Death Plague [Four Zombie Novels]

by Ian Woodhead

  Somehow he doubted that he’d ever share her enthusiasm. Organic farming and eating like rabbits and squirrels was all very fascinating, but as for all that stuff about auras and the life-force? Well, the last thing he needed was some lecture that bordered dangerously close to strange hippy talk.

  “Don’t you like your breakfast, George? You haven’t eaten that much of it. I’m sorry, but it’s the best I could do with what limited ingredients I could find.” Anne smiled, “Never mind, I’ll make you a decent meal before we go out.”

  George wasn’t sure what to make of that that last remark, had she just insulted him? “It’s me who ought to apologise, this—stuff isn’t really the sort of food I normally eat.”

  “Don’t you worry about all that, we’ll soon have you eating proper food before you know it; you’ll be as fit as an ox. It will happen, too, believe me, my darling; your aura tells me everything.”

  Suddenly, he saw an image of his future: an old man wearing bio-degradable overalls made from organic avocados skins and eating lentil soup from half a coconut, while Anne danced in the moonlight and prayed to the gods of grass and nettles.

  George held back an icy shiver. That was one future that he never intended to live. There was no way that he could live without his daily dose of bacon, sausages, and pork pies; nobody, no matter how sexy, would be able to turn him away from his meat intake.

  No bloody wonder young Tom hadn’t been able to jump into bed with this sex-crazed widow. He dismembered dead animals every day. Anne would probably regard the butcher as despicable as Satan or whatever equivalent nasty thing she believed in. Knowing what he’d learnt so far, it would be some sort of forest goblin or something equally stupid.

  “I’ve often wondered why Dean’s aura was so different,” she said.

  “What? Sorry, you’ve lost me, Anne.”

  “Dean, your son, his aura is almost black. I’m not saying that he’s a bad person or anything, it doesn’t work like that; dark auras usually mean that the individual is cursed.”

  “Look, Anne,” he growled. “Can you not bring my son into the conversation? I don’t want his name to kill the mood.”

  With all her talk about new age rubbish, George didn’t think that there was much mood left to kill.

  She smiled demurely, threw back the covers, then straddled his thighs. “I’m so sorry; the last thing I wanted was for you to get upset. Let me make it up to you.”

  Anna removed George’s dressing gown before she placed her left hand around the base of his penis. “I know another way of making you happy,” she whispered as Anne lowered her head.

  Chapter Six

  He couldn’t believe that his old nickname was still there, carved into the wooden bench. Dean slowly traced his forefinger along the crude knife cuts that spelled out the words Space Cowboy.

  Dean yawned and stretched, then leaned back against the wooden slats. The train was about to leave the platform. Apart from Dean, only the scruffy girl got off at Seeton Crossing station. He wondered if the girl was due to depart here or if that conductor had finally caught the fare-dodging mouth on legs and threw her off. He shrugged; she hadn’t seemed unduly stressed when she stepped onto the platform.

  Whatever the case, if she hoped to find any spare money here, then she was in for a major shock. Folk in Seeton were tighter than a pair of wasp’s knickers and were suspicious of all strangers.

  The train left the station, bound for the next crappy village. He watched the young girl cross the footbridge; she must have seen the ancient metal sign that pointed the way to the village square. He sighed and gazed down at his handiwork. Dean felt the beginnings of a nostalgic smile reach his lips.

  He vividly remembered vandalising this bench. It had been exactly two days after he’d celebrated his fifteenth birthday.

  “Oh, my God, that was eighteen years ago,” he said. “Has it really been so bloody long?”

  Dean rubbed his finger across the knife marks one more time. “Eighteen years and the council hadn’t even bothered to re-paint the bench. Nothing round here has changed then.”

  Even when he was a kid this crappy village was stuck in its own little time bubble. Dean remembered himself and his other stroppy teenage mates desperately wishing they could leave this shithole and venture out into the real world.

  The station was the only place in the village where they got to see real strangers, people who didn’t know everything about you and your family; sometimes the train even stopped here and these strangers got off.

  They called themselves the Seeton Massive. Dean chuckled to himself, he hadn’t thought of that name in years. It was Tom Mayland who thought up the name—ironic, considering he was only a shade above five feet.

  Dean used to make fun of his blonde girly hair that grew halfway down his back. He was adamant that when he got older he’d be a rock star with shit loads of money, a garage full of fast cars, and beautiful girls hanging off each arm. His dad owned the village butchers so everybody knew that despite his boasts, the lad wasn’t going anywhere, and there had been a butchers shop owned by the Mayland’s since like forever. His destiny had been set in stone since he was a baby.

  Gavin Ellis, the largest of the group, used to boast that his family owned this village; it was true that his dad was head of the council and they lived in the largest house on the outskirts of Seeton. The running joke was that in the old days there weren’t that many folk in the village, so the Ellis’s shagged their sister’s and aunties, uncles and brothers which probably explained why their entire family resembled the back end of a horse. Nobody would dare say any of that to his face though. Gavin’s temper wasn’t that long and he did have a tendency to talk with his fists if he believed somebody was making fun of him.

  The last one of their group but certainly not the least, was Sarah Winwood. Dean sighed; now that was a name that brought back a few happy memories. Everybody in the gang fancied her like crazy.

  Dean had lost his virginity to that girl at the tender age of fourteen. It may have been just a quick and messy session behind the old youth club, but as far as he was concerned, Dean had now become a man.

  Thinking back, Sarah had been responsible for all the lads in the group to lose their cherries. She’d even been with Gavin.

  At any other time, it would have been cool to hook with the others and re-live old memories over a few pints at the Rose and Crown. Dean reckoned that the chances of all of them still living in Seeton would be pretty high; not many folk left the village, and those who did generally made their way back.

  “Just like me,” he whispered.

  He needed to visit his mother as well and try to explain to her why he hadn’t been able to visit her grave. Of all the actions the institute had taken, initiating a lock-down just after his mother had passed away was the one that hurt the most.

  The graveyard wasn’t that far from here. In between the station and the village, he looked up and saw an old man walking over the bridge; he reminded Dean a little of his old man. His stood up and watched him walk towards the platform, could it be him? The man then stopped by a large red transit van and climbed in. No, it wasn’t him. Oh, bloody hell. How was he going to explain his actions to his dad? He wouldn’t be able to understand what Dean had been working on for all this time or why he hadn’t been able to come up and visit. The daft old sod was too set in his ways, locked into the past like the rest of them here in Seeton.

  Perhaps he ought to ring ahead and prepare him? That seemed like a logical idea. If he forewarned him that Dean was coming up to see him then most of his dad’s anger should have fizzled out by the time he knocked on the front door.

  “Oh, crap!” Bollocks, he’d just remembered that he still had a company phone in his jacket pocket. How dumb was he? They’d easily be able to trace his location if he’d been stupid enough to use that.

  Dean removed the phone, prised off the back cover, and took out the battery. He dropped it on the floor, then stamped on it
until he heard the casing snapped. He then kicked it off the platform. There were times when his own stupidity surprised even him. Well, it looked as though his dad would be getting a surprise visit from his darling son after all.

  He looked up to find that the station platform was no longer deserted. A tall teenage girl wearing a very tight green t-shirt walked past the bench; she held a ghetto blaster in her left hand. Dean tried not to stare at it, bloody hell. Had the kids round here not heard of mobile phones? He hadn’t seen one of those things since the eighties. This place really was stuck in its own little time bubble.

  The radio was on, and Dean caught a snippet of a newscaster mentioning disturbances in the capital; gunfire had been heard in various locations around the city.

  His mouth went bone-dry; he knew exactly what that meant. He watched as she wandered over to the timetable then rushed towards her, eager to hear the rest of the news. Dean heard something about barricades of abandoned vehicles around the parliament buildings and something about bonfires across London Bridge before the woman looked at Dean funny, turned off her radio, and hurried over to the far end of the platform.

  He stood there in the boiling sun and feeling as if he had just stepped out of an ice-cold shower. He had failed to contain it; somehow, the infection had spread out of the institute and into the capital city. He staggered over to the wall and put his hands against the cool bricks. The full implications of what he had helped to create were now beginning to sink in.

  “Christ, Linda’s in London!” Dean looked wildly around the station, then breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the public telephone was still in the same place. “Thank Christ for that,” he muttered. Dean rushed over and groaned when he saw Seeton’s new generation of kids had completely trashed it.

  “You stupid little fuckers,” he growled. Dean saw the woman slowly making her way back to the train timetable bolted to the side of the station building.

  “Miss?” he shouted. “Excuse me, miss. I’m sorry to trouble you, but do you have a phone I could use? It’s really important.”

  The woman looked at him like he was speaking in a foreign tongue. She quickly shook her head then turned her back to him.

  Fuck, what an ignorant cow. What the hell was he going to do now? Dean hurried off the station platform towards the bridge, there used to be a couple of phone boxes just near the village square, surely one of those still worked.

  He glanced back and the saw his phone battery lying in the middle of the tracks, not believing he’d just done that. If the infection really was out then the authorities would have better things to do than search for him.

  Dean turned around and suddenly stopped. He grinned. Some things in Seeton did change after all. Dean hurried across the road and stopped in front of another phone box. He knew for a fact that this wasn’t here the last time he’d been in Seeton.

  He opened the door and hurried inside. Dean dug out a pile of change and placed it on the top while he tried to remember her number. He closed his eyes and attempted to calm down; Dean pictured her delicate features in his mind and immediately her telephone number came back to him. He punched in the numbers and groaned aloud as he was connected to an answering machine.

  “This is all I need, a bloody machine. Linda, if you’re there, please pick up the phone. Linda? Oh shit. Look, I need you to stay where you are. This is no joke, something very bad is happening. Stay inside and do not open the door to anyone. I know we parted badly, but you need to believe me on this. Please take care of yourself.”

  Dean replaced the receiver. Jesus, he must have sounded like a bloody madman. He picked up his bag and ran out of the railway station. He should be at the house in a few minutes. He hoped to God the server was still running, and with a bit of luck Dean would be able to connect to the main computer banks. If he could get online, Dean might be able to work out just what the fuck had gone wrong.

  Explanations and apologies with his dad would have to wait a bit longer.

  Chapter Seven

  Alison stood on her tiptoes and cursed when she found she was still unable to look into the cracked mirror. “This is a joke,” she said to herself.

  Then she remembered seeing a pile of bricks just outside the door of the gents. Alison smiled to herself. “One of those will do the job nicely.”

  She hurried out of the toilets, picked up the top block, and carried her find back into the gents. She dropped it on the floor, climbed on the block, and leaned towards the mirror. “Missed a bit,” she muttered when Alison saw the long narrow streak of grime along her cheek. She paused and gazed at her face again. This was the first time she’d seen herself in a mirror for months.

  “You ain’t that bad looking, girl. Apart from that mucky bit you missed.” She licked her fingers and vigorously rubbed the dirt off. On the whole, Alison didn’t think she’d done all that bad considering what limited washing facilities had been on offer.

  After leaving the railway station Alison had first made her way through the narrow stretch of trees that lay beyond the station and dipped down the banking towards the narrow beck at the bottom. She did feel a bit conspicuous, stripping off all her clothes then jumping into the cold water. After washing herself the best she could, she then dumped all of her old clothing into the stream and watched the running water take her filthy rags down the stream. Shivering, she placed the long coat that she had lifted from a drooling woman on the train around her wet body and made her way back up the bank. The only items of clothing that she’d kept from her old life were a spare pair of trousers and her beloved pair of hiking boots. She’d only had these a couple of weeks, and they were a bit grubby but serviceable. Despite having bugger all clothes left, as long as she didn’t unfasten the coat Alison reckoned that she should pass for a wandering student or some young hiker. Back when she used to live here, those types were a common sight in and around the village, so she ought to walk through her old haunts unnoticed.

  Alison gave her face one more check in that mirror. Yeah, nobody would recognise this mug, she didn’t look a bit like that fresh-faced terrified girl who left here all those years ago.

  Her intention was to go for a quick shopping trip in the village to buy herself some decent clothing before trying to grab a room for a couple of nights above the Rose and Crown.

  It seemed like a good enough plan. Once she had settled in, then Alison could start with the task of hunting down her form teacher, the one who forced himself upon her and the bastard who destroyed Alison’s innocence and caused her to flee from Seeton and from everyone who cared for her.

  Once that evil bastard was finally out of the way, then she would feel comfortable with getting back in contact with her family in the hope that they would forgive Alison and take her back.

  She glanced to the exit and gasped when she heard a pair of voices coming towards the toilet. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t her fault that the ladies toilets didn’t have a fucking mirror; even so, there was no way that she could be caught in here. Alison ran into one of the open booths and shut and locked the door. With a bit of luck they’d be finished and moved on in a minute or two.

  “So why do you think that our dear councillor has moved the dates for the charity gala ahead two weeks?”

  Alison felt as though an ice-cold slug had just slivered down her backbone when she heard that voice. That voice belonged to the other one, the fucker who took Alison outside school and dragged her back into the sports block. The sound of his voice took her spiralling back to that night.

  The school bell was rung absolutely ages ago. God, Alison was so pissed off with that teacher. Just what bleeding right did he have to keep her back? She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  She hurried past the outside of the sports block, trying to keep a rein on her emotions; she knew that just one slip and that would be it, the tears would just stream out like a burst dam. She ought to report that Mr. Hudson, the man was just way too creepy; that thing he did with his eyes when he stared at the
girls made her blood run cold, like he was undressing them or something.

  Alison stopped dead. No, it couldn’t be that. The man was ancient; he must be almost as old as Alison’s own dad. Men didn’t have mucky thoughts at that age, well, except for the creeps and perverts.

  Then again, those two words fit Mr. Hudson perfectly. She nodded to herself, yes. Alison would send an anonymous letter to the headmaster in the morning, telling the head that Hudson had been feeling her arse or something.

  She grinned. Yeah, that would sort him out. Feeling miles better, Alison headed towards the school gates. She ought to be excited now, not pissed off. Tonight was the night when she would finally get to drink inside a real pub.

  It had all been Trisha’s idea. She had told Alison last week that her new boyfriend had just been given a car for his eighteenth birthday. It still excited Alison to think that her best mate was actually going out with a boy three years older than they were.

  Trisha had told Alison that they’d even done it in his bedroom.

  Trisha suggested they all take a trip to Edenvale, the village eight miles to the west. Her boyfriend told Trisha that their local pub was nowhere near as strict as the Rose and Crown; apparently he’d been drinking in there since he was fourteen. They had lock-ins and everything at the Black Goose.

  Alison couldn’t wait; the last time she had alcohol now was over three weeks ago when she was up at Trisha’s house. They both shared a bottle of cider; Trisha was allowed alcohol, which as far as Alison was concerned, just wasn’t fair. Her parents were non-drinkers, and they thought alcohol was the devil’s piss or some rubbish like that. If they even suspected that Alison was going to a pub tonight, they’d ground her for three months. As far as they were concerned, she was staying over at Trisha’s on a shared revision date.

  Just before she reached the school gates, she noticed something small and white move along the top of a dry-stone wall to the left of her. Alison spun around and peered over, trying to make out what it was. It was difficult to make out; the fact that the sun had gone down and the street lamp above was broken didn’t help. It looked like a cat but if it was it was a bloody small one.