The Good, The Bad & The Dead | Book 1 | Once Upon A Time In An Undead World

by Grimes, A. L.

  Tom picked up the large sword and headed to the fence that separated the four of them. He still had his brew in his hand. He raked the sword across the fence to attract their attention. Christine was the first to bare her teeth. Tom waited until all three had their faces pressed against the fence. Their fingers slipped through the narrow slits, reaching for him.

  ‘You pathetic pair of creatures,’ he said to Dave and Christine. ‘I am sorry that you were the unfortunate one to get the call out to these pair of tax evaders,’ he said to the police officer.

  The police officer snarled back at him. To the side he heard the skinny neighbour and her son growl some threats. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said to the three.

  The skinny neighbour could actually reach her hand through the narrow gaps in the fence. She clawed at Tom as he approached. He took the hand with one swipe of the sword; she didn’t pull back.

  The other three were working themselves into a frenzy, their instincts driving them against the fence. Tom proceeded to goad his neighbours. He thrust the point of the sword into the skinny neighbours eyeball, he heard the pop - it amused him. He pushed it further into her brain, she stopped reaching and fell to the ground. Her son showed no emotion other than hunger towards Tom.

  He obliged by giving the son an eyeful of sharp metal, he fell next to his mother. Tom did not feel anything for these people, he hadn’t liked them much as neighbours, he only said hello as part of the social norm. He didn’t feel that he had just murdered his neighbours, they were already dead according to news reports. While that was true, the same couldn’t be said for the youth he had killed in his hallway, again he felt no remorse. He felt he was doing his part in cleansing society. A cleansing that was long overdue. He felt he was a contributor while the two overweight creatures behind him were takers. They had even taken the life of another contributor to society.

  He turned to face them, ready to extinguish their uneventful and pathetic lives. He watched as the wooden slats cracked under the weight of the eyesore in the pink bathrobe, the force increased by the useless lump formerly known as Dave. They crashed to the floor as gravity and too many takeaways came into force. The police officer remained on her feet.

  ‘I won’t be messing about this time Dave,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do you first, then your fat girlfriend. I’ll put you out of your misery last,’ he said to the police officer.

  He heard the groan from behind him. He rolled his eyes. Although there were no words Tom could recognise her gargled voice anywhere, it kept him awake most nights. He half turned to look at her. His mother stood in the doorway, all anger and hostility, the only thing that was missing was a cigarette hanging from her mouth and a continuous stream of negativity that contained all the swear words known.

  ‘Change of plan, I’ll do mother first, she looks the angriest.’

  He turned and strolled calmly towards his her. The police officer followed. Dave and Christine were still rolling about the floor.

  Chapter Thirty

  Cheetwood, Manchester, Central UK

  Eddie didn’t interrupt his brother as he rambled on about the past – the good times and the bad. He talked mostly about the two of them, in between he took huge gulps of vodka. Eddie was aware of how Tommy was deteriorating; the booze was affecting his speech, but it had nothing to do with the paleness of his skin. His mind was beginning to wander and the sharpness in his eyes was beginning to fade.

  Eddie had an idea how long the process was going to take but he didn’t understand enough about biology to know what the infection was doing to his brother’s body. He felt confident enough to sit down facing him, he knew these dead things were much slower than him…Christ he thought, he was already thinking of Tommy as dead. He didn’t really know what he was going to do when the time came to put his brother out of his undead misery.

  Suddenly Tommy stopped talking and slumped back into the chair. Eddie couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, he didn’t want to get that close – he knew too well what a reanimated corpse was capable of.

  He stood up and took the pistol from his waistband, the machete in his other hand. He thought a bullet straight through the brain would be the brotherly way to end Tommy’s second life, but he didn’t want the noise to attract attention. Hitting him in the head with his machete seemed too brutal. Whatever he was going to do he had to think fast, in a few minutes Tommy would be up and trying to eat him. He aimed the gun and raised the machete still undecided.

  When Tommy opened his eyes, Eddie’s grip tightened around the gun his finger applied pressure to the trigger. ‘I’m still here big brother,’ the words were a struggle from Tommy, and he coughed more dark phlegm as he spoke them.

  Eddie’s grip eased and he lowered both weapons. ‘I thought that was it.’

  Tommy raised a faint smile, ‘How were you going to do it?’

  ‘Truthfully, I don’t know,’ he said as he pushed the gun into the back of his pants.

  ‘I want it to be quick whatever you decide. Do you think I will still remember you when, you know…When I change?’

  ‘Seriously mate I don’t know. I’m still trying to get my head around all this.’ The truth was Eddie did know; he knew his brother would have no idea who the fuck he was.

  He hadn’t really noticed the chill in the house, interacting with his soon to be dead brother had distracted him. Earlier he had been watching the dead hunt from his bedroom window, watching and developing a plan of escape. He had forgotten about the dead outside. He was focused on the nearly dead inside. The noise and the chill hit him at the same time. His brother’s talk was barely a whisper now and no longer a distraction. From the rear of the house the noise of the dead was getting louder, so was their movement.

  He raced through the living room and down a small hallway. Through the window he could see the dead pouring through the alleyway door. He charged towards the doorway entrance to the house. A neighbour dressed in shredded nightwear, her flesh ripped and torn stepped through the doorway and into the kitchen.

  Eddie didn’t hesitate, this wasn’t his brother. He planted the machete into the top of her head. The head opened from ear to ear. The corpse crashed to the floor.

  ‘Shit,’ screamed Eddie.

  The corpse didn’t fall backwards or forwards it fell where it stood, preventing Eddie from shutting the door on the advancing army of dead. He slammed the door into it repeatedly, more from frustration than hoping it would move. The door was open at a ninety-degree angle. He grabbed the kitchen table and wedged it behind the door, jamming it into the cupboards. It wouldn’t hold long but it would redirect the hungry horde long enough for him to get upstairs. A dirty claw reached through and almost raked him as he pushed the table in place. The gap only allowed one dead thing at a time to reach through but eventually the weight of the pressing crowd would force his barricade to give way.

  As a way of defiance he chopped the hand free from the dead creature. It didn’t cry out; it didn’t stop either. He turned and headed from the kitchen into the hallway. His brother was up and moving towards him, he walked drunkenly.

  ‘We need to move Tommy.’

  Tommy continued to stagger towards him, his head lifted, and his eyes focused towards his brother.

  Eddie felt genuine sadness when he saw what his brother had become. He knew it was going to happen but struggled to believe. Tommy was a walking corpse, no recollection of his previous life. His cheekbones had hollowed out in death, white orbs staring, pale lips drawn back over snarling teeth. The strangest thing to Eddie was that his dead stumbling about brother still held the near empty vodka bottle in his hand. His other hand reached for Eddie.

  Eddie soon discovered that his inability to choose a weapon to finish his brother was actually a realisation that he couldn’t. He had never believed in any religious bullshit; the afterlife or death is only the beginning although he now had to acknowledge that death wasn’t the end in this fucked up world.

  ‘If you do
have any recollection of me Tommy, I hope you’ll forgive me.’ Tommy wasn’t in there and he didn’t recollect, the dead thing wanted to eat.

  Eddie rushed his dead brother; the dead Tommy was slow to react. Eddie grabbed his brother and with all his strength he shoved him hard into the kitchen table, his limp body slid across the top and disappeared on the other side. The vodka bottle smashed.

  Tommy’s grey hand reached up and landed flat on the table, his snarling face followed. Eddie remembered the car from earlier, the hand and face. Tommy tried to move forward; in life he would’ve known how to overcome the obstacle barring his path but now he didn’t possess that ability.

  Eddie watched, the pain he felt was like nothing he had ever experienced. His younger brother, the kid he had practically raised was fumbling around searching for a way to get at him. Eddie took a moment to remember plenty of the good times they had spent together, he wept for his younger brother.

  He had spent his whole life looking out for him and now when he needed him most, he was about to leave him hanging. Eddie took the gun from his waistband and walked towards his brother. Tommy reached for his brother across the table with both hands, he was snarling like a rabid dog.

  Eddie raised the Browning, he thought about Tommy’s request to put him out of his misery. ‘I know I never told you before Tommy, but I’ve always loved you. I’m sorry for leaving you last night.’

  Eddie pulled the trigger, the bullet entered Tommy’s forehead and exploded through the back of his skull. Brain and bone decorated the walls of the kitchen. While Tommy lay on the floor completely dead, Eddie Makin would struggle to recover from what he had just done.

  *

  Upstairs Laura Chaplin jumped when she heard the gunshot. She would have ran if Eddie hadn’t handcuffed her to the bed. Ritchie was still handcuffed to the radiator in the other room, he didn’t flinch at the gunshot. In fact he had been quite agitated since he woke up and continued to gnaw at his wrist, he was almost through.

  Chapter Thirty – One

  Seaforth, The Lakeside Hotel.

  Mrs Smith had not heard the door to her room open. She was leaning out of the window, shouting for help with a powerful voice. The accent wasn’t local.

  Bernie stood open mouthed, his tongue literally rolling out of his mouth. Ben stood admiring the view, not the lake and sand dunes but the perfect mass that stood before them. They had both forgotten their current predicament of impending doom and focussed on the scene before them. Bernie’s thoughts drifted back thirty years to his mid-twenties and his first holiday abroad. The island of Ibiza, a fortnight of drinking, sleeping, sunburn and a holiday romance. He had met Marisa on the fourth day, she had been tending to him and his friends at the bar she had owned with her husband.

  He would go back to the bar each night just to get a look at her. There had never been anything between them apart from the odd glance and smile in his direction. He had been completely besotted. His infatuation had grown the day he watched her parading along the beach in a bikini that had barely covered her modesty. She strolled past him and his friends in a high cut thong – what they later found out was it was all a marketing ploy. They spent most of their money at the bar, Bernie thought it was worth it the day she had bent over to pick up her sunglasses. As he stood gawping at the sight before him, he had been transported back, he could feel the heat of the sun, the smell of the sea, the fruity fragrance of her perfume and the visual of her backside. A back side that could cause a crash.

  Ben came to his senses quickest, he watched as Bernie stood in a trance. The jiggle was hypnotic, but he still had Jill fresh in his mind.

  ‘You ok,’ he asked Bernie. ‘You need me to push that tongue back into your mouth.’

  ‘Yeah sure, thanks,’ Bernie replied. He hadn’t an idea what Ben had said but he felt the need to thank him.

  He nudged Bernie, ‘Snap out of it, you’re a dirty old bastard,’ he said with a grin.

  Bernie looked at him. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Jesus, you see a perfectly formed arse and what sense you had left has now gone.’

  ‘Hey,’ he replied again.

  ‘If you say hey again, I’m going to crack you open with this hammer.’ For effect Ben raised the hammer in front of Bernie.

  Bernie was so taken back in time that he really wasn’t registering what was being said to him. He mouthed the letter H ready to respond.

  Mrs Smith potentially saved his life. Neither of them had noticed her turn around. ‘At last, I thought I was in here on my own.’

  They turned together. Mrs Smith stood with her hands on her hips. She was certainly body confident. A black underwear set clung to her body, amplifying her curves.

  Bernie felt his legs turn to jelly, Ben grabbed him by his collar, pre-empting the flop.

  ‘We have a situation,’ said Ben.

  ‘I’d call it more than a situation,’ she replied. ‘The bastard in the toilet tried to eat me.’ She tilted her head in the direction of the en-suite.

  ‘He has good taste,’ muttered Bernie. Ben let him go. He wobbled but managed to stay upright.

  ‘Is your friend ok,’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing some covering up wouldn’t fix,’ replied Ben.

  Mrs Smith was quick to get his meaning, she smiled. ‘I’ll put on some clothes, wouldn’t want to raise any blood pressures or worse.’

  Bernie scowled at Ben, ‘I’m really starting to dislike you.’

  *

  Mrs Smith was in fact called Claudia; no surname given. She was a ‘high end’ escort, charging at a rate of one thousand pounds per night. The dead creature bouncing off the bathroom door was Cecil, a local councilman. They had lowered their conversation, so the now dead civil servant was less animated.

  ‘How much?’ said Bernie.

  ‘You heard me right the first time,’ replied Claudia.

  Ben watched the cogs turn in Bernie’s perverted little mind. He was unsure if he was calculating how much Claudia earned in a year or how much he had in his own bank account.

  ‘And you see three punters per week,’ continued Bernie.

  ‘They are clients not punters. Punters sounds cheap and dirty,’ she corrected. She had dressed into the same elegant black dress that Bernie had noticed as she entered the hotel the previous night. It was tight fitting with little movement around the legs.

  ‘The dress doesn’t really go with surviving the apocalypse,’ said Ben.

  ‘It’s all I have with me. I could always take it off again,’ she said with a wink.

  Ben sensed Bernie’s excitement. ‘Not unless you want to be the cause of him having a stroke.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances,’ replied Bernie.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Ben motioned for Claudia to sit down.

  ‘Cash only,’ she smirked.

  Ben stabbed the screwdriver between Claudia’s thighs, the fabric separated as he dragged the sharp end down. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘You’ll be able to move much easier now.’

  ‘Do you know how much this cost me?’ She fumed.

  ‘I’m guessing more than my monthly pay but less than yours,’ he replied.

  Claudia was about to reply with a witty comment, instead she asked, ‘Did you hear that?’

  Bernie remained in his twenty something trance. Ben moved to the door, nothing. He opened the door slowly; the corridor was empty. He moved slowly along the corridor to the double doors. He opened a crack and squinted through. All clear. Then he heard a noise coming from the reception area.

  ‘What is it?’ Asked Claudia. She was close enough for his elbow to nudge into her ample bosom. She felt it too. ‘No charge,’ she whispered into his ear. He could feel her hot breath.

  He ignored her flirtatious comment. ‘I don’t know, sounds like someone or something is moving about down there.’

  ‘Who else is down there?’ she asked.

  ‘As far as I know, nobody.’

  They moved to the next set of double doors and pe
ered through. The door made a creak loud enough for the dead to hear. At least thirty of them had crashed through the glass doors. Several were navigating the stairs towards them.

  ‘Shit,’ said Ben. ‘We need to try and barricade the doors before they get here.’

  A high-pitched scream found its way to them. Such was the frequency that the feminine tone suggested that it had come from Claudia, however she was standing right next to Ben.

  ‘Bernie,’ said Ben.

  ‘Cecil,’ said Claudia.

  Still in his love-struck stupor, Bernie had forgotten the dead Cecil was imprisoned in the bathroom. His urgency to urinate had caused him to open the bathroom door without thinking. Cecil look pleased and Bernie pissed himself were he stood.

  He was still screaming when Cecil clamped his teeth on to his neck. The weight of Cecil forced Bernie’s legs to fold. Bernie could not move under the weight of the former councilman. His former life had been good to him, big car, big house and a big belly. Bernie was flattened out as Cecil gorged on his flesh.

  By the time Ben and Claudia had arrived back in the room, Bernie’s scream had become a gargle. He tried to think of Marisa but all he could see was Cecil eating his face.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  North Wales, UK.

  At first a few of the dead wandered along the A494, they stumbled upon the village. One got trapped on the electric fence and grilled herself, she cooked for that long that the electricity fused out. The power station was at the top of a long road at the rear of the village, a couple of the men went up to try and fix it - they didn’t come back alive. When they did come back they didn’t come alone. One of the women came screeching through the village making a high-pitched racket.

  At the front more of the dead were making their way towards the living, just shuffling until Aaron emptied his shotgun into the face of one that got to close. The noise alerted more and before they knew it they were being attacked front and back. In truth Aaron hadn’t shot one of the dead, he had shot Gerard. Gerard had snuck up on Aaron while he was observing the dead getting closer. Gerard had punched Aaron first in the mouth as payback and the second punch on the jaw that put Aaron on his knees. Gerard guessed wrongly that Aaron would not pull the trigger as he drew a large wrench from his jacket. He had intended to bash Aaron’s skull in. His head vanished is a spray of crimson. Gerard’s brother stood open mouthed as he was soaked in the blood of his brother, seconds later he was covered in his own blood as the second shot hit him in the chest – the two brothers lay side by side, both with holes in them.