Chapter 75: A Swatting
✧✧ ~ ⚜ ~ ✧ φ ✧ ~ ⚜ ~ ✧✧
The roller shutter groaned as Marcus hauled it up, and the sound of it scraped down the length of the block.
"Hold," Anton muttered as he stepped in first, sweeping his torch across the aisles before he looked at the shelves, making sure there were not any zombies lurking.
Behind the shutter, the shelves were still standing, and most of them were still full.
"It’s all clear," Anton muttered, and the air felt that little bit lighter as everyone felt the relief. stepped in first, sweeping his torch across the aisles.
Canned goods sat in their rows untouched, packets of rice and dried noodles on the opposite shelf, and the refrigeration units along the back wall had gone dark but still held bottled water and juice in their racks.
It was a glorious find!
The air inside was stale and warm, carrying the early spoil of whatever meats and dairy had been left to sit without power.
It seemed that the place had not had power before the apocalypse had even hit, considering the faint smell.
"About the other gas station across the road," he said to Yara, who had already come in behind him. "Check on it quick, yeah? And be thorough."
"I’ll be back soon," she said, and moved back out through the shutter.
That left him with Irvin and Marcus, and the work of getting as much off the shelves and into the bags as they could carry.
They had driven two of the cars from the building, parking them a block south so the engines wouldn’t draw anything in immediately, and now it was a matter of making trips between here and there until the boots were full.
Irvin had positioned himself near the store’s entrance, his back to the counter, watching the road.
Marcus worked the aisles beside Anton, pulling cans and packets and dropping them into the duffel bags they had brought.
Irvin spoke then, not turning from the doorway, "We’re finally eating a good enough meal."
"I was getting tired of having to fill myself with water all day."
Irvin faintly laughed at Marcus’s comment, though there hadn’t been much of a reaction from Anton.
They might have found food in this gas station, but that didn’t mean they were home and dry just yet.
They were on their third trip back from the cars when the zombies came. There were six of the fast runners.
Anton heard the slapping of their bare feet on tarmac at a sprint, and by the time he had turned from the boot of the car, two of them had already crossed the intersection and were closing on the storefront where Irvin still stood.
"Contact at out front!" Irvin had shouted as he engaged first.
Irvin rushed out of the doorway and into the street with the machete that he had picked up in their looting here already coming down in a wide arc.
The first zombie ran straight into the swing, and the blade sheared it across the throat and split the windpipe.
Blood sprayed harshly as it collapsed, and Irvin stepped over it without stopping, pivoting to face the second that had been a stride behind.
Marcus came out of the store running up behind him, his axe in hand, and the surface of the blade was coated in the bright blue light of his enhancement in the same moment.
The axe cut the third zombie across the jaw, slashing through as if its edge was hot, cutting through butter.
The thing’s head was slashed off, the severed part falling sideways as the body collapsed, and Marcus continued his momentum.
He moved swiftly into a second swing that buried the reinforced edge into the skull of the fourth, splitting through its figure down from the crown of the head to the base of the next, into two halves.
"Two more on your side, Irvin!"
Anton had meant to go for the remaining two, but Irvin and Marcus were already heading to them.
He put the machete through the side of one’s head with a short thrust and kicked the body into the last, and while it stumbled, Marcus closed the distance and put it down with a single overhead strike that split the skull.
"Not bad for a clear night."
Irvin said, flicking blood off his machete with a sharp snap of his wrist.
He was breathing evenly, and he looked at Marcus with satisfaction.
"Funny how the guy who could ’feel the rain coming’ isn’t out here for this."
Marcus pulled his axe free, and the reinforcement faded from the blade, its surface returning to ordinary steel.
"He seems the type to make big calls and sit back while others do the work."
"And would you look at that sky, clear as ever. I knew it was all bullshit!"
Both of them looked up, and so did Anton, though he had been looking at it all night.
The sky was clear from horizon to horizon, without a single cloud, just the enormous moon and its accompanying stars.
Immediately thereafter, they went back to loading.
Anton carried the last of the duffel bags to the car where Yara was arranging them in the boot, fitting the bags against one another so nothing would shift on the drive back.
She had cleared out what she could from the gas station, mostly bottled water and several boxes of protein bars, and those sat in the back seat already.
She caught him looking up again as he set the bag down.
"That’s the fifth time you’re looking you know?" she said.
"Huh?" Anton had muttered reflexively.
"You, checking the sky." She pushed the last bag into place and straightened. "He was wrong, Anton. It’s been hours. If it was going to rain it would have started by now. We made the right call."
He didn’t answer her, because she was right by every measure that made sense, and still his eyes flickered to they sky one more time.
And in that final time, his brows suddenly creased harshly, his eyes quivering. He did not understand what he saw at first.
Darkness was spreading where the moon had been, and for a single moment he thought the moon itself was going out.
Then the darkness spread, and he understood that it was cloud, rolling inward from the west in a mass so thick and so fast that it looked like it was devouring the sky.
Anton’s voice immediately growled to the woman who had turned back to the car, "Yara."
She turned back to him..
The temperature dropped so sharply that Anton felt the sweat on the back of his neck go cold all at once, and the loud howl of air ripped across the city from the distance..
"Get in the car, now!"
Anton had shouted as quickly as he could, but the wind slammed against them all before she could move.
It combed sideways down the street, slamming several of the metal rubbish bins off the pavement and hurling them across the road, smashing through the gas station windows and glass panels.
Several shop signs tore free from their bolts two buildings down and went spinning through the air, trailing sparks where their brackets scraped.
"What the fuck?!" Yara screamed, her hands raising to block ahead of her.
And immediately within the moments that the wind had battered them, the rain swatted down with the force of a wide, folded curtain thrown against their bodies, billowing their clothes.
Within moments, those same clothes were soaked through in seconds, and the water that ran down his face and into his mouth had a metallic taste to it with a strange, faintly saccharine sweetness attached to it that made his mouth itch.
Down the block, the wind tore Irvin’s shout apart before they could hear anything about what he had said.
And suddenly, the wind became so harsh that even with them putting in he serious effort to, they were being thrown backwards, off their feet.
✧✧ ~ ⚜ ~ ✧ φ ✧ ~ ⚜ ~ ✧✧