Heavy air pushed down on Paul Baehr’s shoulders, forcing him to rest the Remington 700P he held in his hands onto the ground. His eyes stared at the window across from the corner he sat in. The man with the dangling arm and thin brown hair hectically placed upon his head smashed his face into the glass. His mouth opened, revealing yellow teeth loosely hanging into the rotting gum above them. The groan that drawled from his mouth seeped through the window, pulling itself across the grocery stair, peeling away the silence and bearing down upon Paul’s psyche.
Behind the lusting man snapping at the thin layer of protection that lay between Paul and death, thousands of hungry creatures massed behind the thinly-haired man with an esprit of corps that revolved around an insatiable yearning. The ones that stood in the front line caressed the glass, leaving blood and dirt in thick, jagged lines that spread downward from their fingertips. The softened, rotting skin stroked the window, producing a light squeak that accompanied the slowly crawling moans and sharp reverberations of the bony fingers that held no skin scraping along the glass.
Paul cradled his head in his arms, his knees drawn up close against his body, eyes shut tight and ears pounding to the chaotic beat of the nauseous creatures reaching for him through the waves of sound that drifted through the store’s decaying interior. His head throbbed with the screams and the bleeding cries of help and panic that had stricken the last television broadcasts sent across the world, instilling even more fear into the burdened hearts of mankind with a language that had no barrier. Sweat trickled down his rough skin, the gentle touch of trepidation. Submerged in a frozen ocean of hostile thoughts that wore vibrant costumes to mollify the inevitability of the situation, Paul raised his head and his eyes solemnly gravitated toward the large revolver that sat nestled in its warm revolver, emitting a thick quilt of quick and easy resignation.
His knees dropped from their jagged angle and melted upon the floor, sprawling out in content. The chilling sweat dissipated from his skin, heavy thoughts rose into the air as feathers in the wind, the slow-crawling horrors of necrosis fading from behind the cracking window. A shaking hand under the command of a volition that once lay asleep, burrowed into his darkest depths, grasped the handle of the revolver, drawing it in the triumph in the likes of which had laden Excalibur’s conquering. The sleek black barrel emerged from the stiff, leather holster, wagging back and forth in the tremor of Paul’s hand.
As he lifted the revolver up, suspending it level to his eyes, he opened his clutched hand and held the gun with a loose, relaxed grasp, revealing its complete profile. Assessing the black leather grip that melded to his hand and the dark hammer positioned above the harboring cylinder from which the finger of Death protruded, he refastened his hold onto the revolver and swung it toward the growing congregation of limping and deteriorating remnants of man. The barrel danced between the creatures, playing eeny-meeny-miny-moe before it turned around and brushed against Paul’s temple. His thumb slid up to the tip of the hammer and dropped its weight onto the steel, forcing it to pull downward, smashing the spring that extended down into the handle into an infuriated, coiled mess, ready to push back.
Paul’s monochrome eyes watched as the man with the thin wisps of brown hair swung his dangling arm at the glass. The crack in the glass that was as thin as the man’s hair spread outward from the hit. The dangerous sound of ice breaking as one stood over a frozen ocean infested with starving sharks shot toward Paul. The sharp snap stung his ears, jolting his mind. He lowered the revolver to his side, his thumb coaxing the hammer back into its place, relieving the tension of the spring. His eyes swooned as he laid his head against the low wall of the large dairy refrigerator behind him. His eyelids fell as bodies would fall, plunging through the cool morning air in front of spectators that gruesomely watched the jumpers’ self-motivated descent into death.
Another heavy step on the ice sent a barrage of thin cracks as thin slivers of glass plummeted toward the ground as forgotten bricks of ancient buildings would topple in their last seconds. Paul’s eyes opened with as much vivacity as one could harness when surrounded by the deceased who rejected their assumed fate. He pushed himself to his sore feet, blisters tearing open on his soles and toes, smearing his socks with pus. He bit down onto his lower lip, drawing thin shavings of blood into dried cracks on his chapped lips. He shook away the stinging in his feet and stood in the empty grocery store, staring at the horde of creatures that awaited the glass’s capitulation.
The inexorable shattering of the window incited Paul’s decision. He turned away from the pawing figures of the damned and ran toward the back of the store, his legs and arms moving in a robotic cycle, his revolver still clasped in his right hand, five rounds comfortably sheltered in the black steel cylinder. The line of rotting milk, cheese, and other refrigerated products was a blur in the corner of Paul’s eyes, the shelves of crackers and chips to his left of him a parallel blur. The door ahead of Paul with boxes of decomposing fruits stacked up in front of it was the light at the end of the tunnel, the only thing he focused upon, the center of the funnel.
The fruit boxes were thrown to the sides of the door like peasants thrown to the flanks of the royal carpet by the subordinate hands of the guards. Paul grasped the metal lever handle on the door and pulled down on it, yanking the door open, letting in the tainted smell of putrescent meat, fruits, cheese, yogurt, milk, and eggs. The dark air held itself back from the front of the grocery store and the sunlight that dribbled through the cracks between the wall of creatures huddling at the window.
Paul withdrew the flashlight hidden in his jacket’s lower pocket, unscrewed the cap on the bottom of the handle, slid his revolver back into its holster, retrieved two Double-A batteries from his jacket’s left-side chest pocket, and slid them into the handle of the flashlight. He screwed back on the cap and flipped the flashlight’s switch to “ON”. A beam of light cut through the rancid air, revealing boxes and crates of food. Paul swung the flashlight to his right onto a large garage-like door. He drew his revolver, positioning it in front of him just like he had during the exploration of his basement, and stepped deeper into the withdrawing darkness.
Setting his right ear up against the cold, metal door, Paul listened for the growls of the creatures outside. There was only the sound of birds. He closed his eyes, a wet tear sliding down his cheek and breaking apart on the dusty cement floor beneath it. His left thumb moved over the switch on the flashlight, clicking it off as he slid it back into the lower pocket on his jacket. With his left hand curled around the cool handle of the door, Paul put all of his weight into throwing the door up.
Bullets of sunlight shot through the door as it opened, preparing the dark room for the relentless stream of burning light that illuminated it once the door slid all the way open. Paul squinted against the light, standing like a figure of hope in what once was death. He slowly walked out of the room, into the cool breeze that greeted him with the stench of shuffling corpses. Paul began walking faster away from the grocery store, gradually picking up speed as his legs got ready for an unyielding onslaught of pain.
prev chapter
![[send message]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/mail.png){kind=small}
![[befriend]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/friend.png){kind=small}
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Flag Writing
