The Death in a Northern Town Trilogy (Books 1-3): Welcome To Dead Town

by Peter Mckeirnon

He was organising the newspaper deliveries for Oxford Road when he heard the shop door open and he glanced to see who it was. A small hooded figure stumbled through the door and stalled by the ice cream freezer in the middle of the shop floor.

  “I’ll have these ready for you in a second Josh,” he said without looking at the boy.

  Josh had worked for Barry since he was fourteen years of age. Now aged sixteen, his paperboy days were coming to an end but he had been a good worker, having never missed a shift and, unlike some of the other paperboys, he never dumped the morning deliveries onto the railway tracks behind the shop just so he could go back to bed for an hour before school.

  “You’re a bit early Josh. Was it the excitement of delivering the morning papers that got you out of bed or was it something else?” Barry asked, again continuing to sort the newspapers without visually acknowledging the boy.

  “Gurumphrrhh.”

  Barry had never heard a noise like that before and it was enough to distract him from his duties and for the first time look properly at the kid but he couldn’t see the boy’s face. The hood from his jacket and his slouched posture had aided in shadowing his features sufficiently.

  He watched as Josh stood, unsteadily by the ice cream freezer whilst gurgling horrific growls.

  “Are you ok Josh?”

  He could sense that there was something not right but there was nothing that could have prepared him for what happened next.

  Josh lunged forward, hands reaching out towards Barry. The only thing between him and his employer was the shop counter, and Barry would soon be thankful that the hatch was lowered and Josh could not reach him.

  Barry reached for a screwdriver he kept next to the till and with it, carefully removed the hood from Josh’s face. What he saw sent shivers down his spine. Josh was gnarling and chattering his teeth together frantically; dried blood coating his mouth and chin.

  Reaching for the broom he kept behind the counter he pushed out at Josh, sending him falling backwards into the ice cream freezer.

  Josh lifted himself up and staggered back towards Barry retaking his previous position.

  Barry pushed out with the broom again, this time putting all of his strength behind the shove. Josh stumbled backwards before falling hard, cracking the back of his head on the shop shelving.

  He winced when he heard the crunching sound of the boy’s skull cracking against the metal unit. Blood began to pour from Josh’s head spilling out on to the shop floor.

  Barry immediately felt regret, not because he had caused what could be a fatal injury, but because his floor was now covered in blood and it would be a bugger to clean.

  Josh began to move, his head making a ‘slurping’ sound as it lifted out of the growing puddle of sticky blood.

  Barry was having difficulty in believing what he was witnessing. The injury Josh had sustained should have been enough to keep him down but here he was, back on his feet and once again, moving towards him.

  He moved behind the counter and closed the hatch; securing himself from the paperboy. Josh stumbled forward, banging into the counter with arms reaching out, hands clawing the air in front of his employer.

  Barry picked up the telephone to call the police for help but there was no dial tone.

  “Oh bollocks!” he said, realising he was on his own with this.

  He looked down at the newspapers on the counter and for the first time, properly registered the headlines. He then repeated his last four actions again and again.

  The cogs in his mind slowly began to turn and place everything together. Then the door to the shop opened slightly and through the small gap a skin torn, blood stained hand attached to a shredded arm appeared, slowly followed by the gaunt dead face of a man he knew very well.

  It was Paul, one of his regular customers and an old friend. He noted the wound on Paul’s hand and furthermore the deep scratches on his arm.

  He moved his attention back to Josh who was still grasping at the air in front of Barry’s face. There was dried blood on Josh’s hands and, more importantly, what resembled human flesh under his fingernails.

  “Did you do this to Paul?” he asked the non-responsive Josh.

  Paul lurched forwarded, joining Josh up against the counter, reaching out and gnashing his teeth.

  Barry had always been a man who trusted his instinct and gone with his gut and he was starting to think that the two people who stood before him were not the people he knew and that Josh and Paul were no more. He didn’t yet know what had happened to them but he knew he had to do something before it happened to him.

  “Sorry Josh,” he said apologising for what he was about to do.

  He grabbed the screwdriver and stabbed Josh through his right eye and into the kid’s brain, killing him instantly.

  He watched, filled with remorse as Josh fell backwards, hitting the floor behind him, a screwdriver protruding from his right eye socket. But he didn’t have time for wallowing in regret. Not yet at least as he now had Paul to deal with.

  He reached under the shop counter and retrieved an axe handle, something he had kept, just in case he should ever be robbed or a customer became violent. He had never had to use it. Until now that is.

  “Sorry old friend,” he said and with both hands gripping the axe handle, he brought it crashing down on Paul’s head, shattering his skull on impact.

  Before he could process what had happened, the shop door opened again and this time, in staggered another of his locals, a young lady, munching on a dismembered tattooed hand.

  “Christ not you too!” he sighed, not only referring to the young lady, but to the hand she had hanging from her mouth.

  He recognised the heavily tattooed hand as belonging to Neil, an eccentric local that would frequent the shop early mornings to buy cigarettes after returning from working his ‘cabaret’ act.

  By day, Neil was a vegan metal head who kept himself to himself. By night he was Belinda Blaze, the fire haired drag queen of Manchester’s gay district.

  On seeing the hand and knowing Neil as well as he did, he mused that should his transvestite customer have survived the attack, he would be more concerned on how he would look in his many spectacular outfits than losing a limb.

  The young lady slowly staggered forward; Neil’s tattooed yet beautifully manicured hand flapping in her mouth. She had little concern for her surroundings. So much so that she bumbled closer, mouth full of hand and arms outstretched, reaching for Barry.

  Ignorant to the dead bodies that lay in her path, her left foot came down hard on the mashed head of Paul and she fell down rolling around uncontrollably, unable to get to her feet.

  “I’m sorry love,” Barry said, regretful for what he had to do.

  He tightened his grip on the gore stained axe handle then repeatedly smashed her over the head until she was once again, dead.

  Looking at the blancmange that used to be her head, he surmised he had probably gone into overkill and hit the young women several more times than was necessary.

  “That’s going to need bleaching,” he said to himself, evaluating the blood and brain matter that covered the floor.

  It was then he heard a heavy ‘thud’ hitting the outside of the shop. He climbed over the heap of dead customers and opened the shop door, stepping outside to investigate.

  A car had ploughed into the house next to his shop. Behind the wheel, strapped into the driver’s seat, head resting on an inflated airbag was another young woman. Her zombie boyfriend was bent over her, leaning in from the passenger seat. Having ripped open her stomach, he was pouring handfuls of her intestines into his putrid mouth.

  Barry approached the car and opened the front passenger door, dragging the zombie out from the vehicle and onto the path. With his trusted axe handle, he brought it down on the deader’s face again and again, blood and brains spraying out, coating his trousers.

  Eyes wide and panting heavily from exertion, he looked upon the pulped mush that was once the zombie�
�s face and adrenaline filled his tired body.

  “Who’s fucking next?” he yelled, waving the axe handle in the air.

  The woman in the car lifted her head from the inflated airbag and small rasping groans left her throat.

  Hearing the noise he turned to see her pale, translucent face and sunken white eyes glaring back at him.

  Barry moved to the driver’s door and smashed the window with his axe handle. Shards of glass tore into her face, making her once soft and blemish free skin resemble a badly assembled glass mosaic.

  The newly undead woman turned to face him whilst frantically trying to wriggle free from the belt securing her to the seat.

  Tightening the grip on his weapon he forcefully jabbed it into her face repeatedly until she was dead.

  Stepping away from the vehicle, he looked up and down Balfour Street, several of the infected were wandering the street. He could hear the faint cries of people shouting for help and the screams of those being eaten alive.

  “When hell is full, the dead will walk the Earth,” he said to himself, repeating a saying he had heard many years ago but could not recall where from.

  “Well not in my shop they won’t!” he said, defiantly.

  Barry returned to his newsagents and one by one, dragged the dead bodies through the door, dumping them on the street outside.

  He entered the shop again then re-emerged holding a can of black spray paint. With it he wrote on the front of his shop…

  ‘NO ZOMBIES!’

  … then Barry returned to his newsagents, shutting the door behind him.

  Journal entry 2

  Dave drove the Ford Thunderbird out of the factory car park, leaving the zombie bloodbath behind us, the sounds of Gary Numan crackling from the ancient car stereo.

  The road was clear as long as you discount the many dead birds that littered our way. Not just starlings this time either. There were pigeons and crows also. Their feathered bodies tested the Thunderbird’s already questionable suspension as we drove over them. Every time the wheels hit a bird, my stomach would churn, sending a cold shiver down my back.

  Why was it that I had quickly gotten over brutally killing Brockers but driving over dead animals was sending me to pukesville? Dave on the other hand, wasn’t fazed in the slightest. Sunglasses on and fag in mouth, he was quite happy driving along, nodding his head in time to the synth-tastic sounds of ‘Are Friends Electric’.

  What had happened to these birds? Had whatever had caused the zombie outbreak also affected animals? It appeared that way and if so, will they too come back from the dead? Not from what we had seen but then again, the only animals we had encountered were that of the small feathered variety.

  We reached the end of the industrial estate, arriving at traffic lights that sat in front of a cross roads.

  We needed to go left as this was the only route to Emily’s school. Only advancing in any direction was going to prove difficult as directly in front of us a bus lay turned on its side. Blood soaked shattered glass glistened in the winter sunlight as it littered the road.

  Dave turned off the cassette player as we observed the wreckage.

  “What do you think happened?” I asked.

  “Well if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it crashed,” Dave said, obviously trying to get a rise out of me.

  “Really Dave? I thought the bus had just got tired and decided to lie down and have a little rest. The crash, what do you think caused the crash?” I said.

  “Alright narky arse, calm down. I’m only trying to put a smile on that face of yours. You look like you’ve just had a rectal examination and the doctor left his finger in a few minutes longer than he should have,” Dave replied.

  I didn’t answer. How he was managing to find humour in our situation I don’t know but I appreciated what he was trying to do. Yes I was stressed and extremely scared. Not knowing if you’ll ever see your daughter again is a frightful experience and one that I would never wish on anyone. That said, if you’ve survived long enough to be reading this journal then it’s almost guaranteed you’ve lost someone along the way.

  “What do you reckon lar? I could drive around it?” he said.

  He was right, there was sufficient room for him to drive around the wreckage. What worried me was what lay on the other side. From our position all we could see was the bus and what looked like the hunched bodies of people inside. But were they dead? Alive? Dead and alive? We simply didn’t know.

  I nodded to Dave, suggesting that he proceed and drive around the wreckage.

  Dave edged the Ford Thunderbird forward slowly, the sheer horror of the crash becoming more apparent the closer we got.

  The bus had fallen on its side after hitting the partition railings in the centre of the road before skidding into the cross roads.

  Inside the bus towards the rear, kids were piled on top of each other and they were dead. It was horrible. Their bodies tangled with each other making it difficult to tell where one ended and another began. What I did notice was the school uniforms. These kids went to the Grange, the same school as my daughter. These kids could be my daughter’s friends, Emily’s class mates! Shit I might have known some of them! My heart sank thinking about it. It also meant that if these kids had taken the bus to school, then this accident happened hours ago as it was now lunchtime.

  I watched intently as the Thunderbird slowly moved past the rear of the upturned bus. The kid’s features were hard to determine through the shattered glass and blood sodden faces but I could count at least six that had been killed in the smash.

  Something about the crash wasn’t making sense. Yes the bus had crashed through the railings and landed on its side but that didn’t seem enough to kill these kids. Their injuries appeared too severe for the accident.

  “Anything in there Ace?” Dave asked, concentrating on his driving.

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  If Dave had not seen the horror inside the bus I wasn’t about to alert him to it. What good would seeing something like that do?

  The car moved at a snail’s pace as we drove along the side of the bus, the road beyond the accident becoming more visible with every movement. Then Dave brought the vehicle to a halt.

  “What is …” my question was muted as Dave placed his hand across my mouth.

  With his spare hand he pointed forward, all the while not taking his eyes from the road ahead. I looked to see a pair of blue trouser covered legs had become visible lying on the road in front of the bus. The rest of the body was obscured from our view by the vehicle. From what we could see one of the legs appeared to be twitching, almost like something or someone was tugging on it.

  Dave carefully opened his car door, trying to be as quiet as possible. Not easy when the door you are opening belongs to a 1983 Ford Thunderbird but I’ll give Dave credit, he managed to keep the groans and croaks to a minimum. I didn’t have the same skill as when I opened my door, it sounded like a cat being skinned alive. Dave gave me a look that said if he was close enough, he would have given me a slap and who could blame him, I would have slapped me too!

  We cautiously walked forward, the body in the road becoming more visible with every step.

  First we saw the legs, then the waist, then the arms that were tearing into the dead man’s stomach, then the face of the school girl who was shovelling intestines and guts into her mouth like she was devouring sausage links.

  “Someone’s hungry,” Dave whispered.

  “It’s a sad state of affairs when human innards are the tastier option over a school dinner. Definitely healthier though,” I replied.

  Hey don’t judge me, hanging around with Dave was starting to rub off and besides, he was dealing with all of this a lot better than I was. Maybe if I took a leaf out of his book and rolled with the punches I wouldn’t be a jibbering mess with the world’s worst gag reflex. I was wrong. The hungry school girl heard my not so quiet whisper and lifted her head out of the dead man’s stomach to look directly at m
e.

  I knew her.

  “Don’t you fucking know how to be quiet?” Dave said, as he walked back to the car. “Come on kidda get in.”

  “I know her,” I replied, watching what used to be my daughter’s best friend Jane, stagger to her feet and jaggedly move towards me, intestines hanging from her mouth.

  “You don’t know her John, you know who she used to be. This isn’t that girl anymore,” Dave said as he got back into the car and started the engine.

  I glanced towards the bus and took another look at the kids piled up on top of each other. It was not the crash that killed them, but Jane. One of the kids had his throat ripped out and another had an arm torn from her body. I hadn’t noticed this before but now it was as clear as the blue winter’s sky.

  “Get in the car John!” Dave shouted and I listened, doing as instructed.

  “She did this. The bus, she caused all of this,” I said, not taking my eyes from her.

  “You might want to fasten your seat belt,” Dave said revving the engine.

  It was obvious what he was going to do and he was right. She couldn’t be left to continue. How many other deaths would she be responsible for if we just drove away?

  “Do it!” I exclaimed and with that, Dave put his foot down hard and the Thunderbird sped forward, smashing into Jane with force.

  The impact pulled her body underneath the vehicle, which jerked up and down as it moved over her.

  Dave brought the car to a halt and we both turned to assess the damage behind us. Jane’s body lay twisted and contorted, face down in the road. Her legs crushed and her right arm bent in a direction it should never have been subjected to. I felt sick to my stomach at what had become of this poor girl. How was I going to tell Emily?

  Jane lifted her head and looked directly at the car. With her one good arm she tried desperately to pull herself forward, gnashing her teeth.

  Dave put the car in reverse, smashing into Jane’s head, snapping it backwards and removing it clean from her body. Then we watched as Jane’s head rolled along the road, before resting against a discarded take away kebab.