Evolution of the Dead (7 page)

“You don’t have to help me,” Carmen said.  “My friend is inside getting the keys.  We can do it on our own, but it would be nice if you helped.”

Janet snapped, “We don’t know you! How can we
trust
you? We just met you.  Maybe you’re wanting to rob us.”

Carmen couldn’t believe this.  She almost smiled, but didn’t find it funny at all.  “I don’t want to rob you, lady.  I want to be safe.”

“Then why aren’t you in there helping?”

“Because I have a broken
foot
!”

As he started getting out of the car, Nick said, “Alright.  Let’s help her set up the trucks, Janet.  We can at least do that for her.”

Janet popped her door open without saying anything.  She was not at all enthused by the idea.

Carmen added, “While you’re in there, if you get a chance, go into the employee break room.  You’ll see signs once you’re past the counter.  The door is to the left once you get back there.  There’s some leftover food in a fridge, some bottled water and some aspirin.  Please get the pills, ok? I really need to take the pills.”

Janet asked rudely, “Anything else? A foot bath? Some roses?”

Nick ignored her.  He asked, “Are there any weapons in there?”

“There might be a gun in the manager’s office,” Carmen said, also ignoring the black woman.  “I’m not sure though if there is…but, why do you need a gun?”

“To shoot these freaks around here.  How else are we going to survive?”

“Gunshots won’t do anything to them,” Carmen said shaking her head.  “They’re already dead.”

As
they entered the demolished store, Janet carefully tiptoed behind Nick, following his exact foot placements as they crossed the glass littered floor.

Nick grabbed a thin strip of window frame sticking out of a flipped couch.  Careful not to get cut on slivers of glass, he pulled it out.  It was a three foot long by four inch wide sharp strip of metal.  “I feel better holding a weapon,” he said quietly with a quirky smile.  “Even if it really isn’t one.”

Going around the fire truck, Nick pointed at a pool of vomit on the floor with the short beam, his long hair blowing in the wind coming from outside the broken store.  The pool of vomit had sprung short waving worms which were leaning toward them.

Janet asked, “Where’d she say the keys were?” Her hand was resting on his right hip.

“In the
office
? She really didn’t say
where
exactly in the office.”

As they passed the front counter, Nick asked, “It was the door on the left, right?”

“She didn't say.”

The door on the right was slightly open.  The left one was closed.  The door handle on the left side was clean.  He turned it and slowly entered.

Out of the corner of her eye, Janet saw the partially closed door on her right slowly start to open.  A woman with blown out eyes wearing a pair of blue sweats and a long t-shirt was slowly pulling the door open.  Her mouth was opening.  Janet heard a low strong rumble in the woman’s belly.

Nick turned around just in time to see a gush of vomit and entrails erupt out of her mouth.  The entrails hung there.  The vomit almost sprayed on Janet’s back.

Janet screamed.  “No! Jesus! Oh God no! No you don’t!”

Using the broken window beam as a poking rod, Nick jabbed it into the woman’s chest, sticking her hard.  He pushed her back into the room she had come from.  Her shirt pressed back against her breasts.  She had no bra on.  Her nipples were visibly sticking out under her shirt.  It was wet with vomit and bile.

Nick thought
, her tits look like Kaylee’s
.
I wonder if she’s pregnant, too.

Quickly he grabbed the door handle and pulled the door shut, closing Maria in.

Janet, out of breath, said, “That was damn close! God, I don’t want to
die
.”

Scared, Nick grabbed Janet’s hand.  He led her into the break room.  Inside, he slammed the door shut, leaned his back against it, holding it shut.

Janet was looking at him wide eyed.  “Where’s the keys?”

Nick tilted his head toward the other door.  “In that other office.  With that woman.”

“Shit! Now what?”

“Let’s see if we can find some of those pills.  Come on, hurry.”

“Well shit, the fucking airport’s out,” Scott said as they came up to a huge traffic jam on the highway.  “I hope my family made it.  Now what?”

“Take the off-ramp,” Kim said pointing.  “Maybe we can get around this and take the frontage road up there.  Let’s go down a couple exits.”

Up top, the road was crowded with more of the sickened.  “This isn’t going to be any better,” he said as he maneuvered around some crashed vehicles.

“There’s someone in that car,” Kim said.  “A girl.”

“Let her be.  At least it’s a distraction.  She’s keeping the dead fucks at bay.”

Kim gave Scott an open-mouthed offended look.  “Are you
serious
? Are you really that
way
? Would you really turn your back on someone just so you could escape?”

“Oh, you mean like you just did to your husband?”

“Fuck you.”

Frustrated, Scott said.  “Where is she?”

“In front of the Rent-A-Center, asshole.”

“Damn, calm down, alright?”  He stopped the car at the intersection past the Rent-A-Center.  He honestly didn’t want to stop.  Now that he knew that this frontage road was clear, he thought he might have a better chance of getting to his sister and dad.  They were weighing heavy on his mind.  Hopefully they had gotten to the airport already.

Getting out of the car, he yelled toward the dead, “Hey! Over here, dumbfucks.”

Some of them turned toward him.  They began to walk in his direction.  There were still several standing around the girl’s car.

“Ok, now what, sweetheart?” he asked, leaning down into the car with one hand still on the roof.

“The name’s Kim,” she said.  “Just keep hollering at them.  They’ll come over.”

“Yo! Dipshits! Over here!”

As soon as most of them had walked half-way over to Scott’s car, he jumped back in behind the wheel, spun the tires, and did a quick U-turn in the street.  He drove over next to the girl in the car.  He hollered, “Get in!” as he rolled down the window.

“
God damn
,” Carmen said under her breath.  “Lots of people driving through here.”  She opened her door and stepped across the corroded street the same way she had done minutes ago when getting into Nick’s car.

After she got in Kim asked, “What happened to your clothes?”

“It’s a long story,” she said.  “But thanks.”

Scott asked, “Why were you just sitting here? How come you didn’t run away?”

“I broke my foot,” Carmen told them.  “Some friends of mine are inside.  We’re gonna set up a roadblock with some of the trucks inside.”

Trying to remain as calm as she could, holding back anger as well as tears, she explained her idea of parking the rental trucks on the bridge again.  As she told them, she started to have second thoughts.  With Maria missing and the other two people gone, it didn’t seem like things were working out very well.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Scott said, “if you can do it fast enough.”  He drove out of the gathering group of the dead.  “Is there a back entrance to this place?”

“In the alley,” Carmen said.  “The door’s probably locked though.”

“Who cares? We’ll bust it down.  Who’s gonna arrest us? The sickies?”

He drove around to the back of the building.  Carmen pointed out the back entrance.

Popping the trunk, Scott got out, grabbed the tire iron, and headed over to the back door which was locked.  He started prying it open.  No alarms sounded.

Suddenly, the back door was shoved open from inside.  Carmen expected to see her asshole boss Norman stick his head out.  Instead, it was the cute guy with the long blonde hair and the black woman with the attitude.  They were alone.  Maria wasn’t with them.

Stepping back with a surprised grin, Scott asked, “Jesus, how many people are in here looking for keys?”

“There’s a dead freak in the office,” Nick hollered to Carmen.  "Some woman wearing blue sweats and a blue shirt.  That your friend?”

“Yeah,” Carmen called out, lowering her head.  “Her name’s Maria.  Is she dead?”

Nick nodded, his long hair swinging.  “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

“Damn,” Carmen whispered.

Scott said, “Come on, let’s go get her out of the way and get the keys.”

Carmen said, “The door to the left - right when you get in - leads to a hallway.  It goes down to the loading dock.  That’s where the trucks are.”

“We’ll get them,” Scott said hurriedly.  “You two just wait right there.  We’ll be back for ya in a sec.”

Scott followed Nick and Janet back into the building.

Kim turned around in the seat to face Carmen.  She said, “I’m Kim.”

“Carmen.”

She looked down at Carmen’s leg.  “How did you break your foot?”

“I jumped out of a building.”

“No shit? Are you ok?”

“Other than my foot, yeah, but I’m scared to death of this crap.”

“Yeah, me too.  I wonder what caused it.”

“I don’t know.  It happened so fast.”

Carmen turned in her seat, too.  Both of them watched the back door of the Rent-A-Center.  Their heads were like swivels as they looked from the back door, to the corner of the building expecting at any second for the worst to happen.

Inside, Nick, Scott and Janet stood with their backs to the wall next to the shut manager’s office door.

Scott whispered, “You ready?”

Nick nodded as he held his piece of window frame like a baseball bat.

“You stay back,” Scott motioned to Janet as he quickly turned the knob on the door, unlatching it.  He kicked it open.  It slammed back against the door stop.

Maria stepped out into the hallway.  Her skin had all dried.  Now it hung on her in large powdery chunks.  Under her skin, in spots, rivers of worms swirled madly through her veins.  Some had blackened and were dangling out of her cheeks.  Her hair was in the process of falling out.  Something larger was hanging out of her mouth.  It had gotten stuck there when she vomited out all of her liquids.  To Nick, it looked like she had thrown up her stomach, but then he realized that it was a fetus in a dried collapsed amniotic sack.

“Aww
shit
,” he said, holding back vomit.  He used the window frame, stabbing her in the chest and pushing her back into the office.  With Nick holding her back, Scott avoided Maria’s flailing arms.  He quickly stepped into the office.  The walls were covered in puke and blood.  It had run down the walls.

“Where’s the goddamn keys?”

“There, by the calendar,” Nick said pointing as Maria reached for him.

Each key had a plastic color coded ring on the end of it.  There were five of them hanging in a row on a pegboard.

Scott yelled, “Let’s go!” He scooped the keys off into his pocket and ran out of the office past Nick.

Nick pulled his beam away from Maria’s chest as he pulled the door shut, blocking her in.

“Ok, let’s get to the warehouse!”

When they pulled the door open to run down to the loading docks, a woman with long blonde curly hair, red lipstick and large breasts met them.  They scared each other.  Fanning herself with her hand she asked, “Are you here to save me?”

“No, we’re saving ourselves,” Nick said as he ran past her.  “Come on.  We’re taking the trucks.”

“You can’t take those,” Rita called after them.

Realizing these people didn’t care what she said, she ran down the hall after them.  She hoped Norman was ok, wherever he was.

In the parking garage, all six of the trucks were backed up to the loading dock.

Scott gave the keys to Nick.  “They’re color coded to the trucks."

“Right.”

He pointed at Janet and Rita.  “You two.  Go with him.  Get in the first two trucks he starts.”

“The name’s Janet,” she said.

“Fine, whatever, we’ll get to the formalities later, ok? Right now I’m going back for the other girls after I get these overhead doors open.”

“Alright,” she said as she followed Nick.

“There’s buttons on the wall by the doors,” Rita called after him.  “They open the overhead doors.”

The three of them ran down the line of trucks.  Scott ran over to the overhead doors.  Each one had its own electric door opener.  He hit each button as he ran down the length of the building but none of the doors opened.  Cussing, he ran back along the doors.  He had to open each one manually. As each door opened, the group of the dead gathering in the street grew bigger and bigger.

He shouted, “We need to hurry! They’re gonna get in here!”