New Title 1

by Millard, Adam

  Smalling opened and shut his mouth a couple of times before anything came out. “I have to admit, that was one of the last things I thought would happen.”

  “And neither of you are, like, telekinetic, or anything?” Red said. “I mean, were either of you willing that to happen?”

  “I was too busy trying not to shit myself to blow the fucking thing up,” Harkness said.

  “Yeah, we’re really not telepathetic, or whatever it was you said,” Smalling added. “Wait a minute…would we know…I mean, would we know if we—”

  “Yeah, you’re not,” Red said, sheathing the sword and climbing up onto Mordecai. “Let’s get the fuck out of here before more of those things come.”

  They continued along the street, only one destination in mind.

  LOU’S LOOT.

  Where answers awaited them, and failing that, a bottle of something to numb the pain of death.

  29

  “Will you put some clothes on?” Rita asked the naked man as he stalked back and forth across the living-room, his tackle dancing like an epileptic vole. “I don’t mind, personally, but I’ve got kids in the house, and they don’t need to see that kind of thing.”

  Mickey covered himself up, suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry. I guess living nude for the last few decades has desensitised me to it.”

  “Why do you do it?” Zee asked. She was sitting in the corner, trying desperately not to look at anything below the man’s waist, She hadn’t got to the chapter on ‘How to Polish a Penis’ in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management yet, though she was sure the chapter existed.

  “Why do I do what?” Mickey said, smiling. “Why do I live in the alleyway naked?”

  Zee nodded. “Yeah. I mean, that’s a little bit weird, isn’t it? I get the homeless thing; there are loads of people living rough, but naked?”

  “It’s kinda like my thing,” Mickey said. “Some people have guitars, others have dogs…”

  “So it’s how you stand out from the rest of the vagrants?” Roger Fox chimed in. “Why not just get a cat?”

  “Luke Smith over on the corner of Bakewell Avenue has a cat.”

  “Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a cat,” Roger argued. “Another animal…any animal. Surely that’s better than walking around with your trouser-snake out.”

  “I don’t own trousers—”

  “Snake, then. Just snake. You must get a lot of funny looks, being nude all the time, and all. Doesn’t it bother you?”

  Mickey shrugged. “The way I see it,” he said, “it’s hotter than hell out there. People are literally falling down dead in the street on a daily basis. I once watched a rat cook after falling asleep next to a chain-link fence. It was the easiest meal I’ve ever had. Didn’t have to cube it, or anything.”

  “Ewwwww,” Zee said, but part of her was secretly impressed with this naked vagabond. He had survived by adapting to his surroundings, worked with what he had available, and the fact that he walked around stark bollock naked without so much as batting an eyelid only made him more intriguing.

  Mickey smiled. “I don’t usually eat rats,” he said. “Most days I just pick those mushrooms growing over by the McKenzie place.”

  “Not anymore you don’t,” Roy said from the tattered armchair he’d claimed as his own. “I don’t think there will be anything growing over there for a very long time.”

  “You can always pop in here for something to eat,” Rita Fox said. “I mean, if you put some pants on, or something. I’ve always got a pot of something stewing.”

  “Ah, mystery stew,” Mickey said, laughing and licking his lips. “My favourite. I might take you up on that offer if we get out of this alive.”

  “Mommy?”

  Rita turned around to find Clint standing in the doorway. He looked a little ashen, but at least he was speaking, now, and not fainting every few minutes. Could it be that he was on the mend?

  Rita bent and gathered him up into her arms. “Oh, Clint!” she said, peppering his face and head with kisses. “How are you feeling?”

  “I had the strangest dream,” said the boy, “that a severed head thumped me in the face.”

  Roger Fox coughed. “Yes, well, it’s good that you’re feeling a little better,” he said. “Go and sit with your brother, and try not to look at the naked man’s willy.”

  Clint walked across the room, to where his brother sat playing with a pair of Tonka trucks. Tom handed one to the recovering boy and smiled. It was a sweet moment, but also one that required your presence to appreciate it.

  “So what’s the plan?” Zee said, happy now that the young of the family were out of earshot. Zee liked to count herself amongst the adults, even if she was the youngest girl in Oilhaven. At seventeen, she was old enough to drive (if she ever came across any abandoned vehicles) and old enough to marry (if she ever came across an abandoned husband she took a liking to), so, in her eyes, she should be treated with the same respect and sincerity as the other adults present.

  “Go and sit with your brothers,” Roger Fox said, which hadn’t been what she’d expected, at all.

  “No!” she said, which hadn’t been what Roger had expected, either. They were locked in some strange battle, a game of shock the family member, where the rules were simple: render your opponent speechless.

  “Zee,” Roger said, after sucking most of the air from the room with one deep inhale. “What’s going on out there, it isn’t a game. It isn’t some fantasy, like in those books you’ve always got your nose stuck in. It’s really happening, and as your father, I’m asking you to leave it to the grown-ups to make the decisions. Now—”

  “Fuck you!” There, she’d said it. At any other time, she would have regretted it almost immediately, but on this occasion she felt no remorse, no urge to follow it up with an instant apology. “I’m not some little girl, Dad, some naïve little princess that you can protect. Let me ask you a question…”

  She could have asked as many questions as she wanted in that moment, for Roger Fox’s face was frozen with shock. Rita Fox, too, was gobsmacked, but willing to see where this led. She wanted her daughter to be as strong as possible, and if standing up to both she and Roger was what it took, then so be it.

  “How many of those things have you killed?” Zee folded her arms across her chest. It was the only way she could prevent them from shaking.

  Roger faltered momentarily, then said, “Well, there was Tiny.”

  Mickey held is hand up, as if to ask teacher a question. “Mine,” he said.

  Roger shook his head. “Yes, but you couldn’t have done it if Roy and I hadn’t blindsided the thing.”

  “Still mine,” Mickey said. “You don’t gate-crash a barbecue and then take credit for the burgers.”

  “So you haven’t, have you?” Zee said to her father. “Killed any.” She knew she had him where she wanted him, and the silence that answered her question confirmed it. “Well, I have. I had to kill one of those fuckers. I didn’t have anyone there to help me. It was just me and it, and I took it down, so don’t talk down to me like one of your buddies from the mine, okay? I’m as much a part of this shitforsaken town as you are, all of you, and if I have to, I’ll fight to defend it.” Though she really didn’t want to, not if it could be avoided. “So…I’ll ask again. What’s the plan?”

  Her father sat at the kitchen table, running sweaty fingers over the dust that had settled there in the past hour. “Okay,” he said. “I guess we have to weigh up our options. We can stay here and hope that nothing tries to get in, that the cavalry is on its way, and that everything will sort itself out soon enough.” He paused. Option two terrified him, but it made more sense than hanging around, hoping for something that might not happen. “Or,” he said.

  “Or?” Mickey replied.

  “Or…” Roy added.

  “Or what?” said Rita.

  “Or we can get as tooled up as possible and head on over to Lou’s. It’s only a couple of streets away, and
if we stick to the back alleys and yards, we might make it all the way without being spotted.”

  “Why in the hell would we want to do that?” Rita said. “It’s that fat bastard’s fault we’re in this mess. Put me in a room with him for five fucking minutes and we’ll see what happens.”

  “It’s not Lou’s fault,” Roger said. “He wasn’t to know that his product was contaminated, that in selling his milk to the unsuspecting public, he would turn them all into giant mutant monsters. Do you think he would have gone ahead and bottled it up if he’d known that?”

  “I don’t know,” Rita said. “Remember the time he sold those rats as squirrels?”

  Unfortunately, Roger remembered just fine. They hadn’t realised what they were eating until the toilet brush fell off the rat’s backside. “Yes, but that was harmless. Mostly. This is different. This is his livelihood we’re talking about. Lou would never knowingly mutate his customers. He’s a good man, and he works hard over there, making sure we all have everything we need and looking after his perpetually dying mother at the same time.”

  “He does have a lot of supplies over there,” Roy added, which carried far more weight than Roger’s argument. “How long can we eke out an existence here? I’m guessing your cupboards aren’t fully stocked? It’ll only be a matter of time before we have to go out there, anyway, to the well. I’m not keen on the idea of heading outside, either, but if we stay here, we might not get the chance to leave. We’ll be weak, thirsty, hungry, unable to run.” He sat up straight in the armchair. A spider ran from beneath it, which Mickey stamped on before crouching and forcing its mangled corpse into his mouth.

  “Ewwww,” Zee said, once again fascinated by the exposed hobo.

  Chewing frantically, Mickey said, “You won’t be saying that in a few days’ time. It’ll be all ‘Hey Mickey! Catch me a spider, will you?’.”

  “I say we leave now,” Zee said. “Before we’re all scouring the skirting-boards for arachnids, like that creepy dude in Dracula.”

  Something bounced off the front door, causing it to rattle in its frame. Everyone jumped, except for the boys, who were far too busy crashing cars to notice.

  “They’re outside,” Roger said. “Do you think they know we’re in here?”

  Another thud. This one from the MDF board covering the front window.

  “Maybe they can smell their dead,” Rita whispered, gesturing to the mangled bodies stacked against the far wall: the McKenzies. “We haven’t been making much noise,” she added. “I doubt if they could hear us in here.”

  “MIIIIIIILLLLLLLLK!” something bellowed from just beyond the door.

  “Okay, everyone out the back window,” Roger said. “Zee, you’re a little bit transient. Do you know a quick way to Lou’s from here? One that keeps us off the streets and away from those things?”

  Zee had been waiting for this moment her entire life. “I know how we can get all the way to Lou’s without our feet even touching the ground,” she said. “All we need is some rope. I don’t think the boys will make it across some of the gaps, not on their own.”

  A hammer-fist smashed through the door, putting a huge hole next to the ones already there. Everyone rushed into the kitchen. Rita snatched Clint and Tom up from the floor as she ran past, one under each arm. It was amazing the weight a woman could carry when the need arose – a trait they’d inherited from their shopaholic descendants.

  Zee rifled through the large chest that was pushed up against the kitchen wall, found what she needed, and followed the rest of her family, the naked alleyway man, and Roy of The Barrel out through the back window.

  Just as the barricade, the front door, the front window, and half of the building came down in one fell swoop, proving that post-apocalyptic architecture was nothing to write home about.

  30

  “Please stop! Please fucking stop! Gaaaahhhhh!” Lou stood in front of the giant vat, his shirt removed, his entire body coated with sweat and lumpy milk. He had been lactating for an entire hour, and it showed no sign of slowing down. The vat was full to the brim; pretty soon, he would have to simply accept the fact that not all of it could be contained, that he needed to make very good friends with the mop in the corner of the room.

  “No use crying over spilt milk,” Lou said, sob-laughing. Whoever came up with that little gem had obviously never filled a massive bucket with the stuff from his or her own tits. In less than twenty-four hours, Lou had grown sick and tired of the stuff, and the smell that came with it. How cows slept at night was beyond him.

  The milk was now pouring over the sides of the vat, cascading down to the basement floor, pooling around the covered cadaver of the mother-beast. At the rate he was going, he would flood the place in less than an hour. In two hours, he would be swimming through the basement, and in three…well, he’d have to make his way upstairs, lest he drown in his own fucking cellar.

  “To hell with it,” Lou said, scrambling up the steps three at a time. For an aging fat man, it was amazing how quickly he moved.

  Into the store he went, dropping the trapdoor as soon as his feet were clear. His nipples continued to spray milk everywhere, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop it. He’d tried putting a hand over one breast, stifling it, holding it tight against the nipple, but that just caused the other one to pump out at twice the rate. And if he tried to shield both tits at the same time…well, it had almost blown both of his hands off. They were still sore now, thirty minutes after the incident, and he wouldn’t be making the same mistake twice.

  He dragged a tarpaulin out of one of the racks and stretched it out across the floor knocking three shelves over in the process. Tidiness was no longer something that concerned him. Stemming the flow of this milk, or storing it somewhere for now, just until he could get outside without being murdered to death by giant angry mutants, was of paramount importance.

  After locating a ball of string, he tied the four corner of the tarp to racks and shelves, elevating the whole thing slightly, creating what was essentially a giant milk hammock.

  “At least it’ll keep the floor dry,” he said, standing back and admiring his handiwork. It seemed like such a small thing, considering what had happened to his mother, what was going on outside, and that he was probably going to be dead by the end of the night.

  The milk came thick and fast for the next fifteen minutes. The tarpaulin was already touching the floor in the middle. There had been a few minutes when the milk simply rolled and bounced about on the tarp, making something of a dairy trampoline, but that hadn’t lasted.

  Lou stroked at his tender nipples, easing the liquid out – not that it needed any coaxing. He was an uber-cow, the most productive dairy-human that had ever walked the face of the earth.

  Not that it was something to be proud of. He wanted it to stop; the sooner the better.

  A heavy thud at the door caused him to spin away from the tarpaulin. Milk spurted across the room, dripped down the still-rattling door.

  It’s one of them, he thought. One of the milk-mutants, come to exact its revenge.

  “Lou, let us in!” said a voice, one that he recognised as belonging to Smalling…or Harkness, one or the other.

  Lou relaxed slightly, turning his back on the door, aiming his spraying mammaries toward the tarpaulin. “What do you want?” he called. “I’m in the middle of something at the moment. Come back later, if you haven’t been brutally murdered by the milk-mutants.”

  There was a slight pause, several mutterings, and then a female voice said, “Mr Decker, we’ve had a hell of a shitty day so far, and it’s all your fault, so why don’t you open the fucking door and I promise I won’t cut you.”

  Lou’s breasts stuttered momentarily. The woman – whoever she was – sounded like she meant business. But she was out there, and he was in here, and there was a locked door between them. “I have guns,” he said. “They’re old, but they work, and I have no problem shooting things.” It was true. He had despatched his
own mother (or what was left of her) with the antique pistols. He would take great pleasure in turning the guns on Kellerman’s henchmen and their new female friend.

  “We just need to get off the street, Lou,” Smalling said. “There are…things out here. Big angry fucking things. Please, just let us in. We’ll help you to barricade the store up properly. And just think, there will be four of us in there…”

  “And?” Lou said.

  “Well, if there are four of us,” Smalling explained, “there’s less chance that you’ll be the next one to get butchered.”

  Lou made an O with his lips as he considered what the baldy was saying. But then he looked down at the tarpaulin, at the way it was filling up fast, at his sodden nipples, the hair there matted with milk and creamy globules. “I really wish I could help,” he said, “but I can’t get to the door right now. If you come back in about an hour, maybe t—”

  A large blade, sharper than any he had ever encountered, came through between the door and its frame. There was an audible chi-ching! as the blade went down, slicing through the latch bolt in one quick movement. Then the door swung open and the three people that had, a moment ago, been on the other side of the fucking thing, came through it, breathless, fear etched onto their faces. Following them was a gasping horse.

  Lou was about to object when the woman eased the door shut and, leaning against it, gawping at Lou and not knowing whether to be impressed or revolted, she said, “So you’re the milkman, huh?”

  Lou nodded. “I believe I am. But you have to believe me when I say, I didn’t know any of this would happen…I…I just wanted to give the town what they wanted…”

  Smalling and Harkness were carrying a piece of chain toward the door with the intention of securing it. When they were done, Smalling turned to the lactating storekeeper and grimaced. “How do we stop this, Lou?” he said.

  “Well, I’d be lying if I said I knew,” Lou said. “I’ve tried everything. Sellotape, nipple-clamps—”