Milt looked down and was again filled with revulsion, although the revulsion now seemed to be colored by a certain kind of respect for the zombies. Their very bodies were an example of doggedness—they did not let go even in death, even after their appendages had been severed from the rest of their bodes.
“Now, good sir,” Milt said, “if you please, would you be so kind as to remove those feelers from my lower regions?” He pointed down at the tattered, once human hands.
Brian chuckled. “You really must have had a shock. Yeah, of course I’ll help.” He began to pry off the fingers, and after a few minutes of struggling with the hands that seemed intent on holding on forever, Brian was able to remove them. He got up, threw the destroyed hands into the nearby woods, returned, and sat down next to Milt again.
“Thank you,” Milt said. “I appreciate your efforts.”
“You got it. Looks like we’ll be alright here for a little while. I don’t see any others coming.”
Milt was glad to hear that Brian was taking to his role. Brian was using the word “we” to refer to the two of them. Milt might whip his squire into shape yet. Milt told himself it was vital, in dealing with subordinates, to never run out of tasks to give them, so he began to rack his brain for an assignment to give to Brian. He didn’t have to rack long, as there was a whole slew of desires waggling their beckoning fingers at Milt.
“Will you be so kind as to fetch me a
pop,
as you call it? I am quite sure that yonder store has a most plenteous supply of Coca-Cola.” Milt pointed a shaking mitt at the Wegmans across the parking lot. He needed some Coca-Cola. That would help soothe the pulsing in his skull.
The squire suddenly smiled and said, “Hey, do you play
Dungeons and Dragons
or something? Is that why you talk like that?”
Milt gasped. “Excuse me? How dare you presume such a thing? I most certainly do not play
Dungeons and Dragons
or something.
That travesty of a pastime went out of favor years ago. I am a
World of Warcraft
player—the greatest in the world. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? I am called Miltimore the Sword-Wielder, but of course you may call me Miltimore the Mighty, if you so wish. I should add that I speak the King’s English, pity you have not heard of it…I can detect that quite well.”
Brian nodded. “Right. It’s all starting to make sense. You probably dress up and go to conventions and stuff. I’ve heard about people like you…my ex-roommate, he had a friend, and he would always dress up like this Greek god, or Roman, I don’t know, I forget the name, but he would wear a—
“I most certainly do not
dress up.
Please refrain from categorizing me alongside those lunatics.”
“Okay, okay. Tell you what. I’ll call you Milt, you’ll call me Brian, and we try to survive this whole mess. Then each of us can go back to our lives, and, to top it all off, we might be famous. Then your story will be told and known the world over. Milti—how did you say it?”
“Miltimore.”
“Right, you’ll have your fame, we’ll be alive, and everything will be fine.”
“Foolish optimism, but that is forgivable in your case, you are young and no doubt misguided, as is the rest of the youth.”
“What?”
Milt sighed. “Never mind, never mind. I suspect that you are simply bursting to regale me with your life story. Though I am sure it will be quite a stale account, you may nevertheless proceed.”
“My life story? No...but you’re lucky I woke up when I did. I was napping in here—” Brian jerked a thumb back at the car they were leaning against, “—and then there was all this noise, and I woke up, and there you were, on the ground about to get torn up by those zombies.”
“Excuse me? I most certainly was not about to be torn up by any
zombies.
I was doing just fine on my own. I was toying with them you see, and I was just about to banish them from this realm, and they…wait a second, you were sleeping in your car? What is wrong with you? Are you homeless or something? I am not sure that will do at all.”
“You’re worse off than I thought.” Brian opened one of his rear doors and began rummaging in the mess back there.
“What are you doing? I say now, apprise me of what it is you are searching for back there.”
“Here,” Brian said, handing Milt a bottle of water. Brian closed the car door and sat back down next to Milt. “Drink that, it’ll make you feel better. Just don’t drink it too quickly, you might get sick.”
“I most certainly shall not,” Milt said grudgingly, but took the bottle anyway, intending to use its contents topically, to cool his body.
“And no, I’m not homeless...I was just tired. It was a long night and I stopped by here some time around two or three in the morning, and—”
Milt couldn’t believe it. “You have been asleep in your car here since last night? We are well into the afternoon now. I must say, I do fear for my safety being in your presence. Do you have a home, or is your vehicle your regular abode? It is not even a trailer.”
“I have a place, I was just passing through, and it was late, and Wegmans has a great selection, I’m sure you know that…I needed some snacks. So I stopped, but then when I got out Wegmans was closed already, so I went back to my car, and then I got really sleepy and passed out.” He shrugged.
Milt looked at Brian dubiously. “You live around here then?”
The simpleton looked uneasy for a second. “No, not here. I was just passing through last night. I live in
Charlottesville
.”
Now Milt was suspicious. “That’s a long journey from here. What are you doing here?”
“I’m here on business.”
“And what, please be so kind as to enlighten me, is it that you do as your so-called business?”
Brian seemed to hesitate, not answering right away, and that added to Milt’s suspicions. “I’m a delivery boy I guess. It’s no EMT job, but I do alright. What do you do?”
“My spider sense informs me that you are trying to change the subject. We shall get to what it is that I do in but a moment. Please elucidate the nature of your delivery business for me. What sort of goods do you deliver, and to whom do you deliver said goods?” Milt’s stomach must have reacted to hearing him say the word “goods,” because he felt a pang of hunger at its utterance. The hunger began to gnaw away at his stomach, which at that moment could have had no more than a few remaining scraps of nougat and caramel to transfigure into the energy which Milt’s brain and body required to function.
“I deliver nutritional supplements—protein bars, protein powders, amino acids, acai, goji berries, cat’s claw, you name it, I get it and deliver it. Coconut water is getting really big right now—coconut water with acai in it too.”
“Nutritional supplements you say? A likely story. Would one of those nutritional supplements happen to go by the name of marijuana?”
“Weed? No, I don’t sell drugs, just supplements.”
“So you rationalize your crimes away by re-categorizing a drug as a supplement?”
“What? I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“You mean to tell me you weren’t high on your
weed
when you stopped here last night for
snacks
? I’ve seen a documentary or three about people such as you. I know about the cravings.”
“Well, I didn’t say I never touched the stuff, just that I don’t sell—”
“Aha! I have caught you, you felonious scoundrel. But do not fret, admitting that you are a ravenous scourge is the first step in overcoming your darker nature, we have made a great deal of progress already.”
“I don’t sell drugs!”
“Liar! The untruth of your statement is plain. I can see it in your criminal eyes.”
“I’m not a criminal.”
“Oh,” Milt began to lament, “he states that simply because he has not been caught he is not a criminal. What a poor misguided wretch. It is obvious you have been sent to me for a reason. I will be your guide in escaping your dastardly past. This is the zombie apocalypse. It is a time for change if ever there was one.”
“Dude you need to lighten up, for real.”
“Don’t lose hope, my young ignoble squire, you will pull through. I have the utmost belief in you.”
That satisfied Milt. He had done his job to admonish the drug dealer, and at Milt’s incontrovertible mandate, Brian was sure to reform. Milt’s good work was done, and it was time to eat.
Brian was beginning to stammer something, but Milt cut him off. “Do you have any sustenance remaining in your vehicle that you would be so kind as to share with me? It seems that I am overcome by hunger, and yet I do not think it is the time to venture into Wegmans just yet.”
“Yeah, I got some stuff, I’ll check, nothing I like, no good Wegmans snacks anyway.” Brian opened the driver’s side door of his car, half-sat in it, and started rummaging around up front.
“Here,” Brian said, offering Milt a packet of sunflower seeds. “That’s all I’ve got—two packs of those and the other one’s for me. I need my strength too. They’re my emergency rations. I hate sunflower seeds, so I keep ‘em knowing I won’t eat them unless I really have to.”
Milt took the packet with a harrumph, he was certain he had seen Brian look disdainfully at his belly.
A judgmental drug dealer, Milt thought, how ludicrous.
“Don’t you have anything else?” Milt asked as he tore open the packet. “Anything with chocolate or peanuts…a Snickers bar perhaps? Or at the very least a Milky Way and a packet of salty peanuts?”
Milt began munching on the seeds, hoping that it would make him feel better. He hadn’t felt anything like this shade of terrible since the last time he ventured out in the daylight, and even then he hadn’t been outside this long. This was much worse, he needed to get inside into some air conditioning, but he wasn’t ready to move yet. His field of vision had begun to spin violently, probably spurred on by the tightness of the bandage around his head.
“No, I don’t eat stuff like that much, sorry. Let’s just go over to the Wegmans and we can get a whole bunch of stuff.”
“Not yet, let’s give it a few minutes.”
“Why don’t you wanna go into Wegmans now? It’s probably where we’ll be safest, no? The skies sure don’t look friendly right now, those clouds are fixing to soak us real good if we keep sitting out here.”
“I think the tree above us will do,” Milt said, spraying half-chewed sunflower seeds out of his mouth. “We should not go poking around the Wegmans just yet. I am still indisposed, and need my rest before we continue. Furthermore, there are sure to be more zombies inside the Wegmans. We need to formulate a plan before we go in there. I am familiar with that particular store, and its sprawling layout contains many hiding places for the flesh-hungry.”
Brian nodded. “Okay, I guess that makes sense. You actually think it’s safer out here though? I mean we’ll need food and water soon anyway, and we’ll have to go in.”
Milt was annoyed now, but he wasn’t going to tell Brian the real reason he wanted to remain seated. Milt’s head was spinning faster and faster. He attributed this to the sudden interruption of his feeding regimen, and until the spinning passed, he didn’t think he would be able to move his great bulk anywhere at all.
He swallowed the rest of the sunflower seeds, crumpled the pack, and threw it on the ground next to him. “You don’t see any of the damned wandering out among the cars, now do you? We will be fine out here, and we will move into the supermarket once I have formulated a way of doing so. You can trust that I am going through scenarios in my head at this very moment, and my calculations are not yet complete. If you desist in your interruptions, I stand a chance of finishing more quickly.”
“Alright, if you say so. I’ll keep a look out for the zombies…feels weird using that word to talk about what’s actually happening.”