by Nathan Allen
His snooping may have been an invasion of privacy, not to mention a breach of company policy, but he pushed those thoughts to one side and kept on searching.
He opened a drawer and found something even better than painkillers: a blister pack of Ambien with about ten pills remaining.
He had taken Ambien on just the one occasion, about four or five months back. He was having difficulty sleeping one night when he stumbled into the bathroom and discovered Amoeba’s stash of pharmaceuticals next to the basin, left out in the open for anyone to help themselves to. Included among this were a couple of Ambien pills. He swallowed one and returned to his room, where he enjoyed almost nine blissful hours of uninterrupted slumber. He awoke the next morning feeling better than he ever had, like he’d been completely reborn. He later regretted not swiping more of the pills, since they were only available on prescription.
Miles did a quick check to make sure Felix wasn’t lurking nearby, then shoved the pills into his pocket. The label indicated that they were almost two years out of date, but that was just a general guide. And even though he had technically stolen from the recently undead, he wasn’t really hurting anyone. This was essentially a victimless crime, like jaywalking or interfering with a corpse. No real harm was done. It wasn’t like what Z-Pro did; they were known to pilfer cash, credit cards, jewellery, digital devices – basically anything that would fit in their pockets. Those pills would have eventually been disposed of, so it wasn’t even really stealing.
Steve eventually called everyone in at around 6:00 p.m. They could have kept going since it didn’t get dark until around eight at this time of year, but there was little point in staying any longer. The day had been a huge disappointment, and everyone just wanted to go home.
They had severely miscalculated the degree of difficulty for this job. Yesterday, when Steve and Adam were evaluating whether or not to take the job on, they’d estimated that they could collect about three hundred zombies, or four busloads, per day. If they could manage that, it would take about six or seven days to reach their target. That now appeared to be wildly optimistic. By day’s end, they had only managed one hundred and seventeen.
Nothing had gone the way they’d planned. They assumed that because they were dealing with zombies of an advanced age they would be easier to handle. They soon found this not to be the case. These zombies were actually harder to control. Maybe it was because they were so stuck in their ways that they refused to leave their habitat, or maybe it was because old people were just more stubborn and belligerent in general. Whatever the reason, coaxing an elderly zombie away from its home was like trying to drag a pit bull away from its food.
If that wasn’t bad enough, there was the debacle at the service station where Erin and Marcus had somehow managed to set both a zombie and the minibus on fire. Those two were conclusive proof that if you built something idiot-proof, nature just builds bigger idiots. Despite sustaining some serious fire damage the minibus was still drivable, although it now looked like something salvaged from an Eastern European war zone.
But the minibus was the least of Steve’s worries. If the authorities found out about them inadvertently cremating a zombie, God only knows what sort of charges they’d be facing – on top of every other rule and regulation that had been broken today.
All this and more was running through Steve’s mind as he drove back into town. He was alone, behind the wheel of the school bus, transporting the remaining forty-odd zombies to the processing centre. This gave him time to think, and he had some big decisions to make. Should they come back tomorrow and keep going? Was it all worth the risk? If today was anything to go by, it would be weeks before they brought in enough zombies to pay off their debts. The longer they stayed out there, the greater their chances of getting caught. Then again, what choice did he have? It was either this or bankruptcy.
Steve let out a lungful of air. It would be an understatement to say that nothing had gone the way he thought it would. And while many laws may have been violated in Graves End today, it appeared that Murphy’s Law was still being strictly enforced.
He consoled himself with the fact that his day from hell had finally come to an end, and nothing more could go wrong from here.
He was proven wrong a few minutes later when he learned that Adam and the staff had been pulled over in the minibus. They were given a ticket for speeding, followed by a second one for driving an unroadworthy vehicle.
Steve drove on and silently contemplated his next move, as his list of problems grew slightly longer.
Tariq the Anarchist may have abandoned his chemistry degree six months shy of graduation, but he was still able to put his knowledge and skills to good use. He and Amoeba had constructed a makeshift laboratory in Miles’ kitchen out of nothing more than the utensils and equipment found in the cupboards. Pots filled with dark brown gloop bubbled away on the stove, while tumblers and coffee mugs were used to measure out what appeared to be hazardous chemicals. Tariq and Amoeba both wore surgical masks to stop from breathing in the toxic fumes.
An open box, labelled ammonium sulphide, sat on the kitchen table. Inside was a plastic tub of crystalised white powder. It was the box that Amoeba had delivered to the house the day before.
When Miles saw this, shortly after returning home from a tough day at work, he realised he probably wouldn’t be cooking any dinner in here tonight.
“Careful, bro,” Tariq said to him as he poured some of the hot liquid into an empty Coke bottle. “You don’t wanna get none of this stuff on your skin.”
Like so many young men of his generation, Tariq deliberately dumbed-down his language in an attempt to hide his private school education.
“What’s going on?” Miles asked, instantly gagging on the stench emanating from the pots.
“It’s just a little science experiment,” Amoeba replied with a mischievous grin.
Miles pulled the collar of his t-shirt up over his mouth and nose. “Please tell me this isn’t a meth lab,” he said.
He didn’t really know what a meth lab looked like, but he figured it must be something like what Tariq and Amoeba had assembled here.
“Relax, bro,” Tariq said. “It ain’t nothin’ like that.”
“So what is it?”
“Okay, so Marlowe’s havin’ this campaign rally tomorrow, and we really wanna send a message–”
“Hey!” Amoeba said, cutting him off. “What did Fabian say about keeping this quiet from anyone not directly involved?”
Amoeba made a zip-your-lip gesture, and Tariq immediately fell silent.
Miles snatched a pizza menu from the refrigerator and headed for the sanctuary of his bedroom. He figured that whatever Tariq and Amoeba had planned, it was probably in his best interests that he remained ignorant (for legal reasons).
Walking down the hallway, he noticed the back door was halfway open. He went to close it, and heard Fabian outside with a small gathering of his disciples.
“This is just the beginning,” Fabian said, speaking in hushed tones. “That footage from the processing centre was great for our cause, but now we have to take it further. We need to make a bold statement, one that’ll make everyone sit up and take notice of what’s going on in this world. Because if you’re not on our side, you’re with the enemy. Anyone who stands by and does nothing while all this abuse and torture is done in our name is as culpable as Marlowe and Devereaux, or those fascists working for Z-Pro and Dead Rite. It’s us verses them, and it’s time to pick a side, yeah? Because after tomorrow, there’s no turning back.”
Fabian stopped talking when he sensed Miles loitering nearby. One of his lackeys reached over and pulled the door closed.
Miles went to his room and collapsed onto his bed. At least there was still one place in his house where he could find some peace and quiet, even if this was only because he’d put locks on the door. He had them installed a few months after Clea moved in, after coming home one night and finding three unwashed Zeroes sleeping in
his bed. That was the moment he decided clear boundaries needed to be established, and certain areas of the house declared off-limits.
It troubled him somewhat that his childhood home had now become headquarters for a group of activists in the process of planning what sounded very much like a terrorist attack and creating what looked very much like homemade explosives. Individually the Zeroes were probably all quite harmless, but as a collective who knew what they were capable of? Fabian was his biggest concern. A month ago he was just another ineffectual dread-head in search of a cause to rebel against. Now he actually seemed like he might be capable of attempting something extreme.
Miles put this down to two factors. The first was the celebrity and notoriety Fabian experienced after the incident at the processing centre. That stunt had thrust him into the limelight, and was far more successful than he could have possibly dreamed. But that also meant the pressure was on to follow it up with something even bigger. His desire for change and social justice had been surpassed by his desire for fame.
The second factor in Fabian’s recent metamorphosis was the arrival of Neil, who had quickly become one of the most popular Zeroes – especially among the women. Neil would regale everyone with stories of his life as a daredevilish eco-warrior, from chaining himself to Scottish nuclear reactors to sabotaging Japanese whaling vessels. He was confident, charismatic, handsome and a natural leader; in short, he was everything Fabian wasn’t.
Fabian didn’t even try to hide his intense dislike of Neil. He hated the way Neil had become something of a de facto leader of the Zeroes without having done anything to earn it, and he was jealous of the way the female Zeroes – Clea in particular – had fallen under his spell. Fabian’s reaction to Neil’s presence was to take things further than anyone else. His views had become more dogmatic, and he was hellbent on achieving further notoriety.
A kind of power struggle had emerged between and Neil and Fabian, which had created a minor rift within the Tribe of Zeroes. The group had basically split into two factions: the traditionalists, led by Clea and Neil, were made up of those that enjoyed and getting stoned and complaining about the world’s problems but doing little about it. Then there was Fabian’s splinter group, which contained all the hardcore anarchists and nihilists determined to do whatever it took to achieve their goals, consequences be damned.
Miles wondered if he should do something about all of this before it got out of hand. He could ask Clea to try talking some sense into Fabian, or perhaps tip off the police about what the group might have planned. That would be the sane, responsible thing to do.
But before any of that, he had more pressing issues to deal with. So he phoned up his local pizza joint and ordered a large pepperoni with extra cheese.
Chapter 21
Team spirit hadn’t improved the next morning during the bus ride back out to Graves End. The previous day’s disappointments still lingered in everyone’s mind and put them in a sour mood. Worst of all was Steve and Adam – they’d had a blazing row before they left home, and now their toxic vibes were infecting the rest of the staff.
It all began when Adam made what he thought was a fairly innocuous comment regarding a house available for rent. It was a small hundred-year-old stone cottage that they saw every time they travelled to and from Graves End. Whenever they drove past it, Adam couldn’t help but fantasise about what it would be like to live there. It looked like something out of a story book, standing alone at the top of a luscious green hill with majestic views of the sweeping valleys below. It was completely isolated, with no neighbours for miles.
The previous night, Adam’s curiosity got the better of him and he looked up the real estate listing online. He was surprised to discover how affordable the rent actually was. The house had been on the market for two years now, and the rent had more than halved in that time. The reason for this was pretty obvious – the previous tenants probably met with a zombie-related demise – but Adam wasn’t at all superstitious, so that didn’t bother him in the slightest.
But things took an ugly turn when he casually mentioned this to Steve over breakfast the next morning. Steve started off by mocking Adam’s interest in the property, telling him that Adam had lived in the city his entire life and wouldn’t last a week in a place like that without going stir-crazy, before angrily reminding him of the state of their finances and that moving house was out of the question. Adam tried to explain that he was just thinking out loud, and that he knew the house wasn’t really a viable option for them, but this only ended up making things worse. It quickly devolved into a full-blown shouting match that woke up most of the neighbourhood.
Adam now sulked in the back of the minibus and stared out the window. Steve had been in some rotten moods as of late, but he had never been this bad. Adam was beginning to think that all this pressure might finally be getting too much for him. Steve was flying off the handle over the smallest of things. Most of the staff now went out of their way to avoid him, preferring to go to Adam with any problems they had, since they were afraid of how Steve might react.
Adam hoped Dead Rite didn’t go under, but at least there was a silver lining if it did. It would be something of a mercy killing, and maybe it would be for the best. Steve wasn’t happy there anymore, and when Steve wasn’t happy he made everyone else miserable.
A career change might be good for all involved.
If the first day at Graves End hadn’t exactly gone to plan, early indications were that the second wouldn’t be any different. For their first job for the morning, Felix and Marcus spent nearly forty minutes attempting to restrain a crotchety old geezer and bundle him into the minibus. They would have completed the job in half that time if Marcus hadn’t driven off without closing the door. The zombie immediately tumbled out – Marcus had also failed to strap him in properly – and it took a further fifteen minutes to get him back in.
Marcus’s forgetfulness and absentmindedness was getting so bad that Felix thought he might be showing signs of dementia at the age of twenty-seven. His brain was so drug-fried that he was constantly forgetting where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. He would zone out and stare into space for minutes at a time.
He still appeared to be buzzing from the rave he attended the previous weekend, and whatever substances he’d ingested there must have been potent because he hadn’t stopped yapping about it. Marcus’s verbal tinnitus, along with that God-awful radio station he was playing incessantly, was driving Felix up the wall.
The minibus pulled into the driveway of the second house. Marcus jumped out, but Felix hung back.
“You go ahead,” Felix said. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
During the previous job Felix had noticed a large tear in his protective fibre-mesh bodysuit. Luckily, he always carried a couple of emergency spares on him.
“I don’t know why you even bother wearing those things,” Marcus told him. “It’s not like you’re ever going to need it.”
He reached through the front window and turned the radio up full volume, then headed off towards the house.
It wasn’t long before Marcus encountered the home’s owner. He was a middle-aged bald guy in sweatpants and a stained t-shirt. He was lumbering around on his front yard, unsteady on his feet and with a long string of drool hanging from his mouth.
The industry term for this type of zombie is “drunk uncle”.
The zombie spotted Marcus and came hobbling towards him.
Marcus was pleasantly surprised. After spending all of yesterday trying to coax a bunch of geriatric zombies out of their homes, here was one coming straight for him.
It wasn’t until the zombie had come to within about ten metres that Marcus noticed something wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t a typical undead being, staggering around the place like a sloth on barbiturates. This guy seemed more like a baboon on crack. He grunted and growled, and he moved at more than double the speed of what he was used to. The thing was almost running.
Then his speed increased, yet again. It was something close to a sprint. He moved in a series of awkward and jerking motions, like a marionette controlled by a junkie suffering through acute withdrawals.
Marcus had no idea what to do. He hadn’t been trained to handle anything like this.
At the last moment, he lost his nerve and bolted out onto the street.
The bald zombie gave chase. Marcus tried to remain calm and thought about how ridiculous this must seem to an onlooker, like a Benny Hill skit. But something was seriously wrong here. He had never seen a zombie move in this way before. There was no industry term for this kind of behaviour.
He made it out to the street, where he was confronted with an even more startling sight.
Zombies were now everywhere. Pouring from the nearby houses, out onto the street, their dead eyes filled with murderous rage.
Marcus prayed that none of this was really happening, and that it was all just the side-effects of a particularly unpleasant comedown. But the fear he felt was far too intense to be anything other that real.
His lungs filled with air, then he screamed out at the top of his voice.
“FELIX!!”
Felix was still midway through wriggling into his back-up bodysuit and remained oblivious to the drama unfolding around him. He looked up and saw Marcus in the middle of the road with zombies closing in from all directions.
Felix quickly slid behind the wheel of the minibus, then started the engine and threw it into reverse.
But before he did any of that, he switched the radio off. That infernal music was doing his head in.
