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

by Peter Mckeirnon

  So far we had killed three zombies and I had known all of them. All I wanted right now was my daughter.

  Dave pulled up alongside the dead man that Jane had been scoffing. He was the bus driver. He stepped outside and knelt beside him.

  “Well kidda, not the best way to go out lad but look on the bright side. This hell was over for you before it had really begun. It’s the poor bastards like me and John here who are still alive that will suffer more. You got out easy Ace.”

  Dave removed a packet of cigarettes from the deceased bus driver’s shirt pocket.

  “Don’t mind if I do!” he said, lighting a smoke immediately.

  “Right! Let’s get a move on!” he added, getting back into the car.

  “Dave, can I have a cigarette?” I asked, “If ever there was a time to take up smoking, I think this is it.”

  He lit a cigarette and passed it to me. I took a long pull on the cigarette and instantly threw up.

  “Fuck sake lar, the Thunderbird! Give me that.” Dave yelled, snatching the cigarette out of my hand.

  He now had two cigarettes and took a pull on them both at the same time.

  “Fucking amateur,” Dave said, as he continued our journey to find Emily.

  The drive to my daughter’s school was horrifying. People ran screaming from their homes, followed closely by loved ones intent on eating them.

  Cars had been abandoned sporadically along the road. One car had come to a halt after mounting the curb and hitting a bus shelter. As we drove past we could see the driver hanging out of the opened door, seatbelt still secured whilst his female passenger was tearing an ear from his head, chewing on it ravenously.

  Dave turned the Thunderbird onto Latham Avenue, the road where my daughter’s school was located. It’s a long road consisting mostly of houses situated on either side. Again, the scene was similar to our previous encounters. Chaos everywhere as people left their homes and packed up their vehicles.

  Dave manoeuvred the car between vehicles that were backing out into the road, ready to flee this hell infected town. The Grange Comprehensive School was positioned on the left hand side at the very top of the road and prior to that was the Grange Infants and Junior School. We could see the schools from our position then, directly ahead of us, two vehicles backed out of their driveways simultaneously from either side of the road and smashed into each other.

  Both drivers exited their cars and began screaming at each other, their petrified families watching on from inside the vehicles.

  “Fucking move!” Dave shouted whilst beeping the car horn.

  The two guys in the street stopped arguing and instead turned their attentions to Dave and me.

  “Nice one big mouth, this is just what we need,” I said, making sure my passenger door was locked.

  “Well it got them moving,” Dave replied.

  “Yes it did, towards us!” I yelled.

  Just as it looked like we were going to have to fight the living as well as the dead, a small boy of no more than five years of age stumbled out from behind the vehicles in front and grabbed hold of one of the man’s legs, biting into his calf. The man screamed in pain as he violently shook his leg, trying to free himself from the grip of the child zombie, but he wouldn’t let go and gnawed furiously on his flesh.

  The man slammed his leg with the boy attached against his car. After several thumps the boy’s grip was loosened and he let go of the man’s torn and bloodied leg.

  Before the boy could get to his feet, the man viciously began stomping on him, breaking the skull and shattering the child’s head, brains spraying out over his clothes and onto the floor.

  Whilst this was happening, the other man had walked back to his vehicle and retrieved a crowbar. No sooner had the bitten man killed the boy, the other man swung the crowbar with menace, repeatedly whacking the bitten man in the head.

  The bitten man’s family were hysterical in their car watching as their father and beloved husband was brutally murdered.

  “He was bitten! I did you a favour,” shouted the man with the crowbar at the bitten man’s distraught family.

  The man walked back to his car and drove away. In this harsh new world perhaps the man was right to do what he did. But in the way he did it? I’m not too sure.

  Dave drove on, past the Grange Infant and Junior School. Small zombie children were wandering around the playground aimlessly. Several torn and shredded corpses of those eaten by the infected pupils littered the play area.

  We arrived at Emily’s school. It was big with a substantial playground situated at the front of it. Surrounding the playground were iron gates used as security to keep would be vandals from the premises. Luckily for Dave and me, it was containing a hoard of teenage zombies from escaping.

  We parked the Thunderbird outside the school gates and exited the vehicle, Dave taking his trusted battle paddle from the backseat.

  Zombie school kids pressed themselves up against the gates, gnashing their jaws and stretching their arms out in an attempt to grab us. Behind the zombies on the playground lay the remains of a dead teacher with two teenagers eating what was left of him. Well I assume it was a teacher. The only part of him that remained intact was his brown corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. So it had to be a teacher right?

  Amongst the zombie kids were also zombie dinner ladies. One in particular caught my eye as she wandered around without direction, wearing a blood stained apron and chewing on a mutilated child’s arm.

  This wasn’t looking good. If Emily was in there and alive, she must be hauled up somewhere but how the hell was I going to get in? I must have counted over forty zombies, possibly more. They had surrounded the school gates, making it impossible to climb over.

  “Do you think there are zombies in there?” Dave said, looking at the school yard.

  “Are you not seeing what I see?” I said, glaring at him.

  “Well it’s hard to tell. Every school looks like this to me” he replied, lighting another cigarette. “It’s not that bad Ace, I reckon we can figure out a way in no bother. How about, I’ll distract the hungry fuckers while you climb over the gate and check out the school? If there’s one thing going in our favour it’s that these dead bastards are slow, not like your new and trendy Hollywood faster-is-better style zombies. As long as you get a head start you should be able to out run them. Here, you take this and wait for the path to clear. You’ll be needing it more than me.”

  Dave passed me his battle paddle and moved a good one hundred feet up the path that flanked the school gates. He began jumping around, waving his arms wildly and shouting at the zombies in an attempt to grab their attention.

  “Hey you bunch of bastards look over here! There’s enough of me to feed all of ya! Come and get your din dins ya ugly fuckers! Come on what’s wrong? Lost your appetite? Hey fat lad, come and tuck in, you know you want to. I’m tastier than that crap they serve you up for dinner. Hey dinner lady, put down that thin meatless arm you are chomping on and waddle over here. Let those flabby bingo wings grab a hold of something that’s gonna fill you up. Grade A prime scouse over here kiddas …”

  Incredibly, Dave’s plan was working. One by one the zombies slowly shuffled over to where he was throwing himself about like a teenage girl at a One Direction concert.

  With my area now zombie free, I threw the battle paddle over the gates and climbed over. I was in, and I was shitting myself. Dave couldn’t help me now; it was all down to me.

  With Emily as my motivation, I picked up the paddle and moved quickly towards the main entrance of the school. Not one of the zombies had noticed me. Instead they had crowded around the gate where Dave was putting on his one man show.

  The main doors flung open and a large zombie kid stood in the doorway. I couldn’t tell if he was fat before or if he was bloated from feasting on flesh. He was covered in blood from his mouth to his feet and it was fresh. This kid had eaten recently and he was hungry for seconds.

 
I pushed the paddle hard into his stomach and his upper torso bent forward. I withdrew the paddle back, lifted it up high and brought it down swiftly on his head. It didn’t put an end to his devilish existence but it did knock him to the ground. I turned the paddle around and with the pole shaped handle, began stabbing at his head over and over again until his skull caved and brain matter spread across the floor. That did it!

  I stepped through the school’s doors and realised I had no idea where I was going. Although this was the same school that I attended in the mid 90s, a lot had changed since then and the layout was considerably different.

  To the left of me were the torn apart remains of a boy. Just beyond the kid, were two zombies, a man and a woman, and I assumed by their age and dress that they were teachers. Both of these zombies were dead, having had their heads completely destroyed. This gave me hope. There were people here that had weapons and knew how to defend themselves. I was just hoping that one of them would be my daughter.

  “Emily!” I shouted, forgetting myself.

  I immediately regretted shouting as from around a corner came three teenage shufflers. Taking on one fat zombie was one thing but three? The battle paddle had proven effective in one on one combat but it was large and clumsy. I was going to struggle to dispose of three. Nethertheless, there was no turning back. I was prepared to take on one hundred zombies if it meant finding my daughter.

  The zombies slowly advanced, stumbling forward whilst gnashing their teeth. The leader of the deadly trio was a boy of around fifteen years of age. His school uniform was gore stained and torn, slobber oozed from his revolting mouth and below the sweat and blood stained face, you could make out his terrible complexion. The poor kid. Not only did he wake up this morning with a face like a badly topped pizza but he turned into a zombie also. This kid’s skin just couldn’t catch a break!

  I stabbed at his legs with the battle paddle knocking him to the ground then repeatedly clobbered his head until he was dead… again. No sooner had I put down the lead zombie, the other two were upon me. As I’ve said, Dave’s paddle is great in one on one combat but when there is more than one zombie to kill, it’s slow and clumsy and in this case was almost my downfall.

  I took a step backwards, attempting to put some distance from myself and the hungry devil children set on killing me, only my foot slipped in the brain mush of the zombie I had just exterminated and I fell to the floor, landing heavily on my back. It was agony as the pain radiated from my back and shot down my left leg. I knew what that meant. My back had gone, an old rugby injury from my teenage years had once again come back to haunt me.

  One of the zombies was right on top of me now and I lifted the paddle up straight, placing the shovel end in its undead chest. The paddle was the only thing stopping the zombie from falling on me and no doubt sending me to my death.

  The smallest movement resulted in my back twinging, sending agonising shooting pains down my leg. I could barely move and holding off the zombie with the paddle was becoming increasingly difficult. Behind the devil kid, the other zombie approached, edging closer by the second, I had no idea how I was going to hold off two of the fuckers!

  My paddle slipped from the zombie’s chest and he fell on top of me. I pressed my hands against his chest in an attempt to keep his grotesque body away from mine and more importantly his mouth.

  His face moved inches from mine, rancid drool dripping from his mouth, landing on my cheek. And the smell! Oh man, I could almost taste his fetid breath as his teeth gnashed together just above my face. I was done for, of that I was sure. Holding this zombie away from biting my face was causing excruciating pain and the second zombie was only moments away.

  I was done, I could feel my hands and arms caving under the pressure and all I could think about was how I had failed my daughter. I closed my eyes, resigning myself to death, pressure from holding the zombie easing from my arms as my body gave up.

  Then I heard a noise. A heavy thud followed by a disgusting squelch and I could feel that the zombie was no longer on top of me.

  I opened my eyes to see a teenage boy holding a cricket bat drenched in blood. He was stood over a slaughtered zombie. I turned my head to see the back of a girl bent over another zombie, smashing it in the face with a hockey stick repeatedly. She turned to face me.

  “Dad?” said Emily, slapping my face to bring me round. “Dad! What are you doing here?”

  “Holy shit that’s your Dad,” said the boy holding the cricket bat.

  “Come on help me, we’ve got to move him before more of these things turn up,” she replied.

  “Emily, I saved you,” I said, dizzy from the pain.

  “I think that should be the other way around Dad.” Emily replied as her and the boy with the cricket bat carried me through a nearby door, laying me on a couch.

  We were in the staff room and it was then that I blacked out.

  The Battle for Poundland

  It was 08:15am. Poundland had been open for fifteen minutes but not a soul had entered through the shop doors.

  Steven would, on any other morning, be grateful for this as he could stand at the till gazing lustfully at Jess, the girl who worked in the mobile phone shop directly opposite.

  He had spent many a morning stood at his till dreaming of the day he and Jess would finally hook up. Oh how happy they would be together. It was going to be a whirlwind romance, where he envisaged they would quickly marry, buy a house, have kids and live happily ever after. If only he could pluck up the courage to actually speak to her then she would fall in love with him, of that he was convinced.

  But for now, he was content to dream and admire her from the safety of his till, even if it did mean he had to watch whilst her slime ball of a boss flirted with her shamelessly.

  Not on this morning however, as the lights within the mobile phone shop stayed dark. This had struck him as unusual because although the shop didn’t open for another forty five minutes, Jess could normally be seen getting things ready for customers.

  With his regular morning pick me up not available, Steven turned to his mobile phone so he could log on to Facebook and read what his friends were getting up to. But his mobile data wasn’t connecting to the network and boredom was quickly setting in. The only people he had seen that morning had been his manager Jo and her sister and assistant Nikki. The Sisters of Doom as he had christened them due to the authoritarian regime they ran.

  The only other person he had seen was his friend and Runcorn Shopping Centre security guard Tin Tin.

  Runcorn Shopping Centre was a large shopping mall with its outside structure resembling a giant block of Lego.

  A product of early 1970s British architectural ‘forward thinking’ design, under its original name of Runcorn Shopping City, had been officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1972.

  At the time of its opening, it was the largest enclosed shopping centre in Europe and attracted custom from all over the North West of England.

  ‘The City’ as known to Runcorn residents could not sustain its popularity, as the owners sought to capitalise on the initial success by increasing shop rents. This backfired, as many of the popular shops moved to the nearby town of Warrington where rent prices were low and demand was high.

  Now it housed mostly discount stores, with Poundland being one of the most popular.

  Steven hated quiet mornings as it gave him time to reflect on how miserable his life was and how dearly he wished for some excitement. He had worked for Poundland for coming up to a decade and at forty years of age, he was much older than the other employees.

  Poundland was meant to be a stop gap for him, something to do whilst he wrote his big screenplay, the one that would change his life forever. He spoke often about this; in fact he had been talking about it for almost fifteen years. No-one had read or even seen it and if they had it wouldn’t take them long to get through the six pages he had written so far.

  He often pondered about when he would finally become a f
amous writer. Thinking about how talk show hosts would ask what he did prior to being a big name in Hollywood and how he would tell anecdotes about his time as a discount store worker, selling old people packets of Werther’s Originals for £1.

  He would revel in telling stories of how he had risen from the checkout of Poundland to the bright lights of Los Angeles. The only thing he had risen from lately was his bed and even that had become a struggle of late. He felt his life was going nowhere and he longed for excitement.

  Silently fantasising about his would be life as a big shot Hollywood writer was no longer doing it for him and he needed something real.

  As Steven lent against the till, resting his head in his hands and gazing at the closed mobile phone shop, a distant noise entered his ears. A croaking noise, almost prehistoric in its sound, echoed through the walkway of the shopping centre. He heard it again, only closer this time. Whatever made the sound was heading towards Poundland.

  He had initially assumed the owner of the noise was an animal of some sort; most likely a bird that had flown inside and was now looking for a way out. Then he saw him. A frail man, old in years, slowly stumbling in front of the Poundland window, dragging his bloodied and torn left leg along the floor as he moved.

  The old man stopped and turned to Steven, pressing his thin pale face against the glass. Then he groaned and began to thump his right fist against the window.

  Steven’s mouth opened, his jaw hanging low in both confusion and astonishment at what he was witnessing.

  Two thoughts entered his head. Get help or do nothing in the hope that the old man would simply just go away, and his conscience was battling with both. He knew the right thing to do would be to help the old man. He was clearly unwell and the leg injury alone was enough to warrant medical attention but the pale skin, glazed eyes and bloodied leg were all telling him to stay the fuck away.

  He pressed the button that operates the shop tannoy system and spoke into the microphone next to his till.

  “Jo or Nikki to the tills please.”