Beyond the Barriers Read online

  Then I hit the emergency section and found a pair of those flashlights that you shake to charge. A small wind-up radio was next to them, so I tossed that in as well. It was lying on its side, next to a couple of opened tents, through which someone had rummaged.

  I came to the hunting supplies, and found some knives in a large glass case. I looked around for an employee, but folks were running here and there, and the store looked like it would descend into complete chaos at any moment. So I grabbed a wrapped poncho and tore the packaging open. Then I unrolled it and held it to my side. I put the thin, glass door to my back, glanced around to see if any security watched, and quickly swung my elbow into the door as hard as I could.

  Glass shattered behind the bag, which muffled the noise for the most part. I took out a game cleaning kit, putting it in the bag, then a couple of Gerber knives. There was a small axe in there as well. It had a short haft, and the burnished metal finish was dull in the florescent lights.

  I took one of the Gerbers out of a box and slid it into my pocket. It was a four-inch blade with a serrated edge. It felt good to have some kind of weapon with me, no matter its size. Next up was a real weapon. I passed the archery stuff and stopped at the gun rack.

  A couple of years ago, the liberals tried to get Walmart to remove guns from their stores. For the most part, the gigantic company complied, but some stores in smaller towns, like ours, kept them. A lot of hunters stopped here on their way to the mountains, for needed ammo and the occasional hunting rifle.

  A man stopped to look at the knife rack and the mess on the floor. A thin guy with a Hawaiian shirt stuck to his body, he panted like he’d run all the way here.

  “What happened?”

  “I guess someone got impatient,” I told him.

  “Think anyone will mind if I help myself?”

  “I don’t think anyone will care. In a few days, we won’t care about anything.”

  “Jesus, it’s not that bad. The government will reestablish order soon.”

  “Hey, you can’t do that.” An employee came around a corner aisle with a woman in tow. She was looking at the signs, and he was obviously trying to find something for her.

  The thin guy looked between us, then marched off like he didn’t know what to say or do. He just spun on his heel and left. I stared at the employee until he looked away.

  “You got a key for this?” I pointed at the gun rack.

  “Yeah, but we aren’t allowed to open it anymore. The manager is worried about a riot, about someone getting a gun and shooting at people.” He was short and stocky. Perspiration covered his face over a sheen of oil. How many hours had he been here trying to keep order? Trying to milk the last dollar out of the consumers?

  “That makes no sense,” I said.

  The woman who had followed watched our exchange, then shook her head as if just remembering something, and walked off as well. There was a buzz to the air, and things were going to get violent at any moment. I didn’t want to stick around that long.

  “Just open it for a second. I’ll even leave my credit card with you. Charge whatever you want.” I took my wallet out of my back pocket, extracted my Visa Platinum, and set it on the counter. My name gleamed back at me, embossed in plastic.

  He looked at it, then at me, and started to leave. “I’m sorry.”

  “Look, man, you know about those things, right? You got a family? You got a gun to protect them?”

  “It’s not that bad out there. Everyone is overreacting.”

  “Overreacting? I just watched a guy on CNN get torn to pieces. You married, Patrick?” I said, looking at his nametag.

  “I have someone at home.”

  “Then do us both a favor. Open the door, take a gun, and go there. Trust me on this one, pal. You don’t want to be here when those things arrive.”

  He stood there for a few seconds, unsure what to say. I watched a drop of sweat leave his hairline and run down his forehead, until it dripped down his nose and onto the floor. He looked up and down the aisle for a manager, then he took a key out and unlocked the case.

  Shotguns and rifles stared back at me. I took out a smaller-barrel shotgun, a 20-gauge, and laid it on the counter. Then I pulled out a Marlin .30-06 and looked down the barrel. The store didn’t have the highest quality guns, but I felt a weight lift just having the weapon in my hand.

  Allison hated me having weapons, and I got rid of them for her. I sold my .40 caliber pistol, which I missed dearly, and got rid of my old hunting rifle, which was superior to the gun I held now. The worst loss was an M-16 semiautomatic I had treasured for a few years, but I gave it all up for her, and she left me for another man. I would have done better to get rid of her back then.

  “What should I take?” The clerk’s gaze roved up and down the selection. He looked at the assortment and swallowed so loud that I could hear it from a few feet away. He even reached to touch one or two barrels.

  I found a 12-gauge shotgun and handed it to him. It was good up close, and a blast would leave no doubt that his target would be dead. I was going for the smaller shot, because I knew from experience this gun was more of a hunting weapon, and worked better at a longer range. It didn’t have the impact of a gun like the one he held, but it would do for me.

  Not wanting to stand around and comfort the clerk, I pulled a box of shells off the shelf and put them next to his new shotgun. Then I took a couple of boxes for my selection and put them in the cart with the rest of stuff.

  “Wait. You can’t buy a gun and bullets at the same time.”

  “Right.” I added a couple more.

  “It’s against store policy.”

  “Call a cop. If he can get here in five minutes, he can arrest me.” I took my credit card when he didn’t make an attempt to run it.

  Pushing my cart down another aisle, I looked for some Sterno cans. When I found them, I grabbed as many as I thought I could carry. Now it was just a matter of getting out of the store.

  I loaded as much as I could into the backpack, heading out of the hunting area as I packed. While I rushed to jam stuff in, I almost missed one important area. An upended rack held a wealth of camouflage clothing. I pawed through them quickly and found a Large. Holding it to my chest, I decided it would do all right.

  People moved around me, rushing to find anything of use at the last minute. I felt like one of them, and cursed again that I didn’t go shopping earlier. A woman eyed my canned meat, and I stuffed it in my backpack with a scowl. A man stopped and stared at the guns in my cart, asking where I got them. I pointed him in the direction of the hunting goods, then made for the door.

  The security guy who tried to hassle me on the way in saw my goodies and decided to get in my face. He was at the same door and had managed to regain some sort of control. I gave him the once-over, glad to see he wasn’t armed, except for a can of mace. I was willing to bet if he pulled it, I could take him down before he sprayed me.

  “You pay for all that stuff, man? Mind if I see your receipt?”

  “Yep. Forgot my receipt. If you hustle, you may be able to get it from the guy at the gun counter.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna have to ask you to put that down.” He slipped one foot back, like he was going for a fighting stance. I studied his body language, marked striking points and his center of balance. I really didn’t want to hurt him. He was just doing his job, and, in his shoes, I would probably be doing the same. The only thing that stopped me from taking him to the ground was a scream at the entrance.

  The blazing sun tore into the Walmart with a blast of heat, as the door opened for a guy covered in blood. A woman in a sweat suit was trying to get away from his grasping hand. The man was dressed in shorts and had on one flip-flop, but his shirt hung in tatters. He was missing an ear, and a gaping wound, probably made by a large-caliber gun, opened his middle. I should have been able to see the remains of his heart through the broken ribcage.

  The woman stumbled on a pair of sandals that looked to b
e a full three inches tall. This put her height near mine. She had a tight body that a pink sweat shirt treated well. I took my focus off her chest and set it on the thing after her. It was one of them, that much was certain. I was shocked they were here already.

  The guard reacted first by pulling his mace, running the twenty or so feet to the dead guy, and hosing him down with a full blast of pepper spray. The room started to reek of the stuff, and people coming in shied away from the smell as much as from the dead man.

  Make that undead. I guess that is the proper term, after all. This guy clearly met a bad end then came back for more. He lurched forward, ignoring the mace, and struck out at the guard who had tried to stop me.

  The man batted his hand aside, but the dead guy stumbled forward, and his momentum sent them both crashing to the ground. The guard let out a whoosh of air as he fought for his life. On top, the undead tried to bite him, but the guard struck the corpse a couple of times. No real strength to the blows—just fear and adrenaline forcing him to fight for his life.

  Shock froze me in place. I had been about to fight the guard for the right to leave the store, maybe start a riot, when all of this went down. A couple of people screamed, and one man ran over to help. He grabbed the wriggling corpse by the pant waist and pulled. He was trying not to touch any blood, and I didn’t blame him. What if the disease spread that way?

  He didn’t move the dead man very far, but the guard got a leg up, wedged between him and the dead guy, and pushed. The zombie rose into the air and fell to the side.

  Rolling the other way, the guard coughed as he tried to stand. A girl helped him up; she was young and very brave. She had a splash of freckles across her face, and she smiled at me like we were old friends. I grabbed the zombie by the scruff of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. After marching to the door, I threw him into the road. He hit pretty hard, but rolled over and got to his feet.

  Grabbing my cart of goodies, I pushed it ahead of me to keep the thing back. He grabbed hold of the front like he was going to leap over it.

  A big pickup truck slid to a halt, and a guy in cowboy boots and a big brown hat stepped out.

  “That one of the dead fuckers?” His voice carried a hint of Southern, but I was used to hearing that from some of the folks on the outskirts of Portland. Seemed like a clan of them moved from Texas and set up shop here a few decades ago.

  “Yep. Dead as a doornail,” I replied as I pushed the thing back with the cart. Tired of the game, I let go of the cart. The zombie stumbled back, nearly fell over, and lurched into motion once again with me in his sights. I took a full stride and launched one foot in a full thrust kick that nailed the dead guy in the chest, just below the wound. The sound was sickening, as compressed guts and foul air shifted around in the walking corpse.

  It had been a while since I had thrown one of those, but it was something I had done a thousand times. Good muscle memory, or just plain luck, was with me, as the creature flew back a few feet. It landed flat on its back and lay there for a few seconds, as if in a daze.

  The cowboy moved around the dead guy and stared at the hole in his chest.

  “Ain’t no damn way that guy can be alive. No way. His heart is gone!”

  A couple of bystanders came over to look at the guy wriggling on the ground. They stood around as more joined us. One started talking in a cold, clinical voice about the wounds sustained and why he should be dead. He was a tall man, with a gray, receding hairline that rounded his head like a halo. Looked and spoke just like a doctor. All the while, the thing tried to find the motor skills to get back up. It snarled at the bystanders, and one of them, perhaps feeling brave, showed his teeth and snarled back. The others moved away with shocked looks on their faces. The guy held his hands out to placate the crowd and told them that he was just joking around, that he wasn’t some damn dead thing.

  There was a scream behind me, and I spun around, expecting to see someone looking at the wounded man. It was a young woman, about twenty. Her face was etched with fear, lips peeled back as she let loose another howl for help. She ran, flat out on some sensible-looking sneakers, from another of the dead.

  The man behind her was dressed in a biking outfit. He had on those shoes that lock into the pedals, spandex shorts, and a tight shirt. His helmet was askew, half-cocked on one side of his head, and the left side of his face was missing, like he had a really bad case of road rash. One arm hung limply at his side, and the opposite foot was broken at the ankle. He dragged it with each shambling step. His side was caved in, and, though it didn’t show, the damage was almost worse than the guy with the gaping wound. While we were distracted, the dead guy I had kicked managed to get to his feet and fall on one of the bystanders.

  She screamed as he bit into her shoulder, pulling back a huge chunk of skin. His mouth darted back to the wound, like an animal going at a fresh kill. I stared in horror, just like the rest of the onlookers. There were five or six of us standing around like we had just been having some sort of community meeting when, absurdly, a woman was being eaten in front of our eyes.

  I snapped out of it, stepped quickly to the dead man, and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck for the second time, yanking him off the woman. As he turned around, I pushed him down, not knowing what else to do. The axe was in the bottom of my cart, and could I really dispatch this guy with so many people watching?

  “We need to kill him,” someone said in a high voice, and I wondered if they had the balls to back up the words.

  “Someone call an ambulance,” the bleeding woman’s companion yelled.

  “No ambulance can help that man,” another yelled back.

  “Not him—my wife!”

  “MOVE!” someone yelled, and I spun to watch the guy from the big pickup truck come out with a tire iron in hand. He shoved his way through the thin fence of onlookers, raised the curved hunk of metal in the air, and brought it down on the dead guy’s head. The undead had been in the process of standing up when the bar struck. It sounded like a bowling ball being dropped on a wood floor. A spray of blood struck many of the people who watched in horror. I backed up, wondering again about the substance. If it carried the disease, I wanted nothing to do with it.

  That was enough for me. I grabbed my cart with its treasures, gun barrels sticking out but not reassuring me. My car came into view, and, brother, was it ever an inviting sight. I keyed the button and the locks clicked. When the back slid up, I tossed things in as fast as possible.

  Glancing behind me, I spotted the man with the wounded wife pressing his shirt against her shoulder to stop the blood. He walked her to the car, one hand around her waist to help her along. Her head hung limply, and she moved as if in shock. He opened the door on a red compact and helped her in. Then he got in the other side, fumbled for his keys, and started the car.

  I kept watching as I worked, because I hoped she was okay. I also hoped he got her to the hospital, and they were able to treat her. There was movement in the car; it looked like he was leaning over to hug her. No, it was the other way around. She was leaning in to … oh God no!

  She tore into his neck, and blood sprayed out, striking the window on the passenger side. Oh holy hell - that was it. Time to go.

  I had half a mind to go home and board the place up, but how long could I live there without enough food to get through more than a month? I could stretch the rice, and I did have some dried beans. I detested the things, but Allison liked them, so we had a few bags. That would extend anything I made by providing extra protein. Not to mention extra filler.

  In the garage, I had a box of expired Meals Ready to Eat that I got from work. Some brainiac in the safety department wanted them in case we had an earthquake, but they went ‘bad’ in two years, and since I was formerly in the military, she asked me if I knew what to do with them. Now I was glad I took them off her hands. At the time, I thought I would donate them to a homeless shelter, but every call came up with a curt “No thank you.” The label might say ‘ex
pired,’ but I knew that stuff would last a hell of a lot longer.

  I drove around a minor accident, where two stressed-out drivers were arguing. A large SUV had backed into an old Toyota. Probably both in a hurry to get home. I slipped through the space, shot out into the opposite lane, and hung a hard right.

  I slid my shades on, because the sun was drawing low and starting to obscure my view. A pair of clouds lazed across the sky like they had nothing better to do, but they weren’t the dark gray ones that brought rain. These were just plain old cumulus that cast a shadow on the land as they passed.

  The main drag was just ahead, and I saw a pair of zombies stumbling into the street. The old highway didn’t allow for many shenanigans like that, and the first one was picked off by a silver BMW that was doing at least 60. Another car swerved to avoid the beamer as it slammed on its brakes. The woman got out and ran to the body that was tossed onto the side of the road like a rag doll. Even through my car window, I swear I heard the sound of a couple thousand pounds of metal slamming into its flesh.

  The second undead swerved around, somehow avoided being hit by a bright yellow Hummer, and stumbled to the girl who talked into her cell phone while staring down at the body on the street. Her free hand moved all over the place as she reported the accident. I could drive across the parking lot, to the little hill that separated the road from Walmart, and help her. But before I could plan how to maneuver there, the walking dead man latched onto her neck with one arm and drove her to the ground.

  I hit the window button and screamed out the side at the thing. I pulled alongside the little road, but I knew there was nothing I could do for her. She squirmed beneath him, even got a backward looping elbow to the side of his face, but he grabbed the arm and took a chunk out.

  She screamed and thrashed under him, and I felt helpless to stop the assault. The dead guy leaned over and grabbed the back of her neck, pulling the flesh up so that I could see it hanging bloody and raw in his mouth. He chewed as she started to shake, the fight clearly draining out of her.