The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,45
of arterial spray mark the doorway of the vision center on the right. Shelves either stand empty—already plundered—or overturned on the floor.
Josh raises one of his huge hands and orders his cohorts to stop for a moment as he listens to the silence. He scans the acres of retail space, much of which is littered with headless bodies, unidentifiable streaks of carnage, overturned shopping carts, and trash. The rows of checkout conveyors on the right stand silent and stained with blood. The pharmacy center, cosmetics counter, and health and beauty on the left are also riddled with bullet holes.
Signaling to the others, Josh cautiously continues on, his gun at the ready, his heavy boot steps crunching over debris as he moves deeper into the reeking shadows.
The farther they get from the entrance doors, the darker the aisles become. The pale daylight barely penetrates the far grocery aisles on the right, with its spills and broken glass mingling with human remains, or the home and office and fashion sections on the left, with their scattered clothing and dismembered mannequins. The departments in the rear of the store—toys, electronics, sporting goods, and shoes—lie in utter darkness.
Only the dry silver beams of battery-powered emergency lights illuminate the shadowy depths of the far aisles.
They find flashlights in the hardware department, and shine the beams into the far reaches of the store, making note of all the useful provisions and tools. The more they investigate, the more excited they become. By the time they’ve circled the entire fifteen thousand square feet of retail space—finding only a few scattered human remains in the early stages of decomposition, innumerable overturned shelves, and rats scurrying from the sounds of their footsteps—they are convinced that the store is safe—picked over, certainly, but safe.
At least for the moment.
“Pretty sure we got the place to ourselves,” Josh says at last as the threesome returns to the diffuse light of the front vestibule.
They lower their weapons and flashlights. “Looks like some shit went down in here,” Bob says.
“I ain’t no detective.” Josh gazes around the walls and floors awash in bloodstains that could pass for Jackson Pollock paintings. “But I’d say some folks turned in here a while back, and then you got layers of people comin’ in and helpin’ themselves to what was left.”
Lilly looks at Josh, her expression still tight with nervous tension. She glances at the headless greeter. “You think we could clean the place up, maybe stay here a while?”
Josh shakes his head. “We’d be sitting ducks, place is way too tempting.”
“It’s also a gold mine,” Bob pipes in. “Plenty of stuff on the high shelves, maybe stockrooms in back with merchandise, could be damn useful to us.” His eyes twinkle, and Josh can tell the older man has taken careful accounting of the top shelves of the liquor department, still brimming with unopened bottles of hooch.
“I saw some wheelbarrows and hand dollies in the garden department,” Josh says. He looks at Bob, then he looks at Lilly and grins. “I think our luck just changed for the better.”
* * *
They load up three wheelbarrows with down coats, winter boots, thermal underwear, stocking caps, and gloves from the fashion department. They throw in a pair of walkie-talkies, tire chains, towlines, a socket-wrench kit, road flares, motor oil, and antifreeze. They get Scott to help them, leaving Megan in the truck to watch for intruders.
From the grocery department—where most of the meats, produce, and dairy products are either missing or have long since spoiled—they procure boxes of instant oatmeal, raisins, protein bars, ramen noodles, jars of peanut butter, beef jerky, cans of soup, spaghetti sauce, juice boxes, cartons of dry pasta, canned meats, sardines, coffee, and tea.
Bob raids what is left of the pharmacy. Most of the barbiturates, painkillers, and antianxiety meds are long gone, but he finds enough leftovers to open a private practice. He takes some Lanacane for first aid, amoxicillin for infections, epinephrine for kicking a heart back to life, Adderall for keeping alert, lorazepam for calming the nerves, Celox for stanching blood loss, naproxen for pain, loratadine for opening air passages, and a good assortment of vitamins.
From other departments, they acquire irresistible luxury items—items that aren’t exactly paramount to their survival but might nonetheless bring momentary relief from the grim business of staying alive. Lilly chooses an armful of hardcover books—novels mostly—from the newsstand area. Josh finds a collection of hand-rolled Costa Rican cigars behind the courtesy desk. Scott discovers a battery-operated DVD player and