Embodying

Chapter One - A Bit of a Pickle

Setting the scene: all the characters are inside, the zombies are outside and hopefully it stays that way.

'I'm sick of watching zombies. They're not meant to be there. We should, like, persuade them to move somewhere else. How do you reckon we could do that?' Ed was stood by the window looking out through a slit in the paint.

'We don't, man. We just let them ... you know ... wander around. They're not bothering us any.' Kurt was sat on a deckchair a little away from the window sucking on bottles of beer. He'd been doing much the same since ... well, since he'd turned thirteen really.

'But what if we could move them. I mean, how could we do it?'

'I don't know, man. They're, like attracted to noise so we could, I don't know, make some sound somewhere else and then they would go there?' A grin started to spread across his face. 'We could always blow some shit up. Like, waaay over there, man.' Kurt stretched out his arm and flicked his hand towards the little building at the other end of the car park with Greggs and Costa Coffee signs on it.

'Hmm, not sure about ...'

'Yeah, man, that'd be perfect.' Kurt's voice got louder and he sat up from his slouch as he got into the idea. 'It's far enough away not to bother us ...'

'Bother us?'

'You know, with the falling debris and all of that. It's, like, waaay over there,' he waved his arm expansively, 'and we're waaay over here and ...'

'Yes, but what if one of the bricks flew over here and hit one of our windows and smashed it?'

'Dude, that's not, like, gonna happen! Like I said, that place is waaay ...' Kurt shook his head and chugged on his beer a little.

'Yes, I get that. But what if it did?'

'Then ... ' A frown crossed Kurt's face. 'Oh, wait, I can tell you.' He hauled himself up from the deck chair with a groan and made his way over to the edge of one of the big windows fronting the Tesco store. Once there he squatted down and peered into the corner where Ed glimpsed a small etched design before Kurt's head got in the way. 'There you go. BS En 14449. That's laminated glass that is.'

'Laminated?'

'Yeah, it's where you put a layer of plastic between two layers of glass so that, if something hit it the glass wouldn't break. It'd look broken, but the plastic interlay would hold it in one piece.'

'But it'd be weaker.'

'Yeah, sure, a little bit, but it wouldn't, like, fall out. Not straight away.'

'No.'

'Man, it was just an idea. Don't ... how do you say it? Don't get your knickers in a twist? You know what, fuck you man, I was just trying to help.' He loped back to his seat, swiped a beer from the stack on the ground and slumped down into the deckchair. 'Fucking brits, always fucking with you head, man.'

Ed blew air out sharply through his nose and turned away to find that Simbiatu was watching him from the end of aisle one (Veg - Greens/Herbs/Garlic/Roots). She was leant against the end of the empty shelf that had been full of fresh veg just three weeks before.

'Yo, Ed, how's it going?'

'I don't see how I'm going to get through this, Simbi, it's just not working for me. I can't stand seeing them walking backwards and forwards out there. It's just too ... messy.'

'Yeah, there's a lot of mess out there, bro. Lots of stuff gone wrong and the way it's going, it's not going to get right again for a long time. Lucky we ended up here when you think about it.'