All the Dead Are Here (26 page)

“Morning Dad.” I look at her with all the love in her universe, eyes moist, throat tight and I just smile a smile that is full of nothing but my love for her. She smiles back. And before the moment is lost, I gently squeeze the trigger.

Jim Bramer, Minister of Special Circumstances, gazed out of the grimy rain-slick window of The Houses of Parliament office that was his home. Casually he picked at the damp, peeling paint on the window sill and dropped the flakes onto the ageing, stained carpet. The office, once opulent in the seat of government, was now faded and ruined as the city around him. He looked out into the night, and the further he looked west, the more dread snatched at him. He could feel the rising panic in the city below, queues of shabby workers rushing down Abingdon Street towards Westminster Bridge and the Isle of Dogs. They moved together in the vain hope there was still a boat with a friendly Captain. In his office he could hear the murmurs and shouts of the crowd, people shoving and arguing, fear barely concealed as they hurried along. Bramer knew that all the boats were gone, and that Death was coming. He knew this because the Minister had phoned him and told him so.

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 that 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, but 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 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 flame thrower 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 the public address system, an announcement was made.

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

The 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 it’s 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 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, 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 overnight 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 had 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 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 asked. 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.