Autumn

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 ru

‘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.

‘Last couple of boxes,’ Michael yelled as he crammed more and more into the back of the van. He’d left just enough space for him to be able to climb inside and pull the tailgate shut.

‘Forget the rest of it,’ Emma shouted. ‘Just get yourself inside.’

Carl managed to force the key into the ignition. He looked up and to his right. One of the closest bodies in the wretched throng lifted a clumsy hand into the air above its head. It slowly drew its weak and diseased fingers together to form an emaciated fist which, without warning, it brought crashing down on the driver’s door window.

‘Michael,’ he shouted, his voice wavering with strained emotion. ‘Are you in yet?’

‘Almost,’ the other man replied. ‘Last box.’

Carl watched as a second body lifted its hand and smashed the side of the van. Then another and another. The reaction spread through the ragged bodies like fire through a tinder-dry forest. Within seconds the inside of the van was ringing with a deafening crescendo of dull thumps and relentless crashes. He turned the key and started the engine.

‘I’m in,’ Michael yelled as he hauled himself into the van. He reached out and grabbed hold of the tailgate which he pulled shut. ‘Go!’

Carl pushed down on the accelerator and cautiously lifted his foot off the clutch. For a second there was no response then a slow, jerking movement as the van inched forward, shackled by the twisted metal remains of the supermarket entrance doors. Another lurch forward and they were free from the door but still progress was difficult, the sheer volume of bodies surrounding the front and sides of the vehicle preventing them from moving away at speed. Terrified, Carl pushed harder on the accelerator and lifted his foot completely off the clutch and this time the van moved away freely. The bulk of the bodies were brushed away to the sides but many others were dragged down under the wheels.

‘Bloody hell,’ Michael mumbled, watching events behind them through a small gap between boxes and bags of food.

‘What’s the matter?’ Emma asked.

‘They won’t lie down,’ he said. ‘The bastards just won’t lie down.’

He stared in horror and total disbelief as the crowd surged after them. Although their slow stagger was obviously no match for that of the van, the relentlessness and pointless persistence of the rotting gathering caused an icy chill to run the entire length of his spine. There was no point in them following the van, but still they came.

‘Almost there,’ Carl said under his breath as he steered towards the car park exit.

‘Keep going,’ Emma yelled, her voice hoarse with emotion. ‘For Christ’s sake don’t stop.’

A single solitary figure stumbled out in front of the van and, rather than waste precious seconds trying to avoid the woman’s body, Carl instead ploughed straight into it. The momentum of the van carried the corpse along for a few meters before it slipped down under the front bumper and was crushed beneath the wheels. As they left the car park and turned onto the road, Michael continued to watch the battered body on the ground. Its legs were smashed and shattered – that much was clear – and yet it still tried to move. The surging crowd tripped and stumbled over it ignorantly but still it continued to move oblivious. Reaching out with twisting, broken fingers, it dragged itself along the ground, inch by inch by inch.