The steady hum of the tires on the asphalt sent hypnotic vibrations through the truck frame teasing Eric into taking a nap. He couldn’t despite the fact that he wanted to. He as sitting in the passenger seat of one of the four trucks in their convoy, his job was to make sure that the road to the right of the truck was clear of both obstacles and zombies.
The guy driving the truck, a gnarled farm hand from one of the larger family farms in the area named Dan was keeping his eyes on the front of the road and the left side. The guy hadn’t been too interested in talking when they had first started driving towards Rearden and Eric had stopped trying to talk to the man after a few probing attempts at conversation. The guy wore an old john deer hat that was stained with a white layer of salt that had seeped into the fabric of the hat over years of hard labor in the hot summer sun. He had three days worth of growth on his face almost evenly split between black and grey. Hard labor did that too you Eric thought, turns you old far sooner than your body would normal turn. The guy had a lever action .30-06 rifle resting in his lap the wood polished and smooth, the barrel freshly oiled. If they guy was as good of a shot as he was at maintaining his gun then Eric felt he was better off than most of the guys on this trip. Besides himself and Sanchez Eric was a little concerned about how the guys from Rearden would fare in a fight.
Eric turned his eyes away from Dan and stared out the passenger window as they drove along at a leisurely thirty-five miles per hour. The view out the window was pretty unremarkable for Eastern Washington. There was plenty of farm land out the window just recently plowed and planted. There were long rows of infant plants shooting up out the ground in long furrows. Eric thought about how much food these field would have provided if they were maintained. His stomach growled at him and he forced the thought to the back of his mind. They had discussed this the night before and it was stubbornly agreed that unless things went badly over the next few months the farmlands were going to have to remain abandoned. Armando had been the voice of reason saying that it would take too much manpower and put too many people at risk to try and guard one of the farms and the fields.
That was why they were on this mission in the first place. The meeting the night before had been productive and an outline for both their fledgling community’s maintenance and growth was decided on. Davis’ ancestors had been smart about where they built the farmhouse. The farmhouse was situated in a large forested area on a finger-like peninsula along the Spokane River. The river provided a supply of fresh water that was no more than a quarter mile walk to and gave the place a natural barrier on three of its four sides. Defense had been mulled over and an initial plan had been established but that was going to be the mission for tomorrow assuming everything went as planned today.
There was nothing to see out the window and Eric let his eyes come back to the front of the truck and gaze out the windshield at the truck in front of them. Sanchez was in the truck in front, he was riding along with the survivalist and the retired Airman. They were both long time residents of Rearden and were pillars of the community. They had a better idea of the town’s layout and what would be where and how best to get it. Plus if things went south they’d know the best routes of the town and the spots to avoid. Behind them were two trucks that Eric spied through the rearview. Each truck had two men inside it all men from Rearden. Sanchez and Eric were the only two men from their little group. Armando, Kirk, and Fred had been left back at the farmhouse to keep an eye on things.
“Are we getting close Dan,” Eric said taking another stab at dragging the older man into conversation.
Dan flipped a toothpick he was gnawing on from one side of his mouth to the other before saying in dull bored tone, “getting close.” He kept his eyes on the road and didn’t bother to look at Eric as he spoke.
“Quite the conversationalist aren’t you Dan,” Eric said with a healthy dose of sarcasm. All Eric got for a response was a little grunt. Whether that was agreement or not was left a mystery for Eric to puzzle out. He turned his eyes to the front of the truck again and watched as they flat land opened up in front of them and he could see the first clear outlines of buildings ahead. He’d never visited Rearden in the decade that Eric had lived in Spokane but he was pretty confident from the look of the small farming town that the stories his friends had told him in college were true. The place probably had one stop light smack dab in the middle of town where the two main roads met.
The farming town grew closer with each turn of the wheels and Eric watched as the ghost town opened up before them. From what he could see as they came into town it had maybe four streets moving east to west and another two or three moving north to south. Not exactly a metropolis but that was why that’d chosen to come this way. They could have headed back to Spokane, hit up Airway Heights and their Wal-Mart but there was a lot larger population in Airway Heights than in Rearden and Spokane was only eight miles east of the town. Rearden was over twenty miles away from either and that meant zombies would be far fewer and farther between out here.
They drove through town on the Main and Eric smiled as they passed under the now extinguished single traffic light at the intersection of Main and 1st. They continued west through town and out the other side past mostly brick buildings that had been new back at the turn of the twentieth century. Eric kept his eyes peel on the store fronts and large windows as they drove past. He didn’t want to get surprised on the way back through town. He didn’t see any broken glass or blood streaks across the glass as they drove by, a sign he had already associated with zombies. The truck continued through town and out the other side and kept going West.
Less than a minute later as the truck climbed a gentle slope they spotted their target. The farming town required a lot of supplies to maintain the farms spread out for miles in every direction from Rearden’s center and located just west of town was a farm and seed supply store. Eric was stunned by the size of the place; it looked like a Costco for farming supplies.
The dozen or so parking spot in front of the store were empty save one. The giant diesel truck was parked as far back from the store as possible. Its red paint muted and dulled by a year’s worth of dirty and mud.
Sanchez’s truck pulled into the near empty parking lot and Dan followed right behind. Sanchez steered his truck through the parking lot and took the closes parking space to the store entrance. Dan parked to the right of Sanchez. The retired Airman, Eric kept forgetting his name was the first one out of the truck. He had his shotgun jammed tight into this shoulder and was pointing at the doors of the feed store. The survivalist, Matthew was his name climbed out of the passenger side behind the Airman leveling his own pistol at the door. Sanchez was the last to climb out of the truck and he carefully shut his door making sure the old metal door didn’t rattle too much and give away their presence.
Eric jumped out of the truck both feet hitting the hard asphalt of the parking lot simultaneously and sending a stiff jolt up his legs. He called through the open truck cab to Dan who was letting himself down out of the truck with a lot more care. “You’re a good shot right Dan?”
The older man mulled over the question for a few seconds, his toothpick rolling around in his mouth in a counterclockwise circle before answering, “Pretty good.” Eric thought that was all the guy was going to say and heaved a deep sigh but Dan wasn’t done, “stick with me junior and you’ll make it back alive. Don’t and you’re zombie food.” With that the old farmhand brought his rifle up against his shoulder and started walking slowly towards the large doors of the feed store. Eric followed close behind.
Sanchez, the Airman, and Matthew were talking in low tones to one another as Eric and Dan joined the group. “So what you’re saying is that there isn’t a clear way to go about clearing this place without splitting up?” Sanchez was looking at the two men with a concerned eye. Sanchez’s caution was warranted, the few times that Sanchez and Eric had been in a fight against the zombies they had barely survived and that was only by staying together.
“The place is laid out like a warehouse,” Matthew was saying looking from the men gathering around the door and then into the dark building. “There’s rows on rows of stuff in there set up in giant stacks and long aisles. If we don’t move in groups we could chase anything in there for an hour before cornering it.”
“Plus did you see the two semi trucks in the loading bay?” The Airman was putting his skills of situational evaluation and battle planning to good use. Eric was suddenly ecstatic that Sanchez had picked the retired Airman to come along for the trip. In a tone long practiced in the art of command the Airman continued, “There’s no telling what the layouts going to look like once we get inside. Probably supplies lying scattered all around the place. Pallets and hand trucks of inventory strewn around the place plus who knows where the drives of those trucks are.”
“Even if that’s the case every time we’ve run into these things they usually come right at us. They don’t run they aren’t scared of us. It’s much more likely that they’ll see or hear us and come running.” Eric’s few encounters with the undead didn’t make him feel like an expert but he was confident in the things he had seen.
The Airman turned his intense stare on Eric before speaking in a tone that was measured but also was heavy with the forced calm only a man with a barely controlled temper had to develop. “That may be true son but the other reason for the team approach is simple. The building is huge, we cant all check each and every nook and cranny looking for these dead things and inventory the supplies. We are going to need everything in this building and more and know what’s at our fingertips is as important and finding and clearing out the zombies.”
Sanchez pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and took two deep breaths before jumping into the conversation, “it’s settled then. We got in as teams of two and spread out. We move from the front of the store to the back checking doors and hallways but we don’t move down any of them until we’ve cleared the main floor okay?”
“That’s the best way to do something like this.” The Airman approved the plan despite that fact that Sanchez hadn’t asked his situational assessment. “We need someone to stay out here with the trucks, warn us if any of those zombies or anyone else looking for supplies stumbles onto our little hunting party. You,” The Airman pointed at a kid barely seventeen years old who had come along on the trip to Rearden. The kids Dad was one of the farmers in the area but because of a heart condition he hadn’t been allowed to come on the supply run, his son had volunteered in his place. “You stay out here and keep watch. If any zombies show up honk the horn once, if its other people honk twice.”
The kid nodded and trotted back to the pickup truck he had been riding in and climbed into the bed of the pickup. He leaned against the cab his shotgun held across his waist.
“Time to go then,” Sanchez said halfheartedly. “You,” he pointed at the retired Airman, “you’re with me.”
The Airman nodded once almost like a salute and then headed in after Sanchez. Eric took Dan’s advice and stuck with the man he had ridden into town with. Each man took whatever gun he had in his hand and raised it ready to fire at anything that was dead and still moving.
The warehouse was dark. A few skylights let a little light filter into the warehouse but it faded to nothing just a few feet past the glass. Eric’s eyes took a minute to adjust and when they did he could see that the Airman had been right about the problems with the buildings layout.
There were four long rows that lead from the front of the store to the back and separating the rows were three lines of towering shelves pack with seeds, fertilizers, chemicals, and other supplies needed for the daunting task of large scale farming. They teams were already splitting up moving towards the rows they had chosen.
By default Eric and Dan ended up with the last row to clear. It was the far right wall and thought Eric’s eyes were still struggling to adjust to the dark he was pretty confident that the customer bathrooms were situated against that wall. The dark alcoves of their doors were staring ominous and threatening at him as Dan started moving towards their row. Trailing Dan and forcing himself to swallow his fear Eric brought his pistol up and stared down the sights as they moved away from the stores bright entrance.
As they got closer to the edge of their line of shelves Eric’s earlier beliefs were confirmed by the blue and white placards of the Men’s and Women’s bathroom icons on the doors. Dan was pointing his rifle at the door of the men’s bathroom and Eric hesitantly pointed his own gun at the door of the women’s. They both held their breath for long seconds staining to hear in the tomblike darkness if anything was moving behind the doors. Eric didn’t hear anything, no scraping of feet against tiled floors, no pounding of bloody fists against mirrors or doors. After almost twenty seconds listening to nothing he chanced a glance at Dan. They old farmhand met his eyes and nodded once and they began walking up their aisle.
They made sure to go slowly and be careful setting their shoes down on the cement floor of the warehouse gentle making sure that their footfalls didn’t echo in the cavern of the feed store. They checked down each row between stacks of seed and feed and continued to find nothing. Before they knew it they had cleared a dozen rows without finding anything. They hadn’t heard any yells or gun shots as they moved down their aisle and eventually met up with the rest of the teams at the back of the store.
There were two metal roll up garage doors set against the back wall and a small wood door for staff. Sanchez was against the wall by the staff door, the retired Airman on the other side of the door reaching for the knob. Eric still couldn’t hear anything. He walked over to Sanchez and pressed his back against the cinderblock wall, his right shoulder brushing against Sanchez as he did so.
The other two teams with Matthew the survivalist, the seventeen year old and a couple of early twenty-something’s were looking back down the aisles that they had come up making sure that if anything had been missed it wouldn’t sneak up on them now. The seventeen year old looked the worst out the bunch. Sweat was pouring of the kid in waves and his movements were jerky and driven by fear like a rabbit poking his head out of his den after barely escaping a hawks grasp minutes before.
“A lot less eventful then I thought it was going to be,” Eric whispered to Sanchez his words relieving some of the tension choking his intestines.
Bam, the crash of something heavy against the sheet metal of the rollup garage door on eric’s left sent the groups hearts pounding harder than a marathoner’s. The seventeen year old swung his shotgun around towards the sound but his sweat slick hands lost their grip on the stock and the gun when flying across the room. It hit the employee door and as the Airman reached down the grab it the door burst open. The hard wood of the door caught the retired military man square on the nose and drove him to his ass; his own gun flew over his head and out of sight.
Eric grabbed Sanchez’s left shoulder in his left hand and pulled the Hispanic officer down and away from the zombie that charged through the door. Eric fired his pistol and caught the zombie between the neck and shoulder. The zombie jerked to the side but didn’t go down and as Eric took a second to line up his shot a hailstorm of bullets erupted. There was no way of knowing who’s shot took the zombie down but it fell backwards, its body sprawled out in the doorway half in the warehouse and half in the loading dock. Matthew ran over to the Airman and began inspecting his face. Eric wasn’t a doctor but it looked like the retired military man had a broken nose. Blood was running across his mouth and chin like the open floodgates of a dam.
“Alright Charles, I’m going to lay you down and you’re going to need to stay still till all that blood can coagulate. I don’t think we’ve got a doctor so you’re going to be screwed with that nose.” Matthew was digging at his hip and pulled out a knife. He found a small all purpose tool and flicked the knife blade out and then cut off a chunk of his sleeve. He handed it to Charles the Airman all while giving the Vet instructions, “you need to hold this gently to your nose to help stop the bleeding, we’ll get you out of here in a few…”
A guttural roar drowned out the next few words Matthew said. Another zombie came darting out of the open door stumbling over his dead companion. As the dead thing fell its greedy clawed hands grabbed a hold of Matthew and dragged him down. There was only a second to react and even that short time wasn’t enough. They zombie had already torn off a strip of Matthew’s flesh before Sanchez’s bullet took the things head off.