Heartland Junk - Part I: The End (A zombie apocalypse serial)

Chapter 12: Tiny Pearl Teeth

I watched the glass pieces fall as if they were snowflakes, twisting in the air to catch the sun in a brilliant arc and then winking to bronze, spinning, tumbling, a glimmering cascade of dying beauty, jewels tumbling from the heavens while the rot of hell pierced the veil.

The first zombie, the one who'd presumably broken the window, stepped barefoot onto the glass shards. It was one of the secretaries from the courthouse. Her teeth did a little jittering dance in her half-open mouth, like she was freezing and trying to suck in icy breaths. Her feet began to leave red prints on the pharmacy floor. I didn't know why the hell she was barefoot. Maybe she took her heels off at the desk to keep her feet from getting sore during the day.

Behind her, the two other pantsuited zombie ladies staggered through the gaping window frame, then the trotter from the hardware store parking lot, and...oh, goddammit...a little boy, maybe twelve years old, wearing a torn Orioles jersey and a pair of baggy khaki shorts drenched in blood. His lips were pulled back in a sinister, leering grin that looked carved onto his face, and he had a spongey loop of gore-soaked intestines in his hand.

"Grab the shit!" I yelled, scooping medicine into my backpack. Rivet yanked the rifle out of Jennie's hands. Jennie unslung her pack and held it down at the level of the counter and swiped a wide armload of bottles into its open mouth. Plastic tubes pattered and bounced on the floor, little green and yellow and white and pink pills clattering in all of them. The open bottle of triazolam tipped over and sent a cascade of sky-blue ovals over the edge of the counter. Dinkins watched us all with half-shut lids, his lips quivering.

The hardware store zombie, a thin, bearded man with a baseball cap askew over thick, curly brown hair, bumped into a magazine stand and sent issues of People and Time sprawling over the tile floor. Rivet raised the rifle barrel, sighted, and pulled the trigger. I barely heard the tiny click among the echoing rattle of medicine bottles. Rivet swore and tried again.

"Take off the safety, shithead," Jennie shouted over her shoulder. She was on her knees, stuffing fistfulls of fallen prescription bottles into her backpack.

"I did! I did!"

"Did you cock it?"

"Of course I fucking..." There was a rasping sound of metal slipping over metal, then an ear-splitting thunder clap. The rifle barrel jerked up in Rivet's hands, and somehow, like the random details you remember from a dream, I saw a minuscule puff of dirt rise out of the lawn in front of the courthouse across the street.

"Missed!" I called.

"Thank you," Rivet's voice held enough sarcasm to dam the Mississippi. He pulled on the metal knob in the side of the rifle, ejecting a long brass tube. He pushed the slide back and barely took time to aim before he deafened us again. I felt like I was standing inside a massive bell while mighty Goliath whacked it with a sledgehammer. Beside the little boy, a bottle of shampoo exploded.

My ears were ringing with a constant, high-pitched whine, I was shouting something, couldn't hear myself, Jennie shouting too, yanking the rifle out of Rivet's hands, bayonet blade flashing. Mr. Dinkins slumped sideways, offsetting his center of gravity and sending the wheeled chair shooting away. He dropped heavily to the floor. Jennie had the rifle now. Rivet was arguing. I couldn't hear, couldn't hear a damn thing, and then Jennie fired it again and the brunette secretary's neck erupted in three directions like a watermelon. The woman's head sagged to the side, down behind her shoulder, a rapidly deflating balloon. I could see a jagged shard of her spine sticking straight up between her shoulders, and she kept walking toward us, blood cascading down the front of her shirt, head still attached but hanging so far behind her it wasn't even visible from the front.