I, Zombie

by Al Ewing

  Why is my hand shaking?

  Even as it reaches out for the sleek black door with gold lettering - number 10, right in the centre just like in Downing Street, a joke of Sweeney's - my hand shakes, trembles. I shouldn't be afraid. It's Sweeney. Who cares if he's in trouble? Who cares if the door's been forced open, like someone hit it with a battering ram, if the lock's been forced, if it swings slowly open when my fingers bump it...

  I shouldn't be afraid.

  The door swings open.

  It's Sweeney.

  I see him right away. He's looking straight at me, from the end of the stairs.

  I shouldn't be afraid.

  Even though most of him is in another room, I shouldn't be afraid.

  A man's head was torn off and mounted on the banister at the bottom of the stairs, mouth wide open with the wooden spike on top of the banister poking out of it. Eyes glazed and wide in shock and terror. But I've seen worse things. I've done worse things.

  I shouldn't be afraid.

  I wonder what went through his mind, as he tasted varnished wood on his tongue and felt his throat stretched wide by his own beautifully carved balustrade, felt the phantom agony of a body that wasn't there anymore. I wonder what kind of chemicals flooded through his brain when he realised what had happened to him, in the half-second before everything in there shut down. I wonder what they taste like.

  Am I thinking these thoughts to torture myself?

  Or distract myself?

  Suddenly being normal doesn't seem to count for as much as being alive.

  There's blood in the air, the hot reeking smell of it, and something else. Wet, sodden... hair? My nose twitches as my eyes follow the slick blood matted on the carpet, a wide trail leading through into the kitchen.

  The rest of Sweeney's in there, pooled on the tiles. Arms and legs torn from sockets, a strip of skin hanging from the bloody ragged mess that used to be his neck. Ribcage open to the world like a plundered treasure chest.

  The air is full of wet dog hair. You could swim in it.

  Something's been at him.

  Some great animal has been chewing on his guts, tearing and snapping at the offal of him, crunching bones and swallowing hunks of meat. You can see it just by looking. Some great thing like a bear - a dog - burst in, tore his head off and feasted on his liver and lights.

  The blood is still running, still flowing. The edge of the charnel tide licks against the soles of my trainers.

  Did I interrupt it?

  Is it still here?

  The drop of blood hanging from the tip of Sweeney's finger takes seven long years to hit the floor. Am I holding back time? No. No. This is something else.

  This is fear.

  I shouldn't be afraid. I shouldn't.

  I turn away from the yawning meat-larder that used to be a man and move back to the hall. Sweeney's face gapes at me, fixed in the last scream he ever made. Blood trickles down the upright. I step closer, looking at Sweeney's scream. His wide, open mouth. His teeth.

  His solid silver fillings.

  The smell isn't dog hair.

  It's wolf hair.

  Run.

  I leave the crime scene behind, charging out into the rain and the wet, moving as fast as my legs will carry me. Let the police find Sweeney. They'll have a parade. I just need to get as much space between me and that wet dog hair smell as possible. I run for the Tube.

  I need to throw it off my scent.

  Remember when I said I didn't have a smell? I'm pretty sure that's a defence mechanism. But there's smells and there's smells. Even in the wet pissing rain, skin soaked, clothes dripping, there are traces.

  Even when I swipe the Oyster card and barrel down the escalator, hurling myself onto the northbound train just as it pulls out, safe in my metal box with the stares of the passengers feeling like a baptism... there are ways.

  Even while I'm slumped in my seat, dripping and draining, little rivers running in the grooves in the floor, I don't feel safe. Even at this speed, moving under the city in an electrified tunnel, I don't feel safe.

  The silence of my heart is burning in my ears.

  My hands are shaking as I fumble for my keys. I'm terrified. I should be.

  I'm primed for a wave of wet wolf hair to engulf me as I open the door, but there's nothing. Thank you, Jesus, thank you, God, whatever God could make a thing like me, thank you, thank you, thank you...

  Fingers scrabbling at the loose floorboard - no time for finesse, just punch through the wood and rip it out. The sniper rifle behind the DVDs is no use here - this is the time for the secret stash, the emergency weapons, the things I stocked and hoarded because I knew trouble was going to find me someday.

  Just not trouble like this.

  There's a bag containing passports for seven countries and fifty thousand Euros in cash, along with a few other papers and pieces of information I might have a use for. Everything I need to get out of the country. And I need to get out of this country, for good, for ever. If what I think is true, it's run or die.

  There's a loaded sawn-off shotgun next to the bag, in case I need to shoot my way out of trouble. Next to that...

  ...my oldest, most treasured possession. Something from before. It was waiting for me in a left-luggage locker when I finished my killing-tour of the bed-and-breakfasts of London just after I woke up dead - why? Not important now - old and shiny, with the scent of somewhere far away and long ago.

  A katana. A samurai sword.

  I keep it sharp. I keep it hidden. I keep it safe. It was very important once, to the person I used to be. And no matter where I go, I keep it with me.

  That sword belongs to me. I'm not leaving it behind no matter how dangerous this gets. To hell with customs, I'll blag my way around it. Anyway, I might need it.

  It's been fifty-two seconds since I walked in the door and I've got everything I need to disappear for good. Start again in Paris, or Munich, or Madrid - I can learn the language. I'm good with languages, dialects, accents. Just drop me in a crowd of people and I'll pick it up like magic. I can blend in. I love blending in. Blending in is like crack to me.

  One last look, and out.

  That flat was good to me. I had a nice collection of DVDs, some nice CDs. I was working through a Tom Clancy novel. I felt normal there. But I have to go.

  I speed down the stairs two at a time, down to the ground floor. The sword is bouncing against my shoulder blades, the bag smacking against my side, the gun in my hand. If the coast's clear I'll put it in the bag and get a taxi to the airport. Get on the first plane going anywhere.

  Open the door.

  A gust of wind and rain blows in my face, carrying the stench of sopping, soaking wet dog hair.

  The lightning cracks across the sky, illuminating something much larger than a man. A massive predator, eight or nine feet, coated in dense, shaggy fur. Its breathing is like some terrible bellows in the furnaces of hell. It snorts and flexes, moving muscles much greater and more powerful than any human being could have.

  I have a vague memory of a man who killed a tiger. Or something like a tiger. I remember the tiger as all strength and power, coiled tension in each muscle, eyes deep and unfathomable. Every movement it made seemed to come from some primal animating force, some extension of life itself.

  I don't remember exactly when I saw the man kill the tiger, but I remember what reminded me of it. I was sitting in a library killing time before killing people and I was flipping through some school-approved book of poetry - one of those big collections of important poems edited by Seamus Heaney or Blake Morrison or some heavyweight like that, that they hand out to A Level or Uni students to be roundly ignored.

  I generally don't 'get' poetry - I'm just like you, remember? - but I found something in there by William Blake.

  He was trying to describe what was in the tiger.

  All this crashes through my mind in this one instant, as I look at this thing that is not a tiger, that could never be a tiger.
If the tiger was filled with some primal life, this is filled with death. Every shift of muscle and flesh is calling out decay, disease, the nightmare on the dark side of creation.

  This creature is anti-life, primal, terrible and old.

  This is the ultimate killer, the monster that kills and eats the flesh of the dead, born and bred for that purpose.

  I feel its name in the back of my mind like ice as it stares into me with red eyes, baring its fangs. Saliva hits the tarmac.

  This is what will kill me.

  This is werewolf.

  CHAPTER Three

  Killer in The Rain

  It's so fast.

  I'm holding time as still as I can - gripping it until the knuckles of my mind bleed and the world becomes a silent place filled with statues, and still it's so fast that by the time I get my shotgun up it's almost too late.

  Almost.

  The force of the blast knocks it back a step, the pellets drifting lazily into the furry flesh of its chest, drilling and pushing, the impacts turning the flesh into soup as they push the monster back. I don't stay to watch beyond that. I've already let go of the gun, and the bag full of passports and money and all the other useless crap that's only going to slow me down. Only the sword on my back stays.

  I break left and run.

  Really run.

  I don't ever feel pain. I don't ever get tired. I'm stronger and more resilient than living human beings. My muscles don't tear. My tendons don't snap. The small bones in my feet don't break from the impact against the pavement.

  I can run.

  Time is locked down so tight that a hummingbird would barely move, but I move. I pound forward, pushing against treacle gravity, knowing that the beast behind me is already healed, the liquid soup of its chest knitted back into fur and flesh, saliva dripping and spattering in expectation of the kill.

  I know that every step I can put between me and it is crucial.

  The pavement flows under my feet like water. How fast am I moving? It feels like fifty miles an hour, maybe more, but I have time in my grip, every second stretched and pulled like toffee and I know that to the endless parade of statues I must seem like a blur.

  This is harder than I've ever pushed before. Ever. I know that with a cold certainty. I've seen so many films where the dead people shuffle and creep, and then a few years ago they started making new films where the brain-eaters and corpses run and sprint. The first time I saw one of those was in a cinema, and you should have heard the gasps, the screams, the girls clutching at boys and the boys too caught up to even notice... this was terror. This was shock. A corpse running.

  Oh, you sweet, naïve cinema couples. If you only knew.

  If you only knew how fast we can move when we have to.

  This is really running. The speed I'm going now... this is superhuman. This is beyond the capabilities of anyone on Earth.

  And it's not enough.

  Let me tell you about werewolves.

  According to legend, werewolves feed on the flesh of the dead. Groups of them, congregating under the silver moonlight, claws digging in grave-dirt, ripping up wood and nails and tearing at the rotting flesh in the cold coffins, maggots dripping from muzzles...

  It'd be crazy to believe that. To think that packs of feral, half-human monsters are swarming over the landscape somewhere, creeping and clawing at fresh-turned earth, tearing at funeral-suits and best-Sunday dresses, snapping and swallowing chunks of foetid meat like alligators. You'd have to be insane.

  But the gut, she makes her own rules. Deep down in the pit of your stomach, you know it's true. Every time you see a full moon, you wonder if buying that house near the churchyard was such a good idea, if one bright moonlit night you won't look out of your upstairs window and see dark shapes swarming between the stones, see the funeral wreath flying into the air, hurled aside by brutish paws as the sound of panting and snuffling and snarling reaches your ears... and then the howl of the wolf.

  Got you wondering, hasn't it?

  You're lucky. I don't have to wonder. I know.

  There's a dark world outside and above the one David Attenborough points his camera at, a strange and terrible supernature where the laws don't apply. But some things never change - there are predators and there are prey. For every animal, there's another animal that's evolved to eat it.

  You think werewolves have those snapping jaws to deal with bodies in graves? That those swiping claws are the result of millions of years of coffin lids that needed tearing open? That those pulsing, straining muscles that can tear through steel are for mausoleum gates? They evolved them to deal with the dead - the dead that runs and climbs and escapes, the dead that is to man what the werewolf is to the tiger.

  The werewolf is a natural zombie-killer.

  Converse trainers pounding on wet-slick streets, teeth gritted, straining and powering myself forward even as the realisation comes that I am straining, that I am pushing myself, that God help me, God-who-would-make-a-thing-like-me help me, I'm getting tired...

  Is this what it feels like for you? That burning acid feeling in the muscles, that weakness at the joints? The fatigue creeping through you, at long last not pretend or affected? The sense that any second could be your last and when it comes, that's it? Dead for real this time, for ever and ever, rotting in the ground until even your million-year-old bones fall into the sun and burn to nothing?

  I hope so. I hope this is how it feels.

  Because even now, with the end of all that I am one split-second from my heels, I want to be normal. I want to be just like you.

  But that doesn't mean I want to die all over again just yet.

  Somehow, my arm finds the strength to reach up and grip the sword hilt at my back. Drawing it feels like lifting a caber made of solid steel in some bizarre Scotland's Strongest Man semi-final.

  My legs are on fire, and I can feel the werewolf's presence at my back, the hot sour breath of death on my neck. London streets flickering past me in fast forward, my last sight on Earth. I'm too tired to swing.

  But I don't have to swing.

  I jerk left, stopping dead, converse trainers smoking in a skid on the wet tarmac, the sword held out at my right, steadied with both hands, edge facing back. The monster is as fast as me. It's heavier. Stronger. But it doesn't have my sense of time.

  So its reflexes aren't as good as mine.

  Seven hundred pounds of fur and sinew slams into a razor sharp edge and for a brief second I think the sword is going to break, but whoever made it made it sharper than that. It cuts clean, slicing into skin, fur, the muscle of the belly. I feel the jerk in my hand as it cleanly snips through the spine and with it, a strong rush of dèja vu that almost makes me forget where I am. I've never used this sword on a man before. Have I?

  But anyway, this isn't a man.

  Two werewolf-halves tumble forward into the rain, still connected by a thick spray of rich, red blood. With time gripped so strong in my mind, they look like grotesque helium balloons from an obscene novelty shop, their incredible momentum carrying them still forward, floating gently as the beast makes a last furious swipe, claws passing an inch from my open eyes.

  I killed it. I cut it into pieces.

  Impossible.

  I hold time fast and move to a ready position with the sword. If I have to, I can cut off the head, the hands, whatever needs to be done to finish it. Split the skull. My mouth waters involuntarily at the thought. God help me.

  I watch.

  I watch the charnel-carnival balloons drifting and tumbling through the air, the wolf howling, an elongated call of rage and pain and savage hate that hits my ears like whale song. The bottom half of the monster collapses onto its knees, scraping the flesh down to the bone and beyond. The blood gushes from the clean-cut ends, great pulsing gouts of deep red, seeming thicker by the second.

  Thicker and thicker.

  No.

  I watch as the blood seems to clot even as it runs, making thick ropes between
the top and bottom halves. I don't dare to let go of time. I don't dare stop watching.

  Oh, no. No. Please. This isn't fair.

  The top and the bottom are connected now by a conduit of thick, pulsing red, drawing the two halves back together like elastic until they finally meet like ships docking in a science- fiction film. I watch the spine fuse first, a cluster of nerve endings rising like slithering tendrils from the base before the bone ends click into place like Lego.

  My feet are glued to the floor. I can't move.

  The muscles knit together like wicker, reweaving themselves. Organs slither back into place. The skin reseals and new fur pushes through the fine line of bare flesh where the cut once was. I almost don't notice the knees repairing themselves.

  In subjective time, it takes less than a minute.

  Which means the creature healed fully from being sliced in half within a split second.

  I'm in trouble.

  It turns. Looks at me with eyes like red coals burning in the lowest depths of hell.

  It knows what I tried to do to it.

  It knows I failed.

  I can't decide whether the leer of its fangs is born from hate or triumph.

  Then my feet come to life again.

  And I run.

  I travel, occasionally. It's one of the nice things about shooting people in the head, the travel. You can wind up in Sao Paulo, or Rome, or Schenectady. Security's more of a headache these days, but there are always ways around that. Often it's easier to travel by coffin, as some dead national of the country in question, being flown back for a burial on home soil. Who's going to crack open a coffin to check whether or not he might have seen the corpse somewhere before? So long as the paperwork holds up, it's foolproof.