Twelve Days in Hell

way to the back of the store with their new supplies. They left their full buggies there and went to help Mark with the refrigerator.

  They were able to stand the heavy appliance on the pallet jack, and they all walked back to the hidden room together. Everyone helped unload the fridge from the pallet jack and they plugged it into one of the strange looking outlets in the room. It buzzed to life.

  They were happy at the thought of staying safe in comfort. If they stayed in the store they would have everything they needed to survive for a long time.

  Danny still said they should move on and search for other survivors, and then they could return to the store after they were finished. Tom and the others agreed that there must be more survivors out there. Maybe they were stuck in their own homes unable to fight the hordes of the undead.

  With their new found weapons they stood a chance of survival. Danny, Tom, Samantha, William, and Mark made their way to the front of the store to have a look at the parking lot.

  They could see bodies in the street. They scanned the whole parking lot and it looked like the nightmare could actually be over. They looked all across the empty parking lot, seeing no sign of the living dead.

  They went to the lawn and garden to have a look. They saw more bodies lying motionless in the parking lot, but no signs of movement. Only the stench of death filled the air.

  “Maybe the beasts have starved to death.”

  Danny could sense something was not right about it. The hungry dead had to be somewhere close by.

  Tom climbed the 12 foot high fence and jumped to the other side.

  He was armed with the 12 gauge shot gun. He made his way to a circle of bodies, wondering why they were in such a strange circular pattern.

  He stepped over one body, and then he saw the radio in the center of the circle.

  He heard a sharp hiss of breath, and it dawned on him that these were not just dead bodies they were the bodies of the undead.

  He tried to hurry over the body that he had stepped over, but it grabbed him by the ankle.

  He aimed his shot gun and pulled the trigger. The bird shot scattered into the upper torso of the hideously deformed zombie.

  The other zombies roared to life, scratching and biting at Tom has he ran back to the fence.

  He jumped back to the other side, to safety. The others asked if he was OK. He said he was, but they had just about scared him into a heart attack.

  Now they knew the living dead slept during the daylight hours. The shotgun blast had awakened all the other sleeping zombies and they were soon surrounding the lawn and garden section on all sides.

  “Well, looks like we will need to wait till tomorrow if we want to make it out of the parking lot alive.” Tom said.

  They went back into the main store. Suddenly Danny figured out why the zombies were in a circle around the radio.

  He had a plan. He talked it over with Tom and the others, explaining that it might be possible to lure the zombies to the back of the building using a couple of two way radios.

  They had to act fast if they wanted it to work. Mark and Tom volunteered to take the radios out the loading area at the back of the store. They placed one radio on one side of the back doors and another on the other side.

  They closed and locked the doors. On another radio Danny started making loud noises, and the hordes made their way to the back of the store, leaving the front and side parking lots empty except for the two truly dead zombies at the lawn and garden fence.

  Samantha, William, and Mark stayed in the store making noises over the radios as Danny and Tom jumped the fence of lawn and garden and made their way to a large black SUV parked in the side lot next to lawn and garden.

  They had no luck finding a key but Tom said he could hot wire the car. Danny sat in the passenger side of the SUV as Tom crossed the wires and the big car roared to life. They peeled out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

  Danny and Tom were heavily armed, ready to start their search for survivors.

  They decided to check all the local churches. The first church they pulled up to was a two story Baptist church.

  They exited the vehicle and cautiously looked around. There were no signs of the dead or the living. They went to the door and turned the knob, listening.

  When they decided the coast was clear, they finally turned on their flashlights. They went from room to room, looking for any signs of life.

  When they reached the middle of the church and opened the double doors that led into the sanctuary, they spotted bodies in all the pews. But they noticed that the air smelled not of death but of body odor and sweat. These people were alive!

  “Hello!” Danny called. One after another heads started popping up from their resting places.

  “My name is Danny and this is Tom, we want to take you to a new place of safety.”

  People sighed in relief that help had come. There was cheerful whispering throughout the church.

  “We have to act fast if we want to make it there alive.” Tom said.

  “Is there anyone here that can drive the church bus” Danny asked.

  One man stood up and said “I am a regular driver of the bus.” It was the youth pastor.

  “Are there any more people located in other parts of this church?” Tom asked.

  “No,” said the youth pastor. “We are all in the sanctuary.”

  “Good,” replied Tom. “Follow us.”

  There must have been sixty to eighty people lined up to go trough the doors of the church and they made their way to a large church bus that only held about thirty people. They squeezed onto the bus more packed than a can of sardines.

  All together there were forty passengers on the bus. Others climbed into the four remaining church vans. The keys were always kept above the driver's seat in a magnetic box that was attached to the roof of the vans.

  “Follow us, keep together and when we get to where we are going keep quiet.”

  They took off down the road in the black SUV with a bus and four vans behind. They drove through the mountains back to Buy-Right super center.

  They pulled up to the front entrance and radioed to Samantha, Mark, and William to unlock the front doors of the store. They had many survivors. Mark and William made their way to the front of the massive store and unlocked the doors while Samantha stayed in the back room making screams over the radio to the two radios out the back door.

  The zombies remained at the loading dock of the supermarket while Tom, Danny and about eighty others made their way into the front door of the store.

  The time now was 7:00PM. They had another long night ahead of them but at least they made it into the store safe and sound.

  With the front doors of the store locked again and the bars on the windows and doors they decided to turn on the power to the whole store. The store was now well lit, and everybody could see each other clearly.

  They were then told to make themselves at home, that there was access to water hoses in the restrooms where they could shower. Any needed supplies could be found within Buy-Right. The members of the church were reluctant to take anything without asking and without paying for it.

  Tom then told them, “Your money is no good here, not now. Please feel free to take what you need.”

  Tom started to explore more of the store and he found the employee break room. It had a stove, microwave, toaster oven and coffee makers. There were plenty of seats and even a smoking area.

  He came back into the main store and picked up a nearby telephone and put it up to his ear. He heard nothing, no static, no crackling just anything at all. He pushed the intercom button and he heard himself breathing over the stores speakers.

  The others heard it too. He made the announcement that there was a way to cook food and he needed some volunteers to do some shopping and some other volunteers to do some cooking in the break room. He also asked for help to hook up more stoves and ovens so they could have more people cooking.

  Many voluntee
rs showed up at the front of the store more than willing to shop and cook for the survivors. They had enough people willing to help to split the group up into two smaller groups, the cooks and the shoppers. There were also enough volunteers to help with getting more than one stove operational.

  Everyone seemed happy to be in a well lit store. It was much better than being in that cold dark church.

  The shoppers filled their buggies with frozen meats, canned goods, breads, pizzas, tacos, and noodles of all shapes and sizes. Tonight would be a pizza night.

  The youth were with their youth pastor and he was leading them up and down the toy aisles. He told them to pick out toys that they could share and have fun with to keep them busy throughout the day.

  The less they thought about those monsters that lurked outside the better off they would be. He picked out some card games and some of his favorite classic board games and tucked them into the youth shopping cart.

  Many people were putting together beds, tables, desks and anything else they thought they might like to have right in the middle of the store.

  Danny had asked over the intercom if there were any hunters or sharp shooters and if they could make their way to the back of the store. About thirty men showed up, all members of the church, and all hunting buddies.

  He told them he knew it wasn't going to be easy to do this task but they needed to narrow down the zombies as much as possible. He equipped them with weapons and sent them out into the lawn and garden section. Then he asked them to make as much noise as possible to lure the zombies to the garden fence