Parasite ; Sleeper Cells ; Kingdoms of the Dead

by Ian Woodhead

  With reluctance, he moved killing to her, painfully aware that he was now within killing range of that deadly club, gripped in her hand. “Sorry, honey,” he said. “I have no idea why I’m so tired.”

  “Could it be because you’re been living off me for the past two decades?” she answered sweetly. “You haven’t done any real hard work since that time you managed to talk your way into my panties.” Natalie spun around and marched away. “Christ knows what must have been going through my head at the time,” she muttered. “No wonder Daddy almost had heart failure when I brought you home.”

  It was the same old tired speech that vomited from her mouth every time the woman became irritated, only this time, Stephen detected a trace of bitterness sprinkled over the words specially designed to hurt him.

  He looked at his own club. He had completely forgotten that he even had the damn thing in his hand. He wouldn’t need her to stray from the path, it would only take a single blow to the back of her skull to put her down. He knew exactly where to hit as well. The fat bitch would go down like a felled elephant. Stephen slowed down, putting a few more paces between them, just to help him resist the temptation. Hell, he really would be put up against the wall if he tried anything so dumb.

  The lights positioned high above them began to dim. Stephen blinked. He took his eyes off his weapon and tilted his head back. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The lights were fixed to simulate the coming of dusk on a summer’s day. “What the fuck?” Stephen took in a deep breath. For the first time, he found his lungs full of cold air; he detected something else too, there was a breeze now.

  “Stephen!” gasped his wife. “We’re outside, how can that be right?”

  He ran up to Natalie and peered at the next stone archway, a couple of meters from their position. He took one step over the pathline and ran over to the structure, ignoring Natalie’s gasp of shock. He knew that the woman had got their assessment completely right. It didn’t matter about the impossibility; they were no longer in the studio. Stephen trailed his fingers down the cold rough archway, feeling the damp stone on the tips of his fingers. “Either dew or it was raining recently,” he murmured.

  “Come back! You’re between two pits.”

  He shook his head. “No I’m not,” he replied. Stephen look up again. This time, he saw the twinkling of a couple of stars in the black sky. “This is just incredible. Do you know where we are, Natalie?”

  His wife looked as though all her self-esteem and confidence had been punched out of her. He looked at the club in his hand, knowing that he could dispatch the woman in seconds if he so desired. Why not? There were no cameras here. That much he did know. He smiled to himself. Stephen no longer desired to end her life, not now. Looking at this miserable woman, and seeing her deflated personality staring back at him, all he wanted to do now was to go over there and hug her.

  “Look at me, Natalie,” he said, walking back towards her. He lifted her chin and gently kissed her. “We’re not in the city anymore,” he said. “I know this place because I based the game zone on the layout. This is where I grew up. This is where I was born, honey.” He looked around the desolate landscape, feeling a shiver travel down his spine. That feeling of being watched hadn’t left him. Stephen pointed at the archway. “Come on, let’s get over there. I think it’s going to rain again. I don’t want to be caught in a downpour.”

  She refused to budge. “No, we stay here. I want you to stop and listen to the madness coming out of your mouth. We can’t be back where you live, even if by some magical way we had travelled a couple of hundred miles out of the city.” Natalie bent down and scooped up a handful of wet dirt. “My father showed me where you were born a few days after I brought you home. I think he was trying to prove to me that you were no better than the lowest servant in the household.”

  Stephen shrugged. She had never told him this information before but he had always assumed that her father had done his research anyway. “Okay, so you know where I was born, I don’t understand why you’re so agitated.”

  “Oh my God,” she hissed. “You mean apart from the fucking obvious? My father specifically chose this region as one of the anchor points during the plague.” Natalie gripped his hand tight. “This doesn’t exist anymore.”

  His blood ran cold. Stephen remembered the anchor points very well, they all did. It had been the city’s last ditch attempt to stop the millions of corpses from overwhelming the defenses of the last city. Hundreds of prisoners had been shipped out and secured in these chosen anchor points to guide the dead armies away from the city. As soon as those corpses had taken the bait, each anchor point was nuked. In one hour, their plan had vaporized millions of human bodies, both living and dead.

  He hadn’t been that high up in the chain of command to know the specific details of the plan, either that or his wife had just not allowed him to see that one chosen site. He turned away from her and looked back at the archway. “The town’s memorial must be nuclear missile-proof,” he murmured. Stephen spun around, not all that surprised to find his urge to kill the bitch had returned with full force. “So, he decided to murder this town, just in case any of my family still lived here? After all, it was bad enough to have his daughter marry scum, the last thing he needed was for my relatives to start knocking on his door, asking for a loan.”

  His next volley of insults never left his mouth. Stephen’s heart beat double time when he saw a lone figure walking towards the pair of them. The man, dressed in ragged leather armour, carried a double-bladed axe in his right arm, while holding a studded shield in his other hand. What stopped Stephen from speaking was that the man looked exactly like him.

  “Stephen, what is it?” His wife’s eyes shifted from his and she started to turn her head. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  He dug his fingers into her soft flesh, feeling her whole body stiffen. “Don’t even think about it,” he hissed. Stephen pulled her close as he walked backwards, keeping his gaze fixed on the approaching figure. “Please, just keep up with me, Natalie.”

  The woman responded by struggling out of his grasp and twisting her head savagely around. Her reaction to the impossible appearance of the other Stephen made his whole body feel like it had just been pushed through a giant sieve. He gaped in utter dismay as Natalie ran over to the other man, who had already opened his arm to receive her. “No way,” Stephen muttered, his saliva drying up. “I refuse to believe it.”

  His wife sighed loudly and nuzzled into the man’s thick chest. She wriggled then turned around, running her hands up and down the other Stephen’s heavily muscled arms. “It’s not like I’ve been cheating on you, Stephen,” she said, giggling. Natalie purred and visibly shuddered when the man grabbed her breasts and squeezed them together. “It’s just that this Stephen knows how to please me.”

  The other Stephen rested his chin on her shoulder and gave him the once over. If it came to a fight, Stephen knew that he wouldn’t last two minutes with this brute. Just one look into those hard, lifeless eyes told him that much. The fact that he also looked as though he’d been carved out of solid granite was just window dressing.

  “Natalie, did you bring any more tablets?”

  She turned around in his arms and kissed the tip of his nose. “Honey, I had no idea that I was going to end up in this world.” The woman snapped her head around and glared at Stephen. “You always told me that you wanted to hurt your duplicate from my world. Well, here’s your chance.” Natalie pulled herself out of his embrace. “He was up to something and I’d like to know what he had planned.”

  The acid pouring from the eyes of his other self gave Stephen a pretty good idea what would happen if the meathead did grab him. Stephen turned around and raced towards the nearest building, daring not to look back. There was no point, he could hear the pair of them right behind him. Stephen found hidden energy resources from somewhere and skidded to the left, just praying that this place really was just like where he’d grown up. Steph
en promptly took a left and burst through a narrow gap between two stone buildings, feeling a large degree of satisfaction when he heard both of them fill the air with harsh obscenities.

  “Fuck the pair of you,” he growled, jumping onto a tipped-over bin and reaching for a set of black metal ladders. Stephen leaped up and lunged for the first rung, crying out in triumph as his fingers wrapped around the cold, round metal. He pulled them down and scrambled up and onto the fire escape. The pair of them ran into the alley, just as the ladders swung back up into place.

  He raced up the rest of the ladders, heading for the roof, knowing that his lucky escape would be short-lived if he didn’t put a good deal of distance between him and his other self. Stephen pulled his tired body onto the ledge and stood on the lip of the building; he leaned over, watching the man unsuccessfully try to reach for the ladders. It appeared that, this time, the bastard’s huge bulk was not working in his favor.

  “I hope you fall over and break your neck, you fat bastard,” Stephen snarled before spinning around and racing across the flat roof. His blood ran cold when he heard them finally succeed in bringing down the ladders. Stephen looked desperately to his left, seeking out a very special flat rectangular skylight. “Why are you even bothering?” he muttered. “Your special hidey-hole was vaporized in a nuclear fire.” He stopped in the middle of the eight skylights and spun around, searching for the marks. Stephen’s grin widened when he saw them. He dropped to his knees and traced the tip of his finger across the scratch marks made in the hard plastic. He vividly remembered scratching his name and the name of the girl that he was going to marry into the skylight, when he was just fourteen. He looked down and saw his name, then he frowned. “Who the fuck is Andrea?” he murmured. “It should say Debbie.”

  He looked over towards the edge of the building, listening to the other Stephen’s panting. Fuck, it was the brute who had scratched this in, not him. He dug his fingers under the edge and tugged, lifting the skylight off its holder a few inches. He pushed his hands right under and pulled the plastic up, giving him just enough space to slide his body under.

  “He’s going to know what you’re doing, he’s you.” No, fuck him, he wasn’t Stephen at all. He climbed through the gap and gritted his teeth at the sudden shock of the edge of the skylight falling onto the tops of his fingers. He counted to three then let go, hoping that in this world there would still be a floor beneath him.

  His feet hit a pile of clothing. Stephen collapsed his knees and rolled over, watching two silhouettes run past the skylight. “Fuck the pair of you,” he whispered, smiling. “So much for the other Stephen being just like me.”

  Where the hell was he? He looked around the dim room, trying to figure out just what the place held. He walked along the bare floorboards, gazing in confusion at the large wooden crates, each one overflowing with rotting clothing. The stench wafting from the material made him gag. It didn’t take a great leap of faith to work out that all of these pieces must have been pulled off corpses. Stephen had no idea why anybody would even think of doing such a pointless act.

  He shrugged to himself; like it really mattered. His only concern was to find some way out of this place. The thought of him actually being in another world now scared the crap out of him, but it was also exciting. He had heard all the tales about these two other places. Everyone who worked in the upper commands had heard about them, but nobody would dare openly speak of the concept; it just wasn’t worth it. You learned from a very early age that a loose tongue could get you put into the wrong end of one of Rossini’s game zones.

  Stephen stopped, bent down, and picked up a woman’s leather boot. As he turned it over in his hands, he wondered if Rossini knew about this place. He sighed to himself. More than likely, Stephen was probably the only one who didn’t know. By the looks of it, his dirty fucking wife was very intimate with this world. Now he saw what she’d meant when Stephen accused her of having an affair.

  “You sneaky bitch,” he muttered. Stephen saw a flash of movement in the corner of his eyes and hurried around the back of one of the crates. Watching the familiar shape of his wife walk towards where he was hiding. Stephen slowed down his breathing, listening to their footsteps stop. They were on the other side of the crate. Even with the foul stench coming from the decaying clothing, Stephen could still detect his wife’s perfume. It annoyed and upset him to realize that he would never again smell that scent on her naked body, not now, not after what had happened tonight.

  “I still don’t understand how this can be a mistake, Natalie.”

  Stephen got ready to run, just in case the other Stephen suddenly decided to take a quick peek around the corner. He had no wish to meet his maker at the hands of himself. He blinked, finding a bubble of hysterical laughter rising up his throat. He slammed his palm against his mouth and thought of just how sharp that axe of his would be. The vivid thought of that blade cleaving his head in two soon helped him regain control of his traitorous body.

  “It looks like one of our members hasn’t been listening to reason,” growled Natalie. “You remember Joseph? Well, he got the stupid idea that he could find more worlds, some lovely little paradises that haven’t had to suffer this fucking plague.”

  Stephen heard the withering sarcasm dripping from her every word. It was obvious that she didn’t approve. He had no idea why, though; finding another world that didn’t have the living dead shambling around would solve all of their problems. He closed his eyes, remembering what it felt like to walk through fields or woodland without having that oppressive fear that an attack could happen at any moment. He’d do anything to relive that experience.

  “He was warned of the potential consequences. Joseph knew full well that if he tried to alter the devices, the skin around the three worlds would start to split open.” She sighed. “Come on, Stephen, he’s not here. I want you to take me to your house. I’m suddenly very tired.”

  “I don’t care about how tired you are, Natalie.”

  Stephen heard the woman let out a surprised yell. It appeared that this other Stephen wasn’t quite as timid as he was. The image of his other self using his axe on her swam into his mind. Stephen smiled.

  “You can sleep later on. We need to find a way back to your world. If I don’t get my clan members more of your tablets, most of them will be dead within the next couple of weeks.”

  Stephen looked down at his mud-caked boots, wondering how he was going to get out of here himself. The urgent tone in the other Stephen’s voice reminded him that he wouldn’t last that long without his supply of tablets either. Although the idea of just disappearing into this world did have a certain amount of appeal, he’d much rather stay alive by going back to where he came from. He listened to the sound of their rough kissing before quietly running over to the next wooden crate.

  In all the years he’d been with Natalie, he had never once raised his hand to her, no matter how much the provocation. In truth, Stephen had always been aware that the woman had the temper and strength to punch him into next week if he had decided to get violent. It looked as though the strange woman actually had wanted him to slap her around.

  “I hope you’re both happy together,” he whispered, as he reached the next crate. Stephen ran around the back and leaned against the wood, trying to work out his next move. He didn’t want to spend his final hours wandering around this strange but familiar place until he keeled over and died. Stephen searched his pockets in the vain hope that he had a couple of spare tablets tucked into the corners. No such luck though, all he found in there was a single folded-up piece of paper. He pulled it out, not sure where it had come from. He knew for a fact that he hadn’t placed it in there.

  There was a single scrawled word, written in blue pen: Convergence. He looked at the word for a few more seconds before tucking it back into his pocket. Stephen heard the sound of their footsteps receding and peered around the corner, watching the pair of them head back to where they’d come from.

&nbs
p; He followed them, thinking that they would have a better idea of how to get out of there than he did. There had to be another way back to the game zone. His wife obviously thought so, and she knew more of what was going on here than he did. By the sounds of it, everybody knew more than him. If he did manage to get back, Stephen would have to have a little chat with Rossini, preferably with a gun pushed against the side of the man’s head.

  Stephen reached the open doorway, suddenly remembering just how enthusiastic his partner had been about the disposal of his wife. Sure, they would both profit from the operation, but now he wondered exactly how else Rossini would have profited. He turned around, gazing at the rows upon rows of crates, each one full of clothing. Did he really want to know their purpose?

  He grabbed the door frame to stop himself from hitting the floor. The shock of recent events must have decided that this was a great time to pay him a visit. His nails dug into the rotten wood as violent shakes surged through his body. It wasn’t just his present situation that had set this off, that much he did know. His whirling mind saw Rossini and he standing over that pit, watching the resident dead things finish off what was left of his wife’s body.

  Only there would be no celebrations. Not from Stephen. It was obvious that Rossini would have never allowed him to live to collect Natalie’s vast family wealth, or take her seat on the council. Stephen would have found himself being pushed into that pit to join his wife for the final time.

  “I’m such a fucking idiot,” he snarled, straightening his back before leaving the room full of clothes. Thanks to his decision to climb into bed with Rossini, even if he did find a way back to his world, his life expectancy would be measured in minutes if that man caught up with him. “What am I going to do now?”

  Stephen followed the red-painted path between the huge, silent machines that dominated this room. Like the crates full of clothes in the other room, he had no idea what their purpose was for. He stopped and turned around, moaning when he saw there was no longer a doorway to the clothes room. “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he said. Had he just moved back? Stephen walked off the path, subconsciously aware that this pathway might serve a similar purpose to the path in the game zone. “Don’t be so fucking stupid,” he laughed to himself nervously, still taking the time to examine the grey-pitted concrete floor just in case there were any tell-tale signs of any pits by his feet.