Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (91 page)

And there, at the back, Robbins saw her––short dark hair, craning her neck along with the other people to see who had gathered here today: Caroline Hills. He turned to see that the man they had in cuffs had noticed her, too. A look passed between Caroline and the person who so resembled the husband she had lost, and Robbins almost felt sorry for him. But then the DCI was being jostled to one side and more policemen were emerging from the station to deal with the numbers.

Beth spotted it first and grabbed Robbins’ shoulder. There, in the crowd, was a hand clutching a gun. It was an old-fashioned type of pistol, nothing that might be used on the streets today––more like a relic from a museum. Robbins doubted whether it would even fire.

But it did. Three loud bangs.

He saw the man in cuffs go down, two bullets hitting him hard. Then Robbins felt a pain in his own arm, as he dove across to try and shield Beth. If there was confusion before, then there was mass panic now that the shots had rung out. Robbins tried to shout out to his men: apprehend the shooter; secure the area. But the plainclothes officers from the van had already pulled their own guns, which caused even more hysteria.

Robbins clutched at his arm and his hand came away red. Then Beth was there, examining the wound.

She told him to keep the hand on it and apply pressure. “You silly sod,” Beth whispered, and kissed his forehead, before checking on the other injured party. She scrambled along the floor to where he’d fell.

But when she got there she found nothing. No body, no Matthew.

Nothing except a patch of blood where he’d lay, spreading out like wings on the concrete floor.

Chapter Sixteen

The next few days were just as confused as that afternoon.

For a while the news had concentrated fully on what had happened: about Matthew, about who he might be, about where he might have gone after the assassination attempt, about his revenge on the man who had ‘killed’ him. It was discussed on every message board and talk show, theologians offered their opinions and scientists expounded on what Beth had already suggested. But there was no proof, no concrete evidence of anything. So rationality soon began to reign. If nothing else it was a diversion, a curiosity along the lines of raining fish and the Yeti. Certainly nowhere near as exciting as reading about which politician was having an affair or which celebrity had suddenly been diagnosed with bulimia.

Then, just as Croft had predicted, the world began to change.

The first thing that happened was that Phil Barnes, the motorcyclist Matthew had apparently brought back from the brink of death, got up from his hospital bed and went for a walk himself. The nurses thought he was going to the toilet, a good sign that he was recovering even more. But he wasn’t. Phil was going down into the morgue.

He walked past the attendant in charge, who was listening to
Nessun Dorma
on his ipod at the time, as if he hadn’t even seen him. The man asked him exactly what he thought he was doing and Phil simply replied:

“They’re asleep, that’s all. Just asleep.”

Then he pulled open the freezer drawers and woke them up, one by one: men, women and children. In no time at all, the morgue was filled with reanimated corpses and the attendant had collapsed on the floor in a dead faint. He was used to cadavers making noises––groaning and farting as he moved them––but not used to them climbing out of their drawers. The last person to be woken was in quite a bad condition. His limbs were broken and he was still scarred, bruised and cut from the fall.

However, when he looked down on himself, Douglas Knowles found that he was entirely healed, that his body was as good as… no,
better
than new. Life surged through him, the blood pumping in his veins full of vitality. The last thing he could remember was being on that balcony. When the man he’d killed refused to put him out of his own misery, he’d suddenly been overcome with a sense that there was no point in going on. And he owed the person standing there some kind of justice. That was when he decided to throw himself off.

He smiled. It was a miracle.

“Come on,” said Phil, showing the others a way out of their resting place, up into the light.

In his hospital bed, recovering from being shot and being treated for the ‘full house’ of ulcers they’d now found in his gut, DCI Robbins saw the strange procession go past. And saw Knowles tagging on at the end. But he put it down the strong medication he was on, just as he had the return visit from Croft.

~

That night, Dr. Beth Preston was down in the lab––going through blood samples she’d squirreled away while she was still able to––when she was interrupted in her work by a child calling out her name.

She rose from the microscope slowly, then nearly lost her balance, clutching onto the desk for support and knocking over the vials.

Beth’s hand wavered, then it found the child’s back and she hugged her tight. The girl felt as real as anyone she’d ever met, as solid as… well, as solid as Matthew had been. Tears were tracking down the doctor’s cheeks, and she could taste saltwater on her lips.

The penny dropped and Sarah suddenly grinned. “Oh
that
. It’s okay, it wasn’t your fault.”

“But if I’d picked it up earlier then maybe––”

“It was
meant
to happen, Bethany,” Sarah told her. “There was no way you could have known about the clot.” She tittered. “Sounds like cream, doesn’t it?” When Becky didn’t join in, Sarah said, “Could’ve happened anytime.”

“But I’m a doctor, I should’ve seen the signs––”

Sarah put a finger to her lips. “It made you a better one. Think about all the good you’ve done. Now,” she said seriously, “we’ve really got to go, there are things to do.”

~

These weren’t the only occurrences.

All around the country, all over the globe, people were seeing the dead. Not ghosts, but living, breathing human beings––of a kind. Mrs. Shaw, the school helper, woke up from yet another troubled sleep only to see the figure of young Oliver at the foot of her bed, burn marks from the rope still around his neck. Terrified, and thinking she’d brought the images from her nightmare into the real world, she tried to wake her husband. But he just kept on snoring beside her.

Oliver held out his hand for her to take it, and she felt compelled to do so…

Across town Thomas Valentine was shocked to see that his best friend from college, Martin Raines, who had drowned during the Tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka, was playing computer games on the X-Box in his living room. Meanwhile WPC Trisha Adams’ discovered that her Granddad, who’d passed away from a stroke when she was only a little girl, had come to visit offering her a bag of those sticky toffees he always used to bring.

And as PC Frank Wilson was sitting down to eat breakfast, he found that his Uncle Ted and Auntie Rita, the couple who had taken him in as a child and brought him up as their own, were suddenly in the room with him. Ted was making himself a cup of coffee and Auntie Rita was asking him if there was any toast left. He was scared and happy at the same time, but he wasn’t really surprised. After all, the dead man in the cell had told him he would see them again soon.

~

In the cold, damp cellar he waited.

It wasn’t comfortable: he was hungry and he couldn’t feel his hands now, but he had to wait it out. What he’d done had been right, of that he had no doubt. But the authorities wouldn’t see it that way. They’d probably been to search for him already, though he doubted whether they’d find this hiding place––used to protect the faithful during the blitz when the bombing had been fierce. Why, they’d even held services down here.

Smiling, he patted the instrument he’d used to rid the earth of that monstrous creation. His father’s trusty old service revolver, given to his mother after the great man’s death. It had been used back then in the name of good, fighting the forces of evil, and he’d put it to use in much the same way.

Father Lilley struck a match and lit the altar candle he’d brought down with him. He wished to consult the good book once again. But in the half-light he saw something stirring there. A shadow at the back of the cellar.

“He has been at work, yes, but not here. Not today. It was not me who told you to shoot that man.” His father, the moustache he sported twitching, reached forward and took the gun from him.

The army man picked up the bible and leafed through it. “You’re so fond of quoting these passages, Gerald. Here’s one for you: ‘And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged, every man according to his works.’”

Lilley’s face froze. “The Book of Revelation.”

His father nodded. “The immortal body is real, Gerald. And yet that same body can pass through an object, or pick up the object.” He looked down at his old gun. “They also have none of the defects they had in life.”

Lilley was shaking. His father grabbed him by the hand and started to drag him up the stairs to the hidden door beneath the altar itself. “No!” screamed Lilley. “It can’t be.”

The soldier dragged Lilley out into the church and forced him to look through the window. There, in the graveyard, were the dead. Each one standing next to the grave they had risen from, the soil on top untouched (in fact the only hole there was at Matthew Daley’s plot). Their clothes ranged from the quite recent, to centuries old. All were looking at him, all were pointing.

“Now do you understand, Gerald? Around the world, those who have died in conflicts like mine––those who are
still
dying––they are coming back, too.”

Lilley grabbed the gun off his father and placed it against his head. Before the Captain could do anything, the trigger had been pulled and the last bullet punched a hole in Lilley’s skull. To the priest’s own amazement, though, he didn’t fall down. He dropped the weapon and touched the wound in the side of his head, looking at the disgusting mess on his fingers.

His father went to the font and dipped a cup into the water, bowing his head at the stained glass image of Christ above him. The he returned to his son and washed away the blood on his scalp. The hole was gone.