Blog of the Dead (Book 1): Sophie (27 page)

‘Or they might not.’ Sam pulled away from me.

I put a hand to the knife through my belt. I’m usually the first into a fight or a rescue mission. But, let’s face it, they don’t always end well, and, right then, I was tempted just to walk on by. Then I saw him … a boy, no more than about fourteen/fifteen. He clambered up onto one of the refrigeration units. He crouched on top, looking down at the zombies that surrounded him. In his right hand he held a crowbar. Sam had made it halfway between me and the zombies. I pulled my knife from my belt and darted after him.

‘Help!’ yelled the boy when he saw us coming. (What the fuck did he think we were doing?)

The zombies hadn’t noticed us approach, and they crowded around the unit, rancid arms reaching up towards the boy. We were on the ones at the back before they knew what had hit them. Sam smashed rotten heads, while I stuck the knife in, black blood oozing like oil from a punctured can. The others noticed us now.

‘There are too many, Sam! We’ll never get to the boy before the zombies get us.’

Sam grunted with the effort of braining zombies. He looked up towards the boy, then back to the crowd of zombies now coming for us. We backed away as we fought, more and more zombies leaving the refrigeration unit and staggering towards me and Sam. The boy stared at us with wide eyes, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. But it was now us that needed help.

The boy looked down, saw that the way below was clear and jumped down to the ground. He looked me in the eye. Then he turned and ran towards the exit. ‘Hey!’ I shouted after him. But he had gone.

Sam grabbed my arm with his free hand and pulled me away from the approaching zombies, and we darted up the nearest aisle. We ran up towards the back of the store and around towards the exit. We got to the top of the escalators just in time to see a zombie rugby tackle the boy to the ground. He lay on his stomach, the zombie on his back. Despite the fact that he had just left us to the zombie hoard, I dived towards them, grabbed a handful of the zombie’s hair and pulled its head back. I heard a snap as the zombie’s neck broke. But I hadn’t killed it. Its putrid jaws snapped at air. I plunged my knife into its right eye, and let the body drop onto the boy. He scrambled to his feet, shoving the body off his back. He turned to look sheepishly at me. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Whatever,’ I replied.

‘We need to move,’ said Sam. Zombies headed our way from the refrigeration units. ‘Come on.’ Sam ran towards the escalators. Me and the boy followed. Sam lost his footing at the top of the escalator and went tumbling down.

‘Sam!’ He rolled all the way down to the bottom, where he lay in a heap, not moving. Then I saw him … it. A leather clad zombie staggered through the door towards Sam’s motionless body at the bottom of the escalators. Zombie-Liam.

‘SAM!’ I screamed as I pelted down the left hand escalator. ‘Sam, wake the fuck up!’

Zombie-Liam, the left side of his face missing, reached Sam. He bent down, his long, blood matted hair falling onto Sam’s body. Sam woke up and screamed at the sight of Zombie-Liam. He tried to wriggle out from beneath him, feeling around for his claw hammer with his right arm. I couldn’t even see where the claw hammer had landed. Zombie-Liam held onto Sam, while Sam punch him in his decomposing face.

I must have flown down the rest of the escalator because I don’t remember the decent at all. Sam had Zombie-Liam by the neck, keeping his gnashing teeth, dripping with yellow saliva, from his face. I raised my knife and I drove it down into the top of Zombie-Liam’s head. Zombie-Liam stopped moving. But that didn’t stop me from pulling the knife out and ramming it in again … and again.

‘Sophie. That’s enough,’ said Sam, still holding Zombie-Liam by the neck. I pulled my knife out of the mush that remained of Zombie-Liam’s head and sat down on the bottom step of the escalator. Sam pushed Zombie-Liam’s body off of him.

‘You ok?’ I asked Sam as he climbed to his feet.

‘Yeah. You?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m ok.’ I trembled all over.

I heard the sound of feet on the escalator behind me. I panicked, turned and saw the boy heading down towards me. I relaxed. ‘You two are hardcore,’ he said with a grin.

‘Yes. Yes we fucking are,’ I said as I stood up. ‘Sam, let’s go home. I’ve kinda lost my appetite.’

‘Yeah,’ said Sam, putting his arm around me. ‘Home.’

May

5th May, 12.50pm
I cried on the drive home from Asda last week. Sam stopped the Land Rover in the middle of the road. He turned and looked at me. I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the backs of my hands, and followed the action with an attractive sniff.

‘Sophie –’

‘I’m ok,’ I said.

‘No your not. And it’s ok,’ said Sam. He leaned across and put his arms around me. ‘It’s ok not to be ok,’ he said into my ear.

I wrapped my arms around Sam’s neck and held on tight. Sam hugged me back, burrowing his chin into my shoulder. I wanted us to stay like that forever, but Sam pulled away and my arms fell from him. I watched as he sat back in his seat and placed his hands on the steering wheel, head bowed. I thought he’d start the Land Rover. Instead, he turned, leaned forwards and kissed me on the lips. The kiss had been gentle and Sam backed off before I could even respond. He sat looking at me. I couldn’t breathe. I knew that the next move wasn’t mine to make.

Sam leaned across and kissed me again. This time I was ready and I put my hands behind his neck so that he couldn’t get away again. I needn’t have worried because Sam put his hands on my back and drew me into him as we kissed. He snuck his hands under my t-shirt and ran his nails up my lower back. When he finally pulled away from me, biting my bottom lip gently as he did, Sam had a sleazy grin on his face. ‘Home?’ he said.

‘Fuck yeah,’ I said.

That night (ok, the second we reached the house) Sam moved back into our bedroom.

So, that’s the good news. Now for the bad news – we have some new house mates. Nothing to do with the boy me and Sam saved in Asda. We left his cowardly arse back in the supermarket. I don’t even know his name and I don’t care. The new house mates turned up last Wednesday evening as we sat around the kitchen table eating a dinner of tinned veg and canned pie filling.

‘What the fuck …?’ said Kay at the roaring crescendo of multiple engines from outside. Kay put down her knife and fork and went over to the window just as the crescendo climaxed and the engines cut out. ‘Who ordered the motorcycle gang?’ she asked, turning to look at the rest of us.

‘What?’ I said, standing and walking over to join Kay at the window. A man – about late 30s/early 40s, tall, burly, shaved head, leather jacket – opened the gate and made his way up the drive towards the house. Three other guys, all younger, followed him. ‘Shit!’ I said, ducking down from the window and pulling Kay down with me. ‘Who the fuck are they?’

Me and Kay crouched beneath the window, our backs against the wall. I looked at Charlotte, Stewart and Sam, still sitting at the table, knives and forks held limply in their hands. ‘Hide,’ I mouthed to them. But then I heard the tap, tap on the French doors.

‘What do we do?’ I asked.

‘Well, not much point in you two hiding down there when they’re staring right at the rest of us,’ said Stewart. Good point – the table was in full view from the French doors. Me and Kay both stood up to see two of the younger newcomers, one tall and thin with bleached blond hair, the other short and fat with piggy eyes, both mid to late 20s, looking through the window at us. The older guy and the youngest of the four, a boy about my age, shoulder length fair hair, tattoos down both arms as well as peeping up from the neck of his t-shirt, stood by the French doors.

‘What do we do?’ I said again as the older one with the shaved head started tapping on the door again.

‘Hello in there,’ he called through the glass.

‘We’ll have to let them in,’ said Stewart.

‘No fucking way,’ said Kay. ‘We don’t know who they are.’

‘It’s not very neighbourly to ignore us,’ said the man with the shaved head. He had his forehead pressed against the glass and his hands cupped above his eyes. The tattooed boy stood beside him, looking uncomfortable. He kept glancing all around himself, like he expected to be jumped on any second.

Nobody inside the house moved. ‘Do you think they’ll go if we ignore them?’ asked Charlotte.

‘I’m thinking not,’ I said.

‘Hellllllloooooo!’ called Shaved Head Guy, mockingly.

‘I’ll sort it,’ said Sam, and he stood and walked over to the French doors. ‘Hi. Look, we’re not looking for any trouble, ok?’ Sam said through the glass. ‘We just want to keep our heads down, avoid zombies and carry on surviving.’

‘I understand that,’ said Shaved Head Guy.

‘Good,’ continued Sam. ‘So you’ll understand if we don’t open up.’

‘But that wouldn’t be very friendly,’ said Shaved Head Guy. Tall Blond and Short Piggy grinned, while Tattoo Boy looked down at his boots. ‘And we just want to be friendly.’

‘Well, look –’

‘Out the way, Sam,’ said Charlotte. She had the shotgun and she pointed it at Shaved Head Guy’s … um, shaved head. ‘Well, we don’t want to be friendly, ok? Go away and stay away.’

‘Nice gun,’ said Shaved Head Guy. He smiled and backed away from the door. ‘Have a nice evening,’ he said, giving us a little wave. He turned and skulked off down the drive, the other three following him. Tattoo Boy glanced back at us for a second then joined the others as they climbed back on their bikes.

Charlotte didn’t lower the gun until the roar of the bikes had receded.

Thursday morning, I left Sam in bed while I headed downstairs to make us both a coffee. When I heard talking coming from the the kitchen, I guessed it must be Stewart talking to Kay or Charlotte. But there, sitting round the kitchen table, were the four guys from the day before. Shaved Head Guy had the shotgun on the table in front of him. He smiled at me when he saw me. ‘Morning sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get that lock fixed,’ he nodded towards the French doors that were open, the lock busted. Trent, here – Shaved Head Guy nodded towards Tall Blond sitting beside him – is handy with that sort of thing, aren’t you?’ Trent nodded. ‘Nice place,’ said Shaved Head Guy. ‘I think we’re going to like it here.’

12th May, 6.30pm
‘Wh-what do you want?’ I mumbled as I stood in the kitchen doorway a week last Thursday. I wanted to scream,
Get the fuck out of my house
! and slap the four guys around the head, and kick their arses right out of the French Doors. But the way Shaved Head Guy kept looking down at the shotgun on the table in front of him, then back to me with a sly grin on his face stopped me. Angry but scared – that was me at that moment.

‘We just want to make some new friends,’ said Shaved Head Guy. ‘Don’t we boys?’ Trent and Short Piggy laughed, while Tattoo Boy looked down at his hands on the table. He picked at the skin around his right thumb. The back of his left hand had a black and grey tattoo of a death’s-head moth – the type of moth that looks like it has a picture of a human skull on its back – and each of his four fingers on both hands were tattooed. I caught flashes of Gothic style lettering but couldn’t make out what it said from where I stood.

‘Please just go,’ I said to Shaved Head Guy.

‘That’s not very sociable, is it, sweetheart?’ said Shaved Head Guy. ‘If we’re gonna be living together, we need to get along, eh?’

‘We’re not going to be living together,’ I said. Feeling a little braver, I took a couple of steps into the room and stood as tall and firm as I could. ‘There’re tons of empty houses out there. Why here?’

‘You look like nice people,’ said Shaved Head Guy. ‘And you have a gun. Where’s the ammo, by the way?’ Shaved Head Guy picked up the shotgun and held it like he was trying to guess its weight. He cracked it open on its hinge and looked down at the shotgun shell inside. I wondered where he’d learned how to do that.

‘There isn’t any more,’ I said. ‘That’s the last one.’

Shaved Head Guy smirked. ‘You don’t want to lie to me, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I will find the ammo –’

‘I’m not lying,’ I snapped. ‘That’s the last fucking one.’

Shaved Head Guy snapped the shotgun closed. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Better than nothing. Guess I’ll have to make this one count.’ He turned the shotgun so that it pointed at my head. I stifled a gasp, annoyed at myself for showing a sign of weakness. Shaved Head Guy laughed, lowered the gun and placed it back on the table. ‘Only kidding,’ he said. He stood up, picked the shotgun up in his left hand and walked round the table towards me. ‘I’m Caine,’ he said. ‘And here, as you already know, we have Trent,’ Shaved Head Caine motioned towards Tall Blond, ‘and this is Eddie,’ he nodded to Short Piggy.

‘Alright,’ said Eddie.

‘And that little runt is Misfit,’ Caine pointed the butt of the gun at Tattoo Boy, who glanced up at me through the stands of fair hair that fell into his expressionless boyish face, and back down to his tattooed hands. Caine turned his full attention onto me. ‘And you are?’

‘You have to leave,’ I said, ignoring Caine’s question.

‘No. We’re not going any-fucking-where, sweetheart,’ Caine said coldly. ‘We want a place to lay low for a while, and you lot look like you’ve a nice little set up. Here’s the deal,’ he continued, ‘you and your lot look after us, go out into those zombie infested streets and get food and alcohol for us, and we won’t hurt you. How’s that sound?’ Caine stood close enough to me now that he poked the muzzle of the shotgun into my chest. He laughed, but I remained firm.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You can’t do this – just walk in here and take over our lives. We won’t let you do it. We’ve worked too fucking hard to let a bunch of freeloaders barge in and treat us like slaves. We’re not going to do what you want.’

‘Yes you will. There might only be one bullet in this gun,’ said Caine, raising the shotgun before him, ‘but that’s all I need to put a hole through the head of one of your friends. Which one shall I shoot, hmmm? That pretty young girl, or the pretty young boy?’