Dead End Job (Book One of the 'Zombino' series)

by Chris Welsh

  Chapter Twenty-Six. 08:45pm

  TRAIN, TRAIN, GO AWAY, COME AGAIN ANOTHER DAY.

  Even from afar, the gate broadcast a status of 'astoundingly locked'. It had a chain and everything, with links as thick as beefy forearms, topped by sharpened points and wire that wasn't so much barbed as it was laced with lethal razor blades. Sticky anti-climbing paint dripped liberally and promised to ruin our clothes. The spikes promised to ruin our skin, ligaments, muscles and anything else they stabbed through. Walls either side of the gate, and indeed all around the compound, were just too damned high and featureless to scale without equipment or super powers.

  Stuart used the butt of his gun to knock the conscious out of two ambling monsters on the way over, though he didn't have to. I felt confident we could walk up and hug them, then stroll away unimpeded if we so wished. We were sprouts at a Christmas dinner, ignored by the undead guests in favour of the popular festive game, 'Standing Around Looking Bored'.

  The chain was as thick as I'd estimated; a type capable of containing a furious family of werewolves during a full moon. The padlock that held it in place was bigger than my entire head, curiously situated on the other side of the gate; the outside. It looped through the hefty rails and through a metal tube set into the wall. Whoever locked it wanted it to stay locked.

  A faded notice on the wall detailed the expected departure times; 5:05pm it'd leave, then again a while later. No use to us.

  "Why don't we try the other gate, the one round the back?" Stuart asked, shaking the chain impotently. "Although, then we'd have to march through the forest to get to the train."

  "Not something I fancy, in the dark with no path to walk on," Susan said.

  Nelson jogged off a way away, ten yards-ish, carrying his new favourite toy on his right shoulder.

  "You guys might want to stand back a bit!" he shouted. He didn't have to tell me twice. I dragged the bag of guns up and moved, leading Stuart and Susan toward the defunct and pointless car park area. Before we reached what I deemed a 'safe distance', we heard the recognisable WHOOSH shortly followed by an explosion straight out of a movie. Hyper-real in its tenacious efforts to rupture my delicate eardrums.

  I turned to find the gate entirely intact, standing proudly with the chain solidly in place. Next to it was an expansive circular hole in the wall that billowed with dust and dancing debris. A cavernous wound in the brickwork which allowed the dingy greens and browns of the autumnal forestation to creep through. Pieces of flame dotted the ground like ritual candles.

  "Sorry!" Nelson called between coughs, emerging from the tunnel of smoke and waving it away from his mouth. "I aimed at the gate, ackk, I swear! It...It veered."

  "We see that, Nelson," said Susan, heading over to inspect the damage. As she approached the hole grew slightly larger, thanks to a weak chunk that toppled and landed in a crumbling fashion. Through the hole, amid the roots, lay a paved floor obscured by wet leaves and slippery moss, which linked to the main path a few yards away. This in turn wound down to the platform where passengers boarded the train. We still had no idea if it was there or not, but at least we had a way of finding out.

  Technically.

  "I'm not going through that," Susan said with finality. "I'll step through, it'll collapse, and that'll end me. Crushed. Guillotined by masonry. I can't do it. Sorry."

  Stuart clambered through regardless, propping his gun up against a shoulder and waving it around like a seasoned member of a SWAT team.

  "Clear!" he said, signalling for me to follow.

  I quickly hopped through, eager to avoid any sections of wall that might decide to crack my head open like a blood-thirsty Tetris block.

  "I'll wait here," Susan said, staring suspiciously at the treacherous hole, mulling things over. "Nelson and I will wait here. You go ahead and check if the train is there. We'll be fine, you'll be fine, just come back if there's anything down there. Then, maybe, I'll risk it."

  "Erm, okay then," Nelson half-agreed. He'd already slid a third rocket into the launcher, his last one by my count. It made a 'chlomp' noise as it fell into place, which he giggled at.

  The path down to the platform wasn't lengthy, but it was twisty and boxed in by over-grown trees. It was a nightmare to traverse at 5:01PM, when every other fucker in the building punched out to claim an uncomfortable seat for the laborious journey home. If you missed the first shuttle there was a forty wait to endure until the second which, in winter, was close to suicide. The other alternative was a stretch of overtime to avoid the crowds which, to me, also felt akin to suicide.

  Stuart kept quiet as we crept along the pathway. He had one cheek against his gun and the gun pointed ahead of him, ready to drop any zombie, bear or bogeyman unfortunate enough to enter his sights. My gun rested at my side. I held it by the handle but kept my trigger finger away. Safety first.

  "Did you have gun training as part of your security job?" I asked.

  "No, I didn't. But I went shooting at a gun range near my mum's house, once. I was very, very good."

  "Did you shoot targets?"

  "Tin cans."

  "How'd you do?"

  "I hit almost all of them."

  I sighed and allowed a smile to flicker on to my lips when we found the station free of all souls, dead or otherwise. A mix of bemusement and relief. Our carriage awaited, running the length of the impractically long platform. No lights were on inside. It exuded stillness. The only sounds reaching my ears came from the breeze playing amid the branches of the trees, rustling the dry, dying leaves. Meek lamps lit the pathway but mutated the dense forest into pools of oily, impenetrable black capable of hiding anything, creating uneasy tension.

  "No one has been here..." Stuart said. "No one even tried to leave."

  "Doesn't look that way. Guess that was difficult with the lock on the gate, if anyone even made it that far."

  I thought back to the foyer, the big congregation, and wondered how many of them were still human when they got there, or if the zombism had already taken hold. The locked gate was a disconcerting mystery but no more so than anything else.

  "Should we go and get Susan, do you think?" I asked. "I mean, the train is here and there's no danger..."

  Stuart didn't answer. Instead he struggled with a set of sliding doors, prying them open with his fingers. "Give me a hand here?" he asked, dismissing my question for the moment.

  Brute force gave us a space wide enough to squeeze through, defeating the mechanism, though the bastard thing slammed shut again as soon as we let go. It'd require another bout of physical exertion if we wished to leave.

  The train was thin and lengthy, capable of dragging hundreds of sweaty, tired office peons a whole bunch of miles through dense woodland back to civilisation. It didn't have a driver, but it did have a driver's compartment inconveniently located on the exact other end of the train from us. Stuart guessed that if we were to get any magic out of the thing, the buttons or keys that sparked it up lived in there. I didn't argue with his logic, though I wished he'd announced the epiphany out on the light-swathed path. There were no control rooms of any description out there, not even a hut for a conductor to shelter in, but we could have jogged along the platform to save dealing with a hundred doors.

  "I'd love a flashlight. Or a lamp, a stick on fire, anybloodything," Stuart said, skulking unhappily to the end of the first section. Sliding doors either side of short, rubber tunnels separated each carriage; they had helpful handles and thankfully didn't put up much of a protest as we passed through.

  "Remember that email we found earlier? Like hours and hours ago? On the eighth floor."

  "Yeah, why?" I said.

  "I think it lied about the sandwiches."

  -

  We passed through five sections like sausage links before entering the shuttle's final car and reaching the driver's room, only to find it thoroughly locked. Not a bit locked, not 'oh, the door is shaking a bit, bolted from the other side' kind of locked; no, this thing wasn't
giving a millimetre. Part of me thought it wasn't a real door, just painted on as a practical joke.

  We backtracked to the last carriage but the door there told a similar story.

  "Try that one!" I told Stuart, urging him to prise open the sliding door to the platform.

  Nothing.

  Wouldn't budge.

  A palpable fear grew as we realised the train carriage had essentially locked itself right up. The doors ignored our desperate advances and no windows would wrench open; I even made Stuart check for secret hatches under seats, but he found nothing. "What the fuck is going on?" he said, staring slowly around our new cell.

  "No idea, how about w..."

  A single gun shot rang out from far away, barely audible but unmistakable. Whatever I started to say became the least important sentence in the world. I never finished it.

  Susan and Nelson appeared at the other end of the platform, rushing away from something. I had to slam my face against the glass to find an angle at which they were visible. It occurred to me that they wouldn't know we were on the train unless they walked the length of it and peered through the glass.

  Banging on the window made no difference; we were too distant to rise above the gunfire and the sound of wind-swept branches swishing around like burlesque skirts. The only clue they might have had to our location was my gun, which I'd foolishly left near the door we'd forced ourselves through.

  "Get down, I've got an idea," Stuart said, raising his weapon. I barely had time to duck before he pulled the trigger, sending a stream of bullets at the nearest window. Showing some impressive strength, the glass didn't shatter or crack; instead it mockingly bounced the bullets back like fat flies. Each one ricocheted around the small cabin, glancing surfaces until physics put a stop to their play time. I'm certain one smacked against the metal chair I cowered behind, mere inches from my head.

  "Stop it!" I yelled, before catching eyes with a terrified Stuart.

  "Sorry! Sorry! I thought it'd break!"

  "Put that fucking thing down, will you? Christ on a bike..."

  He lowered it, but didn't put it down completely.

  Gun fire from outside echoed Stuart's.

  Nelson and Susan had moved further along the path, running between the spots of light thrown down from the yellow lamps. A compact army of shambling monsters followed on, slow but relentless in their march alongside the train. At least fifty of them formed a thick wall across the platform. The occasional one tripped and fell into the shrubbery; each time, another lined up to replace it.

  Nelson poured bullets into them, even hitting some. Susan's erratic shot relegated her to carrying the bag and providing ammunition to her slightly more proficient partner. The rocket launcher poked out of the hold-all like the head of a fashionista's yappy pet Chihuahua.

  Both Stuart and I thumped the glass, throwing kicks and shoulders to convince it to give way and let us out. I charged with an elbow pointed like a battering ram when the cloudy, tinted glass flickered. Up popped the opaque outline of a man's face, two foot high and stretched out along the length of the window. I bounced off and recoiled in horror at the projected image, then screamed and scrambled away as if the wall was covered in scorpions. The man's face was inert and distorted by the bend of the window like a reflection in a funhouse mirror, the one that turned people into bloated, squat manatees.

  The other previously plain windows changed too, one by one, bringing up the motionless man and his shiny, wrinkled forehead. Then it flickered to life and he moved and smiled, saying nothing but staring directly forward. His warped head displayed somewhat normally on the smaller windows, less distorted. One of his eyes operated independently from the other, independently from the rest of his face, holding a completely different set of interests. It didn't focus on any one thing for over than a second; instead it flitted and rolled from corner to corner to fulfil its own agenda. His other, stable eye dug holes into my soul. The stillness of the pupil was eerily inhuman.

  "Who the fuck?" Stuart asked, elongating his vowels, gripping a handrail for support both physical and emotional. He also tilted the dangerous end of his gun up again.

  "Don't even think about shooting unless you have something to meaty shoot at," I told him, infinitely concerned about a fluke ricochet drilling into my brain. "Flesh. Shoot at flesh. Nothing else."

  A powerful roar from outside rerouted my body's processing power to pump my adrenal glands; a primal and chill-inducing sound that spat a sour taste onto my tongue. Goose bumps ran the length of my arms, meeting up around the back of my neck. Stuart peered out through the grainy man's image but couldn't quite commit to pressing his own face up against it.

  "They're nearly level," he said, referring to Susan and Nelson, as he banged a sweaty fist on the window. The man on the screens didn't notice or react, but Susan turned and ran to us, screaming about the zombies.

  "The big one is back! Let us on you bastards!" she yelled.

  "We can't! It's all locked up!" Stuart told her.

  She backed away, staring confused at the wide face covering the window, then ran back to Nelson's side. He ceased firing his assault rifle and picked up the launcher again. I gazed at the marauding crowd of death through the window in the inoperable door, the only piece of glass in the whole carriage not adorned with the man's mischievous grin.

  A second guttural roar rumbled and shook the train. Something began to split the collection of zombies, displacing them like a shark fin through water. The muscular son of a bitch, the colloquially-named Zombeast, bounded into view with frothy slobber dripping from its wide mouth and its Silverback arms slamming down like angry pistons.

  Nelson took aim, then fired his final rocket.

  It was close, closer than his other attempts, but still swung off to the left, missing his monster and causing wanton damage elsewhere. This time it was the rear of the train that suffered a combustible fate, sending a violent shudder all the way along to us.

  "Haha! Look at that thing. Seriously!" the man cried out, evidently aware of proceedings and finally speaking out. "I leave my desk for five minutes an' moron-boy pulls a missile launcher from his fetid dickhole or sumthin'."

  He spoke with a sloppy American drawl, somewhere from the south of that massive collection of states. He had comfort in his voice, something relaxing, friendly...in any other situation I'd have labelled him an affable guy. His speech spouted from tinny, hidden speakers with an electronic twinge.

  "Who, what..." Stuart stammered, pointing at the main window/screen.

  "You'll havta speak up if you expect me to hear you. I can't guarantee I'll care, but I'll give it a go."

  "LET OUR FRIENDS ON!" I screamed, focussing on the face in the small window opposite the doors. It was the one that most represented a properly proportioned human face, so it felt like I was screaming at real person, not a video game villain.

  "Hmm. No. Naw, I can't do that I'm afraid. I hate...waste, you understand? Bringing those two along would waste perfected. Waste squared. I don't know...too much waste, anyway."

  "They'll die outside! Isn't that waste?"

  "...I suppose. But a different kind of waste. A waste that I, personally, won't have to engage with or mop up afterwards. Oh, you may wish to plant yourself on a seat, maybe have a little lie down. Get comfortable. Just a tip."

  The train jolted as it kicked into life. Its engine slowly chugged up to speed, warming and building to the constant background drone that slips along unnoticed until its pointed out. Lights on the ceiling blinked to life and made the man difficult to see. His face competed with the glare and shine of the curved glass. A loud hiss indicated the release of brakes and our carriage began to move, unhitched, abandoning all other carriages at the station. Breaking away like a lone orphan escaping a Victorian workhouse, headed for who-knows-where...

  We left the rubber joining segment of the previous carriage dangling down like wrinkled skin.

  I threw my weight into the glass again, doing noth
ing but creating a keen bruise on my shoulder. I gave up thoughts of escape and looked outside instead.

  Susan and Nelson had a gun each now and filled the monster with enough bullets to down a demented, stubborn T-Rex. Yet still it stalked forwards, as the masthead of the braying mob. It behaved as if badly hurt, stumbling and bleeding brown sludge from a hundred holes, but it refused to stop or slow. Each breath it expelled came out as discoloured steam, as if it housed a coal furnace somewhere in its guts. The regular zombies hung back like a fearful pack who knew their place in the food chain, ambling along in a predator's wake with hopes of stealing scraps.

  Susan still screamed things at us, mostly obscenities and desperate pleas, but the train soon pulled too far away to hear.

  "Congratulations, Wesley Jetter. You made it out alive."

  He knew my name. I hated that he knew my name.

  "This was a set up? Planned?" I asked.

  "Oh, goodness no. You think I'm dumb enough to do any of this on purpose? It was...a happy accident. One failed, fucked-up test that forced my hand to action a better test I'd been putting off for some time."

  "Where do I come into this?"

  "You, Sir, are the better test."

  I didn't feel like a test. I didn't feel better than anything at all, either; I was tired and broken and busting for a piss. My head ached and my left knee throbbed. I was wearing filthy, stolen clothes and a pair of tatty, destroyed shoes.

  "Who are you?" Stuart asked the man, who sneered at him like he was a degenerate beggar outside a stinking crack den.

  "I, pink shirt, am the man in charge. Call me Abe, if you like. Some do."

  The train picked up momentum but Nelson and Susan's gunfire provided a soundtrack to our chat.

  "What am I doing here, if Wes was the test?"

  "You're here BECAUSE of Wesley. You could count yourself as dead if it wasn't for him. Joining him was a stroke of good fortune on your behalf. By rights you shoulda been zombie chow by mid-morning."

  Stuart's face morphed into abject fury, made all the worse because the man's intangible presence provided no target at which to empty his gun. He had every justification in his anger because the statement wasn't true. It wasn't true at all.

  "Stuart saved my life, more than once. I'd be dead without him. I'd be dead without Susan, without Nelson."

  "You'd also be dead without me, you ignorant dickweed, but I'm still classing you a goddamned success. Can't you take the compliment?"

  The man spoke with a dash of irritation. For the first time since his unexpected appearance, he pushed aside his amiable drawl in favour of rasping anger.

  "I honestly don't think I can," I said.

  "Where are you taking us?" Stuart asked.

  "I'm taking HIM somewhere pretty special indeed. I'm taking YOU along because you happened to get your sorry ass on my shuttle and I didn't stop you in time. Now, both, kindly shut the hell up and take a nice, big gulp of the knock-out gas I'm gonna pump in. Really fill your lungs with it, and I'll see you on the other side. There's so much more to come."

  The carriage filled with a pink haze, seeping from vents underneath the seats. Stuart barely filled one nostril before collapsing face-down, landing in a prone and immobile heap. I kept the safe air inside me whilst I fumbled again with a hopeless window, but I only lasted twenty seconds. My eager lungs burned and forged an allegiance with a dizzying light-headedness; together they forced me to succumb.

  I crawled across three cold, hard seats before risking my first dreaded breath.

  Then, nothing.

  It tasted dry, like tonic water, but a little sweet and acidic on my tastebuds; registering somewhere not far from traditional lemonade. Almost refreshing. I suffered no loss of consciousness or terrible, gut-wrenching nausea as I'd feared. My second breath was somewhat pleasant, like a mouthful of candy floss without the feeling of sugar dismantling my teeth. The man's face had disappeared.

  After five seconds, it blipped back.

  "Hmm, interesting."

  He appeared bemused and narrowed his eyes, studying something intently. "You're not as asleep as I need you to be."

  The train veered off to the right, leaving the original tracks, the ones I travelled every day. It pushed through low hanging trees and other thick foliage, taking a strange and secret route into the unknown; a snake of light slithering through the deep, dark forest.

  "Most pleasantly unexpected! You're stronger than I considered giving you credit for!"

  My throat parched and my eyes felt laboriously heavy, but nothing else. I suffered no immediate desire to pass out.

  "What are you jabbering on about, you big dumb face?"

  As I spoke it became evident I carried more damage than I realised. My speech slurred and came out at about half-volume. I tried a second time with increased power but only croaked out the first three words. Yet I remained conscious.

  "Let us try...knock-out gas number two! No, three! A mix of two and three! We'll call it...four! Ha! This won't taste great. Being honest with you here, kid."

  I wanted to know what was going on, our destination, what would happen to Susan. What the shitting-fuck he was talking about. But then the room's pink glaze morphed to a filthy green and the smoke thickened, obscuring his face.

  I tasted burnt peanuts and some sort of herbal ointment. The inside of my nose caught fire.

  "That oughta kick your donkey in the head!" the man said, chuckling slightly somewhere in the mist.

  A shallow breath scorched my throat, tearing off slivers of flesh and...then...my head...like lead...

  "Bing bong! Next stop: TERRIFYING ABANDONED HOLIDAY RESORT! You're heading straight to my playground!"

  THE END

  - -You have been reading- -

  DEAD END JOB

  Book One of the ZOMBINO series.

  Next: Zombino Book 2: Terrifying Abandoned Holiday Resort

  - due out Winter 2013-

  - ABOUT THE AUTHOR -

  Chris Welsh is an author with three novels and a handful of shorts/novellas under his writing belt. He intends to hopefully sell the novels, but doesn't mind giving the shorts away for as cheap as he can. He also likes to write mini 'About the author' sections as if it wasn't really him writing it. He pretends, occasionally, that he has a secretary to do it for him.

  One of his novels, The End of Superhero Man, (a surreal mystery-comedy about a superhero experiencing a tragic loss of powers) is on course to be published early 2013.

  He can be found in blog-form at www.cwelsh.co.uk, and a revamped, dedicated site is on the way. You can also find him on Twitter, as @c_w_writes

  https://twitter.com/c_w_writes

  Other stories are available:

  HOLIDEATH RESORT

  Book Two of the ZOMBINO series

  HORROR ANTHOLOGY - A collection of short, scary stories…

  Featuring eight short stories, including-

  LEAVE A NOTE

  DIRECTOR'S CUT

  CRIER

  EVIL EYE

  A STRANGER'S STORIES

  THE BEAST OF LEVEL 13

  SEPARATION

  and PATSY

  Chimpley - a novel

  Jason doesn't quite know where he fits in the world.

  Largely because his world just fell apart around him. 

  In just under 24 hours, Jason gets handed divorce papers, loses his job, loses his home, eats some dry cereal. He also finds out about an estranged Uncle who recently died and left him a house in his final will and testament. A very interesting house, located in a town called Chimpley, so far past the middle of nowhere that it almost loops back into civilisation.

  'Chimpley' is Jason's story. One of madness and despair, all centred around a village full of elderly, generally insane, folk. It takes him from his disastrous life in a London suburb to a place he's never heard of or even seen on a map. 

  Can Jason convince the villagers that he does actually own the house? Can he convince them not to
murder him and feed him to the strange bugs that live in the dank tunnels under the village? Can he find out exactly who his mysterious uncle was? 

  -

  Chimpley is a strange tale that rolls around in a variety of genres, from horror to humour to general mystery.

 

  Thanks for reading.

  If you enjoyed it, please rate and review.

  Any feedback helps me greatly.