The Dead

‘See?’ said Brooke. ‘Told you I wasn’t totally useless. Not like you bunch of wimps. What’s the matter with you all? She was just some stupid sicko. Why can’t you just –’

Brooke stopped, clapped her hands to her face and ran round the end of the row of cabinets to be noisily sick.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jack.

It was dark in the store. The strip lighting that ran in grey ranks along the low ceiling hung down dead and useless. When the kids trooped back outside, the suddenly bright sun caused them to blink and squint and shield their eyes so that it was a few seconds before they spotted a group of sickos tramping towards them across the car park.

There were about twenty of them, in various stages of decay. The worst were at the back, the slowest, most diseased. They were limping, hunched up, their skin almost totally covered in boils and sores, or else hanging off them in sheets. Their faces were unrecognizable as human, shapeless, raw, bloody and swollen. Noses missing, ears missing, eyes missing, their cheeks either puffed out and swollen, or rotted away, exposing their teeth. Those at the front were the healthier ones, younger, faster and fitter, but still visibly sick, their flesh discoloured and bloated, their bodies ravaged by the poison that was erupting from within.

At the front, as if he was leading them, was a tall, black-haired father with crazed yellow eyes. He was wearing a long dark coat that flapped in the wind.

‘Omigod, it’s Pez!’ Brooke gasped.

‘What?’ Jack had no idea what she was talking about.

‘The one in charge, he looks like one of those Pez sweet-dispenser things. He was there before, at the bus. He must have followed us.’

Despite everything Jack laughed. She was right. The father’s head was tilting back, leaving his unattached lower jaw dangling and his tongue lolling out over his lower lip. Jack had a strong urge to stand and fight, to stop ru

‘Let’s get away from here!’ he shouted, and they ran.

They skirted round the supermarket and into an industrial area behind it. They could smell the gas from the towers here; its pungent odour got everywhere. After a couple of minutes of furious, breathless, lung-busting ru

‘Stop!’ said Bam, looking around. ‘We should be safe here. I’ll check to see they haven’t followed us, but if we stay put for a while they’ll surely give up searching and bugger off.’

DogNut and Bam went over to the entrance to the yard and looked out.

‘No sign of them,’ said DogNut after a while. ‘I reckon we lost them.’

‘This is crazy,’ Courtney gasped. The big girl was fighting for breath and she looked pale and scared. Her eyes kept flicking around, not settling on anything. ‘We don’t know what we’re doing. It’s too dangerous out here. I think we should go back.’

‘I agree,’ said Aleisha. ‘We ain’t go

Then Jack’s voice caused them all to turn round. ‘There’s a lorry in that alleyway.’

‘What?’ Ed frowned at him.

‘I said there’s a lorry in that alleyway.’

‘So what?’

‘So I think it’s a Tesco delivery truck. We should check it out.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Ed put his hands up, palms towards Jack. ‘Call me a coward if you want, but I don’t think that’s a great idea.’

‘Why?’ said Jack. ‘What’s going to happen?’

‘It was like this when we were ambushed at The Fez.’

‘There’s no one around, Ed.’

‘That’s what it was like then. They came from nowhere. They were waiting for us. That lorry could be a trap.’

Jack laughed. ‘What bloody sickos are going to be able to drive a lorry up an alley and hide it?’

‘So why’s it there, then?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ said Jack. ‘I’m just saying we should have a look.’

‘You weren’t there in Rowhurst,’ Ed pleaded. ‘You don’t know what it was like …’

But Jack was already walking over to the alleyway.

Ed called after him, ‘Jack!’

The others could do nothing but follow. The alley was just wide enough to fit the width of the lorry that was about ten metres down. It sat there in the darkness, a solid, menacing shape, blocking the way like some great beast in a lair ready to dash out and catch its prey. Before he was halfway there Jack wished he hadn’t been so hasty. Ed was right – it would be too easy to get trapped in the narrow space. Then he heard his friends behind him and it gave him the confidence to carry on.

The lorry had a streamlined hood on the top of the square blunt cab that clearly said Tesco and there was a manufacturer’s logo in the middle of the black radiator grille – ‘MAN’. Jack smiled to himself. It was like a sign. It’d be fu

The lorry was jammed in, making it impossible to open the doors. The radiator grille, however, was made up of three bars, like the rungs of a ladder. Well, that was an invitation if ever Jack’d seen one. He reached for the wipers to get a grip and hoiked himself up.

There was a man sitting there, in the driver’s seat, and Jack didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

He was dead, his skin bloated and puffy, covered with a layer of white mould that gave it a soft, fluffy look. His eyes were sunk into his swollen face like two little black holes. He reminded Jack of something.

A snowman.

It was quite unca

Hell, he was even wearing a little hat and a scarf.

Now Jack started laughing and had to let go and jump back down.

‘What is it?’ said Bam, the first to join him by the lorry.

‘Look in there,’ said Jack, snorting with laughter. ‘There’s a bloody snowman!’

Bam climbed up and a moment later he was standing next to Jack, doubled over and barking.

‘You are sick,’ he managed to gasp between laughs.

‘Is that, like, a dead body in there?’ said Courtney, too squeamish to look.

‘Sure is,’ said Bam. ‘As dead as they come.’

‘Well, let’s get out of here then. That’s creepy.’

‘We need the lorry, Courtney,’ said Jack.

‘What for?’

‘What do you think? Can’t you read?’

‘Yeah, I can read.’

‘And what does that say?’

‘Tesco.’

‘Exactly. It’s a Tesco delivery lorry. It could be full of food.’

Courtney stared at the cab and wrinkled her nose. ‘Yeah, well,’ she said. ‘I can’t see him driving it very far.’

‘I’m go

His heart was pounding, as much with hope as with fear. If the container was intact, it might be filled with food. A very valuable load. Why else would the snowman have driven in here if not to escape looters, or hijackers? He’d probably been on his way to Tesco and had come down here to hide, and then tried to sit it out. He could have starved to death, or he could have been taken by the disease. It was impossible to tell.

Well. He might have escaped the marauding sickos, but in the end he hadn’t been able to escape death.

Jack got to the end and dropped on to his belly. He peered over the edge, hardly daring to look. The back of the lorry appeared to be untouched. Unopened.

He gri