Mustafa’s confused. “What?”
“What caused people to turn into zombies?” says Kenny. “Was it a virus created by the military? Were they trying to create a super soldier? Was it animal experiments gone wrong? Or, fracking that released an unknown alien toxin? Or was it the Chinese testing a genetically engineered weapon? Or Iran...”
“Who knows?” Scott snaps, jumping in before Kenny can unleash more oddball theories. “Nobody knows.”
Kenny springs out of the chair like a jack in the box. “We’d better go now. This place isn’t safe. Zombies are drawn to shops and lights...or didn’t you know that?”
We shake our heads.
Kenny frowns. “Christ, guys, have you never seen Dawn of the Dead?” Then he shouts into the backroom. “Colin. Let’s go.”
“But there’s a delivery.”
Scott shouts, “Don’t open the back door.”
Carrot Top reappears. “They won’t be long.”
It’s obvious he’s been listening at the doorway. He’s chuckling away to himself like a school kid fidgeting in class. “You’re not going to fall for this, mate, are you? It’s a pure wind up. We all love watching the movies, and that guy from This Life is good in The Walking Dead, but hey, that’s all they are, movies. Not...”
He’s cut off mid-sentence by human shapes grabbing him from behind. There’s no time to do anything. He’s gone in the blink of an eye, dragged into the back.
We hear bloodcurdling screams that tell us it won’t be over quickly for poor Colin who's now being munched on by dead bastards.
Mustafa’s already at the main door. He’s fumbling with the lock and taking so long about opening the door I’m terrified they’ll finish off Colin and reach us before it opens. We have no idea how many there are. Could be two, three, a dozen; a mob. The only way we’ll know for sure is if we stay here, and we’re sure as hell not doing that.
When the door finally swings open, we run like hell out into the snow.
Kenny’s choking back sobs as he sprints behind us. He’s saying, “Fuck, fuck,” over and over again.
When we get some distance between us and the shop and are convinced we’re not being followed, we stop to lean against a wall until our breathing returns to normal. My teeth are rattling about in my head from the exertion, but Mustafa hasn’t even broken a sweat.
Kenny’s panting away. “You...weren’t...lying.”
I doubt he gets to do much exercise watching videos all day long. I’m about to chastise him for that when Mustafa charges off down the street.
Scott shouts, “Wait,” but when he doesn’t stop, Scott runs after him, and not wanting to be left behind, Kenny and I follow, trudging through the snow.
On the pavement up ahead, I see a girl with long blonde hair being pinned down by three dead bastards who are picking away at her flesh with their fingers as if she’s an all-you-can-eat rotisserie buffet. She’s not making a sound. I hope to God she's dead.
Scott slaps a hand on his Mustafa’s shoulder to stop him from getting any closer. “It’s too late, Muzz.”
Mustafa’s eyes are closed as though he’s praying. “It’s Jessica. She works in the shop sometimes. She’s nice.”
I bite back the temptation to say, so was Marie and she tried to eat you.
They’re too busy jabbering away to notice a hand reach out from a pile of snow at their feet. It grabs Mustafa’s ankle and pulls him towards it. Tam the Bam, our local bum who always reeks of booze, a stench so pungent it could knock us out if we got within ten feet of him, rises Carrie-style out of the snow mound.
There is no way we could have seen that coming.
Mustafa wildly bats away at the hand as it drags him towards the pile of snow, but old Tam, or whatever he is now, holds on as Mustafa shrieks and kicks. Whatever the virus infection does it gives the dead superhuman strength because Mustafa does two hundred bench presses a day (he’s always boasting about it) is losing to a man who weighs about the same as a bundle of bones.
Scott arches the axe upward but stops mid-swing. With Tam holding onto Mustafa’s ankle, Scott has to be careful not to hit him with the axe, especially when the only part of Tam that’s visible now is the hand (I recognise the Royal Navy tattoo) because he’s scooted back into the snow, probably anticipating a nice meal in the privacy of his makeshift igloo.
I don’t know what comes over me, but before I’m conscious of what I’m doing, I’m launching myself at the lump in the snow, battering the hell out of the spot where I believe Tam’s head is with my bat, so lost in my murderous rage I only stop when Scott shouts, “Enough,” and points to the bloody carcass.
Even as chunks of flesh rain down, I tell myself I was forced to do it to survive.
Kenny marches over. “Did you get the brain?”
I’ve forgotten that he was even there because he’d been standing around like a spare part whilst I sprang into action.
I eye the bloody mush that used to be Tam’s brain, and then I burst out laughing at the stupidity of his question. “Aye, it’s fair to say I got the brain. I brained him.”
“Good job,” Kenny says, polishing his glasses.
Poor soul. He might have accidentally got a few splashes of blood on his specs as he stood back and marvelled at the live entertainment.
Mustafa sits in the snow, rubbing his ankle, and then he gives Kenny the death stare. “Where the hell were you, mate?”
“Oh,” Kenny says, “I’m here mainly in an advisory role.”
“Well,” says Mustafa, eyeballing him, “you’d better learn to get into a killer role. We won’t survive if one of us is just a passenger.”
Kenny pushes his glasses back up his nose, the corners of his mouth curling at the edges before he releases a full on smile. “Wow, Emma, you’re a bad ass zombie killing machine.”
I’m about to dampen his enthusiasm by telling him he’ll end up getting eaten alive if he doesn’t learn to fight like me. Instead, my eyes are trained on Mustafa, waiting for him to thank me for saving his sorry backside. No gesture of appreciation is forthcoming.
“You’re welcome,” I snort.
No response, he’s too busy rubbing his ankle.
I vow there and then that the next thing that tries to take a chunk out of that guy, can damn well have him. I won’t be intervening and putting my life on the line for him again. Instead, my pity will be with the poor dead bastard that ends up with indigestion.
6 ALWAYS PLAN A QUICK GETAWAY
“What do we do now?”
In the absence of a proper plan, (doing battle with the undead scrambled our brains) and with darkness descending, we agreed to go with Kenny to his place. It doesn’t seem wise to split up, besides, right now, it felt good to be with other people and Kenny has a car.
When I mentioned Kenny's car, Mustafa sneered. “When he says car, he really means decrepit rust bucket. Anytime it rains I swear the car will disintegrate cos the only thing holding it together is rust.” He addresses Kenny. “I take it your heap of junk is still capable of moving?”
Kenny nods. “Aye, but don’t let me put you out, pal. You can always take your own car.” He put his hand on his head. “Doh, I forgot you don’t have one.”
“Ha, ha,” says Mustafa, his face brightening.
“And,” continues Kenny, “I’ve got a CB radio. I'll crank it up. See if we can't get onto the police channel.”
At last, someone who knows what they're doing.
Kenny leads the way down a series of small back streets. All the time we’re walking, we’re poised for action, full of trepidation, but ready to brain anyone who gets in our way.
When we stop dead at an abandoned store next to a boarded up cafe, my first thought is that this can’t be the place. There's a rusted TO LET sign on a window with an out-of-date phone number. I can tell because it has an old area code. The store’s boarded up at the front and looks like no one has set foot in it for years. Part of the name on the old store sign
is visible: VIDEO.
Kenny’s car is parked out front and is exactly how Mustafa described it. It reminds me of a car my dad had ten years ago before he retired to Spain. Every morning the car needed a shove to get it moving.
“You live here?” Scott's comment echoes my own thoughts.
"Aye," said Kenny.
“How can you live here?” I say as he lifts up one of the boards to reveal a door.
Kenny wrinkles his nose. “The video store I own was once part of a chain. This is the first store they had, and there’s a living area out back. So, I stay there. Its rent free.”
As he leads us all through the dusty store with shelves full of video cassettes, I can’t help but think that time has stood still in here just like in Kenny’s video store. The proof was in the cobwebs and dust. I half-expected Lady Havisham to appear. A rat the size of a cat scuttles across the floor.
When Kenny opens the door behind the counter that leads into the back of the store, the transformation makes me feel as if we’ve stepped through a wardrobe into Narnia. The walls have been painted white, and light streams in through the skylight. There’s a modern sofa and two gaming chairs in front of an enormous plasma TV. The only things predictable about Kenny’s pad are the movie posters on the wall and the PlayStation consol next to the TV along with a video player. Nobody uses video players these days – we’ve all gone digital, DVD or Blu-ray.
I can’t resist smiling. “Wow, this is amazing.”
Kenny blushes and peers at me through his thick glasses. “Aye, it’s no bad. No rent to pay and a pal hooked it up so I could leech electricity from across the street.” He flips on a light switch, but the lights don’t come on. “Not like that helps us now. No electricity. But...” He heads through a doorway. “I’m used to it going off, so I’m prepared.” He reappears with a gas stove and a few cans of beans under his arm.
Apart from Kenny, who I suspect, doesn’t have so much as a speck of dirt or blood on his glasses, the rest of us resemble extras from a bad B movie. Mustafa’s wearing the Incredible Hulk’s t-shirt: it’s ripped right down the middle, so he can be the girl in peril running from the monster while showing way too much chest. Scott looks as though he’s been attacked by a bull fleeing a slaughterhouse, whilst I look like I’ve been filming a slasher movie. I have globs of blood, guts, and brain matter in my hair.
Soon we’re all cradling cups of tea made from water Scott boiled on the stove, and it’s so quiet we can hear a pin drop. With no power, all of the nifty gadgets we take for granted are now useless junk. If it weren’t for the fact people were turning into zombies and eating us, Greenpeace would have been pleased.
Kenny’s bustling about his home, opening cupboards and looking under things to try and find his CB radio. None of us has the heart to tell him the battery will probably be flat, and even if it isn’t, he’s unlikely to make any contact. Does anyone even use them any more?
Scott’s being the sensible one, planning what to do next whilst the rest of us sit in stunned silence, wishing this wasn’t real as we tuck into our meal of cold beans and crackers. Kenny has a lot of crackers; he says they last for years and don’t go stale.
I want to close my eyes and wish all this was just one long, vivid nightmare. Archie will come over to our flat and be the big lummox hogging our couch, and Mustafa will be the guy in our local convenience store who I’d exchange a few words with every morning, whilst Kenny will be back in that time warp shop of his, nose stuck in a comic book, reading about The Walking Dead instead of trying to figure out how to survive them.
“Well?” Mustafa nudges Kenny who’s sitting next to him. “You’re meant to be the expert. What do we do now?”
Mustafa droning away makes me realise a conversation has been going on without me.
My gaze rests on Kenny who’s shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose. This unconscious gesture is starting to bug me. Why couldn’t he get new specs that don’t need to be held together by sticky tape, ones that would sit properly on his nose without all that footering about?
When Kenny speaks, his face brightens. “We kill all the dead bastards we can find and burn their bodies.”
Mustafa puckers his lips and blows out some air. “Great plan. How do we manage that exactly? There’s only three of us.”
Three? Fucking three? What am I, fucking invisible?
I almost choke on my anger. My tea and cracker crumbs shoot past my lips when I shout, “Who saved your neck back there, you ungrateful bastard?” I can’t believe Scott counts this sexist pig as a pal.
Mustafa has the sense to look apologetic, in a kicked puppy dog sort of way. “Sorry, I meant four of us,” he says, avoiding my glare because now he now knows better than to antagonize me.
He's not counting me because I’m a girl. Yet I helped save his life. Twice.
“I should have left you to Marie the zombie and Tam the Bam. Next time you’re on your own.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Fuck you.”
Kenny steps in. “First off, we need to contact the authorities. They should have a contingency plan for this kind of emergency. One that might involve some form of containment for the infected and a safe place for the rest of us to go. Most communications are down, so I need to find that radio. He stops to look around the room. “If I can remember where I put it. Been a while since I’ve used it. There’s too many geeks on the airwaves.”
Scott and I exchange a wee smile. Some people would call Kenny a geek.
Scott’s listening intently. “Sounds sensible. But, there might not be any authorities left. We need to consider that possibility.”
I figure Scott’s been doing a checklist in his head. He’s always been analytical; our weekly shop is planned with military precision.
Mustafa chooses that moment to slam his mobile phone against the wall. “Nae signal. Bastard. It’s still no fucking working. I can’t reach my folks.” He sinks to the floor, grumbling to himself like an old woman. He mentions Mohamed a few times.
I don’t think the prophet can help him now, but I don’t say so. His Muslim faith might be the only thing that gets him through whatever’s coming.
After rummaging about, Kenny’s produces his CB radio with a flourish and is fiddling about with it. “CB radios are great, and you can even use this one to listen to police chatter.” He beams. When his head drops and I see he’s frowning, I know that the radio isn’t working. “The battery’s dead,” he says. “Haven’t used it in so long there’s no juice left.”
“Even if you got it working, Kenny, I don’t think we’ll hear anything that will help us," said Mustafa. "The whole world’s gone to hell. Nobody’s in charge. If they were, the first thing they’d have done is gone into the power stations and got the electricity back on.”
As much as I hated to agree with Mustafa, he was probably right.
Kenny’s disappointment doesn’t last long, and he starts outlining the rules of dealing with a zombie apocalypse, as if they’re written in some book somewhere and he’s the person with sole access.
Sitting here listening to what he’s saying, something obvious has been niggling away at me because no one has mentioned it. They’ve been talking as though everyone else in the world is already dead.
“Aren’t you overlooking something more important?” I say.
“What’s that?” someone says. I don’t know who because I’ve been thinking about Fiona and how scared she must be. She’s in that house alone, and she won’t leave. I’m hoping her agoraphobia will save her. If you don't go out and don't let anyone in surely they can't get you?
My eyes sweep the room. “I don’t know about you, but I’m on my way to check if my sister’s okay. She needs me to survive. Don’t you guys have any family who might need you?”
Kenny removes his glasses and wipes his eyes with a sleeve, then does the same thing with the specs before putting them back on. When he speaks, his voice is clear and free of emotion. He coul
d be reciting a walkthrough for a video game. “I don’t think we should look for our families. It’s always how they get killed in the movies. We’ve got to assume that if they live in a heavily populated area they’ve already been killed or turned into zombies.”
Scott eyes Kenny as though he’s an imbecile. “I’m not ready to give up on my family, write them off as already dead. How can you say we should? Don’t you care about your family, whether they are dead or alive? Or are you as soulless as those dead things out there?”
I jump in. “Fiona’s worth the risk.” And I meant it. Since our parents moved to Spain, it’s been just her and me. Five years ago, her handbag was snatched in Glasgow city centre. She’d held on to the strap and was dragged along the pavement and kicked and beaten. The thug broke her jaw in two places. She lost her faith in humanity. So there was nothing in this world that could stop me from trying to help her.
Mustafa eyes me wearily and nods. “I agree with Emma. I’m gonna go to my house to see if my parents and sister are okay.”
Kenny waves his hands like he’s trying to stop a train. “It’s suicide to split up because we’re weaker without having each other watching our backs.”
Mustafa’s eyes drift towards Kenny and linger on him as though a secret message has passed between them. I think it’s weird until realisation dawns. Kenny hasn’t mentioned any family.
“What about your family, Kenny?” I ask him gently.
He doesn’t say anything.
“You do have family here, don’t you?”
He swallows. “Of course I have family.”
“No you don’t,” Mustafa says.
“I do.” For the first time since we met him, he seems agitated. Kenny closes his eyes. When he opens them again, tears are reflected in his glasses. Scott and Mustafa do what men always do when another man cries. They focus their attention elsewhere. “I just don’t know where.”
The Restless Dead: A Zombie Novel Page 4