We had found this supermarket, an old Winn-Dixie, on the north side of what used to be Charlotte, North Carolina during a sweep we had made a month earlier. At that time we had been full of supplies and since the dead don't need supermarkets we had left it alone. This time through we needed the supplies. It was getting so that we had to travel further or into more dangerous places to find supplies that we could trade. While all the fresh goods had gone bad long ago, some dry and most of the canned goods were fine, as well as medical and pharmacy supplies. Luxury goods like deodorant, shampoo, and cosmetics would also bring a good trade in the larger, more established outposts like Blacksburg and Raleigh.
Once we had salvaged the goods, we would use some of them for ourselves and trade the rest with various outposts. The outposts were like the outposts of the old frontier days, sturdy fortresses to protect the survivors from the dead. They would trade us fresh grown vegetables from their gardens and fresh slaughtered meat for canned items, medicines, and other goods that they needed.
Another source of goods were the hundreds of abandoned or wrecked 18-wheelers that littered the highways. Virtually anything that was shipped locally or long haul could be found inside those trailers. However, because they were out in the open they were difficult to defend while we salvaged the cargo. We always approached those vehicles with a lot of caution, and if there were any signs of the dead, we didn't bother to get out. Better to be safe than greedy.
Bandits were another constant problem due to the loss of law enforcement. Roving bands of outlaws, usually hardened criminals, who banded together, had sprung up since the end. These groups threatened the security of the outposts, and were a danger to us as well. Not only did survivors have to protect themselves from the dead, but from these bandits who stole for survival, and raped, pillaged, maimed and killed for fun.
Tito spun quickly, drawing his sidearm as he did. The roar of the huge Desert Eagle drowned out his rapid fire Spanish cursing. The old woman's head exploded as the huge half inch round tore through it, throwing old blood and brains all over the bulletin board advertising the special of the day from long ago. As much as I hated that gold toned pimped up tire iron of a handgun, no one could complain about its effectiveness. With the dead, overkill was never too much and the only way to make sure they were really dead was to destroy the brain.
Tito continued to swear in Spanish. The deli counter was on his side of the zone we were clearing and he knew he had messed up. In this world after the dead had risen, all that was left to groups like ours was trust that each person had their area covered. But, I was more worried about the effects of that damned hand cannon of his. We have all had the dead sneak up on us; they are very good at being silent. But that foolish hand-cannon would probably get the attention of all those dead who had been wandering around aimlessly outside the supermarket.
Tito Rodriguez was an ex-member of the Washington D.C.-based 5th Street gang. We had met up with as we fled south from New York City and around the outskirts of the old capital. At the time he had been fleeing from the rest of his gang, all of who had turned into the dead. As the youngest member of my team, I typically took him as my second so I could watch over him. Standing 5 foot 3 inches, he suffered from a bad case of little man's syndrome, but he had proven time and time again that he was courageous and steadfast when the fecal matter hit the rotary air impeller. Black as the ace of spades and born in the urban jungle D.C. had become in the 21st century, he was at home in the cramped confines of places like this supermarket. At first he had been hesitant to trust us, mainly because most of the crew was white and educated. But that had faded as the crew bonded through the good times and bad. Lately he had developed a love of reading and picked up books anytime he could.
We had entered the supermarket about three hours earlier from the rear; easing the big armored cab and dual trailer rig we called The Traveler past the crowd of the dead that milled around among the cars in the parking lot. Seems that the dead tend to hang around stumbling through whatever they were doing prior to their deaths unless their attention is attracted. There was one dead man in the parking lot, his leg broken and still pushing his cart of groceries, trying to unlock the trunk of a car. He had probably been trying to unlock that car for the past two years. Backing up to the rear loading dock, we kept the rear door of The Traveler buttoned tight. Hopefully any of the dead in the loading dock area would be drawn to the sounds of the rig stopping against the dock and would come out where we could blast them from the safety of the armored trailer. When none of the dead appeared, we cracked the door and entered the loading dock in two-man teams.
As each team moved through the dock, the next team covered them from the trailer door. We had worked this method out over the last year; two man teams were safer than individuals and multiple teams covering each other meant that someone usually saw a hungry zombie before it was on you. The first team out was Carol and Maurice; they would clear the right side of the supermarket and then cover the front. Tito and I followed them out; we would clear the left side of the supermarket and then act as a roving patrol. Next came Bob and Kim followed by Phil and Tony, then Sam and Karl. They would head directly to the canned goods, pharmacy, and medicinal areas respectively to start loading supplies. Each two man team was set up the same way, one person was lightly armed and pushing a cart, while the other was heavily armed like the rest of us and would provide the loader with security. As Tito and I patrolled inside the supermarket, we would move to backup any team that met up with the dead. To keep all this fairly quiet, we were all armed with ex-Special Forces M4 rifles equipped with suppressors as well as a variety of handguns, shotguns, and bladed weapons.
As we swept through the store, you could hear the quiet pop of the suppressed M4 rifles as we destroyed any of the walking dead we came across. This was often the easiest or the hardest part of salvaging a store. The trick was to make sure you gave yourself plenty of clearance so you saw the dead long before they saw you. One technique we learned early on was to avoid the end caps of the aisles until we were sure they were clear. A zombie could be hiding there and we wouldn't see it until we came down the aisle on either side of the thing. To avoid this problem the sweep teams started moving up the outside aisles and allowed plenty of room when reaching the end. Each team then moved inwards up the next aisle, working towards the center until the whole market was swept. Then, only when necessary, did we sweep the various other areas external to the main floor; areas such as deli and bakery.
This particular supermarket was nearly empty with very few of the walking dead inhabiting its aisles. I could hear chatter on the radio as Phil and Tony found a fully stocked pharmacy and had to dispatch a dead pharmacy assistant. After the pharmacy was cleared they began loading the drugs into their first cart. Over the next hour they would fill fifteen carts and take them back to the truck. The other teams were doing the same thing. I heard Bob give a delicious report on the vast supply of canned ham they had found. Someone else muttered "SPAM Shit" over the radio. SPAM had survived the fall of mankind well, and it still tasted like shit.
Almost immediately after Tito's shot, Carol and Maurice started hollering that the dead in the parking lot were moving our way. My guys had learned not to turn at the sound of a single shot, but to keep doing their jobs; at the moment their job was guarding the front door of the supermarket we were raiding. By now this team had become a finally tuned machine - one forged in blood. Each member knew their task and got to it immediately; Carol and Maurice guarding the front, Thomas and Mikey guarding the rear, the others forming teams of two and collecting the supplies.
"Wrap it up and let's move! We've got company coming," I yelled over the radio. We had a full set of secure radios with throat mikes and earpieces thanks to a SWAT van we had found in New York City and abandoned in Fairfax, Virginia last year. Almost immediately I could hear the wheels of the shopping carts rattle as everyone moved back towards the loading dock doors we had used to gain entrance to the store. It's always a relief to see our armored trailer backed against the open bay doors with the single rear door open waiting for us. Tito pushed our cart through while I joined Thomas and Mikey at the doors between the store and the docks. "Carol, Maurice. Start moving back towards the rear."
"We're working on it, Boss." Even as Maurice answered, I could hear the chatter of his suppressed M4. I like the quieter suppressed weapons, as they don't attract the dead's attention like an unsuppressed one will, Tito's Desert Eagle being a case in point. Most people before the end believed the stupid movies Hollywood put out and thought you could silence a firearm. The best you could do was to try and suppress the noise, and it was always a trade-off as you lowered the effectiveness of the weapon in order to quiet it. Moving up to where I could see down what had once been the chip and soda aisle, I watched as Maurice and Carol fought a withdrawal back to our positions. As the dead flooded into the supermarket, they were funneled into the old checkout lines. This bogged them down momentarily and Maurice used that opportunity to kill many of them with accurate bursts from his M4. The truly dead bodies then created even greater jams, but the walking dead were relentless in their push to get to fresh blood and kept coming. We all knew that some would be finding their way around the checkout lines and Maurice did not want to get flanked. When Carol reached me, I waved her on and began firing down the left side of the aisle as Maurice retreated down the right side. Once he reached the end of the aisle, we both started running towards the door to the loading dock, trusting the rest of the team to cover us.
Almost as soon as we started running towards the dock doors, the dead started shambling out of the aisles. A young woman with one arm missing came out of the aisle nearest me moving fairly quickly for the walking dead. I fired a short burst, blowing the top of her head off and knocking her dead body back into the way of those behind her. The team members at the dock doors fired whenever they had clear shots around us, clearing the way for us to make it to the doors. A huge man who before his death had been obscenely fat came out of the aisle in front of me, so close he was on me before I could react. The sudden crack of a rifle was accompanied by his old rancid blood spraying across the end cap as his head exploded. As he fell I could see Phil standing in the door to the docks with his scoped M1A1 rifle calmly picking off targets when the opportunity presented itself. Once we reached the dock doors, we slammed them shut and barred them behind us hoping that would slow the dead down long enough for us to all make it back aboard The Traveler. Quickly and efficiently, Thomas, Maurice, and I leapfrogged back to the truck. Stopping at the door to the truck, I yelled behind me for a head count. With the dead, there is not much chance of a rescue for those left behind.
"All here, Boss!" Regina's voice over the radio brought a smile to my face, even as I loosed a burst of fire at the dead that had started coming through the door onto the docks. Unlike the store where they could come down multiple aisles, only a single door existed from the store to the docks, so they had to pass through that chokepoint. That made them easier to kill. As the dead managed to push through the barred doors, we began picking them off and clogging up the entranceway. But as more pushed from behind, the bar finally gave way allowing the doors to open completely.
A man wearing a white apron, probably the store's butcher before he died based on the cleaver in his hand, pushed through the doors. A quick double tap sent his brains into the face of a lady dressed nicely. The triple strand of pearls around her neck would have been expensive before the end, but now they were worthless. She tripped over the body of the dead butcher and the dead behind her began to pile up as they continued forward without regards and tripped over the growing pile. Firing a series of short bursts into the pile, I pulled back through the door into the semi-truck trailer.
"Fire in the hole!" Mikey always yelled that stupid line. Just as Thomas pulled the door shut, Mikey threw a grenade onto the docks. When I stopped firing, the dead had started coming through the door from the store to the docks over the bodies of those I had killed. As the grenade rolled to a stop at a dead grocery shopper's feet, it detonated. Shrapnel pelted against the armored skin of the trailer. Whatever destruction it did, we did not see it. The moment Thomas had shut the door; Regina had started the truck rolling. The petite redhead from West Virginia had been a long-haul truck driver before the dead had risen and now acted as the team's primary driver.
"Man the guns, boys. We have a full parking lot to get through!" At Regina's orders, the team moved to man the guns mounted along the sides of the trailer. Two gun ports had been cut into each side of both the front and rear trailers. An M60 light machine gun, acquired from a National Guard armory in Raleigh, was mounted at each port. I moved forward through the trailer around the shopping carts and gear to the front of the trailer. There a flexible tunnel led to an opening in the rear of the forward trailer, and from the front of it another one led to the truck's cab. Moving forward, I slid into the passenger seat of the rig's cab.
"Hi, lover," Regina grinned as she turned the big truck and smashed into the mob of the dead between the exit and us. While The Traveler was a bit unwieldy when it came to turning, the massive engine and heavy weight of the extended and armored semi-truck meant that the dead could not swamp us with numbers; the truck would continue to plow through.
"Hi, yourself," I replied as I yanked back the cocking lever on the M60 light machine gun mounted through the windshield on the passenger side. I had already pulled the radio earpiece from my ear and grabbed a set of intercom headphones. The headphones let everyone talk easily in the rig and protected our ears from the hammering of the machine guns. We had installed the intercom after raiding a Radio Shack in Virginia Beach, before that we typically used simple noise reduction headphones. We found that they seriously prohibited communications when a dead child actually managed to crawl through one of the gun ports. I stitched a line of machine gun fire into the crowd on the right side of the truck. Shooting high, I hit many of them in the head, dropping them permanently. Others simply shrugged off what the living would have considered major damage and kept coming. The massive cowcatcher mounted on the front of the truck was throwing bodies to both sides as Regina continued to accelerate towards the parking lot exit.
Suddenly, the section of the parking lot off to our left erupted in blood and flames. One of the crew had manned the Mk-19 40mm Automatic Grenade Launcher that was mounted in an enclosed turret on the roof of the front trailer. It was loaded with a mixture of high explosive and fragmentation grenades that ripped the walking dead to shreds and blew apart cars in the parking lot. The short burst left a wall of burning cars and fuel between the remainder of the parking lot on that side and us.
As a dead man dressed in a bloody old business suit crawled over the nose of the truck and onto the hood, a short burst from my M60 blew his head apart, leaving a bloody smear. Unable to turn tight enough the truck slammed into a parked car, an old Honda by its looks. The car flew over the hood and slammed into the reinforced ceiling above my head. Regina, knowing speed meant survival, never let off the accelerator. I could hear the car as it rolled off the roof and down the armored side of the cab. Stitching another line of fire through a small group of the dead between the exit, and us, I turned and grinned at Regina. Finally we reached the exit to the parking lot and rapidly left the mob behind as Regina sped us towards the interstate.
"Thomas, Carol, Kim. Ya'll start sorting through the stuff we collected. I think that the new outpost in Lancaster will trade well for antibiotics and baby formula. Blacksburg has been asking for drugs, canned goods, and personal hygiene products." That was how we made our living, raiding and scavenging from the ruins of society and trading with the outposts and enclaves. As everyone relaxed behind their guns, Carol and Kim got up to sort the goods we had salvaged.
Several hours of salvaging from the supermarket had left a huge pile of assorted goods on the floor of the rear trailer. Flats of bottled water and dry foodstuffs were pushed to one side; most of those supplies would be kept for our usage. Drugs from the pharmacy were boxed and brought forward into the front trailer. They would be sorted and either used as trade goods or to replenish our medicine cabinet. Canned goods of all varieties; meats, vegetables, and fruits; where sorted and stacked in cabinets in the rear trailer.
"Hey Boss," Kim called. I walked back to where she was sorting through the supplies from the pharmacy. "I've found 100 boxes of Amoxicillian tablets so far." She was pleased at the discovery and so was I. Antibiotics were probably the most sought after item next to guns, ammo, and food in this new world. Without them, simple injuries or infections that no one thought about before the end could now kill.
As we pulled down onto I-485, the bypass around Charlotte, the sun was setting. Normally we bunker down at night, but our current location was not close to reasonably secure. As soon as we stopped, I figured we would be attacked. Even as we pushed vehicles out of the way and continued to make forward progress, the dead, whose attention we drew, would attack us in ones and twos. Those attacks could be ignored or repulsed with a short burst from one of the mounted guns. The attack that worried me was a huge mass of the dead while we were motionless.
A yellow school bus was wrecked across the interstate. While most survivors would have had to go around, Regina hit one end of the bus with the front bumper of The Traveler and pushed it out of the way. The bus slammed through a group of dead football players leaving one lone cheerleader standing in the road. As we drove past, one of the crew on the side-mounted guns finished her.
Some time later, we could all feel The Traveler lean to one side as Regina made the hard turn onto the ramp to Interstate 85 South. The interstates were crowded with cars in some places and empty in others, but the ramps where typically empty. Regina slowed and finally brought The Traveler to a stop in the middle of the ramp. We would sit here for a while and if we were not attacked, bunker down for the night. If we were attacked, whoever was on duty would get us in motion until the rest of us could get to our stations.
Interstate on and off ramps were relatively secure because they were normally higher and easier to defend. If we had to stop on the road, we preferred the flyway ramps that were supported by tall columns. The dead couldn't come up on our sides, which meant we only had to defend our front and back. An overpass was our next choice because we could park close to the railing and have to defend only 3 sides. Last choice was the type of ramp we were on now. Although higher than the surrounding area, we still had to cover four sides, which meant more watch duty and less sleep for everyone.
"Hey Boss, what's for supper?" Damn, Mickey! Poor guy lived by his stomach.
"SPAM on crackers with canned pomegranates," I replied. That combination was bound to get a reaction. Indeed I could hear the protests and hisses of the crew throughout the rig. Since we had just cleaned out the supermarket, we were well stocked and everyone could choose pretty much anything they wanted. But everyone ate at their station in case we were attacked.
After about an hour with no attacks, we settled in for the night. Tito, Carol, Kim, and Mikey had first watch and the rest of us turned in. The firefight at the Supermarket had taken its toll on everyone and most quickly fell into a fitful sleep. Several hours later, Phil woke me for the morning shift. As I grabbed a cup of coffee from the pot that the night shifts had kept going, he gave me a quick verbal report. While a few dead had been seen, they had completely ignored us for the most part. The ones that had gotten too close or who tried to get into the truck had been dispatched with suppressed weapons.
As Phil went off to catch a couple hours of sleep, I climbed into the driver's seat of The Traveler and scanned the local area with the night vision binoculars that were stored there for that purpose. From here, I could start the rig and have us in motion or sound the internal alarms if need be.
The first two hours of my watch shift were quiet. As the shift wore on and morning came closer there was several times when I thought I saw movement in the shadows of the tree line, but the night vision gear did not show me anything. The last time I was sure I saw movement and even as I reached for the night vision gear, the dead began to appear in the gloom between daylight and moonlight. At first I just thought it was one or two wandering about, but they continued to appear, over a widening area. Flipping the cover off the alarm switch mounted on the dash, I turned the knob to activate the internal quiet alarms. The four-position knob could be set to Off, Quiet, Alarm, and External. Each setting was more aggressive than the last. Quiet Alarm turned on low red lights throughout the rig, but did not make any sounds. Alarm turned on the internal lights and sounded an alarm. External turned on the internal lights, the external lights, and sounded a loud external alarm.
Throughout The Traveler you could hear the sounds of people moving quietly. Any loud noises would attract the dead's attention more than we already had, if we even had. "Damn," Mickey griped in a loud wisper over the intercom, "Why do they always have to come out and disturb my sleep after pulling evening watch?" As the crew manned the guns and made preparations to defend The Traveler, I watched the growing crowd of the dead as they came closer.
What had attracted these dead? Usually it was movement, noise, or blood. We had been parked here quietly for most of the night so I was at a loss to explain their actions. It was possible that something had started the dead moving and this crowd was just passing by us. At first the dead passed by us and continued on, shambling through the gloom. Then one of the dead ran into the side of the front trailer. I could see him in the mirror as he backed up and walked forward into the side of the trailer a second time. Others bumped into The Traveler and then turned to go around it, but this one dead began to beat his fists against the side of the trailer.
Before we could silence him, his pounding had attracted the attention of more dead, which began pounding on the sides of the rig. Within moments the dead had surrounded the rig and were beating against the sides. While they were not doing any harm to the armored hull of the rig, they did manage to actually rock the heavy rig about. Regina relieved me in the driver's seat and fired up the engine. I changed the alarm switch to external. Spotlights mounted along the top of the trailers snapped on, turning the area around the rig as bright as the noon sun. Flipping up a switch cover, I flipped the first of two red switches underneath it. This fired one of the two charges contained in the rig's close defense system.
All around the rig, metal boxes, each filled with twenty 12-gauge shotgun shells, fired. These sprayed 00 and 000 pellets in a controlled pattern, scything through the dead who were pressed against the rig. Even before the noise from the close defense system faded, the crew opened up with the side-mounted M60s. A burst of fire from one of the M60s walked through a group of four dead girls, all dressed in school uniforms. Whoever was manning the gun aimed at head level and three of the four fell, now truly dead. A second quick burst finished off the fourth one. Regina gunned the rig and with the big V-12 diesel engine screaming, we pulled away from the dead and onto Interstate 85 south.