Searching For Summer: A Zombie Novel

by Midwood, Peter

  “Did you have a good one?” Marvin asked Piper as he passed him coming downstairs.

  “I sure did, Marv’, and sorry about the mess.”

  “It’s okay, Piper, I’ve got me a new cleaner.” He pushed Simon along the corridor. “Move it, boy.”

  Piper turned left at the bottom of the stairs and walked to the double doors leading into the bar. He was just about to push them open when he heard a familiar voice on the other side of it. It wasn’t any of the deadbeats who hung around here all the time, but he had heard it somewhere before. He just couldn’t place it. He pressed his ear to the glass panel and listened.

  “…piece of shit who took my daughter this morning told me he was a child kidnapper and I think that very same person dropped the boy off here. I want to know where I can find him.”

  “Suppose we don’t feel like talking?” somebody at a table said.

  Piper could hardly believe his ears. It was Summer’s father, the cop he thought he’d killed this morning. How had he survived? Bulletproof vest, that’s how. From now on, he vowed to shoot everybody in the face. How did he know she was here? A tracker! The crafty son of a bitch had put a tracker on his daughter and simply followed her here. He would have to get one of those scanners that detect microchips for future abductions, but for now, he’d make Summer tell him where the bug was and cut it out of her if necessary. First thing’s first, though, he’d kill this cop for real. He reached around the back of his trousers for his gun and almost cursed out loud when he felt it wasn’t there. He’d left it on the sideboard upstairs. He almost went to get it but changed his mind; it would be more valuable to hear what the cop had to say. Besides, he had plenty more guns in the van. He let out his breaths in long slow exhalations and listened in.

  When he walked into the room Piper had used, Simon bent over and vomited onto the bare floorboards. Marvin laughed from behind him and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, boy, you’ll get used to it. Just make sure you clean that puke up while you’re doing the rest of the room. Pull the twitcher onto the floor and ball-up them sheets. You’ll be washing them later. There’s a rubber sheet underneath, give that a good scrub down and then—” he paused mid-sentence. “Did you hear that, boy?”

  He walked out of the room and went through the door on the opposite side of the landing. Simon followed and dry-retched when he saw what was on the bed. Marvin smacked him on the left ear. “I’ll let you off the one time, but that’s it. No more puking, do you hear me? You’re going to see a lot of shit like this, so you’d better learn to man-up and quickly.”

  Simon took deep breaths and forced himself to look at horror on the bed. So much blood covered the bed that it was impossible to tell what colour the sheet was. Lying on its back was a mutilated zombie girl who must have been three, or four at the most. All of its fingers and toes had been cut off, as had its ears and nose, and its eyes had been gouged out. The amputated body parts were arranged in a crude pentagram at the bottom of the bed with the eyes in the middle. The front right-hand side of its skull was smashed in, yet when the pair entered the room, the resilient creature growled and thrashed its head about, blindly.

  “Goddamn,” Marvin said. “That great, stupid bastard, Big Dave, hasn’t killed it right. You’ll have to put it out of its misery, boy. Go get the gun out of the top drawer and shoot it in the head.”

  “No, sir,” Simon said, horrified. “She’s just a little girl, and I’ve never used a gun before.”

  “Marvin slapped him again, in the same spot where he’d hit him moments earlier. “Don’t you ever say no to me again, nigger boy, do you understand?” Simon fought back the tears while rubbing his throbbing ear and nodded his head. “Get the fucking gun out.”

  Simon slid open the drawer of the dressing table and pulled out an old-fashioned revolver with a long barrel and a spinning cylinder. The kind he’d seen in cowboy films. It was surprisingly heavy, and he almost dropped it. Marvin laughed from behind him. “If you’re too piss-weak to lift it up, use both hands. And get close, so you don’t miss, we can’t afford to waste ammunition. Make it count, or you’ll feel my hand again.”

  Simon approached the brutalised creature on the bed. It gnashed its teeth feebly, blood and drool dropped out of its mouth onto its chest. He took another step forward until he was less than an arm’s length away from it and using both hands, he pointed the gun at the zombie’s face. His frail arms were shaking from the effort, and he had to concentrate to keep them still. “Go on then, boy,” Marvin said. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  “An opportunity,” Simon said. “My dad used to say, when opportunity knocks, you should always open the door.”

  He spun around to face Marvin and pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening in the small room, and Simon dropped the gun and covered his ears. His aim was perfect; he’d shot his tormentor right in the centre of the chest. Marvin staggered backwards into the wall next to the door and looked down at the blood spreading across his shirt front, his eyes comically wide in disbelief. He tore open the garment as if he was going to examine the wound, but slid down the wall, dead before he could. A red smear trail on the wall followed him down.

  “Gotcha,” Simon said.

  10: Gentlemen’s Club (III)

  “What the hell was that?” Danny said.

  “Relax, officer,” said the guy in the high-viz jumper. “It’ll just be Marvin taking care of a zombie, or maybe he’s letting the nigger boy do one.”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking,” Danny said, “and I’ve decided that little boy would be better off with me, so I’m taking him out of here.”

  The regulars burst out laughing, Hi-Viz left his place near the bar flap and stood directly in front of Danny. Danny took a step away from the bar and stared down at him. He was a foot shorter than Danny, but what he lacked in height, he made up for with confidence. “You, officer,” Hi-Viz said, jabbing a finger in his chest, “are not taking him anywhere. Marvin bought him fair and square. He belongs to him now.”

  “He bought him?” Danny said. “From who? And who has the right to sell children? And is that same guy delivering my daughter to somebody, like they’d just fucking bought her on Amazon?”

  “Man, you ask way too many questions,” Hi-Viz said, gripping the handle of a large sheathed knife, hanging from his belt. “Maybe you should leave while you still can, and don’t even think about going for your guns. That would be stupid.”

  “I wasn’t,” Danny said. He swung his leg back and kicked Hi-Viz between the legs with such force that it lifted him off the floor. When he landed, he dropped like a stone down a well and made strange mewling noises. “I was thinking of doing that.”

  A second of silence and indecision followed, as is always the case when cowards are confronted by somebody who can fight, and Danny seized the moment. He drew his Glock and shot the man to his right in the head, the contents of his skull emptied into the face of the man behind him, and he toppled sideways into his arms. The bloody-faced man tried to stand his companion back upright like he might be okay, and at the same time, tried to wipe the blood and gunk out of his eyes. Danny shot him in the chest before he could clear his vision. He dropped his dead friend and fell on top of him.

  He turned to his left and shot a fleeing man in the back and then put Hi-Viz out of his misery with a bullet to the head. Two men sitting at a table in front of him jumped to their feet, one of them pulled a gun and fired just as Danny dropped to his knees. The shot went high and wide and shattered the glass in one of the double doors behind the bar. The second man kicked the table over, and the pair ducked behind it. Danny swung his machine gun off his back and opened fire. The table disintegrated, and the duo behind it screamed in unison. A pool of blood trickled out from under the shattered wooden remnants.

  Piper uncoiled from his crouched position and brushed fragments of broken glass out of his tufts of hair while he ran for the back door. He could predict the outcome of the ruckus;
he didn’t need to stay and watch. The cop was on a mission, a relentless treasure hunt and Piper held the booty. It would be better if he weren't here. He could always ditch the girl, simply dump her on the street and avoid any future trouble, but where was the fun in that?

  Simon reached the top of the stairs just as Piper was running past the bottom of them. He pointed the gun at him and pulled the trigger, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Marvin had been telling the truth; there was only one bullet in the gun. He stopped on the top step and blocked his ears against the gunfight below as he tried to plot an escape route. Going back into the bar would be stupid, he could get shot, and he couldn’t follow Piper in case he was recaptured. Even with Marvin dead, there was no escape.

  His only hope was with the policeman downstairs, that’s if he was for real, and he was in the middle of the shootout. The people in the bar greatly outnumbered him, and it seemed unlikely he would survive. Disheartened, he sat down in the corner of the landing, wrapped his arms around his legs, put his head on his knees and wept.

  Danny sprang up from behind the bar and sprayed bullets down the length of it, sending a deluge of splinters on the people crouching below it. A man in a dirty blue baseball hat yelped and jumped to his feet, trying to pull a triangle of timber, the size of a shark’s tooth, out of his left cheek. Danny riddled his chest with bullets and fired more rounds into the woodwork. “I can do this all day,” he said. “But I’ve got better things to do. How about we call a truce? You all go your ways, and I’ll go mine. Anybody who thinks that’s a good idea, stand up with your hands above your head. It's not a trick, and it’s also your last chance.”

  Six men slowly stood up, with their hands raised. “Don’t shoot, officer,” a thin man in double denim said.

  “Anyone else around there that I should know about?” Danny asked.

  “There’s a guy injured,” Double Denim said. “But that’s it, I swear.”

  Danny walked around the corner of the bar, keeping the gun on his prisoners. A young man with a patchy beard was lying on the floor with enough timber sticking out of his left leg to build a fence. “Help me, man,” he said, through clenched teeth.

  “No,” Danny said. “You’re of no concern to me. I’m going to find my daughter, and I need that boy to help me.” He turned to face Double Denim and the other five men. “What’s upstairs?”

  “Marvin’s turned it into a good old-fashioned knocking shop,” said a toothless old man with a wild grey beard and wilder eyes. He let out a high-pitched laugh of somebody who had lost their mind and carried on, “Except, the hookers are twitchers. He’ll probably have the boy cleaning rooms out. Things can get a bit messy.”

  Danny’s eyebrows raised and his stomach turned. He walked behind the bar and set fire to a pile of porn magazines with the clear plastic lighter beside them. He fired his machine gun into the spirits shelf, obliterating bottles and the backing mirror. “You lot,” he said, “get out of here before I kill you all.”

  “What about me?” the man on the floor said.

  “They either take you with them, or they leave you here to die.” He picked up half-a-dozen burning magazines and threw them at the alcohol-soaked wall behind him. It burst into flames with a woof and instantly, fingers of red heat reached up and raced across the ceiling. “Whichever it is, they don’t have much time to decide.” He ran through the doors into the back and charged upstairs.

  Simon was cowering in the corner with his back against the wall, holding an old gun, with quivering hands. Danny stopped in his tracks and held his hand out to the frightened youngster. “Easy, boy,” he said. “Put the gun down; I’m here to help you. Would you like to come with me? I can take you away from all of this. They’ll be no more beatings and no more mopping up.” The boy nodded his head vigorously. “Good, because I could use your help getting my daughter back, but first I need to take care of the landlord.”

  “I already did,” Simon said, lowering his gun.

  “Is he dead?”

  “I think so. I shot him in the chest. Blood came out of his back.”

  “Good lad,” Danny said. “And don’t feel bad about it, he had it coming. Are you ready to go? Things are going to start hotting up in a moment, and I mean that literally.”

  Simon got to his feet, dropped the empty gun and walked to the top of the stairs. Danny squatted to meet him and swept the boy off his feet in an embrace. “I know you’ve suffered, Simon. Is that your real name?” He felt the boy’s head nod against his cheek. “I can see it in them big dark eyes, but from now on, you’re safe. I promise you I will not let anybody, dead or alive, harm you. Have you got that, little man?”

  Simon nodded his head again, and tears fell onto the policeman’s shoulder. He tried to say thanks, but no words would form. Instead, he put his arms around the officer’s neck and hugged him tightly, displaying his gratitude in the strength of his embrace. Danny returned the hug, and for the first time since as far back as he could remember, Simon smiled.

  A huge man, covered in tattoos, walked out of the passage between the bedrooms onto the landing. Because of his size, Simon assumed this was Big Dave, the man who’d done horrible things to the little zombie girl. “That little fucker killed Marvin,” he said, pointing a long thin dagger at Simon.

  “Block your ears, Simon.”

  The boy put his hands over his ears.

  “Are you worried about him hearing bad language?” Big Dave said, striding towards them. “That’s the least of your fucking worries.”

  “No,” Danny said. “I’m worried about harming his hearing.”

  He drew his Glock and shot the man between the eyes. He dropped the knife and toppled over backwards like a felled tree. A cloud of dust rose out of the carpet when he landed. Simon flinched at the noise, then eased back into a cuddle. Danny carried Simon downstairs and stopped to look back at the bar area. Thick black smoke was curling through the broken glass of the double doors, and inside the room, somebody was shouting for help and coughing. Danny was not surprised to learn the barflies had left the injured man to die. “Is there a back way out of here, Simon?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said. “It’s along this passage and through a kitchen. Your daughter’s in a van that could still be in the back alley.”

  Danny set off running.

  11: Snooping

  Cleaning up the mess left by the dead girl had been hard work. Moses had bundled the sheets up around the corpse and dragged it onto the landing at the top of the fire exit stairs, where it awaited Piper’s disposal. Moving the body had left a bloody trail across the marble floor, so he’d had to mop that up. He’d flipped the ruined mattress over (which was a task in itself) and covered it with a clean duvet, in case any blood seeped through. He’d then had to thoroughly clean himself, scrubbing his hands raw to get the blood out from under his fingernails. Finally, he had sprayed the room with air freshener and opened the French doors to dispel the coppery odour of blood.

  Happy that the room no longer resembled a crime scene, he’d changed into his white gown and hung a wooden cross around his neck. As he combed his long brown hair in front of the mirror, he thought he was starting to look like Jesus. The Hollywood Jesus portrayed in those awful swords-and-sandals epics that lasted for hours. Still, it was a look he knew his visitors liked to see, the godly messiah, and Moses was dressed to impress as he awaited the arrival of the Harpers.

  He had met the family at dinner the previous night. He usually joined his congregation in the restaurant (now serving rations instead of a la carte) for their evening meal and said a few words from the head of the table before they ate. They liked to hear how God was looking after them and took comfort in the empty promises Moses made. It was also an opportunity to inspect his growing community and pick out potential suitors. Since the word had spread about The Castle being a Christian haven, people had started showing up in dribs and drabs. Moses didn’t have the inclination to vet them all, so he trusted his security t
eam to choose who was admitted or turned away.

  A row of tables had been pushed together to form a single long one and in the left-hand corner seats were a group of three who Moses hadn’t seen before – two middle-aged women and a young girl. The trio had their eyes closed tight and hands together in prayer while Moses went through his spiel. The girl looked to be about twelve or thirteen, and although she was wafer thin, Moses could see the buds of breasts sprouting beneath her grey sweatshirt. Something stirred in his loins, and he almost lost the rhythm of his patter. She would be perfect for bearing his child. After dinner, he had introduced himself and invited them to his quarters the following morning to give them a proper welcome.

  At ten o’clock, there was a knock on the door and Moses was pleased to see the ladies were punctual. Nowadays, time was meaningless; gone were the days of to-the-minute appointments and immovable deadlines. He often wondered how many people still kept track of time and what they thought when they looked at their watches.

  He went to the door and beckoned the trio inside with a swoop of his arm, “Ladies,” he said, wearing his most charming smile. “Please come in.”

  They entered and looked around at the opulent surroundings, one of the older ladies gasped when she looked up at the crystal chandelier. “Welcome to my humble home,” Moses said.

  He ushered them towards a sumptuous green leather sofa, large enough to seat six people and sat down in one of two matching armchairs opposite them. He cast a furtive glance over his shoulder to check that the bedroom door was still closed. He didn’t want any lingering odours wafting out, upsetting his guests.