No Zombies Please We Are British

by Alex Laybourne

  With a little help, Jack was out of bed, dressed, and on the move. The stairs were a challenge, but he made them unaided, and with minimal pain-sweats.

  The house was a well-maintained place, larger than the homes Jack had been in previously, yet modest with its furnishings and interior decorating.

  There was no time to spend admiring the place, and no point in planning or discussing decorating ideas, so Jack ignored everything around him and focused on the task at hand.

  The power looked to have gone out, and so a large breakfast had been made, cooking as much as the large stove could handle.

  People ate, but, if asked, all would have agreed that the meal did not taste of anything. The food was premium, and the cooking perfect. But everybody knew that the loss of power was just one more step towards the future.

  Going forward, there would be no more large cooked meals and gatherings. Not for some time at least. When the meal was done, they sat in silence, unsure of what to say. All eyes seemed to gravitate towards Jack.

  The streets were quiet, the undead wandered away in search of other prey. The lack of interference made for a smooth beginning to their journey. The gentle click-clack of Jack’s crutches on the road as he moved had them worried, but there was no other choice.

  They were in the city, or what was once defined as it, but you would not have known. The hustle and bustle of the capital was gone, blighted out over the course of a weekend. Terror was heavy on the air, riding on the ever increasing stench of rot.

  “Piccadilly Circus is just this way, two streets over,” Steve whispered as they stood short of a crossroads.

  “It’s so quiet,” Ayse spoke, voicing the concern they all shared.

  “They cleared it out,” Jack said, remembering back to the video Steve had shown him.

  “Who?”

  “The military, or well, whatever they are now,” Jack answered. “They swept through and killed everything, and pulled out.”

  “So they are fighting back, reclaiming the city?” Nobody answered Ayse, there was no need. A few metres farther up, the world answered it for her.

  Bodies lay strewn over the streets. Swollen and bloated bellies, stretched to the point of bursting. The formerly undead and the living all thrown to the lions and left to rot where they fell.

  The group paused at the sight. They heard someone weeping, but before anybody looked to see who it was, they realized it was them. The tears were unavoidable.

  “Do we have to?” Alessa asked as they began to move.

  “It is the quickest way,” Steve answered. “I hate to say it, but I also think it is the safest.”

  Nobody could think of any objections, and with the threat of the undead all around them, for while there was no counting the carnage that lay before them, the knowledge they all shared was that it was not enough. It would never be enough.

  The actions of the isolated military group had been swift and they had been effective, but not permanent. Many of the shots that were spilled from the mounted guns tore undead heads from shoulders, obliterating skulls and dissolving brain matter in ruthless fashion. However, for every head shot, there were at least as many, if not more, gut shots or limb-severing wide shots, which put the undead on the floor, and undoubtedly killed any living soul that was caught in the blanket sweep of death, but it did not end them. The undead were merely sent to the floor, their hunger unvanquished, the perpetuity of their advance changed but not ended. For the living, their deaths merely acted as a recruitment for those undead that had fallen for the second time.

  As such, as the group picked their way through the field of nightmares, there was no way of telling which of the bodies may take a grab at them.

  On several occasions, hands or teeth had pulled at Jack’s crutches, snatching them from under him.

  The group was exhausted by the time they found an exit from the bloodbath, their clothes were drenched with sweat and blood. Their arms ached from the constant downward strikes.

  Jack had put his crutches to good use, using them to bash skulls from a distance, and had, when it was all said and done, accounted for a sizable portion of the body count they left behind.

  Moving together, as a single unit, it was not long before they were on Regent Street, staring down the long row of tall, pale buildings, and the pillars and rooftop decorations. Over the street, Union Jack flags hung still in the now breathless morning. Their frayed edges and faded colours had taken on a much deeper meaning over the course of a single week. They were a statement, a testament to the strength of the people beneath them. Battered and beaten, they still stood proud, and would not stop until the very stitching that held them together was ripped apart.

  The street was empty, save for the bodies, which by now were largely ignored by the group. Nothing more than street debris, stepped over or around, and under certain circumstances, stepped in.

  “Is anybody else freaked out by how quiet it is?” Jack asked as they stood in the centre of Piccadilly Circus. The towering electronic screens were as black as the blood spilled from undead wounds. The silence was deafening. It was as if they were the only people on Earth. A fate that all would agree was far worse than being trapped in a world filled with death-walkers.

  “Don’t say that too loudly,” Ayse replied fast.

  “Which theatre are we heading to?” Stan asked.

  “They were watching the Michael Jackson show,” Jack answered.

  “Thriller, it’s playing at the Lyric,” Ayse answered quickly. “What? It’s a good show,” she added when she caught the looks everybody was passing her way.

  Nobody said anything, but for the first time in what felt like forever, they smiled.

  “It is down there, on Shaftsbury Avenue.” Ayse pointed ahead of them.

  They picked their way over the crossroads, the echo of the dead growing every louder. It was almost a welcome relief compared to the silence of the city.

  They could see the large poster advertising the show. With their destination in sight, everybody breathed a sigh of relief.

  That was when all hell broke loose.

  A savage crash from their left pulled their gazes to one side. A tank sat in the middle of the road, swarmed over by the undead. They covered it like a fungus, even hanging from the barrel as they tried to claw their way in. At least a hundred strong were gathered around the iron beast.

  Another crash came as the turret spun a little, positioning itself.

  “Is it aiming for us?” Stan asked just before everybody threw themselves to the floor.

  “No chance. They can’t see a thing through that crowd,” Steve answered.

  Their voices carried, because those at the back of the undead throng turned and immediately focused on the newcomers, egged on no doubt by their intoxicating scent and the primitive craving for raw meat.

  They began to move, some fast, some slower, some waddled, their bellies swollen to the point that fluid was leaking through the cracks of their week-dead flesh.

  The tank fired a round without warning. A thunderous, ground-shaking roar that decimated a large number of the undead. Those that held onto the turret were blown apart by the force of the blast, their bodies spread over a wide area. Arms and legs rained down on them, and an ear landed on the side of Ayse’s head. She screamed and swatted at it frantically, only succeeding in smearing the slime of putrefaction.

  They were on their feet before the tank could fire again, the reduction in undead numbers also giving them a few extra seconds to speed towards what they hoped to be the sanctuary of the Lyric.

  Across the street, a new sound erupted. A fresh rumble that tore through the auditory spectrum. The blast from the tank had blown a large hole in the building opposite, and as a result, the occupants who had been contained within its walls were set free. Spilling into the world from the jagged gash in the building’s flank.

  Growls and snarls rang out as the streets filled with the dead.

  “Run.” The order was gi
ven. Nobody knew who it was, or questioned it when it came.

  They simply obeyed.

  It was not more than a hundred metres to the presumed safety of the Lyric Theatre. Yet never in the history of journeys had such a distance felt so long. To Jack, who was stuck at the back of the pack, his surging adrenaline doing him a disservice by making his crutches more of a hindrance than a help, it felt as if he could have watched all of the Lord of the Rings movies in the time it took him to get to the front entrance.

  The only thing he knew, was that through it all, Alessa did not leave his side. She could have run ahead, but she stayed by him, with the knives she had taken from Steve’s shop clutched in her hands. The once-sparkling steel forever stained with the blood of the undead.

  “It’s blocked,” Stan called out. Noise was no longer an issue. The death-walkers knew they were there, and the groans of the tank as it rolled into view drowned out the sound of their voices anyway.

  The tank looked as if it were a living thing, like some piece of Barker-horror brought to life, freed from the hills and cities, to roll its way through the capital. Death-walkers clung to their tracks, either hanging on, their desperation to reach the summit outweighing whatever little survival instinct they had left, or their flesh, malleable in re-animation, was stuck between the plates of the tread. One by one, they were rolled along, flipped over and crushed, exploding like grapes, with a shower of guts and innards shooting in all directions. A wet plopping sound, like that of a juicy pimple being burst, was their final contribution in the world.

  Still overrun, the large iron monster was turned too late, and in too wide of an arc. It drove straight through the front of the listed buildings that lined the street, and disappeared inside. More pools of the dead spilled out, like vermin fleeing their discovered nest.

  “Jesus Christ, let us in. Help, let us in,” Ayse and Steve both began to call, hammering on the wood and metal that had been used to block the entrance way. They even hammered on the brick walls, hoping beyond hope that their message would be received.

  The death-walkers moved in a flood. The crush of their undead bodies as they spilled from within the buildings was too much for some of the more fragile, rot-bloated creatures. They exploded like overfilled balloons. Strings of cold, jellied intestines and other unidentifiable organs flew through the air like party favours, draping over the lucky members of the closing pack.

  The group all pounded on the barricade, and while it gave a little, yielding to their onslaught in a ways that should have given cause for concern to those inside, it did not fall.

  Yet.

  “Psst, come on, round the side. Quick,” a voice called.

  The group froze. They looked around and eventually saw a face peering at them from the side of the building.

  “Come on, quickly.” He waved frantically with his hands, gesturing for them to react with haste.

  They did not need another invitation.

  The dead were nearly on them, and after Steve turned and took his blades to the first faces of the wave, he too turned and ran, bringing up the rear behind Jack and Alessa.

  Steve swung like a madman, hacking at any of the death-walkers that came close enough. Those that he felled served to their advantage, because they acted as a stumbling block for the others.

  “Steve, hurry,” Alessa’s voice cried out.

  Steve was surprised to see that the others had all disappeared inside. Taking down one final death-walker with a swinging blow that saw him bury the knife so deep in the creature’s rotting skull that his fist was covered in brains, he turned and ran.

  Inside the theatre it was dark, and for a few moments while their eyes adjusted, the group was blind and vulnerable.

  It was a strange sensation, but once the door behind them was closed and barricaded once more from the inside, the lights came on.

  Lights in the form of the torches used by the ushers to move through the theatre in their own sneaky way.

  “I was watching you out there. You need to be careful. This place is crazy, those folks … they are … they are dead,” the man said, speaking as if he were coming with some grand announcement.

  He almost seemed disappointed when nobody panicked or gasped.

  “Where is Sarah Welch?” Jack asked. “Is she here? Are there many survivors?”

  The man turned around to face the group. “You mean to tell me you actually came looking for this place. You knew what was happening and you came?”

  “We did, and we would appreciate it if you would help us. You saved us for a reason, there is no need to play games like this.” It was Steve who now stepped forward. “You know what is out there, you have seen what they are. Otherwise, you would not have fortified this place like that.”

  The man looked at them and laughed. He was an older man, the wrong side of fifty. His hair was cut short and grey all over. He had a white beard growing on his face, which showed he was clean-shaven before the world ended. He smiled.

  “We didn’t block it because of the dead. We did it to keep out them army folk. They didn’t last a day before they started getting all power hungry. They shot a man in the head because he didn’t want to get on his knees for them.”

  “You’ve been stuck in here ever since?” Jack asked.

  “Not stuck, but holed up. They were busy clearing the place and losing their minds. They never realized we were here,” the man answered. “I’m Thomas, by the way.”

  Introductions were made and they agreed to get away from the doors. The dead were gathering outside and they didn’t want to extend them an invitation.

  They climbed the stairs, creeping in silence, under Thomas’s instruction. They did not need to ask why. Behind the locked doors came the suffocating growls of the undead.

  “How many of you are there?” Stan asked once they reached the third floor. Once again, he seemed to be the only one of them who was not even a little bit winded from the climb.

  “There are six of us left. The rest, well, the rest became those things.” Thomas clearly disliked talking about the death-walkers, and it put Jack ill at ease, because it threatened a sense of complacency that would get them all killed.

  “You have done well to get them separated,” Jack offered, hoping to see some glimpse of triumph in Thomas’s eyes. All he saw was pain.

  “We ran,” the older man said. “We just kept climbing higher and higher. If they break through again, then we have nowhere left to go.” They were not the words of a fighter, but of a man who had given up.

  “Then why did you save us?” Steve asked. “If you don’t think you have anywhere left to go, why save us?”

  “To give you whatever extra time we could.” His answer was short and it was simple.

  “Come with us, we are not staying here.” Alessa took her turn to speak. “We just came to find Sarah.”

  Jack looked over at the young woman who so confused his thoughts. She spoke of his girlfriend as if she were a friend of hers.

  “Sarah?” The question in his voice made Jack’s heart sink.

  “Sarah, she is five-four, blonde hair, green eyes, slim build, friendly but a little distant, too.” Jack watched the man’s face for any sign of recognition.

  “I know her, didn’t know her name was Sarah though. I thought Sharon, hmmm.” The man turned his back on them and entered the theatre.

  It was dark; the upper section of the once beautiful Victorian-style performance house was dominated by shadow. The sound of the dead chomping at the bit in the sections below rolled in the stale, rot-heavy air.

  The survivors sat together, side by side in the middle of the upper tier. The sole attendees for the last show on earth. They turned around to look at the group of newcomers, but none spoke. Jack searched the six faces and there, in the middle looking at him without so much as a trace of a smile on her face, was Sarah. She was pale, and her hair was dirty and covered with grime. Her lips were puffed up and the lower one was split on one side, but there wa
s no denying it was her.

  “Sarah,” he said, struggling to find the right emotion to use.

  “Hi, Jack. You shouldn’t have come here,” she answered dismissively.

  “Why, Sarah, we came to rescue you, all of you,” Jack began, but the words tasted stale. He had come to rescue Sarah, but that desire had died, the trip was no longer about that, and they had never given any thought to rescuing anybody else. Even Sarah’s mother, who he saw then was not part of the group.

  “Really?” The scorn was there for all to see.

  “Jack, man, they’ve given up,” Steve whispered to Jack. “Look at them.”

  Jack could see it, each of the six survivors had the same dull look to their eyes; a listless expression and that just screamed surrender.

  “Sarah, come on, did you really think I would leave you behind?” Jack began, feeling his cheeks flush with embarrassment.

  Sarah burst into a hateful laugh. Below her, the undead were far more interested in the goings on in the upper seats than in the lifeless corpses that lay on the stage, or those that stood trapped in the band pit, their instruments crushed and tarnished at their feet.

  “Jack, I’m sorry,” she said with a sudden clarity in her eyes. “I … I never expected any of this to happen, but I also didn’t expect you to come chasing after me.”

  “I don’t get it.” Jack felt Alessa tense beside him. She took a step forward.

  “You were cheating on him,” Alessa growled, her voice angry. “You were not here with your mother, but with your boyfriend.”

  “Sarah, what the hell?” Jack moved forward, and at the same time, a muscular, dark-skinned man rose from the chair beside Sarah.

  “Who the hell is this?” Jack pointed at the man, his heart thundering in his chest. He stared at the man and felt nothing but hatred. He balled his fists.

  “Now, I know what this looks like …”

  Jack strode forward, his fists raised and before the man, who was considerably larger, could react, Jack threw a right hook that caught him on the jaw and knocked him backwards. He followed it up with a strong left, thrown without finesse but backed by a rage, the purest of all emotions. He felt the man’s nose explode beneath his fist, and felt the warm blood coat his fingers.