by Woods, Mark
Ten days had passed since then, and Kirsten had still not relented.
The two girls had taken it in turns to make sure both cats were fed and watered, and the two cats had seemed to enjoy being able to come and go as they pleased and up until now, the Dead outside had seemed to pay them little attention just as Kirsten had said.
When it had become apparent that Melissa obviously wasn’t coming back, the two girls had raided her cupboards and her fridge – not that there had been much there, adding more weight to the theory that their downstairs neighbour had probably been out shopping when everything had all gone to Hell.
As for Sammi and Kirsten, so far they had had little trouble from the Dead.
They had kept themselves quiet and so had drawn little attention to their small apartment building.
Most of their days were spent either Z-watching – making up funny nicknames or back stories for the Dead that they saw, trying their best not to think about how those same things out there would kill them and eat them as soon as look at them – or scouring the internet or local news stations, both radio and television, in a bid to try and keep abreast of what was going on in the world all around them.
Any official news was rarer than unicorn poo right now.
Most of the major channels had stopped reporting, and so most of their ‘news’ now came from homemade YouTube Vlogs and videos that people had uploaded. And while the power was still on, neither girl knew how much longer that might last.
They had no idea what had happened to any of their other girlfriends either, other than Kelly of course, and though they had tried desperately to reach all of them, no-one was answering.
But deep in their hearts, neither girl held out much hope that any of them might have survived, for even though it had been less than two weeks since Z-day, already the situation out there was starting to look pretty dire.
This morning when Sammi walked through to the kitchen in her bunny slippers, Kirsten was already up drinking coffee.
As Sammi made to pour herself a glass of orange juice, the last carton they had left and that Sammi had deliberately been trying to make last – she couldn’t handle coffee first thing in the morning, she found it too bitter - Kirsten looked up from her phone where she had been scrolling through the empty newsfeeds on Facebook.
It was quite grim and depressing not to see people posting what they were doing anymore, Kirsten thought. Even the ‘Marked safe from the Zombie Apocalypse’ posts seemed to have dried up.
“We need to think about leaving the apartment,” she told her friend.
“What do you mean?” Sammi asked her, still rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Our food stocks are starting to get low,” Kirsten said. “And what do the tough do when the going gets tough?”
“They go shopping,” Sammi said.
Chapter twelve: When the going gets tough…
“Jeez, look at my bangs,” Kirsten said, holding up her hair in front of the mirror as she tied it back, away from her face, preparing to head outside for the first time in almost two weeks.
“Yeah, the first thing I’m doing when civilisation returns is definitely booking in an appointment with Louise,” Sammi said, holding up her own hair in front of the mirror. Louise was the hairdresser and beauty technician both girls used, and that they had both known ever since school.
She was also the only person either girl ever trusted to do their hair and nails.
“You still sure you really want to do this?” Sammi asked Kirsten now, looking at her friend’s reflection in the mirror.
“Girlfriend,” Kirsten said. “Those Zombies aren’t going to know what’s hit them!” She winked at Sammi in the mirror, and then blew her friend a kiss.
Both girls broke into laughter.
But both of them knew that laughter was just a defence mechanism - hiding just how nervous they both were at having to step outside.
***
Both girls finished getting dressed, and then prepared themselves to leave their apartment. They were both wearing thick leather jackets so if anything out there tried to bite them, it wouldn’t be able to sink it’s teeth into their flesh, and trainers so if anything did come after them, they could make a quick getaway.
Kirsten had her baseball bat out again, but Sammi this time was carrying an axe that they had found in a cupboard under the stairs leading up to their apartment, and that their landlord had used to cut down a tree out back of their building last year when it had started to block out the natural light coming into their flat.
The local council had just asked him to trim the tree back, but their landlord, always having been one for overkill, had decided to just cut the whole thing down instead.
Sammi and Kirsten were quite glad about that now.
But they were more glad that he had left most of his tools behind in the cupboard under their flat when he was done.
Their plan was a simple one.
Open the front door, check the coast was clear, and then Sammi could keep watch whilst Kirsten unlocked her car – a white Mini Cooper emblazoned with a Union Jack – and started the engine. That done, Sammi would climb in and the two girls would then drive on over to the local supermarket express to stock up on food and essential items such as feminine hygiene products, of which they were likewise starting to get low.
It would have to be a case of a quick snatch and grab, for neither girl knew what they might encounter in the store, but it wasn’t a big supermarket – only a little local one – so hopefully, if luck was in their side, it shouldn’t take either of them too long, they thought.
They had already checked the street from their apartment window before they left, and so far it all seemed fairly quiet with few Zs wandering around, so both Sammi and Kirsten figured if they were going to go, there was no better time than now.
“You ready, D?” Kirsten mouthed at her friend now, and Sammi nodded.
“I was born ready,” she mouthed back, her response aimed to try and mask the sheer terror both of them were feeling right now at the thought of leaving the relative safety of their flat.
They didn’t even wait for the count of three.
Kirsten slipped the latch, and then both girls piled out into the street.
While Sammi stood guard, Kirsten pulled out her keys and fumbled for the remote locking button. The Mini’s lights flashed with a shrill *beep beep* that made both girls glance around in alarm.
One lone Zombie started lumbering towards Sammi, who swung at it with her axe as Kirsten climbed in and started the engine.
The axe entered the Zombie’s open mouth, and nearly split the creature’s head into two, almost taking it clean off, but caught on its jaw.
Sammi struggled to pull the axe loose as the Zombie clawed at her and attempted to draw closer so it could sink its teeth in her flesh, blood and drool falling from its nearly dislocated jaw.
The cars engine started, Kirsten quickly came up behind the Z, and brought her baseball bat down on its head hard, smashing the creature’s brains in.
She turned to her friend.
“If you’re finally done screwing around with your boyfriend,” Kirsten joked, “do you want to possibly, I don’t know, think about getting in the car?”
Both girls burst into laughter again as they climbed into Kirsten’s car and drove off.
***
The two girls saw very few signs of life – or Unlife - on their short journey to the store. By now, the streets were almost deserted – the Dead having obviously mostly wandered off somewhere in search of fresh prey, having presumably already snacked on those few living they could find in this area.
There were a few Zs wandering around, but they were few and far between.
Kirsten took out more than a few of them.
At one point, what had once been an old lady was crossing the road, her mouth snapping at the air all around her as she walked. Kirsten just drove straight into her and sent her flying over the bonnet with a loud
*crump* - irresponsibly not even thinking about the damage she might do to her beloved car, but unable to resist the temptation.
“5 points,” Kirsten joked, as the old bid fell off the car and crumpled to the floor in a heap. Sammi looked back in the rear view mirror and saw the elderly Zombie trying to get back to its feet, but both of its legs had been broken and so it kept collapsing to the floor.
“K!” Sammi said in mock horror. “That could have been someone’s grandma for all you know.” But that didn’t stop her giving her friend a high-five as they carried on driving to the store.
They pulled up in the car park.
There were quite a few cars parked all around but just as earlier in town, at first glance there didn’t appear to be too many Zs. One had got stuck in the trolley park, Sammi noted, and was wandering back and forth between the abandoned trolleys there like it was stuck in a maze, unable to find its way out.
There were a few other lone Zs wandering around the edges of the car park, but that was about it.
“Pull up close to the entrance,” Sammi suggested. “That way, if we need to make a quick getaway, we won’t have far to run. And remember what we discussed. In and out, really quick. Imagine it’s Supermarket Sweep. We go in, we grab whatever we can fit in a couple of trolleys quickly, and then we get back here and just chuck it in the back of the car.”
“Aah, D,” Kirsten said. “Don’t you wanna have some fun while we’re here?”
She grinned at her friend.
Much as Sammi loved her friend, Kirsten, and loved her dearly – but not like that, you understand, they weren’t lezzers or anything – she knew only too well Kirsten could be a bit reckless sometimes. As evidenced by her driving at that old lady back at the crossroads without so much as a second thought.
Sammi liked to think she was the more practical of the two, and dreaded to think what might have happened if they’d totalled their car back there.
But they hadn’t, Sammi thought, and right now that was the only thing that mattered.
“I mean it, K,” Sammi said again. “In and out.”
The pair exited the car.
Moving towards the entrance, her friend in tow, Kirsten noted a dead security guard laying sprawled face down by the automatic doors. As she passed him, the security guard groaned and reached up for her leg.
His throat had been torn out, and one of his own legs was twisted at a funny angle which was obviously why he’d been lying on the floor.
He grabbed a hold of her jeans and Kirsten let out a scream.
Sammi moved beside her, and brought her axe down on his neck – severing his head instantly.
As the head rolled away, the jaws continued to snap for a couple of seconds before stopping.
“Thanks,” Kirsten said.
“That’s why I told you to be careful,” Sammi said, feeling more than a little bit smug. “Remember, we need to stay alert in here.”
Kirsten nodded. “K K.”
She readied her baseball bat and the two entered the store.
“What now?” Kirsten whispered. Both girls could hear moans coming from the rear of the store somewhere, but could not yet see anything moving down any of the aisles.
“Let’s draw them out, see what we’re dealing with,” Sammi told her. She moved to the customer service desk.
Pulling out her phone, she opened up her Spotify account and clicked on her Apocalypse playlist that she’d been building the last few weeks.
Sammi found the store microphone used to make announcements and putting her phone next to it, pressed play on her playlist.
The sounds of M.I.A’s Paper Planes started filling the store.
“You ready?” She asked Kirsten.
Her friend nodded.
As Zombies started appearing in the aisles, moaning and lumbering towards them, drawn by the sound coming over the shop’s overhead speakers, Sammi and Kirsten went to work.
Kirsten grabbed one zombie by the shoulder as it tried to bite her, and forced it against one of the stand-up glass freezer cabinets as Sammi swung her axe at its neck. Just as outside with the security guard, it was a clean hit and the Z’s head flew off, but the glass front of the freezer cabinet also shattered in an explosion of broken glass sending Sammi and Kirsten into peals of laughter as once again they high-fived each other.
Their adrenaline was pumping, their fight or flight response triggered, and as the two girls split up, they proceeded to take out any other Zombies they found.
Sammi swung her axe at a skin head shopper she encountered in the bread aisle, the loaves on the shelf all by now thick and green with mould, but only succeeded in taking off one of its arms. As the creature paused to glance down at where it’s arm had once been, seemingly confused, Sammi finished it off with a coup de grace by first taking out its legs, then bringing the axe down on its head with a loud *splat* as the blade sank into its skull.
She felt herself starting to gag as blood and black ichor sprayed up at her, and then turned and threw up in the aisle.
Once she was done, she picked herself up, got her head back together and back in the game, and then carried on. Only too aware she had a job to do – clearing the store so she and Kirsten could stock up and get the hell out of here.
Kirsten, meanwhile, was having a whale of a time.
She rode on the back of a trolley down the sweet aisle, knocking Zombies out of her way like ten pins, before leaping off and setting about the Zs with her bat.
One grabbed a hold of her wrist and sank its teeth into her arm, but just as both girls had anticipated, the thick leather stopped the creature from being able to get through to her skin.
She swung her bat at the Z and as it fell backwards, brought the bat down sharply on its head. One of its eyes flew out, still attached by its optic cord, as she hit the creature again and again, rendering its head into no more than mush surrounding a broken skull.
She, too, started to gag, but unlike Sammi had a much stronger stomach and somehow managed to keep everything down.
It was a close call though.
When they were both done, the two girls met up again at the top of the store.
M.I.A’s Paper Planes has given way to Galantis and Peanut Butter Jelly by now, only to be followed by Basement Jaxx asking “Where’s your head at?”
The two girls looked at each other, covered in blood and gore from all the customers they’d just given mercy, and burst into fits of laughter again.
“You look a mess,” Kirsten said, and Sammi flipped her the bird.
“Speak for yourself, Skank,” she responded. “Clean up in aisle two…”
And both girls burst into laughter once more.
Sammi went and collected her phone, switched off the tunes, and then the two girls grabbed a couple of trolleys and loaded up with the canned goods, bottled water, and the essential feminine hygiene products they were starting to need.
The whole store stank.
Not just from the stench of the Dead, but from the smell of rotten meat coming from the meat fridges which at some point in the last couple of weeks had obviously been turned off; from the deli counter where the cheeses there that had started to all turn; from the milk aisle where all the cream and milk had all started to curdle; and from the produce aisle where all the formerly fresh fruit and veg was starting to rot.
If nothing else, it gave the two girls even more incentive to grab what they needed and get the hell out of here as quick as possible.
Once they were all done, Sammi and Kirsten started to move their trolleys to the front of the store.
Someone, a tall figure dressed in biker gear, stepped out in front of them as they approached the entrance and held up his hand to stop them.
A thick, heavy piece of chain clutched in one massive fist.
The guy was huge, Sami noticed, and more than a match for both of them.
Not for the first time since they’d left their apartment, Sammi was starting to feel scared. Lookin
g over, she saw Kirsten’s usual bravado had seemingly abandoned her and her friend too, was also looking pretty worried right about now.
“Well, well, well,” the bearded man said, addressing the two girls stood in front of him. “What do we have here? A couple of shoplifters if I’m not mistaken. I do hope you’re intending to pay for all that stuff.”
He started to edge towards them.
“The rest of the guys are still on their way back from town,” he said. “But they sent me ahead, and I tell you what. I’m willing to bet they’re going be more than happy to see you couple of cuties. We haven’t had any fresh pussy in weeks, and you two…you’re both looking pretttty fine from where I’m standing here.”
He licked his lips salaciously as he continued to move towards them, his chain dragging on the floor behind him as he walked, increasing the tension in the air.
Unseen behind him, a figure slipped out from behind the customer service desk, came up behind him and slit open his throat before he could even react.
As he fell to the floor, blood gushing from his throat as he struggled to try and catch a breath, drowning in his own blood, Sammi and Kirsten looked up at their saviour.
The dishevelled and bedraggled figure in front of them was barely recognisable, but somehow both girls knew her instantly.
It was their downstairs neighbour, Melissa.
“Well,” Melissa said, addressing them both now. “Are we all going to just stand here and wait for his buddy’s to show up, or are we all going to get out of here? I assume both you girls brought your car?”
Sammi and Kirsten both nodded.
“Then what the fuck are you both waiting for?”
***
Then…
Melissa forced her way back into the store.
The same young store assistant was still standing close to the entranceway.
“I’m sorry, Miss,” he said, addressing her. “But after what happened, I’m afraid I can’t let you back in.”
“But they’re killing him,” Melissa insisted. “Back there, they’re killing him…”
“Who?” The young store assistant asked her. “Who’s killing who?”