Henry did not bother waiting for Dennis and Meri before he headed for the store. He noticed earlier that the door was closed and possibly locked. If the door were locked, they would have no place to go as they could not fight a group this size. Those things never tire and would follow them forever if they ran.
Henry skidded to a stop and turned around.
Dennis and Meri had hardly made much distance from where they had originally started. That fall certainly was not helping with his mobility and Meri did not want to leave him behind.
"We could slow them down." Henry sounded optimistic as an idea popped into his head.
He ran back towards Dennis and Meri.
Dennis looked puzzled at Henry as his friend came running back with a smile on his face.
Before Dennis could ask about it. Henry started talking.
Without actually slowing down, Henry told as much of his plan as he could. "Keep going and try the door. I'm going to try to slow them down."
"What are you..." was all the words that Meri could get out before Henry was off again.
Meri looked at Dennis, "Alright old man. Let's get going."
She reached her arm through his and began to walk a little faster, encouraging him to do the same. Dennis grunted as the new speed made him feel every single step. He tried his best to keep up, even with the soreness, there was no way he was going to let whatever plan Henry was concocting to go to waste by being slow.
Henry raced towards one of two cart corals that were on this side of the parking lot. The first of them was the same one that Meri was leading the other zombies through not that long ago. There were a couple of dozen large shopping carts parked here, and Henry started pushing them out into the parking lot leaving them wherever they ended up. Henry ran out of the cart corral, after thinking about running over and kicking the dead middle-aged rocker mum in the face for being such a huge pain in the ass earlier.
"No," Henry said to himself, stopping the idea in its tracks. "I can't waste much time."
Henry started to run back out of the cart corral looking admirably at the maze of carts he was hoping would slow the walkers down. He put his hands on the handle of one of them and adjusted it's position a little to wedge it between a couple of others. He gave it a little shake. That should hold.
As soon as he thought about doing it, he knew he should not do it, but he still managed to do it. Henry turned his head and looked at the horde of zombies that was approaching him and his new friends.
The colour faded from his face, and he was beginning to feel a little nauseous now as well. Henry stumbled backwards and fell on the side of the cart coral and steadied himself as he regained his composure.
The only thing that Henry could see was a wall of bodies approaching him. Even the massive hoard that walked by the bus as he was hiding did not scare him as much as this one, this group was in hunting mode, the craze and determination that was in their eyes made Henry doubt his plan even before he finished setting it up.
The front line of zombies probably had 20 people in it, all of different shapes and sizes. Some taller people could have easily have been basketball or volleyball players in their college days, standing next to those men were a few average sized women who looked like dwarfs next to them. The only reason Henry knew they were not dwarfs was the couple of zombie children that were intermixed in the group, occasionally poking their hate filled face from between the legs of the group.
Every face that Henry looked at was smeared with blood, full of cuts and bruises. "It's like they all died to get a beating," Henry said morosely to himself. A well of hurt filled him thinking about how they all must have felt knowing they were going to die as they were all attacked.
Sticking out the end of the group was something Henry would not have expected to see. A little old lady was walking to the side appearing and disappearing behind them with every step that she took. It was only as they got closer that he could notice that she was still using her walker and one of her legs was completely broken, causing her to lean to the side almost tipping over with every step.
Henry watched in shocked horror as the group approached him. It was the sound of Dennis yelling to him that snapped him out of his daze. He looked over his shoulder and saw Dennis and Meri looking at him from just in front of the door area, and he got moving again.
He ran as fast as his legs would carry him towards the other cart coral, this one was a little out of the way, but it was full of shopping carts all neatly packed together and stored for the shoppers coming by today. Henry made a beeline for that coral so that he could gather the carts and make another obstacle slow them down.
Henry ran around the other side of the coral and started pushing on the carts with all of his strength but could not get any of them to move. He backed up and took a running lunge at them but only succeeded in partially knocking the wind out of himself instead.
He stood back and shook his head as he looked at the shopping carts. "How do those workers do it?" He asked himself. "How do they move all those shopping carts so quickly?"
Meri said something off to his right, and he turned his head. She was making a gesture with her hand, extending it out in front of her and bringing it back in as if she was trying to saw through something.
"Right!" Henry said as he looked back at the coral. "There's a wall in there."
He had thought it was a similar coral to the grocery store which ran the entire way through so that it would allow the boys were taking the carts into the store to push from one end right through the other. These had a barrier wall in the middle which meant that you had to push them out from there before you could bring them in the store, it also prevented someone from sending a shopping cart flying out the other side by violently pushing a cart in on the other side. That was something he had seen happen a few years ago and knocked a little boy to the ground that was walking into the store with his mother, the man who pushed the cart looked over his shoulder as he was walking way, apparently not caring about the potentially injured boy.
Henry ran into the middle of two lines of carts positioned neatly in the coral and pushed the two rows on the other side of the barrier out a little and then grabbed the ends of each of the rows in front of him and pushed with all of his might until they started moving. He continued to lean and push the carts until they were fully clear of the metal frame.
He grabbed the front cart of one row and lifted and turned, just like the grocery store workers did as they lined the shopping carts up as they move them. He ran around the other side of the carts and pushed them while running as fast as he could until the first cart rammed into the cement barrier separating the other section of the parking lot from the main road.
He turned and ran to get the next row of come over from the coral.
Henry glanced over at the zombies to see their progress and noticed that they were only about 20 feet from his first obstacle.
"Shit," Henry said to himself as he looked back at the carts still needing to be moved. "I'm not going to be able to get them all over here in time. One more, maybe two rows, though."
Henry ran back to the shopping carts and grabbed the front of the other row that he had previously pushed through the opening. He grabbed the front of the carts and violently shook them to move them into position. He ran the carts into the back of the other set but did not set them inside to make a massive chain, instead, he angled them slightly to create a point that led to the front of the store.
Dennis shouted to Henry. "Leave the rest, let's get inside!"
Henry turned to Dennis and shook his head. "Can't need one more or it's all for nothing." He tossed his hammer towards them, and it clanged to the ground a few feet in front of Meri.
"Hold this for me." He shouted as he ran back towards the carts.
Meri stepped forward and picked up the hammer from the ground, it felt incredibly light in her grip compared to the pipe she had slung over her shoulder.
"I do not like this." She said as she stoo
d next to Dennis and watched Henry running towards the other carts.
Henry moved into the empty side of the cart coral and jumped over the small wall to the other side and started pushing one of the rows out from the metal fence. The carts seemed to move a little easier this time since there was a slight incline in the parking lot that pointed towards the road.
Before he knew it, the carts were out past the end of the area, and he began yanking on them as he heard the first clangs of noise as the zombies started running into the carts in his first barrier. Henry did not waste any time looking as he was more concerned with getting this last barrier set up than knowing how the other was doing at slowing down the group.
He pushed the last of the carts into a similar position as the last set of shopping carts to create a funnel to slow the zombies down to let them get inside.
He admired his work and quickly joined Dennis and Meri who were standing a few feet from the front door with a worried look on their faces.
"Why are not you inside?" Henry asked as he approached.
"Can't open the door," Meri said as she handed back the hammer to him.
"What do you mean?" It looked open before as he looked towards the door and noticed that it was fully closed.
A loud bang grabbed Henry's attention and he spun around to see one of the shopping carts in his barrier laying over on its side with one of the taller zombies standing on top of it with his arms held straight out. The other zombies in the group began filing through the larger hole in the barrier while others walked around the pile.
The great zombie looked up from the shopping cart laying on the ground and threw it's head back in the air. The low moaning howls that it made sent shivers up the spine of Henry. The zombie brought its head back down and looked back at Henry as it lifted its leg and walked over the cart.
The barrier that Henry had set up had slowed some of the group down, but the main accomplishment of it was that it created three new groups of zombies. One on each side that walked around the barrier and the ones who walked through the make-shift wall when the cart was tipped over.
The zombies continued on their journey towards them, undeterred by Henry's attempt at slowing them down.
"We need to get inside of there," Henry said as he turned around. "There has to be some way in."
Henry walked towards the door and put his hand on the handle and gave it a little shake. The door rattled and echoed across the empty space. The noise seemed to give the group of zombies something to focus on, and many of them began to groan as they walked with a renewed purpose.
"Fuck!" Henry yelled as he punched the door and slammed his head into it as he leant forward and let out a soft sigh. "I thought we'd be safe here. We should have tried Walmart instead."
Henry turned and placed his back on the wall and slowly slid to the ground. Sitting with a sigh, he put his hands on his head.
"Do not be so hard on yourself. We could not have stayed on the bus either." Dennis put a hand on his back. "We had no food there."
"If we're going to stay alive, then we need to find another place to hide." Dennis looked at Henry waiting to for a decision before he started off to find a new location.
Henry looked at Dennis out of the corner of his eye and only turning his head slightly. "Just give me a minute to get used to this feeling."
"What feeling?" Meri asked. "Disappointment? I know all about that, and disappointing others. Just find my mum and ask her, she'll tell..."
"No." Henry interrupted. "The feeling of always being hunted by these things. I was hoping that it was just a sickness that could be cured and isolated this morning, but now, I'm not so sure. I have not seen a single health care worker, police officer, or even military since I left this morning."
"I do not know if this is ever going to get better," Henry added.
Henry returned his eyes to the ground as he let out another sigh and stood up again.
He looked to Dennis, "Where do you think we should go?"
"Why are you asking me?" Dennis looked puzzled.
"I had this terrible idea that did not get us anywhere good," Henry responded. "So, I'm following your lead from now on."
Dennis thought about it for a second, "With these guys following us, the only thing we can do it go out Route 156 and circle back towards Spryfield to find someplace that might not be touched by this yet."
"Sounds good to me," Henry responded quickly and pushed off from the door and walked towards Princess Street.
"Not that way," Dennis said stopping Henry. "We'll lead them around the building and go into the woods to keep them from splitting off and surrounding us on the other side."
"See, I knew there was a reason why I defaulted back to you." Henry quipped with a smile.
He turned around and started walking towards the far side of the building.
Meri said something that halted them both in their tracks. "Are those keys?"
Dennis and Henry both turned around quickly and looked at her.
Meri stood behind them looking out into the parking lot where they were headed and laying on the ground in a bloody heap was a man wearing a shirt and tie. Next to his outstretched hands appeared to be a large set of keys.
"You think that's the manager or something?" Those words set off a chain of thoughts in Henry's mind that instantly altered his mood.
He turned his head and looked back towards the group that was closest to them. The small group of zombies that had walked around the first barrier and was approaching on the grass of the cement divider. Many of these zombies were smaller and showed more damage than the others. They also appeared to be walking slower than the rest.
"This might mean they're a little smarter, throwing us off the trail by pretending they're weak, like the one at the baseball field." He thought to himself.
"We can only do one thing. Go get those keys and try the door, or make a run for it around the building." Henry asked the group but was looking only to Dennis for an answer. "Which is it?"
Dennis looked past Henry towards the man laying by the car, and the keys next to him. "We have to chance it. We did not come this far to just walk away."
"I would rather die trying than just run away." Dennis was confident in his decision as he started towards the car.
"Not you cowboy." Meri reached out and grabbed Dennis by the elbow. "If you're going then we might as well just walk into a gunfight with a piece of spaghetti." The analogy from her childhood got lost on the men.
"What!?" Dennis said, more confused that inspired.
"I'll go," Henry said as he started bouncing on his feet. "Back in a minute."
Henry sprinted across the parking lot, jumping over the little dividers as if they were mud puddles. The car he was aiming for was halfway across the parking lot in the area typically reserved for store employees since no reasonable customer would park there if a spot closer to the door were available.
The closer to the body he got, the more confident he became in motion that this was one of the store managers. Littered around the body and blowing around this part of the parking were pages of paper from a spilt briefcase containing a letterhead with the company logo on it. This must be someone important.
Henry slowed down as he got closer to the body. He wanted to be able to make sure that it was not playing possum to lead him into a false sense of security. He approached the body cautiously and reached out with his arm carrying the hammer and nudged the man's hand. It rocked on the ground slightly. He watched the body for any other movements, a twitch of a finger, a flicker in the leg.
He looked closer at the body laying face down in the parking lot was missing a good portion of the left side. The man only had one arm and leg still attached to the torso. "At least it's not going to be moving very fast."
Henry could see nothing moving and looked down at the keys on the ground.
The keys that they spied from the front door were very plain and nondescript. They contained two standard k
eys, probably to the front door of his house, Henry thought. On the same ring was the key to the car.
"Damn. Why did not we all comeover and just get in the car and drive away?" Henry said to no one while glancing around.
There was another ring on the keys, this one contained about 5 or 6 more keys all of the various sizes. A couple really small keys likely for a filing cabinet in an office. The one that Henry focused on was a single key that was larger than any of the others on either of the key rings.
Henry bent down and picked up the keys from the pool of blood and wiped them on the back of the shirt of the man.
The largest key contained the logo of the local locksmith with the phrase "Do not replicate this key. Please contact Manny's Locksmith to obtain another key." These were the keys that all of the businesses in the mall used when Henry was going to college.
"This must be it." Henry smiled, and he turned around.
"Shit," Henry said as he froze in his tracks.
Starting to come between him and his friends was the small group of zombies that had branched off from the others and were approaching him while his back was turned. One of the zombies looked at the body on the ground and began to lick its lips, focusing on the fresh and easy meal instead of Henry.
Taking this as a queue, Henry began to side step away from the body. Most of the zombies were focusing on the meat on the ground that only two had started following Henry as he moved back towards the building.
"If these guys are so close, Meri and Dennis must be in trouble by now." Henry began to panic.
He put the keys safely in the pocket of his pants and started back towards the front of the store. His energy was starting to fade as his reserves of adrenaline have been depleted from running for his life most of the day. The muscles in his legs began to burn from the exertion, and Henry doubted that he'd be able to run-walk much more today before his legs collapsed.
He made a wide berth around the group that were approaching him, and he looked to the front of the store to see if Dennis and Meri were in trouble.
Henry was pleasantly surprised by what he saw when he looked. There was not a single zombie around the two. Both of the other groups of zombies were currently caught up in the funnel that Henry had made with the other carts.
Each of the zombies was pushing each other, trying desperately to get through the opening first. The carts were heavy enough that they were not moving just by the zombies leaning and pushing on them.
Henry almost started celebrating until he saw the tall zombies making their way through the middle of the pile to the front.
He began to push himself to go faster before they figured a way through the obstruction.
Henry arrived at the front door and pulled the keys from his pocket.
"I did not think that would work as well as it did," Dennis said looking over his shoulder. "I'm really impressed."
"Thanks," Henry responded. "Save that for when we're actually inside."
"If we get inside," Henry added to himself.
Henry fumbled with the keys, the pressure of being the one responsible for saving the lives of his friends was something he was not used to. He dropped the keys to the ground, and they hit the ground with a little clink.
He grabbed them quickly from the ground and found the key again. He put it in his hand and held it up to the lock on the sliding door. He had to hold the key in both hands to get it to stop moving long enough to be able to line it up and slide it into the lock.
As the key slide into the lock, a sense of relief and extra pressure came over him. "What if the key does not actually turn?" Henry threw the doubt from his mind as quickly as it entered, but he knew that the idea was still there in the background.
He turned the key to the left, and it did not budge. He tried putting a little more pressure on the key in an attempt to see if the lock was just stuck a little. It still did not budge.
Henry took a slow deep breath as he turned the key back to its original position and slowly turned the key to the right this time. The key turned easily, and Henry heard the audible thunk of the lock being lifted.
He turned the key and pulled it back out of the lock.
He grabbed the handle and yelled, "Everybody in!"
The door slides smoothly to the right as Dennis and Meri squeezed by Henry and into the dark entryway of the store. Henry quickly followed them into the store and turned around to close the door.
Before closing the door Henry looked back towards the last obstacle that he had left for the zombies, both of the really tall zombies had made it to the front and were each trying to pull the same cart in different directions as they tried to find a way through.
A sense of accomplishment washed over Henry's body as he slid the key back into the lock on the other side of the door and slammed it shut with a bang. He turned the key to the right and locked it again. He pulled on the door, and it did not budge at all.
Henry smiled and gave the finger to the closed door and backed away from it as he watched the zombies finally break through the barricade and continue their determined march towards the store.
Henry backed away from the door and into the darkness, never taking his eyes from the zombies as they got ever closer to the warehouse. He put his hands out behind him, looking for the wall of the entry way. Finding the wall, he braced himself and lowered himself to the ground and let out an audible sigh.
Henry closed his eyes and leant his head back against the wall.
"What I wouldn't do for a pillow right now," Henry said as he opened his eyes after hearing Meri take a seat beside him.
"I know," Meri whispered as she looked at her feet. "I just want this to be over."
Henry waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light and began to look around the entryway. To his right was the storage location for the large carts people used when shopping in bulk here. There was a small sliding door beside the door that they had just come through which looked to already have a lock in place. Henry made a note to check that out in a few minutes. To his left was a small area which sold the cigarettes. Over his shoulder, Henry could sense the dark and expansive central shopping area.
From somewhere to his left Henry hears Dennis' heavy footsteps as his shape appears as a shadow in front of light from the door.
"I'm going to take a look around for a second, see if there is anyone inside." He said as he looked into the store, squinting his eyes to see if he could make out any more detail. Dennis twisted his hands nervously on his pipe as he took a step forward.
"Hey," Henry said to Dennis.
Dennis turned to his voice.
"Just be careful in there. OK?" Henry said with some worry in his voice.
"You don't have to tell me," Dennis responded, with a hint of confidence. "I'm only going a few feet into just listen and have a look around."
Dennis took a few more steps forward and returned his gaze to the vast door that greeted him into the darkness. "Just listen for a sign of trouble." He whispered back over his shoulder as he stepped through the doorway.
Henry turned his attention to Meri, who was still looking down at her feet. In the darkness, Henry wasn't sure if she was vibrating with fear or crying silently for her friends and family.
Henry reached his hand towards her and placed it on her shoulder. Meri looked up at him with her cheeks glistening and covered in tears.
"Today wasn't supposed to be like this." She said as she wiped away a fresh set of tears.
Chapter Twenty-Two