‘Why don’t you move somewhere smaller?’
Dr Oystein coughs as if embarrassed. ‘To be honest, I always had a fondness for County Hall. When I was casting around for a base, this was my first choice. The Angels seem to share my love for the building. I hope that it will come to feel like home for you over time, as it has for us.’
‘So who lives here with you?’ I ask. ‘You haven’t told me about the set-up yet, how you came to be here, who your Angels are, how you plan to save the world.’
‘Those questions will all be answered,’ he assures me. ‘We do not keep secrets from one another. We are open in all that we do. But there is no need to rush. As you adjust and settle in, we will reveal more of our work and background to you, until you know as much about us as I do.’
I don’t like being told to wait, but this is his gig. Besides, I’m exhausted and my brain hurts, so I don’t think I could take in much more anyway. There’s one thing that does disturb me though, and I want to bring it up before pushing on any further.
‘How come there are no regular zombies here? Every other big, dark building that I’ve seen has been packed with them.’
‘I had already recruited a small team of Angels before I established a permanent base,’ he says. ‘We drove out the reviveds before we moved in.’
‘That must have been messy.’
‘It was actually the easiest thing in the world,’ he replies. ‘With their sharp sense of hearing, reviveds – like revitaliseds – are vulnerable to high-pitched noises. So we simply installed a few speakers and played a string of high notes through them, which proved unbearable for those who had taken up residence. They moved out without any protest, then we slid in after them and shored up the entrances.’
‘I got in without any hassle,’ I remind him.
‘We saw you coming on our security cameras,’ he says. ‘We switched off the speakers – we repositioned them around the building once we had moved in, and normally play the noises on a constant loop, to keep stray reviveds at bay – and made sure a door was open when you arrived.’
We come to a huge room and I catch my first glimpse of what I assume are some of Dr Oystein’s Angels. There’s a small group of them at the centre of the room, in a boxing ring, sparring. They’re my sort of age, no more than a year or two older or younger than me.
‘They spend most of their days training,’ Dr Oystein says.
‘For what?’
‘War.’
I swivel to look at him, but he doesn’t return my gaze.
‘The years ahead will be hard,’ he says quietly. ‘We will be tested severely, and I am sure at times we will be found wanting. We face many battles, some of which we are certain to lose. But if we prepare as best we can, and have faith in ourselves and the justness of our cause, we will triumph in the end.’
I snort. ‘I hate to burst your bubble, doc, but if those Angels are like me, you’d better tell them to get their arses in gear. In another year or two we’ll be pushing up daisies. You can’t win a war if all your troops are rotting in the grave.’
Dr Oystein frowns. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Our limited lifespan. We’ve only got a year and a half, two years max. Then our senses will dissolve, our brains will melt and we’ll be dead meat. If you’ve got a war you want to win, you’d better crack on and –’
‘You were told many things when you were a prisoner,’ Dr Oystein interrupts. ‘Some were true. Some, you must surely know, were not. Your captors wanted to bend you to their will. They told you lies to dampen your spirit, to break it, to make you theirs.’
I stare at him, hardly daring to believe what he’s telling me. ‘You mean it was bullshit about me only having a year or two to live?’
‘Of the highest grade,’ he smiles.
‘I’m not going to die soon?’ I cry.
‘You are already dead,’ he says.
‘You know what I mean,’ I groan. ‘My brain’s not going to pop and leave me truly dead?’
‘Far from it.’
I clench my fingers tight and give the air a victory punch. ‘Bloody YES, mate! You’ve made my day, doc. I was ready to accept an early end, but as crap as my excuse for a life is, I’d rather this than no life at all.’
‘Most of us share your view,’ he chuckles, then grows serious. ‘But they did not tell you a total lie. We do not age the same way that humans do. Our lifespan, for want of a better term, is not what an average human might expect.’
‘So it was half true,’ I growl. ‘Those are the best sort of lies, I guess. Go on then, doc, hit me with the bad news. I can take it. How long do I have? Twenty years? Ten? Five?’
‘We cannot be absolutely certain,’ he says. ‘I have run many tests and made a series of predictions. But we have no long-term data to analyse, and will not have for many decades to come. There are all sorts of genetic kinks of which I might be ignorant.’
‘Your guess is better than mine,’ I smile. ‘I won’t blame you if you’re off by a few years.’
‘Very well. I won’t tease you with a dramatic buildup. As I said, this is a rough estimate, but based on the results of my tests to date, I think we probably have a life expectancy of between two and three thousand years.
‘And no,’ he adds before I can say anything, ‘I’m not joking.’ He leans in close, his eyes wide as I stare at him, stunned and numb. ‘So, B Smith, what do you think of this crap life now?’
FOUR
I’m in shock for ages. To go from thinking you have only months to live, to being told you might be hanging around for a couple of millennia . . . it’s a cataclysmic leap and my mind whirls as we continue the tour.
We visit a kitchen where a good-looking, stylishly dressed woman with a big smile is scraping brains from inside severed human heads and dumping them in a mixing bowl. Dr Oystein introduces us, but I forget the woman’s name even before we leave the room.
‘Some of the heads are delivered to us from people who die of natural causes in human compounds,’ he says. ‘We have contacts among the living who view us as allies, and they give us what they can. But most come from fresh corpses that we found in morgues or dug up not long after the first zombie attacks. I knew brains would be a pressing issue, so I made them my number-one priority. For a couple of weeks, grave-robbing was practically our full-time occupation.’
He tells me how he’s trying to create a synthetic substitute that will give us the nutrients we need, so that we don’t have to rely on reaping brains from dead humans in future, but I’m barely listening.
More bedrooms, another training centre – again, I only spot teenagers – and the impressive council chamber. Dr Oystein starts waffling on about the history of County Hall, but I can’t focus. I keep thinking about the centuries stretching out ahead of me, the incredibly long life that has been dropped on me without any warning.
Halfway down another of the building’s long corridors, I stop and shake my head. ‘This is crazy,’ I shout. ‘You’re telling me I’m gonna live at least twenty times longer than any human?’
‘Yes,’ Dr Oystein says calmly.
‘How the hell can anyone last that long?’
He shrugs. ‘A living person could not. But we are dead. We do not age as we used to. If we take care of our bodies, and sustain ourselves by eating brains, we can defy the laws of living flesh.’
‘Then what’s to say we won’t live forever?’ I challenge him. ‘Where did you pull two or three thousand years from? If we don’t age –’
‘We do age,’ he cuts in smoothly. ‘I said that we do not age as we used to, but we definitely age, only at a much slower rate. Our external appearance will not change much, except for scarring, wrinkling and discolouring. Our internal organs are to all intents and purposes irrelevant, so even if they crumble away, it won’t really matter.
‘Only our brains are susceptible to the ravages of time. From what my tests have revealed, they are slowly deteriorating. If they continue to fail at the
rate I have noted in the subjects that I have been able to assess, we should manage to hold ourselves together for two or three thousand years. But it could be less, it could be more. Only time will tell.’
I shake my head again, still struggling to come to terms with the revelation.
‘Try not to think about it too much,’ Dr Oystein says kindly. ‘I know it is a terrifying prospect — a long life seems enviable until one is presented with the reality of it and has to think of all those days and nights to come, how hard it will be to fill them, to keep oneself amused for thousands of years. And it is even harder since we do not sleep and thus have more time to deal with than the living.
‘But as with everything in life, you will learn to cope. I’m not saying it will be easy or that you won’t have moments of doubt, but I suggest you turn a blind eye to your longevity for now. You can brood about it later.’ He sighs. ‘There will be plenty of time for brooding.’
‘Why tell me about it at all if that’s the case?’ I snap.
Dr Oystein shrugs. ‘It is important that you know. It is one of the first things that I tell my Angels. Our approach to life – or our semblance of it – differs greatly depending on how much time we have to play with.’
‘Come again?’ I frown.
‘If you think you have only a year to live, you might behave recklessly, risking life and limb, figuring you have little to lose. Most people treat their bodies with respect when they realise that they may need them for longer.’
‘I suppose,’ I grumble.
Dr Oystein smiles. ‘You will see the brighter side of your circumstances once you recover from the shock. But if it still troubles you, at least you have the comfort of knowing that you will not have to go through this alone. We are all in the same boat. We will support one another over the long decades to come.’
‘All right,’ I mutter and we start walking again. My mind’s still whirling, but I try to put thoughts of my long future on hold and focus on the tour again. It’s hard – I have a sick feeling in my stomach, like I get if I go too long without eating brains – but the doctor’s right. I can obsess about this later. If I try to deal with it now, I’ll go mad thinking about it. And madness is the last thing I want to face in my state. I mean, who fancies spending a couple of thousand years as a slack-jawed, drooling nutter!
FIVE
The tour draws to its conclusion shortly after our conversation in the corridor. We pass through one of the large courtyards of County Hall – I remember seeing them from up high when I went on the Eye in the past – and into a room which has been converted into a lab, lots of test tubes and vials, some odd-looking machines beeping away quietly in various places, pickled brains and other internal organs that have been set up for dissection and examination.
‘This is not my main place of work,’ Dr Oystein says. ‘I maintain another laboratory elsewhere in the city. I had a string of similar establishments in different countries around the world, but I do not know what has become of them since the downfall.’
He looks at me seriously. ‘I told you that we keep no secrets from one another here, and that is the truth, with one key exception. The other laboratory is where I conduct the majority of my experiments and tests, and where I keep the records of all that I have discovered over the years.’
‘You mean you haven’t just started researching zombies since the attacks?’
‘No. I am over a hundred years old and have been studying the undead since the mid-1940s.’ As I gawp at him, he continues as if what he’s told me is no big deal. ‘I have a team of scientists who have been working with me for many years. They are based at my main research centre. I lost a lot of good men and women when the city fell, but enough survived to assist me in my efforts going forward.
‘I dare not reveal the location of that laboratory to anyone. It is not an issue of trust but of fear. There are dark forces stacked against us. You are aware of the one who calls himself Mr Dowling?’
‘You know about the clown?’ I gasp.
Dr Oystein nods sombrely. ‘I will tell you more about him later. For now, know only that he is our enemy, the most dangerous foe we will ever face. He yearns for the complete destruction of mankind. I guard the secrets of deadly formulas that Mr Dowling could use to wipe out the living. If I told you where my laboratory was, and if he captured you and forced the information from you . . .’
I smile shakily. ‘That’s all right, doc. I know what a bastard he is. You don’t need to feel bad about not sharing.’
‘Yet I do,’ he mutters glumly, then grimaces. ‘Well, as limited as this laboratory is, it does feature one of my more refreshing inventions, a device which is literally going to blow your mind. Come and see.’
Dr Oystein quickens his pace and leads me to four tall, glass-fronted cylinders near the rear of the lab. Each is about three metres high and one metre in diameter. One is filled with a dark grey liquid that looks like thick, gloopy soup.
‘I have a complicated technical name for these,’ Dr Oystein says. ‘But one of my American Angels nicknamed them Groove Tubes some years ago and it stuck.’
‘What are they for?’ I ask.
‘Recovery and recuperation.’ The doctor pokes one of the deep gashes on my left arm and I wince. ‘As you will have noticed, our bodies do not generate new cells to repair cuts and other wounds. Our only natural defence mechanism is the green moss which sprouts on open gashes. The moss prevents significant blood loss and holds strands of shredded flesh together, but it is not a curative aid. Broken bones don’t mend. Cuts never properly close. Pain, once inflicted, must be endured indefinitely.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I huff, having been hunched over and limping since Trafalgar Square.
‘We can endure the pain when we have to,’ Dr Oystein continues, ‘but it is a barrier. It is hard to focus when you are wracked with agony. Like you, I have suffered much in my time. I realised long ago that I needed to find some way to combat the pain, to ensure it did not distract me from my work. I conducted many experiments and eventually came up with the Groove Tube. In the fledgling world of zombie chemistry, this probably ranks as the most significant invention to date. If the undead awarded Nobel prizes . . .’
He smiles at the absurdity of the suggestion, then clears his throat. ‘Although the technology is complicated, the results are easy to explain. The liquid inside a Groove Tube is a specially formulated solution which uses modified brain cells as its core ingredient. If you are undead and you immerse yourself, the solution stimulates some of the healing functions of your body.
‘Your lesser wounds will heal inside the Tube. The cuts on your elbows and head will scab over, as they would have when you were alive. It won’t have much of a visible effect on the hole in your chest, but it will patch up the worst damage and you will not bleed so freely.
‘There are other benefits. Broken bones will mesh. Your eyesight will improve and your eyes will sting less. You will not need to use drops so often. You might get a few of your taste buds back, but that sensation won’t last for long. You will come out feeling energetic and the pain will be far less than it currently is.’
‘Sounds like a miracle cure,’ I mutter, suspicious, as I always am, of anything that sounds too good to be true.
‘A miracle, perhaps,’ he says, ‘but not a full-blown cure. The effects are not permanent. If a bone has broken, the gel holding the two parts together will start to fail after a few years. All wounds will reopen in time. But you can immerse yourself again when that happens and be healed afresh. It is too soon to know if we can use the Tubes indefinitely, but so far I have not noticed any limit on the number of times that they can work their wonders on a given body.’
‘Fair enough, doc. You’ve sold me.’ I start to strip.
‘One moment,’ he stops me. ‘I want you to be fully aware of what you are letting yourself in for.’
‘I knew it,’ I scowl. ‘What’s the catch?’
‘We cannot sleep,’ Dr
Oystein says. ‘Wakefulness is a curse of the undead and I have been unable to find a cure for it. But when we enter a Groove Tube, we hallucinate.’
‘Go on,’ I growl.
‘It is like getting high,’ the doctor murmurs, staring longingly at the grey gloop inside the cylinder. ‘As the solution fills your lungs – you cannot drown, so it will not harm you, although we’ll have to pump you dry when we pull you out – you will start to experience a sense of deep, overwhelming bliss. You will have visions and your brain will tune out the world beyond the Tube, as you enter a dreamlike state.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ I beam.
‘It is good,’ he nods. ‘But there are dangers which you should be aware of. One is the addictive nature of the experience. You will not want to leave. I could let my Angels soak in the Tubes regularly, but I do not. They are reserved for the treatment of serious wounds. The main reason I insist on that is to help them avoid becoming addicted. You may wish to re-enter the Tube at the end of the process, but I will not permit it. They are for medicinal – not recreational – purposes only.’
‘Understood. And the real kicker?’
Dr Oystein nods. ‘You are sharper than most of my Angels, B. Yes, I have held back the real kicker, as you call it, until the end.’ He pauses. ‘It will take two or three weeks for your wounds to fully heal. During that time you will be unaware of all that is happening around you. It would be a simple thing for me or anyone else to attack you while you are in that suspended state. You will have no way of defending yourself. If someone wanted to cut your head open and pulp your brain, it would be child’s play. Or we could just leave you inside the Tube and never pull you out — if we did not haul you clear, you would bob up and down inside the solution for the rest of your existence, never fully waking. Once you succumb to the allure of the Groove Tube, you will be at our mercy.’
I stare at the doctor long and hard. ‘That’s a pretty big ask, doc.’
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘Can I wait to make my decision?’