Free Snatchers 2: The Dead Don't Sleep by Shaun Whittington Page B

they must have belonged to staff or consumers, who might have fled on foot or were still cooped up inside. Their cars were parked near the entrance and all three men were carrying the wooden homemade spears that Paul had made.
    They were three foot in length, with a round circumference and sharpened at the end. Paul had joked previously that they would come in handy whenever the time they needed to hunt for animals that existed in the woods. Jack thought that they were only weeks away from that scenario anyway, unless someone could take control of the country; but with no information filtering through, nobody knew what was going on. No one knew if it was a global epidemic, or was simply a UK catastrophe.
    They walked across the car park and noticed at least a dozen bodies, and assumed they were the infected, as a lot of them had no head as if a grenade had been placed in their mouth, or they had been shot in the head by a shotgun.
    "So what do we do now?" Gary asked nobody in particular.
    "Grab a trolley each," Jack answered. "Just use your head and fill the damn thing up, empty it into the car and go back again."
    "What if some of those things are in there?"
    "Then we kill 'em." Paul intervened. "Unless there are loads of them, of course. Then we run."
    They grabbed a trolley each, rested their individual spears on top of the trolley, and casually walked into the establishment as if it was a normal shopping day.
    They scanned the area and put their shirts over their noses as the effluvium hit them. It was an area Paul knew well. He, Jocelyn and Hannah used to spend their Saturday afternoon at the place. His wife would be by the side of him with her shopping list held out in front of her, and his daughter would sit in the trolley with the baby seat provided, and he would push the trolley.
    A small swelling emerged in his throat as he thought about his wife and daughter.
    He had to flee! He had to!
    They weren't there when the beings engulfed his house. At first he thought that they might have ran out into the street or through the back door into the back garden, but there was no sign of them. Standing there and screaming out their names would only have got him bit. Although he didn't have a clue what was going on, he could tell by the creatures that something was amiss, and his only concern was for his family. He couldn't believe the strength of them as they surged forward when he made the appearance from his bedroom into the living room; and once they tried to bite him, his strength multiplied and somehow he had managed to fend them off before fleeing.
    Paul could see that the smell was coming from some of the rotting food in certain aisles; he called out to the men that they should concentrate on tinned food. The aisles were only a quarter full, as if many people had been here before them. Jack had almost filled his trolley and reached a staircase that led to the clothes department. He looked around and decided to walk up the stairs to see if there was anything of interest. As he reached the top of the stairs, Paul bellowed from the ground floor. "Food! We can get clothes another day!"
    Jack nodded in agreement and accepted his reprimand, and he turned to go back down the stairs. He looked to his left to see a cluster of bodies slumped together on the first floor as if they had been involved in some kind of massacre; beside them, lay dozens upon dozens of empty handgun shells. He couldn't fathom how this incident had come about. They must have been infected, otherwise, why would someone shoot a group of human beings? For the food? He couldn't tell by the faces if they were initially infected before they were shot, but he assumed that they were, as every one of them received headshots, which was starting to become common knowledge that this was the only way to put these things down.
    He trotted back down the stairs, feeling the nausea develop in the middle of his chest once the images had digested in his brain. He couldn't