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

by Chris Welsh

  Chapter Eighteen. 04:30pm

  NELSON'S MOTHER IS A HUGE BITCH, APPARENTLY.

  Before speaking a single word, Nelson's mother sat down on the nearest spinning chair and let out a hefty sigh, failing to act anything other than apathetic to the fate of her son. She even slipped off her shoes, laboriously, to stall us even longer. The urge to stun her grew massively with each second of prolonged silence.

  "Nelson, what's your mum's name?" I called out as she struggled to unclasp the kitten-heeled clog-like abomination on her left hoof. I wanted something to fill the void, something that moved us forward ever so slightly.

  "Erm, June. Yeah, June."

  The bastard didn't seem sure.

  "So your name is June, then?" I asked her as she sat up. Her lips pursed, embellishing her wrinkles of age, the smoker's curse, like the legs of spiders trying to escape her lips.

  "My friends call me June, yes," she said eventually.

  "Okay, Ju"

  "You will call me Ms Stephens."

  "Okay...Ms Stephens. Tell us about what's going on here. Why did you try to kill us?"

  "Oh, calm down. I didn't try very hard, did I?"

  "But you still tried! That's the point. When you give an order to have someone killed, it isn't easy to brush it off. Start talking."

  I hoped my stern tone would elicit some sort of fearful response, maybe give the square-shaped old bat a reason to spew information. Instead, I think it angered her.

  "Er, please," I added.

  "I don't know a blasted thing about upstairs if that's what you're asking. You come barging in here, talking about monsters, like a mad man..."

  "I'm not the mad man!" I said, admittedly losing my control of the interrogation. "You're the mad man!"

  "Don't call my mum a man!" Nelson moaned from behind me. I heard the short buzz of Stuart's wand; it didn't meet skin but he'd pulled the trigger, likely a warning to the ginger fool. Or, equally likely, an over-excited accident.

  I continued.

  "You're the one with a clones running about the place, looking like your son! I guess you won't tell us about either, will you?"

  "Yes, actually. That's my life's work. I'll talk about the specifics until the moon falls apart, if you want me to."

  "Cliff notes, please. Spare pretty much all detail."

  "Basically you hit the nail directly on the head. They're clones of my son, my Nelson, who work in my laboratory."

  "What do they do?" I had to ask.

  "They make more clones. We work to build a better, stronger, less squishy type of clone with the end goal being total and perfect reproduction of a functioning male. They're fine at first but they...well, they're like fruit. Perfectly ripe when you buy them but soon they're a pulpy, mushy mess in your kitchen. My current line of work involves fixing these errors. Creating a stable, long-lasting clone."

  "What for?"

  "I'm not privvy to the eventual goal, but nor would I tell you if I was. I tend to avoid bogging down in the politics of it all."

  "Okay. But, why?"

  "Why what? Why do it at all? Because Science, that's why. Why humans? Well, have you ever cloned a sheep, a dog even? I have. It's perfectly good the first time but then it's boring. They're useless afterwards. You clone humans, even imperfect ones, and you get a workforce. You clone a sheep, you get lamb chops for dinner. I once cloned a mouse. Guess what I had then? Two mice. Then one died, leaving me with just the one boring stupid mouse. I needn't have bothered."

  "Is that why I once had two Mr Whiskers?!" Nelson said, shocked all of a sudden.

  "You had about fifty bastard Mr Whiskers in all, you kept bloody killing them," she turned back to me, "He used to feed them dry porridge oats, straight out of the box. They'd eat until they were stuffed then take a drop of water and expand until their stomach burst. Never learned. Anyway, yes, the clones. They can't count without using their fingers and they couldn't work a microwave if they tried, but they're loyal and, strangely, capable of following any order to the letter. Well, until they fall apart like they're made of mashed potato. Aside from the few I have here, I keep seventy or so in the labs, and the rest are on permanent body-cleaning duty. It's a fairly self-sufficient operation."

  I thought about the hundreds of people who worked in the office above. I wondered how many of them were strong, perfectly sane and capable individuals, how many of them were kind, considerate and smart. People who achieved things and had purpose.

  "But, I mean, why Nelson?" I asked.

  It didn't make sense in my head. Choosing the worst example of a human on offer, blood ties or not, seemed like a hindrance to scientific progress.

  "Well, he's my son and I love him."

  We exchanged a look.

  A 'look'.

  "Okay, and because he was simplest option. Always around to sneak samples from, or for tests, that sort of thing. He's smarter than he looks, too. Mostly."

  Nelson squeaked, an outburst of either deep offence or overjoyed delight. It wasn't clear. It's hard to tell with squeaks; attention must be paid to the squeaker's eyes to determine the intention, but mine focussed on the only person in the room to have pushed out a baby.

  "Why do you pretend to be a team leader upstairs?"

  "I groom."

  I had no idea what she meant by that, but she said it in such a confident way that I felt like I should. It took a recovering Susan to interject for clarification.

  "Groom?" she said, looking up from her pit of despair. Her eyes were puffed but the colour had flushed back into her cheeks. She'd removed her hand from her chest.

  "Yes, groom. Mould. I manage testing candidates, plucking the best from the offices and ear-marking them for one the labs – not necessarily this one – for testing."

  "What testing goes on?"

  "Whatever testing the boss wants. I have nothing to do with the rest of it; I'm on 'cloning' only. It's my speciality, the main reason I'm here. My subjects are home grown, as you may have noticed, but I'm also adept at picking suitable candidates for less... 'straightforward' research. So I do that too. My picks are then passed out amongst the others. I know there's someone working on mind control and someone else dabbling with animal DNA...the boss is sticking his oar in all over the place. Test enough things, eventually something will come good, is his theory."

  "So all that stuff happening upstairs is on purpose? Some sick experiment?"

  "Not a clue. It's nothing to do with me. Honestly couldn't tell you. The communication system is down, has been for a few hours. They planned some experimental stuff on the sixth floor, but I've not been a part of it. I always delete those bloody irritating all-user emails that talk about whatever dull tests the other cretins are conducting, playing at being 'proper' scientists. Weekly catch-up bullshit nonsense. Don't care. I'd hazard a guess and say that someone, somewhere, did a little fuck up."

  Susan exploded, animated and angry. "Then why are all those creatures upstairs, those zombies, as brittle as your pathetic clones? And why did we find one of your Nelson clones wandering around?"

  Her face melted into confusion, topped by a deeply furrowed brow. "I don't know about that. Hmm. I'm not up-to-date with the other projects so the fact that these things are all softer than a bag of shite may be a coincidence but, the clones...well, they never leave this place..."

  "One definitely did. It attacked us. We tossed it off the roof, thinking it was Nelson turned into one of the other monsters."

  "Did you happen to notice what was turning the people into monsters?" she asked, as if it might help.

  "Erm, well, other monsters. They'd be bitten and turn. Infected. Rising from the dead. You know, zombies."

  "Really? I thought he was exaggerating that, or just being stupid. How unoriginal. I wonder what the boss is playing at. What caused the first monsters to appear in the first place?"

  "...I have no idea."

  I really didn't. "We saw a mouse too."

  Susan took over the flailing
conversation. She possessed a demanding style of interrogation, less question-based than mine. Expertly to the point.

  "You need to fix it," she told the bemused woman, pointing and waving a finger in the air like a magic wand. "You need to fix it right now."

  Her wide-eyed fury, the sign of a person reaching the very end of their sanity rope, was unsettling.

  "Can't. Not my mess to fix. Leave it to the others. I told you, I only work on the cloning thing, my dear Susan."

  "Who are the others?" I asked.

  "How do you know my name?" Susan demanded.

  "Names are part of my job. I have to know who is good for testing, who won't die if one of my maniac colleagues opens them up to poke at their brain. Anyway, if you don't mind, I'd like to suggest that it's time to get as far away from here as possible. These monsters you mention, they sound...problematic."

  I asked if I'd ever been tested on, but Susan's eyes lit up at the prospect of escape and she spoke over me. "You can get us out?"

  "Out of Tall Trees? I'm afraid not."

  "Why not?"

  "I only have space for one."

  Then there was...well, something happened.

  -

  Next thing I knew, a lump had formed on my skull and I was at the foot of the stairs that led to the computer platform. She finished her sentence then shoved me hard, knocking me back a few feet. I fell, bouncing parts of spine off each step. Before Susan knew what was going on, before anyone really noticed, June tapped frantically at a keyboard.

  The lights died, disappearing with a resounding 'clunk' and depriving us of sight once again. The background hum of computers disappeared too, winding down to nothing over a few seconds, matching the pattern of the pain leaving my body. I sat up on my elbows but stayed low, urging my eyes to adjust and picking up a few shimmering blue dots of light, the tips of the zapping sticks we held.

  When the stick was prone, it was a dot of light like an effervescent bug floating in the air, but pulling the trigger amplified the glow, creating a weak bubble of light.

  "Where the fuck is she?" Susan screamed. She waved her stick about in the dark, flicking the trigger, doing a terrible job of illuminating anything at all. A few yards away Stuart struggled with someone.

  "Get off! Someone's grabbed me!" he shouted, in case we couldn't guess what was going on.

  There was a brief BZZZZZT sound, then a yelp, a few thuds and a soft moan.

  I saw an arm swing and a body drop to the ground, before the light sucked back into the useless dot. For a few terrifying seconds, the blue from Stuart's stick hung in the air and I had absolutely no idea who held it. Could have been anyone. Well, any one of three or four people.

  From the floor I clicked the button of my own wand, lighting up the area enough to see a bewildered Stuart be knocked down, devoured by the darkness. A large shape writhed in pain; Nelson, the original.

  Susan descended the steps into my hazy circle of light, wary of the crackling electric flame I held. We made brief eye contact and I let go of the trigger, reaching out for her hand to help me to my feet.

  "Everyone okay?" I said, arching my back and relishing the barrage of tiny cracks from my spine.

  "Everyone except Nelson," said Stuart. He struggled to his feet. "The bitch knocked me over but I'm okay."

  "Where's she gone?"

  She didn't give us time to speculate, before she yelled out from across the room. We didn't her moving, no foot-steps because of her stocking-clad feet; her shoes sat by the computers. I felt dumb and angry.

  "Sorry son," she called. "You'll have to fend for yourself this time."

  Not one syllable was sympathetic, not one note of her voice emoted an ounce of caring. She barked another order in an increased, violent tone, then a door slammed.

  A burst of calm spread through the room; a relaxing, almost serene moment lost in black anonymity. Only the miniature lightning bolts at the end of our weapons spoiled the velvet dark, hanging like fireflies. The only noise came from their docile crackling.

  I pressed the button on mine, which made the crackling angrier and the blue glow wider, but all I saw was Susan's concerned face, framed by messy, frizzed hair.

  Then the fear came, sloshing into the room and drowning me in wave after wave of cold sweat. It had no immediate source and nothing perceptibly changed.

  A sense of unease washed over me. A violent illness. Something instinctual, primal.

  Irritable, unwashed evil licked my soul.

  The silence remained until the first weapon clicked into life, then another and then another.

  There must have been thirty in total, switching on in quick succession and populating every corner. They formed a wall of blue lights attached to wands, attached to hands, attached to bodies. Some tested their triggers, creating blue blobs of light that highlighted their blank stares.

  I fumbled for the 'off' switch of my wand, hoping to deaden the light and use the darkness as a shield, but I wasn't sure if there was one. I was ready to toss it and run when large strip lights popped into life along the far wall, illuminating the rear of the army we faced. Floodlights behind a rabid mob. It was a battalion made of Nelson clones wearing sterile, white suits. Most didn't have the masks but some did; they proclaimed their identity via their squat size and awkward shape.

  We formed separate parties, us and them, arranged like an uneven game of chess.

  The big lights emitted a queasy mix of orange and red, the shade of blood mixed with vomit, powerful and relentlessly beaming into our eyes. I instantly missed the darkness.

  "Where the fucking hell did they come from?" Stuart said, whispering, as if he was trying to avoid their attention. It didn't matter. The first pawn took a step toward us to break the stalemate.

  No more moments of calm passed, only an indeterminate span of time packed with bloodshed and wild aggression. Seconds stretched to minutes, the way time slows down like a motorist passing an accident, hoping to get a good eyeful of someone else's misfortune.

  Susan retreated up the steps and made the first attacking move, picking up and launching a heavy computer chair into the encroaching Nelsons. She threw well and struck at least three of them, crushing them like cartons of milk. I was glad to see they were still as easily damaged as overly ripe bananas, though like the zombies their strength lay in numbers.

  Unlike the zombies and unlike us, they also had long stun wands, longer than ours, capable of spitting out enough voltage to cook a steak. They carried the Stretch Cadillac of zappy, electrified sticks, compared to our laughable compact models.

  "Shit!" I said loudly, as a second and final chair flew over my head and straight into an onrushing group like a boulder catapulted at a castle wall. Susan perched on top of the steps, with one of Nelson's mother's shoes in each hand. She'd tossed her stun-stick to the ground.

  This was war.