Dead End Job (Book One of the 'Zombino' series)

by Chris Welsh

  Chapter Ten. 12:35pm

  BUG OUT.

  "What was with that bloody mouse?"

  "No idea. Some sort of fucking Terminator mouse or something."

  "It was a robot?" Susan asked.

  "No, I mean, I couldn't crush it. You saw. I should have crushed it, cut it half with the axe, it didn't notice."

  "'I want your cheese, your cage and your spinny wheel'," Stuart said, adopting a vague European accent and bulking up his shoulders.

  "Like it was the opposite of the zombies. They can't wait to fall the fuck apart. It's their main hobby," Susan said, ignoring him.

  "Think we should add 'mice' to the list of things to avoid from here on in."

  -

  The lift trundled upwards slower than I'd ever experienced any lift move ever, but we hit the tenth floor eventually. Even that morning when I travelled up, trapped inside with the unpleasantness aura of Nelson, it hadn't felt like this lengthy a ride.

  Perhaps idiotically, I felt confident it would be free of trouble when the doors let us out. After all, they were empty offices, unused by anyone, so they were highly unlikely to have anything of threat. It wouldn't have surprised me to find a hulking great zombie army up there, armed to the teeth with, well, teeth, but I certainly didn't expect it.

  Still, that didn't stop me clinging to the side as the door opened, hiding from anyone observing the elevator. The others did the same, listening for any grunt or squeak. Susan was the first to peek, and confirmed the barren hallway. I took a few moments to scan the hall and assuage myself. As I'd already found out, scouting ahead isn't something to skimp on. Stuart's earlier error that resulted in a shot of mushy eye-gunk slapping my face was testament to that.

  I wanted to hire someone with an official-looking clipboard, a check-list of possible threats, a Biro and a decent torch, and have them thoroughly investigate every inch of the tenth floor before the lift doors even thought about opening. I wouldn't have taken a single step until they gave me a confident, zombie-free thumbs up, along with a hand-written four page report. But this wasn't viable given the circumstances, so I made do with peeking and trembling.

  Susan knew the floor best, having nosed around it earlier, so she took point. We headed to the room we all met in and checked the papers again; start over, we three, like loading a save and taking another crack at escape. We needed a fresh approach.

  Foolishly, we had abandoned the suspicious documents in our rush to leave after we found Stuart. Susan scooped them up and grumbled as she flicked through each page, perhaps making a little more sense of them.

  At the very least I assumed the experiments they mentioned, scheduled for earlier, went some way to explaining the sudden appearance of the homicidal, rotting reanimated corpses stalking the building.

  Susan and Stuart pawed through the documents whilst I kept an eye on the corridor from the doorway. The stillness suited me.

  Only two other doors hadn't been boarded or otherwise blocked. The first was another desolate office but the other grabbed our interest. It was more of a hatch than a door, thin and made of dulled metal rather than wood. It led to a set of stone stairs which in turn led to the roof. We'd likely head next, I realised, in the hope of some previously unknown escape route down the side of the building. There might be a box full of abseiling gear up there, left for some reason. Who knows? Parachutes, even. Maybe a rope ladder or series of fire escape steps. Anything to transport us to the ground with relative ease would be greatly appreciated.

  I couldn't recall such a thing tacked to the building but then, I'd never paid that much attention.

  The air on the tenth floor was chalk-dust thick, making breathing a chore; the roof would provide a blast of fresh, outdoor air, at least. A blustery autumn breeze might shift the fearful sludge from my brain, the stuff that made it hard to think with clarity.

  I glanced back at my entourage, tossing through a handful of documents each, exchanging brief thoughts. They engaged in a game of verbal tennis and I was a crowd member, watching them swat info-balls back and forth.

  "There's a few things dated today but I don't see the links."

  "Whoever wrote these is smart. Way smart. Some of these words can't possibly exist."

  "This still means fuck all to me. Cell reconstruction, altered DNA, mind control? Sounds like demented, mad-man ramblings."

  "Too much of a coincidence to be that..."

  "Any mention of zombies?" I asked. "I'd expect them to mention zombies. Like...underlined, highlighted in yellow. Big arrows."

  Both replied with a concise 'No'.

  "Not explicitly, anyway," Stuart added.

  "Mice?"

  "Nothing about mice. There's a bunch of codes, in context they read like names but they're just a jumble of letters and numbers."

  "JmX4RT," said Susan. "Jamex-art?"

  "Don't think it works like that. It says the test this morning, whatever it was for, was to be a 'controlled' experiment. If it's related, I've seen nothing so far to suggest any of it is controlled. It's madness."

  Stuart grew agitated, unable to make sense of what he was reading. "It's making me feel like a fucking idiot. I'm not! I did good in school!"

  "Did well*," Susan said.

  "Shut up."

  He crumpled up a page and tossed it over his shoulder.

  I watched it bounce, mulling everything over when, figuratively, something hit me.

  "Hang on...it's all controlled. Everything. Vic slash Tim were called upstairs in time for us catch their attack on screen, like you said. Our escape routes are consistently blocked, those things appear at our every turn even when they couldn't possibly be there. Then there's the locked-up sixth fucking floor. What's that about? We can't get in, but the lift stops there and it's busier than a supermarket on Christmas Eve. Also, every single one of those things faced so they wouldn't see us? Maybe something forced them to do that, controlling them to a degree. Either to help us or scare the shit out of us. To see what we would do. I'm not saying it makes any sense at all, but maybe it's more controlled than it seems. The lift ignored Susan like a bratty kid, not responding. There must be manual controls for it somewhere. Someone might have made it do that."

  Their blank faces spurred me on. I felt knowledgeable, the centre of intellectual attention, swimming in a flooded chasm of bright revelations.

  "You mentioned mind control? Maybe someone is manipulating them. These creatures, whatever they are. Maybe even us. We might be the test. One of us, at least. How would we know? My ear itched like a bastard before, might be some sort of mind control bug."

  My stomach did a flip as the words tumbled from my mouth. The desperate need to check my ears rushed over me as the vengeful itch returned unabashed, but I carried on regardless, "There's no antenna on your head Stuart, but that doesn't mean you haven't been brain-jacked."

  "I bloody haven't!" he said, incredulous.

  I jammed my pinkie finger down my ear and dug around nonchalantly, then added, "And where the fuck did Nelson swan off to? Fucking...Narnia? He went somewhere, and I reckon someone helped him disappear."

  My exasperated mind filled to the brim, sloshing with unwanted conspiracy about control and our lack of it.

  "Wes...this is an office, a working company. We deal with complaints for a lot of big companies. There's no conspiracy here. You're a man who sits on his arse all day and I'm a receptionist. Not a good one, either. I barely know how to work the scanner; someone else has to do it for me. Whenever I try I end up screaming at it and crying in the toilets. No one wants to run tests on me for any reason. We're still here through dumb luck. If we hadn't all been up on the top floor, we'd be the same as the things downstairs."

  "You don't know that. Anything is possible. Whatever we come up with is guess work at best. These papers are useless without a solid base of existing knowledge. If we got on to the sixth floor without turning into hors d'oeuvres we might find answers."

  I barely believed my own s
uggestion. Thankfully, neither did Susan.

  "I'm not going back down there. Forget that friggin' notion."

  She crossed her arms. If she hadn't had both feet on the floor, she'd have made a show of putting one down, "We have to accept we're no closer to finding out what's going on and not speculate. It could be anything. Concentrate on staying alive long enough to get out of this mess. If we happen to find out what's going on in the process, then super, but I can't say I care."

  Susan had tripped into determined-leader mode again. It was like a switch she flicked, from quivering jelly to impenetrable rabble-rouser forged in iron.

  On her instruction we gathered our things and moved off down the hall to the roof exit.

  "Wait a second..." she said from the rear of the group, "I need to use the ladies."

  "The lady's what?" I asked. She gave me one of her 'looks' again.

  "The ladies room. I need to use it. To pee in."

  "Oh. Oh I see. Um," I stuttered, wondering how we'd fix that for her. Now she'd mentioned it, I realised I needed relief too. My bladder hadn't been paying attention, but the second Susan said the 'pee' word it noticed it was full to bursting and shouted 'me too!'

  "Can't you just..."

  "I'm not going in the corner, Wes."

  "I was only..."

  "No. Never. I need a seat and a lockable door."

  She folded her arms across her chest, ending that trail of awkward conversation.

  "There'll be toilets somewhere," Stuart said, walking down the hall and checking a door for a male/female sign.

  "But everywhere is boarded up," I pointed out.

  He reminded me of the axe in my hand. I giggled.

  -

  "This one," Stuart said, pointing at the fifth or sixth door he'd investigated, signalling to me to swing. The boards did a poor job of covering the door; sporadic nails held them to the chipped frame with gaps of about six inches between each one. The faded blue legs of a stick man poked out beneath a length of wood.

  The axe blade made short work of the first board, cracking it in two. Stuart grabbed one of the hanging halves and wrenched it back, using the leverage to prise the long nails.

  We did the same for another two boards. Susan stopped me swinging at the topmost board with a soft hand on my arm, then twisted the handle and pushed, letting the door swing into darkness. I felt ever-so-slightly foolish, and shot a 'You Win This Time' glare at the remaining length of wood, pointing the deadly end of my weapon at it.

  "In you go then," she said, nodding at the impossibly black room. A filthy chequered floor ran from the doorframe into nothing, swallowed up a yard inside; the door had swept aside whatever dust covered it, leaving a quart-circle shape. After discussing who would or wouldn't dare set a single toe inside for a big tub of cash, Stuart leaned around and blindly searched the wall for anything light-switchy. He pressed something, heard a pop, and whipped his hand back to see meaty remains of a large bug scoured across his fingertip.

  "Ohmygod," he said, wiping it on the wall and cursing.

  "There's bugs then? Fantastic," whined Susan.

  "I felt a switch too though. Pressed the wrong thing, I guess."

  After some urging he went back, found the switch instantly and clicked it. No squish this time.

  The amber light pulsed for a second, then flickered intermittently until it found enough confidence to stick around. I peered in at the bugs; fat, translucent cockroaches-things with pearly ridges along curved backs. They lined the ceiling and the top half of each wall, dotted around, one every few inches. Their insides were visible beneath pale, opaque shells. Two black dots set into what I assumed were faces served as eyes and a couple of antennas twirled and twitched above them like drumsticks.

  Husks spread liberally across the chequer-boards, evidently where they landed after plummeting from the stucco ceiling.

  "I'm going to go wee in the other room," Stuart announced, storming off. I thought this was a fantastic idea and turned to follow him until Susan, staring solemnly into the mausoleum of dead grubs, grabbed the bottom of my stolen suit jacket and dragged me back.

  "I'm peeing in here. I'm not going in a normal room, like some drunken savage. They're only bugs," she said. All emotion drained from her voice. "They're bugs. Only bugs."

  Yes, just a thousand mysterious bugs that we have never seen before and know nothing about. No big deal. Said no one, ever.

  "Okay, well," I said, not entirely okay with leaving her to it but also dead set on setting no foot inside the creepy-crawly bathroom from hell.

  "You're coming in too."

  I protested but she wasn't receptive. She explained that she was definitely going in, but wasn't going in alone, therefore I had to go in with her otherwise she wouldn't be able to go in, and she was DEFINITELY going in.

  She presented this unfathomable logic maze in such a way that suggested I should understand. I did not understand, but I did see that further arguing was futile at best.

  She stepped forward, still holding the base of my jacket like a leash. I prised it from her hands and entered the room face first.

  We waded through the slush of death. The dried husks, white and still, lay like frozen leaves on the ground; they crunched unsettlingly under my feet as I walked. Susan stopped and pushed me ahead, keeping her eyes alert to the living creatures glued to the ceiling.

  "You go first," she said. "Kick me a path through with your boots. If I stand on another one in my heels I might slip or, you know, vomit myself inside out with disgust."

  So I did, because I'm an excellent friend. Or a mug who will do anything a woman asks me too. Not sure.

  The bugs ignored us but I couldn't ignore them. I moved slow, edging aside the remnants like a snow-plow with my cheap leather shoes, which Susan decided were 'boots' and therefore up to the grotesque task. I peered around the cubicle wall to glimpse into the bathroom proper, finding it not quite the desolate hole I'd expected. It wasn't pleasant, but the bugs spread out and it was relatively clean, except for the layer of grimy age that sullied everything, the visible signifier of abandonment. We stepped to the first cubicle and Susan let go of me to push at the door.

  "Too many bugs. Next," she said. The swarm inside became skittish as the door swung, perhaps gearing up to defend their toilet-territory.

  I nudged the second door, the middle of the three, with my foot. It opened with a slight creak, challenging the rusty hinges.

  There was a knock from somewhere else in the room.

  "I'm back," Stuart called from outside, shattering the tension. "Everything okay? Devoured by skin-delving bugs yet?"

  "Nope. Shut up," called Susan. "This one will do. Not many bugs, all things considered..."

  She stepped in and flicked one off the toilet seat, then lifted it and made a pleased 'Oh' sound, as in 'Oh, the bowl isn't full of squirming monsters as I'd expected'. Then the door closed and she screamed so loud her sound-waves spooked more off the ceiling; they splattered and wriggled their legs until life vacated their damaged bodies. I tried to burst in but she shouted at me to stop. "I'm okay, there are, er, more on the door than I prepared for. Sorry."

  "Sure?"

  "Yep, just wait. Don't shake the door. If you do, I'll kill you. Won't be a minute. And don't speak or listen."

  I took up position at one of the wall-mounted urinals. They looked old-fashioned but I couldn't pin down why. Just something about them seemed ancient, relic-like. I got the feeling my piss-stream might uncover an ancient archaeological dig site, as if the porcelain might wear away to reveal the spinal column of a stegosaurus or something equally prehistoric. Bit of a smashed, Grecian urn, or a box of minidiscs.

  I washed the dust from the bowl down the black-hole drain, carving my initials with my accurate spray, when a pale bug dropped from the ceiling, bounced off the front of my skull and landed in the ever-growing urine puddle. It splashed for a while in a wild bid to escape until it flipped upside down, at which point I guess it
drowned, and washed away. I zipped up with a grimace on my face, feeling like a depraved, kinky murderer.

  "Feel free to come out any time you like, you know," moaned Stuart. A duet of 'Shut up' hit back at him, a harmonised melding of mine and Susan's annoyed voices.

  I stared, somewhat inevitably, at the final unopened door. The cubicle nearest the wall. Something about it drew my eyes; half of my brain screamed for me to disregard it, the other half lit up like a fruit machine hitting its jackpot, smothering the door in intrigue.

  I found myself at a mental impasse.

  If video games had taught me anything, it's to be wary of spooky, old, empty bathrooms. Avoid them, if possible, like a plague that makes dicks shrivel and scream.

  Every horror game worth a damn has a spooky scene in an old, empty bathroom. Be it in a dilapidated mansion where something bursts out and mulches the player with a spiked hammer, or in a mental institution where sub-human creatures slither from the stall and sneakily slice at their ankles. Perhaps a basin in a desolate space station full-to-the-brim with faeces that the player must delve into to fish out a key or a clue. There's always something.

  Always.

  Even when the rest of the room is calm and serene with no hint at the evil waiting to be stumbled upon. It might be a lost crow that flutters out when approached, squawking its black, beaked head off, but SOMETHING happens.

  Guaranteed.

  Yet I couldn't leave the door alone.

  My sweating, clenched fist bumped against the final door.

  It creaked like a blood-soaked entrance to a rickety shack in haunted woods.

  "Susan... ready to leave yet?" I murmured.

  "Not quite. I'm, um, having a teensy bit of trouble going."

  "You might want to hurry. Really push it out."

  "...why?" she inquired with a slyness in her voice. She was on to me, she knew something was up.

  The giant insect attached itself to my face.