Lord of the Zombies: Apocalypse (Lord of the Zombies Zombilogy Book 1)

by Parker, Des

  Simon was bemused. “Who brings a duck to a zombie fight?”

  “The winners,” Dick replied as he glanced at the shattered remnants of the zombie mob lying about the place. “Oh and I didn’t bring him, he just came along for the ride. I think zombies killed his family and he wants revenge.”

  “How come he didn’t change into a zombie duck?” Simon asked.

  Dick was confused.

  “Can they do that?”

  There were another couple of squishy thumps as the troop carrier backed into the almost deserted street. All the vehicles had been abandoned and the petrol station was still on fire.

  “I’ve seen a zombie budgie – so I think everything has been affected, except us.”

  “What even cute little pussycats?” Caroline questioned.

  “Um – yes. How can I put this? I met a cat this morning with a big hole in his head.”

  Caroline screwed up her face. “Oh, that’s just gross.”

  “It’s not as bad as you think, and he made a really good cup holder.”

  Caroline was disgusted. “How could you?”

  “Oh, I didn’t. No, that was Nick.”

  “Nick?” Dick questioned as he stopped, put the troop carrier into first gear, and rolled over a zombie straggler who tried to bring down the tank with a pencil. It was not a very successful strategy and ended in a smudge.

  “Nick. Yeah, he seems to be the zombie’s leader.” Simon answered.

  Dick was unimpressed. “Was that the big guy in the silly robes? The one they carried off screaming like a little girl?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.” Simon replied. “He has crowned himself leader and they seem to be following him.”

  Dick glanced back at the sports hall as the roof caved in. “I wonder how that’s working out for him?”

  The troop carrier thundered off down the road, passing over the top of several abandoned cars and the occasional slow moving zombie.

  From a rooftop nearby, Nick watched it depart. He was angry. Angry, hungry and humiliated.

  He pushed one of his minions off the roof to make him feel better. It didn’t.

  Two storeys below, the zombie clambered to its feet, its limbs not quite in the right position. Its addled brain did not immediately put two and two together but slowly, very slowly, it was learning that following Nick was not in its best interests. It hobbled off trying to fix a dislocated limb and find its penis.

  Nick looked down at his fallen comrade and didn’t really care, but thought he should say something. “You might want to put something on that,” he muttered as he turned his back on it.

  Albert was standing nearby on the street and watched the half broken zombie hobble away. He did not like what he saw.

  He looked up at the rooftop just in time to see the man in robes turn his back on them. Something like anger flashed through Albert’s barely-functioning mind and he turned away, only to be confronted by another zombie; his anger abruptly disappeared as he realised this zombie was female.

  He looked at her, she looked at him, they shuffled closer together, their eyes met and they took a bite out of each other. At the exact same moment they spat out the chunk of each other’s upper arm out and half-smiled. She turned to walk away and Albert found himself following her.

  But somewhere in the back of Albert’s mind, anger at the man in the robes was still there, simmering quietly away.

  On his rooftop, Nick was completely unaware of this; he was far too deep in his own thoughts to notice.

  Chapter 15

  A drive in the country

  Sweet little flowers grew by the roadside. The wind danced daintily as one flower opened gracefully, sweetly, blissfully, and bit the top off the one beside it. Clearly the zombie mutation crossed the species gap without hesitation.

  The zombie flower chewed for a moment, its petals contorting in a vicious frenzy that would really look gruesome if there were streaks of red everywhere and it drooled. It might have been contemplating this as it was abruptly pulverised by a troop carrier.

  A troop carrier does not make a very useful flower press. To press a wild flower, one must be gentle and controlled, exerting only the barest minimum of force necessary to prevent any damage to the delicate petals.

  A fourteen-ton troop carrier has the subtlety of a tank, which is probably a fitting analogy. It does not so much “press” wild flowers as much as grind them into dust, grind the bits of dust into dust, dropkick the bits of dust around a bit and punch them in the head repeatedly before snorting them up its backside.

  Apart from this tiny act of destruction, the countryside was pleasant. The sun was shining but not a bird could be heard, except for the duck quacking enthusiastically as it lowered its beak into the slipstream, while riding on the bonnet of the troop carrier.

  The Bushmaster was big and ugly, like a giant, armoured troop carrier should be, with a green camouflage colour scheme, angular lines, flat-top, heavy armour, and four big-bastard wheels. The only thing missing was a gun turret, but despite this, it still looked pretty damn cool. It could carry nine soldiers in full pack for three days. Today it was carrying one porn star, two passengers and a duck on its bonnet.

  They had left the city behind and were heading into the country looking for somewhere to hole up while the world fucked itself.

  Dick avoided the motorways and keep to the smaller roads, trying not to leave a trail. This was clearly an ill-conceived approach. A fourteen-ton tank does not quietly disappear down tiny country lanes; it takes up whole roads and then a bit more, leaving a trail of destruction behind it.

  It was not so much that he was hiding their course but leaving a clearly detailed map, complete with rest stops, guides to petrol stations with bad takeaway food and those shitty brochures pointing out tourist features of dubious merit, that haven’t been interesting to anyone for forty years. Apart from that, one would have to be blind, dumb, and stupid not to be able to track the Bushmaster’s progress - either that or a brainless zombie.

  And the particular horde of zombies tracking them were not entirely brainless, for they had a head man, a big boy – a man, sorry, a zombie with intelligence, cunning, poor bodily hygiene, and a stone-cold, steel-hard, granite-tough pimple on his zombie ass, which made it uncomfortable to sit. So, he had to keep moving, and planning, and scheming about exactly how he was going to feast on his former best friend’s succulent brain and then, perhaps later, work out a way to take over the world.

  The world, however, was not in need of a great and powerful zombie leader to lead a zombie revolution; this seemed to have already happened.

  In village after village, wherever the troop carrier stopped, the story was always the same.

  Simon would get out to look around – it was always him taking this risk, never Dick or Caroline. Simon had accepted this, he had seen the writing on the wall, he was the inevitable third wheel and the axle had already fallen off any chance of him getting near the driver’s seat.

  So, Simon would get out, take a walk around, fight off half a village of zombies, grab a couple of ice creams from the shop, and get back in the Bushmaster, no worse for wear, just a little disappointed.

  “How did that go?” Dick asked as the troop carrier sat quietly outside a tiny village shop somewhere in the north.

  Caroline sat beside him in the driver’s cabin just staring at him in a slightly stalkerish way.

  Simon climbed in the back hatch and resumed his seat in the rear section of the troop carrier, just behind the cabin.

  “Well, there were two lovely old ladies inside and they wanted to make me a sandwich,” Simon said with a dismissive shake of the head.

  “Well, that doesn’t sound too bad.” Caroline replied, without even looking at him.

  Simon ignored this, shaking his head slowly. “Except they wanted me to be the sandwich.”

  Dick chortled, “Hey – I like the sound of that!”

  “No – I don’t think you would. One of them po
ured sauce on me as they bared their zombie fangs in a pincer movement.”

  “Oh!” Dick was obviously disappointed.

  “So, what happened? Did they follow you out?” Caroline glanced out the window at the shop but couldn’t see any sauce-wielding zombies.

  “One ended up head first in the ice cream freezer, the other is stuck in the ceiling.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to get them out?” Caroline asked.

  Simon shook his head. “I wouldn’t bother. The one in the freezer unit stood straight back up and left her head behind. She was still searching for it when I left.”

  Caroline was disappointed. “That’s the third village we’ve tried and everyone’s a zombie. We could be the only humans left on the planet. What are we going to do, Dick?”

  She looked at him imploringly, with a slight smile, one of those smiles with only one possible meaning, a meaning Dick relished and Simon tried to ignore.

  “Maybe there are survivalists somewhere,” Simon interrupted.

  “Survivalists?” Dick was momentarily taken aback, his one-track mind jumping a track. “You know, you could be right.”

  Caroline didn’t care two hoots for this new idea. “Who cares about survivalists, we have to look out for ourselves.” She put a hand possessively on Dick’s arm.

  Simon tried to amp up the positives, “But if we find other survivors, we can band together. Take on the zombie hordes and share experiences together.”

  “I don’t want to share with anyone, he’s...” Caroline caught herself mid-sentence, the words hanging in the air, taunting Simon.

  Dick broke the moment, “I think Simon’s right. We need to move on, we need to find others. We can’t do this alone.”

  “Well he can.” Caroline responded.

  Simon ignored the undertone as Dick put the Bushmaster into gear and slowly drove out of the village.

  “So what’s your story Dick?” Simon thought it might be safer to break the tension with an information dump. “How did a porn star come into possession of a troop carrier, mohair underpants, and a psychotic duck?”

  There was a quack of acknowledgement from the bonnet. Mr Percival had not been forgotten.

  Dick relaxed a little. For once, someone was actually asking him about his life and not about the length of his cock. “We were filming at an army base.”

  “An army base!” Caroline was momentarily distracted by a vision of several buff men in uniforms, or more pertinently, out of them.

  Dick glanced over at Caroline in the passenger seat. She was still leaning in towards him, still holding, or at least stroking, his arm; for a moment she was elsewhere and he was just a little bit disturbed. “Yeah,” he hesitated before continuing. ”We were filming at an army base. Apparently the producers got a good deal on the facilities and the government needed the money.”

  Simon was unimpressed. “I’m glad to see my tax dollars are doing something useful.”

  “So, we were filming a caveman pic by an artificial lake there – that’s why I had the mohair undies - I was last one on set and still had my jocks on when all the shit went down. I walked in on an orgy, everyone already naked, chowing down on each other – if you know what I mean. Then it all went a bit queer, and messy. Three of them came at me, I tripped over the costume box with all the other spare undies, and a duck fell out with a pair of mohair ball-smugglers on his head. One of the zombies grabbed him and was flung into the lake. The other two stepped on the spilled stuff and were thrown through a wall. That’s how I realised the mohair was doing something to the zombies.”

  Simon was annoyed by this revelation. “How is it everybody else found out about the mohair straight away? I had to walk halfway across town before I knew. If I had taken my cardigan off, I would have been lunch.”

  “But you didn’t, so stop whining,” Caroline replied. “And I’m safe now.” She added, gazing longingly at Dick.

  “No need to rub it in.” Simon whispered under his breath as he turned away.

  “Anyway,” Dick continued, “I figured out the mohair thing, kept my undies on, found my trousers, and put another pair on over the top of them, just to be safe. Then I rigged up Mr Percival with his bib, because he started following me around. I felt sorry for him after we stepped outside and a flock of zombies tried to have us. That seemed to set him off and he king-hit every zombie we came across after that.”

  “But why steal a troop carrier? I mean, why not just take a car?” Simon was clearly having trouble with Dick’s choice in transport.

  “Because I’ve seen all those zombie movies and you need something big and hung like a horse to fight the bastards off,” Dick then smiled wickedly, “and it reminded me of me.”

  Caroline licked her lips. “So how did you find us?’

  “Oh that was easy.”

  “I could be,” Caroline interrupted with the flash of smile.

  “Yeah how did you find us?” Simon interrupted; attempting to derail Caroline’s thought train. “It’s not like there was a big neon sign saying, here are some fellow survivors.”

  “Actually there was,” Dick replied. “I just followed all the zombies.”

  Simon was unimpressed. “Yeah - right. Next you’ll be telling us that to find other survivors; we only have to look out for a sign.”

  “You never know.” Dick replied as he turned down by a hedgerow and entered a long road, and then slammed the brakes on.

  “Oh – you’re fucking kidding.” Simon replied, as they stared at a rickety wooden fence with the words, “Here are some fellow survivors,” painted roughly on it.

  Chapter 16

  Gone to the Dogs

  As survivalist camps go, this one wasn’t particularly impressive. No ramparts built from twisted car bodies and any other rubbish lying around, no nasty, zombie impaling spikes, no flamethrowers on makeshift towers, no guards armed to the teeth with automatic weapons. In fact, it was nothing like that at all.

  It was just a farm.

  The mangled and broken zombies lying all over the place, was the only real giveaway that any kind of action had happened here. The main house was relatively unscathed and the outbuildings didn’t seem damaged at all.

  In fact, the gate wasn’t even closed and Dick simply drove the Bushmaster straight up to within fifty feet of the main house and stopped. Having seen countless zombie movies where people do the stupidest things, Dick turned the troop carrier around so it faced the road before he shut the engine down and emerged, gun slung across his front and sword on his back - just in case.

  Caroline kept close to him as they walked cautiously towards the house.

  Simon picked up a long stick lying on the ground because, even though he was still wearing his cardigan, he wanted to feel the reassuring warmth of a fairly useless weapon in his hands.

  A smallish man with sandy, tousled hair came cheerily out to greet them with a big grin and a wave. “Hi, I’m Rex,” the man said as he walked briskly up to them.

  Dick pointed the gun at Rex’s nose and adopted his best Dirty Harry voice. “Are you a zombie?”

  Rex looked down the gun barrel and sniffed it then leaned back and smiled again. “Why, no – are you?”

  Dick kept up the persona. “Do I look like a zombie?” He tried keeping up the voice but couldn’t quite hold the gravelly tone and his voice broke.

  “No, you look like a fucking wanker,” Simon whispered under his breath.

  Dick heard the comment and turned towards Simon, waving the gun barrel about. “Yeah – alright, I can’t do the voice. I’m not fucking Shakespeare, you know.”

  No one noticed Rex follow the point of the barrel with his snout.

  Dick turned back to face Rex. “Alright – if you’re not a zombie, what are you?”

  “I’m a Rex.”

  “Rex?” Caroline asked, “That’s a funny name.”

  “Not really, I used to be Aaron, but I changed it recently. Thought it suited me better.”

  “So
you’re not a zombie then?” Simon asked trying to be polite.

  “No, killed a few though.” Rex replied, “Sorry about the mess.”

  “That’s fine by me.” Simon said as he moved forward to shake Rex’s hand, transferring his stick to his left hand. Rex followed the movement of the stick as if mesmerised. This time everyone noticed. Simon hesitated but thought he would put the newcomer to the test by shaking his hand. If Rex were catapulted across the yard, then Simon would know he was lying.

  Nothing happened and Rex shook his hand with enthusiasm.

  Dick and Caroline relaxed and Dick lowered his weapon. They both shook Rex’s hand.

  Now everyone seemed more relaxed. Rex turned and started walking towards the house. “Why don’t you come on in? The lads and I are about to have dinner.”

  Rex moved off a little way, there was a slightly twisted smile on his face, you know the sort.

  On top of the Bushmaster, Mr Percival quietly stalked into view, his psychotic duck eyes firmly planted on the house. If one believed in animal, or in this case, duck instincts, then Mr Percival was fully alert. He quacked an alarm.

  Dick heard the noise and stopped in his tracks, an arm barring Caroline from moving any closer to the house.

  Simon saw this and his internal alarm started chiming. He cleared his throat and put on his best, I’m-not-fucking-worried-but-I’m-shitting-myself voice.

  “Um, Rex?”

  Rex stopped in his tracks, the smile disappearing off his face as it hardened. With great effort, he plastered the smile back on and turned around to face Simon. The smile was desperately trying to leave his face, because it just knew what was coming, and had an appointment somewhere else.

  Rex hoped Simon did not notice, but Simon had noticed, and was hoping that Rex had not noticed, that he had noticed, and that this noticing, was now getting just a little silly.

  “You’re not wearing Mohair.”

  Rex looked confused. “I’m not wearing mohair? What’s that got to do with anything?” His voice was starting to sound just a little too growly for a happy man and Simon was sure he saw one of Rex’s teeth lengthening.