Two in Billions

It was cold in the Walmart. Jeremy didn't like coming in so early in the morning, but he worked the graveyard shift at the bottle plant and Walmart was one of the few places that was open at seven a.m. When he got off work, unless he wanted to go to the convenience store and he didn't because his ex girlfriend Darla was working the morning shift there. If he went to the Git n'Go at all he paid at the pump and never went in. His break up had been full of fireworks and he had no desire to see the woman again. Maybe she would stop harassing him when she ran into him, if he stayed away long enough.

Of course his dad told him the harassment should stop when Darla found a new boyfriend and Jeremy was counting the days until that happened. He'd even gone so far as to include a few prayers in that direction, asking God to find her a new man quick. He had even prayed for her to find a man who would make her happy, it was easy to be generous when his own happiness was on the line. So far though, God had other things to do. Shrugging as he went through the automated doors Jeremy steered clear of the homeless guy in the cart corral to his right.

The homeless were out in droves today, maybe there was a convention of them in town or something. He'd almost hit two of them on the way into the parking lot, he was going to mention it to the greeter but the man was nowhere to be found. Probably he was on a pee break, old people did a good job at such jobs as saying hi to people, but they had to pee a lot. Kyle picked up a small plastic basket to carry his intended purchases in and headed back towards the food side of the super store. He walked oblivious passed the empty check out lanes and equally empty bakery and meat departments.

As he passed the canned goods isle he saw a man in a smock cleaning up a jar of spaghetti sauce or ketchup on the floor. The doof was just standing there and rocking back and forth. Maybe he was waiting for someone else to bring the mop and bucket. Turning into the soda pop and chip isle Jeremy made it halfway down to where the generic pop was, he plucked a couple two liter bottles of orange drink off the shelf and put the in his basket. The clerk from the canned isle shuffled into the pop isle at one end. His face and the front of his shirt were covered in blood. Jeremy was price comparing different brands of chips and had just, reluctantly decided he would not be able to buy the much better butter pretzels AND the spinach dip he loved so much unless he put one of his two liter bottles of soda back. It was Wednesday and payday was tomorrow, then, he vowed to himself for about the hundredth time, he could come to Walmart and buy twenty bottles of pop and ten or maybe even twelve jars of dip to see him through the two weeks until the paycheck after that.

His money never seemed to last two weeks, which was funny because he was making more than he ever had in his life. The bottle plant had a union and three months ago his trial status had been converted to full time, giving him a hefty raise, even with the dues taken out each check his every two week payday didn't seem to last that long. How did he ever do it before the bottle plant when he was making half as much? He turned to head towards the lunch meat, just to see what was on sale when he saw Darla.

She had appeared at the end of the chips isle, between him and the lunch meat, and while she had never looked that good, right now she was looking really, really bad. He had never noticed how plump she had gotten, or maybe she had just put on a bunch of weight. Darla was wearing her Git n'Go uniform, she must have switched to the graveyard shift there too, it was the kind of thing she would do so she could keep better tabs on 'her' man. Her uniform was filthy, like she had been cleaning the pizza ovens again and in his tired, overworked state the fact that she was only wearing socks didn't seem to register as he whirled around quickly to go back the other way. Jeremy had turned and moved so fast that he slammed right into the store clerk. Knocking both of them down.

“I'm sorry! I'm sorry!”, he said as he tried to disentangle himself from the clerk. He noticed the blood then and his apologies grew more sincere, “Oh God, I must have broke your nose! Shit man I am sorry! I am sorry, I didn't see you there!”

The man was slow moving and lethargic, he grabbed Jeremy's hand and pulled the both of them down again. His mouth ended up on Jeremy's arm and he bit down with a vicious effort, getting a shriek from Jeremy. “What the fuck! Dude, don't, it was an accident! I didn't mean to knock you over!”

Jeremy rolled over and away from the clerk, his arm didn't come with his, it anchored him to the clerk's mouth. He lay on his back with the clerk worrying his arm like a dog with a bone and he saw Darla coming towards him. She's, uh, there is something wrong with her, he thought seeing his ex-girlfriend plodding towards him.

Inexorably she put one foot in front of the other, closing the distance between them. Jeremy gave his arm several quick jerks, timing them to be when the clerk was trying to get a better grip on his arm with his teeth, it took three yanks, but he got his arm back. He was bleeding fiercely and had just gotten to his feet when Darla grabbed him from behind, he slithered forward to get away from her, but she managed to get her arms around his waist and sink her teeth into his side, just below the ribs. The clerks used the distraction to grab Jeremy's legs and all three people ended up on a tangle on the floor. The clerk started biting Jeremy's leg while Darla continued gnawing a hole into his guts with her teeth.

“It hurts! It hurts! Oh God stop! Stop! Darla stop!” Jeremy's voice rose in octaves as the wounding went on, finally ending in a high sharp shriek that any who heard it would have been unable to tell what sex or age it had come from. Darla eventually ended the scream by burrowing so far into Jeremy's insides that her head was almost gone from view, the blood loss killed him.

Overhead the white lights shown down on the pop isle in a cold, harsh glow, three zombies got up and started shambling around the store, hunting with their insatiable hunger.

..home..