I looked up to see us parked six inches over the curb outside of the Wal-Mart. It was one of those massive convenience stores designed to have everything, but all in the places you'd least expect to find it. I thought that this one had been newly renovated, maybe three or four months ago. Sorry, Wal-Mart executives: there's not much investment return on this one. Zombies don't buy potpourri.

In front of us, the automatic door slid gently open. I figured that Kara's heart-wrenching parking job must have triggered the motion sensor. Kara didn't seem to notice. Killing the engine, she slid out from behind the wheel and slammed the driver's-side door. She stood and surveyed the store as I followed suit, hopping out onto the pavement and crossing to her side.

"Doesn't look much like salvation, but there you go," she said.

"I hate shopping here," I said. "There's always a crowd and none of the lanes are ever open."

"Well, don't shop, then," she said. Then, winking, "Just look around."

She laughed at her own wit and strolled through the front doors. I followed at her heels; after all, she had the gun. Maybe we hadn't run into a zombie yet (even if we did get close…Kara drives like a maniac), but that didn't mean that there were none. In fact, what that meant to me was that the zombies were all gathered in one place, waiting for us to get there. If zombies can wait, exactly.

I was used to there being a greeter at the doors to Wal-Mart, and indeed I was not disappointed. However, instead of offering me the daily specials and pointing me toward the best sales, the white-haired lady bared bloody teeth at me and took off at a blistering limp to get herself a big bucket o' fried Dylan. Kara squinted one eye, lined the lady's frizzy hair up in the fine-tuned sights, and pulled the trigger. A shocking (and satisfying) roar took off the zomb's head, splattering fuzzy blue hair and bone fragments all over a magazine rack. The zombie stuttered out two more steps and took a dive, dropping her bottom jaw and not much else on the white-tile floor. Kara giggled a short laugh, set the shotgun on her shoulder, and walked onto the main route. Above, a grinning smiley-face proclaimed Wal-Mart's everyday low prices with a wink and a thumbs-up. I joined Kara in the aisle, thought very seriously about jacking a stereo (on sale for just 20.00 US this weekend only), and then decided that stereos might not be on Kara's list of necessary supplies.

"What do we need?" I asked instead.

"Well, let's try sporting first."

"Sporting? Seriously? We need a basketball or something?"

"You need a gun. It just so happens that dad and I looked for rifles here before settling on an Umbrella-made one. They don't carry Umbrella here, too much power for the clientele here, but they have a couple good deer-hunting rifles."

"Wow. Sweet." I thought about having a rifle in my hands, taking off a zombie's head in much the same way that Kara did, and shivered. "Let's go."

Kara hurried down the center aisle, reading the overhead signs for the one that we needed. It wasn't long before she found 'Sporting Goods', sandwiched between 'Electronics' and 'Maternity'. True to her word, there was a glass rack of hunting rifles jutting out, right where the rednecks and jumpy adolescents couldn't miss it. I went up to the rack and scrutinized the rifles, seeking out the best bang for my bullet.

"Move."

I moved on command, mostly out of old habit and surprise. Kara took my spot, turned her eyes away from the rack, and smashed the glass with the butt of the shotgun. There was a tremendous shimmering splash of glass, scattered all over the floor and the inside of the rack. Kara looked cautiously up.

"You'll want the…hey."

She carefully reached up, lifting the rifle out of its setting by the stock. Looking it over from all sides, she frowned and flipped it again. Then she held it out to me. I took it, but I had to ask:

"What? What's wrong?"

"Wal-Mart is selling the Umbrella-manufactured NightScope deer and fowl rifle now. Before, it wouldn't have touched an Umbrella product with a ten-foot pole. I wonder what changed?"

"Maybe Umbrella put some corporate pressure on them…you know, like in the movies."

"Maybe. Either way, check that thing out. It's already got a scope on it, as you probably noticed. Flick that switch up there to change the scope to night vision. Yeah, that one. It's got a good kick to it, so hold her steady. You know the rest, I think, point and shoot, aim for the head. I think the zombies don't like it when they take one to the brain."

"Good observation. How do I reload it?"

"I'll show you tonight," she said. "For now, just don't shoot unless you have to. Let's get to the food section and- Dylan!"

I spun around, and almost pissed myself. Up until now, we'd seen two zombies up close, and maybe half a dozen more from the seat of Kara's truck. But coming out of the 'Electronics' section, crawling out of the video racks and CD aisles, were dozens of the bastards. There were more weaving through the clothing, in and out of the dense forests of clearance shirts and sale boxers. There were even five or six marching down the way we'd just come, from the front of the store.

"Jesus," I whispered. "There's like a hundred."

Maybe there was. Blue-vested, civilian, or otherwise, each one of the zombies was hell-bent on getting a snack of our tasty flesh. Maybe they'd been drawn by the breaking glass; maybe they could smell us, but either way, we were in deep shit. Then it got worse.

I saw the fucker out of the corner of my eye, but I didn't believe it. I couldn't bring myself to: I mean, zombies lurch (or at best, stumble), but this thing was crawling. Not just crawling, crawling fast. Not just crawling fast, crawling on the ceiling. So, can you blame me for not believing that I really saw it? Can you blame me for what happened?

They were on her like nothing I'd ever seen before. Two of them, long, lanky demons that might have been human once, one taking Kara from behind, the other launching itself off of a shelf and getting her from above. I fired out of panic, and through the grace of God I hit one of them and not Kara. It made a long squealing noise (surprisingly feminine, considering the source), and flipped backward, over Kara's head and into a rack of action figures. The other one, maybe seeing me as more of a threat than Kara (a chilling thought…can these fuckers think?), threw itself off of her and turned to face me. It was on all fours, and resembled nothing more than a man-sized lizard whose flesh had been flayed completely off. It turned its blind eyes to me and licked the air with a grotesque and completely inhuman tongue.

I fired again, but this one was ready. I heard the bullet ricochet off the floor and go into something soft. I only knew that it didn't hit Kara because the sound it made was more of a 'pop!' than a 'squish!' The vague part of my brain, unattached to all the action and violence around us, suggested that the bullet might have lodged in a pillow. The other part of my brain, the one now urging me to evacuate my bladder, screamed "SHOOT IT NOW!" It was easier to listen to the screaming part, so I took aim and fired again.

The thing I was shooting at, zombie or ghoul or demon, jumped sideways, made a complete 180, and attached itself to a rack of video games. By then It had probably gotten tired of being shot at. It indicated this by charging at me.

I lost it then. I turned and ran, past 'Sports' and into 'Toys'. The snapping, slobbering, squealing thing tracked me, using racks and ceiling tiles and yes, even the floor as surfaces to cling to. I saw the end of the aisle up ahead, marked by board games: Scrabble, Othello, and Hi-Ho Cherry-O, from the looks of it. I lowered my head and gunned for those board games, hoping to anyone that I could use something there to stop the monster behind me. Instead, I ran smack into a zombie.