by Nathan Allen
Felix tore out into the street as fast as the rickety old minibus could manage. He sped over to Marcus, who was moments away from becoming someone’s lunch. The street was now filled with at least thirty zombies.
Marcus dived head-first into the moving vehicle and yanked the door closed behind him. “Drive!” he shouted.
But Felix didn’t drive. He continued on at the slow pace he was travelling, studying the amassed zombie horde with a peculiar curiosity.
“Felix!” Marcus screamed. “Go! Now!!”
“Marcus,” Felix said calmly. “Look.”
“Felix!!” Marcus was close to losing it.
“Marcus, we’re not in any danger.” Felix slowed the minibus down until it came to a complete stop. “Take a look around you.”
Marcus worked up the nerve to take a peek out the window. The zombies were still there, but something about them had changed. All their anger and aggression had disappeared in an instant. They were no longer the ravenous beasts that almost devoured him a minute ago. They had returned to the docile and confused creatures he was used to.
“That was bizarre,” Felix said.
“What the hell just happened?” Marcus said, still struggling to catch his breath and make sense of what he had just seen.
“Don’t you see what’s going on here?”
Marcus shook his head. “Nothing about what I just saw is making a whole lot of sense.”
Felix realised he would have to spell it out for Marcus. “I think the zombies were attracted to the music.”
Shortly after 9:00 a.m. Steve called the staff in for a quick team meeting. Felix had informed him of his latest discovery, and Steve agreed to let him share it with the rest. By this stage, he was willing to give just about anything a shot.
Felix explained to the group how the zombies seemed to be drawn to certain types of music. The most effective type, the one that turned them from slothful to psychotic in the blink of an eye, was the popular genre of music known as SlamCore.
After the close call with Marcus, Felix conducted a bit of trial and error to determine exactly what types of music the zombies were most attracted to. They were mildly aroused by electroclash, aggressive hip hop and industrial rock, but it was nothing compared to what SlamCore did to them. Something about that particular combination of sounds, rhythms and frequencies tapped into their primal urges and drew them in like moths to a flame.
Country music seemed to repel them.
“So that explains what happened in Toronto,” Elliott said, referring to the shocking rave tragedy a month earlier. “It was the music that caused it?”
“That and every other rave massacre from the past few years, it seems,” Marcus added.
“So why has nobody figured this out until now?” Adam asked.
“Who knows?” Felix replied. “I assume it’s because they’ve allocated most of their time and resources towards searching for a cure rather than finding out what kind of music they prefer.”
Felix then outlined his strategy for how they could best exploit this knowledge. They would switch on every radio they could find within the town – all the car stereos, portable transistors and bedside alarm clocks – and tune them in to a specific frequency with the volume turned up full. Felix would then use his laptop, which came with an inbuilt radio transmitter, to broadcast a brief sixty second burst of SlamCore over that particular signal. The hope was that this would lure any nearby zombies from out of their homes and into their clutches with minimal effort.
Everyone then returned to their designated areas and set about looking for radios. Since the residents of Graves End were a fairly trusting lot, this wasn’t all that hard. The doors to their homes were usually unlocked, and most left their car keys in the ignition.
Ten minutes later, they had switched on and tuned in about eighty radios. The volumes were turned up as far as they would go, and the doors to all the houses were opened up to allow the zombies to wander straight out.
Right when the clock ticked over to 9:20 a.m. – the staff had all synchronised their watches – Graves End went from being a peaceful and pleasant semi-rural community to one giant open-air rave. The brutal sounds of SlamCore blanketed the entire township. It was like what being caught in a battle zone whilst high on ecstasy might sound like.
The track Felix had selected was “Hang Tha Horse” by Mr. Needlemouse, which was quite possibly the dumbest and most obnoxious song ever recorded. He’d observed that the stupider the song, the more effective it was at drawing the zombies in.
His plan worked almost immediately. Within seconds of the music starting, the zombies began emerging from their homes. One by one they all shuffled out, some breaking into what could be termed an awkward, disjointed run.
The effect this music had on them was a little troubling to some. They had gone from sleepy and docile to agitated predators. Some of the staff took a backward step and gripped onto their snare poles. They had never seen zombies behave like this before.
“Why are they reacting this way?” Erin asked, the concern showing on her face.
No one had an answer for her, but the impact it was having on them was undeniable. The music was like some sort of zombie mating call – although nobody really wanted to stick around for the subsequent orgy.
Even Miles, who was initially quite skeptical of Felix’s claims, was surprised. If he hadn’t been here to witness it he probably wouldn’t have believed it. He also thought it was somewhat appropriate that they were so drawn to this genre of music, given that SlamCore appealed mostly to people with limited brain function who just blindly followed the herd.
He remembered back to the one and only time he had voluntarily exposed himself to this type of music for a prolonged period of time. It was about six months ago, when Elliott and Amy had dragged him out to a club to watch some Dutch teenager with half his head shaved get paid to push buttons on a raised platform wave his hands in the air. The drugged-up crowd went ape for it, but to Miles the music was a form of torture. It sounded like the soundtrack to a snuff film remixed by a hearing-impaired sociopath. In some strife-torn countries, it literally was a form of torture: sadistic warlords were known to lock captured enemy soldiers in confined spaces and pummel them with deafening SlamCore for days on end.
Felix paused the music when his watch ticked over to 9:21 a.m. The zombies stopped a couple of seconds after that. With the flick of a switch, they went back to being like dumb, drunken pandas. They stood in the one spot, caught in a state of suspended animation, clueless as to where they were or what had just happened.
The Dead Rite staff quickly moved in to apprehended each of the zombies, snapping on the cable ties and guiding them towards the bus. After all the difficulty they had experienced yesterday, this almost felt like it was too easy.
The day before it had taken them over six hours to capture enough zombies to fill the first bus. Today they had done it in less than twenty minutes. Marcus jumped behind the wheel, and he and Adam took the cargo back into town to deposit them at the processing centre.
From that point, there was nothing more for the team to do except break early for lunch and talk about how they would be spending all the money they were about to make.
Fabian was becoming more and more apprehensive the longer the day wore on. He had been trapped inside this stuffy auditorium for three hours now, sitting in these uncomfortable plastic seats and having to endure speeches from four indistinguishable politicians, two captains of industry, and a set of patriotic songs from a dreary country singer generously billed as the opening “entertainment”.
Finally, the moment they’d all been waiting for had arrived.
Bernard Marlowe took to the stage, flanked by his trophy wife Celine and fame-chasing daughters Stephanie and Madison. He now stood less than ten metres from where Fabian sat.
“This country will not be held to ransom by extremists and those on the lunatic fringe!” he declared, parroting the words verbatim from the te
leprompter in front of him. Despite reading from the same script every day since his campaign began, Marlowe still relied on his teleprompter like he relied on his daily application of hair-in-a-can. He was a bumbling inarticulate buffoon without it.
The audience applauded, and the rally travelled along on its predictable course: Marlowe’s empty sloganeering, followed by the crowd’s sycophantic fawning.
“On March 1, we will say No! to fear! We will say No! to incompetence! We will say No! to the worst government this country has ever seen!”
More cheering from the crowd. Marlowe regurgitated all the lines he’d spouted at every other public event from the last twelve months, rehashing them like an aging rock band trotting out its greatest hits for easy applause.
“The undead don’t run this country – the people run this country!”
“Together, we will emerge victorious in the war on horror!”
“I believe in democracy!”
The easy-to-please crowd were on their feet now, eating up every word.
Marlowe stood back, drinking it all in. More than anything, this was what he craved – power, respect, adulation. This was the reason he entered politics.
The applause died down, and the audience took their seats.
But Fabian remained standing. He was dressed in a Hugo Boss suit and a woollen hat that couldn’t quite contain his ginger dreadlocks. His face was now hidden behind a red bandana. His suit jacket was turned inside out, revealing a large red Tribe of Zeroes “Z” logo painted across the back.
He climbed up on his seat and raised his fist in the air.
“Fascism is capitalism in decay!” he shouted.
The bandana muffled his voice somewhat, so only those close to him could actually understand what he was saying.
There were a few groans and boos from the crowd. Someone shouted, “Get a job, dead-head!” Security quickly moved in to subdue this lone agitator.
But Fabian was not alone in his act of rebellion. He was joined by seven other well-dressed attendees, fellow Zeroes, who also had their faces obscured by bandanas. They climbed up on their seats and shouted in unison: “Fascism is capitalism in decay!”
Before Marlowe and his goons could respond to this interruption, the Zeroes launched their attack.
In a matter of seconds there were a dozen projectiles flying towards the stage. Marlowe’s security team swarmed in to protect their leader, rushing in from all directions to form a human barricade.
One unlucky guard at the front took a hit for his boss when a balloon struck him directly on the chest. It burst open, and his shirt and jacket were drenched with the ghastly contents. He was immediately incapacitated and fell to the ground in agony.
Panic and confusion quickly took over, as the smell of rotting corpses wafted throughout the auditorium. It was the most revolting stench imaginable. A smell so strong it made it difficult to breathe.
The majority of the attendees made a frantic dash for the exit. Others couldn’t control themselves and emptied their stomachs on the spot.
Once their stockpile of missiles had been depleted, the Zeroes used the growing chaos to their advantage and disappeared into the crowd.
Security swiftly ushered Marlowe and his family off the stage and outside the venue towards their waiting limousine. They maintained a tight wall around them, although several more guards had been hit with the stink bombs and succumbed to violent bouts of nausea and vomiting.
The limo’s door opened. Marlowe disregarded the “women and children first” convention and dived in head first. His wife and daughters followed, but Madison Marlowe wasn’t able to move quite fast enough. Her bodyguard fought a valiant battle to keep his lunch down, but in the end his efforts were all in vain.
He puked all over her brand new Givenchy dress, in full view of the waiting paparazzi.
Chapter 22
There were moments in life when all the planning and preparation you may have done simply goes out the window and success comes down to dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time. The early bird may catch the worm, but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese. This was one such moment.
The Dead Rite crew would have hoisted Felix onto their shoulders and chaired him home if they had the energy to do it. His brilliant new zombie lure-and-trap strategy had worked wonders, and had made them all considerably richer in the process. Everyone was unanimous in their belief that he was both a genius and a hero.
The second day at Graves End finally wrapped up at around 8:30 p.m. Even though they were all exhausted, no one wanted to stop working, and Steve only called it a day once he’d decided it was getting too dark to continue.
In total, nine busloads were filled for the day. That equated to over seven hundred zombies, or $350,000 in revenue. The job they initially thought might take seven to ten days to complete could now be over as early as tomorrow morning.
Needless to say, the mood on the bus ride home was a lot more buoyant than the previous day. The workers were all keeping mental tallies of how many zombies had been brought in, and how much money they’d be earning from this job. They were also thinking about what they’d be spending all that money on.
One by one, they discussed what they would be doing with their impending windfalls.
Marcus spoke of his plans to rave his way around the world. He was going to spend the next year travelling from festival to festival, partying with the superstar SlamCore DJs like some sort of techno Grateful Dead groupie.
Erin said she would pay off her credit card debts, then put a down payment on that Volkswagen Beetle convertible she’d literally had her eye on for the past year.
Felix had no definite plans about how he’d be spending his cash other than to say that he could triple it in one weekend at the casino thanks to a foolproof system he’d devised that could beat the house without drawing any attention to himself.
When it came to Miles, he said he hadn’t really given any thought about what he’d be spending his money on. After some cajoling from his coworkers, he eventually came up with buying a new car so he would finally be able to give up public transport.
The truth was that he knew exactly how he would be spending his money, but it wouldn’t be on anything flashy or ostentatious. He would use it to pay off a large chunk of the mortgage. This would give him some much-needed breathing space, and relieve some of the crushing pressure he felt financially. He could also finally start his commerce degree, and he would have enough in the bank to be able to study full-time and work part-time, rather than the other way around.
Then it was Adam’s turn. He said that once Dead Rite had paid off the fine and all their debts, there would still be enough leftover to trade in the minibus and finally upgrade to a newer model. This news was met with a loud cheer of approval from the staff, who were all well and truly sick of travelling to and from jobs in an unreliable rusty old Winnebago.
A few minutes later, the minibus passed the stone cottage at the top of the hill that Adam had fallen in love with. He knew what he would really love to do with all that money, but for now that would have to remain a fantasy.
Elliott was the only one who didn’t contribute to the discussion. He sat up the front of the bus and rested his head against the window. The others left him alone and assumed he was just exhausted after a long day’s work. A few of them had noticed that he had been oddly quiet these past couple of days, but they put this down to the high level of stress he had been under lately.
The events of the past twelve hours were still buzzing through Miles’ head as he left Dead Rite’s headquarters and caught the train home. He had so many thoughts and emotions swimming inside his mind it was overwhelming. After enduring endless setbacks and disappointments over the past couple of years, today felt like a turning point in his life.
He passed a liquor store on his way home from the train station. He wondered if he might need a couple of quiet drinks to help calm down after such an exhilarating day.
It didn’t take long to convince himself that this was an exceptionally wise idea. He usually abstained from alcohol when he had to work the next day, but he justified it this one time by saying that a drink or two would help him wind down and allow him to have a better night’s sleep. This was just being sensible – it wasn’t a celebration. Not yet, anyway.
He paid for his bottle of vodka and headed for the exit.
The automatic doors opened, and he found himself standing face to face with Campbell.
“Miles,” Campbell said. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Oh, hey Campbell,” Miles said, caught slightly off-guard.
Miles hadn’t seen Campbell since he unexpectedly quit Dead Rite a month earlier. Now here he was, running into him as he purchased liquor at 10:00 p.m. on a weeknight. It probably wasn’t a good look, but at that moment Miles didn’t really care too much what Campbell thought of him.
“How’s life at Z-Pro?” Miles said, struggling to make small talk.
“Oh, you know. Same circus, different clowns.”
Miles noticed how drastically Campbell had altered his appearance in the short time he had been with Z-Pro. He wore a bright pink polo shirt with the collar popped. His hair was dripping with gel, and a triangular patch of facial hair had appeared on his lower lip. His left arm was covered entirely in tattoos, and he had the beginnings of a sleeve on his right. He was slowly turning into another clone. It was as if Z-Pro gave their staff douchebag pills upon commencement of employment.
“What about Dead Rite?” Campbell said. “We haven’t seen you guys around much these past few days.”
Miles hesitated. Did Campbell know something? There was something in the tone of his voice that made it sound like he already knew the answer.
“Just another one of our quiet periods, I suppose” Miles shrugged.
Campbell grinned and nodded in a way that Miles couldn’t decide was sympathetic or patronising.
