by Nathan Allen
The further on they drove, the less hope they had of finding anyone alive. All they saw was the undead. The citizens of Graves End, people Elliott had known for years, were gone, replaced with macabre shells of their former selves.
An eerie scene played out around them as the car travelled through the town at low speed. The residents carried on with their daily routines at one-third the pace of their pre-zombie existence.
An elderly zombie trudged up and down the pavement with the assistance of a Zimmer frame. Another two rode around aimlessly on mobility scooters, bumping into parked cars and each other. A never-ending game of lawn bowls was in progress at the bowling green, played at a glacial pace.
“How could this have happened?” Elliott said. He was still struggling to come to terms with all of this.
His watch beeped to remind him to take his pills. He shifted around him his seat to retrieve them from his back pocket.
“It’s rare, but it’s not unheard of,” Miles said. “Especially in towns of this size. An infection gets brought in, the person responsible is reluctant to seek help, or their families don’t want to turn them over to the authorities, and so it spreads. The fact the Graves End has an older population would have been a contributing factor. They turn a lot faster because their bodies are weaker, and they’re more susceptible to an attack since they can’t move as fast. It doesn’t take much for an entire town to be overwhelmed within two or three days.”
“I was just here yesterday,” Elliott said, swallowing an orange pill with a mouthful of water. “Everyone seemed fine. People were walking around like there was nothing wrong. I talked to Lyle yesterday!”
To their left was Zombie Lyle, the service station’s eighty-year-old proprietor and throat cancer survivor. Zombie Lyle was doing what he’d normally be doing at this time of day, which was sitting out by the ice box, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette through the tracheotomy hole in his throat.
“Then it looks like you got out just in time,” Miles said. “At some point in the last twenty-four hours it would have reached a critical mass. The point of no escape.”
They drove for over two hours, until it became apparent that the only living souls remaining in Graves End were the ones inside the car.
“I guess we better call this in,” Miles said, absentmindedly scratching the cat’s head as it sat on his lap. The cat purred lightly, enjoying this a little too much for Miles’ liking.
“Is that our only option?” Elliott said.
“According to the law it is.”
Undead management and control firms were only permitted to work on jobs with one hundred obits or less. Any more and they were required to report it to the authorities. The Paramilitary Undead Management Authority would be sent in, and the area sealed off while the PUMAs evacuated the remaining inhabitants. The firm would receive a nominal finder’s fee for reporting the incident. In the case of Graves End, a town of about five thousand residents, this would amount to around $20,000.
Elliott had been silent for a moment, staring out the window. Miles knew him well enough to know that there was something formulating inside his head. He had that look on his face.
“What?” Miles said, slightly worried by the sudden glint appearing in Elliott’s eye.
“Maybe there’s another option,” Elliott said.
Steve jumped up from behind his desk and quickly closed the door. Once Elliott had informed him of what was happening out at Graves End, he assumed that the rest of this conversation should go no further than the four walls of his office.
“How many people live in Graves End?” Steve asked, settling back into his seat.
“About five thousand,” Elliott replied.
“And they’re all infected?”
“Yes.”
“Every last one?”
“As far as we can tell. We drove around for about two hours and we couldn’t find any survivors.”
Steve shifted his attention to Miles, sitting alongside Elliott. “You can confirm all this?”
Miles nodded. “It’s a category five plague. The entire town has been wiped out.”
Steve leaned back in his chair and looked to the ceiling. The cogs in his brain were working overtime.
Miles noticed some red abrasions around Steve’s neck and found himself speculating as to how they might have gotten there, before chiding himself for thinking inappropriate homophobic thoughts. There may be perfectly innocent reasons why Steve would have what appeared to be belt marks at the base of his throat. He couldn’t come up with any off the top of his head, but he was sure they existed.
After returning from Graves End, Miles and Elliott took the two grandparents to the processing centre and collected their payment. Elliott offered to split the money 50-50, but Miles insisted he keep the whole $1000 for himself. He figured Elliott needed it more than he did, and considering the circumstances he would have felt weird accepting it.
They then concocted a cover story as to what they were doing at Graves End – they said they were there to help Elliott’s grandparents move some furniture when they stumbled upon the town full of zombies – before approaching Steve and Adam with a proposal that just might save their business.
But Steve’s response was not quite as enthusiastic as they had hoped.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said, shaking his head. “We can’t do it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Elliott said, throwing his hands up in disbelief.
“We have to do the right thing and call it in.”
“This job is like a gift from God, Steve. It fell into our laps at the exact moment we needed it the most. If we turn our backs on this, it’s like we’re giving the universe the finger.”
“I’m sorry, but my mind is made up.”
“This could solve every one of your problems.”
“And it could create even bigger ones for us, too.”
“Oh come on, Steve. Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t do this.”
“I’ll give you two. One, because it’s very dangerous, and two, if we got caught attempting a job this size we would be facing a seven-figure fine and prison time for Adam and myself.”
“I understand it’s a huge risk, but don’t you agree that a risk like this just might be worth taking?”
“That’s easy for you to say, Elliott. We have a lot more at stake here than you do.”
“It’s not really that dangerous. We’re all trained professionals. This is nothing we haven’t done before, only on a slightly larger scale.”
“What’s all this ‘we’ talk?”
“What do you mean?”
“If we do decide to go ahead with this hypothetical job you’re pitching – and that’s a big ‘if’ – what makes you think we’d welcome you back with open arms?”
“Well ...” Elliott hesitated. “I just thought since I was the one that brought this to your attention then I’d be involved. And with a job this size, you’ll be needing as many workers as you can get.”
“But we’re not doing the job, so I don’t know why we’re still discussing it.”
“Has anyone ever been found guilty of doing a job that should have been called in? It’s, like, a technicality. No one ever gets convicted.”
“With the luck we’ve been having lately, we’d probably be the first. Seriously, can you imagine what would happen if we were caught, on top of everything else we’ve been through these past few weeks? We’d be publicly hung, drawn and quartered. They could shut us down just for having this conversation.”
“No one would ever know. Graves End is well off the beaten track. Ever since they built the freeway bypass they don’t get traffic passing through there anymore. The only people we’ll see are locals, and they’re all zombies.”
Steve closed his eyes and exhaled. Elliott seemed to have an answer for everything. He knew that it would be beyond stupid and irresponsible to agree to what was being suggested here, but he couldn’t deny that he wasn’
t just a little bit tempted.
He looked across to Adam. “What do you think about all this?”
Adam had remained mute throughout the discussion, and hesitated to break his silence. “You know what our current financial situation is,” he finally said.
Steve didn’t need to be reminded of the catastrophic state of the business. They were already struggling to make ends meet, but the fine they had just been slugged with would almost certainly spell the end for Dead Rite, as well as personally bankrupting Steve and Adam.
“Do you think we can afford to risk it?”
“It’s your call,” Adam said, shifting awkwardly in his seat. While he appreciated that Steve was involving him in the decision-making process, he was slightly irritated that the responsibility for making a decision of this magnitude seemed to be shifted solely onto him. “But I’m not sure we can afford not to do it,” he added.
Steve sighed and looked out the window to the car park. He took everything in, weighing up the myriad pros and cons. He’d love to be able to sleep on it and make a decision without any of the pressure and emotion that was weighing down on him now, but that was a luxury he didn’t have. This had to be dealt with immediately. The longer he took to make his mind up, the greater the chance of someone else coming along and discovering the town.
Adam, Elliott and Miles all sat in silence and waited for an answer.
“Steve,” Elliott said, leaning forward. “If it had been Z-Pro and not us who’d made this discovery, do you really think they would hesitate for a second to do a job like this?”
That was all Steve needed to hear – Elliott invoking the name of Dead Rite’s much-loathed competitor. He swung around to face the others, a look of steely determination sparkling in his eye, and rose from his seat.
“We’re gonna need a bigger bus,” he declared.
Chapter 18
Later that day, Steve called all the staff in for an emergency meeting to inform them of the situation at Graves End. He then outlined Elliott’s proposal – rather than report it to the authorities, which they were required by law to do, Dead Rite would attempt to undertake the job themselves. After a week or two out there, they would have collected enough zombies to pay off the fine and all of the business’s debts, and each member of staff would take home the equivalent of eight months’ salary. Steve stressed that what they were suggesting here was highly illegal and potentially quite dangerous, and he would understand if anyone declined to take part.
But there were no dissenting voices among the staff. They had made up their collective minds as soon as they’d heard of how much money there was to be made. Everyone was ready to leave immediately, and they seemed a little disappointed when they learned that they would have to wait until tomorrow morning to commence work on the job, since Steve wanted to spend the rest of the day preparing for it.
They did get a bigger bus. Marcus was able to obtain an old school bus, a fifty-seater, at short notice thanks to a friend of a friend who worked at the police auctions. Steve wasn’t sure they had the money for it, but Marcus assured him he could get it for a bargain-basement price: “It’s amazing how much more affordable a vehicle becomes once someone’s been murdered in it,” Marcus explained to him.
Elliott, Miles, Marcus and Felix were put to work modifying the interior of the new bus to accommodate their needs. The seats were ripped out to make room for more zombies, and a retractable folding gate installed to separate the driver from the undead cargo. When it was finished, the bus could hold about eighty zombies standing up.
Adam and Erin gave the exterior a makeover. They added a quick coat of shiny black paint, then airbrushed a logo on the side that was remarkably similar to Z-Pro’s. It was Miles who pointed out the necessity of this; he said that if an unfamiliar bus kept turning up to the processing centre and dropping off busload after busload of zombies then it might raise a few questions. He figured that if it looked enough like a Z-Pro truck, the centre staff would assume it’s one of theirs and wave them on through.
The other thing they needed was more employees. Steve made a few phone calls and was able to find a further half-dozen workers who could come in and help out at short notice. All were former UMC employees who had lost their jobs once the firms they worked for went broke.
It was fair to say that these recruits weren’t exactly of the highest quality. Steve was forced to lower the bar considerably, and these people were more or less otherwise unemployable. He didn’t bother with the usual processes like checking references or their criminal history, since he doubted any of them would have made the cut. The only thing he cared about was whether they could turn up every day, do as they were told and keep their mouths shut.
Miles was yet to make his mind up about the Graves End job. The prospect of all that money was certainly very alluring, but he still had this nagging feeling of apprehension gnawing away at him. It was an opportunity that seemed too good to be true, and so logic dictated that it probably was. There were hazards involved with every job, no matter how simple it may initially seem. Doing one this size was a massive risk – not to mention what would happen if they got caught.
He returned home that night to find Smokey waiting for him by the front gate. He wasn’t quite sure how Elliott’s grandparents’ cat ended up at his house, despite repeatedly telling Elliott he didn’t want him, but there he was. If there was one upside, it was that they were finally starting to get rid of all that tuna in the garage.
The cat wasn’t alone. There were also about two dozen Zeroes congregating out the front of his house. They were spread across the lawn, lounging around on the decrepit disease-infested couches they had dragged over and dumped in the front yard. A few more were hanging out up one of the trees, and another guy was lying on the roof, strumming an acoustic guitar while staring up at the sky.
The only person Miles recognised here was Amoeba, who was leaning against the garage door chatting up a girl with a shaved head, telling her about his plans to “live off the grid”. The rest, he had never seen before in his life.
It was official. His house was now a drop-in centre for drop outs.
He trudged slowly up the driveway. Any hope he may have had for a peaceful night’s rest before the big job tomorrow evaporated in an instant.
A delivery van pulled in behind him, and the driver jumped out carrying a large box.
“Sebastian Devereaux?” he said to Miles.
“I’m sorry?”
“I have a delivery here for Sebastian Devereaux.”
“I think you have the wrong address. There’s no one here called–”
Before Miles could finish, Amoeba rushed over. “That’s mine,” he said.
The driver looked Amoeba up and down. “You’re Sebastian Dev–”
“Uh-huh, that’s me,” he said, fumbling for his ID and signing the form.
Miles shook his head. Apparently Amoeba, or “Sebastian Devereaux” as he was also known, was having his mail delivered to the house now.
He walked up the steps to the front door, where Squealer the Tattooed Pig blocked the entrance. He was lying on his side and wheezing heavily.
“What have you done to the pig?” he asked one of the interlopers.
“Oh, nothing,” they replied. “He’s just had a bit too much space cake.”
“You fed the pig space cake?”
“Well, not directly. But Mai ate, like, a whole bunch of it, and she ended up blowing chunks all over the bathroom floor. We figured the easiest way to clean it up would be to get Squealer in there and, you know, let him do what pigs do naturally. Now he’s feeling a little worse for wear as a result. But don’t worry, he’ll be alright.”
Miles stepped around the munted pig and entered the house.
The whole place seemed to bulge with people, crammed inside every room. It felt like a living, breathing organism.
He decided it was time to have a serious talk with Clea about all of this. This was too much. He tolerated her
having a few friends over, but this was testing the friendship. There had to be at least seventy or eighty people in and around his house, and almost all of them were complete strangers. He’d put up with it in the past since he relied on the income from the room she was renting. Hopefully, if everything went well with this Graves End job, money would no longer be a issue.
He pushed his way down the hallway and knocked on the door to Shae’s room. He received no answer. He called her name, then knocked again. Still no response.
He opened the door and found her lying face down on her bed. He walked over and nudged her shoulder. “Shae?”
Shae didn’t move. Miles thought she was sleeping at first, but she was completely unresponsive.
He gave her a light shake, and realised she was unconscious.
Panic hit him like a sledgehammer.
He grabbed hold of her with both hands and shook her. “Shae!” He lightly slapped her face a couple of times.
Shae groaned and opened her eyes sleepily. “Jesus, what’s your problem?” she said.
Miles expelled a lungful of air. “Thank God for that,” he said, quietly relieved.
Shae struggled to prop herself up. She looked around, her eyes still half-closed. “What are you doing in my room?”
“Look, I just came in here to–”
Miles stopped mid-sentence. Something wasn’t right with Shae. Her eyes were glassy and a deep shade of red. She could barely keep her head up, and seemed to be on the verge of nodding off at any moment.
“What?” she said irritably when Miles let the silence hang a bit too long.
“Are you stoned?”
Shae shook her head. “No, I’m just, um ... no.”
“You’re stoned.”
“No I’m not.”
Miles stood up. “Alright, who gave this to you?”
Shae collapsed back down onto her bed and pulled a pillow over her face. “You’re not going to make a big deal out of this, are you?”
