by Russ Watts
“Tony, fucking move it!” yelled Neale. The zombies were converging on Piccadilly and London’s grey foggy streets, their sickening figures at odds with the headache-inducing neon lights above. Their numbers were swelling with every second, threatening to block off any escape route.
The glass beside Bashar shattered as a zombie put a fist through it, as if it were made of nothing stronger than rice paper. The zombie gurgled and grabbed for Bashar. It wore a navy blue hoodie and as Tony sped the van across a zebra crossing its hood flew back to reveal a sinister face. The man had lacerations across his dark skin and bloodshot eyes above a fat nose.
Bashar pushed himself back against Lulu and swung his hammer in the limited space of the van, striking the dead man in the middle of his forehead. The zombie reacted as if a fly had landed on him, swatting away the hammer and reaching a hand into the van.
“Get the hell off me,” Bashar grunted, as the zombie wrapped a hand around his seatbelt. The dead man’s arm became tangled in the belt and Bashar tried squeezing up to Lulu, away from the reaches of the zombie clinging onto the side of the van. With the window now open the menacing sounds of the dead echoed around them, coursing through the van and instilling fear into its occupants.
Neale reached forward to try and help, but Lulu pushed him back.
“Stay out of the way,” she shouted, as she tried to reach the clasp to release the belt. “I can’t reach it,” said Lulu. Her arms couldn’t reach around Bashar who was trying to raise his arm to hit the zombie again.
“There’s not enough room,” said Bashar. He whipped the hammer forward and struck the zombie’s head, but there was no room for him to get any impetus behind the strike. The zombie looked at Bashar as a lump of flesh fell from between his teeth. A moaning sound came from the zombie and as the speeding van jumped over a kerb, blood and spit flecked Bashar’s arm.
“Hold on, Bashar,” said Tony. “Please keep arms and hands inside the van at all times.”
Bashar saw the row of shops just behind the zombie suddenly get rapidly closer. The van bounced around as Tony took them back over the kerb and up against a solid brick wall. Pieces of masonry and shattered glass flew around the van, and Bashar watched as the wing mirror snapped off. The zombie clutched at it as it disappeared underneath the van. The dead man was dragged along the side of the van, sandwiched between it and the buildings. The zombie’s incessant moaning was finally drowned out by the screeching of metal scraping against the brickwork. Orange sparks flew by the open window and the zombie’s body began to disintegrate as Tony kept the van steady alongside the buildings along Regent Street. Blood and tissue sprayed up from behind the dead man as first his back was shredded and then his skull began to come apart. With his arm still wrapped around the seatbelt Bashar swung the hammer at the man’s fragmenting face and struck the eye socket. The zombie was unable to extricate itself from the belt or ward off Bashar as it was now pressed up against the building and slowly being destroyed. Bashar pulled the hammer out of the socket, the mangled eye following the hammer with a sucking, plopping sound, and the mutilated body of the zombie was finally pulled under the van.
The arm around the seatbelt was pulled from its socket with a loud popping noise. The zombie was pulled under the van and the wheels crushed what was left of it as the arm was left dangling loosely in the van, blood dripping over Bashar and the seat.
Tony swung the van away from the buildings, careering over a small metal sign, back into the road.
“Sweet baby Jesus, get rid of that thing,” said Neale, as Bashar unwound the belt from around the zombie’s arm.
“Thanks,” said Bashar to Tony, as he threw the useless arm out of the now open window. Bashar looked at the road and the fog still surrounding them. It was not as murky as before. Was it as a result of all the zombies charging around and the speed of the van, or was it actually fading?
High-end clothing stores lined Regent Street and Bashar noticed several still with lights on inside. One designer jewellery store was lit up with several bright lights. The display cases were smashed and the door wide open, with a body lying in the doorway, motionless. Adjacent to the jewellers was a clothing store, the sort where Lulu and her friend would have spent too much money on labels that promised an exciting lifestyle if only you had the latest gear. Several mannequins had fallen over, although some remained upright, still posing with sunglasses and skinny jeans, their legs splashed with blood. Bashar wondered if that was the shop Lulu and Angie had been in earlier, perhaps laughing as they tried on new clothes they knew they couldn’t afford. He wondered if Lulu would ever get the chance again, or if London was already written off. He wondered, for the first time, if what was going on was even confined to the city; how far had it spread, how far did the fog reach, and how far had the zombies walked?
The next shop was darker and the bright sign above the frontage offering leather jackets had been charred and blackened. There was a smell of burning plastic as they passed it, and Bashar saw thick smoke coming from the windows above. He looked along the row of buildings that were stacked closely next to each other and saw many were alight. It felt like the whole of London was dying, its history and buildings collapsing along with its population of millions.
There was movement in the fog up ahead, about twenty feet in the air above a taxi that had ended up in the front of London’s largest toy store. The fog was moving, as if stirred by something, and Bashar saw a flock of around thirty or forty pigeons dart out of it toward the ground. They landed as one on the road beside an upturned cart where the contents had spilled out. Popcorn lay around the body of a man still holding onto a silvery-red balloon shaped like a fish, and the pigeons congregated around him pecking at the discarded food. A figure darted out of the toy store, scattering the pigeons that took to the sky and disappeared into the grey foggy sky.
“Tony, look,” said Neale. He pointed to the figure that had run out of the store. “She seems all right,” he said optimistically.
The figure emerging through the gloom wore a long white coat and thin spectacles. The woman appeared to be dressed like a scientist or a doctor and her auburn hair was tied up in a tight bun. Bashar heard her calling for them to stop and she was waving her arms above her head signalling they should wait for her.
“Fuck,” said Tony as he slammed on the brakes. The van slid to a halt and skidded over the uneaten popcorn. The woman ran up to the van and began pounding on Tony’s window, pleading to be let in.
“Go around the side,” yelled Tony, indicating with his hands the door was on the other side of the van. “Go around.”
“Let me in, let me in,” the woman pleaded. “They’re everywhere!”
“All right, all right, just go the fuck around,” said Tony, as he wound down his window. He saw three zombies step out from the store and more approaching from the south. Others too were advancing through the fog ahead, drawn by the woman’s hysterical screams.
“I’ll get her,” said Neale, reluctantly. “Just don’t go driving off without me,” he muttered.
“Please, oh my God, they’re dead, they’re all dead. The kids were just…”
The woman pushed her glasses up her nose, though Bashar couldn’t see the point. She was crying so much that there was no way she could see anything even with them on. “Hold on,” said Bashar, “one of us will come get you.”
As Neale slid open the side door the temperature dropped and the fog seemed to thicken, like curdled gravy. The woman’s tears and cries stopped immediately, and Bashar felt a shiver run down his spine. It was the same sensation he had felt back at Leicester Square. Back then the arrival of a different woman had brought a wave of zombies to them, and Neale had very nearly lost his life.
“Tony, close your window,” Bashar said softly.
“It’s all right, love, you’ll be fine now.” Tony put a hand on the woman’s thin fingers as she rested a hand on the sill of the window. “Neale will—”
“You should
surrender to Him now,” she rasped. Blood began to seep from the woman’s eyes, her salty tears now bright red. Her mouth parted and her eyes rolled back in her head.
Bashar watched the woman speak as if she was a puppet. Her voice earlier had been shrill, insistent, desperate, yet now she spoke with a calm indifference, in a lower tone that conveyed she was utterly serious. “Or you will all die tonight.”
“Neale, close the door,” said Lulu.
“You what?” Neale had one leg out of the van, and was mustering up the courage to go and drag the woman inside. “What did she say? Am I going or staying?”
“Shut the door, Neale.” Bashar gripped the hammer in his hand. There was too much distance between him and the woman, but he would use it if he had to. Lulu and Tony had been shocked into silence. It was as if London had fallen into a stupor as the woman spoke.
“He is coming. His flesh tingles with every breath you draw. Soon you will join your friends.” The woman dug her fingernails into the van until one snapped off.
“What the Hell is wrong with her?” asked Lulu.
“Who cares,” said Neale, as he slammed the door shut. “Let’s just get out of here. She’s lost her marbles.”
Tony seemed mesmerised. The van’s engine sat idle as he stared at her.
“This is His land. This is…is…” The woman trailed off and her eyes rolled back around, moving slowly from Tony to focus on Bashar. The woman’s mouth curled up into a smile and her tongue darted in and out like a snake. The woman leant her head forward and licked her lips. “She’s waiting.”
Three sharp thuds on the van echoed around and Neale pushed Tony in the back. “Okay, enough of this shit, Tony, let’s fucking roll!”
Stirred into life, Tony withdrew his hand and looked ahead. The fog was rolling back now, like an ocean wave being pulled away from the shore. The fog seemed to evaporate when it reached Oxford Circus and Tony gripped the steering wheel. “What the hell…?”
Bashar looked at the receding fog and then at Tony. Things seemed to be going from bad to worse, if that was even possible. Ignoring Neale’s orders to start the van, Bashar noticed that Tony’s attention was on what was happening on the road ahead of them. Yet Bashar was transfixed by the woman at Tony’s side. The woman stepped back and pulled open her white coat revealing a pink, V-neck top and black jeans. She ran a hand down between her breasts and then back up to her neck. She seemed to be almost purring as she did so.
“He’s coming for me now.”
One of the zombies outside the van grabbed the woman and pulled on her arm, sinking its teeth into her wrist. Another zombie pulled her other arm and did the same. The woman remained calm and let out a small moan as the blood began pouring from her wrists.
“Tony, do you see this shit? We have to move!” Neale pushed Tony again in the back.
“And where are we going to go?” Lulu whimpered in her seat.
“How about away from that suicidal, crazy bitch to start with.” Neale leant forward between the headrests as another series of banging noises came from the rear of the van. “Bashar, tell your buddy to step on it will you, or we’re all going to be underneath a pile of zombies real soon.”
“Look, Neale. Look,” said Bashar, his eyes now firmly on the road ahead. A black shape was visible through the fog, something taller than the buildings, something impossible and yet impossibly real. Through the swirling fog Bashar saw what appeared to be a leg, although it rose a hundred feet into the air and stretched the width of the road. He caught sight of a hint of a tail, something black and scaly, and what looked like a cloven foot the size of a double decker bus. It appeared to flicker in and out, like a blinking bulb, one moment standing right there in front of them and the next gone back to whatever dimension it had materialised from. The upper half of the body of the creature was buried in the fog, invisible. Bashar was relieved he couldn’t see any more of it; what he had seen was enough. At its feet was a thick crowd of zombies, at least five hundred of them, all pouring forward, their ranks swelled by more from the tube station exits around Oxford Circus.
“Oh,” said Neale, finally seeing what the others all had. “Oh, fuck.”
CHAPTER 10
A brown and white haired dog, small and snappy, ran out from underneath a shopping cart. Its leash trailed behind it as it yapped at the advancing crowd of zombies. One scooped up the dog and tore its throat out even as the dog bit and scratched it. The dog’s lifeless body was quickly tossed aside as the zombie army marched onto Regent Street.
Two men appeared on a balcony above an upmarket store selling men’s suits and jackets. The two men wore overalls covered in splotches of white paint, desperate looks on their faces. As the army below them advanced one got down on his knees and clasped his hands together in front of him. His lips moved as he recited a prayer, whilst the other man frantically signalled at the van for help. The fog reached the two men and with it the mysterious black creature within it. Something long and thin that resembled a talon seemed to snatch at the men. It was so fast that Bashar couldn’t be sure what he saw, but the man on his knees appeared to jump up in the air and was then thrown off the balcony to the zombies below. He didn’t fall, and certainly didn’t jump willingly. The force that pushed him off the balcony was enough to ensure he made it halfway across the road before plummeting to his death. The other man’s head was sliced off and rolled away out of sight. His arms kept waving for a few seconds before his body realised he was dead, and the signals from the brain ceased. His body collapsed behind the hoarding on the balcony as his colleague was devoured by the dead.
Zombies came running down Regent Street as if they were festive shoppers frantically looking for gifts on Christmas Eve. They zigzagged across the road, fleeting in and out of the fog like ephemeral beings, as if their existence was blinking in and out of reality along with the black monster towering above them.
A fireball above the van blew out of a second storey window. Like a skyrocket the warmth spread quickly through the fog and showered the van below with shards of glass that fell like darts. It rained down on the roof of the van and Tony stamped on the accelerator.
“Finally,” mumbled Neale, as they took off up the road. The woman in the white coat vanished as the two zombies forced her down to the street and began to strip her of her flesh.
More zombies tried to catch the van as it sped past, but Tony kept alert and drove north up Regent Street, past the defiled bodies and zombies, past the deserted stores and on to Carnaby Street where he prayed he would find his wife. They were also headed straight for Oxford Street and the monster that loomed ominously in the fog awaiting them.
“Where are we going, Tony?” Bashar looked nervously at the multitude of zombies ahead. He looked even more nervously up at the shadowy beast that hid in the fog. He knew that the plethora of dead people from Piccadilly were behind them and with the hundreds ahead, there seemed little option but to get off the road. “You got any kind of plan?”
“Yeah,” said Tony as he swerved around a couple of zombies. “Get Lissie. Go home. Cup of tea. Then we wake up and laugh about this fucking nightmare.”
Bashar felt Lulu roll into him as the van suddenly darted to the right down a smaller road. He saw a glimpse of the street sign but could only read the word Marlborough. He trusted Tony knew where he was going, but the narrow lane felt just as dangerous as the open expanse of Regent Street. Small bars and boutique shops flanked them on both sides, and Tony ran straight over a dead woman who had the misfortune of being in their path. The van bucked like a horse in a rodeo, and Bashar winced as his injured shoulder banged against the door.
“Slow down a bit, Tony,” yelled Lulu. “I don’t want to avoid the zombies just to die in a car crash.”
“We are not slowing down.” Tony pushed the van up a gear. “And we are not stopping.”
The van skidded as Tony hit the brakes and swung them sharply right onto Foubert’s Place. A man wearing a tattered grey suit and
maroon beanie stepped into their path, his arms reduced to blood and bone, his ravaged neck leaving him looking like some sort of emaciated refugee. Tony sped up as soon as they had rounded the corner and barrelled into him. The zombie was sent flying and hit the nearby public toilets with such force that the door blew in.
“One down, a few million to go.” Neale had both hands on the headrests to avoid being thrown around the back of the van. Tools and pieces of equipment, rolls of tape and latches were thrown around him, and he was constantly bombarded by them as the van sped down the eerie streets. Through the thinning fog he saw a crescent shape arching from one side of the street to the other, above the doorways. There were black crisp letters on a white background and several zombies walking beneath it over the cobbled stones. “Welcome to Carnaby Street.” Neale slumped back and tried to stay upright as Tony continued racing away from the ghouls behind them.
Bashar saw a coffee house to his left and the interior lights were still working. Inside he saw several people milling around, as if enjoying an evening soiree. From the way they moved, aimlessly, slowly, he knew they were all dead. Only as the van passed did they stir to life and move toward the exit. How many more were there trapped inside the buildings? How many would be drawn by the noise of the van speeding by? They might be able to outrun the packs of dead on the major arteries, but London was soon going to be clogged with them, and the van would only draw more of them.
She’s waiting.
“Tony, we’re gathering a lot of attention.” Bashar saw a market stall ahead, its fruit and veg scattered over the road. Tony ploughed through it, squashing the oranges and bananas beneath the wheels. “I said—”