Zombie Short Story - The Road Trip - Part 6

[Welcome to my short story serial, "The Road Trip."  In this final installment, things are looking pretty grim for our good folks.  But, if you're new to the series, you'll want to start at the beginning - Part 1.]

     Jeb and the store clerk, Darlene, backed into the El Dorado General Store and slammed the front door behind them.  Jeb's wife, Myra, met them inside with her lever action .30-30 carbine in hand.
     "There's whole mess of them coming," Jeb announced.
     As Darlene locked the front door, the dead launched themselves against the store.  She recoiled as the horde scratched against the metal mesh grid of the door and the burglar bars of the windows.  With each onslaught, the bells hanging from the inner door handle jingled with every onslaught and the moans and clawing of the dead made everyone uneasy.
     "This is an old building folks," Darlene announced in a raspy voice that showed the influence of a lifetime of smoking.  "I hope it will hold up to this."
     "Can we fortify it?" Jeb asked thinking aloud.
     "We can move the ice cream cooler in front of the door," Darlene suggested.
     "O.K.," Myra agreed.  "Good idea."
     Jeb pushed mightily on the cooler and it barely budged.  But, when Myra and Darlene added their muscle, the big cooler slowly moved into place blocking the front door.
     "That there was some girl power," Jeb observed.

     Darlene flexed her bicep victoriously and Myra suggested that Jeb start working out.  Jeb just nodded and reloaded his revolver painstakingly ejecting each spent shell until it was empty and then replacing each shell with another cartridge.
     The moment of levity passed quickly as the first piece of wooden siding on the front of the old store ripped from the building and fell with a clatter.  Additional boards followed in rapid succession.  Then a dead man's arm reached through the wall and started to wave around.  Jeb calmly walked over, grabbed the arm, looked through the small hole in the wall, and gazed into the dark bloodshot eyes of a zombie on the outside. 


      "You stay right there fella," he admonished the dead man.
      Then he cocked the hammer and squeezed the trigger to shoot that dead man right between the eyes.  It was a simple act, but inside the store, the roar of the big magnum was deafening.  Everyone jumped and every conversation was conducted at a yell.
       "Does this place have a back door?" Myra asked.
       "Yes ma'am," Darlene answered.  "And, my Dodge is parked out back!"
        More of the dead were clawing through the front walls of the store and Jeb shot two more.
       "Ladies," he announced as he replaced the spent cartridges.  "It's time for us to leave!"
       Myra grabbed her little cooler of ammunition and sandwiches and the trio made it through the junk food packed aisles of the store and back into the windowless store room.  They reached the  back door just as the dead started to break through the front walls and pour into the front of the establishment.  Flustered, Darlene was trying to find the key to unlock the back door alarm.  But, there were a lot of keys on her key ring.
       "You get the car unlocked Darlene, you take the ones on the right Myra, and I'll take the ones on the left," Jeb yelled.
        When zombies started to squeeze into storeroom, Darlene finally stopped fussing with the store keys and just pushed open the door.  After the gunshots, the siren blast of the exit alarm didn't even phase them.  The group just bounded out and dashed for a ten-year-old Dodge Journey SUV behind the store.  As they moved, Jeb and Myra fired at the nearest zombies.  They each felled one.  As they were older folks trying to run and Myra was still carrying a small lunch cooler, the rest of their shots had little effect.
     Jeb jumped into the front passenger seat, Myra dove in back, and Darlene ran around the front of her boxy SUV.  A zombie reached for her as she climbed into the driver's seat.  Darlene slammed the door on his bloody hand three times before getting it closed.  She started the Dodge and the engine roared to life with her panicked foot on the accelerator.

2010 Dodge Journey - photo by SsmIntrigue / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

        Seconds later they were bouncing down the dirt road that led from the back of the store up to the Omega Road.  The monstrous horde dutifully started to trail behind them.  Jeb said take a right, let's get my truck, and then we'll head to our place.  With the dead strung out across the fields, dirt road, and underbrush behind the store, Darlene just floored it, whipped up onto the Omega Road, and around the block to the ruined store front.  Jeb jumped out and ran for his classic Chevy.  A dead man in a farmer's overalls rounded the building and shuffled for Jeb at a surprising fast place.  Jeb pulled the hammer back, aimed for the head shot and squeezed the trigger.  Click.  Empty.  Jeb's heart sank as he realized he had already fired six shots in the previous mayhem.  
    A race for the truck ensued.  Fortunately a living retired farmer was just a bit faster than a dead farmer.  Jeb scrambled into truck and got it started just as the dead man grabbed his door.  Jeb popped the clutch with plenty of panic-stricken revs, and squeeled out of the parking lot with his back tires spun kicking up sand and gravel in the parking lot.  The zombie held on but lost his grip as Jeb spun the truck around to head south.  The dead farmer rolled across the pavement of the two lane highway and came to rest against a chain-link fence.  With Myra and Darlene in the lead, the survivors raced back down 41 in both vehicles.  
     Jeb and Myra's trip home was much faster than any of them had thought possible.  As soon as they got inside their home, the couple ever so faintly heard their phone ringing inside.  Jeb dashed in and picked up the receiver.  
       "Hello," he yelled.  "Hello!"
       It was Jeb and Myra's daughter Betty.
       "Daddy," Betty said frantically.  "We're trapped up here just outside of Atlanta!"

[Thanks for reading! If you're interested in reading more of my stories or my novel Zombie Complex, I invite you to visit my Amazon Author page here on Amazon.]

Photo credit:  Ruger Super Blackhawk photo adapted from photo by Everett Walker / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)