Jomo didn’t know exactly what day it was, but he knew he’d been in the convenience store for approximately two months. There was a calendar in the back store room. He was getting tired of being here, alone, going stir crazy without even the voices of humans on television. The microwave in the back room still worked so there was still electricity, but he didn’t know how many more cans of raviolis or Spaghetti-O’s he could eat. The snack aisle was nearly empty. He was stupid, stupid, stupid! He should have stayed with the group, but now there was no way to contact his friends, or find out where they went. He’d been in a bad place in his head, and hadn’t been thinking clearly, but the time and the distance from those events that had led him here, gave him clarity. There had been few people on this road; it was maybe every three or four days he saw headlights. Some pulled in, some didn’t. It seemed the gas tanks had emptied or dried up. A few had tried the doors, and left after they hadn’t opened. He stayed quiet and hid in the back when this happened until he was sure they were gone. But now it was time for him to leave.
He didn’t know where he could go. He was in a gas station convenience store off of the highway, far off from other establishments, and he didn’t have any transport except for his feet.
As he moved the metal desk from the back-room office he’d used to block the front door something pushed the door from the other side. He stayed still a moment. The door shook. It wasn’t someone knocking. They weren’t even trying the door
knob. It was more frantic, desperate.
Zombies!
Just outside the front door. He struggled to move the desk back. They knew he was here. They could smell him. The pounding at the door became more insistent. The desk overturned.
They can’t get in, can they?
He moved away from the door and the desk. With only the emergency lights on he could see there were still more of them, outside the shop windows, and they could see him.
“Oh my Lord, help me Jesus!”
He had his spear with him, but he was alone, and he didn’t know how many of them were out there. If they got in there’d be no telling if he could fight them all off.
It appeared that a crowd was forming outside the windows, all trying to get in. They began to beat at the windows, striking with loose fists. The windows rattled.
They can’t break the windows, can they?
His question was answered when the sheer force exerted on the glass began to cause a series of spider web cracks.
“Oh no.”
He backed away into the storage room, locking the door behind him. If they managed to break through the glass and this doorway they could only get in one at a time. He had a spear and he could hold them off, killing them one by one, like at the Battle of Thermopylae. It wasn’t the greatest plan, and he wasn’t sure if he’d fair better in the convenience store. There were several aisles he could hide behind and attack, but the aisles also had two points of entry and they could trap him. He decided to take his chances in the storage room.
The sound of the glass shattering reached him moments before the door to the storage room started to vibrate. The undead began to pound on the wood frame, trying to get at him. They would break through, as they broke through the glass. It was only a matter of time. The metal shelving units that held supplies were bolted to the floors so he couldn’t prop them against the door. There was nothing but maybe an inch and a half of wooden plank between them and Jomo. And already the wood was beginning to splinter.
The door shattered, pieces falling all around him. Jomo thrust the spear through the opening as the first zombie came through, jabbing it right between the eyes. He felt it plunge into the creature’s flesh, and again the tearing as he pulled the spear back. He did it again with the next, and the next, always aiming for the forehead. They toppled over each other as they each followed the one before, creating a pile. Soon they were crawling over one another and it was getting harder to pinpoint the head, and they were squeezing into the doorway, two at a time now, barely able to push through, the need for flesh overriding any reason.
He was piercing them at a fever pitch now, to his left and right, howling at them, then swinging the spear and smacking into the sides of their heads. Though their bodies were in a heap, nearly forming a fortress, they kept slithering overtop the bodies, falling down the pile on his side, until several were at his feet and his sides.
There were too many!
This was a bad idea. And now he would die in this tiny store room
. He stabbed the ones falling over, and the ones at his feet. Jomo was afraid they would fall on top of him now, and he wouldn’t have time to raise his spear. But then they stopped coming, though he could still hear them. There was another sound as well. A whacking noise that was like heads being struck. And the groans grew louder and more ferocious, as if they’d found another source to feed on. Jomo pushed through and climbed the pile.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The sound kept coming and then he could hear the skulls cracking, the bodies dropping. He made his way over the pile and he could see there was a girl among the undead, and though they surrounded her she was whirling around, hitting them with a long rounded wooden stick. Jomo believed it was called a Bo Staff. It was hard solid wood and she held it in the center bashing their heads in with both ends. They never even got close to her. It became a blur as if she were holding rapidly fluttering wings in her hands rather than a stick.
Jomo was over the other side of the pile now, and there was some distance between him and the closest zombie. She had directed them away from him and was handling them herself now, but he had to help, so he began spearing the ones not in the range of her staff. He didn’t recognize the girl although she looked young. She was moving too fast, and he couldn’t see her face clearly, although the brown hair looked familiar. She wasn’t wearing her typical dress but a blouse and baggy jeans, but the open toed sandals gave her away. Only when all the zombies were dead, spread out around them, and she stopped could he be sure.
“Lupe?” Jomo said.
“Jomo!” she cried, “Fancy meeting you here!”
They embraced.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
She smiled. “I could ask you the same thing. I heard someone screaming, and I knew someone was in trouble. When I saw the pile up at the door I had to cause a distraction.”
Jomo shook his head with disbelief. “No, I mean how did you get here? Weren’t you with family?”
“I was,” she nodded sadly, “Little less than a month ago the zombies got in our house. Killed everyone. I survived.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Guadalupe looked away. “It’s the way things are now I suppose. Why are you here alone? What happened to the others?”
“I left them to stay here. I too thought I’d be better off locked in one place. I lost my family as well. I wasn’t in my right mind.”
“I understand. I’m sorry for your loss too Jomo.”
She looked at him, and down at the bodies. “So, you want to get out of here?”
Jomo nodded emphatically, “Yes, very much so.”
The mysterious banging at the backdoor of the farmhouse would have to remain mysterious, and although they’d decided it was almost certainly not human and possibly zombie, (although it could have been another animal), they decided it was not worth investigating. They made their way out the front door and back to their cars.
In the back seat Klaus slid a white rag with rubbing alcohol up and down the blade of his sword, wiping off the blood and dirt and smoothing it to a clean polish.
“You should probably find a good oil for the blade so it won’t rust,” Marina said, turning from the driver’s side.
“What kind of oil?”
“They make all sorts of oils for swords. But machine oil works.”
Xinga looked at her Sai. “If you find, please let me know.”
“I will,” Klaus smiled. “They’re stopping,” he said of the car ahead of them.
Marina nodded. “They must see something we don’t.”
They sat still, waiting for the others to move. Marina put the car in park.
“Whatever it is, it can’t be good,” Klaus said.
“It has to be them,” Xinga said.
“Most likely,” Klaus agreed.
Marina backed up, and moved the car to the left, to see if she could catch sight of the obstruction. There was a fog moving in that certainly wasn’t good
for visibility.
“Do you see anything?” Klaus asked.
“Not a thing.”
***
“What is it?” Kamara asked.
Samir looked through the window. There was a heavy fog in the road ahead. Shadows moved in it. “I think it’s them,” Samir said.
“Shamblers,” Ian said from the backseat. They’d taken to calling the zombies that because of the way they walked.
Zombies
began sounding too trite, too much in the realm of science fiction. Referring to their unsteady gait instantly elevated the threat in their minds. And the word had an eerie feel to it, as if they were not once human, but some diabolical alien race, some evil entity called forth- perhaps something from a Cthulhu Mythos.
“Can you tell how many?” he asked.
Both Samir and Kamara shook their heads. Samir stopped the vehicle.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Samir said.
“I vote we kick some ass,” Ian suggested.
“We don’t know how many there are. I say we head back the other way. The entire road could be blocked. There could be a hundred of them and we wouldn’t know.”
“Fair point.”
“Drive back the other way?” Kamara asked. Automated street lamps came on. “It’s getting dark. We have to decide.”
And the fog was creeping in from the way they’d come.
“Go back,” Samir nodded.
***
“They’re turning around,” Marina said.
“Must be shamblers up ahead,” Klaus responded.
They waited for the others to make a full turn around, and then followed them. They were lucky there weren’t any cars coming on either side, because with how dense the fog was getting they wouldn’t be able to see them coming.
“There is likely a lake nearby,” Klaus said.
“Likely.” Marina rolled her eyes.
“I have never seen fog like this. It is Eunuch,” Xinga said.
“I think you mean unique darling,” Marina said. Klaus laughed.
“What is funny?” Xinga asked.
“A Eunuch is a man who has been castrated,” Klaus explained.
Xinga shook her head. She didn’t understand the word castration.
“Had his boys,” Marina did a scissoring motion with her hands, “lopped off.”
Xinga stared.
“His testicles,” Klaus explained.
“Oh,” Xinga said. “Ohhhhh,” she said, realizing. Then she too began to giggle, a blush coming over her face.
***
Samir hurtled down the road as if trying to outpace the fog.
“Hey, slow down mate!” Ian shouted.
Just as he was preparing to do so he hit something, or someone.
The vehicle lurched as it absorbed the impact, bobbing up and down. The car squealed to a stop as Samir braked hard, the car listing to the side of the road.
“Don’t stop!” Kamara said.
“I hit someone!” Samir said.
“Not someone, some thing!” Ian said.
Samir got out of the car, ignoring both their protests. They followed him out with their weapons drawn. It was a woman in her early thirties. They quickly realized she was not one of the undead.
“My legs,” she said. She lay sprawled on the roadway, twisted in odd ways.
“Oh dear Lord,” Samir said.
“I think you broke my legs,” the woman said, a line of blood running out of her mouth as she spoke.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Samir said. “I’m so sorry,” he cried.
“What the hell were you doing out in the middle of the road?!” Ian screamed.
Kamara heard the panic and fear in his voice, the same thing she felt.
“I was...” she spoke weakly, “I was running... from them.”
They saw the shadows of the undead coming out of the fog behind her.
“Get back in the car!” Ian shouted.
“We’ve got to help her!” Samir shouted back.
“No, we don’t,” Kamara said coldly. “She’s going to die. We’re not.”
Samir stared at her with disbelief. “You can’t mean that.”
She didn’t reply.
“Please don’t leave me,” the woman pleaded.
“I won’t,” Samir said. “You two can help me get her in the car, or not. I won’t leave her here to die.”
Reluctantly, Ian grabbed her by her ankles while Samir and Kamara each took one of her wrists and they dragged her into the back seat of the car.
***
Marina braked as the car in front of them stopped. “I think they hit something!”
They got out just as the group was pulling the woman into the car.
“I hit her. She’s alive, but barely,” Samir said.
“Well, we’ve got to keep go...” Ian began. “Oh boy. Shamblers.”
The fog they hadn’t noticed creeping closer as they moved the woman into the car had all but completely masked the undead. They were upon them before they could run back to their cars.
A man came out of the murky mist and grabbed Xinga by the arm. She screamed, and jabbed a Sai into the back of his crouched head. It made a sound like a knife slicing through a watermelon.
The “shamblers” were coming at them from all sides. Kamara swung her battleaxe, cleaving off the top of one of their skulls, then cutting through the bridge of another’s nose. Ian was taking delight in bashing in heads and faces with his spiked mace. Samir was too close range to aim and fire the musket so he was busy skewering skulls with his bayonet attachment. Klaus drove his sword through many a head, while Marina blasted through brains with her trusty Rugers.
There must have been at least two dozen of them, but they killed them all, and rushed back to their vehicles.
Samir checked on the woman in the backseat. Her breathing was slow and labored. “We’ve got to get her to a hospital,” he said. “Hopefully one that’s still running.”
Marina asked the question of her no one did. “Have you been bit?”
The injured woman looked at Marina strangely, barely able to speak, and let out a choked, “No,” shaking her head almost imperceptibly.
“Anyway, we’ve got to get out of here, past this fog,” Ian said.
Samir said, “I agree. Before more of them surprise us.”