The Mammoth Book of Zombies

by Stephen Jones

  "You loved your childhood, didn't you?" Nicci said. I nodded. But I remembered it with sadness as well as pleasure. Even sitting there in the car with Nicci was tinged with sadness. I was hoping, of course, that the weekend would do something about that.

  I wasn't planning to go and look for the Crucian Pit until later, perhaps that evening while it was still light. First I just wanted to drive around the city and outskirts looking for anything that would take me back to what it was like then. This kind of stuff, of course, doesn't mean a great deal to someone who wasn't there, but Nicci had insisted she wanted to come.

  We drove past the railway depot where I used to go clambering about in old rolling stock and sneaking into the sheds to look at the locomotives. Other kids took down numbers but I just liked being around the place, the smells of diesel and grease, the black-faced engineers working down the inspection pits, the crunch of the chippings between the tracks. Anyone who's ever looked twice at a train will know what I mean. There's romance in railway sheds. We parked for a minute or two and Nicci sat on the bonnet of the car swinging her legs while I went and peered over the fence which I had scaled as a child. I recognized the corner of a shed, the pattern of the tracks going into the sidings. For all I knew they could have been the same old diesels standing idle beside the main line.

  We drove on and stopped outside my old school and watched boys playing cricket in front of the pavilion. "A bit posh, isn't it?" Nicci said with a heavy frown. "You weren't by any chance an over-privileged little git, were you?"

  I smiled at her and she raised her eyebrows a fraction just like Kathy would have done. Just occasionally she reminded me of Kathy. Who knows, maybe you do spend your whole life looking for one person, someone you were shown a photograph of before you were born, and that's why all your partners look the same. Nicci was funnier than Kathy though and as far as I was concerned they were unalike, apart from the odd expression - the eyebrows, stuff like that.

  "I haven't upset you, have I?" she said, worried.

  "No, of course not. Sorry, I was miles away. It's seeing the old school. I loved it."

  I tried not to mention Kathy. There's nothing worse than going on about your old girlfriend to your current partner. She pretends not to care but she does. Who wouldn't?

  I felt Nicci's hand on the back of my neck and turned to smile at her. I had to stop thinking about Kathy. She was in the past. They say your first love leaves an indelible impression and they could be right. But this trip was meant to be about forgetting Kathy.

  Nicci and I drove away from the school but I was still thinking about her. Ten years ago I didn't drive and if Kathy and I went anywhere out of town we had to use bikes or go by train. We had a few picnics in outlying parks, an unforgettable day in the dunes at Formby, a couple of visits to the Crucian Pit.

  I first came into contact with Kathy when we were both about fifteen. Out of the girls who caught my bus to school and sat on the top deck she was the one I fancied the most. I probably fancied them all - even those you could never own up to fancying because they were too fat or had greasy hair - but she was the only one who made my heart beat faster and my mouth go dry. It was largely for her benefit that I ostentatiously folded back the huge pages of the New Musical Express each week, thinking it would make me look cool. I made sure the knot of my tie never reached my neck and almost certainly I would have had my blazer collar turned up. For all the trouble I took to look good I didn't have the bottle to speak to her and ask her out, so I wrote a note and left it on her seat one morning. It said something like, "Would you like to go to a gig? I can get tickets."

  When she got on, her just-washed fair hair shone in the spring sunlight and she looked as gorgeous as ever. She might have only been fifteen; she was a woman to me, deeply mysterious and alluring, her maroon and blue uniform concealing a body I had wild fantasies about every night. She picked the note up off the seat before she sat down and read it. Instead of looking round immediately she looked out of the window. When she did look round, her eyes giving nothing away, she saw me watching her and that's when our eyes met for the first time. Her friends got on at the next stop and I spent the rest of the journey in an agony of waiting. When they got up in a group to go Kathy avoided looking at me and one of her friends passed me a folded note. The friend even gave me a tiny smile.

  It was a very encouraging rejection. Not because she indicated she might ever change her mind but because of the nice tone in which it was written. She hadn't used the opportunity to take the piss, as some girls would have done. She'd been nice about it. Thank you very much, but no thank you. "I think I ought to point out," she wrote "that I am already going out with someone, and have been for the last two months." I pictured him instantly - taller and darker than me with clear skin and a deeper voice. He would live in one of the posh southern suburbs and would be able to afford to take her out anywhere whenever she wanted. He was a total bastard, obviously: didn't have to revise for exams, never suffered from respiratory diseases, probably even smoked joints and tried on Nazi uniforms at home in front of his mirror.

  It almost didn't matter that she'd said no because now I had a scrap of paper with her handwriting on. I carried it with me for months, taking it out in school assembly to examine every curve of her signature and feel the underside of the paper where the ballpoint had pressed through, the ballpoint that she'd held in her hand. A kid in my class called Andrew Rosemarine told me there was nothing nobler than unrequited love. I tried hard to believe in this for a few weeks.

  I still got the same bus to school and so did Kathy but I made less of an effort. I even started getting Angling Times instead of the NME. Maybe it was exactly that lack of effort which swung it in the end because when we happened both to be at the same party one Saturday night late in the summer it was Kathy who came out into the garden to look for me and we sort of took it from there. I never asked her about the other boyfriend in case I found out she'd just made him up to have an excuse to turn me down.

  Nicci and I stopped for some fish and chips at Jon's Fish Bar. "I know," she said. "You used to nick 50p out of your mum's purse and use l0p of it to get the bus, then you'd spend 40p on a bag of chips which you'd eat walking home. Then you wouldn't want your tea but you wouldn't be able to explain why and you always ended up feeling guilty so it wasn't really worth it."

  "Yes," I said, "but you left out the bit about discovering a murdered woman on the way home and not being able to report it because then it would come out about nicking the money to get chips." We were crossing the road and already I could smell the chips. "No. Whenever we went out in the evening and were coming back along this road I'd drop heavy hints about getting some fish and chips, and if my dad was in a good mood we'd stop. He'd park exactly where I've parked in that side street and I'd cross the road to get them just like we're doing now."

  It wasn't the same man in Jon's but the chips tasted the same.

  We drove further south and soon we were sitting in the car outside the house where I'd been brought up. "It's so upsetting," I said, looking at the huge hole dug in the front garden presumably for foundations to be laid so they could build an extension. I desperately wanted to knock on the door and ask if I could have a look round. But at the same time I knew it wasn't a good idea. Sometimes it is just best to keep things as you remember them.

  "Shall we go?" Nicci said, picking up on my mood.

  I turned in my seat to look at her and reached out for her hands. I held them tightly. "I mustn't lose you," I said, and thought: like I lost Kathy.

  Ten minutes later we were driving south out of town towards the airport. The Crucian Pit was right next to the airport, very close to the main runway. Or it had been in the old days. I didn't know if it would still be there, but I hoped so. It was important I found it.

  "When I've had a look at the Crucian Pit we'll find somewhere to stay," I said as I calmly negotiated the double roundabout which I remembered so clearly. Ten years ago and more I'd made
this trip on my push-bike, tackle box strapped on the little luggage rack, rod bag slung over my back. By this stage I'd be knackered and longing for the peace of the poolside, the sun beating down on the lily pads, the surprisingly tough little crucian carp throwing themselves at my bread punch.

  Getting there had always been a struggle but with paradise at the end of it all.

  "Do you want to wait in the car, Nicci?" I asked her. "I won't be long." She looked at me and smiled and nodded.

  "Don't be nervous," she said. "I'm sure it'll still be there. I'll wait here for you."

  I wanted to tell her I loved her but for some reason felt shy or too much in awe of her. She could tell I wanted to go up there by myself and she didn't mind. Even if she did mind she wasn't going to show it because she knew how important this was to me. Maybe in that moment she seemed too good to be true. I nearly said it but instead left it to my eyes to tell her what I felt.

  I walked away from the car, which I'd had to park fifty yards down a narrow track off the main road which itself was too dangerous to park on at that point because of the tunnel - about a hundred yards from the track the main road went into the tunnel under the end of the main runway. I looked back at the car and could see the back of Nicci's head. For some reason I whispered, "I love you."

  I crossed the main road and started to climb up the embankment that led to the thick copse that in the old days had concealed the Crucian Pit.

  I heard a plane take off but didn't look up. My breathing became quicker and shallower as I climbed and it wasn't just the effort involved. Ten years ago, for a number of reasons, the Crucian Pit had been one of the most important places in my life, probably the most important.

  I reached the top of the slope and stopped to catch my breath. I looked back down at the road. Cars sped past and were swallowed by the tunnel. I could see the entrance to the little track down which I'd parked the Citroen but the car was out of sight.

  One change I had noticed on my way up the embankment was that a mesh fence had been erected along the ridge at head height, replacing an old wooden fence which in my day had been broken in various places. This was a bad sign. I parted the foliage of a young tree to get a look through the fence. My heart sank. The flat land beyond had been cleared. What before had been a virtual forest of entangled vines and brambles and shrubs was now as clear as the runways beyond. I tried to look to the left to see if any vegetation remained but the fence prevented me. I backed away and began picking my way along the top of the slope between trees and overgrown hawthorn hedge. I was oblivious to the sharp little thorns that caught my hands. Already I'd gone beyond the point at which in the past I had climbed through a hole in the wooden fence and started to make my way past a mysterious group of outbuildings to the pit. I was fast losing hope and beginning to curse the authorities for filling in the pit when I noticed a tall hedge on the other side of the fence that met the wire at right angles. I pushed aside branches and tangles of creeper to get a look beyond the fence. There was a small paddock. I didn't remember this, but then I had never needed to come this far along the ridge. On the far side of the paddock was another high hedge. I needed to discover what lay beyond that.

  I looked at my watch. I'd been gone ten minutes. I didn't want to leave Nicci waiting too long, but she had seemed to understand what was going on. From beyond the trees I heard the roar of a jet as it accelerated for take-off. I heard it come screaming down the runway and knew exactly when its wheels had left the tarmac. The plane appeared above the trees and I watched it climb with my heart in my mouth.

  The fence was high but I was agile and very light. I was over in seconds. The paddock was as quiet as the grave. No planes were taking off or landing. The road seemed to have become distant as well. A light breeze touched my face and whispered through the tops of the trees. A hornet buzzed somewhere behind me and I heard the distinct chirrup of a grasshopper.

  I hoped Nicci was all right. The car now seemed a long way away as I approached the hedge on the far side of the paddock. It was thick but I worked my way through it and over a low wire fence. I found a rough path and followed it through a stand of trees until I began to recognize landmarks - a fallen log, a sleek bed of nettles

  - and I knew I was back on familiar ground.

  I smelt the Crucian Pit before it came into view. I felt enormous relief that it was still there. I walked another fifty yards until I could see it before me, not smaller than I remembered it - as I had feared it might be, if I were to find it at all - but slightly bigger if anything. I shivered at the sight of it, feeling a mixture of pleasure and unease. Over on the runway a jet began its take-off run but I looked down at the surface of the pit. There were lily pads still covering the surface at the eastern end. Lose a crucian in them and you wouldn't ever get it out.

  I'd fished the pit maybe twenty times in all, in a variety of swims, and it was easily the best still water I'd ever visited. If it was stocked with any fish other than crucian carp I'd never caught any. And in all my visits I never saw another angler. I never knew if I was permitted to fish there, though I doubted it because of the difficulty in finding the place, and because there was never anyone else about. The man who had told me about it and given me vague directions

  - flame-haired Jim, our window cleaner - claimed to have fished there for a couple of seasons and never seen a soul. He stopped going because the cycle ride got too much for him. I was younger and fitter and perhaps fonder of crucians than Jim, who later developed an obsession with specimen mirror and leather carp.

  The first day I fished there is as clear in my mind as the last. I broke through the last line of bushes and was profoundly shocked by this sudden expanse of water hidden away in between semi-urban farmland and the airport. Nothing Jim had told me had prepared me for the reality. It was an angler's paradise, nothing less, with its deep green unpolluted water and hosts of lily pads. The bank undulated as it made its way slowly around the water so that there were small promontories and inlets, ideal for getting your bait out among the feeding crucians and steering the exhausted fish into shallow water to land it. There were bulrushes, reeds and weeping willows, and at the far end nearest the airport fences an explosion of yellow gorse.

  I completed a circuit of the pit before choosing a swim. Often a previous angler's debris will tell you where there has at least been activity, but there was no sign of anybody having been here at all. Jim, obviously, was not one to give anglers a bad name by leaving old nylon line and maggot dumps lying around. I still didn't know for sure that there were fish to be caught, though I had Jim's word and a growing sense of my own that the pit was teeming with life. I chose a swim where the ground was not too muddy for my basket and I tackled up with nervous fingers. Twice I dropped a size 20 hook in the grass at my feet and had to get down on hands and knees to find it rather than allow it to defile the perfection of the place. I wanted to leave it exactly as I had found it.

  I used my favourite float - an orange-tipped quill - with two lead shot pinched on to the line half way up from the hook. I elected to fish without any cocking shot directly under the float, so that if a crucian took the bait on the way down I'd know because the float would continue to lie flat on the surface instead of cocking. This method of presentation had already proved irresistible to crucians and rudd in one of my local ponds that summer. I cast out no more than twenty feet and waited for the float to cock, which it didn't. I imagined the shot caught up with the float and the bread fifty yards away having flown off the hook. But just in case, I struck lightly upwards and to the left and immediately bent into a fighting crucian. The quick, edgy runs and strong tugs would have betrayed the species even without prior knowledge. I landed it in half a minute without a net and admired its beautiful golden flanks.

  That was the first of at least twenty five crucians caught in three hours. I got lightly sunburned. I fished until about eight when the colours in the sky were turning heavier and the landing jets flashed vivid messages across t
he water. Prior to packing up I pulled my keepnet out of the water and using the pocket camera I always kept in the basket took a perfect little picture before returning my finest catch to the water.

  Not all my memories of the Crucian Pit were recorded in this way however. I looked at my watch and thought about Nicci waiting in the car. Would she be getting pissed off? I decided not. She had seemed happy to let me do this on my own. I started to walk around the pit. Much of the vegetation that had graced the shallows was there again ten years later, though the willows and other trees that had stood by the edge of the water were no longer around. I walked past the bulrushes and round the far end by the gorse bushes until I reached the trees on the north side of the pit.

  After I'd gone on endlessly about the Crucian Pit to Kathy she had said she wanted to come, so on a scorching afternoon in August I left my tackle at home and took Kathy instead. She fell in love with it at first sight and I swore her to secrecy.

  "It can be our secret place," I said. "Whatever happens to us in the future, we can come back here and as good as be with each other." She gave me a sad look. We both knew the summer was drawing to a close and not only were we at the transition between school and university - which had threatened to split us up -but Kathy's father had accepted a twelve-month lecturing post at Phillips Academy, Massachusetts. As far as everyone except Kathy and I were concerned, she was going too, along with the rest of the family. I naturally hoped she would stay. Kathy herself was still undecided. "I know what I want," she said. "But I know what I should do."

  I took her hand and we wandered round to the trees on the north side. There were enough trees to shield us from the runway - though airport ground staff rarely happened to come out this far - and from the farmland on the other side. But in any case, the only people I ever saw while I was at the Crucian Pit were the faces at the windows of planes taking off and landing. Them and Kathy, on the three occasions she came there with me.