Sand, Sea, Zombies
Page 12
donut, a significant majority of Zombies will choose the donut.
It took Ed and Lily a while to realise what was happening. ‘Run,’ they both said at the same time. Lily made it into the partially destroyed glassed-in area at the top of the pier but Ed tripped and fell. He struggled to get up, but, being surrounded by broken glass, every movement made shards of glass cut into his skin; he couldn’t lever himself up without carving into an artery.
The donut had flown out of his hand as he fell. It rolled towards the Zombies, which distracted them, but, as you probably guessed, one donut into twenty Zombies just doesn’t go. Lily watched through a pane of unbroken glass, terrified, as the first Zombie to reach Ed ripped off her husband’s leg and slid off the yellow trouser covering like taking a wrapper off a bar of chocolate. The Zombie bit into it. Twice. She couldn’t watch anymore.
Back out on the Prom, she could see Zombies approaching from every direction although at a distance. She was safe for now, but wouldn’t be for long. The Tower was very near: she knew she could be safe there. She walked towards it and, as she neared it, crossed the road. When she was in the middle of the road she saw someone, an ordinary person like herself, try the doors: one, two, three, four, five. All locked. She wouldn’t be able to get in.
Helplessness welled up inside her and she slumped down to the floor. It wasn’t that she was heartbroken at losing Ed but not that way, she thought. Not that way!
Up in the tower, Millard was busy directing his Trusties. Trev, driving another tram, this time down at the Pleasure Beach. Howard and Chanise, in police uniform, handcuffing a young couple to a lamppost. Dolly, a nurse at Blackpool Victoria, ushering another victim/patient into the Trustie/Consultant’s room. Angus driving a yellow bus full of old folk from St Annes to their impending doom.
Millard caught sight of the road outside the Tower on one of the screens. There was a tiny orange and purple figure sitting in the middle of the road. It looked familiar so he zoomed in. It couldn’t be! He checked again. It was Lily, his only friend.
He couldn’t leave her there to face certain zombification. He pulled his Hazmat suit from his rucksack, slipped it on and pushed his taser into his pocket. After picking up a spare suit for Lily, he released the lift and rode downstairs. It felt like it took hours but in reality it was only a few minutes.
He unlocked the front door and looked in all directions. The coast seemed clear and he moved silently and smoothly across the road to Lily. He shook her shoulder. ‘Lily, quick, put this on.’
She peered up at him. ‘Millard? What are you doing here?’
‘No time to talk,’ he replied, wrapping as much of the suit around her as he could so the Undead wouldn’t smell her flesh.
He scooped her up and carried her across the road. As they approached the Tower, a Zombie staggered from the Tower Dungeon. It was a question of who would get there first but Millard armed his taser and fired, ‘persuading’ the Zombie to allow them into the Tower. Millard safely locked the doors behind them.
‘Can you stand?’
Lily nodded and Millard slowly lowered her to the ground.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I’d just given up out there. It was Ed, he, he …’
‘Never mind, we’ll talk about it later. Can you walk?’
She took a few steps and nodded.
‘Let’s find the kitchen, nab some supplies and I’ll take you up in the lift to my lair.’
They walked along the corridor. Through a window, Lily spotted some bodies slumped over computers. She pointed and looked at Millard questioningly.
‘Gas. I gassed them.’
‘Oh,’ she said calmly, ‘what was it you used?’
He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Little concoction of my own.’
‘Oh, I remember you talking about it once. Cyanide as a base as I remember?’
‘That’s how I started. I’ve been perfecting it all these years since we finished the course. Have my own secret ingredient now.’
There was the kitchen behind a door marked ‘Staff’. They found the coffee, some milk and a kettle; Millard didn’t have enough coffee in his flasks for two. Lily went to fill it.
As the water was running, she said, ‘I never got round to killing Ed, you know. Time never seemed right, what with the grandchildren coming along.’
‘Shame and you were so keen.’
‘And now the Zombies have done it for me. I wouldn’t have had it done to him like that. My way would have been painless … and undetectable.’
Millard nodded sympathetically. Kettle filled, they made their way to the lift and up to Millard’s lair.
While the kettle boiled, Millard showed the equipment to Lily. Then they sat facing the screens to drink their coffee, Millard occasionally reaching over to send messages to his Trusties.
‘Like old times,’ said Lily.
‘Yeah, me and you against the world.’
‘Stuck up bunch of so-and-sos weren’t they?’
‘They were, and all because they couldn’t understand how vegetarians could be interested in poisons.’
‘We weren’t going to kill animals, were we, Millard?’
‘We were not, Lily!’
Millard drew out a large Tupperware box. ‘Sandwich?’ he said.
They spent the afternoon polishing off the sandwiches and a packet of custard creams as they watched the screens before them. They looked like an old married couple watching telly on a rainy day. Sometimes the screens were filled with images of the Undead walking their funny walk in pursuit of human flesh. Sometimes there seemed to be no one around until a group of people left a cinema, a hotel or the Casino, then the Undead would appear as if from nowhere. At one point, Lily saw a one armed, one-legged figure in a ripped yellow raincoat crawling along the tramlines. She didn’t say anything. Nothing to say really.
Later, when the clouds had cleared and the sun appeared, Lily said, ‘You’ve told me how you’ve done this but not why. Is there a reason for you creating a Zombie Apocalypse in Blackpool?’
‘Because I can, Lily, because I can.’
Glenis has self-published five novels as e-books and paperbacks. She lives in St Annes with her husband and two spoilt black cats. She is retired now and, in theory, has a lot of time for writing. It doesn’t seem to work out like that as she spends a great deal of time walking on the beach, drinking lattes in coffee shops or making sure she doesn’t miss anything on Facebook. It’s a good life.
Remains
by Angel Wedge
Arcadia paced energetically back and forth along the ragged hem between the beach and the sea, sometimes padding in the very edge of the water, or jumping back when she began to sink in the soft sand. She stopped here and there to investigate the flotsam of the day. There was nothing particularly unusual, just some kid’s discarded sweet wrapper, or a piece of tree branch from somewhere up the coast. It was enough to keep Arcadia interested, anyway. Then she found something new, a pile of clothes just starting to be swept out by the first few breaking waves.
‘Arcy! Don’t touch that!’ Lily called from somewhere higher up the beach, but of course Arcadia didn’t pay her any attention. She came closer and looked at the shirt, laying on the surface of the water now, with a pair of jeans scrunched up underneath it.
‘I said get away!’ Lily arrived at a brisk walk, and firmly grasped the mongrel’s collar. ‘You don’t know where that’s been, oh…’ She found herself lost for words as she looked down at what Arcadia had in her mouth: a lone white ankle sock. There were a pair of trainers under the clothes as well, battered and worn, and a cheap faux-leather wallet jammed into the sand. Looking back up the beach, she could see another line of footprints, almost parallel to her own.
There was only one other person on the beach today, a young man jogging a few hundred yards away. He was wearing a high visibility vest that made him stand out even through the early-morning drizzle, but apart from that it wasn’t easy to make out
any details. There would have been crowds of tourists here in the high season, maybe even a few trying their luck at sunbathing, but nobody wanted to play on the beach under this curiously pervasive rain that seemed to find any tiny imperfections in a waterproof and soak your clothes from the inside out. There weren’t that many tourists in March, and even if they were they’d only just be waking up at this time in the morning. Most likely they’d take one look at the grey sky outside the many B&B windows, sigh, enjoy a hot breakfast, and then decide that today was a perfect day to go in the Tower.
‘The rapture really happened, then?’ Lily jumped at the voice; she’d got lost in her thoughts, and hadn’t noticed the jogger coming closer. His hair was just dark enough that he’d probably get away with claiming it wasn’t ginger. He had an athletic figure, muscles clearly visible as rivulets of rain water chased each other over pale, goose-bumped arms and legs. He was even wearing shorts in spite of the season, though Lily couldn’t mock given the failure of her own attempts at wrapping up warm. The waterproof coat hadn’t worked, and the effect of wearing a thick woolly jumper was simply to hold a couple of pints of clammy water against her body.
‘You know, all the Ecclesiopians think they’re going off to heaven this week, we’ll find piles of clothes left behind everywhere after they vanished?’ His voice was thin and reedy, and he seemed a little embarrassed at having to explain his joke. Lily found that she liked this guy already. ‘The