Sven the Zombie Slayer (35 page)

“We’re here,” Jane said.

She spotted the familiar gun store’s parking lot and drove into it, very slowly. “Look safe to you guys?”

“Looks quiet,” Sven said.

“Yeah,” Lorie said.

It did look quiet.

Jane parked in front of the store, then reconsidered, pulled out, and backed up to the store’s entrance. It wasn’t a parking spot, but she didn’t think anyone would mind that day.

75

Sven put Ivan into his backpack. The cat gave Sven an unhappy meow, but didn’t try to jump out. Sven wasn’t going to leave Ivan in the car, not now, and not anymore. There would not be any more separation among the group members.

Sven saw Jane watching him as he packed up Ivan and a water bottle.

“We’re all gonna stick together from now on,” he said, then jerked a thumb at the back seat. “The kids too. And we can’t leave the car running, or unlocked either. We can’t have someone come along and steal it, leaving us stranded. That’d be game over.”

“Okay,” Jane said. She turned the car off and pocketed the keys. Was Sven comfortable with that? With her having the keys? He told himself that he was. Then he turned around to look at Lorie and Evan. Lorie looked chipper, and Sven was sure she was excited to get into the gun store. She would probably try to make off with half of the weapons in there. Evan looked pale and sleepy, but at least he wasn’t throwing up anymore.

“Now don’t go grabbing any guns,” Jane said to Lorie. Her shoulders slumped and her gaze fell to the floor, looking beaten.

“But how am I supposed to defend myself?” Lorie asked. “From the zombies?”

“Guns are very dangerous, Lorie,” Jane said.

“So how come you’re getting some for yourself?” Lorie asked.

“I’ve had training,” Jane said. “I’ve been shooting for a long time.”

“Training?” Lorie asked, excitement creeping back into her voice. “Then you can train me, right?”

Sven wasn’t sure how to deal with this situation. Yes, there were zombies about, but did that mean they should let high school kids arm themselves with guns?

“Let’s stick to blunt objects for now,” Sven said. “You were really good back there with the pan, and with the sledgehammer too.”

“I was better with the knives,” Lorie said. “And I’m not going to give up this one.” She reached down for her butcher knife. Sven saw that she had been resting it on the floor, with one of her feet pressing down onto the blade. She was being careful, he had to give her that.

“I’m not gonna fight you for it, that’s for sure,” Sven said.

Jane looked like she was on the verge of saying something, then didn’t.

“Evan,” Lorie said, “are you well enough to come out with us? We’re just going into the store to stock up on things.”

Evan looked unsure of himself but nodded. He seemed to be turning greener with each nod. “Yeah...I’ll come. I’m okay.”

“Let’s go then,” Sven said. “Before all those zombies behind us catch up. Any sign of those things?” Sven surveyed the parking lot in front of him and turned back to look through the dimmed rear window toward the gun store. It was hard to make things out back there.

“The undead?” Lorie asked. “I don’t see any around here. The store entrance looks all clear, but I can’t tell if any are inside.”

“We look good from what I can see,” Jane said. “Just don’t get too close to any of the cars. They could be under the cars too.”

“Ready?” Sven asked.

“Ready,” Jane, Lorie, and Evan said. Ivan meowed, and if Sven had to interpret it, he would’ve interpreted the meow as, “Not ready, I don’t wanna go.” But it wasn’t up to the cat.

“Sorry,” Sven said to Ivan. “It’ll be okay soon. Lots of fish treats, I promise.”

Sven gripped the straps of the backpack from which Ivan’s head peeked out. He opened his door, and stepped slowly out of the car. His troupe followed, all moving carefully, to the gun store’s entrance. Sven realized they must have looked odd—two adults, a cat, and two teenagers, sneaking into a gun store in the middle of the day. The thought made Sven look up. Actually, it didn’t look much like the middle of the day anymore. The clouds were coming in strong.

“Let’s make this as quick as possible,” Sven said. “The zombies are coming, and it looks like a storm is too.”

“It just keeps getting better,” Jane said, and gave Sven a wry smile. She put on her mask, and Sven, Lorie, and Evan followed suit. Then she pulled open the door and went inside.

76

Sven walked in quickly after Jane, slinging the backpack with Ivan in it onto his back. Jane had begun to move a little too fast for Sven’s liking, and he was trying to keep up with her to make sure she wasn’t walking into a zombie-infested store, while also keeping Lorie and Evan in sight.

The gun shop looked deserted. It would be a huge bonus, a huge relief if it was, but there were aisles, and Sven could see a corridor behind the counter leading somewhere—probably to a storeroom, and there was likely a basement—so there were lots of unhappy possibilities lurking in the unknown.

Then one of these unhappy possibilities emerged into Sven’s field of vision. Evan gasped and Jane stopped in the midst of her mad dash to the gun display. The zombie had appeared from behind an aisle, and it was wearing plaid and overalls that did little to contain its immense belly. The face looked dry and misshapen, and Sven guessed that the thing’s belly had been even more massive before it got infected and dried up. As if to confirm that it was drying up, a piece of the zombie’s earlobe fell off as the zombie lurched toward Jane, who stood watching it, frozen in her tracks.

Ivan hissed, and kicked Sven in the back a few times through the backpack.

Then Lorie was running, and she left Sven’s field of vision.

“No,” Sven said, “where are you going?”

But the girl was gone. She had left Evan standing close to the store’s entrance, still wearing his shocked, pallid expression.

The zombie was getting closer to Jane, and she must have snapped out of it, because she climbed over the counter and began to rummage through the guns in the display. When Sven saw her do this, he noticed that most of the display was empty, and there was a lot of empty space behind the counter too, as if people had gone through the place already and cleaned it out. Sven and his gang were late to the party.

Then Lorie was back. She ran out of the bow and arrow aisle wielding her butcher knife. She made straight for the plaid zombie’s left, overall-covered leg and swung hard. The knife cracked something and stuck deep into the top of the zombie’s calf, but it didn’t go through. The plaid zombie lurched to the side, off-balance, and then was overcome by the weight of its great belly. It fell sideways, thundering to the ground with a terrible crunch as the leg that Lorie had chopped bent sideways below the knee.

On the floor, the zombie floundered back and forth around the mass of its belly, then lay relatively still, though it still made small flailing, clutching motions with its hands. The hands looked tiny relative to the rest of its body, making Sven imagine a tyrannosaur in its death throes.

It was such an odd sight that Sven had trouble looking away, and Lorie’s eager ferocity to dispatch the plaid zombie hadn’t broken Sven’s curiosity at the thing, because he’d already been exposed to her overactive fighting spirit.

What did break his concentration, however, was the gunshot.

He had been watching the great, undead flailing beast on the floor of the gun shop, when, all of a sudden, a black hole formed under its eye and the top left side of its head fell away, as if its skull were a misshapen fortune cookie. The movement of the tyrannosaur-like arms stopped, and the zombie lay still.

Sven turned to the counter, where Jane stood, holding a gun in both hands, still aimed at the plaid zombie’s body. Lorie and Evan were watching Jane too, and their looks were somewhat apprehensive behind their masks. Sven was surprised that Lorie looked apprehensive after she had just sunk a butcher knife into a zombie. Maybe he was wrong, and that wasn’t Lorie’s apprehensive look. Maybe it was her admiring look. It was hard to tell behind the mask.

“I see you’re still a good shot,” Sven said.

Jane began to do something with the gun, then she picked up a shoulder holster from somewhere behind the counter and put it on. She holstered the gun and gathered up some boxes of ammo and a few magazines.

“Do you shoot a lot?” Lorie asked, wide-eyed.

“A couple times a week,” Jane said. “Sometimes more. Are there any bags back there Lorie? Good ones? We’re gonna need some durable packs to carry this stuff.”

“I’ll go look,” Lorie said, and disappeared into the aisle from which she had run like a crazy mini-butcher.

Sven looked around the store, but he had no idea what to pick up here. He wasn’t into guns, and knew next to nothing about them. People always assumed that because he lived in
Virginia
he went hunting or at least shooting all the time, that he owned guns, and that he took pride in owning them. But none of those things were true, and he knew he’d have to defer to Jane’s expertise on the matter.

“Any advice on what I should pick up?” Sven asked.

Lorie came back with three sturdy-looking, camouflage duffel bags and two travel backpacks—the kind with water reservoirs connected to drink tubes with bike valves.

“Are there any more of the camel water backpack things back there?” Sven asked.

“Yeah, plenty,” Lorie said. “They’re kinda heavy though. I’ll get the rest.” Lorie disappeared back into the aisle.

Jane began filling one of the duffel bags with the boxes of ammo and the magazines. “Well, if you still shoot the way I remember, we need to get you a shotgun.”

“Thanks,” Sven said, then added, “I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

Jane raised a dubious eyebrow at him. “Let’s find you that shotgun.” Then she reduced her voice to a whisper, “Of course, this is the zombie apocalypse, so if you want to try some of these handguns, I’m not gonna stop you. Just warn me before you try to shoot them.”

Sven harrumphed. He could shoot a gun if he wanted…kind of. But Jane was right, a shotgun was a better idea, so he began to look for one.

“What about me?” Evan asked. “What should I do?”

Sven was about to tell the boy to look for some granola bars and water, but before he could say it, Jane said, “Why don’t you help keep watch at the door? That’s really important right now and we’ve been neglecting it already.”

“Okay,” Evan said. “I can do that.” He walked toward the front of the store.

“Psst,” a voice whispered.

“Psst,” it came again. Sven turned around and saw that it was Jane, motioning for him to come over to her.

Sven walked over to her. “I thought I was supposed to be finding a shotgun.”

“And you will,” she whispered, “but I want to talk to you about something…in private.”

“Alright.” Sven looked down into the display case and saw that it hadn’t quite been picked clean—not all the way. There were a few guns left, and there was a very long knife that caught his eye. Jane began to say something, but Sven kept looking at the knife. The metal was mottled, like it needed a good shining. That made Sven wonder if the knife was sharp. He peered down into the case, and saw that the label under the knife said, “Machete, dating back to—”