Take the All-Mart! - By J. I. Greco Page 0,35

Trip asked.

She scowled at him. “I was a little stressed at the time.”

“It’s okay,” Rudy said.

“No, no it’s not okay,” Trip said. “We don’t even have a signal to follow anymore. Who knows where —”

A low, growling moan interrupted him. All three turned to look. It was coming from the zombie had Trip shot.

“You put three rounds through it — how is it not dead?” Rudy asked.

Trip drew his revolver and cautiously stepped up closer to the zombie. The hole in his chest was closing, the skin resealing itself over undulating, re-growing lungs and heart. The other two wounds were already gone.

“Great. Self-healing zombies. Fucking nanochines.” Trip flicked his cigarette into the zombie’s chest cavity just as it sealed itself shut. Trip cocked the revolver and pointed it at the zombie’s forehead. “Let’s see if the oldie-but-goodie bullet through the brain does the trick.”

“Wait,” Rudy said. “Don’t kill it.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Karma.”

“Fuck Karma.”

“Other way around if you keep pissing it off, bro.” Rudy pointed at the two zombies pinned to a rack by the Wound, writhing and struggling to free themselves but not having any luck. They were good and stuck, and helpless. “Look, they’re not a threat to us. Let’s just leave them here and get going.”

“Going where?” Trip waved the revolver randomly above his head. “‘Maybe that way’ isn’t a real direction.”

“Killing zombies isn’t going to help.”

“Oh, it’d help,” Trip grunted, holstering the revolver.

Rudy smiled, looked down at the zombie at Trip’s feet. The zombie’s wounds had almost completely healed and it was just starting to come awake. “Anyway... I’ve got an idea about how we might figure out where to go.”

CHAPTER 12: BOB

“Welcome to All-Mart. How can we change your life today?”

According to the nametag half-grown into his chest, the zombie’s name was Bob. He hung spread-eagled on a rack of green polka-dotted teddy bears, electric extension cords lashed tight around his wrists, ankles, waist and throat. Neither his body nor his uniform showed any signs he’d been shot by Trip, the wounds healed and the fabric regrown by the All-Mart nanochines in his blood and living in the fabric of his clothes.

“This was your whole idea?” Trip was up on the Wound’s hood, leaned back on the windshield. He looked up from re-reading the Steve Martin Playboy interview. “Strap the zombie up to a rack and stare at him until he says something other than ‘Welcome to All-Mart, how can we change your life today’?”

“I really think it’s starting to get to him.” Rudy was standing in front of Bob, staring up at the zombie as he thoughtfully puffed on his calabash. “Just give it some time.”

Trip set the Playboy down next to him and slid off the hood. He stepped up next to Rudy. “You’ve already been at it for ten minutes.”

Rudy frowned at him. “You’re not exactly one to talk about taking your time, Mr. ‘I-haven’t-met-a-lock-I-can’t-crack’.”

Bernice was standing off to the side, arms crossed over her chest. “I don’t get it. He’s a zombie. Just torture him.”

Trip smirked. “Oh, no, we couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Growling, Trip pointed at Rudy.

Rudy smiled at Bernice. “Karma.”

“Karma?”

Rudy nodded. “The more you hurt others for no reason, the more you get hurt back.”

“Yeah, I know what it is, but... it did attack me.” Bernice jogged her head back at the two zombies still pinned between the Wound and the rack it had crashed into. Their wounds had healed but they were trapped pretty good, despite their continuing, writhing efforts to free themselves. “All three of them did.”

Rudy puffed at his calabash. “And we roughed ‘em up good. But the threat’s over. Always defense, never attack. Read that at an amusement church, once. It’s good advice. Keeps the soul clean.”

Bernice sighed. “So we’re just gonna stand here and ask nicely?”

“You’ll see — he’ll come around once he sees we’re being all civil.” Rudy looked up at Bob. “We might even offer him some lunch later, if he cooperates.”

Bernice turned to Trip. “You believe this?”

“Believe it? I’ve had to put up with it my whole life. But not today.” Trip pulled his elephant revolver from his holster. “No time for this shit.”

Rudy stepped in front of him. “Dude. Karma.”

“You’re trying to appeal to a zombie’s civil side.” Trip’s thumb rubbed against the revolver’s hammer, itching to pull it back. “Zombies don’t have civil sides.”

“There’s still a person in there.”

“Under about a million body- and mind-controlling nanochines that we have to get through first. I don’t see how we’re gonna do that