ZOM-B 11 (5 page)

‘Poor cow,’ I whisper, reaching up to touch her cheek. She doesn’t flinch. ‘You hoped you’d revitalise, but that was never an option. I didn’t know it then,
but I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. You were trapped. There was nothing else we could have done. It was join them or become their lunch.’

Sister Clare frowns and turns her gaze on me. She’s not used to talking zombies. She checks the hole where my heart should be, making sure I’m really dead, then looks ahead again, dismissing me without thought.

I wish I could do something for her, but she seems to be in good shape. Judging by the stains around her mouth, she ate not that long ago. There isn’t really any way for me to improve her
sad lot.

‘Come on,’ I tell Holy Moly, taking its hand. ‘We’re on my turf now. Let me be the guide for a while.’

‘
is your friend coming with us mummy?
’ the baby asks.

‘That crazy witch is no friend of mine,’ I snort. But then I pause and glance back one last time at the statue-like Sister Clare. There’s no reason why I should care about the
mad zealot after she brought her grisly end down on herself, leading a group of other people to their death while she was at it. But for some strange reason I feel sorry for her.

‘You’ll be properly dead soon,’ I murmur, insides clenching round the buried vial. ‘I hope you find peace, whether it’s in heaven or with your aliens. Think of me
every so often if you do.’

Then, having wasted enough time on the undead woman, I work my way up through the station, squeezing by the zombies who pack the platform and tunnels. They’re even crowding the escalators,
sitting or standing on the steps, gazing blankly off into the distance like Sister Clare was. I wish the escalators were working – what I wouldn’t give for a smooth ride up out of the
depths – but they’re as lifeless as the people stacked along them.

I limp onwards and upwards. Holy Moly ducks in and out between my legs as I walk, treating this as a game. I’m not looking any further ahead than the next step, not wanting to focus on how
far I have to go, knowing I’d lose heart if I stopped to check. What I can’t see can’t freak me out.

Eventually I make it to the top, and I’m more relieved than I should be. I was beginning to think that I’d truly died, that this was hell, an endless series of steps that I’d
have to spend all of eternity climbing.

‘That was easy, wasn’t it?’ I mutter.

‘
yes
,’ Holy Moly says, missing the sarcasm.

The ticket barriers are open, so at least I don’t have that hassle to deal with. We push through and out of the riverbank exit, into sunlight. The light hurts my eyes, but not as much as I
thought it would, and it starts to get dimmer after a few seconds, cancelling out the headache that I normally get when travelling by day.

The dimness confuses me until I recall the special contact lenses that Mr Dowling stuck in when he rebuilt my ruined body. They must feature an automatic tinting system. I’m still not
comfortable in the sunlight, but I can deal with it and see much more clearly than I could before.

‘Thanks, hubby,’ I whisper, and spread my arms wide, feeling like Lazarus reborn. I’m sure I’m wearing a goofy smile but I don’t care. This is glorious after
the darkness of that underworld realm. Even the itching isn’t as bad as it used to be, probably because of all the replacement flesh that the clown grafted on to me.

‘
shall i leave you here mummy?
’ Holy Moly asks.

That surprises me. The baby seems almost eager to be rid of me. But then I recall that I asked it to lead me safely to the city. Now that we’re here, it clearly thinks that its job is done. It’s not looking to abandon me
— it just assumes that I have no more need of it and want to be by myself. The babies are nothing if not literal.

‘Stick with me a few more minutes,’ I tell it, heading under a bridge to the right of the station. ‘I want to show you where I live. It’s a lovely sight. Let me
share it with you. Your reward for helping me out.’

‘
silly mummy
,’ Holy Moly beams. ‘
i don’t need a reward. i love you mummy.
’ But the baby comes with me anyway, to humour me. I’ve a feeling it
would go anywhere I asked it to go.

A railway line crosses the river here. There are footbridges attached to both sides. I limp across to the one that faces Westminster. Steps lead up to the bridge, but there’s also a
lift. I say a little prayer that it’s working and, what do you know, the gods are smiling on me for once.

‘Going up,’ I laugh as we ascend.

Holy Moly looks the teeniest bit scared. I don’t think the baby has been in a lift before. I tickle the little one’s belly to distract it and it laughs with utter delight.

The lift stops and we shuffle out. I pick up Holy Moly and stagger to the rails, to point towards the Houses of Parliament, then across the river to the gleaming London Eye, County Hall lying
just behind it.

‘There,’ I tell Holy Moly. ‘That’s where Mummy and her friends live. Isn’t it the most wonderful place you’ve ever . . .’

My words tail off. It’s a sunny day in London. The rays pick out the Eye and the building to its rear. The pair of landmarks shine majestically, as if the daylight was created to highlight
their glory.

But, with the help of my contact lenses, I can see other things just as clearly — mutants, zombies and scores of babies, each of the infants an exact replica of Holy Moly, only without a
hole in its head.

Mr Dowling’s troops, gathered in their grisly might, have formed a ring around County Hall and are in the process of overrunning the complex. As I watch with stunned horror, they dash in and out of the entrances, smashing windows, killing anyone they find.

The clown and his lethal posse have launched an attack on County Hall, the home of Dr Oystein and his Angels. And, by the look of things, the battle has already been decided. The good guys have
lost. The bad guys have won.

I think of the vial inside my stomach. I stare at the sickening scenes across the river. I lower my head and make a weak keening noise, not cursing this twist of fate, not mourning those
I’ve probably lost, just thinking numbly — who the hell can I turn to now?

Several corpses have been heaped in the middle of Jubilee Gardens, a small park between the bridge and County Hall. Furniture has been stacked nearby, and many mutants are adding to the pile,
racing in and out of the building with tables, chairs and bedding, which they deposit on the growing mound.

As other mutants soak the pyre with petrol, one lights a torch, then steps forward and shouts a warning. The rest of them scatter and the torch is hurled on to the primed furniture. A
bonfire explodes into life. The mutants cheer and applaud.

Then they start tossing the bodies of my slain comrades on to the flames.

‘
toasty
,’ Holy Moly murmurs approvingly, but I don’t react, reminding myself that the baby’s been brought up to see nothing amiss in atrocities like this.

Despite my improved vision, I can’t see from here if the Angels being fed to the fire were some of my room-mates, Shane, Ashtat, Carl, or others I felt close to. And I don’t want to
know. Better the corpses remain faceless. That way I don’t have to mourn them.

I spot an Angel climbing on to the roof in an attempt to get away. It looks like a girl but I can’t be sure. She stumbles off in the direction of St Thomas’s Hospital but
doesn’t get far. Babies follow and launch themselves in a deadly swarm at the helpless revitalised, dragging her down and ripping into her.

I spy another Angel, a boy, in a pod on the London Eye. He must have been on watch when the attack commenced, so it can’t have been more than half an hour ago, which is roughly the time it
takes for a pod to complete a revolution.

The Angel is gazing down on a group of mutants. They’re packing all sorts of weapons and howling gleefully, waving at the trapped boy, making crude gestures. Some begin
to climb up to the pod, impatient, eager to strike the first blow.

As mutants scrabble across the top of the pod and try to smash through the glass, the Angel makes a crude gesture of his own, then drives the bones sticking out of his fingers through his
skull. The mutants screech spitefully, but he ignores them and digs around inside his head. Moments later he drops to the floor of the pod, set free from the torment which would otherwise have
awaited him.

I hate being a helpless observer. I want to dash across the bridge, cut through Jubilee Gardens, fight and die with those who have become my family over the last few months.

But I don’t have the energy for a stylish finale. If I start limping across this walkway, I’ll be spotted long before I reach the other side. Mutants will flood the bridge and either
kill me or haul me back for Mr Dowling to deal with.

So I hold my ground and watch numbly as County Hall falls to its foes. I’m surprised they were able to take it so easily. I thought the Angels would have offered more resistance. Master
Zhang trained us to be clinical fighting machines. We should have been able to at least trouble the mutants and babies. But it looks like they took this place as swiftly and casually as they took
Battersea Power Station.

I wonder if Dr Oystein has been killed. There aren’t that many dead Angels outside the building, so most must be lining the corridors inside. Dr Oystein’s corpse
almost surely lies among one of the groups, unless he happened to be at his secret lab when Mr Dowling surged up out of the depths.

If the doc was here when the invasion began, how did he react? Seeing that the end was upon him, did he uncork his vial of Clements-13, figuring Mr Dowling wouldn’t have attacked unless
he’d been robbed of his sample of Schlesinger-10? Maybe ultimate victory is already ours, despite the casualties and the loss of our base. Perhaps this is merely Mr Dowling’s
compensation prize, annihilation of his most hated enemy before he falls foul of the unleashed virus and drops dead in a matter of days.

Then again, Dr Oystein never told us where his vial of Clements-13 was stored. I’m sure he has some in his hidden laboratory, but did he keep another vial on him, or tucked away in a safe
nook in County Hall? I’m guessing he did, in order to be ready for a surprise attack like this, but I can’t be certain.

Mr Dowling can’t have been certain either. That’s why he never struck the first blow. But now, robbed of his ultimate deterrent, he’s had to gamble. I left him with no other
choice.

Understanding the clown as intimately as I do, I knew that his first task would be to find me and retrieve his vial of Schlesinger-10, to re-establish the status quo. He likes things the way
they’ve been since the world fell, the war between the living and the undead, the chaos and disorder.

But I didn’t consider what he’d do when his mutants failed to track me down. He must have decided to strike immediately before I returned to County Hall. He probably figured that he
was definitely dead if he waited. At least this way he had a chance.

I should have anticipated this. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have acted more swiftly, made for the surface as soon as I could, maybe sent Holy Moly on ahead of me to warn Dr
Oystein and tell him to clear out. I thought I had time to play with. I was wrong.

‘It’s a bloody mess,’ I sob, turning away from the carnage, sick of it all, not wanting to torture myself any further.

‘
mummy?
’ Holy Moly asks, surprised by my sadness. The baby doesn’t understand why I’m miserable. The slaughter across the river is nothing more than a jolly
piece of theatre as far as it’s concerned, par for the course when their father is abroad. ‘
what’s wrong mummy? don’t cry. we don’t like it when you cry. we
love you mummy.
’

‘I’m OK,’ I lie. ‘Just sad because my friends are dead.’

‘
everything dies mummy
,’ Holy Moly says.

‘Is that supposed to comfort me?’ I snap.

Holy Moly nods sweetly. ‘
yes.
’

I suppress a grimace. ‘I know you mean well, but I’d rather be by myself right now. Will you leave me, like you were going to a while ago?’