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

by Chris Welsh

  Chapter Sixteen. 03:45pm

  GET YOUR NELS-ON.

  The man led us down a long corridor, past closed doors that screamed for investigation. Normally I would happily course along ignoring everything not shiny or nude, but something about these narrow, sliding rectangles made me desperate to get inside.

  I once walked through the entire British Library in London without learning a single thing or paying any attention to anything on display, yet I itched to examine every nook in this white, sterile environ. Some niggling part of me had to know what the doors held; my brain gave a new, ghastly suggestion for what hid beyond each one, plucking horror movie monsters from nightmares and placing them inside. I wondered if they were labs or cells, or something equally sinister; or perhaps something infinitely more innocent, like storage rooms or a subsidised canteen.

  I clamoured for answers.

  I wanted to know what Nelson's horrid mother was doing with a place such as this. My desk was hilariously ancient and suffered from a debilitating, persistent wobble. A folded pamphlet about Recycling Office Paper propped up one of the legs. It was three feet across and barely had enough space for a computer screen, keyboard and a stack of A4 papers, all the company deemed me worthy of. Nelson's mother, on the other hand, worked in an entire underground haven. Either something incredibly dodgy was going on or this was the world's single greatest example of injustice.

  The man didn't speak again, but he did wave a dismissive hand as if to silence Stuart when he wouldn't stop asking questions. The rustling, suited man had clearly never encountered a furious, tired, soaking wet, psychologically-tortured homosexual before, because he certainly didn't seem to expect the flaming tirade Stuart let out. It stopped him in his tracks. Even through the suit he was noticeably taken aback.

  "Don't you wave your hand at me you plasticy fuck! You owe us the decency of a response, right fucking now, you prick. After all we've been through to get down here, you ignore me? Wave your hand at me like I'm begging you for money? Do it again, I bloody dare you!"

  If there had been a visible cheek I'm certain Stuart would have open-palm slapped him. Instead he fell silent. The man did the same. His purple, compressed hands hung down limply by his hips.

  "I'm not sure anyone made you, or indeed asked you, to come down here. That we are acting at all amicably is but a testament to our grace. Please, remain calm."

  If he'd had an extra few seconds I'm sure Stuart would have cracked like glass and apologised, swallowing down a slice of dry humble pie, but a 'whoosh' came from behind us and a crew of three similarly-suited men appeared. Two wore yellow rubber gloves, the other had the same naked, pressured hands of the first. He carried a black case. The two with the gloves crammed in shoulder to shoulder behind the other, blocking off the corridor.

  The door stayed open.

  "Room 34 is ready," the ungloved man said, ushering us forward like a nightclub doorman. Inside was charcoal black; the beaming bulbs of the corridor illuminated nothing, as if they scared easily and wouldn't venture in further than an inch or two, defying the established laws of light particles.

  "Do you wear these suits all the time, or what? Just on special occasions? Should we wear suits?" I asked our original tour guide. "Is the air poisonous? Oh no, should I cover my mouth? Will that help?"

  "We need to ensure you aren't carrying anything nasty or harmful. Once that has been determined we may remove the suits. Allow us to scan you then please step carefully into the room."

  Stuart wasn't sure about anything. He hadn't thrown the soft, luxurious towel in yet. "I'm a guard, upstairs in the main building. We don't have these screening protocols up there. We don't have any screening protocols. What are you looking for?"

  "Please, allow us to scan you then step into the room."

  The man's voice, whilst not exactly robotic, carried the exact same intonations each time he spoke. They were either words that came up often or he practised them in the mirror each morning, calling on them like a sound-byte. He motioned for us to turn around and face his colleagues, one of whom held a conspicuous device like a metal cricket bat, only shorter and an inch thick. A wire ran from its handle down into the black bag.

  He hurried Nelson into the darkened room first, waving the thing across every inch of his body. A slight hum emanated from the bat, changing slightly in volume and tone as it scanned, though the men in suits didn't seem too bothered.

  "Can we put a light on in here?" Nelson asked from the blackness, after receiving the all-clear. "Can't see my own hand."

  "Careful with that hand, Nelson. You probably know where it's been," I said. No one else in the hallway found it funny or, if they did, they didn't laugh.

  Stuart stepped up next and passed with even less incident. He entered the room with out stretched arms, then apologised to Stuart for poking him in the head.

  The bat made a quick squeal as it passed Susan's knees before dropping back to the regular hum. The men didn't seem interested in the squeal, or in Susan's knees. She felt her way in and grasped Stuart's waiting hand, leaving me alone with the four men in the corridor.

  "Seriously, I can't see a bloody thing. Can you switch a light on? Stuart, check the walls, find a switch," Nelson said.

  "Light will come soon enough," said one of the yellow-fingered men.

  "That sounds like you're going to set us on fire," Stuart said. "Stop being so ominous."

  The men kept quiet. I sniffed, searching for any sign of smoke or burning. Found none, thankfully.

  The scanner passed over me. It remained calm from my feet to my waist but then went absolutely fucking berserk as soon as it hit my stomach. The manic bleeps and bloops continued across my chest and both arms, the machine screaming like an old modem connecting to the internet whilst suffering extensive emotional trauma. Hushed discussion between the three men gave me serious concern, but the suits and lack of visible mouths made it impossible to figure out what they were saying. They spoke in low murmurs. How they heard each other was a mystery. Something on the backside of the paddle became the most interesting thing in the world and the corridor reeked with my own sweaty fear.

  The original suited man rushed past me and snatched the bat from the other guy, prodded some buttons with a firm finger and did a second scan of my nervous, shaking body. I considered running but had nowhere to go. My fine companions inside the room had stopped speaking, hushed by the creeping darkness. I saw nothing inside and hoped it didn't simply lead to a bottomless pit or other brand of certain death.

  The second scan came out quieter but not silent. It still found issue with my abdomen but on a smaller scale, as if it was no longer overly concerned, but insisted on some small racket to keep up appearances.

  'Well it was there before!' it seemed to indignantly shout.

  This quelled the men enough to give me a pass into the room, but not quite enough to rid my suspicion that something had gone hideously wrong in my guts.

  "What were you scanning for? What do the noises mean?" I asked, before the two gloved men roughly encouraged me into the room. The ungloved pair made a point of not touching me. "Is my chest going to burst open? My stomach? Am I infected?"

  They said nothing.

  The closing door stole the tiny section of light that had been brave enough to enter. Dark smothered me, crawled into my throat and expanded, made it hard to breath. It was like having a thick, black blanket dropped over you in a cold and eerie cave. Only a few distant electronic noises filtered through to my ears. The hum of functioning computers. Susan, Stuart and Nelson waited quietly, breathing shallow and quick breaths.

  "Where are we?" I asked, whispering to conform to the oppressive atmosphere. It felt like anything louder than a cough might break the world, shatter it.

  Stuart – at least, I think it was Stuart – reached out and tapped a wall, creating a hollow, echoing noise. "There's no light switches, I've checked. The walls are like ice. Can't tell if they're wet or cold."

 
; "Oh God, do you think it's another washing-up room?" Susan said. "I'm wearing a skirt! I can't have all that water and wind..."

  "Ssh, I hear something, a motor."

  Stuart moved behind me, checking the door again. Trying to tease it open. He gave up.

  The sound built to a steady thrum.

  "Might want to pin that skirt down, Sus. The water was bad enough in trousers. There's no controlling yourself once it takes your balance."

  The concept of 'control' felt far away, alien.

  On a map, if 'control' were Britain, then I sat in Australia chatting with a wallaby about sense and how little it made. But an alternate Australia, on an alternate Earth, some billion light years away from normal Earth.

  I tried to guess what was going on but came up entirely blank. There was no big picture. Not even a small picture. No scenario presented by my brain sang with plausibility, though I was aware that anything - literally anything - could be happening outside of my vision. Or perhaps nothing at all was happening and the confined black box would contain us until only skeletons and clothing remained. So distant was my grasp on reality that I wouldn't bat an eyelid if Nelson turned into the Pope or if Stuart whipped off a mask to reveal that, secretly, he'd been a unicorn named Arnold Unicorn all along. Susan could be a spy, sent by a tribe of mildly sexy receptionist-people that lived underground and took calls for trolls that caused zombie plagues.

  If someone flicked on a torch to inform me I was lab-created using a trimming of God's pubic hair and, as such, was the last in line to Heaven's Throne, I'd have happily accepted it, no questions. High fives all around, despite the pube aspect.

  The absolute worst thing my brain suggested was this; We might have stumbled upon Nelson's mother's secret BBW porn dungeon/studio. I didn't ponder that for long.

  -

  "Contamination warning lifted," Nelson said. Not actually Nelson, but his voice; the one that blared from the world's most infuriating announcing system.

  "What does that mean?" the real Nelson said.

  "Think it means we're clean," Susan said. Relief dripped from the words.

  "That's definitely your voice, Nelly."

  "It isn't! And do not call me Nelly."

  "Fucking is, mate." I said. "Not a doubt about it. What aren't you telling us, Nelly?"

  "I'm not not telling you anything!" he yelled, risking the double negative but emerging unscathed. I sort of believed him, but still couldn't add things up. He held something back, either on purpose or because he was too bloody stupid to realise it. If his mother controlled a hidden underground base for some maniacal reason then logic followed that her son could be a nefarious sphincter with his own secrets.

  A new voice boomed out from somewhere nearby. Unseen, like the Wizard of Oz, and not pre-recorded - it was a real human voice. Unfortunately, adequately placing its origin with no visual stimuli on which to base location proved difficult, since I'm no bat. The voice surrounded me, wrapped me in a cocoon of the chillingly unknown. Though my feet remained flat on the floor, I felt dizzy, lost, like I was spinning uncontrollably without actually moving.

  Not fun.

  "Silence!" it said, ticking off the top option on a list of 'scary things people can yell in the dark'. It was a female voice, but commanding, powerful. Deep and muscular with only a hint of femininity hiding away beneath a layer of theatrical testosterone. It was a put-on voice, but a commendable one, fitting in with the tropes of a mad scientist holed away in an underground dwelling.

  "That your mum, Nelson?" I whispered, trying to remain calm. He didn't have the chance to reply before she kicked off again, stealing away our available attention.

  "Guards!" she shouted, drawing out the 'ar'. Another tick off the Obvious Villainy List. "Let them out, I wish to see what vile miscreants I'm dealing with."

  It sounded positive, in a way, but carried a tenable threat to our existence, depending on what she meant by 'vile miscreants'. Perhaps she liked 'vile miscreants'. There was a chance, I thought, that we'd be released into an idyllic scene and our captors would be friendly sorts with no deep-seated anger towards us for trespassing. She might greet us with freshly baked cookies and a jug of cold milk, like dear old mums are supposed to, if indeed it was Nelson's mother. He still hadn't answered.

  Much more likely, however, were the chances of finding ourselves suspended perilously over a lake of lava or hungry sharks. Or a lake of lava filled with hungry lava sharks that actively enjoyed the molten-hot temperatures. She certainly conveyed that level of super-villainy in the well-rehearsed tone of her voice.

  The ceiling moved first, sliding away to the right, folding like a shutter and allowing light to pour in through the growing gap. The light illuminated our small, blank holding cell of sorts. We bunched up in the middle of it, intently watching the peculiar roof until it disappeared.

  "Is it your Mum?" Susan demanded, pulling on his shirt sleeve until he gave her attention.

  "I...I think so, yes," he said.

  With the ceiling gone the walls were next, sinking into the ground ever so slowly. They retreated smoothly but took an age to even reach eye level, giving us enough time to exchange nervous glances and ready ourselves. Even Nelson wore a look of concern, unhappy that mother discovered him lurking around her special place. I don't think he expected such a harsh welcome. If it were me, I'd have spoken up already and bagged myself a free pardon in case she was feeling as mardy as her voice suggested, but instead he made himself as small as possible, scrunching up his shoulders and staring at his shoelaces. There had to be perks to being her offspring, but judging by his face, he didn't know what they were.

  Personally, after all the zombies, the blood, the attacks and the growling hunger, I was ready to lose myself in a cloud of red mist. I was prepared, right there, to play psychopath and demand answers. To scream and smash things and run around topless until someone sated me with knowledge or, better yet, a sandwich.

  The room outside of our slowly revealing shell had cluttered, high ceilings which betrayed the clean, white corridors. Visible wires, ducts and other metal bits threaded all over the ceiling like a child's drawing of a maze. The ceiling itself was an ugly, stained example of poor interior design, sitting somewhere between diarrhoea brown and spot-pus yellow on the Scale of Terrible Colours. There was no way to know its original shade, but time had mutated it into something no human could look at and think 'Yes, that's me, slap that on my ceiling please'.

  The walls, what I saw of them, were plain brown. The colour of mixed concrete, dotted with orange-spewing lamps that covered everything in a late-1960s vibe. It was a secret underground compound as designed by someone's unfashionable, stuck-in-her-ways grandmother.

  Eventually the sides of the cell dropped enough to reveal the purpose of the large room. Towers of ancient computer equipment linked by wires, covered in blinking lights that couldn't possibly mean anything to anybody, littered the place. They stood at different heights and widths and at odd angles to each other, like the skyline of a nightmarish future city blanketed by dust and decay. The walls soon dipped to eye-level, revealing five unkempt piles of ginger-ish hair on top of five pock-marked foreheads. Behind them was a raised section of floor with a semi-circular bank of computers. A woman, her broad back turned to us, stood beside another two red-topped men working away at computers.

  My head almost imploded from the weight of realisation.

  The room was staffed almost exclusively by Nelson.

  The five nearest examples wore the white contamination suits but without the helmets, showing off their circular, spotty faces. I fought nausea but fared better than our Nelson, who distinguished himself by turning his skin an ugly tinge of green; I didn't know if it was severe illness or envy that caused the transformation, but his face morphed to match his sleeveless jumper.

  "What the actual fuck," Stuart said, before the nearest Nelson-copy abruptly ordered him to shut up. Susan burst out laughing. If they weren't all holding a foot-lon
g stick with a trickle of blue electricity zapping between two prongs at the tips, I might have joined her. It was both hilarious and my idea of hell rolled into one unmanageable, fidgety bundle. I'd have cried tears of terror as I howled at the spectacle if my body relaxed enough.

  The wide-backed woman still hadn't turned to us.

  "What gives you wretches the right to storm into my sanctum and start playing with my toys?" she bellowed, still utilising the terrible fake voice. It didn't seem like she'd ever had to do such a thing before. The copies of Nelson all winced slightly when she spoke, but they kept their shocking wands pointed directly at us.

  "I demand answ"

  She spun and stopped dead, mid sentence and mid facial contortion. She adopted a very surprised frown, like she'd just been startled awake in the middle of an enjoyable dream.

  "Nelly?!" she said, dropping the farcical bombast.

  "Hi Mum..."

  He gave her a meek wave. His face was that of a silent movie damsel-in-distress, hogtied to tracks with a steam-pumping locomotive in sight, but no hero.

  "What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

  She stormed across the floor like a determined lion stalking a hunk of bloody, raw meat. Her wide, angular shoulders bobbed but her head remained perfectly still as if not fully attached or operating on its own axis. She was a strange and, ultimately, bizarre sight to behold. Something about the environment contorted her, gave her an enhanced, sinister aura compared to the version that roamed the offices doling out paperwork and leading a team.

  "Have you seen what's going on up there? There's monsters! A big one chased us, I opened the door and,"

  "Did you know how to do that? Have you been spying on me?"

  One of her eyes snapped into a suspicious squint as she bore down on us. If Nelson hoped to appease her into calmness, he had a diminishing amount of time left to do it.

  "No! I promise! But I've seen you come in here before, and I took a guess, that's all! My birth year!"

  "It's actually the year I...never mind. Fine."

  She manhandled a Nelson-a-likes aside, making a space to waddle through, then grabbed our Nelson by the left ear and dragged him down to her level.

  "What are you saying about monsters?" she said.

  "They're...I think they're zombies! They're all rotted and they bite you if you get close."

  "Have you been bitten?" she demanded, twisting his ear further. Her inch-long, pink fingernails dug into his skin and threatened to draw blood. My eyes wouldn't leave it.

  "No! None of us have. We're okay. But, well pretty much everyone else up in the main building is a monster. It spreads, I think. Like an infection or...or jam."

  She eye-balled me and let go of his ear, then slapped him hard across the face. The slap echoed through the room, bouncing off each wall. It left a mark on his cheek, a stinging red hand print. He tried to react but she spun him by the shoulders and pulled his shirt collar down as far as it would go, putting pressure on his throat. She inspected for something whilst he choked and spluttered.

  "Face me again," she commanded, releasing his neck but yanking his jumper up and taking a good long look at his stomach. He put up a tame protest until an impatient hiss from mother dropped his arms by his sides.

  "Okay, you're not one of these. Good."

  She pointed a thumb at the copies that held the stun-wands. Grim determination crunched up their identical faces. They were the spit of Nelson, but mean instead of stupid, like whatever made him so irritably idiotic had soured, but there was something else, some tiny bit of frailty behind the fearsome glares. They looked concerned, worried by something. Or so I thought, anyway.

  "Why'd you hit me?" he moaned, pulling his jumper down in a huff. She ignored him.

  Stuart tried to interject.

  "Can you please tell us what's going on here?"

  She ignored him too, leading Nelson by his wrist, past the handful of clones.

  "Kill the rest, and make sure you clean up afterwards," she said.