Chapter 4: Supermarket Sweep (Apocalypse Edition)
The engine’s last gasp was a metallic sigh. Jim let the car roll to a silent stop behind a moss-clad delivery van, its tires flat, at the far edge of the supermarket car park. The place was a monument to ruin. Shattered glass from the entrance doors glittered across the damp tarmac like treacherous ice. A few of the long fluorescent tubes inside still flickered with a stubborn, sputtering blue light, giving the cavernous space a sickly, underwater glow.
Milly was out of the car before he’d pulled the handbrake, stretching her back with a wince. Her limp was less pronounced today, the bruise on her ankle fading to a yellowish bloom. She surveyed the building, then the deserted car park. Her eyes landed on a row of abandoned trolleys, most overturned or nested together. One, however, stood apart, its wheels seemingly intact.
A slow, unexpected grin spread across her face. It was the first real one he’d seen since the chalk-smudged cellar. It transformed her, cutting through the grim set of her jaw.
“Right then,” she said, her voice carrying a note of mock solemnity. “Essential reconnaissance. We go in, we see what’s left. But we do it properly.” She strode to the lone trolley, grabbed the handle, and gave it an experimental shove. It rattled but rolled true. She looked back at him, a challenge in her dark eyes. “First one to fill theirs wins.”
Jim couldn’t help but laugh, a short, surprised burst of sound that felt alien in the silence. “Wins what? A lifetime supply of rotten spinach?”
“The unspoken, eternal respect of their peer, obviously,” she shot back, already pushing the trolley toward the broken entrance. The squeak of the wheels was the loudest sound for miles. “And I get the top bunk wherever we hole up next.”
“There are no bunks!”
“Details!”
They passed through the skeletal doorway, the flickering light casting their long, distorted shadows ahead of them. The air was a complex soup of decay: sweet, putrid fruit, sour milk, and beneath it all, the damp, woolen smell of mould. Aisles stretched into the gloom, shelves mostly bare, picked clean by the desperate early waves. Scattered debris littered the floor—trampled cereal boxes, empty cans, a single, withered apple that looked like a fossil.
Milly headed left towards what was once health and beauty. Jim went right, towards tinned goods.
For a while, the only sounds were the rattle of their trolleys and the crinkle of packaging. It was a grim harvest. Jim found a few dented tins of baked beans swimming in a dubious brown sauce, a can of pineapple rings in syrup with a rust-speckled lid, and, behind a pile of empty cardboard, a solitary, pristine tin of custard powder. He dropped them into his trolley with a hollow clank.
From two aisles over, he heard a victorious, “Ha!”
“What’d you get?” he called, his voice echoing in the vast space.
“A treasure trove of dental hygiene!” she shouted back. “And a hairbrush! My kingdom for a hairbrush!”
He smiled, continuing his search. In the next aisle, formerly home to pet food, he struck a minor jackpot: three unopened packets of long-life spaghetti and a plastic bottle of sunflower oil, half-full. It felt like finding gold.
He turned a corner and almost crashed his trolley into hers. She was standing before a shelf that had somehow been overlooked. It held a few packets of luxury chocolate biscuits, a tower of sealed sanitary products, and several cans of fancy espresso coffee.
For a second, they just stared at the bounty. Then their hands darted out simultaneously.
“I saw it first!” Milly said, grabbing a pack of tampons and the coffee.
“You did not, you looter!” Jim laughed, snatching the chocolate biscuits and the remaining box. Their movements were not frantic, but playful, a pantomime of avarice. He tossed a packet of biscuits into her trolley. She threw a can of coffee into his.
“Truce,” she said, her eyes sparkling in the weird light. “We share. But I’m still winning. I’ve got three tubes of antiseptic cream and a scissors.”
“Show-off.”
They pushed their trolleys side-by-side down the central thoroughfare, the combined rattling a jaunty, celebratory percussion. The flickering lights made the emptiness around them feel less like a tomb and more like a stage for their strange performance. For a precious hour, the weight lifted. The cellar, the chalk drawings, the ominous engine noises—they receded, blurred by the simple, profound absurdity of pushing a shopping trolley through the end of the world.
“Remember when this was just… boring?” Jim said, leaning on his trolley handle. “Sunday shop. Arguing over which brand of biscuits to get.”
“I never argued,” Milly said, examining a rusted can of carrots before tossing it aside. “I had a list. It was law. My ex used to hide things in the trolley when I wasn’t looking. Jumbo bags of crisps. Those disgusting frosted cupcakes.” She said it lightly, but the word ‘ex’ hung in the mildewed air, a ghost from another life.
Jim didn’t press. Instead, he said, “I lived on takeaways and meal deals. My kitchen was a museum of empty containers.” He paused, watching her. “The soil bacteria stuff… do you miss it?”
She was quiet for a long moment, running a finger through the dust on a shelf. “I miss the certainty,” she said finally, her tone softer now. “The hypothesis. The petri dish. You follow a process, you get an answer, even if it’s not the one you wanted. This?” She gestured around them. “No process. Just noise and luck and running.”
“And the occasional trolley dash,” he offered.
That earned another small, genuine smile. “And that.”
They reached the back of the store, where the freezers hummed a dead, empty tone. The glass doors were fogged with a strange, icy condensation. It was colder here. The playful mood deepened into something quieter, more companionable. They worked efficiently, wordlessly, checking behind counters, finding a stash of bottled water that had rolled under a shelving unit, a few more tins, a roll of industrial black bin bags.
As they turned to head back towards the front, their trolleys decently heavy, Milly stopped. On the floor, near the cash registers, lay a single, unopened pack of cigarettes. It looked almost staged. She bent down, picked it up, and stared at it.
“I quit,” she said, more to the packet than to him. “Two years ago. Worst three months of my life.”
“They’re probably stale as hell,” Jim said.
“Probably.” She tucked them into the pocket of her coat. “For a special occasion. Or a really, really bad one.”
Their laughter this time was softer, mingling in the quiet. It was then that they heard it.
Not the scrape of a foot. Not a rasping breath.
The sound was a low, conversational murmur, followed by the distinct crunch of boots on glass outside the main entrance.
All the lightness drained from Milly’s face, replaced by the familiar, flinty alertness. Jim’s hand went to the tyre iron leaning in his trolley. They froze, two silhouettes in the aisle, their breath clouding in the sudden chill.
The voices came again. Two, maybe three men. The tones were casual, but the words were clear.
“…check the back. They said sometimes people miss the storage.”
“Smells like a fucking tomb in here.”
“Just move. And keep your eyes open for more than beans. Ammo, batteries, meds.”
Milly’s eyes locked with Jim’s. She gave a sharp, almost imperceptible nod towards the side of the store, where a sign marked ‘STAFF ONLY’ hung over a door that was slightly ajar. They abandoned the trolleys, their precious, ridiculous haul suddenly feeling like an anchor. Moving in perfect, silent unison, they grabbed their packs and slipped towards the door, their fleeting hour of normalcy evaporating like a breath on the cold air.
Jim pulled the door shut behind them, leaving it open just a crack. They stood in the pitch-black of a stockroom, listening as the footsteps and the rough, unfamiliar voices entered the supermarket floor and began to move, with purpose, through the aisles they had just filled with laughter.
They stood in the pitch-black of a stockroom, listening as the footsteps and the rough, unfamiliar voices entered the supermarket floor and began to move, with purpose, through the aisles they had just filled with laughter.
Milly’s hand found Jim’s wrist in the dark. Her grip was vice-tight, a silent command for absolute stillness. The voices bounced off the empty freezers, warped and unclear. A tin clanged sharply, kicked across the floor.
“Someone’s been through here recent,” a man growled. His accent was coarse, local. “Trolleys are warm.”
Jim’s breath halted. He hadn’t thought of the metal handles, still holding the ghost warmth of their hands.
“So sweep faster,” another voice, higher, impatient, answered. “They can’t be far. Check the back.”
Boots crunched on glass, moving closer to the ‘STAFF ONLY’ door. Jim’s other hand tightened around the cold steel of the tyre iron. Milly slowly, silently, eased a knife from her belt. The thin line of light under the door fractured into shifting shadows.
The handle rattled.
Jim’s muscles coiled, ready to spring. Milly pressed closer to the wall, becoming a part of the darkness.
Then, a shout from across the store. “Oi! Found batteries! And some fucking coffee!”
The shadow at the door paused. The handle went still. “Coffee? Real coffee?”
“Tins of the stuff. Get over here.”
The boots retreated, their owner lured away by luxury. The voices faded towards the front of the store, bickering over the spoils. Jim let out a shuddering breath, his lungs burning.
Milly didn’t relax. She leaned close, her lips brushing his ear. “We wait ten minutes after the engine starts,” she whispered, her voice a thread of sound. “Then we run for the trolleys, load the car, and we’re gone.”
He could only nod, the motion rubbing his cheek against hers. They waited, pressed together in the musty dark, listening to the distant sounds of looting. A familiar, ugly laugh echoed. It was the same sound they’d heard from the garden centre at dawn.
Finally, a car door slammed. An engine coughed, revved, and the sound receded into the hum of the wind outside. Milly counted silently on her fingers, her eyes fixed on the grey slit under the door. At ten, she gave a sharp nod.
They burst out of the stockroom, not bothering with stealth now, speed their only ally. Their abandoned trolleys stood where they’d left them, forlorn in the flickering light. They grabbed them and ran, wheels screaming on the linoleum, bursting out into the sharp, clean air of the car park.
Together, they wrenched open the estate car’s boot and back doors, tossing everything inside in a chaotic, clattering rush. Tins, bottles, the pack of cigarettes, the precious antiseptic cream—it all went in. They didn’t look, didn’t sort, just grabbed armfuls. In under a minute, both trolleys were empty.
Jim slammed the boot shut as Milly threw herself into the passenger seat. The key was already in the ignition. He turned it, the engine roaring to life, and reversed with a spray of gravel.
“North,” Milly said, her voice steady but her eyes locked on the wing mirror. “Just drive.”
He pushed the car faster than was safe, navigating the broken road with a frantic focus. They didn’t speak for miles, the only sound the rush of air through a cracked window and the thrum of the engine. The near-miss hung in the car, a ghost sitting between them on the stained upholstery.
“Balfron Tower,” Milly said after a long while, her gaze fixed on the peeling map in her lap. Her finger traced a route only she could see. “It’s a brutalist thing. Concrete honeycomb. Lots of floors, single entry points if we pick the right flat. High ground. We can see for miles.”
Jim didn’t question it. He just followed the directions she muttered, turning when she said turn. The city’s necrosis gradually thickened around them again, the open wounds of the suburbs giving way to the deeper, older scars of the inner east.
The tower appeared on the horizon like a giant, weathered bolt driven into the earth. It was stark, grey, and utterly forbidding. Every window was a dark, empty socket.
They parked a street away, concealing the car in a narrow alley between two burnt-out shops. They carried their supplies in the black bin bags, the plastic straining with the weight of their chaotic haul. The ground floor doors were shattered, the lobby a windswept tomb of flyers and broken glass.
They took the stairs, their footsteps echoing in the concrete stairwell, a twenty-five floor climb that burned their legs and stole their breath. Milly’s ankle held, but he could hear the strain in her breathing by the fifteenth floor.
“Here,” she gasped on the twenty-second, pushing through a fire door into a corridor. It was dim, smelling of dust and forgotten lives. She tried a door; it was locked solid. The next one swung open with a groan.
The flat was empty, stripped bare. Frosted grey light filtered through the sole window, which was, crucially, intact. The view was a panoramic sweep of London’s jagged silhouette under a bruised sky. They were alone with the clouds and the quiet.
“We block the stairwell door,” Milly said, already dragging a skeletal wardrobe from the bedroom. “And we only use this room.”
Together, they barricaded the corridor door with the wardrobe and a gutted kitchen unit. Their new home was a single, sparse space, but it had a solid floor, a ceiling, and only one way in. For the first time in weeks, they had a door they could shut.
Jim slumped against the wall, the bin bags at his feet. Milly walked to the window, placing her palms flat on the cool glass, looking out at the dying city. Her reflection was pale, smudged with dirt. She was staring at the horizon, but he could see her eyes were closed.
He began to unpack, the sound of tins clicking together loud in the silence. He lined them up against the wall: beans, spaghetti, the pineapple, the custard powder. A pathetic, beautiful little regiment of survival.
Milly turned from the window. She looked at the line of food, then at him, her expression unreadable in the fading light. She walked over, reached into her coat pocket, and pulled out the crumpled pack of cigarettes. She offered him one.
“Special occasion?” Jim asked, his voice rough from disuse.
“Really, really bad one,” she replied, but the corner of her mouth twitched. She lit two with a match from the garden centre, the flare illuminating her tired face. She passed one to him.
They sat on the floor, their backs against the wall beneath the great window, smoking the stale tobacco and watching the night bleed into the sky. The smoke curled towards the ceiling, a fragile grey ghost in their safe, quiet place.
The smoke curled towards the ceiling, a fragile grey ghost in their safe, quiet place. They finished the cigarettes in a silence that wasn’t uncomfortable, just spent. The sting of the supermarket encounter began to fade, replaced by the solid reality of four walls and a locked door.
“We should inventory,” Milly said finally, stubbing her filter out on the concrete floor. Her voice was practical, but tired. “Properly. No trolley dashes.”
Jim nodded, pulling the bin bags closer. They spilled the contents onto a faded blanket they’d found folded in a cupboard. It wasn’t just food. There were the medical supplies, the scissors, the roll of black bags, a half-empty bottle of bleach, a sealed packet of wet wipes, a novelty lighter shaped like a frog.
Milly picked up the lighter, flicking it. A steady flame emerged from the amphibian’s mouth. “Classy.”
“Essential survival tool,” Jim said, lining up the tins. “Nine tins of various beans. One pineapple. The spaghetti. Custard powder, which I have no idea what to do with.”
“Thicken stews,” Milly said absently, sorting the medical items into a pile. “If we ever have stew. Three tubes of antiseptic. Paracetamol. Bandages. This is… actually not bad.” She held up the scissors. “These are good. Sharp.”
“We won,” Jim said, looking at the spread.
She met his gaze, a faint smile returning. “Yeah. I guess we did.”
They worked together, their movements falling into an easy rhythm born from days of coordinated silence. He stacked, she sorted. He checked the seal on every bottle, she tested the sharpness of the scissors on a strand of her hair. The simple, domestic chore in this barren concrete box felt profoundly strange. It felt normal.
Afterwards, they ate cold beans straight from the tin, sitting by the window as night fully claimed the city below. The darkness was absolute, no electric glow from streets or windows, just a vast, consuming blackness punctuated by the occasional orange flicker of a distant, uncontrolled fire.
“The fires never stop,” Milly murmured, her tin poised halfway to her mouth. “I think some of them are the same ones from week one. Just burning through whatever’s left.”
Jim followed her gaze. “I keep thinking I’ll see a light. A proper one. A candle in a window, something.”
“You won’t,” she said, but it wasn’t harsh. It was just a fact. “The ones with lights are the ones you don’t see. They’re smarter than that.” She paused. “Like those pricks from the supermarket. They had a car that worked. They had a plan. They weren’t just… shuffling.”
The memory of the voices tightened the air. Jim put his tin down. “You think they’re looking for people? Or just stuff?”
“Both,” she said without hesitation. “Stuff first. People are a liability. Unless you need something from them.” She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to.
Later, she stood by the window again, her silhouette a cut-out against the starless sky. Jim finished securing their water bottles near the door and walked over, the gritty concrete cold under his socks. He came to stand beside her, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her, to smell the stale smoke and bleach in her hair.
She didn’t turn. She just kept staring out at the void, her arms wrapped around herself. “My sister lived in Croydon,” she said, the words so quiet they were almost lost in the immense silence of the city. “She had a baby. Four months old when it started. I called her. Told her to fill the bath, lock the doors. She was laughing. Said I was being hysterical.”
Jim waited. He didn’t touch her.
“I never got there,” she said. The sentence hung there, final and terrible. A whole world of failure in five words.
Without thinking, driven by a impulse he didn’t name, he raised his hand and placed it on her lower back. A comfort. His palm settled on the curve of her spine, his fingers spreading, resting low on the gentle swell of her backside. It was lower than was strictly necessary for a reassuring touch. The contact was electric through the fabric of her trousers.
Milly went very still. But she didn’t pull away. She didn’t tense or question it. She let out a slow, shaky breath she seemed to have been holding for twenty-eight days, and leaned back, just a fraction, into the solid warmth of his hand. She liked it. The simple, human weight of it.
They stood like that for a long time, watching the nothing, connected by that single point of contact. It was more intimate than anything that had happened in the cellar. It was a choice.
Finally, she spoke, her voice rough. “Your turn. Who did you not get to?”
He remembered the hospital bed. The silence. The ringing phone at the nurse’s station that no one would ever answer. “Everyone,” he said, the word hollow. “My mum. My dad. My… there was a girl. Sarah. We’d had a fight. About something stupid. I was on the bike, I got cut up by a taxi, woke up in the hospital.” He swallowed. “I don’t even know what the fight was about. I just remember her walking away. That’s the last thing.”
Milly shifted, turning slightly towards him. His hand slid with the movement, staying on her. In the dark, he could barely see her face.
“I’m sorry,” she said. It didn’t sound like pity. It sounded like recognition.
“Yeah,” he said.
They didn’t move. The shared loneliness in the room was a palpable thing, but it had changed. It wasn’t a vacuum anymore. It was a space they were now somehow sharing, breathing the same air of it.
A sudden, sharp sound fractured the moment.
It was a metallic clang, faint but distinct, echoing up the stairwell from deep, deep below. It was followed by another. Then the groan of stressed metal.
Something was on the stairs. Something was testing the barricade on the ground floor door.
Milly’s head snapped towards the corridor, her body going rigid under his hand. Jim’s fingers tightened instinctively on her hip.
The sounds stopped. A long, listening silence followed.
Then, from the abyss of the city below, a single, drawn-out scream ripped through the night. It was human. It was close. It ended abruptly.
Milly turned fully to him now, her eyes wide and reflecting the faint gloom. The vulnerability was gone, burned away in an instant. “We sleep in shifts,” she whispered, her breath warm against his cheek. “You hear anything—anything—you wake me.”