Year of the Zombie [Anthology]

by David Moody

  ‘Those other two,’ Giles said. ‘Your mate and that other girl, what happened to them?’

  ‘They’re dead,’ Howard said.

  ‘What, dead dead, or just a little bit dead?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You know exactly what it means. Where are they? I could have sworn I saw something moving out there.’

  ‘Where we left them, I think. But what did you see?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know, you’re the one sitting in front of the screens.’

  Giles shuffled awkwardly in his seat. ‘Yeah, well... it’s not that easy, is it? I mean, I could write the background code for a system like this, but I’m struggling to find my way around it. User interfaces were never my strong point.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Howard sighed, and behind him, Debbie giggled. He glanced around and winked at her. She smiled back. ‘Right, move aside,’ he said to Giles and he pushed his chair out of the way and assumed his familiar position behind the bank of screens. His hands danced across the controls with precision and speed, focusing first on the ground floor dining room. The current image, time-stamped a few seconds ago, showed Kyle standing upright in the centre of the room, skewered like a roast chicken on a spit.

  ‘Bloody hell, squire,’ Giles said, leaning over. ‘Did you do that to him?’

  ‘Yep,’ Howard answered smugly, loud enough for Debbie to hear.

  ‘So where are the others? Veronica and... sorry, I didn’t catch your mate’s name.’

  ‘Charlie. His name was Charlie.’

  But where the hell is he? Howard thought.

  They’d gone.

  Howard quickly reversed the footage. It didn’t take long to see what had happened. When he’d taken off his jumper as he’d left the room, he’d inadvertently dropped it in the door, preventing it from closing fully. His ex-co-survivors, Zombie Charlie and Zombie Veronica, had escaped easily.

  ‘Crikey, squire. I think we should stay put in here for a while,’ Giles said quietly.

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘Can you lock things down from here?’

  Howard fished the fob from his pocket. ‘I can do pretty much anything with this.’ He lay the fob on a sensor pad and started clicking various on-screen buttons, gradually sealing off the rest of the building.

  ‘We talked about leaving an escape route,’ Giles said, grabbing hold of his arm nervously. ‘Just in case.’

  Howard traced a route with his finger on a schematic on one of the screens. ‘One step ahead of you. Straight down the stairs, along this corridor, and you can either go out the loading bay or back to the front foyer.’

  ‘Just in case,’ Giles said again.

  Giles leant across the desk to snatch one of the sausage rolls Charlie had brought for Howard and inadvertently hit the same control Charlie triggered earlier. Several of the displays switched back to infrared. He went to change it back, but Howard stopped him. ‘Wait, that’s not a bad idea,’ he said. ‘We’ll do a sweep of the building. Just to make sure it’s only us in here, that no one else has snuck in.’

  ‘Wise move.’

  Howard began his well-rehearsed routine, scanning the building floor by floor and room by room for signs of life. To his relief, it was completely clear.

  Almost.

  ‘Wait. What was that?’ Giles asked, and Howard quickly reversed. Two glowing white-yellow blobs on the screen. Other survivors? Howard’s heart started to race. He didn’t much like the idea of sharing this ivory tower with anyone else. He looked up the location of the room they were watching, then breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Bloody hell. What an idiot. It’s us!’

  Giles laughed nervously. ‘I got a bit flustered for a second there, squire,’ he said. ‘I thought we might have had a problem.’

  ‘No, we’re okay.’ Howard went to check the next room, but stopped. His hand hovered over the controls.

  ‘Problem?’

  Howard swallowed, his throat dry.

  ‘There are three of us in here, but only two heat sources.’

  They both looked back at Debbie, still lounging on the chairs where Howard had left her. She waved at them both. They both waved back.

  ‘Do you think...?’ Howard started to ask. ‘No, she can’t be. If she was one of them she’d have been baying for our blood, wouldn’t she?’

  Giles didn’t immediately answer. He seemed reluctant to speak. ‘Not necessarily... remember what I was saying earlier? People were talking online about how that there’s two types of infection. It’s only quick and violent if they were bitten or injured.’

  ‘Everything okay over there?’ Debbie asked, concerned at the suddenly hushed voices.

  ‘Fine,’ both Howard and Giles answered in unison.

  ‘If she’s shared bodily fluids with someone who was already infected, she might have caught it.’

  Howard folded his arms defiantly. ‘No, mate, you’re wrong. She had sex with one bloke, but he was clear when they did it, I’m sure he was. Brian Boyd. You know him?’

  ‘Never heard of him. And how do you know they had sex?’ Giles paused for a moment and looked at the CCTV screens. ‘Wait, have you been spying on us?’

  ‘I wasn’t spying, I was concerned for her wellbeing.’

  ‘You were perving, admit it. Christ, what kind of stuff do you watch in here?’

  ‘It was earlier this evening... I was doing my hourly checks and I saw her on her own in the reprographics room. I was worried. I thought something was wrong, but then Brian Boyd turned up and... and well, you can guess the rest.’

  ‘But he wasn’t infected?’

  ‘Not until he got outside, I’m sure. He definitely didn’t seem to be when they were... together.’

  ‘How you feeling, love?’ Giles asked, glancing back at Debbie again, checking she wasn’t about to attack.

  ‘Bit sick...’ she said, and she threw up blood and bile into a wastepaper bin.

  Howard was cycling through footage again, working his way back to Debbie and Brian’s liaison by the photocopier. It was the last thing he wanted to see, but he put it on-screen anyway. ‘See,’ he hissed. ‘There was nothing wrong with either of them.’

  Giles was watching a little too intently. Howard dug him in the ribs.

  ‘Sorry... right... Keep going backwards.’

  And so he did, following Debbie around the building in reverse, watching her walking backwards from place to place, leaving the party, then returning again. Ending conversations, then beginning them. ‘This is pointless. What are we trying to prove?’

  ‘Whether that young lady is just off her food or off her face, or whether she’s dead.’

  Howard shook his head and kept working back. Further and further. Back before the beginning of the party now. Right back into the working day.

  And then he found it. Debbie with another bloke in another part of the office. As intimate as she’d been with Brian. More so, if anything.

  ‘Oh, fuck.’

  ‘Precisely. Who’s he, anyway? I don’t recognise him.’

  Howard knew exactly who it was. ‘Some graduate manager or other. I signed him in today and Charlie and I...’

  ‘Charlie and you did what? Come on, spit it out.’

  ‘Charlie and I killed him earlier this evening.’

  Giles let out a nervous laugh. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He was one of them when we dealt with him, but he looks all right there...’

  ‘Looks can be deceptive. I think what’s happened is this, squire. This gent turned up here complete with the variant infection, which he seems to have passed on to a more-than-willing host.’

  ‘Were they talking about a cure online? A way we can reverse this thing?’

  ‘What, reverse death?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘No. Don’t be stupid.’
/>   ‘Shit.’

  Howard turned to look at Debbie again. She looked beautiful, if a little frail and grey. ‘I’m cold,’ she said to him. ‘Really, really cold.’

  His coat was hanging on a stand nearby. He took it down and draped it over her shoulders. ‘Don’t get too close, squire,’ Giles hissed, but Howard ignored him.

  ‘I’ll look after you, Debbie,’ he told her.

  ‘Thank you, Howard.’

  Giles snatched hold of his arm and pulled him away. ‘If I might point out a couple of things, Howard. First, this young lady seems to have a knack for getting men to do what she wants. Be wary. Because second, you have to remember that she’s pretty much a zombie right now.’

  Howard almost laughed, stopping himself at the last moment. As ridiculous as it sounded, it appeared that Giles was almost certainly right.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘I get it. I think we both need to calm down and just—’

  Howard was interrupted when the door to the CCTV room flew open in a haze of blood and snarls and spittle.

  Dead Charlie.

  Behind him, dead Veronica.

  ‘Shit,’ Howard said. He slammed the door shut and pushed his weight up against it, struggling to keep it closed as the two zombies did all they could to force it open again. ‘Do something!’ he screamed at Giles, but Giles just stood there, quivering and mumbling and doing very little else. A few seconds later and the combined strength of the undead outside was too much for Howard to hold back. He lost his footing and went tumbling across the room, leaving Veronica and Charlie free to charge into Giles, drag him kicking and screaming into the corner, then tear him limb from limb. Literally. Charlie went in one direction with Giles’ head and one arm while Veronica went the opposite way with everything else. They began to feast on him.

  Howard realised he had no weapons. No way of either defending himself or attacking.

  Debbie.

  He had to do everything he could to keep her safe. He had to draw the things that used to be her workmates away from her, and fast.

  With the dead still chowing down on what was left of Giles, a plan formed. Howard knew what he had to do. He stripped off his polo shirt and revealed his pristine white vest. ‘Got invited to the Christmas party by mistake. Who knew?’ he shouted, feeling equal parts Howard Stanton, Bruce Willis and John McClane.

  The Die Hard quote was lost on the dead, but the volume of his voice was more than enough to get their full attention. They both dropped the bits of Giles they were chewing and ran at him instead.

  Howard legged it. Out of his office, down the corridor and down the stairs, tracing the escape route he’d planned and left unlocked just a short while earlier. Giles had been right – they’d needed a way out. He just hadn’t bargained on needing it so soon. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that the creatures were just about keeping up, maybe even gaining on him. That’s the fast versus slow zombies argument finally put to bed, he thought to himself.

  The building, for all its vast scale, was easy to get lost in. Even Howard, who knew the place inside out, occasionally got confused. One corridor was easy to mistake for the next. Disorientated, and forgetting which direction he was coming from, he headed for the foyer instead of the back, and instantly regretted it. He skidded to a halt in a puddle of Susie Smith’s blood, coming to a stop at the huge glass doors, and he looked out onto a world filled with absolute carnage and despair. In the short time since he was last here, the crisis had deepened exponentially. Buildings were ablaze. The streets were filled with the living and the dead fighting pitched battles. When she saw him, a survivor who’d been hiding in a telephone box across the way came running. She hammered her fists to be let inside.

  ‘Help, Howard, please.’

  It was Jessica from Product Development. Howard instinctively felt for the fob in his pocket. It wasn’t there. He’d left it up in his office. No way in and no way out without the fob.

  ‘Sorry, Jess. I need the key.’

  ‘Please,’ she mouthed, and she rushed back to her phone box hideout just before a gaggle of zombies in the street behind her were taken out by a runaway delivery truck.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he shouted, and he meant it.

  But Charlie and Veronica had different ideas.

  He glimpsed their crazed reflections hurtling towards him, arms and legs flailing and teeth snapping, and he side-stepped at the last possible moment leaving them both to smash off the doors and bounce back. It would have been comical if it hadn’t been so damn terrifying.

  He ran back the other way, retracing his steps then heading the way he was supposed to go first time, out towards the loading bay at the rear of the building. With the two zombies still in close pursuit, he fled down a service corridor, turned sharp right, then stopped at the door which led outside. This was the only way out – if it opened – and he had no way of turning back. He waited, mouth dry with nerves, and then they lumbered into view. Veronica first, all teeth and hunger, taking up the full width of the narrow corridor so the Charlie-thing couldn’t get a look in. She threw herself at Howard and, at the last possible moment, the last possible roll of the dice, he pushed down hard on the door handle.

  It swung open.

  He pressed himself back against the wall.

  Dead Veronica flew past him, ran straight over the sheer drop of the loading bay, then landed in a skip. No way out. So long, sucker.

  Now Charlie.

  The creature came at him with ferocious speed, and this time, once he was sure the ghoul had committed to its attack, Howard dropped to his knees and crawled away. The drop outside was too high for any of the dead to be able to climb in, and though he knew he was leaving a door open, the security fencing around the back of the building would prevent anyone – or anything – from gaining access.

  Safe.

  For about five seconds.

  When Howard looked over his shoulder to see what the noise was, he realised he should have given his old pal Charlie more credit. He’d caught the door handle on his way out, hung onto it, and somehow managed to stop himself from taking the same direct route down that Veronica had. He swung back into the building. ‘Shit, Charlie, really?’ Howard had had enough now.

  Stop running, start fighting.

  Howard had always done what he could to avoid confrontation, but sometimes it was unavoidable, and that time was now. Banking on the tenuous hope that the dead would have trouble climbing, he returned to the foyer again and headed upstairs. He looked back over his shoulder as he ascended and saw that although Charlie-thing was following, he was, indeed, having trouble coordinating his clumsy dead feet. Moving along was one thing, moving along and up at the same time, however, seemed to require a different skill-set altogether. The gain was significant and important. Howard was climbing three or four steps for every one Charlie managed.

  By the time he’d made it up six or seven flights, several metres above the top of the massive Christmas tree, the gap between him and his dead ex-friend was substantial. He could have kept climbing to the very top floors, of course, but what would that have achieved? He still had no weapons to speak of (and without the fob he had little chance of picking anything up before he reached the highest levels), and he’d have faced the most awkward of waits on the top landing, clicking his heels while staggering Charlie caught up. No, he decided, better to just get it over with. Without so much as a basic bludgeon to hand, he knew that vertical height would be his greatest advantage.

  Although not as long as it could have been, the wait was still nerve-racking. Howard looked down into the foyer below. It was a vertigo-inducing drop, and the normally high-polish marble floor was stained with blood and bodies. Outside, the world seemed to have descended into the kind of post-apocalyptic chaos predicted by the movies. Who’d have thought George Romero would have been so prophetic? Right in his line of vision was the phone box where Jessica from Product Development was cowering. They made eye-contact across the distance
, Jessica watching his every move. She waved meekly, and he waved back.

  Showdown.

  Finally Charlie had made it up to Howard’s level. Howard was wrong-footed for a moment, because Charlie had always been a good mate, and it hadn’t struck him until now that he was going to have to kill him. Again. Charlie, on the other hand, seemed to have absolutely no qualms in doing Howard in.

  The dead man latched onto Howard, gnarled fingers finding purchase on his vest and stubbornly refusing to let go. Howard had great visions of upending Charlie and throwing him down into the foyer and splattering him on the floor, but it was Charlie who took the immediate advantage through sheer force alone. Howard was taken completely by surprise by his ferocity, and found himself up against the low bannister, back bending, leaning over. He locked his arms, doing everything he could to keep Charlie’s chomping jaws away from his face, then pushed him away.

  Charlie tripped back, then came at him again without hesitation. Even faster this time. More ferocious.

  Howard readied himself and met him halfway. He almost managed to push him back, but the zombie’s velocity was hard to match and his feet skidded in the spillage dripping from his recently deceased friend. Dead Charlie had the advantage of space; Howard was already up against the wall.

  Howard wished he was better at this. As he grappled with the dead man, he wished he’d been stronger or braver or more confident or smarter. He wished he’d come up with a better plan for the evening (though a better plan might have been locking his office door and watching Die Hard from start to finish on repeat and screw everyone else). He fought to get a grip on his dead friend’s clothes and wondered if he really was as completely useless as he felt at that moment. He’d spent an unhealthy amount of time watching all those Romero movies, thinking about the end of the world and the zombie apocalypse, and it had happened while he was in control of an impossibly cool and functional hideout. He’d had everything he’d wanted here, and yet he’d managed to fuck it all up.