Dead Beat

by Remy Porter

  Summer opened the passenger door. I hadn’t even noticed her leave the house. Her skin was pale and she looked like a ghost. There was blood all the way up her slender arms and the hatchet looked blood wet.

  ‘I couldn’t just leave them like that.’

  ‘What about the cat?’

  ‘Fuck the cat.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Lester watched the two of them drive away in their bright liveried police car. He didn’t necessarily think he’d see them again given the current issue with dead people walking the streets, and on reflection he wasn’t convinced he cared a whole heap either. In his experience of living rough on the street people always came and went, and there would always be new ones to take their place. A couple of quid bottle of the cheap stuff was Lester’s best friend anyway.

  Smacking his lips together, his tongue felt like an old bit of leather lolling around his gob. Possibly, it might be rotting in there. Every month some part of his body seemed more flayed around the edges. Sticking his tongue out in the mirror, it looked a nasty shade of purple. Purple was never a good colour, Lester thought.

  Standing in a room full of stinking policemen’s kit bags, it tickled him to think most of them would be shambling around out there on the streets like the worst kind of Jakie, the kind they used to throw in a van and a cell for opening their mouths and speaking their minds. He knew what it was like to be arrested for every offence the lawmen had ever thought up, and wait out the hours in the cupboard sized cells watching the shakes come on. When an honest man couldn’t piss on a war memorial, whilst necking a tinny and strumming ‘I am a walrus’ on a three stringed guitar you knew the world was fucked. Having a few dead bodies turn up in a pissed off mood was just the cherry on the top of a particularly fucked up cake.

  He really needed a drink!

  He started by fumbling through a few of the bags, but they all seemed the have the same useless police junk inside and not even the hint of a silver hip flask or a little whisky bottle. Did these people not drink at work anymore?

  He wandered into their office room with all the computers, all so dead and useless now. He needed to think, but one of the bodies started hitting a dirty palm on the thickened glass of one of the frosted windows.

  ‘Shut up you goon! Some of us have brains and are trying to think in here.’

  Lester paced around in tight circles muttering and repeating things to himself. He remembered there was nothing in the kitchen or he would have seen it already. The other rooms looked too empty and tidy. He knew he was missing something, something really obvious.

  That was it, Lester thought. The bastards go after the children as well.

  He started looking for a key, rustling through all the files and useless bits of paper that were in the pigeon holes on the wall. Soon it was all an untidy heap on the floor. Not a single key. Carrying on, Lester first ransacked a corner cupboard and then a shelving unit designed for external post.

  At last success; a small box drilled into place on the wall. He flipped open the cover and found rows of shiny silver and copper keys. He figured one of them must open a place where they stashed all the booze they snatched from the children. Lester had seen it many a time on the streets on the weekends. The bastards had nothing better to do than jump on poor kids just trying to have a few ales after a miserable week at school. Lester would always share his grog with them, well the ones who didn’t curse him and set him on fire when he slept anyway.

  Now which key? He read off some labels.

  ‘Front door, back door, electrical store, misc store, interview room, garage.’

  No reference to booze or kids.

  ‘Houston, we have a problem.’

  Standing, he kicked the paper pile in disgust.

  The garage. It’s got to be that garage.

  Eyeing the bodies again from the drying room window, he counted off five of the damn things. Not having the constant babble of the pig and his blonde pig assistant must have meant a few had lost interest. He liked his chances.

  Opening the back door a sneak he looked out. It smelled rank out there. Four of the bodies were being nicely distracted in the car park by the squawk of a large crow prancing on the roofs of cars. The other one was an old woman who was wandering off in a random diagonal, away from the station.

  Back into the drying room, he grabbed a large dragon light torch off its charger.

  Smart one Lester.

  Lester stepped out and paced quickly to the back door of the garage. He looked down at the lock and looked at the keys in his hand. Only then did he realise there were at least three other keys on the same key ring and they were all different shapes. He heard a flutter and squawk as the crow buggered off. Lester looked over his shoulder and saw more than one set of dead eyes looking his way.

  The first key went half way into the lock and then got stuck. It was clearly too big and Lester had to wrench it back out. Looking to the bodies again, he saw them closing fast. The next key stabbed at the lock and it wouldn’t go in at all.

  ‘Fuck you!’

  There were two dead young men ten metres away where the police cars parked. Their faces were purple all over. Escape back into the police station was cut off. To his left he heard a scratching, hissing sound which he knew must be one or more of those things dragging themselves down the alley next to the garage. He was getting surrounded.

  The third key. And it turned. Pushing the door, it opened it with a jolt. Lester shut it again in time to see a young, dead face leer up into the toughened, wire crossed glass and head butt it with a wet thud. Already the bodies at the front were beating on the roller shutter door at the far end of the garage. Lester stood there in the dark and tried to be quiet, but they knew he was in there and wouldn’t shut up.

  ‘Fuck you all! Now where’s that booze?’

  He went into the dusty murk, instantly tipping over a pedal cycle balanced against at least a dozen more. They clattered over like dominoes and Lester reached forward and felt a bruised lump rising on his left shin.

  ‘CUNTY BASTARDS!’

  He counted at least six dead faces straining for a look in the back door window, and more behind them.

  I’ve seen more brain power in a midget’s rod end.

  He stood and started to search for the light switch. His hands traced a cobweb trail along the garage wall before he remembered the dragon light and the fact that all the power was out. He found it under the heap of bikes and flicked it on. The beam cut through the dank air and illuminated a whole array of non-booze related items including ‘useless prick licking’ police cones, a ‘fucking fascist’ speed monitoring device, more bikes and miniature motorbikes with engines. Then his foot kicked a plastic box that sounded full of glass bottles. He reached down and found empty jam jars and a post-it note that read ‘for re-cycling.’

  This was getting dire. In one front corner of the garage he could see the purple fingers reaching under the gap beneath the roller shutter. He went over and stamped on them with the heel of his boot, grinding them down into the concrete floor like mashed worms.

  ‘Teach you motherfuckers!’

  He took a step back when the fingers returned; broken white sticks of bone, but still scratching the dirt and reaching for him.

  Lester was puzzled for ideas for a moment before he struck gold. The holy grail was before him on a shelf behind a chest freezer; eight tins of Foster’s lager and a nasty coloured Bacardi Breezer. A tinny was downed in seconds with the slick skill of an alcoholic pro. Lester could set records for downing first pints. Can two was on his crusty lips before he’d even bothered to take breath, draining down like a dynamite plunger.

  That felt right and that felt like justice. ‘Fuck you creeps,’ he cried.

  He gathered the rest of the booze into a cardboard box and picked it up with both hands. The bodies were still crowding around the back door but Lester had a plan. He turned the key on the back door and let them flow in just as the mini-moto at the bottom of t
he garage burst into flames. Lester had lit a rag fuse into the fuel tank a few seconds earlier. The bodies surged at the bright flames as thick acrid smoke filled the garage.

  Lester nimbly stepped from behind the door and tottered into the courtyard. Black smoke billowed up behind him like an industrial chimney.

  ‘Houston, you’re not going to like this,’ he said.

  The back door of the police station was wide open, things moving inside.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Woman’s Institute had been a part of the village since the 1950’s. It was a meeting place for numerous strange meetings and societies, coffee mornings, jumble sales and assorted what-the-hells. It had been a church once, and so was built with thick stone walls and reinforced buttresses. The institute sat on raised ground on the edge of the village, far away from the shops and houses. There was a small but neat ornamental garden and lawn, popular with the women’s croquet club in brief summer months.

  I parked the 4x4 badly as always, near an unattended green Land Rover I guessed belonged to Griffin, the farmer on the CB radio. There were other cars clustered near, bringing with it the hope there may be far more living people than Summer and I had imagined. We’d had a rough journey back along the motorway, with the dead things making a concerted effort to get at our vehicle. We’d spent the seven mile stretch mostly on the banking as the hard shoulder was packed tightly with the dead. It was as if they remembered us, but to look at their cold, lifeless masks it was hard to imagine thought even entered into it.

  ‘Look how many people are here,’ Summer said, excited. ‘Who would have thought so many people had survived?’

  We grabbed our weapons and got out to join the party. At the entrance were two men, both clearly related in the local in-bred way. The older man had a weathered look about him, as if his face was sandblasted every morning before breakfast. The lines on his face looked black, where dirt hid never to be found.

  ‘Jack Nation,’ he said offering a callused hand. ‘And this is Griffin.’

  I looked at the younger man warily. He looked the same age as myself but broader. One eye looked a little funny and off-centre, spoiling his looks. He looked a bit bitter about it. His whole demeanour screamed watch out.

  ‘Hi, Jack and Griffin. I’m PC Johnny Silverman and this is your local friendly PCSO Summer Harris.’

  ‘That’s a funny name,’ Jack said.

  ‘What can I say? My parents were the hippy types,’ Summer shrugged.

  Summer was looking a little tearful again. ‘I think we should move this inside,’ I said.

  I kept checking the road behind us for the moving dead, but it was clear. Jack was looking at me with a weird squint in his eyes. Anti-police? If he didn’t like the uniform, I could sense problems down the road for us all.

  ‘Okay, let’s get inside,’ Jack said. ‘Griffin has done amazing work rounding some of these people up and getting them here. Others wouldn’t leave their houses, too scared, but this is a great turn out. Look at them all.’

  And I did. On the folding chairs in front of the stage, I counted at least thirty five healthy people. It was a fantastic feeling not to be alone anymore. Under different circumstances, I could have imagined this was a perfectly normal WI event, perhaps one of the old dears back from their hols with a riveting slideshow.

  Only the sombre mood gave it away. People were down-faced and some ill looking. Most were sipping hot drinks from white polystyrene cups. There was an atmosphere in the hall not unlike a wake. I could see various, perhaps fractured family groups clustered on the chairs, often with gaps between sad, lonely looking old men and woman. Haven was after all predominantly a retirement village, a place where the old went to enjoy the scenery and the quiet life, and generally not be menaced by the dead trying to bite their faces off for fun.

  I recognised some of them by name from my foot patrols and the interminable parish council meetings. Meetings I did my best to avoid, but that always found me in the end. In particular, I could see that the Hanson family were there in an intact state. Toby Hanson and his pregnant wife Jean and their two eleven and twelve year old sons Mark and Phillip. I knew those two well enough due to their fondness for breaking and burning random street furniture around the village. I’d personally interviewed both for arson of four waste paper bins and knew they’d received every police slap on the wrist possible, short of youth court in their time. They looked happy enough sat with their mum and dad. I think they thought this was one big harmless adventure.

  ‘Do you have any news?’ a hunched old man said.

  ‘No, not really,’ I mumbled as heads began to turn, and the murmur of voices rose a notch.

  Looking at those expectant faces, it finally dawned on me how much these people would be looking up to me to have answers, and to lead them in some way. I felt my hands go clammy just at the thought. I’d never been what you could describe a career mover or shaker. I had no ambitions to be a sergeant or a detective, and in all honesty my overriding thought when at work was always, ‘How long till I finish?’ I could see now my attitude needed adjustment.

  ‘Why don’t you go up on the stage and tell them what you know,’ I heard Jack say loudly.

  I caught that glint in his eye again. It was as if he was probing for my soft spot and wanted me to feel as uncomfortable as possible. I’d always hated public speaking all the way through school. The fear had diminished in this job but the fact remained I was a rubbish orator at the best of times. Taking a gulp of air, I wandered to the stage. In the end I just leaned against it rather than standing so high above everyone. Summer followed me, but then sat down at the front, lost in grief.

  ‘Hi. A lot of you may already know me, but for those that don’t I’m a police officer at Haven Police Station, Johnny Silverman.’

  The brothers, Phillip and Mark were giggling, and the faces in front of me were looking blank. Already not going well.

  ‘Like you, I’m as mystified as you as to what’s gone on today. From my point of view, it seemed a completely normal day. I did find a dead seal and some chemicals on the beach, but that could have been anything. We all know how much rubbish and debris gets washed up on there, week in, week out. I went from the beach to Tomlinson’s, and suddenly it was like all hell had broken out. I can’t say how or why all this has happened, but I promise I will do my best to find out.’

  ‘Have you heard from anyone outside the village on those fancy police radios?’ Griffin shouted out.

  ‘No, I haven’t. Nothing since this morning. After the supermarket incident the radios went down completely. I can only imagine that there has been a power failure at one of the local airwave radio masts and it knocked us all off the air. The last things I heard on the radio, I have to say, were not good. It would seem to confirm that what has happened here is widespread, that it could be everywhere.’

  ‘You’re not joking it’s widespread. I went to town and the whole place is fucking over-run with those things,’ shouted Griffin excitedly.

  ‘I don’t think we need to be scaring anyone Griffin,’ I said looking at the poor old dears’ faces. Griffin just stared back.

  ‘I think it’s gone a little beyond sparing people’s feelings, Officer,’ Jack said. ‘Everyone in this room has seen first hand what’s out there and what they do. Those fuckers bit my son Dexter and he’s in a terrible state. I don’t know if he’ll pull through. Let’s not beat around anyone’s bush. Some of these good folk tell me their own loved ones died, rose up and tried to kill them. The dead have come out to play and they’re hankering to eat every last one of us.’

  ‘So what do we do, Officer?’ asked a man in his thirties sat with his wife or girlfriend.

  ‘I think we wait. We find our safe places in this village and we wait it out. I think the army and the government will come good eventually but until that time comes, we have to stay warm, dry and feed ourselves. We need to arm ourselves and fight those things if we have to.’

  ‘Hit ’em ha
rd enough about the head and they go down like a sack of shit. Just like the movies, Johnny. Maybe we could show zombie films in here and educate the old folks,’ Griffin said, beaming.

  ‘No, I don’t think that would be appropriate. And that reminds me, the power has gone down. I know some of you have your generators, but we have great wind generators on the hills that bring a lot of our power. Does anyone know why they would have stopped working?’

  ‘My name’s Bob Sack,’ said a portly man two rows back. ‘I can only think it’s the dead creatures. They could have gotten into the maintenance rooms and caused havoc. I don’t know how precisely they go together, but I am a trained electric maintenance engineer and may be able to do something to help. Just give me the nod and I’ll go up there with you.’

  ‘That’s an excellent idea. If we are going to sit this out comfortably we are going to need that electricity,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got an even better idea,’ said Jack. ‘We all know we’re not safe in the village anymore with those biters running around wild. I want us all to build a fence and keep those bastards out. I’ve got enough high tensile fencing back on the farm to fence a distance of three thousand feet at least. We get it up and we get it up fast. Reinforce the posts and kill every biter left inside. Then you have yourself one safe village Officer Silverman.’

  ‘Sounds better and better. How long will that take us?’

  ‘What, you want maybe I quote you the job, Johnny?’ he said when he was interrupted by a banging on the door.

  ‘Go see who it is Griffin,’ Jack said.

  There was a hushed silence in the group as Griffin pulled open the door and ushered an elderly man inside. He looked off-colour and sick, and he kept bringing a stained handkerchief up to his mouth between racking coughs. I half recognised him but couldn’t put a name to the craggy face. People were already on their feet and shying away from him.