Scavengers by Christopher Fulbright, Angeline Hawkes Page B

Belt Line heading north, and there was no way to conceal her approach where the forest gave way to civilization.  Of course, these days, the term “civilization” was open to interpretation.
    Dejah managed to stay low in the shadows for the majority of the distance. She struggled with the weight of the duffel bag, but needed the supplies too much to ditch the stuff. Up ahead lay a run-down strip mall with a parking lot that looked like it had been through World War II. The asphalt was cratered, weeds growing through cracks. It was scattered with a few cars.  Lights were on in the stores – a Dollar Tree the size of a supermarket, a Chinese food restaurant, an insurance broker, and a dry cleaner. Beyond the strip was an intersection with another six-lane road. Her heart leaped as she realized it was Pioneer Parkway. At the same time, her stomach growled. 
    She crouched behind a concrete barrier, mulling over how she’d get across the parking lot. She knew that Pioneer Parkway curved down a small slope before it crossed Mountain Creek Lake. Her plan was to reach the toll bridge and go across that way, to travel east.
    Five infected people roamed across the parking lot, one of them wandering into the street.  She saw two others crouched over some kind of gruesome meal. She didn’t look too hard. It was enough to know they were there. Fighting the mental images, she could imagine what they were eating. The scent of rotting flesh greeted her nose.
    Nausea overcame her as she bolted from her place of hiding. She ran full speed to make it behind the strip mall and cut through its rear lot. Adrenalin surged, giving her more speed. She scanned the lot to see if any of the nearby flesh-eaters had cued into her presence, but she made it around the corner unnoticed.
    She breathed heavy, cold air harsh in her lungs as she pressed her back against the cool white brick, closing her eyes.
    Something stirred in the dumpster next to her.
    She held her breath.
    The dark green dumpster was just three feet away. She fixated on it like fugitive might fixate on a prowling cop car. Her eyes searched for an escape, a place to hide, but there were fifty yards of wide-open parking lot between here and the slope leading down to the bridge. She looked back to the dumpster.
    It was quiet now.
    Probably just a cat, right? A mouse, or rat maybe. Nothing to lose your mind over. Dejah was riveted in place. She willed herself to move, to turn her back on the dumpster and run for the slope. Now . She stepped away from the wall.
    The top of the dumpster opened with a rusty screech. What rose from the fetid darkness within was a horror all its own. She must have once been a handsome black woman before she’d been homeless and the wiry gray dreadlocks began to fray, soaked in vomit and garbage. The skin of her face was black as greasepaint, sagging in folds over the bony features of her skull. The muscles beneath her skin had long ago withered from lack of food, but now she’d finally found something to nourish her hunger – in her right hand she held a broken cat, eaten most of the way through the furry gullet, its white spine shining like teeth in the moonlight, innards trailing wet from the cavity. 
    As soon as the woman saw Dejah, she released the cat from ragged fingernails and bared her teeth in a silent threat. Her eyes were rolled so far back into her head that all Dejah could see were the bloodshot whites.
    The infected woman crawled from the dumpster with deliberate movements, stiff but determined. Dejah thought she could hear the woman’s tendons creak as she edged over the rim of the bin, fixed on her prey.
    Dejah broke into a run. Across the narrow lot behind the strip mall was a drop-off into brush. Over the brush she could see the light of street lamps sloping down to the Mountain Creek Lake toll bridge, following the curve of the parkway.
    She ran toward the back of an 18-wheeler parked in eternal mid-delivery behind Dollar Tree.