Parasite ; Sleeper Cells ; Kingdoms of the Dead

by Ian Woodhead

  His twin brother had suddenly just leaped up and screamed out that he couldn’t take it anymore, and ran up the stairs, shouting that he needed to see daylight, that he needed to see the sun. Martin had raced after him, yet despite the size difference between the two boys, the older brother still hadn’t been able to stop the frantic boy from unbolting the cellar door.

  The dead fell in. Mortimer had screamed out at the sight of both his mother and father biting into Martin’s arms. The mailman and Mrs. Barraclough had seen Mortimer crouching in the corner next to a box of baked beans, and, ignoring the other two, started to shuffle their way over to him. He’d felt his bladder let go. Mortimer had started to throw tins at the things, sobbing and yelling at them, ordering the zombies to get away from him. They’d only increased their speed until they reached his shivering form. Both had started to growl, and he saw the hunger in their eyes. Before the pair of them dived down and bit into his flesh, Mortimer saw his two brothers standing up, and the zombies that had attacked them were now on the floor, not moving. Mortimer had screamed out when he felt their teeth pierce his flesh, but there was no pain. The next thing he saw was the mailman and his neighbor falling down, both convulsing.

  Mortimer couldn’t remember much of what had happened after that. The days had passed in a blur. He knew that all three of them had somehow managed to stay alive until a group of government officials had found them in that cellar, sharing it with the rotting bodies. Apparently it had been the foul smell of decomposing flesh that had alerted them to their presence. No zombies anywhere on the planet were rotting, and after the living dead had finished eating the humans they had caught, there wasn’t much flesh left on the bones to decompose.

  The government officials had stumbled across the only three humans on the planet that were immune to the zombie plague. The news turned into a celebration of relief and hope when the scientists soon discovered that all of the kids also had the makings of an antidote in their blood. Humanity now had a chance of surviving this nightmare.

  * * *

  Mortimer watched the door slide shut, leaving him and his brother alone with the scientist. Until Martin started banging on that mirror, he’d been prepared to believe that his brother was just being a dick. He caught his face in the mirror’s reflection and tried to wipe the concern from his features. It was obvious now that the mirror was also a window. Heck, how could he have been so blind?

  “Why are you yelling at us?” shouted Daniel. “You know what he’s like. We just thought he was doing what he always does, bullying people and making their lives a fucking misery.” He stood up and picked up some Lego pieces that had fallen on the floor. “Joseph, can you please go away? I have to finish this building. Oh, and tell the cooks that I want a large pizza. Make sure that they don’t leave out the garlic this time.”

  “Well, I must say, this is not how I expected you to behave,” said Joseph. “Are you not concerned about Martin?”

  “I’m more concerned about the fact that you’re still here. Martin is Martin. He’s always been a fucking dick.” Daniel glanced up from his building. “Now will you please leave us alone!”

  Mortimer watched their keeper take two steps back before spinning around and hurrying out of the room. From the expression on his face, Mortimer thought he’d been about to deliver one of his little speeches, probably something along the lines of just how invaluable the brothers were to the cause of saving the human species. Joseph generally did resort to that one when tempers were a little frayed. Mortimer shrugged, thankful he didn’t have to listen to Joseph go on and on.

  “Shit, some of my Legos are on the floor.” Daniel got on his hands and knees and started to pick up some of the pieces. “Come on, Mortimer. Don’t just stand there watching me, help me pick them up.”

  As Mortimer bent down, Daniel took out the little notepad that he kept in his pocket. He scribbled something onto the top sheet, then pushed the paper into Mortimer’s hand, ensuring that Mortimer folded his fingers over the sheet of paper.

  “Pick them up yourself,” Mortimer announced. “I need to take a piss.” He hurried out of the playroom, leaving Daniel to continue crawling about under his table. When he reached his own bedroom, he leaned against the wall, making sure that he was away from any mirrors before he opened the paper. He silently sighed when he read the hastily scribbled words. It looked as though Mortimer wasn’t the only one who believed what their older brother had said.

  Chapter Four

  Sharp stone cut through the back of his frayed shirt like a knife slicing into soft cheese. Kenny’s discomfort rapidly turned to hot pain as he thrust his body against the wall, pressing until he felt the stones cut through his flesh as well.

  As streams of blood ran down his back, Kenny sighed in relief as all that dense fog swirling through his sleep-deprived mind left him. It didn’t stand a chance of competing against the self-inflicted agony.

  Kenny tensed himself then proceeded to rub his spine up and down the wall. He couldn’t afford to let that fucking slowness back inside his head, no way. He’d already almost ended up dead again due to whatever weird shit had been used to cut the drug. The stuff had seriously messed with his head. He stood up and thrust his arms into the air, then counted from ten to one, not daring to move away until he was sure that the mist wouldn’t creep back inside his head.

  “I hope you die slowly, Rossini, you fucking shit,” he growled. There would be fat chance of that. Somebody with his status would have access to all the best drugs available. Kenny stooped and picked up his leather jacket and wrapped it around his torso before picking up his gun. The feel of the cold steel barrel reminded him just how close he’d been to finding himself on the menu of a dead thing. “Oh Christ. I can’t believe that happened.”

  The corpse must have been lurking in this abandoned dockyard for months. Biding its time, and waiting for some unwary idiot to decide to bed down in here for the night. What upset Kenny more than anything was that he had thoroughly searched the immediate area before relaxing. The months of sleeping rough in the outer zones had shown him the hard way what could happen to people if they let their guard down for just a few moments. Those rich bastards as well as the drones thought they were safe in their housing blocks and large houses, all cooped up in the citystate’s inner zone. They didn’t have a clue.

  His eyes drifted down to the blackened mess of foul wet lumps sliding through the cracks of the wooden jetty. The tattered remains of its clothing stuck to the leathery flesh, reminded Kenny of wet toilet paper. He sighed to himself, now understanding why he hadn’t found it on his search last night. The sneaky bastard must have been under the water.

  “You fucker,” he hissed, savagely booting it in the side. He grunted and cursed himself for wasting his energy. It felt as though he’d just kicked a piece of rolled up carpet.

  It had lunged for Kenny from out of an open doorway as he’d passed the building. He should have died there and then, considering, at the moment it struck, dust bunnies had been operating his mind. Kenny’s thoughts had been spinning around the next planet. His body had taken over. If his finger hadn’t been inside the trigger guard at that exact moment, the dead bastard would have ripped him to bits.

  The gunshot had temporarily brought him back down to earth. Kenny had seen the mashed head with the foul smelling black gunk leaking out, and his first coherent thought was wondering who had shot it.

  He walked away from the revolting thing, feeling his blood congealing on the inside of his jacket. What the hell was in the stuff polluting his poor body? More importantly, how long was it going to last? Before Diane had left him last night, she had outlined her plan; at the time it sounded viable. Right now though, he wasn’t sure, even if they did get him another hit, how it would react to the stuff already in his body. Kenny had heard quite a few horror stories about what happened to people who mixed and matched.

  “Come on, enough with the pessimism,” he muttered. “By rights, you should be
dead by now.”

  The forced happy thought failed to make an entrance, no matter how hard he pushed. He sighed to himself before stopping to gaze at the black water a few meters from his feet. He wondered if there could be any more of them lurking in there. He guessed that he must be the only piece of food that had sneaked into the docks for months. The whole reason why he chose this place last night was because he knew that no constable would dare to come in here. Come to think of it, neither would any other stray like himself; the rumors were rife about others sleeping in here, then disappearing.

  Everyone knew that the docks were the only place in the city where a wild dead thing could get in. It seemed ironic that with this being the case, it would be the safest area in the outer zones to hide from the constables. Those cowardly bastards daren’t show their faces in here. A real dead thing would chew up a constable before they had time to scream for their mother.

  Kenny walked up to the edge and looked towards the horizon. The odds were definitely stacked up against them though. The next piece of land was over two hundred miles away. Still, he’d just found out from experience that it was still possible. His fevered imagination cooked up a pair of cold, grey hands reaching up out of that murky water and grabbing his ankles. Kenny hurriedly stepped back.

  There was nothing in there now, he was sure of it, apart from the floating detritus bashing against the jetty. “Horrible filthy creatures,” he muttered, walking back to the buildings.

  Kenny’s eyes dropped to his feet. He saw a trail of wet footprints leading from the four paint tins standing on the first step of a metal fire escape. “Oh, because I don’t appreciate irony?” He had put those paint tins on the step last night. Kenny’d thought he had been such a clever boy. After filling the tins with water from the docks, he’d stepped over them and continued up the steps to sleep in the building overlooking the water. The fact that he had kneeled on the wooden dock and leaned into the water in order to fill the tins left him feeling cold. If that thing had been just under the water, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  His genius idea had worked alright though; his perimeter alarm had not been tripped. Even so, Kenny hadn’t had a wink of sleep last night. It wasn’t for lack of trying, nor was it because he didn’t feel safe. Diane had left him the gun last night before returning to civilization. His lack of rest was something else that he blamed on the drugs.

  He pulled open the door and hurried inside the decrepit shack, eager to get away from the cold air. Kenny hated this weather. The coldness settled in his chest, causing him to cough. He slammed the door shut and leaned back, checking on the time. With luck, his sister should be here in another five minutes.

  The city’s residential gates had opened ten minutes ago. It would take her that long just to squeeze through the thousands of commuters, all heading towards their crappy jobs in the commercial and industrial zones. “Five minutes isn’t even enough time to eat a bacon sandwich.”

  Kenny walked over to the single window and gazed out, looking to the left of his position, trying to catch sight of his sister. The metal fence surrounding the docks shouldn’t prove to be much of a deterrent to Diane; she was a better climber than he was. Close to where he’d climbed over, Kenny noticed the remains of a café. Judging from the dozens of floorboards nailed over the windows and door, he didn’t think it would be opening any time soon.

  “Shooter’s café,” he said. He remembered going in there, years ago, way before any of this shit went down. Kenny recalled that the place had been packed with dockworkers and men who lived on the boats permanently anchored to the jetties. Back then, Kenny had been trying to make ends meet, taking any and every job.

  Leaving his own citystate had, at the time, seemed like the only option left to him. Kenny had believed that the capital was the only place to flee to; for the first time in a decade, his home city had formed an alliance with the capital after the larger citystate between them had declared war on the capital. Kenny couldn’t give a shit about the politics of the situation, only that the alliance meant that he would be able to live in the capital without the security services shooting him as an illegal alien. It also meant that his wife of twelve years would never be able to find him. Not that Kenny believed she would, considering she had just divorced him and moved in with her mother.

  The bitch had left him with a house he could no longer afford, unpaid bills that would have put Kenny in prison for the rest of his life and, to put icing on the cake of shit, the company that he worked for had just gone into liquidation.

  What could go wrong in moving to the city where all your dreams were supposed to come true, as long as you were prepared to work hard? Kenny had the dedication; trouble was, so did the thousands of other migrants streaming into the capital city, every day of the week.

  The café had been one of the many establishments that he’d visited, looking for any work. The only reason why that one stood out was because it reminded him of the diners that he used to visit back home, back before his life turned to complete dogshit.

  Kenny tried not to laugh. To think that when he was looking for a place to bed down after first arriving in the city, he’d believed that his life could not get any worse. Looking back though, he was just one of thousands whose life had fallen apart around them. He’d been nothing special. The one thing that had set him apart from all the other poor shmucks was that he hadn’t ended up dead or eaten when The Turning swept through the city.

  “Thank you for that, Diane,” he murmured. Kenny knew that if it hadn’t been for his sister helping him through these past few years, he’d have died long ago.

  Even to this day, Kenny still couldn’t understand how he was able to operate as a normal human being. A sudden shiver coursed through his body; he winced as a dozen pain receptors in his back decided to use this moment to punish him. So, maybe not quite as normal as he once was before The Turning, but at least his desire to kill and eat people didn’t rule his existence.

  From the corner of his eye, Kenny saw a small shadow rush out from behind a wall and leap onto the fence. He sighed with relief. Diane had made it past the checkpoints. Not that he had any doubt. His sister had proved time and time again that she was the strong spirit in their family. Nobody but Kenny knew that Diane wasn’t even a native; so much for the security force’s stringent tests.

  Had Diane brought something to eat? He reached the door and felt a smile touch the corner of his lips. Where did that thought come from?

  The thought of hot bacon spitting away in a big, black frying pan refused to leave his thoughts. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the weird shit floating through his veins. Okay, so it had nearly gotten him killed, sent him into orbit and caused him to make his back look like he’d been in a motorbike accident, but at least it brought his ‘normal’ appetite back.

  Diane ran across the docks, heading towards the stairway. She stopped and bent over the body of his previous visitor. Kenny frowned when he noticed a flash of bright purple under her filthy overalls.

  She obviously didn’t want to get her smart uniform grimed up and ripped open. Kenny would have to ask her where she’d gotten the overall from. There wouldn’t have been much chance of sneaking it through gate security. Those uniformed bastards took real pride in ensuring nothing extra went through those gates.

  It wasn’t until he was halfway down the stairs that Kenny realized there was something not quite right about Diane’s outfit. The last time he’d seen her ready for work, her uniform had been green.

  His sister must have been promoted and he’d had no idea. Kenny stepped over the paint tins. It was probably unfair to start accusing her of withholding information. Diane had no secrets and she would have shared her good news. It wasn’t her fault that at the time, Kenny would have probably been floating around a room, doped up to the eyeballs. Would it have been any wonder that the information hadn’t sunk in?

  It explained how she’d managed to get the overall through the gates. A hi
gher pay grade brought about better privileges. Those fuckers manning the gate might have even saluted her.

  Diane’s company had secured the contract to clean up the citystates closest to the capital, to make them habitable for their growing population to move into. He wished them all the best of luck with that one. His sister had shown him the real live feeds of what they looked like now. The citystates were totally fucked. Millions of dead things roamed the deadzones, as well as occupying the other citystates; their fortified boundaries had not stopped the zombies from getting inside. It had frightened the crap out of him when she first showed Kenny how it really looked beyond the high walls of their city. Like the rest of the people in the capital, Kenny had no idea that the images they showed on TV were all just graphics.

  Her job role had the important title of Unit Management Officer. It sounded important, but in reality, it just meant that Diane was tasked with disposing of the bodies after the military had stopped them from moving about.

  Diane’s company must have thought that giving their workers fancy names helped their employees step away from their grisly task. It dehumanized the job.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  Kenny hurried over and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I’m so glad to see you, Diane, and I’m glad that you got here without any problems.” He looked down at the body. “Oh him, He just appeared out of nowhere this morning. By the state of what’s left of his clothing, I think he must have been under the water for the past few months. My arrival must have woken him up. We danced earlier on but I’m afraid that my gun got a bit jealous.”

  “You’re hilarious,” she replied, sighing. “Wait, where is your gun?”

  “I left it up there.”

  “Well, you had better go get it then.” Diane zipped up her overalls and shivered. “We don’t have a lot of time left. If we don’t get there before the first appointments, it’ll be tomorrow before we can try this again.”