The two of us wheeled our trolleys to the door to the stairwell. Jordan had gathered more, some filled with rotting food abandoned by customers during the initial outbreak. Shane and Amy arrived with even more trolleys that they weaved between the bodies of fallen zombies in the aisle by the tills. In Amy’s trolley I saw two bags filled with fake flowers, vases, brightly coloured scatter cushions and some framed prints. ‘What are those for?’ I asked her.
‘To make the place look pretty.’
‘Are you serious?’ I said.
‘Well, I know it’s cheap, tacky supermarket stuff but –’
‘No, I meant, why?’
Amy looked disgruntled, her ruddy cheeks reddening further. ‘Because I like things to be pretty,’ she replied.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, you –’ Shane coughed and I turned to see he held the door open while he waited for us. ‘Sorry,’ I said and me and Misfit headed inside with our supply filled trolleys. We wheeled them to the foot of the stairs and lifted the bags out. Grabbing as many as we could, we carried them to the landing halfway up the stairs where we left the bags to go down and fetch the rest.
Jordan, Shane and Amy wheeled the rest of the trolleys into the area between the door and the staircase, piling some on top of others to get them all in the limited space with us. Amy lifted her bags of tat out of her trolley and carried them upstairs, leaving the rest of us to position the trolleys. We packed them in the space between the doors and the stairs so opening the door from the outside would be incredibly difficult and very noisy, but from this side we could stack them out of the way when we needed to get out. We stood on the stairs, admiring our initiative Shane gave the trolleys at the back a good shove; satisfied there was very little give, we headed up to our makeshift camp.
On the way up, we each grabbed a bag or two from the landing. Chris sat on a chair in the hallway keeping watch outside the doors, a torch held in his right hand. He nodded wearily at us as we walked past. I gave a barely-there smile before pushing through the double doors. We were now as safe as we could be. I left my bags of supplies on the floor with the ones the others had gathered when they first arrived, and I scanned the room.
Charlotte sat on the floor consoling a gently sobbing Dolly in her makeshift bed at the end of the office nearest the photocopier. Patrick snored soundly in the corner of the room, between the window and the drained water cooler, while Derek lay next to Dolly, squashed up against a bank of desks. ‘Elsie wouldn’t want you upsetting yourself like this,’ he said, reaching a hand out to take Dolly’s free one in his.
‘They won’t even let me see her,’ said Dolly, her voice frail and small like an ancient child.
Charlotte squeezed her other hand. ‘It wouldn’t be safe,’ she said. ‘Or a nice thing for you to see.’
‘Yeah, love,’ added Derek, ‘we’ve said our goodbyes. Remember her as she was.’
I turned my attention to Kelly and her eldest daughter, Char. They were settling Cameron and Jay into beds lined up on the other side on the room. Ella lay curled up like a little bundle as she slept in a bed in the very corner, her right cheek all chubby as it lent against the pillow. Kelly’s son Sam and her other daughter Chloe sat playing a game of cards at a desk nearby. Amy busied herself arranging a vase of fake flowers on one of the desks that she had dusted and tidied of all the used Post-it Notes and papers. Once she was satisfied, she stood back, tucking her yellow-blonde frizzy hair behind her ears.
I left the others sorting out the supplies and headed through to the next office. Elsie’s legs thrashed about on her bed while she made a strange strangled sound. Soph had her back to me and as I came further into the room, I saw she held Elsie down by her shoulders, using only the lightest of pressure – Elsie looked so frail, like a patient dying of cancer; all the fleshy life had been devoured. Kay crouched on the other side of the bed, her axe in her hands.
Sean, still perched on the edge of the table above Elsie, turned to look at me as I approached to stand at the foot of Elsie’s bed. He looked tired and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger of his free hand, his crowbar clutched in the other. ‘More supplies are up and we’re as secure as we can be,’ I said to him and Kay.
Sean nodded. ‘Let’s hope this snow doesn’t hang about and we can head somewhere safer.’
‘Safer? Where in this town is safe now … with that sicko on the loose?’ said Soph. She sat back a bit now that Elsie had relaxed and gone quiet, but she kept hold of her wrinkled, arthritic hand. ‘You should all leave town with us.’
‘No chance. And Marco will be the one needing somewhere safe when we get out there,’ said Kay.
‘Just a little matter of finding him,’ said Sean. He rolled his head from side to side, loosing his neck muscles.
‘Misfit is –’ I didn’t get to finish. Something hit my left side, sending me tumbling to the ground onto my right. My t-shirt and jumper rode up as I fell, exposing my left rib cage. Before I could figure out what had happened, Elsie pinned me to the ground and lowered her jaws towards my flesh. My knife was through my belt and weaponless, I tried to push her off, but the infection had given the usually frail old woman added strength. I couldn’t stop her. Zombie-Elsie’s jaws clamped onto my rib cage. I screamed, my eyes fixed on the back of Zombie-Elsie’s thin grey hair as she attached herself to me. I saw the side of her head cave in as something made contact with it, knocking the old zombie off me.
I looked up and saw Sean standing over me, crowbar in hand, Zombie-Elsie’s black blood oozing from its end. I lay back on the floor, closed my eyes and screamed ‘DO IT! DO IT!’ over and over, waiting for Sean to drive the crowbar into my head now I was infected.
‘Sophie!’ I heard Misfit’s voice followed by the sound of his feet pounding over to where I lay but I kept my eyes closed.
‘Sean, do it! Just do it!’ I screamed.
‘What happened?’ demanded Misfit. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘Sophie.’ Sean’s voice to me, ignoring Misfit. ‘Open your eyes.’ I didn’t want to open them. I didn’t want to admit it was all over for me. Adrenaline blocked the pain of the bite, but I knew I had eight hours of sickness or I could ask one of my friends to put me out of my misery now. Someone placed the palms of their hands on my cheeks, gripping me firmly. ‘Open your eyes.’ Sean’s voice sounded close and I guessed it was him who held me.
I don’t know how or why but Sean’s voice broke through my hysterics and forced me to focus. I knew I didn’t want to go out like a screaming cry baby wimp. After everything, did I really want my friends to remember me that way? I opened my eyes and looked up at Sean as he knelt over me. ‘I want you to do it,’ I said calmly.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Misfit. He crouched down beside me and took my right hand in his, but I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on Sean
‘Please, I want you to do it,’ I said to him again.
‘Do what?’ asked Misfit.
‘Sophie, there’s no bite,’ said Kay, standing over me. ‘Look.’
‘What?’ Sean released me and he leant back so I could look down at my side. I saw yellow saliva on my rib cage and a patch of skin that looked a little red, marking the spot where Zombie-Elsie had bitten down on me. But no broken skin … no bite. ‘What the fuck?’ I said, sitting up.
Sean stood and stepped over me to Elsie’s body that lay on the floor beside me and he used the end of his crowbar to pull up her top lip. Gums … I saw gums. Soph, tears streaming down her cheeks, crawled forwards on her hands and knees. ‘She … she hasn’t got her false teeth in,’ she said in a small voice.
Entry Twenty-Four
I couldn’t stop shaking as I tried to come to terms with how close I’d come to getting infected. I sat on the edge of a desk in the front office with Misfit’s arms wrapped tightly around me while Kay, Soph and Sean wrapped Elsie’s body in blankets and carried her out to the men’s toilets. Soph, her eyes bloodshot and her skin pale, remained in the hallway outside the office to join Chris on watch duties. I couldn’t help thinking she was in no fit state after losing Elsie, but I also understood the need to keep busy.
Inside the offices, everyone else settled down for the night, the mood sombre after Elsie’s death. With little room left in the front office, my team plus Jordan and Amy made up our beds in the second section of the office, where Elsie had died. In the glow of the torches around the room, I could see Amy had surrounded her neatly made bed with colourful scatter cushions, and she had placed a framed print of a sunset between the wall and her pillow. I wanted to kick it.
While the others slept, me and Misfit both sat on the windowsill, looking out at the falling snow. I smoked a cigarette as I watched the swirling white flakes. I thought of my Sam, in the pub cellar.
Was the cellar filling up with snow
? I wondered.
Would he be buried
?
But even if he was, he didn’t need to breath, did he
? He’d be OK.
I looked at Misfit, his breath steaming up the window and I wondered what he was thinking about. I didn’t want to ask. Someone who spoke as little as Misfit wasn’t the type to give up his thoughts easily. Asking him what he was thinking would be like peeking up a nun’s skirt to see what colour knickers she was wearing.
After a while, he turned to look at me. I stubbed the end of my cigarette out on the windowsill and looked up to meet his gaze. ‘You OK?’ he asked.
My ribs ached a bit from where Elsie’s gums had clamped down on me. And I tried to ignore the little voice inside my head that said,
What if you’re infected … What if the virus managed to get through the pores of your skin … What if there’s a tiny, barely visible break in the skin where Zombie-Elsie clamped down and the virus got in?
I tried to resist the urge to check my side
again
. ‘Yeah. I’m OK,’ I said, but my fingers shook as I started rolling another cigarette and I tried to control them.
Misfit slid off the windowsill and came to stand in front of me. I licked the paper and rolled the cigarette, not taking my eyes off Misfit’s. He took the cigarette out of my fingers and placed it on the windowsill beside me. ‘I’m going to kill Marco and I’m going to find us somewhere safe,’ he said, holding onto my now free hand.
‘I know you will,’ I said. ‘I trust you.’ He moved forwards so his body pressed up between my thighs. I could smell his body odour. It wasn’t like most people’s body odour in the apocalypse. I mean, with no running water making personal hygiene something not easily attained or maintained, some people smelt almost as bad as the zombies. But Misfit, his odour smelt musky – god, it sounds so cheesy, but it smelt
manly
. I am aware I sound like some dappy female from a sappy romance novel but he smelt like someone who could crush zombie heads with his bare hands, and hunt and … make me feel safe.
My heart pounded in my chest. Trapped between Misfit and the windowpane at my back, I found myself wanting to pull him closer. I knew he wanted that too. I noticed the snowflakes reflected in Misfit’s eyes and I thought of Sam … out there. My Sam. As Misfit leaned in further, pressing himself into me, I lifted my free hand up and placed it on his chest, halting him. ‘I need to sleep,’ I said, pushing him back and sliding off the windowsill. ‘It’s been a long day.’ I slipped past him, leaving him standing at the window, following me with his eyes as I darted to the bed we had made up earlier.
I lay down, my back to the window, and placed my knife on the floor beside me. I wondered if Misfit would follow me. After a moment, I turned to see Misfit, his back to me, looking out of the window, both hands laying palm down on the windowsill, the cigarette I had rolled but not had chance to smoke sticking out from the fingers of his right hand. I turned back, closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
A scream woke me. I struggled to free myself from a tangle of unfamiliar blankets
and sat up, grabbing my knife instinctively. I blinked, surprised for a moment to find myself in an office, not a caravan. Cold grey morning light did little to brighten the room. And then I saw Sara standing over Amy’s bed. Amy had crawled backwards so her back pressed up against the sunset print and the wall, her blankets kicked off and in a heap where she had left them. ‘Get that zombie away from me!’ she screamed, throwing one of the scatter cushions at Sara. Sara didn’t react to the cushion at all. Amy swiped her knife off the floor and she held it out in front of her as she pushed herself up the wall until she stood, the knife slashing the air between her and Sara.
‘Get away from her!’ said Flick as she appeared from the office she shared with Sara. Flick came to stand beside her and pointed her shotgun at Amy.
‘Get away from
her
? Don’t you mean
it
? It’s a fucking zombie. A dead, ugly thing and
it
needs to get away from me!’ yelled Amy as she waved her knife at Sara. Sara shrank back behind Flick, while Flick shoved her shotgun in Amy’s face.
The rest of us, including Misfit, who I’d noticed had slept, blanketless, by the window, had got to our feet. ‘Amy, you fucktard, she’s as harmless as a baby,’ said Kay, stepping forwards.
‘Yeah? Really? Can any of you be sure of that?’ spat Amy, without lowering her knife or taking her eyes off Flick’s. ‘It’s a zombie and who here hasn’t lost loved ones to zombies? Who here hasn’t watched someone they love die slowly only to get up and try and kill them? Who here doesn’t spend every waking moment fearing for their lives because of zombies like that one?’ Amy thrust her knife above Flick’s shoulder in the direction of Sara.
‘Not zombies like her,’ I said, shoving past Jordan and Sean. ‘She’s healing. Her body is fighting the virus and she is becoming human.’
‘She’ll never be human,’ said Amy. ‘She’ll always carry the virus. She’ll always be a danger.’
‘Look at her, for fuck’s sake,’ said Sean. ‘I mean, I’ve only just found out about her but anyone can see she’s completely placid. And the others have told me she can even talk now.’
‘I’m really not interested in your thoughts,’ Amy snapped. Sean gritted his teeth and clenched his fists at his side, but he said nothing. ‘What if she gets angry and bites one of us?’ said Amy to the rest of us. ‘It’s not worth the risk. I want her out of here.’
‘She won’t bite anyone,’ said Flick, her gun still trained of Amy’s head. ‘I’ve lived with her for months.’
‘She looks like she wanted to bite me,’ said Amy.
‘Are you surprised?’ said Kay and I nudged her in the ribs.
‘What was she doing out anyway?’ asked Amy.
‘She’s learned to use doorhandles,’ said Flick.
‘Oh great, so we have a zombie just roaming about the place!’ said Amy.
‘Look,
you
put your knife down,’ said Kay jabbing a finger at Amy. ‘And
you
put your gun down,’ she said, looking at Flick. ‘Or the pair of you will see that I’m far more dangerous than any zombie, healing or otherwise. Put ‘em down!’
Flick lowered her gun by a few inches. ‘Keep
her
away from Sara,’ she said before lowering the gun fully and holding it at her side.
‘Keep
it
away from me,’ said Amy, lowering her knife.
‘OK, look,’ I began, glancing from Amy to Flick. ‘Some people who aren’t used to her are a little nervous around Sara, that’s understandable. But we’re a team, and Sara is a part of that team and she’s going nowhere. Amy, believe me, she isn’t just harmless, she’s hope for the future and it is up to us to protect her.’
‘Hope for the future? No, she’s a ticking time bomb,’ said Amy, her cheeks glowing red. ‘There are kids here. Do you put a zombie’s wellbeing over theirs?’
‘I’ll take full responsibility for her,’ said Flick. ‘I’ll keep her with me and as soon as it’s safe, we’ll go back to our home and leave the rest of you alone.’
‘Whatever,’ said Amy. She turned and stomped off to the front office, barging through Chris, Soph and Kelly, who’d all gathered by the opening next to the stud wall.
Flick guided Sara back into the end office. I ducked into the front office, grabbed a tin of ham and one of vegetable soup and a tin opener, and went after Flick. I knocked on the door. ‘It’s me, Sophie,’ I said through the door. The door opened and Flick put her face to the three inch gap she allowed between the door and the frame. ‘I wondered if Sara was hungry,’ I said, holding up the can of meat.
Flick opened the door further and I slipped inside the small office. I saw one desk along the right hand side of the room, one window to my left and another window straight ahead. Filing cabinets lined the rest of the walls. I handed the tin to Flick. ‘Thanks, Sophie,’ she said before tugging the ring pull and scooping out a handful of pink meat and jelly. She held the meat out for Sara. ‘Food,’ said Flick.
‘Fooo,’ said Sara and she took a couple of steps closer to Flick, sniffing the air between her and the proffered food. I watched as Sara came so close to Flick’s fingers that her nose touched the meat. ‘Fooooo’ she said again.
‘Yes, food,’ said Flick.
I held my breath. I had never seen any aggression from Sara but seeing Flick with her fingers covered in pungent jellied meat, held out to a zombie made me nervous. I continued to watch, amazed, as Sara opened her mouth like a child waiting for their medicine and Flick placed a piece of the meat inside. Sara waited for Flick’s fingers to be clear, then she began to chew. I relaxed a little, now Flick no longer had her fingers in biting distance of a zombie’s mouth. I held up the vegetable soup, ‘And I have –’ I stopped mid sentence when pieces of chewed meat and bubbly saliva dribbled from Sara’s mouth and down her chin. Flick grabbed a sheet of A4 paper, what looked like a spreadsheet printed on it, from the desk and used it to mop up the meaty saliva.
‘She doesn’t like it?’
‘I guess not. It has to be fresh meat,’ said Flick. ‘Looks like her system just isn’t used to processed food any more.’
‘We don’t have any fresh meat,’ I said, glancing out the window. The snow had stopped falling in the night, but fresh, white snow, a good few feet, covered the ground. I walked over to the end window that looked out over the car park. I saw a zombie, its legs trapped in the snow almost up to its knees. It saw me and swung its arms up, the movement made it lose its balance and it fell forwards. It looked up at me, on its belly, and began crawling though the snow towards the building, until it managed to stagger onto its feet again. It only managed to lumber a few paces before it hit deep snow and tumbled forwards again. I turned away from the window and walked back to Flick. ‘What will happen if she doesn’t eat?’ I asked, placing the soup can and the tin opener down on a desk.
‘She’ll get hungry.’
‘Then what?’
‘I don’t know. What happens to you when you get hungry?’ asked Flick.
‘I get grumpy,’ I said. Then I remembered what Jake used to say when he was hungry, ‘My tummy is angry.’