Chloe, Penny and I eased our way around to the front of the building with Johnny in tow and crept along the storefront walls, keeping clear of windows and trying to stay out of sight.
Most of the dead that had been wandering the street were now in the church, likely looking for scraps so we were alone for the moment, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before something jumped out from somewhere.
Reaching the pharmacy, I stopped Penny’s hand as she reached for the door and shook my head, looking up at the bell above the door.
Her eyes widened in understanding and I reached for the handle as she reached up and grabbed the bell, silencing it as I opened the door.
I squeezed through the door, tiptoeing into the room, breath held and waiting for whatever was going to jump out at me. Looking over my shoulder, Penny, Chloe and Johnny were right behind me, silently looking around. Spotting the drug counter in back, I started to make my way slowly in that direction, keeping an eye on the mirrors mounted in the corners of the ceiling for anything that might be in here with us.
A light layer of dust covered the shelves and many of them were just about empty which told me this place had already been raided, but I held out hope there still might be a few things we needed.
Reaching the counter, I stopped and just before I could start to climb over it, a zombie ran out from behind the shelves in the back, headed right towards us. The counter was still between it and me, which meant I wouldn’t be able to reach it with my sword but before I even had a moment to figure out another option, a gunshot rang out from behind me and the body dropped.
I spun around to see Chloe calmly clicking the safety back into place on her pistol and her eyes met mine.
“Are you crazy?! Everyone in a mile radius alive and dead heard that!”
Her eyes got big and her mouth formed a little ‘O’ of understanding. I wanted to get angry at her but we hadn’t really talked about not shooting unless we absolutely had to so I couldn’t just assume she’d get that.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t thin-“
Penny put her hand on Chloe’s shoulder and cut her off. “It’s ok, you didn’t know.”
Chloe looked at me with her giant pleading eyes. I just shrugged and turned back to the counter, starting to climb over it.
Once we were all over the counter, we started to poke around the drugs littered around the shelves. The bottles were all labeled, but they might as well have been Greek for all I could tell. Luckily the only drugs I knew the names of were antibiotics and narcotics, both of which we actually needed.
Most modern pharmacies kept the good stuff in time-locked safes in the far back, so I headed in that direction, passing the shelves of things I didn’t know anything about.
Penny and Chloe were grabbing the last few Z-Packs and more first aid supplies as I reached the safe. It was partially open and there was a half-eaten body lying in the doorway.
Her legs were gone and she reached for me with desperate fingers and mouth open, exposing teeth. I was pretty sure she was wearing what had once been a white lab coat, so I took this for the pharmacist.
I bent down and swiped my machete across her throat until her head rolled off her shoulders, resting on her chest and hanging by a piece of spinal column. Wiping my blade on her pants, I sheathed the knife and shoved the body with my foot out of the way of the door, grabbing it before it closed.
The shelves weren’t completely bare, which told me the woman I’d just killed hadn’t done too bad a job guarding it from looters. Scanning the various bottles, my eyes settled on a few and I started grabbing them and shoving them in my bag.
“Angie!” Penny’s hushed whispered sounded from somewhere behind me.
“Yeah?” I answered just as quietly, still working on pocketing my stash.
“Do you know what we need?”
I smiled and chuckled to myself.
If only she knew.
“Yeah.”
Clearing the safe of anything that might be of use, I zipped my bag and stepped over the body, heading towards the others. Dust motes were floating through the stale air which only made the stench of death in the hot and poorly ventilated room that much harder to bear.
Plucking a stray curl off my forehead were it had become plastered by sweat, I stopped behind the others and watched behind them as they continued shoving items in their bags.
An eerie silence filled the store and it left an uneasy feeling creeping down my spine which only made me anxious to get back to the rest of the group.
“We need to go,” I whispered over my shoulder, wiping the sweat from my palms on my pants and darting glances around nervously. Something felt off about this whole place and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but I knew we needed to get as far away from this town as we could and fast.
“Alright, we’ve got everything we can, let’s find the others,” Penny said, turning around and grabbing Johnny’s hand.
Chloe walked over fiddling with the straps on her backpack and nodded that she was ready too.
Wordlessly, we hopped the counter and slinked back through the store towards the door. I paused at the sunglasses display near the front and snatched a pair of glasses to replace the ones I’d lost in the crash and pocketed another for Jack; if he had inherited my abilities then the sunlight would be a pain in his ass too.
Reaching the door, we stopped and stared through the windows for a few minutes just in case there was an ambush waiting for us.
“Do you think they are still in the gun store?” Chloe asked in a whisper staring across the street at the darkened windows of the shop the guys had entered.
We hadn’t exactly decided on a meeting place for when we’d gathered our supplies; I’d just assumed we’d meet back where we’d started. “Should we just go back to the end of the building where those trees are?”
Penny and Chloe looked thoughtful for a moment than gave a collective shrug; apparently it was as good of an idea as any.
The street was still clear so we opened the door, still careful to not ring the bell and crept out onto the walkway in front of the shops and held our breaths as we looked around for any sign of danger before making our way back down the street to the end of the shops and darted around the side of the building into the copse of trees.
Letting out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding I looked around for the guys, only to see that we were alone. I started to ask if anyone felt like something was wrong when I heard a whole bunch of heavy footsteps heading our way through the foliage.
Assuming it was the guys, I didn’t reach for my weapons, just faced the trees and waited to see their faces. My stomach sank seeing gun barrels emerge from the trees surrounding us followed by 4 men we definitely didn’t know.
“Hands in the air!” One of the demanded and I immediately reached for my handgun when a gangly and dirty looking man grabbed Chloe’s arm and put his gun to her temple.
“I said hands in the air!” The leader said again, looking pointedly at me. I looked at Chloe who whimpered as the guy pulled her in closer and buried his nose in her hair. Holy fuck. This could only end badly.
I raised my hands above my head, “Ok, ok, just let her go,” I said as calmly as I could.
They rushed in and started to disarm us. I wasn’t pleased at having strangers strip me of my guns and knives but now wasn’t the time to argue. A giant ogre of a man pulled my arms behind my back after he took my bag and slapped a pair of handcuffs on my wrists, effectively disabling me. Ok, now I was really starting to get mad.
“We don’t have anything you want, might as well just let us go,” Penny said calmly as she was patted down and cuffed.
None of them said anything as they took our weapons, cuffed us and started leading us through the woods. I thought about yelling for help but odds were they’d found the guys too and there wasn’t anyone to help. Plus yelling would only bring the dead and I might be a mutant, but even I couldn’t fight them with my hands behind my back.
Even Johnny was quiet as they led us through the forest. I tried to pay attention to how far we were going and what direction but I was from Colorado; without the mountains to the west I had absolutely no sense of direction.
Instead, I focused on our captors. The man I assumed to be in charge wasn’t a large man, but he obviously spent some time lifting. They were all white and ranged in height, but were built well which would likely explain why they were still alive. If television had taught me anything, it was that men who lived in the backwoods and were built like Mack trucks probably had tons of weapons, knew how to live off the land and had good chances of survival should an apocalypse occur. Well, it had occurred and here I was, so I was going to trust the stereotypes.
That left a couple of possible scenarios as to why they’d taken us. 1. They needed women to perpetuate the human race, in which case, fuck no. 2. They were just trying to save us and were taking us back to camp so they could protect us, which I was hoping was the case. 3. They were hillbilly psycho paths taking us back to their camp to roast and eat our crispy corpses; again, not my favorite scenario.
“Where are you taking us, why are you taking us and where is the rest of our group?” Penny asked calmly. Her voice startled me after the quiet.
The guy in charge cast a glance over his shoulder at her, squinted, spit on the ground and turned back around, ignoring her question.
“Look, my son and father are out there, my son has a broken arm and needs the medicine in my bag, did you take them too?” Her voice raised a couple of octaves in fear causing Mr. Congeniality to turn back around and glare at her.
He looked at the guy holding her arm and gestured with his head. The guy nodded and smacked Penny hard across the face with the back of his hand.
“Any more questions?” The leader asked meeting the hate in my eyes and leering at Chloe before turning back around.
I looked over at Penny to see her wipe the blood that had started to bubble on her lip on her shoulder and cast a look of pure vehemence at the man who’d struck her. If looks could kill, that guy would be trying to eat our faces right about now.
Obviously the idea that they were trying to save us was out of the question, which begged the bigger question, what were their plans with us and where were the others?
Somewhere in the background of my mind, Manson was singing about the beautiful people but all I could do was follow the sparkling trails dust motes were creating above my head with my fingers. I could almost imagine each molecule of dust was a little fairy dancing to the music; blood dripping from its fangs as it weaved a spell of mystery through the air.
“Where’s my fucking money, bitch!” I turned my head to Javier storming into Forty’s basement where we were all scattered about in various stages of fucked up.
Sarah jumped up from the couch and started to run towards the back door as one of Javier’s guys started after her. I was so tired of her messes but I couldn’t let them fuck her up again.
I rolled over onto my knees and stood up slowly. Javier and his thugs were so focused on Sarah they didn’t see me come up behind them. The Molly I’d taken wasn’t doing me any favors as the room tilt-a-whirled around me and I tried to blink myself into focus.
Pulling the blade from my pocket, I flipped it open and grabbed Javier from behind, putting the knife against his throat before he had the chance to fight back. “Let her go,” I said calmly through the carnival music I hoped everyone else could hear too.
Daniel had pulled Sarah back into the room by her hair and I’ll be damned if she didn’t kick and spit at him the whole way; it was too damn bad Ricky wasn’t here to save her this time.
I felt Javier stiffen but the drugs wouldn’t let me out of the fog in time for a third guy to sneak up behind me and the next thing I felt was a sharp crack across my skull that brought me to my knees. The room tilted again and spit out the blood from biting my tongue onto the floor, panting to catch myself from puking.
Javier leaned down to me and grabbed my chin roughly, “Big mistake,
pinche puta es pendaja
,” he said giving me a sharp kick in the ribs. I was very glad in that moment I was so high I couldn’t tell fiction from reality as I felt his foot connect and I felt the bone crack but there wasn’t any pain.
Once he was done kicking me, Javier reached down, grabbed my hair and started pulling me towards the door. I could hear Sarah screaming and kicking and fighting them for all she was worth as they pulled us into the cold night towards the car but the only thing I could think about was how many stars were out as Manson’s croon faded into the background.
Daniel opened the trunk and threw me and Sarah into it, slamming it shut so fast I was momentarily blinded by the sudden darkness.
“Fuck, Angie, are you ok?” I felt Sarah’s hands poking my ribs in the dark and I spit out some more blood.
“I’m pretty sure this time you got us killed. Bitch, when we get to Hell, remind me to kick your ass.”
I coughed which only made me spit more blood as I heaved for air past the broken bones in my chest. The car had started to move and I could only wonder where they were taking us. I turned to where I was sure Sarah’s head was in the dark, “So tell me exactly what you did to piss Javier off this time?”