The School of the Undead

by Michael Woods

  ***

  The towering patchwork figure that had met Brenden at the entrance to the Tunnels had said nothing more to the boy after the two had made their way to the other side of steel entrance. Instead, the thing had just guided Brenden to a large, ancient oak chest, which looked as if it were on the verge of falling apart. After disappearing for only a moment, the figure reappeared with a large key, opened the chest, and retrieved three sets of stamps with adjustable numbers from a baize lined tray that sat in the centre of the chest. The figure then carefully adjusted each stamp, taking great care not to move the number straps too far; applied the stamps, one at a time, to a red ink pad that sat atop a nearby mahogany table; pressed the stamps down on a slip of paper; and then returned everything to its given place before relocking the chest. Finally, the man, or whatever it was, handed Brenden the slip, placed the key on a rusted iron hook, and slowly lowered itself down into a battered armchair, where it took on the stillness of stone.

  It was only after the strange ritual came to an end that Brenden’s sense of awareness returned to him. He looked around and saw that apart from the thing that had greeted him and its odd set of furniture, the tunnel around him seemed much the same as the one he had just left. Next, he checked the slip of paper he had just been given and was puzzled to find that it was blank.

  “Don’t mind that,” came a woman’s voice from behind Brenden. “I’ll get you sorted in just a moment.”

  Brenden looked around to see a short woman, with short curly brown hair and the yellow, grey skin of a zombie, quickly approaching him. She was wearing a relatively ordinary white blouse and black trousers, which in the surroundings he was in struck Brenden as completely out of place.

  “I’m Gwen,” said the woman as she reached Brenden, extending a leathery grey hand out to the boy for him to shake.

  “Brenden,” the boy murmured in response, before trying a little harder to make himself heard. “I’m Brenden.”

  “Well, good to meet you, Brenden. Don’t worry, this won’t take long.”

  The woman swiftly made her way past Brenden and inspected the tunnel beyond the entrance through which the odd patchwork figure had guided Brenden only moments before. After tutting to herself about something, Gwen closed and bolted the door before returning to the boy.

  “I realise you probably have a few questions, but first things first, let’s go to my office.”

  “Do I need to bring this?” asked Brenden, holding up the blank slip of paper.

  “Oh that. Just put it back on the pile there.”

  A little tentatively, Brenden put his piece of paper back on the pile atop the mahogany table. He looked back over to the patchwork man, for some reason expecting some sort of a response, but there was none.

  “There’s no need to concern yourself with him, he gives those bits of paper to almost everyone who arrives.”

  “But who is he?”

  “He’s one of my predecessors. Like me, though some time ago, he was charged with greeting all new occupants, and with making a note of their number. Several decades ago, things became a little difficult for him and the job was given to someone else. But he’d been at his post so long, he kept on returning to his stool there and attempting to carry on as before. No one’s had the heart to try and drag him away. I mean, where would he go?”

  “But why’s there nothing…”

  “On the paper? Oh, the ink ran out a while back. For a little while, another one of my predecessors replaced it. But we don’t use that system anymore.”

  Brenden took a closer look at the patchwork man and wondered if he was taking in anything Gwen was saying about him. He looked over the stitches that seemed to be the only thing holding the figure together and noticed for the first time how ancient they appeared; how worn and frayed many of them were.

  “What’s his name?”

  “You know,” replied Gwen looking a little puzzled, “I’m really not sure.”

  For a moment, the two stood in silence. But Gwen had no intention of dwelling on the fate of her predecessor for too long - especially due to what it might have suggested about what the future might have in store for herself - and she suggested that perhaps it was time for them to get along. After draping a bony arm over the boy’s shoulder, she led him away from the entrance to the Tunnels and, through a few polite questions, any further conversation about the unknown man they were leaving behind.

  “Well, here we are,” announced Gwen after guiding Brenden through a door in the side of the tunnel to enter the box of a room that functioned as her office. “Just sit yourself down there,” continued Gwen, while pointing to a rather ordinary-looking office chair. Brenden stepped over a clump of wires that led out from the tunnel behind him and underneath a rather cheap beech finished desk. Gwen rounded the desk, before sitting herself down behind a computer that looked to Brenden as if it had been put together before he was even born.

  “Just give me a minute,” Gwen added. “This thing needs replacing. So, there’s only a couple of things I need from you. From the look of things, I suppose you are one of our vampires; so that’s easy enough. But what’s your full name?”

  “It’s Brenden, with an ‘e’, Wilson.”

  “Well, Brenden with-an-e, welcome to the Tunnels,” despite the silliness of the joke, Brenden could not help but smile. The relative ordinariness of the whole situation and Gwen’s demeanour helped him to relax. Indeed, he almost felt as if he could just be entering a new school, or signing up for something. But only almost, as the mention of what he really was, the whitewashed concrete walls, the fact that he was talking to a zombie and the harsh whiteness of the fluorescent strip lights that illuminated the space around him never let him truly escape from what he had become and where he really was.

  “Right, there’s just a few more things. First, could you stand against the wall over there? I need to get a picture.”

  While Brenden stood with his back to the wall, Gwen snapped two quick shots before showing to them to the boy on the computer screen to see if he thought they were okay. Brenden barely glanced at the images and just nodded to confirm he considered whatever she had taken was fine.

  “Final thing, I need to give you your number. Sometimes it gets a little tricky to track people down out there, so everyone is given a number to help us determine who is who. We now also use it to assign you your drop box and your plot. Best say that the boxes are not refrigerated, so if you expect to get any supplies, my advice would be for you to check your mail daily. This’ll also stop any thieves getting their hands on your stuff. Oh yes, that reminds me.”

  Gwen jumped out of her seat and opened up a metal cupboard that took up a fair portion of a corner of the office. When she returned to her desk, she presented Brenden with a little plastic bag containing a number combination padlock and a set of instructions.

  “Use this to lock up your box. One thing: When you set the code, don’t use the same numbers as those I’m about to give you. You’d be surprised how many people have lost their supplies to some unknown thief because they thought they were being clever by killing two birds with one stone.”

  After shaking her mouse to wake her computer screen, Gwen mumbled and hummed through a couple of names and numbers before finally finding what she was looking for.

  “Okay, Brenden Wilson,” she said cheerily as she clacked the boy’s name and an outline of a few of his more obvious features into a spreadsheet. “Your number will be 10,148.” Brenden was about to ask something, but before he could Gwen cut him off. “Don’t worry about having to remember it just yet, I’ll give you a copy of our sign in form for that.”

  With a practised air, Gwen returned her attention to her computer, completed Brenden’s form, printed it off and handed the boy two copies. Brenden glanced over the form, which included the rather glum looking image Gwen had just taken of him, looking only for where he had to sign. As soon as Brenden had added his signature to the second copy, Gwen whisked one of the
slips of paper away to a filing cabinet, which was promptly locked after the boy’s form was safely tucked away.

  “So, I’m afraid we’ve come to the end of my line of duty,” said Gwen. “Daniel will guide you through a few of the facilities here and then take you to your plot. Just wait here a moment and I’ll fetch him for you.”

  Gwen breezed out of the office and, only a few minutes later, returned with the shrunken form of a man that Brenden assumed must have been Daniel. The man was more than half a foot shorter than Brenden, dressed in a herringbone jacket and of an indeterminable age. Indeed, though many of Daniel’s features were still clearly youthful, his pale, grey and fragile skin had clearly been worn for decades, while his eyes suggested he was only just in the room.

  “Daniel,” said Gwen deliberately. “This is Brenden. Take him on the usual tour, then get him to his new home.”

  While she said this to Daniel, Gwen kept one bony hand on the man’s shoulder. The hand remained there until a nod of a response finally escaped from Daniel, enabling her to presume that enough of the message had got through.

  “Well, Brenden,” exclaimed the zombie, “it was good to meet you. Best of luck in there and, who knows, maybe I’ll see you again soon.”

  As Gwen said these words, Daniel was already starting to shuffle out of the office. This resulted in Brenden feeling a little more rushed than he really was and he responded to Gwen with a mumbled farewell even though he had many questions he still wanted to ask about the strange and unfamiliar world he had entered. Brenden then found himself left with an awkward few moments in the middle of the office as Daniel continued to block the way out with his dawdling exit. When Daniel finally cleared the door, Brenden overtook the man to return to the tunnel outside, giving up on any chance he had of seizing the opportunity of his guide’s slow progression to address his concerns with Gwen.

  Once Daniel got going, he managed to shuffle up to a speed that was nearly a normal walking pace, something which allayed Brenden’s fears that he may have been in for a host of hours of slow dull progression through the concrete tunnels that were now his home. It did not cross Brenden’s mind that it made little difference if the man took his time, as there was nowhere really to go. Nevertheless, when Daniel began to slow down once more, Brenden’s impatience returned. The reason for Daniel’s slowing pace was down to the fact he was approaching a doorway at the end of the tunnel, one that sat a good hundred feet away from the silent patchwork figure that kept his quiet vigil near the steel gateway to the Tunnels. A habit of decades induced Daniel to fumble for a set of keys that dangled from the side of his trousers before he eventually pushed open the already unlocked door.

  It came as no surprise to Brenden, after following Daniel into the next room, that he then found himself under another arched length of concrete. However, he was taken a little aback by the dull yellow light that permeated the space and the extent to which it contrasted with the brightness of illumination from the room behind. Indeed, the light from the entrance tunnel behind him was such that he could see his own shadow stretching along the cement floor.

  Brenden examined the back of his slow-moving guide and wondered whether the man was another vampire just like himself. The man clearly was not a zombie, nor a ghost, and so it seemed likely that the man was vampire, even though he had aged in a way he had not seen in anyone he had met before. The boy asked a question of Daniel to inquire if his assumption was right, but if the man heard him he did not want to respond. Instead, Daniel just continued to plod on, shuffling his way along to a gap in the concrete wall.

  When he went through the gap himself, Brenden moved into a space that looked to his eyes to resemble the sort of ancient brick-lined sewer that inhabited any number of the first-person shooters he had played on the odd occasions when he had visited his dad. This memory brought a smile to Brenden’s lips, one that managed to linger a little longer when he further recollected how his father had always instructed his son, whenever the man was turning on his X-box, not to tell mum. “She’ll gut you, you know,” he said with his Mancunian twang, “but she’ll kill me first.”

  “Come on,” announced a scratchy, high-pitched voice that not only pulled Brenden back from a place he had half forgotten but puzzled the boy as the sound seemed so incongruous with the figure of Daniel. But as there was no one else in the vicinity, and though it was possible that a ghost or another mysterious creature could have been responsible, Brenden was fairly sure the words must have emanated from the man.

  The next room was a large, rectangular space, which was decked with a brick vaulted ceiling and filled with row upon row of sturdy-looking metal lockers. Without having to be told, Brenden realised that what he saw before him must have been the very thing that Gwen was referring to when she was talking of drop boxes. He brought out the folded up form he had hidden away in his pocket and reminded himself of the number that had been assigned to him. It was only after this that Brenden noticed that even if he did know his number, it was not going to be easy to track down his locker. To his annoyance, the numbers on the lockers seemed to follow no pattern. Indeed, even the dozen or so that were just in front of him ranged from double to five figures, presenting no clues as to how someone could track down the locker that belonged to them.

  Brenden weaved in and out of several rows of lockers before he finally gave up. With his piece of paper still dangling from his hand, Brenden returned to the entrance - where Daniel was calmly waiting for him in silence - and gave an imploring look in an attempt to gain some assistance from his guide. Without a word needing to be spoken, Daniel knew what the boy wanted and responded to the now forlorn expression on Brenden’s face by pointing at the paper. After a brief glance at the number, Daniel plodded off down to the end of a line of lockers. In no time at all, the strange old vampire led the boy to locker number 10,148, leaving Brenden to wonder if the man had either an incredible memory or if he had just been in the Tunnels for such a time that everything, even this maze of lockers, had become familiar. The boy pushed down a burst of anxiety caused by the very thought of so much time spent in a place such as the one he was in, hidden away under the ground with the stale air and little hope of anything new to look forward to but the very occasional entrance of a newcomer who had probably lost all hope before making the journey Brenden himself had just made.

  The padlock Gwen had given to Brenden produced an unsatisfying, derisory click as the boy attached it to the hasps of the locker. He had placed his cooling bag and blood within the locker for safekeeping, but the idea of the thieves Gwen had mentioned and the clear problem of the flimsy lock convinced Brenden that leaving the blood behind would not be the right course of action. Indeed, as he inspected the other lockers, he noticed that of the ones that had padlocks, only a very few were locked. Whatever the reason for this, it reinforced his conviction that it would be best to take the blood with him, and after removing his cool bag, he asked Daniel to take him on to wherever they were supposed to head next.

  What followed was the rather sad collection of rooms that were supposed to satisfy the entertainment and information needs of those condemned and those who had chosen to live beneath the earth. The first they visited was a temporarily abandoned, wood-panel lined room with two snooker tables, a dart board, a collection of worn and torn board games, and a cathode ray tube TV set. As Daniel expressed nothing further about the need to hurry on, Brenden took the time to pass through the semi-circle of plastic chairs that had been arranged in front of the television to switch on the set. To the boy’s disappointment, the screen displayed nothing but a black and white dance of static on every channel. But his hopes raised as his search of the cabinet below the TV revealed a hundred or so DVDs and the PlayStation 2 they could be played on. Atop the paltry pile of games for the console was a copy of Resident Evil 4, presumably bought as a joke as along with about half of the other items in the pile it was still in its original plastic packaging.

  A library that seemed quite
busy in comparison to the empty games room followed, populated as it was with about two dozen individuals, all of whom were engaged in the private contemplation of books that reminded them of the world they had left behind. Though Brenden was inclined to speak to some of the other inhabitants of his new home, the heavy silence that hung over the library and the lack of any clear figure who could be identified as being responsible for its books made the boy determine that it was best to just move on. His inspection of the individuals seated at the clearly overused and poorly cared-for desks that were inserted in the spaces not occupied by the many metal shelves of the room only reinforced this decision as some were so emaciated, grey and unmoving that you would be easily forgiven for believing that death had finally taken them. That was, of course, until one of the corpse-like beings had to turn a page.

  An ageing and brittle map of a section of the Tunnels in the library, pointed out to Brenden by his guide, gave an indication not only of the size of the labyrinth surrounding the boy but also the location of some of the other amenities available. These apparently included a couple of gyms, rooms for supplies, a music room, a small cinema and a number of other things besides. However, Brenden was not all too keen to find out what these places were like anytime soon, not if the ones he had already been shown by Daniel were anything to go by. If anything, the only sites on the map that interested Brenden were those to which he assumed he could not go to, amended as they were with neat red crosses.

  By pointing at the map, Daniel indicated that they would make one more stop, then head on to one of the accommodation sections where Brenden assumed he would find his plot. This penultimate stop turned out to be a visit to a dilapidated set of showers and toilets, a third of which, upon Brenden’s inspection, still seemed functional. After flicking a few broken white tiles across the surface of the floor and brushing off flakes of peeling paint from the walls, Brenden told Daniel that he wanted to see where he was supposed to stay.