The One Percent (Episode 3): The One Percent

by Heller, Erik P.

  I didn’t think we’d have too many problems getting in and it was good to see that no one else had got there before us, but in its own way, that was as much of a worry as anything else. I didn’t know how many people lived in Wantage, but we’d seen no indication of any survivors on the way in. If there were any, they were probably still holding out for help that was plainly never going to come.

  Once we all pulled up outside, everyone offloaded. The soldiers quickly mustered and despatched the Groaners that were milling about in the car park while Daisy used the tractor bucket to force the shutters open.

  I hoped she would be able to do it with damaging them permanently because the supermarket would have been OK as a temporary base for a night—with the shutters down, but the possibility of Groaners homing in on us with the noise we were making was deemed too big to ignore, so the orders were to grab what we could that was edible and had a long shelf-life, then get it loaded into the truck and we would be on our merry way.

  I wandered over to the motorhome and made the signal for Jim to wind down the window.

  “Are you going to come and help?” I asked, smiling, and trying to be pleasant despite my initial bad-feeling toward Jim.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “That’s right, no. We have our own supplies.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re quite the conversationalist, aren’t you?”

  “Fuck you, asshole” Jim said, effectively putting an end to the conversation. He wound up his window and resumed his aforementioned disinterested stare out of his windscreen.

  I’d seen nothing of the two women who were with him which I was a little concerned about, but I was hardly in a position to go around demanding that he got his arse off his seat and come to help.

  I was in a position to make sure Brian was aware, so he could make sure Jim understood that this was a case of everyone doing their bit and getting their share, one being needed before there was any benefit from the other, when he did come looking for supplies which he doubtless would have to do eventually.

  By the time I’d walked away, everyone bar a couple of the army guys was inside. But not very far inside. It was pitch-black and impossible to see for more than a few feet from the windows.

  I’d left behind my wind-up lanterns when Jezza and Brian played their stupid prank and a quick check around confirmed that nobody had a torch.

  “What do we do?” Libby asked. She had her arms tightly wrapped around her tie-dye T-shirt. I couldn’t blame her. It was cold in there. It also smelled. It wasn’t a breathtaking odour, but it was definitely the smell of something gone or going off. I assumed anything fresh would probably have been OK for a while more. I mean more often than not, before the world went to shit, you could buy a bag of bananas that would still not be ripe a week later.

  I assumed it must be stuff like meat where the refrigeration had gone off. No steak tartare tonight!

  “My phone’s still got battery,” Lucy said, holding up the lifesaving article. One of the soldiers also had some charge left in his but not much.

  So that was it. We had two almost out of battery phones to search a huge supermarket.

  “Sergeant Hughes.” Brian had switched his voice to command mode.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take Private Parker and his phone and see if this place stocks torches and batteries.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hughes and the private doubled off into the store. It was weird seeing the dim light the phone produced as they worked their way up and down the aisles. Eventually, about three-quarters of the way along the store, the light stopped moving and began to wave around haphazardly.

  After a few moments of doing that, and with the rest of us standing impatiently, waiting to get on so we could get out of there quickly, the light began to head back. In the gloom, I could see the ghostly figures of the two soldiers as they ran back toward where the rest of us were waiting.

  “No torches, sir, but we did manage to find these.” He held up a pack of tea lights, while the private had a couple of boxes of dinner table candles in his hands.

  Once the candles had been lit, Brian divided the larger group into various smaller groups. Daisy and I grabbed a trolley and set off on our designated job of looking for tins of anything that were likely to last us for a while.

  I was concerned because nobody seemed to have considered whether we should look around and make sure the place was safe before we started filling up on foodstuffs, important as they were.

  I would have said something to Brian, but he had already disappeared when I actually realised why I was concerned.

  As Daisy and I wandered around we could hear one or two of the other groups clattering stuff into their trolleys as we were dropping stuff into ours. We had almost filled ours when the thing I dreaded most happened.

  Mungo found the dog treats!

  At least that's why I thought that somebody was yelling the dog’s name further down the supermarket. I could hear the dog growling and worrying at something, but from where I was, I couldn't see what he was doing. As soon as I heard the screams, I knew he hadn’t really just found the dog treats.

  He’d sniffed something else out that was making him growl.

  “Keep filling the trolley,” I said to Daisy.

  “Sod off,” she said, “there's no way I'm standing here doing the weekly shop while you're off playing the hero. I'm coming with you.” She pushed the trolley further down the aisle and we both got moving as quickly as possible.

  By the time we reached the aisle where Mungo was making all the noise, I could see what the problem was.

  Jules and Katie—towels and duvets—had a hold on one of those cage things the supermarkets used for deliveries and shelf-filling and were using it to hold back a rather nattily dressed Groaner on the other side.

  Mungo was doing his best ‘I’ll bite your ankles’ thing and actually had a grip on the Groaner’s trousers, or at least the ragged end of them, and was tugging away with all his might, which was to say, not much compared to the strength the Groaner was displaying.

  As I stood there watching, it occurred to me that the Groaner wasn’t in the least bit interested in Mungo. He may as well not have been there. Strange what goes through your mind when there’s a Groaner trying to eat your friends. I stored that useful little nugget of information away.

  Then I thought about it again. The Groaners back at dear old Lanchcombe had gone after any living creature they could lay their clawing hands on. Hedgehogs, foxes, gardeners, and gamekeepers were all fair game.

  Why wasn’t this one bothered by Mungo?

  I very nearly went into a pointless internal monologue, posing unanswerable questions that would drive me crazy, but Daisy shoved me out of the way and added her weight to the other girls’ in holding back the cage.

  “Go around the other end of the aisle, Frank, and sort the bloody thing out, will you?” Daisy said in her usual charmingly forthright manner.

  I knew not to bother arguing, but when I was halfway up the next aisle—sweets, chocolate, and crisps I made a note to come back to—I realised I’d left my weapons back in the car.

  As I was running along the aisle, slowly, I looked to see if there was anything I could use, but the prospect of trying to batter the skull of the assistant-manager or whatever he was with a multipack of Snickers bars didn’t give me much hope of success.

  Once I rounded the end of the aisle, I sneaked a look down to make sure it wasn’t just going to leap out at me, but it was still single-mindedly trying to get at the three women holding back with the cage.

  Mungo was still doing his best to yank the thing’s trousers into even more shreds then they were already in, and the bloody Groaner was still taking not a blind bit of notice of the dog.

  I didn’t want to take a chance on tripping over Mungo when I hit the Groaner, so in a low voice, I said, “Mungo, leave.”

  The dog
took absolutely no notice, but the Groaner must have had hearing like an owl because it snapped its head around and looked straight at me.

  Then it turned the rest of its body toward me and ran.

  Thinking back, I’m not sure ran was the right word. It sort of stumbled, dragging Mungo along behind it, but it stumbled bloody quickly.

  It was, at most, twenty feet from me by the time I reacted—by hiding behind the aisle end—and grabbing the nearest solid thing to hand, a four pack of tinned baked beans on special offer. I dug my hand into the plastic wrap and readied myself.

  Just as I thought it might reach the end, I stood tall, pulled my arm back, took a deep breath, and steadied myself.

  I watched in surprise as there was a loud ‘clang’ and the Groaner stumbled forward, at speed, landing face first in the bakery display where it slowly slid to the ground, smacking its face on each shelf as it fell. The back of its head was mostly crushed into its brain.

  It groaned no more.

  “Ha,” Daisy said as she wandered up to the end of the aisle carrying a large, bright orange, very heavy-looking, cast-iron frying pan in her hand. I recognised them from the kitchens at Lanchcombe although Cook only ever seemed to use one saucepan and the microwave oven in her quest to feed the household with minimal effort for her aged bones.

  She stopped and admired her handiwork. “I always thought these things were a bit poncey, you know? Very expensive and too heavy to lift half the time, but they make short work of those bloody things,” she said, pointing the pan at the laid-out Groaner.

  “Very impressive,” I said. “I suppose you were a tennis champ at school or something? Even if you weren’t, that was an impressive backhand. I wonder why he was here?”

  “He worked here of course.”

  “I know, but the shutters were all down if you remember.”

  “So?”

  “Well, surely, if the shutters were down, the shop must have been closed. If it was closed, why was he here?”

  “Good point, Frank.” Brian’s voice behind me made me jump. He nearly ended up with a face full of canned haricot beans in a rich tomato sauce one portion of which was apparently one of your five a day.

  “Maybe we should do a quick search around, just to make sure there aren’t any more of the things hanging around?” I suggested.

  So, carrying a candle each, Daisy with her frying pan, me with some heavy pot with a handle—I stole Daisy’s idea—and Brian with a gun with one bullet and a bayonet attached, began to tiptoe around the darkest recesses of this particular outlet of all things grocery.

  Once we’d scoped out behind the fish and meat counters, both of which absolutely reeked, even though there was nothing in the displays, then had rolled around the in-store bakery finding nothing out of the ordinary other than some out of date and mouldy doughnut mixture in one of the walk-in fridges, the only other place left to look was the pharmacy and out the back in the offices and staffroom.

  One of our little group had already gone through the pharmacy taking whatever they thought we could use, so the whole place was a mess, however, there was a room behind the shelves that didn’t look like it had been touched.

  Why any of us thought it was a sound idea to open a door that was firmly closed, looking for Groaners, I’ve no idea, but before I could stop him, Brian grabbed the door handle and pulled it open.

  The room was pitch-black inside and when Brian poked a candle in it didn’t seem to illuminate the gloom particularly well. The walls were lined with racking shelves that were stacked with shrink-wrapped packs of cough drops and tinctures of all varieties ready to top up the shelves when they got low. It looked untouched to me.

  When Brian put one foot inside the room, two people came racing toward him spraying something out of cans and screaming at the top of their voices. They both bounced off Brian when they ran into him but kept spraying him. He backed up a couple of steps yelling at the top of his voice. “Stop you bloody fools, you’ll set the whole place on fucking fire.” He held up his candle.

  I thought it was a fair point and I would have said so, but Brian was, at that moment, trying to hack his lungs out of his chest.

  When he got his breath back a bit, he panted, asking, “What the hell is that stuff?”

  “Deodorant,” a man said. He was smartly dressed, still wearing a tie although it was pulled down a little and his top button was undone. The turban on his head was a pale blue and looked like it had seen some action. His long, grey beard hung down almost to where his tie was knotted. His dark brown eyes took in Daisy and me with our cooking utensils then stopped flickering around when they saw Brian’s clothes and the rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “Are you the army?” he asked hopefully.

  Brian coughed a couple more times and shook his head. “No mate. You’re lucky one of these two didn’t crack you on the head.” He glared at Daisy and I, probably because neither of us had moved when he was being deodorised.

  “I have padding,” the man said, tapping his turban, and offering a thin smile.

  “So, what are you doing here?”

  “When things went bad, we were here working. Before I could get out the shop was shut, and everybody was gone, so we hid in the cupboard and just crept out when we needed something. Mark was here too but he stayed in the manager’s office.”

  “Who was Mark?” I asked although I had a reasonable idea it was probably the man lying face down in the bakery.

  “Assistant store manager. He volunteered to stay and keep an eye on the place. Have you seen him?”

  I noticed Daisy slide her frying pan behind her back.

  “Yeah, we saw him. I’m sorry, but he’s dead now. He had turned into a Groaner,” Brian said.

  “Wow. He was fine the day before yesterday.”

  “Well, he’s not now. How are you two feeling? Sorry, I’m Brian, this is Daisy and Frank.” Brian pointed at the two of us. I thought about smiling but decided not to. Too early to go scaring them.

  “I’m Mandeep Sidhu,” the man said. “This is Gianpreet,” he said pointing to a young woman who was standing behind him, her finger still on the nozzle of the deodorant can and looking like she knew how to use it.

  “OK, so are you two married or something?”

  “Married?” Gianpreet said loudly, “Ugh, gross, no he’s my dad. I know I might look rough but bloody hell!”

  “Gianpreet,” Mandeep said, “do not use such language.”

  “Sorry, Dad, but how could they think we were married? I mean you’re ancient.”

  “Thank you, young lady. You know how to make an old man feel very useful.”

  “Sorry,” she said, looking at the ground. She waited a second or two then added,” Even so. Married?” and pulled a face.

  “So, why were you here?” I asked, hoping to give the poor girl a break.

  “We’re the pharmacists.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Yes,” Mandeep folded back the jacket he was wearing and pointed to a badge. It showed his name and had the word pharmacist below it which I thought was going to be as good a proof as we were ever going to get.

  “Brilliant,” said Brian. “We were going to need a doctor eventually. Do you want to join up with us?”

  “Who’s us?” Gianpreet asked, looking suspiciously over her father’s shoulder.

  “There’s the three of us and another,” Brian counted the names in his head, “oh about fifteen of us altogether.”

  “What are you planning to do?” Mandeep asked, tightening his grip on his can.

  “Right now, the plan is to grab what we need then get out of town before the Groaners turn up,” I said.

  “What are Groaners?” Gianpreet asked.

  “Zombies. The undead.”

  “Fuck off,” Mandeep said. He sounded a little taken aback.

  “Dad! You tell me off for language, listen to you.”

  “I’m sorry to set a bad example, but really. The undead and a
ll that nonsense? I am a man of science, not some idiot who watches TV shows and thinks they are real. Anyway, what do you mean, we saw nothing like this, just some poor unfortunates trying to get in when the shop was closed.”

  “Were they biting the windows, or licking them?”

  “Well, yes some deluded people were doing that, but they were desperate.”

  “Yes, they were,” I said. “Desperate to bite you and strip the flesh from your bones. Have you really not seen many?”

  “No, we have stayed away from the windows. Every time we went close those people went crazy, so we stayed at the back of the shop or only moved at night.”

  “Well. they are the Groaners. If someone dies without having their brain destroyed, they come back to life. If someone gets bitten by one, they die and come back.”

  Mandeep turned and spoke softly to his daughter in a language I didn’t understand. She replied, then turned to Brian

  “My dad says you people are all mentally ill and he wishes he had a gun right now.”

  Brian laughed. “What did you say back?”

  “I said, me too, but that I didn’t think you were mad, just a bit crazy, but that we couldn’t stay here forever and you seem like good, if crazy, people.”

  “Great, the more the better. Listen, before you come out, can you grab a load of drugs that you think will be most useful if anyone gets sick? Infections, that kind of thing?”

  I went out and grabbed a spare trolley and wheeled it in. “Fill it with what you can and meet us by the front door whenever you’re ready. Listen, it will save us searching any more. Are you sure nobody else was here?”

  “Nobody else, just us and Mark.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. I really didn’t fancy meeting a Groaner head-on when we were walking about.

  “I’m sure.”

  We left the two of them to fill their trolley and me and Daisy went to retrieve our trolley. We scooped as many tins of tuna and pilchards as we could then just did a walk back down the aisle, tipping in whatever came to hand. God knows what some of it was, but it was food and that was the important thing.