Jason’s heavy black boots trampled effortlessly over the scattered bags of chips, wayward candy bars and shallow pools of blood that littered the aisles of the small family owned grocery store where he worked. Slowly, he put one foot in front of the other and advanced down each row, looking for something to shoot at. Normally the act of walking wouldn’t require so much focused energy. Of course, normally the store wasn’t full of the walking dead either. Jason repeated, “left right left right”, over and over in his head. It was the only way he could make sure that his body kept moving forward even though his brain really wanted him to run and hide.
“People that hide end up getting eaten, and forget that,” he thought to himself.
Jason raised the hunting rifle to his sight line each time he came across a new aisle. He was up to paper goods and kicked a fallen box of Kleenex out of his way before lowering his rifle, all clear. He could hear a heavy labored breathing noise, chewing and slurping sounds as well which turned his stomach. He had to be getting close.
Next aisle was cleaning products. It wasn’t where one would expect to find a trail of blood where a body had obviously been drug across the floor. Resisting the urge to chuckle at the irony of the blood splatter on the floor right in front of the Pine-Sol mopping liquids, Jason kept moving forward. Pet food, it had to be pet food didn’t it? The smell from the ripped open bags of dried meat and vegetable by-products hit Jason’s nose before he even turned to face the aisle, gun raised. The sound of snorting and chewing stopped suddenly.
Mr. Hansen, a clearly recognizable citizen of the small town, was crouched down on all fours. He was the principle of the town’s only high school, a place Jason had himself graduated from only two years prior. Mr. Hansen grabbed the body splayed out in front of him and pulled it closer, hissing at Jason as if he honestly expected a quarrel to break out over the ownership of the bloody thing.
“No thanks, I just ate,” Jason said to no one in particular because it was quite clear that the zombies didn’t understand a word you said. He still had the gun raised, now pointed squarely at the former principal’s head.
Without moving its eyes off of Jason for a second, the zombie held up its victim’s arm and tore a chunk of flesh off with its teeth. Jason recognized the woman but only because she was a regular shopper, he didn’t know her name. He remembered Alan Hansen though; in fact he had attended his funeral just a few weeks before. It was a stroke that killed him, originally. Now Jason would take him down a second time with a gun shot to the head.
“Should have stayed in the ground,” Jason chastised shaking his head. The zombie just stared back at him blankly, licking the blood from the corner of its slack mouth. Its skin had turned grey and wrinkled already and the eyes were rimmed with a deep red. Jason paused for a moment to look at the dead thing’s hands. The fingernails were ripped off almost every finger which were all caked with blood and dirt. Clawing your way out of a grave took a good deal of strength, which the undead had in spades. Luckily though, they were slower than shit. Jason pulled the trigger.
He walked back to the front of the store, to the one cash register they had in the place. Several wide-eyed patrons were huddled there, waiting for him. Jason didn’t say a word. He set the rifle down on the counter and reached behind the register for a box of Camel’s and ripped the cellophane open.
“Did you get them all?” Jason turned towards the voice; it was a small boy, maybe eight years old.
Jason went to wipe his hand across his bright orange employee shirt to clean it off before taking out one of the cigarettes, but realized his shirt was also covered in blood. All he had managed to do was smear the blood around. The blood was his own. He had taken a wild haymaker swing in the nose by the second zombie he encountered. The amount of blood that gushed out of his face down to his shirt and hands was amazing.
“Yea, I think so kid.” Jason put the cigarettes back down without lighting one. “I don’t even smoke,” he laughed. “Just seemed like the thing to do, ya know?”
“Every year I tell myself I’m going to leave this town and yet I never do,” a woman said. She was sitting on the floor, with her arms wrapped around her knees. “Every goddamn year.” She shook her head.
“This place kind of has that effect on people. Dead end town,” Jason laughed again, louder this time. He couldn’t help it. His laughter took on a sinister quality as it filled the tiny store. It was his third hunting season; the novelty had worn off and now he just felt white washed inside, like shooting people just came second nature now. Sure, it was a rush. It was terrifying as hell when you were actually stalking them and trying to off them before they could take a bite out of you. But once it was over it was, well, over.
Jason wasn’t even supposed to work that night, he had switched shifts with co-worker Lisa, so that she could go make out with some preppy college boys at a frat party in the next town. Just as well, Lisa didn’t have a hunting license, and the season had started unexpectedly early this year.
“A bit early for zombies isn’t it?” Old man Rutherford stumbled as his got up from the floor. He was ancient now but in his day he had been quite the hunter himself.
“I don’t know. Seems like it’s either early or late every year, you can’t trust history anymore. It’s not like them to come shambling into a well lit marketplace either.”
“People staying indoors after dark around this time, too many old timers we need some fresh towns people that don’t have the sense to barricade themselves, then they’d have something to eat out there.”
Wasn’t that the truth. Damn zombies wouldn’t have to crash through windows or rummage through the butcher’s case if people would just stick to their normal routines. “Cheaters,” Jason mumbled under his breath.
Jason looked around at the store, there was product everywhere, mostly broken or covered in blood or bits of brain matter. That was someone else’s problem; there were people for that kind of clean up.
An hour earlier the large glass window at the front of the store had shattered and several zombies had lurched into the store, moaning and dropping clumps of dirt everywhere. A few people screamed, mostly everyone just ran around foolishly or hid, people weren’t too bright. Calmly, Jason had reached for the hunting rifle stored under the register and filled his pockets with ammunition.
He took out one zombie near the frozen pizzas just as it sank its teeth into Henry, the only other staff person working that night. Warm bright red blood spewed like a fountain from Henry’s neck, he was dead within seconds. Since it would be hours before Henry would rise up again, Jason continued on. He shot a second zombie two aisles over that was looking utterly confused at a life sized cardboard cut out of a girl in a bikini holding up a Coors Light can. That was the one that had lunged at him and socked him in the nose before he could get a shot off. After stumbling back and recovering from the sight of so much of his own blood dripping down his face, Jason had managed to fire the weapon into the zombie’s head. That left just one more.
The last zombie, Mr. Hansen as it turned out, had been given plenty of time to wander about the store, ripping the place to shreds and looking for some human flesh to devour. Somehow the zombie managed to catch, and partially eat, a woman before Jason located him. Never ceased to amaze him, how the zombies were so slow and stupid and yet almost always managed to capture and eat a few locals per year. Maybe these people deserved to get eaten.
Jason pulled himself out of memory lane; there was still work to be done.
“Alright guys, there’s one in frozen foods and one by the kibble. Let’s get them out back.” Jason motioned to the only other people left in the store besides the shell shocked woman, old man or little kid. They helped him gather up the zombie leftovers and haul the bodies outside.
They stacked the two bodies, one on top of the other and doused them with lighter fluid. Jason stood still a moment while the fluid soaked in, and pretended to be taking a moment of silence for the deceased. The rest of the shoppers had joined them outside, everyone standing around in a little semi-circle around the dead bodies.
“Shit, I forgot the matches,” Jason grumbled. He jogged back to the empty store while everyone waited.
Instead of bothering with the door handle he walked in through the big broken window pane instead. Glass crunched under his boots. There were complimentary boxes of matches up by the register near the cigarettes. The store was quiet as a stone; just the hum of the fluorescent lights greeted him. He sidestepped a goopy mass of mashed up fruit. That’s when he heard it. A few feet to his left, he was sure he heard the sound of shuffling feet. He stopped to listen harder.
His memory reeled back, flashes of blood and bullets, breaking glass . . . where one, two, three, zombies clamored into the store. Three, yea, he was sure of it. Three zombies entered the store, and he had killed every last one of them.
He started walking again, this time whistling loudly, a happy sounding tune, to fill in the silence around him. He hopped up on the counter and leaned all the way over to reach for the little bowl of matched under the register. It was just slightly out of reach. He held on to the ledge of the counter so he could stretch himself even farther. Just as his finger tips touched the side of the bowl, something grabbed his leg and yanked, hard. Jason felt white hot pain zip down his leg as his thigh bone disconnected from his hip socket. It made a tight snapping sound.
“Four, goddamn it, there were four after all,” Jason thought angrily.
His hand scrambled blindly for the rifle he knew was sitting right next to him on the counter. He felt it in his hand and swiveled around as best he could to aim at whatever had a hold of him. The gun went off, but the shot went high and wide and didn’t hit anything but the ceiling. Jason felt his body being pulled with a fierce strength, lifting him off the counter and bringing him face to face with death, literally.
It was a dead woman to be precise, but strong as any of the male zombies he had killed that night. The zombies were inhumanly strong, and always hungry. Her rotten breath left a wet fog around Jason’s face. This one had been dead a while. Jason felt his dinner swim around in circles in his stomach but he swallowed hard to keep from throwing up. She had him by the shoulders now and he swung wildly at her, managing only to rip her dress which was already tattered and dirty. With great difficulty he raised his one good leg up and kicked her in the stomach. His foot made a disgusting slurping sound as it tore a hole into the decomposing flesh. He pulled his boot back out of the bloody hole but the zombie didn’t flinch. She pulled him closer to her and opened her mouth to bite him. Jason screamed as her teeth ripped through his left cheek, tearing the flesh right off his face.
From behind the zombie there was the sound of crunching glass, followed by the click of a safely lever on a revolver.
“Slow and stupid or not, they always manage to capture and eat a few locals each year.” Old man Rutherford said out loud exactly what Jason had thought to himself earlier that night. He smiled at Jason, knowingly, and pulled the trigger of his handgun. Yes, he was quite the experienced hunter. The bullet met the back of the zombie’s head, took its leave and sailed right through Jason’s temple, where it lodged itself into his brain. Death was kindly instantaneous.
The old man walked around the counter and took a book of matches from the bowl under the register and headed outside to finish what had been started. He’d have to come back for Jason later, there was still time yet, hunting season wouldn’t be over for a few more days.
Thank you for reading my story and thank you to the creator(s) of CreepyHomeboys for including me in their project! To me, the best part of horror is the suspense - when you know something bad is about to happen any second but the main character don't seem to be clued in just yet! That, and I love inflicting misery on my fictional characters. I suppose I could benefit from a few hours of psychotherapy, what can I say!