The Undead Day Nineteen (46 page)

I sink into Marcy. Marcy who holds my heart in her hands because nobody else could do this right now. There isn’t another person alive that could take that consuming rage and turn it away so deftly. It goes too. All of it. It goes and instead there is only her. Just Marcy. Only Marcy. Always Marcy.

When we separate we do so by increments of millimetres at a time. Almost as though the very act of parting is painful. Then we are just a man and a woman holding each other on a dark road outside a house where our friends are gathered.

‘Saxon?’ She breathes heavily.

‘Yeah go on then.’

Thirty Four

The rage subsides. A stupid thing to do. To invite the urge to fight and give battle and in the house they snarl and growl at each other until finally it ebbs away like a tide being pulled smoothly back from the shore.

But now it goes and in its place is a warm feeling of grace and beauty that spreads warm smiles from face to face and so organic and natural that none of them question it. These are strange days after all.

‘You okay?’ Paula asks, easing gratefully into bed.

‘Fine now, I can’t believe he just did that,’ Roy says, stretching his arm out for Paula to sink into his side.

‘I think he meant well.’

‘No, not that he did it but that he was able to do it…just switch it on like that.’

‘Mmmm, couldn’t bloody switch it off though could he.’

He kisses her forehead gently and pulls her in closer. ‘I think Marcy will calm him down.’

She mumbles affirmation then lifts her head to look at him, ‘did you see the doctors?’

‘I did.’

‘Everything okay?’

‘For now,’ he says, his tone dropping a notch.

‘For now?’ She asks.

He smiles sadly, ‘magical thinking. One of my fears is that if I believe I am okay then I will get sick…so I never really believe it even when they tell me. It’s like a…like a security blanket or a shield.’

‘Oh,’ she says mildly, ‘okay.’

‘Doesn’t put you off me?’

‘No, Roy,’ she says, leaning over his chest to kiss him gently, ‘nothing about you puts me off. I bet they stay up chatting for ages.’

‘Let them,’ Roy says as she rolls to get on top of him. He traces his fingertips down her back sending shivers through her body, ‘I think we might be up for a bit anyway.’

‘A bit of what?’ She asks with a quick grin.

‘God, you’re turning into Cookey.’

He reads. Water heated from a camping gas stove left in the kitchen and he sips peppermint tea and reads. Candles flicker around the worktop and he sits almost stock still. Only moving to turn the pages or lift the mug to take a sip. After a while he pauses, goes to his bag and takes a writing pad and pen. He flicks to a new page and goes back to the beginning but now with the pen adding notes as he starts again. He doesn’t hear the conversations outside in the garden or the low laughter but somehow, those background noises sooth his mind. The sounds of voices he has already become so used to hearing.

Guide us then. Tell us what we should be doing.

Easy words said but he reads anyway. He reads to learn and as he does so he sees Neal’s life scribbled down in the pages of a journal stained with coffee and blood. He reads because Howie asked him to. He reads because this is his role now and he reads because he refuses to be beaten intellectually by a virus. No Sir, he reads to compete because the challenge is set. His wits against the other player’s. The wheels are in motion. The game is underway. Yesterday was infancy. Today is childlike. What will tomorrow be?

Reginald has seen more horror and felt greater fear than he ever believed it was possible to know, but that pales to the sensation growing inside and as his understand forms so his blood turns to ice in his veins and that feeling of dread magnifies by the second.

They sit and talk as young people do. Blowers, Mo, Blinky, Cookey, Charlie, Nick and Lilly. They tell jokes and laugh and smoke cigarettes and drink hot drinks brewed on a camping gas stove. In the enclosed rear garden of a shore side house with a huge riot trained horse munching at the grass that hasn’t be cut for nineteen days and a dog that rests by the open back door.

They all need this time. Lilly more than anyone. She talks to Charlie about schooling, horses and everything young women talk about. She talks to the others about the fort, her brother and the funny things people say and do. They don’t mention the rage. They don’t talk of the importance of their roles in this brave new world. Instead they listen to Cookey’s jokes and watch Charlie bending double with tears streaming down her face.

The night draws on and as much as they have energy, so they also knew they will need to be awake and alert the next day and with a yawn and a stretch, Blowers stands and signals it’s time to call it a night.

Charlie hangs back to sort Jess out. Cookey waits with her. Blowers, Mo and Blinky head into the living room to kip down on bedding rolled out. Nick panics. Lilly doesn’t.

If you want time alone the first room upstairs on the left is yours.
Paula whispered the words in her ear as she bent to kiss the girl goodnight.

Lilly takes his hand and leads him down the hallway. She feels the callouses on his palms and the hard ridges of his knuckles. Their rifles on their backs. Pistols on hips and his axe held in his free hand they mount the stairs. Nick’s mouth goes dry. His heart thunders. Lilly smiles to herself and opens the door to the first room on the left and spots the single flickering candle next to the bedding on the floor.

He flounders. His hands trembling as he props his axe and assault rifle against the wall. She senses his nerves and watches him with soft eyes. Marvelling at how someone who can do the things he can without fear or worry now shows abject concern at being alone with her. She goes to him. Her nerves held at bay and it’s her confidence that carries the moment and her hands that reach up to gently hold his face and pull him down to kiss her soft lips.

He goes with it. Sinking and breathing into the embrace as they stand in a room stripped of usable furniture. Not even curtains on the walls and the silvery moonlight fills the room to fight against the orange glow of the candle.

‘Lilly,’ he pulls back with fear in his voice, his soft brown eyes everything she remembers. His voice quavering with passion and worry. His honour so clear and his decency shining like a beacon in the darkness.

‘I’m not fifteen anymore,’ she whispers, knowing exactly what he is worried about. Lilly is intelligent. Her mind ten steps ahead of everyone else and any nerves she had at coming to a private room with Nick evaporated at seeing that nervous honesty within him. He blinks and smiles a confused grin with a cute frown that makes her chuckle.

‘When…I mean shit sorry…I er…’

‘Yesterday,’ she says, ‘I was sixteen yesterday.’

He nods slowly, his eyes searching hers. She takes his hands in hers and holds them tight.

‘Remember that day in the field?’ She asks.

He smiles softly, that wry twitch of his lips that caught her heart that day, ‘yeah, yeah I do.’

‘I wanted to.’

‘Fuck really? I mean…shit…’

‘It’s fine,’ she smiles, ‘yes, yes I did.’

‘We don’t have to do anything now, Lilly,’ he says with a brutal yet fragile honesty.

She doesn’t reply because there are no words that could match the feeling inside and this image is the only she held in her head when she walked into the room with Zayden. Instead she kisses him. A girl and boy in a room in a house. Warriors. Killers. Hearts of lions that held the line but a boy and a girl nonetheless.

‘So, right…so by this time the ferry is on fire and Mr Howie is trying to save the coffee machine and we’re all ripping the piss out of Nick who is getting angry as anything…’

She laughs harder. The tears fall faster. Cookey telling her the story of crossing the Solent on a stolen ferry from the Isle of Wight.

Jess is sorted. Brushed, fed, watered and happy to potter about in the garden but still they remain. Leaning against the fence as Cookey gives her a greater pleasure than anything she has ever known.

He trails off. His eyes twinkling as he watches her wipe the tears from her eyes and groan from the pain in her stomach.

‘Cookey,’ she finally stands upright to look at him.

‘Michael Buble,’ he says and she’s off. Bent double from the random utterances that spill from his mouth.

‘What?’ She gasps, ‘what’s…I…Michael Buble?’

He shrugs, ‘dunno, so yeah anyway. Thanks for telling everyone you saw my willy today.’

‘You told everyone you saw my bottom.’

‘I love the way you say bottom.’

She snorts then brays and covers her mouth self-consciously before fighting like a demon to get her breathing under control. She stands up again and fixes him a look,
‘I’ll come to you Charlie…’

‘Oh piss off,’ he groans as she starts laughing at his reaction, ‘right well if we’re not sharing a house then I’m going to bed.’

‘I’d share a house with you,’ she says between snorts.

‘Yeah?’ Cookey asks, ‘have you seen my new sock dance?’

‘No!’ She sputters and turns away when he starts grooving on the spot with a perfectly serious face.

‘My new sock dance.’

‘Stop,’ she gasps.

‘Do the new sock dance with me, Charlie,’ he grabs her hands and starts swinging to get her going, ‘to the left and to the right…and er…to the left or something…’

‘Do you even know how to dance?’

‘Me?’ Cookey asks, leaning back, ‘er no, haven’t got a clue. Bet you do though. Do you do ballroom dancing?’

‘I do,’ she says with another braying laugh that she stifles to keep quiet.

‘Ooh show me,’ Cookey says with fresh excitement.

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah,’ he scoffs, ‘I saved your ass today so you got to teach me ballroom now.’

‘Okay okay,’ she says, heaving to control the laughing, ‘your right hand goes round my back…and my arm goes up onto your shoulder. So, we stand together with our hands held like this…’

‘Blowers would love this…’

‘Stop,’ she gasps, hitting his chest, ‘do you want to learn or not?’

‘I do I do,’ he laughs.

‘Okay, then we step away and…no go slowly and…that’s it, wow, you’re really good.’

‘Yeah?’ He laughs as she takes the lead.

‘For a beginner,’ she adds.

They dance around the garden picking a route through tear misted eyes. A woman with a ragged cut down her face and a chunk of her ear bitten away by an undead with a mutated gene from facing down two hundred on her own. They laugh and giggle as Cookey tries for a swirl and almost trips over a plant pot. A man who’s heart gives the living army the light to keep going in the darkest of days.

She watches him between laughing. Remembering the way he took the pain for her this morning and the utter serious capability that makes him as dangerous as any of the others. He came for her too. He ran through a horde to wrap his body round hers and hold a pistol with deadly intent while she bled over his skin.

He goes quiet. His eyes finding hers. She softens and the laughter gently eases off. Subtly she moves in closer, feeling the warmth coming from his body. A moment captured in life. A perfect moment where there is no pretence and no pressure to be anything than who you are.

‘I love your smile,’ she says and leans closer to kiss his cheek.

He takes the kiss and gives one of his own, soft and full of respect but this is Cookey and never a moment is missed, ‘Michael Buble,’ he whispers with the deft touch of a master able to read his audience and she falls into him with her chest heaving from the laughter surging up again.

Aye, the darkest of days but the world is still here and all the things in it shall live the lives they are meant to live.

Thirty Five

‘We didn’t go on the slide.’

His knuckles turn white from gripping the steering wheel of the van. His bulging eyes stare fixed to the road ahead. His pock-marked skin glistening with a film of sweat coating his ugly features.

‘Gregori,’ the boy whines, ‘we didn’t go on the slide or the seesaw or the roundabout…’

He has never faltered. Not once in his life has he faltered. He never questioned the missions. He did what he was told to do and always without emotion and without a second thought but now? Now he has a lifetime of emotion rushing through his body and mind while feeling repulsed at himself for being so weak.

He is the
Ugly Man
. He is the bringer of death. He is Gregori, a tool, a weapon, an instrument to be contracted out to whoever paid the fee. He was used in every country in the world. He took down Triads and Yardies. He killed former KGB and Mossad operatives. He took out a tribe of battle hardened Afghan warlords when they burnt the Opium fields and sent the body parts to every other tribe in the region. He killed men, women and children. They were targets, not people.

‘Gregori,’ the boy whines again, ‘we didn’t go on the seesaw…’

He killed with pistols, knives and his bare hands. He burnt houses down and stood outside ready to kill any that escaped the flames and listened dispassionately as they screamed inside burning to death from the heat and flames.

‘Can we go back?’

Sometimes the targets were told the
ugly man
was coming. They were given time to strengthen their defences and get more men with guns or pack up to flee and hide. It didn’t matter though. They were still killed and the impact was all the greater for the warning given. You were dead the second the deal was made and the target given. Politicians. Mafia bosses. Generals of armies and even Heads of State.

‘Gregori? Can we go back?’

Today he faltered though. Today he pushed a boy on a sling and felt every life he had ever taken come creeping back into his soul. He ran weeping into the street to see the undead staggering towards him. He shot and felled a few but then gave up and sank to the ground ready to die. He waited for the bites to come. He waited for the teeth to open his skin and the fingers to tear at his flesh.

Only they didn’t come and when he looked up the boy was sat cross-legged watching him while playing with the pistol in his lap and around them the hundreds of undead stood watching with those terrible red eyes.

What Gregori did in his life was wrong. He took life and killed without question. He inflicted pain without remorse. It wasn’t for vengeance that he killed but only because that is what he was made to do. Now, in the space of a few short minutes he knows every life he took was wrong. He has sinned and for that he is damned for all eternity. He knows this as fact. He also knows that what he did was not unnatural. He was trained and excelled at his skills but it was just a skill.

What the boy can do though
is
unnatural and a whole different kind of wrong. Gregori never took pleasure in the killing. To him it was a task to be accomplished and any emotion was beaten and tortured from him as a child.

‘Not fair,’ the boy huffs and sits back in his seat with his little arms folded across his chest. ‘Are we going home now, Gregori?’

Why can’t he kill the boy? Point the gun and shoot. End it. Shoot yourself after and be done.

‘Gregori?’

Slit his throat then slit your own. Hang yourself. Drink poison. Swallow pills. End it. The boy is not natural.

‘Gregori? Gregori? Gregori? Gregori? Gregori?’ The boy says his name over and over, his tone so light and that of a child. His little legs swinging as they hang from the seat. His hair all tussled and his face golden from the sun. ‘Gregori? Gregori? Gregori? Gregori? Are we going home, Gregori? Are we? Are we, Gregori?’ The voice goes on, relentless and unceasing. A thing of perpetual motion that will never end.

‘No,’ Gregori didn’t know he was going to reply but there it is. A word uttered and one the boy seizes on almost with triumph.

‘Where then? Where are we going, Gregori? Where, Gregori? Where then, Gregori? Where are we going, Gregori? Where, Gregori?’

Kill him. Drive the van into a wall. Set it on fire. Burn it. Kill the boy.

‘We go new home.’

‘Yay,’ the boy claps with delight.

Yes, that’s what they need. A new home where the garden isn’t covered in corpses and stains of blood from teaching the boy how to kill. Somewhere remote and private. Somewhere the boy can be a boy and not be unnatural. Get food and toys. Get clothes for the boy and himself. Get books and the things a child needs. Not weapons and knives but toys and books. Yes. Do not let history repeat itself. They took him as a debt and made him into a thing. They beat and tortured every last emotion from him until he was hardened yet entirely broken as an individual. They made him so brainwashed he could be sent anywhere in the world but would always return and wait for the next instruction.

He sees it now. His reason for being here. His skills are to keep the boy alive and safe so he can grow to be normal. Not a machine that kills but a free man that thinks and learns. Nothing can touch them. Gregori knows this. The undead hold no fear to him. He is Gregori. He was a killer but now he shall be a protector and in this he will seek to right a life of wrong.

His knuckles turn from white to pink again. His breathing comes slower. His mind settles. Let the boy be a boy. Protect don’t kill.

‘New home,’ he grunts and nods as he glances to the boy and becomes aware of the stench of death coming from the back of the van. He brakes steady but firm to bring the van to a stop. ‘Come, we go.’ He drops down to walk swiftly round the front to the passenger door. His eyes up to watch and scan. Always watching. Always scanning.

‘Come, we go,’ the boy mimics and jumps down onto the road and looks round at the houses, ‘are we living here?’

‘No,’ Gregori says and hesitates, suddenly unsure of the protocols of protecting instead of killing. Every bodyguard he ever encountered was killed before he ever got a chance to understand what they do. It must be a reversal of skill. No, not a reversal but a change of perspective. Like a thief advising on home security. How would he stop himself from killing the boy? He frowns at the thought. If he was coming for the boy the boy would be dead. How would he stop himself? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t be able to. His mind fills with a sudden image of himself fighting himself. Who would win? The other Gregori would win. The one that didn’t have the weakness of the breakdown in the park.

‘Gregori? Are we walking to our new house?’

He blinks and rids his head of the abstract notions that would never have come into his mind before today.

‘No, new car.’

‘New car?’ The boy asks, staring up in confusion.

‘We need new car,’ Gregori says with a nod, ‘this smell,’ he points to the van.

‘Can we have a blue one? No a red one…no a yellow one…I know I know we can get a blue and a red and a yellow one and and…’

‘Come…’ Gregrori starts to say.

‘…we go,’ the boy beats him to it with a delighted laugh. He reaches out to push his hand into Gregori’s as they move down the centre of the road, swinging his arm and skipping along with a body bursting with excitement at just the thought of having a new car.

Gregori analyses every vehicle in sight. Checking each visually for power, handling, security, speed, performance, fuel consumption and load capacity but not colour. Colour is not relevant for this mission. Colour is important when you are either trying to blend in or trying to stand out and announce your arrival but this is not a mission. Let the boy be a boy.

‘Choose.’

‘Can I?’ The boy blurts spinning round with his tongue poking out as he analyses every vehicle in sight, ‘the blue one,’ he says, pointing to a VW Golf.

‘This one?’ Gregori asks.

‘Yes yes yes no no no, the red one…no the blue one…’

‘Choose,’ Gregori says, looking round at the houses and back down the street.

‘Red one,’ the boy says, choosing a diesel Skoda Octavia.

‘This one?’ Gregori asks, pointing across the road to a battered old mini.

‘No!’ The boy laughs, ‘this one, Gregori.’

‘This one?’ Gregori asks, pointing to the blue VW.

‘Gregori,’ the boy squeals, ‘the red one, Gregori.’

Gregori nods and looks through the windows of the Skoda. He can force an entry and start the vehicle easy enough but why use force when you get the keys. He looks to the house the car is parked outside. This is England where people are weirdly fanatical about being able to park outside their homes.

‘Come,’ he takes the boy with him up the path to see the front door is hanging open with a thick wake of dried blood going down the garden paving slabs. He pauses, listening, smelling, sensing. Nothing here. He finds the keys in the kitchen and goes to leave then stops and looks at the boy. ‘Food. What food you like, Boy?’

He goes through the cupboards pulling tins and packets out to be given either a nod, a shake of the head or a look of absolute disgust by the boy. Food gets bagged and carried to the car to be placed in the boot. They go to door to door. Pausing, listening, smelling and sensing before taking food from cupboards that gets put into bags that get carried out.

The Skoda is loaded and he gets the boy into the passenger seat and leans over him to fasten the seatbelt. By the time he gets into the driver’s seat the boy is jabbing the radio while frowning.

‘Make it work, Gregori.’

Gregori grunts and slides the key into the ignition barrel and turns to let the coils heat before starting the engine.

‘I want music,’ the boy huffs.

Gregori looks at the radio then at the boy with a whole new thought process entering his head.

‘Please,’ Gregori says, the word coming out like
pliz.

‘Make it work,’ the boy ignores him, turning dials and jabbing buttons.

Gregori waits. His face betraying no emotion until the boy looks at him and he lifts one eyebrow of one bulging eye.

‘Please,’ the boy says.

‘Better,’ Gregori says. He presses the button for the radio and goes through the stations, checking for emergency broadcasts but only hearing static. He flicks from FM to MW and again goes through.

‘CD,’ the boy says, ‘mummy had music on a CD,’ he jabs at the eject button and waits for a disc to slide smoothly out from the thin opening but pushes it straight back in. The music system detects the disc insertion and automatically switches from radio to disc as the illumination shows the numerical digit for the first song. Gregori doesn’t watch the stereo though. Instead his eyes stay fixed on the wing mirror and the infected woman standing outside the house further back down the road. She makes no effort to stagger after them but stares drooling and red eyed towards the red car.

He blasts air from his nose, finds the bite on the pedals and drops the handbrake to turn out from the row of parked vehicles as the speakers come alive with a thudding techno beat that makes the boy clap and laugh.

As the vehicle moves down the road that fills with the solid thrumming of an electronic beat so Gregori glances in the rear view mirror to see not only the woman walking out into the road but far back, in the distance, the hundreds from the park walking after them.

He grunts in response and speeds up. They will find a house. Isolated and rural. Somewhere small with a fresh water supply and a good view of the surroundings. The boy will be a boy. Not a killer.