7/24 6:30pm, cont.

Surprisingly, Dave didn't scream at me, or call me a 'damn civvie' again. The old man just helped me up, then dashed toward the back of the store, and the pharmacy-chemist section.

It was furthest from grimy windows and therefore hidden by dark shadow. Dave had reloaded the shotgun, but slung it at his back. Seems that he didn't savor the thought of ringing the dinner bell again. There was a dead labcoated woman there, but she must not have turned, or had the forethought to imbibe her own product. Either way, she didn't bother us.

I shoveled random prescriptions, from codeine to fish oil meds into the mouth of my backpack. I didn't care much what we had. Dave, however, started hunting.

I had always suspected the man had some sort of addiction. It would certainly have explained some things. His habit of muttering to himself, his obsession with getting these drugs, the way he treated his dog, his nervous tics.

He crowed in triumph, and pulled three blister-pack sealed inhalers from a recessed shelf. "Hot damn! They really did have my prescription in!" Turns out, my suspicions have been completely wrong.

Dave sits across from me now and tells me that, when it all hit the fan, he'd ordered the inhalers from that Walgreens, but had "bugged out to to the sticks" before they'd called him.

Given Dave had what he needed and my bag was overflowing with even more jangling orange bottles, we turned to head out, and that's when we saw them.

A cross section of Amercian life were bursting through the doors. Soccer moms, staid old ladies, a pair of joggers, and a decaying weight lifter headed toward us. Their apparent confusion and docility was gone; it was replaced by a slackjawed determination to add us to their tableau of horror.

I turned to Dave, but he had already lurched over the counter, shoving his prized possessions into his own pack. Asking him, “what do we do now,” I must have yelled. Dave gave me the evil eye before pointing, as if I was an idiot, toward the stockroom exit, which he was already gimping toward.

The explosion in my eardrums was becoming less deafening by the time we made it to the back door. Dave paused, hands on his knees, coughing. I tore open a blister pack and he grabbed the metal cylinder, taking a deep puff. He paused for a moment, then exhaled. Beneath the retreating thunder of gun noise still echoing in my head, I heard him mutter “that’s more like it.”

The moaners were halfway across the scattered shelves, falling and jostling one another in their mindless journey to my pumping heart. Determined to keep it working, I kicked the swinging door open, which immediately rebounded back toward me, propelled forward by the body weight of a half-eviscerated clerk who was heading our way.

Dave brought his barrel to bare, ready to make me permanently deaf. I screamed incoherently, jumped forward into his sights and slammed the dripping stockboy onto the ground. Screaming in fear for my ears and overall wellbeing, I slammed the bat down into the squirming moaner’s nose, penetrating through to frontal lobe.

This time Dave did scream “Damn idiot civ!”, but he was already moving forward, my foolish moment of aggression already forgotten. He burst out the back door, slammed a goner in the head with the stock of his gun, blasted another’s skull to jellied confetti, and kept on running.

I followed, glad the open environment absorbed the geyser of sound better than reverberant aluminum shelves. Most of the undead had made their way toward the front entrance, and we only snagged against a single crawler on the top of the hill, it’s back legs a mess of broken bone.

Daisy was fired up, whining incessantly the moment Dave got in sight. He dumped her in the basket and I jumped on. I don’t think I’ve paddled faster in my life, that damn dog yapping the whole way back.

The sun is now setting on our fenced in safe area. Dave is turning the precious medical inhaler over and over in his hands. “Just wasn’t much good without my second wind,” he says. “They say the most important thing in a survival situation is shelter and a gun. That’s God Damn Horse Shit,” he states, smiling. He glances at Daisy and adds, “begging your pardon, Ms. Daisy. Your health, now that’s important. Could live in Buckingham Palace itself and wouldn’t matter if you caught death of a cold for yourself.”

Daisy yawns and grins a doggie grin. She’s just happy to be home.

And you know what? So am I.