by Al K. Line
"The fairground people may have been a bit rough around the edges but at least they gave us warning about what might be going on. I guess we knew it anyway, there have been some pretty weird people and groups over the last month or so. More than usual," said Kyle. "People go bonkers when there is nothing to keep them in check. You can bet there are a lot of men who would do just about anything for some female company now," he said trying to be diplomatic.
"We will be protecting you Ven, we are not letting things be happening to you or to Tomas, right Kyle?"
"Too bloody right, we are a team. The original, and the best."
"Thanks guys, I appreciate it," said Ven. And she did. As much as she joked about the guys, even got damn annoyed with them now and then, there was no doubt that she felt a lot safer in their company than alone. The simple fact was they were her friends. More. Her family, her only family.
Family stuck together, no matter what.
Time to Mingle
Alpha Zombie had nothing to do with humans now he was something so much better.
Superior.
Part of a purer, more honest master-race that was now the dominant species on the planet. He was the leader for a large proportion of those in the UK. The more infected he came into contact with the more there were connected to the hivemind. And those recruits would spread the connectivity through close contact with others of their kind. Alfred wasn't exactly sure how it worked himself, he only knew that within a certain distance there was some kind of a connection.
But some had been dropping out of range. Emptiness where there was a sort of sharp spike making up a tiny proportion of a fractal whole. It was like an ever expanding crystal, all hard edged, infinitely re-configuring, shards moving, expanding, contracting, always there.
He was at the center. The Alpha Zombie that could control the fractal shards so they could act as one when close enough. Distance stopped outright command, but the hivemind was always there, often shifting and morphing, but never dissipating.
Until now.
Alfred didn't know enough about such a bizarre concept to understand how or why it worked, he only knew it did, with a certainty that he was the one at the black heart of the infinite crystal.
Some of his brothers and sisters were breaking off, scattered to the winds, mere tiny wisps remaining of their presence.
Death? Final death? He didn't think so. Or not in a way that sat right with him in any case. There was something more, something different going on, a force at work, almost like another hivemind in miniature, but not quite that either.
There was a deep pain somewhere in the connection, an unconscious bulge that hinted at what he was searching for. It was too tenuous though. He was unable to delve deep enough in to bring it to the crystalline surface.
So he went hunting for it.
Alfred didn't feel any overarching sense of urgency, those kinds of emotions were a part of the past now. He knew deep within himself that he was more animal now. Primal. A new thing, and emotions, deep emotions, were relatively limited. He could hate though, that was stronger than ever. Plus he could reason, detect, help his pack.
He walked. Never tiring.
He traveled far, meeting infected, being accepted. Tapping their knowledge, knowledge they never knew they had, to uncover hidden paths to the source of the unease that made them restless, always thankful for the welcome embrace of the connection to their own kind.
Alfred followed the scent, the gap, the void where things were beginning to disseminate, and he wasn't surprised to find at its center the red pulsing heart of the humans.
It was to be expected. Once again they proved they were not fit to be a dominant species — nothing better than fodder for his kind, that's what they were. Their evil always done with conscious will, not like the infected that acted on pure instinct. Never out of forethought or malice of any kind. Just an overriding need to feed, to get the zombie high once their bellies were ready to pop and expose their raw fleshy meals to the world.
Alfred opened his mind, how he didn't know, and felt the hivemind expand, filling his every sense, feeling the hunger, the deep ache they could never escape, for food and the life-force contained within uninfected. Blood red corpuscles throbbed through his veins, expanding, pounding against his skin, threatening to rupture. He felt the darkness form around his eyes, his face swell, and waves of chemical cocktails crashing against the shore of his consciousness. The beat grew faster, the void blacker, the insanity threatening to pull him down into the primal energy of the zombies.
He fought and kept himself intact, tethered his new self to the reality of what he was — he overcame and triumphed.
He had his answer, now all he had to do was go get the motherfuckers and teach them one hell of a lesson.
What hadn't been lurking in the communal knowledge was that the scent of a fraction of those responsible would lead him to a field full of sickening smells, lights, and the fake emanations of being happy humans were so insistent on still transparently trying to display to others of their revolting kind — he ended up at a fair of all places. The irony wasn't lost on him, there was no doubt he was the biggest freak there — a star attraction if anyone ever knew exactly who the man was with a shaven head and dark unobtrusive clothes that was skulking around in the shadows, observing those having 'fun'. At least some pretended they were, Alfred was now well aware that a number of those present were not there to enjoy the rides and munch down on foul cooked meats that made his stomach heave and his soul cry out at the pathetic needs of humans with their obsession with cooking food to eat, thus destroying the raw savage enjoyment of ripping it from the still living bone.
Pathetic.
Still, he had got a cancer deep sense of what was happening to a small part of the hivemind that was expanding, or had been, so was in no doubt that not far from here was the answer to the pulsing waves of acuminous un-life he felt right down to the saturated marrow ever morphing in his calcium enriched bones. All courtesy of the botnet that gave him the miracle of a second, much more fulfilling, life.
Alfred knew he had been spotted so left the fair the way he had come in — under the fence and away from anyone that might want to take too close a look at him. From a distance he could pass as human, but up close there were numerous signs that he was a botnet victim, just one that was a little bit special.
It was somewhat of a surprise to see the people he had almost approached months ago to actually save him from what he had become. It felt like a lifetime ago. Such details were of no import now, everyday concerns such as time were part of the past. But he remembered the faces, the sweet smell of baby innocence.
Something was different. That pliable innocence didn't seem the same any longer. It was faint, but it was there, a tendril, a wisp, a tiny black fractal shard, gray like a dirty snowflake, but tentatively holding on to its host. The baby was growing, something was developing inside it, something that reached out into the ether but dispersed like a faint wisp of smoke before it could connect to the hivemind to reach its full potential.
Alfred smiled. That would change, the smoke would slowly solidify, reach out stronger each time to the faint pulses at the edge of the community. Until one day it would be accepted in with the ravaged, bloody open arms of the zombie horde. The baby was something entirely unique, he could feel it. Just like he was the Alpha and a leader, the faint tendrils emanating from that child were full of potential futures. Infinite possibilities and histories as yet unwritten. Anything was possible when such miracles were out in this new world he made his way through.
It sure was going to be an interesting future.
Alfred shook himself back to the present. It was easy to drift off, and he often found himself with hours and days lost, waking who knew where, having done who knew what. Not like before, when all he did was feed, but it happened and he had to accept it as a part of what he was now: an aberration of the zombie botnet that had freed him from the fate of the rest, to let him so
ar to heights the human race never thought possible. Such freedom, how delightful.
He shook again, focusing.
Back to the task at hand, he had gotten what he had come for.
He suspicions were confirmed, once again the buzz through the hivemind was right. He knew what he had to do, and the fuckers were going to pay big time for what they had done to his tribe.
It was time to get nasty.
Fucking Pikies
They were ten miles away from the funfair before anyone thought to take a look at the racks of gear on the bus and check that everything was still there. It was kind of a testament to their trust in others that they ignored the bad rap many travelers and Gypsies got, and didn't think to check that nothing had been nicked. It had.
Pistols? Gone.
Sub-machine guns? Gone.
Recurve bow? Gone.
Nunchucks? Still there. As they were next to bloody useless that was why.
"I hate fucking pikies," moaned Kyle.
"Kyle, that's not exactly PC of you, how would you like it if people called you names just because you liked coding?" said Ven.
"Well, they did didn't they? But you are missing the fact that I was being extremely funny Ven, right Al?"
"Huh?" said Al, succinct in only the way a man traumatized by a clown can be.
"Jeez. Bloody Brad Pitt, in the Guy Ritchie movie? Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels? No, not that one. Snatch. Yeah, he was a pikie in Snatch." Kyle looked at the blank faces. "Seriously? No-one?"
"Afraid not. Anyway, you should call them Travelers, or the Traveling Community, Fairground folk, or Gypos," said Ven, trying to crack a joke of her own.
"Very funny, not," sulked Kyle.
"We are going to go back and get our weapons, is what I am thinking. Yes? We will be bashing the pikie head like I did with the coconuts and we will be maybe winning more fishes for us as well."
"Al, I don't think that is such a good idea really dude, do you?" said a thoroughly fed-up Ven.
"And why would that be being?"
"Because, they have all our fucking guns," shouted Ven, totally exasperated.
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh indeed big guy. Oh indeed," said Ven, turning back to the road and putting her foot down in a huff. She had swapped with Kyle after they had pulled over and found the gear gone, driving stopped her from roaming the bus angrily, so it was a win win for all concerned.
The atmosphere in the bus deflated further. Everyone had been in such good spirits for most of their day out, it was hard to accept that things had gone quite as sour as they had. Al sat there clutching his pink elephant, trying not to think about floppy feet and rapists. Kyle had a little monkey in his lap, and Bos Bos was eyeing up the goldfish in the plastic bag that was sat on the boys' table, looking rather perplexed by its new surroundings.
"Well, I guess we have to look on the bright side anyway. It's not like we were exactly proficient in the use of firearms," said Ven, putting on her best army instructor voice. "We were more like very bad trainees than guerrilla warfare dudes."
"Oi, speak for yourself. Me and Al were pretty good with the guns I will have you know. It was you that was bloody useless." Kyle resented the insinuation. He had quite liked having the back-up of a pistol for when he could kill the undead from a distance and save on the arm swinging.
"Fair enough," grinned Ven.
Kyle carried on rummaging through their numerous bags and the rest of the gear now taking up almost all available space on the shiny chrome racks that spanned the length of both sides of the now infamous Basil bus.
"Anyway, how are you knowing that it would be being the fairground owners that were doing the stealing? It could have been the bad men that were there, the ones that were doing the raping of the women," Al finished with a whisper. He hated saying words that meant bad things were happening to nice ladies.
"Well, we don't have any actual evide—"
"We do," interrupted Kyle. "Look."
Kyle held up something small between his thumb and forefinger. Ven looked in the rear-view mirror. It was hard to make out what it was.
"Well, what is it? I can't see from up here."
"It's a red nose," said Kyle.
"Fucking pikies," shouted Ven. "I knew we couldn't trust them. And clowns, never trust a clown."
"I was telling you this all along. I told you not once but many times that clowns are being the evil, they are the most bad thing and now the clown has left his nose but stolen our guns. He is a very bad clown indeed." Al shuddered at the thought of the evil clown touching everything on the bus.
"Yeah, and I wonder why the bloody clown broke into Basil and nicked our guns Al. Any ideas on that front dude?" said Kyle, not angry, just resigned to the fact that they must never let Al near a clown again. He really didn't like them one bit, and it seemed that the feeling was mutual.
"Guess clowns don't like you either Al," shouted Ven from the front, saying what Kyle had just been thinking.
"Why not? I am being a nice man am I not? I am not wearing the giant shoes and the big hair and the funny nose," said Al frowning.
"Hate to break this to you big guy but you have bloody massive feet, your hair is a little funny, you have a bit of a ginger beard and your nose is a little red too," said Kyle, trying hard to contain himself. Laughter eventually overcame him uncontrollably. He was soon doubled over in the aisle, victim of his own wit.
"Well, I may be a little bit ginger in the beard bits," agreed Al, lightening his tone and smiling at the return of a lighter mood.
Everyone hated it when things were too serious, it was a depressing enough world as it was without them bickering amongst themselves. Especially when they were the victim of a disgruntled man in a purple wig, a red nose (now theirs) and feet larger than his legs.
Even during the apocalypse there was some stuff you just couldn't make up — no-one would believe you if you told them.
"What else is missing?" shouted back Ven.
Kyle continued his stock taking, checking what had been taken. The unfortunate result of all this searching was that Kyle uncovered a lot of the stuff Ven had surreptitiously stashed away, hoping it wouldn't be found.
"Nothing as far as I can see, apart from maybe a few of the RynoHide pads, but we have loads more of them anyway. If it was just the clown, or some of the fair peeps too, then they didn't want to leave us totally without protection. All the stabproof gear still seems to be here, and they didn't nick anything else as far as I can tell. But Ven?"
"Yeah?"
"What exactly are we doing with these?" asked Kyle, holding up a handful of skimpy evening dresses, all seemingly black and very similar, if not identical.
"Um, well, just in case we went anywhere nice, or I fancied a change. You know, to feel girly." She at least had the sense to look a little embarrassed.
"I have never, in my life, seen you wearing a dress. And exactly where do you think we are going to go where it's strictly evening wear only? This is the zombie apocalypse in case you hadn't noticed. What is wrong with you?" said Kyle, totally exasperated. "When did you get them?"
"Oh, I dunno, years ago," mumbled Ven.
"What! You mean we have been carrying these around since the beginning? Are you mental or what? I thought you promised to only bring what we needed when we packed the bus up?"
"Sorry."
"What was that? I didn't hear you."
"I said I am sorry alright, I just wanted to keep something that reminded me of the old times, you know."
They carried on bickering for a while longer, but it was far from vitriolic, it was more just a distraction than anything else. A way to cope with the madness, to take their minds off the nagging feeling of something even more out of whack than usual since they left the funfair. And to help them not to think about the fact they were back to having no guns, robbed by a bloody clown by the seems of it too.
Al was unusually quiet, the shock of the clown confrontation obviously st
ill playing out, but he seemed fine, just a little subdued.
They trundled on, away from the fair, aiming to just find a nice spot where they could rest up for the night. They had big plans for the next day and everyone was secretly really looking forward to it. They were going to go to a place Ven had heard about back in the days when she could look at a computer screen without being turned into an undead brain-muncher.
Happy times.
Swim Fishy Swim
"Kyle?"
"Hmm?"
"I am thinking that the little fishy is not being very happy in the plastic bag. It looks like it is doing the sad face." Al was holding up the little fish home. Oxygen was getting low in the sealed bag — the main reason so many of the poor little things died soon after being 'won' at fairs all around the UK.
"Yeah, he's not looking too sharp is he. Think we should let him go?"
"I am thinking that is an excellent idea, and we should be putting him in the river so that other fishies can be his friends and he will not be staring at the plastic all day long."
"Hey, did you know that goldfish only have a memory of a few seconds? So actually it means he never gets bored in there. He swims around, has a look out, and just as he is wondering why he is in a plastic bag he forgets what he is thinking and does it all over again," instructed Kyle, keen to share his, admittedly minimal, knowledge of goldfish with Al.
"Well, it is still not a very nice way to be living is what I believe he thinks, and it would also be meaning that every few seconds he would be realizing quite how scary being lifted up and peeked at all the time is," said Al, beginning to really feel sorry for the poor little guy.
Ven was busy having a good wash outside the bus, just to get some fresh air, even if the weather was now pretty cold. They had parked up near to a river as had become their tradition now. It made getting clean easier, was a chance to do the laundry, and was also convenient for doing the washing up after they ate. Ven usually cooked so the guys would go clean up the aftermath of what were often mammoth meals from whatever they could scavenge on their travels.
