Take the All-Mart! - By J. I. Greco Page 0,41

or squish?” Trip twitched and the Wound leapt forward, her adaptive tires softening for traction. “People might want to hold on to something,” Trip announced just as the Wound slammed into the nearest zombie at eighty miles per, flipping it over the hood and roof like a slobbering, gnarling rag doll.

The Wound plowed deeper into the forest, the clothes racks and zombie horde thickening. The zombies remained focused on their shopping frenzy, most not even noticing the oncoming car until they were bowled under or knocked aside.

Trip sat back and opened his eyes to light a cigarette as he rammed the Wound through a rack, two dozen shoppers swarmed around it, bashing at each other for the last orange-cream sleeveless blouse. Zombies went flying or were churned into pulp under the car’s wheels. “Man, this is a great show. Where’s some popcorn when you need it?”

A severed zombie head splatted against the Wound’s windshield. Rudy threw his arms over his spike-helmeted head and in the back, Bernice screamed. Bob grunted in disgust.

Trip shot him an arched eyebrow in the rearview. “What, did you know him?”

Bob glared at him, visibly straining against his bindings. Then convulsed in pain, Bernice snapping the sparking tip of the stun baton against his temple.

Rudy cleared his throat. “You know...”

“Oh, Vishnu’s late Sunday dinner,” Trip sighed. He threw up his hands in exasperation at Rudy. “Every time the heads go rolling — without fail — you chime in with the party-pooping.”

“Knocking ‘em around some, I’m pretty sure karma can forgive since they heal so fast... but killing them? That has asteroid repercussions written all over it.”

Trip scowled, and twitched. The Wound slid left, avoiding the next cluster of zombies. “We’re almost past ‘em all, anyway,” he said, purposefully not acknowledging Rudy’s appreciative grin.

The Wound slid around another cluster of zombies and into the periphery of the clothing rack forest, the racks already picked cleaned and empty. Both his eyes and the Wound’s sensors told Trip the shopper zombies were all behind them, for now. He aimed the Wound towards a run of empty shelves, slotting it between racks. He twisted around to smile at everyone. “That wasn’t so bad —”

A crack against the windshield and his head snapped around to see a zombie, clinging to the Wound’s roof, whacking the windshield with an elbow.

“We really need to put a sensor up there,” Trip noted when Bernice’s screaming and Rudy’s even more girlish yelp died down. He smirked at Rudy. “Well, that one’s definitely attacking us,”

Rudy shrugged, caught his breath. “Could be argued it’s acting in self-defense.”

“Shut up,” Trip told him, then twisted around to ask Bob: “Thought you said they couldn’t use weapons?”

“Its own elbow isn’t technically a weapon,” Bob pointed out.

Trip grunted and turned back to Rudy. “Can it break through?”

Rudy shook his head confidently. “The windshield’s half-inch thick polymer. A sledgehammer couldn’t get through it.”

The zombie brought its elbow down again, this time near the hole the Magnum’s rail-gun shot had left in the windshield. A sharp crack, and faint fissures a half-inch long appeared around the hole.

“Oh, yeah...” Rudy cocked his head to the side and stared, curious, at the hole. “Forgot about that. Structural integrity’s gonna be a tad less integral than normal.”

“Well, do something about it,” Trip insisted.

“How am I supposed to patch it while we’re —” Rudy stopped as Trip pointed his cigarette at the shotgun in Rudy’s lap. “Duh, yeah. On it.”

Rudy rolled his window down, then, taking the shotgun with him, wriggled up through.

The shopper zombie looked like she was in her eighties, thin blue-white hair flapping in the wind. She was sprawled out over the roof, the gaunt fingers of one hand clenched tight against the lip of the windshield. She was just barely keeping herself from flying off while still — somehow — managing to bring her free arm’s elbow down, again and again, on the windshield.

Rudy pointed the shotgun at her head, put his finger over both triggers, and closed his eyes. “Sorry about this...” he mouthed.

A snarl, and the shotgun was suddenly moving on its own — and trying to get away from him.

Rudy’s eyes snapped open. The zombie had grabbed the barrels with her free hand. She yanked it back and forth, attempting to wrestle it out of his grip.

Without thinking, Rudy clamped his teeth down on her wrist, tight. The zombie howled, let go of the shotgun. In one motion, Rudy let go of her wrist, pointed the shotgun at the hand