Zombiemandias (Book 1): In the Lone and Level Sands Page 5

  Jordan blinked a few times, waiting for his eyes to readjust, and finished his pizza with the inevitable end to his break in sight. He tried to focus on the idea of seeing Ashley later on.

  I need to ask her out… Damn. When am I going to? Someone’s gonna snap her up if I don’t make a move soon.

  Jordan stood up to clear his area. Another break had ended, and it was time for his nose to touch the old grindstone once again.

  ****

  It was 8:35, and Ashley was all that occupied Jordan’s mind, as she was probably in the aisles somewhere. He glanced out at the ten-foot stretch of space between the checkout lanes and the aisles and saw her walk by, holding a basket, looking at a list and then looking aimlessly into aisle six. Jordan’s face lit up, and he waved.

  “Ash! Hey!”

  Ashley turned his way and displayed her sparkling white teeth. They alone were enough to light the entire store.

  “Jordan!” Ashley approached his register. “Hey, where are you people hiding the frozen appetizers? I couldn’t find them anywhere.” She playfully rolled her eyes, and Jordan stepped off his post.

  “I’ll lead you in their direction, ma’am,” Jordan said. He walked around the express counter and joined Ashley by her side, pointing toward the freezer section.

  “Hey, I’m too young to be called ‘ma’am’!” She laughed, and snorted, making Jordan laugh harder. They walked about halfway into aisle nine, and Jordan opened a frosty door and withdrew a red-and-white striped box.

  “You done shopping?” Jordan asked. He tossed the box into Ashley’s basket.

  Ashley briefly studied her list and then said, “Not yet. I have to pick up some milk, butter, bread, and Lima beans… Ew on that last one, man!” She pinched her eyes shut and stuck out her tongue.

  “I second that. Yuck!”

  Ashley’s Lima bean look melted back into a carefree smile. “Well, I’ll be done here soon.”

  “Sweet. I’ll be waiting for you on express, Ash.” Jordan turned back. His once-abandoned register now had a customer unloading his groceries. Jordan walked around to the register, typed in his password, and began ringing up the customer’s order.

  After the customer carted his purchases off, a woman pushed her cart into Jordan’s line. It was stuffed with a good fifty items, and Jordan stared in awe for a moment.

  “Ma’am, this is an express lane,” he said. There were three or four people in the average shift who came to the ten-and-under lane with more items, and Jordan’s patience for them was thin.

  “I see you standing there with no one going through your lane,” the woman said, “while the other registers are backed up to hell. They’re not budging, so you can help me here!”

  “Yeah, but I’m standing here waiting for customers who have ten or less,” Jordan said. The woman proceeded to toss her groceries onto the counter one at a time, moving nearly as slowly as the elderly lady from earlier in the night. She was red in the face.

  “You are by far the worst checker I have ever seen here. Just terrible! Can’t even make one exception. I’ll have you know, your manager will be hearing about your attitude! Where is he?”

  “She is on break,” Jordan said. The woman grunted, but didn’t go deeper into the matter. She continued throwing groceries onto the counter as two more customers appeared in line behind her.

  A few items shy of a fourth of her order remained in the cart. As the woman lifted a bag of frozen peas in one pudgy hand and a box of cereal in the other, she froze in place. Her arms drooped, her grip loosened, and the food fell to the floor. The fire left her eyes, along with all other signs of consciousness. She stared off and didn’t make a sound.

  “Hello?” Jordan said. “Are you okay?” The woman didn’t reply. Jordan looked at the other express checker, clueless.

  “What’s wrong with her?” the checker asked.

  “No idea,” Jordan said. He waved a hand in front of her face and called out to her again. “Hey!”

  The woman’s eyes didn’t even follow his hand. The customer behind her slid his cart forward and tapped her leg with it. The woman lost all balance, tumbled to the ground, and lay by her fallen groceries. The man’s eyes widened, and his face instantly turned red.

  “What the hell?” he said. “I barely touched her. What in God’s name is wrong with her?”

  Jordan shook his head, and went around the counter. Several other customers surrounded the scene. Evelyn rushed across the front of the store as Jordan called for help.

  “I called an ambulance, they’re on their way,” another customer said.

  “Jessica, Calvin,” Evelyn said to the checkers on nine and ten. “Let’s get these customers through the line. Bradley, come sit with this woman until the ambulance gets here.”

  Jordan fetched two chairs from the area in front of the First Bank of Gladstone. Not long after Bradley sat down beside the woman, she turned her head slowly toward him and made a small sighing sound.

  “Huh?” Bradley said, startled at first, and then he smiled. “Ma’am?”

  “Ahh,” the woman said. Her eyes were wide, as if she were surprised. She leaned a few inches closer to Bradley.

  “Hey, I think she’s okay,” Bradley called to Evelyn. The woman opened her mouth, lunged toward Bradley, and latched onto his neck. He screamed as she pushed her teeth into his skin and muscle.

  A nearby customer came to help. “Get the fuck off him!” The customer grabbed the woman, wrapping his thick arms around her flabby torso and heaving with all his might. The woman began grunting irritably, with blood spewing out of her mouth. She released Bradley’s neck and dug into the man’s forearm, and he screamed, throwing her down. Panic spread through the front end, and then a scream from some pocket of the store made its way up to the front. Some people turned around to see where it had come from, but some couldn’t take their eyes off the scene ahead. Evelyn was helping Bradley with his wound. The big man’s wife had rushed up, dropping a loaf of bread on her way.

  Some customers that had been walking the front end decided to abandon their carts and flee the store. People ran through the lines as quickly as possible, and some sprinted out with their groceries, not having paid. Tony Greco, the manager of perishables, ran after a man who was trying to steal a cartload. A few checkers left their stations, and one was knocked over by a crowd of customers. They didn’t seem to care as they trampled him to get through the lane and toward the exit. A small group of people surrounded another customer near the greeting card aisle and began to tear into him with their hands and teeth.

  Jordan thought of Ashley. Where was she in this mess? He didn’t know what to do as he scanned the area. Frightened people ran toward both exits. Jordan saw Evelyn move away from Bradley, screaming. He fell out of the chair, trying to grab her, the same vacant look in his eyes.

  “H-he’s one of them, too!” Evelyn said.

  An announcement for the coming July 4th sale blared over the intercom, managing to combat the screams. The man behind the voice, John Kensington, had ducked behind the customer service counter.

  The big man who’d been bitten was standing with his wife. She used a part of her elaborate outfit as a tourniquet, but screamed when her husband began biting into her.

  “What the fuck is this?” Jordan said. He and Evelyn joined John Kensington behind the customer service counter, away from the main flow of people, which was starting to thin out. Some of those who were fleeing the store had blood on them. After a moment, Erin ducked behind the counter as well.

  “We have to get somewhere safe,” Evelyn said.

  “We don’t want to go out there,” John said. “We’ll likely get killed out in the parking lot.”

  “Why do you say that?” Erin asked.

  “I saw those things out there. They were eating people—the same things in here. The same ones that’ll eat us for dessert if we stay behind this counter whispering to each other!”

  Jordan’s phone buzzed. John glanced down
and sneered. “You’ve got your phone with you while working?”

  “John, you’re seriously worried about that now?” Jordan shook his head and pulled his phone from his pocket. It was a text from Ashley, and he sighed with relief, until he read the message.

  Please Jordan! I’m over behind the meat counter! I can’t come out the meat guy attacked a man in front of the meat case!

  “What was that?” Evelyn looked down at the phone as Jordan responded to Ashley’s text message.

  “It’s a friend,” Jordan said. “She’s trapped behind the meat counter. We need to find her and get out of here!”

  “First,” John said, rolling his eyes at the announcement that blared over the intercom (“Buy one, get one free in the bakery today. A dozen cookies, buy one for $2.99…”), “we need a plan.”

  Jordan leaned over to the left a bit, peering through a break in the counter. He saw blood spilled in several places. People were still making their way out. Those who weren’t were eating other people. Jordan turned back around and looked at the others.

  A few gunshots rang across the store. The group squatted, frozen. Moments later, Jordan spotted a customer emerge from aisle seven with a gun in his hand. The man shot Jordan’s last customer as she bumbled toward him, then he shot Bradley, and a few other people who had changed. Even Tony Greco had changed by then, and the man from aisle seven offed him as well. Then he spotted the four of them behind the counter and approached.

  He was rough-looking; from his chin sprouted a graying, unkempt goatee that was surrounded by white stubble. He wore a do-rag with the American flag on it over his coarse gray hair, and a worn-out leather biker jacket. He peered at Jordan and the others through squinted hazel eyes. Jordan had met the man in the store a few times before, so he was the first to get to his feet.

  11

  On the Bus

  It was the last bus of the day. Zoe sat near the back, her headphones pumping Manchester Orchestra into her ears, her arms rested on her messenger bag. The sky was darkening, and Zoe closed her eyes to block out the stinging blur of the passing streetlights. The bus stopped, let a few people on, and then progressed along its route.

  Zoe was barely able to hear the screeching tires over her music. She opened her eyes to see a blur of lights, and then felt the impact. Zoe lost all sense of direction as the bus flipped onto its side. It rolled over the sidewalk, flipping and turning the people inside like rocks in a polisher. Zoe saw a splash of red across several windows as the bus rolled over someone on the outside. It continued down a small grassy hill beyond the sidewalk. The windows shattered and bits of glass were hurled everywhere, along with the people. Someone slammed into Zoe, and she hit her head on something or someone. Her headphones coiled around her neck, still plugged into the MP3 player in her pocket.

  Finally, the bus came to a stop. The last of the glass tinkled to the ground, and the screeching of tires and screams in the distance faded, along with Zoe’s remaining vision as she blacked out.

  ****

  When Zoe woke up, daylight was seeping into the bus, which was on its side. There were bodies everywhere, strewn about like dolls, all of the visible ones lifeless.

  Zoe was lying on the side of the bus, where a window had been but now was an uncomfortable metal frame with the hard ground filling the gaps where there was no glass. A body had come to rest on top of her legs, and she had trouble moving them.

  Her head hurt, and there was a welt around her neck from where the cord to her headphones had rested all night. Her messenger bag was under her, still wrapped around her shoulder. Glass was everywhere, and Zoe had a few scratches and scrapes on her hands and arms. She felt a stinging pain in her neck and assumed it was also from the glass.

  She wondered why it was day outside, why no one had reported the crash or come to help. She began to slide her legs out from beneath the body when she heard something.

  “Uuuuhh.”

  Zoe was about to call out to the stranger to ask if he needed help when she looked again at the body she was struggling to crawl out from under. Its throat was torn out, and blood was caked everywhere. It looked as though the person had been partially eaten.

  Had an animal wandered into the overturned bus? Whatever the case, she didn’t want to alert whatever was making those shuffling and groaning sounds. She began to slowly pull her legs out from beneath the body.

  “Grrrr… Ah!” Zoe winced at the loud and abrupt end of the grumble. She paused for a moment, felt a bead of sweat run down her face, and realized she had been sweating for a while; it was hot in the bus, especially beneath a pile of bodies, cold as they had grown.

  The shuffling grew closer. Whatever was making it sounded only a few rows away, making its way along the side of the bus, possibly checking each row for something living, something moving. But what was most disturbing was that it sounded very much like a human.

  Zoe finally wiggled one leg free, and couldn’t help but grimace as she carefully set it down on the face of the body pinning her down. She felt apologetic, like she should say something to the poor soul, though logic told her it would mean nothing, now.

  “Braaah!” the voice said, now closer than ever. Zoe thought it might be only inches away, and then she saw the shadow. It was definitely human, and it was definitely close. She stopped moving, her trapped leg raised slightly (as she was now afraid to lower it), her muscles stretching uncomfortably. She closed her eyes and held her breath.

  She played dead.

  She felt the thing find her, then. It was crawling, and placed a hand right on her side. She tried not to flinch, tried not to wince. The thing grunted, and Zoe had an image of it turning to look at her face, to figure out if it had seen movement. She fought the urge to take a peek and see exactly what this thing was and what it was doing.

  The thing crawled on, pressing hard into Zoe’s stomach as it crawled over her, sniffing and grunting as it went. Finally, Zoe opened one eye and saw the thing’s legs as it moved farther down the aisle. She waited a few minutes that felt like they’d never pass, and then opened her eyes. The grumbling went a bit farther down, and Zoe continued struggling her way out from under the body, trying not to make any sudden movements, hoping the thing wouldn’t turn back and see her. She pushed away the thought of what would happen when she finally did get out from under the body. The thing was, after all, still on the bus, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

  Carefully, slowly, Zoe got her leg free and sat up. She took a deep breath and just barely peeked around the edge of the seat and into the aisle. The thing appeared to be a man, indeed crawling on its hands and knees, sniffing at the bodies as it passed. It was a few feet away, and it grunted and groaned as it went.

  Zoe looked around. The bus was totaled, and no one else on it appeared to be alive. She suddenly felt silly for fearing the man so much; he was probably in shock from the crash, in need of assistance.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  The man snarled as he turned. He looked straight at her with something oddly unfamiliar about his eyes, very human but not right, somehow. And there were entrails hanging from his mouth.

  He reached for her, and she dove backward. He reached again and grabbed her leg. Zoe kicked the man (if it could be called such) in the face, and his head snapped backward, but he made little sound, and didn’t loosen his grip at all. Zoe kicked again, and her leg was freed.

  She looked around. The bus’s main door was on the ground and would be of no use to her. The emergency hatch on what was once the roof of the bus had been twisted, crumpled inward, its hinge rendered worthless. She looked at the back of the bus, and the emergency exit was hidden from view by a pile of bodies.

  Zoe looked up and saw a window with a bright red handle, another emergency exit. She reached for it, and the thing reached for her.

  Her hand grasped the latch and she pulled, setting off the bus’s alarm. The horrible ringing only added to her splitting migraine. The window gave way and fell into the b
us (landing on the man’s head, which was closer than Zoe had taken the time to notice) and a wide-open hole was left in its place. Zoe stood up, her muscles aching, sweat pouring from her face. She dove for the hole, making it halfway out as the man wrapped his arms around her waist. Zoe struggled, but his grip was tight. He opened his mouth, and it looked as though he wanted to bite her.

  She didn’t wait to see if she was correct. Zoe jerked upward, slamming the man’s head against the wall of the bus. He was dazed, but went for another bite. Zoe did it again, and then again. Finally the crazed man let go.

  Zoe kicked and shoved with her legs, both at the man below her and at the bodies strewn everywhere, finally hoisting herself through the emergency exit and onto the outside of the bus. She pulled herself completely out of the hole, slid forward and over the edge of the bus, and landed hard with her hands outstretched, then rolled a little because of the uneven ground. Not looking to see if the man was following, she crawled forward a few yards, up the grassy hill, toward the street. She finally made it to her feet, stumbled a bit, and then rushed up the hill and collapsed in the road, where she vomited.

  Zoe gathered herself and looked back at the bus. The man had made no attempt to follow her, and she imagined that he went back to wandering back and forth along its side.

  She turned then and saw something her eyes had seen earlier but her brain had refused to comprehend, finally discovered why no one had come to their aid: The cityscape was a wreck. There were cars crashed and in flames, clothes and paper and various belongings strewn in the streets and sidewalks, broken glass everywhere. Farther down the block the remains of a plane were scattered along the street, like the pilot had aimed for an emergency landing on the road, taken out many cars and people in the process, and left only the streaks and smears of blood trailing behind to tell the tale.