by Barbie Wilde
* * *
48 hours before the events on the “Zombie Train” ...
John Jones wasn’t looking forward to moving. He was used to the local haunts and pubs that he frequented around his charming flat near Euston Station, but he just couldn’t sustain living in London any longer. He felt bad, as the flat had been in the family for nearly a hundred and thirty years, but what could he do? He’d lost his advertising job, the recession was hitting hard and the divorce had pretty much eaten up his savings.
Although he didn’t have a buyer yet, the best way for John to make the time pass was to sort through his possessions. The great cull had already happened after the divorce, of course, but there was still tons of his family stuff that he had to get rid of. Hey, maybe some of it was worth something. Interesting artefacts were put in a box for a trip to Sotheby’s or Christie’s for evaluation. After all, his family had a pretty impressive background—there were boxes full of medals for heroism—although the gene for sterling military service had petered out long before it got to him.
Going through yet another mildew-ridden box one day, John came across the crudely made and mysterious “spirit bottle” of Jones family legend. He remembered when he was a kid gazing at up it on the mantelpiece when his grandfather occupied the flat, before the old boy died, and his mom and dad moved in.
It was really more of a stone jug with a sealed metal plug in the top than a bottle. When he was tall enough, he often sneaked into the living room and gingerly handled the bottle, shaking it to hear a strange hollow rattling sound from within and trying to pry open the plug. Once, his grandfather caught him and John could barely comprehend the rage on the old man’s face as he grabbed the bottle and put it on top of a bookcase, out of the curious child’s reach.
“Never, never, never touch the spirit bottle!” Grandfather shouted. “Never open it! It is forbidden, understand? All it contains is pure unadulterated evil!”
The little boy ran out of the room, determined to never speak to the crazy old bastard again. Years later, after Grandfather’s death, John tried to get the story of the spirit bottle out of his father (what kind of spirits had it contained: whiskey, gin or vodka?), but his dad just shrugged, saying it was just an old wives’ tale, not giving out any details.
So there it was ... in his hands again finally after all these years. It certainly looked venerable enough—sepia-colored, greasy and covered in strange blotches. John dug through the box, hoping to find something that might explain the provenance of the spirit bottle. Two more boxes later, he came across an old letter dated 1880, which caused him a frisson of joy—more money from a possible auction perhaps? Then he started to read the letter and had to pause at one section, because the contents seemed utterly preposterous.
It was common knowledge in the family that one of their ancestors, Robert Jones, had bravely acquitted himself beyond the call of duty at the battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879, actions of which were popularized in the 1964 film, Zulu. However, there had been rumors over the years that Robert’s subsequent life had not been so exemplary. It was almost as if there was a black cloud hanging over him ever since the battle. Robert settled down in South Africa and married, but his wife died a year later and he soon became bankrupt, losing his farm in the bargain. It was almost as if he was cursed in some way.
The letter, from Robert to a friend called Charles Wainwright in London, was still in its envelope, stamped but never posted. In it, Robert told Charles that he had discovered the reason for his run of bad luck and how he had managed to solve the problem. Robert visited a sangoma, a local female witch doctor, who after a “casting of the bones” ceremony, informed him that the zombie spirits of the hundreds of Zulu warriors he and his comrades had killed during the battle had attached themselves to him and were causing all his sorrows.
To John’s bewilderment, he read that Robert put himself completely in the hands of the beautiful sangoma. He endured the cleansing ritual, which included drinking caustic emetics, eating herbal potions and even sacrificing a goat and drinking its blood to satisfy the angry spirits. However, nothing worked, so the sangoma bravely put herself through a grueling purification ritual. She managed to conjure up the Zulu Zombie spirits and then imprisoned them in the stone bottle for all time. She told Robert that he must never open or try to destroy the spirit bottle, because the zombies would issue forth, possess living humans and cause the most horrific mayhem.
Robert gratefully gave the sangoma what was left of his money, which could have proved disastrous, but his fortunes soon turned around and he left South Africa with a substantial sum a few years later, taking the bottle of unquiet souls with him. He later used his riches to buy the family flat just south of Euston Station.
John was thrilled to discover the letter. He was positive that the colorful contents would snare a buyer at auction. After all, a hero of one of the most famous battles in British history going to a comely South African witch doctor to solve his problems? Brilliant. John resolved to take the letter into either Christie’s or Sotheby’s tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe he could earn enough from auctioning off the letter so he wouldn’t have to sell the flat?
* * *
Later that night, John was in bed asleep. He was dreaming that he was in bed asleep (always a disconcerting sensation) and that the unquiet Zulu spirits inside the stone bottle were calling to him, singing strange songs and beating their shields. John was suddenly possessed of the most debilitating terror and he woke up from the dream in a cold sweat. But the sounds didn’t stop; they just got louder and more insistent.
John got out of bed to investigate. Maybe it was crowd of rowdy “disaffecteds” in the street that he was hearing, but the noises seemed to be coming from the living room, where John had temporarily restored the stone spirit bottle to its traditional place on the mantelpiece.
He turned on the lights to discover that the bottle was moving, trembling slightly, as if something within was struggling to get out. He ran over to the fireplace and caught the bottle just as it was about to topple off the mantelpiece. He was shocked to feel thrumming vibrations emanating from the bottle.
John was frantic. The last thing he wanted was a bunch of angry undead Zulu zombie spirits bursting out of the bottle and attacking him in his home. He rushed over to the window and threw it open with one hand. The bottle was vibrating so violently now that he could barely keep his grip on it. More in despair than using any rational thought, John launched the bottle with all of his strength out of the window, hoping that he could throw it across the street over the fence and onto the well-kept lawns of St. Eustace Square, but unfortunately throwing was not his strong suit.
The bottle crashed onto the pavement opposite his flat, releasing a cloud of white dust just in front of a young couple walking back from the pub. The man was incensed. He looked up, shook his fist and yelled, “Fuck you, you bastard!”—but his attention was soon distracted by the screams of his companion, who had fallen to the ground and was violently thrashing around. The man bent down to help her, but the woman rose up as if some invisible force was pushing her from behind and attacked him, tearing out his throat with one swipe of her hand. The man dropped to the ground, spouting blood from the wound in his neck.
The woman stopped dead and then looked up at John. She smiled. Even from across the street, John could spot that her eyes were glistening white, no pupils. He jumped back, shut and bolted the window and closed the curtains. He slipped down the wall and cowered in a fetal position on the floor, dreading the thought of a zombie woman pounding down his door and ripping his throat out, but she never came for him. He eventually fell into an uneasy sleep.
* * *
Late morning sunshine was striking across the parquet floors when John awoke. What a crazy dream he’d had! Then he glanced up at the mantelpiece and noticed that the spirit bottle was gone. His heart sank as he realized that 134 years
of stewardship of the bottle had been broken by one moment of dream-induced panic last night.
John went over to the window, opened the curtains and saw police vans and an ambulance parked across the street. It was real. It really hadn’t been a dream. Oh fuck.
Then he noticed that there weren’t any people around the vans or the ambulance. The usual assortment of rubberneckers who magically appear at every accident also weren’t in attendance. What was going on?
John leaned forward and noted that there didn’t seem to be anyone on the streets. They were deserted. Not even a dog taking a shit in the park could be seen.
John sat down on the floor again and tried to think. Whatever was going on was beyond his meager powers of deduction, that’s for sure. He spent the day racking his brains for a solution. It was only as evening drew in that John remembered the woman upstairs. He’d only passed her a couple of times in the entrance hall, but his ex had mentioned her a few times. The “Spooky Maven,” she called her, a real boffin type, a witchy Internet geek and all around know-it-all.
He went into his bedroom, grabbed Robert’s letter and stuffed it inside his shirt. John slipped out of his flat, locked his door and then climbed up the stairs two at a time to the top floor. He got to the landing huffing and puffing and then looked down the stairwell. Again, all was quiet. Then he pounded on the Spooky Maven’s door.
“Who the fuck is that?” said the not-so-encouraging reply to his repeated hammerings.
“Hello, ummm ...” John stammered. Unfortunately, he had no idea what her name was, but then he spotted a small white business card thumb-tacked to the door that simply said “Adendorff” and called out: “Please, Mrs. Adendorff. Open the door. It’s Mr. Jones from 3D. It’s an emergency.”
John heard grumbling behind the door and it was eventually flung open by a short, angry, middle-aged woman with frizzy blonde hair and enormous blue eyes. “It’s Miss, if you don’t mind. And what the hell do you want?” she asked.
John opened his mouth to reply, but the only sound they both heard simultaneously was a sudden and terrifying “whomp!” coming up from the stairwell, followed by an equally mysterious “chukka, chukka, chukka!” John didn’t know what was causing the noises, but it sounded severely ominous. He pushed his way past Miss Adendorff, dragged her inside and slammed the door shut. He locked and bolted the door and turned around to see that Miss Adendorff had armed herself with an ancient, but well-oiled Martini-Henry breech-loading rifle. (John only recognized it because he’d watched the film Zulu the other night in a fit of nostalgia.)
“Wait a minute,” said John, afraid that he was going to get his head blown off before he could begin to explain his predicament.
“You have two minutes,” said the determined woman, her rifle never wavering from the center of John’s face.
John rapidly explained the events of the previous 24 hours: Robert’s letter, the Zulu Zombies contained in the family spirit bottle, throwing it out the window, the horrors down on the sidewalk. He thought that Miss Adendorff must think he was a lunatic, but as his story frantically spilled out of him to the accompaniment of the approaching “whomps” and “chukkas” from downstairs, the rifle’s muzzle slowly lowered.
Miss Adendorff put the gun down on a sideboard, turned to John and said, “Now I recognize you, Mr. Jones. And I’m probably the only person in London who would believe your story.”
John nearly collapsed with relief, although what exactly this strange little woman could do to help him out this mess was debatable.
Then something slammed against the door and the “whomps” and “chukkas” were almost deafening. John screamed like a little girl, but Miss Adendorff walked determinedly to the door and looked out the peephole. At first, she couldn’t see anything, then a horrible dead-white eyeball filled the peephole. She shut the peephole cover and jumped back as something slammed up against the door again.
“Come on,” she told John and strode purposefully into the living room. She shut the door after John to cut down on the racket coming from the landing and walked over to her computer desk.
“Aren’t you afraid that they’re going to get in?” John asked.
“Even Zulu Zombies would have a hard time forcing their way through the reinforced steel on the door and the frame. I’ve also had Murray locks installed, so good luck to the bastards, that’s all I can say,” Miss Adendorff replied.
“So what are we going to do?” John asked.
“You’re not the only person who is linked to the events of January 28th and 29th, 1879. My ancestor, Gert Adendorff, was the Boer advisor to Lt. Chard and Lt. Bromhead during the siege at Rorke’s Drift. After the battle, Gert suffered from the same problems as your predecessor. Gert was also assisted by a sangoma and our family possesses a spirit bottle as well, although we have taken much better care of ours, it has to be said.”
“But that’s crazy,” said John. “What’s the chance of two people with ancestors from that one particular battle living in the same building in London?”
Miss Adendorff smiled grimly, “What makes you think it was chance? My family has taken it upon ourselves to guard the heroes who saved the day so many years ago. I’ve always known about your history, my friend.
“The Zulu Zombies will eventually go away at dawn. We have to find where they rest during the day—someplace abandoned. Estate agents call them ‘zombie houses.’ Little do they know how accurate that phrase is.”
“Why do they have to rest during the day? After all, they’re not vampires.” John said.
Miss Adendorff replied, “Because they’re tired. They get energy from the moon and the blood they consume and, of course, from zombie sex.”
“Sex!?”
“These particular zombies are hungry for it. It’s how they regenerate. They will find a suitable live woman and impregnate her, mark my words. Then we will have hell to pay.”
At this point, John’s brain went “tilt” and he had to sit down in one of Miss Adendorff’s overstuffed armchairs, while she went over to her computer and began to rapidly Google deserted properties in the area, eventually coming upon a former monastery behind Euston Station that had been on the market for years. She stared long and hard at the photographs. So long that John went over to her and saw that she was almost in some kind of trance.
Miss Adendorff stood up decisively, pointed at the screen and exclaimed, “This is the place!”
“How do you know?” John said.
“I channeled my ancestor Adendorff, that’s how.”
“Channeling? Are you kidding? The Zombie House could be anywhere in the city.”
“The Zulu Zombies will always be attracted to safe houses near railway stations. This goes back the time of the formation in 1872 of the South African Cape Government Railways, which built the train lines to transport workers across the country. Some evil witches took over some of the trains, turning ordinary workers boarding the carriages into zombies.”
Miss Adendorff bustled into another room, dragging John with her. The room was painted dark red and one wall was covered floor to ceiling by an old oak bureau festooned with hundreds of small drawers, all with brass nameplates containing cards labeled in spidery handwriting. She rapidly chose her weapons of war for the coming battle: 9 pieces of broken mirror, 9 straight pins, 9 regular nails and 9 small razor-sharp spearheads.
Miss Adendorff also selected a large-necked stone bottle with matching metal cork, a black candle and some powders of undetermined origin. She placed all the items on a large oak table in the middle of the room, along with a small charcoal brazier on top. She left to go to the kitchen and soon returned with a milk bottle full of a noxious looking red gloop.
Miss Adendorff picked up a small plastic cup and handed it to John.
“Now, I want you to piss in this, there’s a good chap.”
“You must be joking! I’m too scared to pee.”
“Oh, do hurry up. The ritual must be performed at dawn tomorrow.”
“How much do you want?” John asked.
“Just fill the cup, will you?”
John peed with difficulty in the privacy of Miss Adendorff’s bathroom. She then carefully ladled 9 tablespoons of John’s urine into the stone bottle. She gingerly dropped the bits of mirror, pins, nails and spearheads into it as well, all the while mumbling under her breath in a language that John couldn’t identify.
Miss Adendorff handed John the milk bottle full of red gloop.
“I want you to drink this all in one gulp. It will make you feel sick. Feel free to vomit.”
“What is it?” said John, grabbing the bottle.
“Goat’s blood, the purifying drink of choice for all good sangomas, as well as the victims of any curse.”
“That’s disgusting!” John said.
“So is having your throat ripped out by a zombie. Drink it. It’s an emetic, so it will make you throw up almost immediately.”
John felt his gorge rising, but there was nothing for it but to follow the Miss Adendorff’s instructions. He drank the foul, coppery-smelling stuff, tried to manfully hold it down for the grand total of 2 seconds, then puked up the lot into the large metal bowl that Miss Adendorff had thoughtfully provided.
While John gagged and retched, Miss Adendorff carefully spooned out 9 tablespoons of vomit mixed with goat’s blood into the stone bottle. She lit the brazier and threw some of her magic powders on the charcoal, causing a gruesome odor, all the while reciting what John supposed must be invocations in the Zulu language. She waved the bottle over the smoke, softly spoke some enchantments into it and then put in the stopper.
“What’s that going to do?” John asked, “Scare them away?”
