All That I See - 02 (13 page)

“Are they talking to each other?” Sara said.

We tossed our bags into the bed of the truck, and I heard breaking glass from one of the bags.

“Shit,” I said. “Sounds like we lost some bottles of something.”

Another howl, and another reply.

“Start the truck,” I said, turning to go back inside.

Off to my right, another one was coming at me from around the corner of the building. She was a teenager in pink shorts and a gray Hello Kitty t-shirt. She was more recently turned that the others. She still looked relatively healthy, except for the chunk of flesh missing from her left calf. She was very excited to see me.

I ran into the building and pulled the door shut behind me. She slammed into the glass door over and over trying to get in to me. I looked past her to the truck, and I could see Sara looking in the big side mirror. The creatures coming from the road were at the pumps by this time, and the one from the pumps was now at the front of the truck. There were six more coming down the road. Behind me, the clerk howled again.  Sara started signaling me with her arms. I wasn’t sure what her plans were, but I thought she was telling me to get out of the way. I grabbed the last two garbage bags then stepped over by the sandwich bar. I heard the engine revving then the rear of the truck came crashing in. Glass doors and Hello Kitty were shoved all the way into the counter.

I tossed the two bags into the bed of the truck then climbed into the bed myself. I had to sit on top of our bags, and I could feel snack cakes and chips being crushed under my weight. Glass from the doors was everywhere.

Sara shifted the truck into drive. I curled up, shielding my head and she pulled back through the hole she’d made. A few pieces of glass and a brick dropped into the bed with me as we exited the building, but none of it hit me. She sped away from the building back toward the highway, and the creatures chased us. I noticed that there were more in the distance converging on the little store. 

It was a bumpy ride, and I thought it was due to potholes in the parking lot, but it continued even after we were on the road. I suspected that at least one of our tires was flat.

When we were far enough from our pursuers, Sara stopped the truck so I could get into the cab. I climbed down out of the bed then walked around the truck to see how much damage had been done.

“Both back tires are flat,” I said, climbing in. “We’re going to need another vehicle.”

“This one will still drive,” she said.

“Yeah, I know. We don’t have to do it this instant or anything. The county line isn’t more than four or five miles. We can make it that far. Just take it slow.”

CHAPTER 14

We proceeded north past hundreds of acres of farmland and woods. Then, practically in the middle of nowhere, there was a cross road lined with bars and liquor stores.

“Now leaving Grace County,” I said.

Sara took a right onto the cross road then pulled up to the first establishment. It was appropriately named County Line Liquors. From the outside it looked like it had been hit by looters. The front windows were broken, and there were lots of broken bottles on the ground. We went in anyway, hoping something had been left. Nothing had. Every bottle of beer, wine, and liquor had been taken. Shelves were overturned, and there was nothing left inside the building but torn boxes and broken bottles. The other three stores and two bars were the same. We did find four decaying corpses in one of the bars, but they’d all been shot in the head. Aside from them we saw no
one
else neither living nor dead.

There was old cargo van in the parking lot of the second store that still had keys and a little gas in the tank. We transferred our haul from the convenient store into it. We were about to leave when Sara pointed toward a plain, windowless, block building on the other side of the highway away from the other stores. The sign out front was very discreet. It said: THE VEGAS CLUB.

“What about that place?” she said. “Is that a bar?”

“Yeah,” I chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s a titty bar,” I said.

“You mean like strippers?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought that was illegal around here,” she said.

I shrugged, “Beats me.”

“Did you go there often?” she said, a grin playing at the corners of her mouth.

“I’ve never been there,” I said. It was the truth, but I could tell she didn’t believe me.

“Well,” she said, “we’ve driven all this way. We should check it, too.”

I nodded.

“I’ll let you lead the way since you’re a regular there,” she said dryly.

I started to deny it again, but I figured it would turn into one of those methinks-thou-doth-protest-too-much situations. I don’t even know why it mattered; I probably would have gone in there if I’d had some friends to go with, but Blaine never went to places like that, and I didn’t want to be one of those creepy guys that went to a strip club alone. Besides, I was getting the impression from Sara that she didn’t really care anyway; she was just ribbing me about it. I didn’t know if this was a new development with her, or if she’d always been like that. I had made presumptions about her because of her age and because she talked about her church so much after we first met. She’d had such an aversion to drinking at first, but she’d come around out of necessity. Then there was that first night she and I had spent alone…. She definitely hadn’t been a prude that night.

The building was locked. That was a good thing. It meant no one had been in, and we would likely find plenty of alcohol inside.

“These doors are solid,” I said. “We’ll have to drive the van through them.”

Sara nodded then opened the van door.

“Try not to hurt our escape vehicle this time,” I said.

“Okay,” she grinned. “Next time, I’ll let them get you.”

She backed the van against the door. The engine roared and the tires squealed and smoked as she mashed the accelerator. Finally, the doors caved and the van backed into the building. She cut the engine. The vehicle didn’t completely fill the space where the doors had been, but it filled it enough that I thought it would prevent anyone or anything from following us inside. She moved into the back of the van then I climbed in the driver’s door and followed her. When I met her at the back door she handed me a flashlight.

“There aren’t any windows,” she said. “We’ll need these.”

I opened the van’s rear doors. It was almost completely dark inside the building. The only light was coming in through the van’s windshield and our flashlights.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said and went back to the front. “Hop out and tell me if this helps.”

I put on the emergency brake to keep the vehicle from moving then I put the van in reverse. The backup lights came on.

“Much better,” Sara said.

The backup lights gave us a dim view of the interior of the main room. There was a sort of stage or runway in the middle of the room with a stainless steel pole in the center that was secured at the ceiling. There was a bar to the right side with a few partial bottles of liquor and some beer taps behind it. Another continuous bar ran around the stage, and there were a few tables on the main floor.

“Let’s do this quickly,” Sara said. “We can take those bottles.”

“There will probably be extra in the back,” I said.

I shined my flashlight around until I found a doorway to the right of the main bar.

“There,” I said.

We proceeded to the main bar, sweeping the room with our flashlights as we went. When I got to the door, I turned and Sara was still halfway back. She was shining her flashlight on a framed poster on the wall.

“What is it?” I said.

She immediately started toward me, “It’s nothing.”

I shined my light toward the poster, but Sara stepped in front of me and pushed my light down.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re in a hurry, remember?”

“We’re kind of secluded out here,” I said. “I don’t think we’re going to have much trouble. There aren’t any houses close by.”

”I’ll feel safer if we didn’t stay too long.”

We went through the door. There were three more rooms in the rear of the building. One was a large, communal dressing room with mirrors, lockers, benches, and a rack of costumes and lingerie. There was also a small office. The next room was the stock room stacked with cases of beer and wine and liquor.

“The mother lode,” Sara said.

“I think this will do,” I laughed.

We each got a box and took it to the van. After we each made six trips to the storeroom, Sara stopped by the rear of the van, trying to peer through the windshield.

“Don’t you think that’s enough?” Sara said. “I’m getting worried about being here so long.”

”Let’s get the rest, and we can put bottles in the supply caches,” I said.

She climbed into the van and went to the front.

“I see a woman across the road,” she said.

“Come on,” I assured her. “We have plenty of time.”

“No,” she said. “I’m going to sit here and keep watch. You get what you want, but I think we have plenty.”

I went back for the rest of the boxes. They were heavy, and lifting them made my sore arm hurt like crazy. In all, we got ten cases of beer, three cases of wine, a case of vodka, two bottles of bourbon, three bottles of rum, and several partial bottles of different liquors and liqueurs.

“There’s another one coming,” Sara called to me.

“I’m going to have one last look in the back,” I said. “Honk if more come in.”

I did a quick look through the desk drawers in the office. All of the lockers in the dressing room had locks on them. Satisfied that we’d collected everythin
g that would be useful to us, I
started back to the van. Out of curiosity, I stopped at the framed poster Sara had been looking at before and shined my flashlight on it.

At the top, the poster read: THE GLITTER GIRLS of THE VEGAS CLUB. The picture on the poster was of seven women in scant costumes posing together on the club’s stage. Next to each woman was her name. When I saw the smiling face of the woman second to the right, my heart skipped. According to the poster, her name was AutumnTryst, but that was
just a
stage name. It was Jen; there was no doubt about it. She was wearing a silly cowgirl getup.

I had almost forgotten what she looked like. I reached up to touch the image of her face. I could feel the tears coming…
.

The horn honked, startling me. I took one last look then I ran back to the van. By this time, the woman was standing in front of the van staring at us through the windshield. There was a little boy walking around in the highway, too.

“There’s a whole group of them coming down the road,” Sara said. “I really think they’re coming here because of me.”

I shut the rear doors and made my way through the narrow corridor between the boxes to the passenger seat.

“Let’s go,” I said, distracted.

CHAPTER 15

Sara put the van into drive and scraped out of The Vegas Club, running over the woman in the process. The group of infected she had mentioned were out on the main highway. There were about twenty of them. She easily avoided them as she got onto the four-lane headed south back into Grace County.

“If this is because of my period, then what are we going to do?” she said.

I was staring out the window, thinking about the picture of Jen and didn’t really hear what she said.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” she said.

“Huh?” I said, realizing that she was speaking.

“You saw the picture in the club.”

“Yeah,” I said. “
You didn’t have to hide
it from me. I know why you did. I know you don’t like me thinking about her, but—“

“Is that what you think?” she said.

“Well—“

She shook her head, “I didn’t want you to see that picture, because I didn’t want you to think less of her. She wouldn’t have wanted that either.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

“If Jen had wanted you to know what she did for a living, she would have told you,” she continued.

“Maybe,” I
shrugged
. “It never really came up.” I remembered that Sara and I had talked about this very subject the day Jen died.

“Maybe she thought it would lessen your opinion of her,” Sara said.

I wanted to say that it wouldn’t have, that I would have liked her just as much. However, if I was honest,
I would have to admit that the man I was before Canton B
might have had some reservations about dating a woman in her line of work. Of course, that
man
was long gone. The smil
ing cowgirl in that picture was gone, too. She wasn’t the Jen I knew…or thought I knew.

“It doesn’t bother me,”
I said and was
pleased
to find that it was the truth.