All the Dead Are Here

by Pete Bevan

  The world isn’t a game show. I’d give anything to smell a pleasant smell, like soap or steak. I can’t even remember what it tastes like. Life is now constant, unremitting fear and darkness. Every noise is a danger and every bend to go round is death. Sometimes I am convinced it is there, silently waiting around the corner with dribble running from its black teeth. It is waiting for me to turn the corner and then face it before pouncing. The worst thing? Sometimes it is.

  I can barely keep myself alive, never mind my little girl. This is the best way out for both of us. This is the only option.

  Quickly, I slip the warmed gun out from under me and flick the safety off with the same hand. I need to twist my wrist back as far as it can to get the angle, up through her head and into mine above. I try to pull the trigger, I can feel its morbid resistance against my finger. I know this is the only way, but I waver after long seconds of turmoil where internally I shout and scream at myself to just do it, stop being a wimp and do the right thing. I can’t. I haven’t the strength. She stirs and curls her perfect, dirty fingers around the barrel, as if it was her favourite cuddly. The poignancy hits me in the stomach like a speeding car.

  Maybe if I was a religious man this wouldn’t be so hard, maybe I would have enough faith in God to believe that some spurious idea of heaven awaits us where everything is ok and God looks down on us with a warm glow. Meh. I didn’t believe in him before and after spending all this time running, starving, fighting and seeing things that no-one should ever have to see, I sure as hell don’t believe in him now. Sitting here with infection running through me, why should I pray to something that can inflict so much horror on the world? If he does exist he’s a vengeful, untrustworthy shit.

  The gun shakes, my wrist has running pains from holding it in position. I turn it and slide it out from her grip. I place it on the couch beside me and flex my hand. It feels like I have been working out for hours. The infection feels like a low ache in my muscles.

  I lean my head back and sigh, quietly.

  I’m trapped in this paradox by my own guilt, my own humanity, and I can’t rise above it. Somehow I need to let it go and not think about what I’m doing. There is a proper order to these things. I take a minute to calm myself. I stroke her hair, letting it run through my fingers like water, and study each aspect of her innocent face, the curve of her nose, her brow, her closed eyes. How they fit together as parts of her mum and me to become something new. Even under the grime her skin is perfect, untouched by sun or age, it becomes the retainer of all she is, all we made her. I’m woken from my reverie by the moans outside as they track someone else, or us.

  I could be wrong about God. I mean, I’ve got no idea how the Dead walk. Nothing I saw on the news before it died indicated anyone knew the cause. I’d always thought it was a virus or something but maybe it was God. Why not? What harm can it do? I pray, for the first time since I was a child I tell God who I am and why I need his help. I tell him what I’ve done wrong and regretted, and what I have tried to make amends for. I tell him all I’ve told you above and more. I even half expect a sign but nothing happens.

  Calmer. I look down at the gun, pick it up in my hand. It seems heavier than before. I twist my wrist with a crack and move it back under her neck. I need to keep a clear head, just pull the trigger without thinking. I feel the cold metal of it on my finger. I check the position again and an image of us lying there, in a ruined apartment, spattered in our blood robs me of my resolve. My hand starts to shake again. My face screws up. I can’t do it.

  And then.

  And then, without warning she stirs. She stretches out across me, flexing her arms in that cat-like way kids do, around where I’ve placed the gun. My legs go weak. It’s too late. She’s waking up. She stretches out her legs and neck, craning her face towards me. Then I see her eyes open, blankly at first as her consciousness catches up and I see it. Time slows to a crawl as I take in every last moment of our lives. She exists there, in that precious second we all see between sleep and awake. That moment before all the weight of the world rushes in and she remembers the horrors around her, her dead mum, her dead friends, her lost toys. And just for that second, our last second, our only second, she takes me with her and the universe compresses to just her eyes and that feeling.

  God I love her.

  I find a rush comes over me, fear and adrenaline and something else that stretches out into the infinity of our little universe. Just for that second I have faith. I believe, just for that second that no matter what we find after, what we find together, won’t matter. Perhaps even if it just an eternity of blackness I will always have this moment, this second, in her eyes, her universe, my universe, together. I know that whatever happens it will be better than this and she will be safe. I still don’t believe in God, but I feel my faith in what I need to do reflected and amplified by her and suddenly there is no guilt, and any other option feels wrong. Maybe this is how faith works. In her sleepy, part-awake voice I know so well, she mutters:

  “Morning Dad.” I look at her with all the love in her universe, eyes moist, throat tight and I just smile a smile that is full of nothing but my love for her. She smiles back. And before the moment is lost, I gently squeeze the trigger.

  The Minister Verse Three: Resurrection

  Jim Bramer, Minister of Special Circumstances, gazed out of the grimy rain-slick window of The Houses of Parliament office that was his home. Casually he picked at the damp, peeling paint on the window sill and dropped the flakes onto the ageing, stained carpet. The office, once opulent in the seat of government, was now faded and ruined as the city around him. He looked out into the night, and the further he looked west, the more dread snatched at him. He could feel the rising panic in the city below, queues of shabby workers rushing down Abingdon Street towards Westminster Bridge and the Isle of Dogs. They moved together in the vain hope there was still a boat with a friendly Captain. In his office he could hear the murmurs and shouts of the crowd, people shoving and arguing, fear barely concealed as they hurried along. Bramer knew that all the boats were gone, and that Death was coming. He knew this because the Minister had phoned him and told him so.

  Jim leant against the window; the cool night air leaked around the broken frame and cooled his reddened, drunken face as he sipped at the whiskey, trying to garner some resolve. His eyes refocused on his own reflection, as grey, wan, and lined as the skin of any Zombie. He thought about the last sixteen years running from the knowledge that he had lost everything in The Fall, the same as everyone else. He had a memory of that black time, of biting teeth and running in the dark from the moans. Times of black grief and reckless mourning that weren’t to be talked about.

  The weight of the experience formed a cross too heavy to bear. Everyone in Greater London yearned to share the stories of that time and gain some solace, yet few could, because the cross was carried by everyone. The memory of the Zombie apocalypse was too dark and personal to be borne by others. Jim wondered if he was the only one with that recognition. Then, as he poured himself another glass of rough whiskey, he thought about Shayna and the kids, three little gems of life, and although he had a picture on his desk he realised he hadn’t thought about them in a long time. He had hidden from the pain using responsibility. He realised that after sixteen years of fighting the enemy and building this city, he hadn’t grieved for them. He knew that was probably the longest time for anyone in the city, but it was too late now to grieve, no tears came, and he wasn’t even sure any more of the name of the youngest one.

  He tried to gain the will to face his men and tell them it would be ok, that it wouldn’t be like The Fall, but he knew this to be a lie. It would be worse than The Fall and they would all die, no-one would escape that hadn’t left the city already. He knew this because The Minister had phoned him and told him so.

  Eight days ago it had started as a curiosity, a lone Zombie shambling slowly down Knightsbridge, wearing a smart suit and carrying a sign, the last protester at an
Undead rally. It was picked up on CCTV and tracked by a tired, laconic, operator who reported it to the Gate Patrol. They acknowledged with a casual grunt and watched it move onwards in its own quietly determined way past the husks of cars and overgrown verges piled with detritus. It was an ‘Ancient’, with sunken eyes and wiry limbs.

  Eventually, one of the guards folded his poker hand, shrugged at his friends around him, took his winnings and climbed the ladder up the wall of broken concrete and cars. As he struggled upwards he passed the hanging drapes that warned those who left that they would receive no more safety once through the steel and aluminium gate.

  The wall stretched along Piccadilly in one direction and along Grosvenor Place in the other, encompassing Buckingham Palace and the gardens within the walls of ‘Greater London’. He climbed the forty feet to the top of the gate, constructed at the end of Constitution Hill, sat on the little chair in the rain rusted corrugated structure, took the binoculars from the hook and looked towards the lone figure ahead in the cracked and dusty streets. Once he had a bead, he focussed in. It didn’t look too fresh, but strangely, the suit did. It shambled past the remains of shopping carts pushed to the side and over shrubs that grew from the rain filled drains. The sign, clutched in its white knuckles, wobbled about as the grey Zombie lurched inexorably left to right like a metronome. It read:

  The End is Nigh.

  The guard finished his tea, rifled in his bags for some bullets, found some and with them a pack of cigarettes. He lit one and carefully loaded the rifle. Looking up, the Zombie was a little closer, so he finished the cigarette and waited. Finally, the guard raised the rifle, cocked it, settled it into his shoulder, and shot the Zombie through the head. It flopped dustily to the floor. The guard leant the rifle against the chair, rested his head in his hands and sighed.

  An hour later to the second, Control rang through. Two more had been spotted coming down Knightsbridge, both carrying signs. He told the operator in the Department of Control about the sign the first one was carrying, and she asked him to tell her what was on the signs these two were waving.

  The End is Nigh.

  The Minister is coming!

  Ten hours later, the guard was flanked by snipers, dressed in black fatigues and dark polarised glasses, their protection from the morning glare. They settled on the walls like Gothic crows, kneeling, crouching and lying with eyes pressed up to the sights. The minigun stations were manned, as were the flame thrower apertures at ground level. Behind him troops ran, frantically ferrying ammo from supply vans to the individual guns. He could hear orders being barked, men and women sweating as they threw case after case of ammo into position. An alarm sounded. Everyone fell silent and over the public address system, an announcement was made.

  “Here they come. Wait until the order to fire,” the tinny, disembodied voice said.

  The number of Zombies had doubled every hour until this wave held over a thousand. The signs they carried repeating the same mantra,

  The End is Nigh

  The Minister is coming!

  Prepare yourself

  For confession

  In one week

  He will come

  As soon as the mobs of Zombies were in range, and the order was given, the miniguns fired up to speed with a spinning whine. There were four of them around the gate and as one they roared in defiance at the mob. The bullets ripped through the flesh of the Dead, into those behind. Those who were not shot in the head rose to fight again. The guns trained in on them and cut them down with efficiency. A few minutes later, it was over and the guns spun down. The acrid smell of hot metal pierced the senses of the soldiers around. They relaxed, flexed wrists, cricked necks, smoked and waited.

  For an hour more ammo was ferried to the gunning posts, and engineers tended the hot, old guns with cooling oils and pastes in readiness for the doubling of the Zombies again. Jim had wondered at that time how many Zombies the Minister controlled, or could control, maybe it was about a thousand, as many as had been sent in the last wave. If that was the case, of course the Minister would be better using subterfuge, so why announce his arrival? Jim realised this was the psychological component. The attack had been broadcast all over the city on the BBC. Everyone knew the Minster was coming, everyone knew that something was about to happen.

  After an hour the next wave never came, nor an hour after that, and there was nothing for a few days. Even the reconnaissance missions reported very few or no Zombies around. It was as quiet as ever in the City of the Dead.

  Jim remembered sitting in his office three days ago. It was late afternoon and he was reading a very dry report about estimated repair times for the wind farm system when his phone rang. He flicked the receiver up to his ear and held it there with his chin.

  “Bramer,” he said curtly. There was a shuffle and a click on the end of the line. Jim was just about to repeat his name.

  “Ahh Jim. I kent I would just leave ya a wee message.”

  Jim’s legs went weak. He recognised the voice from the MP3 he had played to Paul Jollie all those months ago. It was flat, hollow, threatening even in the quiet between words.

  “Dunnae try talking to me, I’m just a recording... I just wanted to let you know that it’s time for you to stop fightin’ and ready yersel’. I’ll come and hear yer confession. I want you to kneel afore me and admit your sins. I say this, Jim, because when you see me for the first time, in three days time, I’ll walk straight intae yer city an’ you’ll weep an’ realise that there is nothing you can dae. Nothing you can dae to stop this happening. Make yer peace with God, Jim, and I’ll gladly welcome you intae my arms. See you soon, big man. See you soon.”

  Jim held the phone long after the Minister rang off. He felt as vulnerable as the first time he had hidden unarmed from the Dead. The Minister had told him that he wasn’t safe. All the mechanisms and safeguards they had built against the Zombie horde meant nothing when there was a mind behind it.

  The call was traced to a payphone on the Isle of Dogs. CCTV found the person who made the call and held the Dictaphone to the receiver. His name was Charlie Willoughby, and he had entered Greater London through the North gate claiming he had come to trade, in his Land Rover, from one of the isolated communities to the north. He had been admitted after screening then made the call after travelling right across the six miles of walled city. Charlie was easily picked up, and under robust interrogation had admitted that the Minister had taken a thousand Zombies through his community and taken his family hostage, Charlie begged them not to tell the Minister when he arrived for the sake of his family. They reminded him they were more than likely already dead. According the Charlie, the Minister was alive and well and on his way. They locked Charlie up and waited.

  Then, on the morning of the seventh day, the city of London awoke, turned on their TV’s and saw pictures beamed live from a helicopter as it flew down Knightsbridge and into a sea of the Dead. They stood in a line starting a quarter of a mile from the gate. In between the buildings, they filled the car parks, streets, shopping precincts and sports fields in every open space for mile after mile. The helicopter flew over not an army of the Dead, but a nation of the Dead. Millions of zombies had appeared overnight at the gates of London and now stood facing the city in silence, evenly spaced and unmoving, muting all sound with their collective mass. The BBC reporter was trying frantically to describe the vastness of the scene whilst concealing the fear evident in his own voice.

  At that moment, Jim knew that the Minister was right, there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t evacuate the city, but they would try and in the end the nation of the Dead would roll over the city like a tsunami. Jim reached for the whiskey bottle. The Dead stood there as the city fell into chaos. The army stood resolute. They had been trained well but the population fled to the east of Greater London and into any ships, planes and even rafts that would carry them. Now, as Jim watched the last hopefuls file towards Westminster Bridge, a wave of tiredness fell over him.
The empty whiskey bottle fell to the floor and spun. Jim lurched over and kept his balance against the desk. He was more drunk than he had realised. He reached over to grab the faded photo of his long dead family and knocked it over. He scrambled to pick it up and looked at the smiling faces within. He had been wrong, there were tears left to grieve. He flopped into the leather backed chair and stared at the picture cradled in his hands, weeping until the alcohol took hold and he passed out.