Zombies Earning Their Hunger by Brian S. Wheeler
Chapter 5 - Infestation
Rose felt terrible the next morning when her antique alarm clock blared just before the morning’s first smudge of light.
Her stomach was nauseous. Her knees swelled into a pair of cabbages. Her heart felt ashamed. Rose had assaulted the boxes and tins of food she had carried back from Beckmire’s general store as if some type of feral rodent trapped in a cupboard brimming with sweets. Surrounded by all the treasure and trash collected throughout her home, Rose had torn through snack boxes of chocolate cakes filled with delicious whipping cream. She had shredded through sleeves of oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies, ripped through bags of salty potato chips, tossed handfuls of sugary cereal down her throat. Then, the blaring alarm clock announced the dark and cold morning, and Rose’s stomach revolted.
“Don’t sit up there in the clouds judging me, Connor,” Rose groaned when she couldn't find any medicine for her stomach in her home’s crowded cabinets. “You never went without something sweet for as long as I just did. If you don’t approve, then you should’ve put more aside into retirement for me.”
Rose had behaved like a pig. While frantically dropping items into her basket, Rose had tried to pick the boxes of sponge cakes and tins of canned ham that would remain preserved though her home owned no working refrigerator or freezer. Yet in one night, she had torn through too much of it. After being so disciplined for so long, the temptation of licorice sticks and miniature cinnamon rolls was too much for her sweet tooth to deny.
“You’re not ruined yet, Rose.” She shuffled through the boxes strewn in the path from her sofa to the kitchen. “You still have several other bags from the general store waiting for you on the counter. You just have to regain a little composure. You deserved a little gluttony last night.”
Rose’s nose imagined the scent of coffee from the sealed canister she had grabbed at the store. She prayed that the coffee maker had not fallen into disrepair during the night, prayed that her recent ill fortune with appliances would take a better turn. She paid no mind to the way her faucet gargled as it spit water in the carafe. She refused to let her home’s ailments damper her soul on that morning. For after a brave excursion to Ollie Turner’s general store, Rose possessed the ground beans, the dried creamer, and the packets of sweetener to enjoy a mug of warm coffee the likes of which she had always taken for granted when her Connor was still living.
Her excited hands ripped the coffee canister’s silver seal aside, and Rose closed her eyes and lifted the ground beans to her nose to savor the smell of coffee.
And then, something tickled her nose. And then, something bit at her nostril.
“Heavens preserve me!”
Rose threw the canister to the floor, fine grains of coffee spreading across the tile, likely to be forever lost beneath the newspapers and wrappers strewn about the kitchen. Her heart pounded as she stepped back from the sight of dozens of those strange bugs, like the ones she had seen at Ollie Turner’s store, crawling and leaping from the dropped tin of coffee. Her hands shook. Hew swollen knees wobbled at the sight of the insects. The bugs were larger than those she had glimpsed atop the store’s register counter. They hunched upon their abdomens, and Rose swore that their beady, round eyes glared at her before their tiny legs sprung into action and sent them chasing back beneath the trash piles for seclusion and shelter.
“That foul Ollie Turner! His store’s contaminated with bugs! And now I’ve brought those bugs into my home! Forgive me, Connor, for ever stepping into that shop, but I didn’t have any other choice. I was so hungry.”
Ollie Turner was at fault for the infestation. The bugs had to have come from the general store, no matter that the canister of coffee had been sealed tightly closed. Rose forced herself through her fear and opened the cans of green beans and tomato soup. She shrieked, in fear and in fury, as bugs streamed from every opened jar or tin of food. The bugs lurked in the peanut butter. They scattered out from boxes of spaghetti.
Rose winced from the pain in her knees as she stomped at the creatures as they scurried across the counter and onto the floor. She swore as her throbbing feet stomped at the magazines beneath which she suspected a bug was hiding.
“Ollie Turner will answer for this! I’ll march right back to his store and make him refund my goods! He’s selling contaminated food! I’ll make sure everyone in this town knows it. I deserve more than a little compensation for the scare. My heart’s no longer young. That fright might’ve sent me into cardiac arrest. And there’s no telling how quickly those bugs are going to multiply in my home until I find the means to pay for an exterminator.”
Her day was ruined. Rose fell into the foulest of her moods. She hobbled back to the large window set into her parlor, and she stared out of the glass as the first of those zombies assembled in the street. She hated her world more than ever. She resented those zombies as they limped towards their day’s labor with shovels and hammers in their hands. She had never felt so lonely and lost. She had never felt so mocked. Good working people like herself and Connor had built Beckmire, and now the zombies crowded the streets, while only men like Ollie Tuner remained to conduct business.
Rose peeked between her window’s curtains and cursed them all.
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