Misfit stopped the car and we all climbed out, our feet crunching on the thick snow. ‘On foot, then,’ he said.
‘We only need to go on foot as far as our camp and we can get our car,’ I said.
‘Good thinking,’ said Misfit.
It wasn’t the most fun I’d ever had, trekking up a steep hill in the snow with two humans and a healing zombie, but it wasn’t the worst situation I’d ever found myself in either. Not by a long way. By the time we reached the entrance to the camp my Converse were soaked while my red, stiff fingers and toes burned painfully. Despite this, sweat trickled between my shoulder blades.
‘
Wait by the car, I’ll grab the keys,’ I said as I entered the camp ahead of the others. Before me I saw lumps beneath the fresh snow where it had settled over the fallen bodies of HZs and zombies. I couldn’t help trampling over them, unsure where the bodies ended and the ground began.
I heard a groan from my right. I span round, expecting to see a zombie lurching towards me through the snow. Instead I saw Stewart. He had been pinned to what remained of the door of the Martello tower by his own sword, the blade through his chest. The skin from his face had been removed and his lipless jaws snapped at the air, while his dead arms swiped in our direction. His white shirt had been torn at the shoulder, revealing the zombie bite that had infected him, and his throat had been cut; thick black blood oozed from both wounds. ‘Oh god,’ I said and gagged.
‘Don’t look, just go and get the keys,’ said Misfit as he drew up beside me. I obeyed neither of those commands and watched as he stalked closer to Zombie-Stewart, raised his knife and drove it into his head, right between the eyes. Stewart’s body sagged, still held up by the sword. Misfit pulled the blade from the wooden door with his right hand, catching the body under the arm with his left.
Misfit laid Stewart’s body on top of the snow, and crouched down beside him. He crossed Stewart’s arms across his chest and placed the hilt of his sword under his hands. The blade pointed down towards his feet, and the whole arrangement looked very much how I imagined a brave knight would be laid out after death. Once he was satisfied, Misfit turned to me and – sat on his haunches – said, ‘The keys, Sophie.’
‘Eh. Yeah. Yeah. I’m on it.’ I tore my eyes away from the sight of my dead friend and continued through the snow towards the main caravan, stumbling over bodies on the way.
As I neared the door, I saw a couple of zombies staggering about in the camp, their clumsy feet raking up the snow. One slipped over and rolled helplessly on the ground, trying to get up. The other one saw me and headed my way, but ran into an untrodden patch of snow and stumbled. These definitely weren’t
Dead Snow
style zombies. I couldn’t even be bothered to go and put the pathetic things out of their misery, and I carried on to the caravan.
I grabbed the keys to the Mazda from the kitchen worktop and, with my knife in my hand should the zombies have reached the caravan, I stepped outside. I needn’t have worried. The zombies were still sloshing about in the snow as graceful and as competent as a couple of overweight wrestlers in a paddling pool full of mud, and I ploughed back towards the others.
Flick had already got Sara into the car and she stood at the back by its boot, shotgun at the ready, waiting for me. As I passed the Martello tower, I couldn’t help but stop and glance at Stewart again. Snow had settled on his prone body. I blinked hard to keep the tears back.
‘Get in the car, Sophie,’ said Misfit as he stood by the driver’s side door. ‘You too, Flick.’ We did as Misfit asked and, without any of us looking back, Misfit started the engine and drove carefully from the camp.
Entry Twenty-Three
It took us longer than expected to get to Sainsbury’s, what with the snow making driving conditions difficult, so it was getting dark by the time Misfit pulled up in the car park. The van, a Vauxhall Vivaro, had been parked alongside the gap in the store’s window. Its side door sat in line with the missing pane of glass, and we opened the back doors in order to climb through it and into the store’s café. I was thankful for the two door set up, because the van would be going nowhere, what with the three feet of snow that had drifted up against it since it had arrived.
With the darkening sky outside making the interior of the café gloomy, I was relieved to see someone had left a small black torch for us on one of the tables. I picked it up, switched it on and held it out in front of me so its beam lit the way through to the store.
As we edged our way further in, I saw no movement or any sign of the others – other than the bodies of a few freshly killed zombies. We stood in the aisle at the bottom of the checkouts. To our right, we spotted another torch, this one with its beam on and we headed towards it. It had been placed on the ground beside a door that led off the shop floor and to a staff lift. Obviously, with no power, the lift wouldn’t take us anywhere, but someone had left a third torch, this one also with its beam on, by the stairwell to show us which way to go. With Flick guiding a placid Sara, we made our way up the steps.
At the top, I shone the torch’s beam around to see we stood in a small hallway, with men’s and women’s toilets to our right and some double doors in front of us, a long thin window in each. Light glowed from the other side of the glass and I could see a desk with a computer on it directly ahead of the doors. I switched off my torch, pushed open the left hand door and peered inside to see an office lit by torches and candles, giving a warm and cosy glow.
Jay, Cameron and Ella ran about with new toys from the store. Bags full of supplies sat in a heap under one of the desks. Blankets, cushions and pillows from the homeware department had been laid out on the floor as makeshift beds; some were occupied, others waited for little children to exhaust themselves. The remains of a meal – discarded paper plates, plastic forks, empty tins of beans, tinned potatoes and peas, canned ravioli and packets of crackers – lay on a dusty desk by the window.
I scanned the room but couldn’t see Charlotte, Kay, Sean, Clay or Soph amongst the people laying, sitting or milling about. Chris strode across the office and greeted us with a serious face and a, ‘You’re back.’
‘Yeah.’
‘We were worried. You’ve been ages. We thought you might have been caught out in the snow, or …’
‘Not with me driving,’ said Misfit with a half smile.
‘Well, we won’t be going anywhere for a day or two. Not in this weather,’ said Chris, biting a thumb nail.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Can’t be helped. Everyone’s safety is the main priority.’ I saw Chris clench his jaws and pause for a moment. ‘We’ve set the place up for the night as best we can,’ he added.
‘Homely,’ said Misfit and he grabbed a packet of biscuits out of one of the carrier bags. He opened them and handed a couple of biscuits to me and to Flick. I suddenly worried what Sara would eat without a fresh meat supply.
‘Sara, how is she?’ asked Chris as if reading my thoughts.
‘She’s OK,’ said Flick. ‘But I would rather get her to a quieter space, if there’s another office.’ As if to drive the point home, Jay whizzed by with a Lego aeroplane held aloft.
‘Sure. Yeah,’ said Chris. ‘If you go through there,’ he pointed to his left, where a stud wall separated this part of the office with another section, ‘there’s a private office at the end. But …’
It hadn’t escaped my notice his face had been set to ‘grave’ mode, and his voice strained since we arrived. I had put it down to losing Max and Cleo, as well as St Andrews and the fact that the snow had trapped the rest of them in town. Now I feared there was more to it. ‘But what? What’s up?’ I asked.
Chris moved closer to me as though he didn’t want anyone other than me, Misfit and Flick to hear what he was about to say. ‘There were zombies in the store when we arrived,’ he began and my heart began to speed up. ‘Not many and not a problem for us. Or so we thought …’
‘What?’ I urged, more conscious than ever that none of my team were in here but in the section of the room that had been introduced with a ‘But’.
‘We thought we’d got them all,’ said Chris and he stopped and bit his lip as though holding tears back.
‘Just tell me,’ I said.
‘We missed one. It bit Elsie.’
I hate to admit it but relief flooded through me that Kay, Charlotte or Sean hadn’t been bitten. This was closely followed by a shock of sadness for Elsie, a sweet old dear, and a tinge of guilt that I’d rather it had been her than my friends. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
‘Sucks, man,’ said Misfit.
‘Oh bless her,’ said Flick. ‘Is she …?’
‘She’s still with us. Soph’s with her.’
‘She doesn’t want to be put down?’ asked Flick.
‘No, not yet. And Soph – Soph and Elsie are close. She’s like a gran to Soph. They want to spend her last moments together. Charlotte is comforting Soph, and Sean … he’s there in case Soph can’t do the … can’t … You know,’ said Chris.
‘Yeah. I know,’ I said.
‘Soph wants to do it but she doesn’t know if she can. Sean offered …’
‘How long does she have?’ asked Flick.
‘A few hours yet. But she’s old, she could go at any time. We don’t know.’
‘Oh crap,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yeah, three of my people in one day,’ said Chris.
‘One of ours,’ said Misfit, and the image of Stewart pinned to the door popped into my vision like a flyer from an overzealous leafleter. I scrunched it up and threw it away.
‘Marco is going to die slowly. I’ll make sure of it,’ I said.
‘Get in line,’ said Misfit.
On the other side of the stud wall, I found this section of the office was smaller than the front. Just like in the front office, candles and torches had been placed on tables and they lit the room with a warm glow. Elsie, a dressing attached to the creped skin of her left forearm, lay on a bed that had been set up in the far corner, beneath one of the windows. The bed had been made from a quilt underneath her and a blanket over her. She kept throwing the blanket off, moaning of being hot, then sitting up and growling at everyone present for trying to freeze her to death. Soph, who knelt on the floor beside Elsie, held her hand tightly. I saw silent tears on Soph’s cheeks. She had the tight expression of someone trying to hold their emotions in for the sake of others.
Sean, crowbar in hand, perched on the edge of a table, towering over Elsie like a bird of prey on a cliff top. His hand, the one that had been stabbed during the attack on our camp, had a fresh bandage on it, and I saw him flexing his fingers absent mindedly. Kay slumped on a chair at the same table, in front of a computer with a blank screen I doubted would ever ping back to life. She had a fresh dressing on her throat from where Anna had taken a chunk out of her.
Clay sat on a chair at the opposite end of the office, his head in his hands and his back to everyone else. He turned his head when he heard us enter the office. He stood, strutted over, and placed his hand on Misfit’s back. ‘Hey, glad to see you, man,’ he said in a hushed voice.
Charlotte sprang off the floor beside Soph. ‘We were getting worried about you guys,’ she said as I approached and she gave me a bear hug.
Sean tore his eyes off the dying old lady to give us a nod and, when Charlotte released me to squeeze the life from Misfit and Flick in turn, Kay said, ‘What … zombies, HZs and snow stop you lot? No chance. I wasn’t worried.’ She smiled and I smiled back. I glanced down at Elsie and my smile dried up like a river bed in drought season.
‘I’m going to get Sara settled in the next room,’ said Flick. ‘Chris said there are some spare – ah, there they are,’ she said heading to a table by the window and grabbing an armful of bedding. She ushered Sara through a door to the private office.
‘I’m going to clean and dress that wound for you,’ said Charlotte and I looked down to the HZ bite I had suffered at the camp. Dried blood smeared my inner arm and wrist. The wound was sore and deep and still bled a little but with everything that had happened, I hadn’t paid it much mind. I perched on the edge of a table while Charlotte set about cleaning the wound with a disinfectant spray, wiping it clean with cotton wool, before placing a gauze pad on it and finishing the job with some surgical tape. ‘There,’ she said. ‘That’ll do for now and we’d best get some antibiotics into you, just in case.’
‘Yeah, we wouldn’t want your knife hand falling off because of infection, would we,’ said Kay with a wink.
I thought back to when I had been about six years old. I slipped over on some ice and bent the little finger on my right hand back really far when I put my hand out to break my fall. My finger swelled up. I couldn’t bend it without a shock of pain searing up my arm. My parents rushed me to the casualty department at the hospital, thinking I might have broken it. While we sat in the waiting room, my dad began saying they might have to amputate my finger, but not to worry because the stump would grow back, only it might grow into two or more new little fingers. And each one of the new fingers might grow another little finger and so on, until I would have a tree-like growth all made out of tiny little fingers.
I had laughed like I knew he was only teasing me. But I couldn’t shake off the feeling it might really happen. I mean, he was a grown up and grown ups knew about stuff. My laughter faded and I spent the remainder of our time in the waiting room biting the nails on my other hand and growing increasingly nervous that from that day on I would be known as Sophie Tree Finger.
I tried my hardest not to show my fear to my parents and it was with every piece of courage that six-year-old me, when called by the nurse, walked into the cubicle, my eyes scanning the area for the scalpel that would whip off my little appendage. I wondered how long it would take for my finger tree to start shooting. Instead, a doctor just sent me for an x-ray where they discovered I hadn’t even broken my finger, just sprained it.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Kay raising up my bandaged wrist and wiggling the fingers of my hand. ‘This is going nowhere and if it does, at least I’ll have a tree hand. Imagine how many knives I could hold then.’
‘What you on about?’
‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter.’
I glanced at Misfit who sat on the windowsill, his fine featured face in profile as he gazed outside. The night sky had turned a white/grey by the thick snowfall. ‘None of us are going anywhere for a while,’ he said without looking back into the room.
‘Misfit’s right,’ I said. ‘We should get some more supplies up here and board up the door that leads up to the offices … make it as HZ proof as we can. This place is going to be home until we can safely move the vehicles again. We can’t afford for anyone to get stranded out in the snow.’
Misfit jumped down from the windowsill. ‘Come on then, Richardson,’ he said to me, walking towards the door. ‘Our second supermarket trip together, this relationship is getting serious.’ He winked at me before disappearing through to the first office. I smiled thinly, feeling self-conscious, and slid off the table to follow him.
Me and Misfit each pushed a trolley that we had placed five supermarket bags in – the large strong ones they used to charge you for – and we speedily moved up and down the aisles, placing supplies into the opened bags. We each held a torch in one hand to light the way while we ‘shopped’. Shane and Amy had a similar set up, but their bags would be loaded into the back of the van – its doors having been locked now we were all inside the building. The supplies would be ready for when the St Andrews lot could safely leave town.
‘How are we going to find Marco?’ I asked Misfit as I emptied the entire stock of tinned ham into one of my bags, hoping Sara would like it.
‘We’ll find him,’ replied Misfit.
‘You sound confident.’
‘I am confident.’ Misfit had an armful of canned soup, but he looked up at me as he spoke. ‘I’m a hunter.’ He turned his attention back to the tins as he let them slide into one of the bags in his trolley. I nodded, even though he didn’t see the gesture, it had been meant more for me, my body outwardly expressing my faith in him. Once all the tins were bagged, he glanced up at me. ‘We’d better get a move on,’ he said. ‘Get ourselves secure upstairs. We don’t want a battle until we’re ready.’
I nodded again. ‘Yep,’ I said, and busied myself loading more supplies into my bags.
In the baking aisle, Misfit flung a packet of dried fruit and nuts at me. ‘Eat,’ he said as I clutched the packet in front of my body. I realised I hadn’t eaten all day; I had battled HZs and zombies on an empty stomach and with a hangover. I had been running on nothing but adrenaline the entire time. I tore open the packet and rammed a handful of the mixed nuts and fruit into my mouth, feeling the light-headedness and the trembling in my legs – that I had barely been aware of until now – ease. ‘Better?’ said Misfit before he opened a packet and poured its contents into his mouth.
‘Yeah. Definitely better.’
He swallowed his mouthful before speaking again. ‘Good. The colour’s come back to your cheeks.’ He smiled at me. ‘I reckon we’ve got enough,’ he continued, nodding down to our full bags. ‘Let’s get this lot upstairs.’