Year of the Zombie [Anthology]

by David Moody

  Gez edged towards the front door. ‘So, we off then?’

  FOUR

  They headed out of the house and down onto the main road. It was dusk by now, although still light enough. Gez turned to his friends, as they walked, and said ‘Look, the easiest way to do this is if we take the back alleys to get to Billy’s lock-up. It’ll be faster that way. And then on the way back, we stick to the main streets. At least they’re all well lit, and there’s more likelihood of us finding someone to lend a hand, if things get tricky.’ Gez noticed Neil’s nervous twitch . ‘Not that I expect things to get tricky, mind,’ he added. ‘It’s just better to be safe than sorry.’

  Neil’s mood seemed to lighten a little. They crossed Whitchurch Road, and headed, at pace, into the back streets of the borough.

  The walk took longer than they’d anticipated. They were still a good five minutes away from the lock-up, and it was beginning to get dark quicker than they’d expected. They picked up the pace again, and turned into a back alley just off Dogfield Street. ‘C’mon,’ yelled Gez, ‘this’ll save us another few minutes.’

  As back alleys go, it was fairly standard. High walled gardens with solid wooden gates, and the back of the odd shop or local business. Some of these businesses had open yards for vehicles, with metal stairs leading up to first floor entrances. The alley itself was about one hundred and fifty yards in length, and the gang were about two thirds of the way down it, when out of the yard of JF Taylor: Building Contractor, about twenty yards further ahead, shambled a denim clad Stench.

  ‘Oh bollocks!’ said Neil, far too loudly.

  The Stench swung its head towards them, and gave out a long low moan.

  ‘Wish I’d brought my rounders bat,’ muttered Beth.

  The Stench began to drag itself towards the trio, and Gez and his friends started to slowly back out of the alley.

  ‘Can’t you shoot it with your rifle, Gez?’

  ‘Sorry, mate. Left it in the house, remember?’

  ‘Well, can’t we throw Beth at it?’

  Bethan smacked Neil across the back of the head. ‘Idiot. Look at it. All we need to do is walk back the way we came, just a little bit quicker. There’s no way that sod’s going to be able to keep up with us. Come on.’

  The trio turned and set off at a fair pace, leaving the slow moving Stench groaning as his supper disappeared before his dead eyes.

  Less than thirty yards from the end of the alley, the three of them had the shock of their lives, as another Stench – a middle aged woman this time – appeared. They were trapped between two hungry rotting corpses.

  And then it all kicked off.

  ◆◆◆

  The poster for George A. Romero’s classic zombie movie, Dawn of the Dead, had the tagline, “when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth”. Had George been making that film in 2016, following the events of Rotten Monday, he may well have changed that line to, “when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth… and they’ll be asking for a bloody good hiding”.

  It was only the media that degenerated into a blind panic when the dead came back to life. Ordinary people seemed to take it all in their stride. If anything, the public were well up for the odd spot of zombie clobbering.

  Years of watching films like Romero’s, Shaun of the Dead, and similar movies, as well as the popularity of TV shows like The Walking Dead, meant that the general British public were pretty savvy when it came to dealing with the Stench outbreak. Add to that the anger and frustration people felt after successive governments had let them down badly over the years – the way the Tories had viciously taken away people’s rights to all manner of benefits, the systematic destruction of the National Health Service, and the fact that the rich got richer while the poor got poorer – and you were left with a general populace with a definite need to vent said anger and frustrations. You could almost feel sorry for the Stenches. Almost.

  The army had been called out when the hungry dead had risen but, for the most part, it was ordinary people who dealt with the problem. Many headed for DIY outlets, and builders’ merchants in order to find axes, scythes, or even lead piping and thick beams of wood. Sports shops were also raided for cricket bats, cricket stumps, baseball bats… anything with a bit of heft. Some people even tried to liberate shotguns from some of the specialist sporting goods shops, but these were kept firmly under lock and key, and only the shop owners ended up being armed to the teeth: gun-toting, gung-ho vigilantes who were probably more of a public liability than any hungry Stench.

  The British public took to the task of despatching the Stenches with gay abandon. As soon as one of the creatures shuffled into view, there’d be three or four people ready to take it down hard.

  This zealous approach probably explained why, for the most part, the United Kingdom hadn’t been overrun by the ravenous cadavers, unlike much of the rest of the world. On the first day of the outbreak, a large group of the more ‘bullish’ supporters of Cardiff City Football Club went wandering the streets of their city, meting out their own brand of justice. It wasn’t long before other football clubs caught on to this, and by the end of the month there was even a fan-maintained league table showing which team’s supporters ruled the roost as ‘Stench stoppers’. Cardiff were second only to Arsenal in the league – but then again, there was a bigger population of the dead in London and so, on a city size:hit ratio, Cardiff could claim a moral victory, at the very least.

  While politicians ducked for cover, and government ministries dished out pointless and unwelcome advice through the emergency broadcast channels, it seemed as though every man, woman, and child in Britain had picked up a weapon, however primitive, and taken matters into their own hands. At one point, there were almost six hundred heavily armed people surrounding the late Baroness Thatcher’s grave in central London… just on the off chance.

  But it wasn’t all fun and games. Arthur Bevan, a retired park attendant, and former World War 2 veteran, looked out of the front window of his house in Morriston, Swansea, and saw three Stenches standing in the flowerbeds of his garden. ‘Those buggers are trampling my prize Begonias,’ he muttered, before deciding he would ‘put a stop to their bloody antics.’

  Without the benefit of a bat, axe, or large piece of wood, Arthur was forced to get creative. He disappeared into the shed in his back garden, only to emerge with his electric mower. He plugged the extension cable into a wall socket in the living room, tested it quickly to make sure it was in working order, and then opened the front door to meet the enemy.

  As makeshift weapons go, the mower was quite effective. Chunks of Stench flew everywhere, as he arced the powerful little machine back and forth. ‘I’ll have to clean that up later,’ thought Arthur, as he watched the rotting flesh spraying all around him.

  The Stenches continued advancing, and Arthur continued to take them apart, one small piece at a time. Sadly, he took two steps too many, and the plug came free of the wall socket. The mower’s engine died, and Arthur Bevan shortly followed suit.

  FIVE

  Geraint Wyn Thomas could not believe how stupid he’d been. The one thing his Uncle Billy always told him was, ‘If you’re going to be out when it’s dark, for Christ’s sake make sure you’re tooled up. Carry some sort of weapon with you.’

  It was a bit late now, but he really wished he’d brought the hunting rifle with him, even if only to use it as a club. The two Stenches were shuffling ominously towards the gang, and Neil looked to be on the verge of blind panic.

  Gez’s gaze kept swinging back and forth between the rotting creatures, looking for any way of getting around either one without being bitten or scratched. The Stenches were less than ten feet away from the friends now, and Beth swore she could almost smell their breath as they came ever closer.

  Suddenly, from behind the Stench closest to the entrance of the alley, there were flashing blue lights and, almost immediately, a police car pulled up. A burly man in protective cloth
ing slid out of the passenger side, and shouted urgently, ‘Hey! You kids don’t move. We’ve got this covered.’

  The sturdy officer started to run down the alley, with an object that looked like a smaller version of a shepherd’s crook in his hand. Behind him, holding a similar contraption, was a smaller, thinner officer, also wearing the same kind of protective clothing.

  The big policeman barrelled into the female Stench, sending it flying to one side, then continued his charge past Gez and company before rugby tackling the other Stench to the ground. The three friends could only look on in stunned amazement as the officers used their crooks to hook both of the undead by the neck. There was a sharp ‘click’ as the locks on the poles closed. The burly officer looked at Gez, ‘Give us a hand here, son. Hold this pole for a second, while I get the cuffs on this fella.’

  Gez gripped the pole tightly as the Stench squirmed at his feet. The big policeman, a sergeant, judging by the stripes on his arm, made short work of restraining the creature with plastic handcuffs. The second officer, with a little pole-holding help from Beth, had already managed to subdue the other Stench.

  ‘Right, that’s two more for the pens,’ said the sergeant, unclipping a walkie-talkie from his belt. ‘I’ll call this in, and then I’ll be wanting a few words with the three of you.’

  The officer gave Gez a hard look before turning his attention back to his work. ‘Unit Four Two, Unit Four Two – we have a pick-up at the bottom of Dogfield Street, Cathays. Two, repeat, two infected. Over.’

  Sergeant Keith Pugh was a career policeman. He’d joined the force at the age of 18, and had been happy in his work for the past twenty years. He’d had chances for further promotion, and even a shot at making detective grade, but he was at his most comfortable on the beat. He liked to think of himself as a “people person”, and so had stuck to the streets.

  After Rotten Monday, Keith had volunteered to become a member of the newly formed PPG, or Post-living Patrol Group (although, the boys at the station just called it the “Rot Squad”). The early days of the PPG had been fraught, to say the least, as there were constant call-outs to deal with Stenches appearing all across the city. And back then, they had to make do with far less effective body armour than they had now. It was no wonder there was a high mortality rate amongst those original members of the Rot Squad.

  Keith had been close to getting bitten twice in his time with the squad, and it was only his calm manner and rugby player’s physique that had kept him out of harm’s way both times. Since the walls had gone up the PPG’s work was a lot easier, but no one took their job for granted. All it needed was for someone to become complacent while on duty, and things could easily turn fatal.

  Constable Kevin Lovell had been with the PPG for three short, but fairly eventful, months. He had a brain built for comfort rather than speed, and it was pure dumb luck that had led to him being assigned to Sergeant Pugh on his first day with the squad. In the company of a less able partner, or worse still, left to his own devices, Kevin Lovell would probably have managed to get himself sacked/bitten/eaten before the end of his first shift. Under the sergeant’s watchful eye, Kevin had learned to do his job despite his apparent lack of intuition, initiative, and intelligence.

  Sergeant Pugh returned his attention to Gez: ‘So what the bloody hell were you three playing at, wandering around back alleys in the dark? You know it’s still not safe out here at night.’

  Gez looked ashamed, ‘Sorry. It’s just that I had to see my uncle, and I was in a rush to leave the house. I didn’t think it would get dark this quickly.’

  ‘Yes, didn’t think’, repeated the sergeant. ‘There’s still a lot of that “not thinking” going around these days. Not thinking is what gets you killed, lad. Or at the very least, it gets you assigned to the PPG, where you tit about for three months without a clue what you’re doing.’

  The sergeant looked pointedly at his assistant as he spoke. PC Lovell was wiggling a booted foot in front of his captured Stench’s face. Despite lying face down on the floor and being trussed up like a turkey, the creature still managed to move its head enough to bite down on Lovell’s boot. Luckily for the constable, the only damage caused was to the Stench’s fragile teeth. Lovell yelped as the zombie chewed on his footwear. ‘Aaarrgh! It’s biting me.’

  ‘See what I mean,’ the sergeant wearily said to Gez.

  A few minutes later a PPG wagon arrived, more usually referred to as the “Rotmobile”, to transport the Stenches away from the scene. Wandering zombies like these two were usually rounded up by the authorities and then placed in huge, specially built pens, scattered around the country. Once the creatures were inside these large caged areas, they would then be used for all kinds of purposes. Waste not want not, seemed to be the order of the day. Some were sent to specialist laboratories for testing, as scientists worked tirelessly to see if it was possible to stop the zombie infection. Others went to more commercial labs, where they were used for testing make-up products. PC Lovell had always found the idea of a Stench wearing mascara and blusher extremely unattractive, but if he was being honest with himself, he’d had blind dates with worse.

  Some of the undead were used as crash-test dummies (just the once, obviously). Many more were sold on to television productions such as Dead Shot, to keep them in contestants. Or, in the case of the pitiful Jeremy Kyle special – I love a zombie, and he’s the father of my child – they were used as ratings winners.

  As the Rotmobile drove off with its two new occupants, Sergeant Pugh returned his attention to the three teenagers.

  ‘Right then, lady and gentlemen, I think that’s enough entertainment for one night. Time you headed home. PC Lovell and I’ll drop you off in the patrol car so that you don’t get into anymore trouble.’

  ‘But I still haven’t found my Uncle Billy.’

  ‘Never you mind your Uncle Billy. I’ll give him a ring as we’re taking the three of you home. Now what’s your uncle’s surname?’

  ‘Morgan.’

  ‘Billy Morgan? Not Billy Morgan, Australia Road?’

  Gez nodded his head.

  ‘Should have known,’ said the sergeant, staring deep into Geraint’s eyes, ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? Right, get in the car, now.’

  ◆◆◆

  Sitting quietly in the living room of 24 Australia Road, Gez was waiting for the boom to drop. Sergeant Pugh had managed to get a hold of Uncle Billy on his mobile and, even from the back seat of the patrol car, Geraint could hear Billy’s voice rising in anger over the phone as he was told about the little adventure his nephew and friends had just taken.

  ‘You don’t have to hang around, Sarge. He’ll be back any minute, I reckon.’

  Sergeant Pugh looked across at the young man, ‘No, no. I’ll wait. Between you and me, he sounded a little bit annoyed. So, just in case his temper gets the better of him, I’d rather stay and keep an eye on the situation.’

  ‘But Uncle Billy’s never lost his temper with me in all the years we’ve known each other. And he’s definitely never tried to hit me.’

  ‘Well, there’s always a first time. I mean, we are talking about Billy Morgan here.’

  Gez gave the officer a sullen look, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  The sergeant looked around the room nonchalantly, but it was clear he was trying to avoid eye contact with the young man. Before Gez had the chance to ask anything further, he heard the key turning in the front door, followed by Uncle Billy’s voice booming from the hallway, ‘Geraint? Geraint, where are you, boy?’

  ‘In here, Billy,’ called out Sergeant Pugh.

  The living room door swung open, and there stood Billy Morgan. Depending on who you talked to, Billy was either a character, a rogue, an absolute angel or a bloody menace. In his late thirties, with a head of spiky, thick black hair, and what women would describe as rugged good looks, Billy Morgan was not at his most calm as his gaze settled on his nephew.

  ‘What h
ave I told you, time and time again, about being out at night?’

  ‘I know,’ said Gez quietly.

  ‘Well clearly you don’t know, or I wouldn’t have to be shouting at you like this. So none of you were armed, is that right?’

  ‘No.’ Geraint’s voice was becoming quieter.

  ‘Christ on a bike! If your parents were here now.’

  Gez snapped and yelled back at him, ‘But they’re not, are they Billy. And it’s not as if you’re doing such a bang up job of looking after me.’

  An awkward silence descended. Sergeant Pugh stood up. ‘Well, you two have got a lot of talking to do, that’s clear. I’ll leave you to it.’ He looked at Gez. ‘You okay now, son?’

  Gez nodded.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on him, Billy. It was just one of those things. Wrong time, wrong place. Could have happened to any of us.’

  Billy’s attention swung towards the officer, ‘Aye. Fair enough, Sarge. And listen, thanks for looking after him. It’s appreciated. If you ever need anything, just give us a shout.’

  The sergeant raised an eyebrow, ‘Anything?’

  Billy led the officer towards the front door. ‘Oh, nothing illegal. You know, a free tune up for the car, that kind of thing. Mind you, I can get you some very nice bacon at a knock down price.’

  Sargeant Pugh glowered at the man. ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Morgan.’

  ‘Aye. Fair enough. Listen, thanks again. I really do owe you one.’

  ‘That’s all right, Billy. Just take it easy on the boy, eh? He’s had a rough enough night as it is.’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  Billy closed the front door and went back to the living room. Gez sat quietly, looking down at the floor. ‘I’m sorry I yelled at you, Uncle Billy.’