David Moody - Autumn

Michael followed Carl out into the supermarket and Emma followed a few seconds later.

‘Bloody hell,’ she scowled, screwing up her face in disgust.

‘Stinks, doesn’t it?’ Carl said, turning back to look at the others.

Michael covered his nose and took a few cautious steps further forward. The air was heavy with the sickening stench of rotting food and rotting flesh. More than just unpleasant, the obnoxious smell was stifling and suffocating. It hung heavy in the air and he could feel it coating his throat and dirtying his clothes and hair. It was making Emma retch and heave. She had to fight to control the rising bile in her stomach.

‘We should get a move on,’ Michael suggested. ‘We don’t want to be here any longer than we need to be.’

‘I agree,’ Emma said. ‘I can’t stand much of this…’

Her words were viciously truncated as she was knocked off balance by a lurching, staggering figure which appeared from out of nowhere. The stumbling creature had silently dragged itself along an aisle of rapidly decomposing food. Emma screamed and instinctively pushed the corpse away and down to the ground. Michael stood and watched as the remains of a gaunt, mousy-haired shop-assistant lay still for a second before its withered arms and legs began to flail around again as it desperately tried to haul itself back up onto its unsteady feet. Before it could get up he kicked it in the face and it dropped back down again.

‘We should have a look around,’ he said, anxiously looking from side to side. ‘There’s bound to be more of them in here.’

He was right. The deafening crash of the van as it ploughed through the glass doors had attracted the unwelcome attentions of a further five ragged cadavers which had been trapped inside the building. The clumsy remains of four shop staff and one delivery driver slowly advanced towards the three survivors. The battered body on the floor reached out a bony hand and grabbed hold of Michael’s leg. He shook it free and kicked the creature in the head again.

‘Fuck this,’ he spat. ‘We’ve got to shift them.’

He looked around again and spied a set of double doors behind a bakery display piled high with stale, mouldy bread. Without saying anything else he took hold of the body at his feet by its shoulders and dragged it across the floor. He kicked open the doors and threw the remains of the man into a room filled with cold, lifeless ovens. Making his way back towards Emma and Carl, he caught hold of the next closest corpse (a check-out operator) and disposed of it in exactly the same way.

‘Carl,’ he yelled as he made his way towards the third creature. ‘Grab hold of another one, will you? If you’re quick they don’t have time to react.’

Carl took a deep breath and grabbed hold of the nearest corpse in a tight headlock. With its thrashing limbs carving desperate, uncoordinated arcs through the stagnant air he hauled it over to the bakery and pushed it through the double doors. It collided with the body of the dead check-out operator which, a fraction of a second earlier, had managed to lift itself back up onto its feet.

Sensing that quick action was needed, Emma ran over towards the others and shoved through the doors the remains of an elderly cleaner who, unbeknownst to Carl, had been staggering dangerously near. She dropped her shoulder and charged at the pitiful figure. The unexpected force of the impact sent the shuffling carcass (which had all the weight and resistance of a limp rag-doll) flying into the bakery.

In less than three minutes the survivors had cleared the main area of corpses. Once the last one had been safely pushed through the double-doors Michael wheeled a line of twenty or so shopping trolleys in front to prevent them from pushing their way out.

‘Let’s get a move on,’ he said breathlessly as he wiped his dirty hands on the back of his jeans. He stood up straight and rested his hands on his hips. ‘Just get whatever you can. Load it into boxes and pile it up by the van.’

In silence they began to work.

As Michael packed tins of beans, soup and spaghetti into cardboard boxes he nervously looked around. The cold, emotionless faces of the bodies in the bakery stared back at him through small square safety-glass windows in the doors. They were still moving continually. They were clamouring to get out but didn’t have the strength to force themselves free. Were they watching him? Had they not acted quickly in locking the bastard things away, would they have attacked them in the same way that the lone body in the field had attacked him earlier?

‘Jesus Christ,’ Carl said suddenly.

He was standing at the opposite end of the building to Michael and Emma, close to where the van had smashed through the entrance doors. His voice echoed eerily around the vast and cavernous room.

‘What is it?’ Emma asked, immediately concerned.

‘You don’t want to know what’s going on outside,’ he replied ominously.

Emma and Michael looked at each other for a fraction of a second before dropping what they were doing and running over to where Carl was standing.

‘Shit,’ Michael hissed as he approached. Even from a distance he could see what had happened.

Carl had been about to start loading the boxes into the back of the van when he’d noticed a vast crowd of diseased and rotting bodies outside. Their cold, dead faces were pressed hard against the windscreen and every other exposed area of glass. More of the creatures tried unsuccessfully to force their way through the slight gap between the sides of the van and the buckled remains of the supermarket doors.

Emma stared through the van at the mass of grotesque faces which stared back at her with dark, vacant eyes.

‘How did they…?’ she began. ‘Why are there so many of them…?’

‘Heard us breaking in, didn’t they,’ Michael whispered. ‘It’s silent out there. They’d have heard the van and the crash for miles around.’

Gingerly Carl leant inside the van and looked around.

‘There are loads of the fucking things here,’ he hissed, his voice just loud enough for the others to hear. ‘There’s got to be thirty or forty of them at least.’

‘Shit,’ Michael cursed.

‘What?’ Emma asked.

‘This is just the start of it,’ he replied. ‘Fucking hell, that was a hell of a noise we made getting in here. The whole building’s probably been surrounded by now.’

For a few dangerously long seconds the three survivors stood together in silence. They exchanged awkward, uncertain glances as each one waited for one of the others to make a move.

‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ Carl eventually said, stating the obvious.

‘Have we got everything we need?’ Michael asked.

‘Don’t care,’ the other man snapped. ‘We’ve just got to go.’

Michael immediately began to load boxes and bags of food and supplies into the van.

‘You two get inside,’ he said as he worked.

Carl loaded another two boxes and then clambered back through to the driver’s seat.

‘I’ll get the engine going,’ he shouted.

‘Leave it,’ Emma shouted back. ‘For God’s sake, leave it to the last possible second will you. The more noise we make the more of those bloody things we’ll have to get through.’

He didn’t say anything as he climbed through the gap between the front seats and slid down into position. On Michael’s instruction Emma followed and lowered herself into the passenger seat, equally silent. The two of them stared in abject horror at the wall of dead faces gazing back at them. Trying hard to concentrate, Carl attempted to put the key into the ignition. He was shaking with fear. The more he tried to ignore the bodies and keep his hands steady, the more they shook.