Wrong Turn

I savor the taste of the steak as it hits my lips. The warm juice from the medium rare prime rib is running down my throat. Damn it tastes so good. I look down and see the steak, my baked potato, a house salad and a basket of bread. I look across the table and Erin is eating a portion of grilled eggplant covered with sauteed vegetables. She looks at me in disgust as I have a hunk of meat hanging out of my lips. Damn vegetarians always looking down on us meat eaters. Oh well I'm going to sit here and enjoy my steak, every single bite of it. I'm savoring the warm chuck of beef as I chew it slowly as to draw out every little bit of flavor. As I'm dipping my fork into the potato to take a bite I feel something is wrong. Everything is just to perfect. Regardless I push the fork into the bulk of the potato and scoop out a mouthful. As it draws near my lips I hear a loud horn go off and snap back into reality.

Damn I was sleeping and Erin knows it. She is staring at me like I stole her wallet right now. She hates it when I fall asleep in the car while she is driving. She gets so bored driving across the country that she relies on me to talk to. She sneers at my and asks me if I had a good dream. I tell her I did and I wish I was still there. To be honest since all of this has happened I would rather have a dream like that than have any other type of dream.

Food has become scarce for us so we discuss making a stop somewhere and raiding a store for supplies. She wants to stop at the a regular grocery store, but I convince her otherwise. Because of the last few encounters we have had with these mindless creatures we are running low on ammo so we need to restock, what better place than Bass Pro Shop. You're one stop shop for all things survival.

We travel along the highway avoiding the broken down cars and bodies that litter it looking for a viable exit. After searching for over 3 hours we find a sign for a Bass Pro saying that it is 2 miles down the road at exit 82. We decide that this is it and I start to prep the supplies we do have in case we run into trouble. I grab the last two clips for my desert eagles, load the shotgun up, and fill the chamber on the 9mm we grabbed for Erin. We have to grab everything we can in the shop without drawing any attention to ourselves.

We finally come to the exit and see that this Bass Pro is in the worst possible spot...a mall. Contrary to popular belief a mall is one of the worst places to be in a situation like this. If you think about it where do the most people congregate; the mall. Dammit I should have known. Everything in the world has gone wrong and now that we need supplies life decides to kick us in the nuts again. Regardless we decide that we don't have much of a choice we need to stop, not only are we low on food and ammo but we are nearly out of gas.

We pull into the lot and start to survey the area. I notice a few grazers wandering through the lot but they are far enough away that they wont be a issue. Besides I would rather not waste what little ammo we have on them and in turn draw attention from anything else that might be around. As we approach the doors I see a few bodies laying around, luckily for me they appear to be dead dead and not the walking dead.

Erin pulls the car up to the doors and stops the car. I grab my handguns and throw the shotgun over my back. I'm hoping that I wont have to use them at all but from the scene I'm seeing at the doors I have a bad feeling about this. I hop out of the car and quietly close the door and to not alert the grazers. I creep up to the door and grab the handle, its unlocked I'm not sure if this is a good sign or a bad sign. On one hand the door being unlocked means easy entry for me, on the other hand it means that this place was either abandoned or whatever happened here went down so fast they didn't have a chance to lock the doors.

I slowly slid the door open and slipped inside. The place has a stale smell of death permeating throughout. Dammit of course it would smell like death, hell every place we goes to smells like death lately. I scan the area quickly to make sure nothing is near me. I look across the plane of store and see a few moving shadows. I can only hope that those are living people making those shadows and not what I think they are. I grab the radio and call out to Erin letting her know the entrance is clear and I'm going to start moving further into the store. She lets me know she is going to park at the door and come inside.

I move forward making sure to stay in the well light areas just in case the shadows were people in hiding so they don't try to shoot me thinking I'm there to eat them. Then again these people may see me as a threat and shoot me anyways. I swear I can never win. I turn towards the gun section to start stocking up on ammo just in case the shit goes down. As I turn the corner into the ammo isle I see what is left of a body laying on the floor. Well that pretty much confirms my fears that something is in here and is hiding somewhere.

Out of nowhere the radio crackles as Erin lets me know that she has entered the building. I damn near pissed myself when that radio went off. Stupid thing I had it set to loud and now I can hear something shuffling towards me. At least from what I'm hearing if it is one of the creatures it is only a grazer and not a sprinter otherwise I might be worried. I stand up and start looking for where the noise is coming from and see a head moving slowly through the isles. Damn thing is only two rows down from where I am. I guess I'm lucky Erin called me on the radio otherwise I would have never known it was there and run headlong into it while I was grabbing supplies.

I'm still hesitant to take a shot at the creature since we are indoors and if anything else is here then the report from the round will draw their attention for sure. I start looking for anything I can use to manually assault this thing while making as little noise as possible. I notice that there is a portable pan set at the end of the aisle. Hmm maybe I can just beat this thing to death. I walk down to the set and tear it open, feels real light maybe to light. I grab the biggest pan from the set and start stalking my prey.

I creep over to the aisle the creature was in and start looking for him. Of course he isn't there now, why would he be? Just my luck. I stand up and start looking again, he isn't anywhere to be seen. Suddenly I hear a scrape on the ground behind me and turn to see him lunging at me. Dammit how had he gotten behind me? I swing the pan with everything I have and hit the creature right in the face. The pan bends in half and the creature just stands there. Fucking aluminum pans, if I get out of this I sure as hell as not grabbing a set of those. I start to run down the aisle only to stop in my tracks. There is another one standing in front of me. That explains it he didn't get behind me, he was there all along I had just run into another one.

I'm standing in the aisle trying to figure out what the hell to do and the two slowly shuffle towards me. I'm in a aisle full of ammo and yet don't want to shoot these things for fear of drawing in any other ones that are here. Shit, shit, shit, I have no idea what I'm going to do. Suddenly I hear a whoosh fly past my head and turn to see the creature behind me fall to the ground with a crossbow bolt sticking out of its head. I turn back and see Erin standing at the end of the aisle with a big grin across her face. Damn how many times is this woman going to save my life? The other creature turns and starts moving towards her. Erin's big grin dissipates as she realizes she doesn't have another bolt in the crossbow to drop this one. I look around and still have nothing to bludgeon this thing with. Now I'm not about to let Erin show me up by having her save me and me not return the favor. Suddenly it hits me. I start running full bore at the bumbling creature and cock my fist back. With everything I have a drive me balled up first into the back of its neck. The impact sounds like it shatters the bones in my hand, but lucky for me it wasn't my bones that had broken. The force destroyed the bones in the creatures neck severing its spine and killing it instantly. As the creature falls to the floor I look back and Erin and let her know that puts me in the lead for creativity. She just looks at me and lets out a little chuckle. I look down and see what she is laughing about, the creatures flesh had decayed to the point that at parts it was falling off. The force of my punch had broken through the skin and now the flesh was stuck to my hand. Great, here I am standing here trying to look cool with the dead flesh of some guy hanging from my fingers.

I tell Erin what to look for and we start gathering all the ammo we can. Once my hands are full of boxes of shells I look to the back wall and see the guns all over the racks. I'm in heaven. I feel like a kid who was just given a free pass in Toys R' Us. I start looking through and notice that each gun has a lock on the trigger. Of course here I am with a huge selection of weapons and no way to use them. Guess Ill just have to make do with what I already have.

I radio to Erin and let her know to start looking for food and anything else that may be useful while I start loading the ammo into the car. With the stock we are taking we will be set for a huge firefight in needed. Now its time to find some food, that damn dream made me hungry (not that I'm not always hungry).

I venture back into the building and radio for Erin. No answer. I try again and still no answer. Thoughts start racing through my head. Could something have happened? Did she call for me on the radio and I didn't hear it? I start running up and down the aisle looking for her. I'm hesitant to call her name out because there may still be some grazers roaming around and I really don't want anymore rotted flesh on my hands today. As I turn down the beef jerky aisle I hear Erin's voice come over the radio. She is quietly telling me to stop being a dumb ass and running around the store like a maniac. Damn woman. I stop and ask her where she is, she lets me know she located the food aisle and started grabbing whatever she could find. She tells me she had to put her radio down so she could fill the basket she grabbed and that's why she didn't answer. I should have realized that, instead I jump to the worst case scenario. I guess that's what living in this age does to a man.

I work my way over to her and see she has a basket completely filled with trail mix and other assorted meatless products. I should have known that's what I would get for letting a vegetarian do the food shopping. I start looking through the basket trying to see what I would eat. Erin just looks at me and laughs. I give her the evil eye and she points down the aisle to another cart. As it turns out she already grabbed yummy meat filled products for me and just put them in another cart so they wouldn't touch her food.

As we are wheeling the carts back towards the doors I hear something crash into a rack of clothes behind us. I turn around and see a sprinter dashing towards us. I push Erin out the door and pull out one of the desert eagles from my belt. I fire off a round and hit it in the chest. That sure as hell grabbed its attention, but unfortunately for me didn't even come close to bringing it down. I start running through the aisle trying to lose it but this thing is quick. Finally I get a idea and start running for the back of the store.

See at the back of the store on the wall is the giant fish tank and I want to see if this bastard can swim. I dash for the stairway next to the giant glass tomb and start to climb. Now I'm not sure if these things can climb or not but I don't really want to look back and find out until I hit the top. I hit the top and look back to see the thing traversing the steps, slowly but he sure is hell is making a effort of it. I starting crossing the faux rock formation to the other side and of course the creature tries to follow. Just as he stepped off of the stairway and was standing in front of the water I chucked one of the fake rocks at him and caught him square in the head. The blow startled him and caused him to lose him balance. With a splash he fell back into the water and started to sink. I guess since he doesn't have any air in his lungs he doesn't float. What happened next was a huge surprise to me.

Now I had mentioned before that the outbreak affected not only humans but all living creatures and it turns out fish were no different. The fish is the tank quickly darted toward the creature that had just fallen into their domain. Like a swarm of piranha going after a wounded cow they tore into the flesh of the creature. The frenzy was almost to unnerving to watch. The water splashed around as the fish had what was probably the first meal they hadn't eaten since the outbreak. Once they were down all that was left was a skeleton that was still twitching. I could feel my stomach starting to revolt against me at the sight so I hurried down the fake hill and began dry heaving at the bottom.

Once I regained my composure I headed for the front doors. While I was inside dealing with the sprinter Erin had loaded the car, found the gas station, and filled the car. When I got outside she was sitting on the hood looking bored. She just looked up, called me a slacker, and climbed back into the car. Well it looks like we are hitting the road again and continuing our journey east. We are about 2 days out from Michigan and hoping to hit it before the snow starts. Onward Ho!!