by Simon Parker
“Well done, Jack.” Red’s voice seemed strangely distant. Jack found himself on a narrow bricked street, the walls of the buildings leaning toward him. The first thing that struck Jack was the chill of the night air. A worried-looking man stared at him.
“Jack?” the man asked, squinting through the pea-souper that swirled between them. Jack nodded, wondering what on earth was happening to him. “Mr Red said you was gonna be ‘ere tonight.” The broad cockney accent belied the man’s attempt to sound middle class. Jack stood without speaking, wondering where in the hell he was.
“We made a little deal wiv Mr Red. Got a spot of bovver we need cleaned up and ‘e says you’re the one for the job.” The man took a step closer and held out a mahogany box with a brass crest embedded on the lid. He passed the box to Jack. “You’ll need these, fella.”
“What the fuck?” Jack whispered as he opened the lid on a razor-sharp old surgical kit. The man raised an eyebrow, but handed Jack a piece of paper.
“Mr Red also said to give you this.” The list had names, places and dates scrawled on it. “ ‘e says you should know it but you’d understand what was required of you.” Jack looked down at the list and the breath caught in his throat, realisation suddenly dawning. “These girls ‘av all seen summat what they shouldn’t ‘av. We need ‘em gone. Mr Red said you wouldn’t let us down.” The man turned on his heels and disappeared into the gas-lit swirling mists.
Jack hardly needed to look at the list. He knew all the details, better than anyone. Knew what needed to be done, to whom, where and when.
The first name on the list taunted him, the barely legible writing beggaring belief. MARY ANN NICHOLS, 3.15am 31st August 1888, Bucks Row, London. The other names on the list - Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly - Jack knew them all. Ripper victims, each one.
At the bottom of the note, five words were burned into the paper.
BE THERE. DO IT JACK!
Pet
I don’t know about you, but I frequently used to wonder what sort of person I was. I mean what I was really like, deep down. Everyone knows who they are, their basic characteristics, don’t they? We all know who we hope we will be and how we will act when it comes to the crunch, but the reality is often a different beast altogether.
It had been all over the news right across Europe for weeks by the time the fever first hit the shores of the UK. Those of us with any kind of backbone began preparing for what turned out to be, to all intents and purposes, the zombie apocalypse! When the first UK victim began eating the face of the girl sent to interview her live on the 6 o’clock news, the rest of the country woke up and realised what was going to happen. Everyone who had ever considered it had probably seen themselves as survivors, leaders, zombie killing machines, maybe even heroes. The sad, shocking reality was that 30% of the population contracted the fever within the first twenty-four hours that followed the live face-eating. Another ten percent, mainly infants and the elderly, were victims in turn. It was like the old joke about escaping a bear: you didn’t have to outrun the bear – you only had to outrun the guy next to you. The swift survived to fight another day, while the young and infirm became dinner.
By mid-month, a further twenty-six percent became infected, either directly by bites or indirectly through contact with saliva, blood or snot of a victim. Almost every one of those died…then got back up a couple of hours later and started walking around again! It freaked the living hell out of me the first time I saw it happen. Totally surreal. I was my very own extra in a horror movie!
There were a few leaders, even a few heroes, taking it on themselves to destroy the infected. But the shine of glory soon wore thin and it became every man, woman and child for himself.
I did manage to kill one of them, back in those early days; a bit more luck than judgment. But a kill is a kill and I wore that badge with pride. I was hiding out in an old cricket pavilion with a few other survivors, and I sneaked outside for a wee. It seemed all clear until I was well and truly started, full flow, then this kid infect - no older than about fourteen - growled at me from inside the bush I was weeing on. I nearly shat myself and just took off running. Ok, so there was no ‘nearly’ about it; I simply shat as I was running. It was gross, but I had to get away.
So, there I was, running across a pitch-black field, my bits flapping in the wind, desperately clutching the waistband of my jeans and praying they wouldn’t trip me up and make me zombie dinner. Then I suddenly fell, feet sky peddling and crash! I’m under water, flailing around with my jeans tangled around my feet, arms thrashing in a panic, trying to get to the surface.
It turned out that I’d run straight off a cliff and landed in a lake. The teen infect, well, she’d been hot on my heels and followed me over the edge, but she hadn’t been so lucky. Her foot had snagged a tree root and she tumbled over, smashing her head open on the rocks on her way down. But like I said, a kill is a kill and she was as dead as my ego and as battered as my pride. Of course, the tale I told was more heroic; for one thing, I wasn’t half naked and soiling myself in my version of events! Once I’d ‘dressed’ the scene and bloodied my hands, I returned and was quite the hero for a while, but these things don’t last for long.
The government drafted in the army who had all been vaccinated (mmm, go figure, maybe they had seen this coming?) and within days the zombie apocalypse just kind of fizzled out. Things began returning to normal; well, as normal as life gets when half the people you have known are now dead and burning in designated clearance areas. Considering what had happened, it all seemed quite calm, normal and surprisingly quick. An anti-climax really and a bitter disappointment for some of those who’d spent years preparing for what they thought would be the end of the world! Those guys were priceless.
We were living under military rule and there was a strong combined forces presence, but things quickly became more relaxed. By mid-December, most of us in the suburbs were on first-name terms with the guys at checkpoints, and more importantly, the guys on curfew patrol. They may have worn uniforms and been employed by the government, but they were mostly good guys, family men and not averse to a little back hander here and there when we were moving our ‘goods’ around. They even offered us a little help every now and then with a little local intel as to where our ‘goods’ could be found. We had to move fast before the goods got eliminated by the ‘Bug Busters’, a military team that had been allocated the task of ensuring all remaining infects were destroyed.
Once we located a ‘nest,’ we arranged a meet and got a group of us together for the hunt. We’d all take guns of course, but our main aim was not to destroy. We’d found out that they had a higher value to some of the hard-core nutters who had been looking forward to the apocalypse. We only shot to kill if things got out of hand – and that hadn’t happened. This was a good thing, as guns scared me.
We always tried to take a nest by surprise, which meant going in from downwind as their olfactory sense seemed to be heightened; not something I’d expected from something that smelt like the bins at the back of a butcher’s shop in summer! However, almost all other brain function seemed to be pretty much diminished, and they longer they’d been ‘dead,’ the slower they seemed to think (although, as I found out, slow thought does not necessarily equate to slow speed. These fuckers can move like lightning if they’re hungry!)
I say almost all brain function, as they seemed to cluster together in small groups of three or four. Sometimes it was obvious it was a family group. Other times maybe it was friends or work mates. Whatever it was, it seemed to be an unconscious memory of the ‘before’ times that these infects retained, even if their grey matter had turned to mush and leaked out of every facial orifice.
Once we’d made our approach, we would douse them with Cazatelene, a chemical we had inadvertently discovered on an early raid on a farm. It temporarily blinded their freaky red and black rotten eyes for about ten minutes, before the effects wore off.
&nbs
p; That was just enough time for us to move in and put them in restraints. It was fucking scary, don’t get me wrong. I make it sound pretty easy and matter-of-fact, but my heart would race, I’d be drenched in sweat and my arsehole would pucker up like an old man’s ball bag. Scary as a day trip to purgatory, but worth every second of it.
Once we had the infects bound and muzzled, we would chuck them in the truck for the trip back to our warehouse. As soon as they were safely in the holding cells, contained and restrained, we would contact potential buyers – the hard-core preppers, the extreme survivalists and the plain, ordinary, common all garden nutters for whom the zombie apocalypse just wasn’t extreme enough. These guys would pay almost anything, go to almost any lengths to own a piece of history – a genuine blue and bloated, black-veined, shit stinking, pus-brained pet zombie. Fucking weirdos, but hey, who am I to turn down their money or goods if that’s what floats their boats?
It was, of course, technically illegal, so ‘technically’ my friends and I were black marketeers, but what the hell. A buck is a buck is a buck. I don’t care where it comes from as long as it ends up in my pocket. Once these nutters had their pets, it ceased to be my concern.
The infects were normally gone from storage within twenty-four hours, so inventory control wasn’t a problem. Nor (we thought) were the authorities; we were careful to make sure that anyone who could get us into trouble was on our payroll. Since career opportunities were somewhat limited, we thought we were safe.
One of the last nests we found had five full-grown infects, netting us a clean £10,000 each; not bad for a few hours work. Unfortunately, after that the supply just about dried up. Worse, the local government men still expected their usual payoffs. I suppose that made us a little careless.
One night, we’d had a nod from one of the guards on the North checkpoint that they’d spotted a nest about ten miles down the road. A ‘Bug Buster’ patrol would be sent first thing in the morning. That made things tougher than normal. We had to arrange a hunt in just a few hours. If I’d have known then what I know now, I’d never have gone. It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so bloody terrifying. Everything had always gone so smoothly before, so we thought we were pretty well organised, but that night … that night it all went wrong so fast.
When we got close to the farmhouse, we got out of the Land Rovers and kitted up. We made our approach from downwind (these bastards might be as foul as a Portsmouth hooker at low tide, but they could smell fresh meat at two hundred yards and they don’t hang around and queue to get at it!). There we were, five of us with canisters of Caz spray ready to blind these rank infects. Tooled up with a full complement of restraints, chains, duct tape and muzzles, we expected a straight-forward bag and tag like all those before.
Before we got there we could smell the familiar sickly sweet scent of infected flesh. There was a gentle evening breeze; any other night it would have been considered refreshing, invigorating—tonight it was just vomit-inducing!
We crept up to the window and saw them, huddled in a group in the corner of the kitchen. No-one had figured out why they did this. At twilight they seemed to ‘roost’ for a couple of hours before full dark allowed them to go hunting again. That’s why we’d had to move fast. Light was fading rapidly. I for one didn’t give a toss why they did it. I was just glad they did. It made our job so much easier and more predictable. This night, well… this twilight, was different.
We burst into the kitchen, spraying as we went. We kept spraying as we got our restraints out and ready to tie these stinkers up. This time it didn’t go to plan. This lot had some wits about them, tactical beyond our expectations. Three were huddled together as we had expected, but two turned their backs and covered their eyes as we advanced. It was unnerving but we continued to spray, slowly making our way across the kitchen. We were about to snap on the restraints when the two that had their backs to us began to growl, low … guttural. A growl that somehow managed to convey: “You’re pissing me off!” without a single actual word. Then it all went haywire; the plan went out of the window and it all seemed to slow down like someone had pushed the slow-mo function on my cosmic remote.
Mark was the guy upfront, within two feet of the smallest infect. It was the only one not growling, even when Mark sprayed directly in its face. One of the bigger ones (Mum would be my guess, but who can tell with these walking septic shit heaps?) was still covering its eyes, but lured by the smell of fresh blood, it swung round and took a huge bite out of Mark’s arm.
“FAAAAARK!” was the only word he said after that…quite a few times as it goes, but just that one word. The rest of us began backing off rapidly. I was closest to the door (I always make damn sure of that) and I was almost within reach of the handle when I saw the second big one take a blind, grabbing swing at Paul. It managed to hook one of its rotten black finger stubs into Paul’s collar and before we knew it, he too hit the floor, his life fluid pumping from a fresh bite mark like some grotesque water feature. There was no thought of rescue they were goners. We all knew that.
Mark’s voice was losing volume, becoming weaker by the second, his eyes pleading us to shoot him, to stop him becoming one of these rotten shells of humanity. I would have done it for him too, but if I’d stopped to draw my pistol, I might not have got out of there myself… so I opened the door and I ran for my life.
When I got outside I was terrified to see that the twilight was fading fast and darkness was almost full. That was when my bowels decided it was time to let loose again, when I least needed it. The human mind works in some very strange ways and right at that second, my mind threw up a memory of a tune I used to rock out to as a kid; so the next few minutes were spent running for my life with my pants full of crap to a mental soundtrack of Iron Maiden screaming Twilight Zone. Sadly, the images that filled my mind were not of a cool, leather clad Eddie, but rather of the stinking blue-grey rotting infects that were right this second chowing down on my friends.
The ones who’d been covering their eyes must have suddenly launched at my remaining friends. I prayed the new screams I heard were simple anger and revenge, but they sounded more like terror and horror. I heard one shot, then another, but the screaming continued. As I fled for my worthless, cowardly life, I realised those monsters had actually laid a trap and we had just walked right into it.
Just out of earshot of the screaming, I fell headlong into a ditch and completely lost my bearings. I lifted myself from the sticky, muddy mess I’d landed in, deciding my best bet would be to hole up somewhere until daylight. So that’s what I did.
I found a little hollow in the bank of the ditch and kind of buried myself, partly to keep myself a little warmer than the surrounding air and partly to hide the smell of my pumping heart from those infects. As it turned out, it was a pretty decent tactical move; I could see surprisingly well once my eyes adjusted to the night, so if anyone or anything came looking for me, I could react accordingly. Mind you, my idea of ‘tactical’ didn’t normally include spending six hours sitting in a cold, muddy hole in a pile of my own stink. The irony of the fact that I was buried in the cold earth and those dead things were running around hunting was not lost on me, but hey, I was alive and that had to count for something.
That night I wept for my friends, but also for my own situation. My trouble was that we lived in quite a small community; if I went back without my friends, everyone would know what had happened. Worse, the guy who had given us a £20,000 deposit for five infects might be just slightly pissed.
I decided, as dawn broke and the ‘Bug Busters’ went in, that I would let everyone think I was dead too. So before full daylight, I’d crept back home, grabbed a bag with essentials, and left again for the last time. I didn’t shed a single tear; I guess I’m just not an emotional guy.
For the next month or so I just moved from town to town in the Land Rover I had stolen, slowly getting further and further away. I think it was somewhere near the Scottish borders when I finally decid
ed to settle again. I’m not sure why; maybe I just liked the area, maybe I was tired of moving on all the time or maybe I’d just stopped being afraid someone might recognise me.
I eventually got myself accepted into the remnants of the small community (in what had once been quite a large town). I found that what we’d been doing down in Suffolk had actually been big business in quite a few places, including here. It turned out that the nutters who had the pet infects were pitting them against each other in fights in much the same way as those dickheads with pit bulls used to back in the day. The only thing that really annoyed me was that nagging thought of “why the hell didn’t I think of that?” We could have made a killing with the amount of infects we’d found and sold.
It took some persuading and cost me a few quid in bribes, but I eventually managed to secure myself an invite to the next DEAD HEAT. I had to see it for myself; maybe even grab a piece of the action.
When the night came, I got myself ready nice and early and got to the site an hour before the first fight was scheduled. There was no TV or radio to speak of, so events like this were sure to be popular. I wasn’t surprised to see quite a crowd forming around the site.
All the infects were caged in individual cells spaced out around the perimeter of a circular pen. I got chatting to one of the owners and he told me that infects wouldn’t naturally fight each other, but if you starved them and pit them against each other for food (generally a small animal or the occasional fresh corpse if one was available) they would fight each other for a meal. He said he’d even heard of one town, way up in the highlands, that pit live humans against infects! Sometimes, a stranger would be caught committing crimes against the locals. The military didn’t care; they considered us barely above the infects. But a few bright boys knew just what to do. The convicted prisoners were tooled up like bloody gladiator and thrown into the pit. If they destroyed the infect, they were considered to have served their sentence.
