by RR Haywood
Factories, long abandoned with rows of broken windows. Rusted roof panels that streak dirty browns and oranges down concrete walls. Open lands of cemented walkways, parking areas now littered with tufts of grass, weeds and burnt out piles of wooden pallets. Graffiti is everywhere and despite the heat and glorious sunshine, the people look pasty and sickly.
A grimy place full of despair. The financial crisis hits hard in these places. The hundreds of small business close up as they give way to conglomerate corporations that can afford to weather the bad times. With no one able to take the repossessed premises on, they fall to rack and ruin.
Police cars swish past, blue lights flashing and sirens wailing. Ambulances and fire trucks, more police. The bodies have been found and the button has been pressed. Gregori knows there will be a news blackout ordered by the intelligence services and passed through a high court judge within an hour. News of mass murder in rural England doesn't bode well. Drug related mobsters killing each other via mass attacks is something to be kept quiet and worked from back rooms.
The silver Volvo sweeps into an underground car park, the security barrier activated in advance by a remote sensor operated by the driver. Once parked, the men exit and lead Gregori through a solid internal door up several flights of bare, concrete service stairs to the penthouse suite at the top of the luxury building. Once inside they take Gregori to a set of private rooms complete with en-suite bathroom and leave him alone.
Another set of rooms in another unknown and forgettable city. Except something has triggered a response within Gregori. He moves to the window and stares down and out at the down and out city spread before him. Ugly. Industrial and grey. He nods slowly, small minute movements as his eyes narrow. Chimneys cracked and leaning, road surfaces pitted with holes that speak of a council unable to afford the repairs. So many shop fronts boarded up. Others with faded display signs. Charity and betting shops seemingly everywhere. The people walking about keep their eyes down, heads bowed. High crime, high drug use, high gambling, high alcohol dependency.
It felt like home. Like Gregori had found the place he belongs. It matched him. Matched his mindset and his perception of self. Grey and ugly but functioning and essential.
He showers and bags his clothes into a bin liner which he ties up and leaves outside his door. The men will ensure the contents are burnt completely. A new set of clothes more or less the same as the last are laid out and ready for him.
He checks the two pistols, the one he took in and the one he took out. Both have a full magazine within. He strips them down, cleaning and checking them fully. The taken pistol is good quality and well maintained. Ugly and industrial. Both of the pistols are ugly and industrial. Like him. Like this city.
He makes a new decision that these two pistols will be his pistols from now on. No longer will he pick a weapon up on arrival. Sure, they might have to be hidden or broken into parts only to be re-assembled but if he insists on it, the bosses will see to it. The idea of possession is a new one. Life to Gregori was a constantly changing scene of new places, new guns, new clothes.
Dressed, he makes a new decision. He exits the room and walks to the main living area, the men all rising as he enters and pauses.
‘I’m going out,’ he announces in such a tone as to leave no doubt this will happen. The men know this is wrong. This is Gregori. This is the ugly man. He always stays here until the call comes through but not one of them has the courage to question the worlds most wanted man.
‘I need money,’ Gregori says next and finds three men tripping over each other to hand him bundles of notes.
He leaves the same way he came in. Out and down the concrete stairs to the underground car park. From there he vaults the security barrier and walks slowly towards to the closest street. A hundred metres later and he’s a nobody. A random man walking down a random street. Not one person looks at him. People pass by but they pay no attention. Cars drive and sound their horns. Music comes from somewhere, voices and shouts of market traders from somewhere unseen and suddenly, there it is, the essence of the place beneath that grimy outer layer. The heart of the beating city thrives and pumps strong.
He walks closer to the centre and everywhere around him he sees life and living. He sees ugliness but the ugly works and strives to get by. The glamour and glitz of most cities lacks here. There is just pure necessity with all the pomp and beauty stripped away. Gregori blends in like nothing he has ever felt before.
For hours he walks and watches, stops and stares. He orders coffee from a rundown shitty café where the owner barely glances at him or even shows a reaction to the heavy accent. He sees people of colour everywhere. Black people, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Sri Lankans and many more white people that speak languages other than English. A melting pot where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Gregori buys a sausage roll from a street vendor. The warm pastry and hot contents are bland and greasy but he wolfs it down. He takes more coffee and sits watching the world go by. Without a phone he has no way of being contacted. There is no need to contact him. Nothing will happen for at least a day so he has time.
The hot day slides by slowly but far too fast for his liking. The afternoon drifts to evening and still he walks and watches. He wanders through the industrial estates watching the never ending lines of dirty white vans coming and going from the units. He spots men that look like him, pasty, grey, drawn and ugly. They pay him no heed.
Hungry again he heads back towards the city centre. A long, slow walk, his eyes absorbing the glory of the decay and rot. It strikes a chord which digs deeper with each passing hour.
He finds a street café with tables and chairs placed on the street next to the main road. A paltry attempt to be European by allowing the patrons to choke on the exhaust fumes while they tuck into their greasy bacon sandwiches.
As night falls so the environment changes. Gone are the day dwellers scurrying about and they are replaced by the drinkers. Groups of men and women that move noisily through the streets, falling in and out of the many pubs and bars. The heavy thump of bass music, dance music, rock music starts to mingle with the now lessening traffic.
Gregori watches them with interest. The women wear so little here. Breasts nearly fully on show and skirts so short you can see the curvature of their backsides. He watches a group crossing the road towards him. Young men with inflated arms and women with large hooped earrings and hair scraped back. The women smoke and shout, cursing foully. The men laugh. One of the women spits, a great big gob of phlegm that lands with a splat in the road. None of the others pay any attention. This is normal behaviour to them.
‘Wot you lookin’ at?’ The words, although barely recognisable in language are clearly aimed at Gregori. He blinks once and stares at the young man staring at him. He is the alpha of the group, taller and broader than the others. Thick, colourful tattoos swirl up his arms and what must be a permanent angry scowl lines his face.
‘You deaf as well as fookin ugly are ya?’ The young man sneers, coming to a stop a few metres away, ‘you starin’ at me missus?’
Gregori stares back, not a flicker of emotion or reaction crosses his face. The accent of the young man is too thick for Gregori to understand but he gets the sentiment entirely.
‘Fookin perv,’ the spitting girl leers at Gregori, ‘probably ain’t seen a pair of tits before have ya?’
That gets some laughs, cheap sycophantic laughs from all the others apart from the big boy still glaring menacingly at Gregori.
‘Wanna see some titties?’ The girl asks lightly, ‘yeah? Wanna see ‘em do ya? Go on then you fookin’ pervert…get a load of these for ya wank bank,’ she hoists her top down to reveal two saggy, fat tits. Gregori glances at them then looks round at the group as a whole.
‘He didn’t even look!’ One of the other boys bursts out laughing.
‘Ungrateful cunt,’ the girl spits before tucking her breasts back into the flimsy top.
‘Pr
ick,’ the first young man kicks at a chair, scooting it out of the way as he builds up to a temper tantrum, ‘you got a fookin problem then or wot?’
Gregori stares up at the boy but still shows no reaction. With a slight shrug he shakes his head and makes a point of looking away. A confrontation was developing. One that could leave him open to exposure. He should leave and do so quickly but Albanian blood courses strong in his veins. To back away now is simply not part of his genetic make-up.
‘Fookin’ hit him then,’ the spitting girl shouts for the big boy to finally do something. He lunges in with fist already raised and clenched, telegraphing his intent and position. Gregori simply leans to the side letting the fist, and the heavy body attached to it sail past to go sprawling into the mess of chairs beyond.
Gregori turns to stare as the young man gets tangled and increasingly angry as he tries to get back up before exploding in pure rage and surging back for a second attempted attack. This time Gregori is on his feet to meet the incoming body. Stronger and much harder than he looks, Gregori simply counters the charge, lets the young man run into him and twists gently to send the boy sliding over his back to land in another heap amongst the chairs.
‘Enough,’ Gregori says, his own accent just as thick as the northern lads.
The young man snaps his head to stare up at Gregori, blind fury behind his eyes. A blur of movement and a body slams down onto the young lad with such ferocity it surprises even Gregori. Screams rip the air as the new attacker bites deep into the neck of the flailing lad. Blood spurts high and wide as the attacking man takes bite after bite, shaking his head to open the wound. The spitting girl rushes in, no handbag strikes for her as she goes in with fists clenched, raining blows down onto the back of the attackers head. She commences kicking, screaming abuse while her friends rush in to help. Together they beat the assailant away. Like a feral animal, the assailant goes into a crouch then lunges in, slamming into the spitting girl with such force it sends her staggering back and down hard onto the ground. The back of her head slams on the concrete slabs rendering her unconscious as a pool of blood starts to seep out. Again the attacker goes for the bite, driving his face deep into the girl’s neck before he tears a huge chunk of flesh away. Gregori backs away, sensing this situation is suddenly nothing to do with him. His eyes are glued though, the ferocious savaging is mesmerising. He could help, he could do something but to get involved is against everything he has ever been taught. He has never seen anything like this.
The remaining friends rush to the aid of the spitting girl. The boys start kicking hard at the assailant’s face and neck. One of them gets bitten on the calf and falls back howling in pain. Running feet behind Gregori, he spins to see several beefy bouncers from the nearby pub sprinting towards the attack. They grab the attacker and launch him away to sail clean through the air for several feet before crashing into the chairs and tables that so tangled the young lad’s first rush.
The bloodied man is on his feet, a wild look on his face. Gregori notices the red bloodshot eyes staring hard. The wet blood dripping down the beast’s face as it locks eyes on the advancing bouncer shouting at him to stay down.
The bouncer senses the impending lunge and rushes forward to pre-empt it, they meet halfway and the greater body weight of the bouncer has the bloodied man taken from his feet. This has no effect other than to give him clear access to the bouncers face who he shreds apart with wild gnashing of teeth.
As Gregori backs away further up the street he notices the young lad who abused him is now sitting up. The lad gets jerkily to his feet and turns slowly to face his friends. His head hangs at a funny angle, not broken but twisted as though he has no control over it. He animates quickly, simply switching from staring and drooling to a staggering jerky run. His friends watch him coming but take no action other than to stand gawping in complete shock. He barrels into them amidst squeals and shouts of alarm, shock and pain. He bites deep and is pushed away into another, he bites again and again. A frenzied attack from one to the other and each time his teeth break the victim’s skin so the deadly virus is passed.
His spitting girlfriend is back on her feet. The virus having worked its way through her system like a tidal wave of destruction as it infects and turns every living cell within her body. Her heart stops and she ceases to be the young woman she is. The blood is no longer pumped. The millions of messages and electrical stimulations from the brain are instantly shut down. She is a corpse. Dead. Life is extinct.
Then the virus re-animates her. It brings her back in the state it is designed to be. The heart starts beating again. Her brain fires up. The muscles, nerve and sinew all become charged with electrical stimulation.
This is the first day for the infection. It has not yet learned to control these host bodies so the thing that comes back is programmed simply to do one thing, to infect others, pass the virus. Jerky and spasmodic she is, lurching to her feet with her head lolling side to side. The red bloodshot eyes fix on the back of a bouncer still trying to fend the other zombie off. She breaks into a canter, stiff legged with arms hanging limp.
The bouncer doesn't register the impact. He is a huge man with a broad back so the young woman running into him has no effect. When she bites into his shoulder he feels nothing but a mild irritation at first but still ignores it, so focussed is he on the deranged lunatic in front of him. The pain gets worse, like a hot searing pain and suddenly it has his entire focus. Spinning round, he stares aghast at the young woman chewing away on the flesh ripped from his shoulder. Her jaws work up and down with mouth open. Blood and gristle hangs from her lips. A strong punch from him sends her spinning away with such force that a normal person would either be dead or very seriously injured. Her cheek is fractured, her nose broken. Her skull is already fractured from the impact on the concrete ground a few minutes ago. She feels no pain and suffers no distress. The pain signals are blocked. The injuries are contained. Blood loss is rapidly congealed and again she gets back to her feet. Nose misshapen and clearly busted. One eye socket already swollen shut but still she staggers back towards the bouncer.
He mutters in abject fear. That was a strong punch. Big men have gone out cold from his punches before but this young woman, despite the injury, shows no reaction. He starts to move away. This is beyond anything he has ever seen. He digs in his pocket for his mobile phone and keys three nines for the police. No signal. Pain flashes through his stomach and he wonders if he took a blow to the gut. That bite on his shoulder is burning now, really burning.
He feels weak, his legs trembling as he takes smaller steps. His vision seems to close down, his hearing diminishes. The pain in his stomach explodes with such venom that he sinks to the floor clutching his gut as he rolls and whimpers in pain. One minute later and he is gone from this life only to be re-animated and charged back to existence.
Gregori, already backing away from the explosion of violence, turns at the fresh screams coming from across the road. Men and women run from the entrance to a bar, bursting onto the pavement where they wail and scream. Blood soaked bouncers try to force people out and Gregori watches as one after the other drop to the ground clutching their stomachs. He watches as they writhe and scream in pain. He watches as they die and he watches as they come back.
Gregori does not believe in mythology. Zombies do not exist, nor do vampires or trolls. He does however, believe in what his eyes see. Gregori knows death. He has given it many times over and he watches and believes as those that are dead, become no longer dead.
The ugly man spins yet again at noise behind him. Screams and shouts indicate another explosion of chaotic violence from further down the street. People everywhere, running and screaming. Bodies rolling on the road. Cars unable to get through grind to a screeching halt and sound horns. Drivers get out to shout for the idiot to get out of the way, others rush to give aid only to get bitten so they too can drop to the ground clutching their stomachs.
He doesn't feel fear, only morbid intere
st, and his mind works fast as he processes the information. Fact is fact and within those few short minutes he understands that to get bitten means you die and become one of them.
A young man staggers across the road begging for help. Gregori watches with cold detachment as he clutches his stomach, ‘help me…please…’ The words are clear, Gregori has heard them many times in many languages. The man drops and starts to writhe, the pain simply too great. Gregori takes a step closer, standing next to the young man who he watches go still and become lifeless. Gregori drops down to a crouch and checks for a pulse. Nothing. He opens the man’s eyelids and watches as the whites become flooded with blood giving that horrendous appearance.
He frowns as he struggles to understand how the eyes can do this if the body has died. He pinches the earlobe. No reaction. He grips and wrenches the ear lobe with sudden ferocity. Still no reaction.
He places one hand on the dead man’s forehead and grips the closest wrist with the other. Then he waits and counts time off in his head. Less than two minutes and the man’s eyes snap open, now fully red and different to what they were. The life that was within them is gone. This thing is no longer what lived before.
The thing tries to sit up but Gregori pushes the head down. He feels the tension as the arm he grips tenses and tries to lift. He pushes down with both hands holding the beast in place. Its struggles become harder. It’s mouth snaps open and shut as it snaps the head side to side in a desperate attempt to bite him.
The young man is of average build and looks to be in good health. From this Gregori gauges the strength. It’s wild and uncontrolled but greater than it should be for a man of this size and age. In a fast motion, Gregor releases and steps back, watching closely as the thing now sits up and struggles to get to its feet. It doesn't use its hands or arms to help but rather just the leg strength to propel the body upright. Once up it turns slowly to fix gaze on Gregori. It starts moving slowly in that wild way. Then it lunges with a complete charge of lunacy. Gregori side steps, grabs the beast round the head from the rear and snaps it to one side breaking the neck. The man falls down instantly. Dead again. Gregori checks for a pulse, nothing. He checks the eyes, still red and bloodshot but clearly not animated. It is dead.