’s head bounced off the tile. He stomped down two more times. Green fluid exploded out of the back of its head on the last impact. I saw its eyes roll up as its arms fell away from Doc’s legs and crotch.
I pressed myself to Doc’s back as we moved forward. I tried to step over the body, but planted my foot in the center of its chest. The cartilage that connected at the center of the ribs snapped under me. Then, the ribs folded in and the lungs deflated. I felt the body collapse in three distinct phases before I stepped off awkwardly.
I held my hunting knife up as most of the zombies filed through the doors beyond us and continued unabated into the empty shelves beyond the registers. My eyes were focused on the knob above Doc’s backpack on the back of his skull. I felt bodies collide into my back as they tripped over the deflated body in the floor. I waited for their teeth to sink into my lower back or my thighs, but they did not.
We managed to escape the Super Max.
***
Light from the sun directly above us dazzled my eyes. I don’t know if Doc could see, but he was still moving forward. I had a brief flash of memory. I remembered climbing through an open window as zombies clawed at my back. They did not get me because my mother was holding their ankles as they reached for me. She was screaming in pain.
I turned around and looked blindly back into the store expecting to see her face that I still could not remember clearly. I just saw the dead pouring through the doors like we weren’t there. I started to wonder if I was already one of them until a fat, blue woman in a stained, flowered sundress staggered out with open arms, open jaws, and open wounds. She was not my mother.
I turned away.
Doc slammed the back cargo door of the truck that the zombies were also ignoring. He was whipping the pole around him connecting with hands and faces. He almost caught me on his backswing. He did not drop any of them and he wasn’t deterring them much either.
He pulled open the back passenger door. He grabbed my collar and hauled me through the opening and shoved me as he backed in after me. I fell over the jump seat and nearly landed on my own knife. Even if I hadn’t stabbed myself, getting scratched by the blade with zombie matter on it would have been the end of me too. He shoved me again as he slammed the door closed and started hitting all the locks. I held the blade away from me and stumbled around the seat.
We were the only two in the truck. Doc was looking through the plastic, window covers trying to see around the biting mouths and clawing hands.