Death Plague [Four Zombie Novels]

by Ian Woodhead

  “What’s wrong?”

  Dean gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. He feared the worse. There were two men in the alley now from the sound of it, and not that far behind either. He then felt the first window bar and resisted the urge to scream for joy. “We’re here.”

  He twisted around and put his hands on her waist then gently swung her past him, “You go first,” he whispered. “The middle bar comes out, just pull it up and slide it out.”

  As Alison climbed through the window he looked back, trying to work out where those men were; he heard one of them swear out loud and a couple of gunshots rang out. Dean guessed that they’d just found the moving pile of wood. Alison was through. He followed her in, watching the two shapes hurry back the way they came. He’d have to remember to thank that dead thing for saving their lives.

  He dropped onto the dusty floor and immediately felt a set of warm lips find his. She moved away after a few seconds and groaned.

  “Thank you, Dean. I thought we were goners just then.”

  Dean led her towards the cellar steps. “I’ll confess that I wasn’t that confident of getting out of there in one piece.”

  If Alison’s gangster friends continued travelling the same direction, then they ought to end up near the village hall, which suited Dean just fine. He and Alison would be able to sneak out of the butcher’s front door and get back to Dad’s house. They ought to be there in a few minutes.

  They both skidded to a halt when the cellar door slowly swung open. Dean stared in astonishment at the diminutive shadow framed in the doorway.

  “Tom? Is that you, old mate?”

  The man laughed. “Who else would it be?”

  Dean then saw the cleaver in the butcher’s hand.

  “I had a feeling that you’d pay me a visit.”

  “Tom, what are you doing with the cleaver?”

  The man looked down at his hand, “Well, old friend, I’m afraid that I’ve got a bit of bad news.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The crack in his new dining table had widened. It had even got worse since this morning. He could now see the kitchen tiles through the twatting gap. Well, there was no chance that he’d let that soap dodging twatter get away with this one. First thing in the morning, Gavin Ellis was going to pay a visit to Huggins Furniture shop and stick his easy payment plan right up that cheating bastard’s arse.

  Two hundred quid he’d paid for his shoddy built lump of twatting crap. That’s nearly a month’s worth of beer money he’d thrown away.

  Gavin could picture that smarmy fresh-scrubbed fat face beaming when he’d entered the man’s shop. He’d taken Gavin for a complete ride. Roger Huggins had literally bounded towards Gavin. With his overweight frame forced into that white suit, and two sizes two small, the man cut a rather sad picture. He looked like a silly fat fool.

  Looking back, he should have figured that the image had been just a smoke screen. Roger Huggins was a shark, a predator, and a bloody good one too.

  Fifty quid per month and only four payments, a complete knockdown price; this was on sale only a week ago and five hundred pounds. We’ll even deliver it for you. A dining table and four chairs of this high standard would set you back over a grand anywhere else. Gavin had nodded along like a complete twatting retard, listening to all of the bullshit flannel spewing out of this gobshite’s mouth, and believing every twatting word.

  He ran one of his thick fingers along the jagged edge. “He took you for a wild ride, my son,” he murmured.

  What pissed him off more than anything was that he hadn’t wanted the bloody thing in the first place. It had been that twatting wife of his who’d begged him to part serious cash for this.

  Fallen in love with it, she had. Seen it in the window and just had to have it. What Gavin would have liked to know was what business the bitch had on the other side of the village. The furniture shop was nowhere near any of the other shops. He’d have to remember to ask her that one.

  Sarah had even promised him to take real good care of it, to clean and polished the table and chairs every day. Not that Gavin gave a fuck about the house anymore. He rarely spent time in here anyway. He’d rather be in his garage with his motorbikes.

  The only occasions he bothered to enter the house was to eat, sleep, clean up before hitting the pub, and when the need arose, to give Sarah a good seeing to, either with his cock or fist. Didn’t matter which, both were fulfilling.

  Occasion number one had been the reason why he’d pulled himself away from stripping down that Yamaha’s engine. After discovering the twatting crack and the realisation that the fat cunt had sold him a lemon, his appetite had deserted him.

  He sighed, thinking that he ought to just pull Roger’s arms and legs off. He then took another look at the damage; he’d rather not allow his mates to find out about this. After a close inspection, he reckoned that the gap should be fixable. He’d take a trip into the village tomorrow and see if that old bag in the general store had any wood filler.

  Gavin sure as fuck wasn’t giving it back, he’d just not give that twatter anymore money. He grinned to himself, pleased that he’d come up with a workable solution. He felt rather cheerful now; hell, with the cash he’d saved he might even get Sarah’s television fixed. He was sick to fuck of her whining on about it anyhow.

  With that problem out of the way, he sat down in one of the new chairs, surprised at how comfortable it was. It did occur to him that perhaps the joke was on Roger. What if this dining table set really was worth a couple of grand? He laughed, wouldn’t that be the clincher. Once he’d repaired the damage, Gavin would get it valued, just in case.

  He looked under the table to see if there were anymore cracks. Gavin saw no evidence, but he did notice something that made him smile. At the edge of the table lay Sarah’s best jeans. She loved those things. He grinned, they were just what he needed. Gavin slid down the chair and reached out with one leg and dragged the garment across the floor. When the white jeans were under his feet, Gavin wiped both his oil-stained boots on the material.

  That’ll be a right bitch to get clean,” he said, grinning.

  Speaking of bitches, where the fuck was she with his twatting food? He already told her what time he’d be in for it. Sarah understood what the consequences were for lateness.

  “Are you in the kitchen, girl?” he shouted. “Come on, I’m fucking starving.”

  He leaned back in amazement; the bitch was actually ignoring him! She had to be in there, he could smell the twatting food. He almost laughed aloud; imagine that, his wife was openly defying him after all these years.

  “Are you going to answer me? Don’t make me come in there, girl.” He had to give her another chance; after all, Gavin Ellis was a big softie at heart. He counted aloud to ten; she always knew that trouble was brewing when she heard Gavin count. There was still no sign of that apologetic face, and then it dawned on Gavin that she really was going to defy him.

  This was a most interesting development. At any other time he would have enjoyed employing Mr. Fist and his equally competent brother to search for that bitch’s misplaced respect. Not now though, at least not until his gut was full.

  Gavin stood up, grabbed the chair he’d been sitting on, and hurled it into the living room. It slammed against the television, knocking it over. It just occurred to Gavin that he’d bought the TV from that moon-faced fat bastard as well. The chair had withstood the assault; he hadn’t expected that.

  He stormed past the dining set, heading towards the open kitchen door, making sure that he made as much noise as possible. Gavin needed to know that the defiant blonde twatting bitch knew that her husband was coming in there to have words. He pictured her in there, huddled in a corner, shaking her tiny tits off, whimpering like a scared puppy, and desperately looking for somewhere to hide.

  “Don’t you fret, my clenched fists, you’ll soon be pressed against her skin.” He just needed to eat something first. The notion that Sarah hadn’t even m
ade him anything had crossed his mind; if that was the case then he’d use her housekeeping and order a takeaway, and then he’d beat the shit out of her.

  The thought of watching her scared bunny eyes darting from mouth to spoon as he ate helped to calm his foul mood.

  The man walked into the tiny kitchen, his snarl fell off his face, and he slowly lowered his arms when Gavin saw that his wife wasn’t even in here.

  “What the fuck?”

  He hadn’t expected that, where the hell was the bitch?

  Sarah may be nowhere to be seen, but his food wasn’t. He spotted the white oval dinner plate sat on the counter top next to the draining board. Only the edge of the plate was visible. This was fantastic; Sarah had really piled the food on.

  “It’s a grub hill,” he said, grinning. “It gets better; I do believe that I can see pie crust underneath the mushy peas.”

  This was a pleasant surprise. Gavin loved Sarah’s homemade pie. The woman’s cooking skills were the envy of the village. There wasn’t much that she couldn’t bake, roast, boil, or grill. Her kitchen accomplishments were one of the reasons why he’d married her.

  He took his favourite spoon out of the cutlery drawer. Gavin had never seen the point of using a fork, any food that the spoon had difficulty with, he just used his fingers. He picked up the plate and carried it out of the kitchen. After buying the table set, he might as well use the twatting thing.

  His love of home-cooked food only ignited after his first stay-over at his Uncle Ken’s farmhouse. Gavin had never realised that food could taste so good until he sampled the delights of his Aunty Dorothy’s steak pie, followed by blueberry crumble. Gavin’s mum had brought him up on the suspicious delights of tinned food and cheap meals from the local freezer shop.

  Gavin’s mouth underwent orgasmic glee as he stuffed it full of pie, chips, and mushy peas. The meat in the pie tasted like lamb and chicken. There was never a shortage of fresh meat in their fridge. Tom always looked after his two oldest friends. Then again, the butcher owed him big time for fixing up Tom’s knackered old Land Rover a few weeks ago. He’d put in a lot of time and effort into sorting out that motor. It was only fair that Gavin should have his pick of the occasional choice cut of meat, along with the odd bird thrown in for good measure.

  “This is incredible!” he shouted, looking towards the kitchen. “You really have surpassed yourself, lass. I’ll tell you what, what say I nip down to the village first thing in the morning and pick you up a new telly?”

  He wouldn’t go to that rip off Roger either. Tom told him the other day that creepy Clarence wanted to sell his for a reasonable price. Gavin then slowly put the spoon back on the plate. Why the hell was he shouting into the twatting kitchen? For crying out loud, he’d just come out of there, and unless the bitch had squeezed herself in the fridge, Sarah wasn’t in there.

  “Where the fuck is she?”

  Gavin left the table, intending to finish his meal once he’d found his woman. He could not scoff another gob-full until he’d resolved this twatting mystery. Could she have gone upstairs to the bog? Yeah, that made sense. The bitch was always running up and down the stairs with that bladder of hers.

  Sarah was always whining on about her waterworks, suggesting that these troubles hadn’t started until he’d married her; there had been no direct implication, but he knew the bitch blamed him. Admittedly, his fist family had been a little over enthusiastic with her down below bits in the early days of their marriage. Even so, it wasn’t his fault that she’d been born with frail insides.

  Gavin stood at the foot of the stairs and heaved a frustrated sigh at the sight of the open toilet door directly above him. She couldn’t be in there. Sarah always shut and bolted the door whenever she paid a visit. Fuck knows why, considering there were only two of them in the twatting house. There had been talk of bringing a baby Ellis into the world, but he soon knocked that idea out of her silly head.

  “Oh, come on, you silly bitch, where the fuck are you? This has now gone beyond annoying.”

  He then heard something hit the floor right above his head. Gavin laughed, “So that’s where you’ve been hiding!”

  Gavin slowly climbed the stairs. “You are so going to regret fucking me off!” he shouted.

  It had been a while since her behaviour demanded the full works, but this incident was too serious to ignore. After the fist family had finished their dance, their downstairs neighbour would then be called out to play. If the bitch was still capable of moving, he’d get her to make him up another dinner.

  He reached the top of the stairs and peered into the bathroom just to make sure. Gavin then padded across to the spare room and placed his ear against the door.

  “Sarah, come out right now and I promise that I’ll go easy on you.”

  Gavin stepped back. He had no intention of going easy on her, but she wasn’t to know that. She’d do as he ordered, though, of that he was sure.

  Something thudded against the door on the other side.

  “So, that’s your reply is it?” He pictured the woman crouched in the corner of the room, surrounded by a collection of small objects. She’d gone through a moment of madness only once since they’d been married. After a rather vicious episode with Gavin’s fist family, she’d run into the kitchen screaming her silly little head off. When he’d followed the hysterical bitch, she assaulted him with an assortment of flying kitchen utensils.

  Something else thudded against the door. Gavin folded his arms. The stupid bitch had chosen the wrong room to pull this damn fool stunt. She’d be shit out of luck for decent ammunition in there. Apart from his collection of bike mags, the only other items of significant quantity were her large collection of soft toys. He figured that was what he was hearing hitting the door.

  “This is your last warning, bitch.”

  Another noise caught the man’s ear. This one came from right outside the house. Oh, fuck! Some twatter was inside his beloved garage! He’d recognize the distinctive sound of his creaking garage door anywhere.

  “I’ll deal with you in a minute,” he growled.

  Gavin raced into the main bedroom and gazed out of the window, and he was just in time to see his wife emerge from the garage, stop, then look up to the window. She saw him and waved.

  He backed away from the window. “What the fuck is going on here?” Gavin grabbed the baseball ball that he kept beside his bed and crept towards the spare bedroom. He raised the bat above his head, then slowly counted to three.

  Once he’d reached his desired number, the man raised his foot and slammed his boot against the handle. The door swung open and a silent cloud of black and grey feathers flew through the doorway and engulfed the shrieking man.

  Gavin staggered back, he dropped the bat and fell against the wall. Dozens of tiny pointed beaks belonging to some of Seeton’s missing bird population drilled into the man’s exposed skin surface, transforming his flesh into something that resembled tenderized beef steak.

  The man’s cries abruptly ceased when a sparrow flew into his open mouth and lodged itself deep in his throat.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Alison had been through way too much weird shit today to be fazed by this short-arsed bastard. Some psycho butcher threatening with a tiny cleaver didn’t even get into her top ten.

  “You should have stayed away, Dean, you and your plague.”

  “You ain’t making sense, Tom. Look, move out of my way and let us through. I’m in no mood for games.”

  “This is no game!” screamed the butcher. “You’ve killed our village with your filthy disease.”

  Alison couldn’t take this anymore, what the fuck was up with these people? She ran towards the idiot, screaming at the top of her voice. Alison had dropped the bat in the alley, but its absence didn’t make a difference, Tom must have dismissed her as some inconsequential teenage nobody. His eyes turned to saucers, and he turned and ran back up the stairs.

  “Fucking coward,” she grinne
d.

  “Jesus, he could have stuck that in your head!”

  Alison shook her head, “Who him? The action man of Seeton? Give over. Our Sarah told me all about him, he talks big, but he’s just a big pudding.”

  She watched the man scurry back towards the window.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed. For all Tom’s cowardice, it wouldn’t take him long to figure that he could just finish them both off by standing at the top of his stairs and fling his knives at them. She just hoped that he hadn’t thought of that one yet. Alison gazed up the stone steps; he’d yet to make a reappearance. Alison jumped when Dean tapped her on the shoulder.

  When she spun around, he pressed the cricket bat into her hands.

  “Now we can go,” he said.

  Alison kissed his grinning face and raced up the steps, just aching for that butcher to attempt another confrontation. They both reached the top without seeing him.

  “Where’s he gone?”

  Dean shrugged. “Who cares? Look, we have to get to my dad’s house. I need to get this stopped.”

  Alison leaned against the back wall and blinked, “Wait, what he said just then about you bringing this to Seeton. Are you telling me that all this madness is your fault?”

  The man shook his head. “Of course, it isn’t my fault. I worked on the project, but I didn’t release the fucking stuff.” The man started to cry. “Do you think I wanted this to fucking happen? Jesus, you have no fucking idea what stress I’m under here. Millions, maybe billions, of people are going through torture because of what I’ve helped to create.” Dean ran up to her and grabbed both her hands. “I can stop this from spreading, maybe even reverse, it but I sure as fuck can’t do it in here.”