Twelve Days in Hell Read online

maybe the hunting department.

  Luckily for him the hunting department was right next to the camping supplies. It took him another ten minutes to find the knives, but they were in a locked glass display case.

  Danny realized he could just break the glass. He hit it with the butt of his weapon, and shattered glass sprayed the floor.

  He picked out a yellow army knife and punctured the blister package of the flashlight. He opened a pack of C batteries and slid them into it.

  He closed it and turned it on. The light was surprisingly bright.

  He scanned the store with its narrow beam. Now he could find his way without worry of tripping over anything on the floor or running into shelves.

  ————

  Tom and the other survivors had lost hope that the person they had heard on the radio would ever show up. It had been three hours since they had heard his voice from the parking lot. Tom had tried several times since then to reach him.

  Outside, the zombies surrounded the radio. Hissing, growling, chattering and moaning in response to every word they heard coming through the speaker, they cocked their heads as if wondering how to extract the humans from the box.

  At the front of the store, Danny pushed the emergency door open to be greeted by a zombie.

  It gave a shriek of confusion and surprise. Danny also shrieked in surprise and in turn the zombie shrieked again. Finally Danny slammed the door in the zombie's face.

  “Wrong door,” Danny said, his heart pounding.

  So the front exit next to the restrooms was the wrong exit, He could also rule out the exits that were not next to bathrooms.

  His stomach started to growl, and he remembered that it had been awhile since he had anything to eat. It would be a good idea to find the grocery area and get some food.

  With his flash light he made it to the other end of the Buy-Right shopping center and located the deli fridge, where he found sandwiches that had been made the day before the virus had taken hold. He unwrapped a twelve inch sub and got a soda from a fridge nearby.

  Danny sat on the floor, eating his sandwich and sipping on his soda.

  ————

  Tom and the others were playing a card game when the door knob rattled and the door slowly opened.

  They jumped up in surprise, not sure what they were going to see come through it.

  “Hello, I'm Danny, the one who you talked to over the radio.”

  Tom said, “Come in, Danny, it's nice to meet you. Sorry it's not under better circumstances.”

  Danny walked into the well-lit room and turned off his flashlight.

  He found it hard to believe that a store like Buy-Right would have a hidden room. He also wondered how Tom and the others knew about it. He was on the verge of asking, but he decided that they had more important matters to discuss.

  “My name is Tom. and let me introduce you to the others. First we have William. He's a really bright kid” Tom said.

  “Pleased to meet you, Danny,” said William.

  He was a short, chubby man in his late twenties. He was wearing a loose black shirt with a blue dragon on the front and baggy blue jeans, and he had on a pair of nerdy looking black plastic frames. Danny reached out and shook his hand.

  “Here we have Samantha,” Tom said, pointing to a very attractive young female wearing a pink belly shirt and a short blue skirt.

  “Pleasure,” Danny said, taking her small hand in his and giving it a nice shake.

  “Over here we have Mark” Tom said pointing to a large muscular black man who was probably the tallest man that Danny had ever seen in his life. He was wearing red basketball shorts and a white top.

  “Nice to meet you,” Danny said, and he shook Mark's giant hand.

  “That's all of us,” Tom said, walking back to the sofa.

  “Do you guys have a plan for getting out of here?” Danny asked.

  Tom looked up and said, “It would be like suicide. I think we should stay here until this mess blows over.”

  “What if it doesn't?” Danny asked.

  “We all should try to get a little bit of sleep while we can,” Tom suggested.

  The time was 11:59 PM.

  Day 4

  By 12:00AM Tom and the others were getting ready for bed.

  Danny couldn’t sleep. He dozed off once or twice, but he had vivid nightmares about Molly and some of the other zombie faces he had seen throughout the last three days.

  His eyes were tired, and he started seeing flashing lights from the corners of his eyes. He had been up for a while and his body was trying to shut down and get some rest, but he was not about to let that happen. He continued to fight sleep until morning, and by 6:30 the others were awake and making coffee.

  He had trouble getting to his feet. His mouth was dry and his vision was blurred. He started to think he was becoming one of those terrible monsters, and then he realized it was just the lack of sleep.

  At 7:00AM, after Danny had had some coffee, he decided to go back into Buy-Right and do some “shopping”.

  With the morning sun shining through the skylights he could actually see what he was looking for.

  First he made his way to a restroom. He found a place to attach a water hose, which was exactly what he'd been looking for.

  He hurried to the front of the store and found a shopping cart, and then headed to the lawn and garden department.

  He could hear the muffled cries of the undead coming from outside the glass door. He put a water hose into the buggy and then pushed it to the hunting and fishing department. In the section where he'd picked up the yellow army knife, he also picked up a buck knife and a couple of really sharp pocket knives. Then he made his way to the gun section, which had so far remained untouched.

  The guns were in a revolving glass case. It was locked, of course, but under the cash register behind the counter were some sliding drawers. He opened one of them and found a duster that was used to clean the glass. He slid a second drawer open and found a set of keys.

  “These must be the keys to open the cases.” Danny said to himself.

  There were only three keys on the ring, and the first key he tried opened the case. There were many guns to choose from. There were about twenty high powered rifles, fifteen shot guns, and many different types of hand guns. He found a 12 gauge shot gun, a couple of high powered rifles, and a crossbow.

  He loaded the weapons into his shopping cart. Then he found the shelves that held the ammo, and he stocked up on box after box of bullets. He also found arrows for the crossbow and put those into his buggy as well.

  He passed by the sporting goods section and spotted a selection of golf clubs that would make good weapons if you couldn't reach your gun fast enough.

  He hefted several of them, feeling their weight, and selected the heaviest ones he could find. He added them to his shopping cart.

  He walked over to the electronics section and found some two-way radios that required a special type of rechargeable battery, so he picked up a supply of the batteries along with a couple of chargers.

  He made his way back to the hidden room. Tom, William, Samantha, and Mark all greeted him on his return from his shopping spree.

  Tom was impressed. He hadn't thought about going through the store in search of supplies, he'd only thought about hiding until either help arrived or all the zombies had starved to death.

  Danny gave out the radios with the batteries and the chargers. He kept one for himself and told them all he was going to go freshen up.

  Tom and the others decided to go do some shopping of their own.

  Danny picked up another shopping cart from the front of the store and made his way to the personal health aisles.

  Now he was shopping for body wash, shampoo and deodorant. He picked out his favorite brands and then made his way to the men's clothing section. There he found some clean underwear, socks, shirts, and pants.

  He chose all black shirts with gray and black camouflage cargo pants. Then he wen
t to the home section of the store and grabbed a couple of towels.

  He made his way to the men's restroom. He hooked the water hose up to the faucet, turned the faucet to the left, and was relieved to find that it was warm water that sprayed from the end of the hose.

  He started off by washing his hair with his new bottle of shampoo. Then he rinsed out the shampoo and started washing himself with the new body wash, applying it with the sponge that had come in the package with the manly smelling soap.

  The soapy water made its way to the drain in the middle of the bath room floor. Danny dried himself with a new towel and put on his new boxer shorts, his black shirt, his black and gray camouflage cargo pants, and his new black socks.

  He walked out of the restroom and went to the shoe department. He found a pair of black steel-toed boots in his size and slid them on. He tied the boot laces and then went to the nearest mirror.

  He looked good in his new style of clothing.

  ————

  Tom and the others made their way through the store with radios in hand, talking to each other back, and forth.

  Samantha went to the electronics section and picked out a stereo system for the back room. She also went to house wares and picked up a micro wave, and after that she made her way to the toasters.

  William went to do the grocery shopping. He picked out the freshest bread and sandwich supplies, and he also picked up a lot of canned good items.

  Mark found a pallet jack behind the double doors that led to the shipping docks. He wheeled it into the main store, and then asked the others over the radio to help him move a refrigerator to the back room.

  Samantha, William, Tom and Danny made their