by Colley, Ryan
It was only when I left the changing rooms and took a turn down a different section of the store, just to have a look around, that I realised how silly going into the changing rooms seemed. Then again, the end of the world didn’t change my nudity shyness. Some things would never change.
There was a cool breeze of air conditioning the deeper I got into the store – so refreshing. I took a moment to close my eyes and let it wash over me, enjoying it while I could – but then I realised there was something else in the air. A stench that was all too familiar. I sighed – it was the undead. I readied my SA80 and crept along slowly, my flip-flops slapping the floor with every step. Dammit. I kicked them off and continued barefoot, if only for the time being. I didn’t have time to warn the others that danger may be lurking. In the confined space, they would hear me shout no problem, but so would the undead. Instead, I hunted my prey silently.
I arrived at the girl's section and saw a dark brownish pool of gore that had spread from an aisle. I sidestepped so I could look down the aisle in question. Laying at the centre of it was a dead zombie, its head partially collapsed and a spray of gore across the various princess dresses. I crouched next to the zombie and looked around. The cause of death was definitely a bullet wound, the brass casing nearby explained that. I poked the gore with the barrel of my gun. It was thick and like sludge. I had no way of even guessing how long it had been there. That was the problem with the undead, their blood wasn’t fresh. It could have happened an hour before my arrival or weeks ago for all I knew. It didn’t matter though, it was no longer a threat.
I headed back to the front of the store with my flipflops and a few other items, finding the others waiting for me. They all had a small bundle of clothes in baskets.
“Wow, wearing clothes makes you look a lot better,” Keith mocked, grinning as he did so. He held a basket of very different clothes. A mix of jeans and shorts, t-shirts and jumpers, underwear and footwear – he even had a backpack with him. I didn’t need to question his choice of items, it was obvious that he was preparing for life after he left us. Kirsty and Stephanie had picked a selection of clothes also, not including the new ones they wore. I smiled. Clothes they chose, instead of the poorly fitting ones I’d picked, made them look so much more alive. Everyone was beginning to look a little more human.
I started to leave the store but Keith grabbed my arm to stop me.
“What?” I groaned. What could I have possibly forgotten to pick up? I might have been feeling awful, but I wasn’t an idiot.
“Don’t forget the security tags,” he warned me sternly.
“Oh, how could I forget,” I said, rolling my eyes and tried to walk out again. He stopped me, I snapped back, “Worried the police will stop us?”
“No, but if the electricity is running then it will set off an alarm and I would hate to see who actually hears it, okay?” he said, like he talking to a five-year-old.
“Oh,” was all I could manage before the others walked to the checkout and removed their tags. I followed with a sour look on my face and did the same. He winked playfully when he caught my eye. And he had to be smug about it … great.
We left the shop and climbed back into the van with Kirsty moving us to the supermarket, parking close to the store and next to another van. We climbed out and began moving carefully. There were more zombies scattered about, dead on the concrete, and not by our hand.
“I wonder how long ago this happened,” Kirsty said aloud, noting the brass casings.
“There was one in the last shop. Didn’t think anything of it,” I replied casually. I leaned against the other van, it belonged to a flower company, and adjusted my shorts. I stopped and pulled my hand away, staring at the van cautiously.
“What’s wrong?” Keith asked, seeing the look on my face. I ignored him and felt the van again.
“It’s warm,” I said finally. I would have even gone as far as saying it was hot.
“It’s in the sun,” Stephanie said. “It probably heated up the metal.”
I felt other panels which were still in the sun, but not close to the engine. They were nowhere near as warm. I walked around the back of the van and tapped a finger against the exhaust. Hot.
“There’s people nearby,” I said definitively. I stood up, head still swimming. Everyone looked at me with concern and determination. “Be ready.”
CHAPTER 17
We entered the store as silently as possible, the electronic doors sliding open with a ‘whoosh’ as we approached. I was at the head of the group, crouching ever so slightly and SA80 pointing forward. I kept my head on a swivel, waiting for any sign of movement. Kirsty and Stephanie followed behind me, pointing their guns and ready to kill, with Keith following behind them.
The shop was huge and open-plan – likely a converted warehouse – a few pillars spread throughout the shop acted as supports. There were shelves every ten feet or so, all of which were shoulder height or taller, acting as walls and dividers. I could see rotten food everywhere – the fruit section was decimated and full of flies, a musty and mouldy smell in the air. What time hadn’t destroyed looked as though it had been partially ransacked by others. I noticed a sign hanging from the ceiling at the back which read ‘pharmacy’ and pointed to it, the others nodded in silent agreement.
We continued onwards, careful to avoid any debris on the ground. If there was someone in the store, we didn’t want to alert them through clumsiness. I strained my ears but couldn’t hear anything other than our footsteps which felt impossibly loud. However, silence didn’t mean that there wasn’t anyone. Maybe they were being as silent as we were? It would make sense – how else would they survive?
As we got closer to the pharmacy, I noticed our first obstacle – scattered bags of crisps. If we were in a movie, we’d stand on them by accident and alert everyone to our position with a single crunch. Fortunately, we weren’t idiots and moved around them with zero complications.
We continued deeper into the store, only slowing when it soon became painfully obvious that we weren’t alone in the store – not just because we heard the movement of people, but whispered speech as well. I didn’t need to signal this to the others, their frozen positions and raised weapons made it clear they’d heard. On top of that, they were all looking to me for direction. I had to make a decision. Did we try to call out to them, hoping they were friendly? Not everyone in the apocalypse was a threat. Or did we get the upper hand and attack first, never taking the risk to begin with? Both had merits and detriments, but time was a factor and I had to act.
I signalled with exaggerated hand movements for Kirsty to move silently around the side of one aisle with Stephanie and for Keith to stay with me. Kirsty signalled back when they were in position and ready to act. I stayed any further action with a steady hand and, in that moment, we’d developed a silent communication. All we had to do was deal with the other group.
“Hello!” I called out anticlimactically, my voice echoing around the quiet store. I heard someone in the other group curse, followed by the noise of several people scrambling as, what sounded like, guns were picked up.
“Who's there?” a female voice shouted back.
“Just someone passing through,” I replied somewhat honestly – there was no point giving away that there were more than one of us, not until we knew more anyway. I could hear the padding of feet as others moved about, trying to get into a better position to deal with whatever threat that I was. Kirsty flashed me a quick gesture, holding up five digits on her hand, followed by another two. Seven people. I squinted at her, as if asking how she could determine what was clearly out of sight and she pointed to one of the security mirrors that framed the other group perfectly. We were outnumbered big time.
“We have guns!” someone else called to me, more as a warning than a threat.
“So do I,” I called back instinctively, then mentally kicked myself for responding in a way that could suggest a threat. I then tried to backtrack, taking a warmer approac
h. “Look, I’m not looking for trouble – there’s enough of that. I’m just here because I need something.”
“That’s all well and good, but this is ours,” the first voice replied, matter-of-factly. I could see how the situation was playing out in their mind already – I, the foreign invader, was armed and there to take what they’d fought for.
“Come on,” I said, forcing a smile and hoping that it was reflected in my tone when trying to bargain with them. “I just want some rehydration sachets – anything like that. I’ve been sick.”
There was a lot of fevered whispering. They were discussing something … the consequences of helping me? The merits of killing me?
“Were you bit?” the first voice eventually called back.
“No, but I–” I began to say back but was cut short when I heard a crunch to my side. I span around, raising my gun in that motion, and saw a man stood there wide-eyed with his gun trained on me. Fear spread across his face, not like a ripple of a pebble in the ocean but with the urgency and violence of a boulder falling in a pond. He ducked back behind the shelf and out of sight.
“There’s tons of them!” I heard him shout, exaggerating our numbers in his panic. “They’re surrounding us!”
I heard shouting and weapons loading.
“No, we’re not!” I shouted, trying to dispel the crisis that was escalating.
Kirsty wasn’t waiting for the situation to deescalate and shouted, “Just give us those sachets and we’re gone!”
And that was it, any chance of peace was broken. Their paranoia and need to survive, influenced by our perceived threat and magnified by our demands decided the course of action. A burst of bullets ruptured the metal shelving near my head and passed violently by as they sent their reply. I dived to the floor, and Keith followed.
“We’re not after a fight!” I bellowed, but it was too late and there were more shots, followed by answering shots from Kirsty. I almost couldn’t move, dumbfounded that the situation had gone so wrong – surely there was a way to resolve it without violence?
“This isn’t a diplomatic situation anymore, we need to fight!” Keith hissed to me as we both lay prone while bullets ripped by overhead. My eyes grew wide as the full extent of his words hit me. I didn’t want to fight. There was a pump and a blast from Stephanie as she fired up and over the shelf. Someone screamed, pain and fear in their vocal explosion. Others began shouting, a more organised shout of commands. First blood had been drawn. I didn’t want to kill.
More rounds tore through the metal and peppered the ground and pillar near me. The tiled floor exploded upwards and I was hit with tiny shards of the material. Kirsty continuously traded shots with them, moving to another position and never staying in the same place for too long. I heard another scream, followed by a gurgled choking sound. I quickly checked the members of my group, ensuring it wasn’t one of them – it wasn’t. Six more to go.
I locked eyes with Keith as we both laid down and said, “Get out of here, you’re useless without a gun.”
“I’m really not,” he said with a quick nod and disappeared down one of the aisles – not towards the front door but deeper into the chaos. And then it was my turn to move. I forced myself up, switching to fully automatic in a split second and firing through the metal shelf as I moved. I heard more shouts, and bullets ripped through the air where I’d been. The fight was on.
I crouched behind another shelf, trying to get a decent view of where our attackers were but I didn’t have a line of sight on any of them. I tried to use the mirrors in the same way Kirsty had done, but they were shattered with newly created bullet holes in them – they must have caught on to Kirsty’s tactic. Not knowing where anyone lurked was horrible. My breathing was hard and fast, trying to fill lungs that felt the size of grapes. I was forced to take tiny, ragged breaths. My heart felt like it was in my throat, hitting a thousand beats per second. I was scared. Terrified. Fearful. I didn’t know what else to say. I’d feared for my life before the dead were walking, and had felt fear on my journey before – scared of what I would face. Scared of what the future held. Scared of what my future held. Scared for those around me. But it was the first time I felt true fear for my life. Those bullets had come so close to my head. I could have been killed and would never have ever known – everything snuffed out in an instant.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” I panted repeatedly. I held my gun close to me like it was a comfort blanket and not the implement of death that it was. My head spun. Was it the dehydration or fear? I didn’t know. I heard crunching nearby again. I looked up, my eyes wide with panic, and I was staring down the barrel of a gun.
Then something happened. Something changed inside me. One moment I was scared and surrounded by people trying to kill me. The next, facing my impending death, I saw only targets. Someone I had to stop before they killed me. It wasn’t about hate or fear. It was about survival. I didn’t even see their face. They barely even looked human to my mind’s eye. I just knew it was them or me.
In one swift motion, I dived forward and swatted their gun to one side, holding it away from us and dropped my own. They fired a shot which came close to my head – excruciating pain down one side of my face. I ignored it and carried on with my assault. My heart pounded in my ears and I was overcome with a bloodlust which only the death of another could satisfy. I couldn’t hear anything other than my heart pounding in my ears and their panicked calls for help. It was all about us – them and me, in that moment. I would be the one to survive the encounter. I would be the one to wake up in the morning.
I pulled the knife up – for an occasion I’d almost predicted. The cool weighted metal felt like a feather in my hand as I plunged it deep into my attacker's stomach. They impulsively continued to fire shots, but I held their gun away from us and they peppered the ground. They screamed. I ripped the blade out of them and stuck it in again. Hot, sticky fluid coated my hands and made holding the knife difficult – my hand sliding around on the handle. I looked down to see blood pumping out and onto the floor. The person was still struggling. They weren’t going down easily. They had just as much will to survive as I did, they just didn’t have the strength to fight back. I just happened to be the better equipped to deal with it. I pulled the knife out again and stuck it into their chest, twisting it. They let go of the gun and I let go of them, letting them collapse to the floor. I stood there, and I breathed heavily, shoulders heaving.
The clattering of their gun hitting the floor finally reached my brain and violently wrenched me back to reality, like being shocked and dragged back from the void. I took a staggered breath and looked down. My hands … they were covered in blood. My clothes were drenched. The floor was slick with it. Then I looked at my attacker. The one who had threatened my life. The person who wasn’t a man, but a girl … a prepubescent child. The wide-eyed angel-faced girl had to be no older than twelve. The same girl I’d stabbed. Repeatedly. She laid there, in a pool of her own blood, knife still in her chest and writhing in pain. Blood pumped from every wound that I had inflicted. She coughed and blood came out of her mouth. Shit. I sank to my knees, the weight of realisation as heavy as the world on shoulders of Atlas. I reached for her, wanting to pick her up and carry her to safety, but it wasn’t any use. She weakly tried to crawl away, expecting me to deliver the death blow. I tried to tell her not to be afraid, that there wasn’t any danger, but it wasn’t true – I was the danger. She stopped struggling. She didn’t have the strength. I made another attempt to pick her up, but she was heavy in my trembling arms and my unsteady feet kept slipping in her blood.
“We need help over here!” I shouted, my vocals finally freed. What had I done? I tried to apply pressure to her injuries, attempting to stem the flow, but she’d lost too much blood and I didn’t have enough hands to cover so many puncture wounds. I shouted again but no one came to help us. Everyone else was too busy exchanging shots with each other to realise what had happened. Then the girl started to cry, her sobs ripping m
y heart from my chest. I slumped down next to her and did my best to cradle her in my arms. She didn’t resist this time.
“What’s your name?” I whispered, our embrace acting as a bubble away from everything else around us. I moved her bloody and matted hair out of her face. She stared at me, not with fear but with knowing. She knew something that someone her age should never know – the simple and undeniable fact that she was going to die in that store in my arms. But there was more in her eyes … she didn’t even blame me. She knew that was just the way things were.
“L … L … Lindsey,” she wheezed, every breath a desperate struggle for her dying body. I looked at her, meeting her eyes as tears formed in my own – she didn’t notice. Her eyes were slowly losing focus and the living sparkle that people had was fading.
“Where are you from?” I asked her quietly, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Bath,” she said in an exhale.
“Bath? I live in Bristol,” I said forcing a smile. “We’re practically neighbours.”
She smiled and coughed out, “I … love … Bristol.”
“Where … where do you love most in the world?” I asked her, tears rolling down my face as I fought back a choking sob.
