There may not even be working phones, have you thought of that Joey-boy?
Checked the building in a rush. Ignored a couple of locked doors that looked like storerooms and once satisfied that the place was empty made a beeline for the toilets.
Desperate to go and too tightly-sprung to relax, the worst possible combination. It took an age that seemed longer still. When he’d taken care of business there, he found himself back in the main restaurant, staring at the row of bottles behind the bar counter. Laid the machete on the counter and looked at the Pink Lemonade girl.
She hadn’t gone anywhere.
I told you, we’re open for business, you bad lock-the door-man. We should be open and that’s the way it’s got to be until...well, until, I simply rot away.
He shuddered and looked outside.
No movement. The car seemed unchanged.
He wandered away from the picture window and found himself at the bar. Staring back at himself in the mirrored panelling and at the fascinating collection of optics. He fetched the battered pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit another one. Considered the impressive selection of alcohol on display as he exhaled smoke.
“A little stiffener would surely lighten the mood. God knows the old mood could do with lightening. It’s like a fucking morgue in here. Har-de-har-har. Not funny, not even a little bit funny,” he muttered to the empty room.
Not quite empty Joey, there’s you and employee of the month by the door there.
Walked behind the bar and took water, orange juice, bags of nuts and crisps. Walked to a table by a window where he could observe the car and not be in direct line of sight of the body at the entrance.
Don’t be so self-conscious Joey, she’s not looking at you, she’s not even slightly interested.
Christ, if he was going to spend even a short time here, he was going to have to do something about Pink Lemonade. She was freaking him out.
Messing with his head.
As the old song goes, you’re really twistin’ my melon man.
What would he do though? Haul her outside? The ugly thought popped into his head that she’d attract wildlife. And wildlife might mean more than rats and foxes these days. He had no idea what attracted those mutated human things and he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to conduct any research into the subject.
He looked at a framed picture on the wall. Black and white. Old shot of an old building that had an echo of where he was sitting. The Trooper at Thorney Park, Iver. He was at a gastro pub outside London. Geography had never been his strong suit but he knew it was out towards Windsor, Langley Park way.
Dear God, they’d made no distance at all considering how long it had taken.
Their flight from the city began to fall into some sort of order. He’d been in a semi fugue with shock and the blow to the head.
Don’t forget that good old granddaddy whopper-hopper of a hangover Joey-boy.
But he’d acted with some kind of logic. They’d got turned around and turned around again as they tried to evade the hordes of monster people that had appeared. At some point, he must have had an inkling that they were going west and decided to aim for an old friend’s place in Wiltshire.
Andy Pells was his last remaining ally of any influence in his own company. Whilst he’d been busily doing his best to saw through the branch on which he was sitting, Andy had tried to stay his hand and then defended him with the other partners.
Bastards. Well, most of them.
Andy Pells lived in an incongruous prayer to ultra-modernism just outside a little village called Bishops Caining in Wiltshire. A steel and glass boxlike structure in a world of thatch and traditional stone. Fuck alone knew how he’d ever got planning permission. Not far from Marlborough. Pretty isolated given the part of the country in which it was situated. Joe’s own place was north rather than west but he must have decided Andy’s pad was a better bet given the circumstances.
It still made a certain desperate sense. Probably better equipped than his own apartment, probably safer. Certainly further away from people, and that could only be good at the moment.
Get there. Make them secure, him and the boy. See how things panned out. Make some plans.
He chewed honeyed cashew nuts and swigged good orange juice, thinking and looking at the car. Blue sky and sunlight, vibrant greenery. Lush
He needed to clean himself up and disinfect whatever wounds he’d sustained. It’d wait, he owed the kid that much and more besides, but he felt like he needed to do it.
On impulse he tried the landline by the lamp.
Punched the dial-out icon and got nothing.
Dead, not even a tone.
It made him wonder how long the infrastructure that he took for granted would continue to exist. Pushed the thought down.
After finding a first aid kit and some bandages in the staff room, he made his way back outside, trying to ignore the body at the door.
There were ants crawling on her hand.
Jesus.
The happy Trooper’s always open for business Joe, even when the world goes all horror flick surreal and people turn into flesh eating animals. Hope you enjoyed your breakfast. Don’t puke now. And come again soon. Don’t forget to give us a good review online. Share your experience. Sharing is good for us all.
He stopped and sat at the bottom of the brick steps. Attempted to blank her out of his mind and not regurgitate what he’d just ingested. He couldn’t afford to do that. He was still starving hungry and thirsty as hell. What he’d had only made it more obvious.
He eventually got himself together enough to squint up at the car again. Blinked in the sunlight and then frowned. Something wrong with this picture. The boy wasn’t in the passenger seat anymore.
Found more energy than he thought he had and managed a huffing run to the vehicle.
Smiled in relief when he got to it.
He’d only moved, the boy had only moved, that was all. Laid himself across both front seats. Got more comfortable, kicked off his shoes.
But the frown wasn’t done yet and the smile was doing a long slow fade as the show went on. The foot he could see had stretched and was tearing through the toe of its sock in places. There were ...kind of, well, claws, poking through.
The one hand was wrong. He could only see one hand clearly but it was wrong.
Too big and ...not normal. Not at all normal. Not even in the normal ballpark.
Too pointed. Bald patches on his head. Big bald patches on the kids head. Hair and gluey fluid drying to the passenger window, door panel, head rest.
The wound on Sebastian’s arm was visible. It had changed. Not healed exactly but filmed and kind of melded into an arm that was thinning. Developing an almost biomechanical appearance, like twisted steel cables laid haphazardly on bone and skinned over.
Joe opened the door and manhandled the boy more or less into a sitting position. Stood back quickly and realised he’d left the weapon in the restaurant as Sebastian languorously growled in semi-conscious distress.
A low rumble, alien and animal.
Revealed a mouth that was morphing into something the likes of which Joe had become all too familiar with in the last twenty-four hours.
“Ahhh fuck no.”
Not really speech. An exhalation. A prayer to the dead.
Joe slowly leaned in and grasped the baton. Had to lean over the kid. Heard that growl again and felt his bowels turn to liquid. Gradually manoeuvred out and gentled the door shut.
Stood back.
Heard engine noise. Growing louder and louder in the still air. Stood agape as two vehicles hurtled past and the noise receded. Could see the bushes waving in the after wash.
What now Detective Byrne? Your ward seems to be turning into something that doesn’t really meet many of the criteria for the ideal travelling companion. How disappointing after he kept you alive when you were too fucked up to do it for yourself. I know you won’t mind me saying it, but you really are a sorry sack of usel
ess shit. Why don’t you get it over with? Climb in and give him his first meal on this new plain of his existence. Brekkers, the most important meal of the day. By the way, those vehicles seem to indicate that more trouble may be coming your way.
I think we both know what form it may take, the trouble, when it materialises.
More a question of volume than definition. How many, not what, will it be, my clueless bastard boy. That much seems elementary, don’t you think?
By the time Joe had turned back to the car, the kid had moved again.
Sebastian sure doesn’t stay still for long does he? Bet he was an active child. Full of beans. A real live-wire baby.
The boy was more or less upright but bent forward, hands on the dashboard.
Joe sidled along the vehicle until he was parallel with the driver’s door. Sebastian was shuddering, clawed hands making a mess of the dashboard. Legs hammering, razor-tipped toes tearing at the old mats and older flooring beneath them.
The scary frenetic motion slowed and then stopped.
Sebastian unhurriedly twisted his head to gaze at Joe. Hands a half-inch deep in dashboard and legs still and stiff. His mouth gradually unhinged and then chittered as if tasting the air. Whatever was happening to him, whatever unimaginable process was taking place within his body, wasn’t finished. Wasn’t complete yet. There was still something of Sebastian left in that tortured face, but not much and it seemed to be slipping away by the second.
Joe felt as if he was watching some clever but not very agreeable special effect.
A fucking YouTube smash Joey-boy. Watch in wonder as the incredible Sebastian’s skin literally crawls before your very eyes. Don’t worry about sharing, your friends and family have probably already posted!
The boy’s face seemed to move and ripple. Small pulsing billows, like inflated veins swelling below the surface of the skin on his face and arms. Joe guessed the body beneath his clothes was the same.
He’d seen these things. Had accepted the reality of them to some degree. Christ he’d killed them. Fought them. Ploughed through them from behind the wheel of this beat up old BMW. It was difficult to not to accept all of that, at least on some level.
Seeing the transformation take place was another matter entirely.
If he considered it logically, this had occurred to millions, maybe billions, of people but actually witnessing it. Seeing the kid turn into something that wasn’t human.
What are you gonna do now fella? You can’t just leave him locked in there.
Well, yeah, maybe he could do just that. The thought of opening that car up was about as appealing as shoving his arm into a play-pen full of starving Rottweilers.
He’ll be all over you like a rash Joey-boy. A big toothy, clawey fecking rash. Just fucking well look at him. He looks pretty hungry to me fella-me-lad. Even if he’s not hungry, he’s still plenty fucking bitey isn’t he? Are you able to fight him off with a nightstick of dubious authenticity? Are you willing to kill him? And what if he bites you? Has that occurred to you?
Joe had got the impression that the kid wasn’t affected by the disease or virus or whatever it was. Sweeping Sickness or City Flu or whatever the hell they’d called it. Was immune, like himself. Had got the impression that the kid had started getting unwell after everyone that had been infected had turned into something from the twilight zone and jumped up chomping and growling.
Had started getting unwell after he was bitten by one of them.
The kid suddenly launched headfirst at the side window. Teeth and mouth impacting against the glass. Bounced back and propelled himself forward again, barely seemed to register the force of his head colliding with the glass.
Shuddered and then glared at Joe. Then began hammering those viciously clawed hands at glass.
Joe knew he had to get away and get away sooner rather than later. When the by broke out, he’d either tear Joe limb from limb or Joe would have to kill him. Joe didn’t want to die and he didn’t think he had it in him to murder the boy. Despite knowing him for less time than he’d usually wear a pair of boxer shorts, he liked Sebastian. And the kid had saved his life. He didn’t think he could simply despatch him like an animal even if that’s what he seemed to have become. Despite it probably being the most merciful thing to do.
So Joe ran.
A reprise of his huffing jog of moments before, only in reverse, back to the Trooper. Perhaps a little faster this time. And as he heard the splinter of shattering glass behind him, the pace definitely increased. That noise definitely added a bit of zip to his zing. He fairly bounded up the steps to the not so Happy Trooper and barely gave Pink Lemonade a glance as he slammed the door and flicked the latch to bolt it into place.
Backed away fearfully from the smoked glass entrance until he felt the brass rail of the pub bar dig painfully into his spine. Snatched the briefest of glances to locate the machete. Deemed the world a better place all round once he could feel the weight of that weapon in one hand and the baton in the other.
Waited and watched.
<><><>
Once he’d calmed down a little and his breathing had slowed, Joe moved further into the main restaurant.
Could feel sweat cooling on his forehead and smell the ripening aroma of the dead girl in the entrance. Wondered if Sebastian would detect the smell from outside. Be attracted to it. Keeping to the shadows, attempting to remain unseen from outside, he peered at the car through the window. Couldn’t see Sebastian anywhere.
“Ahh fuck, what now. Where the fuck have you gone kiddo.”
Leaned his head back against the wall and fought a wave of dizziness. Closed his eyes and waited for it to pass. He needed a long sleep, the feel of luxuriant duvet above him and the memory of foam below. Maybe a week in the sun where your biggest worry was when to get up. He needed a drink. Or to be sober. Needed the world to not be going mad.
Jumped and snapped his head around to the right as something substantial thumped at the entrance doors. Frozen, he heard another hefty thump accompanied by the glassy rattle of the frame.
Edged back until he could glimpse the entrance, see the ever welcoming Pink Lemonade girl lying in the wreckage of her own blood and bones.
See a shadow through the smoke of the glass.
See it scrabble and scratch and then thud again at the glass.
Sebastian. It had to be Sebastian. If he kept that up, the door would break in. Of that there was no doubt. No doubt at all. What Joe doubted was his ability to kill him ...it.
His willingness to kill it. To kill the kid. Swing the machete at his head and hear the slice and crunch ...if he was lucky. If not, he’d get to enjoy the sensation of his flesh being ripped and torn.
He’d never have a better chance. If it crashed through the glass and he was ready, he’d have every advantage he was ever going to get.
Or he could run and hide and hope.
The shadow ceased its onslaught and shifted position. Moved away from the door. Paled and lost solidity. A monster shifting beyond the misted glass.
Relief flooded Joe and then he dimly perceived engine noise.
Through the big window he could see a small car as it slewed into the car park. Generic economy city runabout. Ford or Vauxhall maybe. It stopped past the BMW, closer to the restaurant. Two people inside.
Don’t get out. Stay in there and drive away.
He wanted to shout but he had no voice and there was no point, they wouldn’t hear him. He just stood and watched as the driver’s door opened and a man exited.
Youthful. Short hair. Athletic physique.
Followed by a woman on the passenger side. Older. Greying. Plump.
No Joe, enough marketing speak. You really can’t afford to indulge in that shit now. Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? She’s fat. Benny the fucking Ball on a carbs only diet fat. Benny the Ball gobbling steroids and sipping four or five litre bottles of Coke a day, sitting by the cake tin with feet up and ordering Pizza online.
; Wearing a voluminous kaftan skirt.
She’d make a meal and half for any starving monster.
Sebastian came into view, running in that hunched lope that they had.
Move, you have to move. You’re dead if you don’t move.
Sebastian closed the gap on the man and woman in a flash.
You didn’t do anything about him Joey-boy and now someone’s going to pay the piper.
The man rummaged something from his waistband. Black and metallic. A gun.
Sebastian hit him before he managed to finish fretting with it. Bowled him over the rear wing of the car so his body did a weirdly sickening somersault. Like one of those soccer tackles you see from a distance and know that damage has been done. Appalled voyeuristic intrigue. Look away and never know or watch and have your stomach turned.
The man lay beyond the car unmoving. Sebastian moved with an alacrity that was alarming. Was on the fallen man in a heartbeat. But what ensued was much more alarming than mere inhuman speed.
What followed was feeding.
The woman remained on the other side of the vehicle, her hands raking through her hair.
It was at that point that Joe left the restaurant and descended the steps to kill Sebastian.
He didn’t rush or run. He was deliberate and measured.
<><><>
They stood a little way from the small car trying not to look at the two bodies. Sebastian and the man.
“Oh poor Stephen. I only met him yesterday but he was very kind to me,” she said, hands to her face.
Poor Stephen and poor Sebastian, Joe thought and said nothing.
Her name was Miriam Bell, although he suspected he’d always think of her as Benny the Ball. Up close she was older than he’d thought. Probably late fifties.
“It’s all just too awful. Everyone turning into those ...things. Well, nearly everyone. I was hiding. Southall. At the Library, but there were an awful lot of them and I’ve seen what they do to people who haven’t turned.”
She gave a little shudder and continued.
“I thought my number was up to be perfectly honest. Look at me. I can’t run very far, or very quickly for that matter. Stephen found me and offered to take me with him. We we’re trying to find somewhere to rest. Somewhere safe. That’s why we stopped here. He thought it looked quite isolated and perhaps we could rest for a little while.”
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