Damned If You Do

  I couldn’t believe what he was implying. I stepped away from him, dangerously close to the damaged cactus.

  ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ He inclined his head slightly in what may, or may not, have been a nod. A flood of adrenaline surged through me. ‘What about the consequences? What about the future?’ And a small, selfish urge surfaced: ‘What about my contract?’

  ‘No-one has seen your contract since Wednesday morning. Perhaps you’ve been lucky. Perhaps it’s been lost…’ he added suggestively. He offered to take back the ampoule, but I held on to it. ‘Besides, the Agency will have more pressing things to do than launch a zombie hunt … And I can always swear on my badge that Death put you back in the coffin before he was killed.’

  I doubted this, but I could find no holes in his argument. Besides, I didn’t have much choice.

  ‘What’s in it for you?’

  ‘Immediate promotion,’ he said simply. ‘With both of you out of the way, I’ll be in line for a senior position.’

  I turned to the window again, clinging to the magic potion in my hand. The drop of water dripping into the well inside me became a trickle, became a stream, became a flood.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I protested.

  He placed a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s the only solution, if you want to get out of here … I wish there was a better one.’

  Damned if you do

  This is the corpses’ creed:

  I am nothing. I have nothing to offer, I have nothing to say. I define myself with silence, by inaction, through hopelessness. I will restrain every pointless atom of my being until I achieve permanent paralysis and sterility. I will do nothing, think nothing, believe nothing; and I wish only for the continuation of this powerless condition.

  I mouthed these words as I examined myself in the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door. Skirmish was dozing peacefully on the top bunk, undisturbed by my activity or the pale dawn light filtering into the room through the open curtain. I hadn’t slept much, having spent most of the night considering his offer very carefully. The silence and darkness had focused my mind, but I’d failed to reach a firm decision.

  I am nothing.

  In the mirror I saw a man. He was naked. He stood on two clumsy wedges of flesh, terminating in eight skinny toes. Bony shins bent outwards from the ankles to the knees; thin thighs bent inwards from the knees to the waist. The pale skin of his pin-cushion legs was stitched with coarse black hairs, running upwards to the pubic triangle, in which a loose, useless stump of a penis nestled. The withered belly was a mouldy grey fruit of flesh in which his navel, that mocking reminder of his birth, was nothing more than a shadow. Above it, the wasted chest was a deflated life-belt punctured by dozens of cactus wounds, and adorned with two small, white nipples like plastic mouthpieces. Hard collar bones curved against the slope of drooping shoulders, forging a triangle of skin below the scrawny neck. From an ape’s hairy arms a pair of slender, blue-veined hands hung, lacking two fingers and a thumb. The entire body was criss-crossed with thick, black surgical thread, disguising a network of angry red scars arranged in bite-shaped arcs.

  I am nothing.

  His face was sad and weary.

  I am nothing.

  The man moved closer to the surface of the mirror. His head was deathly grey. The chin was unshaven, and disfigured by a raw, red wound at the centre. The lips were pale and thin, and broken by creases and cracks. The nose was sharp like a rat’s, cratered with pores, blemished by bruising. The eyes were reptilian creatures cowering in caves of bone. The man’s ears clung to the side of the head like rock-climbers, one higher than the other. Scattered patches of short, black hair crept up to his crown like iron filings drawn to a magnet.

  On the left side of his neck, a number was stamped: 7218911121349.

  I am nothing.

  * * *

  After showering and disposing of my body’s waste, I selected the last remaining clothes from the wardrobe: boxer shorts decorated with pink roses, pink socks with a grey porpoise motif, and a plain pink T-shirt with the slogan DAMNED IF YOU DO printed on the front, and DAMNED IF YOU DON’T on the back. I put on my blue suit and white shoes, popped Skirmish’s ampoule into my inner jacket pocket, and checked the mirror for the final time.

  I saw a zombie. I saw me.

  * * *

  On the way to the breakfast room I was surprised to find Pestilence walking towards the front door. Seven white cardboard boxes were wedged between his hands and his chin, and he was stepping very carefully.

  ‘Love to talk,’ he said, teeth clenched, ‘but can’t stop.’

  ‘What’s in the boxes?’ I asked.

  ‘New virus. Batch zero-nine-stroke-ninety-nine.’ He lifted his head from the uppermost package, balancing the column against his chest. ‘That’s better. I can speak properly now.’ He jiggled his lower jaw to prove it. ‘It’s based on the contusion experiments I conducted earlier in the week. I think we’ve finally found the right formula. Massive bleeding … Rapid spread … Potentially fatal … Probably as many as one in a hundred cases…’

  He continued in this vein for several more minutes, until I remembered the question I had wanted to ask him the previous night.

  ‘What happened to the disease we released on Tuesday?’

  He frowned, annoyed at the interruption. ‘A complete and utter failure, I’m afraid. Our clients remain sickeningly healthy.’ He gave me a look of contempt. ‘Pity, really. The Chief had been working on it for years. It would have been a truly spectacular way to start the next millennium.’

  ‘Nothing you can do,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed.’ He lowered his chin again. ‘Now, would you be so kind as to open the door for me?’

  I squeezed past him and complied with his request. Pale sunlight broke through the doorway, intensifying the contrast between the pallor of his complexion and an overnight onslaught of acne. He looked terrible, and I told him so, intending it as a compliment.

  ‘You look as bad as I’ve ever seen you,’ I said.

  ‘You look like Death warmed up,’ he replied.

  * * *

  No-one else was awake, and I ate breakfast alone. I found a couple of brown bananas and a half-opened carton of yoghurt in the fridge, and devoured them eagerly whilst standing at the window. Apart from Pestilence and a couple of early-morning joggers, I saw no-one.

  I was about to return to my room when Death walked in, wearing his grey kimono and velvet slippers.

  ‘Hello. You’re up early.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He stared intensely at me. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine.’ I meant it. ‘What time do we start?’

  He didn’t answer immediately, but went into the kitchen. I heard him mumble something excitedly, as if he was speaking to a child. He was answered by high-pitched squeaks and the rattling of cage bars. A moment later, he appeared behind the saloon doors, only his feet, chest and head visible.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said slowly. ‘Today’s client … it’s a pretty gruesome affair. Don’t ask me why it has to be that way – we could arrange for him to pass away peacefully in his sleep. But the Chief wants something special.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m told it’s the person who saw Hades being killed two months ago. The Chief says his termination will solve some problems and tie things up neatly…’ He lowered his voice. ‘Anyway, this is all irrelevant. My thought was: why don’t you have the day off? I can easily handle things on my own.’

  We discussed it a little more, and I briefly considered what effect it would have on my slim chances of continued employment, but in truth I was glad. It was increasingly likely that I would finish the day back in the coffin, and there were a couple of things I wanted to do first:

  I had to discover whether my parents were still alive.

  I needed time to think.

  * * *

  After explaining my plans to Death I returned
to the room, where Skirmish was still in bed, snoring quietly. His diagonally-striped duvet had ridden up his legs.

  I poked his arm. He grunted, and turned over.

  ‘I’m going for a walk. Can I borrow your front-door key?’ I whispered.

  He grunted again – a sound which was far from an agreement, but even further from a denial. Since I didn’t have time to probe further, and since I probably wouldn’t be seeing him again anyway, I took his answer to be a yes. The key was lying on the desk.

  I glanced back at him as I left. In the darkness, and in the way he slept so peacefully, I had a brief vision of him as a tiny baby, held in his mother’s arms.

  Tales from Tomb Town

  I left the Agency and headed back to St Giles cemetery where, until recently, I had been comfortably buried. I wasn’t afraid to walk around alone. I’d found some blusher and concealer on Pestilence’s desk, and applied them to my face using the bathroom mirror. My general appearance wasn’t a problem, either. Over the past week I had learned to walk upright, stop shuffling, and keep my mouth shut. I had even managed to control the bug-eyed stare that all zombies have.

  On the way there, my brain untangled the mystery surrounding Hades’ death. I would never know for sure, of course – I was no Sherlock Holmes, and I couldn’t prove anything – but I had a clear picture in my mind of what happened.

  * * *

  It’s late Saturday evening. Skirmish has just finished making a small poppy and honey cake. He leaves it to cool overnight on a wire rack, knowing that his roommate will find it the following morning … And he’s right. Hades, always first in the kitchen on Sundays, is attracted first by the smell, then the texture, and finally the taste. He can’t resist one bite, then two – then the whole cake is gone.

  With the sun rising behind him, he sets off on his weekly walk across the meadow, bloated but satisfied. Skirmish, watching him from the rear window, waits until he’s halfway towards the river then quietly opens the bedroom door. Careful not to wake anyone, he leaves the house through the rear exit and pushes his way through the tall grass in the back garden. Arriving at the kennel, he opens the door and frees Cerberus.

  Maybe the hellhound hasn’t been fed in two days, and it snarls at him from hunger. Maybe Skirmish sprinkles a few drops of water on its back to enrage it further. Maybe he’s even removed an article of Hades’ clothing from the wardrobe they share, and rubbed a little honey into it; and now he hands it to the dog and watches as the animal sniffs, then growls, then tears it to shreds. Whatever: he unlocks the iron gate, encourages Cerberus onto the street, and smiles as the dog’s three heads turn towards him for instructions.

  ‘Go and find him, boy,’ he says.

  It seemed plausible. Who would suspect Skirmish? Even if they did, and they managed to connect him with the events I imagined, he could easily claim it was an unfortunate accident. Cerberus was the real killer, after all.

  I tried not to imagine Hades’ face as he saw the animal bounding towards him, knowing that he had the smell of poison on his breath. I tried not to feel his terror as he realized that his end had come. I tried not to hear his screams as those razor teeth sank into his belly.

  But it was impossible. Your mind does what it wants to.

  * * *

  I was so absorbed in this speculation that I briefly forgot who and what I was; but the few people I met on the way to St Giles didn’t give me so much as an interested glance, let alone the terrified scream I had feared on Monday. Their indifference made me feel alive again.

  I crossed the main road, turned into the narrow paved walkway running alongside the church, and entered the cemetery. I was searching for my parents’ graves, though my hope was that I wouldn’t find them. The thought that they might still be living somewhere was a source of joy to me – but I needed to know for sure. All I had was a memory of the burial plot they had purchased, somewhere near the junction of the south and east walls.

  I followed the narrow sandy path towards the iron gate at the far end, walking slowly, absorbing the rich and varied greens of the trees and plants, imprinting the colours of flowers on my memory, memorizing the rows of tombstones arranged like crooked teeth. But I didn’t have the courage to head straight for the plot. Instead, I sat down on the damp grass a few yards from the clearing where Death and I had reassembled Thursday’s client – the bearded man who had been mangled by a machine. I listened to the breeze, the cars passing, the distant sound of ringing bells. I heard a bird singing.

  And I saw my father.

  * * *

  He pulled hard against the oars of a wooden rowing boat, drawing us away from an island into a broad lake below a weir. His arms were leathery and thick, like the African snakes I’d seen in books. He was laughing.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  He let the oars drag in the water and began to rock the boat. Gently at first – but when he saw I was refusing to play the game, he caught the rhythm of the undulations and rocked it more violently, and for longer.

  ‘Tell me,’ he repeated.

  I couldn’t swim, but I wasn’t afraid. I knew he would rescue me if anything happened; and he knew how much I enjoyed it. I watched the muscles rise in his left arm as he pushed down on the left side; in his right as he swayed in the opposite direction. The oars chafed against the rowlocks and slapped against the water, sending sparkling ripples towards the bank where my mother stood watching nervously.

  ‘No more!’ I squealed.

  ‘Then tell me.’ He let the boat settle and looked me straight in the eye. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

  And I gave him the answer I had always given. The truthful answer.

  ‘I want to be like you,’ I said.

  * * *

  The sun burned above the dark green trees, and the heat of the day dried the grass even as I sat upon it. I peered into the shadows beneath the chestnut tree, hoping for some sign – an absence of gravestones, or an undisturbed patch of ground. But the whole corner was locked in darkness. I could barely see my own grave lying between the two thick roots near to the wall.

  I would have to move closer.

  * * *

  ‘It’s all right. Come over here … Sit down.’

  I did as my mother asked, but perched cautiously on the edge of the bed, level with her feet. I had just cycled back from Amy’s house, and the room was bright with moonlight. My mother sat up in her dressing gown, drinking a cup of chamomile tea, a white pillow supporting her back. A bloated hot-water bottle lay beside her, like a stranded puffer fish. I wondered why she needed it on such a warm night.

  ‘There’s something I want to say to you.’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘It’s important.’ She reached over and touched my hand with her own, resting her fingers on my thumb, stroking it gently. Embarrassed by the attention and physical contact, I stared through the window at the clear, black, night sky. ‘It’s about you and Amy.’

  ‘Nothing’s happened,’ I lied. ‘We’re just friends.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ She nodded. ‘But if something does – if you think you might actually live together…’ I laughed embarrassedly ‘… just make sure you love her as much as I love you.’

  Her words were excruciatingly personal. I had once adored her voice, the rising and falling tone, the emphases that made her unique. The sound of her had been as familiar and necessary to me as the rise and fall of my breathing, or the beating of my blood … But time shuffles the deck, and I couldn’t bear to listen now: I was too old, too grown up. I wanted my feelings to be a secret.

  I turned around, wanting to leave, and saw that my mother was gazing at me intensely, with the same powerful, unwavering love I had perceived as a child. And in the darkness of her pupils I saw the half-moon reflected, as I would see it reflected in Amy’s eyes ten years later.

  * * *

  I stooped beneath the branches of the chestnut tree, noting that the mound of earth by my grave had already been r
eplaced. The moss-covered headstone still remained, even though the corpse to which it referred was now walking amongst the living. The feelings of nausea and dislocation this provoked surprised me. It’s hard to stand at your own graveside and remember the way things used to be.

  I glanced across at my neighbour’s grave on the far side of the tree. His stone rested at an odd angle to the ground, probably disturbed by a root. He’d officially died of natural causes, but had always maintained that his doctor had poisoned him. I think he was just trying to show off. Of the two people buried behind me, one had committed suicide, the other had been killed in a road accident. Par for the course. All three occupants of the plots to my left had been killed in war time: a bullet wound, a plane crash, a bomb. I knew nothing of the corpses immediately outside this tiny ring of satellites.

  I knelt down and scraped the moss away from my headstone, but the inscription was too worn to decipher my name or discover any significant dates.

  It was as if my whole life had been erased.

  * * *

  It was Christmas, and we were staying at a seaside hotel. My father and I were in the lift, travelling from the ninth floor to the lobby where my mother was waiting. I was seven years old, slowly emerging from the fantasy phase of childhood, learning not to believe everything he told me. But about halfway down the lift stopped, and before I could even begin to wonder what had happened, my father started to panic.

  ‘Oh God,’ he shouted, ‘we’re going to fall.’ He paced from one wall to the other, then banged loudly on the doors. ‘Let me out! Somebody. Help!’

  His terror communicated itself to me very quickly, and I began to cry. But he ignored me. He just paced back and forth, and banged on the door again, and punched all the buttons, and stamped on the floor, repeating over and over how we were going to fall and die. But I knew that he liked to play games with death, and after a few minutes I began to suspect that he was only teasing. I stopped crying, and sat down in the corner, watching him, admiring his acting. And sure enough, when the lift started moving again, he calmed down. He noticed me sitting on the floor, wiped the sweat from his brow, and knelt down to pick me up.