Chapter 2

Nina had barely finished reading the alert about the missing bodies when Elise snatched her phone, skimmed the message, and shoved it back at her with an expression that suggested the government had personally ruined her morning.

“Brilliant, absolutely brilliant, because apparently people can steal dead bodies from a hospital now, and we’re still expected to go shopping like sensible citizens instead of moving to the middle of nowhere and living off the chickens.”

“You would starve in two days because you’d eat the chickens before they laid any eggs,” Nina replied, following her into the supermarket car park. “Give me the list before you lose it, and try not to embarrass me in public for at least twenty minutes.”

Inside, the place looked as if somebody had announced the end of the world and forgotten to tell the staff. Shoppers shoved bottled water into their trolleys, a man argued over the last pack of batteries, and a woman near the entrance was screaming at an employee who had refused to let her buy six boxes of medical gloves. Nobody seemed interested in the fact that the shelves were still reasonably full; they were shopping like tomorrow had been cancelled and whoever collected the most supplies would somehow win.

“Look at that woman fighting over gloves like she’s about to perform surgery in the car park,” Elise muttered, steering their trolley around a child who was crying beside a mountain of toilet paper. “If she bites somebody, do you think the gloves will protect her from herself?”

“Could you please stop talking about biting people when the news has spent the entire morning showing us people biting people?”

“I’m trying to make you laugh, Nina, because you’ve been walking around with the face of a woman attending her own funeral, and it’s getting bloody depressing.”

Nina grabbed two packs of disposable gloves and dropped them into the trolley, refusing to admit that Elise had noticed how unsettled she was. The missing bodies kept circling through her mind, especially the way the hospital announcement had appeared on her screen without any explanation, and she was still thinking about it when Elise slipped a packet of sweets beneath the bottled water.

“Put those back before Daniel sees the receipt and starts behaving like we’ve bankrupted the family,” Nina warned, pulling the packet out.

Elise snatched it from her hand and dropped it back into the trolley with a grin. “They’re medical supplies for my emotional wellbeing, and unless my father has recently qualified as a psychiatrist, I suggest you stop interfering with my treatment.”

Before Nina could invent a sufficiently insulting response, a man near the entrance began screaming about his daughter.

“She was standing right beside me, you useless bastards, and now she’s gone, so open those doors and bring my little girl back!”

People turned toward him, some annoyed at the noise and others already backing away. His shirt clung to his sweaty body, blood ran from his nose into his moustache, and his eyes moved wildly across the crowd as if he were searching for something nobody else could see. One security guard approached with his hands raised while another called for assistance, but the man barely seemed to notice them, repeatedly pointing toward the aisles and demanding that somebody find his daughter.

A little boy standing beside a trolley started crying, and the man whipped around so violently that his shoulder struck a display of canned tomatoes.

“There she is, you stole her from me, you filthy little thieves, and I swear I’ll tear this whole place apart until somebody gives her back!”

“Sir, nobody is holding your daughter here, and you need to step away from the customers before you hurt somebody,” said Martin Cole, the older security guard, whose tired voice suggested he had already dealt with three idiots before breakfast.

The man seized the front of Martin’s uniform and slammed him against the entrance barrier, demanding that he stop lying while blood dripped from his nose onto the guard’s collar. Martin tried to wrench himself free, but the attacker twisted his head and sank his teeth into Martin’s forearm.

Martin’s scream ripped through the supermarket so violently that a woman dropped her baby’s carrier and another shopper immediately climbed over a trolley rather than waste time walking around it. Blood burst between the attacker’s teeth as Martin punched him in the face, but the bastard kept biting, his jaw grinding against flesh while the guard’s radio clattered across the floor.

“Get this animal off me! He’s taking a piece out of my bloody arm!”

The second guard struck the attacker across the skull with a heavy flashlight, once and then again, until he finally released Martin and collapsed beside the entrance. A dark pool spread beneath his head, but when one of the guards crouched to check him, the man’s mouth snapped shut around empty air, his teeth clicking so hard that the guard stumbled backward with a curse.

Somebody shouted that the man was dead, somebody else screamed that he was moving, and then the whole entrance erupted into a stampede.

Nina grabbed Elise by the wrist and dragged her toward the side aisle as shoppers abandoned their trolleys, knocking bottles beneath their feet and crushing packets of food into the floor. A woman fell directly in front of them and clamped both hands around Elise’s leg, pleading for help while people trampled over her shopping bags.

“Get her off me, Nina, please get her off because I can’t move and these people are going to crush us!”

Nina bent down, grabbed the woman beneath the arms, and hauled her away from Elise just as another shopper crashed into them. They staggered toward Martin, who had broken free from the entrance barrier and was clutching his wounded arm while blood poured through his fingers.

He caught Nina’s wrist to keep himself upright, and when she tried to pull away, his injured forearm scraped across the side of her hand, leaving a warm red smear near her fingernails.

“Please, girl, don’t leave me here, because I can feel something moving under my skin and I swear to God it wasn’t doing that before!”

Nina tore herself free, too frightened to answer, while Elise dragged her through a side exit and into the car park. They ran between parked vehicles as screams burst from the supermarket behind them, followed by several gunshots that sent people diving behind cars and a flock of birds exploding from the roof.

Elise began laughing halfway across the car park, a horrible, breathless sound that kept breaking into sobs as she fumbled with the car keys.

“Stop laughing, Elise, because this isn’t funny and you’re scaring the hell out of me!”

“I’m trying to stop, Nina, but every time I remember that man chewing on the guard like a bloody piece of meat, my brain does something stupid and starts laughing instead of screaming!”

Nina wanted to shout at her again, but then she saw the tears running down Elise’s face and pulled her into a hurried, awkward hug before they climbed into the car. Neither of them spoke until emergency vehicles began racing toward the supermarket, and even then Nina kept looking at the blood smeared across her hand, wondering whether she should tell Elise what had happened.

At the first petrol station, she rushed into the washroom and scrubbed her skin beneath the tap until it turned pink and sore, convincing herself that Martin had been alive when he touched her and that a little blood could not possibly matter.

By the time they returned to the car, Elise was calling Rebecca to explain why they had abandoned half the shopping. Nina kept her reddened, sore hand tucked beneath her thigh, hiding it from Elise as though concealing the evidence could somehow make what had happened at the supermarket disappear.

The radio crackled as they drove home, and a breaking-news presenter announced that the hospital where Martin had been taken had suspended admissions after a patient attacked medical staff. Nina turned up the volume, gripping the steering wheel while the presenter struggled to speak over the noise in the background.

“Authorities have confirmed that the individual involved in the attack was pronounced dead before the incident occurred, and hospital officials are currently investigating how the patient regained movement while secured inside a treatment room.”

Elise stopped talking on the phone, her face slowly draining of colour as the presenter continued.

Then a scream burst through the radio, so close and so raw that Nina nearly drove onto the pavement.

The broadcast cut out, but not before a man's voice came through the static, shouting that the body they had locked inside the room was standing up again.