Black Friday Specials

'Black Friday Specials'

Scene one of my WIP.

The end of the world had quite spoiled Alice McMahon’s 18th birthday. The wild party at the boxing club was just not going to happen and instead of her fabulous little black Dior dress, she wore old jeans and trainers topped off with an ancient motorbike jacket to hide a stubby little sawn-off shotgun slung under her arm.
Alice stood in the gloomy, unlit kitchen of the Anne Hale Stardust Home for Children, or ‘The Dump’ as it was more widely known. She glanced across a litter of food remains and torn open packets strewn across the worktop. She rolled a fragment of bread crust between her thumb and fingers. Still soft, so not out of the bag for more than a couple of hours. Her nostrils twitched and she recoiled slightly from the sharp scent of soured milk lingering over a pile of dirty washing up in the sink.
Moving into the lounge, she almost missed the charred and tortured remains of a teddy bear in the deeper shadows of the massive old Georgian fireplace. She looked closer, poked at it with the toe of her trainer and grinned as it tipped over to reveal the letters JS on the back of a well scorched homemade glittery waistcoat.
Double glass doors gave a good view across extensive lawns bordered by mature trees and shrubs. She squinted briefly in the bright sunlight, her eyes quickly settling on the silver and white static caravan set amidst tubs of fresh spring flowers at the far end of the garden. A tiny movement caught her eye and she faded back into the shadow, silent, motionless and watching. The corner of the red floral curtain twitched again and Alice finally remembered to breathe.
“Gotcha” she muttered to herself.
Alice, aka Ace or Mad Alice McMahon, had been a resident at The Dump on a couple of occasions while her crack addicted, prostitute mother was locked-up on remand for the usual offences. As far as Alice was concerned, staying at The Dump was irritating, but convenient enough for the boxing club where she captained the girl’s squad and for the cannabis grow houses and other gang related businesses she managed.

Silver birch trees and dense rhododendron bushes covered her approach to the caravan. The corner of her mouth relaxed into a grin as she held her small dentists inspection mirror to the corner of a window. She waited patiently for a few minutes until the small, pale and scruffy little girl of about 11 or 12 years old, knelt on the seating at the far end of the caravan and carefully lifted the corner of the curtain to peep towards the house again. Alice held her breath as she slowly, carefully, opened the door and slipped inside, the sawn-off shotgun in her hand. The girl peering intently round the corner of the curtain was entirely oblivious to the dark, looming presence behind her. Right up until Alice tapped her lightly on the shoulder with the gun barrels and breathed into her ear,
“Hey kiddo, ‘how you doing?” She laughed as the girl squealed and leapt away.
Wild-eyed, the little girl slumped back onto the sofa with a hand over her pounding heart.
“Holy shit, Ace Girl, Jeez, you could’ve just bloody knocked. I nearly had a frickin trouser accident.”
“Sorry kid, I guess it was a bit mean, ‘anyone else around?”
“No, it’s just me and it wasn’t ‘a bit mean’, it was straight-out child abuse. How did you know I was even in here? I was being careful.”
Alice shrugged and sat on the table, the sawn-off across her lap.
“’Saw you twitching the curtain. Anyway, it was pretty obvious you were around somewhere; you’re not dead and there’s sweet wrappers and stuff in your room and all over the place. Plus, you always hide in here when you’re in trouble – I hope you’ve not just been eating Sugar Puffs?” Carly shrugged and slumped down in relief,
“Jeez, I’m glad you’re back. Everyone said you were dead.”
“Only in their happy-dreams. What ‘you actually doing in here?”
“Nothing, hiding, I keep thinking they’re going to turn into zombies or something. Where you been?”
Alice frowned,
“Things got a bit tense and I had to duck out for a while.”
“You got a pretty decent tan out of it.” Said Carly,
“Yeah, it was hot, too hot, I’ll tell you about it later. How you been doing?”
Carly slumped back against the cushions, twisting her fingers together,
“Not great, to be honest, on my own, it’s not nice with all dead people everywhere. Is it really the same everywhere?”
Alice nodded, knowing what it cost the kid to admit frailty of any sort.
“Yeah, It's pretty much all over the world. 'Looks like it started here first, so far as they could tell. The internet and everything is completely off now. As of last night, nothing’s working at all – no internet, no radio, TV, Facebook, electric, nothing. All gone, all of everything gone kaput, poof, gone.”
Carly looked back at her wide eyed, shocked,
“Jeez, seriously? you’re not trying to wind me up again?”
Alice frowned as the enormity of their situation touched on the edge of her mind again, she pushed the shadows away and shook her head.
“No kid, I’m not winding you up; the whole world just got flushed. It’s me and you kiddo; We are the last heroes, mankind’s last great hope.”
Alice watched the kid struggle with it for a few minutes, finally she looked up,
“What we going to do?”
“Drive to the arse end of nowhere, get a load of supplies and hide out until someone sorts the mess out. I’m also planning to get rich. ‘You coming?”
“Gimme two minutes to get my stuff together.”
Carly had arrived at The Dump a year previously during one of Alice’s visits. She was placed, quite inexplicably, with a bunch of completely hateful kids who were looking forward to shredding her mercilessly until the end of time. Their games lasted until Alice took an interest. After a week of impressive resistance from the not quite so helpless little girl, Alice told the other kids to knock it off and leave her alone. Only one boy – Daz, 15 years old and with delusions of becoming some kind of gangsta, was stupid enough to ignore her warning. Next time he emptied a jug of water onto Carly’s bed, he turned to find Alice blocking the doorway and pulling on a fingerless leather gym glove. Somehow, it had never occurred to idiot boy there was a reason why Alice spent multiple hours every single day and most of the weekends at the boxing club. She swayed away from his well signalled swing and a brutal straight right took him clean off his feet, smacked the back of his head on the doorpost and broke his nose spectacularly. He later swore blind to everyone he’d slipped and fallen, nose first into the doorpost, then picked up concussion when he bounced off and hit the back of his head on the other one. No one believed him even for a second, but knowing the company Alice kept and the feel of her fist in his face, the boy stuck to his story like industrial strength glue.

Two minutes later, Alice picked up one of two black bin liners containing all of Carly’s worldly possessions.
“When did you last see anyone? The staff – anyone at all?” she asked,
“Ages ago, what day is it today?” Carly counted on her fingers, “Right; half the kids died on Friday night – that scared the shit out of everyone. None of the day staff turned up so Miss Tucker stayed and tried to sort things out – she was in a right state, just crying all the time, I felt sorry for her and tried to help but she wasn’t really coping very well. She’s in the staff bedroom – she died the next night. Next day everyone else was dead except me and a couple of boys – they ran off, ‘haven’t seen them since. I’ve been into town every day, there are still dead people in the frickin shop doorways – they even had their wallets and phones when I found them. I’ve seen a few alive people in town, ‘didn’t like the look of them.” Alice watched Carly’s anxiety levels going up, “It’s really bad isn’t it? Are you going to look after me?” Alice nodded and patted the kid’s shoulder,
“Yeah, I am, it’s a mad world out there and we need to look after each other now kid. Is the office open? I need the postcode for the campsite where we went on the house holiday, I’m thinking that’s pretty much the arse end of nowhere.”
“I locked all the doors and put the keys under the sofa.”
“Thanks, I’ll get them in a minute.” Said Alice,
“I’ve got a load of nice phones and laptops – and plenty of plastic, good plastic – including a couple of AMEX cards with the pin numbers if you’ve got a decent price for me? – I cleared the fingerprint locks on the phones as well.”
Alice grinned at her eager young apprentice and shook her head,
“That was very good thinking, but I’m not buying anything right now, the market’s a bit dead at the moment – and I wouldn’t worry about zombies; seriously, they’d have turned already if they were going to.”
Carly nodded reluctantly and licked her cracked lips,
“I know, but I still get nasty dreams about it.” Alice noted weary dark smudges round the kids’ slightly bloodshot eyes,
“I suppose my foster placement is off.” Said Carly,
“Yeah, they’re probably dead.” Said Alice, “Did you like them?”
“They were OK, you know – ‘quite old, I quite like old people.”
Alice nodded, then giggled,
“Looks like Mad Alice McMahon is officially your new responsible adult, what do you think Shannon would say to that?”
Carly also giggled and offered a high five.
“Jeez, she’d have a bloody heart attack – a genuine, proper one.”
“Let’s get the van and crack on, shall we?” said Alice.
The large white Mercedes van was parked a hundred metres down the road, They collected it and parked it out of sight on the lawn behind the house.
“When did you learn to drive?”
“Yesterday.”
A number of options for a reply dashed through the little girl’s mind, she saw the tension in Alice’s jaw and sensibly went for something fairly neutral,
“Right, Interesting.”
“I’m going to sort out a few things, why don’t you get a trolley and start getting the food from the kitchen cupboards, I’ll give you a hand in a minute.”
“K.”
Alice retrieved the campsite details from the satnav in the home’s mini bus. She frowned, the journey time was 6 hours, and 250 miles was a lot more than all her driving experience added together – it was definitely going to take longer than 6 hours. Although, she considered, having no other traffic to think about would help though and it should be daylight all the way.
Carly started loading the contents of the food cupboards into the back of the van,
“I haven’t had any breakfast; can we get something to eat? The milk went off yesterday.”
Alice nodded,
“Good idea, how about a fried egg and bacon sandwich? We need to eat the bacon before it goes off.”
“God yeah, I dream of bacon sandwiches – and zombies, mostly zombies at the moment unfortunately.”
“You find the ketchup and butter some bread, I’ll do the bacon.”
“I’m having Marmite on mine as well.”
Alice screwed her face in distaste,
“On bacon? Jeez girl, that is genuinely weird and disgusting.”
“Yeah well, I wasn’t offering it to you.” Alice grinned at the tiny glint of Carly's familiar, very bolshie attitude,
“Feeling a bit better, are we?” Carly nodded,
“Yeah, we are actually. I was beginning to get quite pissed off to be honest – I’m glad you came back.”