Story based on Stephen Kings "The Mist"

Chapter One: Tearing a new hole.

Inter-dimensional rift. It was one of those, I was sure of it. I’d seen what happened on the site, my dad worked there. He told me all about it, there were holes in the fabric of time, they accounted for the strange things that people cannot explain, he said. They accounted for the things that go bump in the night, he said. Well, he never said anything about this. Stupid, really, of all the times things could go horribly wrong, maybe for the human race, it was now. I guess I’ll be putting this in my diary, Tuesday 13th October, 2010. The day time unleashed true horror.

Though now I think about it, it was our fault, our fault for playing with what we didn’t know about. I know my dad is dead now. I saw his video he sent me, remarkable in all honesty, I have never gotten a signal in here, but his video came through, loud and crystal clear. He was screaming, everyone on his damned army site was screaming. I could see a hole in the background and things were pouring out of it, eating people alive. Gunshots, blood, the whole thing. Then my dad was crying, he told me he loved me, and to get to a safe place. Then they got him, thankfully the camera on his phone cut out, and the transmission ended.
Well, a safe place I was in. Probably the safest place I could have thought of. A supermarket.
Tesco’s supermarket, a huge, two storey sell everything you like supermarket.
And, I wasn’t alone, either. The reason behind my being in a supermarket at four o’clock in the morning would be that myself, Eli and Laura, decided to stay in the supermarket after closing time and lock ourselves in the bathrooms. Funny, right? Well, it was Laura’s idea and I blame her for everything.
My name is Luke, by the way. Luke Southall, I turn eighteen in twenty hours, and I probably won’t live to see it. As far as I know the world could be ending.

We’re still stuck in the bathroom. It’s been three hours and we haven’t heard anything since the sirens started to blare, a high pitched whining sound. We pounded on the doors, tried to break our way out, but there are no windows in this place, and the doors are ridiculously heavy duty. I think after five minutes of the sirens everyone had left. Stranded and deserted in Tesco. Fantastic.
Four in the morning. God I’m so tired, I look over at Eli and Laura, they’re practically comatose in the corner, sleeping their way through this nightmare.
I couldn’t sleep though, not with the knowledge that this had happened. When Eli and Laura had watched the video, Laura cried, and Eli covered his mouth in shock. But nobody stepped up to the plate here, they thought our attempts at breaking out of this claustrophobic ceramic prison ineffectual, and gave up. I have spent the last hour or so trying to throw toilets at the doors, but they just fell asleep to the sound of my racket and I too gave up. Now I am sitting on my white throne of failure, surrounded by toilet paper confetti, proof of the celebration of my demise to-be it would seem.
I think I may have a new side plan though, so I take a pen from my pocket - yes, I keep pens in my pocket, I like to write. I then take a piece of toilet paper and write the words “HELP” and a small arrow pointing to the side on it. Sliding the paper under the door, making sure the arrow is pointing towards me, I quietly laugh at myself, no-one will see it, but it doesn’t hurt to hand yourself a little hope in times like these.


Upon hearing a small sigh from the corner, I turn and Laura is awake, she tells me there isn’t anything we can do, and that shoving toilet paper outside wasn’t going to help. I was about to give her a witty reply when I heard something. I turn to her, hoping she can confirm that I am not going mad already, and she has heard it too. She shakes Eli by the shoulders and tells him to listen. There are footsteps, more than one person was walking around somewhere outside in the main part of the supermarket. Well, hopefully it was human.
“Beans”
That was all I heard, but all I needed. I moved faster than I have ever known myself to and started vigorously hammering on the door, and yelling for help. Laura and Eli joined me in my efforts, and an eternity later we heard a voice again.
“Hey” Was all I got, and it was all I needed.
“Thank God someone came, can you get us out of here?” I asked the mystery saviours standing on the other side of the door.
“Give me a minute, Sam, help me”
It was a female voice, she sounded a little young to be a rescuer, maybe more people escaping the hell that had been let loose. Whatever, I thought to myself as I heard heavy objects clunking around, as long as they had two legs and spoke English I just didn’t care.
“Stand back” the voice muttered into the door.
The three of us scrambled back towards a stall and waited for a second.
I was expecting a huge object to come crashing through the door, but a resounding thud resonated through the room, and a strange sucking sound next. Then a thud again, then again, this carried on once or twice more, and a silver glimmer of freedom appeared in the shape of a fire axe.
Shards of wood started to fly in the proceeding two minutes and I found myself laughing as we saw parts of faces of those trying to free us.
After a few more minutes of hacking they inexplicably disappeared, and returned with a battering ram consisting of one Tesco bench.
“Now stand back more” Another different female voice sounded through the cracks in the door.
I did as I was told and I shuffled away from the door as far back as possible and watched.
A quick footstep motion was heard and the door literally burst open, splinters flew in all directions and I covered my eyes with my forearm as half a Tesco bench and the flailing body of a young girl flew through what was once the bathroom door.
The girl looked up and brushed her long red hair out of her face.
“Hi, I’m Stacy, and ouch”
I laughed and as she rose to her feet I gave her an unceremonious hug whilst thanking her and the person behind her.
Eli and Laura were equally excited at being sprung from the bathroom, and Eli was particularly questioning of what was going on outside.
“Well, I live just down the road really, and Sam here was staying at my house, my parents are in Greece for a week you see, we waited for a while after the sirens but we decided to pack some stuff and make a run for it when we heard what was happening to other people” Stacey said as we made our way downstairs to the main part of the store. I was confused, and asked her about the other people, whilst Eli, Laura and Sam talked about the video I had received from my dad.
Stacey started walking to the furniture part of the store and we all followed.

“I got phone calls from people who live near me, my ex boyfriend lives right next to the army facility, and he was the first person to ring me. You should have heard him, he said he was locked in his bedroom and that monsters killed his parents, I thought he was messing with me so I hung up on him” She sighed and found a comfortable looking sofa, tore the plastic sheeting from it and dropped into it, she looked exhausted.
“Anyway, I got other calls like that, and realised things weren’t right when the sirens went off. I left my parents a message on their phones just to let them know I was okay, you know? And then we hid”
I contemplated things for a minute or two, staring at the floor. I then asked her if they had any trouble getting here, the answer was no. Well, I though to myself, at least we were safe for now. Then safety came into mind, and I wondered if there was anything we could do to stop the apparent monsters from getting to us whilst we were in the store.
“Did you and Sam get into here through the front?” I asked Stacey as she started to let the rest of her hair down from it’s semi ponytail.
“No, actually it’s all locked down there, you know, shutters and all that, and on the windows too. We went around the back and broke in through a staff entrance door. We should probably go and make sure everything’s tight back there, so nothing gets in if you know what I mean”
I nodded and gestured for Eli to bring the other two over from the separate cigarette and magazine stand down the aisle.
“Listen, guys, Stacey and I are going to go and check the back, and make sure nothing can get in, do you want to stay here or come with us?” I asked Eli, who was lighting up a cigarette. Stacey butted in and asked Eli in a stern voice “Are you sure you’re allowed to do that in here?”
Eli laughed and responded with “No, but I don’t think anyone is going to fine me for it, and I think I’ll stick around here, it might be an idea for some of us to start piling stuff against those shutters, they won’t hold anything major back without some reinforcement”
Sam and Laura agreed to stay with Eli, so Stacey and I started off towards the staff entrance, but not before I plucked the cigarette from Eli and took a relaxing drag.

With our backs to the small mountain we had amassed against the final rear entrance, I fished out my mobile phone and checked for any sign, from anyone. Nothing.
Stacy did the same, with the same result, it seemed like we were the only people alive in the world, the silence was thick in the atmosphere, and I let my head fall back and began to enjoy it.
I was jolted to my senses when I heard a high pitched yet stifled scream from the front end of the building, Stacy and I exchanged worried glances and jogged to where we had left Eli, Laura and Sam. We ran into Laura, who was apparently running to find us, I first saw her horrified face, and looked past it towards the main entrance, then the sound hit me.

Eli was furiously struggling with the metal shutters, trying to pull them down but to no avail, they were blocked by some mangled looking alien-like extremity. I ran over to help, but in all honesty, I had no idea of what to do. Eli looked at me and shouted “Get it out! I can’t close the doors! Get it out!”
His shouting became screaming as the spindly, clawed arm thing moved closer to Eli, and I heard a voice from above. It was Sam, she was outside the toilets on the second floor wielding the axe they had used to break in. “Catch! Was all I heard before the axe came hurtling down from twenty feet away.

I tried to counter the movement of the flying axe by moving backwards with it, but I only succeeded in fumbling it and I watched in pain as it skittered across the tiled ground and came to a halt just next to the mutilated arm. Whatever the arm was attached to, it clearly noticed the axe, and it became a race between me and the arm, I ran full speed and dove to the ground in a desperate attempt to grab the axe before the hand could, but I knew I was going to be too late, the hand touched the handle of the axe as I was in midair, and my face dropped faster than I did. I crashed to the floor and by some miraculous fortune, Eli slammed the shutter down on the gross limb and it let go, the axe handle spinning into my hands, and now, with my fingers clasped around the solid wood, I raised myself onto one knee and brought the blade down onto the enemy, the sheer power of the swing totally severing the arm from its indiscernible body.
What was left of the arm, a bleeding stump, withdrew with an otherworldly howl, and I sat on the floor, shocked and in silence, both hands firmly gripping the weapon, to the point where my knuckles were popping out of my skin. Stacy took my hands in hers and I loosened my grip enough for her to take the axe from me. Eli pulled the shutters down and started putting the locking pins into place, Laura and Sam began to help him.


Chapter Two: Fortification

It is now midday, and every conceivable entrance to the building was now fortified with every kind of heavy object possible.
The thoughts of other people out there crossed our minds, but in situations like these I feel okay with being cowardly and saving only me and those around me. Plus, I don’t particularly feel like knowing what was on the other side of the shutters earlier.
Now I look back on our decision to stay in Tesco overnight, it was probably that which saved our lives. I made a mental note to thank Laura for bringing the idea to light.
Stacey and I made a quick meal for us all, being in a supermarket was incredible. We started off by saying we were going to make a huge buffet but it ended up that we had microwaveable pizzas. With the food settling in our stomachs, we decided to discuss together what the plan for the future was. I knew that this could not last forever, and so did the rest of us. I asked if anyone dared go outside, or perhaps try to assess the danger we were in, but to my relief none of us felt the courage to do so, Sam was definitely intent on staying put, she was under the impression that we would be saved somehow, yet the rest of us were on more realistic terms with the situation.
Eli’s opinion was that it would be a good idea to find out what is going on outside, but at the end of the day, he didn’t like the risk of death. Stacey and I thought the same, that we were better off staying until it was necessary to leave. Laura was half on the gung ho attitude of blasting out of the building and kicking some ass, but she knew it was stupid, and she too elected to remain in the store.
And so, for the next couple of hours, we sat in mostly silence and deep thought. Short and inane conversation hung in the air for some parts, but we were all tired, and the mental pressure had been detrimental to our state. I ended up falling asleep at around six in the evening, and I was the last one to do so, Eli had drifted off first a couple of hours ago with Sam, Laura and Stacey talked a while but I had spent the last thirty minutes staring into space and ambling around the supermarket alone, with no aim to follow, I just walked and inspected pretty much every item on offer.
Only a few hours sleep were afforded to any of us, and when I opened my eyes, I could smell cooking. I sat up on the couch I had fallen asleep on, and Eli sat next to me.
“Stacey cooks great, there’s some pork chops in the café waiting for you” He smiled and relaxed, letting out a cheerful sounding sigh.
“Why the hell are you so happy?” I asked him, he replied with a childish grin on his face and told me he had talked to Sam a lot, and that he pretty much had the hots for her, and he thought she liked him, too.
I wished him luck on his noble venture, and made my way to the café where the smell really hit me and I felt my mouth well with saliva, I hadn’t realised I was so hungry. Stacey, Laura and Sam greeted me with smiles and a plate of dead pig, which I very much appreciated, we brought out some food and laid out a large table big enough for the five of us. Eli walked past and a half a minute later returned with a bottle of red wine and a box set of very expensive glasses.
“Only the best from Tesco, you know?” He laughed and poured us all a drink. Throughout the meal we talked and laughed together, discussing a range of subjects from the low financial ebb in the towns economy, the fact that it didn’t matter anymore and whether the world was going to end or not. I felt a real connection between us all, we looked and acted as if we had known each other for years as we sat and ate, and there was a certain sparkle in everyone’s eyes that made things just a little easier to deal with.
We finished up and piled the plates on the café counter, realised we were going to have to clean up after ourselves more often than usual and left them anyway until it was absolutely necessary to sort it out.
After making a round trip to the alcohol aisle we sat in the furniture section again and began to celebrate the coming to the end of our first day in Tesco. Eli and Sam took a bunch of comfy chairs and pulled them around into a circle of sorts, and we spent a long time drinking and Eli and myself took great pleasure in the seeming over availability of the alcohol and cigarettes, to my knowledge we drank enough to kill a few horses, and smoked enough to at least give one lung cancer.

The first howling noises came at midday, we were all still asleep as far as I know, considering the wreck we had made of ourselves the previous night. The only way to describe the howling was eerie, harrowing perhaps. It sounded as one would imagine the howling a dying beast of great importance would sound like.
It seemed as if the howling noises were coming from every direction possible, and they weren’t too loud, but loud enough to seem just a few hundred feet away. We spent at least twenty minutes peering through gaps in windows on the second floor searching for the source of the noises, but a thick fog was closing in around the building, and as time went on it came closer and closer. Abandoning our seemingly futile attempts at locating the howling things, we took turns keeping a watch out of the main window on the second floor, the one that looked out into the large car park in front of the building. Hours passed by and at around six in the evening, the howling noises had not abated, and the impenetrable fog had finally engulfed our building. Visibility was up to ten or fifteen feet, if you stared hard enough. Not enough to see something coming, and prepare, I knew this.
Time dragged on, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it was, not being able to see what was going on.
Taking our turns became a chore, and by the time it turned midnight, we were all tired, and thoroughly depressed, the blanket of fog seemed to rest over the top of us and smother and cheer in the place. I had just relinquished my post at the windows to Eli, and I started on a lone wander around the store, out of boredom. A few minutes later the howling began to fade, not in volume, but in frequency, it soon became softer, and then stopped. I jogged over to Eli and asked him if he could see what was going on, but he simply answered with a shake of his head and a bored sigh.
“Well this is ridiculous. If those howling things aren’t going to stop then… Wait, it’s stopped!”
As this realisation dawned upon him he turned to me with a furrowed brow, and the rest of our survivor gang hurried up the stairs to peek out of the windows with us in confusion.

It took a few minutes for us to make it out, but soon after the howling abated, shapes began to appear in the fog. Just shadows of a form, indiscernible from this distance, but it was clear that they were big. At least the size of a small car, and they moved pretty fast. First there were two or three, but it became clear that there were at least five in the car park, and as for the rest of the land around us, who knows.
The shapes stayed around the edge of the fog, just out of plain sight, and they moved around the perimeter as if circling us, hunting us.
As more minutes passed, they moved around more, and we found ourselves rooted to the spot, only talking in hushed tones if at all. They became anxious and scuffled around the car park, but still staying on the edge of the fog. I was close to stepping back when I heard what sounded like horses running on concrete, and what looked like a giant spider burst out of the thick mist and came hurtling towards the building, I braced myself against the wood we had nailed to the walls across the window and the impact was shocking. The sound of the creature hitting the wall sounded like a muffled explosion, and the creature seemed unfazed from the hit. That was the first time we saw them in full view, it was basically a set of jaws attached to an elongated and thick body, it’s head are seemed shielded by some sort of exoskeleton, its legs looked like that of an arachnid, but its skin looked hard as iron. As mentioned before, they moved fast, and I could hardly count the legs, but I think there were six.
I turned to Eli in shock, but found him running down the stairs to the ground floor.
“Eli, Where the hell are you going?” I shouted, but he was already pushing more furniture towards the metal shutters. As much as I thought this a futile action, I told the others to help him, though it looked as if these things could take out the walls if they really wanted to get in. As Eli and myself pushed a large fabric sofa to the shutters and nestled it between two crates of bottled water I whispered my doubts to him and cringed as another resounding thud echoed throughout the store.
“Why didn’t we think to look for something to defend ourselves with… Do you think these will last?”
I didn’t know what to say, I thought we were going to be okay, but we obviously underestimated the situation.
I told him to carry on and keep the spirits up, took Laura to one side and told her we should look for some sort of weapons, she agreed and to my surprise ran off into the maze of aisles without another word.

Soon after we had dispersed into the store we regrouped by the main shutters and discovered that Tesco wasn’t the best place in the world to defend yourself.
As we waited for the unthinkable to happen and the walls of our fortress become undone, I found myself surprisingly calm, but the others around me, wielding flimsy weapons and playing host to some unknown monster, were not coping so well. I imagined how frightened we must have looked, five people without a clue as to how to fend off six legged armoured creatures the size of small cars. I shook my head and knew we couldn’t stop one of them if we tried, never mind the others. I cleared my throat as the rumbling and consequential thudding against the wall continued.
“I don’t think we can do this. I think we should hide instead. Guys?”
They turned towards me and nodded in unison.
“Where can we go?” Eli ventured, stealing a glance at the upstairs section of the store.
I latched on to his train of thought and laughed a little.
Five minutes later and we were barricaded inside a small staff room at the rear of the second floor, we had piled up an insurmountable blockade of shelves against the stairs leading up towards us and had also dragged a huge bookshelf across the front of the staff room door, and after we were all safely inside with perhaps a days worth of food and water, we pulled the bookshelf snugly against the doorframe and sighed in relief. As far as anything on the outside of that wall was concerned, there was no door, Just an oddly placed bookshelf. To be safe, we had jammed some furniture against the door, but we knew that if we were somehow discovered it would provide little protection against the forces pummelling our new home.

“Do you think we’ll die?” A soft voice came from the corner of the room, it was completely dark apart from a sliver of light from a tiny gap in the defences at the window and I couldn’t tell who had asked. We had a no lights policy instated after our discussion on how the things outside found us, and why they were trying to get in.
Eli responded with a warm and soothing “Of course not”
His voice also emanated from the far corner, Sam must have asked the question, they wouldn’t part from each other now and before we had turned out the lights they had nestled together in a large chair in that corner.
Laura and Stacy were as far as I could tell sleeping on a couch to the left of me whilst I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the peep hole I had made at the window. I couldn’t see much, but it was peace of mind for me to see the road beside the store deserted of the six legged things.

My mind began to wander as I stared out of the window, and I laughed quietly to myself as something dawned upon me.
I saw a shadow move to my left and Laura’s head popped up from the couch.
“What is it?” She mumbled, she must have been on the edge of sleep, and I felt guilty for keeping her from some sanctuary much needed.
“Nothing, just I turned Eighteen like four hours ago, all this crap actually made me forget”
I smiled as she rolled herself off the couch, being careful not to disturb Stacy. She ambled the few feet towards me and gave me a very tired hug and a kiss on the cheek. She stayed in her hugging position and lay her head on my shoulders with her eyes closed, she whispered a happy birthday to me and shuffled off again to the couch where Stacy shifted herself to the other side, giving Laura some room.
“Happy birthday, you’re now welcome to buy alcohol legally. But from where…”
Eli’s voice sounded with a mocking tone, and I laughed again.
Sam began to snore softly and I counted that as a happy birthday anyway. As far as birthdays went, this was probably the most exhilarating yet soul destroying, nerve wracking yet surreally serene, tense yet smooth birthday I had ever had.
Shame there was no cake, really.