Necropolis Rising

by Dave Jeffery

  “What you got us, Stu, a tank?” Clarke scoffed.

  “I didn’t have enough time,” Stu said with the kind of seriousness that came with honesty. “So we’ve got a Mastiff six wheel drive; carries six, fully armored.”

  “Isn’t that a little like overkill? We’re supposed to blend in, not go on a ram-raid.” Suzie said pointedly to Kunaka, earning her a scowl from the big man.

  “We’ve got to prepare for every eventuality, Suzie,” O’Connell interjected. “If we get rumbled, we may have to force our way through.”

  “And a roadblock ain’t gonna stop no Mastiff, missy,” Stu growled.

  “Armour as thick as your head, then, I guess,” Suzie sniped, turning away from him.

  “Let’s stay focused,” O’Connell said tactfully. “The plan is this: we get into the city, appraise the easiest route to our target, then use the explosion as leverage to gain access to the NICDD building. We’re a squad sent to protect and lock down a potentially exposed, strategic target. From there we plug into their mainframe and Clarke will deliver our package directly into the system. Then we get the fuck out of there the way we got in. I’ll try and plug gaps as I go; so stow your questions because I haven’t got all the answers for you right now.”

  “What’s the time frame?” Clarke asked.

  “We go now,” O’Connell said, “while there’s still confusion in the air. We’ll use it to slip through the cordon.”

  “And if we can’t blag our way through?” Amir queried.

  Squatting down, Stu patted the hold-all at his feet.

  “Then I guess we have to use a little persuasion,” he said.

  “What you got in there, cowboy?” Suzie said with a caustic air.

  “Like you’d know if I told you,” Stu said with a patronizing smile. He reached down and began pulling weaponry from its canvas innards; depositing each one onto the floor. “Benelli M4 shot gun; SA80 rifles, they hold a 30 round magazine; Browning high powered pistols; Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun, capable of firing 950 rounds per minute. That enough for you, Suzie?”

  “Sure,” she said. “For a war.”

  “Got any grenades?” Clarke’s question got in the way of another potential exchange.

  “You crazy?” Stu said looking up at the pimple-faced youth. “Those things are dangerous.”

  Suzie looked from Kunaka’s face to the small arsenal at his feet and shook her head disbelievingly.

  “Men!”

  “Okay,” O’Connell said after picking up a rifle. “Be ready to move in five minutes.”

  ***

  5

  Take that you undead bastard,” Darren Doyle screamed as he emptied the magazine of his Heckler and Koch machine pistol into the oncoming zombie horde.

  Several figures span around, some taking rounds to the head, others the chest, blood and flesh splattering the air in thick gory wads.

  But still they came, the room filling with their mournful groans. He tried to reload but he was out of ammo. There was no way out of here, no way back. There were just too many of them, all yearning to grab him, hold him; eat him.

  “Ah, fuck it!” he muttered in resignation.

  And then Darren Doyle paused the game.

  On-screen, the undead pixel army stopped in mid stride, their tide of terrible lament receding, allowing silence to wash in behind it.

  “Should’ve gone for that bastard arms cache after all,” Doyle appraised after taking a long slug from the can of beer that he’d retrieved from a stained coffee table next to him. He grimaced. The beer was warm and flat. Christ, how long had he been playing? He peered at the Michael Meyers clock on the wall of his bed-sit. The LED readout told him he’d just emerged from another six hour straight, cyber bender.

  You need to get a life, Daz.

  It was Gerard, his brother’s voice that had now taken residence in his head. Doyle reviled his brother’s piety more than the zombies frozen on the screen in front of him.

  He’d not seen Gerard for over three years. Last time it had gotten pretty ugly. Words had been exchanged, booze fuelled of course. Doyle couldn’t remember that much about it. But he guessed it involved his brother telling him what a waste of space he was, how he’d never amount to anything. It usually did.

  The irony was that they used to be close; driven together by the need for survival. Their parents had split when Daz and Gerard were four and eight respectively. And the years that followed were an acrimonious exchange between warring parents who used to screw each other as opposed to screw each other over. And as in all wars there was crossfire and the two kids were caught in the middle, doing the only thing they could do: keep their heads down.

  Since their mum and dad had shrugged off their responsibilities, so Gerard had put them on; making sure that his little brother had some stability.

  And this continued, even when their gran took them in and raised them while her son - and their dad - continued as though the world impinged on the next trade union club or snooker hall or any place but home.

  But somewhere it all got worse, it all got skewed. Time marched on and boys became youths and the world grew broad and enticing. Gerard yearned for it and sought it out, and suddenly a little brother became a big mill stone that he just wanted to leave behind to gather moss.

  Initially it was only for a short time, but to Daz these moments were deep cuts, carving into his psyche. And these wounds festered, eating into the wall he’d built around his feelings of insecurity. Before long, as Gerard turned his focus to new horizons, so Daz began to turn to himself. And insecurity began to manifest as rebellion; truancy and alcohol and drugs coming in quick succession. Before anyone had realised, Daz was twenty-eight and slumming it in a cramped bed-sit, with only an Xbox and a giro for company.

  But fuck it! Unlike his parents, unlike his brother, the games machine was at least constant, at least reliable. And it helped him to lose days; replacing alcohol and drugs as his new addiction of choice, his new way to just bail from life.

  A huge crash from the bed-sit below yanked him from his reflections. It was followed by another, this time he felt the threadbare carpet vibrate under his bare feet.

  “What the fuck was that?” he moaned at the TV. The gallery of gory faces stared gormlessly back at him, declining to comment. They didn’t have to, Doyle already knew the answer. It was his tempestuous neighbors and their feckin’ tempestuous relationship.

  Two people, one disagreement, countless bottles of booze and, by the sound of it, another night of bedlam. There was a loud pop and the bright tinkle of shattering glass and then a short, sharp scream. A series of shuffling footfalls ensued as though something was being dragged across bare floorboards.

  Doyle made a decision to be pre-emptive. He smashed his foot down onto the floor boards three times.

  “Shut the fuck up and learn to communicate, you morons!” he yelled.

  For some reason, Doyle found the resulting silence more disturbing than the argument. Then the shuffling noise was back.

  And something else. It was faint, drifting though the floor but its presence had his eyes flitting towards the TV screen and the hairs of his neck began to do a jig.

  Someone was groaning.

  It wasn’t a groan of pain, or of love making. It was discordant and feral, like the growl of a hungry animal.

  Doyle turned off the TV.

  He held his breath, listening out for that groan (growl). But what he heard was an even more unsettling noise: the click and squeak of a front door being opened. He heard it in surround sound; partially through the floor and also drifting up the stairwell.

  And after the squeak ended the slow dragging noise started again; the shuffling punctuated by the thud of a foot landing on the steps.

  Then the groaning came again; amplified and given a hideous, ethereal quality by the stairwell. With each slow and deliberate footfall the groaning became louder and thicker and closer, until Doyle could see shadows shimmering in gap bet
ween his front door and the thread bare carpet.

  He jumped as something struck the other side of the door with enough force to make it rattle in its frame.

  The sudden surge of adrenalin; the bright, insistent need to scream consumed him and for one horrible moment he almost gave in to it. Instead he clamped both his hands over his gaping mouth, his fingers creating dark divots in the flesh of his cheeks.

  The shuffling on the landing, the wavering shadows at the door-hem held his eyes. He felt a twinge in his right calf as the muscle protested and he lifted his foot to head off cramps.

  The noise from the landing began to recede, the footsteps now moving away from the door; away from Doyle. He allowed his hands to fall away from his mouth and placed his foot firmly back onto the floor.

  And onto the TV remote.

  The room was suddenly alive with sinister music and the pervading din of the pixel undead, now re-animated and lurching towards him on the screen.

  Doyle stooped for the remote, grabbed it and hit all the buttons until the TV went blank and silent. But whoever was outside had heard the cacophony and had returned to the front door; bringing with it the slow labored footsteps and that deep growling moan.

  “Oh, shit,” Doyle whispered as the pounding on the door started up again. It was a full sound, deep and dull and Doyle realised what was happening shortly before the door bowed inwards bringing the frame with it in all its splintered glory. The person lying on the floor had been butting the door with his head!

  It was a man, Doyle was sure of it. The size of the guy gave it away. And as the figure clambered slowly and awkwardly to his feet, Doyle gawped in horror.

  Oh, his face was livid with blood and death; a three dimensional parody of the creatures he’d been battling in cyber land for the past six hours. But somehow worlds had collided and Darren Doyle was caught in the fallout, and he was not alone.

  He shook off his terror enough to back away, the thing before him straightening until its buckled twisted frame wavered. Doyle noticed a black tee shirt sporting an image of an old Smith’s Meat is Murder album cover. Somehow, Doyle knew that if this thing had ever endorsed such doctrine in the past it was now about to make a radical U-turn.

  It began to shamble towards him, arms outstretched and mouth dribbling blood and saliva onto its shiny new training shoes.

  “Stay away from me!” Doyle yammered.

  The zombie neighbour kept on coming. It had cocked its head to one side as if listening to his cry, but its eyes were yellow and vacant, peering out from the windows of oblivion.

  The zombie was between Doyle and the door. He had to think fast, try not to lose his cool. His mind began to adapt. This was a game; he only had one life left and no ammo. What could he do?

  He searched frantically about the bed-sit, trying to find anything to use as a weapon. Instinctively he peeled left, an attempt to circumvent the man-thing, and this action brought him into the kitchen area, a Formica haven bristling with strewn cutlery in desperate need of a wash.

  The zombie followed his movements, its utterances both mournful and sinister.

  Doyle made a grab for a bread knife, its blade dull with shitty smears of Marmite. The zombie was slow, but in the small space of the bed-sit it didn’t really matter, it was close to Doyle as he turned to face it.

  Over its shoulder Doyle saw the sanctity of the front door-frame, the jamb a splintered route to freedom.

  He lashed out, and the zombie walked into it, the knife carving a line into its cheek and congealed blood fell as chunks of jelly.

  He ducked underneath outstretched hands and on his way past jammed the knife into the things side, repulsed by the feel of the blade grating against its ribs. He left the knife behind him, his focus now the exit and thoughts of escape.

  But in this hasty exodus, Doyle got clumsy. His foot caught the felled door, and he careened into the frame, his collar bone shattering on impact, causing him the cry out, his momentum spinning him out onto the landing where his back caught the stair rail producing a bar of white hot pain that crumpled his right leg and sent him lolling to one side.

  It was Harold Lloyd, it was Buster Keaton, it was Darren Doyle bouncing and rolling down a flight of harsh concrete steps, the bones in his body popping like a sheet of bubble wrap in the hands of a toddler.

  He smashed onto the landing below and lay there, semi conscious; his breathing shallow and his eyes cruelly focused on the stairs.

  In his woozy state he saw a hand appear on the ruined door jamb of his bed-sit and watched as the zombie extricated itself onto the landing. It turned to face him and without pause began its slow, lumbering decent.

  Doyle should’ve been horrified at the fate he was about to endure, but his view of the event was third party. It wasn’t real was it? Not the pain, not the creature now standing over him filling the air with its putrid, butcher-shop reek. Any moment now it would all end; underscored by two words in bold red letters.

  Game over.

  ***

  6

  Sitting in the back of the Mastiff that Kunaka had acquired on the strength of a phone call, O’Connell looked at Suzie Hanks.

  She didn’t return his gaze. He’d upset her. He knew this because he knew her; every nuance in her emotional arsenal, and every inch of her delicate body. He’d made a gaff. And now she was letting him know.

  After their briefing, O’Connell had placed a hand on her arm and steered her to another part of the room. She sensed something immediately. His eyes never lied to her. She loved the way they never tried.

  “What is it?” she asked bluntly.

  “You can bail from this, Suzie.” O’Connell’s reply was cautious; testing the water.

  “Bail?” she quizzed, but knew what he meant. “As in not go?” Incredulity coated her words. Her top lip turned white. “And why would I want to do that?”

  “You probably wouldn’t,” O’Connell sighed. “But I thought I’d give you the choice.”

  “I’ve made my choice. I’m part of this team. My name’s in The Consortium’s hat just like everyone else’s.”

  She caught something in O’Connell’s face; it was fleeting but she spotted it with ease.

  “What?” she said sternly.

  “You’re not known to The Consortium,” he admitted sheepishly. He could take out a guy twice his size, without hesitation or regret, but right then he couldn’t look into her eyes.

  “Why?”

  It was such a small and simple word, but the answer was big and so complex he paused to get things straight in his mind.

  “I wanted to -” He stopped and changed direction, “I needed to make sure that you were ...”

  “This isn’t about me at all is it?” she interjected with uncanny accuracy. “It’s about you.”

  His shoulders sagged with resignation. He couldn’t deny that his decision not to inform The Consortium of Suzie’s involvement was to make sure she would be safe. Safe from the job, safe from those who would stop at nothing to get the job done. And safe from the retribution that would most certainly follow should they fail. O’Connell wanted to protect the one thing in his life that he held above all; the purity of one person’s commitment to another. From the second Suzie had climbed from the parapet at his insistence, O’Connell couldn’t help but protect her. Maybe it was because of her old man, maybe it was because it was in his nature to protect what he considered vulnerable, or what he cared for dearly.

  O’Connell knew that he would give his life for Suzie Hanks, but she would never let him do it. Her nature was that of strength and resolve and pride. It was this latter element that had taken a pounding. O’Connell had tried to keep her safe, and had only succeeded in making her different. And for Susan Hanks this was a painful act, an act of betrayal. Seven years of ritualistic abuse at the hands of her daddy had made her different. She didn’t want reminders; she wanted inclusion.

  “I did it for the right reasons, Suzie,” he whispered reaching up to
touch her arm. She allowed the action but didn’t respond to it. Her eyes were cold with hurt.

  “It was wrong,” her words were without malice yet this somehow made their sting far more potent.

  “Yes,” he conceded. “I’m sorry.”

  “You can say it again when we’ve done the job,” she said turning away.

  His arm stayed in the air for a few seconds before he allowed it to drop to his side, redundant for a while.

  “Hey, boss?”

  O’Connell blinked away the memory and saw Clarke’s spot blasted face wavering into view.

  “What is it, Clarkey?”

  “How come I only get a pistol?” the younger guy grumbled.

  “The weapons are a last resort,” O’Connell said, his tone cautious. “It’s unlikely we’ll be needing them. So don’t fret, okay?”

  “Well, if these things are just for show, why can’t I have one of those rifles?” Clarke said in a petulant tone.

  “Because you’ll probably shoot yourself,” Amir grinned next to him. “Then you’ll be no good to anyone. If you ever were.”

  “My mother loves me,” Clarke said pulling a disgruntled face.

  “She clearly doesn’t love you enough,” Amir replied.

  ***

  The A38 splits Birmingham City in half. As the primary access route, the road is often congested and sluggish and doesn’t stop being as such until the early hours of the morning; where it becomes home to taxis ferrying clubbers and late night revelers back to the surrounding suburbs.

  Because it was the main road into the city, it was likely to be fortified to the hilt. As such O’Connell instructed Stu to avoid it. The Mastiff approached from the market town of Bromsgrove, using a sequence of rat runs that made the passengers feel as though they were constantly turning either left or right every few hundred metres.

  The view inside the cramped space was limited, the level of patience amongst the passengers, equally so. Suzie continued to keep herself closed off and Amir and Clarke sniped at each other. In this atmosphere O’Connell felt the first stages of doubt begin to churn in his belly. He stamped it out immediately, the way a vindictive child pounds upon a redundant toy. This wasn’t the time or the place for hesitation.