Chapter 14
Happy Larry
“Don’t do anything stupid while we’re gone,” Chuck warned Amy sternly, as he laced up his boots in the darkness of the flat.
“Like what?” Amy asked, annoyed at being spoken to like that.
“Like trying to take those two to the cordon,” he clarified, nodding over at the two strange men on the sofa.
“Of course I won’t,” Amy said.
“You know what would happen to you, don’t you?” Chuck asked her.
“Of course I do.”
Chuck gave the woman his most authoritative stare. He wasn’t sure she was taking him seriously. “I just don’t want you getting yourself killed. You do understand that, don’t you?”
Amy gave him a steely look. “Of course I do.”
Chuck grumbled and looked down at the bow he was making. Amy grinned.
Margaret, lacking the upper body strength for concussive weapons to do much good in her hands, still preferred blades. In the kitchen, she took the two largest knives from the draw and slid them down behind her belt. Her heart was beginning to race a little at the thought of going back outside but she refused to let it show.
Night had long since drawn in and they had put off what they needed to do long enough.
“Okay, let’s go,” Chuck said decisively, heading for the door.
Jay slapped the end of his bat against his palm a couple of times and followed Margaret, as the woman went out after Chuck.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be back before you know it,” Muz said to Amy, in response to her apprehensive expression.
“Good luck,” Tom said, still wishing he was going with them.
The four of them headed down the stairs. Their collective silence wasn’t just due to the tension. They were listening out for any sounds that might be their only clue that someone had managed to gain entry to the tower and was waiting for them around the next turn in the stairwell.
In the ground floor foyer, they saw the barricade still in place against the doors. As quietly as they could, they dragged the furniture aside and stepped out into the night. It was extremely dark outside, despite the presence of the street lights. The group had to tell themselves that as unnerving as the darkness was, the cannibals wandering around out here had to be able to see less than they could.
They scurried up to the Jankel and climbed in as fast as they could. Muz had made sure that he had kept the key on him at all times, day and night, and so jumped into the driver’s seat. Chuck claimed shotgun, while Margaret and Jay sat themselves in the rear.
“Make sure the back doors and those sliding windows are shut tight and locked,” Muz called back over his shoulder, as he started up the engine. “We don’t need any small animals managing to get in.”
Jay double checked, rattling all the handles. “We’re good,” he said.
“And everybody keep your eyes peeled for anything bigger than a man,” the copper added. He didn’t want to go through again what he had with that police horse.
“And don’t forget dat man-eatin’ bogey fing dat ate Carl,” Jay reminded him.
Muz really hoped they didn’t bump into that blob and scowled over his shoulder at Jay for bringing it to his mind. Were those tentacles powerful enough to smash through the toughened glass of the Jankel’s windows, he wondered. Would squashing it under the wheels of the truck kill it? Hopefully, the weird snot monster was long gone and it wouldn’t come to that.
“Okay, let’s just get going,” Chuck said. Muz’s obvious apprehension was beginning to get on his own nerves.
Muz edged the vehicle forward off the grass, taking care not to spin the wheels in the soft dirt.
The night was particularly cold and a film of frost had already settled on all the cars. Those few afflicted people they came across seemed incapable of any movement, literally frozen solid where they stood. As the Jankel passed them by, the only animation they could muster was a slight frustrated juddering. Quiet cracked moans could be heard emerging from their frost bitten larynxes.
Muz was startled to hear a metallic rattling nearby but tried to calm himself when he saw its source. One of the rotting victims had someone got one side of his face frozen to a car bonnet. As his frozen muscles shuddered in their best effort to pull him free, the cover of the engine compartment beat against the surrounding bodywork. The man must have collapsed onto the car in exhaustion brought on by malnutrition, Muz guessed.
“See, there’s nothing to worry about,” Chuck told the others. “The dead won’t be putting up much of a fight tonight.”
The walking corpses stunk worse now than they ever had, Chuck decided. The fetid stench of their rotting mingled with the putrid odour of eight days’ worth of faeces that was crusted down the backs of their legs.
Muz wove his way through the estate, until he reached the far end, passing through a square arch that ran through a newish more affluent-looking block. How much had people paid to live in the flats in that building, Muz wondered. How many of those people had moved in without even being aware of the scum they would be living right next door to?
Appearing out the other side of the block, the Jankel joined Spur Road and turned left towards Canons Corner roundabout. Muz drove them along the road for no more than twenty metres then turned left again into the forecourt of the petrol station. They could see the roundabout from here, and just visible in the darkness, were several tall concrete barriers and coils of razor wire on its far exit. They marked this section of the western cordon.
There had clearly been some kind of stand-off on the forecourt. Cars had been lined up to form a wall of cover, protecting their owners from the rifle fire of the soldiers on the far side of the A5. It had ended badly for the civilians though. Car bodies didn’t stop rifle bullets, as the holes riddling their chassis and the many prostrate bodies lying behind them bore testament to.
Muz backed the rear doors of the truck up to entrance of the petrol station, accidentally crunching the wheels over more than one corpse as he did so. He tried to ignore the brilliant little red dots of light beginning to dance around on the bonnet and windscreen.
“Let’s get in there and get this done,” Muz said, hurriedly clambering between the two front seats, to get to the rear away from those laser sights.
As Jay pushed open the doors, they saw that someone had, as they had expected, beat them to the punch. A hole in the shattered lower glass panel of one of the twin doors showed the previous looters’ point of entry.
“Be careful, there could still be someone in there,” Chuck warned Jay, as the boy squatted down and climbed through the hole in the glass.
Inside, to their relief, there was still plenty of food for the taking. Most of it was lying on the floor between the short aisles of shelves. It looked like the place had been ransacked by a few youths, out for a good time more than anything else.
Muz jumped over the service counter and warily opened the door to a back room. The space, little more than a large cupboard, was piled up to the ceiling with boxes. Reading the writing printed on the cardboard, he determined which the best parcels to take were and passed them out onto the counter top.
“Take these,” he told the others, who were already rapidly gathering up the spilled food and stuffing it into carrier bags.
While Margaret and Chuck were both going for the more nutritious items of tinned food and the ready meals in the fridges, Jay was paying attention only to the packets of crisps, family-sized bottles of fizzy drinks and the chocolate bar display. When Muz had finished passing out all the boxes of worth and the others had filled a plentiful supply of carrier bags, he helped them form a chain, passing the loot through the shattered door and into the truck.
“This lot is gonna last us for time, bruv,” Jay said happily. “I’m gonna make myself sick tonight, innit.”
“Yes,” Margaret agreed, “this was a splendid idea, Mustafa.”
With the back of the Jankel brimming with boxes and bags, th
ey all climbed back inside, Muz again making them double-check all the locks.
“Let’s just go back to the block,” Chuck said.
Muz was tempted for a moment. They had enough supplies now to last them weeks, but nothing in the way of raw meat.
“We still need to get food for the newbies,” Muz replied.
“Forget them,” Chuck told him. “We should quit while we’re ahead.”
Muz paused, indecisive. “What do you two think?” he asked of those in the back.
“Amy does think that those men are important,” Margaret mused.
“Yeah,” Jay added, “we should get dem somefink.”
“Mackie D’s it is then,” Muz said and began to manoeuvre around the line of cars.
The sounds of rustling and crunching from in the back told him that Jay was already tucking into some of the crisps.
“Don’t eat that rubbish,” Margaret rebuked him, snatching the huge bag of nacho Dorritos from his hands. “You need real food inside you.”
Muz drove them out of the forecourt onto the A5, turning left. Again, the red laser dots crawled all over the vehicle, as the soldiers on the now very nearby roofs waited for the slightest reason to justify opening fire.
“I don’t like this one bit,” Chuck said, his entire body tense, as a red light jostled around on his chest. He knew all too well how trigger happy Marines could be.
Muz however took an immediate left again, off the road and into the car park of the fast food restaurant. He continued to drive, following the lane of the drive-thru to the rear of the building, until they were obscured from the snipers’ lines of sight.
It was particularly dark back there in the rear car park, off the road and hidden from the street lights, so they waited a minute before daring to emerge from the truck. They scrutinised the darkness, listening intently. Nothing. There were no signs that anything was moving around out there, so they reluctantly opened the doors and stepped out.
Though the fast food restaurant on the whole appeared locked up tight, the drive-thru pick-up window was ajar. Standing beside it was a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a clown. It was Happy Larry, the Mackie D’s mascot. ‘Larry is now available for kids’ parties,’ the writing above Larry’s head said.
The clown character had been thought up by the company’s advertising committee in order to attract children. The directors knew that getting kids hooked at an early age on the highly addictive chemicals, hidden in the stuff they peddled as food, meant guaranteed customers for years to come.
Muz stepped up and examined the window. There was no sign that anyone had forced entry. It had probably just been open at the time this area had become subject to the expanding quarantine. He was the first to climb through, almost knocking over a broom that had been propped up against the service counter. As the long handle slid along the edge of the ledge, he managed to catch it before it clattered to the floor. His breath caught too for a moment in his throat, as he perched precariously balanced on the counter top. If there was anyone inside the building, the last thing he wanted to do was announce their entrance so dramatically.
Margaret and Jay clambered through after him. Chuck was the last and, with the aperture being quite thin, he found squeezing through a struggle. The other three grabbed him by the arms and helped him force the girth of his gut through the gap. As they were doing so, the constriction caused the big man to start coughing. Chuck did his best to fight off the wet rasping barking fit, fearing his noise might alert someone to their presence.
“I’m okay,” he said, as he finally slid through and managed to take control of himself.
With the four of them pressed tightly into the tiny room that was barely bigger than a cupboard, they could hardly move. Muz pressed himself between Jay and Chuck and tried to open the service hatch on the wall behind them. It was too small for any of them to climb through but they would at least be able to see whether anyone was waiting for them in the kitchen. The hatch wouldn’t budge though, probably locked in place from the other side.
Margaret reached around to her back and worked the handle of the door she was pushed against. Managing to crack it open, the slender woman slid through. This created enough room in the cramped confines for the door to open further and the others followed her.
They now found themselves stood midway along a short corridor with a couple of other doors along its length and one at either end. Margaret opened a door, and as luck would have it, found that it led to the stock area with an adjoining freezer room.
As quietly but as quickly as they could, they set about passing boxes of frozen burgers along the chain they made through the corridor and the little service room, with Chuck at the end, tossing them through the window into the back of the truck.
“What about de chicken burgers?” Jay asked. “Will dem zombies eat chicken?”
“I don’t know,” Muz whispered. “Just pass them out and hurry up.”
“Dat’s de last of dem,” Jay said eventually.
“Okay, let’s get out of here,” Muz said thankfully.
“Hang on, hang on,” Chuck said. “We should check out the kitchen and the main counter area.”
“Why?” Muz asked. “We’ve got what we came for. What are we going to find in there that we haven’t already got?”
Chuck remembered the cabinet display that stood on the counter of every Mackie D’s he had ever been to, tempting him with goodies he knew he shouldn’t be eating on top of his usual triple stack bacon cheeseburger meal.
“Donuts, muffins, cookies,” the man said with awe in his voice.
Muz’s eyes widened. He could murder a glazed donut himself right now. “No, we should just go,” he said instead.
“Oh, come on, bruv,” Jay protested. “Mackie D’s rings are proper sick.”
Muz looked at Margaret and the woman just shrugged back at him.
“Okay,” he conceded a little too readily.
Jay pulled the door to the pick-up counter closed. As he did so, they heard the broom within the room slap loudly against the tiled floor. Wincing at the loud noise, they waited for it to cause a response from someone lurking in the building. After a minute or two of no sounds from elsewhere within the restaurant, the group relaxed a little.
“Chuck and I’ll go left,” Muz said, the serving hatch in the little room having shown that that door must lead to the kitchen. “You two try the doors to the right. See what else you can find.”
Margaret and Jay nodded and headed off.
“Be back here in five minutes max’,” Chuck whispered loudly after them.
Muz opened the door to the kitchen area, tentatively scanning the brilliantly lit room. Chuck however, shoved past him eagerly.
“Just be quick,” Muz said.
With all the excitement of a child, Chuck bounded past all the metal ovens, deep fat fryers and worktops. As he reached the clear plastic display cabinet, housing the shiny sticky donuts and other sweets, a movement in the corner of his eye distracted him from those colourful beauties and he stopped in his tracks. Seeing that the big man had stopped suddenly, Muz froze too, his heart already beginning to race.
“What’s wrong?” the copper dared to whisper as faintly as possible.
Chuck thrust out the flat palm of a hand back at him, gesturing for him not to come any closer. He himself then began slowly to back up.
At the far end of the seating area, on the other side of the main counter, about fifty children wearing pointy little Mackie D’s party hats were gathered around an adult female, who was sprawled on her back over one of the tables. Though she still appeared to be conscious, she wasn’t putting up much of a fight against her tiny assailants, as they had already almost eaten her down to the bone. So absorbed were the children by their feast that they hadn’t even noticed Chuck’s presence yet.
Other adults, parents or teachers maybe, were slumped in their seats or lying twitching on the floor. They were all nothing more than rags and bones, having s
uffered the same fate as the other woman. The few of them had clearly been no match for the overwhelming number of children, who had, through some primitive instinct, banded together against their larger foes. It was a scene of utter carnage. Blood was sprayed everywhere, across the floor, over the tables, up the walls and windows. With all the meat of the adults not having been enough of a meal for them, the strongest of the children were now turning to feed on the weaker.
The kids looked fresh, Chuck saw, as he continued to edge away, one slow step after another. They showed no signs whatsoever of decomposition and therefore couldn’t have turned too long ago. They and the adults must have managed to remain alive all this time, holed up in here. They had obviously thought themselves to be safe but clearly, some afflicted cannibal had found a way in.
Just as Chuck was daring to hope that he might make it back out of the kitchen without being spotted, the head of the woman being torn apart on the table lolled to one side and she saw him. She feebly reached out an arm in his direction and howled. Chuck’s blood ran ice cold through his body, as he feared the others would be alerted to him watching them. Instead, a skinny girl with blonde pigtails bit down into the woman’s throat, cutting off her cry.
Chuck forced himself to breathe and continued to back up. As he was doing so, one hand brushed along a metal preparation surface. The limb nudged against a pair of serving tongs and, before he could catch them, they fell to the floor. His bladder went weak in response to the loud clattering the metal cutlery made.
The blood-soaked heads of the children suddenly lifted and snapped around to stare at Chuck, their faces alert. These were not the shambling messes most of the undead had by now become. Their eyes burned ferociously with rage, pain and hunger, forcing Chuck to recall how terrifying the undead had been when this had all first happened.
“Run,” he shouted at Muz. “Get out.”
The copper didn’t need telling twice. He was on his heels and back out the door before Chuck could catch up to him. As Chuck burst through after him, slamming the door in place behind himself, they saw Margaret and Jay lunge hastily out from another room. They appeared just as panicked as the two men did.
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 40