Death Plague [Four Zombie Novels]

by Ian Woodhead

  “Oh, dear Lord,” he muttered.

  The minders had hollowed him out and yet he still moved. His minders hadn’t been lying, this travesty really was dead. The boy’s hand reached out to grab Billy’s bare foot.

  “Get the fuck away!” he shouted, jumping back. Billy brought the pistol up and fired a single shot at the boy’s forehead. Fragments of skull and pieces of brain sprayed out of the back of his head, and what remained of the body just collapsed like a de-boned fillet of fish.

  “Did you two spastics not think of bashing in the cunt’s brains?” Billy gazed at his two trained killers, shivering like babies.

  “Is he dead?”

  Billy stood back, “Of course he’s fucking dead, Craig. Now get cleaned up, and then meet me upstairs in ten minutes time. I want to see a bucket of cold water in one hand, Craig. Jacob, you can bring a stiff bristled brush.”

  Craig looked at him with confusion etched into his ugly features. “I’m sorry, sir. Did I hear that correctly?”

  Billy sighed. “You two fuckwits have dripped all over my expensive carpet. I expect you to clean it.”

  The last of the military vehicles rumbled past the entrance to the alleyway. When he and his colleagues drove through the deserted city streets earlier, Billy watched a dozen uniformed men setting up checkpoints near the railway station and close to The Bull Ring. Thankfully, their route took them away from any of the main shopping areas, so they didn’t have to stop. Looking back, it may have been difficult to explain why three men were tooled up with hardware more sophisticated than what the soldiers had.

  He guessed that the army would start clearing the moving dead people from the centre and spreading out from there. There was little doubt in his mind that the chances of them returning to the club anytime soon would be next to remote. He kept this vital piece of information to himself. If his men knew he had no intentions of retreating to the safety of the club, their actions may be unpredictable. Usually, he wouldn’t give two fucks about how his employees felt. His word was law and that was that, but the rules had changed. He had adapted to this fucked up state of affairs, but they still needed time to acclimatise.

  “Sir, we have company. Oh, fuck, it’s another one of them.”

  Billy followed Craig’s trembling finger. He watched a young teenage girl stumble into the alley. She stopped in the middle, turned towards them, and took a single step towards the three men. Even without his previous contact with Marigold, he would have been able to deduce that this lady should not be moving about. Her naked body displayed the unmistakable ‘Y’ shaped stitching of a mortician’s assistant.

  Jacob unleashed a sound reminiscent to an angry bear as he stumbled past Billy whilst reaching into the inside of his jacket pocket. “A shot to the head? I can do that,” he muttered.

  Despite applauding the man’s eagerness to make amends, there was no way Billy could allow this. He padded up to Jacob who was already attempting to draw a bead on the approaching corpse. Billy placed his hand on Jacob’s wrist and pushed his arm down.

  “The time to exterminate these abominations with bullets will come later. I don’t want any gunshots in here, though. Look around you, we’re in an alley, the buildings will amplify the noise; do you wish to advertise our presence to Birmingham’s myriad dead? Unless of course, you intend to battle with a few hundred of the things.” Billy grinned. “Besides, I want this one intact. This bitch has a role to play.”

  He ran back over to Glen’s body. He found it unfortunate that the dealer had chosen to fall in the only area in this alley that wasn’t covered in litter. Around his sprawled body were piles of discarded bin bags, and another inch to the left or right and the rubbish would have cushioned his impact.

  Billy glanced behind him and saw that the girl was getting dangerously close, and his two minders still had their guns drawn, but he didn’t think they’d fire unless they believed their lives were in danger. A cursory examination of the crap piled up around the body resulted in nothing he could use. Billy ripped open one of the bin bags and almost whooped with joy when a supermarket carrier bag fell through the hole.

  “Just fucking perfect,” he said. He emptied the contents out, watching as a lump of mouldy teabags bounced off Glen’s face.

  “Sir? Can we shoot this fucker yet?”

  Billy sighed. He ran past his minders, turned the bag upside down, and pulled it over the girl’s head. Then he ducked under her flailing arms and tied the bag’s handles around her neck.

  “Come on, don’t just stand there fucking staring, get this thing secured.” Billy pushed the dead girl towards the two men and strode out of the alley towards his van. The occupant tied up in the back still hadn’t answered his questions. Billy turned and watched the minders each grab an arm. He felt that close contact with one of these things would help them both to adapt to the new situation.

  Glen had been involved in rather a lot of activities not authorised by Billy. He’d allowed these indiscretions to continue because the dealer was the best he had. It was reasonable to assume that if Billy reined in Glen’s rather vile pleasures then his productivity would be affected. In retrospect, perhaps paying more attention to the dealer’s contemptible traits may have avoided the silly fucker’s needless death.

  He grabbed the van’s rear doors. Even so, Glen was still family so consequently, his death needed to be avenged.

  The terrified girl’s face altered from blind hope to dread in the space of a second when Billy opened the rear doors. Just who did the silly bitch expect to open the door? Perhaps she heard the rumble of those army vehicles and thought some handsome soldier would stop his truck, rush over to the van, and rescue her.

  He climbed in and took a seat opposite the girl. Billy left the doors open, he wished to give this girl just a slight hope that escape may be possible.

  “Hello, Maggie.”

  It pleased him when her eyes opened just a little wider; she hadn’t expected him to know her name. Her eyes were rather pretty considering the state of the rest of her; they were probably her best feature.

  “I imagine that not too long ago, there would have been lots of handsome young men just dying to take you out to the cinema or for a meal.”

  She tried to cringe away when Billy placed one of his large hands on her thigh. “I’m guessing that you’ve forgotten what it was like to normal.”

  Her eyes darted over to those wide open doors. The prospect of freedom must be so tantalisingly close for the poor girl, she must even be able to taste it. He squeezed her thigh tight. She groaned behind her gag.

  “You only have to tell me where Alison has gone. That’s all you need to do. Just a few harmless words and that’ll be it; you can be on your way.” He pulled out a small plastic bag from his pocket and placed it on the bench beside him. Her eyes immediately shifted down to it. He decided not to inform her that the contents were just washing powder. “I’ll even give you a gift for being so cooperative.” He released his grip on the leg and then removed the gag. “Do we have a deal, Maggie?”

  The girl slowly shook her head, “No way,” she whispered. “I ain’t betraying Alison. She’s well out of it and good, too.”

  He had expected a little resistance, hence, the carrot on the stick prop, but this was ridiculous. Billy sighed, and he untied the knot in the bag and emptied the contents out of the rear of his van. It pleased him to hear the little bitch let out a tiny moan. “Craig, bring in our guest.”

  Billy jumped out and stood to one side while the minders brought the struggling corpse up to the van’s rear. He carefully removed the bag from around her neck. “Maggie, this is your last chance. Tell me where she’s gone right now, or I’ll put this monster in the back of the van with you.”

  The girl shuffled back, mumbling and groaning, her raw fear was there, visible for all to see, and yet she still shook her head.

  “Move that thing away,” he ordered. Billy jumped into the back, grabbed Maggie’s wrist, and dragged the girl
out into the open. She tried to get away, seemingly forgetting that she was still trussed up like an oven ready chicken. He moved back a few steps and drew his own pistol. “Okay boys, throw that thing at the bitch.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell, I’ll tell! She’s gone back home to where she was born.”

  Billy nodded and smiled. “Thank you, Maggie, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” He pointed his pistol at the dead girl. Maggie couldn’t take her eyes off the trigger. “Oh, wait on. Where exactly was she born?”

  The girl shook her head, tears streamed down her filthy cheeks. “I’ve no idea,” she whispered. “Alison never told me.”

  “Let it go.”

  The minders released her arms and jumped back. The dead girl took no notice of her previous captors and lunged for the girl on the ground. Maggie shrieked in agony when it bit into her outstretched arm. Billy heard the collective moaning of a dozen more of the dead slowly walking towards the van. Maggie’s screams must have attracted their attention.

  “Get in the van, it’s time to finish this.”

  “But she didn’t tell you where the girl was born.”

  Billy shrugged. “I already had that information; I just needed confirmation before I went on a wild goose chase.

  Chapter Eleven

  It must have cost an absolute fortune. Somehow she doubted that his family would have coughed up the cash either. Oh no, the caring community would have bought this for the deceiving, evil son of a bitch.

  “The village won’t be the same without him.” Alison choked back a bitter sob as she carefully re-read the inscription cut into the stone. “Karl Hudson will be sadly missed by all who knew him.” She wanted to scream out at the top of her lungs. Alison saw all her imagined acts of retribution flushing down the sewer because of one careless driver not looking where they were going.

  “Those idiots wouldn’t miss the bastard if they knew what he’d really been like.”

  Alison sincerely hoped the teacher had not been killed outright. She wanted him to suffer, to lie there all alone in the middle of the road, staining the tarmac crimson, his body broken like a smashed doll and suffering an unendurable agonizing death.

  She spat on the gravestone and watched her phlegm slide down the black marble, leaving a green slime trail. “You’re going to burn for eternity for what you did to me, you evil cunt,” she spat. She dropped to her knees, unable to contain her torrent of emotions from sweeping through her. Alison stayed in that position for what seemed like hours. The sudden noise of the huge cemetery gates being pushed open filtered through her misery, and she raised her head, aware that she was no longer alone. Her desire to remain inconspicuous overrode her need to unleash the bottled in emotions. Alison wiped her eyes and watched the figure slowly walk along the leaf covered gravel path. For the moment, Alison saw it was safe to stare; the woman had her eyes trained at her feet. In her hands was a small bunch of pink roses.

  Something about the colour of the flowers and that woman seemed to trigger a memory from her childhood. The other woman suddenly stopped beside an old tree and placed the flowers down next to a grey gravestone.

  Alison slowly got off the floor, silently cursing at her now soaking wet coat. It took her a moment of searching through her seldom used memories to discover why the scene before her was familiar. She looked again; yes, the hair colour had changed and she obviously had grown older, but there was no doubt in Alison’s mind that she was staring at the girl whom she was due to meet on the night the teacher violated her. The girl was her old friend, Trisha.

  She was here to pay her respects to her grandmother. Alison remembered accompanying her friend here just the once. They couldn’t have been any older than ten. Alison had stayed by the gate while her friend laid the flowers that Trisha’s mother had cut from their garden. There was no way that she’d come in here, the place gave her the creeps.

  Despite her previous plan on not interacting with anyone in the village until she’d dealt with her past, she just couldn’t allow herself to ignore Trisha. She felt the tears return.

  “I don’t think I can do this alone,” she whispered. Alison brushed herself down and stepped away from the gravestone, intending to call out her name, when another figure opened the gates. Alison gasped when she saw who was there.

  “This can’t be a coincidence,” she said, stepping back and slowly bobbing down. The man from the train had just entered the graveyard. She turned and sat against the granite. She’d been on the streets far too long to believe that coincidences just didn’t exist. The chances of him following her were far too high for Alison to ignore.

  “He must be working for Glen’s friends.” She looked back, watching him slowly walk past the stones; he appeared to be reading them as if looking for a particular grave. “More likely he’ll be looking for me.”

  He passed Trisha, and they both politely nodded to each other then he looked at his watch, spun around, and rushed out through the gates. Alison didn’t waste any time, she had to know what he was up to. She got up and hurried through the graveyards towards the gate; she glanced around just the once and saw Trisha stood by her grandmother’s stone. Trisha’s eyes were shut. Alison sighed, promising herself that she’d try to locate her sometime today. Alison definitely needed allies now. The game board had just acquired another player.

  The man was heading up a steep street at a fair rate of knots. She had no idea what had got into him, he appeared to be almost panicking, and acting like someone who thought his house was on fire.

  He suddenly stopped outside a red-brick detached house, opened the gate, and ran up the garden path before pushing open the front door and disappearing. Alison leaned against the stone wall beside her and sighed. She realised that she’d made a mistake; the man must live here in the village. He had probably just come back from visiting someone, or judging by the look of him, been on a business trip.

  Alison turned round and headed back to the cemetery, hoping that Trisha was still there. She smiled to herself.

  “You really are a silly paranoid cow.”

  Looking back, it was obvious that he couldn’t have been part of that gang; he looked about as dangerous as a toothless hamster. Even so, his behaviour did seem a little weird. Then again, what did she expect from someone who lived in Seeton?

  Alison reached the gates, and her heart was racing, getting excited about meeting her old friend for the first time in ages. She hoped that Trisha would forgive her for vanishing into thin air, Alison was sure that she’d understand when she explained her reasons. Alison then stopped dead.

  “Oh. Jesus, what if she doesn’t believe me?”

  Alison turned around, watching a red transit van turn the corner before stopping outside the butcher’s shop. She’d already had this conversation with herself many times in the past; the fear of nobody believing her story was another reason why she’d left the village.

  “Come on, you silly bitch, get a grip on yourself.”

  She turned back around and slipped through the open gates, Alison looked towards where her friend had been, only to find that she was no longer there. She hurried along the path and stopped at the grave and gazed down, not understanding how she could have left here without Alison seeing her, and then Alison noticed something shiny and black laying on top of a pile of freshly dug earth. She padded over to investigate and found that it was a single high heeled shoe.

  This had to have belonged to Trisha; she felt inside and found that it was still warm. Could she have really left here hopping? Alison looked at the mound of wet soil; it was almost as if she’d burrowed her way out.

  “Either that or something had dug their way out and snatched her.” Alison laughed at the ridiculous idea.

  “Get a grip, lass. Like that’s going to happen.

  Chapter Twelve

  He leaned back on his chair and stared at the front door, and he was sure there was somebody out there. The dog hadn’t moved, so maybe he had imagined it. Then again, Gruff’s reac
tion was hardly a good indicator anymore. He was about to call out when George heard the sound of a key scraping the inside of the lock.

  They had gone their separate ways earlier on; she had a few errands to run for her elderly neighbour and George needed to visit the pet store. As their destinations were on the opposite sides of Seeton, it seemed faster to accomplish their tasks separately and meet up here.

  It sounded like his good lady friend was back from her brief shopping trip. He’d forgotten that he had given her the spare key; a bit silly really considering that Dean was in the house and he told them that he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I’m still used to having the house by myself.”

  He still found it bloody hard to wrap his head around the fact that his son had come back. George absently patted Gruff when the dog placed his head on George’s lap.

  “There’s no point you trying to soft-soap me now. It’s way too late for that. I still haven’t forgiven you for sucking up to Anne.”

  He tickled the dog behind his ear, He was so glad that he had, though. God knows what he’d have done if Gruff had gone for the woman.

  “I always thought you were a one dog, one owner type of animal. Come to think of it, you weren’t all that keen on Dean when he used to live here.”

  George looked into the dog’s big brown eyes, “I think you must be getting soft in your old age. I bet you allowed him to rub your belly as well.”

  That lock was giving that poor woman so much trouble; he could hear her cursing from the kitchen. That was pretty funny. He vividly recalled her patronising lecture while they were walking into the village. It appears that her being at one with nature and discovering her inner peace had suddenly gone right out of the window.

  “The door’s already unlocked!” he shouted, grinning.