Sometimes We Ran (Book 1) Read online

  Claire looked at me. “What’s the plan, Tiger?”

  I thought for a minute and looked across the street. “I think we have to try to get inside. We need a place to stay for the night.”

  “All right. Sounds good. Let’s do it,” she said with determination. Claire was such a brave young lady.

  We broke out of the bushes, and started across the street. Fireman-Zombie saw us and began to walk over. He was moving pretty fast. We might have to take him out.

  “Claire, stay near my side and don’t get too far away. We’ll make a beeline for the door. We not going to run, but don’t dawdle. Oh, and one more thing…”, I paused.

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Stop calling me ‘Tiger.’”

  Claire could only giggle.

  Chapter 10

  Mollie’s Place

  Claire and I crossed the street into the mall parking lot. We were trying not to run, but walking very fast was recommended.

  The fireman-zombie saw us, and began to move in our direction. I took a quick look at his eyes, and saw that they were yellow. Good. Maybe he might be a little easier to kill. I hoped he was alone. He was walking at a slight trot perpendicular to our path to the door and slowly coming into range.

  I raised the rifle, aimed, and fired. Fireman-zombie’s helmet came off taking most of his head with it in the process. He crumpled to the ground and moved no more.

  “Nice shot,” Claire said with a little admiration in her voice.

  “Thanks. I don’t think he felt a thing.”

  We continued to make our way to the doors. We passed busted cars, huge piles of debris, and bodies. A whole lot of decayed and broken bodies. Some of the bodies looked like they were shot in the back. Many of the poor souls had groceries and supplies scattered around them. They had been shot while trying to escape the store.

  “John, another zombie, dead ahead!”

  I swung the rifle to the front. It was a teen age girl, a little taller than Claire. Her neck was broken, and her head was tilted at an obscene angle. Blood covered her lower jaw and and clothes. The earphones from her portable music device were still stuck in her rotting ears.

  There was even more bad news. She had red eyes. I silently prayed she wasn’t like the two we met back on the road eating the deer.

  The teen aged zombie saw us, and began to make the usual animal sounds the Red-Eyes all make. I breathed a quick sigh of relief. This Red-Eye was like the old favorites I knew and loved.

  “Claire, get behind me. I am going to try and take cover behind a car.” She took cover at my back, and I aimed the rifle at our new attacker. Teen age Zombie looked really angry and hungry. I was moving around, trying to put a wrecked car or two between us.

  It worked. Claire and I moved around to achieve a better shooting solution while trying to put our young zombie into a disadvantage. Teen-age Zombie followed our every move, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. We moved sideways into a field of several cars and trucks. Now, I had the advantage. Our dead friend would have to go around or over a car or two to get to our position.

  Almost as if she were recognizing my strategy, Teen-age Zombie started her attack. She moved with cat like reflexes around the first car toward where I was standing. A second car was in her way. She darted around it but I plugged her as she cleared the front fender. She fell a few feet from my position. She lay still for a few seconds, but then I saw her try to rise off the tarmac to continue her attack. I shot her again, dumping her brains on the pavement behind her. Sometimes these Red-Eyes didn’t want to stay down.

  “Okay, Claire, let’s go.” I turned towards the door.

  “Right behind you.”

  We encountered no more bad guys on our way to the doors. Claire and I had to duck under a truck and scale a small pile of shopping carts to arrive at the front of the store. The doors themselves were standard sliding doors that opened when you walked under a small sensor.

  We crouched down at the dirty glass doors. I grabbed a small piece of junk metal, and jammed it the space between the two doors. They resisted opening at first, but my prying yielded a small one to two-foot gap between the doors. I took a quick look inside. It was fairly dark, but thanks to several skylights, I could make out a series of cash registers and displays. Nothing seemed to be moving and it looked empty.

  I looked back at Claire and gave her a thumbs-up. She smiled and started to stand up, and that’s when a howling demon from hell tried to kill her. A zombie came out of the shadows and grabbed her. She didn’t even have time to scream.

  The zombie was burned up and looked a little like a Halloween skeleton. He still had its eyes, and they bulged out of his dark eye sockets like two yellow ping-pong balls. He made an awful wailing noise as it attacked. Grabbing Claire by the arm and shoulder, he pushed her to the rough, sandy colored brick wall to take a bite. I reacted with the only weapon I had at the time: the flat metal piece I used to open the doors.

  Right before he sank his teeth into Claire, I jammed the piece of metal into one of his eye- sockets. The metal went so far in that it disappeared into his head. He let go of Claire and whirled around screaming in agony, trying to pull the metal out of its skull. It fell to it’s knees in front of Claire. She finished off the horrible apparition with her gun.

  Claire fell back against the wall and slid down to the ground. Oh God, don’t let her be bitten. I got to her side, and checked her for bites. She looked unharmed.

  “Jesus. Are you all right? He came out of the dark. I …I didn’t see him coming.” I put my hand on her shoulder.

  She didn’t answer at first. She had her face in her hands as she sat against the wall. She was heaving a little bit, like she was crying.

  I put my arm around her. “It’s okay Claire. We killed it, and you’re okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice from wavering. However, she wasn’t crying.

  She was laughing like a maniac. I feared Claire had lost her grip on sanity.

  She stood up and wiped her eyes. “Scared you, huh? You should see the look on your face.”

  This was puzzling. Claire might be going around the bend. Burned up skeletal zombie attacks can have that effect.

  “Are you all right? You were laughing.”

  “I’m fine. It’s all so absurd. Life used to be normal. Now I’m fighting zombies like in some kind of bad movie. Now can we go inside?”

  Actually she was right. It was a little funny and absurd. I hadn’t thought too much about it. A few months ago, I was living a normal life as well. It was like a badly-acted sci-fi movie. I almost expect the theater lights to come on, and ushers to point out the exits. “Yeah. Let’s get inside before something else tries to take our heads off.”

  Claire and I pushed the doors open wider. They creaked in protest, and dirt rained down on our heads. After we were safely inside the store, I pushed the doors together and turned the lock. Claire and I looked at each other, and remembering the attack outside, we began to pile a few larger items in front of the doors. We used chairs, old cases of soda, rental vacuums and other things to barricade both set of doors.

  After securing the exits, we turned to look at the store. Mollie’s Place appeared to be a competitor to the “big box” stores that were common before the outbreak. There was a small supermarket and a department store under one roof. This was a great place for supplies, unless somebody already had a claim on the place.

  We took a few more steps inside passing the cash registers and the front displays. The supermarket was to the left, and non-food consumer goods were to the right. It looked like women’s clothes were first, with men’s clothing next followed by the baby section. I assume sections like electronics, drugs, automotive, and toys were at the back of the store.

  Like most places, the store was a bit of a wreck. Piles of goods littered the floor. Shelves and displays were pulled down and scattered all over the place. It looked like a large crowd had come through, and raided the place. The store smelled of spoiled foo
d and waterlogged fabric. The walls and displays were also covered in pink decorations and big paper hearts. I wondered if anything good was left to scrounge.

  “It was getting near Valentine’s Day. That’s why there’s a bunch of decorations,” Claire whispered in the silence of the store. I remembered. When all this zombie stuff started, Valentine’s Day was approaching. The decorations were all faded and sad. It looked a little depressing.

  There were also a lot of places to hide. “Let’s head down this central aisle and check out the back room,” I whispered to Claire.

  “Do we have to go back there? It looks a little creepy.”

  “Yes, we have to. Someone could already be here.”

  “Okay. Let’s get it over with.”

  We started walking towards the back. We passed racks of smelly waterlogged clothes, aisles full of bed and bath items, and then into the toy and game section. On the back wall, near some aisles of puzzles and games was a set of double doors to the storeroom. Before we went inside, I picked up two working flashlights from the sporting goods section, and handed one to Claire.

  “Ready kiddo?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Let’s do it.”

  We got ready and pushed into the darkened storeroom. Right in the doorway, we found our first body. It was a guy dressed in a tattered Mollie’s Place uniform. The body was severely decomposed and covered in flies and maggots. The poor guy had been dead for a while.

  “Oh, God,” I heard Claire whisper. I ran the flashlight down the body. There was a sizable bite in his neck, and a large gunshot wound in his head. An empty handgun lay in his outstretched hand. He shot himself before he turned.

  “Keep an eye out,” I said to Claire glancing around. “He committed suicide. Something terrible could be waiting back here.”

  We continued into the stockroom. It had a central aisle with racks on both sides, full of different types of consumer goods and dry food. There was enough canned food to last Claire and I for a good while. There were also a few pallets of bottled water. We had struck apocalypse gold. I only hoped no one else had a claim. I shined my flashlight to the other end of the storeroom. The aisle ended in a small office with a glass wall and a loading dock door. I swung the flashlight beam to the floor to see if the door was closed.

  That’s when I saw the bodies.

  There had been a final battle at the dock door. I counted at least half a dozen corpses arranged in a neat pile on the loading dock floor. I also found a few discarded weapons, both improvised edged weapons and firearms. Deep brown splashes of dried blood were everywhere. A few trails led away from the bodies, and ended at the door.

  Something had dragged a few unfortunate souls outside.

  It was all too clear. Some of the Mollie’s Place survivors had retreated here to wait it out. They barricaded themselves back here, and added an obstacle course to the front door to keep undesirables away. Something must have gotten in and killed everybody. The loading dock door looked like the point of entry. I was standing on the survivors final stand. My stomach began to churn with fear.

  I shined my flashlight in Claire’s direction. She was checking out the blood trails that went under the door. She was putting her small hands into the bloody prints plastered on the walls and floor. “This was it for these guys,” she said. “They came back here, and the zombies came and killed them. The undead dragged them kicking and screaming outside. Look at the handprints.” She stood up, and covered her mouth as if trying to stop a scream. I recognized the look in her eyes.

  It was panic.

  I walked over, and put my arm around her. Panic could kill us as sure as the zombies could. You stop thinking straight, and then you make a bad decision or two. “It’s okay Claire. They’re all gone. No one here is going to hurt us.” I looked around nervously. “At least I think there is nothing here that can hurt us.” She started to cry, so I took her into the store’s office at the end of the storeroom. By the time we entered, she was shaking and pale with fear. I was having a hard time holding it together, as well.

  The office wasn’t much better. Two zombies were laid out on the floor towards the back wall. A Mollie’s Place employee sat dead in an office chair with a garage-door remote in his cold hand, and a gun shot wound in his head. He had been the one to close the door during the battle. Even though he was decomposed, I found two large bites on his arms. I rolled the body and the chair into a dark corner.

  I deposited Claire into another empty office chair. Her eyes were wide with panic, and she was rocking slightly back and forth. I had to snap her out of it. I bent down and looked her in the eyes. “Claire!” I shook her gently. “Claire! You still with me?”

  She snapped out of it, and started to cry again. “John, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to panic. It was just a little too much with the blood trails and the handprints. Those poor trapped people. I’m sorry. I guess I’m just a big fat baby.” Large tears rolled down her cheeks.

  I dried them with my gloved hand. “It’s all right. You’re not a baby. It was a pretty bad scene back here.”

  Claire shook her head, as if to try and erase the images of the storeroom out of her brain. “Tiger, I promise I’ll be strong like you. I won’t wig out like that again.”

  Strong like me. If only she knew. I was about two minutes from vomiting in terror myself. “It’s okay. Panic is part of the world now. We’ve both seen some terrible shit, you and I. We’re due a little panic now and then.“ I looked her in the eyes to make my point. “We have to focus on our survival. These people are beyond our help. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I stood up, and extended my hand to Claire.

  She took my hand. “That’s better, kiddo. Let’s check out the supermarket.” I started to walk away from the horror of the dock with Claire in tow.

  Claire followed me out of the office holding my hand. She was very quiet and pale. I thought maybe she didn’t want to stay here. I had to lay our situation out. If we didn’t need supplies or shelter so badly, I would leave Mollie’s World behind.

  Actually, I felt like lying down and taking a long nap.

  We stepped outside the storeroom, and started walking over to the supermarket side. Claire and I were silent. I don’t think either of us knew what to say about what we saw in the storeroom. I stopped walking for a minute.

  “Claire, here’s the situation. We need supplies and a place to sleep, but if you don’t want to stay, we’ll move on down the road. What do you think?”

  She looked at me with her watery eyes and said, “We’ll stay here. I think we need to stay out of the storeroom, though.” A forced smile crossed her lips.

  I tried to smile back, but I was unsuccessful. “Okay. It’s a deal. Staying out of the back room is a good idea. Let’s you and I check out the food and water situation.”

  “All right. I am getting a little hungry,” Claire said, taking my hand again. “Do you think they have any oatmeal cream pies?”

  “Probably. They seem to have everything else in this damn store.”

  We started walking to the supermarket section leaving the horror of the storeroom behind.

  Chapter 11

  That Night in the Department Store

  “Wow, that’s a really big pile of food,” Claire exclaimed in amazement.

  We were standing in Aisle One of the supermarket section of Mollie’s Place. The floors were a tangle of spilled and rotten food and ripped packaging. The smell of spoiled dairy and overripe produce filled the air. Flies and maggots were everywhere.

  “No kidding. I wonder if anything is left,” I said, becoming a little concerned. If Claire and I couldn’t find any good food, we might have a problem. Our backpacks were getting a little light on supplies.

  We started looking at the shelves, going aisle by aisle. Some good news began to emerge. While most of the produce, meat, frozen food and dairy were spoiled, the shelves still had some food to spare.

  We found crackers, cookies, and other sna
ck-foods still on the shelves, along with peanut butter, all kinds of jelly, breakfast cereals, and pastries. There was a little canned food, soups, and fruit. We found pallets of water and other drinks, and there were even bottles of wine, beer, and other alcoholic drinks on the shelves. We even found Claire’s favorite processed snack-food, oatmeal cream pies, at the end of one of the aisles. Everything that was still wrapped was a little stale, but still edible.

  “This is great. I think we should stay here awhile,” Claire said as she grabbed a box of cookies off a shelf. After tearing open the package, she offered me one.

  “Yeah, looks good.” It looked a little too good. Why hadn’t anyone else tried to stay here? Why was there so much food left?

  As Claire busied herself taking food off the shelves for our supplies, I looked a little more carefully at the messy floor. A lot of the spilled food had dried in odd colorful patterns. As I stared at the floor, I saw a few familiar shapes. I put the cookie in my mouth, and bent down to take a closer look.

  The familiar shapes were footprints.

  So, there had been people here. A whole bunch of people, by the looks of the floor. Why hadn’t they stayed? I stood up, and placed my boot beside the footprint. The print was too small to be mine. Claire emerged from one of the aisles carrying a few dry food items in her arms. “Claire, come over her for a second.”

  “What’s up Tiger?”

  I pointed at the footprint in the spilled food. “Put your foot next to that print.”

  She threw me a puzzled look, but placed her sneaker on the floor next to the print. “Something wrong?” she asked.

  Claire’s foot was too small; neither of us had made the print. “Nothing. It’s just that you and I didn’t make that footprint. That means people have been by here in the past.”