“You ever fought one in the dream?” asked Tyrone.

Bee shook his head. “I heard that they have them there, but never seen one.”

Karen was having none of it. She turned and tried to run. The wounds on her legs made the process into torture. She hobbled for dear life, tears streaming from her eyes.

The zombie moaned loudly and staggered after her. It was not particularly fast, but it did seem determined to catch the wounded woman.

“Bee, try to keep it busy,” said Tyrone as he hopped down behind Karen.

“Me?” asked Bee with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah. I’m going to close the door,” said Tyrone. “Can’t have anything else coming in here!”

Bee hopped over the conveyor belt then waved his arms up and down. “Hey ugly.”

The zombie did not need to change its path as it was already walking in that direction, but its focus was on Bee now. Karen limped onward to the hope of safety.

Tyrone was almost to the back door when another moan reached his ears. This one was followed by a hissing sound. Deathly pale fingers curled around the door frame from outside. Yellow claws lightly gouged the wood as an equally pale head poked in from the outside.

He stopped cold in his tracks and back-pedaled a little as dark yellow eyes oriented on him. The mostly hairless head offered only a few scraggly strands of hair for view. Unlike the other zombie, this creature did not immediately rush in to find the meat that it wanted. Instead, it stared at Tyrone for a brief instant.

Tyrone began to shake. His limbs refused to move. There was something wrong. He knew that he needed to get away, but his body did not respond at all. Something about those dark yellow eyes held him transfixed in place.

Bee kicked at the zombie that came for him and sent it staggering back slightly. It did not seem fazed by the attack in the attack in the slightest otherwise. “Ty! Bro! Get out of there!”

Slowly, the albino creature with the dark yellow eyes crept into the room. Tyrone’s body shook heavily as though he struggled with everything that he had within him in a desperate bid to make his body move.

“Fuck it!” snapped Bee. He practically threw himself onto the conveyor belt and rolled to the side. “Keep running Karen!”

Whether the zombie came after him or continued after his co-worker did not matter to him in that moment. She had a head start. Tyrone wasn’t going to make it at this rate.

Bee ran past a box on the conveyor belt that no one had bothered to shelve yet. It was open, so its contents caught his eye. He slid to a stop rushed back a step then snatched up a jar from inside. He threw it as hard as he could. His first throw missed, and struck the wall uselessly, but his second throw smashed into the creature’s head when it was only a few feet from Tyrone.

Almost as though it had moved in slow motion, Bee watched the glass jar shatter against the thing’s head. Cheap Archers’ brand spaghetti sauce went everywhere.

The albino critter shrieked. Tyrone staggered back, as he suddenly found the means to move once more. He didn’t even try to grab his dropped hammer. Instead, he spun sideways and hauled ass down the aisle. “Run! Don’t look at its eyes!” He shouted.

The aisle he picked led to the first zombie, which he ended up hitting with a shoulder tackle. The staggering creature was sent sprawling toward the ground, it’s head bashing into the ground with a loud wet smack.

The pale creature snarled and wiped at the glass and spaghetti sauce. It snapped its head around, its eyes flashing a yellow light. Its mouth opened a parody of a smile to reveal inhumanly sharp triangular teeth like those of a shark.

“Brains!” it cried in a shrill voice.

Bee felt his body begin to lock up, but he quickly hopped up and down then shook his head and ran away as well. He was apparently outside of the thing’s range of effect for whatever skill it was using.

The creature shrieked once then power walked after them. It did not seem capable of running, but it was much more agile and steady in its movements when compared to the first zombie. From the doorway, several moans echoed. More friends were coming to join the party.

Bee caught up with Tyrone just in time to see the man shove his shoulder into Karen’s mid-section. She yelped in fright as he lifted her up onto his shoulders like a large sack and trotted down the hallway with her.

“What do we do, man?” asked Bee as he reached Tyrone’s side.

“Nothing we can do without better weapons. Even that dog thing took forever to kill, and it was just level three,” said Tyrone.

“Put me down!” cried Karen.

She kept crying and fussing to the point that Tyrone eventually slapped her on the ass. “Shut up, dammit! You can barely walk!”

Karen shouted in indignation, and Tyrone gave up. “Fine. Walk, Bitch. Damn.”

He put her down near the maintenance closet and told her to hide inside. She refused.

“Look. We don’t have time for this! That thing is already halfway down the hall!” snapped Tyrone.

“Then kill it!” she snapped at him.

“With what, my good looks?” snarled Tyrone.

Bee had disappeared around the corner during their altercation. Suddenly, a loud beeping sound echoed through the area. Tyrone poked his head around the corner then blinked. “Hell yeah!”

“Out the way, Bitch,” exclaimed Tyrone. He no longer used Karen’s name. After what he and his partner had tried to do for her, she was far from appreciative.

“What?” she asked him angrily. She was suddenly forced into a little alcove by the big man as Bee drove around the corner in the seat of the store’s fork-lift. Not as large as one of the bigger industrial models, it was still the envy of the store. Everyone wanted to drive the thing, but since it was an actual forklift and not a pallet jack only a few staff members were licensed to do so. Bee was one of those precious few.

“Say hello to my little friend!” Wild-eyed, Bee cackled like a mad man and made engine revving noises.

The weird albino zombie-thing tilted its head to the side. “Brains?” it asked in seeming curiosity.

It tried to move out of the way, but despite its greater agility and movement speed than a normal zombie, it was no match for a demented maniac behind the wheel of a forklift.

Bee rammed into it with one of the lift prongs and sent it to the ground. Before it could get back up, the forklift released a beeping noise and he backed up over its head.

Surprisingly, the thing did not die! He was forced to drive back and forth over it several times before its head finally caved in, much to the shock of the trio.

By this time the other zombie had made its way down the hall, with its new friends staggering close behind them. Bee set out to commit more vehicular zombicide. Tyrone followed him in case he needed help. Besides that, someone needed to shut that damned door!

While they handled the backroom, however, things in the front of the store were just starting to become interesting. A man ran inside the store. Bleeding profusely from a large gash on his arm, he cried out for someone to lock the doors.

“Hey! What’s going on?” asked Erin as she rushed to the man’s side.

“Lock the doors! They’re coming!” shouted the man hysterically.

“What’s coming? What is it?” asked Erin.

The doors opened with a rush of air as two men dressed in tattered clothing staggered forward. The stench reached her long before they could ever hope to do so given how they staggered.

“Shit! Are these the guys who hurt you?” She did not wait for him to answer. Instead she pulled her walkie-talkie from her holster and called for security.

“It’s too late!” screamed the man. He flailed his arms wildly and pushed her away. With a hysterical cry he ran down the nearest lane, blood pouring from his open wound.