The Undead the Second Week Compilation Edition Days 8-14

by RR Haywood

  He ventures inside and starts examining the arrays of bottles and medicines, all of them sealed into plastic cases ready to be opened and put on display on the shelves of the chemist shop.

  Yes, new toothbrushes. He needs a new toothbrush desperately, he only brushed his teeth eight times yesterday and then convinced himself the brush would be infected somehow and once that thought was there he couldn’t use it anymore so it was discarded.

  Grabbing the case he rips the plastic outer layer away and grabs a hard bristled brush, breaking the cardboard to yank it free. Toothpaste. He scans the shelves and finds a box, breaking it open to pull a fresh tube out.

  Easing his bag off he draws a bottle of water out and wets the end of the brush before squeezing a nice thick layer of paste on the end. Then he brushes, and brushes, and keeps on brushing.

  The gums are irritated and just the tiniest bit sore. Most likely it’s from the constant brushing but to him, they are growing deadly tumours and diseases that will grow and spread throughout his whole body.

  So he brushes. And then he brushes again just to be sure they’re clean. But that isn’t enough, the brushing will only do so much so he scans the shelf for the most important ingredient of the mouth procedure.

  ‘Come on,’ he mutters. They have bottles of Listerine which is okay, nice and strong. Colgate and other ones, and that stuff that makes the green bits come out. No…where is it?

  With a yelp of triumph he grabs the case of Corsodyl mouth wash and starts shredding the packaging. Clinically proven to stop bleeding gums, that’s what he wants. Something that is clinically proven. Not something marketed and sold to idiots with funky adverts. Clinically proven meant something. It meant smart people in white lab coats did tests and stuff.

  Twisting the lid off he takes a swig and groans with pleasure at the familiar taste. His last bottle ran out two days ago, which just created a sense of rising panic that if he didn’t get the Corsodyl soon he would develop mouth tumours which would spread. Probably too late, two days without it and they would have started by now. It was only twelve days since this all began and already he had run out of something vital and lifesaving.

  He swills the liquid round his mouth, blowing his cheeks out and in to force it into all the nooks and crannies.

  Finally he spits it out onto the floor, feeling a sense of relief that he now has a whole six bottles to last him. Maybe he could mix it with water to make it last longer?

  He shoves the bottles into his bag and start scouring the shelves again. Remembering the funny sensation he felt in his armpit he looks for wet wipes, specifically antiseptic wipes.

  Maybe a slight chaffing from the high temperatures, sweating and clothes rubbing or the crease of his skin. But there was definitely a sensation there, not pain, just a very mild discomfort. Had to be a tumour, they grew in armpits. They grew and spread and that was it; you died.

  A groan from the front of the store. He turns round to see a zombie staggering in through the smashed door. Old by the looks of it. Wispy grey hair and skinny limbs attached to a fat body. Turned a few days ago too. Dried blood on its face and down its front.

  Why do the things come in here when he had serious stuff to contemplate and deal with? He’s not wasting a shotgun shell on this one, oh no. This one can get stabbed in the face for the sheer impudence of disturbing him. This should be like sacred ground, like a church or something. Just wait outside for him and then they can have a scrap.

  Using the sword he plunges the sharp pointy end deep into the face, through the eye socket and into the brain. Then with a kick he sends it backwards and sliding off the sword to land in a heap.

  He looks at the sticky goo on the end of his clean sword and frowns before using the corpse to wipe it clean.

  Back in the store room he grins with excitement at finding the antiseptic wet wipes and pulls his top off to start cleaning both pits thoroughly. Then for good measure he does his chest and sides, then the arms too. With a thought he undoes his belt and button, opening the front of his trousers to push another wet wipe down to clean his groin.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he mutters as another zombie shuffles inside. The bloody things can’t just piss off for five minutes can they? Oh no, they got to keep pestering and annoying, drooling everywhere and groaning like idiots.

  ‘I’m bloody cleaning myself,’ he shouts but the zombie ignores his protests and comes on.

  With that one stabbed through the face too he goes back to the cleaning ritual, forgetting what he’s done so far so starting again from the beginning and finishing off with shoving all the packs into his bag.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he muses, got three packs of multi-vitamins but will that be enough? One a day and sixty in each so that’s what? One hundred and eighty days. What if he loses one or all of them? Yeah, best chuck another one in just in case.

  ‘What else,’ he asks himself. Sun cream, that was it. It was so hot outside and with an almost bald head he worried about getting burnt which would make tumours grow from his skull which would spread and then you die.

  The chemist had loads of different sun creams, too many to choose from which just irritated him. Why didn’t they just have one? How can they all claim to be the best?

  ‘Bollocks,’ he grabs a factor fifty and squeezes a big dollop of the thick cream into his hands before rubbing it into his head, then down his arms. The only problem with sun cream is that it made the sweat full of chemicals which stung his eyes. He hates baseball caps as the peak cuts down your vision which isn’t good.

  So instead he sticks with a floppy brimmed sun hat, the old fashioned type but in an urban camouflage pattern. That wasn’t chosen from choice but just grabbed out of necessity. He would have worn a pink Barbie one if it was the first to hand.

  Painkillers and anti-inflammatories get put into the bag. Then the stronger prescription only painkillers. Then some big packets of anti-biotics get shoved in too. All different types and he knew he could use the chemist book to look up what each one did. They were rarely used as he knew the body built up a resistance to them, but they were kept just in case.

  Same with the first aid kit, the sticking plasters, bandages, eye wash and everything else he carried.

  ‘Feet,’ he remembers and scans the shelves once again for the anti-fungal powder. It was hot and feet got moist which harboured bacteria which developed and became skin infections.

  Unlacing his boots he shrugs them off and uses the bottle of water to clean the sweat off before rubbing them dry with paper towel. Then a liberal sprinkling of powder which was carefully rubbed in.

  Powder was tapped into his socks then everything put back on. Anything else? Nope, that was all he needed.

  He shrugs the bag back on and keeps the sword to hand. Fastening the chest and waist strap of the bag he heads outside with the sword held in his right hand.

  Sunglasses on and he steps out into the street, rolling his eyes at the sight of the three decrepit zombies shuffling towards him.

  They were back to being slow today. Not fast and nasty like they have been sometimes. Why’s that then? Why couldn’t they maintain a constant speed? Too slow in the day and stupidly fast in the night. He’d already figured out they were doing it to conserve energy, that was obvious. So why didn’t they just choose a speed in between the two and stick at that? That would make more sense.

  But oh no, it wasn’t like he had enough to contend with, dealing with his immense health problems but he also had to do battle with hordes of screaming zombies every bleeding day.

  Stress. That would kill you too. Too much stress would make tumours grow and then you die, or lead to a heart attack, or raised blood pressure.

  On that thought he went back inside the chemist, heading for the stock room to find a blood pressure machine. What if he became diabetic? He should check blood sugar too, in fact, come to think about it he was quite thirsty today and that was sign of diabetes. Thirsty and pissing a lot. He suddenly needs a piss, like an urgen
t pressure on his bladder.

  Diabetes. He knew it. He knew something like this would happen. Diabetes and tumours. Shit. Probably one day left to live at the most, that and the high blood pressure.

  He finds a blood pressure kit and takes it out the box, reading the instructions while wrapping the thick black sleeve round his arm. Batteries included. That was nice. It was always nice when they put batteries in ready for you. Even if they were the cheap shit ones that ran out really quickly.

  Remarkably simply to use so he turns it one and feels the sleeve tighten on his arm. The machine whirred while he read the accompanying booklet. Systolic, oh that didn’t that sound good. He’s definitely got Systolicism and the other one too, oh my…Diastolic. That sounds like a killer. Oh wait, they’re the words for the measuring chart. So Systolic is the heart when it pumps and Diastolic is when it rests between the pumps, so those numbers they always say on the medical programmes when the handsome doctor shouted it was one hundred and eighty over seventy, that’s what it meant.

  Nodding with understanding he waits for the machine to calculate his, knowing it will be really high. Probably up there at the top; one hundred and ninety. Easily one hundred and ninety. All this stress and what with the diabetes too. The machine bleeps with flashing numbers.

  ‘Systolic is one hundred and ten…it’s too low, oh…no that’s perfect…hmmmm. Diastolic is seventy,’ checking the chart he reads that is in the ideal range too. Perfect blood pressure. That can’t be right so he shakes the machine, switches it off, shakes it again and switches it back on.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he whines as the next zombie gets to the doorway. He presses the button and waits, feeling the sleeve tighten again. This time will be the proper reading.

  ‘Just fucking wait,’ he shouts at the shuffler heading across the shop floor. One hundred and ten over seventy again.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he shouts, so why did he feel so ill if his blood pressure was perfectly okay. The machine beeps with a change as his blood pressure rises another ten to hundred and twenty.

  Heart attack. Got to be a heart attack. The zombie groans, making him roll his eyes. Grabbing the sword he walks out and shoves it through the eye, holding the hilt which holds the zombie up while also holding the blood pressure machine in his hand. One hundred and thirty now. Shit, this is it. The final end. He takes a deep breath and waits for the burst of pain to explode in his chest. The machine bleeps again. One hundred and twenty, now one hundred and fifteen and dropping.

  It was the zombie that made it rise. He kicks the thing away, pulling his sword free as he stares at the screen.

  So his blood pressure was okay. Just the diabetes to worry about now. How would he control that? Insulin, yeah that was it. People took insulin every day.

  Back in the store room he finds the stock of blood sugar testing machines, and goes through the same motions; stripping it free from the box and getting it rigged up and ready.

  The machine comes with a device to prick the end of his finger, the blood goes on that strip which goes in the machine. He does it quickly, knowing he will have to find the insulin quickly.

  ‘em em oh el stroke el….what does that stand for?’ He looks again at the letters; mmol/l. Millimoles per litre. What the hell was a mini mole? An image of a burrowing animal with thick glasses swimming through his veins comes into his mind.

  ‘Five point five,’ he nods at the numbers on the screen. Six must be the limit, so he’s got point five until he dies. Reading the chart he narrows his eyes that the figure is the perfect range between meals.

  When did he last eat? Two, maybe two and half hours ago. He had that tinned fruit and some Shredded Wheat.

  Not diabetes then. That settles it, it’s gonna be the big one. The big C. Or it could still be the big heart attack waiting to happen.

  Outside again he walks towards the last zombie still making its way towards him. Where had all the rest gone? This area was crawling with them yesterday. Just these few left and they looked fit to drop any second. This one could hardly walk and was trailing a leg with the ankle broken at a right angle. How was it still walking? It was limping down and putting its weight on the broken ankle.

  He winces with the thought of the pain that must cause. Swinging the sword left and right in a casual manner he walks towards it and side steps at the last second, sweeping the sword through the things neck. The blade bites deep, severing the arteries which spray blood out across the pavement as it slumps down.

  Walking on he wonders what to do for the rest of the day. His mouth felt better already, that was for sure. And his armpits too and come to think of it he didn’t feel thirsty or need to urinate anymore now either.

  Back to the base for a cup of tea and some reading. Sounds perfect. He’d have to stay in the shade though, this sun was dangerous.

  He reaches the car and gets in, a small sporty hatchback; perfect for nipping in and around town and ideal for cornering and accelerating on the short roads. He drives the hatchback out of town and parks in a layby. Leaving it there he climbs out and walks the few paces to the big four wheel drive Volvo. Perfect for the country lanes, holding the road and with great power.

  Driving the Volvo he navigates the country lanes driving into a field in a small valley. With higher open ground in every direction he could see everything. Parking the Volvo he walks into the field and across the short grass to the extra-long wheel base high top van left there. The thing was huge, the sort of vehicle the motorbike racing teams use and it was a perfect find.

  Clicking the doors he grasps the big sliding door and pulls it back, looking in at his home from home. He draws the folding chair out and opens it on the grass. The sun is on the other side of the van now so this side is in the shade. Still stupidly hot but at least he will be out of the sun.

  He places the sword propped against the van and the bag nearby with the butts poking up ready to be grabbed. He pulls out a long barrelled shotgun and rests that next to the sword before climbing in. The van is high enough to stand upright with a long bench down one side split into hinged doors that prop open with storage space within.

  Truck and caravan batteries stacked at one end, several deep and secured against the bulkhead of the van. Crates of bottled water, cases of tinned food, dried pasta, rice and noodles.

  A folding camp bed and stacks of smaller batteries, first aid kits and everything imaginable tidily stowed away.

  Paper and hardback books rest on a shelf, all of them relating to survival, electrics, hunting and gathering but the majority of the well-thumbed books are medical encyclopaedias.

  One battery is separated from the rest, set aside with a multitude of wires coming from the two metal prongs. One set lead to the split relay which charges the battery from the engine. The other wires lead to an inverter fitted with a household plug receptor, enabling him to plug household objects in.

  He picks the item currently connected to the inverter and checks the battery level, fully charged. Detaching the charger from the e-reader he drops it into the seat of the chair outside an plugs a small travel kettle into the inverter. Once filled with water he gets a mug ready, choosing a teabag from the many boxes stacked neatly under a bench.

  ‘Earl grey, a perfect afternoon pick me up and full of anti-oxidants too,’ muttering away to himself he gets the cup ready and waits while the kettle slowly boils the water. Going to the back of the van he drops down to check the fuel containers and still there, wedged out of sight safe and away from the sun. He did have them inside but the smell was too strong so they were removed and put under the vehicle.

  With the e-reader charged up he settles down and activates the home page. The Kindle was a great device and when he saw the outbreak starting, and how quickly it spread he correctly sensed what was coming so quickly went online and downloaded every single book relating to survival he could find, then cooking, butchery, health and fitness, mental stimulation exercises, how to books of every description, ranging from How to Succ
eed In the Workplace to The Art of War. He downloaded tongue in cheek zombie survival guides and then the more serious post apocalypse accounts. In addition to the hundreds of instruction books, he also downloaded as many fiction books as possible. Everything he could find from every genre. The retailer had made it easy with one click purchase. His credit card was already linked in and with the balance being very low he was able to keep going.

  Then, while everyone else was fighting for the tins of beans in the supermarket aisles, he was going for the vehicle auto shops to get batteries, inverters, leads, wires and travel accessories. He then went for the local Cash and Carry, getting there before the masses had time to stop and think about safe refuges with good supplies. He set the alarms off but he was in and out within minutes. Going for bulk supplies of essentials that he would need to survive.

  A loner anyway, the sudden loss of mankind, civilisation and the fall of society hardly bothered him. What he did miss however, more than anything and what he would give his right arm for, was a doctor. Even one on a phone that he could talk too and relay all the weird symptoms as they arise.

  He was forever in the local surgery and on first name terms with the nurses and reception staff. He was almost banned from attending due to the sheer number of emergency appointments he made. But the last doctor to see him understood and humoured the appointments. Knowing the simple act of laying hands on whatever part of his body was complaining now, and then saying “nothing wrong, you’re fine” would see him through for another couple of weeks.

  But now there were no doctors and the pressure was building. He had no recourse to medical expertise and had to rely on self-diagnoses from the books, but that just scared him even more.

  Fit and healthy, he exercised every day without fail. Going through a varying mixture of cardio and resistance training. He wasn’t huge with bulging muscles but he was strong and lithe. He ate carefully and paid attention to the ratio of proteins to carbs to fats, essential fats and avoiding fatty acids like the plague.