The Words of Their Roaring

by Matthew Smith

  "You're awake," a voice said somewhere in the gloom.

  Mitch's senses instantly came alive. His head snapped up and he peered about him. The room was in shadow, but his eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, aided by the thin shards of light that pierced the curtains pulled shut across the windows. It was a lounge, but one that hadn't seen life within it for quite some time. The TV in the corner and the Welsh dresser against the far wall were similarly bedecked with cobwebs, framed family photographs hanging above the mantelpiece turned almost opaque with dirt. From what he could see, he didn't recognise the faces smiling out at him. There was a wooden dining chair standing conspicuously in the centre of the carpet, and upon it was seated an unmoving figure, evidently watching him, even though at the moment it was just an outline from which it was impossible to discern any features.

  He heard breathing close by, heavy and ragged, only to realise that it was his own. He held it for a second, and in the silence that followed came to the conclusion that he was the only living thing in the immediate vicinity. Then he remembered the Returner that had offered its hand, and the way that it had wiped its gore-streaked machete blade across its jacket sleeve. He must've blacked out, because everything after that was a haze.

  "How are you feeling?" it asked. "Are you hurt?"

  The rush of questions that had surfaced in his mind upon awakening had superseded any physical pain, but as he considered the query he was aware the he was indeed in some considerable discomfort. His right forearm throbbed where he had been struck, and when he put a hand to his chest he winced at its tenderness. No wonder his breathing sounded so strained, he thought. It was possible that several of his ribs had been fractured and were pressing on his lungs. He felt like a mass of bruises, in which each new movement would lead to a fresh ache. Despite its mildewy stink, right now he didn't have the energy or the inclination to leave the sofa. If he was in danger, then so be it, he had little left to defend himself with. But he guessed he was safe from harm for the moment; he would've been carved up like a Sunday roast long ago if all this thing wanted of him was a snack. He didn't know how or why it was acting differently to the others, but he couldn't pretend he wasn't grateful.

  Mitch cleared his throat. "How... long have I been out?"

  "Few hours. Thought you might be concussed." It paused, then added: "You can understand what I'm saying?"

  He nodded. "I'm OK. At least, I think I am. No impairment up here, anyway." He tapped his forehead. "Bit battered elsewhere, but I'll live." He bit his tongue, wondering if the creature would regard that as a sly dig, then admonished himself for worrying about insulting a stiff. In any other circumstances, he wouldn't hesitate in trying to ram a spike through its brain. "I... I guess I've got you to thank for that. I'm not sure I'd be in one piece if you hadn't come along."

  It didn't reply for a moment, then said: "You put up quite a fight."

  There was something slightly sinister about its declaration, as if it were making a grudging statement of approval about the liveliness of its prey. But it didn't elaborate any further. Suddenly, the image of Donna's frightened eyes sprang into his mind, a zombie's hand clamped over her mouth. "Shit, Donna—" He tried to stand, and regretted it, his legs wobbly beneath him. "Is she OK? Did you get her back?"

  The figure shook its head. "They had gone."

  "Hell, we gotta go after her. They'll have taken her to be processed."

  "I know. They've adapted a school near here, St Jude's, into one of their body shops. That's where she'll be taken."

  "So let's go!"

  It shook its head. "There'll be too many of them for the two of us to handle. We'll go after your friend soon enough, but we'll need back-up."

  "But in the meantime she could be torn apart."

  "They'll want to keep her alive for as along as possible. There's still time. But we should lie low for a while, wait until dark. There's no reason why our handiwork won't be found for days, but in my experience it pays to be careful."

  Mitch sat in silence, a mixture of frustration and fatigue gnawing at him. Eventually, he asked: "Where are we?"

  "One of the houses nearby. They're all deserted round here."

  "You carried me?"

  "You weren't going to waltz in by yourself."

  Although he should've been appreciative of its actions, Mitch couldn't help feeling prickly at the thought of the dead thing touching him. It triggered the ingrained hatred he had against Returners and he sensed himself becoming more defensive. "You're one of them, aren't you? One of the flesh-eaters."

  It said nothing.

  "Why did you save me? Why attack your own kind?"

  Again, there was no reply. But instead the silhouette stood and stepped towards him. As it moved closer, Mitch could gain a better appreciation of its features: it looked remarkably fresh for a ghoul, the pinched, tight texture of its skin the most visible sign that it had resurrected. There was a blackened patch on its chest, and its shirt was stained with similar dark areas, but there was a looseness to its posture and gait that was unlike even the smart zombs. It didn't stagger or jerk, and the eyes still had some spark of humanity behind them. It had been a man in his early thirties when it had died, and it was as if a tiny fragment of his former life had stayed trapped in that shell when the virus had worked its magic. It leaned over him, one hand on the back of the sofa, and put its face close to his.

  "They're not my kind," it said, an eerie lack of breath behind its words. "So consider yourself fortunate I got to you first. If you're worried I'm going to eat you, relax. I didn't bring you here for a picnic."

  Mitch leaned back, aware there was nowhere he could retreat to. "How can I trust you?"

  It cast an eye over each shoulder before turning back to look at him, shrugging; a disarmingly human gesture. "You have a choice?"

  Mitch found himself relaxing, despite himself. This thing was far too eloquent, far too self-aware, for a stiff. "What are you? You're like no Returner I've seen before."

  It straightened, walked back to its chair, picked it up and brought it closer to the sofa, then sat down. "I am what I am. I can offer no other explanation than that."

  "You are undead, though? You've resurrected?"

  It nodded.

  "Can you remember who you were? Do you have a name?"

  "My name is Gabriel, and I can remember everything. As far as I am concerned, there is little difference between my states of being, pre- and post-death. Perhaps I notice the chill more these days, that's all."

  "But you're a deadhead. You don't breathe, your heart doesn't beat..."

  "You get used to it."

  "And the flesh-eating? You get used to that to?"

  It looked away. When it replied, its voice was low and steady. "It can be controlled."

  Mitch was incredulous. The creature was right, in a way; conversing like this, there was little difference between it and a living being. It was just one shade away from human. But even so, it was still on the other side of the divide, and thus couldn't be entirely trusted. For all its apparent intelligence, it surely must have dangerous urges that he should be wary of. "How long have you been like this?"

  "A decade, perhaps more. Time loses all meaning." It looked down at itself. "I'm... not changing. I'm growing no older, like I'm frozen."

  "What happened to you? I mean, what killed you?"

  It parted its jacket and gestured to the dark circular patch on its chest, a hole ripped in the material of the shirt. "Shot," it said simply. It fingered the entry point sadly.

  "By whom?"

  "By someone who is due a reckoning."

  Gabe had made sure he was on his very best behaviour, talking to the human. Mitch needed to be convinced that Gabe wasn't a threat to him or his friends, if they were to be any use, and so he swallowed the raging hunger that clawed his hollow belly and diligently answered his questions. Mostly, he told the truth. He told him that he had worked for a criminal called Harry Flowers, and that his
employer had believed he'd turned traitor and had him executed. He told him that he'd been bitten by a ghoul and taken a bullet in the heart, and that for what seemed the briefest time he'd floated through darkness, pulled inexorably towards a destination he couldn't visualise. Only when he thought he'd arrived did he open his eyes and stare at the cold light of day. His body had been slung beyond the boundaries of Resurrection Alley, and he was lying amidst the shambling crowds of the dead, who battered disinterestedly against him. All life had long since left him, and therefore he had little to offer them.

  Gabe had stood, on the day of his resurrection, conscious of the stillness of his pulse and the sour taste of his final breaths at the back of his throat, and realised he had some semblance of his wits about him. At first, he'd wondered if was truly dead; that somehow he hadn't passed over, impossible as that was to believe, since his mind was so clear and precise. But his skin was icy to the touch, and when he ran his hand over his chest wound his fingers came away coated crimson. The zombs ignored him too, obviously regarding him as one of their own. There could be little doubt that he had joined the ranks of the undead. Shock hit him like a tsunami, and he had staggered away to some private corner to come to terms with his new cadaverous state in his own way.

  But his body had stopped working, and he could no longer weep, try though he might. Inside his head, he howled and cried, but nothing would emerge from the dead shell he was shackled to. It was like trying to shout in a vast, echoing room. When he had regained his mental composure, he struggled to recollect everything that had brought him to this point, and he was amazed to discover that he could focus on it all: Flowers, Anna, Hewitt, Vassily's undead father, everything. He could even remember his own name. He could think for himself, make free associations, memorise faces from the past. This was not what being a Returner was meant to be. Surely he should be a mindless stiff, driven by the need for warm flesh?

  At that moment, two things happened: he became aware of a scratchy sensation in the pit of his stomach that had somehow always been there but he had not considered; and the civil servant Fletchley's words floated back to him about how the ghouls were learning, that the virus was working on their brains. The scratch became an ache, and Gabe knew that he had not escaped the full state of zombiehood, despite his clearly advanced status. He had a hunger that was growing with intensity all the time, and it could not be dismissed.

  It was around this element that Gabe deviated from what was strictly true. He had told Mitch that his craving for warm meat was an addiction that could be controlled, and while he managed to keep the stabbing pains in his belly fairly low-level, they would not be denied for ever. In the years since he'd resurrected, he'd managed to assuage the need when it became too great by feasting on what vermin and stray pets he could catch, the thin, bitter flesh just keeping a lid on his hunger. It was a frustrating and demeaning position to find himself in, his self-awareness pointedly reminding him of the levels he was stooping to: chasing half-starved, diseased animals for their scraggly hide. He almost envied the rank-and-file ghouls and their mindless consumption. But that very intelligence he possessed ensured he could not devour the humans, no matter how strong the cravings became. He told himself that he would not sink that low, that there was still some vestige of the man he'd once been inside the Returner he'd become. Even so, close proximity to the living awakened an appetite that verged on the carnal, and it was this that he would have to keep in check around the kid's colleagues. It was unlikely that he'd snap and rip a chunk out of someone's throat, but he might get distracted, which could be dangerous for all of them. And if they got wind of the fact he was looking at them like they were his next meal, they were going to stave in his head at the first opportunity.

  So he had assured Mitch that his diet was not a problem, and the kid seemed to believe him; or said he did, at least. Gabe knew he'd have to cross that bridge when he came to it: working with humans was always going to be tricky, even without the ceaseless demands of his stomach.

  Having waited several hours for night to fall, Mitch was leading him back to his group's hideout in a deserted pub on the outskirts of Blackheath, the two of them carrying what they could snaffle from the lock-up. Gabe's assistance had gone some way to soothing the younger man's fears and cementing an element of trust, to the point where he was willing to take the Returner to meet his friends. There would be some explaining to do, Gabe envisioned, and more than a few threats to suffer. But he'd outlined a little of his plan to Mitch, who'd been anxious to volunteer his services, and by proxy that of his fellow humans, if only to rescue his friend, Donna, whom Gabe believed Mitch was more than a little sweet on. When he'd told him that he believed Harry Flowers was now the power at the centre of the city, that it was he all the organised zombies reported to, and that the living were being farmed on his orders - and that Gabe was determined to take the grizzled old fuck down - Mitch had thrown his full weight behind the scheme. Gabe got the impression that the kid reckoned that by taking out the ganglord, things would return to normal. He wasn't going to dissuade him if it guaranteed his help, but as far as he was concerned normality was a very long way away indeed.

  "You mind if I ask you something?" Mitch asked as they hurried through the moonlit streets. He had gained some degree of confidence being in Gabe's company, feeling protected from the other stiffs by walking alongside one.

  "Go ahead."

  "How did you learn to talk? You said that when you resurrected you were trapped in a dead shell. Was it something you remembered from your past life?"

  "Partly. I understood the language as much as I did before I died; it was just a matter of getting my mouth and tongue to coordinate once more. I listened to tapes and practised until the sounds that emerged from my throat were formed into words. It wasn't easy. We're talking a period of five years or more."

  "You could hear too, then?"

  Gabe nodded. "It was like the senses were all there, I simply needed to retune them to a different frequency."

  "Are the other smart Returners - the ones that work for Flowers - like that? Have they learnt like you?"

  He was amused by the kid's insistent interrogation. He supposed it was the first time a survivor, who'd spent a good portion of his life battling an enemy he couldn't reason or empathise with, had gained inside information on what made them tick. The zombies' basic carnivorous motivation was pretty straightforward, but there were always the questions that nobody had yet found an answer to: why did they continually want to eat, especially when their bellies were incapable of processing the nourishment? Why were some regaining their pre-death motor skills? What did they plan to do when they had devoured everything on the planet? The ghouls were a species mankind had yet to fathom. Even Gabe was at a loss to explain what the virus was doing inside his head, what primal functions it was adapting for its own end. And indeed, what end was that? That bacteria had brought the dead back to life and given them cannibalistic tendencies, a goal it had achieved quite spectacularly; but what was the next step? What would it progress to next? How would it develop?

  "I suspect so," he told Mitch. "But their learning seems rudimentary, like they've just mastered the basics. You've heard them talk?"

  "Yeah. They're kinda slow."

  "I think their brains aren't quite as knitted together as mine. They're taking longer to pick things up."

  "But why you? How did you get so to be advanced?"

  Gabe shook his head. "Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe the virus found a natural home in my physiology to take hold. But I can tell you that I'm not alone - there're others like me, in similar states, with more growing all the time."

  Mitch stopped dead and turned to him. "More like you?"

  "A veritable Dirty Dozen. Or a Filthy Five, at least." Gabe tapped him on the shoulder and indicated that they should continue. "But we need more recruits."

  As expected, Mitch's friends came within a hair's breadth of putting a bullet between Gabe's eyes on first
introduction. The zombie had had guns thrust in his face before, and he had become accustomed to staying calm looking down the length of a shotgun barrel, but that didn't mean he didn't tire of it eventually. As an act of conciliation, he had removed the machete from his belt and laid it on the ground, his hands held up to show he meant no harm. But it seemed to cut little ice with the humans, who regarded him with open hatred. Their attention was divided between keeping the Returner securely in their sights, and arguing with the kid for bringing it to their door and being naive enough to trust it.

  Gabe's patience was wearing thin, and he was getting nervous that someone's trigger finger was going to twitch. They were a sorry-looking bunch, skinny and unhealthy, a few cold months away from death's door, and dressed like refugees; typical of the many batches of humans scratching a living among the ruins. Not counting Mitch, there was eight of them in total - four men, three women and a young girl, hunched up on a chair, pale and painfully frail - and it seemed one of the women was nominally in charge; or at least the others looked to her for a decision. Liz, she was called; broadly built and in her early forties, she had the air of a well-heeled PA about her, someone who once presided over a tidy, efficiently managed office. Despite the dirt-smeared jeans and shapeless T-shirt she wore, she exuded an unmistakable corporate attitude. The kid had breathlessly explained the evening's events, insisting they mount a rescue mission to save Donna, and pulling open the bags they'd brought with them and displaying the booty, which earned more than a few murmurs of appreciation from the others. Liz had nodded and listened, refreshingly cool-headed, despite casting the occasional sour glance Gabe's way.