The Words of Their Roaring

by Matthew Smith

  It sparked a memory in him, of awaking in a hospital after the bike accident, shivering with pain. The déjà vu was almost as insidious as the ache in his bones.

  Following his initial confusion, it took Gabe a few minutes for the truth to sink in that he had survived. The memory of his legs collapsing out from under him burned brightly in his head, and the desperation of his attempted crawl to safety stuck bitterly in his throat. Tears formed in his eyes as the terror he had experienced for those fleeting seconds resurfaced. It can't have lasted any time at all, but for those few elongated moments the urge to live had never been more powerful, and the thought of falling victim to the ghouls - to see them stumble closer, to feel their cold dead hands clasp on his limbs, to smell their fetid stench as their teeth bit down on his skin - instilled in him a palpable fear. He shivered, the delayed after-effects of his narrow brush with being eaten alive bubbling up inside him as each horrific eventuality and permutation played across his imagination.

  But he had escaped, he told himself, trying to bring the anxiety under control; or at least, he had been ushered out of immediate danger by persons unknown. Surveying his environs again, he felt it was safe to assume that this wasn't one of Harry's safe houses, and that he wasn't being kept here solely to recuperate. He had to have been retrieved by the troops before they evacuated the area - they had that second vehicle, he dimly remembered - and bundled back to a government complex. But for what reason would they want him alive, and, indeed, fix up his leg so he could be mobile again? Looters and bandits, especially those that preyed on military convoys, were given short shrift, and it wasn't that long after the outbreak took hold that a shoot-to-kill policy was imposed. Soldiers were notoriously merciless in handing out summary executions, and under other circumstances the military wouldn't have cared less if he'd ended up passing through a zombie's digestive tract. No, they had to have a reason for taking him and keeping him here; he had to have something they wanted. But what? Information?

  The prospect gave him chills again, but not so much at the thought of what they could do to him as to what Harry's reaction was going to be once he realised that Gabe was in enemy hands. He'd become a compromise to the organisation. Flowers prided himself on a closely knit outfit, and would not accept security lapses, plugging (in every sense of the word) anything that threatened to destabilise his set-up. Gabe had worked for his employer for many years, and had been privy to the old man's numerous dealings. For Gabe to be captured by the opposition was a major embarrassment. Gabe could envision Harry making the equation, of tallying up his loyalty and friendship and weighing it against the trouble this predicament could cause him... but who was he kidding? The old man would decide Gabe's fate without a second thought.

  Funny, he mused. For a moment there he'd been reassuring himself that he was still alive, that he'd made it through intact, when all along he was a dead man walking. His die had been cast the second that he fell, and it was just a matter of waiting now before the bullet caught up with him.

  Multiple footsteps were approaching, he realised, as their tap-tap-tap resounded in the corridor beyond the room, growing louder as they came closer. There was a jangle of keys, the door was unlocked, and a pair of uniforms, rifles slung over their shoulders, entered, fixing him with a blank glare. Then a suit and a whitecoat emerged between the two and marched up to the bedside, the doc twisting his head to study Gabe's face intently. He reached out and pulled Gabe's eyes open wide with the fingers of one hand, retrieving a pen light from his breast pocket with the other and shining it into his pupils. Meanwhile, the suit wandered round to the foot of the bed, fiddling with his shirt cuffs.

  "How are you feeling? Any concussion? Double vision?" the whitecoat asked, clicking the light off.

  Gabe shook his head. "Leg's killing me."

  "Painkillers have worn off. We'll give you some more presently." His gaze flickered to the knotted linen tying Gabe's arms to the bed frame, and turned his attention to the suit. "Are the restraints necessary? They're probably interfering with his blood supply."

  The government man raised his eyebrows, then nodded to the squaddies to go ahead and untie them. "OK. I think our friend here isn't stupid enough to try anything with an armed guard in the room."

  Once they were free, Gabe brought his arms up to his chest and rubbed them, getting the circulation moving again. "So who are you?" he asked.

  "The name's Fletchley," the suit replied. "I work for the Home Office. Or at least I did. I suppose it's a moot point whether such a thing still exists anymore." He motioned to the doctor, a leathery-faced, harried-looking old soak with sprigs of grey hair erupting from a bulbous nose. "That's Dr Hillman. He patched up your leg."

  "Yeah, remind me to thank whichever arsehole it was that shot me when my back was turned."

  "Rules of engagement, Mr O'Connell," Fletchley replied with a sigh. "The military has every right to protect government property. Even so, none of my troops can verify that they were the ones that fired upon you as your motley crew fled. That you fell into our lap is a bonus, I won't deny that."

  Gabe's brow furrowed. "Well, if one of your boys didn't—"

  "Who knows? Perhaps a stray round caught you at one unlucky moment. But at the time we were more concerned with evacuating the area." Fletchley stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at the thief. The civil servant had a surprisingly youthful air, although he had to be in his late forties; his face was thin and rosy-cheeked, the pale skin seemed almost papery, his thatch of brown hair equally fine and insubstantial. Judging by his build housed within the dark woollen suit, he was slender and narrow-shouldered. "You may or may not have ascertained by now that the sample you were after was being transported in the back-up van. The truck you quite spectacularly destroyed was a decoy, intended to draw the fire of anyone attempting such an escapade. We should've guessed Harry Flowers' move into the medical arena would be typically heavy-handed."

  Gabe flinched at the mention of his boss's name, dropping his gaze away from the Home Office man.

  "Mr O'Connell," Fletchley said softly, "we know who you are and who you work for. Mr Flowers has been a thorn in our side for quite some time - redirecting arms supplies, kidnapping government scientists, conducting organised looting expeditions... His methodology is really quite impressive, if he'd used it for the common good instead of building his own power base. And let's face it, that what this is about, isn't it? Harry wants to take on the entire city."

  Gabe didn't reply, opting instead to study the cuts that criss-crossed his palms, tracing them with his fingers.

  Fletchley exhaled wearily. "I'm growing short on patience, O'Connell, and time is not on our side. We are not going to stand by and see Flowers attempt a coup. Do you honestly think that if your boss achieves his aim and takes control of the city that matters will improve? Do you think he has the best interests of those that have managed to survive through this at heart? If Flowers wiped every zombie from every corner of London, the regime that he would put in place would be just as dangerous and just as restrictive. Society may be destabilised at the moment, but it will be nothing compared to the lawlessness that will break out in his wake, because there are those that will not sit quietly and accept Flowers as their ruler. The capital will descend into tribalism and all-out warfare... and at its heart, a grasping, power-hungry dictator using his position to exploit those below him."

  "You're telling me you prefer the deadfucks?"

  "I'm telling you that Flowers will simply replace them with something a lot worse. What, for example, did he tell you he had in mind for the virus culture he wanted you to steal?" When Gabe refused to answer, Fletchley leaned forward and pressed down on his calf, causing him to hiss in pain. Hillman started to say something, but was silenced by a glare from the civil servant. "My tolerance towards your attitude is rapidly coming to an end," he continued. "Perhaps a few days without morphine will loosen your tongue?"

  Gabe locked stares with Fletchley, feeling
the throb in his leg muscle subside. He swallowed, knowing they could do what they liked to him, could keep him in a perpetual state of agony if it suited them. And did he owe Harry any loyalty anyway? If the gang lord was going to put the whack on him no matter what he said, what did it gain him by refusing to reveal his plans? Chances were these government pricks knew a lot more about Flowers' intentions than he did.

  "Harry was seeking a way to make the stiffs more docile," he said finally. "He reckoned if they adapted the virus, they could turn them into non-cannibals, make them more... civilised, I suppose. That way his organisation could take to the streets without any opposition."

  "That's what he told you, is it?" Fletchley looked amused.

  "Well, yeah." Gabe was instantly suspicious. "He had his scientists working on it."

  The suit laughed. "Those scientists - which, may I remind you, Flowers had removed from Ministry of Defence research bases - have been getting word back to us through primitive radio relay. From what they say, your boss isn't interested in curing the plague - at least, not all of it. According to them, he's planning on keeping a regular private army of flesh-eaters back for his own use."

  "Say that again?"

  "I'd guess you'd call them his elite bodyguard. Flowers doesn't want to get rid of the zombies entirely, not when he can use them for his own purposes. I imagine you could get someone to do whatever you wanted with a pack of slavering Returners on a leash that need constant feeding. And we all know that the dead get restless if they don't eat for long periods, so I shudder to think what he's going to be using for pet treats."

  Gabe laid his head back on the pillow, wondering if this could possibly be true. Could Flowers be that ruthless, maintaining his own battalion of undead enforcers to support his reign? And to keep them supplied with human meat... was he going to have his own farm, cultivating men and women like livestock, all so he could rule London unapposed?

  Fletchley pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed. "You don't have to believe me, of course, but I think you realise that there's no cause for me to lie. I want Flowers stopped; it's as simple as that. There are many reasons, but it all comes down to the fact that he's a serious menace that cannot go unchecked."

  "Why are you telling me this? Why are you keeping me here? If you know so much about what he's planning, what use am I to you?"

  "It's not so much what you know, Mr O'Connell, it's what you can do for us. We have need of your skills. Naturally, once your leg's healed and we inevitably let you out of here to fulfil this task, there's nothing to stop you running back to your boss. But we both know you'd be returning to the lion's den. The moment you fell into our clutches, you were marked for execution. I know all too well how Flowers' paranoid kind work. But as a result, you are now free of obligation, offering allegiance to no one."

  "So by that token, why should I do anything for you?"

  "Well, quite. I mean, apart from repaying the care and attention that Dr Hillman here has lavished on you," Fletchley shared a brief grin with the medic, "there's the opportunity to do something worthwhile with your life, Mr O'Connell. What we're asking you to be involved with could turn the plague around forever and save thousands of lives. You've been in Flowers' employ for many years, I know, and no doubt you've seen that as your sole interest, your world. But now's the chance to do something for the greater good, to help others rather than support one man's greed. To step outside Harry Flowers' shadow." The government man leaned closer. "You must've lost loved ones since the outbreak, Gabriel. Don't you want to redeem yourself in their eyes?"

  Gabe didn't answer. He stared at the cracked ceiling, but all he could see was the outline of the woman at the window.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The same two soldiers that had arrived with Fletchley that first time he had regained consciousness came for him again almost a week later, by which point he found he could put a not-insubstantial amount of pressure on his injured leg, and the doc had decreased his painkiller dosage. He was sitting on the edge of the bed exercising the muscle when they marched through the doors and instructed him to go with them. Although he hissed as he limped along a series of dreary corridors between the two squaddies - perhaps acting a little more pained than was strictly necessary, slowing their journey out of simple bloody-mindedness and taking a perverse pleasure at being a nuisance - he made a note of the building he was passing through, trying to gauge where they were situated. What had looked like a hospital ward upon awaking was clearly now merely a medical wing, amounting to little more than a couple of rooms in the whole complex. The office architecture he was entering now - with its walls of metal cabinets, file boxes piled high, and computer terminals covering every surface, rats' nests of cables strewn across the dull brown carpet - told him that this was some kind of government bunker that had been in existence, in all probability, since the 1970s. Most likely, the authorities thought they would escape down here in the eventuality of a nuclear conflict. Few, if any, would have believed that the end of the world would've been brought about by a zombie plague.

  It seemed to be very understaffed. The scale of the mess was drowning the dozen or so clerks he saw tapping away at keyboards or juggling ring binders and ledgers, the exact purpose of their work a mystery. It was as if somebody hadn't told them that the world outside had changed, and they were blithely carrying on, balancing books, chasing up invoices, sorting through correspondence. There was something quite comically surreal about watching them potter between desks like accountants, refusing to believe that the apocalypse had already arrived.

  The reams of paper stacked up on the floor and crammed into cupboards looked like the last remnants of the human race. He tried to catch a glimpse of what was written on them as he was hurried past, and merely saw a jumble of figures, addresses and names. He got the impression they were census reports and electoral registers, dating back over the last six or seven decades. Quite what they were doing here, or what use they could ever be in the current circumstances, he couldn't fathom. It was as if the record on every man, woman and child in the country had been inexpertly stuffed into the nearest available storage facility once the undead situation had quickly spun out of control. For what reason, he mused: as a list of the missing? Almost certainly sixty per cent of the people transcribed on these printouts were no longer living. Who was ever going to read or process this information? And what could they ever do with it? As he eyed each shelf, bowing under the weight of bulging folders, he had the inescapable morbid sense that this was intended to be some kind of mausoleum of mankind, a memorial - not etched in stone but immortalised in documentation. No epitaph, he thought, just the facts of who we were and that we were once here. Gabe didn't know which was the more chilling: the idea that he was walking through his species' history, or that his fellow Homo sapiens were dumb enough to consider that this really mattered anymore.

  The lead trooper halted at a door and rapped upon it, ushering Gabe through when he heard a response. Fletchley was sitting on the other side of a desk - itself a landslide of reports, photographs and stationery - and signalled to the thief to pull up a chair. Fletchley glanced at the soldiers and they withdrew, leaving the two men alone in the office. Gabe briefly gave the room the once-over, unsurprised to see yet more sheaves of paperwork poking from overfilled suspension files. It took him a couple of seconds to note that there was no window - the dim light came courtesy of a bare bulb hanging above his head - and he determined that this complex was definitely below ground. The one object of note in the room was a vast map of London pinned to the wall, virtually covering it vertically from skirting board to ceiling. There were drawing pins and coloured stickers spiralling across it.

  Fletchley noticed his momentary interest in the map and motioned towards it. "We're tracking the movements of the Returners," he said. "Trying to distinguish a feeding pattern, seeing if we can pre-empt their grazing routine."

  "They go where the meat is," Gabe replied. "I would've thought that was obvious."


  "Not necessarily. True, they'll zone in on the living if they sense them in their vicinity, but they're not simply ambling about anymore, hoping to stumble upon a meal. They're remembering where they've fed before, learning how to navigate themselves around the city to find the best spots."

  Gabe looked back at the map. "You've witnessed this?"

  "Oh yes. Or rather, our backroom boys have. They've released electronically tagged dead back onto the streets and monitored their journeys through radar. They've seen them coming back to the same feeding grounds time after time, even returning here, where they were set free, aware that living are in the area. The information is staying with them, you see, and they're acting upon it. It's cognition. They're thinking."

  "It's instinct, surely. The same instinct that keeps them upright on two feet, that makes them scared of fire, that leads them to hunt in packs. They're driven by motor functions. Any animal with half a brain develops a knowledge of where the food is if it follows its nose enough times."

  Fletchley sat back, clicking the end of his pen distractedly. "They're animals, certainly, demonstrating as they do a low-level intelligence. I don't think they can really be called 'zombies' anymore, not in the classical sense. They're not just reanimated cadavers. They're showing signs of skill development, of memory retention, of recognition. They're no longer monsters of folklore, but could possibly be classified as a new sub-species."

  "Classified," Gabe repeated, opening his arms wide to take in the room. "That about sums this place up. What are you doing here, Fletchley? Cataloguing? Archiving? Filing fascinating data like that while the world consumes itself?"