Undead (ARC)

by McKay, Kirsty

  music. At first I think her eyes are closed, but then I realize her eyeballs have rolled back into her head and all I can see are the whites. There is a single thick string of dark saliva hanging off her chin, and as she sways, the dribble swings, too. Suddenly her arms shoot out at her sides, her wrists flexed and her fingers like claws, almost as if she’s playing piano, the music in her head reaching a crescendo.

  “What can you see?” Alice shouts from above.

  Cam has gone. Everyone has gone. It’s just Lily, or what used to be Lily.

  “What’s happening?” Pete calls from the desk.

  My eyes are too dry for tears, and my heart is banging in my chest.

  And then there’s a flash of movement behind Lily, and it’s Michael with

  Smitty’s dwarven ax held high above him, moving in on her . . .

  “Switch it off!” I cry, and Smitty’s hand shoots out and smacks the

  screen’s off button. All goes blank.

  Smitty punches the cabinet, then he turns on a nearby leather chair,

  wrestling it to the ground and kicking it across the polished floor.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Alice is reaching critical level.

  “Cam turned and bit Lily,” Smitty says quietly, his chest heaving. “She

  turned, too.”

  “Oh my god!” Alice wails. “Cam was one of them all along?” She casts

  the phone down onto the ledge, flings her head back, and yowls, sending up some kind of primal scream into the dying light, like every last vestige of hope is leaving her body. It’s quite something. She should have got that out of her system a long time ago — like about when puberty hit. It could have made her a much more pleasant person.

  I notice the phone she dropped was mine. Never mind. It’s not like I

  was that fond of it anyway.

  “I knew it,” Pete says. “There was always something off about Cam.”

  “Really, Snowflake?” There is bitter venom in Smitty’s voice. “How

  sickeningly astute of you.”

  “What?” Pete counters. “It’s not like I’m not sorry or anything. It’s

  horrible.”

  “At least it was quick.” I place a hand on Smitty’s shoulder. “Lily, I

  mean.” In reality I don’t know if what I’ve said is true, and Smitty knows it. Cam and Lily could be tortured, in pain, frightened, and half-dead, being hacked to pieces by Michael. I dig my nails into my hands and try

  to banish the thought.

  Smitty turns to me and holds my arms just like he did when he kissed

  me in the coal chute. For a second I wonder if he’s going to kiss me again.

  Probably not appropriate right now.

  “We’ve got to forget it,” he urges. “Hold it together and focus on

  getting ourselves out of here.”

  I nod, trying to gather myself, to prevent meltdown.

  He drops my arms and takes a step back. “Good, good.” He’s

  bought it.

  I trust myself to breathe again.

  “We need to search this place,” Smitty says, gritting his teeth. “There’s

  got to be something here that can help us.”

  “Doing it already,” Pete snaps from the corner. “PCs” — he points at the

  desks — “checking them to see if we can get online.”

  On each desk unit are a few scattered belongings, like little fragments

  of personality stamped into place in an otherwise sterile petri dish. On

  the desk nearest to me there’s a tube of lemon-scented hand cream, and

  a picture of a glamorous blonde wearing sunglasses, her arm around a

  muscle-bound guy in swim shorts. Grace’s desk. Clean and functional.

  Smitty turns on the PC and hits a few keys.

  A box leaps up: password.

  Smitty looks up at me. “Any bright ideas?”

  He runs to the next desk and turns on that computer. I move to a

  third desk. The leather chair that Smitty attacked belongs here, and I

  pick it up and put it back in its place. It’s an old-fashioned, office swivel chair, worn and cracked, with what looks like horsehair sticking out of a hole in one of the arms. I sit down — it smells familiar somehow,

  of warm body — and turn to the PC. The hard drive is missing; it’s been

  disconnected.

  “Anything?” says Smitty.

  I shake my head, halfheartedly fumbling through a cardboard box of

  belongings on the desk. Nothing useful.

  “Pete?” Smitty calls out.

  “Negatory,” comes the reply.

  “Radio!” Alice clambers down from her perch on the window ledge.

  “Shaq said there was a radio.”

  She and Smitty begin to plunder the room anew, desperation rising.

  “Lies, all lies,” Smitty spits, pulling drawers open, rifling through

  shelves.

  I can’t bear this. I am so done with the mystery, and the raising and

  dashing of hopes. I lean heavily against the desk and push the box of

  belongings to the floor in despair. Something flutters out. What is that?

  “Oh, kneel down before me because I am Princess of Genius!” Alice

  has found something. I glance up; it’s a laptop. Great. Another password not to guess.

  My gaze falls again on the glossy rectangle that fell out of the box.

  There’s something odd . . . I crouch down beside it. It’s a photograph. I hold it up to the light, my heart drumming.

  A little girl, four or five years old — no, she’s four, I’m sure of it —

  sitting on a toy tractor, wearing blue shorts and a big grin. A happy

  summer holiday. A hot day, with a picnic, sticky-ice-cream fingers, and a

  wasp that flew into the jam . . .

  “We’re logged in!” Pete shouts. “And there’s web!”

  I look over to where the three of them are crowded together over the

  laptop. Web? But I’m not sure I can move. I stare at the photograph again.

  I must be wrong. This makes no sense at all.

  “Bob, what’s wrong with you!” Smitty yells at me. “We’re online!”

  There are no easy answers. I shove the photo into a pocket and force

  myself back into the moment.

  “We have Internet?”

  “In a sense,” says Pete. “However, that’s not the end of the story.”

  I hurry toward him. “Can you contact someone? Do people know

  what’s going on here? Is it happening everywhere?”

  “Hold your horses . . .” Pete is typing something furiously. “They

  would never make it easy for us, would they?”

  “What do you mean?” Smitty is hanging over the back of Pete’s

  chair, like it’s all he can do to stop launching himself into the screen of the laptop.

  Pete pauses, and plays with his head scab. “It’s weird. And clever. I’ve

  never seen anything quite like it before.”

  “What?” Smitty bellows in his ear.

  Pete smiles up at him. “You know how your parents set controls on

  your laptop so that you can’t look up how to make a bomb out of pipe

  cleaner or get hooked perving on bimbos?”

  “Of course he does,” Alice sneers.

  “Well” — Pete’s smile widens — “that’s what they’ve done here. They’ve

  set up restrictions so that we can’t access any sites they don’t want us to.”

  He smile fades. “Like anything at all, pretty much.”

  “Nothing?” I ask. “You can’t e-mail, either?”

  “There’s an e-mail server but it’s password protected.” He hits a few

  keys. “No web access really, just a browser that won’t let me browse. I’ve checked the history. There’s only one website c
oming up. Something called Xanthro Industries.”

  Smitty frowns. “What’s Xanthro Industries? Sounds like some kind

  of drug company. Are they the bad guys?”

  I feel the room start to undulate softly. For want of anywhere better,

  I sit down heavily on the floor.

  “What’s up with you?” Alice says, backing away from me, her eyes

  wide. “Do I need to get my knife out again? Are you going to turn?”

  I shake my head. “No.” I snake my hand into my pocket and close my

  fingers around the photograph. The photograph of Roberta, age four.

  Smitty looks down at me closely. “Xanthro Industries. You know

  what that is, don’t you?”

  I look up at him.

  I nod.

  “Xanthro Industries is the company my mother works for.”

  2 5

  Of course, as soon as I say it, I wish I hadn’t. Because now all three of

  them are scuttling away from me like I’m public enemy number one.

  “Your mother?”

  Pete is looking at me with extreme disgust. It’s almost funny. I feel a

  giggle well up inside of me, but push it down. Going all fruit-loopy now

  would only make things worse, if that’s even possible.

  My mother. My mother.

  “Xanthro Industries is a pharmaceutical and biotech company.” Pete

  has one beady green eye on the laptop, the other on me in case I leap up

  and bite his head off.

  “No kidding.” Smitty’s eyes are fixed on mine. Without a flicker.

  Pete nods, reading. “They make drugs. Experimental drugs. Including

  the contents of Veggie Juice, I’m betting?” He’s swaying, quite literally

  reeling, with shock.

  Reel all you like, Pete, you won’t touch what’s going on inside

  my head right now. The first feeling is sheer unfrickin’-believable

  flabbergastery — but the second feeling is even weirder. The feeling that

  I’m not surprised.

  Because Xanthro Industries is basically responsible for everything

  that’s wrong in my life. The company kept my mother away from birthdays, school plays, and the umpteen times I had a skinned knee and

  needed her there to kiss it better. They uprooted us to the US, then worse, dragged us back to the UK. They made my mother work so hard for so long that she — a doctor — never noticed my dad was sick until it was way

  too late. So, really, the idea that Xanthro Industries should be involved in a zombie apocalypse does not surprise me one tiny bit.

  But the idea that Mum’s involved? Ever since I hit my teens, I’ve been

  convinced that my mother was a nightmare, but I put that down to

  hormones. Hers and mine. It’s not like she’s über-evil, or anything. And

  yet now it all makes stomach-lurching sense: the long trips away, the

  tiredness and stress etched into her face. The photograph, her lingering

  smell on that leather chair. She’s been working here, at the castle.

  But did she do this? Did she make those monsters?

  “What’s the story, Bob?” Smitty’s voice is calm but serious.

  I look at the three pale and angry faces across the room.

  “I have no idea what’s going on.”

  Wow, that sounds super-convincing. Actually makes it sound like I

  masterminded the whole thing.

  “Look.” I scramble to my feet, and they all take another step backward. “Why on earth would I be here — in the middle of everything — if

  my mother had been involved in this? Why would she put me in danger?”

  “Ha!” Alice snaps. “If you were my daughter, I’d do the same.”

  “Wrong,” I snap back. “As much as things with my mother are . . . difficult, she’d never risk losing me.” It’s only when I say it out loud that I realize it’s true. “Not after last year, not after my dad dying. It would be too much for her.” I feel a lump forming in my throat.

  Smitty’s face softens a little. “Your dad died?”

  “Six months ago.” My breathing almost stops. It’s the only good way

  to keep those pesky emotions down; just don’t breathe and you can fool

  yourself it doesn’t hurt. “He had cancer. Which is kind of ironic, seeing

  as my mother’s an oncology specialist.”

  “A what?” Alice clearly thinks I’m making this shit up.

  “A cancer doctor,” Smitty mutters.

  Alice shakes her head. “Your dad carked it? Great sob story, you loser.”

  “Shut it, Malice!” Smitty shouts.

  I feel my shoulders inching up around my ears. “My mother researches

  cures, does clinical trials. But she doesn’t grow zombies in a lab.”

  Pete crouches down on the floor, engrossed with the laptop again.

  “They were creating a drug here at the castle, for sure. There are some

  notes, fragments of e-mails. I don’t pretend to understand it, but it’s

  something to do with activating dormant antibodies with a chemical

  stimulant.”

  Alice finds time to roll her eyes. “Oh, spare us the science bit.”

  Pete glares at her. “This is all the science bit, you ignorant donkey.”

  “Stand down, you two.” Smitty walks toward me, then turns back to

  face Alice and Pete. “Bobby’s kosher. So her ma works for some evil drug

  corporation. Big fat deal. She nearly got chomped good and proper more

  times than either of you.”

  I’m grateful, of course. My shoulders drop a little as he stands by my

  side. I risk a look, and our eyes catch for a second. Thank you. Alice sees the shared glance, and groans sarcastically. Smitty ignores her.

  “Whatever you believe about Bobby, think about looking after yourselves. Grace, if she can be believed, said there was some kind of antidote here. We should look for it. At the very least it will give us something to bargain with if the bad guys show up.” He strides over to the wall. “Aren’t there any lights in here? This spooky shadow crap is getting old.”

  We look for a switch.

  I think he’s persuaded them not to kill me — yet.

  “Got it!” Alice finds the switch and flicks it.

  There’s a loud bang. I don’t so much hear it as feel it; the tower walls shake and the floor vibrates.

  “What did you do?” cries Pete at Alice.

  “Nothing!”

  I shake my head. “That was something outside.”

  Alice is already scrambling up to the window ledge, with Smitty close

  behind.

  I run across the room to the security camera screens. Smoke is

  obscuring the pictures, but I can make out people outside, dozens of

  people — at the gates, at the front door, and many more in the courtyard.

  My heart leaps. The army! They’ve found us at last. Guns a-blazing,

  they’ve come to rescue us!

  Then the wind changes direction and the smoke clears. There’s an

  oil drum burning — that must have been the bang we heard, not army

  guns. The grainy black-and-white figures are stumbling and clawing the

  air. Their heads are lolling. The dog is there, too, barking and snapping

  at the figures agitatedly.

  It’s not an army.

  The hordes have come home.

  Alice’s screams from the window confirm it.

  Smitty, flattened against the glass, cries out, “There’s Pube-Face!”

  I look at the courtyard screen again. Michael is holding what looks

  to be a gas can in one hand and a makeshift torch in the other, waving

  it at the mob.

  “Oh my god!” Alice is pressed against the gla
ss beside Smitty. “He is

  so dead.”

  “But not Undead.” Pete joins me at the TV screens, standing a little

  farther away than he would have ten minutes ago. “Yet.”

  As we watch, Shaq emerges from the Ski-Doos’ stable. Even with the

  blurred resolution on the screen, I can read his look of desperation. They can’t escape on the Ski-Doos. I feel for the spiky lump in my pocket.

  I have the keys.

  The hordes advance.

  Michael looks like he’s screaming for Shaq, who has disappeared

  back into the stables. Or maybe he’s shouting for Grace, who is nowhere

  to be seen. Maybe she’s fared better with her cattle prod, or maybe she

  was standing too close to the oil drum when it went off. Or maybe she’s

  already one of the hungry crowd.

  Shaq appears again. But it’s not because of Michael’s screaming. Cam

  is clinging to his leg, clinging with arms, legs, and teeth, latched on,

  immovable. Shaq can’t run far with a three-year-old zombie on his leg,

  and he falls just clear of the door.

  The crowd moves in. Michael flings gas wildly from his can, and

  waves his fiery torch, but the liquid splashes over nobody but him. And

  then, inevitably, he lights up like a beacon, the flames whipping up over

  his head. He hurls the torch away from himself, his arms lifted in a

  useless effort to extinguish the fire, silently dancing a jig on our black-and-white TV screen.

  I turn away.

  Smitty, who caught the whole episode at the window in Technicolor,

  turns away, too.

  “We have to get out of here, we have to go now!” Alice jumps down

  from the ledge.

  I hit the button to turn the kitchen camera on again. Black smoke

  oozes thickly from the door leading to the mudroom. What are the

  chances? Michael’s last action was to throw his torch into the castle and

  set us all on fire.

  “We’ll burn to death in here!” Alice cries. “What are we going to do?”

  And as we all stand there trying to think of a good answer to her

  question, a phone rings.

  2 6

  My first thought — just for a split second — is that the ringing noise is a fire alarm.

  But then my brain catches up with reality. It’s one of those generic

  ringtones you get when you first buy a phone, one that only grand—