Hair of the dog

Maybe it was Joe's snoring, how the cold of the room numbly pinched his face above a blanket or how the sun shone high and bright into Jack's eyes that woke him up, he couldn't say. He sat there and ached all over, especially on the inside.

His guts were rotten and his liver was a sack of rancid pâté that he felt putrefying within his mummified body. His head ached when he made the slightest movement and it hurt when he didn't. His brains would surely slop out of his skull if he moved it too fast. He wished they would, just to stop it hurting. There was a buzzing pain right above his eyeballs that hummed on and on without end. The only thing that made him able to sit and live through it was the sluggish lethargy that wouldn't let him do anything else and how he couldn't remember the pain of ten seconds ago as his liquid brains erased his memories as fast as it made them.

Squashed between Katie and Joe and unable to remember how he got there, Jack blearily observed that the gas stoves had long since gone out, that the others were slumped about in a dead slumber and that he felt truly, truly terrible. He didn't want to move from the ball he curled into because that would break the fragile shell of warmth trapped between him and the blanket; the last comfort in the world. He groaned, swept his tongue around a vile mouth he could scarce believe felt like his own and had the energy to do nothing but sit there and feel bad. Time crawled, his heart palpitated and the edges of reality were hard and painful now the rushing train of euphoria had derailed and left such a scattered, ruined human mess around the room.

Katie ground her teeth in her sleep with a noise that went squeak, squeak, creak right next to his head.

The sun was painfully bright in Jack's eyes and his ringing head wasn't soothed by the regular whine and grumble Joe made or the whistling from his nostrils. He needed a shower. So did Joe. Jack leaned over to Katie and sniffed. So did she.

Eventually the discomfort of staying where he was outweighed the tiny comfort of his cocoon and he heaved himself out into the cold world, where he stood, weak and shivering, feeling as thin and fragile as a length of string.

Andy was still awake. He was sitting, rocking in his chair and twisting a rolling paper between his fingers. Tobacco and Bhuna flakes fell from it and landed on the table, where a heap of torn, misshapen papers lay. Andy didn't look up as he hummed, muttered, rocked, twisted the paper back and forth and spilt more on to the table.

'My liver's only fit to be fried with onions. I've got to get out of here,' Jack groaned to no one in particular, and he made for the gents. 

After a jump in the perception of time passing, the next thing Jack knew, he was leaning on a sink and pouring a cool, refreshing bottle of water over his head. He rubbed it through his hair, careful not to ruin the face paint, swilled some round his foul-tasting mouth, spat and drank a little.

For a while Jack clutched weakly at the sink, felt ill and stared at himself, locked in introspection. His hair was getting too long and it was growing outwards, not downwards. Damn his stupid curls. He would have to approach Katie and ask for a haircut sometime. No wonder Emily wouldn't go out with him. What a mess.

Oh God, Emily. The embarrassment of last night struck like a lightning bolt and Jack rolled his eyes to heaven and moaned 'Why, why, why?'

He was so hungover. Why did he drink so much? He was anxious around other people when he was sober, he only wanted to have a few to get merry and sociable. The next thing he knew he was stumbling round drunk, being a fool and embarrassing himself before waking up in a state like this. He would never learn.

Jack was repeating 'Why, why, why, why…' to himself when Tom walked in. He must have heard.

'Are you alright?' asked Tom, and he bared his prominent, white teeth in an awkward smile. Jack muttered that he was and ducked out through the toilet door. He mumbled 'sorry' at the end without thinking and truly hated himself for it.

Jack wondered how long he'd spent in the toilets because when he returned, most people were awake, dragging their feet and ambling aimlessly. He didn't feel any better. The hungover feeling wouldn't leave but churned on and on and shifted into various different shades of feeling bad. Jack went to rejoin the others and gulped down some cider in the vain hope it would make him feel not as bad as he currently did.

'Did we bring anything for breakfast?' asked Emma, her head in her hands as she smudged her paint across her eyes.

'No. Seems like we didn't think that far ahead,' said Matt.

'There's peanuts and crisps behind the bar,' Katie said with a groggy, weak voice.

'Ugh, no,' was the response from everyone, except Joe.

'Winner winner, bar snack dinner,' Joe said, and he merrily blundered off behind the bar. 'Ugh, it reeks of booze over here,' he said.

'Don't you all remember getting bored with pool so you started to play golf around the pub with the cues instead? I think the final challenge was to stand on the tables and smash as many bottles and glasses behind the bar as you could,' said Katie. 'For every one you broke you cheered "WHEYYY!" and fell about like it was the funniest thing ever, every time you said it.'

'No,' said Joe.

'Huh, I remember. Whey. I love a good Whey,' said Jack, grinning through the pain.

This was after you and Jack raced each other by holding your heads under the spirits optics to see who could drink their way across the bar the fastest,' said Jenny.

'Again, no,' said Joe.

'You were so wasted. I thought you were drunk before we even began,' said Jenny disapprovingly.

'My stomach hurts,' whined Emily.

Me too,' said Jack. 'We need something proper to eat to soak up the booze.'

'Well volunteered,' said Matt.

'Nice one, Jack,' said Sarah.

'Yeah, cheers, Jack. Good lad,' said Nick, sitting with his arm across his eyes. 'There's no food in the building that hasn't spoiled, apart from tins of baked beans and tomatoes. I suppose that's a start.'

Well, he had dropped himself in it again. 'O-okay, where can we get food from, then?' Jack said, cringing.

'Well, if there's nothing in the building, then you'll have to look outside the building, obviously.' Nick said scathingly. 'Now think, where do you know that has food?' Jack noted a few others bite their lips in an attempt to conceal their humour even as they frowned at him.

'Fine!' Jack said, in a voice he thought was loud and assertive but came out petulant.

'I think we need a big fry-up,' said Matt. 'A full English, with all the trimmings. That's what would do the trick.'

'I want bread… for toast,' Jenny whined.                  

'There isn't any more bread. It's all gone mouldy,' Jack stated flatly.

'Get us some eggs,' Nick told him. 'They're the best for absorbing alcohol.'

The idea of rotten green eggs wobbling in the pan made Jack feel queasy. 'There aren't any more eggs,' he said. 'They've all gone mouldy.'

'Bacon, also, would be mouldy.' Jack was dumbfounded. They weren't even listening to anything he said. 'I suppose there might be some tinned ham or something?' he suggested. God, this is what he meant when he said that some of the stuff they come out with was plain stupid.

Matt massaged his aching skull and lit up a spliff. 'You'll have to go with him,' Matt told Joe. 

Joe stopped grimacing and picking at a bag of nuts. 'Oh, what? Why do I have to go with him?' he whined.

'You're his mate,' said Matt and offered the joint.

'I really don't feel up to it. No, I'm not going,' he whined. Matt kicked him under the table.

'I could bleeding well see this come a mile off!' Joe exclaimed as he snatched the joint and got up.

They stepped out of the pub into the daylight. It had happened again. Joe was stuck with Jack for some errand he'd got himself volunteered on. The two of them lowered their bike helmet visors a little way to shield their eyes against the sun's glare. They had their weapons and a couple of other bits in their rucksacks and utility belts that could come in handy.

The street in front of The Depot was home to a collection of other bars and takeaways, and on the far side rose the high walls of Kingsgate Shopping Centre. The road was empty, except for some skeletal remains by the kerb. A light coating of the strange, ashen dust had collected on the pub's windows and the desiccated plants in the flowerbeds outside it.

The street took a left turn into the heart of town. A minute's walk would take them right into the middle of it.

Crows eyeballed the pair of them from the shopping centre roof and rats ran freely along the gutters and pavement. They looked well fed, and blurred, like everything else through Joe's vision. The two friends smoked Matt's spliff out of sight of the main road behind a bin store. It still smelt faintly of the patrons' urine.

Because of the herb, they soon found they had things to say and thoughts to share, at least to delay the task at hand.

'Here's an idea,' Jack said. 'I don't think that the greatest danger in the world today is the Dead; it's your own appetite.'

'Go on…' Joe said, sighing. 

'Edible food and drink becomes rare as it gets consumed or expires. To get more means that you have to leave the relative safety of your hideout and take a chance on whatever dangers may be outside.

'Now, hunger and thirst can make you do stupid, desperate things. They make you take silly risks that you would never consider otherwise. You might break cover and try going somewhere that you swore you never would when your belly was full. Then you get caught, all because you were hungry and you wanted to eat something that would satisfy you for just a few hours more.'

'Like we're doing now,' said Joe.

'Right. I mean, if you never had the need to eat or drink, you could take off and live somewhere remote and be perfectly safe, or stay in your hideout forever. You'd never have to leave and would never get found. Your own worst enemy is your appetite. The trouble is that all of them – the Dead – have an appetite too. Thus, the world's greatest killer is, in fact, the stomach and what people do for it. The damnedest thing is that it's always ticking down, from the moment you finish eating the last thing you had, until you get hungry again. Yours doesn't stop, theirs doesn't stop. It keeps going and will keep forcing you to keep going and taking risks.'

Joe pulled a face. 'At least until you got bored. That's why you couldn't stay in your hideout forever. You'd be bored shitless and dying to get out,' he said. 'So maybe boredom's the world's second biggest killer?' Joe wanted to hint he was getting bored as well but Jack didn't get it. 

'I think you're right!' Jack said, pleased with what Joe had said that built on his theory.

Joe hushed Jack. 'Shh, you're talking too loud,' he said.

'Sorry, got carried away there,' Jack said.

'Don't you think that love is a motivator? Isn't that what made the bar manager go back, try to protect the bar and that employee and his dog?' asked Joe.

'No,' Jack scoffed. The idea that love was a motivator was ridiculous. 'Never mind, let's move on. What were you saying about the world's second biggest killer?'

The road turned onto a pedestrian precinct that went uphill into the town centre. The sides of the road were lined with shops and bars, and up ahead was a shopping precinct called The Shambles.

Jack peeked around the corner and surveyed the road ahead. There were several of the Dead at street level, some near, some far away. Some were motionless like scarecrows, other wandered the pavements and in or out of doorways.

Many windows had been smashed and shop's goods mingled with other debris spilled on to the street where the rats roamed free with the crows. The closest figure to them was a woman who was crouching at the side of the road with her back to them. She appeared to be picking through rubbish on the ground.

'It seems quiet enough,' Jack whispered. 'There's a corner shop on the right. We could get the stuff we need from there.'

'I don't want to do this. This is stupid,' Joe said.

'No, come on, we can do it! We can see how busy the town centre is and get us all a good old fry-up,' said Jack.

'I don't want a fry-up. I'm not even hungry, and you just said that hunger makes you do stupid things and wasn't worth dying for two minutes ago,' said Joe.

'No I didn't,' Jack said. 'We may not feel like eating now, but you know it'll make you feel so much better when you do.'

'Fine!' Joe said. 'But if I die it's your fault.'

'That's the spirit,' said Jack, and the two of them ducked out around the corner with their hammers in hand and crept out behind a nearby row of cars.

'Look, I really can't deal with bashing anyone. The thought of seeing any brains and gore right now makes me want to hurl. I really don't want to puke inside my helmet. That would be so bad. Please don't make me puke inside my helmet,' whined Joe as as they got in position.

The woman near to them who was squatting and picking at the junk on the road seemed to stare at the pieces with a childlike fascination, or a nostalgic longing perhaps, as she rolled them back and forth with her fingertips. She still clasped a handbag underneath her arm.

'Do we have to bash her?' muttered Joe.

'No, then again, we shouldn't leave her in case she makes trouble on the way back,' replied Jack.

'We'll tape her then,' said Joe.

'Nice one. Go for it,' said Jack quickly, before Joe could say that what he meant by 'we' was 'him'.

Joe grumbled. He slowly peeled a strip of gaffer tape he stuck to his thigh before he left and held it ready. He waited until the coast was clear before he scuttled up behind the damp-stained, ragged ghoul. She turned around as Joe got close but he slapped the tape over her eyes and pushed her over before she could react. The woman froze, then, disorientated, she flopped like a landed fish on the ground.

Joe tried to keep low to scurry back to the cars, but the sudden movement drew the attention of a corpulent old man who appeared in a doorway. The man sputtered in anger and started to lumber their way. 

When the man reached the row of cars, he saw Joe lean out and wave to him at the far end which was enough of a distraction as Jack slipped around behind.

Jack pulled off a strip of gaffer tape, but it made a loud ripping noise right at the last moment. The man turned sharply around, and in a split second's panic, Jack swung out with his hammer and struck the man on the head. The man staggered but wouldn't go down. Jack had to hit him twice more before he fell.

'Goddamn it! I thought you were just going to tape him,' Joe said between gags and coughs as he fought his dinner down.

Sorry, I fumbled at the last second and made a noise.' Jack pulled Joe behind the barrier of a pub's outdoor seating area as he spat and dry-heaved through his visor.

They crept up along the edge of street as fast and quiet as they could, but when they turned the corner they were met eye to eye by a dozen of the Dead who were standing right in front of the newsagent's they wanted to go to. Joe was sick in the middle of the road.

'Come on, don't just stand there! I know a way round. Let me show you something,' Jack said, and he doubled back to drag Joe along behind him as the groaning, gargling monstrosities staggered their way.

The pair of them ran along the middle lane of The Shambles shopping centre. The lane led to The Piazza; an open-air collection of modern shop units with a central green and the town library.

Halfway down this lane was an inconspicuous maintenance doorway. The lock was already bashed in, and it swung open when the boys barged inside and stumbled their way up a stairwell on to the roof where they slowed to catch their breath It had started to speckle with rain. 

The roof over The Shambles shop units was flat and covered in gravel, moss and cigarette butts. Here and there were skylights, ventilation stacks and a few access points from the shop units below.

'You can relax,' said Jack. 'Up here there are no Dead, and we can travel all the way along the rooftop around the town. You can go that way to The Piazza, all the way along to Queensgate Market and the multistorey carpark on the other side, all without touching the ground. Or you can go this way and get further into the town centre.'

Joe was still coughing and spitting. He wiped a phlegmy trace of sick from his helmet visor on to the nearest wall.

In time, they got up, and Jack led Joe over to the part that overlooked the town centre.

'Wow,' said Joe, 'I've never seen Huddersfield up from this angle.' He squinted at the distance. 'The Dead are so small down there.' He pretended to squish one between his fingers.

 'Nick showed me this place. Just me and him,' said Jack, with a touch of pride. 'It was early days for us, as a group, after all this happened. I don't know if we even wore biker suits then. Ryan was alive. Anyway, Nick was pretty high and a lot more friendly and talkative than usual. I was quite surprised.'

'We were sat here where we are now, looking at all this around us. We got talking about stuff, I asked Nick what course at uni before all this went down and was surprised to hear Nick say that he wasn't a student any more. I'd always assumed he was. Did you know that? I didn't realise how old he was.

'He said it had been three years since he graduated and that he was broke and miserable all the time. He couldn't find a decent job that didn't pay in peanuts and he lived in a shitty little bedsit. "Every day I wanted something to happen, some big shake-up, maybe even a revolution, a war, anything. I prayed for it. Even a war," he said. Then all this happened and he said in a perverse way it seemed he got what he wished for.'

'Nick said "others see this as a disaster, but I think it's an opportunity. Somehow, only we survived. We must be immune to the disease or whatever it was that made the people turn sick. We were nobodies but now we own this town. We had nothing, but now it's all ours. We could have everything. Everything you wished you could do, you can now. There's no laws, no responsibilities. We are kings of it all."

'You're joking. He said that?' asked Joe. 'Don't tell me you agree with him.'

Jack shrugged. 'Nick said "you can look inside these backpacks we brought" and when I opened mine up there was all these bundles of what looked like very expensive, fashionable t-shirts torn up into strips. Ther was a bunch of bottles of spirits beneath – Grey Goose, Ciroc, Patrón, Diplomatico Ambassador rum – the good stuff, the very best, and cans of lighter fluid.

'Nick took a swig from a bottle, poured some over the Dead who gathered round on the street and filled the bottle back up with lighter fluid. He stuffed one of the rags in the top, lit it and chucked it at one of them.'

'Molotov cocktail,' said Joe.

'Right. It burst into flames on impact and set fire to one of them, this fella wearing a suit and tie, and he ran around, flapping his arms, making a noise like "Eeeeeeeeee"! It was pretty funny.'

'Yup, well, sounds like a worthy way to spend an afternoon,' replied Joe. 'I don't get Nick. Sometimes he sounds crazy.'

'The Molotovs didn't turn out to be very effective,' said Jack. 'The fire went out pretty quickly and it didn't really harm the Dead. I don't think they can feel it, so it didn't really do much, other than make them panic.'

'I see some broken glass down there, but that's it really,' said Joe. 'No burnt bodies.'

'The Molotovs need something else in them, like tar or petroleum jelly. That would make the fire stick and burn at a higher temperature,' Jack considered. 'Though it was really funny to see them all light up and run around, though,' he continued. 'You've never seen them move so fast! They made that sound like "Eeeee!" and started running around into things, and each other.'

'Now that's something I wanna try sometime,' Joe said, grinning savagely.

'Nick said what he wanted to do was make bridges across the rooftops. He pointed out that most buildings in town are arranged in blocks, you see? You can cover a lot of distance if you walk along the roofs. You can also choose which part of town you would like to go to directly. You can scout out what it's like first from above before you go. Did you know a lot of the blocks have a central courtyard with fire escapes you can climb up? Nick said that using the roofs should be our go-to choice for travelling around town and that making bridges should be our next project.'

'Nick talks a load of shite,' Joe said and grimaced.

'Nick reckons that if you had only seven or eight bridges then you could get all around the town centre while being out of reach of the Plebs on the street,' Jack said.

'How would we make bridges?' asked Joe.

'Take a look at this,' Jack said, and led them across the rooftops to the entrance of The Shambles. Two ladders laid there, tied together with a dozen plastic binding clips.

'Here's one we made earlier,' Jack said happily.

Together they dragged the ladders to the overhang above the entrance to The Shambles which protruded a good couple of metres closer to the next block of buildings on the other side. 

'Don't worry about the noise, we're well out of reach,' said Jack as the ladders grated along.

Planting the ladders' base against the concrete rim of the overhang they heaved the ladders high into the air and over so they fell to rest against the opposite building and bridged the gap.

'Trust me,' said Jack. He clambered across and cheerfully ignored the wailing, growling Dead who gathered beneath the ladder and waited eagerly should he fall.

'No. No way. Sod that,' Joe said. 'I am NOT good with heights. Not happening.'

'Come on, it's the only way,' Jack called over his shoulder.

'I don't know if that's gonna hold me! I would NOT like to climb across bridges like that. I'd sooner stay on the ground and fight than climb across that then fall to my death!' Joe shouted. 'God, Nick can talk such bollocks with his big ideas. It's naïve, it's unrealistic, and it's bloody stupid.'

'No, no, he's got a point,' said Jack.

Joe moaned, then hunkered down to grip the bars as hard as he could and began to climb across, very slowly. The ladders sagged in the middle and gave a loud creak for a heart-stopping moment, but, slowly, very shakily and stiffly, he made it to the other side, where he fell about gasping and panting on the next building's roof.

While he did so, with a look of rapture on his face, Jack pointed out that from here they could cross over the top of Packhorse Shopping Centre further into the town centre on the west side, over to St Peter's Church on the north side or indeed if they doubled back from the way they came they could go back over The Shambles, across The Piazza shopping centre, Queensgate markets and the multi-storey car park after that until they got as far as the ring road. With this one bridge, all these places were now linked, and wasn't that wonderful?

In the absence of much enthusiasm from Joe, Jack pulled him up by the arm and they took a short, wobbling walk over the roof slates until they reached the corner shop.

'And here we are!' Jack said triumphantly. 'We skipped past all that silly bollocks on the ground and here we are. We made it to our destination.'

'I can't help but notice that we're on the shop. We don't want to be on the shop. We want to be in the shop,' Joe pointed out with a stony expression.

Jack's face fell.

When the pair of them finally managed to gain entry to the shop, the air was musty with decay. Most of the produce was strewn around the floor and the shelves had been cleared out of anything that was any good. After waiting and listening for a while, they determined that at least they were alone in the building. Jack shook water from his sleeve where he'd slipped and put his hand in the toilet after crawling headfirst through the bathroom window. He'd then come downstairs and let Joe in through the back door from a tiny, disused alleyway behind the shops, which was green with moss and clumps of weeds. Decaying children's toys lay discoloured and forgotten as they gathered rainwater.

The front door hung ajar, with the top pane of glass smashed through. Jack crept over to it and wedged it shut by gently working items from the stationary section beneath it so they wouldn't be interrupted by the figures roaming the street.

The door to the back of house area was still intact and locked after all this time. Jack was able to open it from the other side on his way down, and he beckoned Joe along a dingy, narrow corridor, a staircase and a back room stacked high with untouched crates of produce. The two of them high-fived and celebrated quietly.

The staircase led up to the next floor to what must have been the home of the shopkeeper's family. On the wall were pictures of Vishnu and elephant-headed Ganesha, and there was a large vase with dead plants, a varnished cabinet of ornately carved wood, with family snapshots and a bowl of dusty potpourri on top of it. Over any lingering trace of spiced perfume was a thicker, more pungent smell of decay and faeces. Joe led the way and nudged each door open with his weapon drawn to make sure they weren't in for any surprises.

The fridge and freezer are rotten. It stinks in here,' said Joe from the kitchen, coughing. 'Hey, come and take a look at this.'

As Jack turned the corner, he heard Joe say, 'Hey, Jack, I heard you like— WHEYYY!' and he walked straight into a cloud of chocolate powder that Joe had launched through the air. Jack spluttered and choked as he swallowed the plume of dust.

'What the fuck,' he croaked drily.

Joe read out loud from the label of the tub he was holding. 'Pure, 100% Gold Standard Wheyyy!' he said, and burst into laughter as Jack wheezed, hawked and spat. He shook an avalanche of the stuff from his hair, his shoulders, arms, everywhere. Some had even got down his collar.

'Goddamn it, Joe.'

There were no human occupants to be found but they found the stiff, desiccated body of a cat behind a door covered in scratch marks. The smell was from where the cat had fouled around the house as it probably tried to scavenge anything it could to eat or drink in its last days.

Both being animal lovers, the scene seemed especially poignant to Jack and Joe. They remarked how this family pet had been forgotten, trapped, and left to die in its own home. It had been a petted and cherished household member until it was suddenly, inexplicably, abandoned for reasons it could never know. The mania of thirst would have set in and it died alone in torment because of reasons it could never understand, human reasons beyond its control, and no fault of its own.

They stared at the cat's body for a while in sombre quiet.

'I was always more of a dog person,' said Joe.

'Yeah, same,' Jack said, sniffing. Whey powder had gone up his nose.

'I used to have a cat. It was a cocky little shit. I remember when I was young and it was a kitten. I tried to be friends with it. Because I wasn't old enough to feed it, it didn't want anything to do with me. It scratched me when my parents weren't around,' Joe reminisced.

'There was one time it came and sat on my head, all dainty like. People thought it was funny, so I let it. It licked its paws, licked its groin and sat on my head, making me look like a fool. Then it began to lose balance and slide off. It didn't steady itself or hop off or anything, just stuck its claws down into my scalp and raked gashes all down the side of my head. I screamed and it strutted away without looking back, like nothing happened. It went and washed itself, and within five minutes my older sister had given it a treat and was cuddling it on the sofa.'

'Wow.'

'Actually, you know what? Fuck cats,' Joe said, getting angry. 'They act all chummy when they want something from you. They meow and paw at you and act all cutesy when they want attention, and decide if they let you have the privilege of stroking them. What do people get out of it? If you ever saw a cat with its fur shaved off, like if it's been to the vet or gone mangy, you'll see what it's really like. Under that lovely, glossy coat is an evil, manipulative, ugly little reptile.'

'Just like girls, then,' Jack said.

'Hmm, I dunno,' said Joe and grimaced uncomfortably at what Jack said. 'I don't think I see the connection there. I love my girlfriend. And my dogs,' Joe said. 'We have two of them. I hope they're okay. My parents too, I suppose.'

They stood in silence for a little while longer. Jack dusted out a shower of chocolate dandruff.

'Goddamn it, Joe,' he said.

Joe found a bottle of gin in the cupboard and sat down to have a drink. They decided to stay at least until it stopped raining.

'I've been thinking about everyone back home in Leicester,' Joe confessed. 'I don't even know if they're still alive. I miss them. I gotta say, I'm really homesick. I just wanna go home, Jack.'

'Well, there's the small matter of growing the Bhuna,' Jack replied. 'Andy takes care of all that here and I don't even know how kindly relatives would take to it. Mine don't even know I smoke.'

'We could just quit,' said Joe.

'Oh, you remember all of one day ago? Quitting's what killed Ryan,' Jack said. There's not much we can do right now apart from sit tight and wait to be rescued.'

'I don't think it was quitting Bhuna that killed Ryan. I mean, I hope not. Maybe we could wean ourselves off it. I just wanna go home.'

'I know it's tough, but what can we do? It's dangerous to travel out to places we don't know,' Jack said, sympathetically. 'We've got everything we need here. We're best off here for now.'

They downed another glassful each and grimaced. Jack picked at crusty grime on his sleeve in a moment's reflection.

'Jack, there's something I've gotta say.'

'What's that?'

'Aren't you… I mean, do you feel…'

'What, hungover? Mad at you?'

'Don't you feel scared?'

Well, there was a question. 'Maybe, I suppose. In some ways I feel more awake than ever since before all this happened. Despite this,' Jack indicated the booze on the table. 'And the Herb. Well, you know what I mean. Looking back it feels like I spent my life treading water, waiting for something to happen. Something that never did.

Joe looked frightened. 'Have a look at this,' he said, and showed Jack some red-purple blotches on his skin, and he pulled back his lips. Jack saw his purplish gums made bloody traces in his saliva. 'I-is it the same as what Ryan got?' Joe asked in a low voice.

Jack shook from trying not to laugh. 'No, it's not the same as Ryan. You've got scurvy! You need more vitamin C. I don't know what to suggest. Drink less spirits and more cider?'

Joe told Jack to stop laughing. He looked like he needed cheering up.

'Oh my God, look at this, have you seen the top of this?' Jack grimaced in horror and put a bottle of mint and yoghurt sauce on the centre of the table.

'What? What?' Joe said and looked down on the bottle cap.

Jack gave the bottle a hefty squeeze and a jet of the rancid sauce gushed out of the bottle and into Joe's eyes. Jack guffawed and brayed with laughter.

'Oh wow, I can't believe you actually fell for that! You're so stupid. What? I thought you liked a good prank?' Jack knocked the bottle away from where Joe tried to squirt him back.

The pair of them sat down, finished the bottle of gin and stayed until they got the energy to face the journey back. They almost forgot, but they chose a few cans of hotdogs, Spam and hamburgers, and oil to fry it in, on the way out. Regrettably, bread for toasting was out of the question. There were many loaves in the shop but every single one was a round bag of blue and green fur, inflated like a balloon.

Jack and Joe decided to unwedge the front door and make a run for it straight back to The Depot rather than go back across the rooftops. They burst out and ran artful zigzags past the Dead on the street that confused them so much they couldn't give chase. Once or twice one appeared out of nowhere to grab at Jack or Joe, but they were flung aside by their agility of their nimble evasions that spun the world around them into a blur, and only once or twice left them sprawling on the ground. 

'Watch this!' Joe called out as he threw his cans to Jack then tackled one of the Dead like he saw on pro wrestling. 

'Did you see that?' Jack replied after he stooped to pick a can up and turned the manoeuvre into a flip-kick that actually connected. They laughed and weaved their way back down the road they came along to The Depot, still carrying most of their provisions. 

On the way back they came to the woman who they saw picking through the rubbish. 

The rats must have sensed her vulnerability after they'd taped her eyes closed, and Jack and Joe watched in horror as a horde descended upon her while she was blind and defenceless. All she could do was flop and flail helplessly on the ground as she was devoured. The boys had only wanted to incapacitate her but now they watched as she made the most haunting, appalling wails as the rats gnawed away at her to the bone. Horror-struck, they returned to the bar.

'Where the hell have you been?' asked Nick. 'You've been gone hours. And what happened to you?' he said, pointing to Jack, who was still covered in the protein powder, and Joe, who was spattered with yoghurt sauce and traces of sick.

'Erm, we didn't have enough arms to carry it, so we thought we'd wear it back,' Jack ventured, but if anyone laughed, it wasn't because they thought his joke was funny. It struck him how wasted he was, again.

'You've been gone hours when the shop's only round the corner. You come back in a state, looking like you saw a ghost and covered in shit, and you brought…' Sarah looked at the collection of tins the two lads clutched: crackers, hotdogs, hamburgers and Spam. 'You just brought back some cheesy biscuits and a whole load of meat. What the fuck is wrong with you two?'

'We brought some oil to fry it in!' Jack said.

'It's a fucking pub restaurant!' Matt thundered. 'With a kitchen! They've already got oil! Great tubs of it. Gallons! What have you got there – sesame oil? Who fries hotdogs in sesame oil?'

'I-it tastes better than sunflower oil,' Jack stammered.

'And that's what you use, is it?'

'Yeah, sometimes?' Jack got his laugh from the group.

'You know what, forget it. We're not even hungry any more, and I can't even look at shite like that. Not interested.' Matt turned to Nick. 'One thing I can tell you, Nick, right now, is that it's definitely not happening. We are NOT going on some kind of idiotic, half-baked raid on the town centre. We're going home and sleeping this one off until we have a decent plan.'

'Yeah, come on, let's go shopping!' said Jenny, already wearing her biker suit. 'We need things. Important things. Many things.'

'No you don't,' shouted Sarah. 'You went last week.'

'What's it like out there?' Nick asked Joe and Jack, who looked at each other for a bit and said, 'Erm.'

'Bit rainy,' said Jack.

'I meant for the Dead, you cretin,' said Nick.

Jack and Joe agreed that there weren't many on the nearby roads, but there were more up towards the shopping centres. It was hardly crowded. 

Well, it's decided,' Nick said. The girls looked excited. Sarah blew out a stream of smoke, clapped her hands like a kid seeing their birthday cake and hugged Katie.

'Chuck that shit,' Nick said to Joe and Jack. 'No one needs that, complete waste of time. We're going to do some window shopping.'