There was just enough light in the mini supermarket for Kingsley to find what they needed. It was only around midday but the sun was strained by thick clouds, bleeding silver through the poster-covered front windows and casting everything in monochrome grey. A sickly yellow light fizzed above a staff door at the back of the shop, but the main lights were off.
Kingsley knew he wasn’t alone in here. He’d heard footsteps a few seconds ago and now he could hear what sounded like the crinkle of food packets.
It was probably an undead – a snapper, as they had started calling them.
He listened for breathing, sighs, grunts, whispers. The undead didn't use their lungs.
He couldn’t hear anything except for the faint plastic noise.
Kingsley edged along the front of the shop, peering down each aisle as he passed. Many of the meat-based food items on the shelves had been ransacked by snappers. Packets of jerky torn open with eager teeth and stiff fingers. Dented tins of chilli scattered on the floor, their contents abandoned for easier meals.
He would grab some of the untouched foods before he left. They couldn’t risk eating anything that had been touched by the undead in case it made them ill, or infected them with whatever it was that turned people into snappers.
But right now, Kingsley had to find out who the stores other occupant was. The sound was coming from the refrigerator aisle, the one farthest from the door.
His hand tightened around the handle of his machete as he approached the last row of shelves. Then, holding his breath, he leaned into the refrigerator aisle and stared down it.
A snapper – male, checkered shirt, ashen skin, blood coating it’s neck and hands, the entire lower half of it’s jaw missing. Unable to remove the clear plastic packaging from a joint of beef, the snapper attempted to eat the piece of meat by repeatedly shoving it into it’s gaping half-mouth, tongue writhing against the plastic like a leech trying to attach itself to flesh.
Kingsley’s head swam in dizziness for a moment, eyes locked on the hideous spectacle. As usual, his brain tried to deny what he was seeing. Then, realising that it was as real as his own strange existence – that this world really had become a place in which a person could be missing half of their face and still be walking around – he shook his head and tried not to think of the living, breathing man the snapper had once been.
He tried instead to think of everything that was happening as the workings of nature. Because really, nature was full of all kinds of horrors. There were animals that participated in cannibalism, parasites that invaded ecosystems and destroyed other lives just to survive, wolf packs that had no care for their weakest members and would leave them behind to fend for themselves in a heartbeat.
It was only human morals that deemed these things bad. Nature didn’t give a fuck. And while humans were at the top of the food chain, they were spineless in the face of nature.
Though I guess we’re not top of the food chain anymore, are we?
The snapper had not noticed Kingsley. It was too busy trying to eat. The urge to devour any meat that it could find was too strong to let a piece of plastic and a mutilated jaw stop it. So Kingsley backed away from the freezer aisle and left the snapper to it, thankful that he wouldn’t have to use the machete.
He could do it. He had done it enough times. But it felt so wrong, spineless human he was.
Kingsley went to the back of the shop where the flickering light taunted him by illuminating, over and over again, the barren medicine shelves.
That was what he had come in here for. Darren hadn't been lying when he’d told them he was low on medical supplies. Although they weren’t in desperate need of meds right now, they wanted to make sure they were well prepared for another situation like James’.
There were a few boxes of ibuprofen, a bottle of paracetamol-based child medicine and four boxes of congestion tablets.
Weak shit that probably wouldn't help them much. Still, Kingsley took all the boxes of painkillers and tablets, as there was more than enough space in the duffel bag and he thought it might at least give them a bit of comfort to know they had them if anyone became ill.
Rushing down the canned goods aisle, Kingsley snatched up as many cans of beans and sweetcorn as he could hold. He tried not to make too much noise, conscious of the dead man still in the shop with him – albeit a harmless one with half a jaw that wouldn’t be able to bite.
Still, when he realised he could no longer hear the crinkle of plastic, he practically ran out of the store.
*
Sammy and Eric both seemed to not notice him when he stumbled out. Eric was examining the back of his hand and Sammy was staring up at the sky with unfocused eyes.
Kingsley dropped the supplies he’d gathered into the duffel bag on the ground by the front window of the shop. “Nothing much in there, I’m afraid. Just painkillers and some congestion relievers.”
Sammy swallowed and finally glanced at him and Eric.
“Right,” she said with a noticeable lack of interest. “There’s something I need to talk to you two about. I’ve made a decision.”
Kingsley raised his eyebrows, then nodded for her to continue.
“My mum and dad live in Kelvedon, not far from here. I need to find them. I need to make sure they’re safe. Besides you two, they’re basically all I have left in this world. So I’m going to my mum and dad’s home.”
"Okay. And?"
“And I just wanted to tell you that you don’t have to come with me – either of you. I have to find my parents no matter what, but I know you two will also have people you want to see. Your
