Sven the Zombie Slayer (49 page)

There’ll be time for crying later, she told herself, now’s the time to get out of harm’s way.

Sven put the shotgun down and leaned over Evan. He began to scoop the boy up when Brian came up from behind him.

“Let me,” Brian said. “You look like you need to ease up on the heavy lifting…yeah, I’ve noticed you’re injured. I’ll get the kid. And besides, you’re pretty good with that thing. Mean kinda gun isn’t it?”

Sven let Brian take the boy away from him and straightened up. “Thanks. I got into a bit of trouble this morning, pulled a few muscles I think.’

Brian nodded, not seeming to strain at all as he held Evan in his arms. Jane was relieved that it wasn’t Sven holding the boy…not that Brian deserved any worse, of course, but she couldn’t watch that happen to Sven, couldn’t—

“I put it before you all that we leave the unfortunate boy behind,” Milt said. “In fact, to be quite frank, I insist upon it. We cannot bring that thing inside with us.” Milt pointed to Evan. “It is quite clear that he is on his way to becoming a human-devouring zombie. Therefore, he cannot remain a part of this tribe. Don’t you understand? This is not a camping trip, this is the zombie apocalypse!”

Sven’s mouth dropped open. “It’s just a cold. He’s had it for a few days.” Sven was stiff and tight-lipped. He gave Evan a once-over and turned away.

“It is
obviously
much more than a cold virus. Look at the exterior of his countenance! We need to be rid of him or he will pass the virus to us! Then we will all be infected, and all of our efforts will be for naught. It is so simple a concept I cannot fathom how it is that you people are incapable of understanding.”

Jane watched, feeling her body tense as Sven locked eyes with Milt.

“If the kid stays out here,” Sven said, “you stay with him.”

“You’re going to regret this,” Milt said, and began to trundle off toward the Wegmans entrance, snorting and harrumphing as he went.

Jane’s mouth felt unusually dry. She went over to Sven and pulled him aside. “What if he’s right?” she whispered. “What if…”

“I don’t know, but we can’t leave Evan out here.”

Jane looked around and saw that Lorie was eyeing her and Sven suspiciously. Jane was sure the girl could easily have guessed what they were discussing, anyone could have.

As if in answer to Jane’s thoughts, Brian walked over and said, “You’re not considering what he said, are you? Leaving the kid out here?”

Jane looked at him, feeling her mouth get even drier.

“No,” Sven said. “No.”

“Even if,” Brian said, “even if…we can’t…” He shrugged and turned away.

Jane understood the frustration. What could you do in a situation like this?

They’re all being so decent, Jane thought, except for the fat guy…but who’s right?

92

Jane felt oddly detached as she watched what was happening in front of her. It was as if she were floating several feet up above the parking lot, unfeelingly looking down at her own body and the bodies of the other survivors, as they went about a rehearsed repertoire of physical movements.

The air seemed to be thick with futility, with an inescapable conclusion, which, though it might be delayed, could never be avoided.

Jane watched with foreboding as Brian brought the unconscious Evan inside, Sven beside them. She followed, straining under the weight of the duffel bags from the car. She felt depressed and angry, though she was uncertain from where the anger was coming, and at whom she should direct it.

They entered the Wegmans and laid Evan down in the middle of the produce section, on the smallest sleeping bag from the gun shop, setting him up away from the supermarket’s multitude of refrigeration units.

When Jane was unable to rouse Evan for a drink of water and another fever pill, she resolved to check on the boy at regular intervals, but not to stay by his side. With each passing moment, she grew more sure that Milt was right, and that the boy would become dangerous at any moment. Jane reflected on how long the boy had fought the disease off, keeping it from taking over his body long after everyone around them had already turned into zombies.

She said her mental goodbyes to the child and zipped him up into the sleeping bag as a final precaution. If he woke up as one of the infected, he would likely be unable to get out of the sleeping bag, or would at least alert the rest of them to his plight before he could do any damage. Then once he woke—the word “reanimated” occurred to Jane, and made her shiver—then they would…

She walked away from the boy and set up camp halfway up the row of checkout aisles, between the cash registers and an aisle containing magazines, paperbacks, and stationery. She set out the remaining sleeping bags for Lorie, Sven, and herself, and then began to check her munitions. The routine of the check dried her dampened spirits quickly and significantly, but the distraction was only momentary.

Jane jumped to her feet at once when she heard an irritating, scraping sound, overlaid by the sound of human retching. Then Sven and Brian appeared, pushing a dripping, overloaded shopping cart, scratching its wheels along the supermarket’s polished floor.

Jane watched with revulsion as Sven and Brian carted out the dead zombies. They tried to conceal their loads with makeshift tarps, but it was little use. Blood and the now familiar viscous liquid drizzled from underneath the cart, leaving a trail of putrid sludge, smattered at irregular intervals with gobbets of rotten flesh.

It was a gut-wrenching sight, made all the worse for Jane because when they were done, she put herself on cleanup detail, mopping up the trail of zombie pus, while she strained to control the bouts of dry heaving into her surgical mask. She mopped up to the entrance and threw the mop outside, giving one last look to the pile of dead undead—she didn’t know how to think of them yet.

They were so much like the zombies in the movies...whatever disease they had contracted stripped them so bare of their previous humanity that it was hard to see the creatures as people. Jane looked at the heap that had now grown to many times its initial size and felt as if she were sinking.

When the cleanup was done and Sven and Jane had recovered from their nausea, they figured out how to work the entrance shutter and lowered it. The sliding doors still opened and closed when they came near, but the shutter would keep the uncoordinated zombies out.

Sven pushed several rows of shopping carts up against the back of the shutter for good measure, and that made Jane think of Evan...of being trapped inside the supermarket with Evan, who was now most of the way—

“Hey where’s Lorie?” Sven asked.

Jane shook her head. “I don’t know, I haven’t seen her in a while. On that note, where’s Milt?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like this setup. It seemed like a great idea when we were driving up this way...but I don’t trust that guy. He seems so unpredictable to me.”

“I don’t trust him either, but what can we do? Kill him? We’ll have to keep a watch—a patrol.”

“Between you, me, and Brian, one of us can be up at all times. That way we won’t be surprised by the zombies, or by Milt if he decides to go crazy on us. I’ll go tell Brian.”

So Jane stood there, and watched Sven walk away to tell his friend. She put her hand on the grip of the .460 XVR, knowing that it would always be there for her, and hoping that Sven would be too.

93

Ivan was watching the boy from a safe distance, tilting his furry head this way and that, curious about why Sven kept the rotten boy around. It was as if Sven couldn’t smell the bad smell, as if Sven had no idea about the rot...the terrible, sickening smell. But then Sven must have been able to smell it, because he was killing the rotten people everywhere they went. Why was the rotten boy allowed to remain? The smell was so bad. What about the woman, couldn’t she smell it? Why couldn’t she? Soon the rotten boy would begin to move, to try to spread the rot into the others, and they would have to run again, or fight, fight and kill the—There was suddenly a stale, fusty odor in the air that drew an instinctive hiss from Ivan. It wasn’t the rot. Ivan skittered away from the smell and turned his nimble body around, using his tail to keep balanced in the hairpin turn. A big man was coming, moving slowly and with great effort, wheezing and out of breath. Ivan flattened himself out, ready to pounce. But the fat man wasn’t coming to Ivan. He was coming to the rotten boy. Ivan would’ve hissed a warning if it were Sven. Ivan even would have clawed at Sven if it were he that was approaching the boy in this particularly late stage of the rot. But with the fat musty man it was different. Ivan didn’t care about stopping him. The fat man wasn’t rotten, but the fat man was soft, not like Sven. The fat man didn’t like Ivan, and Ivan knew it, could smell it. The fat man, Ivan decided, would get no warning. Then the fat man had something shiny. He was holding the shiny thing next to the rotten boy. Then...then? The fat man stood there holding the shiny thing, over the rotten boy. Then the fat man plunged the long shiny thing into the rotten boy. Then...then? Ivan knew at once that the fat man didn’t understand. That wasn’t enough. The rot was still there. Why would the fat man do that? The rot. It was there. It was still coming. The bad death was still coming.

94

Lorie was creeping around the inside perimeter of the Wegmans.

I could get used to this place, she thought, it’s definitely big enough for me. She was holding the hunting knife in her hand now, making no effort to conceal it. She had no intention of letting go of the knife, not then and not even if it made its way into a zombie’s brain. She would pull it back out and reuse it. Use and reuse.

I will
not
be left without a weapon again, Lorie told herself.

She revised her circular route when she spied a red-faced Milt trundling out of the candy aisle, chocolate stains running down his chin. She stopped short of the far aisle and stood before an open refrigerator, feeling the cold air spill out onto her. She ignored the fat man as he waddled past her in his slipper-clad feet, grunting and muttering something about wizards and the apocalypse and zombie children.

The guy was a real creep, and Lorie wondered if he could be sectioned off at some far end of the store, or in an aisle—the candy aisle perhaps—so that she didn’t have to see him. It was worth giving up access to all the candy in the store for that.

Lorie shuddered Milt’s lingering creepiness off her and took a bottle of water from the refrigerator, savoring the feel of the cool, wet plastic against her palm. Instead of putting the knife down to open the bottle, she hooked it into her back pocket, then opened the bottle and gulped the cool water greedily.

Surprised when the water stopped flowing, Lorie lowered the bottle from her mouth and realized that it was empty. It hadn’t felt like more than two sips and the thing was empty already. She scanned the refrigerator for another drink.

Anything would be more refreshing than the water, she thought, and decided on a large orange-colored Gatorade. She picked it up, opened it, and downed half of the drink before coming up for air. Then she took the hunting knife in her hand again, and began up the aisle, open Gatorade bottle in one hand and forward-facing hunting knife in the other.

She was a predator, meticulously stalking her prey. She just hadn’t chosen the prey yet. Then, glancing into an aisle of frozen foods as she passed it, Lorie decided that she wanted some fruit. Fruit was good fuel. It was light and kept the energy up, and it was one of Lorie’s snacking staples at track meets and in training.

I’ll start with a banana, she thought, realizing how light-headed she felt, that should help steady me on my feet.