“It’s ... it’s nothing short of a miracle. I thought we were going to starve out there.”
Florence looked up from her bowl then just as quickly started shovelling the sweet cereal in her mouth once again. “Yeah, well, you don’t have to think about that anymore. I know this little cutey-pie is Florence, but I didn’t catch your name.”
“I’m sorry. My name’s Zeta.”
“Huh, like that singer, Zeta Newman,” Jules said smiling; then the smile suddenly vanished as the woman flushed red. “Oh my God, that’s you, isn’t it?”
The woman continued to look embarrassed. “It was ... once.”
“How—how did you end up here?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Yeah, no doubt.”
Zeta put a spoonful of food into her mouth and slowly chewed it, wondering where to begin. She looked down towards her daughter, knowing there were secrets she did not want to utter in front of her. “I ... err…”
“I tell you what. You and I will have a chin wag, later, how about that?”
Zeta’s face lit up. “That would be nice.”
Jules looked around. Everybody else was just enjoying their breakfast, oblivious to the fact they had a bona fide hit songstress in their midst. Granted it had been a few years since she’d been in the charts with anything and recent times had not been kind to her, but Jules was still a little dumbstruck that here, sitting on a white plastic chair with her knees almost touching Jules’s, was a woman who she had mimed in the mirror to as a teenager. “I’ll let you enjoy your breakfast with your daughter. You don’t need to worry about anything now, you’re with us.”
“Thank you.”
Jules stood and carried her bowl over to the table where George and Maggie had settled. “Making new friends?” Maggie said.
“You won’t believe who that is.”
“Who?” Maggie asked.
“Zeta Newman.”
“Who?”
“She had that big hit with Love on a Cloud; then there was that other one, oh … what was it called?”
“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. Remember you and I grew up listening to very different things.”
“Yeah, but I mean that was like huge.”
“Nope, don’t recall it at all.”
“How about you?” Jules asked, looking at George.
“Don’t ask me about stuff like that. I was never that into music.”
“Bloody philistines. We’ve got a genuine pop star in our midst, and I may as well be talking to people who’ve spent the last twenty years in a grass hut with no electricity,” Jules said, dipping the spoon into her bowl and piling a dangerously high pyramid of Coco Pops in her mouth.
“See this is the problem when you form friendships with people who aren’t your own age. It’s another good reason you should start spending more time with your brothers, I’m sure they’d be interested in hearing all about your new pop star friend,” Maggie said, smiling.
With a mountain of cereal still in her mouth, Jules tried to respond, “Phwook you, y’old bag.”
“Sorry, dear, I didn’t quite catch that, what did you say?”
Jules raised her middle finger in response, and they all laughed.
The three of them sat at the table for several minutes, just watching everyone, particularly the newcomers. This morning, like no other, there were a lot more smiles, the mood was noticeably more optimistic. It was a combination of things. The airbeds and sleeping bags had obviously played a significant part, but the influx of newcomers had raised everybody’s spirits too. It had made them realise just how lucky they had been and how lucky they were. Life was not perfect, in fact, life was a long way from perfect, but they had something special here. Everybody had a place, and to see the new arrivals in awe of their surroundings made them all incredibly thankful.
Suddenly, Mary Stolt, the woman in charge of the catering side of the operation, took a spatula and banged it hard on one of the serving tables three times, gaining everybody’s attention. The entire makeshift cafe fell silent, and all eyes shot towards her. “Now, this isn’t something we will be doing every day, so don’t get used to it, but my team were up extra early this morning to make sure the scavenger groups went out with food and flasks. While you were all still in your comfortable new sleeping bags, we were boiling water, and I’m happy to announce that this morning, to finish your breakfasts, everyone may have a single cup of coffee.”
There was a rush from the tables that made the opening morning of a Harrods half-price sale look like the overdue books line at a village library. Jules, Maggie and George watched with huge grins on their faces. Everything could have taken a huge downturn after the disastrous visit to the boarding school, but thanks to the work of George, Maggie, Josh and now Mary, people had all but forgotten the tragedy.
While the other servers dished out mugs of instant coffee with long-life milk, Mary walked around from the counter with a tray carrying three travel mugs, three plastic stirrers and several catering sachets of sugar. She placed the tray down on the table in front of Jules, George and Maggie then sat down herself.
“How to win friends and influence people,” Jules said, still smiling.
“I thought it was the least we could do. Since Josh brought those camp stoves in yesterday and all the rest of that gear, it seemed a shame not to put them to good use.”
“Well, you’ve certainly done that,” Jules replied.
“I wasn’t sure how you three took yours, but I was pretty certain you wouldn’t have time to sit here lollygagging, so I put them in travel mugs for you. Don’t get too excited, it’s only instant, but it does the trick.”
Jules screwed off the top of her mug and inhaled deeply. “Mary, you’re a Godsend, has anyone ever told you that?”
“Plenty.”
“Well, now I’m telling you.” Jules closed her eyes and took a sip. “I had the best sleep I’ve had in a long time, and now I wake up to Coco Pops and coffee. I could get used to this.”
“Yes, well, I thought it would be good for morale.”
“That it is. Look at those faces. People think Christmas has come.”
“Well, I can’t sit around here talking to the likes of you all day, there’s always plenty of work to do,” Mary said, standing up and heading back behind the counter.
“Nice talking to you too,” Jules said, but either the sarcasm was lost on her, or she didn’t hear the words above the sound of the excited chatter. Jules took another sip of her coffee as she watched the line of people gratefully take their mugs. She looked across towards George and Maggie; she could tell they were feeling the same satisfaction. This has the makings of a great day, she thought to herself.
She spent the rest of the morning mingling with the newcomers, talking to Zeta, and getting very few of her chores done. It didn’t matter though. Jules had worked non-stop since they had first arrived at the Home and Garden Depot, and she deserved a morning like this.
She met up with Maggie and George again in the early afternoon, and they all sat at the same table where they had shared breakfast. The three of them watched happily as the children were served their lunches. Suddenly, the sound of a woman’s scream carved through every conversation in the building, rendering the whole store silent but for the last echoes of the shriek.
Jules shot to her feet, knocking her chair over, and as another scream rang out, she knew that the happiness had just been an illusion that everybody, including herself, had wilfully believed.
CHAPTER 14
Jules led the charge towards the direction of the noise. She did not look back but heard other chairs being pulled out from beneath tables and feet following hers. As she rounded the corner of the top aisle, she saw a small crowd gathered around the entrance to the warehouse. When she finally reached them, she understood the scream. The scavenger teams had arrived back. Ben and Josh were both covered in blood, but it wasn’t their own. They were carrying an older man wh
ose eyes were closed and skin was getting paler by the second. His body was riddled with gunshot wounds.
“What the fuck happened?” cried Jules as she looked beyond Ben and Josh towards the rest of the procession following them from the loading dock. There were several more wounded and bloody trails streaked across the floor.
“I’ll tell you later, we’ve got wounded,” Josh said.
Jules was horrified and confused and scared, but she could see the look in Josh’s eyes. He was all of that and more. “Okay, get them down to the cash office. Get the ones who have the worst wounds inside.” She turned around and caught sight of Andy and Jon. “You two, round up all the medical supplies we’ve got. Maggie, find us a couple of people who’ve done a first aid course or something. Anybody who you think might be able to help.” Jules spotted one of the kitchen assistants near the back of the small crowd that had gathered. “Kelly, go tell Mary we need boiling water, lots of it.” Andy, Jon, Maggie and Kelly immediately sprang into action.
“What do you want me to do?” George asked.
“Don’t leave my side,” she said under her breath before turning back to Josh. “Okay, come on, let’s get down there.”
The line started to move again, and Jules realised that she did not recognise all the faces. Reading her look, Ben said, “We found some people.”
“So I see.”
They reached the cash office, and three patients were carried in. They were in varying states of consciousness, but none of them looked good. More were sat down outside and made as comfortable as possible. Jules organised another small group to fetch the wounded water and help them in any way they could until Maggie or one of her recruits could take a look at them. There were twelve people needing attention altogether. The three with the worst wounds were out of sight, Jules had seen them briefly as they had been transported into the cash office; she did not hold high hopes. Kyle had been shot in the arm, but the bullet had gone straight through and, thanks to Josh applying a tourniquet within a minute of it happening, the bleeding had more or less stopped.
Other injuries were sprains, cuts and bruises. There were three older people who had been with the group they’d found. They looked shell-shocked and exhausted as they sat in the plastic chairs outside the office. When everybody who needed it had someone attending to them, Jules and George led Ben and Josh off to one side.
“So, what exactly happened?” George asked.
“We found three scavengers wandering as we were on our way to Blacks. They were out trying to get supplies for the rest of the group. They took us back to this little TV repair shop that they’d been hiding out in. There were ten altogether including two kids and the three old folks,” Josh said, pointing to the elderly people sitting outside the cash office. “Yesterday, there had been over forty of them. They’d tried heading to one of the supermarkets to get food but ran into a horde of infected. You can imagine what happened.”
“Jesus,” Jules said, looking around at the bewildered new faces.
“Yeah, well, we took them with us to Blacks. Got one of the box vans half full when we got hit.”
“Hit?”
“Yeah. Whoever they were, they came in guns blazing. Killed four of us before we knew what was happening. We put up as good a fight as we could while we got everybody loaded, but four more of us took bullets and we lost another three of the group we picked up this morning. They started following us, but we ran into a horde of zombies and they obviously decided it wasn’t worth the risk. We got back here on a wing and a prayer.”
“Jesus,” Jules said.
“We’ve used virtually all the ammo up. To be honest, I don’t think it’s a great idea for us to head out on any more scavenging missions. I think the next time we leave this place, it should be to evacuate. If we run into that army again no way are we going to be as lucky.”
“Lucky? You call this lucky?” Jules said.
“Trust me. I didn’t think any of us were going to make it back at one stage.”
Jules rubbed her hands over her face. “And these new people … do they have weapons? Do we know anything about them?”
“Well, three of them died during the raid. There are the three seniors, the two kids, and two women. None of them look like they’ve eaten in days. There are a mother and daughter among them. They lost their family to the horde yesterday. The woman hasn’t spoken since.”
“Jesus, I can’t say I blame her.”
“That’s everybody in now,” Ben said. “I’ll get the box van unloaded and then—”
“I’ve been thinking,” interrupted Jules. “When you’ve unloaded, take all the vehicles round to next door’s loading bay.”
“What? Why?” Ben asked.
“If someone comes looking, we don’t want to give them clues that there’s anybody still here.”
Ben, Josh and George all raised their eyebrows. “That’s a good idea,” Ben said.
“Yeah, I have them occasionally.”
“Right, I’ll get that sorted,” he replied, heading off in the direction of the loading bay.
“I’ll give you a hand,” Josh said, following him.
When they were gone, Jules turned to George. “What do you think?”
“About what?” he asked as they stood there, arms folded, looking towards the hive of activity in front of them.
“Do you think we should head out sooner?”
“Let’s take a little walk, shall we?” George said, guiding Jules away from the area and towards one of the quieter parts of the warehouse. “Getting out of here and heading north depended on us getting more fuel for the vehicles. Food’s okay for the time being, and I thought our trips for the airbeds and the sleeping bags would make people a little happier with their lot while the rest of the preparations took place. If we’re not going out to look for fuel, though, we’re not going to get very far at all.”
“When you say not very far at all, just how far is that?”
“A few of the vehicles are pretty much running on fumes as it is.”
“So you’re telling me that right this minute we’re going nowhere, and if we don’t head out to find fuel, then we’re going to be stuck here. We’ll gradually run out of supplies and slowly die surrounded by a city full of the undead.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to put it like that, but in a nutshell, yes.”
“Fuckin’ brilliant. Well, there’s no option. If Josh and Ben won’t head back out there, I’m going to have to go. We need that fuel.”
“I’ll speak to them. I’ll try to impress on them how important it is to the plan working.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. I can’t really say I blame them. If I got attacked by a small army, I’m not sure I’d be inclined to head back out there either. But, ultimately, we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t.”
“Ultimately, yes,” George replied grimly and removed his tobacco pipe, carefully placing it between his lips. He was about to light it up when the sound of footsteps made both him and Jules turn around.
Maggie had tears in her eyes as she approached. “We couldn’t do anything for them,” she said, burying her face in Jules’s shoulder.
Jules hugged her friend and gently rubbed one hand up and down her back. “None of them?” Jules asked, locking eyes with George.
“All three. We couldn’t find a pulse for Marcus or Bruce as soon as they came in. Paul only hung on for another couple of minutes. They’d just lost too much blood.”
“If we had a team of doctors and the most up-to-date surgery in the country, nobody could have done anything for them.”
“Such a waste. Such a waste of good men.”
Jules continued to hold her. “It never gets easier, does it?”
“It never does,” Maggie replied, still sobbing.
“Look, I need to head back and check on everyone. George, take Maggie to my office, I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“A pleasure,” George said and stretched his ar
m around Maggie’s shoulders as he escorted her down the aisle towards the offices.
Jules watched them as they walked away and when they were out of sight let out a shivering breath, doing her best to hold back the floods of tears she could feel welling behind her eyes. “Jules! Where’s Maggie?” Kyle shouted as he ran around the corner.
“Why, what is it?”
“One of the women that came in has just collapsed.”
“Come on; let’s go take a look,” Jules replied. “Maggie needs a few minutes to herself.” Jules looked down at Kyle’s arm as they walked briskly back towards the makeshift infirmary. “How are you feeling?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
“No. I was being polite.”
Kyle smiled. “In that case, I feel fantastic.”
“Good.” As they reached the small crowd that had gathered, the woman who had collapsed began to rouse. She looked almost white as if all the blood had somehow been drained from her. A small child, her daughter, stood beside her looking fretful.
“I’m alright. I’m just a little faint. It’s been so long since we’ve eaten anything,” the woman said.
“Somebody, please see Mary about getting these people some food as soon as possible,” Jules said, crouching down by the side of the woman. “My name’s Jules, and who might you be?” She looked towards the young girl.
“I’m Daniella,” the woman said, “and this is my daughter, Gretel.”
“Gretel?” Jules replied, smiling. “What a lovely name.” She turned towards Daniella. “Are you injured at all?”
The little girl was about to say something, and her mother grabbed her wrist to silence her. “No, I just feel very weak. I’ll be fine when I’ve eaten and rested. We haven’t really slept in the last day or so either.”
“Then I’m not surprised you’re feeling faint. Look, we’ll get you something to eat, then we’ll get you and Gretel settled in a bedsit.”
“A bedsit?”
Jules smiled. “Sorry, force of habit. That’s what I call them cos they’re not much smaller than the first bedsit I rented when I came across here. We cleared out lots of the stock bays and put some sheeting around them so people could have a little privacy.”
Before Safe Haven (Book 4): Jules Page 10