by Ed James
Adam didn’t doubt it, but then you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. ‘No, but you’ll struggle to find another job.’ He gestured through the roasting backroom towards the cleaning store. ‘Just get on with it.’
No sign of Keith doing that. The big lump just stood there. ‘You check those links I sent you?’
Adam vaguely remembered some messages on his phone that morning, but he was too bleary-eyed to focus on them. The pot of coffee had cleared the worst of his hangover, but it was shaping up to be a day where he needed to plan a nice snooze on the toilet. ‘I was busy last night, sorry.’
‘Busy nudging turps, aye?’ Keith’s glassy eyes glowed in the dark store. ‘Found this cracking video about cora…’ He frowned. ‘Coru…’
‘Coronavirus?’
‘Aye!’ Keith clicked his fingers, quick and fast. ‘Apparently the CIA developed it, unleashed it on some bats in China. From space.’
‘How does that explain it infecting people in America?’
‘Collateral damage.’ Keith’s shrug showed that’s all the consideration that gaping hole needed. ‘Plus, the kind of people most at risk of catching it are the ones who can’t afford to get a test and can’t afford to take two weeks off work in quarantine. Thinning out the herd.’
Always an answer for everything. What Adam wouldn’t give to go back in time to before YouTube and all those nut-job conspiracy theories, and before pretty much everything else. ‘So the New World Order can institute a global government, aye?’
‘Sure you didn’t watch it?’
Adam patted his arm. ‘I’ll just check on the young lad, see how he’s getting on.’ He pointed to the cleaner store again. ‘You’ve got a lot of cleaning to do.’
‘Aye, and I’ll be sweating like a bastard when I’m doing it.’
‘So turn the heating down.’
‘Aye, aye.’ Keith shuffled off, stuffing in his earbuds to listen to yet another conspiracy freak podcast or an audiobook about chemtrails turning frogs gay or whatever.
Adam walked off in the opposite direction, into the store itself. He hit the first aisles and triggered the banks of lights to flash on. The rest of place was set in darkness—not a good sign—so he set off, the lights flashing on as he passed. He tried not to inspect each and every aisle for how badly they need refilled. Tuesday night wasn’t nightfill, so his team of underpaid idiots had to stack up during the day. The way things used to be, but it meant they’d be chasing their tails all day until the store shut and the nightfill took over.
Absolutely no toilet rolls, even with their rationing. Pretty soon people would start paying at the tills by the sheet.
At the end, the bread aisle was a complete disaster. The shelves were virtually empty, just a huddled remnant of yesterday’s stock that hadn’t been sold off to the yellow-item vultures in the final hour of trading last night.
No sign anyone had been here that morning, though. Young Phil should’ve been here at five to take the delivery and stock up. Then again, it wasn’t like the lorry had just dumped the cages outside and they were still sitting in the cold. Even so, this was the height of unprofessionalism.
All Adam could think about it was having to take at least half of the cages to make sure they were ready for opening. He checked his phone for messages from Phil, maybe saying he was self-quarantining, but he just found the YouTube link from Keith.
Scratch that — he was going to have to do the whole lot himself.
And it was so effing hot. Adam would be sweating out super-strength lager while he stocked up. Still, the sooner he started, the sooner he’d get that sleep in the toilet. He stomped off through the store, all bright now, then back through the doors to the store.
A loud squeak came from somewhere behind him. Made him jerk around.
But it was just Keith twisting that tap he was constantly moaning about, the one Adam would have to call another Crieff-based plumber to fix.
The storeroom was piled high with boxes ready for the compactor. Adam cut through the narrow corridor, just about wide enough to wheel a cage through, but where it should’ve been empty and ready for the late-morning delivery from head office, six bread cages sat there, unattended. Six cages of white, two of wholemeal, another three of rolls and wraps and all that malarkey. Two of cakes.
And still no sign of Young Phil.
Effing useless.
Adam stepped between the pair of cake cages and stopped dead.
A message was scrawled all over the scuffed floor tiles. “Love and kisses, the Evil Scotsman”.
Next to it, a body lay there in an Ashworth’s uniform, covered from head to toe in yellow price-reduction stickers. His face was exposed, but his mouth was covered in stickers.
Young Phil, and he was very dead.
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