Chapter 14: Healing wounds
Eventually I found myself able to sleep. Occasionally I would feel Raquel move around beside me within the throes of whatever world lay beyond her wall of sleep. Every now and then I found myself waking up to check on her, but inevitably I succumbed to the comforts and subsequent terrors of sleep. I dreamed of monsters and mad men. I dreamed of terrible creatures crawling their ways out of the ground. But above all, I dreamt of everything I had lost along the way… It was that, which caused me to awake almost in a scream. I jolted up from sleep suddenly, and I startled Raquel from her sleep as well. "What's going on?" She asked… squinting through obviously squinting eyes. "Its nothing… just go on back to sleep. Everything's okay." I said, soothing her back into her slumber. I sat there for what seemed like hours before sleep finally overtook me again. Sadly the nightmares continued on throughout the night.
We all woke up around 9 or 10 in the morning. We judged it by the light outside, our phones had all died at some point in the night and considering the electricity went out quite a while ago… there was no way of charging them. We ate breakfast and Mike checked out my bullet wound, making sure it hadn't become infected. Everything looked fine according to him, but I still made the point to douse the wound in alcohol again to be sure. We cleaned it up and re-bandaged it before we began talking of our plans to finally leave.
We sat around the living room thinking of where we should go. It was obvious that the cars weren't moving, and all that we had to use really were the bikes. We took a walk out into the yard to check the damages and see what we had to work with. One of the bikes was riddled with bullet holes and rendered useless, and another one looked fine but when we tried to start it, the engine wouldn't turn. But the other two worked fine from what we saw. There were leather saddlebags on both bikes and despite mine and Mike's disdain for them under usual circumstances, we saw them as a godsend considering all the shit we would need on our trip. We had finally decided upon trying to make it to the Mills rescue station.
We went back inside to pull our things together… the things we definitely needed anyway, and we each took a shower before heading out. The water was cold as ice, but got us clean nonetheless. Although showering was a plus, the shitty side was that we had no clean clothes. Mike had been doing laundry before the shit hit the fan and had forgotten about it. When we checked on them the clothes were mildewed from sitting in water for so long. So we mutually decided to make a run by K-Mart again if circumstances allowed, and pick up a few changes of clothes. Mike was going to carry a backpack with our clothes and some supplies, while Raquel and I would ride on the other bike. Web gear and weapons equipped, we walked on outside into the bright sunny day that cast its rays down upon us. We got on our bikes, started them and headed on down the road.
As we road down McGill for what seemed like the thousandth time in a two day span, we paid close attention to our surroundings. Being that we didn't have the security that came with a closed in vehicle, we didn't want to get snatched by a runner or anything unpleasant like that. As we neared K-Mart, we saw that the place was utterly deserted. I guess since Raquel was no longer inside, they had no interest in entering an empty building. Sure there were a few slow movers here and there, but we could be in and out in no time. They wouldn't be a worry.
We pulled into the parking lot again, I motioned for Mike to follow me around the building so we could enter the same way I had gotten in last time. We pulled around back and I instantly saw the now decaying corpse of the infected man I had hit on my vigilante run to save Raquel. He hadn't moved since he landed on the concrete, he just lay still, broken and bloody. We got off the bikes and walked through the service entrance and into the warehouse within.
As we walked through, I began hearing the tell-tale moans of zombies somewhere within the building. "Keep your eyes open… they're in there somewhere. Just grab some clothes and shit… and we'll get the fuck out of dodge, alright?". They both nodded in agreement as we walked onward. As we exited the double doors, we came upon the toy aisle. Mike stopped for a second… "Since we're going to the Mills… I want to get NaeNae a toy… I think it'd be nice to give her something, you know?". I smiled and nodded. Mike looked scantily through the doll aisle until he came across a baby doll. He picked it up, showed it to me, and put it in his book bag.
We walked on through the aisles, and as we did, we passed the baby clothes. I could feel the all too familiar heart ache coming back as I looked at all the clothes I remember fawning over when he… when he was younger. I quickly turned my gaze away, trying to stop the bad feelings before they could consume me… but the thing they don't tell you going into fatherhood is that your love for your son… is always all consuming.
We luckily made it quickly to the women's clothes and Raquel quickly began looking around for something decent to wear. We walked around the section with her for seemingly hours, "Damn… even in the midst of the apocalypse women are still fucking indecisive eh?" Mike said. "Fuck you, man… I don't give a fuck what it is out there… I still wanna look good." She quickly retorted with a grin. I laughed as I listened to their childish bickering, and focused my attention on it. I didn't want to let my mind wander any more than I had to. It was a beautiful thing to see either way… smiling… laughter. Genuine smiling and laughter at that. It was enough to help you realize… Hell.. Maybe the end of the world isn't so bad after all.
Raquel finally settled on something to wear and we walked with her to the changing rooms and made sure no creepy-crawlies would come out and bite her in the ass or anything. We waited for her to change before we went and grabbed clothes for ourselves. As we made it over to the men's clothes, Mike and I made quick decisions on what we would wear and walked back over to the changing rooms. We went in one at a time so no one would have to keep watch alone. Whoever was in the dressing room at least had walls separating them from outside danger. The watchmen however didn't have that perk.
We threw our old clothes aside and walked on back towards the hunting section. We decided to grab a few more guns and some ammo before finally making our trek out to the Mills… Way we figured it was… with the world gone mad… you can never have too many bullets. Realizing suddenly that my clothes were missing something, I told Raquel and Mike I'd be back in a minute and ran over to the housing supply section. I came back with some cans of spray paint and threw a few over to Mike. He got the idea as soon as he saw what it was. We walked over to the coats and we both grabbed a leather jacket. I pulled out my knife and cut my sleeves off, letting Mike do the same. We put them on the ground and began going to work on them. Raquel just stood there, still confused by what the fuck we were doing, until she saw the big red anarchy symbols now emblazoned on the backs of each vest. She just stared and simply said…"Fuck that… make me one too." We grabbed one for her and did the same.
We had been having so much fun in K-Mart just being stupid, we almost forgot what awaited us outside. Sadly we didn't forget for long. We opened the door to the small alley behind K-Mart where our bikes still sat and low and behold… a wall of zombies was headed our way from the other side of the building. We loaded up quick and jumped on our bikes, trying our best to speed away before they could catch up. Just as we thought we were going to lose them, a couple of sprinters dashed to the front. We sped up and made it around the turn, only to find that more of them were trying to cut us off down across the parking lot. I felt Raquel squeeze tighter onto me as she saw what was coming. Knowing we had only seconds to make a decision I looked around and saw that we had a clear spot over towards the gas station. If we drove fast enough they wouldn't close us in. "Hang on puppet…" I told Raquel, "This is gonna suck…". I pointed Mike in the direction we were headed and sped off towards the opening. We raced along and the hole we intended to escape through began to grow smaller as the hordes started closing in. I shifted the gear and picked up speed, Mike steadily coming up behind me. We were now only feet away from our escape when I realized we would have to make a sharp turn, otherwise we were going to jump the embankment. The entire purpose behind this was not to die, so that wasn't an option. But I saw that there was plenty of area behind the zombies after we cleared the gap that we could drive through and out onto the highway… I just hoped Mike knew the same.
As we crossed the gap, I could smell their hot breath on me as they tried to bring their fetid teeth closer to us. I swerved to the right and down the entranceway towards the highway. I turned around just in time to see Mike do the same. Feeling a sudden pang of relief for my friend, we drove out onto the highway and towards the intersection that would eventually lead us to Concord Mills. We all understood we had to leave the fun behind us and enjoy the little things while we had them. We all had the feeling that things were about to get fucking crazy… or crazier at least. Despite the fact that none of us were looking forward to what we might find once we got there, we drove on… hoping and praying we'd find salvation.