Safari - 02 (5 page)

He retreated to the garage and readied his weapons. The aluminum bat got slipped over his shoulder, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. It would probably kill him to swing the thing.

After getting the ladders back in place, Gus went up and over the wall. His heavy, steel-toed boots squeaked over the snow as he made his way to the road leading up to the gate. He got to the pickup and remembered the suitcases in the back.

“Might as well…” He got back out and proceeded to haul them from the rear of the truck. Gus opened the stylish blue one first and quickly dismissed it as belonging to a woman and containing only clothes. The two black ones were filled with an assortment of men’s and women’s clothing. He didn’t see anything useful, so he left them in the snow, open and exposed to the elements.

Grunting, he got aboard the pickup and gave the dangling fuzzy dice a slap for luck. His bat and shotgun went into the passenger seat with a warning of ‘Be good.’ He turned the key, and the engine rumbled to life. The fuel gauge informed him that he had three quarters of a tank, plenty for what he wanted to do.

As he drove over the snowy road, huge flakes splattered against the windshield. Moments later, the lower gate came into view, and he frowned. Roxanne’s raider friends had smashed through it and left it ruined on warped hinges. That was another job that would have to wait. Shaking his head, he pulled onto the highway and turned in the direction of Annapolis.

A huge Dodge pickup sat in the middle of the road, snow covered and as dead as the corpses he’d only just burned.

“What’s…?” Gus slowed and stuck his head out the window. He pulled ahead of the dark truck and saw the driver, a man, splayed out on his back in the road. His torso had been gutted in a fashion that reminded Gus of someone perhaps eating a meat pot pie, face first and leaving only the crust about the edges. The man’s clothes had been shredded. Frost coated the jagged edges of the corpse’s abdominal cavity while a trail of guts snaked from the body, frozen to the asphalt, and congealed into a gruesome lump a few feet beyond. It almost seemed as if a zombie had scooped out a generous dollop of intestinal tract, left the other undead feeders, and dropped it for some unknown reason.

“Sucks to be you.” But he shifted the truck into park and studied the remains.

He had to make sure.

Reaching down and pulling the Ruger from his boot, he switched the safety off the weapon and racked the slide. The cold air gusted in as he opened the door and struggled from the vehicle. Lumbering like a deadhead himself, he reached the side of the devoured corpse and stared down at the ravaged face. Gus felt his stomach turn. They had clawed the eyes from the poor bastard’s head and chewed the flesh from his face, gnawed right to the bloody bone. Distaste smoldered within Gus’s core, and he aimed the pistol, straight-armed, at the forehead of the corpse.

“Hey,” he said.

No reaction.

“I said
hey
, you stupid rat fuck bastard.”

Still nothing.

Gus considered the man’s legs. The thigh and calf muscles had also been gnawed to the bone. The guy wouldn’t be rising even if it could. The undead hadn’t just feasted; they had eaten the man down to nothing.

The body at his feet moaned.

From its ruined throat came a hollow sound that startled Gus and caused him to step back. The head turned slowly, shaking as if about to detach itself from the few tendons fastening it in place. The eyeless sockets seemed to track him. The jaw opened, and Gus had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing a gaping hole where the tongue should have been. The corpse continued hissing, and Gus stood away from the new zombie, once again awed by the sinister life force that animated the dead even when nothing was left on the bones. The thought entered his mind that the newest zombie had somehow been responsible for the army of deadheads at his front door. At his feet, the zombie tried in vain to lift its head. Strands of a few remaining tendons enabled it to open its jaws a little more, as if it were attempting to scream.

Gus shot it through the forehead, the sound of the suppressed Ruger sounding strange on the snow-covered highway.

He’d lingered too long. There was work to do.

4

Gus circled the Home Hardware superstore in his new pickup, keeping at a steady thirty kilometers per hour and giving the few deserted cars left in the parking lot a wide berth. The sky remained overcast and sprinkled snowflakes as if seasoning a soup. Snow blanketed the ground and candy cane shaped streetlamps, giving the scene a Christmas-like feel. He rolled behind the shop and saw that the loading bay doors were all closed, which was a good sign. Sometimes gimps lucked out and got a door open, especially if it meant pushing a lever instead of a turning a knob.

He circled the store once more and studied the ground for signs of tracks. There weren’t any that he could see, but the sound of his tires creeping over the snow-covered lot plucked on his nerves.

“Shit.” He should have gotten half-drunk before venturing into town. That was a mistake he felt in his face and ribs. Painkillers. He needed painkillers as well as building supplies, but he didn’t know any of the stronger brands beyond the more generic ones, nor did he have any idea of dosage.

He brought the truck around to the front, then turned it so the rear faced the entrance of the Home Hardware. Once in position for a quick getaway if needed, Gus stared ahead for a minute and mentally readied himself. He reluctantly got out and felt the cold air brush across his devastated features. The bat went into the scabbard across his back, and a full bandolier of shotgun shells crossed it. The weight of the bat pulled uncomfortably against his ribs, but he kept it there. Wishing again for the pain dampening buzz of whiskey or rum or whatever, he checked the Bowie knife in his left boot and the Ruger pistol in his right. Satisfied, he hefted the shotgun and placed the butt against his shoulder, hoping to God he wouldn’t have to use it.

“All right. Let’s get shopping, Captain.” The name drew him up short for a moment. He didn’t have a bottle of Captain Morgan with him, but the idea that the foppish sailor accompanied him in spirit was comforting.

Gus marched toward the main entrance, flakes attaching themselves to his battered brow and eyelids. The snow crunched with each step, and he tried to look everywhere at once. He reached the dark maw of doors and noted that they were intact. He rattled one in its frame before realizing he was pulling when he should push. Placing his shoulder against the glass, he eased inside and scowled at the gloomy interior. Shafts of daylight periodically stabbed the darkness from skylights high above, but it was too far to illuminate anything deep inside the aisles. Gus paused, standing before a turnstile and chrome sensor used to deter shoplifters.

“What do you think? Hmm?” he asked the captain’s spirit and eyed the deep recesses of the hardware store. After a moment, he clanged the barrel of the Benelli against the metal sensor. The echo rang out in the store, and Gus shifted the skeleton butt against his shoulder, his fingers flexing on the grip.

He didn’t have to wait long.

From somewhere deep inside the store came a loud crash, as if a small mountain of cans had toppled. Gus turned to his left when he heard the rapid thudding of bare flesh against the floor, like a drummer warming up to really lay into the skins. Footsteps. The feet came closer, and he hunched over, shotgun ready.

The patter of bare feet sped up, closing in, coming from his right. The thing had altered its course. Gus shifted and looked over the scope of his shotgun. The clamor became louder, as if the person who had just entered the main aisle was gathering steam.

“Shit,” Gus whispered.

He heard the maniacal wheeze and moan of the runner before it burst into sight, and even though he had known it was coming, seeing the tall, lanky corpse with both of its arms chewed off at the shoulders startled him. The dead thing spotted him, and its eyes brightened with famished delight. It slammed into a cash register, buckling its upper body over the counter and knocking a rack over in its clumsy haste. It lifted its head up frantically, checking to see if its meal was still in sight, and when it sighted Gus again, the jaw dropped open in a jagged grin.

It turned the corner of the checkout counter, and Gus shot it in the face, the spent red shell-casing spitting out the side of the weapon. The blast flung the armless deadhead back, crumpling it over a packing station. Bare, filthy feet went up and shivered in the air for a brief moment, like something stretched out before snapping back into shape, then flopped down out of sight.

“Right on,” Gus said, not lowering the Benelli and feeling the lingering punch of the recoil. Then, he heard the rustling of debris, of things being pushed aside with no consideration of silence, coming from different directions, and knew he’d come upon a nest.

Backing through the doorway, Gus retreated to the pickup and tossed the shotgun into the rear. He drew his pistol, switched off the safety, racked the slide, and checked the surrounding area before finally settling his attention on whatever was about to spring from the hardware store doors. He had a killing field of perhaps ten feet. If there were more Dees than he had bullets, it would be a challenge to get into the truck and away before they swarmed him. He wasn’t as spry as he used to be.

Shadows slowly solidified into shambling husks of long-dead shoppers and red-shirted staff. They spotted him and charged, crashing against the glass door.

With a sigh of disdain, Gus remembered the door opened inward, yet the monsters were intent on pushing. Shaking his head, he cut the distance in half and put a bullet into the first zombie that stayed still long enough. A splintered hole appeared in the surface of the glass with a harsh tinkle at the same instant he squeezed the trigger. Faces smeared themselves against the pane, mindlessly tracking him as he moved. He shot the second one a moment later, then put down the remaining five, riddling the glass without regret.

Afterward, he kicked out the crinkled glass in one door and stepped inside. The smell of the decomposing bodies hit him like a mallet, fouling his mouth and his wreck of a nose. Snarling, he pulled the corpses back, clearing the way, and used a couple of them to prop open the door.

“Stay,” he warned the mound before turning around and heading back into the store. Once past the powerless shoplifter sensors, Gus readied his pistol two-handed and yelled, “Anyone else want some of this? Huh? Anyone? I’m right here, you sorry sons-a-bitches..

He made an effort to keep his upper lip down over his gums, to shield them from the cold air. Hearing nothing, Gus shouted again, a nonsense bellow of noise that failed to attract any attention.

He stepped over to a rack near one of the checkout counters and picked up a handheld, rechargeable flashlight. He squeezed the handle, powering up the device, and after a few seconds, the bulb emitted a dull light. Holding the flashlight in his offhand and keeping the Ruger ready, he proceeded into the hardware store, stopping once to reach for a shopping cart and wonder if there might be any specials. The thought made him chuckle.

The light from the flashlight wobbled as Gus steered the cart down the main aisle. Listening to the gentle rattle of the cart, he soon found himself leaning over its push bar. Surprisingly, many of the shelves hadn’t been looted. He passed painting supplies and remembered a career long gone with some nostalgia, and actually stopped and considered the prices. Next, towels and facecloths appeared, along with a supply of miscellaneous kitchen goods. He spotted a shelf full of small tents and grabbed a box, dumping it in the cart. The noise made him pause for a moment, listening once again for any reaction.

He rattled past aisles cluttered with debris of all kinds—hockey sticks, cans of motor oil, plastic water bottles, coolers, even children’s preschool toys. Some sections had been gutted, especially the firearms and stores of ammunition. Gus had come there perhaps a year ago looking for weapons, only to find that everything had been taken. He pushed the cart to the building supply section and quickly found boxes of three-inch nails. A few of these went into the cart, as well as several boxes of short ones from another nearby bin. He wheeled up another aisle and came across a dark set of patio furniture, which made him think of the deck.

And then Roxanne.

He pushed her face from his thoughts and forged ahead, ignoring the sour smell of decayed sweat on the air. Cans and other fallen items on the floor clattered as the cart’s front wheels shoved through the debris. Weaving through the dark maze, he eventually located several large pallets of wood. Switching the safety on the pistol, he holstered it in his boot and inspected the planks. He figured each piece was about an inch thick and at least three inches wide. He took one piece from the pile and guessed it to be cut at least eight feet long. The pallet itself had wheels, but he wasn’t able to haul the raw building material anywhere. Fumbling with a plank, trying to make it fit in the cart, he piled up several pieces length-wise across the top, spanning the front and handle bar and wrapping an arm around the ends of the planks for stability. It took some effort to get moving, and he plodded down the aisles, the wood jutting from the front of the cart as if he were about to joust. He returned to the truck, unloaded the wood, and made the first of several trips back to the pickup. He didn’t know exactly how much he needed, so he decided to haul back as much as the truck could handle, just to be sure.

Once he finished storing his scavenged supplies in the pickup, Gus noticed the temperature had dropped. He badly wanted to sniff, to clear his sinuses, but he knew the pain wasn’t worth it. Gus turned around, sensing something sneaking up on him, but the parking lot remained as snowy and stark as an Antarctic plain.

He looked up, taking in the huge yellow lettering of the store, and kept his eyes on it for a moment before slowly turning his attention to the distant tops of houses and buildings fencing in the lot. The idea of making one more search of the store hit him, as he wasn’t certain he had an electric saw back at the house. He had a handsaw, but there was no way he could take that kind of motion. It would rip him apart. He’d need an extension cord as well, the heavy outdoor kind. While thoughts on where exactly to find the needed items filled his head, he took the keys from the ignition.