The hardware store. Not far from where Bea was. She could make it there easily enough. “Fuck,” she muttered to herself, then hit the talk button on her own walkie. “When you say stuck, do you mean ‘I’m a fucking idiot and got myself locked in a room’ or ‘There are forty fucking Shufflers on my ass’?” If it was the latter, Bea was fucked. She couldn’t just leave the kid there. And it had to be a kid. It sounded like a fucking kid. But if there were even a dozen zombies she wasn’t stupid enough to risk it. God, she hoped there wasn’t a fucking horde trapping the girl with the walkie.
“I’m on my way,” she responded, taking note of the desperation in the girl’s words. Whether or not she was walking into a death trap didn’t matter. She had switchblade, handgun and a rifle. Hopefully that would keep her out of the weeds and alive long enough to get the girl out and back to the compound. “Don’t move.”
The one time she could have used some back up, and she was by herself. What fucking luck she had. Seriously. At least it didn’t take her long to find the hardware store. She was less excited about the handful of Shufflers hanging out around the front of the store. But a run to the back door confirmed what she’d been hoping for. No zombies. And the door wasn’t locked.
Inching the door open slowly, Handgun raised, she let her eyes adjust to the darkness, then found the walkie. “I’m coming in through the backdoor. Don’t fucking shoot me.” Did the girl even have a gun? If she did she could have cleared out some of the zombies out front. Which only gave Bea more reason to believe she was dealing with a frightened kid and not someone who had any fucking business being out in Ossining at all.
“Hey,” she called softly once she’d hit the main store. “Kid?” She probably should have bothered getting a fucking name, but too late for that. “Are you in here?”