The Undead. The First Seven Days (15 page)

I got on well with Bert, and he once showed me how the system worked and how to move between all of the cameras and have them displayed as a split screen with four, eight or up to thirty-two very small images. The joystick controls the camera movement and focus.
  The company invests heavily in state of the art security; a camera in one corner can be zoomed in to read the packaging from an item on a shelf in the far corner.
  Starting with the staff area, I commence flicking through the images and I am surprised that there are no undead in the back rooms. I go through the different sections: the canteen, the office areas and the locker rooms are all clear.
  In the dry goods stock room, the largest of the storage areas, I can see a large mound on the floor near the far corner. The dry goods room is very dark and it’s hard to see what it is.
  I zoom the camera in and can the see that the heap is made from stacked up bodies. There are limbs hanging out from the pile. It’s too dark to see clearly, but there are at least seven or eight bodies, all on top of each other. I move the camera about, but cannot see anything else, no movement. All the rest of the staff area is clear.
  I start looking at the shop floor images and, very quickly, I see bodies lying on the floor - lots of bodies. Nearly every aisle has several bodies in the prone position. The live footage is full colour, and the blood is vividly stark against the off-white flooring. Zooming in, I can see that they are all undead, or rather
were
undead.
  Bite injuries are all over them. Men, women and children all scattered about. Many of them have severed jugulars, necks slashed open and appendages cut off.
  I go through the cameras on every aisle; starting at the back and working my way towards the front of the store.
  In the large central aisle, there is another massive heap of bodies, and bloody drag marks show where they have been pulled along on the floor.
  Again, using the powerful zoom, I can see they are all undead. There is a single arm on top of the highest pile, as if it has been chucked up there.
  This is the last thing I had expected to see. I knew that the place would be crawling with undead, but I wasn’t expecting them to be
dead
undead.
  The next monitor along has been left focussed on the store entrance. Movement catches my eye, and I see an undead female staggering into the store. She is moving fast, like she has seen prey. I check the list for the camera numbers and watch her path through various feeds.
  She moves past the security barriers and towards the customer service desk. I select a camera fixed above the main door and move it to see the service desk area.
  There is a man wearing
Tesco
uniform facing the oncoming undead female. He stands still with his arms hanging by his sides. I try to zoom in closer to see who it is, but the undead blocks my view as she charges at him. The man lifts his right arm, drops down and spins off to the side in one fluid motion, coming to stop with his back to the camera and facing back, towards the service desk. As he comes into view, I see that he has a massive, orange-handled butcher’s knife in his hand. The knife is reversed, and the blade is upright, resting against his forearm… the blade that just sliced across the throat of the undead female who has crashed into the desk and is now on the floor.

I see crimson spurting from her throat area as she spasms, and, within seconds, she is motionless.
  The man walks over and looks down at the undead female. He has his back to me, and I still can’t see who it is. The man appears satisfied that she is done for and bends down to pick her leg up by the ankle. He then starts dragging her body towards the central aisle.
  I change camera view and focus on the section that he will walk into. There are already several clear, bloody drag marks on the floor. He must have done the same thing, countless times.

As the man comes into view, his head is down; carefully avoiding the slippery wake he has left before.
  He lifts his head, and I’m amazed to see that it’s one of the night shelf stackers. I rack my brains trying to remember his name: David… no… Dave. That’s it, Dave. He always corrected me if I called him David.
  A small built man with a very wiry frame and short fair hair, cut close to his scalp; maybe a grade four.

He had joined the store about a year ago, on the night shift. He was a very hard worker, quiet and kept to himself. He impressed the managers with his consistent working pace, and they frequently offered him the chance to move onto the day shifts, but he always refused. I remember trying to talk to him on several occasions. He always called me Mr Howie, despite my telling him several times that he could call me just Howie. The store prefers first name’s for the managers, as it tries to promote a friendly one-team approach.

Dave would just stay quiet.
  He was never silent in a disrespectful way, he was just a very withdrawn man. We couldn’t even work out his age. He could be anything from late twenties to early forties. There was even a bet running in the canteen on his age. The other night staff were always asking him how old he was. He would just give a little smile and carry on with what he was doing, and he was always doing something.
  At meal breaks he would get food and sit by himself, eat and then go back to work. At first we kept telling him that he was entitled to a full hour, but he just carried on. He rarely took tea breaks and would occasionally stop for a drink of water.
  After a few weeks, it just became the norm, and nobody paid him any attention, but then nobody took the piss out of him either. There was always banter in the canteen and jokes being played on the shop floor, but never at Dave.
  I can’t think of a time that he said more than five words in the same sentence.

Dave dragged the body round to the far side of the heap and pushed it onto the pile.

An arm flopped out and he lifted it up and pushed it back in. It flopped out again, and he pushed it under another body. Neat and tidy.
  He then turned and walked back down to the service desk. There, he picked up a long, thin metallic stick and started running the butchers blade up and down it, whilst looking at the door.
  On the desk behind him I can see more knives from the meat department, huge cleavers and normal straight-bladed knives. There is even a long metal shaft with a hook at one end and a handle at the other.
  Dave just stands watching the door, his knife moving in perfect motion, up and down the sharpening tool.

I leave the security office and make my way onto the shop floor with my axe. The bright lights blind me a little, after the darkness of the back area.
  There is piped music playing low, and I head towards the central aisle, passing the heap of bodies. I suddenly become very nervous, and I call out, so he doesn’t think I’m trying to sneak up on him.
  ‘Dave… it’s Howie, are you there? Is it okay if I come down?’
  Dave appears at the end of the aisle ahead of me. The two implements are held down at his sides.
  ‘Mr Howie, sir.’
  I wait in the central aisle, then look at the piled up bodies on the floor. There is a rancid, rotten smell coming from them, and they don’t look real. There’s too many of them to look real.
  There was a pile in the dry goods room, plus the ones in the aisles at the back of the store, and now these.
   He must have killed at least a hundred of them. The sight of the wounds: red eyes, slack mouths and limbs - all in various states are too much for me and the contents of my stomach heave up. I bend over and vomit on the floor, putting my hand out to steady myself. I keep retching until nothing but bile is coming out. My throat burns, and my eyes are watering. Dave is suddenly next to me, handing me a bottle.
  ‘Some water.’
  I take the bottle and unscrew the cap, taking big gulps to soothe the burning in my throat.
  ‘Sorry, Mr Howie.’
  I look up, fearful that he is apologising before cutting my head off, but he standing there with a very slight, pained expression on his face.
  ‘…for the bodies.’
  He motions to the heaped cadavers.
  ‘Every time I try to clear them up, more come in.’
  That was a long speech for Dave.

He doesn’t look or sound threatening.
  In fact, he looks the same as he always does. His shirt is tucked into his blue trousers; his fleece is zipped up, with the collar down. The buttons of his polo shirt are done up. There are just a few blood stains on his hands. He notices me looking at his hands and walks back to the service desk. I follow him there and watch as he takes an antiseptic wipe from a pack; methodically cleaning the blood from his hands.

I don’t know what to say. He sees me looking at the wipes.
  ‘I paid for them.’
  ‘No, it’s fine, don’t worry.’
  I feel dizzy after the vomiting and sway on my feet, and Dave rushes to my side and helps lower me down onto the ground. I sit down with my head between my knees; the axe at my side.
  ‘Rest now.’
  He goes back to sharpening the knife and watching the door, and then he stops and walks off towards the chilled drinks cabinet by the front. He returns, within seconds, and silently hands me a bottle of
Lucozade
.
  I drink it and, within a few minutes, I start to feel better as the glucose pumps into my system.
  ‘How long have you been here, Dave?’
  He thinks for a second.
  ‘Eleven months.’
  ‘No, I know that. I mean how long now?’
  He raises his head slightly
  ‘Friday.’
  ‘You’ve been here since Friday? Since this started?’
  He nods.
  ‘Why are you here, Dave?’
  He pauses his sharpening and stares at me, expressionless. Then he looks down at his uniform and back at me.
  ‘No, I don’t mean why are you
here
. You work here. I mean… why are you still here when this is happening?’
  He shrugs.
  ‘Don’t you have family?’
   ‘No.’
   ‘A home even? Where do you live?’
    ‘South Street.’
    South Street is in the town centre, right by the High Street. That area would be crawling with undead.
    ‘No family or relatives?’
    He shakes his head and continues with the sharpening. I watch him work. His eyes never leave the front of the store. He stops, and although he remains expressionless, there is a change in his eyes. A set and fixed stare. I twist round but can’t see anything, and so I stand up and look out the front. There are several undead coming across the car park.
  Dave calmly puts the sharpener back on the desk, then hovers his hand over the handles of the knives. He selects a smaller, straight bladed, black-handled knife. He reverses both of the knives, so they are upright against his forearms and starts walking towards the entrance doors.
  He stops a few feet back from the doors and stands waiting. I heft my axe and go down to stand beside him. He looks at me, then at the ground between us.
  ‘Too close, Mr Howie.’ He states, matter of factly. .
  ‘Sorry.’
  I take a few steps to the side.
  He turns his head back to the undead. They are closer now, and I can see there are four of them, three males and one female - all adults. They are dressed in formal evening wear. The female has a gold coloured gown, and the men are wearing dark suits, and I wonder where they have come from.

They are advancing in a staggered line, with the female at the front. As they get within a few metres of the door, Dave runs out, going straight towards the female. As she leans in for the bite, he side steps and brushes the straight bladed knife against her throat; his forward momentum causing the blade to dig as he draws it across. His right arm is extended and the long, orange-handled knife is held out in front, like a sword.

He then plunges into the neck of the next undead male, pushing it deep.
  He spins round with dexterity and draws the knife out, dropping down. Then he uses both knives to thrust upwards at the chest of the next one; repeated stabs into the ribcage as he pushes upwards, forcing the undead back. Then he viciously drives the straight blade into the forehead.

One left, and Dave lets him come on. At the last second he spins round the back of the undead and grips the hair on the back of his head, yanking him. The blade saws at the exposed neck, and I can see blood pumping out.
  He lets the body slump to the ground, then looks left and right, turns and scans the rest of the car park.
  I am still standing in the entrance area holding my axe, my mouth open.
  He was so clinical. Not savage or violent. Well, it was violent, incredibly violent, but not in a demented sense, like I had swung my axe and hoped for the best. He was precise and exact.

Dave checks the area and then walks back to the undead male – the one with the knife sticking out of his forehead. He then leans down and puts his foot on the undead’s face and pulls the knife out quickly. He wipes both blades on the undead’s clothing and starts walking back towards me, but he stops at the female and bends down to grasp her ankle, and he starts pulling her into the store. He nods as he passes me.
  ‘Mr Howie.’
  I go after him as he trails the body up the aisle. Her arms are out behind her. The front of her gown is stained red, and there are bite marks all over her arms.
  ‘Dave, you don’t have to stack them up.’
  He stops and looks back me, then down at the body. He lets go of the leg, which falls to the floor with a thump.
  ‘Okay.’
  He goes back to the desk and uses the wipes to clean his hands and then the bloody blades.
  ‘Dave, have you got anywhere else to go?’
  He pauses, then shakes his head.
  ‘No, Mr Howie.’
  ‘Listen, mate, you can’t stay here. They will keep coming, and you can’t keep stacking them up. They will decay and rot. The electricity won’t last that long either. There are survivors heading to the Forts on the coast. You could go there. Take a delivery truck from the back… ’
  He pauses, clearly thinking.
  ‘I can’t.’
  ‘Why not?’
  ‘I can’t drive.’
  ‘I can show you. It’s really easy.’
  ‘I don’t have a licence.’
  ‘Dave, no one will care. There is no police or authority now, and you can do what you want.’
  He seems suddenly unsure, like the notion is too much to grasp. He looks left, right and then at me; a quizzical expression on his face that I have never seen before.
  He is clearly very worried.
  ‘Or you could come with me? I have to find my parents and my sister, then I’m going to the Forts.’
  I almost curse myself for saying it, but he looked lost and floundering. He could kill me easily without hesitation, but then he hasn’t shown any threat or signs of evil intent yet. In fact he has acted the same as always, and he would be very handy to have nearby. The worried expression is gone from him instantly.
  ‘Okay, Mr Howie.’
  That’s it. No hesitation or questions, no wondering about who or where, an instant decision, and he is back to being normal Dave.
  ‘I need to change my clothes. I’m covered in blood.’
  I start to walk over to the clothing section on the far side.
  ‘Blood?’
  ‘Not mine. Bert - the security man – slit his wrists in the security office.’
  ‘Oh.’
  ‘You could get some more clothes if you wanted to, Dave.’
  ‘No money.’ He shakes his head.
  ‘It’s okay. You can just take them.’
  He seems unsure again.
  ‘Err… I’m a manager, Dave. I can sign for them to be given out.’
  ‘Okay.’ He follows me to the clothes section.