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

by Peter Mckeirnon

  “Here you go you pair of bastards,” he said, ripping the note in two and giving us half each, “Don’t spend it all at once.”

  Then we heard more groaning, only this time the sound was fuller and louder. Out of the shadows at the far end of the car park shuffled seven zombies.

  “I’m sure you need bloody glasses!” Butty yelled at me before running at the lead zombie, smashing it hard in the forehead with his crowbar.

  Before the zombie had hit the ground another closed in on my brother, leaning in to chomp on his neck. Butty reached out with his porno magazine covered forearm and placed it in the deader’s mouth.

  With the zombie chewing on the heavily laminated copy of ‘Juicy Whoppers’, Butty hammered his crowbar repeatedly into the top of his attackers head.

  “Some help would be appreciated boys!” he yelled.

  With two zombies down there were still five to contend with and they were a rotting assembly of one female and four males. All wearing business suits.

  I passed Dave his battle paddle. He ran forward a few steps then launched the giant mayonnaise stirring instrument through the air towards the oncoming undead. What a shot it was or as Dave so elegantly put it… “His fucking head came off!”

  Like a javelin athlete of Olympic ability (only with sunglasses on and tab hanging out of his mouth), Dave had propelled his battle paddle towards the oncoming gathering of flesh eaters with astounding precision (or sheer luck as I suspected). The unconventional weapon hit one of the male zombies in the neck, slicing through tissue and bone removing its rotting head clean from its body. The fire damaged paddle was now jagged and spear like in its appearance and it cut through the zombie like a knife through butter.

  “Fluke!” Butty shouted, drilling his crowbar into the head of another approaching zombie.

  Three zombies to go and as I had so far stood by and watched Dave and Butty dispose of the advancing undead, the pressure was building for me to join in and do my bit for the team. With cricket bat in hand I joined the zombie bashing party and pelted the woman in the face as hard as I could. Broken teeth and dark thickening blood flew through the air as the thwack from the bat broke her jaw which now hung loosely, barely attached to her face. A cold shiver ran down my spine and the impact of the blow reverberated through my body.

  I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll say it again but killing zombies, for me, does not come easy. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, the retching motion that follows and despair that swallows me upon killing the undead has not eased over the past few days. Maybe it’s just me as the company I’m keeping seems to be enjoying it!

  The zombie business woman shuffled towards me, her jaw swinging below her bloodied nose; the threads of tissue and skin holding it in place loosened more with every step. I swung the bat once more with as much strength as I could muster and watched as her head cracked open on impact and her jaw broke away from her mouth.

  Then I puked and in case any of you were wondering, spam looks almost the same coming out as it does going in!

  By the time I had finished vomiting I looked up to see Butty and Dave standing victorious over the two remaining zombies puffing their chests out and proudly displaying their killing weapons like a pair of apocalyptic peacocks.

  “You’re still struggling with this zombie killing aren’t you ace?” Dave rightly observed.

  “I have told you before little brother, they are not people anymore. Nothing of what made them human remains. They feel nothing and desire only to feed, you need to remember that John,” Butty barked, pointing his finger at me like a school teacher on a power trip.

  “Oh I remember alright but it’s easier said than done when you’re faced with the prospect of twatting a dead person in the face with a cricket bat. I wouldn’t find it so difficult if they didn’t look like us,” I explained.

  “You’ll get over it, you’re gonna have to if we’re going to find Emily because between now and when we find her, and we will find her, there’s going to be a hell of a lot more dead people to kill,” Butty replied.

  “That’s right kidda and look on the bright side, in a few days these dead bastards won’t look as fresh as they do now. They will look barely human at all apart from the clothes on their backs. I reckon you’ll find it a lot easier in a few days,” Dave confidently informed.

  I wasn’t so sure.

  “Now then which one will it be?” Butty said, referring to the many parked cars that surrounded us.

  He lent over a fallen zombie and began searching through his pockets before retrieving a set of car keys. He pressed the key fob and the lights flashed and doors unlocked on a large top of the range Land Rover, very similar to the vehicle Dave had dismissed outside the Mayonnaise factory in favour of the Ford Thunderbird. It wasn’t until Butty and I were inside the Land Rover that we realised Dave had not followed and was instead circling an old brown Volvo Estate like it was a Jaguar F-Type.

  Dave reached into his pocket, retrieved a 2 pence piece and placed it into the lock of the Volvo’s door, opening it with very little struggle. Once inside he found a spare set of keys in the glove compartment and revved the engine joyfully a few times before pulling up in front of us, winding down his window.

  “If you think I’m travelling in that thing when there’s vintage wheels like this classic Volvo available, you can think again. They don’t make them like this anymore lar. It might be a bit boxy but it’s sturdy and well built, great MPG and of course the icing on the cake, it has a fucking tape player! Also, look what I found in the glove compartment…” Dave said excitedly, lifting his hands in the air to reveal he was wearing brown leather driving gloves.

  “How cool do I look wearing these bad boys? In fact, there’s no need to respond because I already know the answer. I feel like James fucking Bond, only cool 1980s Roger Moore James Bond, not your pouting, trunk wearing, moody arse Daniel Craig James Bond. Roger’s eyebrows alone have more acting talent than Danny Craig has in his entire body. Also look at this. Whoever this car belongs to had some great taste in music. I was gonna blast out some Ultravox but I’ve got the Best of Tom Jones here. What a perfect soundtrack for our mission to find Emily,” he continued.

  Dave slotted a cassette into the Volvo’s tape player and Kiss by Tom Jones began to play. He sparked up a cigarette and said…

  “The name’s Dave, 80s Dave. License to be Ace!”

  Then he drove out of the car park.

  Drink Till They Die

  “Tony? The Karaoke is fired up and I thought we could maybe have a go at singing a duet. Me and little Sophie have been singing all night and we don’t want you to miss out on the fun! Maybe a bit of ‘Don’t Go breaking My Heart’ by Elton John and Kiki Dee. Don’t worry I don’t mind being Kiki but I’ll have to borrow that leopard print fur coat of yours to get into character. If you don’t fancy singing that one we could always go for a bit of ‘Real Dead Ringer For Love’ by Meatloaf and Cher. You can be Cher though as I reckon you’ve got better legs than me. Tony? Are you still sleeping? You’ve been gone for hours mate. Tony?”

  It was early morning and Nick had not seen Tony since the previous evening when the Terrorvision front man had gone to find an empty apartment to rest in. After surviving a plane crash and being attacked by zombies he was beat but Nick was missing his new friend and wanted somebody to share a drink with.

  Nick walked out on to the hallway – His long black hair hanging in front of his face and a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. He turned and looked through the open door at Sophie. She was dancing and singing along with microphone in hand, warbling to a sickly sweet pop song. On the couch was baby Gaby, laughing hysterically at her big sister’s antics. Nick smiled and considered how resilient children can be. A little over two days had passed since their father had been eaten alive by zombie ducks and geese and their mother, from what Sophie had told him, was very sick and he held no doubt that she too would now be dead. Yet there was Sophie, danc
ing and singing like she hadn’t a care in the world. Though he had only known them a short time, a strong bond had formed and he deeply cared for the children. They were his only light in a world filled with darkness. Apart from his new apocalypse running buddy, Tony, of course.

  He walked down the stairwell of Churchill Mansions to the hallway below and entered through the open doorway of the closest apartment. He knew this home well. Before the outbreak it had belonged to Billy, an old man and good friend of Nick’s grandmother but he knew him better as Trust No One, founding member of Aliens of Runcorn Spotters Elite or A.R.S.E. as it was better known.

  An ex-military man, Trust No One was obsessed with aliens and claimed to have been abducted and experimented on many times, referring to a scar on his lower abdomen to where they had removed and then later replaced all of his internal organs. As a child Nick was fascinated by this story and believed every word. That is until he had his appendix removed aged thirteen and received a scar exactly the same. Still, he enjoyed the old man’s company and loved nothing more than to listen to crazy tales about alien life forms, the imminent invasion of our planet and the plans that he and other A.R.S.E members had in place for the end of the world. It pained Nick to have had to kill him. But like the rest of the apartment block, including his beloved Grandmother, he had become the undead and every last one had to die in order for him to secure the building.

  Just as he was moving to leave the apartment, droplets of glistening blood on the carpet leading to the living room window caught his eye.

  The closer he got to the blood the more of it he saw. Red droplets turned into a pool of sticky plasma soaked into the old dirty carpet. It was fresh and there was more dripping down the wall below the window. He ran to the window and opened it quickly looking to the ground below.

  Amongst the many zombie corpses surrounding the apartment block lay Tony; his body twisted and bloodied from the fall.

  Nick strained his tired eyes and looked closely at the body. Tony had been ripped open across his stomach, a wound that did not look to have been caused by the fall. He quickly turned away from the window and looked again to the blood stains in the apartment. He hadn’t noticed at first but there were bloodied footprints imprinted in the carpet leading to the apartment door.

  He wasn’t alone.

  “Fuck!” Nick exclaimed before running out of the doorway and up the stairwell to his apartment.

  When he arrived at his apartment door, the same sickly pop song could be heard from his karaoke machine only it wasn’t Sophie that was singing. It was a deep dull voice that sounded like it belonged to a man of some stature. He tightened his grip on his bottle of Jack Daniels and forcefully opened the door, bursting into his apartment.

  There he saw in front of him a large heavy set man singing into a microphone held closely to his mouth. His other arm was wrapped around Sophie tightly with his hand smothering her petrified face. On the couch sat on old thin women with short grey hair and skin like cracked leather. In one arm she cradled a sleeping Gaby and in her other she held a decapitated hand which she was bringing down slowly towards the infant’s face.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Nick questioned sharply.

  “So nice of you to join us. I was wandering how long it would take for you to realise that you were not alone in this building. My name is Blanche, I live in apartment thirteen and that handsome fine specimen of a man over there is my son, Walter. I guess you were not as thorough as you thought when you secured the building huh? I was an acquaintance of your Grandmother’s. I wouldn’t go as far as to say we were friends because if truth be told I disliked the old bitch. She was always so, nice to everyone, I just couldn’t stand to be around her. She loved you though and the bitch talked about you all the time. She was always telling everyone how kind you are and how you always made time to visit and look after her. Deluded old fool but I digress… You’re arrival here is perfect. You can watch as I finally get to prove my theory,” she said.

  “And what theory is that? That you’re both a pair of crazy bastards that killed my friend?” Nick snarled.

  “My theory, you drunken piece of shit, is the younger you are when you become infected, the quicker it takes for you to turn into a zombie. Which means the older you are, the longer it will take for you to die. Take a seat whilst I show you…” she said, moving the decapitated hand closer to Gaby’s face.

  “You touch her and I swear to God I’m going to fuck you up!” Nick yelled, shaking with anger.

  “What are these girls to you anyway? They are not yours, you are not their father. Walter and I watched as you saved them from the ducks outside but why? Why would you risk your life to save theirs? To save your soul perhaps? Because you’ve led a worthless life, wasted on drink and the occasional money begging visit to your granny to see you through to your next government hand out? Look at the state of you. You’re nothing but a chancer, a loser with nobody to love and nobody left to love you. We’ve been watching you since the outbreak Nick. The only person you had in the world turned into a zombie and you killed her. You’re scum and these girls will be better dead than living with you!” Blanche responded, her thin lips stretching into an evil smile.

  “Wrong!” Nick replied purposefully.

  Walter pushed Sophie to the ground and started to move towards Nick with determination, growling with his mouth wide open as his moved. Nick flipped the Jack Daniels bottle so that he was holding the base then removing its lid he ran at Walter, thrusting the neck of the liquor bottle down into the big guy’s throat.

  “My boy! What have you done to my boy?” Blanche screamed, rising to her feet with Gaby in her embrace.

  Walter had fallen to his knees. With his neck tilted back he clawed at his mouth trying desperately to remove the bottle from his throat, coughing and spluttering Jack Daniels as he drowned from the constant liquid pouring into his mouth.

  Using the palm of his hand Nick pushed hard on the base of the bottle, driving it deeper into Walter’s throat. He pushed it so deep that the outline of the bottle was visible through the skin of his neck.

  With his last breath Walter reached out to his mother before collapsing face down onto the floor. Consumed with despair Blanche screamed then brought the zombie hand inches from Gaby’s face, a dirty jagged finger nail ready to scrape across her forehead.

  Quickly Sophie wrapped her arms around Blanche’s thin, vain covered legs and bit deep into her calf. The old women shrieked in pain, releasing her grip on the mutilated zombie hand.

  Nick rushed towards Blanche and placing a hand around her dried out leathery neck he began to squeeze causing her cataract loaded eyes to bulge from the pressure.

  “Take your sister and go to the bedroom Sophie,” he instructed and she did so without question, “Now then, that theory of yours. Let’s put it to the test shall we?”

  He picked up the zombie limb with his free hand and dragged Blanche by her neck out onto the balcony of the apartment, pushing her against the railings, bending her upper body backwards over the edge of the building.

  “So the young turn quickly do they? Then you should be in for a long and painful transformation!” Nick snarled, scratching her face with a rotting finger from the mutilated hand.

  “It… was… me…” Blanche croaked.

  “What did you say?” Nick questioned, loosening his grip slightly so that she could speak.

  “Your… grandmother. I gave her the… infection. I gave it to all of them. I infected everyone. They all deserved it…” she rasped.

  Unable to control his anger Nick gripped her neck tightly and began to push, again bending her upper body backwards over the balcony railing.

  Crack!

  Her face contorted with pain as the frail bones in her back began to break.

  Crunch!

  The noise of her spine snapping only enraged Nick more and he pushed his hand deep into her throat, snapping her neck backwards, forcing her broken body over the balcony and dow
n to the road below.

  He moved away from the edge of the balcony and slowly walked back into the apartment, taking a moment to compose himself before entering the bedroom where Sophie sat nursing her sleeping sister.

  “I messed up. I thought I’d checked every apartment but I…” he started, struggling to find words.

  “Is your new friend dead? He is isn’t he?” Sophie asked,

  “Yes,” came Nick’s solemn reply.

  “I don’t like it here. Bad things happen. Teddy doesn’t like it either, he says he wants to leave,” she continued.

  “I don’t think I like it anymore either and if Teddy says he wants to leave then we leave. I’ll get a few things together, you look after your sister for me,” he smiled before leaving the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  Nick sat down heavily onto the couch and reflected on what had just happened. Killing that evil women and her son barely felt real but he was sure of one thing and that was they deserved it. What the evil old women was about to do to Gaby and the revelation that she had spread the zombie infection within Churchill Mansions was enough to justify his actions.

  He looked at the woman’s son lying dead in front of him. The big guy’s head lay in a pool of blood and alcohol and next to him the karaoke system which still played horrible pop music. The smell of bourbon filling the room made Nick very thirsty. He turned off the karaoke machine and entered the kitchen, taking another bottle of Jack Daniels from his well-stocked supplies.

  Opening the bottle and bringing it to his lips he heard the sound of Sophie talking in the bedroom, whispering to her baby sister. Moving the bottle away from his mouth he re-entered the living room and gently pressed his ear against the bedroom door.

  “We’ll be OK Gaby. Mummy and Daddy have gone to heaven but we’ve got Uncle Nick now. Uncle Nick is funny but he drinks too much. I think I’ll ask Teddy to talk to him and get him to stop. We don’t like it do we Teddy…”

  Nick took himself back out onto the balcony and lent against the railing with the bottle of liquor in his hands. The sound of groaning could be heard from the road and he looked down to see the twisted and torn body of Blanche on the ground below, her badly damaged head moving slowly, shifting from side to side.