Tiredness Kills - A Zombie Tale (4 page)

3)
   
Head immediately
to a safe and hidden area.

4)
   
Ignore all cries
for help from other humans. Don't even look at them. If they are wearing blood
then it is already too late.

Unbeknownst to them, Kyle's
generous nosebleed had infected many other customers as he had made his
stumbling way towards the toilets. The ones that had missed the highly toxic
blood vapours had been treated to sprays of putrid vomit. The unstable
components in the stolen TK MAXX (once inside human flesh and outside the
sanitized, clinical area) had evolved into a blood thirsty virus that was
intent on spreading itself through the body fluids of as many hosts as
possible.

Scott and Ant took a 360-
degree turn, taking in an extensive view of their surroundings as per their
first rule. A little to the left a woman who had previously been breast feeding
was now covered in blood and eating her baby. Nothing in this unpredictable
world can ever prepare you for that sight, and both men felt their legs almost
collapse from under them. To the right, people were climbing over tables and
chairs trying to escape others who stumbled awkwardly but resiliently after
them, their mouths open and their eyes crazed! Yup, these were zombies for
sure.

 
Without conscious thought, they both went
straight to their second rule- weaponry and very quickly scooped up the arsenal
that had been purchased that very morning before the world had gone mad. Rule
Three was a no-brainer and they struggled against an oncoming tide of man and
monster. They had almost reached the doors, where only an hour before they had
entered excited and hungry, when they had heard the gun shot and the man's
incredulous cry of 'Why has he been shot?'

 
This too would be a question for later, right
now though with gun shots being heard outside and cannibalism rife inside, a
hiding place was tantamount to survival. It was at this point that Ant spotted,
amongst the melee, the determined stride of two young lads wearing the
recognisable company logo on their t- shirts. He grabbed one of Scott's over
loaded arms, pulling him in the same direction as Jon and Jordan were headed.
The four were soon in the relatively quiet safety of the dark recess, and as
Jordan frantically scrambled to punch in the vital numbers of the code, getting
it wrong the first couple of times, Jon suddenly felt the presence of others
behind him and instinctively jumped into a karate stance instilled in him from
his childhood love of a certain film.

“
It's
okay man” said Ant, slightly shaken at the sudden movement. “We're on the same
team!”

Jordan finally remembered the
correct numbers in the correct sequence and, as the door to the sanctuary
opened, the four men stormed in closing the door very quickly and very firmly behind
them.

Once inside the safety of the
little office, Scott and Ant laid down their arms. The stash covered the
surface of the desk and with an impressed smile, Jordan looked them both up and
down and in an overly dramatic voice said the words “Welcome, Soldiers!”

Scott held back a gasp of
laughter. How absurd was it that the young lad in front of them who looked like
a real life Johnny Bravo was addressing them both as soldiers? But then how
absurd was the situation on the other side of the door where previously
civilised diners had dumped all etiquette and table manners and were ripping
out, and feasting upon the entrails of strangers and family members alike?

Life as they knew it had
ended, things were never going to be the same again, and although Scott's heart
had felt squeezed by an icy hand at this very thought, another part of him had
suddenly felt empowered and rejuvenated at the thought of the Quest that had
somehow been thrust upon them. Normal everyday actions like deciding what to
have for tea would now become mini- adventures (albeit danger of death ones) He
looked across at Ant and saw the exact same thoughts reflected in his face.
Although they had never actually prayed for this to happen, all of those hours
of discussing strategies had not been in vain. They were ready for this. And
yes......maybe they were soldiers!
 

“Choose your weapons!” said a
very composed Ant pointing to the array of items on the table. Jon was the
first to move, quickly bagsying a pair of Wolverine claws that he'd spied
underneath the
Biolite
mini camping stove.

“Ok,” said Ant “But when we
get through this- and we will- just remember to give them back. I've wanted a
pair for ages!”

Jordan added to the booty a
few little hidden gems of his own, such as a baseball bat, a broken- off chair
leg and a thick heavy chain that lay in the desk draw.

 
“Really?” gasped Jon, looking surprised.

“These machines generate a
fair bit of cash,” explained Jordan indignantly. “Man's
gotta
'
be prepared!”

It was whilst the weapons
were being chosen and applied (as in the case of the claws and the Samurai
umbrellas) or concealed in pockets (as in the case of the thick chain and the
bottle of Sex panther- Scott was not going through the embarrassment of
purchasing
that
a second time) that a whiny noise was heard coming from
beneath the desk.

 
Given their vulnerable predicament, all four
pairs of legs jumped back immediately, and with the reflexes of a cat. Jon, who
had heard the noise first, tapped the strap on his palm, releasing the sharp
metal claws that could shred a watermelon in seconds and jumped onto all fours.

The very tips of the
Wolverine claws almost punctured the face of a man who was hiding underneath
the desk; but was he undead or alive?

 
“Get out from under there!” shouted Ant,
knowing that compliance of this simple instruction would determine whether or
not this was friend or foe.

Being very careful to avoid
the X-Man's extremities, a snivelling male in staff member's uniform dragged
himself out from under the desk.

“Bryn!” stated Jon and
Jordan, neither of them sounding surprised.

“You've got to help me”
spluttered Bryn. “There's monsters out there! They're after me! Trying to
eat
me! You have to save me! They're going to get me!” he squealed, dropping to his
knees at Jordan's feet “Please, Jordan, I beg you. Make them all go away. Kill
them for me!”

When Jordan next spoke, his
voice was dripping with contempt. “Stop snivelling on my shoes. Get up like a
fuckin' man and choose a weapon to fight with. There's no room here for
cowardice, you little weasel!”

“
Arrrgghhh
!
I can't go out there,” cried Bryn “I'm not made of that kind of stuff. I can't
cope with this. I'm hyperventilating, I need a paper bag! Someone get me a
paper bag! I'm gonna' die! We're all gonna' die!”

 
And with that, he did the most unexpected
thing ever and ran for the door, displaying all the actions of a mad man whilst
bawling “Let's get it over with! Come at me monsters!”

Just in the nick of time
Jordan grabbed Bryn's hair and dragged him to the radiator at the back of the
room.

“Duct tape! Second draw
down!” he shouted to Jon who, once he'd retracted his claws, carried out the
order. “You're a fucking liability, you
muppet
.
You're staying here out the way. And if you piss me off one more time I'll rip
you to bits and personally feed you to the monsters! Do you get me,
Bruv
?”

With even more fear in his
face than before, Bryn merely nodded as he let Jordan and Jon tie him securely
to the radiator, not even murmuring as a thick piece of duct tape was placed
roughly across his mouth.

“Now where were we?” he
continued, shaking himself slightly as if he'd just shaken off an annoying
little mosquito.

“A plan” said Scott simply.
“We need to get out of here pretty damn fast if we're gonna' survive. It would
seem that the military that we witnessed arriving are well aware of the seriousness
of our situation. Seeing how anyone trying to escape through the doors is
getting shot! We need to find another way out, one that they haven't covered.
One that they don't know about!

“There's a hatch that leads
out onto the roof,” said Jon remembering a mischievous incident that happened
on a late shift some months previous
  
that resulted in a damn fine
Youtube
video of
him and a fellow colleague singing 'Up on the Roof ' whilst heavily disguised.
“But it means getting to the back of Waitrose and up two flights of stairs!”

“Great,” added Ant “Then
that's our plan. You will have to lead though, Jon! Are you up to it?”

“Of course I am! Let's get
the hell out of here!”

Armed with their weapons of
choice, the foursome gathered around the security monitor that afforded them a
black and white grainy window into the
Gamezone
arcade. Apart from the flashes coming from the gambling machines everything
else seemed still.

“On three....!” announced
Scott.

“Wait! What's that?” blurted
Ant, pointing to a dark figure moving cautiously between the machines and
heading towards the door.

All four examined the
movements of the figure. It was a large man who appeared to be moving purposely-
certainly not the movements of a zombie.

“It's Andy the arcade
manager,” breathed Jordan, having already decided on letting him in, and had
opened the door quietly as Andy fell right through it.

“Thank fuck for that,” said
Andy “I...I...I couldn't think of the
..the
..
bloody
door code. Please tell me I'm dreaming this!”

“
Sos
'
mate, no can do,” offered Scott. “Have you got any blood on you? Either yours
or anyone else's?”

“
Er
...
no, none at all,” he answered, sensing the seriousness of the question and
casually moving his left leg behind his right thus hidden from sight.

“Right then, Andy. Grab a
chair leg off the desk and let's go”

“No way- No how! I ain't
going back out there. It ain't happening!”

“We haven't got time for this
cowardly shit,” announced Jordan “You stay here with the other wuss. Hasta la
vista, babies!”

Suddenly the door was opened
and, led by Jon, the newly forged alliance left the relative safety of the
little room and crept out into the unknown.

Stealth was the word of the
day and the four men moved silently and carefully and with one hundred percent
concentration. Every fibre of their bodies was tuned in to the situation, their
senses were heightened and their breathing was shallow...............except for
Jordan!

 
From out of the corner of his eye he saw it.
It was right there in front of him. He stared at it knowing full well that this
would not end well.

 
There were two cherries on the line and one
cherry above them and the nudge button was flashing like a pretty girl winking.

 
His heart began to palpitate as he realised
that whoever had been terrorised into leaving this machine in this condition
had been on the very cusp of bagging the £500 jackpot, something Jordan had
been dreaming about for a very long time.

 
With the end result being a foregone
conclusion, Jordan decided to get it over with quickly and with as little fuss
as possible. There was no way he could just walk away from this situation
without pressing the nudge button, even if some folks around here had gone
stark raving crazy! He waited until Jon, Scott and Ant had reached the very
edge of the arcade and were about to enter the gory battleground.

 
Then he just did it. Just like that. With no
warning and no regret, he just scratched that itch. Bang! His hand hit the
button as he knew it would. His mother had always told him that his
uncontrollable impulses would become his downfall; but would he listen? Oh
sure, he felt bad for the others; but there was nothing he could do!

The noise that came out of
the machine sounded on par to that of a freight train. It stopped the three
silent ninja-like men in their tracks as they turned their heads in mute horror
towards a sheepish looking Jordan and a machine that was announcing to the
world in the loudest possible way that a jackpot had indeed been won!
 
And then the coins began to pump out.

 
Jon looked at him and shook his head “You
have to be kidding me!” he said before following up with “RUN!”

 
The pounding of the machine as it spewed it's
five hundred coins all over the floor, together with the loud WAAAA
!WAAAA
!WAAAA!
sound
that blared
from out of the speakers, not only began to attract the vile outer casings of
what had once been rather nice and sane people, but also managed to drown out
some other hideous noises that were coming from inside the little office.

 
If any security footage were to be viewed at a
later date it would show Andy rolling up his trouser leg to inspect a rather
nasty and bloody wound. It would then show him appear to die, as a startled,
bound and gagged Bryn looked on. One can only imagine poor Bryn's horror, as
right there in front of him, the dead body of his manager began to twitch and
contort. The eyes that flew open were not the eyes of Andy, his manager; they
were the crazed bloodshot eyes of a lusting madman.

 
The images on the security tape will be in
grainy black and white, which at least will shield the viewer from the full
horror of what took place in that little room, as poor, incapacitated Bryn was
completely eaten, beginning with his left ear.

 
The viewer would see that, mercifully, Bryn
appeared to meet with his death approximately five minutes later (probably of
shock) as Andy ripped open his torso to get at the softer organs, and the
splatter of grey- looking liquid that sprayed onto the camera lens in the tenth
minute, as Bryn's body was torn into several smaller sized chunks, at least
prevented the indignity of Bryn's final devouring ever ending up on the
internet.

The four men managed to get
across the concourse and to the opening of the Waitrose supermarket with
relatively little bother given the circumstances. Ant made the mistake of
turning his head to look at the escalators which, being run on a separate
generator, were still ferrying zombies between the ground and first floors. The
undead had mainly stumbled onto the sharp metal moving steps more by accident
than purpose as their sense of smell and their lust for flesh lead
them
 
blindly
in all
directions.

 
At the top of the ascending escalator stood a
man- a normal man, but a horrified man.

Tears were running down his
cheeks and his eyes were full of despair. Travelling on the escalator, heading
towards him and unable to stand,
  
was a
small elderly lady.

 
He had watched helplessly as she had been
attacked on the floor below and had fallen onto the moving staircase.
 
Her long grey hair, which had previously been
held in a tidy bun, had been pulled and tugged loose and was now caught up in
the movement of the stairs, pinning her head against the metal. She was quite
smeared with blood, but she did not notice, and as she neared the crying man
she turned her head to face him and began to growl and spit, and glare at him
with unrecognisable wild eyes.

Her head reached the man's
foot, and as Ant watched, unable to drag his eyes away from the dreadful scene,
the sobbing man bought down his heavy boot and without doubt crushed the poor
ladies skull to smithereens. It was also without doubt that this had been a
strong act of mercy and of love as the hysterical man then fell to his knees
screaming the words “Forgive me, Mom!!” which reverberated throughout the
building causing Anthony Langston to throw up all over his rented tuxedo.

 
This was real, and nowhere near as easy as he
had imagined in his made- up scenarios. This was really going to require a huge
amount of Man-up juice if he were to survive. He looked for the other three,
who he had briefly been separated from, and in his peripheral vision he
happened to spot
the
 
slightly
glowing green
M claw
motif on Scott's favourite
Rossi baseball cap
 
heading into the
supermarket, which unfortunately appeared to be rather full of shuffling,
groaning blood- soaked shoppers.

As Ant turned to catch them
up he felt a tug on his right arm. Standing there before him was an abomination
of humankind, half man and half snarling beast. This was really it, no time for
jelly legs now. With his left hand he reached over his right shoulder and drew
out the samurai umbrella from its sheath. He had to take a step backwards due
to its length, and with a racing heart, he plunged the metal tip straight into
the monster's crazed eyeball. Blood sprayed out, as he forced his weapon of
choice deeper into
it's
skull, piercing the brain, and then just as quickly, he pulled it back out
again. He didn't wait around to watch his victim slump to the floor dead.
 
Holding back tears and yet more vomit he ran
into the shop thrashing wildly at anything that groaned in his path.

Scott, who had now noticed
Ant's absence and was frantically searching through the stumbling crowd, gasped
with relief at the sight of an umbrella being wielded in a maniacal manner, and
whistled (of all things) the loudest wolf whistle he'd ever before
managed.
 

Recognising the sound, Ant
raced towards it and was soon reunited with his three allies. Shaken,
breathless but alive, and (although it would never fill him with absolute
pride) he had his first zombie kill under his belt.

In the dim light of the
supermarket, the four men edged their way along the chilled/frozen aisle. After
only having had one member of the undead to deal with along the way, they
quietly pondered whether the cool temperature may be disguising their
irresistible aroma. That poor victim had quickly been dispatched with something
as simple and undignified as a blackcurrant
callipo
through the eye socket, administered by Jon at close quarters. No time for
sentiment.

 
As they shuffled along on their knees to the
end of the aisle, occasionally reaching up
 
to grab small items of food
 
supplies from the freezers, they peered around the corner and were
astounded to see what appeared to be a seven foot high Power Ranger comically
fending off a gang of
 
lumbering cartoon
baddies. Of course, there wasn't really anything remotely funny going on at the
checkout area; and it wasn't a Power ranger at all- it was a biker dressed head
to foot in leather complete with crash helmet.

 
Unable to bite through the tough leather or
claw through the perfect safety headgear- and without enough living brain cells
to realise this-they continued to lunge at him with their mouths. More and more
of them were making their shuffling advances towards him, attracted by the
sound of the others' groans- and, of course, the delicious scent of living
flesh.

 
He had in his possession a mop which he had
managed to prise out of the hands of a half- eaten sanitation consultant, and
was using it against them with the skill and power of a martial arts expert.
Maybe he was one!

 
He flailed his crude weapon strongly and
swiftly, crushing skulls and jabbing eyes, even subjecting a few of the poor
gruesome sods to a Glasgow kiss from his rock hard helmet.
 
Each time he knocked one off their feet he
stamped really hard on their heads with his huge biker boot. Blood and bits of
brains were flying in all directions, coating the cash registers and the
'suggestive selling'
area in a thick red lumpy goo. The supermarket was
fast resembling an abattoir (though the smell was thankfully indescribable).

 
For a fleeting moment, Scott wished he had
made the journey to the Gadget Show on his own Kawasaki ZX12R.
 
At least
 
he would be wearing a zombie- proof suit right
now; and with all due respect- and taking into account the dreadful
circumstance that this lone karate biker was in- (albeit fairly protected), and
judging him by his body language alone- Scott decided that this
Stig
look-a-
likey
appeared to be
having the time of his life!

 
It was because of this noisy attraction that
the foursome were given the opportunity to make a dash for the staircase that
would lead them to the safety of the building's roof.
 
Following Jon's lead, they ran through the
fire doors and up the first flight of stairs.

Half way up the second flight
Jon suddenly halted and held up his hand for the others to do the same. There
were noises coming from above them. It was hard to tell at first what was
making the noises, but it was definitely movement. They silently crept up
another step, hearts pounding and weapons poised.
 
They strained their ears and eyes in the half
darkness, not daring to breathe.

 
Suddenly there was a loud, dull thud, followed
by a long, loud groan, which was quickly followed by an angry, accusing voice
that said “For fuck's sake Josh, you ain't pushing hard enough. I'll climb up
me bloody self,
ya
' wimp!”

“It's Kelly!” shouted a
relieved Jon to the others behind him as he raced up the remaining stairs,
narrowly missing getting his head bashed in by a startled
 
Kelly who, on hearing footsteps running
towards her, had sprang into attack mode.

“Nice crowbars!” said Jon,
not only relieved to find living beings up here but thankful that tough
no-nonsense Kelly was one of them.

“Babes!” cried Kelly, “I've
never been so glad to see you two ugly gits!” she said hugging her fellow work
colleagues. “Who are your mates?”

Kelly looked first at Scott,
who being
a gent
immediately offered his hand in
greeting.

 
“I'm Scott, pleased to meet you!” he said
simply.

Ignoring his outstretched
hand, Kelly instead offered out her fist- which Scott, aware of the crowbar in
her hand, quickly fist- bumped. This was not the kind of female he was used to
meeting but at least she appeared unruffled and capable.

“Wow! What is that smell?”
she asked, sniffing the air around Scott. “It's awful and at the same time
….....
frickin
' gorgeous!”

Scott looked down at himself
to an area where he had earlier felt a warm wet patch on his hip. With
realisation dawning, he remembered the bottle of Sex Panther that he had
hastily shoved in his coat pocket which had now obviously leaked out. Sensing
Scott's embarrassment, Ant too remembered the personal purchase and probably,
because of the whole surreal and terrifying situation they had become embroiled
in, he began to laugh uncontrollably.