The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy)

by Mann, W. E.

  I released the triggers and the cloud parted. But the boy had not fallen. And now he was standing over me and there was something in his hand. A heavy plank of wood, swinging by his side. And I could see his face now and it was not one I recognised. It was not one anyone could have recognised. It was horrific, rotting and wild. The flesh, what little there was left of it, was congealed and hung loosely from his cheekbones and chin. There was one eyeball, but the other eye was nothing but a socket squirming with fat maggots. He shrieked outlandishly and raised the plank of wood above his head. I watched helplessly, pinned to the floor by his foot. I realised with horror that this was an old zombie, already quickened, and that the gas would have no effect against it. There was nothing I could do.

  And as I watched, helpless as he was about to bring the wooden plank crushing down on my skull, there was a deafening, reverberating crash. His head exploded in a cascade of flesh, bone, gore and maggots which splattered around and upon me. His body teetered above me for a few moments, a plume of smoke wisping up delicately from his unburdened neck like a volcano which has stopped erupting. Then the plank slipped gently from his hand and clattered on the floor by my feet and his body flopped backwards and collapsed.

  Colonel Barrington was standing over me, lifting his gas-mask to blow at the barrel of his shotgun. He held out his hand and dragged me to my feet.

  “We need to fall back. Akwasi, Edmund,” he ordered, “fall back! We need to regroup by the Dungeon door. There are too many of them now.” We were already stumbling backwards towards the Crypt door. “We have probably cured about half of them, but there are too many of the old zombies in there now.”

  We were stepping cautiously back through the Crypt door, when the unmistakeable, cowled skeleton of the Wandering Monk shuffled out of the depths, with the Black Dog loping by his side. The dog let out a menacing, deathly howl.

  “The old Bokor,” muttered Barrington grimly. “Edmund, change of plan. You and I must stay here and deal with these two. They may be very strong. You two boys back away to the Dungeon door. We’ll see you there shortly. Stay together and keep gassing the boys. If any old zombies get anywhere near you, just run. Okay?”

  thirty one

  With the sound of shotgun-fire ringing out from the Crypt above Caratacus’ persistent chanting, Samson and I backed through the Dungeon passageways towards the door. The air was cooler and cleaner here. I leant back against the wall to regain my breath and Samson hunkered down with his hands on his knees, panting.

  “What time is it?” I asked with my voice muffled by the gas-mask.

  “Dunno. Must be about half ten,” he said. “How much longer can this go on? How many more do you think...”

  “Shh,” I whispered sharply. He stood up and listened as we heard someone stumbling towards us from the direction of the Crypt. I quietly pulled the Dungeon door ajar so that we could make a hasty escape if necessary. We waited.

  After a few moments, a lonely figure limped out into the passageway, dragging its left leg awkwardly. For a brief moment, candlelight flickered out and illuminated its sorry, sunken face. It was Milo. He hadn’t seen us. He turned right painstakingly, away from where Samson and I waited and hobbled further into the Dungeon.

  Samson patted me on the shoulder and we set off after him. But, as we crept past the corridor leading to the Crypt, another figure sprung out towards us. This one was a fresh specimen displaying none of the usual ravaging effects of quasi-death and burial. It was Reggie.

  “Reggie,” said Samson. “What happened? Where have you been?”

  Samson was about to set off towards him when I held him back. “He’s not right,” I said. “Look at him!”

  He looked exactly the same as he had about three hours ago, but it was clear that he hadn’t recognised or heard us. He had a vacant, confused expression, staring blankly into the middle-distance, with his mouth hanging open, drooling.

  “Caratacus has given him the poison,” I whispered. “You go after Milo and I’ll see to Reggie. Get back here as soon as you can...”

  I marched towards Reggie, releasing a blast of the antidote with my left hand. In the billow of gas, I heard a chuckling and then the sound of a dead weight hitting the floor. I stood back, waiting for the haze to dissipate so that I could check that I had dealt with him effectively. But as the vapour thinned, I could make out the outline of a shadowed figure standing in front of me.

  The cloud cleared and my heart missed a beat when I came face-to-face with Head Matron. She was about fifteen feet away from me and had a syringe in her right hand. There was a look of strange intensity which I had never seen on her face before, almost like she was excited about something, though I knew that couldn’t be possible. One corner of her mouth was curled up slightly into a faint, wry smile.

  “Time for your medicine,” she croaked.

  She strutted towards me, her high-heeled shoes clicking at a brisk tempo.

  I turned and ran towards the door as fast as I could and, looking back over my shoulder, I saw Samson just as he headed out of sight, following Milo around the second turning in the Dungeon passageway. I realised I would have to try to get Head Matron to follow me away from Samson so that he wouldn’t be caught. I pulled open the Dungeon door and waited for her to emerge. When she got to within ten feet of me, I set off again, just jogging this time, towards the door to the Spiral Staircase. And again I waited.

  I lured Head Matron past the bottom of the Spiral Staircase and out of the door on the other side. And then I set off at a run past the Woodwork Room, ducking into the Shower Room and heading through into the Junior Changing Room, with the clicking of Head Matron’s shoes becoming more and more distant behind me.

  I stretched the gas-mask away from my face briefly just to relieve the discomfort pinched into my nose and chin. The familiar odour of the Changing Rooms crept into my nostrils. It was that musty, muddy smell of boisterous pursuits; linseed oil and towels drying over hot water pipes.

  The Junior Changing Room, like the Senior Changing Room further down, contained three rows of lockers back-to-back down the middle and a row on either side. Strictly, I suppose, they were not “lockers” because they did not lock. They were, rather, small doorless wardrobes, each containing three pegs for Games kit and a space underneath for plimsolls, cricket-spikes and wellies.

  I crept over to my locker, which was wedged into the far corner. It had to be the best place for me to sit and wait - a short dash to the Senior Changing Room and close enough to the exit to the Basement Corridor. The zombies would be able to see me in darkness or light, so I flicked the light-switch. Only one of the strip-lights in the room responded and even that one was indecisive. But it was enough.

  So I sat in my locker in the flickering gloom, listening to Head Matron’s shoes clicking distantly and, in my head, trying to pinpoint where she was.

  And then an unsettling thought occurred to me.

  It was something Barrington had said about zombies. He had told us that Caratacus, when he is in his trance, is using the zombies’ eyes like they are his own. He could see everything they could see and he could command their actions. So that must mean that if one zombie knew where I was, then Caratacus knew where I was, and if Caratacus knew where I was, then he could send any number of zombies after me. So, I was not just hiding from one zombie. I was hiding from all of them.

  The clicking stopped for a moment - near the Showers, I thought. But then it started again, only this time from another place. It sounded like she was walking past the Boiler Room and through the Senior Changing Room. How on Earth had she got there so quickly? And now the snapping of her footsteps was echoing confusingly from all directions. I stood up with my eyes darting all around, disoriented by frenetic light.

  But then I could hear her clearly, approaching to my right. Yes, I was sure she was in the Shower Room. Or was it the Senior Changing Room? I started to feel panic brewing. I glanced towards my remaining escape routes to gauge how long I cou
ld wait before I had to run. The sound of her high-heels seemed to have taken on a different quality now, not so much clicking as crunching, like the guilty sound of football boots indoors.

  The footsteps paused again. And then suddenly she stepped out of the darkness and was there in front of me, not six yards away.

  But this was not Head Matron at all.

  It was a skeleton draped in a ragged, rotten boiler-suit. Its skull-face, puce in this flashing light, was a twisted expression of demented glee like it had been waiting for a long time for this opportunity to kill me. The Fallen Boy. I was rooted to the spot, drenched in harrowing fear and here he was.

  Before I could take the heartbeat opportunity to dart for safety, he ran at me and lashed out with a cruel hand that slammed into the left side of my face with sickening force. I tumbled, dazed, into my locker, my gas-mask clattering away into some dark recess. There was a deadening pain in my left eye. I flapped my hands around and tried to stand back up so that I could run. But as I stumbled to my feet, trying to shake the dizziness from my head, he hit me backwards again with a bruising blow to my ribcage that stole the breath from my chest and caused my left shoulder to land painfully against a hard object in the corner of my locker.

  There was no escape for me now. I was gasping for air, my head was spinning and the Fallen Boy was advancing upon me. I let out a brief, futile jet of antidote with my right hand, not concerned that I had lost my gas-mask. But it barely distracted him. I scrabbled around inside my locker, grasping at anything to throw at him. Gym shorts, cricket jumper, ball of socks, jock-strap. These were surely the last desperate flailings of a doomed boy.

  But then my hand fell upon whatever it was that had been digging into my left shoulder. The handle of my cricket bat. My trusty old Hunts County size six, passed down to me from my father, and which I was sure I had left up in the dorm. It was my last chance. He was only a couple of yards away now as I tried to stand.

  With my head still whirling, I grasped the handle with both hands and sprung up into the air out of my locker, swinging my bat above my head. With all of my strength and my fiercest war-cry, I heaved it downwards in a crushing arc, smashing it into the Fallen Boy’s cranium. The top half of his head disintegrated into a shower of bone-shards and squirming brain. And, just as I landed rather unsteadily on my feet, he landed on his back, twitching once and then no more.

  My head was still hurting, but at least the room had stopped swimming around me. I had to get out of here. Head Matron could not be far off and would know where I was. I cuffed the blood away from my nose and set off out of the Changing Rooms and down the passage back towards the Dungeon with both gas canisters on my back and my dear cricket bat in my left hand.

  thirty two

  The Basement corridors on this side of the building had no emergency lighting at all, but I was just about able to make out shapes and distances in the dark from the faint orange glow that seeped underneath the door back into the Spiral Staircase. However, this was no place to be loitering when there were enemies that could see in the dark.

  I was sure I could still hear the clicking of Head Matron’s high-heels in the faint distance. Or could I? Maybe the noise was just in my head.

  Up ahead of me, the door to the Spiral Staircase swung violently open. I quickly ducked into a recess in the wall and watched as three small figures emerged, lumbering from the warm glow. I recognised all of them as boys from the First and Second Forms who had fallen ill over the past two weeks and were now in varying stages of decomposition. I waited to ensure that they were not followed through the door by any more menacing zombies.

  I suddenly felt exhausted, injured, weak and tired. I thought to myself that the best thing I could do now would be just to head up to my dorm and go to sleep and if I didn’t wake up in the morning, well, I would be none the wiser. But I knew that I had to go after them and there was no time for selfish thoughts. The sooner this night was over, the better.

  I padded after them as quietly as I could, past the door and down towards the end of the corridor where it turned right towards the Pantry. One of them, the tallest of the three, whose right arm hung lifelessly from its side suddenly staggered drunkenly and tripped onto the floor with a resounding crack like a gunshot. Neither of the other two seemed to notice. But, when it floundered back to its feet, its head was flopped sideways onto its shoulder and I realised that the loud crack must have been its neck breaking.

  It caught up with the other two just as I got to about three yards away from them.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, turn around!”

  They all swivelled around awkwardly and started to stumble over each other, groaning and reaching out towards me pathetically. I propped my cricket bat gently against the wall, turned back towards them and gassed them with both nozzles. All three of them slumped to the floor, giggling and then quiet.

  But suddenly I felt light-headed. Tingling waves were throbbing up and down my limbs. I bent down to reach for my bat, but I slipped and staggered and landed on the floor, crouching, addled.

  I realised with horror that I had lost my gas mask in the Changing Rooms – I had been breathing in all that gas. Alien sounds were now pulsing in my head, overlapping and colliding with one another. I squeezed my eyes shut to try to focus on being able to regain my faculties. But behind my eyelids, there was another world. And the outside became a faint memory. I wandered around inside my thoughts, exploring strange areas. I could hear someone giggling before I realised that it was me.

  The throbbing was beginning to subside. I took a deep breath and, forcing myself to sit and gripping the familiarity of my bat handle, I dared to open my eyes. It was difficult to see, like I was wearing sun-glasses in the dark. And then I heard the clicking again. It was coming from my right.

  I looked up, straining against my eyes to focus. My body was limp and my face still sore from where the Fallen Boy had hit me. I just couldn’t inject myself with the energy to stand. I breathed deeply again, as deeply as I could, and I felt the effects of the gas wearing thin, gradually lifting the ethereal shroud from in front of my eyes. There was someone there. Or something. And it was clicking towards me. It was Miss Prenderghast.

  I managed to heave myself to my feet and began to stagger away from her. But then I heard more clicking, this time coming from the direction of the Changing Rooms. It must have been Head Matron. If Miss Prenderghast could see me, then Head Matron would know where I was too.

  The nitrous oxide had left a dull ache in my brain. I hobbled as quickly as I could in the only direction available, through the door to the Pantry.

  I dragged myself up the creaky wooden staircase past the Pantry, ascending into an electric indigo glow which buzzed from the light of the Fly-Zapper in the Kitchen. I waited next to the door with my back to the wall. There was someone or something in there, carelessly crashing and clattering about, causing chaos. I needed to get past this door to the Dining Room and then through to the Spiral Staircase. Even if this was a new zombie, I did not fancy another dose of antidote. No, I had to get back downstairs and either find Barrington, Boateng and Akwasi or find my gas-mask in the Junior Changing Room. The way I had just come was barred by Miss Prenderghast and Head Matron, and if the zombie in the Kitchen saw me, Caratacus would know where I was and those two would be after me.

  I peered around the doorframe briefly to catch a glimpse. The Kitchen was an echoing, metallic area of sanitised surfaces, super-heavyweight cupboards, mops, mousetraps and tired knives of every imaginable shape. At the far end, by a rusting jumble of colanders and ladles, one of the cupboard-doors was wide open, spewing precious meat and veg onto the floor. Next to that was a burly, crouching figure gorging itself on what looked like raw minced beef. I quickly stepped back when, for a sharp moment, the figure looked up furtively like a hyena jealous of its catch. I waited, hearing nothing. It can’t have seen me.

  But just as I began to creep over to the Dining Room door, it started shambling in m
y direction. I ducked behind the cupboard where the spreads and sauces were kept. It shuffled closer and closer until I could hear it snuffling and growling right next to me. I didn’t dare to move.

  It pulled the cupboard open violently so that the door swung out in front of me and I was wedged between the door and the wall. It began dragging jars and bottles from its shelves, smashing them on the floor. My socks and sandals were being pasted with beef dripping, mustard and marmalade. I peered around the door. I wanted to know whether it was a new zombie or one of the quickened. But when the cynical light of the Fly-Zapper fell upon its face, it gave me such a shock that I couldn’t help gasping out loud.

  Hector Vanderpump.

  Realising immediately that I had stupidly betrayed my hiding place, I slammed the cupboard-door into him. He sprawled backwards, glaring directly at me with custardy meat hanging from his mouth and a large cleaver from his right hand.

  I ran, slipping and sliding, fumbling through the door to the cavernous Dining Room. I could just see the exit to the Spiral Staircase in the distance. I crashed into a trestle table, sending punnets of strawberries and cans of whipped cream flying in all directions.

  Vanderpump was right behind me. He took a wild swish at me with the meat-cleaver. I turned to face him and pulled both triggers of my nitrous oxide cylinders to give him the full blast. I preferred the prospect of some passing nausea to that of having my arms hacked off.

  But nothing happened.

  I pulled the triggers again. Nothing.

  Surely I couldn’t have used it all up already? He took another frenzied swing at me. The cleaver slipped out of his hand and flew across the room, crashing through a window. In my efforts to evade his attack, I trod back onto one of the fallen cream cans and slipped and fell heavily on my funny bone. An electric shock of agony shot through my right arm as I tried to get back onto my feet.