ZOM-B 11 (2 page)

I’d love to return to Mr Dowling’s bedroom-cum-laboratory and immerse myself in the pool of restorative blood and brains. A long soak in that would cure many of my ills. With all the
mutants still celebrating the wedding, there’s a chance I could steal in, rest up, then slip out again without anyone spotting me. But it’s too risky — if one of them spots
me in my bloody, bedraggled state, they’ll know something is up and raise the alarm.

I don’t even stop for a few minutes to rest, since the clock is ticking. Instead I push myself as hard as I can, ignoring the agonised protests of my body as I force it through the pain barrier once again.

I come to a room that looks the same as the others. I would have passed through at any other time and thought nothing of it. But I know from Mr Dowling’s stolen memories that
there’s a hidden door here, so I stop, treat myself to a short pause, then go looking for it.

I shuffle to the wall on my right and lift down the upper half of a woman’s carcass from where it hangs on a hook. The wall behind her is caked with dried blood and dung. The babies bit
off some of my artificial finger bones, but several remain intact. I use them to chip away at the mess. After a while, it starts to fall off in chunks and the outline of a door is
revealed.

There’s a small, old-fashioned combination lock in the centre, the type where you roll the tumblers one at a time until they click into place. I prised the numbers from Mr
Dowling’s memory and they’re somehow still clear in my mind — it’s like I have perfect recall. I start entering the digits until they read 528614592. Then I push down on the slim handle and the door opens.

I stare suspiciously into the gloom of the tunnel on the other side. I still don’t know how I wrung so much information out of Mr Dowling. I hadn’t planned to squeeze his secrets
from him. I didn’t think that I could. Something happened in the bridal suite that I had no control over, and it unnerved me. I don’t like the fact that I operated on auto-pilot like a
cold, calculating, experienced spy.

But what are my options? I can’t go back. Mr Dowling will slaughter me on sight if I don’t get out of here. I might be his beloved, but he can’t let me live, knowing what I
know. I’ve got to press ahead as fast as I can. It doesn’t matter how I came by this knowledge. I need to cash in on it, and quickly, before the mutants lock down the complex and come
hunting for me.

I enter the tunnel and push the door closed behind me — there’s no way of operating the lock from this side, so I just have to hope that Mr Dowling’s mutants don’t spot
the disturbance and investigate. Then I press on through the gloom. This area isn’t brightly lit, just the occasional light. But that’s OK. I know the way. I could find it blindfolded if I had to.

The tunnel forks and I take the left turn. Then a right, another right, a left. These tunnels are roughly carved. Mr Dowling only used a few of his mutants when creating them, in secret, away
from the gaze of his other followers. All of the workers were killed once they’d finished, like the slaves who built the tombs for the pharaohs in ancient Egypt. He didn’t want anyone
to know about this hidden network. It was created for his personal use only.

More twists and turns. I take them without thinking, following the map which was clear as crystal inside Mr Dowling’s brain. He often comes here to check on his deadly prize, standing
before it in ecstatic but horrified awe, like a worshipper at the shrine of some all-destructive god. There are several entrances and routes. He tests them all out on a regular basis, making
sure the doors work, that the paths are clear of cave-ins, that no one has been sniffing around his toxic treasure.

It’s not a long journey but I make poor time. I’m incapable of rushing. Still, as slow as I am, I’m dogged, and eventually I draw to a halt at another locked door. This one is
protected by four combination locks, each requiring a twelve-digit code, and you’d need a serious stash of dynamite to make an impression on the door or wall. It would take a crack team
a lot of time and hassle to break through. Even Ivor Bolton, an Angel who can open almost any lock, would have to admit defeat if confronted with these devilish beauties.

But I have the inside scoop, the elaborate string of numbers flashing in my mind’s eye as if highlighted on a neon billboard. I start spinning the tumblers and soon I’ve set all
forty-eight windows correctly. I grasp the round handle and twist. There’s a sighing sound and the door opens inwards, widening the more I turn the handle, like a giant opening its mouth.

I step into a small, steel-lined room. There’s a single light hanging from the centre of the ceiling. It switched on automatically as the door opened.

A safe sits in the middle of the room, bolted to the floor. The code for this lock is simpler than any of the others. Mr Dowling figured that if someone made it this far, the game was up. He set
the code out of a sense of irony more than anything else, aware of the things that Dr Oystein has said about him over the years. I chuckle weakly as I spin the tumblers to the most diabolical of
numbers — 666.

The safe opens and I sink to my knees. I reach in and pull out a clear tube, no more than twenty centimetres long. It’s sealed with what looks like a plain rubber cork, but I know the cork
is made from a special material and is absolutely airtight. It will never shrink or shake loose. And, although the tube appears to be just glass, again it’s been carefully manufactured from a
far tougher substance. You could put it on the floor and whack it with a sledgehammer, over and over, without even cracking it.

Just to be safe, there’s a second clear, corked tube nestled within the first, every bit as indestructible as the outer container. And then, snuggled within that, is a vial, maybe fifteen centimetres long, filled with a milky-white liquid. There’s no label on any of the containers, but I don’t need one.

‘
Schlesinger-10
,’ I croak, holding the tube up to the light, watching the liquid as it splashes around inside the vial.

I never wondered what it would be like to hold the lives of every living human in your hands. Now that I’m in that position, I find it absolutely terrifying. I know I can’t do any
damage to the tubes. I’d have to deliberately uncork the first, slide out the second, uncork that, then slip out and uncork the vial in order to unleash the hounds of havoc. But I still feel
sick at the nightmarish thought of the tube slipping through my fingers and somehow smashing open. I guess it’s like doing a bungee jump — you know you’re safely attached, but try
telling that to your natural instincts when you’re about to hurl yourself off the side of a cliff.

Reverently, knowing I’m not worthy of such a grave responsibility, I lower the tube and look for a place to store it. But there are no pockets in my wedding dress. I could carry it but I want both hands free. So where . . . ?

With a grisly snicker, I stick the tube inside my stomach and root around until I find some pliant flesh to wedge it into. I grit my teeth as I work the tube firmly into place, taking no
chances, not worrying about the discomfort. When I’m satisfied, I shake myself roughly and jump up and down. The brief burst of exercise almost makes me faint, but the tube doesn’t
budge. It’s secure.

I feel like an expectant mother, only, instead of carrying a baby, I’m carrying hope for the entire world. If I can get this to Dr Oystein, the stalemate will be broken and he can
release a sample of Clements-13, bringing the curtains crashing down on every zombie and mutant on the face of the planet.

‘So, no pressure,’ I giggle.

Then I put all humorous thoughts aside, turn my back on the safe, limp into the corridor and make my slow, sluggish, excruciating break for freedom.

Although most of the access points to the secret tunnels are situated in Mr Dowling’s base, a few open out into the area beyond. He wanted to be able to skirt the main complex in case
it ever fell into the hands of his enemies. As crazy as he is, he likes to cover as many angles as possible.

I absorbed all sorts of memories from the clown, more than I realised at the time. I knew that I was confirming the location of his vial of Schlesinger-10, but I also tapped into recollections
of countless trips  that  he’s  made  through  his  underground domain. My mind’s full of maps and ways out of here.

Assessing that information, I try to come to a decision — should I head straight for the surface or stick to the shadows for a while?

The nearest exit is through Whitechapel Station. It wouldn’t take me long to reach it, even in my current shuffling state. I could climb up through the station and lose myself on the
streets.

Whitechapel would be my first preference, except I know from Mr Dowling’s memories that the station is always carefully guarded by his forces, along with the one at Aldgate East. The
guards might have been pulled from their posts to attend the wedding, but I can’t count on that. It’s unlikely that the mutants would have left themselves completely open to a sneak
attack.

The alternative is to make use of the various tunnels and link up with the Tube line further west, pop up out of a random station. In its favour — the mutants can’t patrol every
stretch of tunnel, and they won’t know which area of the city to focus their search on once they discover I’m missing. Against — I’ll have to spend a lot of time in darkness, meaning I might not see them coming if they happen to chance upon me, and it
will be hard, probably impossible, to outrun them if they stumble across my trail before I make it to the streets.

I spend a couple of minutes weighing up the pros and cons, figuring it’s time worth investing. In the end I decide I’d be safer in the dark. I don’t like it down here, but just
as it would be hard for me to see any hunters coming, it would be equally difficult for them to spot me going.

Having made up my mind, I first head in the direction of Whitechapel. I’m aware that I’ve left a trail of blood, and I’m hoping to throw off my trackers by continuing east
for a spell, to make them think that I’m aiming for the easiest way out. I’m probably being naive – chances are they have mutants who’ve been trained to detect the subtlest
of scents – but I’ve nothing to lose by trying.

After several minutes, I stop in the glow of a light and start ripping the remains of the lower lengths of my wedding dress into strips. It was such a lovely dress, and I hate having to wreck it, but it was already in tatters after the attack by the babies. The veil is missing, huge holes have
been torn or bitten out of the material, its colour is now more crimson than white in most places.

I ball up some of the strips and press them deep into my flesh where I’m bleeding worst, plugging the gashes, stemming the flow as best I can. I wince as the material bonds with my flesh,
sticking to it like an extra layer. As the balls absorb my blood and swell within me like flowers in bloom, I loop more of the makeshift bandages round my feet and ankles so that they’ll
hopefully soak up the drops trickling down my legs.

I study myself when I’m done. Far from perfect – I’d never have made a nurse – but it will have to do. The most important thing is that the vial has remained steady
within its nesting place. My movements haven’t shaken it loose by even a fraction. That’s good to know going forward, means I don’t have to stop to check on it too often.

I listen intently for a minute, trying to detect whether the hunters are already on my trail. I hear shuffling sounds close by and stiffen, thinking my number is up. But then I spot a couple of
rats gnawing on an old bone and I relax. I suppose I should be grateful that the rodents don’t attack me — I’d make a tasty snack for a big enough group
of them. If I was human, they’d probably take me down, wounded and bleeding as I am, but zombie blood must not appeal to them.

When I’m sure that there are no mutants lurking nearby, waiting to spring upon me the second I turn my back, I take a deep breath – pointless since I don’t have any lungs, but
it’s a force of habit – swing a left and arc back upon myself, heading west, deeper into the twisting network of tunnels.

After a while, I move out of the system of secret tunnels into old, disused sewers, the walls crumbling, the floors long dried up, relics of the past, forgotten by all except the mutants
who discovered them when scouting around to find the perfect location for their base. Judging by the complete silence, I think even the rats and insects of London don’t know about these
ancient arteries.

It’s pitch-black here and I have to feel my way along. There’s no way up to the streets from these abandoned sewers – at least none that Mr Dowling is aware of – but they link with the Tube lines in several places, offering me a choice of exits when I’ve advanced further.

I think a normal, living person would be afraid if they found themselves in my position. The isolated sewers have a ghostly feel to them, and it’s easy to imagine the spirits of the past
drifting around me as I stumble ahead, or monsters like the Minotaur roaming freely, looking for victims.