British Zombie Breakout - Part Four: Last Gasp
Copyright Peter Salisbury May 2012
Cover painting by Daphne Coleridge
Smashwords Edition 2012 June 21
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
The contents must not be copied and distributed or re-distributed by means of printed paper, electronic transfer or by any on-line means, without the express permission of the author.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This story is entirely fictional and any resemblance to any person or place is entirely unintentional and coincidental.
British Zombie Breakout: Part Four Last Gasp
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Ball
Chapter 2: The Mall
Chapter 3: Breakfast
Chapter 4: A Closed Meeting
Chapter 5: Tea and Biscuits
Chapter 6: Coffee
Chapter 7: Reunion
Chapter 8: The Scream
Chapter 9: More Screaming
Chapter 10: Vantage Point
Chapter 11: After Dark
Chapter 12: Unwelcome Visitors
Chapter 13: More Zombies
Chapter 14: Attack!
Chapter 15: Study
Chapter 16: Tarquin
More by Peter Salisbury
Chapter 1: The Ball
'Stop calling him Steve!' Alex said. She wrung her hands in frustration. 'The guy you dragged me in here with is called Tarquin.'
A woman in a white coat sitting across from Alex made a note in her book but said nothing.
'He's nothing like Steven,' Alex continued. 'We just happened to be together when those agents grabbed us.'
Not knowing what was going on was bad enough but Alex had a dreadful feeling it was all going to end up being about zombies again. Nasty, berserk bitey things with bits missing. She desperately wanted to see Steve. The real one.
The woman spoke in even tones, 'He answered to Steve when we brought him in.'
Alex took a deep breath and dragged herself back to reality. 'Probably he was confused, or just going along with it because the agents had guns. I saw the holsters under their jackets.' How many times was it now? The whole being 'grabbed out of the blue' thing had got way past tiresome.
The woman shrugged.
'But he's not at all like Steve.' Alex scraped her chair back and stood up. 'He's the wrong guy, alright?' She stared down at the woman who sat unmoved at the other side of the table. Alex realised she should be thankful that 'they', whoever they were, hadn't got Steve. He was still out there somewhere, probably worried sick thinking she had gone off with that Tarquin.
'Oh hell!' she said.
Alex walked to the window and back, while attempting to defiantly shove her hands in her pockets. But of course she didn't have any; she still had on the dress she'd worn to the dance.
Alex scowled at the guard by the door. He looked uneasy but he didn't stop her walking to and fro. Light flooded through the glass, providing a further annoyance. It was that opalescent stuff, so Alex could see nothing through it, though she guessed she was at Breathedeep. They were probably in one of the rooms intended for staff meetings, right away from the zombie cells. Even so, Alex thought she heard a faint scream. It reminded her of who might be in charge.
'I want to see Professor Mason or Commander Hodgeson.'
The interviewer shrugged again and gave an open-handed gesture. 'Sorry, I'm not authorised…'
'But you are authorised to keep me here without telling me why, or how long for, or anything else!'
'I can arrange for you to spend some time with Steve and have something to eat.'
'I have no desire to see your 'Steve',' Alex said from between her teeth.
If the clock above the door was to be believed, it was near eleven and at the mention of food, Alex's stomach actually began making loud 'feed me' noises. She hadn't eaten since the buffet at the Fresher's Hop in the middle of the night and there'd been nothing on offer since. With the country trying to haul itself back on its feet with limited resources, the buffet had been a meagre affair, consisting of free food and a buy-your-own-drinks bar.
The food hadn't been really free, of course, the money to pay for it came out of the course fees which had a nasty habit of increasing every year. Consequently, Alex had picked her way through a selection of the tiniest sausages she'd ever seen, some vol-au-vents and bits of cheese on sticks.
She generally avoided vol-au-vents since the time she'd tried one at a party of Rachel's. Rachel claimed she had spent 'hours' slaving with her mother making them, although they'd looked exactly like resuscitated versions of the ones you could get frozen in the supermarket. Alex found the things most unappetising; a pointlessly fattening pastry case with some sort of unidentifiable, supposedly edible goo in the middle. The two she had eaten eight hours ago had neither sustained her, nor informed her of any merits she might have missed the time before.
Alex sat down, arms wrapped around the hollow feeling in her middle. 'A proper breakfast would be a good idea.'
She stared at the woman's face, then tried to make out the tiny writing on the dosimeter she had pinned to her white coat. Despite noting down everything Alex said, the woman appeared to have forgotten what they were talking about, so Alex glared and added, 'Today?'
'Oh, I'll see to it at once,' the woman said, gathering up her notebook and moving to the door.' She'd apparently not missed her breakfast.
'And you can take him with you,' Alex said, pointing at the guard.
'He'll be outside the door. This is as much for your protection as anything else.'
As the guard left, Alex took note of his navy blue uniform. The jacket had plenty of pockets and button-down flaps but no insignia to give away rank or purpose. His cropped blond hair was covered in one of those lopsided caps the military favoured. The cap was also navy blue and bore an insignia of a white shield surrounded by white leaves. It was nothing she recognised but he did have a shiny black belt with a gun, a taser in a button-down holster and a nasty-looking baton, each of which Alex was pretty certain he'd been well-trained in the use of. She sneered at his back as he closed the door.
Then again, that sound, though fainter than before. The zombie scream.
Chapter 2: The Mall
Rachel sat on the edge of the deep leather couch in the spacious lounge of her parents' house in Kilkorne, waiting for Maisie. A sharp pain in her finger informed her she'd been tapping her nail on the back of her phone for the last few minutes. She lifted her hand and checked to make sure the varnish was still intact. Her watch showed that it was ten minutes past the time Maisie should have called to say she was ready. Rachel got up, walked around the room, looked out of the window at the neat and colourful garden, then stepped out into the hall and admired herself in the mirror. She looked at her watch again, sighed, went back to the lounge, and voice-dialled Maisie's number.
'Maisie, are you ready yet?'
'Was I ever, like, not ready to go to Wyncester Mall?'
'So, why haven't you called me?'
'Oh. I thought, like, you…'
'Never mind. You're not wearing anything scruffy, are you?'
'We're only going to buy, like, student stuff, aren't we?'
Rachel rolled her eyes towards the ornate chandelier in the centre of the lounge ceiling. 'Maisie, there's no point going to buy new clothes if you don't look like you can afford to go in the shop.'
'They're only for wearing at college.'
Rachel hadn't worked each weekend for the last six months, saving every penny, to go around every day in jeans and a plain top, and certainly not
for nights out.
'Yeah, college discos and dances and parties.'
'Oh. You think we'll, like, get invited to parties?'
'We've been on TV, haven't we?'
'But, like, invited to actual college parties?'
'Duh! We kept the zombies out of the castle. We invented the zombie torch.'
'Didn't Steve, like, invent that, actually? All we did was…'
'You helped me grab our stuff out of the classroom.'
Maisie gasped at Rachel's mangling of the truth. It scared her to think how she'd almost fallen in when the classroom floor collapsed, while Rachel waited outside. Rachel had been choosing a handbag in an abandoned shop while the rest of them made breakfast the morning all zombie hell broke loose in Stannicvale. Then an image from earlier still came back so vividly, Maisie had to press a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing: the expression on Rachel's face when she found herself covered in dirty old cobwebs from the dungeon.
It was too much; Maisie held down the privacy button, while emitting a shriek of laughter and frantically tried to think of something else to say which didn't actually contradict Rachel.
'You could say were all in it together, I suppose, Rach.'
'You know I hate it when people shorten my name like that.' Rachel sometimes wondered why she stayed friends with Maisie but she had decided Maisie was a perfectly convenient foil for her own brilliance. 'You wouldn't like it if I called you Maise, would you?'
'Well that doesn't make sense because maize is, like, a food, isn't it?'
The conversation wasn't going the way either of them intended. They both fell silent while they tried to think about something else.
Rachel got there first. 'Remember what it was like in the TV studio.'
Maisie shivered as the sensation of soaking up the audience's adulation came back to her. 'Yeah, like when everybody cheered us for just being there?'
'Well, not just being there; for being who and what we are.'
'You think there'll be lots of parties?'
'Of course, all the time. Didn't you read the student online magazine?'
Maisie only read what she had to. She tried to keep Rachel talking while she rummaged through her wardrobe. 'You know what Alex and Steve are doing?'
Rachel guessed that Maisie was stalling while she looked for a change of clothes. Her friend could look quite presentable when she tried but sometimes she just needed reminding to make the effort. Rachel tossed her hair over her shoulder; whatever Maisie wore could only make Rachel stand out. And they still had plenty of time to catch the bus.
'That new university. So boring they've already 'gone up', or whatever it's called.'
'A whole week before us?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Fred's, like, going to the same college we are, isn't he?'
Rachel anticipated Maisie's next question. 'Business Studies, didn't he tell you?'
'No. Haven't seen him.' Maisie held a hanger up against herself and looked in the mirror. Something in a pink floral print. She grinned at how it came up shorter than anything Rachel could get away with. 'Sounds like you've seen him, though.'
'Those rumours are all untrue!' Rachel knew the papers liked to make things up about people but she still didn't like what they'd suggested about her and Fred. 'I'll see you at the bus stop at ten past, OK?'
'See you there.' Maisie dropped her phone onto the bed and shook the dress off its hanger. Since they'd left school, needling Rachel was her own special way of getting back for the put-downs, by bursting the bubble of assumed superiority Rachel liked to surround herself with.
Chapter 3: Breakfast
The guard placed a grey plastic canteen tray in front of Alex ten minutes after the awful woman in the white coat had deserted her. On the tray was a plate of cooked breakfast consisting of one thin chipolata sausage, a dessert-spoonful of scrambled egg, a single rasher of bacon, two button mushrooms, half a fried tomato, and one rather damp-looking hash brown. A smaller plate held one slice of toast, a tiny pot of 'mixed fruit' jam, and there was a large mug containing coffee which was not quite hot.
Alex attacked the food with the plastic knife and fork provided, eating and drinking everything on the tray. Afterwards she sat still, waiting.
The woman had gone away without any explanation, so Alex was left on her own. She examined every corner of the room: in front of her the tray with its plates of toast crumbs and congealed fat, the mug now containing only a sip of cold coffee; the table on which the tray stood, regulation metal legs and a marble-patterned laminate top; the chair the woman had sat in, as uncomfortable as her own. Otherwise the room was completely bare, with white walls, pale blue floor tiles, and diffused lighting set in a suspended ceiling. From one corner, the black dome of a surveillance camera reflected an image of the room, distorted as if in a goldfish bowl.
Alex pushed back her chair, walked to the door and turned the handle. To her surprise it opened. The guard put his hand on his holster and moved from 'at ease' to 'you won't get past me' stance.
'Yes miss?'
'What happens now?'
'Can't say miss.' He took a step closer. 'If you'd go back inside, miss.'
Alex retreated, leaving the door ajar. As she sat back in her chair, the door was closed from the outside. She waited some more. After another hour, she went back to the door.
This time she found a different guard. He was even less informative than the first.
Another hour passed and Alex was about to have a screaming fit when she heard footsteps approaching down the corridor. They were brisk and business-like. When the footsteps stopped outside the door, there was a muffled exchange of words for a few moments before it was opened.
'Alex, I am so sorry you have been kept here like this.'
'Not as sorry as I am, Commander Hodgeson!' Alex said, standing up to shake the man's hand. He was much as she remembered from the last time he'd rescued them. His uniform looked as if it was straight from the box and Alex thought he looked handsome in a kind of old-as-your-parents sort of way. Looking into his face, she realised that she hadn't taken notice of his eyes before. They had a curiously kindly look for someone whose business was killing people, or at the very least threatening to.
'I don't understand why they've kept you separate from Steve.'
Alex clenched her fists on the table top. 'Please, don't you start.'
'Oh? I was going to see him next.'
'It's not Steve, it's some guy called Tarquin. I barely know him.'
Douglas Hodgeson raised a quizzical eyebrow and Alex began to explain.
'Everything was getting back to normal. We passed our exams…'
'We?'
'Steve and I, the real Steve that is, got our results and applied to university. We both went to that new one, amalgamated out of three or four others.'
'Four.'
'Yes, you'd know that, it's where we were grabbed from.'
Hodgeson did his best to smile. 'Not on my orders. Go on.'
'The first thing that happens after you register is you get allocated your room in the halls of residence, you know, kind of blocks of flats for students.'
'Yes, yes.' Commander Hodgeson drummed his fingers on the tabletop.
Alex felt she was giving way too much detail but she'd been kept waiting so long to see a familiar face that she wasn't able to stop herself. She'd only been away from home for a week and she wanted to get it straight in her own mind.
'Well the next thing is the Freshers' Ball. They put on an all-night dance thing, with bands and a DJ, so everyone can meet everyone else, so you don't feel like you're on your own. The only trouble is, it's always too loud to hear yourself talk.'
'Some meet people who turn out to be life-long friends,' Hodgeson said with a distant smile.
'Really? ' Alex frowned. 'Well some arrive with their life-long friend.'
'In which case, how come you weren't with Steve.'
'I can't see why this is so important.
' Alex sighed. 'Apart from the fact that it appears you can never tell when you're going to be abducted in some way, I suppose it was my fault. I was starting to get bored with the whole dance thing when this big, good-looking lunk of a guy came up. He said he played rugby or something. Anyway, he asked me to dance. I didn't see the harm in it but it turned out to be a slow one. By the time we'd shuffled round with everyone else, we way over the other side of the dance floor. I'd lost sight of Steve when two guys came out of nowhere.'
'Soldiers?'
'No, agents. Black suits, shiny shoes. Stuck out a mile they weren't students. They flashed some sort of ID…'
'Like when the terrorists grabbed you from the hotel in London.'
'No, they could speak English. If I'd thought they were terrorists, I'd have started screaming. They said it was top priority or something and that we should go outside with them. I had no idea they were after Steve and me.'
'Then they brought you here.'
'Shoved us in one of those four wheel drive things with blacked out windows and drove off before we could do anything.'
'Most unsatisfactory.'
'Yeah, and the real Steve, my actual boyfriend, is probably going nuts back at uni, wondering what the hell I'm up to.'
Chapter 4: A Closed Meeting
By the time Alex and Steve began their course, there had been eight weeks of a zombie-free living, with the UK's borders opened to the rest of the world. The first visitors to the British Isles had been TV crews and reporters from across the globe. Soon after they sent home stories of a land besieged but without a single zombie sighting, ferry terminals and airports grew busy with a rush of sight-seers.
It was only when the influx was well under way that the Prime Minister was informed of the situation with latent zombieism. He roughly cut the connection to Mason at Breathedeep and let out such an agonised shout that the Downing Street security team burst into the room, guns ready.
'Is everything alright, Sir?' the leader said.
British Zombie Breakout (Book 4) Page 1
