Henry walked down the embankment on the far side of the highway and crossed through a little clearing in a row of hedges and stepped into the parking lot of the town's mall.
The mall was a typical commercial mall designed in a plus shape to be able to put four large box stores at the end of each row to draw people to the mall just to shop at those locations. On an average day, the mall did not open until 10 am and seeing as how the monsters were downtown at nine the parking lot of the mall was pretty empty. There were a few cars scattered in different spots through the parking lot. Most likely the managers or key holders arriving to get the stores ready for the shoppers that day.
Henry was standing at the end of the mall that featured entrances to the movie theatre and chain bookstore. There were about a dozen cars parked in front of the movie theatre, probably a couple of cleaning crews trying to scrape chewing gum of the bottoms of the seats, and layers of butter from the floor underneath those seats. After working in a theatre when he was in college, Henry vowed never to go again after having to clean up when the first summer blockbuster came out that year. There was popcorn, candy, and pop spread all over the floor; Henry had to stay until 3 am cleaning a single theatre before he was allowed to leave for the night. That was the day he had failed his only exam in college.
"I wonder if the people inside the mall even know what's going on outside?" He wondered. "They're going to be in for a surprise when they get outside."
Had he have been standing closer to the mall, Henry would have seen the bloody hand prints on the glass doors leading out of the mall, and one of the doors was propped open with an overturned mop bucket.
He stood at the edge of the massive parking lot, thankful that is was barren except for those few cars 500 meters away.
The wholesale store that Henry was interested in was directly on the other side of the mall; he could see the roadside sign peeking over the top of the mall.
"I could just walk through the parking lot to get there faster." A sudden noise from the other side of the mall made Henry jump. "Or, I could just stick to the edge of the parking lot so nothing can jump out at me. There are a lot of corners around here."
He looked to his left and saw that the parking lot continued in a straight line following the highway that he just crossed and then it made a sweeping turn to the right before disappearing around the corner of the building as the parking lot met up with the other end of Princess Street.
Princess Street was one of the main streets running through town. It stretched all the way from the downtown core to the edge of the city before it turned into rural highway 156 and continued to the coast. Every type of business, residence and government building is located off of this street. He knew that if there were going to be a pocket of survivors like him, they would be along that road; but a group of people, even hidden, is probably going to attract a bunch of those monsters as well.
"I'm going to avoid that place as long as I can."
The sound of the car crash from the other side of the mall grabbed Henry's attention. "Yeah, I'm going nowhere near there."
With that said, Henry crept out of the bushes and walked slowly along the edge of the parking lot. Hoping that nothing was in the mall watching him and planning on making a move.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. There were no fewer than four sets of eyes watching Henry's slow, deliberate movements from the shadows of the mall. Each of the eyes were encouraging and waiting for Henry to come inside. The pile of bodies and splatter just inside the mall doors tells the tale of how many other people thought to go to the mall to escape was a good idea. Somewhere inside the mall, one of the creatures tried to laugh.
The noise coming from the mall terrified Henry. It sounded like the noise Henry's cat made each time it went into heat and wanted to go outside to find a mate. The memory of his childhood almost brought him to tears but the fear of getting eaten alive because he stopped to have a cry kept the tears at bay.
Trying to watch the tree line ahead and keep an eye on the massive parking lot ahead and behind him was causing Henry to walk slower than he anticipated. He had expected to be on the other side of the parking lot by now, but the constant glances over his shoulder kept him from moving faster than he had wanted.
Henry was about half way across the parking lot when the next side of the parking lot started to open up, along with the view of Kings Road that ran along the edge of that part of the mall. Kings Road was one of those roads that were never built up, but now that the big retail stores had been put in the area more and more businesses wanted to move as well. There were several active construction sites along Kings Road. Henry could not hear a single machine or hammer today, though.
The closer he got to Kings Road, the more he could see the parking lot. This portion of the mall anchored by a newly re-branded and refinished Walmart Superstore, the kind of store that is supposed to carry everything from fresh fruit to charcoal and kids toys. Since construction finished, Henry had made a point to avoid it; The parking lot always packed on a good day, and he could not imagine what it would be like now that it had everything in it.
The Walmart opened it were doors at 7:30 am every day and did not close until midnight. Henry glanced down at his watch. "10:30. Ouch."
Henry took another few steps and jogged for 30 seconds before stopping dead in his tracks.
The parking lot in front of the Walmart had some cars in it. There were at least 4 or 5 dozen cars all lined up and parked neatly into the first few rows in front of the main doors. There were even still a few cabs sitting along the sidewalk as if they were waiting for the students to finish their shopping.
A few people were lingering around the parking lot, walking without a purpose it seemed. Henry thought about waving at those people until he spotted a young lady trying to sneak out of the cars in the middle of the parking lot when one of the people who happened to be on the other side of her car sprang at her and took a big chunk from her neck. Even from this distance, Henry could see the life vanish from her body as she had stopped trying to push her attacker away and let her arms fall to her side, defeated.
Henry stood frozen on the other end of the parking lot like the small group of people in the parking lot all converged on the body of the girl to feast on her flesh. He counted each as they disappeared behind a vehicle.
"Six. Seven. And... where is the last one? Where did that old man go?"
Henry was looking for the man who was wearing the fedora that he has seen walking near the line of taxis a few minutes ago.
"Well, if he's going to hide. Then I guess he cannot see me then." He said as he started sprinting across the edge of the parking lot. Henry hoped that the people would be busy with the latest body until he was well out of sight.
Henry kept running for what seemed like hours before he was close enough to Kings Road to slide down in the ditch that separated the mall from one of the first empty properties on the road.
Henry laid in the ditch with his back to the mall, keeping an eye for anything that might approach from where he could not have seen them before dropping into the ditch.
Henry sat in the ditch quietly trying to catch his breath. He wiped away some sweat from his brow as he watched and waited. After a few minutes, Henry slowly lifted his body and peaked out of the ditch and towards Kings Road, luckily for Henry there was a construction dumpster parked at the back of the building lot that covered his approach.
Satisfied that he was not spotted, Henry slowly turned around and looked towards Walmart to check if any of the members of the parking lot group spotted him. Henry sighed as he spotted the man wearing the fedora shuffling through the car park towards him.
"Crap," Henry said and ducked back into the ditch again. "I should have been more careful."
He counted to 30 before sticking his head out of the ditch and looking again. The man wearing the fedora was no longer walking towards him. He had turned around after another person in a car had tried to make
a run for it.
Henry could not tell if this person was a man or woman, the group had already surrounded them when he had taken his second look.
He returned to the ditch again and let go of another large sigh.
"I did not figure I'd get this close to the Wholesale store." He said to himself. "Now I need a new plan, and to be extra careful."
Henry crawled down the ditch, luckily for him it was just for storm runoff and dry most of the year. About twenty feet from the side of the Kings Road, he stopped. Behind him there was a cement barricade that the mall had put up when they added in an exit to this end of the parking lot, to keep people from driving into the ditch.
Henry put his back to the barricade and raised himself slowly to peer out into the construction zone that was Kings Road.
For a road that was just a connector between the mall and a residential area, there were more cars on it than he expected to see.
"There was probably a group of monsters in the subdivision that people were trying to escape from, but they were not watching where they were going."
The first car to run into problems was a little brown European car flattened by the track wheels of the yellow bulldozer that was trying to cross the road. After that, cars had crashed into the back of that car and any other obstacles there were around. The only exception to this mayhem was a city bus that parked in the middle of the road with a pickup truck lodged into its rear axle. The bus looked to be only standing upright because of that truck.
Henry's eyes lingered at the bus since it looked so out of place in the rest of the carnage. That's when he saw it. Ahead peeking up over the ledge of one of the windows in the middle of the bus and then it disappeared again. His heart began hammering with adrenaline. "Could that be!? Is that a person?"
A smile crossed his face, and he almost jumped out of his hiding spot and sprinted towards the bus when he heard the familiar growl. The colour drained from his face as he tried to pinpoint where the sound was.
Henry glanced to the right to see a mangled and beaten man emerge from the construction site and walking towards the bus. He stole another look at the bus and saw a second head appear at the front of the bus. This new one was not paying Henry any attention as all of its focus was on the new person walking to the bus.
A man stood on the bus and pulled what looked like a gun from the back of his pants. Henry looked back at the man walking in enough time to see his head snap back followed by a cloud of red mist. The man crumpled to the ground.
Henry sank back into the ditch. "Holy shit. That gunshot did not make a sound."
He was shaking again in fear, only this was not a fear of getting eaten alive by these people, he terrified of getting shot by the people on the bus the next time he stood up.
"Hey!"
Henry was startled by the sudden voice.
"You, in the ditch!"
Henry looked around. "They could not be talking to me."
"I just saw you go in there!" The voice bellowed. "Get up and run towards the bus if you want some safety. You've got a little more than a minute before the next walker gets here. Now. Move!" The voice commanded.
Henry looked around from the ditch, "I guess it has to be safer than where I'm hiding right now."
He took a giant breath and scrambled up the side of the ditch and did not even bother to look around for any threats. He just ran towards the bus.
Henry used all of the adrenaline in his body and forced it to run without having any food or nutrients yet today. He approached the bulldozer in the road and vaulted himself over the scoop and continued his run.
It was now that he spared a glance around and over his shoulder only to see a large group of people approaching from the other end of Kings Road. They were far enough away not to pose any immediate threat, but they were coming this way and would likely find him soon enough.
"How do I get in?" Henry yelled as he approached the front of the bus.
"Pickup truck. Use it to get to the roof. I'll open the fire escape up there." The voice came from the depth of the bus.
Henry ran around toward the back of the bus and jumped into the bed of the truck without much of an effort. He took a second to have a look around and noticed the bodies that were littered around the area, many of them seeming to be missing a large chunk of their head or face.
"When you get on the roof, do not walk on it. Crawl, I do not want these bastards to know how you got in here." The voice startled him, and he jumped to the small portion of the roof.
Henry stood on the truck's roof and looked for anything to grab hold of to hoist himself up. There was a grate on the roof of the bus a couple of feet away, "Shit." Henry said as he stretched and strained to reach for it.
He bent his legs a little and jumped up reaching for the edge of the bus.
The side of the grate slipped through his fingers, and Henry came back down with a small thud. His right foot slipped off of the truck, and he started flailing his arms looking for anything on the back of the truck that he might be able to grab. His right hand found the edge of the exhaust stack that comes out of the top of a bus to eliminate blowing directly into a car's radiator.
Henry was able to steady himself and regain his composure standing on the roof.
"Not to worry you, but you might want to hurry up if you want any chance of getting through this." The voice said from inside the bus.
"I'm working on it," Henry said with a little frustration in his voice. "There is not much to grab hold of up there."
Henry peered around the side of the bus and nearly fell off of the truck. The large group of people were now by the first entrance to the Walmart parking lot and making their way down Kings Road towards him.
"One more shot at this," Henry says to himself, and he readied himself for another jump.
He placed his feet a little further apart than last time, hoping that he can get a bit more distance by crouching down more. He put his arms over his head and slowly inhaled and exhaled.
The energy he stored in his legs as he held that position vaulted himself into the air. As Henry cleared the edge of the bus, he leant forward and stretched as far as he could to reach the grate. His fingers gripped the edge of it, and he pulled himself onto the bus as quick as he could.
Henry did not even lift his head as he tried his best to imitate the marines and army guys he's seen on television as they crawl under a barbed wire fence. He was beginning to wonder if he had passed the emergency exit when it slid open just in front of him and a dirty hand came out of it.
"Over here." It whispered. "Come head first, and I'll help you down."
Henry could just picture the owner of that voice anxiously looking back of his shoulder as he said those words, wondering if it was too late to be letting someone into their safe area.
Henry worked his way over to it and judging from the size of the hands that were waiting for him. He had no doubt that they'd be able to help in into the bus.
He was at the edge of the fire escape and peered into the bus, but he could not see anything.
"Come in now or start running." The voice was harsh and full of force.
Henry put his arms into the hole and started to slide into the bus. The massive hands wrapped around Henry's ribs and lowered him to the ground. The man reached up and closed the fire escape before looking to Henry.
"My name is Dennis, and the girl over there is Meri." He offered his hand to shake.
"I'm Henry." He said as he reached his hand it became engulfed by Dennis'.
Dennis looked over his shoulder, "We'll talk more later. It's time to hide before those undead fuckers find us."
Henry scratched his head. "Undead!?"
"Shh. They can still hear." Meri said from somewhere in the shadows.
Dennis took a seat on the floor behind one of the seats near the middle of the bus and leant his head slightly so that he could still see out the front window. Henry did the same thing but from across the row. Meri sa
t curled into a fetal position a few rows in front of Dennis and hardly made a sound.
For the next few minutes, all Henry could do is sit there and watch the massive group of people slowly make their way around the bulldozer and come towards the bus.
Chapter Fourteen