Zombies Don't Cry

by Brian Stableford

  I made a rapid count of our blessings, and came up with a total of four: the number of steps leading up to the front door. I wished that it had been eight, or that they’d at least been a bit steeper. The four steps were going to make charging the door with the ram a little more difficult, but not that much more.

  Stan called the police and gave them the news.

  The dispatcher promised to get a first response vehicle to us within three minutes, and a fully-staffed riot van within fifteen. “Wankers,” was Stan’s uncompromising judgment. “What do they think the first response unit’s going to achieve against—how many ED thugs are there?”

  “Sixteen,” Jim informed him, dolefully. “And some of the other people are taking hold of the battering-ram too. There’s another crowd coming up the hill—must be the drinkers from the Crown and Bells. This is bad.”

  “The boozers don’t count,” said Stan. “They’ve just come to watch. Even the bastards who are grabbing a bit of the ram are just in it for the fun. The ram’s not a bad thing, really—it’s obviously theatrical, more symbolic than merely brutal. There’s every chance that they’re just putting on a show, and don’t really intend to hurt anyone. Anyone see any guns or knives?”

  “Nothing in plain view,” Marjorie reported. “They’ve mostly got loose fitting combat-jackets on, though, and those stupid jeans with all the zip-pockets. My guess is that some of them will be carrying concealed handguns, but no Kalashnikovs or Uzis.”

  “Pity,” Stan said, with a sigh. “If they were waving firearms around, even the Thames Valley Police would feel obliged to scramble a copter and an Armed Response Vehicle.”

  “Maybe you should just tell the cops they’ve got guns,” Kevin suggested. “It’s almost certainly true, as Marjorie says.”

  “Best not,” Stan said. “If an ARV does turn up, and the ED boys think it incumbent on them to defend themselves, people could get hurt. If it’s just a riot squad, the nutters will probably be content to keep their popguns in their pockets. Even mob violence has its regs.”

  The regs in question obviously permitted stone-throwing. As soon as the first tentative stone had hit the window, it turned into a shower, and the shower rapidly became a deluge. A lot of the missiles bounced off the bars or the windows, but three or four came through within a minute, spraying shards of glass across the floor before everyone had had time to take cover.

  Then the battering ram hit the door for the first time, and Stan turned into Action Man, bellowing orders. He thought he was in charge—and to be honest, I was as glad as everyone else appeared to be that he did. As requested, I raced to station myself by his side. So did Jim Peel and the most able-bodied of the older males.

  “Kev—you and Mike strip the sheets from my bunk and the spare, and try to fix them up over the windows to intercept the flying glass. Grab a broom each, and if anyone reaches through a broken window with a gun, knock it out of his hand. Nicky, Jim, grab that table and wedge it against the doors—then upend the other one, fold up the legs and lay it on of the first. The rest of you, fold up the chairs, and pile them on top—then put a couple of armchairs on top of the stack, for good measure. Quickly—once the barricade’s formed, everybody get behind and brace yourselves. The longer we can prevent the door from breaking, the more chance there is that the riot squad will be able to nip this in the bud. You’ll thank me for working you all so hard if we can keep them out.”

  “There are too many of them!” Jim said mournfully, glacing through the as-yet-unobscured window as he lumbered forward to help me with the first of the trestle-tables. “It’s not just the ED—they’re all joining in.”

  “No they’re not!” Stan retorted. “And they won’t, if we can just keep things under control. Work together—and don’t panic!”

  The battering ram hit the door again. It juddered, but didn’t break. The tables and chairs were formed up into an inner barricade now, and a dozen of us put our weight behind it, with Jim in the center. Stan and I were positioned to either side of him, bracing ourselves for the third crash.

  “Is Timmy with them?” Pearl asked, trying to peer out of the imperilled window to the left of the door while helping Kevin to secure the sheet from Stan’s bunk.

  “No,” Marjorie reported. “He made himself scarce as soon as the ED appeared.”

  “That’s good,” said Pearl. “That’s good.” She didn’t specify whether it was because she didn’t want her loyal stalker getting hurt, or because she was simply glad that he hadn’t joined in with the people who were coming to get her—and perhaps to lynch her—because she’d been labeled an angel of death by dodgy rumor-feeds.

  The battering-ram hit the door for a third time. The door was beginning to splinter, and the barricade threatened to fly apart. “Hold it together!” Stan commanded—although it wasn’t an order that could be easily obeyed. The rain of stones and other objects hitting the other wall of the building seemed to be very loud—but the whole point of it seemed to be to make a noise. As Stan said, it was theatrical rather than merely brutal. The ED were acting the part of besiegers storming a redoubt.

  The theatricality, I knew, might turn out to be more dangerous than any acts of violence they eventually achieved. It would encourage the gawkers to join in, giving them a script for comprising an angry mob—and there were a hundred cameras of every sort jostling for a ringside position

  “It’s going out live on three high-profile news-feeds,” Methuselah reported, from the mezzanine, as if to confirm my fears. “As soon as one of the networks starts putting it out, we’ll have millions of eyes on us. The ED aren’t even trying to stop the paparazzi taking pictures.”

  “Of course not,” Stan said. “That’s what they want. This is purely a publicity stunt.”

  As if to underline his claim, the telegraph pole smashed into the door for a third time. The rammers were building up a rhythm now.

  As if to drown out the ominous thunder, Stand started shouting again. “Pearl! Get behind the counter in the kitchenette and keep your head down. Jim, if the door gives, go stand in the kitchenette doorway. Just lean on the jamb, as if you were passing the time of day, but keep it blocked. Marjorie, Alice—gather all the women in the store-room now, lock the door and don’t bloody argue. Kevin, if the door gives, go put Highway to Hell on the blaster….”

  “I don’t…,” I began.

  “Shut up, Nicky—it’s for my benefit, not theirs. Everybody else—and that includes you, Son—if the door breaks, get up to the mezzanine or into the corners of the room. Make yourselves as small as you possibly can, and don’t get involved. I’ll front it out. I know how to handle these fuckers, and the fewer targets they have ready to hand, the more chance there is of talking instead of brawling. They may be idiots, but they’ve got their headline now—with luck, they’ll let the police clear them away, pretending all the while to be victims of establishment politics.”

  The battering ram hit the door again. We leaned into the impact as best we could, but the screws holding the door hinges were already coming away, and the battens were cracking from top to bottom. It was obvious that the door was going to break, and that the barricade made out of tables and chairs would be reduced soon afterwards to flying debris, no matter how hard we tried to hold it together and brace it with our own feeble strength. I couldn’t see a thing through the doors, but I could easily imagine than there must be as many as forty people manning the battering-ram now, treating it as a bit of alcohol-fueled fun, not knowing or caring what would happen after the door caved in.

  I could hear police sirens, and knew that the riot van could only be a couple of minutes away—provided that the streets were clear. I had an awful suspicion that they wouldn’t be.

  This is serious, I thought. I had to remind myself, because it all seemed so surreal. But I was quick to rebuild my morale as best I could: But it’s not the bloody Alamo. This is Merry England, not the Wild West.

  Then the battering ram hit the door again,
and the hinges gave way. Once the wood split, the weight of the doors lent its own momentum to the shock of the impact. As soon as the battens began to fall, it was obvious that nothing behind the double door was going to put up any significant resistance, even though the sheer bulk of the secondary barricade stopped the battens from crashing down immediately. We all stepped back.

  Every man who was still there did exactly what he had been told to do—except me. Kevin went to put Highway to Hell on the blaster. Jim went to stand in the doorway of the kitchenette. Some of the others clambered up to the crowded mezzanine; the rest moved back into the corners. I guess I just hadn’t been doing rockmobility long enough to have got into the habit of following Stan’s orders. I wasn’t being insubordinate, let alone brave. I was just confused. I didn’t know which corner to head for, or whether to join the queue for the stairs up to the mezzanine, so I just stayed where I was, hesitating.

  Where I was happened to be a couple of paces behind Stan, and a couple to his left, relative to the broken door.

  I was still there when the battens were unceremoniously shoved aside and the monsters surged through.

  The remains of secondary barricade were still in their way, but they flung it aside with the casual ease that monsters always manifest, when something is getting between them and their intended prey. None of the flying debris reached as far as me, and Stan only had to swat away one skidding chair, but any faint hope we might have had that the ED thugs would spend four or five minutes stumbling and tripping over like the Keystone Cops on acid went right out of the broken windows.

  In fact, presumably following a carefully-prepared script, more than half of the thirty amply-booted brutes who’d brought the ram continued to hang on to it as they drew it back into the street, turning it through ninety degrees so that they could use it as a wall against the riot police, who still hadn’t contrived to get the van up the hill past the boozers from the Crown and Bells. More than half of the rest were holding a non-violent but conscientiously-obstructive discussion with the members of the police first-response team.

  Thanks to the fact that the huge doorway was now wide open, I could see the distant riot-van and the ongoing discussion quite clearly—and a whole lot more. Suddenly, the deafening thunder of Highway to Hell didn’t seem so inappropriate—and it didn’t seen ironic at all. The monsters didn’t seem in the least surprised or alarmed by it. It was probably their kind of music—but Stan really did seem to be drawing strength from it, standing tall and firm like a true knight.

  All the world really is a stage, and all the people in it merely players, but it seemed to me that a good two-thirds of the hundred-and-fifty-strong crowd now gathered outside hardly even qualified as spear-carriers. They were just swarming extras, intent on raising the arms in which they were holding their phones or dedicated cameras to get a better view. Their avant garde was crowding the steps of the Hall, but making no effort to rush in. I only hoped that when the riot cops eventually got past the telegraph-pole, they’d be able to force a way through in order to come to our aid, however belatedly.

  Only four of the ED thugs actually crossed the threshold, although three more remained on the steps, as if to hold back the crowd. Given that they probably had paid employment as night-club bouncers, I figured that they were probably experienced men who knew what they were doing and could cope with the task—but anybody can be wrong.

  One of the four who’d made an entrance stepped forward to confront Stan—who was, as he’d promised, simply waiting there to “front it out”. Unsurprisingly, the monster who stepped forward was the biggest of the four—big enough to make Jim look like a modest individual, let alone Stan.

  The giant was wearing the standard khaki waistcoat and trousers, both garment bristling with oddly-shaped and bulging pockets, but unlike his followers he wasn’t wearing a T-shirt. His chest was bare, evidently to display his pride in his very extensive tattoos. He had a lot of them, including the obligatory flags of St. George, swastikas, daggers and dragons, but pride of place on his vast clean-shaven chest as a golden eagle with its wings outspread, perched on a cartouche bearing the motto: Pro Patria Mori.

  I was tempted to ask him what kind of Englishman would walk around with a Latin motto sprawled across his navel, but I didn’t dare, Stan wouldn’t have approved.

  “Where’s the girl?” demanded the patriot. “We’ve come for the angel of death. Hand her over, and nobody will get hurt.”

  Stan didn’t bother to ask what they intended to do with Pearl if they got their grubby hands on her, or even to compliment his adversary on what was probably the longest speech he’d ever made in his life. Instead—and I have to admit that he took me completely by surprise, although I probably should have been expecting it—he simply reached up to the collar of his black T-shirt with both hands, and literally ripped it from top to bottom, following the line of the sternum.

  Then he pulled the torn halves apart and said: “There’s no need for this, Brother.” Maybe the appeal to brotherhood would have sounded more convincing if Kevin hadn’t followed Stan’s instructions and put Highway to Hell on the blaster, but maybe not. The words were, after all, supposed to be ironic.

  I couldn’t resist taking two steps forward, just to see what it was that Stan had tattooed on his chest—the broad chest that had always been covered by a black T-shirt during the fortnight I’d known him. That movement brought me to stand right beside him, almost shoulder-to-shoulder with him—a side-effect I hadn’t even considered, let alone planned.

  As if in reflexive response, the ED Goliath’s three companions each took a diagonal step forward, in order to wind up virtually shoulder-to-shoulder with the monster-in-chief and one another.

  More flying buttresses, I could help thinking.

  Stan didn’t tell me off for not obeying orders, but he certainly didn’t seem glad to see me there when he risked a brief sideways glance.

  The tattoo on his chest was a phoenix. The cartouche on which it was perched bore the motto: England Will Rise Again. It was a very impressive tattoo. The eagle, big and ferocious as it was, had something of the air of an old sepia photograph about it, by virtue of its suntanned background. Stan’s skin was polished ivory, delicately striped with blue veins. The accidentally-prophetic phoenix and the fire of its miraculous rebirth stood out beautifully, all their artificial colors flamboyantly ablaze. I only hoped that the cameras in the doorway could capture the full effect.

  The reason that Stanley Blake was so convinced that he “knew how to handle these fuckers,” I belatedly realized, was that he had been one of them. Had been being the operative words. Becoming a zombie changes people.

  It also, unfortunately, means that even your very best comedy moves fall flat.

  Stan knew perfectly well that what he’d just done was absurd. He knew that it was beyond melodrama, way out in the realm of the ludicrous. I honestly believe that he expected it to raise a laugh, or at least a chuckle. He had never expected for an instant that his erstwhile colleague was going to respond to the word “Brother” by falling into his arms and declaring that the war was over—but he had expected a better and kinder pause than he actually got. He had expected, at least, a twinge of amusement, a recognition of the irony of fate.

  Instead, the ED Goliath was actually spooked. He didn’t know what to do, or say. His prepared script hadn’t included any such possibility. Although there was no need, he panicked, and lost his rag.

  He didn’t have a real actor’s talent for improvisation. His own reflexes were the monster variety. Had he had time to think about it, and half a brain to think about it with, he probably wouldn’t have done what he did, but the sight of the phoenix was like a trigger to his feral instincts. In response to Stan’s challenge, even though it wasn’t really a challenge at all, the marauding monster reached into one of his multitudinous pockets and pulled out a handgun.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  If ever they make a movie of my memoirs, for which
I shall naturally be asked to write the script, everything will be done on a much more lavish scale. Instead of being crammed so tightly against its neighboring buildings that there was no alleyway to the back yard, the hall where the heroic afterliving are besieged will be free-standing, and surrounded, and it will have the words Kingdom Hall on its lintel instead of Salvation Army, which is just as plausible, given that Jehovah’s Witnesses have built similar meeting-places and have also had to sell off many of them as their numbers have declined. At any rate, that legend seems more appropriate to me, for symbolic purposes.

  The extras will be assaulting the Hall from every side, smashing shuttered windows and reaching inside with avid arms, trying to stab or grab anything within. Most of the extras will be computer-generated, of course, so there won’t just be hundreds of them but thousands: a veritable rabid horde rather than a mere drunken mob. And the siege will last for at least half an hour, rather than a lousy few minutes—not exactly the Alamo, but not your average inner-city street-brawl either. Epic, after its fashion.

  I’ll insist that the tattoos be faithfully reproduced, and the stature of the Goliath really won’t need any exaggeration. He can’t have that gun, though, because, to be perfectly honest, the gun was entirely inappropriate to the situation. I’ll give him a samurai sword instead—a sword with which he intends to subject poor Pearl, our inexpressively lovely damsel in distress, to a public beheading right there and then, to demonstrate that England’s Finest can match any jihadists in the world, blow for blow, when it comes to crass bloodthirstiness.

  I think I’ll arm the actor playing me with a brass candlestick, so that he can engage the samurai sword in a fencing-match. I know there aren’t many brass candlesticks around nowadays, but it’s not entirely implausible that we might have a supply of candles in the Hall and apparatus for their distribution, not so much because of our distaste for brighter light but because of the increasing frequency of “rationed power cuts.”