‘We’re hunters,’ Barnes says stiffly. ‘We don’t withdraw once we’ve engaged our prey. We have to see this through to the end. If you prefer, you can return to the car and wait for us there, but my advice is to stick together. Never forget that this is a city of the undead. There’s safety in numbers. I can’t protect you if you cut yourself off from the rest of us.’
‘I didn’t know it was going to be like this,’ Tag grumbles.
‘Quit whining,’ Essex snarls. ‘They told us it could turn nasty. We knew the risks coming in. This is all part of the fun, right, Barnes?’
‘Sure,’ Barnes says drily. ‘Fun. That’s what we promised you guys and we won’t let you down. Coley, you in place yet?’
‘Got it covered,’ Coley shouts.
‘Then if you boys will give me a minute . . .’
There’s a long pause. I peer over the counter, trying to see what they’re up to, but Tag and Essex start firing as soon as they spot my head. Ducking again, I curse and grab another knife, determined not to go down without a fight and maybe take one or two of these bastards with me.
‘Come on,’ I whisper, gripping the knife tightly. ‘Meet me on my own turf. Let’s see how useful your rifles are up close.’
But the American is obviously thinking the same way I am, because even as I’m willing them to advance, he yells a warning to the others, ‘Clear!’
A couple of seconds later a bottle comes flying through the window. There’s a burning rag sticking out of the top of it. I don’t know much about weapons, but I know a Molotov cocktail when I see one.
The bottle smashes into the wall and flames billow from it, scorching the shop, roasting the flies, blackening the scraps of meat. I don’t wait to be engulfed by the fire. I started moving the instant I caught sight of the bottle flying over my head. As the glass explodes and flames roar around me, I launch myself over the counter and shoot through the window like a human bullet propelled from the heated chamber of the store.
Crashing back to earth, pain flares in my feet and I see that my socks are on fire. Yelping, I toss the knife aside and slap out the flames, then tear off the smouldering socks. I’m so concerned about my feet that I blank out everything else. It’s only when I hear a soft clicking noise that I pause, look up and realise that the barrels of three rifles are pointed directly at my head.
SEVEN
Nobody says anything and nobody opens fire. The American is slightly in front of the others, studying me coolly, the mouth of his rifle trained on the centre of my forehead. The other two look less sure of themselves. I think of diving for the knife, but I’m afraid that if I move, their trigger fingers will tighten instinctively and that will be the end of me.
‘She’s smart for a dead bird, isn’t she?’ Coley remarks, sauntering back into view, rifle slung across his shoulder, grinning viciously. His hair is cut short like a soldier’s and he’s wearing a pair of designer sunglasses. ‘Seems almost a shame to kill her.’
‘It’s not really killing, is it?’ Tag frowns. He’s a thin man with a Scottish accent. Long hair tied back in a ponytail. ‘I mean, they’re dead already, so it’s not like we’re murdering anyone, right?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Barnes murmurs, never taking his eyes off me. ‘This isn’t a crime. Nobody will hold us accountable for what we do here. She looks like one of us but she isn’t. She has less right to exist than an animal. It’s elimination, not execution. Now, who wants to –’
‘Screw you all!’ I scream and every one of the men recoils with shock.
‘Jesus!’ Essex roars. ‘She spoke! Did you hear that? She bloody spoke!’
‘I heard,’ Barnes growls. His dark brown eyes are hard. He’s taller than the others, lean and muscular. He’s the only one not wearing gloves. His black hair is shot through with streaks of grey and there’s a bullet tucked behind his right ear.
‘What the hell is she?’ Coley asks. He doesn’t look so relaxed now, and has trained his rifle on me too.
‘I don’t know,’ Barnes says softly.
‘Is she alive?’ Tag asks.
‘She can’t be,’ Essex snorts. ‘Look at the hole in her chest.’
‘But she spoke.’
‘Maybe it was a reflex action,’ Essex says.
‘Reflex action my arse!’ I shout and again they flinch. I push myself to my feet and glower at the astonished hunters. ‘My name’s Becky Smith. I’m a teenage girl. If you shoot me, you can bet a million pounds there are plenty of people out there who bloody will hold you accountable.’
Barnes blinks and lowers his rifle a fraction. ‘Are you a zombie?’
‘What does it look like?’ I sniff, pointing a finger at the hole in my chest.
‘Then how are you speaking?’
‘Some of us can.’
‘None that I’ve seen,’ he counters.
I shrug. ‘Maybe if you asked first and shot later . . .’
‘This is insane,’ Coley mutters, circling me slowly, keeping well out of reach, nervously eyeing the bones sticking out of my fingers. ‘Every zombie we’ve ever seen is a rabid, senseless beast. There can’t be an in-between state.’
‘Well, there is. I’m proof of that.’
‘There are others like you?’ Barnes asks.
‘Yeah.’ Then I recall Mr Dowling, the mutants, the flame-throwers. ‘At least, there were . . .’
‘Where are they?’
‘I don’t know. We were being kept underground. Most of the others were killed, maybe all of them. I got away but I think I’m the only one. The clown attacked and everything went crazy.’
I stop, aware that I’m making no sense.
‘Who kept you?’ Barnes asks.
‘Soldiers. Scientists. They were studying us.’
‘Soldiers?’ Essex yelps. He looks around, edgy now. ‘This sounds bad to me. If the military’s involved . . .’
‘We’re not doing anything they’d disapprove of,’ Coley says quickly. ‘We’re zombie hunters, that’s all, helping clean up the mess.’
‘But we’re not supposed to be here,’ Tag mumbles.
‘Only because it’s dangerous,’ Coley reassures him. ‘They tell people to keep away because they want to stop fools being killed or turned into zombies. But nobody’s going to give professionals like us any grief for coming in and shooting some of the buggers. We’re saving them a job.’
‘Still,’ Essex says, pointing his gun away from me, ‘I think we should split. I don’t want to be caught here by the army. They might mistake us for zombies and open fire from afar. I want to leave now.’
‘We came here to hunt,’ Coley snarls. ‘You both begged to join us. We didn’t force you.’
‘I know,’ Essex says stiffly. ‘But now I want to stop. Tag?’
‘Hell, yes.’ He lowers his rifle.
‘Bloody amateurs.’ Coley spits with disgust, then cocks an eyebrow at Barnes. The American hasn’t budged. ‘What do we do?’
‘If there are soldiers in the area, Tag and Essex are right, we need to get out of here. We’re breaking the law. They might let us go with a slap on the wrist. Or they might shoot us dead. We’d be fools to risk it.’
‘Fair enough,’ Coley sighs. Lowering his rifle, he pulls a handgun and aims it at my face.
‘What the hell!’ I roar, throwing myself to the ground.
‘Coley!’ Barnes yells.
‘What?’ he frowns. ‘She’s a zombie. It doesn’t matter whether she can talk or not. She’s one of them.’
‘One of the undead, definitely,’ Barnes agrees, ‘but partially one of the living too. I don’t know how she can respond, but she’s more than a walking corpse.’
Coley laughs cynically. ‘Not much more. I say we kill her. One less zombie is always a good thing.’
He takes aim again.
‘This is murder!’ I howl. ‘I can talk! I can think! I used to go to school!’
I don’t know why I shouted that last line. It just popped out.
>
‘Hush now,’ Coley purrs. ‘One little bullet and all your worries will be behind you.’
‘Hold,’ Barnes barks. ‘We’re hunters, not killers. We mop up the dead, we don’t execute the living.’
‘She’s a zombie,’ Coley protests.
‘But unlike any other we’ve encountered. She can reason. She can plead for her life. We don’t have the right to kill someone who understands what we’re doing.’
‘Not a someone,’ Coley sneers. ‘A something. And you might be going soft in your old age, but I’m not about to lose focus. These bastards killed the people I loved. I won’t stop as long as they’re active and I don’t give a damn if they can talk or not.’
Coley cocks his gun. Tag and Essex gawp like children. Barnes goes on staring at me.
‘She said her name is Becky Smith,’ Barnes says softly.
‘I heard.’ Coley shrugs. ‘I don’t care.’
‘Have you ever killed something that could tell you its name?’ Barnes presses.
‘As it happens, yes,’ Coley says. ‘That didn’t stop me then and it sure as hell won’t stop me now. She’s a bloody zombie! They’re the bad guys, remember?’
‘I don’t know about good and I don’t know about bad,’ Barnes replies softly. ‘Until a few minutes ago all that mattered to me was the living and the undead. I thought the world had been divided neatly along those lines and I operated accordingly. Now I see it’s not so simple. I can’t kill this girl. Even though she’s missing a heart, she’s too much like a real person.’
Coley stiffens. ‘Are you saying you’ll stop me if I try to shoot her?’
Barnes considers that. I start to smile. Then he says, ‘No,’ and my smile fades away to nothing.
Coley grins and takes final aim.
‘I don’t have the right to stop you shooting her,’ Barnes adds. ‘You’re a free agent, I’m not your boss, you’re not answerable to me. And maybe you’re right — maybe she is a monster, and we have every right to cull her like a rabid hound. But if you kill her, I’ll put a bullet through each of your kneecaps and leave you here for the other zombies to pick apart come night.’
Coley does a double take. Barnes’s expression doesn’t change. If he’s bluffing, he’s got a first-rate poker face.
‘You’d do that to me?’ Coley asks softly. ‘After all we’ve been through these last six months?’
‘I’d have to,’ Barnes says. ‘In my view that would be the only appropriate response. If you feel you have to kill this girl, I won’t stop you. But be aware of the consequences.’
‘You’d choose a zombie over a friend?’ Coley snarls.
‘You’re no friend of mine, any more than I’m a friend of yours.’ Barnes smiles icily. ‘We’re just a couple of guys who hunt together.’
Coley weighs up his options. I can tell he’d love to put a bullet through Barnes’s head almost as much as he wants to put one through mine. But the American has a lethal air about him. He’s not someone you go up against lightly.
‘Have it your way,’ Coley finally snarls, holstering his gun. He heads for the car, not looking at any of the others.
‘Head on back, boys,’ Barnes says, nodding at Tag and Essex. In a daze they follow Coley to the vehicle and get in. Coley fires up the engine and revs it angrily. For a moment I think he plans to mow down the American. But Barnes never gives any indication that he’s worried. And although the car rumbles forward a metre or so, Coley doesn’t push things any further.
‘You’ve had a lucky escape today,’ Barnes says.
‘Yes,’ I gulp. ‘Thank you.’
‘In this city, you’d better hope you stay lucky,’ he mutters, then backs up, keeping his rifle trained on me the whole way, until he gets into the car. As soon as the door slams shut, the car squeals past. The last thing I see of the hunters is an angry-looking Coley giving me the finger.
Then the car turns a corner and is gone, leaving me lying alone in the road, still trembling at my narrow escape.
EIGHT
I drag myself through the streets, limping, bruised, the flesh torn to shreds on my elbows and at the back of my head. I don’t think any bones are broken, though I can’t be certain. The pain isn’t as bad as it would be if I was alive, but it’s pretty damn excruciating.
I recall the look of hatred in Coley’s eyes as I stumble along. Oddly enough, I don’t blame him for wanting to kill me. I probably had that same look when I first saw a zombie. We’re monsters, plain and simple. The dead can, by definition, have no automatic right to life.
I make slower progress than before, hampered by my injuries. It’s dusk before I turn into the street where I used to live. Some of the keener or hungrier zombies have already come out of hiding and are on patrol. A few stop and sniff me as I pass, losing interest when they realise I’m more like them than one of the living.
Finally I come to the block of flats where I grew up. I can see from here that our front door is open. We have electricity in this area but no lights are on inside. It doesn’t look like anyone’s home. Which is a good thing. My greatest fear as I drew closer was that I’d find Mum, eyes glassed over, human flesh stuck between her teeth, lost to me forever in a state worse than death. (I’m not so worried about Dad, as I’m pretty certain he made it out alive. He has the luck of the devil.) I’m not sure what I’d do if I found her and she was a zombie. I’d want to kill her, to end her suffering, but I don’t think that I could.
I spot a few familiar faces on the street, neighbours from a past that seems a thousand years removed. Nobody that I really cared about though. Ignoring them, I crawl up the three flights of stairs – as I pass a giant arse which was spray-painted on the wall, I slap it for luck and grin fleetingly at the memory of happier times – and limp along the landing, then step inside what used to be my home and shut the door on the outside world.
The flat smells musty. The heating hasn’t been turned on for months and none of the windows are open. Most of the doors are closed – a habit of Mum’s, she couldn’t bear an open door – so the rooms are stuffy.
I do a tour of the flat, making sure I’m alone. No bloodstains anywhere, which is a promising sign. No zombies lying in any dark corners either, which is even better. Maybe Mum made it out after all. Perhaps Dad came for her after I split from him at school, took her somewhere safe. They could be living the high life on some paradise island now.
‘Yeah,’ I sneer at myself. ‘Dream on!’
I get a pang in my chest where my heart should be when I look into their bedroom. Some of Mum’s clothes are laid across the bed, three different sets. She was obviously choosing what to wear that night when the world went to hell. I can picture her standing here, staring at the clothes, trying to decide. Then . . .
What? Killed by a zombie? Turned into one of the living dead? Taken off to some mystical Shangri-La by her racist, wife-beating knight in shining armour?
I don’t know. All I know for sure is that she never made a final choice. The clothes stayed here, strewn across the bed, never to be worn again.
‘I miss you, Mum,’ I moan and wait for tears to come. But of course they don’t. They can’t. So in the end I close the door and go to check my own room.
It looks smaller than I remembered, dark and poky. I turn on the light, but that just makes it seem even more claustrophobic, full of ominous shadows. I gaze round. My bed looks the same as it always did, crumpled black sheets, the indent of my head on the pillow. No bookshelves or posters. I didn’t believe in cluttering up my room. I liked my space, me.
I spot my iPod lying on the table next to my bed. I pick it up and smile softly. I left it charging the morning I set off to school for the last time, so it’s warm to the touch. I scroll through a couple of my playlists, select a song at random and stick my headphones on. I yelp and immediately turn down the volume. It’s easy to forget how good my sense of hearing is. Back then I used to set the volume up almost to maximum. If I did that now, I’d deafen mysel
f.
I let the song play to its end, then lay down the iPod and step out of the room. I’d been looking forward to settling in here again, lying on my old bed and staring at the patch of ceiling which I knew so well. But now that I’ve seen it, I’ve gone off the idea. Instead I head back to Mum and Dad’s room, sweep the clothes from the bed (I never was overly sentimental), lie back and cross my legs.
‘Night night,’ I murmur after a few minutes, then turn on my side. I can’t sleep, not since I was killed, but there’s no harm in pretending every once in a while, is there?
NINE
I spend several days in the flat, maybe even a couple of weeks. Hard to tell for sure — one monotonous day blends into another and I lose track after a while. I only leave three times, to feed. On each occasion, being new to the whole brain-eating game, I track other zombies. They shuffle around the streets, sniffing like pigs in search of truffles. Often they go for hours without finding anything, but in the end they usually manage to track down an old corpse with some scraps of brain still left in its head.
I expected the zombies to fight over the meagre morsels, but they feed politely, taking turns, waiting patiently while others gorge themselves. Sometimes they get a bit overeager and try to butt in, but always pull back if the feasting creature growls warningly at them.
I hate having to feed on the dried-up, rubbery bits of brain, but it’s eat or lose my mental faculties completely. I keep looking for animals, but I still haven’t seen any, apart from the birds and rats. I’ve eaten the brains of a few dead crows and rodents, and even caught a live rat once — I think it must have been sick or lame, because it couldn’t run very fast. But they haven’t made any real difference. Too small. I’d need to tuck into a dog or cat’s brain to find out if it could do the job that a human’s does for me.
The rest of the time I hole up in the flat, recovering. My wounds don’t heal, but the dull ache fades from my bones and my thick, jelly-like blood combines with the green moss to form thin, wispy scabs around the scrapes. After a few days, I’m good as new (well, as close to it as a zombie can ever be), but I make no move to leave. I can’t think of anywhere better to go.