by Remy Porter
Just then, Bill and Arthur appeared at the door.
‘Anything we can do to ...’ Arthur managed, before he was hurling chunks down his beard.
‘Don’t be a pussy, Arthur,’ Bill shouted at his partner. ‘It’s only a little zombie brain.’
‘Do you think we should have told them?’ I whispered to Summer.
‘One thing’s is a definite, Johnny. I’m not clearing this room up, ever. Gross!’
Lester kept wiggling the ladle inside Trevor’s head, and finally the brain was out with a plop and a splash. Trevor snuffed out like a candle.
CHAPTER 16
We passed a message to those working on the endless fence that we wanted another meeting at the Woman’s Institute. The workers had a thin, haunted look now like pictures on the police station walls of 1890’s poor house prisoners. Jack had them working from dawn into the night nearly every day. We would see the glow of the generator spot lights from the police station and every hour hear shots ring out as another body got too close.
The fence line was an impressive endeavour I had to admit. It stretched nearly a mile from the coast, past Jack’s farm and into the fringes of the village itself. Another few months and the fence would be all the way back to the coast again, and the village would, in theory, be zombie free.
For my own reasons I’d kept myself and the others that had stayed at the police station separate from the collective at the farm. Summer, Lester, Bill, Arthur and even Jefferson all kept busy on other tasks, mainly killing bodies and burning them in grand funeral pyres. We systematically went house to house, clearing out the dead and undead, and collecting useful items such as tinned food and fuel to store back at the station or hand out to the workers.
Each one of us became experts at moving through a house room by room, listening for tell-tale sounds of the dead and being ready with our own brand of ultra violence. Jokingly, we called ourselves the SKUL team: Special Killers of Undead Life.
Each had their weapons of choice. With Summer, it was always a hatchet or axe. Bill and Arthur had short, razor-sharp daggers that went through zombie heads like a hot knife through butter. Lester had cleaned and oiled up a WWII German Luger pistol he’d dug out of some Nazi war criminal’s loft. Always trust Lester to go that extra mile. Myself, I’d made a sawn off shotgun, like a regular Jessie James bank robber. Jefferson, well, that crazy old man preferred to use his gloved hands. We wore lots of police riot gear and helmets, and made extra protection for vulnerable areas like the neck. We looked like patchwork American footballers.
Today wasn’t about killing zombies. We’d called a meeting so Lester could discuss his findings. We went to the WI early and opened the place up to air. It was clear nobody had been inside since the last meeting over five weeks earlier. The chairs were all still set out as they were and polystyrene cups littered the floor. On the stage, Lester busied himself setting up his presentation diagrams and slide show.
‘Do you think they’ll come?’ Summer said to me as we picked up the litter.
I shrugged, but soon enough there was the tell-tale grumble of diesel engines outside and Jack and Griffin were walking in like they owned the place.
‘We got your message Johnny ... so where’s the fire,’ Jack said.
‘No fire Jack. We found a few things about the bodies and we thought it would be useful for us all to know ... for all our benefits.’
‘Our group is all ears,’ said Griffin.
‘Your group, Griffin? I thought we were all part of the same happy community,’ I replied. ‘Now be a good boy. Sit down and pin back your ears.’
‘You don’t speak to me like that.’
‘Listen, Griffin, no offence to your vast intellect and all, but I think what Lester has to say up there on that stage might just save your life one day.’
‘Leave the good policeman alone,’ Jack hissed, and placed a hand onto Griffin’s shoulder. I could see issues down the line.
I turned to Summer and shrugged, and we went and took our seats at the front. A few other villagers had filed in, their hands and faces dirty. Tired faces; every one of them. I wondered how many of them really liked their new farm community. Was it worth putting up with all Jack’s shit? I felt very glad I wasn’t part of it.
‘Ladies ... gentlemen,’ Lester began on the stage. ‘Thank you for coming all this way again in such difficult circumstances.’ He pulled back a cloth sheet on the table and revealed what was left of Trevor’s brain bobbing in the fish tank.
‘What the fuck is that in aid of?’ Griffin shouted out.
‘Shut the fuck up and let him tell you,’ was my reply.
Lester ploughed on. ‘I appreciate this isn’t necessarily what you expect from the average Women’s Institute meeting, but please bear with me.’
Lester went over and fired up an old slide projector. A large rectangle of white light flickered into life on the wall at the back of the stage.
‘This is a slide I made from the blood of the unfortunate Trevor the postman,’ Lester continued, and slotted his first slide into place.
The rectangle of light turned into a red globular mess, which Lester then focused until a cluster of clear, jagged bubbles appeared which I knew must be red blood cells. Lester had spent days getting these slides ready. I figured it must have been the most constructive work he’d done after years of drinking himself into oblivion. I was proud of the guy.
‘These are dead, clotted cells you can see, and in any normal, not undead person they would not be in this broken and twisted state. It shows me that these things do not transport oxygen around their bodies. I would surmise they would not even need it. I dug through every inch of this unfortunate’s body and organs, and it remains to me a complete mystery how they can continue to function when in all reality they should be pushing up daisies.’
‘You dragged us all this way to state the bleeding obvious. I thought you were going to tell us something useful today,’ Jack said.
‘But I’ve not finished, my farming friend,’ Lester said and clicked onto the next slide. It was a picture of a dead domestic cat.
‘Apologies again. Due to a distinct lack of rats and mice at my disposal, I had to utilise an unfortunate house cat. As you can see, it is quite dead now. What I can say theoretically is that the saliva that we know can re-animate humans is in fact quite toxic to everything else. Our dear departed tabby here did not come back looking for an all-you-can-eat fish breakfast, but instead died rather peacefully after being nibbled by a body. I’d suggest that at this time the only zombies we have to worry about are ones of the human variety.’
‘Are you taking this in Jack? It means the livestock will need better protection or we’ll all end up living off food cans from now until forever,’ I said.
‘Finally, the most interesting thing of all,’ Lester continued.
‘What’s that? Shoot ’em in the brain and they die. Big surprise there!’
‘No, Griffin,’ Lester continued. ‘There are possibly ten year old children in the Amazon who know that’s how you kill a zombie. No, that’s not what I was about to say,’ Lester said and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘A little time before I met my good friends Johnny and Summer here, I was bitten. I was bitten right through my clothes and into my skin.’
Lester showed off the ugly, but now healing scar on his shoulder. ‘Now I have no doubt that the zombie bastard Sergeant Dolan’s saliva flooded that wound, and yet here I still stand living and breathing, and passing on my wisdom. My final hypothesis to you is that there are some people among us who are quite immune to zombie attentions. Not all animals were born equal it would appear.’
‘Doesn’t help a lot when there’s a pack of those things tearing you apart,’ Jack said gruffly, and he and Griffin stood up.
‘What about a cure Lester,’ Summer said. ‘Can you make us all immune?’
‘I’m sorry, Summer, I was just a biology teacher. I can only hope there are still some real scientists left out there who can
do something special. Until then, we just have to make the best of things and be careful.’
‘So, how can we find out who else is immune, Lester?’ I asked.
‘I’ll think of something, some test. Just leave it with me.’
‘Well, you could stick your hand in a zom’s mouth, Johnny, and see how it takes you,’ Griffin said, trying to stare me out.
‘Go and fuck your cousin or something. Perhaps the mutant gene pool will throw up some more medical miracles for us.’
Griffin charged at me. I sidestepped and clipped him on the side of his head with a short right-handed punch. Griffin’s equilibrium scrambled and he skidded to his knees and then rolled onto his back. He started sucking up air like an old Hoover and his eyes looked a little short on focus. I turned quickly towards Jack, anticipating that he’d make a move, or possibly just shoot me.
‘Got your number clocked now officer, don’t you worry about that,’ he said, just standing, looking at me. He helped his rhino of a son to his feet and they walked out the door. The rest of the villagers filed out behind silently. They looked bowed and defeated.
‘Didn’t quite go to plan, did it?’ Summer said, hugging herself close.
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Lester, hurry up and pack your shit. We need to get back to the station before those fuckers come back.’
I eyed the door, felt relief when I heard the diesel engines start up and drive away.
She looked down at his chest, the sweat glinting cyan shades of blue in the light filtering in from the street. She felt tall up here, like she was rising above it all and she could forget it all. The breath in her chest moved in rasps, and she imagined the icy air dousing the flames of her burning core. Their breath plumed out in clouds of mist and the office windows turned white opaque. Forms and figures shifted beyond the glass, their faces blurred and indistinct. She gasped and outside moans and cries followed as if calling to her. She concentrated her mind and blocked it all out. He touched her bare, chilled shoulders and she felt his wedding ring bite a little on her flesh.
‘Johnny ... Johnny ... I love you,’ Summer hummed.
Outside the figures paced closer. They wanted to love Johnny too.
CHAPTER 17
Black plastic rubbish bags filled the alleyway. Many were torn and had spilled their putrid contents like a sea of rotting, decaying mulch. Here and there an arm or foot was distinguishable, an indication that humans were now every bit as disposable as the old newspapers that blew around the streets of the city like tumbleweed.
A noise cut through the air, a low whine that became a metallic roar of force. The half dozen ambling bodies on the street craned their maggoty necks in the direction of the vibrations. They sensed it now ... sustenance. The bags exploded into their ruined faces, and hulking metal crashed through the end of the alleyway and into the open street. Sickly smells of burnt rubber rose off the dirty asphalt and mingled with the rot. The bodies watched motionless as the metal shape disappeared around a corner and the vibrations receded far into the distance. A part of them still sensed it out there and in unison, they moved to follow.
‘Trust the apocalypse to come on a bin day,’ Howard said and looked around at the three others in the old VW campervan. Jinny wasn’t smiling, and was still ineffectually dabbing at the wound torn through the Jonah’s camouflage trousers. The back of the van had become a chaotic jumble of clothing, food and pools of black clotted blood. Barely habitable.
‘How’s he doing?’ shouted Tehgan over the tinny tappets of the engine. She dropped the A-Z map down to her lap and looked back over the front passenger seat.
‘He’s doing just fine, aren’t you Jonah,’ Jinny said back to her sister. She wasn’t fooling anybody.
They’d been hiding out for over two months in the city, scurrying around like rats, trying to eke out an existence in a crumbling nightclub that had once been a church. Howard had been a student, drinking until the sun came up. He’d staggered out dazed into the morning sunlight with a handful of student friends, and a shared goal of getting a Macdonald’s all-day breakfast. At first he had thought he was witnessing a traffic accident, and inexplicably there were more and more. Metal piling on metal, people running and screaming one way and then another.
It was as if his friends had been washed away in the craziness of it all. All of a sudden, he had been alone on the step of an old church watching a world gone mad. Almost without conscious thought, his feet had taken him back inside and his hands had moved and locked the heavy door behind him. He was glad that he had been drunk when it started; it softened that first blow. Howard looked at his paunchy face in the rear view mirror, and wondered if today he would die.
Tehgan and Jinny were pretty blonde sisters and had been bar staff in the club. Jonah was another student and all night reveller. There had been others in the beginning but Howard never knew their names. Instead he learned quickly how dangerous this new world had become, as one of those sickly, grey things was let inside and swiftly tore the throats out of the funny couple in fancy dress he liked. Rocky Horror to the horror. And Howard learned a pool cue could save your life. That left four people. Not one yet twenty one years.
Howard scanned the one way street. His heart sunk when he saw how crammed it was with abandoned cars.
‘Hang right, we’ll use the pedestrian walkways in the city centre to get through,’ Tehgan shouted across. Bodies were everywhere, both dead and undead, and the van started to knock down the walkers like so many bowling pins. The engine revved and protested, but kept making chugging headway.
Howard looked out at the unfolding scene with amazement. This was the furthest they’d ventured since that first morning. The familiar market place, where he’d spent so many afternoons wandering when lectures seemed too much of a chore, was devastated. The glass sliding doors at W H Smith’s were wedged open with mutilated dead people. In the gloom of the interior, he could make out the shambling silhouettes of the undead people, drifting between the aisles like rotting ghosts. The water fountain in the centre of the square had run dry, and the circular pool in which it was set teemed with twitching cadavers. In every shop it was the same, densely packed with bodies.
‘We have to get out of here Tehgan,’ Howard said. In the back, Jonah was crying again and Jinny was trying to hush him.
‘Down this road will give us a straight run out of the city and into the country,’ Tehgan shouted over, and pointed them the wrong way down a one way street, metal grinding and sparking as the campervan grazed parked cars and walls. The nose of the VW became evermore crumpled as it carved a route through the destruction, and Howard was thankful the engine was in the rear.
It had been Jonah who had made them go, with his incessant talk of disease, typhoid and diphtheria and the like. He had convinced the girls that to stay any longer was tantamount to suicide. We need to go to country where it’s safe, he’d repeated endlessly. Both sisters had had a crush on him and listened. His athletic toned body had made Howard feel like a sasquatch.
That morning Jonah had run across the street to the campervan in his soldier fancy dress uniform, a size too small for his expansive limbs. There wasn’t a zombie in sight. It should have been perfectly safe, but of course, it hadn’t been. Howard had watched him yank open the driver door and like a box falling out of a cupboard the child had dropped down. Jonah had managed to push it away, but in the frenzy, the girl found his thigh. Howard and the sisters had rushed to help, and pulled the biting child away. A small cube of flesh hung in her mouth. Howard knew Jonah was as good as dead, they all did.
Finally, the city centre was behind them. Howard eased back on the accelerator and glanced back. Already the grey tinge was on Jonah’s skin.
‘I don’t think you can travel any further, buddy. I think we need to drop you off,’ Howard said to him. The girls looked shocked but neither said a word.
‘You can’t do this, man. Don’t do it.’
Howard and Jinny lifted him out of the back of
the campervan and sat him on the pavement.
‘Don’t just leave me; I’m begging you, man.’
‘We’ve got to go now. You’ll be alright here,’ Jinny smiled.
They got back into the van and drove away. Howard watched in the wing mirror as the small figure on the road diminished and then vanished. Tendrils of smoke rose above the ruined city. He was glad they had made it out alive.
The sun went down and the dark proved treacherous. The weak headlights of the aged campervan were near useless at picking out the debris and bodies that littered the country roads.
‘We should find a place to stop for the night,’ Jinny said.
Half an hour later, they stopped on a road where the trees seemed to bend over like a knotted tunnel, pulling off onto a muddy lay-by. They hadn’t seen a moving body for some time and felt they would be safe to rest. In the dim interior light, Tehgan and Jinny set about lighting the single gas hob, while Howard emptied a can of meatballs into a pan.
‘Do you think he turned into one of them?’ Jinny said as they ate.
Howard could imagine Jonah rising off the pavement and staggering back towards town. His muscled limbs disjointed and disconnected.
‘He always loved HMV,’ Howard said.
‘What?’ Tehgan replied.
‘Just thinking aloud, wondering where he would have likely wandered off to. That’s if he wasn’t torn to pieces while he waited for the change.’
‘Shut up. That’s an awful thing to say. I feel bad enough we had to leave him there,’ Jinny said.
‘It was either him or us. You should know that,’ Howard said. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this. The zombies are really thinning out. This place you’re taking us to Teghan sounds great. I’ve always loved the sea.’
‘We both went there when we were kids. Haven seemed like the quietest place in the world. I think we’ll all be really safe there.’