Way of the Barefoot Zombie

by Jasper Bark

  TOMES OF THE DEAD

  WAY OF THE BAREFOOT ZOMBIE

  The automatic locks on the security doors clicked open and they slid apart. The group moved out onto the sandy ground and into the blazing heat.

  Benjamin's whole life had been leading up to this moment. There were real Zombies all around them. He stole sideways glances as they shuffled into the centre of the space with the rest of the party.

  They were as magnificent as he'd imagined they would be. Shambling about in the noonday sun just as he'd pictured them a thousand times in his mind.

  Noble Monsters, Death Defiers, Graveyard Rebels, none of the names he and his fellow Deathwalkers used to describe them did the awesome creatures justice. They were the ultimate passive-aggressive subversives.

  They'd given death the middle finger and refused to lie down just because they weren't alive anymore. It was defiance that kept them up and running. Not hunger, like the idiots all around him thought. The pure defiance of anyone who tells them how to act or what to do. Defiance of the ridiculous hypocrisy of Western consumer culture and everyone who tries to uphold it.

  An Abaddon BooksTM Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  abaddon@rebellion.co.uk

  First published in 2009 by Abaddon BooksTM, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Editor: Jonathan Oliver

  Cover: Mark Harrison

  Design: Simon Parr and Luke Preece

  Marketing and PR: Keith Richardson

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Copyright © 2009 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  Tomes of The DeadTM, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

  ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-142-3

  ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-150-8

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  TOMES OF THE DEAD

  WAY OF THE BAREFOOT ZOMBIE

  Jasper Bark

  "Some can gaze and not be sick,

  But I could never learn the trick.

  There's this to say for blood and breath,

  They give a man a taste for death."

  A. E. Housman

  "Nothing is more important than learning to think crudely. Crude thinking is the thinking of great men."

  Bertolt Brecht

  Chapter One

  Is this where the adventure begins? thought Benjamin. In the john on a private jet?

  His Uncle Brian once said there were no beginnings or endings in real life. Just a sequence of events from which we draw our own significance.

  Brian, who was actually his step uncle, had been killed by a frozen turd. Benjamin wondered what significance Brian would have drawn from that. Personally, Benjamin couldn't take a dump on a long haul flight without thinking about it.

  The homicidal turd had fallen off some bargain airline with a cracked sewage tank. The plane was so high up that the turd had frozen solid. It remained intact and rock hard as it plummeted the whole 35,000 feet.

  It fell vertically and the wind resistance honed the end to a fine point. It had picked up quite a bit of speed by the time it hit Brian. It bored right through his skull and embedded itself in his brain. He died instantly.

  This probably came as quite a relief to the Peruvian tour guides with Brian. He was lecturing them on why sanitation was so important to modern society and how this made New York far superior to anything the ancient Incas built.

  He was on vacation in Peru at the time. Or rather he was indulging in a 'unique recreation experience' that his 'lifestyle-management expert' had organised for him. Brian indulged in these several times a year, just like all his super-rich buddies.

  For seventy thousand bucks they'd do things like fly to South Africa and take pot shots at some endangered species the natives had tied down for them. Then over dinner, in a Michelin starred restaurant, some local celeb like Nelson Mandela would pretend their coked up rant about the importance of an unregulated market was full of profound insight.

  This time around it was a guided tour of the ruined city of Gran Saposoa in the middle of the jungle. Brian's body had to be airlifted out and shipped home. The turd had thawed by the time the astonished medical examiner dug it out of his brain.There was a lawsuit of course, but it didn't go anywhere.

  The most ironic thing for Benjamin was not how Brian died, but where the turd had come from. Brian was an insufferable snob. If there was one thing he hated worse than taxes and Democrats, it was the poor.

  For Brian they were another species. They shared certain physical similarities with real humans but they were quite mentally inferior. That's why he crapped on them every opportunity he got. Waiters, parking attendants, hotel porters, all of them had to be put in their place.

  It amused Benjamin no end to think that some immigrant flying coach had dropped his pants and done to Brian what Brian had been doing to the poor his whole life. That the frozen aftermath of one cheap airline meal had totalled the one thing Brian was most proud of - his cultivated brain.

  That's where Brian's adventure ended. Benjamin's began here as he took the Zombie stud out of his ear. He'd kept it in as a final act of defiance, but that was stupid. He was trying to blend in. To look as though he was born to this and the earring didn't help that a bit. As he took it out he shed the last trapping of his old self, the transformation was complete.

  Benjamin checked his reflection in the mirror to see how well he looked the part. His chestnut hair was cut short. The jet black dye had grown out. As had the ragged and uneven clumps into which his hair had previously been cut.

  His blue eyes had quite an intensity. Especially as he no longer wore opalescent contacts and red eyeliner that made his eyes look like a dead man's.

  He even noticed, with amusement, that he was getting a tan. It was strange how healthy his skin looked when it wasn't made up to look like a corpse. He wasn't used to seeing himself in an Oswald Boateng suit either, but it fitted his tall, thin frame alarmingly well.

  One of the other passengers shot him a supercilious look as he headed back to his seat. A platinum blond in an Armani suit. She probably wasn't used to flying on a jet she didn't own.

  Most of the passengers had arrived at the offshore meeting point in their own private jets. Others docked their 250 foot yachts in the adjacent marina and some landed in their helicopters so as not to appear too ostentatious.

  The meeting point was a remote spot on the south coast of Texas. When Benjamin arrived some of the other guests were kicking up a fuss. There was a lot of discontent about the travel arrangements. People were incensed that after staking $5 million worth of assets on the course they were expected to fly together on a single luxury jet.

  "Why not bump us down to coach with a bunch of peasants and be done with it?" said one man with a red neck and an English accent.

  The staff handled the outrage professionally. They were courteous but insisted that the guests were contractually bound to abide by all the course rules. No privately owned jets could enter or leave the island's airspace. Failure t
o abide by any of the rules would result in a total loss of the attendants' stake.

  The stake was what got the attendants a place on the course. It guaranteed that only the right kind of people would attend. If they didn't have access to $5 million worth of assets then they weren't rich enough to be considered. And if they weren't prepared to stake that much then they didn't have enough conviction to study the Way of the Barefoot Zombie.

  Richard's lawyer explained all this to Benjamin when his family agreed to make the stake in lieu of his inheritance. Upon completing the course the assets could be bought back at less than cost over a period of years, providing the attendant didn't break any conditions in the contract. This was all part of the 'incentive to succeed' that the course offered.

  It was also an effective way of maintaining control over people who were not used to being controlled. Within only an hour or so of meeting, the guests were already jockeying for position. Some applied their charm and charisma, others flaunted their wealth and influence. All of them were trying to establish their supremacy.

  These displays sickened Benjamin, but this time his disgust was tinged with panic. He was used to setting himself apart from such behaviour, but now he had to blend in with it.

  He was gripped with self doubt. Would he really be able to pull this off? There was so much more at stake than $5 million.

  They were already singling him out as someone who didn't belong. The platinum blond wasn't the only one to look down at him. How long before they found out why he was really here? What would they do to him when they did?

  Benjamin could sense the undercurrent of animosity towards him. Beneath the civilised veneer of their thousand dollar hair cuts and their designer suits he was aware of the guests' true nature and their vicious intolerance of outsiders.

  It's okay, he told himself, taking deep breaths. You can do this. They're not on to you. You know these people. You were born for this.

  His breathing slowed and his heart stopped beating so fast. He glanced around him to make certain no-one had seen his moment of weakness, then he joined Tatyana and slid back into his seat.

  Tatyana had transformed herself too. Her long blonde hair fell off her shoulders like she'd just stepped out of a salon. All the plastic bugs and stuffed rodents she'd once sewn into it had gone.

  While her dark brown eyes and Slavic good looks stopped her looking like a typical WASP, when her face wasn't made up to resemble a decaying cadaver, she glowed with good health and affluence. Benjamin put his arm around her slender shoulders.

  No-one would have picked them out as Deathwalkers now. There was nothing about their appearance that suggested they belonged to a cult that idolised the living dead.

  "You okay?" said Tatyana, sensing he was on edge.

  "Yeah," he lied. "What you doing?"

  "Trying to find St Ignatius on Google Earth," she said, playing with her iPhone. "It just goes all blurry every time I go north of Haiti though."

  "That's because they'll have blocked it. That's the kind of power they have. It's a totally private island. It's not on any maps or in any guidebooks."

  "So how do we know that's where the plane's going?"

  Benjamin pointed out the window at the small island below. "See for yourself. We're coming in to land."

  Tatyana leaned into him "Nervous?"

  "Nah. I'm pumped. Just think, in a few days we're going to see our first real live Zombie."

  "Shouldn't that be real dead Zombie?"

  "You know what I mean smart ass," he said and kissed her to hide his nerves.

  Chapter Two

  "Are sir and madam travelling together?" the guy with the parasol asked them. All the passengers were met by a member of staff as soon as they stepped off the plane. "There is another vehicle allocated if you want to ride separately," he said, adjusting the parasol to make certain they were both sheltered.

  "That's okay," said Tatyana. "We're fine together."

  "This way then ma'am," the man indicated a fleet of Mercedes Maybachs. He escorted them to their car where a chauffeur stood ready with the door open. Benjamin followed Tatyana onto the huge leather backseat. More than twenty feet long and looking like something out of The Great Gatsby the Maybach was Mercedes' answer to Rolls Royce's Silver Phantom and a seriously impressive vehicle.

  Benjamin's step cousin Brad had been showing his Maybach off at the Town and Country club a few months back. Brad had flaunted the fact that he'd paid way over the $385,000 price mark in order to jump the two year queue to buy one.

  Benjamin was astonished that they had a fleet of them here on St Ignatius. Just another sign of how powerful they were. Of why he had to be so cautious.

  "Is the temperature okay sir, ma'am?" the chauffeur asked. "I could cool the seats if you like, or even heat 'em. If you want to let go of any tension from the flight you can put the leg rests out and I can put the massage setting on."

  "Everything's fine thanks," Tatyana said.

  "There's Champagne, water and other refreshments in the refrigerator," said the chauffeur. "And there's glasses on the Champagne holder."

  "Water's great," Tatyana said grabbing two bottles from the refrigerator and handing one to Benjamin.

  "So," said the chauffeur as he pulled away. "Which way would you folks like to go? There's the main highway, the scenic route through the jungle or I can take this baby up to 155 along the coast road."

  "Just take us where the least number of people are going to be," said Benjamin.

  The chauffeur smiled "Scenic route it is then."

  Benjamin stared at the back of the chauffeur's head and tried to make out whether he was smiling to himself. Benjamin had been waited on his whole life. He knew that the people who worked in service industries were often more judgemental than the people they served. Their deference was simply a way of hiding this.

  This unspoken judgement, implied in a glance or a tone of voice, always stung Benjamin more than his peers' outspoken judgement. He didn't want to be held to their standards. He hated it when people who weren't a part of that world tried to put him in it, then secretly looked down on him because he didn't fit.

  He should probably cut the guy some slack. He was only trying to do his job the best he could. Benjamin had to watch he didn't get paranoid. Even still, he knew that if he was going to pass for one of these people, convincing the service staff he belonged was a crucial part.

  "Have you worked on the island long?" Tatyana said to the chauffeur. It was one of her endearing little habits. She always spoke to cab drivers, receptionists and store clerks. Benjamin worried for a moment that the chauffeur would think it unusual or inappropriate behaviour. That Tatyana was about to blow their cover. But the guy seemed quite cool about it.

  "About a year," he said. "I started on short term contracts and spent the rainy seasons driving limos in Florida."

  "They have rainy seasons here?" said Tatyana.

  "Sure. There's two, just like in Haiti. It's what keeps the weather so humid. Seeing as it's the end of October though, you got nothing to worry about."

  "Is that why you've got so much jungle here?" Tatyana asked, looking out the window at the dense foliage that surrounded the road. True to his word the Chauffeur was taking them on the scenic route. The fierce afternoon sun struggled to break through a criss-crossing canopy of palm leaves and only just dappled the narrow road they drove along.

  "I don't know if it's cos of the weather," said the chauffeur. "Course this was all sugar cane fields a hundred years ago, before they let it grow wild."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah, that was back when Mary Papamal owned it."

  "Who?"

  "Are you guys serious? You never heard of the Scarlet Witch of Mangrove Hall?"

  "No," said Benjamin. "Should we have?"

  "Well no, I'm not saying you should have heard of her. I was just surprised. She's the most famous person to have lived on St Ignatius, being a serial killer and all."

  "A seria
l killer, for real?" said Tatyana. "And she came from St Ignatius?"

  "Well she was born in France. Her parents moved to Haiti when she was four years old. They both died of typhoid when she was fourteen. She was raised by her Haitian maid who took her to Voodoo ceremonies and taught her magic. When she was eighteen she found her trust fund had been spent by the relatives put in charge of it. Her only hope was to marry some rich dude. So she seduced Jean Papamal, the guy who owned Mangrove Hall. He was forty at the time and she was nineteen."

  "Aw man that's gross," said Benjamin. "Imagine doing someone twice your age."

  "Maybe he was cute," said Tatyana. "Besides, it wasn't like she had much choice. She'd lost both her parents and all her inheritance was stolen. I feel kind of sorry for her."

  "Don't feel sorry for her," said the chauffeur. "She more than made up for the bad start she got in life. She murdered her first husband within a year of coming here and had his body bricked up in the wall of their bedroom. Then, when she discovered he was so in debt he was going to lose the whole plantation, she married a rich Admiral to save it."

  "Did he last any longer than her first husband?" said Benjamin.

  "Nope. By this point Mary had started to take lovers from the plantation slaves. So, one night she sneaks three of them into their bedroom and waits till the Admiral comes to bed. Then she has two of them hold him down and strangle the Admiral while she does the third slave and makes him watch. The last thing the guy sees before he dies is one of his slaves humping his wife. Then apparently she had a foursome with all three slaves while her husband's corpse was lying in the bed next to them."

  "Whoa," said Benjamin. "She sounds like quite a chick."

  "Oh yeah," said Tatyana. "Now you like her, soon as you find out she's into kinky stuff."

  "She did a lot worse than that, " said the chauffeur. He enjoyed titillating them with this lurid local history. "Afterwards she had the three slaves stripped naked and tied them to the back of her carriage. Then she rode all over the island till the slaves were just bloody lumps of meat.