Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] (38 page)

He nodded. “We’re going back to my dad’s house, at the top of hill,” he replied.

“But that’s where the zombies are coming from!”

There were over twenty of them now, all shambling their way along the road, their direction only changed when they neared Dean’s position. Somehow, the dead things could detect warm humans close to them. This phenomenon baffled Dean; there should be no way that they could. Any first year biology student would say that it was impossible. “Sorry, but it’s our only choice. Better start practicing your swings.”

A few feet from where they stood a grey-haired woman abruptly stopped, turned, and shuffled towards Alison. Aside from her gait, the woman appeared quite healthy. With her neatly brushed hair and that god awful floral dress, the woman looked more suited to be going to bingo. As she neared them he saw her dirt encrusted hands and the bite marks around the dead woman’s face. Dean guessed that a fox must have gotten her.

“Aim for the head,” he whispered.

Alison nodded and raised the cricket bat above her head. They both jumped when a loud crack shattered the silence and the dead woman’s head exploded, gushing gobbets of grey gunk into the air. 

“What the fuck?” Dean then saw three large individuals, each one wearing dark suits, stood behind the walking corpses. “I don’t believe it, the cavalry has arrived.” The smaller blonde-haired man casually raised his pistol and shot another one; the man stood at the back raised a cane and buried the end into one sneaking up from behind. All the dead had now turned towards the three newcomers.

“We need to get out of here, Dean! Oh fuck, I can’t believe that they’ve followed me here.” She pulled him towards a boarded up shop. “The one at the back, the fat fucker with that cane, well, he owns half of Birmingham.”

The girl dragged Dean around the corner of the shop, and when they were out of sight, she finally released his hand. She slid down the wall, weeping. Alison looked at him. “They’ve come here to kill me.”

He shook his head, not understanding any of this. “What do you mean, he owns half of Birmingham? So he’s a businessman?”

A bitter laugh erupted from her mouth. “Christ, Dean. Have you been living in a cupboard all your life? He’s a gangster, you plant. One of the worst there is.”

“What did you do to him?”

She shrugged, “Does it matter?”

Dean peered around the corner. “They’re coming this way.”

Alison moaned. “We have to find somewhere to hide. Oh God. Please don’t let them get me, Dean! I’d rather be eaten by the dead.”

He picked her off the floor and kissed her gently on the lips. “Don’t worry, Alison, they won’t get you.” He took her hand and led the girl into an alley between the shops. Dean couldn’t see a thing, but that didn’t matter, he knew exactly where he was going. “Did you ever play near the shops when you were younger? He asked.

“No, not really, apart from going into the park, I stayed home or stayed at my mate’s houses.”

Dean chuckled to himself. “You mean you plugged yourself into the computer? That’s what kids do nowadays, isn’t it. Well, in my day, we explored and had fun.”

“That’s just not possible, there’s no way anyone could enjoy themselves in this shit hole. Wait, you do know where you’re going.”

“Me and Tom used this alley to sneak into his dad’s shop. You’d be surprised how many people would buy bargain priced joints off a pair of twelve-year-old kids.”

“You mean Tom used to nick meat off his old man? That’s evil.”

“Yeah, I know. He never did twig either.”

Dean stopped moving when his foot touched something solid and gave it a light kick. “There’s something in my way; I think it’s a pile of wood.”

“Can’t we step over it?”

He cut his reply short when Dean heard the sound of running feet. He turned his head, “They’re close by,” he whispered.

The woman gasped.

“Don’t worry, Alison, it’s too dark; they won’t be able to see us.”

He watched as two of the men ran past the alleyway. The fat man stopped, and Dean watched him lean forward. It honestly felt as though he knew they were down here. After what seemed like an eternity, the man looked in the other direction. He must have satisfied his curiosity and decided that they weren’t down here.

Dean’s sigh of relief stuck in his throat when the pile of wood started to moan and move. Alison’s hand tightened around his, she’d heard it too. He lifted his foot and slammed it back down. Something cracked, but the thing still moved. He then saw to his horror that the fat man must have heard the sound as well. Dean watched him gesticulating with his arms. He didn’t have a gun, but his friends did. A couple of shots down here would finish them both off.

He slammed his foot down once more, feeling as though he’d just stamped on a balloon full of cold jelly. “Alison,” he hissed. “Get ready to run, and if anything tries to grab you, kick back, you understand?”

She whimpered. He took that as a yes. Dean saw one of the other men stand in front of the alleyway before he dragged the crying girl across the moving lump of dead flesh.

Dean soon reached solid ground and dragged the girl further down the alley; he was betting that the crack he’d felt was one of its leg bones snapping, and if it was, it should slow it down enough to allow them to escape.

He heard the girl stifle a cry when a single shot echoed through the dark alley. “Just another few seconds, we’re almost there.” He heard footsteps behind them. They were in the alley. Dean put his hand against the rough stonework, feeling for the metal bars across the basement window. It had to be around here somewhere. Dean refused to think that anyone would have blocked it up. His blood then ran cold when he realised that blocking up that window would have been the first job Tom would have done when he took over the shop. The young butcher wouldn’t have wanted the same trick to be played on him.

“What’s wrong?”

Dean gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. He feared the worse. There were two men in the alley now from the sound of it, and not that far behind either. He then felt the first window bar and resisted the urge to scream for joy. “We’re here.”

He twisted around and put his hands on her waist then gently swung her past him, “You go first,” he whispered. “The middle bar comes out, just pull it up and slide it out.”

As Alison climbed through the window he looked back, trying to work out where those men were; he heard one of them swear out loud and a couple of gunshots rang out. Dean guessed that they’d just found the moving pile of wood. Alison was through. He followed her in, watching the two shapes hurry back the way they came. He’d have to remember to thank that dead thing for saving their lives.

He dropped onto the dusty floor and immediately felt a set of warm lips find his. She moved away after a few seconds and groaned.

“Thank you, Dean. I thought we were goners just then.”

Dean led her towards the cellar steps. “I’ll confess that I wasn’t that confident of getting out of there in one piece.”

If Alison’s gangster friends continued travelling the same direction, then they ought to end up near the village hall, which suited Dean just fine. He and Alison would be able to sneak out of the butcher’s front door and get back to Dad’s house. They ought to be there in a few minutes.

They both skidded to a halt when the cellar door slowly swung open. Dean stared in astonishment at the diminutive shadow framed in the doorway.

“Tom? Is that you, old mate?”

The man laughed. “Who else would it be?”

Dean then saw the cleaver in the butcher’s hand.

“I had a feeling that you’d pay me a visit.”

“Tom, what are you doing with the cleaver?”

The man looked down at his hand, “Well, old friend, I’m afraid that I’ve got a bit of bad news.”

Chapter Twenty-three

The crack in his new dining table had widened. It had even got worse since this morning. He could now see the kitchen tiles through the twatting gap. Well, there was no chance that he’d let that soap dodging twatter get away with this one. First thing in the morning, Gavin Ellis was going to pay a visit to Huggins Furniture shop and stick his easy payment plan right up that cheating bastard’s arse.

Two hundred quid he’d paid for his shoddy built lump of twatting crap. That’s nearly a month’s worth of beer money he’d thrown away.

Gavin could picture that smarmy fresh-scrubbed fat face beaming when he’d entered the man’s shop. He’d taken Gavin for a complete ride. Roger Huggins had literally bounded towards Gavin. With his overweight frame forced into that white suit, and two sizes two small, the man cut a rather sad picture. He looked like a silly fat fool.

Looking back, he should have figured that the image had been just a smoke screen. Roger Huggins was a shark, a predator, and a bloody good one too.

Fifty quid per month and only four payments, a complete knockdown price; this was on sale only a week ago and five hundred pounds. We’ll even deliver it for you. A dining table and four chairs of this high standard would set you back over a grand anywhere else. Gavin had nodded along like a complete twatting retard, listening to all of the bullshit flannel spewing out of this gobshite’s mouth, and believing every twatting word.

He ran one of his thick fingers along the jagged edge. “He took you for a wild ride, my son,” he murmured.

What pissed him off more than anything was that he hadn’t wanted the bloody thing in the first place. It had been that twatting wife of his who’d begged him to part serious cash for this.

Fallen in love with it, she had. Seen it in the window and just had to have it. What Gavin would have liked to know was what business the bitch had on the other side of the village. The furniture shop was nowhere near any of the other shops. He’d have to remember to ask her that one.

Sarah had even promised him to take real good care of it, to clean and polished the table and chairs every day. Not that Gavin gave a fuck about the house anymore. He rarely spent time in here anyway. He’d rather be in his garage with his motorbikes.

The only occasions he bothered to enter the house was to eat, sleep, clean up before hitting the pub, and when the need arose, to give Sarah a good seeing to, either with his cock or fist. Didn’t matter which, both were fulfilling. 

Occasion number one had been the reason why he’d pulled himself away from stripping down that Yamaha’s engine. After discovering the twatting crack and the realisation that the fat cunt had sold him a lemon, his appetite had deserted him.

He sighed, thinking that he ought to just pull Roger’s arms and legs off. He then took another look at the damage; he’d rather not allow his mates to find out about this. After a close inspection, he reckoned that the gap should be fixable.  He’d take a trip into the village tomorrow and see if that old bag in the general store had any wood filler.

Gavin sure as fuck wasn’t giving it back, he’d just not give that twatter anymore money. He grinned to himself, pleased that he’d come up with a workable solution. He felt rather cheerful now; hell, with the cash he’d saved he might even get Sarah’s television fixed. He was sick to fuck of her whining on about it anyhow.

With that problem out of the way, he sat down in one of the new chairs, surprised at how comfortable it was. It did occur to him that perhaps the joke was on Roger. What if this dining table set really was worth a couple of grand? He laughed, wouldn’t that be the clincher. Once he’d repaired the damage, Gavin would get it valued, just in case.

He looked under the table to see if there were anymore cracks. Gavin saw no evidence, but he did notice something that made him smile. At the edge of the table lay Sarah’s best jeans. She loved those things. He grinned, they were just what he needed. Gavin slid down the chair and reached out with one leg and dragged the garment across the floor. When the white jeans were under his feet, Gavin wiped both his oil-stained boots on the material.

That’ll be a right bitch to get clean,” he said, grinning.

Speaking of bitches, where the fuck was she with his twatting food? He already told her what time he’d be in for it. Sarah understood what the consequences were for lateness.

“Are you in the kitchen, girl?” he shouted. “Come on, I’m fucking starving.”

He leaned back in amazement; the bitch was actually ignoring him! She had to be in there, he could smell the twatting food. He almost laughed aloud; imagine that, his wife was openly defying him after all these years.

“Are you going to answer me? Don’t make me come in there, girl.” He had to give her another chance; after all, Gavin Ellis was a big softie at heart. He counted aloud to ten; she always knew that trouble was brewing when she heard Gavin count. There was still no sign of that apologetic face, and then it dawned on Gavin that she really was going to defy him.

This was a most interesting development. At any other time he would have enjoyed employing Mr. Fist and his equally competent brother to search for that bitch’s misplaced respect. Not now though, at least not until his gut was full.

Gavin stood up, grabbed the chair he’d been sitting on, and hurled it into the living room. It slammed against the television, knocking it over. It just occurred to Gavin that he’d bought the TV from that moon-faced fat bastard as well. The chair had withstood the assault; he hadn’t expected that.