| Empty Graves Part Eighteen: Dead End Jake, Mary and Saul were stocking the car up with supplies, their heads burrowed in their tasks and their minds on the job as well as what was not surrounding them, yet anyway. They were all totally oblivious to the fact that Gareth had not shown his face in the past few minutes. As far as they were concerned, he was still organising the boxes and crates of extra supplies for the pick up they were to conduct later that same day, they thought they might as well strike while the iron's hot. "Come on you two, stop dilly dallying around and get the last things loaded up and I'll go and get Gareth," said Saul in a deliberate drill sergeant voice as he proceeded to walk off towards the store entrance. Glancing at each other's flushed and sweaty faces, Jake and Mary gave each other a raised eyebrow, unifying them in their concern for their new friend's mental state. "Maybe he's the good kind of nuts," said Jake. "What?" "Maybe he's one of those people who are nuts but are really quite nice." "Probably, at least he's not one of those psycho-nutter types." "Yeah," smiled Jake as he lifted another six pack of bottled water from the tarmac parking lot into the trunk. Saul was standing at the entrance, his head stuck into the store. He was listening for sounds of Gareth's movements, but could only hear a slight cracking noise. "Hey! Gareth!" he shouted. He received no reply. "Hey! Come on man! We've got to get a move on; we can come back for this stuff later on! Get your ass in gear already!" he ordered again, now stepping into the store. Again he received no reply and his loud calls to Gareth had attracted the attention of Jake and Mary from outside. They both looked into the store as Saul stepped further into the building so that he now stood beside the cashier desk. "Come on man, get a move on already!" A sharp snapping sound rung out from the dark supply room and the sound of something wet being torn into so it seemed. "What the hell?" said Saul as he proceeded to walk over to the door of the supply room. The sound grew louder as he approached the door and as he was about to turn into the room, a very loud crunch noise stopped him in his tracks and a sudden jet of crimson fluid exploded from inside the doorway so that the droplets trickled down the surface and onto the floor. "Shit," muttered Saul, a sudden strobe of fear flashing into his mind. "Gareth!" he shouted. Turning around to glance at Jake and Mary's poised figures outside for a brief moment, Saul leapt into the supply room to be confronted with the mangled body of Gareth. The scene was a bloodbath and sat awkwardly on the floor was a solitary zombie, emaciated and badly rotted, the creature must have been locked in here for some time. "Son of a bitch!" shouted Saul as he leapt for his friend's attacker. Tackling the slimy corpse to the ground, Saul proceeded to beat the writhing demon all over, finally finishing his assault on the creature's softened head. "Saul!" shouted Jake as he and Mary entered the store to see what all the commotion was. Receiving no response, they went in search of their new friend and entered the supply room to see him wrestling with a zombie amidst a bloody mess. Raising his fists above his head in a sledge hammer style formation, Saul let them come crashing down into the zombies face so that it exploded with the force of the blow. As the blood and gray matter flooded across the floor and the zombie's body went limp, Saul peeled himself from the bloody floor and outside to get some fresh air, trailing gory foot prints with him as he slouched away. Looking on in terror, Jake motioned for Mary to leave the room, something that he did almost immediately too. Closing the door behind him, he looked out to the front of the store where Saul was hunched over, leaning against the glass, panting. Jake and Mary proceeded to exit the building and lock the door behind them. "Come on Saul, we've gotta get this food back to the others," said Jake. Saul just panted and eventually stood upright, looking Jake in the eye. His quirky behaviour had vanished and his eyes were stale. Obviously Saul had never seen anyone he knew killed before. Motioning for Mary to start the car, Jake guided Saul away from the store and into the back seat of the vehicle. Quietly, Mary pulled the car away from the parking lot and drove back to the docks. What were they going to do or say when they got there though was something they were all dreading. |