The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1)

by SW Fairbrother

Alister glared at me. ‘The word you’re looking for is venomous. Snakes are venomous, not poisonous. Something is only poisonous if you eat it. And you need to let me go.’

  I ignored the request. ‘Okay, are you venomous then?’

  ‘Only mildly. Not enough to kill anyone. I’m sorry about the old man. I wanted to smell him, that’s all, and then he rolled over onto me.’

  I believed him. Margery called it ‘shifterbrain’—the way a shifter’s thoughts changed and matched the animal they were. To a snake’s-eye view, we’re nothing but feet and nostrils—maybe feet, nostrils, and belly if you’re a bit chubby. He glanced at me then raced to the door and grabbed the handle.

  ‘I told you it was locked.’

  ‘You need to let me go.’

  ‘I want to talk to you. What’s the hurry?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything to you. Margery said I could trust you, but she didn’t say you were a zombie. And you have a corpse in the attic.’

  ‘That’s my mother. She’s dead, but it may not be permanent. And I’m not a zombie, not yet.’ It came out a croak.

  He shrugged as if it were only a matter of time.

  ‘I’m not a danger to anyone. Not yet.’

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. We both knew that was also only a matter of time. He folded his arms.

  ‘I’m not dead yet. I might get lucky. Maybe I’ll be a carrier.’

  Alister gave me a pitying look. ‘Dad didn’t want to go into the pit either. He was going to be cremated.’

  ‘You saw him?’

  He glanced at the door again and shifted his weight from foot to foot. ‘No. Ben told me. And I only saw Malcom... Dad when he was dead. He tried to hide it, but I could smell it. Zombies have a very sweet smell, like liquorice. I don’t know why. You’d think they’d smell of blood. Or dead things.’

  I wondered how many zombies he’d met. ‘Do I smell of liquorice?’

  ‘Yeah, really strong.’

  At least I no longer smelt like I was decomposing. Bonus point to zombiehood.

  ‘Alister, do you know who crushed you?’

  ‘My name’s Oliver. At least it’s the one I’m used to. And, yes I do. Can I go now?’ He glanced at the tea, seemingly seeing it for the first time.

  ‘Well? Are you going to tell me? Have you gone to the police?’

  He gave me a look of contempt. ‘And why would I do that? You’re a zombie. You locked me in a bag. I don’t trust you. And the police don’t care about people like me.’

  I couldn’t argue the point. I just had to look beyond him at the cat flap at the bottom of my door to see the proof of that. ‘What’s the hurry?’

  ‘I came looking for you because I needed help. Ben needs help. He’s so weak, and he can’t fly away anymore. But he doesn’t need another zombie.’

  Per had been right. ‘You did it. You and Ben. Why on earth would you do something like that?’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Because everyone’s looking for this boy with these huge identifying characteristics.’ Then his voice dropped, and he said softly, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’

  ‘If he’s that sick, call Per Ogunwale. He’ll help.’

  ‘He has been helping. I can’t get hold of him. Per set up a bed and a drip for him in the spare room at Per’s dad’s house.’ I closed my eyes and suppressed a silent scream. All the time I’d been speaking to Moses and Florence, Ben had been upstairs. ‘But Ben’s not answering his phone. And neither is Per or his dad. There’s something wrong.’

  ‘Call 999. They’ll send someone out there.’ I swallowed. Alister’s face was beginning to grow fuzzy. I blinked and shook my head to try to clear my vision, but it just made my head thump harder.

  ‘They’ll just send Ben to prison. You’re the Lipscombe. You’re supposed to help people like us. If you’re not going to let me go, you need to send someone to help him.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Like healers. And security just in case. Don’t you have, like, werewolf swat teams and stuff?’

  ‘You’ve been paying too much attention to the Human Preservation Front.’ A tickle rose in my throat. I began to cough, but it was stuck. I reached out for the cup of tea at my side. It smashed on the floor.

  Alister’s gaze flicked to the cup and back to me. But evidently he wasn’t going to risk coming any closer. He said something to me, but the words came at me through a fog. I tried to catch them, but they slid through my brain and dissipated into the air. Burning bile blistered my throat. My body slid, hot and boneless, to the carpet. I blinked twice to try to rid my eyes of the wetness, but the world blurred further. My heart, which had been racing, began to slow.

  Uninstructed, limbs pinned to the floor, my body began a familiar process.

  61

  I’ve died enough times that I’ve never been afraid of the real thing, but I’d always thought I knew what came next. I never thought I’d still be walking in this world, the same way it had never occurred to me as a child that I might spend my adulthood wiping Sigrid’s arse and worrying that someone would find out about the dead body in the attic.

  I opened my eyes. The floor was hard under my nose and only an inch from my face. The nausea was gone, as was the fever and accompanying aches and pains. I stretched, a long glorious stretch, and rolled onto my back.

  The door stood wide open. Alister was gone. No surprise there. The only surprise was that he had left me a note on the floor beside my head. In neat block letters, under an 077 mobile number, he’d written, ‘Not going to wait around for you to wake up. You know I can’t not say anything. I’ll wait twelve hours in case you want the other option. Please don’t’

  Please don’t... what? Eat anyone?

  I got up and sat heavily on the chair, or at least that’s what I intended to do. I bounced. My body was as lightweight as spider silk, dried from the inside. I was as light and inconsequential as a leaf. Did all zombies feel like this? I supposed no one had ever asked. I didn’t want to be light. I wanted to be heavy with muscle, tissue, and blood. Heavy with life.

  I felt my teeth with a cautious finger. They felt the same shape but the tips were razor sharp, and when I tapped them, they made a light ringing sound. I stared at the floor.

  I was a hag. My body was made for coming back from the dead. Maybe if I died then came back, it would trigger the reverse decomposition process. Maybe zombification didn’t have to be permanent.

  I didn’t bother going to my bed or getting a sick bag. I closed my eyes.

  In the underworld, harpies didn’t just cover the floor, they sat on each others’ shoulders four birds high and bickered and snapped and jostled. I gagged at the stink and ignored the squawking as I shoved my way to the door and back to the world of the living.

  Where I was still dead. I sat still for a moment, even though I knew better, trying to feel for my heartbeat, but it wasn’t there. My eyes burned with tears.

  Until a few minutes before, there had been the chance my body would fight the infection, that I’d be one of the two percent. Until a few minutes before, there had been hope.

  Now there was none. I lay on the floor and thought about death.

  I had options, but no hope. Stay in the underworld, get cremated, murder to eat, or go to the pit. None were particularly appealing.

  I could just die and avoid the whole thing—spend the rest of eternity in the underworld. Alister would call the NRTs, and they’d come and cart my body off to the pit. It meant no coming back. If I did come back? Best-case scenario: I’d end up shambling, ravenous and insane, in the pit. Worst-case scenario: I wouldn’t be in the pit, and my family would be the casualties of the first rule of zombie club. If I was going to die, I might as well do it properly.

  I certainly wasn’t going to murder anyone. There were plenty of people I didn’t like, but to casually stab them? Strangle them? I couldn’t picture myself doing it, not to anyone. It was one thing to say it was them or me, and quite another
to go out and murder somebody. Relief washed over me. You never know until you’re tested, but I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t an option. Not a real one. I had alternatives. Nasty alternatives, but alternatives. And that left only one, because the pit was no alternative at all.

  So that was it. The end of Vivia Brisk. I felt strangely calm, and that didn’t feel right. Wasn’t I supposed to be railing against the dying of the light? But all I could think was that all the things I needed to do—find Ben, fix Siggie—didn’t matter anymore.

  If I couldn’t do them in twenty-four hours, they would be someone else’s problem. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. That was it. Game over.

  My to-do list had suddenly been cropped a whole lot shorter. It shouldn’t have felt like a relief, but it did. Everyone else—Stanley, Obe, even Sigrid—would have to learn to stand on their own two feet.

  I knew what being dead was like, and it wasn’t so bad. I’d get to find out if there really was an induction. And where all the dead people went once they were done with the underworld. Maybe I’d reincarnate. Start over. Or maybe whatever came next was something I just couldn’t imagine. I swallowed. It brought back the memory of Malcolm in his cell, trying to lick his dry lips with saliva that no longer existed.

  I lurched to the bathroom and stared into the mirror above the sink. My eyes weren’t cloudy, but they weren’t bright and glossy either. I didn’t look dead, but I did look seriously ill. I wouldn’t be able to pass for long.

  I grabbed my makeup bag and began applying foundation. It went on a bit bobbly over the new warts, but with a bit of blusher and lipstick, I looked alive at least.

  Malcolm’s words returned to me. You should wear more makeup, Vivvie. Laughter burst from my lips. It hit my stomach, and I couldn’t stop. I laughed until my stomach ached, and then I cried and had to reapply all the makeup.

  62

  I was hungry. Not ravenous. Not yet, but hungry. And I didn’t want a sandwich. Everything I’d thought about zombie hunger was wrong. The slim packages in Malcolm’s freezer were wrong. I didn’t want neat squares of meat. I didn’t want meat the way humans want animal meat. I didn’t want human steak, with maybe a little brain thrown in. I wanted the lot. Toes, ankles, genitalia, ears, and noses.

  I stood in the bathroom and stared into the mirror, trying to find the part of me that found the thought disgusting. It was missing.

  Another option occurred to me. I could go do the graveyard thing. It would be risky. Graveyards are patrolled. And the ghosts would be happy to give me up. The prospect of a zompocalypse holds little entertainment value. Who’d change the movie projector at the Graveyard Theatre?

  ‘And I don’t want to eat human slime,’ I said aloud. Except I did. I did very much.

  It would mean no murdering. No death by fire. The pit was a risk, but not if I was careful. I had an answer.

  A tap sounded at the bathroom door. Lorraine’s voice followed. ‘Vivia, sweetie? Are you all right?’

  I took a deep breath and opened the door. ‘Yes, I’m...’ Fine, I was going to say. I was going to say I was fine, but I couldn’t because Lorraine wasn’t herself.

  She was a candyman version—a fat dumpling made of sugar-flavoured red flesh and white marbling, and I understood human slime wasn’t really an option. From now on, everyone I knew was food. It was only a matter of time before I gave in and ate.

  ‘Are you okay? You’re giving me ever such a funny look.’

  I mentally shook myself. ‘I’m fine.’ I gave her what I hoped was an innocent smile, but as anyone over the age of three knows, that only makes you look guiltier. ‘I hate to do this to you, but could you take Sigrid for a bit longer? I have something I really need to do.’

  ‘Sure, sweetie. As long as it involves going to the doctor. You really don’t look well.’

  ‘I know. I’m going to fix it.’ I risked another glance at her. She still looked edible, but she was also the woman to whom I owed an enormous debt. I’d still be stuck in my room if it weren’t for Lorraine. I wouldn’t have had my job if I also had to look after Sigrid during the day. No amount of checking on Lorraine’s dead husband made up for the time she gave me. I bit back tears. ‘I don’t say thank you enough. What would I do without you?’

  She gave me a worried look. ‘I know you and Stan don’t always get on, but he’s going to be all right. He’s a tough old coot, and fairy bites aren’t usually serious.’

  I gave her a weak smile.

  She smiled back at me, ‘I don’t know how that fairy got in. Maybe the cat flap. I’ll pop into Tesco’s and pick up some repellent.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ve got to go out. I’ll... text you when I know what’s happening.’

  I felt her gaze on me as I walked across the landing to my bedroom. I dressed for a funeral in smart black jeans and a black silk shirt. I brushed my hair into an up do I usually save for special occasions. Just because you’re going to burn doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look your best. Besides, this was going to be my outfit for all eternity.

  And the things that were important to me? The key around my neck and two photos. One of me and Sigrid as children, the other of my friends at the Lipscombe. I folded them and tucked them into the back pocket of my jeans. I packed my laptop into my backpack.

  I kissed Sigrid goodbye, but aware of Lorraine’s worried eyes on me, I didn’t cry. Then I put on my coat, grabbed the keys to Stanley’s van and left my home for the last time.

  63

  I drove around the corner and parked illegally on a double yellow line. Ticket? Nobody’d be collecting where I was going. I flipped open my laptop and, just as I’d hoped, managed to log on to the home Wi-Fi.

  I spent five minutes tapping out an email to Obe, letting him know where to find my will and trying to explain what had happened. I spent a little longer figuring out how to set a timer delay on sending it out.

  It took longer to write out the email to Dunne. I didn’t mention my impending zombiehood, but otherwise I left nothing out. I liked Jillie, but I was convinced she’d been the one to murder Berenice. She could have been telling the truth about Ben and the rabbit meat, but it made no sense to me. Annie knew nothing about it, and Ben had been in London almost two weeks before Christmas. Berenice had still been alive on Christmas Eve, and Jillie had also lied about seeing Berenice on Christmas Day. She’d been the only one home long enough to dismember Berenice’s body—when Malcolm took Finn out to the park.

  I recalled the worried look Samson had given me when I’d visited Carapace, and the ground that at the time I’d thought had been disturbed by his shifter clients. I was willing to bet Dunne would find Berenice’s bones there. Poor Berenice. Dead for nothing. I wondered how Jillie had intended to tell her husband and what he would have said.

  I wrote out everything I knew about Alister Brannick and added the new mobile number he’d put at the bottom of the note. I detailed my trip to the ZDC in the world of the dead, leaving out the bite, and explained what I’d seen of Rosa’s death.

  When I couldn’t think of anything else, I set the timer on the email and shut the laptop down. I couldn’t procrastinate any longer.

  I turned my mobile over in my fingers a few times before I found the courage to scroll to Patricia Stull’s number. She answered after a couple of rings.

  ‘Pat, it’s Vivia.’

  ‘Hello, was the spreadsheet helpful?’

  I’d forgotten about that. ‘Yes, thanks.’ My mouth was too dry. I swallowed. ‘Pat, I need a favour. I need to know which crematoriums accept zombies.’

  There was silence. ‘Why?’

  I considered lying, then thought better of it. What would be the point? ‘It’s for me. I died about an hour ago. For good.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She paused then said, ‘There are other options, you know.’

  ‘None I want.’

  ‘I have contacts. In the morgues. No one has to be hurt.’

  I thought of how delicious Lorraine h
ad looked. ‘I’ll end up hurting someone, Pat. I know I will. I don’t want to do it, but I can’t see another option.’

  She sighed. ‘If you’re sure. I usually send people to Putney Vale, but our man there is still in prison. I’ll have to make a few phone calls.’

  ‘Thanks, Pat.’

  I sat in the van and waited. Outside, the world seemed so ordinary. My stomach rumbled. I jumped when the phone rang.

  ‘How long can you last?’ Patricia asked.

  ‘Maybe a day at most. I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.’ I caught a note of hysteria in my voice.

  ‘I’ve got someone who can do it, but he’s on holiday. He can be back in six hours.’

  ‘Okay. Yes. Please ask him to come back.’

  She gave me the address. I jotted it down on the back of an old invoice I found on the passenger seat. ‘Thanks, Patricia.’

  ‘Of course. Let me know if you change your mind.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  I sat back on the leather seat. Six hours. That was six hours to back out. Six hours to lose my nerve. Six hours to kill. But not literally.

  I turned the keys in the ignition. I couldn’t do anything more for Sigrid, but I still owed Malcolm. I’d sent him to the pit instead of the quick fiery death he’d wanted. And he hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t murdered anyone. At the very least, I could check his son was okay.

  It was daytime. It wasn’t raining. There was more traffic and my reasons for the drive were very different, but as I followed the route to John Line Terrace I couldn’t help remembering driving this route only a few days earlier after hearing Malcolm was dead. Thank God, I’d thought. What a bitch.

  I parked on the side of the road opposite Moses’s house and stared at the front door. It was open just a crack—enough for me to see that something wasn’t right. No Londoner leaves their front door open long enough to do anything other than slip inside.

  I closed the van door quietly and approached, silent as a cockroach. I nudged the door open with my foot.