Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Part 4

I sat up, sputtering and coughing trying to hold down whatever was left in my stomach. Not the same could be said of the…re-corpse, the viscera of its abdominal cavity lay hanging, growing even colder, and rotting just as fast. I sat there trying to stand up, trying to stop shaking, trying to keep it together. The body lay there, leaning against the case, as if we were buddies, sitting and chatting face to…uh chin. The body fell over and I jumped, scared that perhaps it wasn’t finished with me yet. That made me move, those evil howls continued and the screams of the dying continued to reverberate off of the metal ceiling. I crabbed walked back, never letting go of the gun, never taking my eyes off of the slumped over torso. My clothes had turned into a sponge; I felt the absorbed blood travel from the cotton in my pants to the surface of my skin, dirty, cold, and sticky. I bumped into the camo bag, and I stood up, shaking and wet, alive but no longer living, existing. I shuffled a few more cases of shells into the bag and zipped it tight, realizing I had to take the same way out as I had come in, and I could only hope my car was still there. I grabbed the bag and slung it over my shoulder, stuffed my pockets with shells and reloaded the gun. I needed water, I had food in the house but I didn’t have any bottled water, now I needed as much as I could handle; so much for going green, in the end we all choose our own lives over that of the Earth. The screaming had stopped so had the blood coated vibrations of rotting vocal chords, “fuck me,” either they were all eating, or they had finished their meals. I figured out where I had to go; down past the electronics, past the shoes, through the baby clothes and into the aisle with all the bottle sodas and waters and whatever type of drink you could bottle. I decided to take the route around the counter since the slumped over chin proved that jumping the counter would probably be a mistake. I tried to avoid the glass while circumventing the blood painted on the floor. The bag was a lot heavier than I thought it would be, I was already out of breath and was only just passing through all the toys. I passed by the aisle with the gargling woman, but she was gone. Only a pool of blood and some strips of clothing remained, “that can’t be good.” I continued on, no time to pause and no time to think I just kept pumping my leg muscles and fighting my already aching back from the bag. At the electronics the lights above flickered for a minute, like a cheap strobe light at some haunted house. I passed by a rack of batteries and grabbed a couple packs of AAs and AAAs along with some C batteries. There was no blood on the floor back there, it seemed that those monsters hadn’t been there that long and when they did show up everyone must have tried running out towards the doors, “would I have done the same?” Everything was still on, and the two rows of TVs were looping some mix of clips that supposedly showed off the “true experience of HDTV,” the irony in that, nothing could be as real or as “true an experience” as those fucking things going for a 97 degree chunk of flesh. The set up displays of speakers were playing one of those collections of nature sounds, I remember wondering if all the way over there in the jungles the same crazy shit was occurring. I crept past the TVs and was serenaded by some tropical bird as I found myself navigating the shoes aisles. I remember wishing I had more room, more strength; an extra pair of shoes might come in handy. But I couldn’t waste the time trying to find a pair of shoes that fit and were comfortable, no time, even when the world was ending I still had no time. The cheap, thin carpet muffled my footsteps as the baby clothes area came into view and then semi-hid me as I continued shuffling towards the bottled water. I saw the aisle come into view, there was no short supply since there was no time for people to loot or stock up supplies, I glanced at my watch, and then the lights went out.

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