Chapter 5

A Chapter by Wunderlich

And here's chapter five.

The parking lot was huge and only two stores stood on its border furthest from the main road, the buildings looming over the cars, and Paul. He shook his head, knowing what he was doing could get him killed, that if he made one mistake, or if he had already made a mistake, the whole operation could turn into a royal screw-up. For what he was getting, Paul decided to take the chance.

He stepped into the grocery store through its propped open slider doors, its stuffy, foul air penetrating his makeshift mask. Holstering his revolver, he grabbed a cart and rolled it back-and-forth briefly, testing out the amount of sound the wheels produced. A sharp cry of rusted pain shot out from the wheels of the cart. Damn shopping cart wheels always squeak. Paul grabbed another one, testing it out in the same manner. Its wheels were no different. With four carts pushed off to the side, Paul stepped into the vast opening of the grocery store with a barely inaudible cart in front of him.

Pushing it across the tiled floor, almost constantly through a large, dried pool of blood, even by a rotting corpse that looked like its attackers were too hungry to let it get back up, he walked to the aisle full of glorious canned food. Paul began throwing cans of SPAM into his cart. There was a surprising amount of it left. He figured people hadn’t made it too far in the grocery store, most of them probably looting the electronics and gun stores. No wonder no one around here was left.

Ham, ground beef, and pork of the Something Posing As Meat began to pile up. SPAM wasn’t the best choice of canned food, but rationing it with more healthy foods would probably work. Paul continued pushing the cart down the aisle, grabbing as many cans of canned fruit as he could. Applesauce, peanut butter, jelly, bottles of water, anything that penetrated his mind wound up in his cart until it was full.

Turning the cart around, Paul began to wheel the cart back toward the exit of the store. As he made his way down the aisle that seemed to be eternal, he stopped in his tracks. Outside of the store was a figure limping toward the doors. Sweat poured out of Paul’s head and drenched his shirt. He ran toward the doors as fast as he could and kicked the props out of the way. Grasping the doors with his hardened hands, he shut them closed. He took as many carts and boxes of rotten fruit as he could and stacked them up in front of the door. Outside of the window he could see the figure even closer. Its left arm was hanging from its socket by a thin strip of muscle, wagging back and forth as the creature lurched forward.

Paul ran around the store, fear cluttering his mind, as he checked on all of the doors, barricading them and securing them. He ran back to his cart and pushed it into a corner where the produce and refrigerated products converged. Possibly the worst smelling area in the store, it was also the farthest from any glass. Paul took off his backpack, laying it on the ground carefully, the gun case attached to it clunked softly against the dirty floor. Paul’s fingers grasped the latches on the case and flipped them up. Pulling open the top, he reached in and retrieved his Remington 700P and its scope. He fastened the scope on the rifle’s rail and adjusted it, looking at the creature’s face through the lens. Sure enough, behind the first one, many more were lumbering toward the grocery store. Paul couldn’t get the thought of that one creature hiding in the electronics store out of his overwhelmed head.

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