Starting the 90 up and looking around revealed no new surprises so I slowly drove to the gate. Sat there ticking over for a few minutes I was able to reassure myself that there was no movement out on the road, so I turned left again (no signal this time) and started the slow drive for half a mile uphill until I reached the little store.
Chapter 8
Hmmm, two cars are parked outside – one with both front doors open and both parked like they had been stolen. I’m taking no chances this time. The pump action came out from behind the seats. It was coming with me this time! I climbed out and locked the 90 up. This wasn’t a film, I was the last person to handle the pump action so knew it had a cartridge loaded, so there was no need to do a theatrical pump of the shot gun every time I got it out. Had it been left around where someone else could have messed with it then I would have of course checked it, but there was no need and I hated it on films when they constantly pumped or racked the side on their weapons – a proper pet hate of mine that was!
I walked up to the first car, a Mondeo, with all doors shut and, based on the red light flashing away on the door card inside, locked too. I placed my hand on the bonnet – stone cold. Moving onto the next car, a BMW X5 – its doors were open and looked like it had been lived in for a while. A hand on the bonnet showed it to be warm. Only thing I couldn’t tell was whether it was warm because it had been driven sensibly and its occupants had only just got here or if it had had the arse ragged off it and been parked here a while. Either way, I reckoned at least two humans had arrived here in the last hour or so and maybe even passed me whilst I was in the camping store.
With the sliding doors to the store were wide open, I swept in, shotgun out front. Lights were on and burning bright. On the left was a body. No, make that two – one a crumpled heap and the other led out like a starfish. And there was crying! I swung the pump action in the direction of the crying – it was coming from behind the serving counter.
Body one was obviously zombie and had a claw hammer in its temple. I’d have zero trouble from this chap. The starfish was human, for the moment at least. I say was as she was bleeding from the neck from quite a large bite would, more of a giant tear, and for all I knew could turn at any time.
The crying was still coming from my 11 o’clock behind the counter. I stepped around and at the end of the shotgun sat a blonde, slightly built, woman holding an expanding police baton. Getting the good news from one of them would no doubt hurt like fuck, but I had my doubts if it could drop a zombie in one swipe. Her grey jogging bottoms were drenched in blood – litres of it. She had a bite on her left wrist, but I doubted all the blood was coming from her wrist. ‘Bit of a shitty day out?’ I asked, dropping the shotgun slightly.
Her sobbing stopped but she didn’t look up at me – she just looked at her arm and her hand clamped over the bite. ‘We didn’t see him.’ She backwards nodded as if nodding through the counter towards the hammer head zombie. ‘I reached over behind the counter to turn the lights on and he bit me.’ She sighed, rubbing her arm and this time looking up at me. ‘Jane pulled me away, but they fought, and he got her. She got him with her hammer before she collapsed. Now she is dead, and I won’t be long either.’
‘Your friend Jane could turn at any time – are you going to let that happen to her?’ She laughed slightly. ‘Why not? We could both turn. We’ve known each other since secondary school. What is it the kids say nowadays, ‘best friends forever’?’ She laughed again. ‘Now we could be zombie friends forever!’
That was some funny shit and I tried to stifle a chuckle. ‘Soooo . . . is that the plan?’ I asked. ‘Only if that is going to be the case, I’d really like to get a bit of shopping done if I may, before you both turn, and I have to kill you. You know, just to get out of here alive.’
‘What fucking choice do I have?’ Fair comment.
I thought for a moment and as I relaxed the shotgun asked. ‘How long ago did you get bitten? I’ve seen films where they’ve cut arms and legs off straight away and they haven’t turned. What do you reckon? Worth a shot?’
She presented a wry smile. ‘It was a good ten minutes ago, incidentally around the same time we heard two gun shots’. She nodded towards the shotgun I was holding. ‘Was that you?’
‘It was’ I admitted. ‘Though not with this exact one.’ Why I had to say that I don’t know, it just came out.
‘Been getting some zombie action yourself then?’ She started to get up. I stood back and gave her some space. She was gorgeous, no make-up, no hair care, yet under that grime you could tell she was beautiful, yet she carried herself with confidence. She was probably the type of girl that saw herself as ordinary, but she was anything but. As we walked back around the counter she continued. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t live with one arm. I was a Police Officer before this all kicked off. If it ever went back to at least semi-normal, how would I ever be able to cope with all of the paperwork included eh?’ We both laughed at that.
‘Go do your shopping.’ She said as she sat up on the counter. ‘I’ll keep an eye out and if Jane turns, I’ll let you know straight away.’
I nodded my thanks, grabbed a plastic basket and worked my way down the aisles collecting what was on my post-it note list. I did quite well. Six bags of self-raising flour, three bags of sugar, tubs of margarine, a few left over cans of tuna and corned beef and the surprise of the day was finding eight bottles of pancake mix (you just add water to the mark on the bottle, shake and cook in a frying pan!). Seeing these made me back-track to where the maple syrup was and grab the last two bottles. A few bottles or rum and gin, several party packs of aspirin, paracetamol and Imodium – food and hygiene may not be great for the next few years and spending time shitting when I could be running (away, instead of out my arse!) could be a bloody life saver, some left over rice crispy bars and I was done.
Out at the 90, I piled it all into the food storage boxes and the little 12v fridge. I then locked it up again and walked back into the shop.
The blonde was still sat on the counter looking down at Jane’s prone form in a pool of blood on the floor. ‘Can I help?’ I asked, slightly waving the pump action in the direction of Jane. She shook her head.
‘Save the cartridges. If she turns before I die, I’ll put her out of her misery. If I die before she turns then we will be back together again for however long our decaying bodies last, or until a zombie slayer like yourself comes along and sorts us out.’
I smiled. ‘I’m no slayer by any means but I would like to see how this situation pans out in a few years at least.’
‘Yeah, me too. But it wasn’t to be was it?’ She hopped off the counter, I couldn’t help noticing a jiggle of the chest as she headed towards me. Typical meet my ideal girl and she is already halfway dead, gorgeous as she was necrophilia didn’t ring my bell. ‘Come with me, you might like this.’ I followed her outside to the boot of her car – the BMW X5. Now I looked at it, knowing her old job, I could see the extra ‘shark fin’ aerials on the roof, the pop-up police LED strip in the back window and blue strobes hidden in the light clusters. No doubt if I looked closely at the front grill, I’d see lights behind that too. She raised the key fob and the boot popped open, slowly raising itself under the power of the support rams. She waved her hand over the contents. ‘If any of this stuff is any good to you, help yourself.’ I looked in and was amazed. There were pepper spray canisters, hand held and probe-firing tasers (may be no good against a zombie but certainly a non-lethal way to resolve a human conflict), riot gear (the helmet and shield would be fine but the guards and pads would be too small for me), hand cuffs, plasti-cuffs, extending batons, all sorts!
I put all of it into a holdall she had, put it on my shoulder and followed her back into the store. ‘No pistols or anything like that?’ I asked hopefully. She smile., ‘We were lucky to get what we did. The station was empty by the time we made it there. Jane already had the Beemer.’
I was stuffing all the chocolate bars I could find in
to the holdall and she had some back on the counter. Stuffing a Mars bar into my chops I sat beside her. ‘Where were you staying?’
‘We didn’t really stay anywhere in particular. We tended to park up in as secure or remote a place as possible and lived in the car. As bad as it was with the zombies, there was still a lot of wankers out and about raping, looting and murdering.’
I butted in . . . ‘Yeah I met some of them. Scum of the earth at the best of times! They always say cockroaches thrive at times like this. Did you have any plans on where you were heading?’
‘Bristol bound, but no idea how we were going to get in until they opened up the check points. Even then we didn’t fancy being quarantined with the possibly infected.’
I agreed. ‘Yeah, my thoughts too. I was hoping on like-minded people heading that way and maybe holing up just outside of Bristol until they had sorted their shit out.’ She nodded. ‘Any idea how this all started?’ I asked.
She shook her head, ‘I watched news after news, but nothing mentioned how it all started. You?’
I laughed. ‘I went to bed and woke up as normal, then whilst writing my shopping list I saw someone get run over out of my window. Then people started eating him! I stayed locked in out of sight until this morning when I ran out of food.’ I left out the bits about Zombie Zack and the Burger King family.
She chuckled. ‘Typical bloke living at home with sod all but pot noodles in the cupboard then?’ She smiled but couldn’t hide the pain from her spreading infection.
‘Pretty much, but I had spam too.’ We both laughed. She had my sense of humour for sure. We sat there in awkward silence for a few moments, I realised I knew her dead friends name but not hers. I was about to ask it, but she spoke first.
‘A body if unburied decomposes twice as fast as one in water. A buried body can take over four times as long to decompose as an unburied body, depending on the depth that it is buried.’
I just looked at her. ‘Okay . . . and here was me about to ask your name. How silly do I feel now?’
She tried to smile but was obviously suffering a flash of pain as she held her wrist. She had suddenly become very pale. She started to reply but the retching got her first. She turned behind us and puked quite spectacularly onto the serving side of the counter. I passed her some serviettes from where the hotdog warmer was still rotating hotdogs. I know those things are made of lips and assholes all rolled into a sausage of sorts, but do they never rot?!
She nodded her head in thanks as she took them and wiped the vomit away. I broke open a pack of triple strong mints and left them between us. I chucked a couple in my mouth and when she turned back around, she did the same. She had a bit more colour in her face.
She crunched a few mints. ‘It’s Sue, why? Are you going to order my headstone?’
This time I laughed. ‘Well, with all this death around I hear the Co-op is now quite competitive on prices for its funeral packages.’ Smiling and I got one bac. ‘Anyway,’ I continued. ‘Sorry to interrupt but you were saying?’
‘I was thinking out loud about how long these things would last. An unburied body in the tropics could be bones in as little as 48 hours. In the desert 60 or so, but in climates like ours, probably two months. Only problem is that these things don’t lie still, and I’ve also not seen animals, birds and even insects feeding on them which again could extend their life span even further still.’
‘How much longer do you think?’
‘Well, we know cold is a preservative, so if we have a cold winter and spring……. Maybe 11 months or so could be possible before they lose enough flesh and muscle to not be able to move around?’
I thought for a moment, and not about how I met my ideal woman and how she is already off limits –I’m sure Alanis Morrisette could write a song about that or something. ‘Soooo…. Each one if not killed has the potential life span of 11 months plus?’ She nodded. ‘But we couldn’t say that in 11 months’ time we would be infection free because someone bitten by a 10-month old zombie could live for 11 months and do the same, on and on and dragging on for a few years?
Sue nodded again. ‘Or until they run out of humans to infect and turn.’
‘I’m going to take a wild stab and say that you aren’t just a standard plod officer then Sue?’
‘Police forensic officer and a bit of an egg head to boot if I’m honest.’ She chuckled again.
‘Okay… how about turn time? I’ve seen one change in minutes after death and the news says it can sometimes take the best part of the day. From what I’ve seen they also seem to skip rigor mortis.’
‘I don’t really know, and I’m not sure anybody does now, my best guess is that the heat of the infection stops the normal cooling of the body in death and affects the amount, if any, rigor mortis.’ She looked at me and shrugged. ‘But I am only a forensic officer, a real one, not Abby Sciuto from NCIS!’ We didn’t laugh that time as we both saw Janes bled out body twitch. Sue looked at me. ‘What is your name? We got a tad side-tracked there.’
I was never any good on picking up the signals with women but from all the smiles, open and honest talking I was sure there was an attraction there between us. ‘Brian. I’m certainly not the messiah, but I will probably be a very naughty boy in the remaining life to come’
‘Pleased to meet you Brian.’ Sue gestured towards the claw hammer in the zombie’s temple. ‘Could you do me a favour please Brian? You couldn’t be so kind as to pass me the hammer that Jane left in that chaps’ head, could you?’
I got off the counter. ‘Certainly.’ I walked the few steps over to him. Not worried about him but keeping an eye on the ever-twitching corpse of Jane. I reached down and grasped the shaft of the handle. There was surprising resistance and it made a sucking squelching noise as it came free of the skull. I gave it a sharp shake to rid it of the blood, brains and hair as I carefully stepped back towards Sue. As I handed it over to her, I could see her shoulders sink and she sighed. ‘Would you like me to do it for you?’ I asked, kind of regretting asking as I did so.
Sue shook her head, fought back the tears that were welling in her eyes. ‘No ta, it’s not Jane down there anymore.’ She slowly lowered her small frame off the counter to the ground, took three steps over to Jane and stood above her, weighing the hammer in both hands. Both of Janes dead legs began to move in a frog like manner, albeit a bit slower. Sue adjusted her stance to shoulder width apart, bent her legs slightly like she was readying herself for a golf swing, hefted the hammer above her head – like Thor about to command the lightening – and bought it down on to Janes forehead with all her might. The hammer head and slim metal shaft split through the top of her head exposing all the crimson and grey pulp that was once her brain. The legs stopped doing their Kermit on acid impression immediately. Sue stood up straight, left the hammer buried in Janes forehead, came back to the counter and sat down again.
‘I should have bought the hammer back; you’ll need it for me soon.’
I looked at her. ‘The infection in the arm is quite local at the moment. It could take two to three days to kill you yet.’
‘Nice, thanks! Bloody good job you aren’t a doctor with that bedside manner!’ She laughed.
‘You know what I mean.’ I laughed back. ‘You’ve still got a couple of days of life. It might be more than I get, I’ve had a few close shaves already today and who knows what is down the road later on eh?’
She shrugged. ‘You’re right but what can I do with this gift of extra time?’ I loved her sarcasm.
‘I dunno.’ I said honestly. ‘I’d always told myself that if I was ever given six months to live by a Dr, I would kill all the people on my “people to kill before I die” list.’ I tapped the side of my head to show her that it was all memorized, then continued. ‘But the end of the world has probably sorted out ¾ of that list if not more. Bloody zombies, coming over here and taking away my last pleasure!’
‘Careful.’ She said sarcastically. ‘I am still a police o
fficer.’ We both laughed.
‘Honestly though, was there never anything that you wanted to do before it was too late?’
She looked sad again, but this time for a different reason. ‘I always wanted to reconcile with my dad, but cancer took him before I could. My sisters and step mum never let me come to the funeral or even visit the grave.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m an orphan myself and my adopted parents also died not long ago in a car crash in Spain, but I got to say my goodbyes. Could you not visit his grave? Despite what the films show I can’t imagine graveyards being overrun with the undead. Never heard of them coming out of the ground like the films anyway.’
Sue sighed. ‘It’s in Thame in Oxfordshire, ninety odd miles away. Might as well be on the moon with the roads as they are.’
I pointed out the door to my waiting 90. ‘Roads? With that thing we won’t need roads.’ I said in my best Dr Brown from Back to the Future voice.
She looked surprised and not at my bad impression. ‘I thought that you were Bristol bound?’
‘Nothing has been set in stone, I’m just going with the flow at the moment.’
‘I couldn’t make you come with me.’ She replied. ‘I have the fuel and I know a few different ways. Last time I looked the sat nav was still up and running. ‘Going to be no fun for you when we get there and then I pop my clogs and you are in a strange place is it?’
The Reanimated Dead (Book 1): Into the Cotswolds Page 6