The four of them had to navigate around haphazardly parked vehicles and dropped electrical objects.
Betty stepped around a toaster.
Mr. Warren almost face-planted the concrete when his foot got caught in a coat hanger.
There were a couple of men who looked like they were fighting over next to the pharmacy’s late night, twenty-four-hour dispensing window. One was holding a baseball bat. She then realized they were trying to batter their way into the chemist.
Inside there was pushing and shoving. People screamed at each other, and fought one another. It was complete pandemonium. The noise and constant movement was an assault on the senses.
It was too dangerous for them to try to collect anything. And if they did manage to find anything on the shelves, someone younger, and stronger, would simply take it off them.
It was no place for four old people whose bones could snap like twigs at the first push.
They safely retreated back outside.
“Get in the minibus, I have an idea,” Betty stated. It was something she noticed when they first drove in.
Mrs. Fredrick didn’t have chance to climb into the driver’s seat; Betty beat her to it.
“Give me the keys!”
“I’m the only one insured”
“Look around you Joan, I don’t think that matters anymore. The world has turned to shit!”
Mrs. Fredrick handed over the keys.
“Everyone sit right at the back, and belt up.”
Betty waited for them to click the seatbelts into place.
“Now hold on, and get ready to do as I say. Oh, and prepare for impact!”
“Impact?!” Mrs. Fredrick mumbled. “This bus is only three months old.”
Betty ignored her as she gunned the engine, revving the needle into the red. She then released the handbrake and the minibus shot forward.
Everyone’s heads snapped back.
As she sped through the car park, dodging parked cars, and people, she put her foot to the floor, while slamming her hand on the horn to warn people to move or become a wet smudge on the tarmac.
“Hold on,” she shouted as the minibus hit the large gates to the loading dock area. The minibus lurched as it punched through – the grating sound was deafening. The front windscreen cracked into a thousand spider webs. One side of the gate was caught on the minibuses’ nearside rearview mirror. It rattled and sparked as it was dragged across the ground.
I’ve always wanted to do that, she thought as she struggled to keep her grasp on the juddering steering wheel.
It was just like in the movies!
With a wide smile on her face, Betty gripped the handbrake, and as she pulled it, she stomped on the breaks. The minibus wheel skidded and spun in an arc as it screeched to a stop. The gate fell off, ripping the rearview mirror away with it. It clattered onto the ground.
Betty clicked the button to open the back doors, then she rammed it into gear and jerked the vehicle forward – the back doors flew open. She then put it into reverse and drove it into the loading dock, bumping over the gate, and wedging the bus up against the concrete. She unbuckled and ran down the aisle.
“Let’s move people,” she screamed.
With a grunt, Betty stepped up onto the large expanse of the loading dock.
It was just as she expected. People were sticking to what they knew. To most, it wouldn’t occur to them to look for food in other parts of the supermarket, not until the food ran out on the shop floor.
There were a couple of people over near the back of the loading dock, piling food into a trolley, but that was it.
For now, they will soon come pouring through.
“Here, this one. Make a line and hand them to each other and fill the minibus up.”
Right next to the open back door, possibly the last load to be delivered, and hadn’t had chance to be moved before the virus outbreak, was a group of pallets.
“I don’t like Pot Noodles!” Mrs. Armstrong said, as she read the label as she passed another box along the line.
The pallet was stacked high with boxes. Each box contained forty-eight pots.
“It’s food! So shut up, and keep moving!” Betty shouted, rallying the small group of thieves.
They had every intention of paying for their food when they left the nursing home. In fact, they had to wait while Mrs. Fredrick returned inside, because she forgot the checkbook. However, upon seeing the state of society, and their actions, this was the only option left to them.
Secretly, as her arms started to ache from lifting the boxes, she was thinking of how much time it would save if everyone was eating only meals that needed hot water to prepare them.
Within five minutes the front half of the minibus was full of Beef & Tomato, and Chicken & Mushroom noodles. They ignored the Sweet & Spicy and Bombay Bad Boy because none of them relished having to clean up after those flavours went through an old person’s digestive system.
To one side was a delivery of Sainsburys own brand lemonade.
As good as water, at a push. With added sugar and carbohydrates, she reasoned.
The large two liter bottles were slower going. Luckily, the adrenaline of punching through the gate, and looting provisions was keeping them all going.
Boy are we gonna be aching in the morning.
There was a ruckus behind – people were pouring into the docking area.
“Let’s go!” Betty didn’t want to have to fight someone off who reasoned that pinching a minibus full of food and drink was easier than getting their own.
By the time Betty was in the driver’s seat, and the others squeezed into whatever space was free, they were all knackered.
Mr. Warren didn’t bother sitting down; he lay on his back in the aisle.
Betty drove slowly, while trying to see through the smashed windscreen. She would’ve liked to have kicked the screen out, like she’d seen at the movies. However, there were three problems stopping that scenario. Firstly, she hasn’t got her leg up that high in thirty years. Secondly, she didn’t have the strength to kick the screen away from the rubber binding, even if she could reach it. And thirdly, and most importantly, if she could do the first two, rather than succeeding in making the screen shatter onto the road; she was more than likely to dislocate her hip.
They headed into town. They needed to collect their prescription drugs.
As she drove down next to the train station, they could all see how bad the town was. Shop windows were smashed, with objects littering the streets. People were everywhere, and everyone was carrying something.
There was smoke billowing from a couple of buildings.
There was no hope of driving up the main street to the chemist the nursing home used, not with all the people and discarded objects. Besides, with what she had seen so far, there was no way the pharmacists would be untouched; they would’ve been one of the first places looted. And she didn’t relish driving past, advertising a bus load of provisions to the obviously desperate people who was looting the town.
There was only one option Betty could think of, and that meant returning to the supermarket.
13
First Betty dropped the food off. If everything went pair-shaped, and they lost the minibus, she didn’t want to lose the food and drink as well. Besides, she needed to collect a few things for the plan to work.
At the nursing home, everyone who was physically able to lift anything came out to help. Within ten minutes the food and drink was stacked in a messy pile in the driveway.
Mr. Warren had to be carried inside. His back went while lifting the lemonade bottles.
While the bus was emptied Betty went to search the rear garden for what she needed. It was in the gardeners small shed. She grabbed the hefty pickaxe and a length of musty smelling rope. It was so heavy, after lifting all the boxes, so for most of the way back up the garden she dragged it along by the handle.
After a few miss attempts, and with Mrs. Fredrick’s, and Mr. Tomkin’s
help, she smashed one of the back door windows. She then managed to slide the wooden handle down through the gap in-between the metal door handle and the back door, and rest the base of the pickaxe onto the back footplate. One spike pointed into the minibus, through the smashed window, and the other pointed out by just over a foot. She used the rope to make sure it stayed in place.
Perfect! I hope.
With a handful of black bin liners from the kitchen, and a collection of thick coats off the hooks by the front door, she left the others carrying the food inside, and with only Mrs. Fredrick she headed back to the supermarket.
Betty explained her plan to the short, round manageress.
Mrs. Fredrick just stared, then she mumbled, “Shit!” Then, while staring at Betty with hard, squinting eyes, and pushing her glasses back up her nose, she shouted, “Fuck it, let’s do it!” She punched the air, which made her elbow crack.
It was the first time in nine years she had ever heard the manageress swear.
She may be dressed all in yellow, but she’s no chicken-shit!
They took the same route to the supermarket, with Mrs. Fredrick sat behind Betty.
Once there they weaved through the parked cars, and Betty reversed the minibus into position.
“Ready?” Betty asked.
“No!” Mrs. Fredrick said, while sweating profusely. “But let’s do this!”
Betty slammed the minibus into gear and floored the accelerator. The small bus wheel spun then shot back. Luckily, the section where they needed to be was relatively free of cars. But one car, which was parked in the way was hit on the rear, spinning it around and out of the way.
Betty corrected for the hit and kept her foot down. Her neck was hurting from leaning sideways, looking backwards.
“Stay on target,” Mrs. Fredrick shouted. Just at the last second, before impact, Betty spun around and wedged her head against the headrest.
The sound of the minibus hitting the gates was nothing compared with the sound of what they had just achieved. It sounded like a tonne of bricks had just fallen off the back of a lorry.
Betty changed gear, jolting the bus forward while flicking the switch to open the back doors. The impact wedged them shut.
“I’m on it!” Mrs. Fredrick shouted. She unclipped the seatbelt and jumped up and ran the length of the bus and slammed the full weight of her shoulder against the doors. They flew open. She had to grab the handrail above to stop herself flying out the back.
Betty reversed back, forcing the doors against the wall, with a jarring metal screech, creating a barrier no one could get through. She then pulled the handbrake on as hard as she could and double-checked the front door was locked.
She grabbed the coats and black bags.
In the wall, square in the middle of the opened back of the bus was the smashed thick window of the supermarket’s pharmacy.
The spike of the attached pickaxe, along with the weight and force of the bus had done what others couldn’t – they had breached the thick shockproof window.
Betty lay the thick coats over the sill of the frame, then slowly she climbed through, lowering herself down carefully.
Someone was banging against the security door that led out onto the shop floor with a heavy object. It rattled on its hinges, but it was made to take a battering.
Come on door, hold them off for just five more minutes.
Betty ran around tipping all the small glass bottles and plastic containers from the shelves into the black bags. As she filled them up, she passed them back through the window to Mrs. Fredrick.
She emptied everything out of all the drawers and cabinets. It wasn’t a very big pharmacy, so it didn’t take long to grab it all.
“Incoming!” Mrs. Fredrick shouted.
Betty passed another bag through the window. She was sweating profusely, and every part of her ached, but she was buzzing with adrenaline.
Well doc, you said I needed more exercise.
Some men had seen what they were up to, and were now outside slamming their hands on the windows, and trying to pull open the minibuses’ front door. Their muffled shouts and insults resounded throughout the shell of the bus.
“Last one,” Betty announced as she moved a chair over so she could climb out.
She hoped there were some tablets she could use. She was told her kidneys were packing up. There was a full pot of her new drugs at home, but they would only last so long.
Sod’s law, she reasoned. She was never a heavy drinker, or an excessive eater. As far as she was concerned, she lived a healthy lifestyle. She was told because of her age a transplant was out of the question. With the right medication, and regular sessions on the dialysis machine, she was told she would live another two or three years.
With the way the world is going, I will be lucky to last a month anyway.
Betty gave a quick glance around. There were computers and other expensive apparatus inside, but she wasn’t interested in stealing in that sense, but they did need the drugs, else residents were going to die.
One of the men had found a pipe or something metal on the ground, and was now whacking it against the door window. Cracks snaked out. He then noticed the front windscreen was already damaged, so he started on that instead.
Betty jogged down the bus as fast as her old legs would carry her. She dropped onto the seat.
“Hold onto something.”
Betty revved the engine until it sounded like it was going to explode, then, while ignoring the man smashing away at the windshield, she wedged it in gear. The minibus lurched forward, sending the man flying to one side.
Another tried to grab one of the swinging back doors, and was rewarded by being hit on the shoulder with the point of the pickaxe.
The bus screeched off through the car park, hitting the corners of a few cars in the haste to escape, with the sound of the man screaming in pain behind.
Betty was still buzzing with adrenaline, as they screeched out onto the main road. So much so that she was shaking all over. She hasn’t felt so alive in years.
When they returned, they found someone was at the nursing home waiting for her.
14
Betty helped carry the black bags inside. She then noticed Abel sat quietly in a chair, staring at the flashing lights on the Christmas tree.
He was wearing one of the boiler suits the home got him for helping around the home’s gardens. He proudly showed Betty when he first got them. They weren’t orange and yellow, his favorite colours, but they were real working mans clothes. That made him a worker, he had stated.
“Abel?” Betty shouted, as relief flooded through her body. She didn’t realize just how worried she was until she saw he was okay.
Abel slowly climbed from the seat, which creaked when his weight left it, and ambled over, and embraced his grandmother in a hug. He didn’t say a word, he just held her for what felt like hours.
Within the next hour, she was going to tell Mrs. Fredrick that she was going to use the minibus to go get her grandson. It occurred to her last night, that if the old people were left to fend for themselves, why would it be any different for the adults in Abel’s home?
“How the hell did you get here?” she finally asked as he pulled away, while her small hands gripped his huge plate sized ones.
“Train!” he mumbled. His dull eyes locked onto her lips.
She knew all public transportation was halted, to stop people mingling and the virus spreading. It dawned on her what he meant.
“You walked along the train track?”
Abel came with John every Saturday for years. He remembered the route, and walked it. The normal nineteen minutes, eight miles train journey had taken him three days to slowly walk.
Betty was gobsmacked. She hugged him again.
“Hungry,” he muttered into her hair.
Betty took a step back and looked him over. He was dehydrated and starving, and covered in mud and grime.
Betty sat him in the dining room and
got a plate of leftover Christmas dinner. It was two days old, but Abel gulped it down, along with half a bottle of lemonade. He was still dirty, but she needed to get some nourishment inside him.
She sat opposite, watching her grandson eat.
If only we had you a few hours ago, we could have cleaned the docking bay out. No one would have tried to mess with us if you were there.
Abel sat eating, making content sounds.
You’re just like Lennie, from Of Mice and Men. Hmm, it’s a good nickname; she reasoned.
She got him to carry a mattress into her room, and place it on the floor. It would be the first time they had slept in the same building together for over nine years.
Betty then made him strip, and while he slowly wiped himself down in the shower, she took his clothes to the laundry room and washed them. Hanging his huge overall up took some doing; it was so big, and heavy when wet, it was difficult for her to get it over the washing line in the boiler room, which was so warm; clothes dried in no time.
She removed another overall from the bag he was carrying. Inside was a few tee shirts, jeans, a jumper, and underwear, all neatly folded, as well as a collection of stuffed Bob the Builder toys, and the one framed photo of Betty and Abel that rested next to his bed.
When she returned forty minutes later, he was still stood under the spray from the shower. She forgot he did exactly what you said.
He would probably stand in there all night if I didn’t tell him to dry himself off.
Abel sat in front of the television. Most of the channels were showing just a static screen, but a few were running reruns of old movies and TV seasons. Every half an hour a government announcement interrupted whatever was on. The man was dressed in military uniform.
“Do not leave your home. Do not try to leave the cities and towns. Stay put. Keep calm. The government is doing all it can to sort the situation out. Keep your families together and seal all windows and doors. Do not go outside! Do not approach anyone who looks infected!”
The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The Squads First Three Weeks Omnibus [Books 1-10] Page 39
