by Luke Duffy
The rampaging infected were running in all directions out in the car park as they hunted for the two living people. Some stalked between the cars, peering through the windows and pounding on the glass, while others raced across the expanse of the parking lot and towards the other buildings. Directly outside the door where Tina and Christopher had taken shelter, a large group of them crept along the wall until they reached the thick glass panes that separated them from the dark interior.
Just centimetres to her right, the dead faces of dozens of the infected pressed themselves up against the glass and stared into the gloomy reception. Tina saw the haunting shadows of the numerous heads and shoulders stretching across the carpet by her feet as they clambered at the entrance. The door juddered lightly as they pushed their putrid bodies up against it and searched for any sign of their prey, but the way in to the room remained tightly sealed from within.
Tina screwed her eyes tight and prayed that they had not been seen entering the building, and that the infected would soon lose interest and move on in their search. She remained pressed to the wall, as she listened to the nerve wrenching snarls of the monsters that were lurking just beyond the glass.
Christopher was beside her. His chest was heaving rapidly and his breath came in sharp painful gasps. She knew that if they were discovered, they would not get very far. Her brother was incapable of going any further. He was ready to collapse and his knees trembled uncontrollably. With each grunt from the crowd outside or thud against the door, he flinched involuntarily and let out a stifled yelp. He was physically and emotionally exhausted.
It was fifteen minutes before she could breathe easily again and pluck up the courage to move. She gingerly crept towards the doorframe and looked out through the thick reinforced panes. She was careful not to expose too much of herself and kept most of her body hidden in the shadows.
Out in front of the building, she could see a tribe of the infected lurching about in the bright sunlight. They were no longer running about and shrieking with excitement. Instead, they were aimlessly shuffling around and bumping into one another and the cars dispersed throughout the expanse in front of the warehouses.
They were trapped but safe for now. Tina just hoped that there were no other entrances leading into the building that their hunters could exploit. She looked at her brother who had slid to the floor. He was sitting with his back to the wall; his legs sprawled out in front of him, and his chin resting upon his chest. She quickly realised that he was asleep when she heard the grumbling snorts that emitted from his mucus-filled nostrils, and saw the drool that cascaded from his quivering lips.
She stared at him for a moment then shook her head. She knew that she had to check and secure the area, but she now realised that she would be doing it alone. Her brother was beyond help right now and was of no use to her or himself. She decided to let him sleep.
He would only be a hindrance anyway, she thought. At least he would be out of the way and she would know exactly where he was.
Remaining conscious of the bright light that shone through the glass panes of the door and illuminated a large rectangle on the floor, she carefully moved around the edges of the room and kept herself hidden within the shadows. In the centre of the reception area was a large desk with a dust covered computer, printer, and a number of files and books. It was all still neatly placed and stacked on the desktop and showed no indication that there had ever been any trouble there.
She knew that it was an exercise in futility, but she could not resist the urge to lift up the receiver from the telephone and hold it to her ear. As she expected, the line was completely dead, but from years of living with a mild form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, she knew that if she had not followed the impulse then it would have niggled at her until the desire had been satisfied. She could not afford to have such a trivial matter endlessly playing on her mind at that moment.
The doors leading off to the left and right towards what she presumed to be the offices, held no indication of having been forced open or barricaded shut. The place looked untouched and abandoned. She considered it as a good sign and she began to feel more comfortable in her new surroundings.
Something caught her eye as she walked around to the opposite side of the desk. It was an identification holder hanging from a hook on the wall. She reached up, removed it, and tilted it towards the bright sunlight filtering through the glass door. The photograph showed the smiling face of a young blonde haired woman, and beneath the picture, was a name stencilled in thick black lettering.
“Michelle Potts,” Tina read aloud as she rubbed her thumb over the image. “Where are you now, Michelle?”
In the top right hand corner of the identification card, she was able to read the company name and it caused her eyes to widen as she realised where they had stumbled into. It was a supply depot for a large supermarket chain.
For the past four months, Tina and Christopher had been surviving hand-to-mouth and looting anything that they could find. They had been living on a small riverboat and making their way from one village to the next and treating the canals and rivers as moats, anchoring their cramped vessel away from the banks and separating themselves from the land that swarmed with the plague’s victims. Almost every shop and store that they came across had either already been ransacked and was completely empty, or was teeming with the infected and impossible to get near. Pickings were always meagre. Now, stumbling upon a warehouse that supplied goods to a popular supermarket and so far seemed untouched, there was hope once again.
She needed to see for herself. With a final check on her brother and satisfied that he was completely oblivious to his surroundings, she entered through one of the doors that led off to the right of the reception.
She found herself at the head of a long narrow corridor. On her left was a solid wall and all along the right was a row of small, semi-private office cubicles that were separated by thin partition walls. The area was well lit from the sunlight that flowed in through the large windows overlooking the parking area, and filtered through the blinds of each cubicle and reflected from the brightly painted walls.
She silently made her way along to the end, pausing at the edge of each booth and listening for any sounds from within. Then she would carefully poke her head inside. Most of the offices were just empty space, but there were a couple that were furnished with desks, cabinets, and chairs. All of them remained unscathed by the panic and chaos that had engulfed most buildings and businesses. Most importantly, the windows for each office were unbroken.
She reached another door at the end of the narrow walkway. The door was thick and solid and she had to push hard in order to open it. Inside, a wall of blackness greeted her. With no windows allowing the natural light to enter, she remained at the doorway and listened into the darkness. She could smell the distinct scent of ash and as her eyes began to adjust, she could see a number of doors on either side of the passageway. In the light that managed to filter in from the windows behind her, she saw faint clouds of charred, microscopic dust rising into the air as the atmosphere in the room changed.
A fire had raged through that part of the building, and somehow it had been stopped from engulfing the entire structure. She was unsure if it had been due to the heavy fire doors or whether it had happened earlier on in the crisis before the power failed, and the sprinkler systems still worked. It did not matter but it was something she could not help but wonder about.
Eventually, she plucked up the nerve to step forward. The odour of burnt wood and melted plastic was strong in the air, and as the door slowly closed behind her, a faint draft sent up clouds of tiny cinders all around her that immediately began to obstruct her nostrils. She remained still and concentrated on controlling her breathing and listening for the minutest of sounds. Eventually, her eyes began to adjust to the gloom and she inched her way forward to begin checking the other doors.
The walls were black with soot and deformed from the heat that had ravaged the corridor
. Her feet crunched against the brittle floor tiles that had cracked and shattered under the intense heat and their echoes through the darkness caused her to cringe with each step.
The first doorway revealed what she believed to be a small storeroom and after the initial fright of feeling something bristly against her fingertips, and then realising it was a broom, she moved onto the next.
Inside, she could see nothing but from the stink of the murky space she surmised that it was the staff toilets. Beyond the smell of burned wood and scorched concrete, she detected the distinct mixture of old urine and bleach, and she felt relieved at the absence of the foul stench of decaying human beings. She had experienced that particular smell all too often, and as revolting as it was to her senses, it terrified her mind more. She closed the door and continued into the dark corridor.
At the second to last doorway, she could see a sliver of light through the small gap at the bottom. Without a sound, she turned the handle and was greeted with a brilliant whiteness. After a few minutes of being unable to see and relying on her sense of smell and hearing, the brightly lit room was blinding. She squinted and shielded her eyes with one hand, and raised her crowbar in the other.
It was a cafeteria. At least it had been once. Chairs and tables that were neatly placed filled every space of the floor. All of them were blackened and misshapen from the smoke and heat that had virtually incinerated the room. The walls that had once been painted white were now streaked with the dark artwork left behind by the licking flames. Black smears reached up towards the ceiling where the foam tiles had melted and now hung from their frames like synthetic stalactites.
At the far side was a counter and hotplate, and judging by the extent of the damage to that part of the room, Tina surmised that the fire in that area had been at its most intense. In amongst the detritus, she could see what she believed were a number of bodies. They were burned beyond recognition, and had become fused to the floor in a sea of solidified ash and melted plastic. In a number of places, she noted the pale bones of hands and legs jutting out from the mess, and the longer she stared, the more she was able to see. Some of the blackened bodies were still moving. Only very slightly, but enough for Tina to see the twitching of bony fingers and writhing legs.
She watched for a moment, unsure whether to run from the room or not. Eventually, she concluded that they were no threat to her. Somehow, some of them had managed to survive the fire but their bodies were too badly damaged for them to move. She wondered if they had already been infected when they had been engulfed, or if they had reanimated after being killed in the blaze. She was curious but felt no urge to get any closer to investigate.
Set into the far wall of the canteen was a row of large windows that stretched the length of the room. They were discoloured and obscured from the smoke but a few patches remained clear enough for Tina to see that they looked out over an empty part of the car park. There was no sign of the infected around that side of the building and she hoped it denoted the area was a staff parking zone or loading bay and sealed off from the public. She would consider that side to be a potential escape route should they need it.
The final door in the hallway led out onto a platform that overlooked a spacious warehouse. The skylights high above dimly lighted it and it was hard for her to make out any details beyond the first few metres. From her higher position, she saw a few rows of stacked goods in front of her but they soon faded into blackness as they were swallowed up by shadow. She could not be sure of the extent of the place due to the low light but she was confident that given the fact that it was a supply depot for a supermarket chain and the dimensions of the exterior walls, it would be of a substantial size.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the flames had not spared the warehouse either. As in the cafeteria and the corridor behind her, the smell of fire was thick in the air. Many of the shelves closest to her had collapsed and their contents had been scattered and consumed by the searing heat. It was impossible to see any further and she could not tell whether the rest of the storage area had suffered the same fate.
She stayed by the door and listened for a while. There was no way to tell if there were any infected inside and the only realistic way of finding out would be to make her own presence known. For the moment though, she would remain unannounced.
She secured the door and made her way back to the reception area. She paused on the far side of the receptionist’s desk and peered out through the entrance and over the parking area. The dead were still there but they were no longer hunting. They had gone back to their mindless meandering.
Christopher was still slumped against the wall and snoring noisily. His large stomach was rising and falling with each loud intake of air.
“Useless bastard,” she grunted under her breath as she walked by him and towards the open doorway to his left.
On the other side, she discovered a flight of stairs that led up to a number of spacious offices. The Managers and their assistants had clearly enjoyed their comforts with expensive furnishings and appliances adorning each room. Every office was laid out in a manner that befitted a bank manager rather than a supermarket supply office.
In a small kitchenette at the far end of a corridor that dissected the managerial offices, Tina found a fridge loaded with rotted food. The smell made her screw her face up in disgust but the three bottles of water that she noticed sitting in the rack, were quickly snatched up before the fridge door was slammed shut.
In the cupboards, she found mouldy loafs of bread and cakes along with other unrecognisable substances that had perished through time. They were of no use to anyone, but the five tins of tuna and three sachets of dried fruit were akin to a discovery of buried treasure. She was happy with her find. They could at least stay there for the night and get some food and rest. Most importantly, there were no indications that the ravenous infected were inside the building.
They would hide there and assess the situation in the morning.
2
The world was a very different place now. Even after just four months since the plague had forced the remains of humanity to seek shelter and hide from the roaming dead, the landscape had changed considerably. Every manmade structure was already beginning to blend into the background of nature. The colours were fading and the sharp edges were starting to soften. Weeds and wild flowers sprouted from every crack and crevice and slowly began to spread their way out over the remnants of civilisation.
Sitting on the hilltop, the two of them watched the small row of stores that backed onto a sprawling housing estate. The infected were everywhere but the living men remained unnoticed. From their vantage point, they could see for a great distance in all directions and no matter which way they looked, shadowy figures stumbled through the streets or sat idle, staring at the floor.
“It’s quiet, isn’t it,” Bull grunted.
“Yeah,” Danny replied as he looked out over the jumble of rooftops. “To be honest, I find it quite pleasant.”
Bull looked at him curiously for a moment and then turned his attention back to the street below them.
“Well, if you ignore the fact that there are dead people walking about everywhere you look, it’s rather tranquil,” Danny continued in way of explanation.
Bull nodded. He understood what Danny was saying and after a moment of reflection and comparing the old world to the new, he could see his friend’s point. The world had become a much quieter place. The harsh noises of human society had disappeared and had been replaced with the soft murmur of the natural Earth. However, no matter how hard he tried, it was difficult for him to block out the reality of the situation for very long.
A sharp clang followed by a rumbling grunt that emitted from the foot of the hill dragged him back to reality. For the past couple of hours, they had been resting in the shade of a tree and out of the midday sun. It was the height of summer, a heat wave was in the process of parching the land, and as usual, the men were lying up during the hours of daylight.
>
At the bottom of the slope, a row of parked cars at the roadside demarcated the end of the rural and the start of the urban areas. The partially decomposed corpse of a man sat in the driver’s seat of one of the vehicles and endlessly turned the wheel through its hands. It pushed and pulled at the gears and levers and it had even managed to fasten the seatbelt over its torn and bony chest.
“They’re not the brightest of creatures, are they?” Bull noted.
“It’s probably been sitting there for weeks,” Danny pointed out. “You know how they are. They’re persistent.”
“Stupid more like,” Bull replied. “What’s Bill Gates doing?”
Danny panned to the right with his binoculars. Further along the street and sitting on a bench in front of a shop window that still displayed the latest deals on electronics and software, another of the reanimated corpses sat. In its hands, it held a laptop computer and it repeatedly tapped away at the keys as though typing up a document or writing out an email. Now and then, it would appear confused and begin examining the underside of the device as if checking to see if the notebook was connected to a power source.
“No change,” Danny replied as he studied the figure. “I think he’s still trying to remember his Facebook password.”
Bull sniggered beside him. He rolled on to his back and let out a long sigh as he stared up at the branches that gently swayed above them. He was beginning to feel bored and wished that the night would hurry up and arrive so that they could move again.
“I don’t think either of us is going to win this bet, Danny. Those things are so stupid that they’ll stay there until their bodies rot from underneath them.”
They had been on their patrol for almost three weeks. Their mission was to reconnoitre the harbour at Portsmouth and see whether the airfield at Farnborough was still intact. One of their secondary tasks was to check the various routes leading north towards London. Moving at night and lying up during the daytime, Bull, Danny, and Marty drifted through the desolate countryside like a band of ghosts as they moved from one place to the next and gathered the information that they needed. They avoided the living as well as the dead and on many occasions, they had found themselves in close proximity to both. Their orders were clear and they were to avoid contact at all costs.
