‘You OK?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, keeping my back to him.
‘Do you want some company?’
‘No.’
‘Sophie, you were the first to be suspicious of Sean when he showed up,’ said Misfit without moving from the top of the stairs. ‘You were the one that wanted him followed and wanted him out of here. You wouldn’t have stopped me from killing him on the beach. You were the one that worried about Flick and Sara’s safety. Let’s face it, he probably did it. It all points to him.’
I turned to glare at Misfit. ‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ I said. ‘It all points to him so the St Andrews lot are going to pin it on him whether he’s guilty or not.’
‘So what if they do? Why do you care?’
A surge of anger pushed me up onto my feet but I stayed by the window, at the other end of the room to Misfit. ‘So what if they do? Are you serious, Misfit? You don’t know me at all do you? If they do, I believe they’ll be punishing an innocent man. I know they wouldn’t do that intentionally. I know they’re all hurting really bad because they’ve lost Lucy, but I’m worried that’ll make them blinkered to the fact that there’s more going on here than any of us realise. And the killer will still be out there but no one will care because as far as they’re concerned they’ve had their justice. What do you think they’ll do to him, huh? Have strong words with him, make him promise never to do it again? There’s no legal system any more. No fair trails. No prisons. They’ll kill him and then we might never find out what happened. That could put us all at risk.’
‘What do you mean, what really happened?’
‘I don’t think he did it, but he knows who did,’ I said.
‘And he told you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘I think so. I’m not sure. But I do know he looks guilty as fuck and he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. No fancy lawyer who can clear his name. No detectives who can investigate what really happened.’
‘I think you’re wrong about him,’ said Misfit.
‘He saved our lives yesterday. You were out of it. You didn’t see what he did for us – for you. If he hadn’t carried you away from that car, neither of us would be alive now. The zombies would have got us. He could have run after the crash but he didn’t, instead he struggled with you on his shoulder until he collapsed to the ground with the effort. You didn’t see all that, Misfit. But I did. I saw how he refused to give up on you even though it could have been the end of him too. And why would he come back here if he was guilty? He would have known Lucy’s people would be searching for him.’
‘To murder us in our sleep,’ said Misfit.
With my cheeks burning with anger, I turned my back to him and flicked the butt of my cigarette out the window. ‘Leave me alone, Misfit.’
I heard his feet moving on the bare, dusty floorboards. He stood right behind me, his body lightly touching mine, but I continued to gaze out across the sea. ‘You can’t just push me away because I don’t agree with you,’ Misfit said close to my ear.
I turned and looked him in the eye. I had so much I wanted to say but in that moment something pulled my plug out and everything inside me drained away. I pushed past him and darted for the stairs.
Entry Nine
I woke up alone on the sofa in my caravan. I had a blanket over me. I hadn’t had one on me last night when I came to sit in here and I guessed I must have fallen asleep and either Kay or Charlotte had put it over me. I glanced out the window, the sun was only half visible on the horizon so I knew it was still early. I wanted a cigarette but I’d smoked the last of my baccy yesterday.
I pushed the blanket off, stood up and staggered to the caravan door. Outside, Misfit sat by the glowing embers of last night’s fire and he dug his knife into a piece of wood like a gardener trying to unearth a stubborn weed. ‘It’s not one of your best,’ I said sheepishly as I stepped down from the caravan and inched my way towards him.
Misfit looked up at me. ‘It’s a representation of my current emotional state,’ he said.
‘Oh … ah.’ I mock grimaced. Misfit gave me a lopsided grin and I smiled back. ‘I need baccy,’ I said. ‘Quite stupidly, desperately.’
‘You wanna go on a supply run?’
‘Everywhere in town has been picked clean by the sounds of it.’
‘We can scout around further afield. There must be somewhere that still has stock. I’ll go hunting later, but I can do a supply run with you first, pick you up some baccy so you don’t turn into a grouch.’
‘I’m not a grouch.’
‘You are when you don’t get your nicotine fix.’
‘Oh.’ I nodded. ‘OK. Thanks. I’ll go and wake Kay and let her know we’re going.’
We drove around and, on the outskirts of town, we found a big Sainsbury’s in the middle of an Industrial Estate, surrounded by electrical and DIY stores and huge warehouses. Misfit drove right up to the front entrance, mowing down five zombies that lumbered through the car park. He had to do a zig zag manoeuvre to get them all, and while neither of us spoke during the entire journey, I could tell by his half smile he had gained satisfaction from the game of Car-Zombie skittles.
We climbed out of the car, me sliding the knife from my belt, and we headed for the entrance. The automatic doors were shut and wouldn’t budge, despite Misfit trying to prise them open with his fingers. I cupped my hands over my eyes and pressed myself against the glass, peering inside. ‘It’s well stocked,’ I said. ‘Over a year into the outbreak, I can’t believe no one’s busted into this place.’
‘It’s not a residential area. I guess it got overlooked.’
Misfit slid the blade of his knife between the doors and tried to lever them apart. They were stuck fast. Frustrated, he struck the glass with the side of his fist. A zombie lumbered out from one of the aisles, its dead eyes trained on me as it staggered across the store’s entrance until it reached the window. It slammed its putrid fists against the glass, and I instinctively jumped back. The zombie began to scratch at the invisible barrier separating us. It pressed its mouth against the window, trying to bite its way through to me, but all it succeeded in doing was to leave a trail of yellowish green saliva on the glass. I saw three more zombies shuffle out from various aisles, then another two, and a few more, and they all headed towards their comrade.
‘Hmmm, well, I guess that lot might have put any scavengers off. Looks a bit busy in there. We should’ve done the shopping online – beaten the crowds.’
‘Wait here,’ said Misfit, ignoring my joke.
While the zombies slammed their rotten hands against the front entrance, I turned and watched Misfit as he strode back to the car. He climbed inside, fastened his seatbelt and started the engine. He reversed a few metres and, with his hands gripping the steering wheel, he drove straight towards the store’s big tinted floor to ceiling window about five metres to the left of the main entrance.
As the car hit the window, I heard an almighty crashing sound. I watched as shattered glass dropped from the top of the window frame to land on the speeding car like the blade from a guillotine onto an exposed neck. In the dust settling silence all I could see of the car was the very end of its boot sticking out from the obliterated shop front.
I darted towards the broken window, worried that Misfit would be hurt, and I crunched over broken glass to reach the side of the Mazda. I saw Misfit had crashed into the store’s café and I scanned the area for zombies but spotted none. I placed my palms against the passenger side window and peered inside the car. Misfit turned to look at me from the driver’s seat. He grinned a full toothy smile and raised his hand in a thumbs up sign, before reversing back outside, leaving my hands to fall to my sides while he parked the car.
Misfit rejoined me and we stood in the café surveying the damage. Chairs and tables had been shoved towards the middle of the café by the impact of the car and dust motes swirled in the light beams that poured through the smashed window. The store itself was gloomy. It smelt musty and rotten. ‘The power’s gone,’ I said, noting that the overhead lights, as well as the lights in the refrigeration unit by the food counter were off.
The caravans weren’t hooked up to the mains. We had a generator that we ran occasionally, though less and less because it was noisy and attracted zombies – that’s how I used to charge my laptop but I hadn’t done it since my last entry, a couple of days after the wedding. I hadn’t been able to face keeping it up since losing Sam, and now I knew with no electricity, there would be no point in updating a blog anyway.
I heard a groan and a shuffling noise from further inside the building,
reminding us we weren’t alone. Misfit tightened his grip on his hunting knife and we inched forwards through the café into the store itself. I saw three zombies staggering towards us from the aisle beside the cash tills; these were not the same ones that had been at the entrance.
The first one wore a Sainsbury’s uniform and I read her name tag – Vanessa. I felt sort of awkward killing her, now I knew her name. But I did it anyway – blade between the eyes. The other two were customers, a young guy in a filthy dark grey suit that probably fit him nicely once but now hung on his emaciated frame, his white shirt covered with dried blood and ripped at the collar where half of his neck had been torn out; and a middle aged woman who must have worn too much make up in life, because I could still see smudges of blue eye shadow and a smear of peach blusher under the dried blood around her gaunt, grey face. I took out Suit-Zombie and Misfit took out Clown Face, stabbing her through the eye with his hunting knife.
We walked to the left, away from the checkouts, and came out into the store’s wide entrance. My mission – the cigarette counter. But the crowd of zombies I’d seen earlier, still clawing at the glass doors of the front entrance, stood between me and it. They groaned when they heard me and Misfit approach, before turning and staggering towards us.
Whatever
, I thought,
nine zombies aren’t going to keep me from my nicotine fix
.
I strode across the main entrance towards them with my knife raised. I’d only got halfway across when I saw another five or six
zombies emerging from various aisles. More zombies lumbered out from all directions and staggered towards me and Misfit, crowding into the entrance and surrounding us as though we’d just been announced as ‘deal of the day’.
One of the zombies wore a shirt and tie and had an orange badge pinned to the left of his chest, informing me he was the store’s manager. The others were a mixture of staff and customers, all withered and dried, and I guessed these zombies must have been sealed up in the store since the outbreak, probably a group of humans thinking they would be safe from the madness outside but not realising that someone inside was already infected. As the virus took its toll on all the survivors, they would have spent more than a year staggering around the store with no chance of a fresh food supply. Sucks to be them.
I stabbed the store manager first – he’d obviously been a crap leader to draw his team into such a trap – but as I struggled to pull my blade from its dehydrated head, I noticed the others, at least twenty-five, maybe thirty had lumbered uncomfortably close. Misfit stabbed one as it lunged at him, then kicked another with a booted foot; it fell back against a zombie that had been on a lumber course for me. I stabbed a zombie through the eye and edged backwards as the unmanageable crowd approached, until my back pressed up against the electric doors Misfit had tried to prise open earlier.
I saw Misfit grab a trolley from the shop floor and he charged at the zombies, knocking into their frail bodies. Once he’d cleared the crowd, he turned and rammed them again, scattering the zombies and giving me much needed breathing space. He abandoned the trolley and both of us drove our blades through decomposing heads to prevent the zombies from regrouping. Sweat trickled down my back as I stabbed and sliced.
With the crowd thinned out, I could inch forwards, my knife darting in and out of zombie brains. I reached the section where the fresh flowers used to be and I grabbed one of the plastic buckets, the brittle remains of a bouquet still inside, and I threw it and its contents towards three zombies that approached me. The bucket wasn’t heavy enough to have much of an impact on them, so I grabbed another one and dropped it over the head of the closest zombie. It pawed at the dark green plastic that covered its rotten face, while it stumbled around aimlessly; but it couldn’t figure out how to get it off. I kicked another zombie back so I had time to stab the other one. Then, as the one I’d kicked righted itself, I was ready for it and I stabbed it between the eyes, before stabbing Bucket Head right through the bucket.
‘Woohoo!’ I said, looking around to see me and Misfit had managed to slay the whole lot. My gaze settled on Misfit as he stood on the other side of the flower aisle, surrounded by zombie bodies.
He glanced up and smiled at me. ‘Great team, huh?’ he said.
‘The best.’ I smiled back at him. But then I thought of Sean and my smile dropped. He had done more than enough to be considered part of my team; he’d risked his life for me and Misfit. But I had allowed him to be taken and imprisoned and … and I hated to think what might happen to him.
‘You OK?’
Realising I had been standing among zombie bodies while staring off into space, I snapped out of it and looked at Misfit. I squeezed out a smile and nodded to him, knowing where he stood on the subject of Sean. He shook his head like he wasn’t even remotely convinced that I was OK but didn’t want to push it, and grabbed hold of the trolley he’d used as a battering ram. Weaving it through the rotten bodies, he followed me as I turned and headed over to the left of the store, to the cigarette counter. Finally!
‘Nice,’ I said, seeing that the shelves still held a bountiful supply of tobacco. I jumped up to perch on the counter, knocking some chocolate bars to the floor, and swung my legs up and over and landed on my feet on the other side. I swiped baccy, Rizzlars and packets of cigarettes off the shelves and tossed them over into the trolley, while Misfit grasped handfuls of chocolate bars.
I held onto one of the packets of baccy and opened it. I rolled a cigarette and lit it with a lighter I picked up from a box on the shelf. I slipped the lighter into my jeans pocket, then grabbed the whole box and threw it into the trolley. With the cigarette in my mouth, I climbed over the counter, to land on my feet beside Misfit. ‘Let’s shop,’ I said.
We loaded the trolley, marvelling at how much stock remained on the shelves here.
‘What are you putting that in for?’ We had stopped in the seasonal aisle. The outbreak had started a year ago in November, so the stores had all been filled with Christmas stuff, creating a sort of reverse Narnia situation – always Christmas, hardly ever winter.
‘It’s almost Christmas,’ I said.
‘But it’s a Christmas pudding.’
‘I know. We could always use the generator as it’s a special occasion and we’ll be able to cook it in the microwave.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ said Misfit in all seriousness. ‘I mean it’s fucking horrible stuff.’
‘You don’t like Christmas pudding? Shit, I might seriously have to rethink our friendship, Misfit …’
Misfit smiled at me sheepishly, holding eye contact, before turning his head to the left as though something on the shelves had urgently caught his eye. I stood by the trolley and watched him raise a hand and scratch the back of his head. His gaze flicked back to me briefly before he grasped the handle of the trolley and he wheeled it further along the aisle.
We continued shopping, filling two trolleys to the brim, and by the time we had the car packed up, the sky had already started to gain its late afternoon dullness. ‘I guess I won’t be hunting today,’ said Misfit.
‘You don’t need to. We’re eating like fucking kings for a while,’ I said, smiling at him. He smiled back and we both climbed into the car.
We drove in silence again, me smoking a cigarette, and Misfit casting sideways glances at me and smiling. I had enjoyed our little trip. But I still couldn’t shake off the feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach … the feeling I’d failed Sean.
As we drove over Radnor Bridge and into Wear Bay Road, I couldn’t take it any more. ‘Stop the Car!’ I yelled.
‘What? What is it?’
‘Just stop the bloody fucking sodding car, Misfit!’ Misfit hit the brakes and stopped in the middle of the road. I opened the car door, leapt out and ran down Wear Bay Road, turning into The Durlocks, not even caring if I ran into a zombie.
Misfit caught up with me. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked but I ignored him and I ran to St Andrews. Shane stood on guard, baseball bat in hand, just inside the car park to the left of the huge old building, once an old convalescent home, but long since been converted into flats.