The Zombie Room (2 page)

‘I sell bathroom supplies.’

Vicky laughed until she saw he wasn’t joking, and then stopped abruptly. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were pulling my leg.’

‘Hey, I do quite well: area sales rep, company car, I’m pretty happy with it,’ he said defensively.

Vicky placed a hand on his arm. ‘I work in a library,’ she said by way of conciliation, and added a shrug.

‘That’s cool. I’m just touchy about the job thing as my parents are a bit stuck up. They expected I’d go the doctor or lawyer route.’

Vicky nodded. ‘You have plans after the club finishes?’

‘I was going to go back and stay at my friend’s place, smoke a few joints and then crash. What about you?’

‘Pretty much the same thing, although my friend doesn’t smoke. You want me to tag along, or is that really forward of me?’

‘It does sound pretty forward,’ he said grinning. ‘That’d be nice though.’

‘It feels kind of weird calling you Mangle. Do you have another name?’ she asked, and took a sip from her beer.

‘Yeah, Nicholas.’

‘Nicholas the bathroom salesman, that’s just perfect,’ she said and laughed.

‘Alright Mangle, who’s this then?’ a voice from behind him asked, as a pale doughy arm reached around and plucked the beer from his hand. ‘Ross, Mangle has been holding out on us again.’

‘Alright boys, this is Vicky,’ Mangle said as his two friends invaded the conversation. ‘This is Danny.’ He indicated the short chubby lad with close-cropped black hair in a peak on his brow, who now stood drinking Mangle’s beer as he winked at her. ‘And this is Ross.’ Ross was about the same height as Mangle but slimmer build; he had receding blonde hair that he swept up into tufts, and eyebrows like humps on a camel.

‘Nice,’ Ross validated with a grin. ‘You still coming back to mine after the club, dude?’

‘Yeah,’ Mangle said. ‘Is it OK if Vicky tags along as well?’

‘Sure, the more the merrier and all that. We’re gonna play Edward Cider-Hands.’

‘You have any friends to bring with?’ Danny asked, hopefully.

‘I did, but I haven’t seen them in a while, I don’t know if they’ve already left,’ Vicky said. ‘Um, you’re going to be playing what?’

‘Still time before closing,’ Danny said, with a glance at his watch. ‘Off you go and find them.’ He made a shooing gesture.

‘OK, come on you,’ Vicky said laughing, as she dragged Mangle along with her. ‘See you later, guys.’

‘A couple of my more delinquent friends from school,’ Mangle explained once they’d got out of earshot. ‘Have your friends really gone home or did you just not fancy setting them up with those two?’

‘They might have gone, but to be honest they’re just girls I went to college with. I got dragged out tonight on one of those reunion things, so I’m glad of the excuse to avoid them later on,’ she said. ‘Now what the hell is Edward Cider-something?’

‘Edward Cider-Hands. Those two clowns tape a big bottle of cider to each of their hands. The deal is they aren’t allowed to take the bottles off until they’re both empty. It’s hardly highbrow humour but it can be pretty amusing to watch.’

Vicky laughed warmly. ‘Sounds like it could get messy.’

The living-room door clicked shut as Ross staggered towards his bedroom. Vicky pulled her legs up alongside Mangle and slid her toes underneath his calves.

‘Will they come back out for anything?’ she asked, glancing again towards the closed living-room door.

‘No, after all that cider that’s the last we’ll see of them before noon at the earliest.’

Vicky nuzzled her face against his neck. Mangle could feel her heart beating against his chest, slightly elevated, almost in rhythm with his own. He angled his chin down and she tilted her face up towards him. They kissed for only a few seconds but Mangle felt a rush of adrenalin and found himself short of breath. He wasn’t used to this effect from a girl he’d only just met. He ran his fingers through her hair, releasing a smell like springtime. Vicky dropped her hands down and began to unbuckle his belt.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Mangle asked. ‘We did only just meet.’

‘I suppose that depends on what your intentions are for after.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well you kinda have to go backwards or forwards after sex.’

‘I thought that was during sex,’ he said without thinking, and quickly grinned so as not to ruin the moment.

‘Ha ha, very funny. I mean a friendship between a man and a woman. After you have sex you either have to move on to a relationship, or you go back to having, well, nothing.’

‘Is this a “will you still respect me in the morning” kind of thing?’

‘Maybe. I’m just asking if this is only for tonight or something more than that.’

This situation he’d been in more times previously than he could count; but when Mangle told her that he very much wanted it to be more than just tonight, it was perhaps the first time he’d actually meant it.

An alcohol and Ecstasy comedown usually left Mangle with a patchy memory of the previous evening and a feeling like dirt under his skin, but seeing Vicky curled up against him when he awoke filled him with an invigoration akin to the first caffeine hit of the day, and vivid memories of the previous night.

He reached over Vicky and pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket to check how much was left for cab fare home, and winced at what he saw. There was no doubt he wanted to spend time with Vicky, but dates cost, and the last thing he wanted to do at 27 was take her to his place all the time and listen to more of his parents’ bullshit. By their reckoning, he should be working for a well-renowned company, with a pension plan, a house and a wife squeezing out grandchild number three by now. He understood that they had sacrificed a lot to pay for his private school tuition, and now expected a return on their investment, but he simply wasn’t interested in the idyllic life they had pictured for him, or in being a trophy they could show off among their social circle.

Mangle’s usual course of action was to get the latest girl to pay for almost everything, claiming late payment of his wages. After a few weeks the girls would tire of the excuse, but by then Mangle had usually grown tired of them and begun looking around for the next pretty face. But this time he was determined to do it right.

Derek ‘Decker’ Rankin stood on the corner of Cleethorpe Street, smoking a cigarette and trying his best to look inconspicuous.
He’d earned a modest amount of credibility already through various initiations, but if this went smoothly then he reckoned he’d no longer have to live life as a thug and low-level drug dealer. Brian, John and Tony weren’t exactly a gang – that just sounded soft. They were a bunch of entrepreneurs who looked out for each other and got things done.

At 18, Decker was a lot younger than the other three, but even as a scruffy kid running around the streets he’d known their reputation as people you just don’t mess with. All three had served stretches inside, but so far the law had never been able to put anything worthwhile together to keep them there.

Decker too had served time, in a young offenders’ institute, which he’d tell anyone who asked had been like a holiday. In truth it hadn’t been unbearable, and it helped to raise his street profile no end when he got back out. The downside was that it had brought him up onto the police radar and he’d been questioned a few times since for crimes he’d had nothing to do with.

Decker took another drag from the cigarette and flicked the butt against a passing car; it bloomed into a shower of sparks that rained down the side. The brakelights lit up and the car began to slow, but seeing Decker unmoved, the driver had second thoughts and drove on.

Gary Bilaney had wronged the guys in some way. Exactly how, wasn’t important. Decker had been told to teach him a lesson. He slid a hand into his coat pocket and ran his fingers over the cold steel of the utility knife, the fresh blade exposed and locked into position to save time. He’d replaced it before he left home, and tested it on a thick sheet of cardboard. Don’t kill him, just cause some damage, preferably on the face so people will know. Those were his instructions. He’d been told the spot to wait at and the time to expect Gary to get off the bus, returning from work.

Decker checked his watch. Looking up again he saw the bus making its way slowly around the tight corner at the bottom of
the road. A greasy burger wrapper blew against his leg. Decker absently shook it free without taking his eyes off the bus.

The air brakes wheezed as the bus came to a halt, and a few passengers disembarked: an old man in an oversized brown coat mumbled to himself as he walked; a young woman struggled off unassisted with two toddlers and a pushchair. And lastly there was Gary.

He was around 30, reasonably well built, certainly bigger than Decker’s more moderate frame. He had on well-worn overalls with work boots and had light brown hair worn in a crew cut. He stopped on the pavement to light a cigarette as the bus juddered uneasily away from the stop, coughing out a cloud of acrid fumes.

Decker strode purposefully across the street towards Gary, forgot to check for traffic and was startled by a car horn that blasted as the driver braked sharply to avoid hitting him. His attention switched back to Gary, who now watched him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Decker’s hand went back into his pocket, thumb and fingers rubbing intently on the handle of the knife as if it were a lamp about to release a genie and grant him three wishes.

Gary dropped his cigarette onto the ground and his lips moved silently, as if trying to select the right words to get him out of the unfolding situation.

‘N-no,’ was all he managed to stammer. ‘It was a big mistake, I didn’t even mean to do it – you tell them.’

Decker had the knife half out of his pocket now, just a few paces from using it. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. It should be straightforward: just cut him a few times and run. But the rising feeling of nausea inside him was debilitating. His eyes darted left and right, checking no witnesses were close enough to be able to pick him out of a line-up, and then fixed intently on Gary.

Gary had planted his left foot backwards at a 90 degree angle. Was he adopting an aggressive stance to fight back, or was he about to bolt? Decker’s nerve ends sang with tension and he
swiped his left cuff across his forehead. He stopped in front of the larger man, whose lips were still moving, but Decker couldn’t make out what he was saying over the rush of blood pumping in his ears.

Even afterwards Decker couldn’t have explained the feeling. It wasn’t physical fear: he’d been in enough street fights to know that even without the knife he could probably handle the guy. There might not have been a lot of Decker but he could take care of himself. It wasn’t fear of getting caught either. There was no one anywhere near now, and after it was done he’d vanish down the twisting maze of alleyways and back streets, and he knew Gary would never talk.

The thought of dragging the cold steel blade across his face, separating warm flesh as easily as he’d slit the cardboard earlier that day, made his stomach turn over again and he had to swallow the surge of bile that rose up in his throat. Decker had twice in the past used a knife on someone, and never felt like this. Both times he’d been the one who was attacked. Was that the difference this time? Attacking a defenceless man, disfiguring him?

Decker held the knife out in front of him, gripped tightly in his shaking palm. He felt hot and his face tingled; a high-pitched almost electric whine was now all he could hear. He pulled his arm back and swung forward in a low arc.

Gary cried out as blood spilled onto the pavement in coinsized drops, like a handful of loose change.

‘Get out of here,’ Decker yelled, or thought he did. He couldn’t be sure over the incessant ringing in his head.

Gary turned, cradling his blood-soaked forearm with his left hand, and fled.

Decker staggered a couple of steps, heard a clatter as the knife fell from his hand onto the pavement. He looked down and saw blood on his hand, on his sleeve, on the pavement and across the blade of the knife. Gathering his wits he stooped to pick it up, and ran.

*****

Tazeem stepped spritely up the three red brick steps and into the Mosque to attend Friday prayers. It was considered a compulsory part of a Muslim man’s life, but attendance for Tazeem in recent times had become more sporadic than his elders approved of.

The walls inside the Mosque were painted pale yellow and adorned with plaques of verses from the Qur’an, in Arabic calligraphy. A rack of leaflets and newsletters hung on the right-hand wall, and shelving already holding many pairs of shoes was to the left.

Tazeem quickly removed his shoes and made his way to the male ablutions to perform
wuzu
, the ceremonial washing that took place before prayer. He completed the specific routine and walked through to the prayer hall, picking up a spare head covering as he went in.

The prayer hall was a large wide room almost completely devoid of furniture. The floor was covered by a red carpet designed to provide individual prayer mats for the worshippers. Various other prayer mats and Qur’anic texts hung on the walls. The domed niche or
mihrab
in the wall ahead marked the direction of Mecca, showing worshippers where to face whilst praying. Sitting below it, leading prayers, was the Imam. Because the prayer hall had to face towards Mecca, the Mosque had been built at a different angle to the other buildings on the street outside.

Tazeem found a spot towards the far corner of the room next to his friend Latif, and joined in with prayers. Latif was a short man with a rather square shaped head, whose shifty looking eyes were due to an astigmatism he was too proud to wear glasses for, and in sharp contrast to his affable nature.

Once concluded, the Imam Omar stood and faced the room to begin his sermon or
khutbah
. He paused long enough to take in the faces in congregation before him. Tazeem felt the expressionless gaze linger on him for barely a second, but knew his presence had been noted.