Before Safe Haven (Book 4): Jules

by Artinian, Christopher

  “That sounds like luxury compared to what we’ve been used to,” Daniella replied.

  A procession of people carrying trays of food began to arrive, proudly led by Mary. “Look,” Jules said, “get something to eat, and I’ll get you a couple of airbeds, and sleeping bags set up; then you can have a proper rest. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds perfect,” Daniella answered with a smile on her face.

  The food was distributed, and Jules stood up, immediately heading off to arrange the accommodation for the newcomers. By mid-afternoon, the new arrivals were settled. They all had full bellies and gratefully moved into their luxurious new apartments, equipped with all the latest post-apocalyptic mod-cons, including dynamo lanterns, water flasks and car air fresheners.

  For the rest of the day, little work was done with regards to the preparations for the planned mass evacuation, and Jules was still conflicted as to whether to share the insight George had given her with the rest of the group. After the initial excitement and flurry of activity as the scavenger teams arrived back, the reality of the situation had begun to dawn on people. The ones who had laid down their lives had not had relatives or indeed anyone close at the Home and Garden Depot, but still, they were part of the community, and their loss was mourned. At dinner time, there was a small gathering while the new arrivals continued to sleep, and Jules said a few words in tribute to the people who had given their lives for the benefit of others.

  Soon after dinner, people retired to their living spaces. Considering how upbeat the morning had been, the day had taken a depressing turn, but hopefully, a good night’s sleep would help Jules, George and Maggie come up with an idea that would get things back on track.

  The soft glow of LED lanterns behind the plastic and cloth partitions slowly diminished as darkness fell and people started to put their heads down for the night.

  Jules was about to turn hers off when there was a light tapping on the outside of the tarpaulin that covered her cubicle; she pulled it back a little to reveal Ben standing there.

  “Can I talk to you?” he whispered.

  “Now? I’m just about to go to sleep.”

  “It won’t take two minutes.”

  Jules looked across to see sheets covering the opposite cubicles begin to twitch. She tutted and climbed out of her sleeping bag. “Come on,” she whispered, placing a hand on his back and guiding him down towards the front of the store where a single lantern hung above the cash office door.

  “I haven’t been able to think about anything else since it all happened ... y’know ... the other day at the school. Everything turned to shit in a split second and I made a wrong choice. Then, by not coming clean, I made another wrong choice straight away. When I said I was sorry, I meant it. You and I … we had something.”

  “Had being the operative word.” As soon as the sentence came out of her mouth, she regretted it. She was not happy with Ben, not by a long way, but coming out with something hurtful just for the sake of it wasn’t like Jules.

  “I—”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I just want to try to make things right with you. I want to make it so at least we can talk again, normally I mean.”

  Jules looked at him in the glow of the lantern. “Let’s take it one day at a time.”

  “Okay, that’s a start.”

  “Now, it’s been a long and incredibly shitty day, I need to get a bit of sl—” The sound of a child crying close by cut Jules off in mid-sentence. “What the fuck is that now?” she said as they both left the small arc of light they stood in to go in search of the sound.

  Ben flicked his torch on, but before they had the chance to stray too far, Gretel appeared at the end of aisle five, where she and her mother had been housed. Ben shone the torch beam towards her tear-drenched face and Jules ran across to her. “Mummy!” was all the little girl could say before breaking down in tears again. In Gretel’s hand, there was a folded piece of paper. Jules took it and was about to open it up when a bone-chilling howl tore through the quiet like an axe blade through cookie dough.

  CHAPTER 15

  Jules immediately straightened up. The sound was unmistakable. There was an infected somewhere in the vast warehouse, and someone else was being attacked. “Arm yourselves!” Jules shouted at the top of her voice. “Arm yourselves. There’s one inside the building.” There was not a man, woman or child who did not understand what the one referred to, and, straight away, lanterns were turned on all over as panicked chatter and stifled screams began to reverberate through the dim interior of the showroom.

  “Jules!” Ben shouted, grabbing a fifteen-hundred-millimetre pitchfork from a Best Buy end and tossing it towards her.

  Jules snatched it out of the air and began to run in the direction the sound had come from. Ben took one of the pitchforks himself and sprinted after her, leaving the forlorn little girl standing there, beginning to howl herself as the tension and fear became more palpable by the second.

  People quickly emerged from their plastic-covered cocoons brandishing lanterns, torches, and a wide array of weapons ranging from crowbars and hatchets to broom handles and clawhammers. Then something appeared carrying nothing at all, followed by a second figure. Even in the dim glow of the artificial lights, Jules could see instantly that these … things were no longer her comrades or even her species. Their skin was a ghoulish grey, and in this meagre illumination, their eyes were black as pitch.

  The beasts paused for the briefest moment, almost as if acclimatising themselves to the dim interior, or maybe it was just indecision as to which body to begin feeding on first. But then Hell did in fact break loose.

  The creature that had been Daniella leapt towards a twelve-year-old boy who she had arrived with earlier in the day. The child stood there, the screwdriver he held in his hand forgotten as he instantly lost control of his bladder on seeing this flying monster hurtling through the air towards him. The speed and ferocity of the attack were so great that he did not even have time to scream. He gargled blood as tears pooled in his eyes and the rest of his senses finally caught up with what was happening.

  The second beast that had followed the Daniella thing out of the cubicle took two long strides before launching towards a terrified looking woman, still standing in the mouth of her own shanty dwelling. The decorator’s dust sheet that had been her door separating herself from the outside world still rested against her shoulder as she stood half in, half out, frozen in time as the horrifying events unfolded. The beast tackled her hard, and both figures went cascading into the cubicle, the dust sheet falling back into place like a theatre curtain at the close of a performance.

  As Jules continued to sprint up the aisle, she heard Ben behind her shout, “Kill them for Christ’s sake!”

  Everybody seemed to be glued to the floor, unable to tear their eyes away from the unfolding horror show that was playing out in front of them. No sooner had Jules reached the scene and readied her pitchfork like an angry villager chasing Frankenstein down the street than Daniella pounced once more. The twelve-year-old boy had fallen still, the light of the lanterns thankfully too dim to make his tears glisten, but his fate was clearly sealed. Jules raised her weapon, ready to plunge the tines through the boy’s head before he turned into one of these abominations, when the opaque plastic sheeting from where Daniella and the other creature had first emerged flew open once more.

  “Fuck!” Jules gasped, spinning towards this other monster that now stood there in a similar state of wavering indecision as the first two. It had not been uncommon for lonely, lost, frightened souls to find comfort in the arms of others on the cold, dark nights in the Home and Garden Depot – much like Jules had with Ben – but on this night, comfort was the last thing these two poor souls found. Jules lunged towards the scrawny-looking beast before it got the opportunity to do the same. With a roar, she raised her fork and speared the creature’s head. Two prongs disappeared through its eye sockets be
fore reappearing at the back of its skull. The beast remained there for a fragment of a moment before slipping off the fork like a chunk of rotten meat.

  Jules twisted back around, turning her attention to the boy once again; thankfully, she was too late. In the brief time she had been dealing with the other beast, the boy had opened his eyes, only they weren’t his eyes anymore. The figure had started to climb to its feet, and as she watched now, Ben thrust his pitchfork up through its head. The combination of adrenaline and her former lover’s powerful physique almost flung the young creature into orbit. There was a sickening slurping sound as its head left the prongs of the fork. Its body flew two metres back, landing heavily on the Daniella thing that had already taken a chunk out of its third victim.

  Another terrified scream rose into the air from what sounded like the next aisle. Ben and Jules shot each other the quickest of glances as the same chilling thought clutched them both at the same time. Ben flung back the plastic sheet that the second creature and the young woman had disappeared behind. Bloody swirls decorated the inside of the cubicle and the thick tarpaulin that hung behind, but the small compartment itself was empty. This was running away from them fast. “You stay here, I’ll head through to the other aisle,” he said, charging through the tarpaulin before the plastic sheet even had time to fall back into place.

  Just seconds had passed since Ben and Jules had arrived on the scene, but already it had seemed like an age. Some people were still frozen in fear in the mouths of their cubicles, unable to believe what was happening. Jules raised her fork again, ready to finish off the Daniella creature, but then, like a switch had suddenly turned on inside them, the rest of the spectators jolted into action.

  Daniella, leaving yet another victim lying lifeless on the ground, leapt through the air towards Mary, who had been amongst the audience, just gawping in incredulity at what had been happening. Even now, as the beast flew at her, she stood there, unable to move, unable to believe. Then, out of nowhere, a man in his fifties let out a yawp and shoulder barged the creature, knocking it off course and causing it to crash hard against the sturdy metal frame of one of the giant shelving units. Not giving the monster a second’s respite to gather itself, he dived, raising his homemade truncheon with nails through it, and then smashed it down into the creature’s head as he landed. The Daniella thing did not rouse. One blow and it was all over, but that did not stop the man pulling his weapon from its skull and pummelling the beast’s head several more times.

  Another cry of pain soared from the adjacent aisle, and as more people joined the fight to finish off the other creatures, Jules flung back the plastic sheeting that Ben had disappeared through seconds before and dived beneath the tarpaulin. As she rolled out of the other side, the gory violence from the first aisle looked positively sedate compared to the scene of carnage that she was now witnessing.

  “We need help in aisle three,” she yelled as footsteps from all around the cavernous showroom began to slap across the linoleum towards them. As in the other aisle, people had come out of their small domiciles, placing their lanterns on the ground to cast enough light for all the living to see what was going on. It was common knowledge that the beasts, the creatures, the infected, the zombies, the things … whatever people chose to call them, had amazing vision at night. It was one of the reasons they were so lethal and so terrifying, not that they needed any help.

  There were numerous battles going on as people up and down the aisle were fending off or fighting freshly turned monsters. How these things could turn so quickly was something that often made Jules wonder if there was more at work than biology and chemistry. She had come face-to-face with more than her fair share. She had glared into those jet-black pupils and felt the malevolence behind them as they stared back at her. She was a lapsed Catholic but had never stopped believing altogether, and now Jules wondered whether, if she made it out of this, she should pick up a set of rosary beads the next time they went out to scavenge … assuming she lived past tonight.

  The shouts, screams, grunts and running feet all combined to create an arrhythmic symphony of the damned. It became hard to focus on any one sound, so it was instinct more than anything else that made Jules turn. The beast was already within striking distance and her mouth fell open as she desperately tried to bring her weapon up to defend herself. It was too late. The thing lunged and Jules’s eyes widened to the size of golf balls as she realised her life was over.

  Suddenly all the noise stopped. The only sound she could hear was her own breathing. She could feel her chest heaving in and out; feel the hairs on the back of her arms and neck ripple with terror as this startling realisation overwhelmed her. Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed—

  The monster’s grasping fingers were millimetres away from Jules when the hideous thing veered off course. For a second, she could not comprehend what was going on; then she saw Ben, flying through the air like Superman rescuing Lois Lane. He and the beast crashed into one of the cubicles, disappearing behind the thick cotton sheet doorway. Jules was about to fling back the curtain when she heard the petrified scream of a young girl. She looked up to see Gretel at the bottom of the aisle, watching on in terror as a creature tore towards her.

  Jules’s eyes flicked from side to side, surely there was someone who could get to the girl before the beast, but everyone was tied up with their own battles. Jules started to run, hoping more than anything that Ben would be able to manage the monster alone. Her eyes immediately caught sight of a creature lying motionless on the ground. Ben’s pitchfork stuck out of its head. He must have literally just done that before diving to her rescue. Surely he had a secondary weapon? The beast that was closing in on Gretel was an older man in life, not as fast or nimble as Jules, but she realised quickly that she did not have the speed to chase him down before he reached the young girl.

  Jules hurled her pitchfork along the floor as if she was bowling a ball towards some pins. The four-pronged missile skimmed across the surface and Jules stayed in her bowling pose for just a moment before continuing her sprint after the creature. The fork began to turn then roll, bouncing off the floor surface; then finally it reached its target. Jules held her breath as it passed below the beast but then the creature’s right foot caught underneath the shaft, carrying forward and smashing it against the Achilles of its left foot. The monster crashed to the floor giving Jules the vital seconds she needed.

  She came to a skidding stop as the creature gathered itself. Jules swooped down picking up the long-handled pitchfork and positioning herself in between the monster and the little girl. The creature pounced, launching itself into the air in one giant leap. Jules edged one of her feet back to give herself the best balance and poise she could before thrusting the fork upwards. The centre tines disappeared into the beast’s gaping mouth before breaking through the back of its skull. In less than the blink of an eye, it was all over.

  Jules looked beyond the lifeless monstrosity at the end of her pitchfork to the battles that were still going on up and down the aisle. She flung the creature from her weapon with contempt, the adrenaline, for the time being anyway, giving her more strength than she knew she had in her. More people had gathered at the top of the aisle and hurriedly made their way down, weapons raised to aid those in need. Jules looked behind her to see that Gretel had now been bundled away to safety. Before she could say a word, a group of men, including her brothers, rushed forwards and began to attack the attackers. Jules’s brain kicked into gear once more and she started to run down the centre of the aisle back towards where she had left Ben a few seconds before. Her heart lifted when the sheet he had disappeared behind was flung back and he emerged into the soft glow of the lanterns. He turned towards her with his hand held up to his neck then fell to his knees.

  Jules got closer and realised what had happened. Blood, black in the artificial light, was trickling between his fingers. His face looked pained and was getting paler by the second. She walked up to him as he knelt down in
front of her. The surrounding fracas and raging fights were all but forgotten for the time being. Jules placed a gentle hand on the head of her former lover as he looked up towards her pleadingly. His breathing was laboured, and his eyes kept opening and closing as if he was fighting sleep.

  “I’m sorry,” he rasped.

  “I’m sorry too, darlin’,” she replied, and tears began to roll down her face.

  Ben’s left hand came up suddenly. It was clutching a screwdriver. The blade disappeared into his temple, and he collapsed forward, still clutching his neck. There was a loud crack as his skull smashed against the floor; Jules watched the black treacle pool around him. In the end, he had done the right thing. He had saved her life, and more than that, he had freed her from the obligation to kill him.

  She carried on standing there as the fraught sounds around her died down to sad cries and disbelieving whispers. She could not pull her eyes away from Ben’s body, and it was not until she felt a gentle arm around her that she finally looked up.

  “Come on, love. It’s all over now,” George said quietly.

  Jules stared at him for a few seconds, the tears still streaming down her face. “No. Don’t you realise? This is Hell, and damnation is eternal.”

  CHAPTER 16

  George grabbed a clean handkerchief out of his pocket. How he managed to keep a supply of clean handkerchiefs during a zombie apocalypse, Jules would never understand, but he dabbed the tears from her face and then handed it to her. She unfolded it and blew her nose. “Don’t worry; I’ll make sure I wash this before I give it back to you.”

  “Tell you what, you keep that one. I’ve got plenty.”

  They both shared a sad smile and looked down towards Ben one final time before George led Jules away, leaving Josh and Kyle to organise the removal of the bodies and the clean-up.