Revenence: Dead Silence, A Zombie Novel (23 page)

"Hurry up," Daphne said in a muted, sing-song voice, her lips barely moving, "and be careful."

Shari crept back to the front of the store. 
So far, so good,
she thought, noting the procession of zombies steadily making their way east, continuing past the motorcycle shop.  She advanced to the spot where she had stood, changing into her new zombie survival gear.  She picked up Fauna's hat from the shelf where she had absent-mindedly set it.  She placed it on top of the kevlar skull hood she wore and silently crept to the back of the store, where Daphne and Eva waited.  She stopped for a moment near the counter, looking back.  She saw, much to her chagrin, a young male zombie in a Wal-Mart shirt making his way toward the shop. 
Now I KNOW I saw that guy shuffle past the store and down the road. 
As she gazed out the window, she saw another familiar one, and another, and another.  An elderly female, two little girls wearing their best Easter dresses. 
They were all headed in the opposite direction, now they're coming back.  That can't be good.

"Well, princess, it would appear they are, indeed, hunting you and Daphne.  They're just not that skilled at it, I presume.  But it would seem they've got their sights set on you now, wouldn't it?"

She made her way to the back room.  She looked at Daphne and pointed toward the road.  "They're coming back," she whispered, though it was really more mouthing the words than whispering them. 

Daphne nodded.  "I know," she mouthed.  "I can hear them out there."  The undead were piled up against the front door.  One fifty-something male zombie wearing a uniform was awkwardly beating the door with a large pair of channel locks.  A thin crack appeared in the door.  Shari was guessing the undead man had been a plumber, based on the uniform and the tool that he still held in his undead state. 
Judging from the state he's in,
she thought, noting his discolored, well-rotted flesh,
he might've been walking around with those channel locks since the first day of this plague.  Since the day he was still just a plumber, and I was just a librarian. 
The plumber continued to batter the front door, which was already compromised.  The crack began to deepen, sending out smaller cracks along its length.

Shari climbed onto a desk.  It was situated underneath a window, which was high up on the wall.  She stood on the desk, peering through the window. 
Aw, shitstain!
she thought.  There were roughly a dozen undead wandering around the back parking lot. 
They know we're in here, for sure.
  She racked her brain, wondering how she and Daphne should proceed.  She looked around the back of the store and the hallway leading to the front showroom.  She approached the front door carefully, realizing upon close inspection that there was a metal gate which could be retracted from the wall, providing a barrier between the foyer and the rest of the store.  She silently pointed it out to Daphne.  Daphne nodded, giving her a "thumbs-up."  She walked briskly to the front of the store, no longer worried about being stealthy.  She unlocked the front door, then the outer door of the foyer.  She grabbed the gate, attempting to pull it closed. 
Fuck, it won't budge!
she said internally.  
Kandi, what the hell do I do!?

"
Hurry up!  Lock it!"
Daphne whispered, her face contorted into an expression of horrified urgency.   

Kandi piped up from behind her.  "You might want to disengage that lock," she said, pointing to a locking mechanism near the floor.  "And hurry, because trouble's headed this way."  Shari heard a zombie stumble toward the open foyer.  She fumbled with the lock, beginning to panic. 

"
It's stuck
," she whispered to Daphne.  She continued her attempt to slide the locking mechanism down as  Daphne crept toward her and took out her Titan blade, ready for a showdown with the undead.  She saw that there were another eight of them wandering toward the foyer. 

"Shari," Kandi said in a sing-song voice, "you have that hammer, dear."  Shari ran to the back room.

"
Where are you going?"
Daphne hissed. 

"Be back in two seconds," she said over her shoulder, already passing the back counter and headed into the back of the store.  She opened her bag and took out a titanium drywall hammer she had gotten from Fauna's garage.  She raced back to the front, where Daphne was throwing her sharpened sticks at the undead.  She had taken out four of them just outside the shop, but more were approaching.  Shari struck the lock with the hammer side of the axe, still unable to move it.  She glanced up...half of a dozen undead were now three feet away from the threshold.  She inhaled deeply. 
Fuck this lock,
she thought bitterly.  She hit it with all of her strength, breaking it off.  It flew toward the zombies as Daphne grabbed the gate and pulled it closed until she heard a latching sound.  Shari snatched her hand out of the way just as the gate closed, but not before a middle-aged undead man crouched down to gnash at her.  After she had yanked her hand back through the gate, she took off her kevlar glove.  There was a mark that looked like a perforated oval on her lower forearm...the shape of the man's teeth.  It was already forming a thick, red welt.

"Jesus," she whispered, "thank God I had these gloves on."

"Yeah," Daphne agreed, panting with relief, "that looks like it hurts, but at least you didn't get zombie cooties." 

The two of them stepped back, staring in macabre wonder at the foyer, which was rapidly filling with undead. 

"There's got to be...I don't know...at least a few dozen already," Shari muttered.

"And a lot more still outside, finding their way in," Daphne added.  She looked toward the back door that lead outside behind the building.  "The good news is, the ones who were back there are probably headed up front, too."  She silently crossed the showroom to the back of the store and stood on the desk.  Shari followed her tentatively.  Daphne peered through the window into the parking lot.  "Yeah," she mumbled.  "Looks like they're all on their way to the front to pile on top of each other in that foyer."

"Alright," Shari said, "we'll go back up there, attract as many of them as possible.  Let them all make their way in the front door.  Then we'll make a break for it."  She eyed the gate nervously.  "At least, as long as it looks like that gate'll hold." 

They packed up the few items they had taken from their bags, and the excess merchandise they had taken, and prepared to make a run for it when the back lot was clear of undead.  Shari took advantage of the extra time by carefully surveying the merchandise, taking everything she thought might be useful, at least what she could fit in her pack.  She then took two leather backpacks from the shelf, filling one for herself and one for Daphne.  She loaded the packs with extra gloves, sunglasses, belts, and other sundries, including a few dozen clean panties and socks that read,
Ride to Live. 
Each pack also contained a spare kevlar outfit and hood.  She approached the front counter display and perused the selection of chest protectors, cigarette holders, and fancy lighters.

Daphne passed the time by stabbing zombie skulls through the gate.  She was indifferent as she reached her arm through the five-inch wide slots.  She disloged her knife from the eye of a fresher zombie, a pretty young woman with hair dyed the color of a candy apple.  As she brought the knife back through the gate, she found, much to her annoyance, that the young lady's eyeball was still attached to the blade.  She looked at it in distaste, then slid it gingerly to the end of her knife, at which point she flicked it across the room.  Shari flinched as the orb bounced across the floor, stopping as it struck her boot.  Daphne continued, plunging her blade into undead eyes and temples, then sliced off the ears of the victims, or at least the ones she could reach.  As they were slain, they collapsed to the floor, where they were stepped upon by the ones behind them.  When Daphne was finished, she had about three-dozen ears.  Zombies were piled up wall to wall, three feet high.  Even with all the ones who were re-killed, there was still a crowd of many dozens more outside the building.  Shari looked out the window to the east.  The horde stretched about fifty feet past the building.  "I'm gonna go in back and look again," she said.  Daphne followed behind her.  Shari climbed the desk.

"I think we can make it," she told Daphne as she looked through the window.  "If you hurry up and get the ATV started, we should have no problem outrunning them.  Just keep a safe perimeter from the building.  They're all still intent on getting here, and probably will be until they hear us take off."

They slid the cabinet out from in front of the door.  Shari led Eva out as Daphne swung the door open.  She mounted, then waited for Daphne to start the ATV.  She watched, shaking with anxiety, while Daphne struggled to turn the engine over. 

"I think it's because it's low on gas," Daphne muttered.
             

Shari heard what she thought to be an approaching zombie.  She held her breath for about five seconds, until she saw a frail, elderly male zombie round the corner.  His lower face had been torn and eaten down to the bone. 

Oh God, Daphne, hurry,
she thought, arming her drywall hammer
.
 

The rotting octeganarian advanced in Daphne's direction, slowly but surely.  Shari heard the shuffling sound of more undead headed toward the back lot.  One rounded the corner, then two, three, four, five...and still Daphne sat, trying to start the ATV.

"Daphne, just get on the horse with me and let's go!" Shari snapped, riding Eva toward Daphne...and the undead...reluctantly.  She swung the hammer at the festering neck of the walking corpse.  The titanium head sunk into the skull with ease, which collapsed the soft bone around the entry hole and gave it the look of a button on an overstuffed chair.

"But all the guns and ammo I've collected are in the trunk!  I'm not leaving all that stuff."

"It's not worth your life!  We can come back for it, just come on!"  Another zombie was now within grabbing distance of Daphne.  She swung her knife, barely looking up from the ignition she was still struggling with, and sliced off the top of his skull, which slid slowly from the head to which it had been attached and down to the ground.  The other five zombies were closing in on her, and more kept appearing from around the corner.  Shari backed away from the enlarging crowd of undead, trying to be sure she they couldn't surround her.

"
Daphne!
" she thundered.  "
Let's go now!
"  Daphne finally succeeded in starting the engine, and within two seconds she was speeding away from the crowd.  She did a wide U-turn to head eastward in the direction Eva and Shari were headed.  They made their way to the road, keeping a wide gap between themselves and the building.  After about three-hundred feet, they were clear of the migrating herd of undead on the road, and out of harm's way.  They shifted from the shoulder to the road, and headed east.  Shari rode alongside Daphne.

"That was a close call," she shouted over the roar of Daphne's engine. 

"Yeah," Daphne replied, "but I wanted my stuff.  Besides, we've got this nifty armor now.  Otherwise, I wouldn't have taken a chance like that."

Shari scoffed.  "Armor or no armor, you don't want to be on the bottom of a zombie pile."

Daphne shrugged, eyes ahead, and continued down the road.  Once they had gotten a considerable distance from town, Shari motioned for Daphne to stop.  She braked, coming to a halt near an abandoned minivan. 

"I'm gonna siphon some gas while we're here," Daphne said. 

Shari nodded.  "I was just thinking," Shari said, "I don't think it's very likely that those guys...those sadists...went through town back there."

Daphne pondered the idea.  "No, probably not," she agreed.  "It was way too quiet when we came  through there.  I mean, if our one ATV and one horse dragged that many undead out onto Main Street, just think what it would've been like if a convoy of loud, obnoxious Viking-wannabes came through, motors blaring.  We would've seen at least some of them still wandering the streets, or the road east of town if nothing else."

"Well...."  Shari gazed off absently, contemplating what their course of action should be.  "Let's try going back toward town, then take the highway south from there.  I know there's a Wal-Mart down that way, and a decent-sized town.  If you want to find the sadists, follow the valuables."

"And where there are survivors, there are women," Daphne said.  "That's all those scumbags live for.  Rape and plunder."  She turned 180 degrees, in the direction of the town they had come from.

"Let's go punish those cowardly mobsmen," Kandi said, turning her horse around to follow Shari and Daphne.

"Cast your thoughts back, dear," Kandi replied.  "Remember the Indian goddess Durga?  I suppose you could say I'm the Kandi to your Durga."

But who's Durga?

Kandi smirked.  "If I know it, you must know it, too."

Whatever, Kandi Cane
, Shari thought, irritated
.