by Birch, S. C.
Daniel stared into the large pot of grey cream as he stirred the ladle around. It bubbled and frothed. Everything inside that pot turned his stomach. But his stomach cramped in pain. Then it churned in horror. Then it called out begging for food. Then it squirmed in unrelenting disgust.
“You holding up there, buddy?” Cameron asked, though he was worried his sarcasm would go unnoticed.
It was.
“No,” Daniel shook his head, “I really hate mushroom soup.”
Cameron sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know. But it’s this or nothing.”
“I just hate it. I mean, it’s so grey and gloopy and horrible. And it smells like bad onions. And it’s just so thick…”
Cameron rolled his eyes again and felt a mild twinge of pain appear in his temple. “Just don’t think about it too much. Come on.” he nudged Daniel away, picked up the pot and poured the contents into seven bowls.
Daniel and Cameron balanced the bowls along their arms and crept into the Fort Room. They handed the food out and sat down. Everyone drank it up in seconds. Except for Daniel. It took him three minutes and forty-two seconds to eat his meal. And everyone else watched him. Staring at him and the food being played with more than being eaten, they all looked rather cannibalistic. Even Grace.
Jack sprawled out over the mound of clothes he had made himself (during his drunken stupor) the night before, “God I can’t do this. I’m hungover to fuck and I’m soooo hungry. Do we have anything else at all to eat?”
Cameron shrugged, “Crisps.”
Jack shook his fist at the ceiling, “Why, God? Why are you so cruel?”
“We need to get food. Today. Like, before we get too hungry to do anything and end up, like, eating each other or something.” said Emily.
“Shut up, Emily!” Owen shouted. Christ, he thought, why in the hell would you say that in the middle of a fucking zombie apocalypse!
“Do we have to?” Lucy groaned.
“Eat each other?” Grace said in horror.
Lucy groaned, “No, obviously not that. I meant do we need to leave.”
“Ahh,” Grace said and tucked her legs under herself, “That one we do have to do. We won’t have anything to eat after tomorrow.”
Lucy rolled her head towards Owen, “Book time?”
“Book time!” Owen said with a grin that stretched across his face. He hadn’t sobered up the whole way yet.
Owen staggered down the stairs, collected his little book from the abandoned living room, and ran straight back up the stairs. He threw himself down on the double mattress between Emily and Daniel and flicked through the pages until he found what he was looking for.
“Okay then. So, it says here, err, should you find yourself in the desperately unfortunate but almost certain situation whereby food is running dangerously low -”
Jack wailed out in pain, “He uses too many adverbs!”
“Shut up! Christ’s sake!” Owen shouted. He glared at Jack before scanning the book and starting again. “It is imperative you find food as quickly as possible. These are the best possible options when hunting for food. You should try a neighbour’s house, a local shop, a supermarket, a farm, local eatery such as a café, or a warehouse. Right, so which one we going with?”
“Supermarket.” said Emily. Then the thought of leaving the house hit her and she let out a little whine before throwing herself backwards and bouncing on the mattress.
Grace nodded, “I think that’s best.”
Owen looked around the room, “Any objections?”
Jack wailed out again, “I don’t care! I just want food!”
“Right, fine. Chapter seven, err. So, you have decided to rob a supermarket! Congratulations. Only joking, theft doesn’t exist in a lawless world -”
“Does the book actually say that?” asked Emily from behind Owen, “Seems, like, really out of place.”
Owen yelled in anger and spun round to face the source of his interruption, “No more talking! Anyone! Especially from a Brooker.” he waited for the inevitable.
“Okay, mate.” Jack said from atop his mound of clothes.
But then Owen lost what little patience he had left in him. “Right, I’m done! Fuck it, we’re winging it. Any problems with that?”
“Nah, I’m good with winging it.” said Jack.
“Shouldn’t we really work out a plan or something?” Grace asked. “I mean, I know that you four,” she gestured at Owen, Cameron, and the twins, “will know what to do when we get there. But what should we do?”
“Well I think, right,” said Emily, “we should use a car to get there and have it blasting out tunes. That way they’ll be distracted and go after the car and not us.”
Owen squinted and shook his head, “Yeah, but then how do we get back into the car?”
“Simple. We kill them. How dim are you?” Emily asked.
Owen just groaned. “Fine! We kill them once we get back to the car. What else?”
“Owen?” said Daniel, “Have you got suitcases or rucksacks or something?”
“Yeah, I will do. Why?”
“We take them with us and that way we can carry more food. And we should only take frozen and tinned stuff. So it doesn’t go bad.”
“Good work! Daniel! I am appointing you our Intelligence Officer! From now on you come up with the plan and fill us in.” said Emily only half serious.
“Gladly!” Daniel beamed.
“Let’s get going then. Everyone, badass the fuck up!” shouted Jack who had still not moved from his soft hill.
Owen found five suitcases, dragged them up the basement stairs and dumped them in the hall. Then, while he remembered, he went to the electronic box beside his front door and turned on his sprinklers. Everyone got suited up with their weapons ready. Jack, Emily, Cameron, and Grace tipped out the innards of their bags onto the living room floor and wrapped their bags around themselves.
“We good to go?” asked Owen as his friends appeared in the hall.
“And here I thought that us being here and looking like this was obvious.” said Cameron.
“Oh Christ, don’t start that shit.” groaned Owen as he glared at Cameron.
Daniel decided to avert the imminent attack, “Any last things we should say or something?”
“Actually, there is, what we listening to for this?” asked Emily, “Like, as a theme tune.”
Then there was a long, heated, dangerous debate about what they should A, listen to for the drive and B, what they should use to attract the undead. And after they finally settled they realised that a five-seater car wouldn’t fit seven people and stolen supplies. And then there was another, long, heated, dangerous debate on how many cars they should take, who should go in what car and what the second (they did agree that the fewer cars used the better) car’s music should be. The Brookers and Owen screamed, they wailed, they threw their arms around, they threatened each other. It was all very tense. And pointless because by the time they had bundled into the two cars, all that fighting felt like wasted energy. Then the journey started.
Owen (because it was his car) linked up his phone to the speakers and played out his favourite music. He checked his passengers; Grace and Daniel in the back and Lucy in the front with him. Cameron had also tried to jump in with them but was forced to drive with the Brookers. The reason he wanted in the Impala, was not only because it by far the most fabulous of the two cars, but because as a rule, you should never, EVER drive with a Brooker. Emily and Jack were horrible drivers and had together been in no less than eight accidents. They both sped, crashed, and had spent a night in a small cell for drunk driving. At the same time. With the same car. It was a family thing though; their parents were just as bad. As Emily cranked the volume in her rusted little car up to eleven and set up her sat-nav and Jack pulled up his feet and dumped them on the dashboard, Cameron sat in the back and gripped his seatbelt tight.
Emily slammed her feet hard on the pedals and sped forwards. The whole car jerked as
she stopped beside Owen on the other side of the gates. She rolled down her window and so did he.
“Race!” she screeched.
Cameron tensed up, bracing for an impact he was sure was going to happen.
“No!” shouted Owen back.
“Pft.” said Jack this time, “Loser!”
“Did you just actually call me a loser? Are you twelve?” Owen asked, but Jack replied with a grin and the middle finger, then the Brooker’s car sped away.
Emily roared the car to speed and bounced off. She flew the car around on the crowded roads, ploughing through the undead and only just managing to avoid crashed cars.
Jack jerked his arm at the window and shouted over the music, “Get the fat one!”
Emily rammed into the plump zombie hard and he flew over the car and splatted on the ground behind them.
“Nicely done!” said Jack as he and Emily shared in a low-five.
Cameron groaned as the Brookers went over the rules of their new game. Jack’s job was to pick the most difficult target and Emily’s was to hit it. They loved their journey. The two laughed, joked, shouted, and threw a barrage of insults at each other.
Of course, the Brookers won the race and as they had time to kill, they drove around the supermarket carpark in manic, screeching circles while the undead chased them round and round in the smoke and skid marks.
The Impala, however, glided along the roads. Its passengers’ barley felt the bumps and holes as they drove along. It was, rather obviously, a far more relaxing experience for them than what Cameron was enduring.
“I feel so sorry for Cameron right now. How do you think he’s doing?” asked Daniel as he looked out of the window and at one of the decapitated zombie’s courtesy of the Brookers.
“Probably better than I would cope. Look at what they did! I swear they’re broken.” said Lucy.
Owen spun the wheel of his car and dodged the half exploded, large zombie on the middle of the road, “I point blank refuse to ever get in a car with them.” then he dodged another splatted corpse, “Even if I’m driving, I will never share a ride with them.”
The Impala pulled up into the carpark outside the supermarket and the four passengers watched in complete confusion and horror as the little, rusted car ahead of them spun around, bolted forwards, and skidded to a halt beside them. The zombies followed them with their arms pointed towards food, their teeth on show, and their feet dragging across the ground.
“We win, bitches! You coming?” asked Jack as he climbed out of the car.
Cameron slid from the car and had never in his life felt so relieved to be on solid ground.
“Stop shouting and let’s go!” Grace shouted as joined them on the tarmac.
Daniel pulled himself and his wide shoulders out, “Uh-oh, they’re coming!”
They all spun round and looked at the horde shuffling towards them.
“Fuuuuuuck!” Jack shouted and disappeared from beside them all and ran to the shop. The rest of them (apart from Emily who skipped along to her brother) grabbed a suitcase and followed.
The flakes of glass from the shattered shop doors crunched under boots, trainers, and a pair of brogues. Owen looked at his Beloved car, zombies swarmed it, stroking it and drooling black ooze. But none seemed to notice that the car was void of life. Nor did they hear the glass of the shop smash.
Daniel smashed open the second set of doors and they all climbed through the frame and into the shop. Hundreds of rotting corpses filled the aisles. Meandering around. Still unaware they had been interrupted.
The group stood with their weapons ready.
Then they continued to stand.
And continued.
One nearby zombie was walking into a display of books over and over again like a moth does with a light. Another had managed to trap itself in a freezer, running his hands along the glassy wall in stiff motions, and quite a lot were already on the ground dead. Although Owen could see no signs that the shop had been pilfered or that anything alive had been there in at least a week. The smell was beyond foul and the air felt thick with rot.
Jack coughed loudly and raised his weapon higher.
The zombies swayed where they were.
Owen slipped over to some trollies and tipped them. The wire clashed with the tiled floor and the noise rang through to every corner of the shop. The zombies from all over spun their heads to the noise. They gnashed their teeth, brought up their arms, and moaned. Then they started to walk towards the group of warriors. But slowly. Stupidly slowly. Annoyingly slowly. Slower than a baby walking for the first time. Their feet had a lot of trouble moving forwards and quite a lot simply fell down.
“Wwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiillll.” wailed the pitiful horde.
The group waited for a long while just staring at the sight.
“Is this it?” Cameron asked as he dropped his arms to his side.
Emily rocked as she shifted her weight from the balls of her feet to her heels and back again in mild frustration, “No. This can’t be just it. Maybe these ones were starved or something…”
“Nnnhhhuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrr.”
Owen walked towards the closest one, pressed his bat against its head and watched as it collapsed to the ground like a popped balloon. “I think this is really it. They can’t be that starved after only a week.” he said.
Jack approached the zombie trapped behind the kiosk counter and examined it as its arms flailed around. “I kind of feel bad now. It’s like throwing kittens in a sack into a river, isn’t it?”
“Bwwwwaaaaahhhhhuuaaaaaaa.”
Lucy crept forwards, “So what now? Do we kill them or just steal food?”
Daniel shrugged his shoulders, “Bit of both maybe?”
Emily pranced forwards and slid her knife into the face of a moaning corpse trapped behind a checkout. The zombie dropped her arms as the knife found her face and slid to the ground.
“Seriously, why is this so easy? I mean, it was difficult yesterday. How? Like, just how?” Emily screeched. “…How?”
Jack thumped his wrench into the trapped zombie’s face. And before the poor, twice-dead gent hit the ground, Jack placed his palms on the counter and swung his legs around. He opened up his bag and started cramming as many cigarettes in as possible.
His sister nodded in approval, “Good thinking.”
Cameron sighed and rolled his eyes. “Am I the only person here who hasn’t lost all sense? Let’s just get what we need and leave.”
“Gnnuuaauwwwaaaaahhaaaaaa.”
“Well,” said Emily as she skipped to her brother, “it’s not like we’re in a rush or anything now.”
“Exactly.” said Jack still swiping cigarettes. “We can, you know, take it easy.”
“For God’s sake!” shouted Owen who was frustrated not only with the Brookers but with the undead too, “Right, we’re grabbing shit and going. Cam and Grace, come with me and we can go get tinned things. Lucy and Daniel, you can get frozen stuff.”
“Well that’s us sorted, what about those two.” said Lucy as she jerked her head towards the Brookers who were enthralled in their tobacco thieving.
Owen waved his hand at them, “Just leave them to it.”
Lucy and Daniel walked to the frozen food aisle with a suitcase each and started heaving as much as they could in. Some corpses did travel towards them, but Lucy took them all out with ease and stopped counting how many she slayed after the twelfth one. Their wails and moans crawled along the shelves and aisles, but it sounded about as annoying as the usual music playing in shops.
Cameron and Owen pulled along their suitcases to the tinned food section and Grace ran her arms along the shelves, toppling the contents into the open suitcases. It was of course loud, but any zombies foolish enough to limp towards them were killed in seconds.
Meanwhile, the twins filled their bags with cigarettes then weren’t quite sure what to do with themselves.
“What do we steal now?” asked the sister as sh
e looked around.
The brother shrugged. “I dunno, maybe toilet roll?”
“Oooh, smart.”
So that’s where they went next. They stole packs and packs of toilet paper and toiletries. Then they were lost again.
“Huh, maybe hit the game bit next?” Emily asked.
“Nice! I like it.” Jack said. He picked up a suitcase and along they went. They stole some video games and a few hand-held consoles. By now their suitcase was rather bulky.
“Be right back. Going to get the other case.” Emily said and she skipped away to the front door. She poked her head out of the shattered doors. The zombies still meandered around the cars as music blared from them.
“Mmmmmeeeaeeaaaaooooohhaaa.”
Emily dumped the suitcase down on the ground beside her brother, “Anything else we need?”
“Err,” Jack looked around, “Here!” he bolted forwards to the electronic aisle, jumped over the back counter, and into the unlocked room behind.
He looked around the room filled with rows and rows of branded boxes. Jack found what he was looking for. He scooped up six different sized boxes, left the room, and dumped them in the suitcase.
“Nice haul. We good to go?” Emily asked.
Jack looked at their pilfered goods, “Yeah, I’d say so. We should really see how the rest of them are getting on.”
“Nah. If they were, like, having any bother we would hear them scream and that.” said Emily.
Jack nodded, “That’s true. Wanna go kill the zombies outside?”
Emily’s eyes lit up and she broke into an excited smile, “Yes!”
They zipped up their suitcases and dragged them through the shop and to the front door.
“Hmmm,” said Jack, “there’s a lot of – what?” he shouted as a crawler snatched his foot. Jack wriggled and jerked his leg, “Just. Fuck. Away!” he managed to free his foot and kicked the crawler square in his face. The crawler flew upwards and backwards before splatting on the floor.
“Ha-ha! Nice!” Emily stuck out her hand and Jack slapped her palm.