The zombies locked eyes with Sven, and began to scrape at the door with their undead nails. There were six now, two up against the door and four behind them, vying for a closer spot. Then the four in back were pushing up against the two in front, and—
Bing-bong, the door said, and the zombies were inside.
60
Sven, wearing shoes and socks but no pants, began to retreat into the darkness. But what if there was something lurking in the back of the store? What if there were other zombies back there? There was no smell in the drugstore, but what did that really mean?
I should have tried harder to find that damned light switch, he told himself, but now it’s too late.
Moments after the six zombies entered the drugstore, it was filled with their stench. That didn’t surprise Sven. But then the zombies did something unexpected. They didn’t come at Sven in a mindless way—not at all. They split up. Sven hoped it was by accident, and was the result of the six-zombie bottleneck at the store’s entrance that formed when they stumbled in. But what if they were hunting him—hunting him and planning it out?
An image of the Pac-Man video game flashed in Sven’s mind, and that was what he was—Pac-Man. Sven brought the sledgehammer up to his chest and backed up into the aisle. Two zombies were coming at him, and two had disappeared to the left and another two to the right. It all seemed too well-rehearsed. He could hear the four zombies that were out of sight stumbling through the store all around him, but amidst his shallow, ragged breathing, the beating of his heart, and the stumbling, rotting creeps in front of him, he couldn’t place where they were. It was like a house of mirrors except with sounds and shambling, tripping noises coming from all around him.
Sven reminded himself to slow his breathing and made a conscious effort to breathe in very short sniffs through his nose. He had to get out of there, the air was getting worse with every second.
He did the only sensible thing left to do. He charged at the two zombies in front of him. There was no room to swing the sledgehammer from side to side in the narrow aisle, so he raised it and brought it down, aiming for the top of the nearest one’s head. Sven missed, and the head of the sledgehammer grazed the zombie’s forehead, taking off a sheet of rotten flesh and all of its nose. Because of the hammer’s momentum, when Sven missed, he was carried forward in a twisting motion, and almost fell into the zombie he had just grazed. Sven regained his balance, moving backward away from the two zombies just in case they had come within grabbing distance in his moment of vulnerability. He looked up, and in the dim light he saw that the nose-less zombie with the sheared forehead had fallen backward into the creature behind it, and the two were trying to get back on track in their stumbling toward Sven.
He rushed at them again, but this time, instead of swinging the hammer in the tight quarters, he jabbed with it, knocking each of the zombies in its head. There were cracks, twitches, and the zombies fell backward. They weren’t out of commission, but Sven took the opportunity to sidestep past them, being mindful to avoid their biting mouths and grasping hands.
Sven, now holding his breath again, ran to the entrance of the next aisle and searched the visible parts of the store with frantic turns of his head. He had to get what he needed and he had to get out of there. There were no more zombies outside the door and there was no more wretched bing-bonging, but he had no idea how many of the creatures were in the dark store with him, and with every step that he took, he imagined one of the things taking a merciless bite of his exposed calves, quads, or hamstrings. There was a lot to bite, and Sven couldn’t help thinking that him being pants-less was a zombie’s dream come true. But he wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
Jogging across the front of the store, Sven caught sight of two shambling zombies that must have been the ones who had split off from the group of six at the entrance. They were in the middle of the aisle he was looking into, so he ran to the next one, wanting to avoid a confrontation and get out of the place as fast as possible. Then he saw something. It wasn’t what he needed for the boy, but it would be helpful—to him and to everyone waiting in the car.
He took four packages of surgical masks from the shelf in front of him, ignoring whether each package held one or multiple masks. There was no time for counting right then, and the more masks the better. Sven tore one of the packages open, pulled out a mask, and put it over his face.
It helped. Sven was surprised by just how much it helped. He could breathe more or less normally without getting too much of the taint in the mask. The burning in his lungs cooled. Sven threw the open package away and tucked the remaining three packages under his arm. Then he had a thought, and grabbed a fourth unopened package for Ivan. Ivan certainly wouldn’t like having a mask put on him, but it was better than being eaten by zombies. He tucked the fourth package under his arm with the other three.
The packages were awkwardly shaped and cumbersome to carry, and they reduced Sven’s range and ability with the sledgehammer. That could be a problem, but there was no time to look for a bag now.
Sven, masked, a little calmer, and breathing in a steady rhythm though still shallowly, tiptoed to the next aisle. And there it was. For a second, as he stared at the acetaminophen pill bottles in front of him, he thought his luck was turning. Then, as he propped the sledgehammer up against the aisle and reached for the pills, something grabbed his left ankle. Sven fell, both from the pull and from his own surprise, dropping all the surgical masks and sweeping at least ten bottles of acetaminophen off the shelf.
He looked at his ankle, and, sure enough, a set of rotten fingers and the rotten hand to which they belonged were holding fast.
Apparently, the aisle hadn’t been empty when Sven tiptoed into it. A zombie had been lying in wait, and now it had snared its prey. As the thing began to pull at his leg, Sven stretched out his right hand for the sledgehammer propped up against the shelf. It was just out of reach.
61
Milt counted the zombies that surrounded him—a ragged mass of fourteen. He then proceeded to commend himself on his rapid counting abilities. Of course, as a former video game designer, math was one of his strong suits. He had always been good at it.
Milt’s arms were beginning to tire under the weight of the sword, so he carefully leaned the flat part of the blade against the front of his shoulder. Then he took a good look at the fourteen zombies. They were of all shapes and sizes, but it seemed they were nonetheless united in one common pursuit—Milt’s savory flesh. Of the fourteen, three were children—two boys and one girl, eight women, one younger man, and two older men, or
older gentlemen,
as they were likely to be called, and to call themselves, in the not-so-deep South of Charlottesville, Virginia.
They were shopper zombies, and though still quite piddling in Milt’s eyes, he felt more respect for them than for the looting hooligans he had so effectively made flee only moments before. An enemy—even a zombie enemy—was easier to respect than a gang of thieving scoundrels. Milt looked from black zombie eye to black zombie eye, and he resolved that their stumbling owners would not have even a nibble of the delicacy that was his tissue.
The zombies were closing in at a fast shamble, so Milt began to plan his offensive. He would pick off the weakest ones first, and he decided that the most logical way to go about that was to go from smallest to largest. His sword would build up momentum that way, and all fourteen would fall victim to his mighty blade. Milt wanted to make a quick job of it, because he was starting to grow hungry. He could feel the harbingers of his first stomach rumblings making their way up his esophagus, spurred on by the delicious aroma in the air, which seemed to grow stronger as the zombies drew nearer. There was no time to waste.
Milt picked out his first target—the smallest of the children—a little boy zombie. Little boy green, Milt thought he might call him, for the green tinge of his coarse zombie skin.
“Prepare to meet your maker,” Milt said to the staggering boy.
He began to heft the Sword of Crom from his left shoulder. A combination of the heat and low blood sugar must have been affecting him, because lifting the sword became a struggle, and his hands couldn’t keep it centered. The sword slid inward on his shoulder, and the blade came to a painful rest behind Milt’s ear. Milt lurched the whole of his massive body instinctively away from the source of the pain. The sword then came away from his ear, slid off his shoulder, ripped out of his hands and clattered to the pavement.
There was a moan, and Milt remembered the boy zombie. He looked up and saw that little boy green was closer than ever, and he was reaching up to grab Milt—but the smell in the air—it was so good, so enticing, so wonderfully fragrant.
Milt took a step back, away from the little zombie and put his hand behind his ear where the sword had cut him. The area stung when he dabbed it with his palm. Milt brought his hand down and looked at it. There was a lot of blood, and he was surprised the pain wasn’t worse. But there was no time for first aid, this was a battle, and Milt was a mighty warrior, after all.
He rubbed his hands together, rubbing the blood into his palms. Then he bent down and picked up the sword, his hands steadier with it after the brief rest.
There were more moans now, coming in twos and threes, and Milt had to take several steps back to avoid the slowly-grasping arms. He raised the sword, and right before he brought it down, an odd thought struck him. He was looking from zombie to zombie, and it seemed to him that they—the vile undead beasts—were looking at him with a sort of reverence in their eyes. It made Milt almost feel a sense of compassion, or was it kinship? No, that was ridiculous, these were zombies for Milt to dispatch to the netherworld. And so he would.
Milt brought the sword down with a ferocity that wriggled his fatty folds. Little boy green’s face split open, and the zombie fell backward, spluttering a viscous goop from his hacked, yawning mouth.
The remaining two children would be next, and they were very conveniently lined up side by side, moaning their child-like zombie moans as they dragged their feet closer to Milt. Milt drew his sword back over his right shoulder, heaving his belly out to counterbalance the ten pound weapon. Then he pulled his belly in and whipped the sword down and sideways, slicing clean through the two children.
After completing the slice, Milt scuttled a few steps away, shock creeping into his mind. This was more gore than he was used to...and it was so real. Video game violence couldn’t hold a candle to what he was seeing now. But in spite of what he saw, he kept his grip firm. This was all part of being a hero, humanity’s last champion.
The right top corner of the girl’s head was gone, leaving cleaved skull and brain matter exposed to the hot sun. She peered up at Milt through one half-broken eye that the sword had touched, as she tottered on her feet. It seemed the feet had forgotten how to drag, and her body was trembling.
The boy was in worse—or perhaps better shape, depending on how one looked at the situation. He was on the ground, unmoving. Milt’s sword had been lower to the boy’s body when it carved him up, and the top wedge of his torso, from left shoulder to right sternum, was detached from the rest of his body. Milt had a good view of spine and rib cage, but no blood.
Then the girl fell forward on top of the piece of her head, and she lay as still as the carved boy.
Only the adult zombies were left, and there were eleven of them, gaining ground. Milt stepped backward, clattering into a shopping cart that one of the uneducated hooligans must have left there to get in his way. He cursed them under his breath, and, regaining his balance, spotted his next two victims, who were at the rear of the zombie pack.
The two Southern gentlemen zombies were at the back of the undead group, their old legs struggling to drag on in time with the others. They were falling behind, and that made them vulnerable.
Milt grinned, and capered around a car to get past the adult zombies in his way. He noted that it wasn’t the lightest of capers, and the ground may have trembled under him just a tad. Nevertheless, there had certainly been an inspired bounce to his step.