Take the All-Mart! (13 page)

BOOM!

The shot tore into the zombie’s abdomen, ripped it open, taking a good portion of intestines, stomach and kidney with it as it punched out through the zombie’s back.

But the thing still kept on running. Faster, now.

The zombie let out an angry yell that pierced through the white-noise whine of the gunshots, and leapt. Right over Bernice and straight for tall guy.

BOOM!

And just like that, the zombie had a hole the size of a bowling ball through his chest and Bernice was being showered in bits of blue-gray lung and bone.

The zombie went limp in mid-air. Tall Guy stepped to the side — putting the revolver barrel’s tip to his lips and blowing away the smoke — just as the zombie hit the floor in a crumpled mess where he’d been standing. Tall Guy smirked, poked the toe of his red high-tops into the zombie’s side.

“Hey, lookie there, it’s dead,” Tall Guy said, smiling at himself. “Yay, me.”

“Yeah, well,” said a second guy, getting out of the driver’s side, “I would’a had him if you hadn’t pinned my door shut.” He was short, muscular, cute — especially the darling little red soul patch — and carrying a sawed-off shotgun. He walked around the front of the car to stand next to Tall Guy and stared down at the zombie.

“Did you a favor.” Tall Guy holstered the big revolver. “If you’d tried to down him with that pea-shooter of yours, you’d be picking zombie teeth out of your neck right now.”

“Bullshit!” Soul-patch touched his bandolier. “These shells are packed with high-density micro-explosives. They would have vaporized his head into a cloud of fine red mist.”

“Sure, once he got within range.” Tall Guy lit a cigarette. “Which is what? About zombie-arm length, right? Like two feet?”

“Three,” Soul-patch said, frowning. “Okay, two-and-a-half.”

Bernice sat up, cleared her throat. “Never mind the damsel in distress here.”

Tall Guy glanced at her and smirked. “You’re welcome.”

“Oh, sorry, yeah,” Soul-patch said, slipping the shotgun into a harness on his back and walking over to her. He extended a hand down to her and grinned optimistically. “You okay?”

“That depends.” Bernice took his hand. Firm and strong. She let him pull her up. He didn’t strain at all. “You gonna get me out of here?”

“Your parents got money?” Tall Guy asked as he strode up next to Soul-patch.

“What?” Bernice asked.

“Ignore him,” Soul-patch said. “We can get you out of here.”

Tall Guy rolled his eyes and walked off to examine the zombies the car had pinned to the racks.

Bernice checked herself out. Nothing broken or missing. Just a lot of blue-gray zombie blood splatter. “Then, yeah, I’m okay.” When she looked up, she noticed Soul patch’s camos were wet in the crotch. “What’s with the... you have a little accident?”

He blushed. “Oh. No. Spilled some beer.”

“Beer? You got any left?”

He smiled. Dopey, but cute. “Whole backseat.”

Bernice returned the smile. Normally, that’d be the whole of it — she’d clam up and look away, embarrassment over actually talking to a guy catching up to her. But not this time. Roxanne’s advice to be aggressive rang in her ears — and given extra urgency by the absolutely shitty day she’d been having. “My kind of guy.”

His smile got a lot bigger and dopier. “Really?”

Bernice grabbed his head between her hands and pulled his surprised face towards hers, planting a long, deep kiss on him.

After a moment, she let him go. He just stared at her, wide-eyed.

“For rescuing me,” she said. A pause, then, “Too much?”

His wide-eyed stare broke into a panicked head-shaking. “No... no, not at all...”

“All right, there’ll be plenty of time for you two to get acquainted in the back seat later,” Tall Guy said, returning. He pointed his cigarette up and down Bernice’s body. “I’m assuming by the getup, you’re a Sister of No Mercy, so I’m betting you know who Roxanne is.”

“Roxanne... sure, she’s — Oh, shit!” Bernice exclaimed. “You’re the guy! You’re Mr. Hunter McRealMan.”

Tall Guy’s face went confused. “Huh? Who?”

“Trig, right?” Bernice asked.

“Trip.”

“And I’m Rudy,” Soul-patch said.

“Hey, Rudy,” she said, giving him a hungry smile. He blushed. She was beginning to enjoy this aggressive thing. She offered her hand out to him. “Bernice. Bernie. You can call me Bernie.”

Rudy took her hand and giggled sheepishly. “Hi.” He didn’t shake it, but he wasn’t letting it go, either.

“Concentrate.” Trip took both their wrists and pulled their hands apart. “Where’s Roxanne?” he asked her.

“I dunno. We were running from shoppers, and this big brute with a badge pops up in front of us. It grabbed Rox — just took her, dragged her off, and left me there. I doubled back to join the others but by then all these other zombies had showed up and were force-feeding everyone, and that’s when I took off again.” She gave Rudy a devilish little smile, taking a step closer to him, puffing up her cleavage. “Thanks again for the save.”

Rudy swallowed, struggled to not stare. “I was just... I...”

Trip sighed. “I’m the one who did the actual saving, let’s not forget.”

“That’s nice,” Bernice said, running her finger down Rudy’s bandolier. “So, you mentioned beer?”

“Ummm...yeah...” Rudy watched her fingertip slowly work its way down towards his belly. “Coming right up.” He reluctantly backed away, all the way back to the car, nervously waving at her while he did.

“You say they
took
Roxanne?” Trip stepped in front of her. “Why’d they take her instead of force-feeding her like the others?”

“You’re asking me?” Bernice reached into her purse and took out something wrapped in tissue paper. She handed it to Trip. “But might have something to do with this.”

Trip unwrapped it. “Her RATpack antenna?”

Bernice nodded. “Yeah. The fucker took it off her and dropped it when he dragged her off.”

“That must have been when you lost contact,” Rudy said, returning with a milk jug of beer. He held it out to Bernice.

Bernice took the jug with a smile, uncapped it, and drank. “She thought you were jacked in and near, that second time.” She handed the jug back to Rudy.

“There was a first time?” Trip asked.

“Just before the All-Mart snatched us up, during the appeasement ceremony. The antenna looked like it was connected — it went all blinky red — but she wasn’t feeling anybody on the other end. You weren’t sneaking a peek at the ceremony, were you?”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Trip said with a half-smile. “But no. We were still in Shunk. Pressing business.”

“That’s what we figured. She thought it was on the fritz.”

“Weird.” Trip stuffed the antenna away in a tux pocket. “But irrelevant. Any idea where they took Roxanne?”

She shook her head. “I just got here myself.”

Rudy stopped staring longingly at her over the beer jug long enough to ask, “Do you remember what direction it dragged her off in?”

She pointed off into the distance. “Maybe that way.”

“Maybe?” Trip asked.

She scowled at him. “I was a little stressed at the time.”

“It’s okay,” Rudy said.

“No, no it’s not okay,” Trip said. “We don’t even have a signal to follow anymore. Who knows where —”

A low, growling moan interrupted him. All three turned to look. It was coming from the zombie had Trip shot.

“You put three rounds through it — how is it not dead?” Rudy asked.

Trip drew his revolver and cautiously stepped up closer to the zombie. The hole in his chest was closing, the skin resealing itself over undulating, re-growing lungs and heart. The other two wounds were already gone.

“Great. Self-healing zombies. Fucking nanochines.” Trip flicked his cigarette into the zombie’s chest cavity just as it sealed itself shut. Trip cocked the revolver and pointed it at the zombie’s forehead. “Let’s see if the oldie-but-goodie bullet through the brain does the trick.”

“Wait,” Rudy said. “Don’t kill it.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Karma.”

“Fuck Karma.”

“Other way around if you keep pissing it off, bro.” Rudy pointed at the two zombies pinned to a rack by the
Wound
, writhing and struggling to free themselves but not having any luck. They were good and stuck, and helpless. “Look, they’re not a threat to us. Let’s just leave them here and get going.”

“Going where?” Trip waved the revolver randomly above his head. “‘Maybe that way’ isn’t a real direction.”

“Killing zombies isn’t going to help.”

“Oh, it’d help,” Trip grunted, holstering the revolver.

Rudy smiled, looked down at the zombie at Trip’s feet. The zombie’s wounds had almost completely healed and it was just starting to come awake. “Anyway... I’ve got an idea about how we might figure out where to go.”

CHAPTER 12: BOB

“Welcome to All-Mart. How can we change your life today?”

According to the nametag half-grown into his chest, the zombie’s name was Bob. He hung spread-eagled on a rack of green polka-dotted teddy bears, electric extension cords lashed tight around his wrists, ankles, waist and throat. Neither his body nor his uniform showed any signs he’d been shot by Trip, the wounds healed and the fabric regrown by the All-Mart nanochines in his blood and living in the fabric of his clothes.

“This was your whole idea?” Trip was up on the
Wound
’s hood, leaned back on the windshield. He looked up from re-reading the Steve Martin Playboy interview. “Strap the zombie up to a rack and stare at him until he says something other than ‘Welcome to All-Mart, how can we change your life today’?”

“I really think it’s starting to get to him.” Rudy was standing in front of Bob, staring up at the zombie as he thoughtfully puffed on his calabash. “Just give it some time.”

Trip set the Playboy down next to him and slid off the hood. He stepped up next to Rudy. “You’ve already been at it for ten minutes.”

Rudy frowned at him. “You’re not exactly one to talk about taking your time, Mr. ‘I-haven’t-met-a-lock-I-can’t-crack’.”

Bernice was standing off to the side, arms crossed over her chest. “I don’t get it. He’s a zombie. Just torture him.”

Trip smirked. “Oh, no, we couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Growling, Trip pointed at Rudy.

Rudy smiled at Bernice. “Karma.”

“Karma?”

Rudy nodded. “The more you hurt others for no reason, the more you get hurt back.”

“Yeah, I know what it is, but... it did attack me.” Bernice jogged her head back at the two zombies still pinned between the
Wound
and the rack it had crashed into. Their wounds had healed but they were trapped pretty good, despite their continuing, writhing efforts to free themselves. “All three of them did.”

Rudy puffed at his calabash. “And we roughed ‘em up good. But the threat’s over. Always defense, never attack. Read that at an amusement church, once. It’s good advice. Keeps the soul clean.”

Bernice sighed. “So we’re just gonna stand here and ask nicely?”

“You’ll see — he’ll come around once he sees we’re being all civil.” Rudy looked up at Bob. “We might even offer him some lunch later, if he cooperates.”

Bernice turned to Trip. “You believe this?”

“Believe it? I’ve had to put up with it my whole life. But not today.” Trip pulled his elephant revolver from his holster. “No time for this shit.”

Rudy stepped in front of him. “Dude. Karma.”

“You’re trying to appeal to a zombie’s civil side.” Trip’s thumb rubbed against the revolver’s hammer, itching to pull it back. “Zombies don’t have civil sides.”

“There’s still a person in there.”

“Under about a million body- and mind-controlling nanochines that we have to get through first. I don’t see how we’re gonna do that without some good old-fashioned Rumsfielding.” Trip leaned close to Rudy, lowered his voice. “Besides, I think you’re losing Cleavage here.”

Rudy stole a glance over at Bernice. She was glaring up at Bob, rubbing her fist with her palm. “You think?”

Trip nodded. “She seems like the aggressive kind... you know, into real men. Not pussies.”

“Fine.” Rudy gestured for Trip to put his gun away. “But I’ll do it. Your karma debt’s big enough as it is, no need to risk tipping it over and having an asteroid fall on you or something. Especially when I’m standing next to you.”

Trip smiled. “Just get him talking.”

Rudy patted the ashes from his pipe and jammed it into his bandolier. “Right. Right. Okay, give me some room. Okay, how we wanna do this?” Rudy asked himself as Trip and Bernice took a few steps back. Rudy cracked his knuckles and, chewing his lower lip, surveyed the rack of baby toys next to Bob. After a good long moment, Rudy grabbed a yellow rubber duck from a bin. He turned back towards Bernice. “You might want to, you know, avert your eyes, this could get nasty.”

She stared at the duck dubiously. “I don’t see how.”

“Sorry about this...” Rudy said to Bob as he wrapped his hand around the rubber duck and punched the zombie in the gut.

The rubber duck squeaked.

Bob, he didn’t even notice he’d been hit.

“Huh,” Rudy said, staring at the rubber duck in his hand, “that should’a worked.”

Trip bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb. “Oh, for Shatner’s sake.”

“Mind if I give it a try?” Bernice asked, taking the rubber duck from Rudy. “I’ve got a badge in discipline.”

Rudy’s eyes went wide and he swallowed. “You’ve got a badge in discipline?”

“Since I was thirteen,” she said proudly, tossing the rubber duck away over her shoulder. “Second badge I earned after indoor horticulture.” She turned to Trip. “Well?”

Trip stepped aside and swept his hand towards the zombie. “Be my guest.”

She pointed at his revolver. “May I?”

Trip thought for a moment, then shrugged, taking it out and handing it to her handle-first. “Be gentle with her.”

Bernice nodded, brushed hair from her face, and strode up to the spread-eagled zombie, cocking the revolver. While Bob looked down at her, his blue-bloodshot eyes trembling, she raised the gun.