Stage 6 (22 page)

He disappeared into the bus and relayed the information, and quickly Steve came bounding out with a pistol and some ammunition in hand. Kevin and Shawn set up near the couch with their hunting rifles, and took aim along with Joe’s group. The Infected came over the grass and entered the parking lot, heading straight towards us.

Steve’s voice boomed out confidently, “Make sure you can see their face’s before firing, and aim for the head! With these things, one head shot is worth far more than even a few body shots. Watch out for your fellow shooters!”

Kevin yelled, “Death to the zombies!” and fired off a shot, hitting the first Infected in the head and dropping him to the ground.

As soon as that first shot was fired a multitude of others broke out from all around us, and the Infected started falling left and right. It was obvious that most of the shots did not in fact kill their targets in one hit, and some missed altogether, but we were thinning their ranks fast nonetheless. By the time they had crossed the parking lot and almost reached us, their number had been cut by more than half.

As they rushed towards the couch, Joe shouted, “Back up! Use the combat weapons!”

From out of nowhere her group pulled rakes, brooms, and assorted household items that all had one thing in common: long reach. They held them to the door, pushing against the Infected. The Infected were too stupid to duck around, and even just a rake would hold one off for a few seconds at least. As they started to push past anyways, the firing started up again, this time from the other group who until this point had sat off in the corner. Suddenly three of the Infected broke through, and one raced past us towards a small kid hiding in the background. I had no idea why he went for this kid in particular, but he did, and I was the closest one nearby. I brought my shotgun up and pointed it at the Infected as it flew by, pulling the trigger and blasting a hole in his chest. I then pointed at its head, and blew it to smithereens. I turned to see the battle was over, and that we had won. Immediately the group started pulling out gloves, and dragging the Infected outside. Occasionally they would find one still alive, and a gunshot would ring out.

I walked over to Joe confused, and asked, “I take it you’ve done this kind of thing before?”

She replied with a breezy air, “Oh yeah this happens all the time. We’ve figured out that the mutants tend to stay away when they see a large pile of their dead, at least for a few days anyways, so everytime we have a shoot out like this we drag the bodies out there. Eventually when they start to come around anyways, we burn the bodies.”

I was about to ask how long they’d been there when she cut me off and said, “Listen I don’t need to know your life story and you don’t need to know mine. The past is meaningless now; it’s the future that matters. It’s survival that matters. What are your plans for the future, Jack?”

I sensed she wanted to know what we meant to do here, in her safe haven.

I replied, “We’re not quite sure. We traveled halfway across the country to get here... We were expecting the capital to be safe.”

She clucked her tongue and said, ‘The capital hasn’t been safe for quite some time. The president is all holed up nicely in his little white house, but they aren’t letting anybody in. Anybody at all actually, we even have a senator in my group who was rejected at the White House because he arrived too late.”

Dismayed, I replied, “Well what are your future plans here?”

She said, “I’m not exactly sure at the moment. Somehow I became the representation for my group, and we’re all pretty unsure about what lies ahead in the future. Now, I speak for my group that is. The other people you see over there,” pointing to the group that stood on the sidelines for the whole fight, “that group is determined to make a home right here in this supermarket. They were technically here first, and are led by an extremely rude and stupid man called Donovan. He actually tried to force us to leave a few days ago. If you aren’t one hundred percent on his side, you had better watch out because he is not tolerant of differing opinions than his own.”

I thanked her for the head’s up, and asked, “How long do you think you could stay here in this supermarket? What’s the situation for supplies?”

She laughed and replied, “Well that’s the one good thing about this place. It never seems to run out of stuff we need. I’d estimate for the combined total of some fifty odd people we have here now, we have enough supplies to last months. Feel free to take a small amount if you need them.”

I thanked her again, heartily this time and left to tell the other’s of our good fortune. We seemed to be on a roller coaster of up’s and downs on this fantastic trip of ours. I found them huddled on a group of bed’s pulled up by the bus, and I told them everything Joe had said.

When I finished, my Mom asked, “Are you serious, they have enough food for months here?”

I replied, “Yep, that’s what she said. I mean it makes sense, this is a pretty huge supermarket.”

Kevin jumped to his feet and said, “Well let’s get something to eat!”

I agreed, and we browsed the food isles happily to pick out our favorite treats we had been missing. I grabbed a bag of specially-flavored chips I used to enjoy occasionally, and savored the taste of that first chip I placed in my mouth. I missed such easy, pleasant things like this. We sat around the bus, talking about all the amazing splendors around us when suddenly the lights flashed and went out.

We looked around confused for a bit, until I heard a voice say in the pitch black, “Aww don’t pay that any attention. It’s just Donovan trying to assert his dominance. He does this every night when he feels it’s time to sleep. I’m Eric by the way, I’m an auto-mechanic, or I was anyways before the whole world went to hell. I was interested in that bus you have, you think in the morning I could take a look at it?”

I was about to reply when Ben’s voice sounded out, “I wish I could see who I was talking too, but of course you can come over. I’ve wanted to make some modifications to the bus; I’d love to have you help me if you’re up for it. Oh and I’m Ben.”

Eric replied, “Sure thing. We’ll get to work in the morning then Ben. Goodnight all.”

We all chorused, “Goodnight.”

There was a loud switching sound, and the lights all came on again, waking me up half way through the process. There were loud groans from assorted spots in the store, from everybody being abruptly awoken. Somebody yelled out an obscenity directed at Donovan, and half the store broke into laughter. I stood up and yawned, stretching. People generally avoided each other for the first thirty minutes or so, and actually a large portion completely vanished.

Emily came rushing over from somewhere, yelling, “Guys they have showers!”

We all followed her, disbelieving. My Mom wheeled Lucy after us on her makeshift wheelchair. Where could a supermarket possibly have a shower? She led us to the back room, where they had rigged several showers out of the sprinklers in the area, probably designed to wash the produce the store received on a regular basis. I tentatively felt one of the sprayers and realized to my shock that the water was warm! It wasn’t hot by any means, but it also wasn’t cold.

I met Kevin’s eye, who shrugged and said, “Beats me. Maybe they’re wizards?”

Just then, Joe entered the room and saw us. She came over and said, “Hey, it’s the girls turn to shower first. You’re lucky you arrived on our shower day, we normally try to conserve the water.”

I asked questioningly, “How on Earth do you manage to get the water warm?”

She shrugged and said, “I have no idea. We have an engineer, and a few people that used to work at this store so combined they figured out a way I guess.”

I realized the value that having such people would be in times like these. I hadn’t thought about it before, but most of the people in our group didn’t do anything very useful. We didn’t have any engineers, we didn’t have any doctors; all we really had was Steve, who was great, but not enough for all our situations.

She continued, “So hey, I want to take my shower. You men, shoo. Girls, you can stay.”

Obediently we turned to leave, and went back to the bus to find somebody examining it. He saw us and smiled, and reached his hand forward.

He said, “Hi, I’m Eric from last night.”

I shook his hand, and introduced myself. Ben did likewise, and then asked Eric, “So you’re a mechanic huh? What do you think?”

He glanced towards the bus, and then said, “To be honest, I’ve always wanted to militarize a school bus... Is that just me?”

Ben laughed loudly, and said, “It’s not just you Eric, I’ve been thinking along the same lines lately.”

They went off together, taking Shawn with them and began to talk and make plans about modifying the bus.

I gathered Steve, Kevin, and Ian together and said, “Look, I think we should come up with a plan sooner rather than later. How long are we going to stay here?”

Kevin agreed with me surprisingly, and said, “I second that. We need to make it clear; we’re not staying here. This is more of a temporary residence until we think of something else.”

I said, “Well alright. What do we do from here?”

We sat in silence for a while. Then Ian asked, “Why can’t we stay here? What’s the reasoning behind leaving?”

I replied, “Well from all our experiences so far, staying still and waiting to engage the Infected on their terms never turns out well for us. I think we need to always keep moving. We can look for possible survivors, and pick up supplies and things we need while on the road.”

Steve remained noncommittal, but Ian said, “They have enough supplies here to last for months. On top of that there’s a whole city around us! When supplies start to run down, we can just scavenge more from the houses and stores around us.”

Kevin said, “That’s just what the zombies want us to do! If we stay somewhere like this, they will eventually overrun us! Didn’t you hear about what Joe said? They get attacked all the time. I don’t know about their weapons situation, but eventually they’re going to run out of ammo. Then what? They’re going to be stuck in the store while zombies come in and grab them off the shelves for a snack. No, we need to keep moving. It’s nice; I’ll admit it’s nice. But I don’t think we should stay here waiting for the next attack. Joe said the stack of bodies keeps away the Infected for a few days right?”

I replied, “Yup.”

He continued, “Then I say we need to leave here tomorrow at the latest. We want to get out of here while the zombies are avoiding this area, so we can make a clean escape.”

Ian replied, “We just have to conserve our ammunition, that’s all. Just like other supplies that run down, I’m sure we can find some guns and bullets around here somewhere. And besides, you saw how those brooms and stuff worked... If we decided to stay here, we could come up with a new strategy for dealing with the Infected, and we could upgrade parts of this place to make it easier to live in, and safer.”

Kevin looked for a loss of words, and I stepped in to save him.

I said, “Ian, the problem with that is while our supplies run down, the Infected are out there finding more victims and increasing in number. And Ben said there were reports of the Infection in other countries too right? So this isn’t just going to go away. We need a permanent solution, and staying here will only be good for so long.”

Ian exploded, “And how is driving around aimlessly looking for other survivors a permanent solution?”

I admitted, “It isn’t. But we’re more likely to find a solution to our problems out there, than stuck in here. Maybe we end up finding a huge amount of people? We could reclaim a city. A city, with machinery that can make clothes, and farms that can make food. We could build a great wall, with soldiers to patrol it too. Who knows, maybe eventually there’s a cure? But we can’t stay here, hoping this will all just go away on its own.”

Eric and Ben came up to us, and Eric looked at me and said, “Jack, your words are inspiring. I too, don’t believe in staying here forever. When you leave... Would you consider adding me to your group? I am only a mechanic, and might not be very useful for a city like the one you are talking about, but I will help with any vehicle trouble you may have.”

Ben spoke up, “He’s a pretty good mechanic from what I can see. I vote we let him come... The more the merrier eh?”

I agreed, and said, “On the contrary Eric, I think a mechanic will be extremely useful to us.”

Ian looked troubled, and turned away.

I asked Eric, “Do you think any others might want to come with us? And if so, do you think you could fix up and prepare an entire convoy of cars to accompany us? With the amount of people I hope to find, it will never hurt to have as many vehicles and supplies as we can find.”

Eric replied enthusiastically, “Sure! I’ve been bored around here for so long; I would enjoy fixing up some cars. But with those things out there, how are we going to find the right cars and work on them?”

I grinned and replied, “Well my friend, we have become very experienced car thieves throughout all this. With Joe’s permission, we’ll send some people out to find cars and drive them back through here. In the mean time, see what you can do about preparing a space to work on them.”

He nodded and said, “That sounds good, but good luck with Joe I’m not sure she’ll be ok with that.”

I looked around, and asked, “So Shawn, Kevin, you up for some car stealing? Leave Joe to me, you guys just try and steal as many cars as possible and bring them in here. Think of it like a race.”

Shawn and Kevin gave each other side-ways glances, sizing each other up, and then both of them together said, “It’s on!”

I replied, “Ok, get whatever stuff you think you’ll need while I go talk to Joe. We might as well start this as soon as possible.”

Eric said, “I might know some things that would be handy getting in to the cars, come with me over to your truck and I’ll show you what I know.”

They went off to learn some tips from Eric, and I wandered around searching for Joe. I found her angrily arguing with a short, stocky guy with jet-black hair. I walked over, and the guy immediately broke off his conversation and turned to me.