by Ryan Casey
Stan grumbled and peered at Riley and Ted as he left the room with Jill.
“Okay — Claudia, obviously I want you to keep an eye on your girls, but also watch the street. If anything happens, I want you to be the one to make sure everybody gets in the Previa and out of here. Okay?”
Claudia looked around the table. “Are—are you sure I can—”
“You’re tough, remember? We can trust you with this.”
Claudia inhaled a sharp breath. “Yes. Yes I am. You can trust me.”
“Ted — darling — I want you to help Claudia on watch. If anything gets out of hand… yes. You act fast. Can you do that?”
Ted’s eyes were dreamy as they stared at Anna. Way too dreamy and positive than they should be in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
“Ted?”
“Yes. Course I can. Course.”
“Okay,” Anna said. “Which leaves the three of us. Riley. Trevor.”
Trevor raised his head. Looked at Riley then Anna. “Me?”
“Yes, you. You’re tough and you’re quick. I saw how you were in the city. You can handle yourself.”
Trevor shook his head and slumped back under his hood. “Don’t know if I can…”
“It’s this way or the road. We’re all pulling our weight around here. Your call.”
Trevor lifted his head and stared at Anna. Narrowed his eyes. His jaw tensed.
And then he sighed and nodded. “Okay. Whatever.”
“Good.” Anna raised to her feet. “Then we all know what we’re doing. Trevor, Riley — meet at the Mercedes in five.” She opened the door and started to walk out of it.
“And where are you going?” Riley asked.
Anna raised her eyebrows. “Getting us some equipment to kill creatures with.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Riley sat in the passenger seat of the car. He gripped the wrench tightly against his legs. It was heavy enough to swing at the heads of the creatures. Not the most comfortable thing to carry, but it would serve its purpose. Finding a gun within the first few hours of the outbreak was good luck. This was reality.
Anna sped down the road in the red Mercedes. A butcher’s knife was stuffed under her belt strap. Her weapon of choice against the creatures. She kept her eyes on the road. She didn’t turn to look at the boarded-up windows or the gradual rise in abandoned cars as they got further out of the countryside and into the suburbs. She disregarded the slow, stumbling beings, turning their heads and clambering in the direction of the engine. She didn’t drive all that badly for somebody who didn’t own a car.
“We’ll have to take another road back. If those creatures follow us now, they’ll—”
“Let’s focus on getting there first. Okay?”
Riley shrugged and looked in the rear-view mirror. A pair of furry dice dangled down from around it. He could see Trevor on the back seat, hands in pockets. Staring out as they passed the creatures, not a flicker of emotion.
“So, how did you two meet?” Riley asked in a hushed tone. The car swerved past a corpse in the road, innards spewing out. Riley tried his best not to remember the taste of the prawn crackers.
Trevor shuffled in the back seat. “In town.”
“Okay… So did you guys know each other before, or…?”
“No.”
Riley puffed his lips and turned to Anna, who was focused on the road. “He’s a chatty one, isn’t he?”
“You know as much about him as I do. All we know is that he’s quick and he’s tough. Helped get us out of a really bad blockage of those things. Not… I don’t think a lot of people survived at my surgery. But the few that did, well. I have Trevor to thank. So he’s entitled to his silence.”
Riley took another glance in the mirror at Trevor. He stared back at him, eyes unmoving.
“He was covered in blood when he got to us. Didn’t speak until last night.”
“What if he has… like… a dark secret?” Riley whispered.
“I think we all have our secrets.” Trevor cut through Riley and Anna’s chat.
Riley nodded. The gun. How they’d kept hold of it. Leaving Jordanna to die. “I guess so. And the others — you know them?”
Anna slowed the car down. Two creatures were in the road, feasting on a skinny framed corpse. The gender was unidentifiable. As was the age. The creatures looked up as the car approached and gradually manoeuvred around them. “Stan and Jill were at the surgery when it… when they came. Claudia and the girls were on the street outside. So no. I don’t really know them.” She continued to edge the car around the feeding creatures, who rose to their feet and pressed their bloody hands against the window.
“Then why do you trust them and not me?”
Anna stopped the car. The creatures were still pushed up to the glass. They snapped their teeth and scratched at the window. Thick blood and mucus oozed out of their mouths and onto the car. Anna pulled the butcher’s knife out of her belt strap and rolled the window down, then stabbed one of the creatures in its half-eaten face. “Because they didn’t have a gun.” The other creature attempted to pull itself in through the window, but Anna yanked her knife back and stabbed it right in its wide open mouth. When she brought her knife back again, it fell to the floor.
She closed the window and wiped the knife on a towel. Then, she slipped it back into her belt strap and smiled. “Does that answer all your questions?”
Riley looked out of the front window as the car began to pull away. “All but one.”
“Which is?”
“How can a doctor be so handy with a butcher’s knife?”
Anna smirked. “I guess we really do all have our secrets, don’t we?”
They drove for another ten minutes or so. The numbers of creatures fluctuated as they turned off the main road and down a windy country lane. The supermarket was at the end of the road. With any luck, it wouldn’t already have been stripped of its supplies. The chances of that were small, but it was the best chance they had of all the supermarkets in the area.
“What if this place is already bone dry?” Riley asked. He could see the roof of the supermarket emerging in the distance.
“One step at a time, like we agreed.”
Riley nodded. Anna was right — they couldn’t get too far ahead of themselves. But a sense of dread lingered in his stomach. A ‘what if?’ circled his head. Nine mouths to feed back at the Chinese restaurant. If they didn’t manage to take much food back, he had a bad feeling Ted and he wouldn’t be top of the guest list. The group could only last so long on prawn crackers. Numbers would have to be cut.
He had to prove his worth. Stake his claim in the group.
Anna turned in to the car park. There was no sign of creatures around. Several cars were in the car park. Not loads — perhaps twenty or thirty. People rushed inside, clinging to the hands of their wives, as others pushed trollies stuffed with tins and various sharp paraphernalia out of the supermarket doors.
“I guess this is it,” Anna said. She opened her door and looked around the car at Riley and Trevor. “Trevor — you head for the canned aisle. Grab baked beans, tuna — anything that we can eat cold if we absolutely have to. Meet back at the car in fifteen minutes. No exceptions.”
Trevor nodded and opened the car door. He slipped a knife under his sleeve and scanned the area. It was clear. For how long, nobody could tell.
“And you.” Anna stopped the engine. “Get us some bottled water. With a load of contaminated bodies crawling around and bathing their feet in the water supplies, I wouldn’t like to think too much about the sorts of diseases that could be spreading through the tap water.”
Riley smiled and made sure the wrench was securely fastened in his pocket. “Something only a doctor would consider.”
“I’m hoping that’s the case.” Anna opened the car door and stepped out. Riley followed.
Trevor was already several hundred feet in the distance, reaching out for a trolley and pushing his way into the supermarket.<
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“Told you he was quick,” Anna said.
“Let’s just hope he’s loyal.”
Anna clicked the remote car lock. “He’s quiet, but he seems to have his heart and head in the right place. That’s the sort of people we need on our side in these times.”
The pair of them walked to the entrance of the supermarket. The people entering and leaving were completely focused on themselves, barely acknowledging those around them. Their trollies looked full. Microwave meals. Books. Video games.
“The world goes to shit and all people are interested in doing is playing video games.”
“At least we haven’t changed that much. Yet, anyway.”
Riley grabbed a trolley and yanked it backwards. It was chained to the one in front.
Anna held a coin out. “Just because the world’s gone to shit doesn’t mean you can start stealing trollies.” She plonked the coin into the trolley that Riley struggled with. The chain snapped free, and she repeated it with the next trolley.
“Meet you in fifteen?”
Riley examined the car park. Families stuffing the contents of their overfilled trollies into their car boots. Men barking orders. Children crying.
But no creatures. Not yet.
“Let’s get this done with.”
Riley shoved his way past people as he approached the bottled water aisle. He tried to remain focused and undistracted, but he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Men grabbing televisions and iPads, handing one each to their children. Trollies stuffed with bottles of wine and booze. Consumerism’s final dying breath.
He took a right and looked at the words above each aisle. Fruit & Vegetables. No use. Would start to rot in no time. Would have to find other sources of Vitamin C. Meat & Poultry. Same as fruit and vegetables. Still, the aisle had been mostly emptied. One last fry-up to celebrate the end times. No — they’d have to find some sort of link with a farm if they wanted a meat supply in the long run. Somehow form a trust with them. Repay them in a sought after commodity. Somehow, Riley didn’t expect that prawn crackers and the scraps of fried rice remaining in the Chinese restaurant would be much of a catch, but then again, business consistently surprised.
Riley started to jog. He could see the Water & Juice Drinks aisle emerging in the near-distance. Anna was right — they were relying on the complacency of others when it came to water. The short-sighted assumption that tap water would suffice for the immediate future.
But they didn’t know how long this was going to last. Nobody did. Better to prepare for a future that might not unfold than be underprepared and dehydrated.
He turned his trolley around the Water aisle. All the juice drinks had vanished. All cordial and all the pure juice. But at the end of the aisle, at the bottom of the shelf, there were three packs of bottled water remaining. Eighteen large bottles a packet. Enough to get by on, for now.
Riley pushed his trolley to the end of the aisle and reached down for the bottles of water. His neck ached as he lifted the pack from the shelf and dumped it in the trolley. Must’ve slept funny. Or hurt it at some stage yesterday. Both were likely.
He grabbed another pack and winced as he lifted it. He could hear voices at an aisle nearby. People giving orders. Footsteps echoing against the hard floor. He dropped the second pack of water bottles into his trolley. Two down, one to go…
As he lifted the third pack of water bottles, he heard footsteps shuffling at the end of the aisle he’d come from.
“Just get what you can!” A voice an aisle or two away.
He looked up. A woman was at the end of the aisle. She had thin blonde hair, a gaunt and pale face. She twiddled with a locket around her neck, her fingers covered with warts. Her bottom lip shook as she stared at Riley with the third and final pack of water bottles in his hands.
The pair of them glared at one another, completely silent. But nobody had to talk. Riley knew what she wanted. The way she was staring at the water bottles, lips cracked and chapped. She blinked rapidly. Opened and closed her mouth as if to speak.
A guilt descended inside Riley’s chest. The images of the people in the supermarket stealing televisions. Trollies ram-packed with excess food and excess drink and excess-whatever-the-hell-else. Pure greed. He couldn’t be that man. Humanity had to stick together.
He placed the final pack of water bottles on top of the others and started to tear the plastic wrapper that held them in place. The woman watched him, closely. Silent.
“Get a fucking move on down there,” a man’s voice shouted.
“Ye—Yes. Almost done.” The woman’s voice was high-pitched. Croaky. Sounded like she’d smoked one too many cigarettes in her lifetime. She shuffled her feet on the spot. Scratched at her reddened arms even more rapidly with dirty, over-long nails.
Riley squeezed out three bottles. Would three be enough? It would make just a bottle and a half each for her and her husband. A bottle each if they had a kid. Less if they had two. He grabbed another bottle and held the four of them in his arms, carrying it over to her like it was a baby.
She didn’t look him in the eye as he got closer. Moved back slightly.
“Here,” Riley said. He nodded at the bottles. “This… It should get you by. For now.”
The woman briefly looked Riley in the eye. Her eyes were watery. Dark underneath. Scanned his face inquisitively. “Tha… Thank you. Very kind. Very kind of you.” She held out her weedy, shaky arms.
Riley lowered the bottles into her arms. She hunched forward slightly with the weight, then took a deep breath and pulled herself as upright as she could manage, her tendons sticking out with the tension. She smiled. “We won’t forget this. You’re… You’re a kind man. Thank you.”
She disappeared around the corner with the four water bottles in hand.
Riley turned back around to his trolley. The fifty remaining bottles. He sighed. He could’ve given her more. She’d been so grateful. So appreciative. He walked back to the trolley and reached for a loose piece of card from the top shelf. He covered up the water bottles. He had to get them to the car. Anna might have been right about people’s misjudgment, but he couldn’t risk the woman’s husband seeing him pushing fifty bottles along while he had to make do with four.
He looked at his watch as he turned the trolley around. Five past eight. He still had ten minutes remaining. He could take his time on the way back. Exit via the quietest route. He pushed the trolley forward. The first thing he’d stolen since 2000. Kid A. Even that, he’d stolen digitally because a major reviewing opportunity appeared and he didn’t have the money to buy the album at the time. Spent it all on booze. And no matter how perfectly layered the album was; no matter how sonically brilliant and brimming with depth, he still couldn’t listen to it without feeling a slight bit of guilt to this day.
This should have felt different. This was stealing to survive. But it didn’t. In the back of his mind, a small part of him truly believed that everything was going to suddenly switch back to normal again. That order would return and he’d be the one caught red-handed stealing water bottles. He shook his head and carried on pushing the trolley as two men rushed past carrying a fifty inch television.
As he turned out onto the main aisle, he noticed a little green plus sign above a closed door. It flickered on and off intermittently. He moved towards it. He’d never noticed the ASDA pharmacy before. There were no lights on inside. It didn’t look like anybody else had noticed it either.
He turned the handle and the door swung open. It was silent inside. No voices. All the voices and the commotion were in the supermarket area. No doubt the druggies would find it eventually. Raid it for its supplies.
But not yet, by the looks of things.
He glanced at his watch. Eight minutes past eight. He still had time to go in there. See if he could find anything to help Jill — Stan’s wife — with her cold. Sure, there would be meds in the pharmacy next door to the Chinese, but supplies were limited. At least if he showed he was
making an effort, Stan might warm to him. Maybe.
He moved into the dark corridor. He could see a dim light flickering on the right up ahead. The words, Sharoe Green Surgery were written above the lit window. He definitely hadn’t been aware they’d had a doctor’s surgery in here, either. Quite handy, really. Go to the doctors, get told you’re not morbidly obese, and treat yourself to something from the ice cream freezers on the way out. Just make sure you carry a bag of vegetables with you to give the illusion of healthy eating.
Riley turned to the shelves on the left. Stacks of Strepsils and Halls Soothers. Sun cream and allergy repellants. Nothing too extreme.
He grabbed a few of the Strepsils and Soothers and dropped them into the trolley. They wouldn’t cure any illness, but they’d help. At least he’d be acknowledged for making an effort. He swung the trolley back round and headed to the pharmacy exit door.
Something thudded behind him.
He turned around slowly. The thudding seemed further away than the pharmacy. Down the corridor.
Another thud.
It was coming from the surgery.
Riley gripped the wrench in his pocket. He didn’t have to check it out. He could take the trolley and leave. Anna had made it clear — fifteen minutes and they were out of here. He couldn’t take his chances.
Another thud.
He brought the wrench out of his pocket and walked slowly down the dark corridor, pulling his trolley behind him. One look wouldn’t hurt anybody.
As he got closer to the flickering light of the surgery window, he saw the door shaking slightly. The thudding noise. Something was banging against the door. Somebody was trapped inside there.
Something was trying to get out.
He held his breath and let go of his trolley as he stepped past the door. There was a note pinned up to it — Flu Jab Season: Get Yours Here & Stay Safe for Winter! The door shook again. Rattled on its hinges.
Riley peeked in through the window, holding the wrench tightly in his clammy hand.
The wrench almost dropped to the floor when he saw what was inside.