by Talia Mason
The cat deftly side stepped the oncoming pillow and jumped up onto the bed to continue his demands.
“I take it its breakfast time then, is it?” Gracie said getting out of bed.
After she had fed the cat and had herself eaten a quick breakfast of cold rice pudding straight from the can Gracie went out to the range rover on the drive way and slipped the pair of swords down the side of the cars seat.
The first ten minutes was taken up by working out what some of the buttons and levers did that were spread about the console and steering wheel but none of which seemed really important now that she was the only road user.
After a few more moments she had gotten to grips with the foot pedals and by the time she had crossed the fields her control of the vehicle had improved and the ride had become smoother.
As she drove the field track ways she was beginning to wonder why she hadn’t learnt to drive sooner.
As she had pulled onto the empty main road that marked the boundary between the farmland and the village she had realized that her confidence stemmed from the fact that there was nobody to object if she were to make a mistake, crash into their car or hold up traffic, nor was there a need for the use of indicators, highway code and driver etiquette.
Her first destination was to be the hardware store in the hope that amongst the shelves there she might find the oil and wicks that would make the old oil lamps that she had found in the house operational, yet as she drove through the village she saw the motor spares store and she remembered the need for a pump for collecting fuel.
Gracie was about to return to the range rover when a stack of big green petrol cans on the lowest shelf by the door caught her attention, each according to its label would hold twenty liter’s of fuel.
After throwing the pump into the passenger seat of the car Gracie grabbed two of the cans and wedged them in the passenger foot well of the range rover before going back twice more collecting two at a time and stacking them on the passenger seat.
Jumping back into the car she drove around the corner to the village’s high street where the main bulk of the village’s shops were located and pulled up onto the pedestrian forecourt of the hardware store as close to the shops door as she could.
Just as she was about to climb out of the vehicle she caught sight of a movement reflected in the rear view mirror out of the corner of her eye.
Turning to get a better view through the rear windscreen, she saw one of the undead making its slow stumbling way towards the rear of the range rover.
Gracie recognized the person that the rotting, reanimated corpse had once been and with a sneer of disgust remembered their past encounters.
Many of the residents of the village had once feared the man who he had been, his thuggish behaviour and self-entitled attitude making them wary of his attention.
Gracie herself had experienced more than one run in with the man, but unlike most, she refused to be cowed by his threats of violence and attempts at intimidation.
Even though there seemed to be little of the monster he had once been in the monster that he now was the thought of ending his existence was not unappealing.
As she watched his decaying form move inch by inch closer to the rear of the range rover Gracie began to think that his new personality was a vast improvement upon the man he had once been.
“What the hell” Gracie said to herself as she slammed the range rover into reverse and stamped hard on the accelerator, feeling a satisfying bump as the vehicle bounced over his body on its way across the forecourt.
Stepping on the break and putting the car back into drive Gracie let out a deep sigh of satisfaction as she watched the corpse laid on the paved area before her.
The arms of the undead twitched and then it raised its head although its legs and torso had been ravaged and mangled by the grip and weight of the range rover’s tires.
“Fuck it” Gracie said before urging the range rover forward once more driving over the undead as he struggled to rise without understanding that he was too damaged to do so and in truth should already be dead twice over by now.
This time Gracie drove slower, steering the range rover more carefully so that the driver side wheels lined up with the undead’s skull and crushed it with a satisfying crack and squelch.
This time as Gracie sat staring at the mangled corpse through her rear view mirror there was clearly no possibility of it rising again, its crushed skull spilling its decayed contents across the paving slabs and leaving a perfect print of the range rovers chunky tires in the vehicles wake.
“Better, much better.” Gracie sighed letting go of six year’s worth of hate and fury.
After picking up the flashlight from the centre console and Grabbing one of the swords from down the side of the driver's seat Gracie opened the range rover’s door and hopped down to the pavement before slamming the door closed again.
Once in the hardware store Gracie had some trouble finding the lamp oil that she was looking for but she did find a hosepipe and an adaptor that looked as though it could possibly be made to fit the spout of the cold-water pump in the scullery.
Going through the door behind the counter Gracie found herself in the storeroom at the rear of the shop where rows of shelving were crowded with boxes of all sizes.
Towards the rear corner of the storeroom Gracie found what she was looking for, crate upon crate of six, five litre plastic bottles of lamp oil secured together with thick, clear polythene were stacked on one of the lower shelves beneath a layer of dust and grime that told of years of redundancy.
Grabbing the flat bed trolley from by the open doors of the loading bay and a partially unloaded van Gracie stacked the six crates of oil on the trolley along with all of the reels of lamp wick from the shelf above before dragging the trolley to the shops front door.
Gracie stood with her nose pressed to the glass of the shops large front window, peering through a gap between the notices taped to the glass that advertised varied services from painters and decorators to builders and pest control.
She was unable to see any of the undead, not even the rotting corpse of one of their own had drawn them out and this to Gracie felt somehow wrong and worrying.
“Where are they?” Gracie asked the empty shop. “Why hasn’t all that Spoiled blood drawn them out?”
Not wanting to hang about long enough to find out she opened the shop door and dragged the trolley to the rear passenger door of the range rover, stacked the crates of oil in the rear seats and threw the reels of wick into the rear foot well leaving the substantial boot space free for the supermarket visit.
Pushing the trolley back into the shop Gracie noticed the stand of batteries by the counter alongside a display of solar powered camping lamps.
Rushing to the rear of the shop Gracie stepped behind the counter once more, grabbed a stack of polythene shopping bags from beneath the cash register, and dropped them on the counter with a dull thud.
Beneath the thud of the bags, there was another sound, the jangle of keys falling to the floor.
Looking down Gracie saw that she had knocked a bunch of keys off the shelf beneath the counter, which could quite possibly contain the keys to the shop.
Grabbing the keys and shoving them into her pocket Gracie took up a bag and began to empty the packets of batteries into it and then another until the stand was completely empty before shoving the solar lamps into more bags.
After she had put the shopping bags in the back of the range rover with the lamp oil Gracie returned to the rear storeroom, closed and locked the doors before rushing through and out of the shop.
Gracie fumbled through the keys on the ring and tried three before finding the right one before locking the door and pulling down the shutter.
The key to the shutter was easier to find as it was shaped differently to the others of the bunch and soon the shop was locked up and Gracie was again in the driver’s seat of the range rover.
During the drive through the desert
ed streets to the super market Gracie saw none of the undead.
This, the main commercial area of the village should have been the area where most of the undead would gather as in death they mindlessly stuck to the habits and routines that they had lived by.
Their absence, rather than feeling like a blessing, made Gracie feel uneasy.
Driving past the car park entrance Gracie steered the range rover onto the footpath and turned the car to drive onto the supermarkets forecourt, barely missing crashing into one of the concrete bollards that separated the car park from the pedestrian Area.
She reversed the Range Rover through the supermarkets double width automatic doors that had stuck in the open position when the electricity network went down.
As the pandemic had spread so quickly and most of its victims had succumbed before there had been any warnings of the severity of the outbreak or the speed at which it were spreading there had been little to no looting of the shelves of the village shops.
Those who were still alive after they had seen what was happening, or after the news had broke, had hidden away in their homes by their TVs or radios too afraid to venture out beyond the safety of their locked doors.
Now all that Gracie needed sat on the supermarket shelves, waiting for her to come along and help herself, with nobody to take payment and nobody to object.
Out of all of the places that she would visit on her hunt for resources the supermarket posed the greatest risk, its aisles of shelves and storerooms, staffrooms and offices formed a maze of blind corners from which the undead could spring at any time.
Months ago, before the outbreak, the supermarket had been one of the busiest places in the village with people coming and going from the early morning and throughout the day until late at night increasing the risk that one of the undead who were regular customers in life may now return and find Gracie, a fresh meal, wondering the aisles.
The light that spilled in through the open door only reached halfway along the row of checkouts leaving the majority of the cavernous space in shadow and darkness.
Parking the range rover by the row of checkout counters that stood between her and the aisles Gracie grabbed the torch out of the centre console and clicked it on before climbing out of the car and pulling one of the swords out from where she had wedged them between the passenger seat and the center console.
The sickly sweet scent of rotting fruit that blew in from the produce stand by the doors hit Gracie the second that she opened the door of the range rover, turning her stomach and causing her to feel nauseas.
Starting with the cigarette counter, Gracie looked behind each of the checkouts looking for the keys that would lock the doors and keep the undead out, leaving her safe to load up the range rover without constantly having to look over her shoulder.
Gracie drew a blank in her search for the keys behind the checkouts so by the light of her torch she hurried down the stores centre aisle, towards the rear of the supermarket where the doors to the storeroom and offices were located by the bakery counter.
Further towards the back of the store the unpleasant smell changed from that of rotting fruit to the scent of decaying meat coming from the next aisle where the open fronted refrigerators held packets of what had once been fresh meat.
Gracie was suddenly glad that she had not chosen to pass through that aisle, knowing from past experience that the gasses given off by the rotting meat would have first caused the pack to bloat and then explode, spewing forth a rancid rotting slime.
The cloying aroma of decay masked the scent of the rotting corpse that made its stumbling way along the next aisle, hidden from Gracie’s view by shelves of cereal boxes.
It was the soft sound of movement caused by the undead lurching towards her right side as Gracie stepped out from the end of the aisle that made her instinctively swing the sword in its direction, slicing off a portion of its shoulder before the blade became jammed in the hard plastic of a reduced goods stand.
As she had spun in the swinging of the sword, the beam of the flashlight had fallen upon the uniformed body and the face of the undead revealing the decayed, peeling flesh of the man who had once been the shops security guard.
In a horrified panic Gracie kicked out at the undead, feeling the squelch of rotting flesh beneath her boot and the corpse’s clothes as her boot made contact with its stomach.
The motion wrenched the sword free of the hard plastic display stand which almost unbalanced Gracie and sent her sprawling on the blood slicked floor, yet through instinct and luck she regained her footing and swung the sword again.
The undead’s head rolled from its shoulders to hit the floor with a sickening wet thud as the body swayed limply before falling to the oily black rotting blood smeared floor.
Gracie turned away from the decayed mess that had once been human, had worked, played, loved and lived all unaware that it might one day become the soulless thing of nightmares.
Fighting the urge to pass out and struggling to get her breath between violent retches brought on by a combination of shock and disgust Gracie stumbled past the bakery counter and through the heavy double fire doors into the storeroom.
Once in the fresher, cleaner air of the storeroom the tide of panic and horror passed and her breath came to her without the resistance of her body.
Gracie wondered around the storeroom, more cautious now in the knowledge that she may not be the only one moving through the aisles of shelves and piled boxes, yet she found no one Else there either living or dead.
Eventually she came to a staircase against the back wall and stood on the lowest step, looking up at a small landing where it turned back into the building partway up, and listened for the sounds that would give away the existence of anybody on the floor above.
Gracie heard nothing and as she made her way up the stairs and paused on that small landing listening for a warning shuffle It was not a sound that reached her but the scent of true death and decay.
“Why does everything have to smell so fucking bad?” Gracie groaned to herself as she climbed the rest of the stairs.
Unsure and trying to work out how she could tell the difference between the true dead and the undead just from scent Gracie came to a standstill at the top of the stairs.
Before her lay a long corridor off which there were red painted doors to each side and another at its very end.
The smell was stronger at the top of the stairs, a constant reminder that, at best, behind one of these doors was a truly dead body or, at worst, a truly dead body being feasted on by an undead.
The first room opened into a staff kitchen filled with the sound of the large buzzing flies and complete with a part eaten plate of food crawling with maggots on an ancient chipped Formica table.
Gracie closed the door softly as her brief glance around the room had revealed no sign of the keys she sought and she had no desire to spend any time in a room infested with blue bottle flies.
The door opposite the kitchen opened into a locker room, all of its four walls lined with red metal lockers and a bench running along the room’s centre.
The next two rooms facing each other were women’s and men’s bathrooms, each containing a shower cubicle in the far corner from the door.
The next four rooms seemed to be extra storage rooms and were piled high with boxes and crates.
Gracie stood outside the last door, frozen between reaching out and turning the handle and running down the stairs, jumping into the range rover and going back to the house far away from the undead, the dead or the stench of decay.
The longer that she stood staring at the scratched red paint of the door the more her apprehension at what she would find on the other side grew.
Finally she reached out and turned the handle as she drew in a deep breath of the marginally fresher air on the outside of the door, with torch and sword at the ready she pushed the door and stepped into the room, the doors handle still within her grip.
The smell was like a soli
d force driving her back out of the room as she stepped back out, pulling the door closed behind her and turned to vomit on the grey linoleum floor of the corridor.
Again and again Gracie wretched although there was no longer anything left in her stomach to produce, tears ran from her eyes and thick viscous snot ran from her nose making it increasingly difficult to breathe in the foul air.
Soon the pit of her stomach began to feel as though it were being wrenched up through her chest yet still all that she could see was the rotting corpse laid in a pool of its own fluids and crawling with insects.
Yet as her mind registered and played through all of those horrific details one other detail kept springing to the fore of Gracie’s mind, the huge bunch of keys clipped to his front belt loop.
Now that the keys were within her reach all thoughts of running away and leaving the job undone had faded from Gracie’s mind and though she didn’t relish the thought of having to reach out and unclip the keys from the dead man’s belt loop she certainly would appreciate having the supermarkets stock to bulk up her meager resources.