Begin and End - a zombie short ⚒

Part 4

They were lucky to find the place without broken windows, and an unlocked backdoor.

The name on the front read Lickety Split, with the sign boasting one-hour copies. Not many places outside the city were safe, but a few, like schools and offices, were always empty. No one needed to work or learn, not anymore.

Even so, blood smeared walls greeted them at every turn, some decorated with cliché warnings like,

THE END IS NIGH
 
and
 
NOTHING LEFT.
 
Shauna tsked as she passed by the words. "Not true."

Brian rolled his eyes, and repeated more of his favorite song in his head:

Another nail in the coffin!
Just what I say, it's the end of days!
Another nail in the coffin!

Still humming, he tried each door, peeking inside the few open ones and not finding much. Shauna was stopped half-in and half-out a doorway, as though blocked. Brian sidled up behind her to see the hold-up.

Inside was like all the other offices of the Lickety Split building: plaques on the wall about businessman of the year, motivational posters, a television poster with a caption that made Brian chuckle:

"I think we should make some new rules before they get back. I hereby declare we have Spaghetti Tuesdays every Wednesday. First we have to find some spaghetti."

And then there was the body slumped at the desk. Dusty rays of sunlight filtered in through the blinds, falling on the gun within reach of statuesque fingertips. Usually Shauna danced for joy when they found weapons, but she stayed put. Brian shouldered around her into the small space. Then he noticed what had stopped her: two other bodies sprawled on the floor, a woman and child. He could have gone his whole life without his curious eyes inspecting the bullet wounds in their heads, but inspect he did.

"She didn't try." Shauna's voice fell flat, an odd accompaniment to her tear-filled eyes.

Brian shrugged, busy searching the desk drawers for bullets. He moved around things in his way, picking up a small bust of Yoda that had served as a paperweight with a raised brow. Finally, he dislodged the gun from the cold, and overly ripe grip of the alleged quitter. He forced himself not to look again at the bodies on his way out. Shauna's words stopped him:

"She should've tried."

"But she didn't," he told her, hurrying away before she said anymore.

The rest of the office was littered with papers, creating an awful amount of noise when trodden upon. A piece of newspaper stuck to Brian's boot, and he ripped it off, glancing at the headline:

Cat Can Flush Toilet!

He almost balled it up, but something made him turn it over. The front-page headline took a more serious turn:

Lezzie Traitor in the White House. Tell-All Inside!

The accompanying picture was unflattering in the way that the perpetrator had tried to dodge the photographer and failed. He studied the grainy rendering, not quite believing who he saw.

Shauna.

~*~