——

From our good friend Mr. Pete Bevan:
“It is with great pleasure I can announce that my collected works of Zombie fiction, entitled “All The Dead Are Here” is now available at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com for the Kindle Reader App. This means they can be read on the Kindle, Smartphone, PC, iPhone or Mac (through Kindle Cloud Reader) for a price of around $5 or $3.50.

All The Dead Are Here – Amazon.co.uk
All The Dead Are Here – Amazon.com

This book contains 9 stories from TOWWZ that have been professionally edited and, in some cases rewritten. Then there are an additional 8 previously unpublished works in this collection that represents all of Pete Bevan’s Zombie fiction in one spine chilling tome of 85,000 words. The collection also contains all three (Three? Or four?) parts of his acclaimed ‘Minister’ series.

I sincerely hope you treat yourself to a bit of a Zombie this Halloween, and I would only ask that you leave a review on Amazon.

Due to the subject matter and language used this book is not recommended for the under 18’s. Not unless they’ve been really bad.

Islands – Competition winning story of a lone shop owner trapped in a city of the Undead, his salvation coming from an unexpected source.
The Minister – Years after the Apocalypse a band of survivors meet the strangest man of God.
Kernow – Take care when holidaying in Cornwall after the Zombie Apocalypse.
The Beating of 10,000 wings – An old man makes his final peace in a scarred land.
Cadish – An strange alien with the best intentions makes a hideous mistake.
The Minister Verse 2 – Government forces hunt for a strange priest not realising his true power.
The Isle of the Ungodly Dead – A Victorian reporter from the Times finds a tropical hell.
These things always happen to me on a Tuesday – The Zombie Apocalypse is not always as it seems.
Leaving Liminality – A survivor reminisces on what he has become.
The Boy – A traffic jam at the wrong place and time changes a boys fate forever.
Koyashis Button – A man employed for his lack of empathy has to make a fateful decision.
Zom – bee – The last man to sleep has to become fear itself as he drives across a nightmare world.
The Madman, The Tower, and The devil – A US General gets a visitation from the old adversary.
Angels with Dirty Faces – A father is faced with his darkest decision.
The Minister Verse 3: Resurrection – The final epic showdown of the Minister triptych
Quantum Practice – The last scientist uses a hat stand of non-linear time to prevent the Apocalypse.
The Tellers Apprentice – A lone traveller seeks to pass on the lost knowledge, but who is this traveller?”

So consider getting yourself or a friend this collection of fine stories for Halloween. Several of these are featured on our site, but many are exclusive to Pete’s collection.

-Ed.

By now you may be aware of the ‘Oxford Incident’. It has been reported on the BBC, Daily Mail, and Guardian websites as having been a group of disaffected students “going postal” in the Summertown area of Oxford after a night of mephedrone and cheap supermarket alcohol.

(edit: At the time of posting all references and links to this news report have been removed by the various websites)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-10955861

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/12/uk-student-riot-oxford

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/article-1378900/Oxford-student-riot.html

According to the report they broke out of their student  flat, moving through the street attacking people with axes and knives in some sort of bloodlust. The Daily Mail is already saying that they were all Muslim Terrorists. It was reported that they decided to take their frustrations out on society for their failing grades and spiralling addictions.

Let me ask you this though: If you are good enough to go to Oxford, would you be damaged enough to go on a rampage through one of the most affluent cities in the UK? It stinks of cover up and obfuscation.

My suspicions were confirmed when I received a call from an old friend yesterday evening. I have transcribed it verbatim below. It makes for spine chilling reading, but the text cannot convey the fear in his voice. I can hear him now talking over the Police sirens and chaos in Summertown. He would have wanted me to protect his identity, so for the sake of this article I will call him Tom.

/phone rings

Me: “Hello?”

Tom: “Pete, it’s Tom.”

Me: ”Hello mate. Long time no speak. How are you?”

Tom: “To be honest, I’m freaked out. Have you heard about this thing in Oxford?”

Me: “Yeah. Someone linked the BBC article on Facebook, but its pretty vague. Something about some students rioting?”

Tom: “ Well, that’s bollocks!”

Me: ”Really!”

Tom: “Its saying that they went, crazy but that’s bullshit.”

Me: “Why’s that then?”

Tom: “Look, I live across the road from them, and I know…knew one of the guys pretty well and they are….were massive Zombiphiles.”

Me: (Laughs) “Well, I’ve been accused of the same in my time.”

Tom: “Nothing like this, though, Pete, I mean I’ve been round their house and it’s like a fucking shrine to George Romero. Their house was a tip, like any student house, but they’ve got piles of DVD’s stacked up to the roof! It must be every Zombie film ever made, and books, posters, Xboxes with that Zombie game on permanently. Seriously, mate, they put on Zombie Walks and parties every other week. Anyway, I met this guy in the pub and we got chatting. So we got a bit pissed (For our American readers ‘a bit pissed’ in this context means ‘very drunk’) and started talking about that Tales of the Zombie thing you have some stuff on. He said he knew all about it and if I liked Zombies I should come round.”

Me: “Right.”

Tom: “Well, I wouldn’t normally do this, but we lived on the same street, so we walked back here and went in when he said he had some beer in the house. I was a bit pissed to be honest, I’d had a few before we left.His house was filthy, and I mean disgusting, take-away food trays everywhere, beer cans, ashtrays full, and the whole house stank of weed and sweat. You know that really strong shit, what is it? Skunk? Anyway, they are watching some obscure Asian shit on a big TV, with gore and body parts everywhere. They just sat there watching and not saying a word, just passing these massive joints round.”

Me: “Sounds lovely.” (Sarcasm)

Tom: “Hehe, yeah right. So, I’m not so drunk that I get the wiggins and just get out of there as quick as I can. Anyway, so I kind of start keeping half an eye on the house and I see them coming and going looking like a bunch of tramps. I don’t think any of them went to Uni any more. So that was a few weeks ago, and I thought they had been kicked out or something as the grass on the front path got so high, I thought they would struggle to open the front door. Anyway I had the morning off today as I was having a new fridge delivered, so I’m sitting there watching Jeremy Kyle (again for our American readers Jeremy Kyle is like Jerry Springer but for a lower class of clientele) in my pants with a cup of tea….”

Me: ”Too much information fella!”

Tom: ”….and I hear this scream. Like a real loud, blood curdling scream. So I rush to the window and I see them. They’ve got this…..*ahem* …they’ve got this girl on the ground and there’s blood everywhere and she’s stopped screaming and they are pulling big bits of her out and eating it! I start to think its like a stunt or something, for their latest party, until I see this Special (NB: Again for our American reader a ‘Special Constable’ are Volunteer Police.) go over. They drag him down as well and he’s screaming into his radio and …and…they pulled his fucking arm off, Pete! I could smell it. You know like that smell you get when you walk into a butchers. That meat smell.”

Me: “Tom, look. Calm down. It’s a stunt. They aren’t real.”

Tom: “That’s what I kept telling myself, it was a stunt. A fucking good stunt, but a stunt anyway.”

Me: “That’s all it was mate, just some sick students having a laugh. The Special was probably in a costume from a Hire shop with a few blood bags. Trust me.”

Tom: “Thing is Pete, when I first heard the girl scream, she was moving. She was flailing her arms round and screaming and by the time the Special was on the ground, there wasn’t much of the girl left. So how did they fake that? Eh?”

Me: “Dunno. Maybe some projector thing like that Gorillaz concert, with a mesh across the street making the projection look 3D?”

Tom: ”Pete. Listen. There wasn’t any fucking mesh across the street. So, I keep watching and people are keeping a fair distance and these guys are just chewing away with that sound…you know when a dog has a bone… that crunching, tearing sound? Anyway, I hear sirens and the Police turn up and circle the scene while some officers dive in there with Pepper spray and batons. Well, these guys get injured as well, and then I see the Special get up. I mean, not even Stan Winston could do effects like that. He didn’t…he didn’t have any insides mate. It was all just gone and he’s up and walking. How the fuck did they fake that?”

Me:”I, er…”

Tom:” So anyway, it’s chaos and the injured Police are trying to get out the way. More Police turn up and they’re shouting instructions at the guys, so they start using tasers, which make them dance like a puppet on string but don’t stop them. They don’t even slow down mate, so I hear more sirens and it’s the Armed Response guys! They pile out while the….the……fuck it! The fucking Zombies, Pete, alright! The fucking Zombies are just chew…

(At this point the Tom becomes unintelligible as he is talking so fast and his voice is shaky)

Me: “Tom! Tom! Calm down, mate! I can’t understand what you’re saying. Just take a breath and calm down. Just take a second.”

(I can hear Tom breathing hard as he tries to calm himself. After 10 or twenty seconds he starts again.)

Tom: “ I’m okay. I’m okay………The Armed Response unit turn up and they start barking at the……Students to cease and desist. Thing is they aren’t listening, and they start to turn on the Armed Response. I hear the gunfire and they start to drop. I mean, I’ve never heard gunfire before, it’s not like anything in a film, it’s like a crack that echoes round the street. After a minute or so its over. They are all down, Students, Coppers, witnesses, everyone, and The Police are ‘mopping up’ the area as all these ambulances turn up. I hear a knock at the door but I don’t answer.”

Me:”So, are you still in your flat?”

Tom: “Yeah, but not for long. I’m getting out the back and going South. I have an Auntie who lives in Cornwall so I’m gonna go there. I suggest you guys do the same. Thing is Pete, and this is where it gets really weird, I put up a tweet about it and somehow it gets picked up by this Japanese guy. He contacts me and his English is shit, but he reckons the same thing happened in Japan about a month ago. I think he says it was at a cinema, and he and his missus were in a restaurant across the street and there was a Zombie film marathon going on and the police turned up and killed everyone. He filmed it on his phone, but as soon as he posted it on Youtube, it was removed and the police turn up at his house and took his phone and his PC. He did tell me something else but I didn’t get what he was saying…Shit.”

Me: “What?”

Tom: “Two Police vans have just turned up outside. Pete, I’m going. Now.”

Me: “Tom! Wait!”

/click.

I have been scared to ring back in case they trace my number, assuming they caught up with him.

I took a moment after the call to check myself and I’m not ashamed to say I was sweating. I took a long time to consider if this was a wind up, but that’s not Tom’s style. He’s a close friend, an old friend, and, I trust him. So maybe it was an elaborate hoax by the students, but you should have heard the sound of his voice. It was earnest, sincere. It wasn’t like he was sniggering in his hand or anything. So, the upshot is this:

I believe him.

I know its not much of a stretch of the imagination for me to believe him given all the “Z” stuff I have read and written. I have an entire bookshelf devoted to the genre, but I can’t escape the tone in his voice. The fear. The gravitas. If it’s a hoax, then he has got me hook line and sinker. If he comes back on the phone saying “Ahhhh, sucker I got you!” I’ll let you know, but I can’t escape this nagging fear.

I didn’t sleep much last night, let me tell you. I have been mulling this over, and it keeps running round my head back to one conclusion. I have a theory that’s its not a virus. There have been two independant “outbreaks” under similar circumstances. This seems unlikely, and I know of no virus that can re-animate the Dead. I haven’t heard of any meteorites making landfall, and if it were Gods’ final judgement, why just England and Japan? Why not everywhere? My theory is more esoteric.

We did this.

You, me, Ryan, Clitoris Rex, Jeff DeRego, Nick Lloyd, Clay Dugger, George Romero and Danny Boyle. Everyone who has lived breathed and dreamed of Zombies for the last forty years has caused this. If you don’t believe me, have a look on Lulu.com, the self-publishing website. I counted fourteen thousand Zombie books there, and that’s not counting traditionally published works. Type ‘Zombie’ into Google. Forty five million results. Look at the entries for Zombie on IMDB.  Thousands and thousands of films from big budget blockbusters to little Taiwanese schlock horror flicks. Hundreds of games from high def big action titles to little flash zombie simulators. We love Zombies, and that may be our undoing.

The internet and 21st century media connects us to other social groups of similar interests in a much more global way than ever before. That’s why I can chew the fat with Clay and Jeff thousands of miles away over Skype, discussing ideas and stories.

You are probably the same. “Have you read this new Zombie book? Seen this new film? Played this new game?”.  The psychic effort of a billion zombie fans, all pushing and pushing at the meme, until it takes on a life of its own. Like Oxford. Like an Internet pushed drug. Existential philosophers have stated that through belief, we created God. I’m no philosopher, but perhaps the psychic effort creates others realities as well.

Who can prove that reality itself is fixed, immutable, solid? Perhaps the net itself which, lets face it, is only about fifteen years old when it comes to mass public usage, allows a connection of minds unheard of in human history. An alignment of thought that can warp and buckle the reality of those so immersed, so changed by the meme that they become something more. Or, perhaps, something less, than they are supposed to be? We’ve let the Genie out of the bottle with the Internet, with no idea how it’ll turn out.

I’m not making any sense. I guess I’m panicking a bit.

Look at it a different way: Its been proven that bacteria can flourish in non-oxygenated, sunless environments, both here on Earth and in the Solar System. By extension we can assume this is the case in the wider Universe. Isn’t it odd that none of those bacteria have ever evolved to the point of sentience? Could it be that alien societies see a brief flowering of intellectual and technological brilliance, before the population creates a self destructive meme? Perhaps thousands or millions of societies have existed in the universe before ours, to be snuffed out at the moment of their greatest achievement by the psychic creation of their own downfall. Not Zombies per se, but their own fears manifest, like the creature in ‘Forbidden Planet’. Maybe there is a critical mass of population that causes this?

My own fear is this: What happens as more people get caught up in the unconscious wish for Zombies, say when the ‘World War Z’ film comes out? What if a significant event is going to happen that the authorities can’t control and it gathers momentum in the ways we have all written about on ‘Tales of World War Z’?

Rest assured no matter how many guns you Americans own, or how good at survival you are, or even how ruthless you think you will become. It won’t be how you imagine it. Imagination has its own built-in buffer to protect the fragile mind. No matter how horrible you think it will be, the reality will be far worse.  You will watch those you love die before your very eyes. Then as the full unshielded horror unfolds, you will start to shake as the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder hits, to the point where you can’t function. You can’t survive. Think about the reality of it. Not some sanitised film version, or some heroic nonsense, that finds you battling your way through a thousand dead with a buzzing chainsaw. I want you to consider that this is not a story. This is reality.

Finally, even if you survive the lottery of the Zombie Apocalypse, then the unwritten reality of starvation, disease, cholera, dysentery, infections, and madness will rob you of you health and sanity until we are extinct. It won’t be the heroic or dark entertainment we write about for fun, it will be the end of man written, in the bacteria of decay. There will be no survivors, for that is the very meaning of the word ‘Apocalypse’.

We have one chance.

Delete the meme.

Ryan, I beg you, delete TOWWZ from the server and destroy the links. Jeff, leave Pleasant Hollow lie. Rex, keep the darkness within yourself. David, never speak of Riley and her struggle. Tom, finish with the diary in the basement and burn it forever. Readers, delete all links to this site and any site with Zombies. Burn your books, DVD’s and games. Delete all Wikipedia entries and spread the word. Don’t teach your kids the meaning of the word Zombie. Maybe we can prevent further outbreaks before its too late. We can delete the apocalypse. Share this, digg this, tweet this and spread it on Facebook.

Good God, this gives the next sentence a whole new meaning.

“Lead them to Victory”

God help us all, and good luck.

Pete

(Note from the Editors of TOWWZ: Since receiving this email we have not been able to contact Pete by email, or through social networking sites. If you know his wherabouts, please ask him to get in touch!)

Jim leant against the window; the cool night air leaked around the broken frame and cooled his reddened, drunken face as he sipped at the whiskey trying to garner some resolve.  His eyes refocused on his own reflection, as grey, wan, and lined as the skin of any Zombie. He thought about the last sixteen years running from the knowledge he had lost everything in The Fall, the same as everyone else. He had a memory of that black time, of biting teeth and running in the dark from the moans. Times of black grief and reckless mourning that weren’t to be talked about.

The weight of the experience formed a cross too heavy to bear. Everyone in Greater London yearned to share the stories of that time and gain some solace, yet few could, because the cross was carried by everyone. The memory of the Zombie apocalypse was too dark and personal to be borne by others.  Jim wondered if he was the only one with that recognition. Then, as he poured himself another glass of rough whiskey, he thought about Shayna and the kids, three little gems of life, and although he had a picture on his desk he realised he hadn’t thought about them in a long time. He had hidden from the pain using responsibility. He realised, that after sixteen years of fighting the enemy and building this city, he hadn’t grieved for them. He knew that was probably the longest time for anyone in the city, but it was too late now to grieve, no tears came, and he wasn’t even sure any more of the name of the youngest one.

He tried to gain the will to face his men and tell them it would be OK, that it wouldn’t be like The Fall. He knew this to be a lie. It would be worse than The Fall, and they would all die, no one would escape that hadn’t left the city already.  He knew this because The Minister had phoned him and told him so.

Eight days ago it had started as a curiosity, a lone Zombie shambling slowly down Knightsbridge, wearing a smart suit and carrying a sign, the last protester at an Undead rally. It was picked up on CCTV and tracked by a tired, laconic, operator who reported it to the Gate Patrol. They acknowledged with a casual grunt and watched it move onwards in its own quietly determined way past the husks of cars and overgrown verges piled with detritus. It was an ‘Ancient’ with sunken eyes and wiry limbs.

Eventually one of the guards folded his poker hand, shrugged at his friends around him, took his winnings and climbed the ladder up the wall of broken concrete and cars. As he struggled upwards he passed the hanging drapes that warned those who left that they would receive no more safety once through the steel and aluminium gate.

The wall stretched along Piccadilly in one direction and along Grosvenor Place in the other, encompassing Buckingham Palace and the gardens within the walls of ‘Greater London’. He climbed the forty feet to the top of the gate, constructed at the end of Constitution Hill, sat on the little chair in the rain rusted corrugated structure, took the binoculars from the hook, and looked out towards the lone figure ahead in the cracked and dusty streets. Once he had a bead, he focussed in. It didn’t look too fresh, but strangely the suit did. It shambled past the remains of shopping carts pushed to the side, and over shrubs that grew from the rain filled drains. The sign, clutched in its white knuckles, wobbled about as the grey Zombie lurched inexorably left to right like a metronome. It read;

The End is Nigh.

The guard finished his tea. Rifled in his bags for some bullets, found some and with them a pack of cigarettes. He lit one and carefully loaded the rifle. Looking up, the Zombie was a little closer, so he finished the cigarette and waited. Finally the guard raised the rifle, cocked it, settled it into his shoulder, and shot the Zombie through the head. It flopped dustily to the floor. The guard leant the rifle against the chair, rested his head in his hands and sighed.

An hour later to the second, Control rang through. Two more had been spotted coming down Knightsbridge, both carrying signs. He told the operator in the Department of Control about the sign the first one was carrying, and she asked him to tell her what was on the signs these two were waving.

The end is nigh

The Minister is coming!

Ten hours later, the guard was flanked by snipers, dressed in black fatigues and dark polarised glasses, their protection from the morning glare. They settled on the walls like Gothic crows, kneeling, crouching and lying with eyes pressed up to the sights. The minigun stations were manned, as were the flamethrower apertures at ground level. Behind him troops ran, frantically ferrying ammo from supply vans to the individual guns. He could hear orders being barked, men and women sweating as they threw case after case of ammo into position. An alarm sounded. Everyone fell silent and over public address system, an announcement was made.

“Here they come. Wait until the order to fire.” The tinny, disembodied voice said.

They number of Zombies had doubled every hour until this wave held over a thousand.  The signs they carried repeating the same mantra.

The end is nigh

The Minister is coming!

Prepare yourself

For confession

In one week

He will come

As soon as the mobs of Zombies were in range, and the order was given, the miniguns fired up to speed with a spinning whine. There were four of them around the gate and as one they roared in defiance at the mob. The bullets ripped through the flesh of the Dead, into those behind. Those who were not shot in the head rose to fight again. The guns trained in on them and cut them down with efficiency. A few minutes later, it was over and the guns spun down. The acrid smell of hot metal pierced the senses of the soldiers around. They relaxed, flexed wrists, cricked necks, smoked, and waited

For an hour more ammo was ferried to the gunning posts, and Engineers tended the hot old guns with cooling oils and pastes in readiness for the doubling of the Zombies again. Jim had wondered at that time how many Zombies The Minister controlled, or could control, maybe it was about a thousand, as many as had been sent in the last wave. If that was the case, of course The Minister would be better using subterfuge, so why announce his arrival? Jim realised this was the psychological component. The attack had been broadcast all over the city on the BBC. Everyone knew the Minster was coming, everyone knew that something was about to happen.

After an hour the next wave never came, nor an hour after that, and there was nothing for a few days. Even the reconnaissance missions reported very few or no Zombies around. It was as quiet as ever in the City of the Dead.

Jim remembered sitting in his office three days ago. It was late afternoon and he was reading a very dry report about estimated repair times for the wind farm system when his phone rang.  He flicked the receiver up to his ear and held it there with his chin.

“Bramer.” He said curtly. There was a shuffle and a click on the end of the line. Jim was just about to repeat his name.

“Ahh Jim. I kent I would just leave ya a wee message.”

Jim’s legs went weak. He recognised the voice from the MP3 he had played to Paul Jollie all those months ago. It was flat, hollow, threatening even in the quiet between words.

“Dunnae try talking to me, I’m just a recording…..I just wanted to let you know that its time for you to stop fightin’ and ready yersel. I’ll come and hear yer confession. I want you to kneel afore me and admit your sins. I say this, Jim, because when you see me for the first time, in three days time, i’ll walk straight intae yer city an’ you’ll weep an’ realise that there is nothing you can dae. Nothing you can dae to stop this happening.  Make yer peace with God, Jim, and I’ll gladly welcome you intae my arms. See you soon big man. See you soon”

Jim held the phone long after The Minister rang off.  He felt as vulnerable as the first time he had hidden unarmed from the Dead. The Minister had told him that he wasn’t safe. All the mechanisms and safeguards they had built against the Zombie horde meant nothing when there was a mind behind it.

The call was traced to a payphone on the Isle of Dogs. CCTV found the person who made the call and held the Dictaphone to the receiver. His name was Charlie Willoughby, and he had entered Greater London through the North gate claiming he had come to trade, in his Land Rover, from one of the isolated communities to the north.  He had been admitted after screening, then made the call after travelling right across the six miles of walled city. Charlie was easily picked up, and under robust interrogation had admitted that the Minister had taken a thousand Zombies through his community and taken his family hostage, Charlie begged them not to tell the Minister when he arrived for the sake of his family. They reminded him they were more than likely already dead. According the Charlie the Minister was alive and well and on his way. They locked Charlie up and waited.

Then, on the morning of the seventh day the city of London awoke, turned on their TV’s and saw. Pictures were beamed live from a helicopter as it flew down Knightsbridge and into a sea of the Dead. They stood in a line starting a quarter of a mile from the gate. In between the buildings, they filled the car parks, streets, the shopping precincts, and sports fields, in every open space for mile after mile. The helicopter flew over not an army of the Dead, but a Nation of the Dead. Millions of zombies had appeared over night at the Gates of London and now stood facing the city in silence, evenly spaced and unmoving, muting all sound with their collective mass.  The BBC reporter was trying frantically to describe the vastness of the scene whilst concealing the fear evident in his own voice.

At that moment Jim knew that the Minister was right, there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t evacuate the city, but they would try, and in the end the nation of the Dead would roll over the city like a tsunami. Jim reached for the whiskey bottle. The Dead stood there as the city fell into chaos. The army stood resolute. They had been trained well, but the population fled to the east of Greater London and into any ships, planes and even rafts that would carry them. Now, as Jim watched the last hopefuls file towards Westminster Bridge, a wave of tiredness fell over him. The empty whiskey bottle fell to the floor and spun.  Jim lurched over and kept his balance against the desk. He was more drunk than he realised. He reached over to grab the faded photo of his long dead family and knocked it over. He scrambled to pick it up and looked at the smiling faces within. He had been wrong, there were tears left to grieve.  He flopped into the leather backed chair and stared at the picture cradled in his hands weeping until the alcohol took hold and he passed out.

…..

Little Paul Jollie sat up in bed and screamed.

“Mummy! Mummy!” He started to cry and although he knew he was safe at home he could still feel them all around him.

“Mummy turn the light on. Pleeeaaase” He wailed.

The door flew open  and the light came on, not to show the crowded dining room of his dream, crammed with dead and rotting figures with little Paul cowering in the middle, but to his little bedroom. It was blue and had all his toys and little boxes and all his Bob the Builder posters just as they should be. His Mum ran in and swept him up. He sobbed, terrified into her shoulder.

“Oh my darling what’s wrong?” She soothed as she hugged him close. Between sobs Paul blurted out.

“It was the dream again Mummy. I…I was not walking. I was just standing this time. They were all around me all stinky and ill”

“Oh my baby. My Darling. It was just a bad dream.” She whispered. Paul began to calm down after a time and slowly she lowered him back into bed, with words of love and gentle kisses.

“Mummy.” Said Paul. “Leave the light on.”

“I will babe.” She tucked the duvet round his shoulders. It was cool and welcome.

“Do you want me to stay for a while?” She said.

Paul nodded. So she sat there and gently stroked his head.

Finally as he drifted off into the grey of sleep he could feel the weight of his Mum on the bed. He could hear her gentle breathing, the warm smell of her in her bed clothes, then, just as the grey of sleep drifted over his mind, just for a second, they were all around him again.

There in the grey, the space that existed between sleep and consciousness, surrounded by tiny eyes of darkness, a speck of light hid from the enormous black hole that spun silently before it.

…..

Jim woke with the early summer sun full in his face. It streamed through the window and made his face sweat precious water. He groaned and tried to get up, but his old stiffened neck complained loudly with a crack. He rubbed at the loosened flesh. The war of flesh was coming. The memory shocked Jim awake. He grabbed a half empty glass of water from his desk and drained it. He staggered to the toilet in the other room, drained himself, washed quickly, and just as he straightened his hair while returning to his office there was a knock at the door.

“Come” Shouted Jim.

The door opened and in stepped Miss Mitchell, who was a short woman, in her late forties and fiercely efficient. She has short black hair and a faded but smart twin set.

“Good morning Sir. I have Control on the line. They want to give you a sit rep but couldn’t get hold of you, probably because your phone is off the hook.” She strode over and replaced it, shaking her head slightly. It rang immediately. She picked up the receiver.

“Mr Bramer’s office?…..He’s here…Yes….No, I’ll have him call you in five minutes…….Have the Zombies moved?……In that case, Sir, I will have him call you in five minutes.” She said tersely and plonked the phone down with just enough force to indicate to the caller on the other line they had been hung up on.

Jim sat at his desk, and Miss Mitchell wrinkled her nose at him.

“By the smell of you you’ll need coffee and water. All non-military staff have left the building so there’s no breakfast but I’ll see what I can do about toast. That was General Jones.”

Without saying another word she strode out of the office.  Jim had employed her simply because to her the Zombies were another obstacle to be overcome, like not having milk in your tea. He put his head in his hands and pulled his hair back. He picked up the phone and dialled.

“Control. General Jones speaking.”

“Jonesy. It’s Jim. What’s the situation?” There were too few Generals to not be on first name terms.

“No different. They haven’t moved all night, but while you have been incommunicado we’ve pretty much got everything ready. I have a Division of troops at the gate, minigun and flamer crews ready. Everyone else is lined up on top of the wall or barricaded on the top of buildings along Birdcage Walk, the Mall and Buckingham Gate. We’ve also managed to get twenty choppers on the go, but no armour.” Tanks, like most military tech too big to be carried, hadn’t been used since The Fall.

“Any luck with the TIC Snipers?” The TIC snipers were Jim’s best hope. The Minister was the only one alive amongst the crowd, and with Thermal Imaging Cameras, a sniper would be able to pick out the heat signature and take him out. Needle in a haystack didn’t even begin to describe the task.

“None so far and the BBC helicopter we outfitted hasn’t seen anything either.” Said General Jones.

“Keep looking. Remember the TIC snipers can fire at will, but only at a signature. I don’t want that bastard walking up to the gate only to find they are out of ammo.”

“Righto. There are no reports of Z activity from the other gates too, so we’ve pulled a couple of Divisions over to the West Gate.”

“Good idea. Any luck with the heavy ordnance? “Jim said.

“None. All the tridents were made safe years ago, and we know from The Fall what nukes would do to the Undead, even if we had any.”

“Radioactive Undead? Not Good”

“No. All the bombs, tanks and heavy stuff were dismantled for parts years ago.” Jonesy said.

“Its ironic. There hasn’t been a war between humans for sixteen years. Peace at last eh?”

Jonesy didn’t know what to say to that.

“Also the situation at the Docks is getting worse, we estimate two hundred thousand trying to get out, we can’t contain the situation much longer.” Jonesy continued.

“Where the hell are they gonna go, Jonesy?”

“Everything’s that’s got an engine, wings or sails has already left.”

“Pull your men out. Get them deployed this side of the river. If the people want out the gate then let them go. It’s their choice.”

“You think they’ll think twice and calm down if we play ball?”

“It doesn’t matter either way, if we can’t stop him they might stand a better chance on their own, and all his forces are this side of the river”

“Fair enough, but we’ll get him Jim.”

“I bloody hope so. Call me if there is any change.”

“Will do.”

Jim put the phone down and picked up the remotes. He turned on the CCTV system and logged onto the Control network. Several different sized TV’s fixed to the opposite side of the office flickered into life. He could see what the commanders on the ground could see. The might not have armour but they had information, nothing moved in Greater London without it being picked up. Jim flicked on the BBC as well and watched the footage of the reconnaissance flyover again. He couldn’t comprehend the scale. He had hoped to feel more positive after he woke but in the face of these odds, how could he? The gate might hold until they ran out of ammo. The gauntlet that the Zombies needed to run to get to Westminster and Westminster Bridge might thin them down enough. With a stroke of luck one of the TIC crews might pick up The Minister and they were then into a straight fight, but Jim was a realist more than anything else, and he knew that battles throughout history were won by the army with the most troops. He didn’t expect this to be any different, and as Miss Mitchell arrived with his coffee and toast, he swung into action. He picked up the phone, and made some calls.

…..

Paul knew that part of him was here, in the dorm of the orphanage set up in the compound of Windsor Castle. He couldn’t move but he could feel the warm sheets, he could smell the dirty pillow beneath his head. Part of him was here, in the now, but part of him was in the dream. The same dream he always had. He was walking at night, surrounded by Zombies, through broken streets and overgrown fields, endlessly walking. He had no control over his movements but could see his hands, and they were as dead as those around him. He screamed and sat up in bed. One of the other kids told him to shut the fuck up. Paul was eleven and his Mum was long dead. He laid his head back on the pillow and sobbed quietly until he fell asleep into the grey.

…..

“They’re moving. Yes they’ve started walking towards the gate. I’ve never seen anything like it. God help us. God help us all.” The reporter commentated, but Jim wasn’t listening.

The whole nation of the Dead, moving as one, started to walk towards the gate, their footfalls a low rumble through the concrete and stone of the cities’ foundation. Slowly, inexorably, they came. The images from the BBC helicopter showed them moving like an oily tide through the city, meandering over broken glass and rubble, around toppled streetlights and rotting furniture, the discarded remnants of history.

In the helicopter the camera span round to show a line of twenty helicopters heading out from the city towards the massed crowd.  It was a rag tag collection of machinery, converted civilian and military helicopters, older than the end of The Fall as the parts were easier to find or convert. They stopped over the front line and waited for the order. Cannons exploded simultaneously at the crowd, flicking bodies into the air and splitting the concrete below into a fine dust that rose from the army, mixed with their black blood in an oily mist.

The BBC helicopter lurched sideways and the camera focussed in to see a covered arctic trailer. It was being pulled by a line of Zombies, roped together like slaves moving a sandstone block for their Pharaoh. Suddenly the covered side of the trailer fell away and inside you could see a row of Zombies holding tubes. The cameraman tried to focus in on what they were doing as they raised the green tubes to the sky, it zoomed in frantically to see that all the Zombies in the trailer had stinger missile systems crudely duct taped to their hands, and as Jim realised what was happening, they fired simultaneously. Missiles streaked into the sky trailing ragged fingers of smoke. The helicopters had either had their chaff systems removed for parts, or the pilots were too young to have been trained in this pointless defence against Zombies. In the case of the two remaining military Lynx machines, their old Pilots fired the chaff but in their surprise fired too late and, with a searing light and concussive blast that knocked the crowd below off its feet, it showered the Zombie army with fiery helicopter parts. The humans’ air defence was removed with one stroke, along with the BBC helicopter as the screen in Jims office turned to static for a moment.

The phone rang.

“Jim, its Jonesy. Did you see that?”

“He’s rolled through every military base in the country, picked up equipment and tools. You better expect more surprises.” Jim said, coolly. He realised now they had underestimated the Ministers power and cunning.

“Is there any news from the TIC snipers?”

“No.” Said Jonesy

“Stick to the plan, Jonesy.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The Nation of the Dead approached the gate. Miniguns and rifles exploded at the crowd as they came within range. Thick cordite smoke rose lazily past banners on the gate pronouncing ‘Work Hard: Live Safe’ and into the summer sky as the miniguns and ten thousand rifles picked at the crowd below. Like pushing oil on a table, the fingers of each miniguns probed and prodded the mass only to be replaced by more dead as they surged forward towards the narrow opening.

The gate was sheet aluminium and steel, thick enough to protect against a multitude of banging fists, but not thick enough to protect against the thousand Rocket Propelled Grenades that streaked haphazardly toward the gate, loosely aimed by their Undead troops.

The Minister relied on quantity, not quality of each shot. They slammed into the gate and the surrounding area with such a ripple of explosions that it shook the windows in Jim’s office. He looked towards the gate, past the ramshackle city, and saw the flash of light past Buckingham Palace.  Some of the RPG’s flew ineffectually over the barrier and some hit the crowd of Zombies in front of the shooter, flicking them up like plastic soldiers duct taped to a firecracker, but most hit the gate or surrounding wall.  It shattered like glass sending shrapnel down Constitution Hill, shredding the home made polytunnels that housed some of Greater London’s food source, with a ripping sound.  The blast knocked over home made ploughs and farm equipment like a winter gale.

There was a calm after the explosion at the gate, as blackened shards of metal clanged and clattered to the ground, then the sound of injured troops crying out in pain, victims of the RPG’s or shrapnel blast that followed. This was followed by the sound of tramping feet as the Zombies breached the gate. The CCTV’s in Jim’s office switched to show the gate itself and as the smoke cleared the first line of Zombies shambled casually through the breach. They marched round the ruined Portacabins and markets used to process those coming into the city and provide them with food and water when they got there.

…..

The grey was nothing. Neither warm nor cold, neither dark nor light, it just existed as a distance between two unspecified points. Yet it had character, Paul could see this now. There were areas of grey thicker than others, clouds of etherea that he could use to hide from the black disc that spun in the centre of millions of black eyes. They watched it slowly rotate in rapture, these dead eyes, these soulless wells. All this time Paul hid from the dark. Then he could feel it, the road beneath his feet with the dead walking with him and the buildings that flanked them like broken monoliths. Ahead, he could see a gate explode as a thousand fingers of fire stretched from the dark hole in the grey to envelope it.

Paul juddered awake and could feel the warmth of Sarah against him in the cramped single camp bed and he wanted to stay here with her more than anything. They were young and in lust. He wasn’t dead, and it was just that dream again. He drank in her scent as she snored like a purring kitten. The fear finally left him, but he couldn’t sleep so he thought about passing his basic training in two weeks time and he rested his cheek against her soft warm ribs as they lay together in the darkness.

…..

Inside the gate lay Constitution Hill and the fields of Buckingham Palace gardens. Between that and the gate lay the semi circular ring of five bunkers, each equidistant to the gate. Inside, the guns spat rounds at the aperture where the gate used to be, tearing at the dead and those injured from the blast, without prejudice. The bunkers were constructed from rubble left over from the buildings demolished to make the wall but had never been used, as the wall had never been breached. The mound of corpses grew, unable to pass the weaving aim of the gunners.  Each gun was taken out in turn to cool, and for a while it held back the Zombies until, pushing through from behind, scrambling past their older slower colleagues, the runners came. They shoved their way through from the back like commuters hurrying for a train, each desperate to get to the front line.

These were the freshly dead. To run as fast as they did they must have been turned within the last forty eight hours, before they started to slow and become as unstable as their more ancient brethren. Jim realised that they must have been pillaged from the myriad small communities that had lasted since The Fall, or recently formed strongholds as humanity pushed back. They had been kept alive by The Minister until the day before the Nation of the Dead appeared. They had been turned into his shock troops, undead suicide bombers in The Ministers’ Jihad.

Figures sprinted through the thickening crowd, dodging and weaving towards the bunkers. Jim could see these were the young and fit dead, children and teenagers who had never known the world before The Fall, marched to the point of exhaustion and then turned to be moulded by the will of The Minister.

They closed on the bunkers and Jim could recognise the belt of grenades each wore, swinging wildly as they ran. The miniguns couldn’t track them all with the crowd of normal Zombies moving in behind past the gate. While The gunners concentrated on the runners, a solitary girl reached bunker number four to where the gun couldn’t reach. She ran behind the bunker and detonated. The steel door was blown off its hinges as a second runner, a thin teenage boy dressed in a dark blue shell suit, reached the entrance and disappeared inside. There was a crimson flash from the bunker and the minigun span down as smoke poured from the slotted window. One by one the bunkers fell and the mass of dead climbed over their comrades without a word, expanding out inside the city itself. Small groups closed in on the injured and dying, not to devour them but just to place a single bite so in a few hours they would join The Minister on his crusade.

Jim’s phone rang. It was General Jones.

“Jim. I want you to get out. Get on the last Evac and go. We didn’t last a fraction of the time we expected, shit we expected to run out of ammo first.”

“Don’t talk crap Jonesy. He’s after me, its my face on the posters. I’m ‘Uncle Jim’.” He said, quoting the posters all over the City. “He wants to make an example out of me and to prove no-one is safe”

“That’s why you should go.” Jonesy’s voice was cool and level.

“I’m not going. Full stop. Now give me an update.”

“Update is we’ve got a lot more Z’s left than we wanted, and we’ve lost everyone at the gate and along that section of the wall. At least ten thousand men if you include the support crews behind the gate.”

“Any TIC snipers left?”

“I’ve kept some in the city but most were on the wall.”

“And they saw nothing?”

“No.”

“Bollocks!”  Jim shouted. He banged the table in frustration. They had to find him to end this. They had to find the one lone heat signature.

“Pull back into the city for phase two, let’s hope the gardens thin them down a bit until they get into the streets.”

“Ok, Jim…and good luck.”

“You too, Jonesy.” Jim said replacing the phone gently on the desk.

The Zombies fanned out inside the gate and moved towards the converted gardens. They formed a rough front line before striding towards the Palace. They trampled across fields of corn, potatoes and lettuce, showing no regard for anything that was not human meat. They marched across the poly tunnels of tomatoes and strawberries. Jim watched as all his work was crushed into dirt.

Then there was an explosion as one of the hastily planted landmines exploded, showering dirt and body parts, flicking buckets and pots up into the sky to fall and smash to the ground. The Zombie Nation didn’t need fields or irrigation to survive, all it needed was time and meat. Greater London had the latter, The Minister the former. Further down the line a pipe bomb exploded flicking a Zombie above it into the air where it spun like a ragdoll before falling to the ground. Explosions ripped down the line as they advanced and the frequency increased until it was an immense firecracker celebrating the revolution. Corpses piled deep as the Dead marched on with most of the force still cramming towards the gate from the outside.

Jim and Jonesy had scant few hours from when the dead miraculously appeared to prepare. Every landmine and explosive had been used to make the killing fields the Zombie army now moved straight through. This was the perfect army. No fear, no morale, unswerving loyalty, invulnerable to pain and fatigue. It would not stop until it achieved the dark purpose The Minister set for it. The carefully ploughed fields and well stocked greenhouses were destroyed by both sides in their desperation to win this, the largest land battle the world had ever seen.

Eventually the firecracker died and the army rumbled on past the ruins of Buckingham Palace and the Victoria memorial. It was still covered with notes to the lost, little stories of those trying to find friends and families in the apocalypse. Left for all this time just in case, and now ignored by those who could be the object of the note, as they walked on into the city itself.

…..

For months the grey had been a static place, but now the black hole rotated furiously, casting its gaze left and right as the tiny pairs of black eyes winked out of existence around it, and yet the disappeared ones were just a drop in the ocean for the cloud of Zombie minds was seemingly endless.  The millions of empty vessels stared in rapture at the Undead Godhead.

Beyond, he could see the same familiar scene from all his dreams. He walked left, right, left, right endlessly walking with the thirst and hunger nagging him on, and then in daytime hiding in sewers and houses, in ruined sports halls and crumbling churches from the Helicopters that infrequently flew overhead.

As he lay in the hospital ward, numb from morphine with a memory of pain shooting through his temple and eye, he drifted in and out of the grey. He wondered, for the first time, just why the dream ran contiguously and yet he couldn’t remember a day between waking up and shouting for his mother, and waking up screaming in the orphanage. Yet the dream was changing and, rather than the endless monotony of walking and hiding, now the dream was a dream of carnage and horror as he joined his red armoured cohort and walked with the throng through the gate. He stumbled over corpses and rubble with the smell of death in his nostrils and the ripple of explosives and gunfire ahead in the distance. Then as he walked he realised that the black suited man in the centre of the cohort was a priest or Minister. Yet how he knew this and exactly who The Minister was escaped him.

…..

Jim and the personnel in Control saw it first. Moving through the gate, like Astronauts to the flight, sauntered The Minister surrounded by his personal guard. Six of Jim’s Special Forces troops, symbols of Greater London, England and humanity itself, murdered so their loyalty turned, with their black armour spray painted the colour of blood. It was aimed, like the phone call, at Jim personally, but with a psychological component recognised by anyone who hadn’t already fled the city. He was using the army to clear his route and allow him to walk straight into the heart of Greater London.

Just over half a mile ahead, the forefront of the Zombie Army entered The Mall, Birdcage walk and the treeless St James Park. The wide streets where covered in multi coloured lines of drying washing, and cabling criss crossed the street providing the city’s jury rigged power supplies. Old buses and lorries had been moved and converted into cafes and shops, and on every street corner there were posters and banners reminding you of your responsibility to the collective, and the rewards of safety and growth for you and your family for that work. The banners were red lettering on a black background with a portrait of Jim Bramer himself watching over those under his protection. Prince William was still the titular Heads of State, but Jim was the power in Greater London and everyone knew this city wouldn’t function without Uncle Jim. On every building along the route, on top of the once opulent buildings that lined the route to Westminster lay the bulk of the British Army. They hid between windmills and rain water collectors for the advancing horde.

The front line came within range, and over the comms Jim heard Jonesy give the order to fire. The CCTV operators changed the screens to show the route through to Westminster and Jim watched as the troops opened up on the Zombies below. Jim expected it to be more frantic than it was. The troops were confident that the entrances to their individual buildings had been sealed by steel doors and rubble. They took their time, drew a good bead, and fired when they were confident of a headshot.

From the window of his office Jim could see the rising gun smoke in the distance as the troops engaged the enemy, the rumble of gunfire punctuated by grenades tossed from rooftops into the crowd below, bangs and flashes echoing through the ruined canyons of London. The troops settled into a steady rhythm of fire, reload, shoot. Once again the tide was slowed and once again the humans had underestimated the time and thought Minister had put into the invasion, and the resources he had gathered on his drive through the ruined countryside.

Gun smoke burnt the nostrils of the troops and made vision difficult in the windless summer. On the streets below, Zombies wandered aimlessly up to the barricaded doors of the buildings in which lay the soldiers.  They meandered as close to the building walls as possible to make them difficult to hit by the soldiers above. In turn the soldiers picked numerous easier targets still making their way down the centre of the street. The dust and gun smoke obscured the Zombies close to the walls so they could not be seen to pull the pin on the grenade, or clamp the landmine in each hand, that many of them carried. The troops on the building rooftops could feel their barricades crumble and the slow tramp of feet up the stairs before they engaged the Dead that made their way slowly up to their position. Using time and numbers the first building fell, then the second, then the third. Then as the afternoon wore on and the troops began to run out of ammo the buildings fell more frequently, and still the mass crowded through the gate, with many more awaiting their turn outside in ruined London.

The Undead Army weaved its way through the streets, denser now and filled with the colour and life of the rebuilt city now abandoned for the second time. They made their way circuitously towards Westminster. Jim could smell the gun smoke now and see figures running through the streets as the troops backed from building to building in a running retreat, picking away at the masses as they went.

Jim and everyone in control heard the voice, it was quiet but authoritative, and in the background you could hear the moans of the Dead were very close to his position.

“Control? This is James Rogers. TIC crew seventeen. I have the target but no thermal signature. I repeat I have the target but no signature. Do I take the shot?”

The Minister and his red armoured cohort had entered the city; the start of the Mall was quieter now as the front line moved inexorably on a few hundred yards ahead. James was hidden on the roof of an already overrun building, near the entrance to The Mall, but they hadn’t seen him and he had waited for the opportunity that now presented itself. The CCTV showed the Minister walking down the street looking up at his troops on the rooftops above, but the smoke made an outline of Minister and Jim couldn’t put his finger on it but there was something wrong. Why was there no thermal signature?

Jonesy didn’t hesitate.

“Rogers. Take the shot!” There was a loud crack over the radio and the The Ministers head flicked back, his back arched and he fell to his knees before collapsing flat on his face. The comms went silent, no-one, including Jim, knew what to expect. Nothing changed as the cohort moved on leaving the black suited corpse behind, and then, in the crowd of Zombies behind the personal guard, one pushed through to resume The Ministers position. With a flourish he removed his thick overcoat to reveal the white dog collar and black suit within.

Over the open comms Jim could hear James Rogers fight his last desperate battle as the rooftop Zombies tracked in on his position from the crack of the shot. There was a scream before the operators cut the comms.

“It’s a decoy, any TIC crews remaining keep scanning the crowd for as long as you can. Standing orders remain. Only take the shot if you have a signature,” Jonesy said, dourly. Jim was sure he could hear “Goddamn it!” as he cut the connection.

Jim picked up the phone on his desk, hesitated slightly, and dialled the number.

“Miss Mitchell, could you come in here please?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The door opened and she stepped in.

“Its time for you to go, Miss Mitchell. You and the rest of the troops downstairs.”

“Are you leaving?” She asked, hand on hip.

“No.”

“I took the liberty of asking the men their opinion, and if you are staying so are we.”

Jim was dumbfounded. She walked over to his desk drawer, took a fresh bottle of whisky and two glasses from inside, poured two generous shots, took a glass and sat down on the cracked leather sofa on the other side of the room. She sipped half the glass straight off the bat.

Jim raised the glass at her, without a word, and drained it in one and she raised her glass in response.

It was nearing the endgame now. Jim stood slowly and looked out of the window. In the distance he could see the rooftop troops firing at the mass below. He could hear the distant rumble of continuous gunfire and he could see squads of troops directed by Control retreating from buildings to take up defensive positions closer to the Houses of Parliament. Jim sipped the whiskey and waited. Miss Mitchell watched the CCTV screens as the Zombies continued to pile through the gate in a never ending flow.

“How many do you think there are?” She said finally.

“It doesn’t matter.” Said Jim flatly.

…..

Paul couldn’t sleep. He had spent the day practicing the Z Kata on live targets in the new armour Jim Bramer had provided. The cage had been set up in the courtyard with troops positioned to take the captured Zombies down if Paul let his concentration slip for just a moment. Paul was young and strong, intelligent and quick witted, and had known the Z all his life; he worked hard to perfect his skills.

However, even with the Zombies’ nails and teeth removed the fear of fighting them was still omnipresent. It was their stench and that ungodly moan they made. He lay in bed unable to sleep because of the adrenaline pumping through his system. He thought about the day’s exertions and what he would say when asked about the effectiveness of the armour and the Union Jack sword. Suddenly Paul thought he heard a noise like an explosion and a scream, he stood up quickly, his pumped muscles sore from the lactic acid of the day’s work. He looked out of the window to the courtyard and cage below but saw nothing. Then he had the strangest sensation that he was walking, slowly and steadily, and he could hear the screams again. He lay back down in the bed and confusion clouded his mind. What had he done yesterday? What had he eaten this morning? He couldn’t remember yet he could remember dreams from years gone by. What did it mean? Finally, as tiredness overtook him, he questioned what was the dream was and what was the reality.

…..

Jim watched as the Zombies overran the entrance to the building below, slowly taking the gunners and their crew, falling and being replaced as if nothing had happened. The troops fought well and took many of the Dead with them, but the never ending well of Zombies replaced them immediately. The smell of blood and meat, both fresh and rotten drifted through the ill fitting window into Jim’s office and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. He watched The Ministers’ troops skilfully injure a stricken soldier by holding him down and biting his arm, ripping great ribbons of sinew from the bone. The blood ran in rivulets from the exposed artery. Then they wandered off in search of new prey leaving the man to stumble in shock and horror as the realisation of his fate overwhelmed him. More than one troop immediately raised the gun to his chin and pulled the trigger before the enormity of their fate could be realised.

Jim marvelled at the control The Minister had over his troops. He had expected a force of Zombies, thirty, forty, at the limit a thousand strong. This perfect army under the tacit control of The Minister was unimaginable. Each troop acting as they had since The Fall, yet operating within the boundaries set by The Ministers’. Working as the individual hunger drove them on, yet reined in by the power of the will of The Minister to mobilise the biggest army the world had ever seen.

Now they were in the building, and the roar of gunfire shook the ancient door on its hinges. Shouts and screams echoed through the home of a government overrun a second time. Then as Jim looked lazily through the window, and Miss Mitchell clinked bottle to glass on her mission to numb the forthcoming pain, he saw the battle move away from the window and towards Westminster bridge. Then through the smoke, and surrounded by the crowd he saw the red armour and the black suit. They walked purposefully down St Margerets street, and a rising panic took Jims’ drunken legs as the disconnect between the CCTV cameras and the reality outside his window was removed.

The Minister is coming

The end is nigh.

Jim chided himself and sat down in his chair. He straightened his tie and flatted back his hair. Suddenly he wished he had a gun, but at that moment he didn’t know who he would use it on when The Minister arrived. In the end he was glad he didn’t. He waited.

Then he could hear the shots die down to a sporadic pop and the screams fade to a panic filled gabble. The moans of the Dead rose in response and then there was the singing. It rose in volume pausing only to ask one of the dying troops the location of Jims’ office.

“All things bright and beautiful. All creatures great and small. All things wise and wonderful. The Lord God made them all.” It rang out triumphantly as it approached the door.

Three knocks, widely spaced.

Jim looked at Miss Mitchell.

“Come!” He bellowed with as much gravitas as he could muster, and the alcohol helped. He would stand up to the Minister. If it was a psychological battle The Minister wanted, it was a psychological battle he would get, and Jim would not fold nor confess his sins. At that moment Jim would be everything he guessed The Minister despised in humanity. He would not fold; he would be the very essence of courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Good God, he would be the essence of England itself. Jim reached across his desk to the comms unit, turned down the volume and opened the mic. Everyone based over at the Department of Control, safely tucked away high up on Canary wharf, would hear his last stand. Miss Mitchell shifted nervously in her seat.

The door opened.

In shuffled a number of old Zombies. Their torn and shredded suits and dresses hung from their emaciated frames. Pockmarked and grey-faced they moved silently into position around Jim and Miss Mitchell. Jim had never been so close to a Zombie without running or shooting wildly, but they were here now standing within grasp. They swayed and moaned slightly, and involuntarily, as they waited for their Master. In came the red armoured personal guard. Jim recognised them all, each sent after The Minister, each never to return.  The plastic segmented armour looked scratched and bitten, the suit below ripped and torn with all the military insignia removed, but they still carried their weapons, including the short sword in the scabbard at their back. Looking through the open door, Zombies crowded in the hallway behind. The two nearest Jim leant down towards him and clumsily opened his suit to look inside. Satisfied they opened the drawers in his desk and rifled inside, finding nothing they pulled them out until they fell on the ground. Jim was glad he hadn’t had a gun after all.

“Hur, Hur ,Hur” Chuckled a voice in the corridor. The crowd parted and Jim could see a small figure in a ruined hooded leather cloak enter the room slowly chuckling to itself. Head bowed, it flicked the hood back. Jim was shocked to see a Zombie raise its head. All the reports he had received, and the MP3 where Joe Wyndham had described The Minister, had said he was human. It unclasped the cloak and let it crumple to the floor.

The Minister cut a small thin figure in front of him, tattered black suit and bloodstained dog collar hung limply from his ectomorphic frame. One shoulder was hunched higher than the other through choice or disfigurement.  Jim realised this was why the TIC snipers hadn’t found him, he was already dead. What had been a needle in a haystack search had become an impossibility.

The Minister looked around the room and saw Miss Mitchell. His brow furrowed and he waved his hand gently in her direction. The three Zombies nearest her turned slowly in her direction. She looked up at them and finished her whiskey in a long swig. The Minister let his subjects go and they fell on her with all the fury of their hunger unleashed. She tried to fight them off as they ripped at her clothes and flesh but she wouldn’t scream. One grappled with her arm and gnawed on it like a chicken leg, another peeled at her torso to reveal the red morsels inside, and the third buried his face in her neck until a torrent of blood pooled on the floor around them. They slavered and chewed at her loudly until she stopped twitching and hung limply like a concubine pleasured by her hungry suitors. Jim watched in terror but would not let it show on his face. He was angry now, there was no need for this other than a demonstration of power. More psychological warfare. All the time, The Minister watched Jim’s face, until he had had enough and the murderers stood back up to attention. Blood covered their tattered clothes and dripped lazily from their stained teeth. They were passive again, all trace of their fury gone.

The Minister sat slowly in the chair opposite Jim and his black eyes gazed into his. Jim hesitated and wanted to run, his legs were weak, but he would not let it show.

“Ye looked taller in yer posters, Jim.” The Minister said finally. He spoke in a low cracked voice that still rang with a resonance around the room. Jim ignored the comment.

“So, are you another decoy or the real thing, because I’m done pissing about with this shit” Jim spat. The Minister raised his eyebrows, and smiled a thin, wan smile.

“I walk straight into your city, just tae come and see you and this is the welcome I get. Nae way to treat a man of God, a pilgrim, is it now?” He said cheerily, crossing his hands in his lap.

Jim felt stronger. Dead or not, this was just a man. He paused, knowing the calm would make his enemy speak first.

“Well.” The Minister said. “I’m ready to hear yer confession. Time to make peace Jim.”

“I’ve nothing to confess to you, you murdering scum.” Jim said with just the right amount of control and contempt.

The Minister feigned a hurt expression.

“Murderer? Me?” The Ministers’ Scots brogue rolling the R’s in the word.

“Well. Only the once. I believe you know Paul here.” Jim saw the Zombie Paul Jollie step forward. He had known Paul since he was a lad and now he was just another puppet in The Ministers’ Army. Another victim in a world full of victims.

“It turns out I havnae really got the stomach fer it. Paul and I have a special relationship. He killed me and I killed him. Mutually assured destruction, they used to call it.”

“Shame he didn’t finish the job.”

“Jim. This antagonistic attitude won’t win you a place in heaven, now will it?”

“Then I’ll see you in hell.” The Jim smiled sweetly.

…..

Paul walked into Jim Bramers’ office full of trepidation about his latest mission.

“At ease, Paul” Said Bramer

“Sir.”  Said Paul, relaxing.

Bramer motioned towards a chair.

“Whiskey?”

“No thank you, Sir.” said Paul taking a seat in the red leather high back in front of the old mahogany desk.

“The reason I have called you here is, unfortunately, not a social one” Said Bramer

“It never is, Sir.” Said Paul, smiling

“No… No” chuckled Bramer.

“I want you to listen to this recording and tell me what you think”

Paul looked around, his brow furrowed. He was confused. He had been here before. He remembered this conversation. Jim leant forward to push the button on the Sony Vaio and Paul stretched and grabbed his hand. Jim just looked at him. There were two Jim Bramers. The real one he could see reaching forward with his hand and the ghostly image behind leaning back with a furious look on his face talking silently.

There were others around him too, dark shadows in the grey stood in the room with him, and, on the leather sofa over there, a ruined corpse. Paul could smell the fresh meat and a hunger rose in him. He wanted to grab Jim and consume him. He pushed the impulse away.

This didn’t make sense, why had he come here? What was the mission? How had he got here? The last thing he remembered was being in the hospital in a morphine fugue. What was the reality and what was the dream? Paul didn’t know anymore, but behind this all he could feel the grey envelop him as he shone like a bright star, close, but behind the gaze of the black hole that stared intently at Jim Bramer.

…..

Jim saw something from the corner of his eye as Minister talked. Pauls’ slack expression changed for a moment. It looked confused.

“Well, if I must confess to you, then at least answer me a question.” Jim said. “How did you do it? How did you make your Army appear from nowhere, and how did an army this massive move through the country unseen by the helicopter patrols?”

The Minister laughed his hollow laugh.

“You mean you hadn’t even worked that oot?”

Jim shrugged, and stared into the obsidian black eyes of The Minister, sunk in his graying, ancient face.

“James. James. In the day I hid them. Simple as that. In town halls and cinemas, in sewers and houses, away frae the prying eyes o’ your whirlybirds. That wus the easy part. The hard part was training them to use the missiles tae take them whirlybirds oot. Hae you any idea how long it takes tae train a Zombie to fire a stinger. Bloody months, and it has tae be the right Zombies tae. An if they failed at that, they could use they RPG’s. The real brainwave wus the runners, did yer see that one coming, eh Jim? What yer real question should be was how did I outsmart you and walk straight into yer city and intae yer office to sit here.”

“I already know the answer to that.”

It was The Ministers’ turn to smile.

“Don’t flatter yourself. Your tactics, if you can call them that, were juvenile. Cheap parlour tricks from your marionettes. You won through numbers and nothing else.  Your armies aren’t brave or noble or have any of the qualities that a great army has. You aren’t God or the Messiah, Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan. You are just a freak. In fact you haven’t been granted this ability; it’s just fallen to you through random chance. Maybe there are others in this world with your ability that haven’t realised it yet, or they were killed before they knew they had the gift. No. You were just lucky.” Said Jim, calmly. He paused, but didn’t give The Minister a chance to speak. He could see the doubt in his eyes now and pushed on.

“Each one of my men has given a good account of themselves and fought bravely until the end, each one of them is a hero, and given enough time and resources we would have whittled your army down to nothing, found you and put a bullet through your ugly head. Look at the piles of corpses you left in your wake. My troops must have taken a hundred of yours to every one of my heroes. Every single one of my men would die for his brothers in an instant, and every single one would die for his country to have things back as they were. Your troops aren’t loyal, they aren’t brave or heroic, they don’t recoil at the horror of war as they walk over their fallen comrades, they just are. You think God wants this? You think God wants his flock to die in screaming torment or turn into these monstrosities? No Minister whatever-your-fucking-name-is. God is on our side and one day God will grant one human the chance to put you down once and for all. Then we will rebuild this world without you or your army. Just as God intended.” Jim leant back in his chair and relaxed, smiling and in control of the situation. He had said what he wanted to say, let the bastard take him now.

This was a speech for the personnel in Control, not The Minister.

Anger flashed through Ministers’ face. He tried to reply but fury robbed him of the words.

…..

Thoughts rushed through Pauls’ mind, and try as he might, he couldn’t remember the days between the dreams, yet the dreams ran on, longer than his waking hours. It didn’t make sense. In the dreams he was Dead, in his memories he was alive.

What if.

What if he really was dead, and the dream the reality, and the reality the dream? Why would he think this? Why would his mind think this way?

Then it came to him. His mind had protected itself from the unimaginable horror of this reality the only way it could. Its living soul had retreated into the recesses of this dead brain so it could learn and come to terms with its new reality. He was dead. He had died with a sword in his belly in a kitchen in Edinburgh. Whatever The Minister had within him had mingled with the fake Ministers’ Zombie blood and Paul’s human blood, on the black and white tiled floor. This forced evolution created something new.

With an almost audible lurch, Paul was in the room with the Minister and Jim Bramer as they argued back and forth. The Jim stretching forward to start the MP3 was gone and Paul was there surrounded by the Dead in Jim’s office so many months after he had first received his orders to go to Edinburgh.

In the grey, Paul shone like a thousand stars in the murk, light poured from him like sunshine eating away at the edges of the black hole that raged at Jim Bramer, like bright dawn through skeletal winter trees.

…..

The Minister sat forward in the chair and ranted incoherently at Jim, while Jim sat back and watched impassively. The Minister spat insults and threats at him, promised tortures and pain to him and everyone who lived in the city or had fled in fear. Each sentence was unfinished, each threat worse than the last. Jim had hit all The Ministers buttons and he was giving it to Jim with both barrels. Jim’s failure to react did nothing to pacify him; in fact, it made the dead priest angrier.

Out of his peripheral vision he saw Pauls’ arm move. Instinctively he wanted to look, but knew The Minister would notice. Paul raised his arm slowly towards the Union Jack sword in the scabbard on his back, the look on Pauls’  face was grim and determined, yet filled with emotion. Jim was convinced this wasn’t The Minister in control, but Paul.

…..

Paul reached slowly towards the sword on his back. He couldn’t afford for the Minister to see him. He had one chance to do this and he wouldn’t waste it. In the end it wasn’t Paul’s movement that alerted The Minister but his proximity in the grey. The light was close enough to eat away at the black of the Minister and black hole span round to stare at the tiny star in front of it.

…..

The Minister spun and looked at Paul’s arm halfway to the sword on his back. He reached out and grabbed Pauls’ arm, pulling it down again.

…..

In the grey, the full force of Ministers darkness was brought to bear against the tiny spark of Pauls’ light. For a second it threatened to consume him totally. It overwhelmed Paul and he could feel himself fading against its might.

Paul pushed back, igniting his soul against the blackness. Paul raged in the grey. He would not be consumed.  The hunger and rage of a Zombie starved, combined with the anger and fury of a man who could avenge his own murder, created a firestorm of light that burned at the shadow. The black hole was fixated on Paul yet it seemed to struggle to turn away from him like a man forced to stare too long at the sun.

…..

The Minister held onto Pauls’ arm but couldn’t look him in the face, his head flicked frantically about and a gurgled cry escaped his lips.

Paul had one chance, and the firestorm of emotion filled his every point of being. He lunged forward and tipped The Minister’s chair over, spilling the skinny old man to the ground. Paul tried to scream in rage but air rushed from his dead lungs through his torn throat which hissed and gurgled ineffectually. He leapt over the chair and onto The Ministers’ chest. There was no Zombie or man here now, Paul was a being of pure fury.

The Minister struggled, turning his head furiously away from the light as the grey and reality became one. Paul plunged his fist through the brittle bones into The Ministers chest and grabbed at anything it could find. He ripped a lung from the old Zombies body and held it in his teeth, his other hand around the old mans throat. He bit at the lung like an animal and ripped it away with his hand, shredding it. He discarded it like a rag and ripped at The Ministers’ throat. Skin and sinew came free and he held the bits of flesh in the air like a caveman glorying in the hunt. He plunged his ichor blackened hands into the chest again and ripped out bone and decaying arteries that spat black fluid over the green carpet of the office.

Finally he grabbed the Minister’s flailing head with both hands, and ripped his gargling screaming skull from his body, twisting it, pulling it as the vertebrae snapped and the ligaments tore until it was free in his hands, attached only by a few sinewy cords. He flung the head over against the wall where it lay blinking until its black eyes faded milky white and its jaw hung limply from its pivot.

In the city the Zombies stopped and gazed blankly into the distance. Those humans still fighting hand to hand or firing from rooftops continued the battle, all caught in their own bloodlust.

In the grey, the final vestiges of black dissipated like wisps of smoke and Pauls’ soul shone like the sun in the gloom of a foggy morning. All the tiny twinkling eyes gazed unthinking at the new Godhead that spun slowly before them.

Paul crouched over the headless torso. Jim noticed he was panting with exertion, his Zombie lungs needlessly pumping air into his dead blood. It was a thoroughly human autonomic response.

Paul turned his head slowly to look at Jim, but there was no vestige of humanity there and for a moment Jim thought the creature would turn on him, but it lowered its head to stare at the headless torso below and it stayed crouched over the corpse.

Finally, slowly, its breathing, slowed and gradually it stood, head crouched with clenched fists. Its eyes still focussed on its prey below.  Then it turned its dark head, black fluid dripping from its chin and looked at Jim’s desk.

Jim stared aghast.

The Zombie Paul, its long dank hair hung over its face, raised its hand and stupidly shuffled the papers around until it found what it was looking for. It grasped the pen in its fist like a small child and raised its other hand to hold the paper in place. It raised the pen like a knife and tried to scrawl on the slippery page. The pen ripped the paper, so with its other hand it cast that paper to the floor and tried again. Slowly it drew on the paper and Jim noticed that its tongue was sticking out and Pauls’ face was screwed in concentration, like a small child.

Then it cast the pen to the ground, raised its head and lifted the paper to its chest. Jim stared in amazement as the creature raised its black, obsidian eyes to stare at him smiled a wide, twisted, scarecrow smile. Jim found himself, despite everything, smiling back at the monster before him.

Paul rustled the paper in front of his chest to get Jims attention. Jim stared at the crumpled form that it held to its chest and struggled to make out the words. In the city, and all around Jim’s office, the Zombies stood stock still and smiled a big, twisted scarecrow smile.

Finally Jim realised what the note said.

hElLO Jim

The End

I thought about asking for my CD again, but I know they will just shout at me or each other like before. They have had Radio 4 on since we left this morning with this boring bloke going on and on about “infection rates” and  “demilitarised zones” whatever they are.

I still need a wee as well.

“Mum”

“Yes babe” She says, sounding bored too.

“How long have we been in the car now?” I say.

She looks at the clock.

“Six hours”

“Mum I need to go to the loo.”

“So do I babe. How badly?” She says.

“I’m alright for a bit.”

“Good. We’ll be moving in a while I’m sure and we can stop at the next services”

She said the same thing last time I asked.

“Dad?”

“Yes mate?” says Dad.

“How long until we get to Auntie Cassies?”

I should be on the beach at Auntie Cassies now. Eating an ice cream and scaring Mum with crabs and gippy things found in the rock pools. We had such an ace time we went to Cornwall last year that I was really excited when Mum said yesterday we were going to visit for a while.

“Sat nav still says three hours but it depends on traffic” He says, sounding annoyed.

“Why aren’t we moving?”

“I don’t know mate, must be an accident or roadworks or something. Same as the last time you asked.”

“Sorry.” I say, but don’t mean it.

“Dad can I get out of the car?”

“No son. If a motorbike comes down in between the cars he might hit you.”

“Well can I get out of my seat then and lie along the back, my bums gone to sleep.”

“No.” Says Dad.

“Oh let him stretch out, its not as if we are going anywhere.” Says Mum.

“Fine” says Dad sighing and rubbing his face. He looks tired.

I unbuckle my seat and scramble to the other side kicking newspapers and bags to the floor. I stand up on the seat and look out the back, past all the camping gear and boxes of stuff we brought from the house. What was weird is when we went on holiday before we didn’t take boxes with wedding albums, and the pictures off the wall.

I look out the back and see the lines of cars stretching back up the hill behind us for miles. Some people are sitting on the bonnets of their cars, some of them are standing round in groups talking. Everyone looks bored.

Suddenly there is a massive bang and I turn round to see a mushroom cloud of smoke and fire out of the front window. Its a big explosion like you see on the telly on Yu Gi Oh or Dragonball Z, but its a fair distance away.

“Wow!” I say

“Fucking hell!” Says Dad

“Dad!” I can’t believe he said the F word!

Mum looks at Dad, they both look scared.

“You don’t think they are here do you?” Says Mum.

“Who? Who’s here?”

“Shut up you. No. Its not them, they haven’t reached this far west yet, its just an accident. I’m gonna go and see if anyone needs help.” Says Dad, opening the door.

“Jamie no!”Says Mum grabbing his arm.

“I’m just going to go and have a look. If I see any of them I’ll come back. Besides someone might need First Aid.” Dad pulls his arm away from Mum.

“Jamie you aren’t a bloody paramedic, you’re a First Aider at work.”

Dad steps out of the car.

“Its ok hun, I’ll be back in a minute I promise.” He smiles at her. He closes the door. She gets out of the car and calls him back. I can’t hear what they are saying. Ew they are kissing now, that’s grim. Mum gets back in driving seat and winds the window down. Dad disappears in between the cars jogging towards the cloud of smoke.

“Wheres Dad going?”

“He is going to see if the traffic jam is clearing and we can go to Auntie Cassies. When we get there we’ll have fish and chips for tea. Sound Good?” She smiles but its not a proper smile, its only her mouth that’s smiling and not her eyes.

“Yeah” I say, doing that sort of half smile as well.

I clamber over and get into the seat next to her.

“Mum?”

“mmm?” She says, staring down the road after Dad.

“What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” She says, still staring.

“Well all this? We have been to places before like Legoland on Bank Holiday and we never got stuck like this? And Dad said that journey was the worst he had had for getting stuck in a jam, and what’s a Zombie?”

Mum looks at me with a weird expression on her face. Really serious.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Bobby Driscoll at school said they were going to come and eat our heads and stuff.”

“Well Bobby Driscoll is wrong.” She says, still looking at me. She shuffles round to face me better.

“There is a disease that some people are getting, and it makes them angry and violent. Thing is there are a lot of them getting it and that’s why we are going to Auntie Cassies to be safe. She says they are building a wall where we can hide behind in Cornwall.”

“Oh.” I say, not really getting it.

“How do I know who’s ill? Is it like a cold?”

“No its not like a cold, if they are ill with this they look all grey and erm, they will probably have blood on them. If you see them you have to hide and when they have gone come find Mummy and Daddy. Got it?”

I nod.

Boom! There is another huge explosion, a bit closer this time. I can see flames and smoke. Mum stares out of the window.

“Can you see Dad?” I say.

“No.” She say very quietly. She looks in the rear view mirror.

“Babe, can you scramble in the back and pass me Dad’s binoculars in the Tesco bag?”

I climb to the back and rummage around until I find them and pass them to Mum. As I get into the front of the car Mum opens the door and uses the binoculars to look down the road.

“Can I have a go?” I say.

She doesn’t answer and I can hear glass smashing and tyres screeching. I can hear screams as well. My legs feel a bit funny and my mouth goes dry.

“Mum?” I say, but she doesn’t answer. I look out the window and see a car in the distance go off the motorway and down the ditch at the side, its wheels shoot mud up into the air but its not moving. Mum is still looking through the binoculars, but her hands are shaking.

“Mum?” I say again.

This time she turns and looks at me, her eyes are wide, my legs go really numb, she looks really scared but her face is blank like she’s thinking.

“Mummy?” I say again.

She beckons me over the seats. I scramble over and she picks me up in her arms, the fresh air outside feels nice but I can hear more screams, and glass breaking, and tyres screeching, and I can smell burning. Mum has turned me away from where Dad went and I try to turn round in her arms, but she is holding me facing back up the road. I see her face and she has tears in her eyes. I stop struggling.

“Babe. Remember when you were little and we used to play the ‘Stop’ game, where you had to stay very still when we shouted stop!”

“When we were on busy roads and in car parks?”

“Yes thats right. Good boy. Well I want you to get under the car and play the stop game until I come and get you.”

“But I don’t wanna get under the car, its dirty!”

“Listen. This is very, very important and you mustn’t make a sound for anyone until I come and get you.”

The sounds are getting louder now and I want to twist and see but Mummy’s face is red and she is crying. In her eyes she looks like she loves me when I have been a good boy all day and she tucks me up with a nice story.

“Ok”

“Your Dad and I love you more than anything, you know that don’t you.”

“I love you too Mum.” I throw my arms round her, she smells warm, like bed. My neck feels wet and I realise its her tears. We hug like that for ages. I hear another explosion and it makes me jump its so loud. There is another sound too, like someone moaning.

She lowers me to the floor.

“Now Paul. Get under the car now!”

I scrabble under the car, its still warm from when Dad was running the engine earlier. It smells like the garage. I think about calling out to Mum. I can still see her feet, but I remember the ‘Stop’ game and stay quiet. The screams are louder now and I can hear running and something like a dog growling.

I can see Mum’s  feet walking backwards slowly, and then there are people running past her and the screams are so loud I cover my ears and want to cry and I can hear the growling again. Then I see someone hit Mum and knock her over and she’s lying on the ground and I can see the back of her head and I want to crawl out to her but I remember the ‘Stop’ game, and someone is hurting her and I can see her blood and the man has blood on his face. Oh…my..God ..its a Zombie. The man gets up and carries on running and the screaming won’t stop and all the people running past the cars and I see Dad’s shoes I think and I can’t cover my ears hard enough to stop the screaming and growling but I can’t see any dogs and there is blood spraying on the floor and Mummy is just lying there and I want to go to her but the ‘Stop’ game won’t let me and I feel wet on my legs and I don’t need a wee any more and I lie there for hours and the people keep running and the dogs I can’t see keep growling and the tyres keep screeching  and things keep exploding and then Mummy gets up slowly and something red and covered in blood falls from her as she stands and then she runs away and she’s gone. Mummy’s gone!

Then it starts to go grey.

Paul Jollie sees the images from a lifetime ago fade away, but the feeling of fear stays with him like a child. It’s so real, the letterbox view from under the car, but soon it fades to milky mist like a cloying London fog. He can still feel the fear in his legs, still see his Mum lying on the ground a thousand years ago. Before……

Before something happened.

Before he died.

Now all Paul can see is the fog, so close he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, yet all around he could see myriad specks of black off to a billion miles. Specks in pairs, like soulless eyes all facing in the same direction. Billions of black colons looking past him.

Paul turns slowly to see what the eyes see around him see, and, with the feeling of dread spreading through his dead mind, he sees the monstrous black shape that they stare at. Slowly it rotates like a massive black hole in the grey and he finds himself on the edge of its centrifugal force, both repelled and attracted to its horror and majesty like all the other Dead around him. They are waiting for the black to cast its vastness at them and tell their dead legs how to function.

Paul died in a kitchen in Edinburgh with a sword in his belly and his image reflected in the black eyes of the Minister. Eyes that contained the black hole in front of him, and the boy was how it all started.

“Shit, shit, shit.” He repeated. The Zombies filled the end of the alley. He couldn’t run past them. Arms raised they moved inexorably towards him with hungry lust in their rheumy eyes. Frantically John tried to brace his back against the wall and shimmy up, but the gap was too wide and he fell on his ass. He had no means of escape. He huddled in the corner and the Dead closed the last few inches bending down to grab him and feast on him. He raised his arm up to stop them and noticed that he could see through his hand. His whole body tingled as the moans rose to a crescendo, and as the Dead grasped at him, snapping their teeth and licking their lips, his arm seemed to vanish in front of his eyes.

“What the f” he said

8.96 nanoseconds prior to John saying “What”, Cadish once again surveyed the scene many miles below him. He was perplexed and confused. This was almost the polar opposite to the effect he had expected. The simulations he had run had showed happy meat, and a pleased population with a bright future for the meat creatures. No. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right at all.

3.47 nanoseconds before John said “f” Cadish reviewed the past few hours surveys, collated the anomalies, ran a series of simulations based on current and assumed data forward in time to several thousand years and came to the conclusion that he didn’t have enough data to assume anything. He would have to talk to one of the locals. Get their perspective on the situation.

“uck” Said John as the transfer completed and he found himself crouched in the centre of a silver room. Myriad complex pipework in what looked like stainless steel formed the walls and as he looked closer he saw pipework on pipework like a fractal pattern. What looked like blades or butter knives appeared to be connected to the ends of some of these pipes or rods. The room was roughly square and dimly lit even though he could see no light source. His eyes adjusted to the gloom and he realised he could see his breath. It was freezing cold but as he stood the temperature rose dramatically.

“What. The. Fuck.” John repeated, now completely confused, and feeling slightly sick.

“Apologies meat creature. Interior space has oxygen content but the temperature will take  several divisions of linear time. bits of time. pieces of time. Pieces of Eight? What? …..Seconds to achieve your ambient temperature.” Said a low hollow voice that didn’t seem to come from anywhere.

“What the fuck?” John repeated.

“Are you stuck? Locked? Repeating? Looped?” Said Cadish.

“If so say ‘What the’ if not say ‘fuck’.”

“Eh?” Said John.

The room seemed to vibrate with a low rumble. John immediately thought it sounded like someone saying ‘Hmmm’ as if they were frowning in consternation.

John regained a modicum of composure.

“Where am I?” he asked to the room

“Excellent!” Exclaimed Cadish. “You are not stuck. Looped in linear time! Communication can commence. Let us talk together/communicate in sporadic soundwave amplitudes.”

John just blinked.

“Would you like a seat?” Said Cadish, emulating meat protocols he had observed.

John nodded. Cadish thought this was wonderful. Normally transferred creatures became angry or panicked and had to be returned to their prior location before they hurt themselves. This creature showed a higher function.

John felt the ground underneath him move and he stepped to one side. The pipework and blades below him seethed and writhed around before rising out of the ground searching and feeling their way up to a height of about three feet. There was the sound of a thousand knives being sharpened as the rods flicked about searching for something, as if working out the best position to lay and for several seconds it flapped about ineffectually before finally settling into something that resembled a lopsided chair, or it would do if there wasn’t a nasty looking blade sticking up from the seat.

John didn’t sit.

“Oh sorry” Said Cadish, and the offending blade flipped about as if searching for somewhere to hide, like a mouse caught by surprise in the corner of a shed with no immediate escape. Eventually it forced its way under several other blades laying flat on the seat, and nestled in as if getting comfortable. John sat down gingerly and the chair seemed solid enough.

“Good. Good.” Said Cadish. “I cannot offer you food, energy, fuel, sustenance…”

“Look. Where the hell am 1?” Said John, trying to bring some sanity back to the situation.

“I have created this aperture to maintain your current life state. You are  several divisons of distance above your previous position. Divisions of distance. Millimetres. Yards. Chains. Inches. Kilometres. Miles. Yes Miles. You are several miles above your previous position. Look”

Two large rods folded out of the roof at one end of the room and an inky image coalesced between before forming an unbelievably high definition image of the Earth in 3D. The ruined Earth sparkled below John, it was so realistic, so beautiful and with a sickening sensation John realised he was in space.

“What the. What are you?” exclaimed John.

“I am Cadish” Said Cadish.

“What’s a Cadish? A Computer? A ship? A robot? An Alien?” Said John

“I am Cadish” Said Cadish. “I am not a PC, an ocean going vessel or an alien. Not to me anyway.”

“Well what do you want with me?” he asked.

“Good. Good. Straight to business. No beating about the bush. Excellent.” Said Cadish.

“I need to enquire/ask/determine/assess/simulate/hypothesise/find out and torture several parameters with reference to the situation currently in progress through linear time on the surface of your home planet/home-world.” Said Cadish.

“You want to ask me a question?” Summarised John.

“Yes.” Said Cadish with uncommon brevity.

John shrugged and with no small measure of glee Cadish realised this was the meat gesture for ‘Go ahead’.

The image on the screen morphed into a street view. Zombies were chewing on a fresh kills, savouring the dark meat of the liver of what looked like some poor teenager.

A rod shot up from the floor with a ‘snick’ and stopped in front of the image.

“What are these?” Asked Cadish, tapping the screen with the blade pointer.

“These are Zombies Cadish. The living dead, eating the flesh of the living”Said John, sickened by what he saw.

The physiological response of the meat creature confused Cadish.

“Living Dead is an oxymoron, a conundrum. A paradox. Not…..erm……right.” Said Cadish.

“The dead started rising up last night, they started attacking and eating people. I don’t know why Cadish.” Said John sadly, thinking about the people he had lost in the last few hours.

“Maybe it was a disease, some type of Swine Flu, or maybe the government” he continued.

Cadish saw the same sadness come over John he had observed on his arrival and initial surveys of the planet.

“I do not understand. These Zombies are autonomous, moving, thinking, in the same way as you meat creatures why do you think they attack you meat creatures?”

“I don’t know Cadish. I’m not a scientist. They aren’t the same though are they? They don’t bleed, they don’t think, they just eat human flesh.” Said John

There was a low rumbling ‘Hmmm’ from Cadish.

“You are correct meat creature.” It said after a moments thought.

“John.” Said John.

“What?” Said Cadish

“My name is John. John Kendall.” Said John.

Cadish remained silent.

“JohnKendall. I do not understand death” Said Cadish.

“Nor me.”

“When meat ceases to move/function/talk/speak/complain/analyse/think, what happens?”

John thought for a moment.

“Everything stops Cadish. The heart stops pumping blood, electricity stops going through the brain, the soul leaves the body.”

“The soul? I have not seen this on analytical diagrams of your meat structures? Where is this ‘soul’?” This was totally new information to Cadish and was very exciting.

“If you are religious you believe that the soul departs the body to move to a higher plane or a different dimension.” Said John.

“Oh.” Said Cadish. “Please remain here for 3 divisions of linear…sorry….seconds.”

“Do what now?” Said John as the room dissolved around him. Panic gripped as the cold of space nibbled at him and the air was sucked from his lungs, he could see the Earth hanging like a jewel below him but pain shot through his eyes and he had to close them before they were forced from his body. The pain and cold increased exponentially until he realised he was sat, once again, in the spindly metal chair aboard Cadish. He breathed deeply, recovering his composure before screaming at his captor.

“Cadish! What the hell was that! You left me in space!”

“Yes. Apologies. I needed to check several trillion dimensions and as you can appreciate this can take some divisions of linear time.” Said Cadish.

“Your meat structure ‘souls’ are not referenced in any pan dimensional literature, nor could I detect any evidence of a physicality of ‘souls’ in any dimension other than this one.”

“I don’t think it works like that Cadish.” Said John, still out of breath.

“Why?” Said Cadish petulantly.

John sat and thought for a moment.

“I wish I had the internet here.” John mumbled.

“The internet? What are the internets?”

“Our global information network on Earth”

“Oooh!” Said Cadish who was actually quite  impressed by this.

“Where is it?”Cadish enquired. The scene on the screen still played out but in the background John could see a shop counter, with a PC on it. He stood and walked over to the screen.

“There. See that thing?” he asked as he pointed at the screen. The image tilted jerkily around until the front of the computer could be seen.

“We use those things to type, you know, with our fingers. To give the computer instructions or to access the internet.” Said John pointing at the keyboard. “We see what the results are on the screen” Said John.

“Then its lucky we were at the exactly correct place/location/spot to view this ‘internet’.” Said Cadish calculating the staggering odds of that happening.

“What? No. Any object like that, really anything with a screen that looks like that can access the internet or store information” Said John.

“Really?” Said Cadish.

“Yes. Try to log on to it, if you can find anywhere with electrici……” John stopped as the PC onscreen booted up. The image changed to show the flickering scene of millions of computers booting up simultaneously even though the apocalypse had stopped the supply of electric to all but the most secure bunkers.

“Ah yes. I will retrieve/gather/harvest this information. Harvest complete. What now JohnKendall?” Said Cadish.

“Have you just downloaded the internet?” Asked John, stunned.

“Yes.”

“That was quick.”

“No it wasn’t. Your computers are slower than light.”

John felt like apologising for some reason. He didn’t.

“Look up ‘Religion’.”

“oh” Said Cadish. The room seemed to dim around John and when Cadish spoke again it was in a low tone.

“The Nanodes and I did not calculate this possibility.”

“Wait! Hang on. The what now?” Said John “You mean you know about this?”

The room visibly bristled with alarm, the screen folded up into the roof and a rod and blade hand shot out to grab John’s and shake it vigorously.

“VerynicetomeetyouJohnKendallthishasbeenveryinformativeIwillnowtransferyouback”

Whoa. Whoa. Wait a minute you. What do you mean. ‘The Nanodes’?” exclaimed John.

There was a long pause.

“It appears JohnKendall that I may have a confession/redemption/apology to make.” Said Cadish, contritely. The screen flicked down from the roof and an image appeared of a group of people, dressed in black, mourning at a funeral. The coffin was being lowered into the ground and the people around could be seen to be crying and shaking with grief. The image morphed into a succession of funerals from different parts of the world.

“This was the first image/funeral/burying I really saw on my arrival. It confused me for eight seconds, which is a very long time indeed.” said Cadish. John sat back in the spindly chair.

“Why did it confuse you?” Asked John.

“Everyone was very sad/morose/scared. It made me feel similar.” Cadish’s voice was very quiet now.

“I did not want to study so much sadness. So I calculated several million possibilities and planned a future with limited outcomes. Bar some population errors it appeared to be a good solution. The Nanodes were dispatched to implement the plan/scheme/non linear action.”

John rubbed his forehead and eyes in frustration. He had a headache coming on.

“So what did you do?”

“The idea/thought was to repair all damaged meat structures. So no one would…….die, and those that were dead were repaired.” Said Cadish.

“Well it didn’t work did it?”

“Yes it did.”

“No it didn’t.”

“Yes it did.”

“No it didn’t, they are all still dead. None of their organs work, none of the nerves work.”

“Actually it did but not as it was prior to the event. We decided that it would be inefficient/poor form/just plain wrong to repair them as they were and so the Nanodes replaced all existing autonomic functions, with the exception of the higher brain activities, so as better to assimilate themselves back into a live state, and prevent further cellular decay leading ultimately to a system failure/death.”

“They were going to be immortal?” Said John.

“They were going to be immortal, and so would you when you suffered a terminal system failure/went kaput.” Said Cadish.

“So you were actually trying to stop death?” Said John.

“Yes. I thought this was what the people were like before they died but I don’t believe that to be correct/resolved, hence my communicating with you.”

John thought about this for a moment. Cadish, for some reason, could feel non-linear time wriggling about in the background as the possibility of this revelation revealed itself like a mass of writhing snakes.

“So you thought all the Zombies were like this before they died?”

“Yes. It was the only resolving pattern.”

“So the Nanodes got something wrong then?”

“Not possible. They have 100% success rate at all tasks we agree on.” Said Cadish, a little offended it must be said. He contacted the Nanodes.

“Oh.”

“What?”

“It appears there may have been an iterative error/cock-up/mistake.”

“What!”

“Given that the Zombies state was a second state separate to that of standard meat structures, there may be a reason for it. Initial subjects did not act like meat structures and the Nanodes could not determine the reason for this. They are not as intelligent/pan dimensional/omnipotent…No…too much ego. Not as smart as me and they looked for a precedent to base higher function programming on. Seeing as this was not a normal state for the meat structure to return from system failure/death then they used a guide to understand higher function programming, and not knowing individual psyches/higher functions/personalities/memories they based it on a template.” Explained Cadish.

“what template?” Said John, pensively.

“A DVD copy of George Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’” Said Cadish, the room shuddering with embarrassment.

“Everyone was the same. It made the programming easy and this was what we assumed the people looked like before death, because they still looked like that in their graves. I think the Nanodes may have become confused and thought it was a historical document. This has never happened before.” Said Cadish.

“So you thought everyone would embrace Zombies as old friends and loved ones and that no-one would notice that weren’t actually acting like they used to.” Said John.

“This may have been an error.”

“Yes Cadish. This is an error.” Said John thinking about what this meant. He rubbed his face and forehead. His head ached and was getting worse. Eventually he looked up at the screen and smiled.

“I reckon we can fix it.” he said.

“Hmmm.” vibrated Cadish. “I’m not sure how wise this. I don’t want to interfere/spoil/mess up and make the situation any worse.”

“Can’t you just go back in time and stop yourself doing it?”

“As you yourself said JohnKendall, it doesn’t quite work like that.” Said Cadish.

“Really? Ok. Well we’ll just have to repair what you’ve done the best we can.” Said John.

Relinquishing the endless possibility of Cadish’s considerable power to this meat creature was too delicious a opportunity to ignore. He felt positively giddy at the thought, and he could feel non linear time flapping about like a wet fish with all the uncalculated possibilities that could occur. Cadish tried not to show his excitement.

“Can you get the Nanodes to relinquish control of the bodies, just let them die again?” Asked John.

“Hmmm. I am reluctant to comply. People will not see their loved ones again, and will be sad. I cannot allow that.”

John laughed. Cadish was stunned at this reaction, it was like nothing he had ever seen before, he was quite perplexed as to its meaning.

“Cadish I absolutely guarantee that the people will be happy about it.” Laughed John, smiling for the first time in hours.

Cadish negotiated with the Nanodes, and reluctantly they agreed. On the screen John saw the Zombies drop to the floor, their link severed from their microscopic puppet masters.

The image changed to show a group of survivors who were fighting a running street battle against the Dead. As the pursuing Zombies fell to the floor, the group slowed to a walk, looking dazed and confused. Slowly one edged back to the now dead pursuers and poked it with the end of his machete. It didn’t move. The grouped started jumping around laughing, hugging each other, and crying. They didn’t look sad at all.

“Ooh!” Said Cadish “Well that is good isn’t it!”

John sagged in his seat, relieved the nightmare was over. Cadish flicked through other scenes of celebration occurring all over the globe., but John couldn’t see the celebrations, all he could see was the devastation the last night had caused. This gave him an idea.

“Cadish. Can the Nanodes repair inanimate objects as well as living forms?”

“Oh yes. It is much easier, but the amount of damage done compared to time of my arrival is massive, this may take several linear…sorry…minutes to achieve and may not be one hundred percent accurate, but I can ensure that none of the errors are dangerous. Would that suffice?”

“We’ll try that then.” Said John.

Cadish was stunned, the meat creature, knowing that the solution would not be perfect was willing to complete the task anyway! Oh to have such uncertainty, oh to have a wild stab in the dark without calculating the trillions of possible outcomes! Cadish deliberately ignored both linear time and non-linear time, he didn’t want to know what would happen next. It was so exciting. It negotiated with the Nanodes who complained bitterly at the amount of work involved. He promised them a reward for their hard work and loyalty and they agreed.

John watched the screen intensely as broken glass rose from the floor, millions of pieces coalescing together forming a white hot ball of glass before stretching out to the size of the window it came from, it drifted back into place cooling rapidly as it went. A car rolled onto its wheels before the panels buckled out to their former shape, the wing mirror flew in from the left of the image and re-attached itself and it glided gently into the parking spot from which it came. John and Cadish watched in awe as the scene unfolded, in fact if it wasn’t for the reaction of the people watching the scene it would just look like a film in reverse. After a couple of minute the Nanodes reported in.

“99.14% correct realignment of damage.” Reported Cadish, proudly.

“What about the 0.8 or whatever is left?” asked John

“Of the incorrect realignments the most severe is a tree in idaho which has the DNA of a horse. It will not be a problem….As long as the DNA has no muscle stem cells of course.”

“Right.” Said John trying to imagine the horse-tree running free across the plains of Idaho. He shook his head and got back to business.

“Last thing Cadish. All the dead are going to rot and cause horrific diseases, can you remove all the bodies? Dispose of them?” Asked John.

Cadish didn’t answer but on screen all the Zombies corpses instantly bubbled, grew into a sort of small mossy hill and then disintegrated into the Earth.

“Next?” Asked Cadish.

“Next? Well the last thing I think is to return me home isn’t it?” said John.

“Oh” Said Cadish.

“What?”

“It would be unwise JohnKendall for your species to know my name/nomenclature/power/existence. I’m afraid you cannot go homeworld.” Said Cadish, quite saddened by this turn of events, and the fact that JohnKendall was going to leave this mess a lot less tidily resolved than Cadish would have liked.

“Cadish. Look up ‘Conspiracy Theory’ and ‘alien abduction’” Said John.

“Oh.” Said Cadish “They will think you are insane/nutty/mad-in-da-heid/not well.”

“Yes. That is why I’m not going to tell anyone about this.”

Cadish thought for a while before agreeing. It had considered the possibility of putting John in his sub-space Zoo, but felt this would be a bit unkind given all the help, and fun, he had provided.

“Well JohnKendall it has been an absolute pleasure to meet you.”

The blade and rod hand shot up and shook Johns own hand enthusiastically.

“Er, and you.” Said John, taking care to not cut his fingers on the vicious looking blades and rods that shook his.

“I’m sorry about all that erm, all those erm, well I’m sorry anyway.” Said Cadish, and he meant it, it had been quite the strangest visit he had made to anywhere in a long time.

“Oh that’s… ok.” Said John. Ok? Ok! He had lost his girlfriend and his best mate. God only knew who else and here he was saying it’s ok like Cadish was a seven foot tall body-builder who had spilt his beer in the pub. It didn’t pay to antagonise body-builders and John concluded that Cadish was a lot more powerful than a body-builder in the pub.

John stood there awkwardly for a moment.

“Well then bye.” He said hopefully, he waved his hand feebly to the room.

“Bye JohnKendall.” Said Cadish, and in a moment John was back in the alley, tingling all over. In the distance he could hear singing. He walked from the alleyway without looking back and never spoke of Cadish with anyone, however he often pondered the experience and decided after a few years to join the Clergy.

Cadish hung like a silver star in the heavens for 7.6 nanoseconds. In this time he catalogued the internet watched the whole of Youtube, and everything ever made on television. He read every piece of writing committed to file. He came to the conclusion that he liked Benny Hill, Chess and JRR Tolkien the best but didn’t really like the film ’2001′. Finally he filed all the data away in subspace along with the dimensional search results and the trillions of simulations he had conducted, and decided to leave a marker for any passing traveller who happened upon the human race. For his own amusement he decided to leave it as a meat creature email:

‘Traveller@Earthorbit.sol

Dear Traveller,

If you find this message it means you are in Geosynchronous orbit above a most remarkable planet, who’s populace display the most interesting possibility solutions. I would recommend the inhabitants be viewed for a period of linear time, or to see the planet from first-life to fiery end, I suggest a hat-stand of non-linear time be employed.

However, I most humbly request that you do not interfere or disturb the creatures below as there existence is short, brutal and fragile and any well meaning action can have disastrous consequences as I, Cadish, have learned.

Best Regards,

Cadish.’

He simulated linear time to ensure that all who saw this message obeyed it, and unfortunately, several billion years in the future, Earth would be conquered by a warlike species from the rim of the great event.

To counter this he added ‘…However If you do interfere I will be… displeased.’ to the last line, another scan revealed this would do the trick and ensure that the meat creatures would be left well alone.

Cadish gazed at the planet one last time, thought about what had happened, and vibrated its interior space in a ‘Hmmm’. Then it folded space around it like a child folding a duvet round itself in a  cold bedroom, and was gone.

I crunch across the gun shop roof towards the door, locked and wedged shut with my heavy pack. Sliding it out of the way I listen. Six days of scratching and shuffling becomes seven and I don’t know if I have the will to open the door. Slowly, I turn the key and hear excitement rise from below. Hesitantly, I open the door and the carpet of foetid stinking hands below grasp through the broken stair well to the bottom edge of the door, hunger increasing every day. I close the door quickly, lock it and wedge the pack back against it. One more day trapped in my new home, my new prison.

I don’t want to look over the edge just yet so I retrieve a tin of beef stew. It was all so rushed I packed food for a month before retreating up here but it was all dried meals, and I didn’t have time to lug all the water up here I needed. The relentless morning beats heat against my scalp so I sit half in half out the tent for shade while I finish and rub my finger against the tin insides to get the last gravy. I throw the tin over the edge and stretch, clicking my back in several places. My routine finishes with the wind up radio but each morning I spend progressively less time flicking through the channels as hope fades in the sea of static and low moans around me. I lay back with my head inside and close my eyes. I want to sleep but I’m well rested, at least sleep takes me from this nightmare, even if it is just temporary transport through a moments blessed blankness to another nightmare. Nothing left now but to survey the kingdom.

Under the tarp sunshade I find the rifle, powerful, accurate, silenced, with a high magnification sight. I nestle it into my bruised shoulder and lie under the tarp. Boxes of ammo form one side of my shelter, yet I took this over water? Idiot. I check the gun over ignoring the mag within, I know it’s full, the gun looks ok. I place it reverently on the ground for in it lies the seed of hope, now shrivelled and warped by sheer numbers below.

First of all I slide forward and peek at the street below, just before I look I imagine it clear, with a few cars parked and a man posting letters across the street. The cute girl with the terrier sashays past my window at eight twenty three, just like every morning. After a week my mind still expects this view even with the sounds rising from the street below. Below the Zombies wait, unmoving, passive. Like a snapshot of a normal world they stand resolute. I look round for my favourites, Clown Boy, Skater Chic, Mr Banker, are all there, somewhere in the street. I avoid looking at the horrible ones, Spiderman, the young boy with the flesh flayed off his back, Ironside, the disabled guy still in his wheelchair rolling around in circles with his one good arm and worst of all ‘Mother’. I recognise with my peripheral vision her outline and that marks the spot where I won’t look today. I just hope she doesn’t move and if she does I hope she moves far away, dragging the thing on reins with her, once again I toy with shooting her but it would mean looking at her again and I just can’t face it. From three stories up a quick look would tell you it was a busy morning on a normal city street, but look again and the pools of blood and missing limbs appear as a record of horror and death etched on each face and body. Smashed cars, overturned trucks and the tanker slewed into the wall of the music shop complete the vignette.

I look up and down the straight city street, in the distance the heat makes shimmering heads of the distant crowd, as far as the eye can see in any direction they wander aimlessly or stand staring at a world that no longer exists.

Suddenly I feel a ripple go through the crowd below, flock-like they turn towards something unseen. I can hear the screech of tyres on tarmac. I go to the edge of the roof in the direction the Dead below are looking. Over the engine I can hear whump, whump. The sound of body panels hitting bodies. Looking up the street I see about thirty zombies on the street corner go shambling out of view up the road. More screeching tyres and I run and pick up the sniper rifle and a few mags. I lay them on the low wall in front of me, put on leg on the wall and rest my elbow on it, settling into the sights. More Zombies run down the side street towards the noise just as a large SUV careers, screaming round the corner towards my position. Its battered and several Zombies are hanging from the roof rails and spare tyre. It straightens up to go down my street but the driver over compensates and ends up on the two opposite side wheels. Closer now, he tries to correct again and clips the corner of an upturned truck.

The SUV spins stalling to a stop, flicking bodies off it like a pinball bumper. It’s two hundred feet away, nicely in range. I flick the safety and get ready. There are already hundreds of Zombies closing on the truck and more on their way as the sunroof opens and a head pops out with a pistol in front of it.

A woman in her forties climbs out of the sunroof as frantic hands grab at her. She shoots a few around her, desperately looking for escape. This wakes me from my reverie. I shoot, single shots, each as accurate as the last into the heads of those around her. She spots the dead drop but doesn’t panic or try to see me. Above her she sees the Stop Sign. She tries to lean into the jump but as she swings her leg goes into reach and they grab her. Fft fft fft, I shoot and I continue swapping mags with ruthless efficiency, but as I take them out more climb up frantic with hunger, snapping their teeth. They pull her off the roof and into the writhing mass so I can’t see which ones to shoot next. Then another figure climbs through the sunroof, but too much time has passed and the Dead now stand on each other, desperate for the food, as high as the car. They drag a young man in his twenties out of the car as he screams something unintelligible, he falls to the mass and I stop shooting. Over the frenzy I can hear the cracking of ligaments and the tearing of flesh. I drop the rifle on the roof and sprint to the tent. I fit the earplugs back in and sit in the tent, rocking, I don’t want to look over the edge any more. I don’t want to look over the edge. I don’t want to look. There is no hope. I’m gonna die up here.

Eventually I look.

The car stands there, all around are the lucky red Zombies that had a feast. I guess if there is enough of them you don’t get a chance to become one of them, you just get turned into red stains. Once again I tried to help. Once again it was futile. I cry. Not for them, for me, and after I feel better.

Retrieving the binoculars I decide to check on my silent neighbours’ progress. The mall behind was overrun so there is no need to check it, but ahead the city stretches out in archipelagos, gravel islands lifted to the sky by planning laws become desert islands in the Sea of the Dead.

I calibrate in on the Garage maybe half a mile away. ‘Bill’ and ‘Ben’ the two grease monkeys aren’t doing so well. They are still asleep on the roof (They were in different positions on the roof yesterday weren’t they?). I haven’t seen them eat or drink since this started, and yesterday I caught the tale end of an argument that nearly saw Bill thrown from the roof. I make a mental note of their positions in case they haven’t moved by tomorrow.

The girls at the deli, on the other hand, have started early morning sunbathing and are barbecuing something from the shop below, presumably using the fresh food as the city still has electric for all the use that is on my island. They have a jug of water on the table and an umbrella to keep the heat off. I bet they have Ice as well, I wish I was there.

Fuck. The office must have fallen overnight, I watch in despair as the survivors I hoped to meet if we got out of this mess now roam the roof with their new buddies. The young girl gnaws distractedly on an arm. Looking at the watch I realise it is the arm of ‘Prick boss’, I hope her Undead self enjoyed ripping the arm from him, he was a real asshole. I don’t see anyone else I recognise at the office and mentally cross it off places to look in the future.

I look closer to the Music shop just down the street. ‘Music Shop’ looks different today, he’s searching for something round the roof, not just looking over the edge or sitting on the office chair, like yesterday. The music shop is only two levels so I can see down onto his position. All four sides are tinted glass so I can’t see him when he is inside but he does pop out onto the roof occasionally. I see him peering over at my gun shop. It won’t do him any good if he does get here. Look at the shit I’m in. The artic that slewed into the building sits partway in the bottom floor, and I was surprised he wasn’t overrun, perhaps it sealed the hole it created.

Music shop is gathering something from the roof, looking closer I can see him coiling cabling in his arms. Either electric cables or phone wires I’m not sure, but he is working steadily coiling away. As he works I settle myself under the tarpaulin and watch with the binoculars.

Once he has a long length of cable he goes over to the roof and starts to uncoil it down the side. What is he doing? The cable drops until it reaches the floor. None of the Zombies seem to notice. He does something with his end and starts to pull the cable back up, coiling it as he goes. Then he uncoils it along the length of the roof and disappears back into the shop. For the rest of the day he goes up and down from the roof, measuring lengths of cable or hose and winding smaller lengths together to make something. Then late in the afternoon he stops and surveys the scene. I take stock of him properly through the binoculars. He is balding, grey haired, mid fifties maybe with a bit of a paunch and red skin from working in the sun all day. He has a wry grin on his face. I like him.

I shift my position to get more comfortable and when I look back Music Shop is tying something around his waist. Then he backs towards the edge of the roof and starts to shimmy his way down the wire he spent all morning making. He’s over the tanker wedged into the side of the building dropping slowly hand over hand down the glass sides of the building. What the hell is he doing? He drops onto the tanker roof and the Dead around him go wild, closing in around the tanker frantic for their next meal. Now he works quickly, he opens the small access hatch in the tanker, unties part of the cable he climbed down on feeds it inside and then gingerly closes the lid. On the far side I see a head pop up, followed by an arm that grasps towards Music Shop. I draw my bead and fire, an explosion of black wetness on the glass behind. Then Music Shop turns, squints in my direction and is frantically  waving his arms at me. Is he committing some weird suicide? The Zombies are so densely packed they are clambering over each other and getting a grip on the top of the tanker. I see Music shop grasp his makeshift rope and start to climb, slowly.

Hand over hand he climbs, his age now betraying him. Agonising minutes with each faltering grasp I think he is going to fall. Finally he reaches over the roof and collapses on the gravel. I realise I have spent the whole time holding my breath and curling my toes in support. I relax too. To try and fathom his plan I try to see if there is an ID plate on the tanker. Unfortunately I can’t see it for Zombies. Is he siphoning off fuel for a generator when the electricity dies?

I am disappointed when Music shop slowly rises and disappears inside. I spent the  whole afternoon watching him. The sun slowly sinks. I finish my water.

—–

I’m thirsty. Bill and Ben haven’t moved since yesterday. No sign of the girls at the Deli. No sign of music shop. My shop is still full of them. I toy with the pistol.

—–

I’m thirsty. Bill and Ben are definitely dead, but the girls in the Deli are hanging on, maybe they had sunburn and stayed inside yesterday. I have sunburn even though I’m mainly under the tarp. Weirdly I’m not as depressed as yesterday, maybe these things go in cycles.

I’m drawn to looking at the car from the crash the day before yesterday for some reason, after checking for Mother (she’s moved on I think), I inspect the vehicle.  I’m sure it stalled when it crashed, if it did its still got fuel. I lean right over the edge of the roof to get the angle on the scope and the keys are definitely in it, with an interior light is still on. It still has power. My heart leaps until I see the density of the dead below. Even if I could teleport into the car I wouldn’t get it started before they ripped me out. It may as well be in the South Pacific. My island. My prison.

I sit under the tarp and watch single clouds drift across my vision in the summer sun. I stare at the girls on the deli roof. I throw gravel over the edge. I sit. I try not to think about how thirsty I am. I fail. I toy with the pistol. I stare at the sky.

A crash followed by glass hitting the floor. I can hear shouting. I fumble the gun and sweep with the scope. I miss it at first and have to sweep back. Music shop is stood on the first floor of the shop, shouting obscenities at the Dead below.  Then he backs into the shop and breaks the next window, shouts some more and breaks another window.  The Zombies below are wild with desire, they press up against the bottom storey grasping and tearing at each other to get to the meat. Music shop carries on breaking glass and shouting as he moves out of view around the corner. I can hear the reverberation of him as he repeats his mantra, break glass, shout, break glass, shout all the way around the building. Then silence. Silence?

Then he is on the roof waving a whiteboard at me. He props it up where I can see it and I focus in with the scope. FRIENDLY NEIGHBOURHOOD SNIPER WHATEVER HAPPENS DON’T SHOOT ME!!!!!

What? Why would I shoot Music Shop?

Then he runs to some cabling and plugs something in. There is a massive electrical bass sound and I see movement on the first floor. I realise he has arranged every speaker in the shop to face outside and I can see the speakers react to the power. Then he sits at the keyboard that I didn’t see him bring up from the shop and he starts to play.

Its quiet at first, barely audible above the roar of the dead below, but it carries. It carries so far the Deli girls can hear it and stand up to look, and I see others on buildings further away, others I haven’t seen before, other survivors coming to hear Music shop play. It starts gently as if carried on the wind. Then each note takes it higher, it is the most beautiful piece of classical music I have ever heard, and I don’t recognise it. It rises and I see all the dead turn, like a Cecil B Demille production of Thriller. It rises again and as I see the Zombies moan as one below, I cannot hear them over Music Shops’ perfectly set up sound system and I smile. They move as one towards the music.

Unconsciously I close my eyes and suddenly I’m there on the river bank, with a girl whose name I don’t remember. Laying back on the grass with the ripple of the water washing gentle tones over me, her skin against mine, laughing gently at her jokes and enjoying the freedom that summer brings while Music Shop plays an unseen score over my memory. I feel my shoulders relax at the warmth over the sun on my face and the smell of her lying across me, a perfect moment, a perfect memory long forgotten but brought here to this place of horror by his beauty. I lie back against the wall as the music detoxes my soul, and then? Oh my days, and then he sings! A beautiful baritone lifts above the city streets in Italian, from some unheard opera and once again it caresses me from this place to my perfect riverbank and for brief moments I am there with the smell of wild flowers and still waters, I feel myself sigh unconsciously and dream of her skin, her smell, her eyes and one unappreciated moment in my life consumed with consumerism and lost to vagaries of everyday life. I lie there and let him wash over me, a thin smile on my face as each note lifts the terror away, and for one brief second all is as it once was.

I blink awake and feel the riverbank fade at the noise below me, a crash, I stand and peer over the edge to see the dead streaming from the streets around and from my shop below. The Dead run, shamble and crawl towards his lilting tones, towards the power of his music. They surround his shop banging pitifully against the glass and crushing together, frantic to taste the voice above them. I close my eyes again but the moment is gone and I realise I don’t know what he is doing but by God I have to protect him, just for the glorious possibility that he sings tomorrow.

I grab the mags and line them up on the wall, I grab the empties and frantically load them dropping bullets over the sides of my island as my hands shake. I realise I have tears flowing down my face and quickly wipe them away. I haven’t saved anyone yet from my vantage point but I will save him. Somehow.

The street below is clear as I hear the crash. Thousands of Dead are so crushed up against the shop the sheer weight has shattered the safety glass and they pour in like ants over a dead bird. I glance at my watch to realise he has been playing for over an hour, long enough for each shambling corpse in earshot to add their weight to the number. I want him to stop so they will disperse and leave him be, and I want him to play to free my soul from this place for just one desperate second longer.

The crowd start to thin on that side as they enter the shop and I see a couple tumble stupidly from the smashed windows of the first floor. The rest rise up the sides of the building clambering on top of each other in their desperation.

I ready myself by getting comfortable and breathing slowly and regularly to level the sight. Music Shop faces slightly towards me as he plays and I see his chest rise and fall with each lyric. His fingers play gently across each key as he creates, in this city of destruction, a pure thing, a human thing reminding us that humanity isn’t survival, it’s creation.

Then I see the first head rise from the stairwell onto his roof, snarling and crusted with filth its milky eyes narrow at seeing him and it rises to its feet, mouth contorted in its snarling hunger. I hope my fingers can match the perfection of Music Shops playing.

It does and even from this distance I take the thing through the forehead, its skull shattering like glass and a wild hue of colours decorating the stairwell and Zombies behind. They come thick and fast now having located the source of the sound.

Crack. I shoot. It spins and falls to the ground. Crack. It falls to its knees as others push it over. Crack. Pure luck takes one and ricochets through the eye of another. Over and over I squeeze the trigger, my rhythm matching his, and I hear Music shop play as if he is at a recital. He doesn’t even see them scrambling up the stairs as I take each threat out. The pile of finally dead corpses grow as does the pile of empty magazines at my feet. I will not falter. I will grant him every second before they take him.

“No. No. No.” I whisper to myself as the tide turns. They come up in two or threes now and I have to swing wildly to target as they veer out of the stairwell stumbling towards their goal, their heads bobbing as they slip on the fallen, I find it difficult to to draw a bead and then when the mag runs out I realise they will be on him before I change it. One more I couldn’t save. I watch as they close in on him and for a moment I wish I had one bullet to save him the pain, and I remember the sign. They are barely ten feet away as he finishes. I see him pause and breathe out. Five feet. He picks something up and hold it in both hands, and then he turns and looks at me, smiling and I drop the gun from my eye. I see the distant rooftop and the trail of Zombies cover him, and I want to look away but can’t.

Then I see a flash from the side of the building and for a second the tanker bulges and warps before exploding. The white light make me squint as the shockwave takes a second to reach me. It knock me on my backside and as a wall of noise takes the air from my lungs I see glass, body parts and a guitar fly over my head. The explosion seems to last for ever and as I lie there I see a disembodied hand hit the roof not five feet from me. I wonder just how big an explosion needs to be to throw a hand a good quarter mile to my location.

Now the only sound I can hear is my ears ringing and I scramble up to the edge to see the source. I peek over and see that it wasn’t just gas in that tanker, whatever it was has levelled not only the music shop but also all the surrounding buildings and the buildings next to those, which are in the process of collapsing and finding their new shapes as the smoke rises into a mini mushroom cloud.

“Jesus!” I say to no-one in particular as I survey the scene. Papers and detritus fall languidly to the ground and small fires take root in amongst the red mist, Zombies turned to stains like their victims as the mist obscures the hole where the Music Shop used to be. I realise I never knew his name.

Then I look down. The streets are empty. No living or Dead. All I can see is the car below me and the empty street around me. I look up into the distance left and right along the road and realise they must have heard it and flocked to him, every damn one of them that could hear him. Shit I could do ‘Walking in the Rain’ down there!

My mind reels, still shocked by the blast, and suddenly I’m running. I grab the backpack and fling the door open. For the first time in a week there are no hands below me, only the ruined stairs. I turn and look once again at where the Music Shop was and smile. He knew exactly what he was doing, and not just for me but for all my island neighbours. He gave us hope and opportunity, and as I jump down into my shop I realise, for him, I will not squander either.

The fresh smell of cheap lemon soap fills the room as I towel dry my hair. The first full bath I have had in six months, and the water stone cold by the time I finished scrubbing my fingernails and every other part of my body clean until I could see the pink flesh for the first time in weeks. Metrosexuality seems so pointless now, so vain. I smile at the memory. I turn to drop the towel on the bunk and catch sight of myself in the mirror.

“Jesus!” I say to myself, stunned.

The figure staring at me in the mirror is not the guy I remember. My hair is lighter, changed by the sunlight and stress to a greyer shade. It’s been nine months since I frantically begged my stylist for an appointment to cover up that stray grey hair that made my mortality real. Now my hair hangs damp below shoulder length, longer than I have ever had it, brown with grey streaks running through it like an old hippy.

I realise my face and head are well tanned from spending weeks running in the spring/summer sun from shambling death, encroaching, and imminent cadavers. I have sunglass marks from my trusty Raybans, one of my few original possessions left. Possessions. Stuff. Things. All meaningless now unless you could carry it and it could save your life. Somewhere in the Land of the Dead my flat lies rotting, with my hand built furniture and 50” plasma all waiting for me to return, I picture a Z standing in my flat admiring my small collection of Art, maybe he’s trying on my bespoke Saville Row suit? Just stuff I suppose. Just things.

The crow’s feet I moisturised daily now explode from my eyes like rays of moonlight, contrasted, deep and shadowed.

I look into my own eyes, and my legs weaken and go numb. The doe-eyed financial controller I was doesn’t live in that reflection anymore. There is darkness around them and I’m sure they are a different shape. They have the depth of a Holocaust survivor. I realise with shock, my cheeks are sunken and even after brushing my teeth, flossing and using the mouthwash that they provide in this safe haven, my teeth still look dirty. Packets of sweets and crisps last well, fruit does not. The harsh reality of the apocalypse means I will probably never eat a Curry or Modern British Cuisine again.

The scar is now red from the heat of the bath but its itchy scabs have fallen off to reveal the six inch red welt that runs from above my eye, vertically, to level with the corner of my mouth. On the second night I jumped a fence but dropped too close to it and, what I presume was a loose bit of wire, carved the rune in my face. Covered in blood, I was lucky not to lose an eye. I was even luckier to meet up with a running nurse who crudely stitched the sides together without an anaesthetic in an abandoned people carrier before we were parted on the fifth night. Now its finally clean I can see the nurse did a good job, it’s nearly straight and has healed well. Good God, a scar running right down my face. I trace the line down its full length, feeling every bump and contour. A year ago I would have been phoning the most expensive plastic surgeons I could find, but now I don’t seem to mind any more. Priorities I guess.

The act of shaving was unappreciated in the modern world, my chin feels smooth for the first time in weeks, but makes my facial tan look strange. Like a mountain man returning to society from a winter in the hills. I rub my face enjoying the fresh feeling. It stings and I want some expensive balm to calm the angry heat caused by the old razor.

Looking down I realise I don’t have moobs any more. This makes me smile again. I took care (‘Took care.’ what vanity!) of my appearance, I was never one for the gym and had a belly and moobs that made me look fatter than I probably was. This has changed, now the muscles on my shoulders are tanned and lean, for the first time since I was a kid I can see sinewy muscle beneath. I have been honed by the running, lifting, building and fighting that costs fat and builds muscle. I lift my arm and flex, surprised at the size of the bicep that grows from it and the definition of the pec that lifts the arm. The little kids that found me were skinny wraiths but after so many lifts over cars, railing and obstacles, after so many nights of rocking them to sleep in my lap, my upper torso is defined by toil, and now I know nursery rhymes.

Rubbing down my belly there’s no six pack, and my old self is disappointed at this, but there is no belly. My white stomach is flat, probably from lack of food and the stomach bug that caught me so badly after the first month. This showed me what to eat and what not to eat even if you are starving, and just how vulnerable you are when being chased by the living dead while you have crippling stomach cramps.

On my side, I trace my finger over the fresher gunshot wound, just a nick from someone who finally cracked and shot his fellow survivors before turning on himself. I was the only one to leave that basement alive and some of those I left I had travelled with for weeks. Some of them were closer friends than I had in the five years before. The scar feels bumpy and rough with drying flakes of skin rubbing off. It still stings sometimes but the muscular ache is gone.

It’s probably the first time I have seen my dick in weeks. It doesn’t look any different, just clean and doesn’t stink. It was never much used before and probably won’t get much use now, but after looking after the kids I decide I would like a child of my own. I grew close to them, probably too close, I took risks to rescue them, put myself in danger so that I didn’t leave one behind. Looking back it wasn’t a conscious decision, it was just the right thing to do, but I think the kids knew what I had done and told others their story. Maybe that’s why, for the first time in my life, I get a respectful nod from men here who are older, wiser, harder and stronger than me.

The ‘Plastics’ that my dick thought it wanted are all dead. They couldn’t climb chain link fences with their false nails. Cold rotting hands could grab the hair extensions as easy as pie. Their tottering heels stuck in drain covers, their owners too stupid to leave their precious Jimmy Choos. They tried to save their little toy dogs and died because of it, calling out to their rich fathers to buy their way from death. Their pouting collagen lips ripped of their sneering faces as I watched. The women here are hard, many of them are mothers who have had to decide who lived and who died, this has made them fierce and practical; this has made them demand more from the men, more protection, more ammo, and more food. Strangely this has redressed the balance. Men fight, women protect, as it was in the Stone Age, not saying that the women can’t fight. One petite little girl here, Aileen I think her name is, was seen to rip the head from a Zombie. It went for her girlfriend so she just ripped its fucking head off, sinews and windpipe stretched taught like a drum before the spine released with a ‘pop’. Good girl. Scratch that, we are all becoming hard, what’s left of the human race is changing, and we are warriors now, survivors. Maybe this is what God wanted to show us, what we really were, not the soft corporate metrosexuals and plastics that were obsessed with possessions, reality TV, and vapid fashions, but the survivors we once were. For the first time I realise that it feels right, I’m not only different on the outside, I’m different on the inside.

I look down at my white legs, my calves and thighs are sinew and muscle, vaguely I recall I used to get pains in my knees, I haven’t had those in months, probably from too much time in office chairs. I rub my hands up and down, the resistance of the hairs tugging at the pallid skin and now they just ache from exhaustion. Five days ago when the kids and I ran here, all those miles in the open chased by one, then two, then three, then six, then twenty, then two hundred, then too many to count, the people here behind the gate couldn’t believe what they saw. I was running along holding the twins in my arms with the other kids holding onto my clothes, exhausted and dehydrated but still running.

The twins are three years old, Tommy, my right hand man, five, and Princess Celia, my warrior queen, seven. The Z’s were so close that if we stumbled they would have us, and the people fucking poured out of the gate of this place. They didn’t think about themselves or me just ‘Get the kids inside!’ was all I could hear over the percussive shotgun rounds that split the air around us as the kids clung tighter to me, and as I fell the to the floor the people swarmed around me and lifted me up before sweeping back into the compound closing the gate behind them. The fighting lasted for days apparently, but we won and no one ever questioned the fact that I lead thousands of Zombies here. Not when I had the kids in tow. Three days later I could walk but I ached and when I left the tent that was when the men started to nod to me with respect.

One old guy shook my hand and called me a hero, I was confused and didn’t realise what he meant, Running down the highway with the low moans of the dead like a slow, inexorable tsunami behind us I had resigned myself to dying on the highway with the kids. The car had broken down and there was nowhere to hide. Then, when little Celia walked up to me outside the tent, she smiled at me and I smiled back. Then she looked at the woman whose hand she held and said ‘This is my Mum’. I looked the woman in the eye and she mouthed the words ‘Thank you’. I fell to my knees racked with sobs. These tears weren’t the shocked sobbing that hit me at night when I realised I would never again eat at McDonalds or use a PC, grief at the loss of the things we took for granted, intransigent stuff that mean nothing. Laying in the dirt my soul cried tears at the loss of the world and the randomness of life that allowed this miracle to happen. I had no relatives, no friends except online, and had lost nothing, but to re-unite a girl and her Mum, my fragile mind couldn’t reconcile the odds, it was just impossible to believe that through all this I could help a child find its mother. I thought having nothing had made me immune to the horror around me and standing here now I realise that what I lost was myself, I had become a drifting shell doing nothing but survive and if I’m honest before I met the kids I wasn’t even doing that very well. I mean I’m not stupid or arrogant enough to realise that a lot of my survival was down to luck, Z’s choosing to nom on someone else instead of me.

All of our souls had been cast into the furnace of the apocalypse to be beaten and worked by the each new horror, like beads on a rosary, until the soul either shattered, taking the mind with it, as I had seen so many times, or in my case, to leave the furnace white hot with rage and shock only to be quenched by my tears to form a new thing. A new harder, tempered, soul that stood here naked in front of the mirror.

I realised finally it had taken twenty nine years, a child, and an apocalypse to make me a man.

I started to dress myself in a mix of clean and dirty clothes I had with me. The feeling of elation at my recollections had faded now and I felt slightly numb, but calmer than I had in months, more resolute. Determined.

I pulled up my 501’s I acquired when my designer jeans fell apart in days. I laced up my steel toecap boots and dropped a fresh white T shirt over my head. It occurred to me that maybe I had stumbled over the reason for the popularity of Zombies before the fall. It wasn’t the shooting a Zombie in the face as I assumed, which is a far more gruesome and horrible thing than any of the films ever made out. Perhaps it was the subconscious realisation that living like this freed you from the credit crunch, car payments, mobile phones, social networking and all that crap that means nothing to the instinctual man that evolved in caves and hunted meat. Perhaps it is a secret yearning to return to something simpler where the stress is immediate and decisions have life or death consequences. Where a man has a real role as a warrior, a provider and a protector in a real first person way and not the abstract third person, pay your bills by direct debit and buy your food from a supermarket, kind of way.

As I pulled on the leather jacket I thought about my old life, my old self, and realised that this figure was fading from memory, as were my hang ups. I had convinced myself that Celia’s Mum had asked me to dinner out of gratitude, and the shyness and poor self esteem I tried to cover with my nice possessions and metrosexuality had convinced me not to go. Now I wanted the company of another, just to talk and feel normal for a change and so I resolved to take up her offer, as a friend, and see what happened. She is a beautiful woman under all that muck and not ‘plastic’ in any way. She is a warrior woman like the rest of us. Maybe that was my ‘type’ now.

The bandolier of shotgun shells goes over my shoulder, my Raybans on my face and I pick up the shotgun. I take one final look in the mirror and see an action hero, a Marlborough man, Mad Max. Snake Bliskin. For effect I cock the shotgun with one hand and leave the bathroom. I am a free man, alive in a reality where I could die at any time and should live each day like it’s the last. The epiphany of this makes me smile so hard my scar hurts.

PS: I had dinner with Celia’s mum. She made chicken curry. It was the best I’ve ever tasted.

The Minster: Verse 2

Against the gentle whump, whump, whump, of the helicopter blades, Paul Jollie listened to the last thirty seconds of the mp3 over and over again. He’d put the earpieces of his ipod underneath the bulky headphones to try and drown out the noise of the ancient Huey he was now sat in. He was studying the photographs of the living room of the old croft where the attack had happened. He tried to visualise the knock at the door, the surprise of the occupants, that final desperate struggle and what had happened after the tape stopped, after the bloody violence ended. He had listened to the MP3 over and over again, studying to every nuance of Joe Wyndhams voice as he described the Minister and that final line, the voice of the Minister himself; that drawn out Scottish brogue dripping with menace. No matter how many times he listened, he couldn’t gather any further information from it and yet every time he listened to the recording the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention.

The pilot leaned round from the front and pointed towards his headphones. Paul lifted each side of the helicopter headphones gently and removed the Ipod earpieces. He moved the mic into position.

“What?”

“Twenty minutes until we hit the Edinburgh drop zone, Sir” called the pilot

“Alert me at five minutes to drop”

“Yes Sir” said the pilot.

Paul relaxed and closed his eyes, his privacy invaded by the grating whine of the chopper as it sped over the desolate British countryside, and the cold misty morning looked almost sepia toned as the sun struggled to fight its way through the wet gloom. His mind wandered back to the meeting with the Minister of Special Circumstances, barely eighteen hours before.

Paul was one of the new breed of Special Forces employed by the British Military. He had just turned seven years old when the Fall had happened and in it he had lost his entire family. At nine years old he had fired his first pistol and dropped his first Z. At sixteen he had found himself on the front line at the Battle of Tower Bridge. The army had tried to reclaim North London by using the bridge as a choke point only to find that the mass of Z’s in that half of London was too great for the bridge and they had risen from the Thames, a mass tide of Z’s that flanked their position, rising up through the water to surround them, decimating the ragged British Army in the process. He was one of barely a thousand survivors of that great battle, who had fought a running retreat through the streets. Ten thousand people who had survived for twelve years swapped sides that day, making the retaking of London all that much harder.

His skills at knowing how the Z would behave, when to fight and when to hide had served him well and got him noticed by the newly formed Ministry of Special Circumstances. He joined the unit at eighteen and was trained in the use of weapons, both military and martial. He was taught the newly developed Japanese Z kata, a martial art specifically designed to keep as many of the dead at arms length or further whilst they were systemically and efficiently despatched by the best weaponry British sword smiths had developed. The ‘Union Jack’ was a high quality stainless steel blade with strengthening ribs criss-crossed along it, like the old flag. It was just long enough to sever a head at arms length and sharp enough to chop logs. It looked like an ancient broadsword but was considerably lighter and gunmetal grey in colour.

Paul had helped developed the Special Forces Z proof armour, lightweight black polypropylene recycled from waste plastic: Flexible, strong, yet slippery to hold, with bite proof Kevlar at the neck, knee and elbow joints. It looked like skinny American football gear crossed with a medieval suit of armour but was considerably lighter and easier to manoeuvre in. He had participated in the live testing where it was discovered that the facial recognition skills of the Z’s brain was partially how the fresher Z’s homed in on humans, so now a lightweight Motocross mask was used to hide the soldiers features. Paul had taken to using a stylised white skull painted on the front which confused the Z’s into thinking he may be a Z himself, this hesitation in their actions was all he needed and he was trained to take advantage of it.

He was now used by the Ministry to scout cities, towns, sewers and small isolated communities and to generally clean up where a single man could. Sometimes pre-Fall items were required: Laptops with military or scientific data, culturally significant items from museums or libraries needed to be saved, but most of the time but it was to help the disparate communities of survivors clear a local threat, or protect them whilst their community was expanded. After all it made sense that Special Forces worked alone. It was easier to hide, easier to run and it meant that you were not tied to the bonds of friendship which could make you put yourself in a deadly situation to save a comrade, risking you both in the process. It was you alone against the Z. Pre-Fall there were sixty seven million people living in the UK in a landmass less than half the size of Texas. Fifteen years after the Fall there were less than a million people left and it was estimated almost ten times the population in Z’s. Only Japan still had as many Z’s per live citizen, some of the more densely populated countries had no citizens left at all. Clearance was a morale term, a term to let people know that things were returning to pre-Fall normality. The reality was that this was far from the truth, and operatives like Paul Jollie were merely playing a numbers game, eventually his time would come and when it did he hoped that his kill figure was up in the five figures, it needed to be so that there were still humans left when the last zombie was killed, and not the other way around.

Most UK cities were still ‘out of play’ to use the military term. Only really London due to its cultural and historic significance, and Edinburgh because of the easily defendable castle, had significant populations. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, all these and many, many more were out of bounds to humans and still roamed day and night by their former inhabitants.

Paul had been summoned by the Minister of Special Circumstances and had arrived through the ruined London streets by Rickshaw cabbie. Civilian petrol shortages meant cabbies had cut the rear end off their taxis, and attached bikes to the front, most of them were happier that way as it kept them fit into the bargain and now there was virtually no traffic in the deserted streets, there was nothing to get frustrated at. He had been cleared by the dogs at the entrance to Westminster and entered the Minister of Special Circumstances private office. He stood in front of the desk and, although still wearing civilian gear, saluted stiffly.

Jim Bramer, Minister of Special Circumstances, had been an Operations Manager and engineer in a factory prior to the Fall; this training had given him a unique perspective on rebuilding the capital. He commissioned wind farms and solar panelling to provide some electricity. He had set up apprenticeship training programs for blacksmiths, motor mechanics, builders, pilots, and farmers. Virtually everyone in the London safe zone had two or three different trades and his idea to resurrect the wartime spirit of the British had given hope where previously there had only been despair. Posters, and adverts on the BBC were everywhere urging citizens to recycle, be vigilant, build not destroy, farm not consume, help not hinder. Crime was virtually non-existent.

However, Jim was most proud of his military achievements, the new Special Forces were seen as Knights of the New Monarchy, something for young minds to aspire too, and something to be feared in their black armour reminiscent of the medieval warriors on which Britain had been founded. To the outside the UK looked like a mix between medieval England and George Orwell’s’ 1984, with all the positives of stern governance, a strong King in William and a job for everyone to rebuild the shattered Kingdom. Yes, Jim’s job was much better than being a faceless drone in a factory. He was over sixty now, with short grey hair and a lined face that showed a history of starvation and struggle under its stern features.

“At ease, Paul.” Said Bramer

“Sir.” Said Paul, relaxing.

Bramer motioned towards a chair.

“Whiskey?”

“No thank you, Sir.” said Paul taking a seat in the red leather high back in front of the old mahogany desk.

“The reason I have called you here is, unfortunately, not a social one” Said Bramer

“It never is Sir.” Said Paul, smiling

“No… No.” chuckled Bramer.

“I want you to listen to this recording and tell me what you think”

Bramer clicked play on the battered old Sony Vaio and the office filled with the sound of a recording of a mans voice. Paul listened intensely to the file and both men baulked at the end of the recording.

“But I thought the Minister was just a legend, a fairy tale to scare your kids” said Paul, visibly shaken.

“Apparently not… Paul, we have lost contact with several of the smaller Scottish communities north of Edinburgh and now we have lost contact with Edinburgh itself.”

Paul looked surprised.

“I want you to investigate and report back. This is a 24-hour recon and destroy mission. If you find The Minister your orders are to capture or kill him. If he is resistant to the disease then he can infiltrate communities destroy them and escape with impunity. We cannot allow that to continue.” said Bramer gravely.

“Of course not Sir” Said Paul

“This enemy is human Paul, capable of all the dirty tricks, lies and betrayals specific to humankind. You need to forget everything you know about fighting the Z and recalibrate to fighting someone who is immune to the Z. Someone who has survived the Fall and believes himself to be some sort of Priest doing Gods work. That is all we know but even that is enough to make him a danger to the State. We are rebuilding something wonderful here Paul and I won’t let this son of a bitch ruin it. I want him found and dealt with, nipped in the bud before the populace realise he is more than a legend. Panic, is our biggest enemy in this city Paul, did you know that?” Bramer was red faced now.

“Panic breeds Death, Sir” said Paul, quoting one of Bramers’ favourite propaganda posters.

“Yes, Paul. Exactly”

“One final thing.” continued Bramer “A question, actually”

“Why now? Why has it taken him all this time to start this crusade? Why not in the first few years after the Fall when we were weakest? You need to consider this, Paul, considerate it carefully before you go up against him, not because I don’t think you are capable, but because he is a different enemy to the one you are used to.” Bramer took a sip of whiskey. Paul merely nodded in thought.

“I’m in the process of arranging a chopper to take you north, other than that it’s your mission”

“As always sir” said Paul, darkly.

Bramer slid the thick file across the table to face Paul; on its cover it read:

‘The Minister: Top-level clearance only’.

The helicopter pilot turned and looked at Paul.

“Five minutes, Sir”

Paul retrieved the kit bag from underneath his bench on the Huey and opened it. He grabbed his black armour and pulled it over his head, tightening the clips, and securing it firmly. He grabbed the greaves and pulled them on each leg securing them as he went. He pulled the skull mask, with black tinted goggles over his head and finally secured the black, plastic ribbed, gloves over his hands. The small pack he shouldered had water and food, a couple of flash bangs, ammo, a maglite, some rolling tobacco (his only vice) and his radio. He took out his automatic pistol and tucked it in the back of his armoured suit. He removed the AS50 sniper rifle with telescopic sight, checked and loaded it before holstering it on his back. The P90 sub machine was also loaded and checked before slotting into the thigh holster. Finally, reverently, he removed the Union Jack sword and scabbard and strapped it to his back, crossed against the sniper rifle.

Paul opened the door of the Huey and noise exploded around him, the cold Scots air rushed through the ancient chopper chilling him through his armour. He held onto the rail above and gazed down as the green countryside rushing below him. They passed a small group of Z’s walking north; they looked up acknowledging the passing chopper. They were obviously ‘originals’. Z’s from the Fall, now naked, clothes fallen off after years of wandering and shrivelled, like grey tree bark moistened by the misty dew of the morning. In a way they were easier to deal with as they looked about as far away from human as you could get, and moved more slowly than the freshly turned. The only thing less human were the bloaters, those that had rotted in underwater for a long time and had swelled as the gases in their bodies expanded and the water separated their cell membranes. You could usually smell bloaters a long, long time before you saw them.

They passed several burnt out farmhouses and overgrown car parks littered with rusted cars, whitening skeletons, and dominating weeds. Nature itself was taking over; most roads except for the motorways were impassable due to wreckage and the encroaching hedgerows and flora were slowly breaking up the concrete road surfaces.

Ahead, Paul could see the twin hills of Holyrood Park. It was a perfect drop zone away from the urban area of Edinburgh itself. The Huey dropped between the two hills, the sound of the chopper muffled from the surrounding area by the imposing cliffs on either side. The pilot dropped to about fifty feet scanning for movement below. There was none, and no cover so when Paul indicated he would use the rope to rappel down, the pilot shook his head and dropped the chopper to the ground. Fuel constraints meant the pilot couldn’t afford the fly by of Edinburgh he requested but this didn’t matter.

“See you in 24 hours boss” said the pilot, cheerily.

“You will,” replied Paul.

Paul crouched and trotted away from the Huey as it rose with a rumble into the cold morning sky. The buffeting of the down draft subsided and Paul jogged northwest towards the crest of the hill. He wanted to get a vantage point to view the Edinburgh community from afar. He also knew that even with the secluded drop off point it would attract some unwanted attention. He stopped just shy of the crest maybe thirty feet higher and unslung the AS50. He would give it ten minutes in this safe spot and despatch the few inquisitive Z’s that would inevitably arrive. He rolled a cigarette and smoked it, savouring the flavour of the imported tobacco after the long flight, while scanning the area. Dead quiet, he wryly thought to himself.

Paul crested the hill and shouldered the sniper rifle, looking through the powerful scope. Edinburgh stood like a series of grey monoliths against the skyline. It was still too early in the day for the mist to clear and although he scanned the area of Edinburgh castle rising in the distance he couldn’t pick out any detail. No lights were visible.

He studied his route north towards Dukes Walk and the A1, again nothing except derelict cars and rubble; all colours washed away by time and the grey morning. He looked along Dukes Walk to Holyrood Road. He had memorised the route last night. No movement. By his reckoning he was a click away from the wall that ran along the A7, signifying the east side of the Edinburgh community boundary, with 500m of that across urban ground. Ideally he would need to find a route up to the rooftops, standard procedure for traversing a city due to the Z’s inability to climb. But it didn’t look good, he wasn’t into the city proper and the building density wasn’t great enough to allow rooftop travel. He shouldered the sniper rifle and checked the P90. Quietly he moved back into the valley.

The road had been cleared and broken rusting cars littered the verges, mostly empty, but he saw a people carrier with a family of rotting skeletons inside, including a tiny skeleton in the child seat. The drivers’ door was open but the driver had a large hole though his skull. Paul didn’t want to think about what had happened in that car and moved cautiously onwards. He cut north past a white permanent tent with glass sides, signposted ‘Dynamic Earth’; obviously an eco museum of some type. Didn’t feel too dynamic at the moment, he thought, as he padded silently through the windless grey like a stalking black cat. He passed Holyrood Palace and stopped for a second to look at its striking architecture of sweeping curves and glass frames; windows that were now smashed, rotting barricades that showed the battle that had been fought here to save Scotland’s fledgling democracy. Evidently it had failed.

Given that roof travel was impossible he decided to head north to Canongate and down the wide street to avoid side alleys and points where he could be ambushed from dark corners and Edinburgh myriad closes and alleys. Tall 18th century granite buildings rose on his left, now vine covered, with a small tree was growing out of an upper storey window. Ahead he could see the Barrier that used to be the A7 and across it there was a thirty-foot high wall of rubble with what appeared to be an aluminium gate at the end of Canongate road, with a guard tower either side atop the wall. The row of buildings had been demolished to make the wall which left a no-mans land about 100m wide all the way along the wall, north and south. Paul cut left and crouched behind a car.

Now there were two real dangers.

The first were unseen snipers in the guard tower, bored, stoned, or drunk they were known to take pot shots at any Z’s entering the no man’s land area. This was generally tolerated because after a few months the Z’s would learn not to go into that zone. Unfortunately for the Special Forces, these guards didn’t think that a lone human would stay in that area so they would usually take a pot shot at them too. Paul nearly lost an eye because of this a few years ago.

The second danger was crossing No-mans land itself, normally there would be a lot of Z activity just out of range of weaponry on the towers. Paul knew he was in that area now, but there was nothing, no movement, no moans, nothing. This, in itself, unsettled Paul. In fact he hadn’t seen a single Z on the way in. That was unheard of in a major population centre; where there were humans there were Z’s, simple as that.

Paul took the Maglite out of his pack and flashed it at the guard towers, using the series of signals agreed to show he was military and would be approaching the gate. He waited for a reply, after several minutes he tried again. No response. Maybe that’s why there were no Z’s: There were no humans. But it would still be dangerous to cross to the gate if there was no one there to let him in. It would leave him too exposed. He repacked the Maglite and looked at the wall again. To the right from the gate he saw a route where he could climb up some exposed concrete columns and granite blocks where they were poorly stacked and the steel reinforcement bars stuck out from the wall at a variety of angles. At about ten feet there was a small ledge he could use to stay out of reach if Z’s came. Hopefully, that would attract the attention of anyone inside to open the gate. He shouldered the P90 and got ready to move. Swiftly he left his cover and crossed the open ground towards the wall. Nimbly he scaled the wall up to the ledge and only then turned round. Nothing followed him. He scanned the buildings and dark corners where he came from. No movement, only silence and his own steady breathing.

He listened intently to see if he could hear anything from the guard towers above or the enclave beyond. He considered calling up there, but decided against it, for fear of attracting the wrong kind of attention to his exposed position. He spotted a route to climb up, so he took it and as he scrambled to the top of the wall he was in line with the crudely built guard towers. There was no one in them. He looked down at the rest of Canongate stretching out away from the gate. There were certainly signs of life and below him was a series of ramshackle tents and crude buildings, rusting caravans and MPV’s. Washing lines with drying clothes stretched across the road, as well as jury rigged electrical cables and chained extension leads. The population density was huge in Edinburgh; normally this would bustle with fifty thousand people crammed into a small walled city. There was only silence, complete and enveloping silence, the kind where your own breathing was all-encompassing. He looked at the building on either side of the street, boarded up windows to protect from the cold; some windows were still intact but there were no lights anywhere. He removed the sniper rifle and peered into its scope. He was close enough now to look along the high street, up towards the castle itself. It was like looking at an oil painting; nothing moved in the still air. Brightly coloured banners and tent covers lay static in the morning stillness in a long line right up to the castle, their colours washed out by the dull morning sun. Nothing moved. There was not even the sound of a bird or sight of an insect in the cold damp vista.

Paul shouldered the P90 and moved across to the guard tower ladder. He scrabbled quickly down it and onto street level, gun aimed along eye line constantly as he jogged. Checking corners and side streets as he moved up the middle of the road, he slid along the High Street through the granite canyon of the tall Victorian buildings. Pauls footsteps, light as they were, echoed gently from the old stone walls.

“I love you, I love you” said a cutesy voice echoing in the silent street. Startled, Paul jumped, aiming his gun as he left the ground. As he landed he saw he had kicked a child’s doll. Off key, it repeated its mantra.

“I love you, I love you”

“Jesus Christ” whispered Paul, bringing his boot heel down on the chest of the doll, silencing it forever. Quickly he swept a 360°, checking to see if anything had heard. Again there was nothing. His heart thundered in his chest.

“Jesus” he repeated, relaxing his aim a second. He kicked the doll and it skidded loudly across the road. He pursed his lips and exhaled, breathing heavily, assuming his stance with the stubby gun at his shoulder he moved of again toward Edinburgh Castle. Silence enveloped him once more.

Quickly, and quietly, he moved up Castlehill and through the inner blockade.  It was as if the entire population had vanished. He entered the main castle itself past a building with a faded gift shop sign, his black figure outlined in the glass reflection of the door.  A wide concrete area inside was well tended and neat, no signs of struggle. This was the highest point in the safe zone so he moved up to the north battlement, shouldered the sniper rifle, and looked north across the safe zone to the outer wall beyond. There was no movement; the vista was the same one he had moved through to get to this point, grey buildings, temporary structures, static mist but no life, or death, for that matter. Nothing. Through the gloom, the distant sun struggled to light the city around him, even though it was now mid morning.

Paul leant the rifle against the battlement, removed his mask, and took out his bottle of water, drinking deeply he considered what he had seen so far.

Normally after a Z attack where there were no survivors, the area of the attack would be rife with the dead. They would just mill about aimlessly, it would take days for them to wander and disperse, possibly years before they left the area entirely in search of the living. Here there was nothing. It was if the Hand of God had picked up everyone from Edinburgh and removed them. He considered Jim Bramers’ words once more. How could the Minister do this? Where the Hell was everyone?

He had checked East and North, he decided to roll a cigarette and check South and West. The yard was big that he felt he could see things coming so he relaxed as he strolled across the compound, smoked his cigarette and looked out across the South battlement. The view through the sniper rifle was desolate, no movement within the confines of the distant wall and the grey mist made dark silhouettes of the city beyond.

Finally he checked the West battlement, once again the city was empty, and he felt as if he was trapped in a Polaroid: A static scene where once there was bustling life. As he scanned across the horizon, he stopped. Was that movement in the distance? He tracked the scope slowly back, unsure as to what he had seen, or was it his mind playing tricks on him? He could just about make out a large structure in the distance, he thought about the landmarks he had studied last night in the dossier. That must be Murrayfield Football stadium. It looked the right shape and was in the right direction. He was sure he had seen something move at the base of it. Then he heard it, like a distant buzz. No, more like a background noise. Then it was gone. Paul decided it was the closest thing to a lead he had had all morning so he finished his cigarette, tossed it over the side. Grabbed the P90 and moved off back down Castlehill before doubling back west along Johnston Terrace and towards the west wall that ran along Lothian Road and the stadium beyond.

He made his way through the streets, growing accustomed to the silence, with increasingly more speed and less caution. This wasn’t carelessness but a realisation that the city was really as he saw it, devoid of anything. The west gate moved into view. It was wide open, as far as it could go; this was a cardinal sin in a community of this type. It was clear that whatever had happened had happened around here, yet there were no signs of a fight or struggle, no blood, nothing.

He moved past ruined buildings and overgrown parks at a cautious trot. He paused occasionally, sure that he could hear a distant rumble, perhaps even cheering or singing? He wasn’t certain but he was beginning to realise where all the people were. They must be in the stadium ahead. The A8 curved off to the right and to his left was a field or park between him and the stadium. It meant moving through long grass, an idea that didn’t fill him with joy. Anything could hide there, the perfect place for a starving, broken Z, to ambush him. He considered setting light to the field, but that would alert his position to anything around or in the stadium. He would just have to move carefully and be confident. He moved through the grass keeping a line of trees to his right, just far enough away so he couldn’t be jumped from behind a trunk. As he safely reached a line of trees between him and the stadium he could see across the wide concrete plaza that there were two Z’s stood by the main ticket stall entrance. There was maybe a hundred feet between them of open car park. Clearly now he could hear the faint drone of a man shouting from within the stadium. In the background he was sure he could hear something else, a crowd perhaps?

The two Z’s stood by the entrance shuffled from foot to foot but remained in position. Surely they could hear the human voices in the football ground, why didn’t they move towards the sound? The one on the left was fully clothed, but scruffy. Its pale skin matched the morning grey perfectly, ‘he’ looked like an average Joe: Jeans and trainers, black jacket and blue T-shirt; only a bloody leg gave away his status. The other was a tall girl, she had been turned longer than her companion; her black dress was torn and shredded revealing the shrivelled flesh of her legs and arms. She had suffered a blow to the skull at some point and a patch of hair was missing on the side of her head where there appeared to be a dent. This made her look strange and lopsided.

He had left his mask off since the last cigarette on top of the castle. He now replaced it, his face now a brilliant white skull against the black of his armour. He shouldered the sniper rifle. Removing the attachment from the side he fitted the silencer. He adjusted the scope for the distance involved and got ready. He would need to move in quickly.

He stood and strode purposefully towards the entrance; the two Z’s spotted him and shambled towards him, and as they both turned to face him he dropped to one knee and steadied his aim. The girl opened her mouth as if to moan and call others to them, with a ‘Pfft, Pfft’, they both dropped almost simultaneously, a small neat hole in each temple. Paul rose and strode towards the entrance quickly swapping rifle for P90 as he went, his movements practised and fluid. As he reached the entrance he flattened against the corner and peered inside. Nothing except for the sound of a man’s voice, clearer now, but he still couldn’t make it out. Other noises too; a definite sobbing and behind that a something else, he wasn’t sure. The interior was dim with no lighting but not in darkness due to the various tunnel and openings into the stadium beyond.

He moved in gun at the ready, sweeping corners as he went. If the citizens of Edinburgh were in the main stadium he needed a vantage point to survey the scene, ahead there was a wide set of stairs. At the bottom a cracked and broken sign showed four floors, at the top it said ‘Director Box’.

“Perfect.” whispered Paul to himself.

Covering the way forward with his gun, he rose deftly up the stairs to the second floor. Carefully, he poked his head up so that his eye line was level with the next floor. To the left he saw a long corridor curving round the edge of the stadium, every few metres he could see a tunnel leading though to the main stadium and at the entrance to each tunnel stood two or three Z’s. To the right the tunnel curved more dramatically around the short side of the stadium but again, at each tunnel entrance, more Z’s stood watch. None of them faced him and they all stood motionless looking into the stadium ground itself.

Paul moved silently but swiftly on up to the next level. As he poked his head up again, the scene was repeated, at every entrance the Dead stood, guarding every exit. He listened and realised that the murmur he could hear was a prayer: Thousands of voices speaking in hushed tones.

He moved up quickly to the third floor then finally the top level, unseen as he went. To the right were the wide mahogany double doors of the Directors Box, fortunately with no Z’s near it, however the entrance to the main stadium to the left had three Z’s in position. Again they looked fairly ‘fresh’. Although they stared impassively towards the ground Paul didn’t think he could get into the Directors box without them seeing him open the door to slip through. He needed a distraction. There was nothing around to use, no rubble or detritus, so, whilst ducking out of sight, he slipped the pistol out that was tucked in his belt, quietly removed the magazine, and took out a single bullet,. He replaced the magazine and the pistol as quietly as he could, and then tossed the bullet behind the heads of the three Z’s. It sailed threw the air and hit a plastic bench with a loud crack. The Z’s turned as one towards the noise and as they did so he slipped up to the door, opened it a fraction and slipped through silently.

Inside the opulent room the huge glass window to the stadium was shattered, glass littering the floor, the plush chairs had been knocked over and broken and the drinks cabinet raided. A large cracked and dusty LCD TV hung limply from the wall. Paul could clearly hear the singing now as fifty thousand voices, rang out, and tinged with terror, they sang:

“This is the feast of victory for our God, for the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign”

Paul shouldered the AS50 Sniper rifle and crept, on all fours, across the glass to the edge of the box. There was not enough sunlight to worry about reflections from the rifles telescopic sight. He peered over and was stunned.

Below him, the stadium was rammed with people; all the inhabitants of Edinburgh were crammed onto the pitch, most standing, with looks of abject terror on their faces, men huddled with their wives and children, holding them close. Some injured or dead lay on the ground. The smell of fear and rotting flesh rose like a cloud above them. Some of the citizens were sobbing uncontrollably whilst trying to sing and some appeared to be holding their arms aloft, eyes glazed in rapture staring at the figure that was leading the sermon, as if gazing at the face of God Himself. By the state of the grass they were stood on, now just a muddy stain, they had been here for some time, maybe days, without food or water.

Around the stadium stood a ring of impassive statue-like Z’s, maybe a few thousand of all types. They stared at the crowd, their faces a mix of passive death and abject hunger. They blocked every escape route and stood like grey mannequins, or patient shepherds around their flock. It was clear now. The Minister wasn’t just immune to the Z’s; he could control them and control a lot of them simultaneously. Paul couldn’t even begin to imagine how he did this, but it was clear this was what he was seeing below.

He tracked the guns sight to the end of the stadium to a small stage that appeared to have been there since before the fall. The skinny, black dressed figure, sung out, stamping the rhythm of the tune on the wooden stage. He was dressed as a man of God, his greying dog collar and black waistcoat were frayed and muddy; he raised his arms in exultation as the hymn reached a crescendo. The Minister looked starved and gaunt, grey stubble sprouted from his chin and his thinning grey hair was tinged with yellow stains. Spittle exploded from his mouth and dribbled down his chin as he sang, his eyes the most piercing sight in Edinburgh, burning with insanity as he sang.

“This is the feast of victory for our God. Alleluia. Sing with all the people of God and join in the hymn of all creation”

Paul could see a woman walking up the stairs to the stage, she was young and he could see her singing the hymn, arms raised, with the glazed expression of madness and horror in her eyes. She walked slowly up the stage and towards the Minister who regarded her with a gaze full of compassion. He smiled gently at her and placed his yellowed hand lightly upon her head. In the crowd where she had come from he saw a long haired boy shouting and struggling against the restraint of others who were holding him back. Faintly he could hear him scream and rage for the girl to come back, what appeared to be friends and family held him from running up the stage to try and retrieve her.

“Julie. NO!” The boy yelled over and over but she knelt solemnly in front of the Minister. The old man nodded to one of the Zombies on the stage and it stepped forward towards her as the Minister smiled at her reassuringly. She rose and the Zombie embraced her gently. The boys struggling intensified and for a moment Paul thought he might break free, but then the Zombie bit hard into Julies neck and pulled back pulling flesh and ligaments from her, and as blood flowed onto the stage in rivers she fell to the floor. The Zombie stepped back, yet the Minister sang on, as did the crowd, more shakily with individuals in the crowd falling to their knees and weeping. The boy fell to the floor out of grief and out of sight of Paul, and the macabre scene carried on as before. Paul wondered how many times the scene had been acted out since they had been brought here, and how many times the scene would be acted out again until the only living thing left in the stadium was the Minister himself.

Paul settled against the rifle, and slowed his breathing as he did so. Compensating for the distance the cross hair levelled at The Ministers’ forehead. He paused. Doubt crept into his mind. If he shot now, the Z’s, now free of The Ministers’ control would fall upon the crowd, ripping them to shreds. He would have to think of another strategy.

He heard a crack of broken glass behind him and quickly looked round, above him stood a huge Z, dressed in a stadium security jacket. The sound of the singing had masked the sound of it entering the room and now Paul lay prone beneath it. He swung his legs and caught the back of the zombies’ knee. It fell heavily but recovered quickly and they both rose together. The Z lashed out before Paul could react and knocked the sniper rifle out of his hand; it fell out of the window and clattered to the stands below. Stubby hands clawed at Paul’s armour but could find no purchase on the slippery plastic. Paul hitched his leg under the side of the Z and pushed hard. The Z fell over his leg, and scrabbled for the ledge as it also fell out of the window. He stood there now, his white skull mask contrasted against the darkness of the room around him, he realised that every being in the stadium was staring up at him. The humans had hope on their faces, but he was glad they couldn’t see his own, now devoid of hope as he gazed at The Minister.

The Minister addressed the Z’s now.

“Fall on them my brothers. Turn them all!” He raged.

The noise was deafening as fifty thousand people screamed in terror. Paul watched as the Minister jumped from the small stage and disappeared up the stands and down a tunnel into the rear of the stadium. He didn’t want to watch the rest, but knew he had one chance to end this. He took the P90 in his left hand and unsheathed the sword in his right, it sang as it cleared the scabbard. He would have to fight his way round the stadium and intercept The Minister before he could get away.

He kicked open the door of the Directors Box to see five Z’s moving towards him. They weren’t quite close enough yet for melee. Raising the P90 he shot two through the head, in single shot mode, and kicked a third in the chest as he ran at them, knocking it to the ground. Spinning, he raised the sword and extended his arm and as he completed the circle, two heads crumpled to the floor and the bodies sagged in front of him. He drove the sword vertically down into the eye socket of the remaining stricken Z and it twitched as the nerves were severed.

Running now, he passed one of the entrances to the stadium. He glanced in to see crowded faces of fear being pushed by the throng behind. The people at the front up against the Z were pushing back while the dead were picking victims like cherries from a tree. The Z’s themselves shone wet red, totally covered in blood and dripping with gore, their milky white eyes and flashing, broken teeth, piercing the façade. Paul saw the floor bathed in blood and organs, arms and heads, but passed too quickly to define movement from the scene and yet he already knew that brief vista would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Still running, he followed the curve of the tunnel. Small groups of two or three impeded his progress but the curve was not sharp enough so that they could get the jump on him. He barely paused, but quickly knelt and dropped the two groups with his P90 as they approached and moved on.

He passed another entrance to the stadium and saw a vision of Hell, straight from a Bosch painting. Their were no survivors at this entrance just an abattoir of body parts, blood covering all four walls, and Z’s feasting like starving sharks, as he continued on the sound ripping of muscle and flesh made him briefly want to puke. He pressed on, as the screams and sounds of the butchery echoed around him like knives.

As he reached the next stairwell, he saw Z’s pouring out through the tunnel ahead. Heart pumping he moved down a level and carried on round. He was closer now towards the carnage in the stadium, the roar of screams echoed towards him. If the Minister had stayed near the tunnel entrance then Paul would have to drop down another level and he should see him. He couldn’t afford to lose him now, as Paul would have had enough difficulty against a thousand Z’s, if all the dead in the stadium came after him it would be game over. He had to end this now; it might give the remaining people a chance, however slim.

As he passed another entrance he tried not to glance but couldn’t resist and his vision flicked to the ground beyond. In a flash he saw groups huddled together in raw panic, waiting to be picked off as Z’s ate lustily of their loved ones. The Minister had unleashed his wolves in sheep’s clothing, and they were hungry. Paul ran faster, each entrance he passed shown him a vignette of horror as he glanced down it, each a fresco of gore on his minds eye, each scene indelibly scorched on the paper of his memory like bright sunlight through a lens of terror, blood and screams.

He could see the last stairwell ahead but a group of about ten Z’s were moving toward him. Behind the stairwell he could see even more moving to block his access down the stairs. Paul flicked the gun onto auto as he ran and with one arm, raised the gun to head height. He barely slowed as he fired and swept the gun across the tunnel, the roar of the gun muffled by the sounds in the stadium. He dropped a few, too many to count at this speed, including a couple in the group behind. Z kata kicked in and he simultaneously dropped two with a roundhouse kick and decapitated two others with the sword, one grabbed at him from behind, its teeth gouging lines in his shoulder pad. Paul dropped to one knee, grabbed its ankle and pulled it over backwards. He was just going to finish it and deal with the last ones when he noticed the rear group was nearly at the stairs. No time. Paul sprinted, barging the lead one over who grabbed feebly at him, and jumped down the stairs three at a time as two dived at him and toppled down the stairs.

He reached the bottom and scanned the tunnel ahead, there were no Z’s but he could see a skinny black suited figure ahead at the furthest point you could see before the tunnel curved out of sight, he could hear the zombies descending the stairs behind him, and the sounds of slaughter in the stadium beyond. He stopped, raised his weapon, and burst fired at the figure. He thought he saw a shot connect, a small plume of blood explode from him but the figure darted left into a tunnel away from the centre of the stadium.

Paul raced down the tunnel and skidded, then he bolted left where the Minister had gone. The double doors ahead swung gently and he ran down and pushed through, fully aware of the mass of zombies behind him. Ahead there was another short corridor that lead to another door marked ‘Kitchen – Authorised personnel only’. To his left was a steel hostess trolley full of plates and dishes, after all this time the rotten food was odourless and reduced to black stains against the white crockery. He yanked it over and wedged it against the door handle hoping it would hold, and that there were no other exits for The Minister to escape through.

He moved down the corridor and slowly pushed open the door. Inside was a large industrial kitchen, dusty stainless steel appliances, with pots hanging above and the remains of unwashed plates in the sink. Paul moved in and instantly heard a shuffle to the left, in another doorway stood the skinny black frame of the minister, only it wasn’t. This was a Z in black suit and dog collar; its hair was black but had been crudely spray painted white. Paul paused and realised too late it was a trap; realised too late it was a simple human deception; realised too late that he hadn’t heeded Bramers’ words and the heavy steel frying pan was brought down with a clang on his skull.

He keeled forward spinning round as he fell, his mask slipped from his face and landed on a nearby work surface. In an effort to catch his fall he dropped the P90, which skittered under an oven and the sword clattered to the floor. Paul landed on his back, his vision swam, and he tried to scramble backwards as he faded in and out of blackness. He banged his head on the steel unit behind him, and scrabbled to lean against it. His vision cleared slightly but all he could see were myriad figures in front of him, spinning round and round. In a moment of clarity he realised he was sitting on his pistol, which had come loose, but just as he realised this, one of the figures in front of him bent down and reached what looked like an immense grey finger towards him. As it entered his body he realised it was his own sword, used against him.

Paul screamed and adrenalin surged though his body, he reached under and grabbed the loose pistol he was sitting on, raised it and fired eight shots at the figures in front of him. His training ensured, even in this weakened state, that he always left a bullet for himself. A wave of darkness enveloped him and the pistol clattered to the floor as he lost consciousness.

He awoke unsure of what had happened, the sword sticking out of his gut reminded him, and he guessed by the flow of blood, and the pool around him, that he hadn’t been out for long.

“You’re nae deid then son” rattled the prone figure in front of him.

Paul looked up; sat against the stainless steel unit opposite him was The Minister. Four bullet holes punctured his muddy black coat, and blood was running out of the wounds and pooling on the floor around him. Near the door he could see the fake minister lying dead on the ground, a gaping exit wound in the back of his head, the blood coated the pattern of the floor. Paul tried to move but he was weak, the wound in his belly stung as he shifted. He realised that the trap he had fallen for had been set by The Minister in such a way that the Z’s had lead him down the stairs to this place, hell; he may have even known Paul was there when he dropped the first two Z’s at the entrance.

“No I thought I would lie here and wait for the ambulance,” said Paul, with a thin smile.

The Minister broke into a chuckle, which turned into a hacking cough; a small trickle of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth.

“The ambulance, heh, Very good soldier boy. Very good” said The Minister finally.

“Well at least we’ll nae die alone eh?”

Paul looked down at the sword again and considered removing it, but he didn’t have the strength. He realised he could still hear screaming in the background, but it seemed to be less frequent, more sporadic.

“Whats yer name son” said the old man.

“Paul” Said Paul. “What’s yours?”

“Ted…Edward. They call me Ted” Said the Minister, raising a hand feebly.

“Nice to meet you Ted.” nodded Paul.

They studied each other for a moment. Then the Minister spoke.

“Its nice tae have someone to speak to. My flock here, are obedient, but are not known for their conversational abilities. Ken whit I mean?”

Paul smiled.

“So how do you control them then?” Enquired Paul. They were dying. No point in beating around the bush he thought.

“Ahh well, that’s a tale…” Said the Minister

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Paul, blackly.

The Minister shrugged.

“The fall happened frae me the same as everyone else I s’pose. I had a nice wee Parish, some good folk, in a nice wee town. Then the plague came and we barricaded oorselves away frae everyone. Same as most people. But we didnae hae the luck o’ some others I’ve met. We were isolated and far from a city. It made food hard tae come by and we didnae hae a Doctor. Each year more people died of disease and starvation, the bairns were born deid, or their mothers died. The fathers did theyselves in. I prayed but it was a Godless place; people stopped worshipping and I stopped praying. Winters took the weak ones, and the Zombies took the strong.”

The Minister paused and looked down at his wounds.

“So the last of us got on a bus and headed south. First place we came to we found one o’ they big outta town supermarkets and just drove the bus straight in. We piled oot and ravaged the place frae anything we could eat, gorging ourselves like heathens, on beans tinned salmon, that sorta thing, but we were stupid, and all the old staff were in the back. They poured out and ripped us apart. I just curled up and waited frae the bites. Ye ken?”

Paul nodded.

“I waited and waited until the silence returned and everyone was deid. But I didnae feel nae bites. I just lay there with my eyes closed, thanking my lucky stars at least I would die with a fully belly. Hunger’s funny like that. I dunnae think I even prayed. Then, after a long while I opened ma eyes and guess what?”

“What.” Paul said, impassively.

“They were all stood roond me, just staring. I closed ma eyes again and I’m nae ashamed tae say I wept son, wept like a bairn. Now again I opened ma eyes and they were still stood there, just peering at me with them soulless eyes.” He paused as if deep in thought.

“Eventually I just got up the courage tae run, and run I did son, run I did. Everywhere I went they just followed me until I couldnae run no more and I just walked, I’d become like them Paul, all deid inside, just wandering through the countryside wi my wee troupe o’ disciples. That’s when I had an epiphany son. You ken whit an epiphany is Paul?”

“Like a revelation.” said Paul

“A revelation, exactly!” exclaimed the Minister “In fact I had two. The first was to realise that all the close scrapes I’d had wi’ zombies across the years weren’t scrapes at all. Every time I thought they had gone frae me they had really gone frae someone else. I always thought it was luck, or the provenance o’ The Lord, but it wasnae, they weren’t interested in me. The second revelation was that every time I moved, every time I took a step, they moved at exactly the same moment I did.”

Paul looked confused.

“They were reading my mind Paul. They were doin whit subconsciously I wanted them tae dae. It was like they couldnae dae enough tae please me. Well, I’m no ashamed tae say son; I went a wee bit mad after that. I got them daeing things I shouldnae, things tae each other, things tae me.”

The Minister visibly shuddered.

“Anyway, as I wlked the land I pondered the reason for this frae a long time, and I decided that this apocalypse, these creatures weren’t man made at all. It was the Rapture, Paul. The End of Days and I had been chosen as Gods servant to stop the suffering o’ mankind and lead them oot o’ purgatory an intae the Kingdom o’ Heaven. Praise the Lord! I was tae use this power to lead the creatures to cleanse the Earth ready for the coming of the saviour!” exclaimed the Minister.

“You could have used the power to draw the Z’s out so we could kill them, Ted. You would have been a hero” interjected Paul, into the Ministers increasingly fervent rant.

The Minister stared at him and blinked. He smiled.

“You know, that never even occurred to me. You’re a clever lad Paul, but no. It wouldnae hae been right, it wasnae whit God wanted.” The Minister broke into a hacking cough, blood flowed freely from his mouth and he carried on coughing for several minutes, spraying blood over the kitchen floor. In the meantime Paul was feeling weak and fuzzy round the edges. The pool of blood was larger, mingling with that of the Minister, all around him now. His legs tingled even though felt less pain, and the background roar in the stadium seemed to have stopped.

The Minister recovered a little and spoke once again.

“So I took my little troupe and roamed the countryside, converting righteous souls where I could until I came here. But Paul, I want you tae know this. I didnae want to take them by force, I wanted them tae believe. That’s why I brought them here, so I could tell them. So I could convince them. So they could feel the power of the Lord and believe. Do you see? Do you understand?” The Minister asked, almost meekly.

“You’re insane, that all I see, mate.” said Paul defiantly.

“And you’re a prick” said The Minister, smiling. Paul smiled then, two dying men having a gallows joke.

“Anyway.” said The Minister “Do you think we’ll survive? As a species I mean. I havnae heard the news recently so I dunnae ken.”

“The Americans are doing well I hear, pretty much cleared the whole country was the last I read.” said Paul.

“Really?” The Minister sounded surprised. “I always thought it was a Godless place, I always thought they would be first tae go…..Ah well. I’m tired now Paul. I’m gonna hae mysel a wee sleep.”

They sat in silence for a while until The Ministers head sagged down onto his chest. Paul noticed the blood was slowing from his wounds. The Minister was dying. Paul himself felt exhausted, there was no pain, and he just felt dog-tired. He looked across at the grey haired old man and saw his chest fall for the last time. The Minister was dead. Mission accomplished, thought Paul. At least there was that. He was just another victim in the end, and Paul’s Z count? He thought maybe he had done enough.

Paul waited. He’d expected to hear the dead thumping against his makeshift barricade but there was only silence in the kitchen and silence in the stadium beyond. He might just have a little nap himself. His eyelids were heavy, so he though he would close them, just for a minute.

“Hur, hur ,hur.”

Paul snapped to full consciousness, across from him The Minster, was shaking gently as he laughed. Paul saw the flow of blood from his wounds had turned into a trickle of black ichor. His skin was white with black veins traced underneath. His hair now deathly white, no traces of yellow remained and his dirty, gaunt hands were now skeletal in appearance.

“Hur, hur, hur.” laughed the Minister and when he spoke his voice was lower; hollower.

“So it seems Soldier boy that God won’t even set me free from this place” croaked The Minister, as he slowly raised his head.

“It seems that God, still has a role fer me even now”

Paul reeled in shock at what he saw. The disease didn’t work like this, he thought. It took hours to turn people, this wasn’t right; this wasn’t the way it worked. The Minister stared at him and Paul knew he was dead. The Ministers eyes were obsidian black and Paul saw his prone refection in them, the sword sticking out of his gut. The Minister shifted slowly onto all fours as he spoke.

“I’m gonna do the Lords work my boy, I’m gonna take this world to Rapture, I’m gonna save this world by ripping it to shreds wi’ my bare hands, and you’ve just old me where tae start. I’ll take this island, then the good ole’ US of A.” The Minster was crawling towards Paul. Black ichor exploded from his mouth and dribbled down his chin as he spat the words, his knees and hands leaving trails through the pools of blood as he shuffled closer.

“And do ye ken what?” The Minister was in his face now. Paul could smell the death on his breath, and the stale stink of his dirty clothes.

“I’m gonna need men Paul. Good men like you tae be ma generals, ma disciples, and you are gonna be my first, ma right hand man, because I like you boy.”

“No Ted. Don’t do this please, please just let me die” Said Paul, his voice shaking with terror, his eyes wide as he gawped at the demon in front of him. He remembered using the pistol bullet as a decoy earlier and starkly realised there wasn’t one left for him even if he’d had the strength to lift the pistol once again.

“But I have to Paul, because this is what the Lord wants, this is whit I want, and do you know why else?”

Paul shook his head, trying to turn away, but was transfixed in horror.

“Because I. AM. THE ZOMBIE MESSIAAAAAH!” The Minister screamed, the last word turning to a gurgle as he bit down on Pauls neck. He felt the warmth of the blood running down his chest and felt the rip of skin, tendons, and sinews. The last thing he heard was the triumphant roar of the new zombie army in the Stadium beyond and the last thing Paul realised – before the blackness enveloped him – was that The Minister, The Zombie Messiah, was now unstoppable.

———

Pete Bevan currently lives in Worcester, UK with his beautiful wife and baby daughter, writing occasional works of fiction and comedy for friends and relatives.  Pete was shown ‘Dawn of the Dead’ at 7, an experience that has lived with him ever since and means that trips to shopping malls and church fetes in graveyards make him excessively twitchy, and prone to eyeing scruffy people with suspicion. Zombiphile doesn’t go far enough in the opinion of friends and work colleagues.

Guide to Reading Scottish:

Frae = From or for

Fer = for

Ken = Know (Do you ken/know?)

ma = my

Hae = Have

Roond = Round

Assume that n’t words are replaced with nae, hence,

Couldn’t = Couldnae

Wouldn’t = Wouldnae

Can’t = Canae

Also some letters may be missed off the end of words.

Mysel = Myself

In addition a ‘close’, as mentioned in the text, in Edinburgh is like a very small covered alleyway. Edinburgh is riddled with them due to the way the city developed around the castle.

Thanks the ‘The Broons’ and ‘Oor Wullie’ from the Post, and Irvine Welsh’ ‘Trainspotting’ for this method of bastardising English to create Scots as used in the final sections.

Big thanks to my wife unwavering support when I don’t do the things I’m supposed to be doing because I’m upstairs writing. Big thanks also to Phil Walsh for proof reading skills and encouragement.

—-

It was the summer of 1870, and Queen Victoria reigned supreme, although not a young man any more I was still within my prime. I had worked for a number of years as a reporter for The Times, a newspaper, I am sure you are aware, of great standing within the Empire.

Unfortunately, at that time, I was a bullish gentleman with more than a little ambition. Therefore I had made an enemy of my employer, a Mr Simpson, who drew the title of Under Editor to the Editor of The Times, (a position I wished to hold myself one day). Hence, when we received a missive from  a Gentleman Scientist in the Caribbean who called himself Dr Baker, which talked about ‘The greatest scientific discovery of the age’ and ‘an experiment to cure the woes of the world’, Simpson had me in mind.

It was vague and meandering letter, scruffily if not hurriedly written and yet it was malodorous, smelling faintly of mould. As I read it I distinctly remember a slick, oily feeling pervading my skin and coalescing into a feeling of dread that made me compelled to place it lightly on the desk and only look at it from a distance. That feeling of dread stayed with me for the remainder of the day, as I remember.  Mr Simpson decided to despatch me forthwith to meet with this man and interview him for an article for The Times. Truth be told, I had made Mr Simpson look like a dullard the week before in the office and no doubt he wished for me to be out of his sight for a time.

This letter may have normally been ignored as the work of a charlatan or madman, however Mr Simpson took it as an opportunity to be rid of me. Not being well travelled within the world at that time, I took it as an opportunity to see some more of the Great British Empire and perhaps make myself more interesting at fashionable London dinner parties. Such parties were frequented by fashionable London ladies in who I took great interest at the time. Yet as I read the letter again that evening, in the comfort of my own home, the oily horror of it returned and I found myself in a drunken state at the effort of trying to remove it from my minds eye.

So it was that I was despatched on the morning of June 12th with a small, nay tiny, allowance from The Times to join, by arrangement, the HMS Endeavour on a voyage to the Caribbean. I would be set off at the port of Montserrat to find my own way to the even smaller Island of St Johns where, according to his letter, Dr Baker resided. A missive had been despatched on an earlier ship to inform the governor of Montserrat of my arrival and beg him provide me with the means to complete Mr Simpson’s task.

Arriving by coach at Plymouth docks I was stunned by the sheer level of activity, of the humanity that swarmed around that great ship. After the French had made the first Ironclad in 1862 the might of British Industry had swung into full motion in the creation of equal or better ships so as to counter the French in their ambitions. The HMS Endeavour was part of a growing fleet of metal monstrosities that now keep the sea-lanes around the globe free of vicious piracy and those vile French.

The docks themselves writhed like a sea of humanity and stank of molten steel and that slightly rotten, brackish air, associated with all ports. Workers busied around like ants carrying ironworks and wood from carts and narrow boats to the place of fitment on the large ships in dock. The air was thick with steam and smoke from the variety of engines and machineries used to construct and bend the heavy steel used in the manufacture of Her Majesty’s fleet.

The carriage could take me no further due to the morass of activity in front but the coachman kindly agreed to carry my travelling trunk to the Endeavour for a small fee. I regret to say that I was not one to travel light and feel I had the better of the deal as I paid the sweating, red-faced coachman his dues. I stood in awe at the huge steel monolith that was the Ironclad before me and for no reason I could fathom, I was compelled to run in panic from the scene, the letter heavy in my pocket as in my mind the ship took on the appearance of a monstrous gravestone. At the time I had never seen such a construction, surely it must have been as large as St Paul’s cathedral. I stood in the shadow of the ship its huge black hull looming like a wall in front of me and there, barely in view above that, the masts and elongated funnel that spewed steam high up towards the Lord himself. I mused that perhaps that God Himself must be in awe of such achievements of The Empire. Blasphemous perhaps but I was a younger man and prone to such flights of fancy. As I gazed I saw the huge rotating blades at the rear of the ship, taller than several men stood atop each other and wondered, as I gaped, what possible machinery could have constructed such items. Truth be known, I was a man more of the arts rather than a scientist or engineer; such things were unfathomable to me.

—-

“She’s a beauty isn’t she” said someone close, making me start.

“Quite wonderful” I replied as I composed myself and turned to see a man about my age, but beardless, dressed in full Admiralty Regalia.

“You must be the reporter,” said the Gentleman.

“And I presume, you sir, are the Captain of this vessel?”

“You are correct Sir, Captain William Burrington at your service”

“Phineas Smith,” I said “reporter for The Times at yours, Sir”

We shook hands. He was altogether not what I imagined from a Naval Captain, in fact he seemed quite personable.

“I do hope you are not writing about Her Majesty’s Navy during your voyage?” he smiled.

“If I do Sir, it will only be complimentary, this is quite a wonder.” said I, glossing over the way my skin crawled and perspired at the thought of the journey ahead.

“Lets see if you say that after several weeks aboard her.” He chuckled.

I smiled politely slightly bemused by the comment.

“I will have a boy come and collect your baggage, you are welcome to join me on the bridge if you like Mr Smith, for you are our only passenger on this voyage, and the tide turns within the hour.”

I thanked him for his hospitality and climbed the long gangplank to the deck of the Ironclad.

The voyage was uneventful except for the constant rumbling of the massive engine and even after all this years I swear my hearing was never the same after that journey. Below decks, bouts of fearful panic overcame me whenever I considered the journeys end. Yet my rational mind could find no cause for this fear and I set it aside as travellers’ nerves.  I found myself bored and wishing I had brought more books. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the company of Captain Burrington and his deck of cards, I may have flung myself to the mercy of the sea.

The Captain and I spent many a pleasant hour in discussion and we quickly discovered that we had a like mind in nearly all matters both political, (Disraeli was a cad of the highest order), religious (God save the queen) and in matters of the heart. (Our ‘dance’ cards were closely matched in terms of ‘conquests’, if you take my meaning). Truth be told, we formed a fine friendship and both commented on a desire to stay friends after this voyage. He had a house in London where he chose to reside when not at sea and by pure chance we both had knowledge of an Ale House of fine repute where we both had occasion to drink but on separate occasions.

After several weeks and a distinct change in the weather for the better, we arrived in the Caribbean. The HMS Endeavour, it turned out, was merely there to show the might of the Empire to our colonial cousins and the colonial cousins of our enemies who inhabited surrounding islands along the Caribbean. This meant that the ship would be returning to England in two weeks. I hoped that my business on St Johns would be concluded within that time and so the good Captain offered to return to Montserrat, or indeed St Johns if no transport could be found, to pick me up for the return journey. I was happy at this thought for a number of reasons: Firstly, I enjoyed his company immensely and secondly, the romance of travelling perhaps outweighed the practicality of it; I longed to return to England with its fine alehouses and busty women. I would also perhaps be rid of the sweaty dreams and irrational panics, for there is nothing more lonely to an English Gentleman than a ship full of sailors. Unless, of course, one was a sodomite. I am happy to say that a succession of beautifully pleased women would testify that I am not.

—-

I bid my farewells to the good Captain and was taken by steam launch to the port of Montserrat. From a distance it looked a beautiful place, the sea a shining graduated green    and blue, golden sandy beaches and luscious green palms. In the misty distance rose the mountainous volcano from which the island itself had been formed. The port town itself a rambling site of white wooden housing, truly colonial in appearance. As we approached I could clearly see a busy market and the juxtaposition of the Negro natives and the white colonials, those brave souls who left Queen and Country for this gorgeous but Godforsaken land.

I spent an uneventful evening with the governor, who was a most frightful bore, demanding news of London society and talk of people I had never heard of and never met. The only light relief from his tedium was the vista of his beautiful wife, a vision if I may say so but unfortunately she was smitten with the fellow and barely cast a glance in my direction. Consequently I made my excuses and went to bed, feigning some form of sickness caused by so many weeks at sea. The only curious event was when I questioned the governor about the Island of St Johns and the good Dr Baker. He would not linger on the subject and gave the shortest, curtest answer available to him. Tired and a little drunk at this point I did not press him on it.

The following morning the weather had not changed and I purchased myself a wide brimmed hat, fashioned from leaves, to protect myself from the bright sunshine. I was transported through the town to a waiting sail ship to take me the 10 nautical miles to St Johns. The hat looked faintly ridiculous I feel but needs must when the Devil drives and I thought the protection would outweigh my mild embarrassment. Besides, I was in a rum mood, as a night in a real bed on land had lifted my spirits somewhat.

At the far end of the beach there was a small sloop, a swarthy Negro standing by it. They were both as scruffy as each other, the man dressed in little more than rags and a contrast to some of the other well tended fishing boats and sloops in the bay. I was not best pleased by this turn of events and asked the coach driver why I must use this boat. Curtly I was told that this was the only boat that would go to St Johns and looking back I feel it was the tone in the drivers voice that began the feelings of foreboding that came to dominate the remainder of the journey. The boat itself needed a lick of paint to say the least and the sails where a patchwork of differing cloths, stitched together at random.

The coach driver loaded my items onto the boat and I approached the ‘Captain’ of the ‘ship’ with my hand out to shake his.  Well, the fellow just looked me in the eye and spat on the floor before turning and climbing aboard. I was shocked but before I made an issue of it I reminded myself that foreigners had different customs and perhaps I had misinterpreted his gesture. However, I am ashamed to say that it crossed my mind that if was what the repeal of slavery resulted in, perhaps it had not been the right thing to do. As I have stated previously, I was a younger man then and prone to such idiotic fancies.

The journey took some considerable hours so I read a little and played solitaire to pass the time. Eventually I saw a small island in the distance, no more perhaps than a mile in diameter. As we approached I could pick out a series of huts dotted amongst the trees that made the verdant paradise of the island look scruffy, the owners seemingly cared little for civic pride.

As we approached I could see that the settlement looked sparsely populated, several old men and women sat in groups and I was unsettled by the rotting carcass of a cow that seemed to have been dumped not too far from the village. As I gazed I thought I saw figures in the trees behind moving away. I tried to use my book to shield my eyes and thought just for a second that one of the figures moved with a deportment different to the others but then they had gone. At this point I distinctly remember having butterflies in my stomach and the urge to jump overboard and swim for my life was nigh overwhelming. Perchance it was the heat and lack of sustenance for the voyage but I remember feeling nothing but foreboding as we landed the sloop on the beach.

—-

The captain jumped off the ship and bade me follow him. I considered asking him to take my trunk, however pride meant that I merely hefted it onto the beach and proceeded to drag it behind me. I made slow progress up the beach but rather than offer to help he merely stopped every few feet and waited. This was quite intolerable and I muttered so under my breath. It occurred to me then that the Negroes of this island looked different to those of Montserrat. Their skin was darker they themselves seemed skinnier and wiry perhaps. From photographs I had seen, I surmised that they could be African in origin. With a great show of effort I dragged my trunk through the village lest the locals felt compelled to help me but none of them did and eventually I came upon a large wooden hut some way along a small track outside the main settlement. It had a western construction and I deduced that this was the house of Dr Baker. My erstwhile Captain wandered off without a word and being an Englishman I felt obliged to thank him. However the combination of his surliness and rudeness meant that, to my shame, I merely poked my tongue out at him when he turned his back. When in Rome and all that.

I dropped the trunk and removed my sodden kerchief from my trousers, discovering it was possibly wetter than the perspiration of my face. Exasperated I left my baggage where it lay and proceeded inside. The shack, if you could grace it with such a title, was dark inside and the floorboards creaked as I entered the door. A musky chemical smell was omnipresent in the room, despite being open to the elements by means of shuttered windows. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, for the shack was deep within the palm trees of the island, I saw that it was simply furnished with two dining chairs, bedecked with antimacassars and a small table that looked unused but was set with a grace unbefitting of the scene. On the wall hung a portrait of a couple, dusty and lightened by age. Small paraffin lamps could be seen dotted about. I was about to call out when, through sheet on the other side of the room, stepped a small man who simply stopped and stared at me for an inordinate time. He was perhaps a foot shorter than I, with long black hair tied back with jungle twine. A skinny fellow his clothes hung from him. I could see it would once have been a respectable suit of tweed, yet now was threadbare with age and use. I pondered if he had other clothing at all.

“Ah. Mr Smith is it?” his eyes cleared as he drew the logical conclusion.

“And you must be Dr Baker” I said with all the heartiness I could muster.

“I am. I am. I am.” He said wiping his hands on his trousers and stepping forward to shake my hands vigorously. I distinctly remember how slick he felt, like freshly caught Trout or such like. His eyes were dark with lack of sleep and he seemed restless, the tone of his voice monotone and dour, but filled with gusto.

“Pray Sir, was your journey a pleasant one?” he said enthusiastically, still shaking my hand.

Distracted by his slickness I replied

“Well no. Not really.”

“Oh” He stopped shaking my hand.

Regaining my composure I answered.

“Actually some water would cure all my ails”

“Of course. Of course.” He darted out of the room.

I flopped onto one of the chairs as he returned bearing a pitcher of water. I drank long and deeply as he sat opposite, just staring at me.

“The fact you have arrived today fills me with joy Mr Smith” he said.

I looked quizzically at him whilst drawing more water from the pitcher.

“Yes. Yes. For this very evening I come to the zenith of my experimentation”

“It was not clear from your letter what the nature of your studies are,” said I.

“Ah well. I am a Chemist by training and an anthropologist by chance. I did not want to enter into too much detail for fear my letter was intercepted by my rivals.”

I struggled to see that this little man would have any rivals but I let this point pass.

“I suggest that we eat and then perhaps I can show you what it is that I have been doing with my time here”

I smiled, though my heart was dreaming of nice ale and perhaps some roasted venison.

Baker left the shack for several minutes while he fetched a meal from the villagers and I took this time to take in my luggage. I changed clothes and for reasons I still do not understand to this day, tucked my loaded service revolver into the inside of my jacket. I could not shake a feeling of horror that seeped into my soul, in the same way London fog soaks through the sturdiest wool clothing, even though the evening was warm and pleasant.

It was then I noticed that the portrait of the couple on the wall showed Dr Baker and I surmised, his wife. She was a fine beauty, taller than Baker perhaps, with blond hair and piercing blue eyes. I realised then that this small shack had indeed at one time showed the touch of a lady. The placement of the furniture, the antimacassars, the china oddities on a shelf. The touch of a woman of taste trying to make the best of a poor lot. Yet, the grubby shack had not been cleaned in some considerable time. As I pondered this Baker returned with a wooden platter of fish and vegetables and we dined whilst he caught up on news of the Empire. The vegetables were nothing to speak of but I must admit I enjoyed the fish; it was moist and succulent, with a fresh flavour and must have been grilled over an open fire. I don’t know why I remember this so clearly; even now many years later in London I can still taste it. Memory is a strange thing. With a full stomach I plucked up the courage to ask about his wife.

“I’m afraid she died of a fever a few weeks after coming to the Island” was all he would say on the matter before hurriedly changing the subject and looking away.

Over a glass of Rum I asked Baker to expand on the reason for my visit.

“Well” he said,  “Several years ago, my wife and I were travelling around Africa, it was our Honeymoon truth be told and I found myself stricken with the most dreadful sickness. I could not eat and keep my stomach contents. Our guide, concerned for my welfare, recommended I consult a local ‘Bokor’, or sorcerer for a cure. Good Christian teaching warned me against this but I must confess that the pains in my stomach were such that I acquiesced and saw the man. After a ritual of some length and complexity I was handed a small bag of powder to consume with water over the following few days. This I did and to my amazement, the following day I ate a hearty meal and felt fully recovered. In awe of this powder I completed a chemical analysis of it and found the most amazing interplay of chemicals and compounds I had ever seen. In order to learn more about the origin of this remarkable chemistry I stayed in Africa for several months until I learned that the most accomplished Bokor in Vodou, the religion of the area, actually lived here on this island.”

“So this remarkable discovery is a cure for illness of the digestive system?” I enquired.

“No, no. Not at all. I was interested in the chemistry of the cures, not the mumbo jumbo they associate with Vodou.” he sighed.

“Tell me have you ever considered what will happen to the Empire now that we have to rely on European workers and not slaves”

“No, not really” I said for truth be told, I failed to see how anything could affect the Empire.

“The way it appears to me is that the Europeans will require a fair wage, that will require more expense for the simple tasks one requires which will inflate the economy, which in turn will bankrupt us all. What we need is a way of creating a labour force that requires no wages and little or no costs to maintain”

“Well surely that would be slaves, and I don’t think your grasp of economics is quite accurate,”

“Nevertheless, a free labour source would allow the Empire to flourish would it not?”

I nodded, now thoroughly lost to the mans point.

“Come with me” he said.

—-

We went outside and walked through an overgrown path, deeper into the undergrowth of the jungle. The light was fading into darkness and I was already struggling to keep my footing in the dense underbrush. Eventually we came to a reed hut built in a small clearing. Outside there were a variety of glass bottles and canisters, smashed and broken and an ungodly smell of rotting meat. I was also shocked to see a crudely made coffin lying on the ground by the entrance to the hut. Resting one foot on the coffin stood a black man of tiny stature, he was dressed in rags that once may have resembled a black suit and smelt of fish as he smoked a tiny hand rolled cigarette. Around his neck was a garland of what appeared to be bones, hair, ribbons and carved wooden effigies. His rheumy eyes looked me up and down and he smiled at me with rotten teeth. I realised the fish smell was most probably his breath.

Baker and this man had a short conversation in a language I didn’t recognise where my name was mentioned and ‘The Times’ newspaper. The gentleman raised his eyes and shook my hand.

“This is Papa Badalou, the Bokor I mentioned previously.” said Baker.

“Charmed, Sir” I said, perhaps a little ungraciously. I tried to smile but I’m afraid it would have been false for the sense of foreboding in my soul had risen to a crescendo of fear at this point. I did not like this gentleman one bit.

They had a further conversation before Baker turned to me and said,

“Bear in mind that what I am about to show you is an automaton, nothing more than a shell, equipped to do ones bidding: Lifting, carrying and such like but without complaint nor rest. It is to all intensive purposes the perfect employee.”

As Baker lit a rough torch that had been left on the ground at his feet, Papa Badalou shouted something at the hut. From inside I heard a terrible low moan. A huge hulking figure stooped through the doorway before emerging into the evening gloom. Unconsciously I stepped back in fright and as Baker raised the torch I saw the full countenance of the creature that emerged. It was a man. ‘Was’ being the operative word. It was a corpse. Its eyes were grey as its skin, no blood coloured his lips and he appeared to have a hole in his chest. It. He had been buried a time for there was mould on his suit which had the shirt unbuttoned. It must have been his burial suit.

“Good God” I exclaimed.

“God has nothing to do with it dear boy. This is pure science, with perhaps a little touch of Voodou,” said Baker, apparently rather pleased with himself.

“But its inhuman” I continued, barely able to form the words.

“No, Mr Smith. It was human. Now it is merely a collection of actuators and structures as lifeless as a fairground mechanical device.”

“Did you kill him?” I asked.

“No. No. No. Nothing unnatural happened. He was in an accident, a boat oar puncturing his thorax.” With this he put his fist into the hole in the creatures chest. I felt the humours rise in my stomach.

“He was buried a good Christian burial, I am merely using the chemical components of his body before the are absorbed into the earth. Can you imagine Sir, cleaned up and perhaps with some sort of mask to make their countenance more pleasing, one in every house in the Empire, a servant for every home” He looked the creature up and down.

I stood agog. The full horror seemed to reflect off me, I couldn’t speak; I just stared at this thing.

“Let me demonstrate.” He continued, now clearly excited.

“Jacob!” He said in a loud clear voice. The thing turned and gazed at him.

“Take the body from the coffin and place it on the workbench please.” The creature stared at him for a second then bent and opened the coffin. The smell was horrendous as the creature reached inside and hoisted the black suited corpse onto his shoulder. Baker wrinkled his nose.

“Fresh, Papa Badalou, they must always be fresh, how many times must I tell you.” The tiny Negro shrugged his shoulders and muttered something.

“Yes. Yes.” said Baker. “Its always the heat isn’t it.”

“See how obedient he is Mr Smith, quite pliable to all but the most complex requests.”

I did not answer but just stared as Jacob entered the hut and placed the corpse on the workbench. Baker lit several more torches inside the hut and I could see flasks and rubber tubing, oil burners and a small cooking stove, it looked like a small laboratory or pharmacists. Baker busied himself lighting oil burners and checking chemicals. As he worked he ushered me in. Morbid curiosity carried my legs forward but my mind reeled.

As he readied the process he continued,

“Now Jacob there was made with a mixture of chemicals, and Voodou. What I intend to do now is the same process but without the mumbo jumbo. If the Zombification can be easily achieved I intend to set up a factory in the North of England where the weather will be kinder to the materials involved until reanimation is complete. At that point Mr Smith their decomposition ceases and one can eliminate the smell. What do you think? I was toying with ‘Bakers Zombie Automatons Ltd’ as a name. What do you think? Eh?”

I wanted to call him a madman and run, flee this place and return to England forthwith but I just stood there, unable to process the macabre scene before me.

Papa Badalou obviously understood some English because he began to query Baker. I do not understand what was said but it quickly became an argument. Jacob and I stood there as they raged at each other, until Papa Badalou stormed out of the hut back towards the village.

“Oh dear.” He said as he continued to run around placing tubes into the corpse and removing stoppers from flasks.

“It appears the good Bokor is convinced that his ritual is as important as the chemical processes. I’ve tried to persuade him that it is just science but he is not convinced. Apparently the spirits must be appeased.”

Baker paused, and waved his hands in a mock expression of a magician doing a trick.

“We better get this done quickly so I can prove him wrong, before he returns with his colleagues.” This cryptic answer unnerved me further.

“Jacob be a dear and pass me the sulphur.” The corpse reached over and passed Baker a small dish.

“No Jacob. The sulphur. There. There!” exclaimed Baker, pointing, as Jacob replaced the dish and passed him another.

Finally, he stopped.

“Now Mr Smith, prepare to be amazed,” he exclaimed, more showman now than scientist.

Several stoppers were removed from flasks and taps turned in tubes. Coloured liquids drained into the corpse through tubes placed at various points in the body. Baker just stood there, a wild look in his eyes, with his hands on his hips. Presently he removed his pocket watch from his waistcoat and tapped it impatiently.

Minutes passed and he checked his watch repeatedly.

“Odd.” He murmured.

“How very odd.” he muttered again before leaning into the corpse to look at the face.

“It never normally takes this, errrk”.

The corpses hand had shot up and grabbed him around the throat. I jumped in shock and I am ashamed to say at that point I may have soiled my undergarments slightly. The corpse bit deep into Bakers neck and the little man screamed a gurgling scream. Blood gushed from his neck like a stream, covering the table and workbench as it flowed. Baker gazed incredulously at the amount of blood and removed his hand from his neck to inspect it, whereby the blood jetted from the open wound and Baker looked up pleading at me before gurgling something, bubbles of blood obscuring his words as it dripped from his mouth.

The corpse sat up and proceeded to feast on Dr Baker. In that moment I became painfully aware that I was the only living thing in that hut and feeling the weight of my service revolver, I removed it from my waistcoat and took aim at the head of the creature. The Zombie took the Doctor and laid the stricken man in its lap before tearing gobs of meat from Bakers neck and devouring them greedily.  Through all this Jacob stood impassive, and Baker merely stared at me in panic. Slowly Bakers eyes grew dim and the blood ceased to flow from the wounds. The only sound remaining was the grisly chewing of the Zombies’ foetid jaw.

As the creature turned its attention away from its meal I fired and the noise rang out through the jungle. The blast briefly illuminated the hut and I saw blood and what not splatter the far side of the room. The creature barely reacted and sat up with its eyes locked firmly in mine. Then I saw the corpse of Baker twitch and rise from the workbench.

It turned and both creatures eyed me lustily.

Almost casually and without any emotion in my voice, (after all I am an Englishman), I said to the impassive giant,

“Jacob, be a good boy and stop these two creatures killing me would you?”

As he stepped between the creatures and me I turned tail and ran. As I sprinted through the dark bush I could hear the sounds of combat behind me and as I got further away from the hut I could also hear shouts in front of me. I looked and saw torches heading my way and the voice of Papa Badalou shouting in the distance. Unwilling to meet the villagers of the island, or the creatures behind, I cut directly left and stumbled through the undergrowth in the growing dark.

—-

I dived over a log and peered back towards the path whence I came. I saw the two Zombies lurch from Bakers hut and stumble towards the din of the party of villagers who were coming the other way with torches and spears, shouting with bravado. Baker and his ally fell upon the villagers grabbing one each like wolves and using their hands and teeth to gouge the hapless victims as they screamed. Badalou and the other villagers pierced the bodies of the Zombies with spears to no effect and as the panic rose they moved from villager to villager tearing eyes and throats, biting legs and torsos until all that remained were the dead and the moans of the dying as the two gorged themselves on the last two villagers they had encountered.

It was then, as I watched the grizzly scene unfold, when the first two victims rose from death and fell upon the injured, that I realised that Bakers vision had been wrong in its entirety: Rather than the pastoral scene of dutiful, bemasked Zombie servants attending the great stately homes of London that he envisaged, or the vision of the chaotic, noisy mills of Lancashire in their never-ending toil. I saw waves of these monsters sweeping first through the slums of the East End, the poor too weak to defend themselves as the dead feasted in the maze like back alleys and tenements until the sewers ran red with blood, before this new army did what no nation could do: To stand triumphant at the gates of Buckingham Palace, the British army impotent to defend the beloved Monarchy. Then across the empire and the world they would spread, until the Empire was no more and nothing living remained: Both the highest Lord and lowliest thief standing together, in death, against the survivors of this End of Days.

As the last of the corpses rose, more villagers, intrigued by the screams could be heard coming from the village and as the group shambled of towards their fresh victims I ran as fast and as hard as I could, all the time thinking that I must survive and prevent this apocalypse.

Driven by pure fear I carried on for an indeterminate time, until as I saw a hut in front of me. My foot caught on something unseen in the night and I fell heavily onto some rocks hidden by a large bush of some description. I must have hit my head for I was enveloped by blackness.

When I came to, I was aware that it was day. I had no clue as to how long I had been unconscious but I was sure I was being watched. As my vision cleared I saw, sat no more than a few feet away from me, a woman. She was not a Negro like the others but a white woman, her dress was tattered, her hair matted and her skin unwashed for many weeks. Barefoot and covered in bruises as she was I realised this was the figure I had seen being taken into the jungle upon my arrival. In her eyes a wildness hid behind the striking blue. Around her leg a locked iron band had caused red sores around her brazenly naked ankle and the chain it was attached to lead to another band locked around a sturdy palm tree. More aware of my surroundings now I could hear distant crashing in the undergrowth. Suddenly I was hit by recognition.

“Mrs Baker?” I said incredulously. She nodded glumly.

“He told me you died of a fever.” I said.

“More lies to assuage his guilt at trading me like common cattle.” she said, her voice cracked and ragged.

“Trading you?”

“Yes, he gave me to Papa Badalou for the secrets of the Dead.”

“Well it has been his undoing ma’am, I’m afraid your husband is dead.” I regretted immediately speaking so bluntly, after all this was his wife. Her reaction showed no emotion.

“Good. He deserves nothing less for messing in the black arts,” she said.

“Well his experiments have gone wrong and we are in danger. For the Dead he has raised are murderous in their intent.” I spoke quickly of the nights events realising the crashes in the jungle were nearing our position. With rising desperation we pulled and tugged at the chain to no effect. I looked round for tools to perhaps jemmy the irons free but found nothing. As the cacophony, now accompanied by low moans, came closer we became increasingly more fervent in our effort. I bade her cover her eyes and without thinking used my service revolver to shoot at the lock on the palm to no effect. As the ringing of the gunshots faded I realised we had unwittingly given away our position and the sound of the dead closing on us increased in frequency. Try as we might I could not free the lady and as panic gripped us I stopped. I realised there was but one course of action remaining. She looked up at me, in wonderment as to why I had ceased to free her. Recognition slid across her face and the wildness I had first seen faded into calm resignation.

“Sir. I realise I do not even know your name, yet you must do for me a service. As an Englishman and as I can see, a Gentlemen.” Her voice was placid now. We both knew what was required. She stood tall, taller than I and flattened her dress against her body and returned the strap of the dress to her shoulder. I bowed low to her, as the sounds of the Dead grew closer and more frantic.

“Madam Baker. You are a woman of bravery and grace unbefitting of your husband and this island. It would be an honour to do this last service for you.” Then she smiled the most radiant smile. I remember it to this day and it was if the sun itself illuminated the dark undergrowth of this hell. She closed her eyes. I raised the revolver and shot her squarely through the heart. She fell to the ground and I was filled with remorse as I realised I did not know her full name, nor the names of her family and I could not inform those who loved her of her demise. Since that day I have prayed, every day, that when I stand before the Lord on Judgement Day he will see this act as mercy and not murder.

The undergrowth exploded behind me as numerous dead shambled towards me, I raised the revolver which clicked, empty as I fired. I turned and ran as more of the figures entered the clearing, it seemed whole village had also succumbed to the raging experimentation of Dr Baker.

As I ran I could see light blue through the underbrush, I headed for it at full pelt and exploded onto the beach, shielding my eyes from the bright sunshine. My eyes adjusted slowly for I was still groggy from my fall and yet I could hear my relentless pursuers behind. Frantically I looked for a boat, a means off this wretched place but could find none. As I ran up and down the surf I looked back to see many figures emerging front the jungle, eyes affixed on me, their next meal.

Perhaps a hundred yards or so up the beach I saw some flotsam and jetsam brought in by the low tide. In particular a log jutted from the rubbish. I ran to it as more of the shambling figures emerged from the jungle. With the last of my strength I hauled it into the sea, pushing it out into the breaking surf. As I got out of my depth I clambered aboard my impromptu raft and paddled for my life. As luck would have it the tide was retreating lest I would have been pulled back to the shore. I paddled until my strength faltered and only then did I look back to see the whole village and its lifeless inhabitants crowded at the shore. They did not seem willing to enter the surf but just shuffled listlessly around.

Now I feel I must go fetch myself a whiskey, for it is late but I know I will not sleep until this tale is written. I am perturbed at the memory but driven on to finish this story

—-

I recall little of what happened next. I floated aimlessly in the sea. Starved and hungry I dreamt of fine wines and roasted dinners but the dinners turned to cannibalised human flesh and the wine to congealed blood as my long time dread coalesced in my nightmares. I could not drink the seawater and was not enough of a seaman to know which direction to go. Eventually, convinced I would slip from the tree and drown. I faded into blackness.

When I awoke my throat burned and my eyes stung, yet I could feel a soft coolness envelop my body. I was naked and felt awful.

“There now Mr Smith, you are quite safe, rest awhile,” said a thick London brogue. With relief I realised I was back in my cabin aboard the Endeavour. The sailor tending to me brought water, which he advised I sipped slowly, and some simple bread and meats, which I also was to eat slowly. As I recalled my experience on the island I bade the sailor summon the Captain. As I waited I rested my head but did not close my eyes for fear of what images the minds eye may draw.

I must have slept again and when I awoke Captain Burrington sat upon a chair near the door. I drank some more water then told my tale to Burrington, for even in my weakened state only one course of action became clear. When I finished the tale Burrington accused me of drinking, or hallucinating the whole thing in a fever. I informed him I was not anything but sane and lucid. We discussed what could be done and although he was reticent he agreed to return to the island. For I was retrieved from my raft by the Endeavour on her way to pick me up. Yes, I had floated for many days and nights adrift on the sea.

I was informed of our arrival and against the advice of the ships Doctor I insisted two burly seamen carried me up to the deck. Once there a spyglass was used to view the Island and in viewing Burrington was heard to very loudly utter:

“My God in Heaven.” He forbade any of the Seamen to view the island through their own spyglasses but announced, after affirming my story as the truth, that the island was deigned by the Admiralty to be a place for target practice and they had all been complacent in their duties and not sharp. Instantly the crew leapt into action and for the next eight hours the Island was shelled by every piece of artillery on the Ironclad until not a tree stood standing and the waves took the wretched place back within the bosom of the sea.

Each shell that pounded the shore was a nail in the island of the Dead and a tonic for my soul.

As the waves lapped over the island I realised I still had Bakers letter in my pocket, Shakily, I stood and let the cool breeze waft it into the sea so nothing could remain of Bakers work, nothing that could be copied or repeated. The damn fool should be erased from existence for his madness and ambition, I thought. Yet, as the paper dropped from my hand, the feeling of dread finally lifted and that night I slept dreamless as a babe.

—-

I returned to London but not The Times, for I could not retell the tale again. Sadly I had not the heart to strike up a friendship with Burrington for when he contacted me for a meal or drink I declined, for I could not think of him without the nightmares returning. Eventually I took a post at a provincial paper and met a fine woman who bore me two beautiful girls and we lived for many years in Herefordshire, far from the sea. I still take the papers regularly scouring for news of my dread Apocalypse but the Empire thrives as I near the end of my life, and still wonder what became of Jacob, a creature that was no more than matter yet still saved me life.

Now I must fetch more strong liquor as the telling of the tale has left me wan and fearful. I will not sleep tonight, so a bottle of whiskey must I finish. Tomorrow I may tear this paper to shreds lest I think of Dr Baker again, or then again, I may not.