by Gary McMahon
D.I. Harper nodded at him as he passed by, speaking into a two-way radio. He sounded stressed again, like he was hanging on by his fingertips. They all were. There was no other way to hang, not here, not now, amid this insanity.
A crowd had gathered to watch the clean-up. Most of the onlookers were on edge too, just like D.I. Harper, but their edginess was different: it promised yet more violence. Faces peered at him, their eyes huge and bright and perched on the precipice of panic. Sirens wailed across the rooftops; the fires still burned in the sky; distant gunshots punctuated the music of the city, an off-tempo rhythm section.
“Get back! Just get back! We have this under control. Please return to your homes and go about your business.” A suited man Rick did not recognise was screaming into a bullhorn, his cheeks puffing out like those of a crazed cartoon character. “Return to your homes. Clear the area!”
Nobody moved. They just stood and stared, violence brewing. This was their turf; these were their streets. Nothing was allowed to happen here without them knowing, or even granting permission.
“This is going to kick off. Big style.” The man next to Rick had a high-pitched voice, but he was broad as an ox. “They’re just about to blow.”
Rick said nothing. He simply watched and waited.
More bodies were being brought out of the building. There were no survivors. The terrorists had all been killed – most of them twice – and those officers who’d fallen under fire had been taken care of. The other corpses were those which had been discovered in some of the other flats, the departed loved ones of drugged-up tenants who’d been confused by the sudden death and resurrection of their friends and family members.
It had become obvious almost immediately that anyone who died would rise again within minutes, and they would attack whoever was nearest. The only way to prevent this was a headshot.
Rick had witnessed D.I. Harper shooting an unmoving corpse through the temple. Just to be sure, to be safe.
“God,” he muttered. “Holy God...”
“What’s that?” said the man next to him, the one with the high voice. He had beautiful clear blue eyes – young eyes in a baby face.
Before Rick had the chance to answer somebody started yelling.
The crowd began to surge, just a small movement but one that was building slowly, a ripple from the back that became a wave when it reached the front row of the massed onlookers. A barrier fell forward. There was no one to pick it up; everyone’s attention was focused back at the building, where that yelling was still going on. The crowd shifted forward, forcing their way close to the action.
“Oh, shit!” Babyface ran towards two more men and another sheet-covered gurney, his gun drawn in an instant. The man on the stretcher had pulled himself upright by clawing his way along the ambulance man’s arm. The other ambulance man was backing away: it was him who was doing all that yelling. He was crying for his God, his wife, his mother. For anyone who might listen.
Babyface ran at the corpse on the gurney, clearly unaware of the information those inside the building had been party to – not knowing that you had to shoot them in the head.
The dead man was already biting into the ambulance man’s arm. The victim pulled away, stumbled, and fell beneath the gurney, stopping it dead. The dead man rolled off onto the ground, hands clawing, his arms flapping. He was still trying to reach the felled ambulance man.
Babyface arrived at speed and kicked the dead man full in the face. Unfortunately, the dead man had his mouth open and Babyface’s foot smashed into the top row of teeth as it entered the gaping maw. The dead man bit down, a quick reflexive action. Blood spurted from Babyface’s boot, and then as the dead man jerked his head to the side, the end of the boot came away. Along with a few of Babyface’s toes.
Rapid bursts of gunfire. The dead man was blown to pieces.
Babyface screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
Rick turned away, making a decision that would eventually dictate the course of the rest of his life. Fuck this, he thought. I’m out of here.
“Nutman!” It was D.I. Harper. “Don’t even think about it.”
Rick was too stunned to speak. How had the D.I. known what he was about to do?
He watched as the big man approached, striding towards him with a cigar clenched between his teeth. “I know that look. I saw what you were about to do. I need every good man to remain at his post – particularly men like you: men with combat experience.”
“Sir.” Rick was unsure how to react.
“This is turning into a war, Officer Nutman. A fucking war. I’ve just spoken to the boys at the station, and they’re under attack. Running battles all over the fucking city. Reports of walking dead are coming in thick and fast. We have a combat situation on our hands here, and we don’t even know who the enemy is.” He grabbed Rick by the lapel, pulled him up onto his tiptoes. “So you’re staying put. Just like everyone else.” The benevolent father-figure had vanished; now, in his place, stood a warrior, a leader of men.
“Yes, sir.” Rick gently took hold of D.I. Harper’s big-knuckled hands, tried to prise them from his clothing, but the man’s grip was like iron. “I’m with you, sir. I’m with you.”
D.I. Harper relaxed then, as if realising that he was stepping over the line. He let go of Rick’s collar, stood back, and glanced around at the mayhem. “This is all so strange. So very strange.” He had a faraway look in his eye. “I’ve seen some awful things in my life, son, some truly awful things, but never anything like this.” His shoulders slumped, the energy spent. Then he looked up, directly into Rick’s eyes. “Just stay with me, son. We all need to stick together, to act as a team. If we’re going to get through tonight, we need to stand together like brothers, all of us pulling in the same direction.”
The man’s platitudes sounded vaguely ridiculous, as if they’d been scripted, but Rick nodded in agreement. He felt obliged to obey his superior officer, no matter how much the man seemed to be losing his grip. Obeying orders – both those of his unit and his own body – had helped keep him alive. But he couldn’t remain here for long, whatever he was told. Sally needed him. He’d give it another hour for things to settle down, then leave quietly, without causing a fuss.
Mere seconds after this decisive thought, Rick’s attention was drawn by the sound of many running feet. The watching crowd had finally been stirred into motion, and even now they were pushing a line of uniforms out of the way to get at the building and see for themselves what was going on.
Officers moved in, weapons aloft, and Rick closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath before joining his colleagues in their positions at the front line.
Rick knew what was coming. He knew it intimately.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DARYL FELT ODDLY safe out on the streets. Despite the lawlessness, the fighting and looting and displays of aggression, he now possessed a self-assurance that had eluded him for most of his life. Were these simply more personality changes due to Mother’s grip slackening, or had something occurred at a more fundamental level?
On his back was a new rucksack, the straps tight across his shoulders and digging into his armpits. Inside the bag were his tools, along with the photograph of Sally Nutman. She was his guiding light, his sole aim in all this wonderful chaos. With the city erupting around him, no one would even hear her death rattle; the extinction of her life-force would be lost amid the flowering brutality of this strange new world, a world he felt curiously at home in.
Mother’s house was located in a suburb not far from the centre of Leeds. Daryl did not own a car, and he doubted that any taxis would be operating with so much going on, but it was a short walk, really. He’d traced the route many times in the past, and knew every shortcut along the way.
The best way was to follow the canal into the centre. It was usually a dangerous place to be after nightfall, but tonight everywhere was dangerous – indeed, the canal was probably safer than the streets and estates right now.
He’d left Mother in her room, staring into the giddy blackness and fearing the sight of her own private Reaper. Perhaps it would have Richard Nixon’s face, or maybe it would be dark and featureless, skulking in the shadows of her room. The latter thought pleased Daryl; because of Mother’s fear of the dark, it suited that darkness would claim her.
The canal towpath crunched underfoot, pebbles and broken glass scattered across its narrow width. The black waters ran slow and sombre, with not even a duck or waterfowl about to mar its glassy surface. It felt like the end of the world.
Daryl hurried along the towpath, his thoughts filled with images of blood and the sound of muted screaming. He had another erection – this was a banner night for his libido. He wondered if Sally Nutman would recognise him, if she had noted his scrutiny at some point over the last few months. Part of him hoped that just before she died, her eyes would blaze with recognition. The other half of him prayed that she would die in utter confusion, not knowing who he was or why he’d decided to use her in such a way.
The waters shone blackly at his side, reflecting his desires. The canal was like a mirror; the images it contained matched those he’d carried around in his head since he was a child. It felt as if the landscape around him was shifting, altering to accommodate his new shape. The sky had lifted, allowing him to breathe, the trees and bushes bordering the path pulled back from his approach, the path itself twisted and undulated to meet his falling feet.
After years of feeling apart, isolated, he at last felt that he had a place in the world. A dark place, filled with demons.
It was only fitting that his first victim be as beautiful as Sally Nutman. He’d adored her features from afar, cementing that face in his mind. The slanted cat-like eyes, the firm jawline, the long, graceful neck. It would not suffice to kill an ugly woman first; a beautiful act must be carried out on a special victim. He began to regret that this long-awaited act might soon be over. He’d spent so long fantasising about it, building the whole thing up inside his head, that he feared the actual kill might be an anticlimax.
But, no. It was stupid to think that way. Here he was, on the cusp of becoming, and all he could do was whine! He sensed the disapproval of his heroes, his masters; their long shadows followed him along the towpath, maintaining their distance but never slackening their pace.
He heard a splash as he walked beneath a low concrete footbridge. Graffiti adorned the abutments: crude drawings and obscene slogans meant to express a rage that could never otherwise be demonstrated. The splash came again, softer, as if moving away.
Daryl stopped and looked out at the water, trying to make out what was causing the sounds. His eyes fell upon a discarded shopping trolley tethered to the opposite bank by the knotted fronds of some riverside weed. Nearby, a child’s doll floated in a slow circle, pink and naked and deformed. Then, turning his head to face eastward, he finally saw what was making the noise.
A fat white corpse was struggling to climb out of the canal. Water-bloated and covered in black silt, the thing kept gaining a few inches before slipping back down the bank and into the water. Daryl could see it from behind, so was unobserved. He watched it for a while, enjoying its struggling motion. The body was naked, its flesh puffy and discoloured. The fat arms and stubby hands looked as if they were made of dough as they grasped at the mud on the sloped side of the canal.
Daryl edged along the path, watching. It was an amazing sight, when you thought about it, like something from a nightmare. He supposed that the corpse must belong to a drowning victim who’d suddenly risen from the murky depths, heading for shore to return home.
He paused, and wondered why he’d accepted all this so readily. Reanimated corpses. The living dead. Perhaps it took the truly insane to accept a truly insane situation?
The Michelin-man body rolled as it grabbed a handful off moss, its bulk turning in the water. The face was hideous: a mass of jellied flesh and fish-bite wounds. It had no eyes, which went some way to explaining why it found it so difficult to gain the canal bank. The nose was gone, too; all that remained was a clean but ragged hole through which Daryl glimpsed white bone.
The corpse opened its mouth as if trying to scream. Canal water slid from between its fattened lips, spilling down over its flabby breasts and corpulent belly. Its lower portion was obscured by the dark water, so Daryl could not make out if it was male or female. If he was honest, he’d rather not know anyway.
As he drew abreast of the corpse, a fortuitous accident occurred. Still caught in its slow roll, the body’s momentum carrying it round in an agonising circle which pivoted at the thing’s hand – which was still holding on to the side of the canal – the corpse began to slide towards a steel stanchion that stuck out from the bank.
Daryl watched in quiet awe as the stanchion pierced the side of the thing’s head, just above the ear, driving slowly into the sodden skull as if it were paper. The head split, the length of steel tearing it so that the waterlogged contents of the brain pan spilled out into the canal.
The corpse hung there, twisting in the undertow. The split had stretched around the front of the head, connecting with the mouth, so that it resembled a smile. Or a salacious leer.
Daryl laughed, and then continued on his way. For some reason the whole episode felt like a prelude to something bigger. Knowing how silly it seemed, he felt that the drowned corpse had been sent to him as a sign to show him something he would only understand later, once he was indoctrinated into the league of killers he longed to join.
He passed a burned-out concrete structure, an old storage shed used now for drug taking. Dirty syringes littered the doorway, and something stirred within. Daryl glanced into the darkness and saw a thin figure sitting against the wall. Its white limbs were skinny as pipe-cleaners and pin-cushioned with needles as it searched for a vein.
He hurried on, processing the information in a rush.
Habit. It all boiled down to habit.
These dead things – these hideous revived remains – fell into the same habits they’d suffered in life. The drug addict returned to the needle; the mother came back for her babe; the victim of a drowning once more attempted to climb back on to dry land. Life, he mused, was full of such cycles. The living re-enacted their daily routines, their lives becoming like a film clip stuck on a loop. So when they came back from the dead, what else was there but to resume that loop, to climb back into the rut and carry on carrying on?
It made perfect sense to Daryl. The dead tried to copy the living. It was all they knew, all they had within them: primitive urges, tribal acts, a repetition of events tattooed onto their memories by social custom and workaday existence. Strip away the thought process and all we are is habit, routine, learned experience. Like a mouse stuck on an exercise wheel, the dead just kept on running, with no destination in sight.
He crossed the railway line and then doubled back in a loop, the city rising before him. He could see the lights – far fewer than usual at this time of night – and the rooftops of the higher buildings scraped the sky like glass and concrete fingers. He focused on his destination; one of the new docks along this side of the canal, where developers had built apartment blocks and fitness complexes.
Allinson Dock was less than a mile away. He knew the spot by heart, had traced the route both in life and in his dreams too many times to even count. Further along the river, at Clarence Dock, he could make out the blocky structure of the Royal Armouries Museum, with its hexagonal glass and steel tower
set amid a clutter of oblongs. The windows reflected the canal water, glittering like huge insectoid eyes. Daryl admired the illusion, enjoying the fantasy while it lasted.
He left the canal and cut across a short bushy verge, stepping over the town planners’ idea of an urban green zone. Empty beer cans, bottles and used condoms were scattered between the shrubs.
Heading uphill, he reached a smooth, flat road surface. The road led into the apartment complex where Sally and her husband lived; it terminated in a few parking spaces that flanked the entrance to the underground car park.
Daryl squatted in the bushes and waited, scoping out the site. He watched a dark figure as it scuttled on all-fours, heading for the canal. The figure – it looked like a woman crawling around in the mud – disappeared into the undergrowth, and there followed a single splash as she entered the water. Daryl held his breath; he heard nothing more of the curious figure.
Nearby, the burned remains of a car smouldered, the metal of the bodywork groaning and creaking as it cooled.
He stared at the apartment block, locating Sally’s seventh-floor windows with ease. He knew exactly where they were. All the windows were dark, but that did not prevent him from identifying the ones Sally hid behind, thinking that she was safe and secure.
He smiled. The darkness nestled around him, wrapping him in a comforting cloak.
Minutes passed, but Daryl did not keep track of how many. Eventually his legs began to ache from sitting in the same position, his rear end held inches from the ground and all his weight taken on the annoyingly weak muscles of calves that simply would not develop no matter how hard he tried to train them. He stood, stretching, sucking in the night. Sally’s windows remained black, silent, and blind to the terror he brought. The temperature dropped around him, the air becoming sharp.
