4 FACING UP TO REALITY
Most streets in Glasgow have a
Big Issue
seller, and ours was no different. Marie had a wild mane of frizzy, curly hair as though she’d put her wet hand in the national grid, and she was the size of a brick wall. She was younger than me (one day she'd told me out was her 20th birthday), but in every line of her face I could tell she’d lived a hard life. When she handed me my change (she’d never keep it, even when I insisted) I could see scars and calluses on her hands, but I never asked her how she got them. Instead I'd buy the magazine she sold, and we’d whine about Scotland’s wind and rain and how the sun never shone.
One morning it was freezing and without thinking about whether she’d accept it or not, I’d brought her some coffee in a polystyrene cup from the store. It was so hot my fingers were burning through my woollen gloves, but she’d drunk it in one great gulp, her throat bobbing as though she had an Adam’s apple. With the smile she’d flashed through yellow picket-fence teeth, you’d think I’d given her a gold watch. From that day onwards, I made a habit of getting her a cup a few times a week on my way to work.
Yesterday was the last time I’d be getting her a hot drink, because as we turned the corner and came into what passes as a high street - a strip of shops with everything a person could possibly need: bookies, bakers, hairdressers, a store selling everything from newspapers to screwdrivers and a tanning salon - I realise Marie isn’t Marie anymore.
She’s grappling on the pavement with a man we’d seen coming out of the store earlier, and her mouth’s wide open, but not because she’s giving her Big Issue I pitch. She’s trying to bite the poor guy.
The message of countless domestic violence campaigns had been rammed home to Glasgow’s men: never hit a woman, under any circumstances. How else can I explain Scott’s initial reluctance to get involved even when he must have realised before I did that the man in trouble was one of his pals?
My vision’s obscured by the biker’s helmet I’m wearing, so it’s only when we’re within scruff of the neck distance that I realise it’s Mustafa from the newsagent's who’s on the ground. He’s struggling to get up, but Marie has a beefy arm across his throat, and her mouth’s snapping at him, and there’s no trace of a smile. She reminds me of Donald Sutherland in the final scene from
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
.
Scott swings into action with the axe, and with one swoop, he chops off Marie’s free arm so cleanly the crunch sounds like a lettuce being sliced in two.
The limb lands with a schlep onto the ground, turning the snow crimson as blood spurts out of the stump, drenching everything in its path with arterial spray, including Scott, Mustafa, and me.
Mad Marie stops to gawp at her arm as though she’s never seen it before. The limb’s twitching on the snowy sidewalk, grasping at thin air.
Will the thing no die?
I’m so entranced with watching the arm move, the fat pink fingers digging into the crisp snow, that I don’t see Scott get busy with the axe. But I hear it all, the grunts and groans as the blade falls, the snap of tendons, the crunchy separation of bone, and the squelch of bloody pulp.
Without realising it, I’ve stepped backwards into the path of another one of those dead bastards (we’re calling them that because they’re dead and a bastard to kill). The helmet has blocked my peripheral vision, and I brush against the thing that’s still wearing a suit and tie and as I do, I catch a waft of the decaying flesh that reminds me of the stench in our flat when we’d killed Archie.
I stagger backwards and keep moving away, trying and create as much distance between me and it. I’ve got the bat raised off my shoulder, ready to inflict some serious injury when Scott jumps between us and chops into the freak whilst yelling in time to every blow as though his voice gives him the strength to do the unthinkable, hack a man to death. Mild-mannered Scottish schoolteacher turns into American Psycho in one day.
First an arm flies off with the suit jacket sleeve still attached, then a nose lobs off, followed by a leg, but the thing is still lugging forward until Scott slices it right across the abdomen, and its guts flop out. It trips over its own intestines and falls, leaving Scott a clear swing to sever its remaining leg. Now it’s crawling along the sidewalk, its only arm reaching out, grabbing for me. That’s when I swing my baseball bat and keep on whacking it hard on the head, spray painting the sidewalk with blood.
I don’t realise until Scott tells me that I’m yelling obscenities as I bash the thing’s brains in, and there’s a fierceness in my expression that scares the hell out of him.
“He’s dead.”
I’m brought back to the present when a gentle hand is placed on my shoulder, and I turn and almost take a swing at Scott.
Mustafa hauls himself to his feet and stands there dumbfounded. His jeans and white t-shirt are smeared with blood, but there’s no sign of it being his blood. His eyes are the size of small planets. His mouth is open wide when he turns to me and says, “What the fuck was that?”
“Zombies,” I say.
The word sounds dumb in my mouth, and I almost apologise for saying it. This is the kind of madness that gets someone locked away in a padded room, in an I-love-me jacket. There’s got to be a better explanation than zombies for what’s happening to people, though I haven’t a clue what that better explanation might be.
Mustafa gazes at me as though he’s seeing me for the first time. Bet he thinks I’m crazy. I don’t blame him. I would too if I clapped eyes on a woman wearing a biker’s helmet and wielding a baseball bat covered in blood.
I guess he doesn’t believe me. “Zombies? Are you high on something?”
“That thing,” I say, pointing. “It’s what that is, a zombie, and Marie too.” I stare at her body parts on the sidewalk. “Well, she was Marie.”
A flicker of understanding flashes across his face, and he focuses on the bloody axe hanging at Scott’s side, and then doffs an imaginary hat to him. “Thanks for saving my life, pal.”
Scott blinks as though it’s no big deal. Most people would have run the other way (self-preservation and all that), which would be understandable. But, not Scott. Because of his outward demeanour, he may come across as way too serious at times, but on the inside beats the heart of a lion. It’s one of the reasons I fell for him. He has principles and the courage to back them up. Not many men do.
Scott pulls off his blood-drenched catcher’s mask and throws it away, muttering something about it not being worth a shit in a bloodbath. I follow his lead and toss the biker’s helmet away too. Thing’s going to get me killed because it restricts my vision, even if it could prevent me from getting bitten on the head or face.
Scott tells Mustafa to come with us, but it’s as if he can’t hear him. He’s in a daze and walks back towards the shop, prattling on about needing to lock up because his father will kill him otherwise.
I tug on his arm. Despite the chill his skin feels clammy. “If you go back to the shop, one of those zombies might kill you, eat you first. Or worse, you might get bitten, die, and come back as one of those freaks.”
In case he doesn’t get it, I point towards what’s left of Marie and the suited man. “And the thing is, this plague, or whatever it is, is only going to get worse.” There’s no point in sugar coating our situation. “So you have to come with us. Scott’s friend has a car we can borrow.”
Mustafa stops walking and turns around to face me, meeting my gaze. “I need to stay here. Dad will kill me if I don’t. The place will get cleared out like those shops during the London riots.” He turns back around and starts walking towards the store. “Besides, old Mrs King is waiting for me.”
Scott jogs up alongside him and grabs him by the arm, and pulls him to a stop. “She’s in the shop, Muzz?”
Mustafa’s brows knot. “Yeah, she walked in with her stick, wasn’t looking too good.”
“Damn,” Scott says.
I know what he’s thinking: how could we possibly take an old woman with us? Me? I’m thinking she’s already been bitten, and I don’t want to be eaten by an old woman. Or have to kill one.
Mustafa taps his head. “She’s gone senile, that's all. She had a bit of a turn, spewed up some horrible looking green stuff, so I got her a chair. She dozed off. Weird it was. I think the old bag’s gone cuckoo.”
“I don’t,” Scott says. “She’s been bitten. She’s one of those things now, just waiting for you to come back so she can gnaw the meat off your bones.”
His mouth goes slack-jawed, reminding me of a ventriloquist’s dummy; after someone has withdrawn the hand.
“We better go.” Fear laces my voice. I’m itching to get away from here. We’re out in the open, and who knows what could leap out of at us from one of those doorways and finish us off.
Grabbing an arm each, Scott and I pull Mustafa along with us as if he’s a drag-along toy dog that toddlers play with, and this time he doesn’t put up a fight.
“Okay, I’m coming,” he tells us, jaw muscles tightening. “But there’s someone I want to fetch on the way. He’s an expert in these things. And he’s got a car.”
“What things?” Scott and I say at once.
“Zombies or whatever you want to call them. Kenny has seen all the films, including the Romero movies, which he tells me are the best top ones. And he’s read all the books and comics. If we need any survival tips, he’s our go-to guy.”
Scott raises his eyebrows. “Okay.”
I can tell by Scott’s lack of enthusiasm that he thinks the notion of anyone being an expert in what’s happening now based on some geeky movies he’d seen and books he’d read is dubious.
So I ask Mustafa, “Kenny? Is he the freak who works at the last video store in Scotland?”
That’s what we all call it, but immediately, I wish I could snatch the words back, even although I have this image in my head of Kenny being some kind of nut who’ll tell us to wrap ourselves up in tinfoil and hide in a room lined with egg boxes so the aliens can’t communicate with the transmitters they’ve implanted in our heads.
Scott eyes me with the kind of disdain he reserves for unruly pupils; I’ve seen him in action. He’s used it on me so often I’m starting to develop an immunity.
Mustafa acts like I didn’t say anything offensive. “Kenny’s a smart guy.” Then he pauses as if he’s remembering something, and then meets my gaze and grins. “Yeah, you’re right; he is a bit of a freak. UFO’s, superpowers, extraterrestrials, he believes in a lot of weird stuff, including zombies. He’s like that guy off The X-Files.”
Something occurs to me. He can’t be that much of a freak if he thinks zombies are real. “I don’t know about UFO’s and aliens, but he’s right about zombies.”
Nobody has a response to that. We all know we’re screwed without Kenny, because maybe, just maybe, he’s the key to us surviving this apocalypse.
5 THE TROUBLE WITH ZOMBIES
Little has changed in Kenny’s world since the 1980s. We realise that the minute we step inside The Video Emporium and saw the framed
Back to the Future
and ET posters alongside those for
Footloose
,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
, and other movies. Bins of tapes and DVDs on sale take up most of the floor space.
Kenny stands behind the counter, wearing thick John Lennon-style specs held together with sticky tape. He’s gabbing away to a carrot-topped pal, oblivious to what’s going on outside and their obvious lack of customers. Going by Mustafa’s comments as we jogged along to the shop, Kenny is pretty much oblivious to anything that goes on the world unless it involves little green men and the paranormal.
One of the few concessions to the modern era was the massive plasma telly they were watching the original
V
on. The TV's blaring, and I know that once we leave I’ll need to make my ears pop or risk ending up with the hearing of someone submerged in water.
As we advance towards the counter, Carrot Top and Kenny carry on discussing the best way to deal with first contact from extraterrestrial life. They seem oblivious to the zombie apocalypse landing on their doorstep.
I’m holding my bloody baseball bat as though it’s a part of me, and Scott’s swinging his axe at his side. I half expect him to sing, “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay.”
Mustafa, who’d turned the keys in the lock to prevent anyone from coming in, leads the way; his body movements are as sleek as a snake’s. I swear he wears tight white t-shirts to show off his washboard abs to the giggling schoolgirls who come into his dad’s store. So far, he’s not shown that he has the balls to back up his brawn. If it weren’t for Scott and me, he’d be dead by now, but he didn't thank me.
When Kenny and Carrot Top finally pry their eyes away from the telly where something horrible is springing out of someone’s chest, to look our way but still carry on with their conversation, Mustafa reaches across the counter and doinks his mate on the head to get his attention. “Haven’t you seen what’s going on outside?” His voice is a growl.
A bemused glance from both men gives him his answer.
“There are fucking zombies out there, man.”
Kenny and Carrot Top shrug and carry on with their conversation.
Mustafa’s body stiffens, and he turns to face Scott and me. “Tell these dunderheids the score.”
We don’t have time for this.
Scott swallows and is about to speak when tired of them pussyfooting around, I step forward and shove my baseball bat right under their noses and point to the blood that’s congealing at the hitting end.
“See this…” I pause to let Kenny and Carrot Top examine it, resisting the urge to whack them across their thick skulls with it. “This here is brain matter from Scott’s best mate, Archie. You might know him - gob bigger than the Clyde, enjoys a bevy, bit of a ladies’ man. Or, at least he was. I say was because he’s dead and this time he’s no getting up. Oh, and he tried to eat us. After he was dead.”
I hope my words sink in. I’ve got their attention now. “We had to bash his brains in so he couldn’t get up again.”
Kenny turns to his colleague with a gormless expression on his face that I want to smack right off with my baseball bat. “Brilliant,” he says, his eyes bright. “This is your best prank yet, Muzz. You’ve even got props.”
Aye and we’ve got a dead prop back at our flat. Very realistic it is.
I’m about to clatter him over his dumb head with my prop, but Scott steps in front of me.
“Haven’t you seen the news, you two? Heard about all those folk who are dying, then waking up and eating people? Christ, one of them even ate David Cameron.” He breaks off talking to make a victory gesture with his fist. Scott's dad was a miner when another Tory leader, Thatcher vowed to crush the coal unions and was accused of using the police to beat up striking miners. “And grand it was too. Looked like Milliband who did it, though he died the day before. I had to watch it a few times to be sure of what I was seeing.”
Kenny’s disbelieving grin is lopsided. “What is this, Muzz an early April Fool’s? Or, let’s make fun of the video guy today? You guys are always coming in and saying crazy stuff.”
Mustafa springs forward, and with arm muscles straining, grabs his pal by the throat. “This is real, mate. Not some kind of fucking game. We need to leave. Move your arse. Now.”
Kenny’s specs steam up, and his face turns red like it’d been given a damn good slapping.
“Get off me,” he yelps, using both hands to knock Mustafa’s grasp away.
Both men stand eyeball to eyeball as if sizing each other up. The goofy grin slides off Kenny's face and he starts shaking with anger. “What’s up with you?”
Scott steps in with a neutral expression on his face. Having worked at a Glasgow high school, he’s well used to breaking up fights and not getting clobbered in the process. “Whoa, take it easy, guys.”
Mustafa’s mutters away to himself as Kenny slumps down on a chair beside the counter. Meanwhile, Carrot Top has slinked into the back of the shop, saying something about a delivery.
It doesn’t occur to me that we should warn him not to open the back door. Not that he’d listen. He thinks we’re wind up merchants, and that this is some elaborate practical joke.
I’m desperate to get moving. To get to Fiona’s. In this shop we’re an easy target with all the glass windows. Whether the door is locked or not, those things are hungry and mad enough to break in.
I’m about to point this out when something in Kenny’s brain must have clicked. He puts his finger to my bat and comes away with some blood on his fingertip. He raises it to his nose and sniffs. “Smells like copper.” He wipes the smear on a brown paper bag on the counter. “It’s blood, all right.”
The way he announces this discovery sounds as if it’s some kind of revelation and not what we’ve been telling him all along.
“Is what you say, true? Has it really happened? The zombie apocalypse?”
He eyes Mustafa who nods. Kenny’s eyes sparkle, and at first, I think I’ve misunderstood his sudden show of emotion. How could anyone be pleased about this? Then he wipes his glasses with his sleeve. “I knew it would happen. One day.” There’s feverish excitement in his voice. “How did it start?”
Mustafa’s confused. “What?”
“What caused people to turn into zombies?” says Kenny. “Was it a virus created by the military? Were they trying to create a super soldier? Was it animal experiments gone wrong? Or, fracking that released an unknown alien toxin? Or was it the Chinese testing a genetically engineered weapon? Or Iran...”
“Who knows?” Scott snaps, jumping in before Kenny can unleash more oddball theories. “Nobody knows.”
Kenny springs out of the chair like a jack in the box. “We’d better go now. This place isn’t safe. Zombies are drawn to shops and lights...or didn’t you know that?”
We shake our heads.
Kenny frowns. “Christ, guys, have you never seen
Dawn of the Dead
?” Then he shouts into the backroom. “Colin. Let’s go.”
“But there’s a delivery.”
Scott shouts, “Don’t open the back door.”
Carrot Top reappears. “They won’t be long.”
It’s obvious he’s been listening at the doorway. He’s chuckling away to himself like a school kid fidgeting in class. “You’re not going to fall for this, mate, are you? It’s a pure wind up. We all love watching the movies, and that guy from This Life is good in The Walking Dead, but hey, that’s all they are, movies. Not...”
He’s cut off mid-sentence by human shapes grabbing him from behind. There’s no time to do anything. He’s gone in the blink of an eye, dragged into the back.
We hear bloodcurdling screams that tell us it won’t be over quickly for poor Colin who's now being munched on by dead bastards.
Mustafa’s already at the main door. He’s fumbling with the lock and taking so long about opening the door I’m terrified they’ll finish off Colin and reach us before it opens. We have no idea how many there are. Could be two, three, a dozen; a mob. The only way we’ll know for sure is if we stay here, and we’re sure as hell not doing that.
When the door finally swings open, we run like hell out into the snow.
Kenny’s choking back sobs as he sprints behind us. He’s saying, “Fuck, fuck,” over and over again.
When we get some distance between us and the shop and are convinced we’re not being followed, we stop to lean against a wall until our breathing returns to normal. My teeth are rattling about in my head from the exertion, but Mustafa hasn’t even broken a sweat.
Kenny’s panting away. “You...weren’t...lying.”
I doubt he gets to do much exercise watching videos all day long. I’m about to chastise him for that when Mustafa charges off down the street.
Scott shouts, “Wait,” but when he doesn’t stop, Scott runs after him, and not wanting to be left behind, Kenny and I follow, trudging through the snow.
On the pavement up ahead, I see a girl with long blonde hair being pinned down by three dead bastards who are picking away at her flesh with their fingers as if she’s an all-you-can-eat rotisserie buffet. She’s not making a sound. I hope to God she's dead.
Scott slaps a hand on his Mustafa’s shoulder to stop him from getting any closer. “It’s too late, Muzz.”
Mustafa’s eyes are closed as though he’s praying. “It’s Jessica. She works in the shop sometimes. She’s nice.”
I bite back the temptation to say, so was Marie and she tried to eat you.
They’re too busy jabbering away to notice a hand reach out from a pile of snow at their feet. It grabs Mustafa’s ankle and pulls him towards it. Tam the Bam, our local bum who always reeks of booze, a stench so pungent it could knock us out if we got within ten feet of him, rises Carrie-style out of the snow mound.
There is no way we could have seen that coming.
Mustafa wildly bats away at the hand as it drags him towards the pile of snow, but old Tam, or whatever he is now, holds on as Mustafa shrieks and kicks. Whatever the virus infection does it gives the dead superhuman strength because Mustafa does two hundred bench presses a day (he’s always boasting about it) is losing to a man who weighs about the same as a bundle of bones.
Scott arches the axe upward but stops mid-swing. With Tam holding onto Mustafa’s ankle, Scott has to be careful not to hit him with the axe, especially when the only part of Tam that’s visible now is the hand (I recognise the Royal Navy tattoo) because he’s scooted back into the snow, probably anticipating a nice meal in the privacy of his makeshift igloo.
I don’t know what comes over me, but before I’m conscious of what I’m doing, I’m launching myself at the lump in the snow, battering the hell out of the spot where I believe Tam’s head is with my bat, so lost in my murderous rage I only stop when Scott shouts, “Enough,” and points to the bloody carcass.
Even as chunks of flesh rain down, I tell myself I was forced to do it to survive.
Kenny marches over. “Did you get the brain?”
I’ve forgotten that he was even there because he’d been standing around like a spare part whilst I sprang into action.
I eye the bloody mush that used to be Tam’s brain, and then I burst out laughing at the stupidity of his question. “Aye, it’s fair to say I got the brain. I brained him.”
“Good job,” Kenny says, polishing his glasses.
Poor soul. He might have accidentally got a few splashes of blood on his specs as he stood back and marvelled at the live entertainment.
Mustafa sits in the snow, rubbing his ankle, and then he gives Kenny the death stare. “Where the hell were you, mate?”
“Oh,” Kenny says, “I’m here mainly in an advisory role.”
“Well,” says Mustafa, eyeballing him, “you’d better learn to get into a killer role. We won’t survive if one of us is just a passenger.”
Kenny pushes his glasses back up his nose, the corners of his mouth curling at the edges before he releases a full on smile. “Wow, Emma, you’re a bad ass zombie killing machine.”
I’m about to dampen his enthusiasm by telling him he’ll end up getting eaten alive if he doesn’t learn to fight like me. Instead, my eyes are trained on Mustafa, waiting for him to thank me for saving his sorry backside. No gesture of appreciation is forthcoming.
“You’re welcome,” I snort.
No response, he’s too busy rubbing his ankle.
I vow there and then that the next thing that tries to take a chunk out of that guy, can damn well have him. I won’t be intervening and putting my life on the line for him again. Instead, my pity will be with the poor dead bastard that ends up with indigestion.