“There’s nothing to explain. What you’re looking at here is the perfect zombie protection suit.” Butty replied.
“I wouldn’t really call it a suit. More of a mixed bag of random crap you’ve found lying about the house,” I said, trying to hold back the laughter.
“Crap? You have a lot to learn little brother. You see these boots? Big and heavy and almost impossible to damage. There’s not a zombie roaming the Earth that could chomp through these bad boys and just to make sure, I’ve covered them in metal plates. Not only extra protection but great for causing damage should I have to boot any of the bastards,” Butty explained.
“They look heavy, you’ll struggle to kick a pebble in those never mind a zombie,” I said.
“If it were you wearing them then maybe, but me? Piece of cake. I’ve been doing squats in preparation John, don’t you worry,” my brother replied.
“Squats? In those jeans? I’m surprised you can walk never mind bend down. They do look familiar though, have I seen them before?” I asked, intrigued.
“You have, I’ve stolen them from Jonathon. You see, whilst you guys were taking the piss out him for wearing skinny jeans, it got me thinking. Tight jeans are perfect anti zombie trousers. Think about it. The last thing you want to be wearing when being chased down by the living dead is baggy clothing. Tight clothing is a must. Nothing for them to grab hold of you see? In fact, I reckon the next chance we get, we pick up skinny jeans for everyone,” Butty said.
“Fuck that lar. I’d rather take my chances than squeeze into those things. No offence but you look like you only need to sneeze and you’ll be sliced in three. I can even tell what side you get dressed. It can’t be comfortable? Your junk looks like a squashed bull frog! It’s almost putting me off my smokes!” Dave interjected.
“Just a minute, did you just say they’re Jonathon’s jeans? How did you manage to take them without him knowing?” I asked.
“Easy. He was fast asleep snuggling up to our Emily and his jeans were draped over the back of a chair. I just took them,” Butty replied.
It’s difficult to explain the rage that built up inside of me on hearing that my daughter was snuggling up to her boyfriend minus his jeans and, if this was a cartoon, my face would have been deep red and steam would have been blowing out of my ears! Then as quickly as the anger came it disappeared again. I can no longer treat my daughter as a child. I must treat her as an adult and trust her to make the right decisions. If this would have happened a few days earlier, before the zombies had arrived, then the outcome would have been very different. Still, I was glad Jonathon wasn’t in the room. If he was I don’t believe I would have been capable of anything resembling rational thought.
“The stab vest I can understand as it’s not just zombies we have to watch out for but what’s with the lampshade? You look like a dog after an operation with that thing around your neck. Have you got some stitches you are trying not to nibble?” Dave teased.
“You can mock, but nothing is biting my neck with this thing protecting it that’s for sure. Right then, I’m ready to go, Get your gear on and we’ll be off,” Butty said to Dave.
“What do you mean get my gear on? I’m ready now,” Dave replied.
“You can’t seriously be considering going out dressed like that? You have no protection. What will you do if you find yourself surrounded by zombies? Use your fists?” Butty responded, becoming agitated.
“If it came down to it yeah I would but I won’t have to, not with this bad boy. Throw me the battle paddle John,” Dave instructed.
I threw the battle paddle to Dave who began swinging and swooping it around the room as if to prove to Butty how effective it was and he was right. It may not be the most elegant of zombie slaying weapons but without it, both Dave and I may not have escaped the mayonnaise factory with our lives. Butty wasn’t impressed however and scoffed at Dave’s paddle swooping.
“Yes I’ve looked over your battle paddle Dave. Clumsy and impractical if you ask me. I’m astounded you’ve lasted this long with that lump of plastic for protection,” Butty said.
“This lump of plastic saved both mine and your brother’s lives. Where I go, it goes. No compromise,” Dave replied defiantly.
Whilst Butty tried and failed to convince 80s Dave that he needed more protection than just a large plastic mayonnaise (yuck!) stirring instrument, I heard footsteps out on the hall and the voices of teenagers whispering. It was Emily and Jonathon and just as I was about to rush to the door and confront my daughter’s boyfriend for snuggling up to her minus his pants (the anger didn’t disappear for long) Dave pressed the battle paddle into my chest, restricting my movement.
“Don’t be hasty kidder, all you will do is upset Emily and you don’t need that John, not with all the other shit going on around here. Have a quiet word with the randy little sod when it’s just the two of you, when nobody else is around. That’ll do the trick,” Dave advised.
“Wise words and good advice. Surprising really coming from a man that thinks his best defence against the undead is a giant plastic spoon,” Butty interjected, shaking his head in disapproval.
“Just you wait Ace, I’ll show you how effective the battle paddle can be, just you wait,” Dave replied defiantly, lighting another cigarette and throwing a smoke to my brother who gladly accepted.
Then Jonathon and Emily entered the room. I quickly and without thought of consequence, grabbed the battle paddle from Dave whilst he was distracted with his cigarette and repeatedly smashed it into Jonathon’s face. Emily screamed as my relentless attack continued and blood and teeth flew from the boy’s mouth. So enraged was I with Jonathon for spending the night cuddled up to my daughter without his trousers that I couldn’t stop my attack and it took both Dave and Butty to pull me away from him. By this point though it was too late and Jonathon was dead.
Or that’s what played out in my head when I laid eyes on the little shit. If it wasn’t for Dave’s out of character words of wisdom my rage fuelled daydream could have become a reality. It’s a good job I had heeded Dave’s words because Jonathon entered the room wearing cargo pants, my brother’s cargo pants to be exact.
“Morning all. Hey Dad, what do you think of Uncle Butty’s anti zombie armour? Pretty cool isn’t it? I helped him design it. Wearing Jonathon’s skinny jeans was my idea. I figured that if we don’t wear loose clothing it gives the zombies less to grab. Jonathon agreed to let Uncle Butty use them for the ciggy run in exchange for a pair of cargo pants. Next chance we get, I think we all need to get some tight jeans, maybe even leggings,” Emily said.
I turned to my brother who was smiling at me whilst offering a look that confirmed my suspicions. The bastard had been winding me up. Again! He hadn’t taken the jeans from Jonathon whilst he was sleeping at all. Jonathon had willingly given them to him. Butty knew what my reaction would be and he was hoping to see me lose my shit and go ape on the boy. Thank god I didn’t but now I was riddled with guilt following my hellish fantasy where I pummelled his face into a pulp with the battle paddle.
“Gutted lar, now I can’t call you skinny jeans anymore. I’ll just have to stick with Scrappy Do instead and if I were you I’d fill your belly with Scooby snacks now as you’ve got a busy morning ahead of you fortifying Diant Towers. John will show you and Emily what needs doing, as soon as the colour returns to his face that is. Come on then Butty lad let’s get a move on. There’s ciggies waiting to be looted and I’ll be fucking pissed if we’re late to the party and there’s nothing left. Knowing my luck the only brand remaining will be Silk Cut. Honestly, why anyone who smokes would choose Silk fucking Cut as their brand beggars belief. You might as well walk around sucking air. Actually you’d probably get a better toke sucking the toxic polluted air around here than you would from pulling on one of those lame arse tabs. The type of people that smoke Silk Cut are the type of people that smoke because they think it makes them look cool. Scene smokers that don’t know the meaning of the word dedicati
on. Not like me Ace, I’m in it for the long haul. Right then, I’ll go start up the Thunderbird,” Dave said, finishing his rant and leaving the room.
“He really takes his smoking seriously doesn’t he?” Butty asked me, to which I nodded in response, “Emily look after your Dad for me, we’ll be back soon I promise.”
Butty hugged Emily before slowly walking out of the room like a robotic John Wayne.
In all honestly, I held a real concern that this was going to be the last time I would see Dave and my brother but nothing I could say would stop them from making their little shopping trip. Captain Cocksure and Sir Smokes-a-Lot would not have even considered it as a possibility but the reality was they were taking a trip into the unknown. I hoped to God they knew what they were doing.
Irregular Urban Survivors
Tony began to gasp, his parched throat jolting him into consciousness. Struggling to swallow, he desperately attempted to lubricate his throat with saliva. A task that was proving increasingly difficult to do as the cold winter air filled his mouth. Lifting his head from the drop down tray, he opened his eyes to see blue sky through the broken carbon fibre and metal frame of the Boeing 737, the cool morning air responsible for his dehydration.
He quickly lowered his head, averting his eyes from the bright blue sky. Having been unconscious for almost twenty four hours, he struggled to focus and chose to concentrate his gaze on the floor of the aeroplane.
With vision steadying, he noticed a small bottle of orange juice resting against his right foot. Reaching down he grabbed at the bottle of juice, desperate to quench his thirst and coat his throat in much needed fluid. In his haste he lunged forward with speed but his seatbelt was fastened tight, forcing the strap to dig deep into his waist. The pain made his right leg jolt and he watched as the orange juice, now free from his foot, rolled along the floor before finally resting in the palm of a cold pale blue hand which reached out from underneath the seat in front.
Tony knew who the hand belonged to. He recognised the Rolex wrapped around its wrist. The watch was a fake of course and he knew it to be so. Reality TV stars do not earn enough to afford an original Rolex Oyster Perpetual Datejust. The pale frozen hand belonged to Michael Wood or ‘Mikey’ as he was known to fans of the new hit reality show ‘Famous for 15 Minutes’, where contestants try to outdo each other with acts of extreme stupidity to win votes from the public and a cash prize of £25,000. Mikey had won the show by bathing naked in a bath filled with live eels whilst singing ‘When Will I Be Famous’ by Bros repeatedly for twelve hours. Tony was aware of the show as it was difficult to escape the constant barrage of television, radio, magazine and social media buzz surrounding the series. Every time he turned on his television, listened to his radio or logged on to Twitter and Facebook, everyone would be talking about the ‘Wild and Crazy’ antics the contestants were prepared to do to win the show, the money and the fame that came with it. Tony, unlike a large proportion of the British population, had never subjected himself to viewing it. Big Brother, Tool Academy, The Bachelor, Famous for 15 Minutes.. They were all the same to him and they served the same purpose - to dumb down the British population, acting as nothing more than a distraction from the economic and social unrest that had engulfed the country in recent years.
Tony had been quite proud that he didn’t know the names of any of the ‘Famous for 15 Minutes’ contestants or indeed what they looked like. That however, had all changed a day earlier at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport, when Mikey had made his presence known to everyone with his appalling behaviour. He had screamed at the attendants in the departure lounge for not allowing him to fast track his way onto the flight before everyone else. Rants of “Don’t you know who I am?” and “I’m Michael ‘Mikey’ Wood, winner of ‘Famous for 15 minutes’, I’ll have you fired for this!” had echoed through the departure lounge. His arrogant diva like behaviour continued on the plane where his demands to be moved to a better seat with more leg room had fallen on deaf ears with the air stewards. Obviously this ‘celebrity’ had never flown with a budget airline before.
Tony was familiar with this type of behaviour. As the frontman with British rockers Terrorvision and Laika Dog, Tony Wright had been confronted with more than his fair share of wannabes over the years. Back in the mid-1990s, Tony was a regular on TV music panel show ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ and would often find himself in the company of so called celebrities, full of deluded self-importance and inexcusable rudeness. It was to his annoyance that he still found himself surrounded by these people and had often thought it must be something about him, something that attracts the talentless and fame hungry. Though he had often wished it, this was the first time that one of them had actually died on him.
Tony unclipped his seatbelt and reached to the floor, taking the bottle of orange juice that was resting in the hand of the dead reality TV star. Drinking greedily, he lined his throat with the cold, thirst quenching liquid. It felt good and for the first time since waking, he found his voice.
“What the fuck happened here?”
He pushed himself out of his seat and rose to his feet. Assessing the damage, he thought it nothing short of a miracle he was unharmed. The scene was gruesome, with mangled bodies, trays of airline meals, hand luggage and dispensed oxygen masks littering the fractured passenger cabin. He quickly began to shiver, as if his body had all of a sudden realised how cold and exposed it was. Looking for something to keep warm, he noticed a leopard print fake fur coat underneath the body of a dead air stewardess. She was a mess. Lying face down in the aisle, her left foot had twisted an almost full 180 degree turn and her right leg, having been sliced from foot to thigh, was opened up like a freshly gutted fish.
Tony tugged at the leopard print fake fur coat, pulling it from underneath the stewardess and in the process flipping her over onto her front. He recognised her as the stewardess that, on take-off, had had the unfortunate job of handling the difficult and petulant Michael ‘Mikey’ Wood and did so with a degree of expertise too. After several demands to be moved to another seat, the stewardess had been stern and strong when dealing with Mikey and she had done so repeatedly. That is until a rather loud and public tantrum from the reality TV star had forced her to lose her cool and threaten to remove his fake Rolex and shove it so far up his arse that he’d need a rectal exam whenever he wanted to know the time. A threat that was met with a round of applause from the passengers and that was finally enough to shut him up.
Like everyone else, Tony had overheard the angry exchange and admired her greatly for standing up to the wannabe celebrity. Now he was looking down at her bloodied and bruised lifeless face. He needed to get off the plane.
Tony walked down the aisle towards the front of the plane. He pulled hard on the passenger door handle but it would not open. The crash had damaged the door’s inflatable seal used to lock in cabin pressure. A team of World’s Strongest Man contestants would not be able to open it with the seal still in place.
“Help me.”
Tony turned his attention from the door and looked back along the aisle to see where the plea for help had come from.
“Help me, please.”
He looked to the centre left of the aeroplane where a heap of deceased passengers lay piled up on top of each other in the seating area directly over the wing. He quickly walked along the aisle and examined the bodies. At the very bottom, between a disfigured arm and a torn foot, was a heavily bruised mouth and it spoke to him.
“Don’t leave me please.”
He began to quickly remove body from body, lowering the deathly mound and reducing the pressure of weight on the man at the bottom. Finally free, the man shakily rose to his feet, revealing his heavily bruised and bloodied face. Tony found a small carton of water at his feet, peeled back the silver foiled lid and poured it into the man’s mouth.
“Thank you,” the man said gratefully as the cool liquid lubricated his dry throat.
“Are you ok? I thought I was the only on
e alive on this plane. My name’s Tony,” he asked.
“Mike. Man it hurts to talk,” Mike said, wincing in pain when touching his face.
“Well you’ve suffered severe bruising to your face, I’m surprised you can talk at all,” Tony said.
“Thanks for pulling me out of there. I thought I was going to die with those people on top of me. What do you think happened? Do you remember anything about the crash?” Mike asked.
“I have no idea what happened. The last thing I remember is taking off from Liverpool, some dick sat in front of me mouthing off demanding to be moved seats, the stewardess putting him in his place and then nothing. I don’t remember a thing after that. I must have blacked out and I came around a few minutes ago. What about you, do you remember anything?” Tony asked.
“Well, I remember the take-off the same as you and I remember the man complaining. I’d seen him on TV making a tit out of himself a few weeks back. I suppose he thought he was some kind of big shot screaming to be moved seats. Probably thought with the plane being nearly empty he could sit wherever he wanted. To be honest, I’ve seen people sit wherever they want on these budget airlines before, it happens all the time but I guess he yelled at the wrong stewardess. Then I remember looking out of the window, hoping to see my house as we flew over it when the plane suddenly dropped in altitude and oxygen masks came down. People screamed and something seemed to be happening down at the front of the plane. What it was I don’t know but I saw one of the air stewards covered in blood and passengers began to leave their seats, heading towards the back in a panic. Then that was it. I first woke a few hours ago and I have been drifting in and out of sleep until I opened my eyes to see you pulling on the door over there. Lucky for me I woke when I did eh?” Mike said.
The Death in a Northern Town Trilogy (Books 1-3): Welcome To Dead Town Page 20
