‘Then you’re idiots,’ said Purna calmly, looking him straight in the eye. ‘We’re not your enemies. Those things out there are your enemies. Think about it for a minute. Fighting is a waste of time and energy. There are plenty of resources for everyone, and we’re in a position to help each other out here.’ She paused. ‘So — this is the deal. We get you food, you allow us access to the armoury. Food for guns — and plenty of both for everyone. Once we’ve both got what we want we go our separate ways. That sound reasonable to you?’
The weasel stared at Purna for a moment, then glanced at his colleagues. ‘How do we know you won’t just run out on us?’ he asked finally.
‘We want guns,’ said Purna simply. ‘One isn’t enough.’
‘You look hard enough, you can find guns anywhere,’ said the tattooed man.
‘We ain’t got time to go lookin’,’ said Sam.
The weasel thought about it, then eventually he nodded. ‘OK. But you get the guns
He gestured casually with his gun at Jin and Dani.
Purna shook her head. ‘That’s unacceptable.’
‘That’s the deal,’ said the weasel. ‘Take it or leave it. But if you leave it, I reckon that’ll be bad news for you.’
He grinned, and looking into his eyes Purna knew exactly what he meant. But she tried not to show her anger or frustration; for now the weasel and his cronies were holding all the aces.
‘I’ll be OK,’ Jin said bravely.
Dani nodded. ‘I look after her.’
Purna glanced at Sam and Xian Mei. Sam raised his eyebrows. Xian Mei’s face was stony.
Sighing, Purna shrugged. ‘Guess we don’t have much of a choice,’ she said.
Chapter 10. AN ACT OF LOVE
‘BE CAREFUL.’
They approached the door cautiously, Sam in the lead. They could see that it had been separated from its hinges by a crowbar or something similar and then shoved roughly back into position. On the door a sign read: STAFF ENTRANCE ONLY. Situated on the far left of the huge back wall of the supermarket, the door was almost unnoticeable next to the big metal roll-up doors of the loading bay, which were five times higher and wider. It was here, adjacent to the currently empty staff car park, that trucks delivered goods in bulk to the warehouse. And it was here that Xian Mei had suggested they try to gain access to the building.
Getting to this point had actually proved easier than any of them had anticipated. Rather than hanging out by the offices and municipal buildings that seemed to dominate the far end of the long main street, most of the infected had wandered away by the time Purna, Sam and Xian Mei were ready to exit the police station, and were congregating en masse at the other end, where the retail outlets were. Maybe it was some kind of long-buried memory that drew them to that area, thought Sam, or maybe it was simply that that was where the majority of their food was — or at least had been. He guessed that, like the old woman with the loud TV, a lot of people must live in houses or apartments above or behind their business premises. Where the majority of those people were now was anyone’s guess. He liked to think that some of them had got away, or even that they were still holed up in their homes with plenty of provisions to hand. But he suspected the real truth was that they had either been ripped apart and devoured by the infected, or had become part of the massed and still growing ranks of the walking dead.
Whatever the motivations of the infected, in this instance they had given Sam, Purna and Xian Mei a relatively easy ride. Sprinting from the door of the police station to the van, they had only had to take out a couple of slavering, snarling attackers instead of an entire horde of them. And on the short drive round to the back of the supermarket, only one zombie had got in their way — a girl of about ten in a pink dress, who had flown through the air after being hit by the van and had clattered to the pavement like a broken doll. Glancing in the side mirror as they sped away, Sam had seen the girl lurch to her feet and shuffle pointlessly after them, despite sustaining what appeared to be multiple fractures.
Thankfully, the area at the back of the supermarket had been even more sparsely populated. In the almost- empty car park, which was enclosed by thick hedges, they had come across only three of the infected. One, an old black woman, who had been down on her hands and knees, her face buried in the torn-open belly of a headless corpse, had ignored them completely as they drove past. The other two — a long-haired guy in a Led Zeppelin T- shirt and a thin woman in blood-spattered spectacles, who looked like an archetypal librarian or prim schoolmistress — had run at them from opposite directions the instant they opened the van doors.
Purna’s first shot at the long-haired guy had been a bad one for her; the blast had gone low, taking away most of his left hand, but barely slowing him down. The second shot, by which time he was less than ten metres away, had ripped off the top of his head. He had kept running for maybe two steps, and then, as though realizing what had happened to him, had collapsed like a felled bull.
By this time, however, the schoolmistress was on them and targeting Xian Mei. As she leaped like a panther, her teeth bared and fingers hooked into claws, Xian Mei spun and side-stepped, bringing the machete round in an upwards sweep. It was such a perfect stroke that it separated the woman’s head from her shoulders with almost surgical precision, her now lifeless body continuing to fly forward before thumping to the ground and skidding along the tarmac. Her severed head, meanwhile, spun over and over in such a high, wide arc that it bounced on the roof of the van and looped away out of sight before eventually hitting the ground with a wet crunch.
Now, having despatched their attackers, they were moving towards the ‘Staff Entrance’ door. It was Xian Mei who noticed that someone had taken the door off its hinges, and she who warned Sam to be careful.
Sam turned and glanced at her briefly, flashing a wide but nervous grin. ‘Careful is my middle name,’ he murmured, and reached out to pull the door open.
It came free with a splintering creak, listing slightly. Sam steadied it, at the same time peering into the gloom of the high-ceilinged warehouse beyond. He could see nothing but rows of tall metal shelves stacked with boxes. There were no sounds of movement, no sign of anything shifting in the shadows.
‘All clear,’ he said, glancing at Purna, who was standing with the shotgun raised, alert as ever. She nodded and they moved as one into the warehouse, their eyes darting everywhere.
Immediately they became aware of the low buzzing of flies and a faintly unpleasant smell. They edged to the left, where both seemed to be coming from. They crept from the top of one aisle to the next, halting to peer around the end of each row of shelves. Eventually, after checking out five aisles and finding nothing, Sam peered around the corner of the next row along and instantly drew back. ‘There’s something there,’ he whispered.
‘What?’ asked Purna.
‘I can’t make it out. It’s too dark.’
Cautiously the three of them peered around the corner. Sure enough, about halfway along the aisle, was a bulky dark shape. From their position it looked like a crumpled tarpaulin or a collapsed tent. The lazy drone of flies was louder here, and they could even see flies looping and hovering above the shape, like flecks of static in the gloom.
‘It’s something dead,’ said Xian Mei. ‘An animal maybe.’
Sam broke cover, machete in one hand, flare pistol in the other. ‘Let’s check it out.’
They crept along the aisle towards the shape. It didn’t move. It was only when they were a few metres away that Sam realized what it was.
‘Aw, man,’ he muttered.
It wasn’t a single shape, but several — several bodies, in fact. It looked like a family: a man and a woman in their mid-thirties, a girl of maybe six or seven, and a boy wearing nothing but a nappy and a white T-shirt, who could have been no older than three.
They hadn’t been killed or eaten by zombies, but shot through the head. The man, who looked as though he
