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  “Yeah, ain’t you the big hard soldiers. Well, no amount of press ups can stop a kick in the bollocks.” He took a step back. “One blink, and I’ll ventilate the pair of you.” The handler turned to the garage.

  “Don’t do this! Look, let me close the door. It’s me who’s taking the risk here. They’ll change back in a few hours, Jeff.”

  The handler stifled a chuckle. “You poor, naïve bastard. Did you really fall for that line? Shit, man. No fucker is going to turn back. They are already dead, you bloody fool. It’s as simple as that.” He swung the weapon towards the garage and sprayed the interior with bullets.

  “No!” Marsham cried. He saw the man’s finger ease and knew that he was next. Before he had time to react, the handler dropped to his knees and fell face down onto the pavement. Marsham looked over at Klinski who stood there holding a tranquilizer gun. They were supposed to be using that to grab a live specimen for the scientists back at the base.

  “Are you alright?”

  Klinski managed to nod. “Define alright,” he answered. “My wedding tackle’s still making its way down from my guts. Shit, I can’t believe that clown just dropped me.” He struggled to his feet and looked over at the garage. “Sorry, sir. I let you down.”

  Marsham shook his head, “No, son. That regret belongs to me. I should have left this white-suited moron in the house.” Of the five kiddies that the handler had managed to take down, only one of them was on the floor. The other four got back on their feet, and despite the appalling injuries afflicted on them by Klinski’s assault rifle, resumed their original positions.

  Rushworth walked over to the man and rolled him over onto his back. “There. With luck, the fucker will choke on his own vomit when he comes around. Sir, that stuff he said about this being permanent, do you think it’s true?”

  Marsham shrugged. He did believe that. This fucker had no reason to lie. After all, once he’d finished slaughtering the kiddies, Marsham had no doubt that his unit would have joined them. As for those kiddies being dead, that piece of info was a little too hard to swallow. Marsham stooped and grabbed the handler’s shoulders and started to pull his body closer to the garage.

  “Sir, those kiddies are starting to move.”

  He ignored Rushworth’s warning, feeling the man in the white bio suit begin to stir.

  Marsham looked up at the sound of both his men cocking their weapons. He heard the handler groan just before he caught sight of movement behind him. He dropped the body, ran back to his men, and spun around, watching in amazement as all the kiddies, including the shot ones, dove on the handler.

  The screaming man disappeared under the pile of wriggling bodies. Before he turned away, Marsham saw that the blonde-haired boy at the top of that pile had taken hits to his chest. Those bullets had shredded the kid’s heart, and yet there he was, still trying to clamber his way through the squirming bodies. The dread that the handler hadn’t been lying about these kiddies being dead began to take root.

  “Come on, I think it’s time to get some answers.”

  Klinski looked in the window of a nearby car; he then lifted his rifle and knocked out the side window before reaching in and pulling out a grey blanket.

  “If we live through this,” said Klinski, “I swear to God that I’ll make the people responsible pay for this.”

  He placed the blanket over the little girl’s crumpled form and bowed his head. The other two joined him in a very short prayer. “When we get back to base, I need you two to stay outside in the garden. Don’t acknowledge anyone. We need more info before acting.” The more he thought about this fuck up, the less Marsham believed. Had even the little information given to him been bullshit?

  At his insistence and refusal to do anything unless they told him something about the situation, his superiors had revealed a hint of what he would be facing. They told Marsham that a weapon had been developed that, when used on an enemy, would temporarily block all higher brain functions. In short, they’d just turn on each other. The beauty of this designer chemical was that all traces would disappear within a few short hours, leaving the dazed survivors looking in horror at the devastation they’d caused to everyone around them.

  None of them had given him a good reason how this weapon had somehow ended up in the middle of a vast urban sprawl, only that the flight navigator must have made a miscalculation.

  “Time to leave then,” Marsham said, turning around and hurrying towards the intersection that led to their base of operations. He took the tranquilizer gun from Klinski. “You men don’t have to stay with me.” He stopped and looked at the pair of them. “I’m technically deserting here. We all know the penalty for that particular crime.”

  Rushworth sighed. “You know we won’t leave your side, sir. Not after what we’ve just seen.”

  Klinski nodded. “Get the information, sir.”

  Marsham took a deep breath and ran along the pavement, his men following him, keeping their ears tuned for any other signs of activity. They passed another unit on their way and exchanged brief nods, knowing that the next time they met an exchange of fire was most likely.

  They reached their destination and stopped outside the gate. He waited for his men to take up position before continuing on in. Two white-suited technicians nodded to him as he passed them. Marsham couldn’t find the energy to return the greeting.

  They had chosen this house due to its location. From here, the teams could easily reach any other area of this housing estate within minutes. Right now, though, all the action was occurring at the far end of the estate. Most of the unfortunate residents exposed to the weapon had clumped together into one huge swarm. Before he’d left to supposedly capture a specimen for the head scientist, the nerds behind the monitors had shown him the satellite imagery of the swarm. Back then, it hadn’t occurred to him to ask these know-it-alls why these poor people were behaving completely opposite to what he been told. These people were supposed to be tearing into each other, not acting like a swarm of locusts actively hunting down and consuming single victims who, it seemed, were immune to this weapon.

  He wondered what these idiots would do if this swarm changed direction and started to head for this house. The white-suited geeks, all spouting indecipherable gobbledygook into their microphones, wouldn’t stand a chance. Marsham decided that he liked the idea of these fuckers dying at the hands of their creations; it was wonderfully ironic.

  “I must say, Colonel, you’re back quickly. Is my new sample outside?”

  Marsham gritted his teeth and tried to calm down as he spotted the head geek rushing over to him. This was one guy whom he’d enjoy to see screaming at the mercy of those kiddies. Dr. Marious, despite his diminutive stature and annoying mannerisms, had complete control over this project. Just like everyone else, Marsham had been taken in by the doctor’s eccentric attitude and his timid behavior. He should have known better. It was all an act. This fucker made Dr. Frankenstein look like Dr. Doolittle. All of this mess could be put squarely at his feet; he was the one who had created this vile weapon in the first place.

  “Well, before I see what you’ve brought me, I need to show you this. This test has proven more spectacular than I could have ever imagined.”

  The little man hurried off, obviously expecting Marsham to follow him. He sighed and left the cramped kitchen, knowing that if he needed answers, he’d have to stroke this man’s ego as well as play the dumb soldier.

  The head scientist led him into what used to be the kitchen.

  “There, just look at that, Marsham!” he announced.

  A large glass container stood in the middle of an ancient dining table. Marsham noted with disgust that the tablecloth and plates, still with the remains of food clinging to the ceramic, were piled in the far corner of the room. He fought to control his rage. Not that long ago, some normal family had been sitting around that table with probably nothing more pressing on their minds than wondering what would be on th
e TV tonight.

  The colonel walked over to the table and leaned closer to the glass jar, trying to work out what was inside it. All he saw was a large watermelon-sized ball of meat. This made no sense.

  “It is from your last sample. It might help if you walked around the other side, Colonel.”

  The only occupant they had stumbled across was a young infected boy around fourteen years of age. Marsham had found him in one of the bedrooms. He’d jammed his foot between two slats in the base of a bed and was trapped there. It had taken all three of them to subdue the kid. He’d only stopped moving when Klinski came up with the genius idea of throwing a pillow case over his head. It had certainly done the trick.

  He’d watched his team pull the boy out of the bedroom before turning back to gaze at the walls. Every inch of wallpaper had been covered over with sci-fi movie posters. He’d spotted a bank of white-painted wooden shelves on the back wall, every shelf holding dozens of plastic military models, everything from battleships to a helicopter gunship. He’d picked up a model of a German panzer tank and marveled at the detail. The paintwork alone was exquisite. The now-dead boy had to be a stranger to this house. With his short, cropped hair and skinned knuckles, all wrapped up in a bundle of very expensive designer clothing, their captive looked every inch the miniature thug.

  The doctor rushed over. “Man, you just don’t get it. Save me from the slow and stupid.” He pushed Marsham around the edge of the table.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he gasped, staring in utter disgust at the upside-down severed head inside the jar. If it wasn’t bad enough that these monsters had defiled the kid’s body, they had completed their debasement by flaying off every scrap of skin.

  “Yeah, I thought you’d be impressed,” chuckled the scientist. “Watch this Colonel, this will knock your socks off.” He tapped on the side of the jar.

  Marsham jumped back in surprise then the eyes moved towards the direction of the sound. “What the fuck?”

  “You are looking at dead flesh, Colonel Marsham.”

  He leaned closer, shivering when the eyes found his. Oh Lord, that handler was right after all. Then again, how could he have doubted? Marsham had seen that poor kid with half his internal organs demolished fighting with the others to get to that handler. There were a few compounds out there that could switch off the pain receptors in a body and give people the strength of five men. Nothing out there could allow you to operate without a heart, though.

  He felt the scientist’s eyes boring into the back of his head. He wanted to throttle this little bastard for what he’d done to this kid. He forced down the anger, knowing that he still needed to act the dumb grunt for a while longer, at least until he’d got everything out of this cold-blooded freak. “This has to be a trick.”

  Marious flashed him a dazzling smile. “I assure you, there’s no theatrics involved.”

  “This is bullshit. Once you’re dead that’s it, you lie still and rot.”

  “Not any more. It appears that the weapon has given us another stage of existence.”

  “Explain.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t explain it, not without performing more tests. The weapon was not designed to do this.”

  Marsham saw the man’s whole posture switch from confusion to ecstasy. He noticed something else as well. The scientist’s eyes were shining. The madman was actually pleased with this unforeseen result.

  “I still don’t understand how the weapon ended up here, Marious. I mean, I thought the test site was miles from here.”

  “Oh, they didn’t go off-course, not at all. This is the test area, Colonel.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  He pulled the tin from the back of the shelf and twisted the label to face the front. Ernest then took one step back to ensure that the shelf full of tins of stewed steak were now all symmetrical. He had missed one. Ernest picked up the last tin and turned it over; the tin didn’t go out of date for another month.

  “This is our best-selling tinned meat line, you know,” said Ernest, carefully placing the tin back on the shelf. “It’s seven pence cheaper than what the supermarket sells on the end of Bridge Street. Mr. Singh wouldn’t tell me where he got the stock from, but I do know that the shipment didn’t come from any of our regular suppliers.”

  Ernest wasn’t an idiot, he knew exactly where this stuff had come from. He knew his boss had been looking into a way of increasing his profit margin, and that obviously included buying questionable, stolen food. It was the only answer.

  He sighed, watching Mavis continue to fill her mouth with pieces of mackerel covered in tomato sauce. Ernest had the insane urge to ask the woman if she was going to pay for that tin that she had just opened.

  This was just awful. Being right here in the middle aisle of the mini-market was almost as bad as his last visit to his home. He saw evidence of his handiwork everywhere he looked. That huge display full of sugar bags might have been his boss’s idea, but it was Ernest who had to build up the bloody thing. In fact, he’d had built it up twice, once after that annoying little bastard had thought it would be hilarious to jump into the display. Ernest had suggested placing it at the back of the store, but Mr. Singh would not listen to him. Ernest was the poor soul who had repainted the entire shop when the boss suddenly decided that meadow green was a more appealing colour than leaf green.

  Ernest stooped down and scooped up a packet of cream crackers. He placed them back on the shelf and yawned. He had spent many long hours in this shop working like a bloody slave for that man for less than minimum wage. Looking back, Ernest wondered if he had subconsciously chosen to follow this path of drudgery as some sort of perverted penance to atone for his past misdemeanors.

  “Are you okay, Ernest?”

  He shrugged. “Considering the situation, I think I’m doing better than I should be.” Ernest smiled at her when he saw her face drop. “I’m okay, honest.”

  “I remember seeing you in here, Ernest. You looked very smart in your apron. It was good to see a man who took pride in how he dressed.”

  Ernest just looked at her, not exactly sure if she was making fun of him. It was only a stupid apron. The boss made him wear the damn thing over his own clothes. “Thank you,” he replied uncertainly.

  “We’d better get a move on, Ernest. Where did you say the bolt-cutters were? I can’t seem to find them.”

  Ernest turned around and pointed over to the door. “They should be behind the counter, near the cash register. At least that’s where I last saw them.”

  “Oh, that’ll be why I couldn’t find them. For some reason I thought that he’d have them for sale.”

  Ernest shook his head and chuckled. “No, he wouldn’t sell those, Mavis. Mr. Singh sells most things, but even he wouldn’t sell tools to help the thieves in Breakspear break into his shop.” Ernest watched the woman drop the empty mackerel tin on the floor and pick up another one. “But if he did discover that the supermarket was selling them, he’d get some stock in and sell them at a cheaper price.”

  He walked past the baking section, stopping himself from pulling the bags of self-rising flour forward, and leaned over the glass counter. Ernest smiled when he saw the bolt-cutters lying next to a claw hammer.

  “Is it still there?”

  He nodded. “Yes, here it is, just where I thought it would be.”

  Ernest skirted past the sweet display and ducked behind the counter. The hammer was there for one reason. It was Mr. Singh’s only method of protection. The police had told him numerous times that he was risking his own life by keeping the shop open so late and having no visible alarm, but he had just smiled back at them and tried to sell them the contents of the shop.

  Nobody had robbed the shop. Sure, they had a few problems with the odd kid lifting sweets, but nothing major. Most of the locals shopped here only because the boss kept the prices down. They also knew that if the shop was ever turned over, it would cost them a for
tune to shop somewhere else. Mr. Singh was no fool, and neither were the residents.

  Ernest heard Mavis walking over to the counter. He guessed that the woman must have become bored of eating the shop’s stock of tinned fish. “Okay, Mavis. I’ve got it. We can go now.”

  Ernest yelled out in shock when cold fingers gripped his hair and dragged him back up. He twisted around, his eyes streaming with agony as he felt his hair tear from the roots. The cold, dead eyes of his former employer gazed down at him. Ernest shrieked when the man’s mouth opened. His hands scrambled along the counter, trying to find anything to get this thing off him.

  The claw hammer seemed to mock him; the ideal weapon was just inches away from his grasping fingers. Ernest pulled back, screaming in agony, feeling the thing’s hands holding on to more of his hair. The dead man moaned louder and reached across the counter with its other hand.

  Through tear-blurred vision, Ernest saw something move behind Mr. Singh; he heard Mavis let out a single grunt. His former boss suddenly let go of his hair. Ernest jumped to the side and the dead thing fell face down, cracking the counter glass when he hit it. Ernest saw the handle of a screwdriver sticking out of the back of the neck.

  “Oh God, Ernest, are you alright?” Mavis cried. “I’m so sorry that I took so long. It took me ages to get the screwdriver out of the bloody plastic packet.”

  He gingerly touched the top of his head and winced. “It’s okay, Mavis. I’ll live to fight another day. Remind me to book an appointment with the barbers. The bastard nearly turned me into a monk.”

  “We should have searched the bloody place first. I can’t believe that we didn’t check before we went shopping.” She looked into his eyes, and Ernest saw tears begin to form. “I nearly lost you.”

  “Yeah, well, luckily for me our hardware section was stocked up last week.” He picked up the bolt-cutters and looked back at his former boss. At least you died in the place you loved, buddy. Ernest then reached across the cold body and picked up the hammer. That would come in handy. “Come on, we had better make tracks.”