Journal of the Living

by John Moralee

  “Mohinder Singh. I’m a doctor.”

  I was suspicious of what he was doing to my wounds. He was relieving the pain and stitching me up – but why if he was part of the gang? “You’re a doctor?”

  “A surgeon, actually. Well, I was before Day One.”

  “What are you doing with those men, Dr Singh?”

  “Those animals captured me and my granddaughter Leela a month ago. They’ll hurt her if I don’t cooperate. They keep her locked up in another building nearby with some other girls they captured alive. They use those girls like … If I ever did anything against them, they’d hurt my Leela instead of just keeping her as a hostage.” He looked close to tears. “They told me to keep you alive because the nephew of their leader nearly killed you. Their leader – he’s called Quinn if you don’t know it - wasn’t happy with his nephew Billy. Quinn wants to find out where the others are you were with before killing you. He’s gone out of the village – but he’ll probably be back soon. Billy wants to continue torturing you as soon as I’m done. I suggest you tell him anything he wants to know. If you don’t, he’ll make what they’ve done to you already seem like nothing. I’ve seen them feed a man to their dogs. His screams haunt my dreams.”

  “Can you get me free, Mohinder?”

  “I’m sorry. They’d kill me and my granddaughter if I did that.”

  “Can you at least tell me where I am?”

  “You’re in church in Grickwich village.”

  That was the village where they had ambushed me. That was good news. I had studied the village. I knew the layout. I also knew that if Neal had told the Pure Blood about the village, help, of a sort, was on its way. The Pure Bloods were the mortal enemy of vigilante groups like Quinn’s gang. If they showed up here, the village would turn into a war zone. If that happened, it was very likely the Pure Bloods would destroy the village and end my suffering. I was happy to die like that if it meant saving the others. “How long have I been here, Doctor?”

  “Six hours.”

  “That’s all?” It had felt like days. “So I wasn’t unconscious for very long?”

  “They brought you in at dawn. I had to treat you for concussion. You were not in any state to question – but they still hung you up to soften you up for interrogating.”

  “It’s working. I’m in agony.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t take away your pain with some painkillers. They don’t let me have access to the drugs.” He shook his head wearily. “I hate to see anyone suffer. I became a doctor to help people – not to assist torture. This is barbaric.”

  “Doctor, they’ll kill me eventually if you don’t help me. We can escape together – you, me and your granddaughter. Just help me get my wrists undone. We can then get out through that window. There must be a key to the padlock. Where is it?”

  “Quinn has it. But I’d never get it off him even if he wasn’t with his bodyguards. I used to be a strong man capable of dealing with a man like him – but I’m not any more. I’m seventy-two and too cowardly to risk my life for yours. I am sorry. I really am.”

  It appeared I’d wildly underestimated his age. “Mohinder, do you want to stay here working for Quinn’s gang for the rest of your life?”

  “No – but I have no choice.”

  “Do you want your granddaughter to be free?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then help me. I’ll rescue Leela. I promise that. Just get the key and undo me. Then we can all get out of here. You won’t be a prisoner any longer then – but you have to do it before I’m too weak to fight. I can’t stand much more torture.”

  I could see him thinking about it – but then Billy returned and the hope left the doctor’s eyes. Billy swaggered through the doorway. “Okay, Doc, you’ve patched him up. Now get out of here. We’ve got unfinished business – me and him.” Billy was carrying a car battery with jumper cables. “I’m going to have myself some fun, Ben. I saw this on an episode of 24.”

  Mohinder looked horrified. “You’re going to electrocute him? That could kill him!”

  “Not where I’m going to do it,” Billy said. “It will just make him scream for mercy, Doc. Beat it, old man, before I test them out of you.” Billy brought the cables together – producing a blue-white spark of electricity that filled with air with smoke and ozone. He taunted Mohinder, laughing as the old man cowered. Billy sneered. “Go!”

  Terrified, Mohinder shuffled out of the room, only pausing to look back sadly, apologetically.

  Billy grinned. “Now, Ben, where were we?”

  He reminded me with a jolt.

  ENTRY NINETEEN

  Some nightmares only get worse when you wake up. That was what happened to me in the church, where I was a prisoner of an evil sadist called Billy.

  Eyes gleaming with sadistic pleasure, Billy threw a bucket of icy water over me to ‘help’ the electricity flow, then he stepped up to my body with his electroshock device. Two crocodile clips were attached by wires to the car battery – which would send a shock through me once they were connected. Billy brought one clip towards my body – trying to clip it to my already sore skin near my heart. I pulled away as far as possible – which was not much given I was hanging from the ceiling. Billy relished my fear and sniggered. The sick freak was eager to electrocute me. But first Billy pretended to have a conversation with the crocodile clips, doing a weird one-man Punch and Judy show with the clips ‘talking’ in funny voices. At least voices he found funny.

  I didn’t find it at all amusing.

  “Do you want me to bite him here, Billy?” one crocodile clip said. A clip worryingly close to my groin. “Snap, snap, snap!”

  “No,” Billy said.

  “Or here?” the other clip said. It snapped near to my nose. “I’ll bite off his nose.”

  “Not yet,” Billy said.

  “Let’s fry his eyelids!” the first crocodile clip said. “Yeah – that’ll hurt! They’ll crisp like slivers of bacon.”

  “No!” the other clip said. “His feet first! Then up and up, one little bit at a time.”

  “Hmm,” Billy said in his normal voice. “I don’t know, guys. High or low, which way to go? Hey – I’m a poet but I don’t know it!”

  He chuckled like a madman. No – not like a madman. He was a madman. A madman about to hurt me. Before he clamped the clips to sensitive parts of my anatomy, I decided I had to say something. “Wait, wait! Okay, Billy, you win. You win.”

  Billy frowned. “I win what?”

  I sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll tell you where the others are.”

  “Go on,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  “They were gone from the camp when you got there.”

  “What?”

  “Neal drove off in the camper van with them all a few hours earlier. I just stayed behind to get some more things before leaving. By now they’ve got so far away you’ll never get them.” I allowed myself a smile just to irritate him. “You lost them.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Billy said. “Where were they going?”

  I would have shrugged if it had been possible in my position. “I don’t know, Billy. I didn’t want them to tell me.”

  “Liar. They are like your family. You must have had a plan to join them. So that means you know where they were going.”

  I swore to myself. I’d tried to be clever with the half-truth – but it was hard to make up a good lie when someone was torturing you. “Okay – I know where they went. But it’s somewhere you won’t believe.”

  “Try me.”

  “Oxford.”

  “No way. The Pure Bloods have control of Oxford. They’d never go there.”

  “They did, I swear.”

  “Oh, well, if you swear that makes me believe you. You’re just lying to stop my crocodile friends taking a bite.”

  “No – it’s the truth, Billy. They’ve gone to Oxford.”

  “That’s insane. The Pure Bloods inject people with the zombie virus to see if they are im
mune. You honestly expect me to believe your friends would submit to that voluntarily, Ben?”

  “No, Billy – but Angela was dying. You know that. You saw her. She needed powerful antibiotics urgently. The Pure Bloods were her only chance of survival. The others hoped they’d treat Angela if they turned themselves in and fully cooperated with them. Everyone went without me because the Pure Bloods would never accept me – not after I robbed them of supplies from a supermarket they were guarding. The supplies you found in my van. The Pure Bloods would just summarily execute me – but Angela and the rest of my friends had a slim chance of survival in Oxford. The others were willing to risk their lives to save Angela – so they left.”

  “No, no, NO! Why would risk their lives for Angela?”

  “That’s what good people do, Billy. They sacrifice themselves for others. You wouldn’t understand that because you’re a psycho.”

  “Your story makes no sense. You could have told me that straight away before I started hurting you – if it was true.”

  “No – I couldn’t tell you then.”

  “Why not?”

  I had to think of another believable lie. “They only left the camp a few hours before you showed up. For all I knew, they were still on their way to Oxford. They needed all the time I could give them to get there. Giving them more time was the only thing I could do for them. Billy, I couldn’t let you harm those kids. They did nothing to you. I had to help them get away – but now they will be safe and you can’t touch them. They got away from you.”

  I laughed to make him believe me. He stared into my eyes for any sign of a lie. I stared straight back, laughing.

  “Stop laughing!” He slapped me. “You think they’re safe now? Ben, the Pure Bloods have probably killed them already. And I can’t see them wasting good medicines on a dying woman. Your precious Angela will be dead, too. All of them will be dead – or undead – because you didn’t have the guts to stop them going. How does that make you feel, Ben?”

  “I’d rather them be dead than here,” I said. “You and your friends are evil, Billy. You’re parasites. You rob and kill innocent people. We were just trying to survive when you attacked us. You hurt us first, Billy. Don’t you forget that. We just defended ourselves.”

  “Defended? Your friend Angela killed my friends. I wanted to kill her myself – but now that’s ruined. It’s not right. Not right at all. My uncle will be so mad!” In anger he hurled his torture device into the stone wall where it smashed apart, plastic and metal flying across the room. Billy snarled. “You know what, Ben? Electrocuting you isn’t going to be good enough. I’ve got something much more fun. Payback for letting out the zombies that killed my friends. Hang around. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  His devious smile worried me as he stormed out.

  I looked down at the pieces of the broken car battery. There were some sharp fragments of black plastic nearby. I wondered if I could pick up something sharp and pointed with my feet and somehow use it to pick the padlock securing the chains around my wrists. But how could I do that? I wasn’t a contortionist, Harry Houdini, Macgyver or Jack Bauer. I could … not quite … reach anything ...

  Ten minutes later I heard footsteps and squeaking wheels and knew whatever was coming was going to be bad, much worse than electroshocks and the company of a psychotic nutter.

  Billy and Skull T-Shirt pushed a wheelchair into the room, stopping at the doorway. The wheelchair had an occupant – a male zombie strapped into it. He smelled like rotten meat and month-old curdled milk. He was a big one with wide-shoulders and thick, muscular arms and tattoos that had started to turn green with fungus. His body ended at his torso, where I could see pink and grey and purple entrails instead of his lower abdomen and legs.

  “Meet Ryan,” Billy said. “The moron got bitten four weeks ago because he didn’t watch his back. We’ve been keeping him around because he still has his uses. Ryan likes to eat the rats … and anybody we get sick of having around, like you. My uncle chopped off his legs to make him less dangerous – but he can still crawl pretty fast. He’s got strong arms for a dead guy. He used to work-out every day. Me thinks he’s hungry for a proper meal.”

  Billy undid the straps, then Skull T-shirt tipped Ryan out of the wheelchair. Ryan flopped onto the floor. The zombie fell onto his grey belly, moaning, his head snapping around so he could stare back at the two living men at the door. He moaned and started dragging himself in their direction, leaving a vile trail of gore behind him.

  Skull T-shirt looked scared. “Billy, he wants us!”

  “Calm down. Just get the door closed behind us.”

  “What about the wheelchair?”

  “Leave it!”

  Billy and Skull T-shirt abandoned the wheelchair and backed out of the room – while the zombie moved towards them. It tried climbing over the abandoned wheelchair, which slammed into the door. Billy and his assistant struggled to get the door closed with the zombie pushing the wheelchair against it. But they manage it. Billy waved me goodbye as he shut and locked the door, leaving me trapped with the ravenous zombie. I heard Billy laughing when he walked away, criticising the teenager.

  “Boy, you are such a wimp, man. The dude’s got no legs. We had ages to get away.”

  For two or three minutes, the zombie slammed his head against the door, trying to smash a way through it to the men on the other side, but he lost interest in them once they had moved far away.

  It went very quiet.

  I didn’t move.

  I didn’t want to draw the zombie’s attention.

  I hoped the zombie would stay at the door and forget about me – but the smell of my blood was too strong. He sniffed at the air and turned to face me, his jaws gnashing together in anticipation of tearing into my flesh. He saw me hanging there in the middle of the room like a piñata stuffed with tasty treats. The zombie moaned, sending a shiver through my bowels because my spilled blood was exciting his interest.

  I was fresh meat. Food for him.

  Moaning, Ryan dragged his torso across the floor towards me.

  ENTRY TWENTY

  Ryan – the legless zombie – half-crawled and half-slithered across the room on his way to get me – leaving me with no choice but to get ready to kick out when his head was in range. I didn’t want his snapping jaws to bite a chunk out of me, infecting me with the necrovitalis virus in his putrid yellow-green saliva, so I would have to be careful to time it just right, kicking him with my bare feet as he got close to where I was hanging by my chained wrists. Like a slug, Ryan moved relentlessly, leaving a gooey trail behind him. His entrails were coming out and piling up like sausages – but since he felt no pain it did not slow him down. His hands dragged him to just a few feet away. Soon his gnashing teeth would be in biting distance.

  I waited. Nearer. Nearer. Now.

  I kicked out like I was aiming at a football and trying to make it shoot up into the air. My foot struck Ryan’s head a good hard blow – caving in his nose and knocking him backwards. The injury would have knocked out a living human – but it only enraged the zombie. Ryan crawled closer and I did it again – striking him in the top of his forehead, whipping back his head, tearing something in his neck, snapping cartilage. A jagged hole appeared through his neck into his dark throat – but even that did nothing. Only damage to his brain or spinal column would stop him for good.

  Unfortunately, kicking out had given me unwanted momentum that sent me spinning around on the chain, making it impossible to kick out a third time when Ryan continued moving forward. By the time I had spun around he was under me, snapping at my heels. I spun around and around and desperately tried to control my motion. But it was hard to do that and avoid Ryan. Ryan was using his strong arms to raising his head in an effort to bite my swinging legs. Each time I swung near him, I raised my feet up when he tried to bite them. Just avoiding him. Desperately, I struggled to keep my momentum going so my feet were constantly ahead of Ryan’s teeth – but I knew I’d tire bef
ore he did. In a human versus zombie stamina contest the zombie would win every time. My only chance against him depended on striking his head again with a more powerful kick that could expand the wound to his neck – so I started swinging back and forth until I was moving like a human pendulum. I moved faster and faster, gaining height with each swing, waiting for the right moment to kick Ryan’s head. With his arms lifting up his body, Ryan was nearly biting me with every pass. I raised both feet as I swung back and lashed out when I swung forward, yelling as I kicked his face so hard his head completely ripped off his neck. It rolled away and slammed into a wall, where it stopped rolling. The rest of Ryan’s body stopped moving the instant it was no longer linked to his head, which was still alive in the corner, the eyes staring at me.

  “Sorry, Ryan. No meal today.”

  I gingerly lowered my feet onto the stump of Ryan’s neck, taking the weight off my arms. Ryan’s corpse was a good but sticky stool to stand on while I recovered my breath and rested my aching muscles. I was in no immediate danger – but I had to get free before someone returned. I yanked down on the chain connect to the ceiling – but it was too secure. Some kind of DIY expert had nailed or screwed it up there. My arms would come out of their sockets before I freed myself.

  I thought of the doctor. If only he had not been a coward. He could have got me free.

  I was praying for a miracle when I heard what sounded like several automatic weapons firing, followed by shouting, screaming and more gunshots. What the hell? A second or two later an explosion rocked the church and cracked the ceiling, dropping dust and plaster. The impact did what I could have never have done – it brought the roof down around me. I dropped onto the zombie as the chain dropped. Hard things struck my back and shoulders. Darkness. Dust. The smell of chalk and sulphur. Blood dripped off my nose. I looked around, stunned at the chaos. The floor was covered in rubble that could have cracked my skull – but I was only scratched. I found myself on the floor on top of Ryan’s corpse with the chains piled on me. My wrists were still bound with chains and padlocked – but I was in a slightly better situation. At least I was not hanging from the ceiling.