Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (86 page)

~

“I should have seen this coming. Why didn’t I send a uniform to keep an eye on the place as soon as I knew he was free?” Robbins banged the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

Beth, in the passenger seat, stared out the window at the small school they were approaching. The red brick of the building, and gray-slated roof, looked remarkably like her old primary school. “No wonder your stomach is always playing up. Which, by the way, I’ve told you to get looked at... Listen, you weren’t to know this would happen.”

“You read the gravestone same as I did: ‘Devoted son, husband and
father
’. He’d already visited Mrs. Daley. There was a huge probability he’d try to get in touch with his… with
the
son again. Shit!”

Robbins was still reluctant to recognize the man as Matthew Daley, even after what he’d seen. She recalled the conversation they’d had on the way to the station when he’d asked her for theories. “How about this: Matthew Daley dies, is pronounced, then buried. But he’s not really dead.”

Robbins grimaced. “What do you mean, not really dead? How can he not be dead when he’s had a fucking autopsy?”

“Happens more often than you think,” she replied. “Patients even wake up in the middle of autopsies sometimes. Or when they’ve been buried prematurely. The medical term for it is Catalepsy, where the patient suffers from a form of temporary paralysis and appears dead.”
Sleep well
, it had said on the gravestone––and perhaps that’s all he had been doing, just sleeping. “The latest thing now is to put a web-cam in the coffin so you can keep checking on the deceased.”

Robbins pulled a face. “Beth…”

“Ask Poe, it scared the crap out of him.”

“I suppose you’ll be saying next that
he’s
alive and well and still churning out stories,” Robbins said snidely.

“At least we have some samples from the coffin. We can work on a DNA match now.” And they’d left it at that, not getting any further at all. Now here they were, looking for a man who should have been inside that coffin but wasn’t. A man who had come to see his little boy.

They pulled up, the white and orange car following them doing the same. Valentine and Adams waited inside their car while Robbins and Beth got out and went through the school gates, pressing the buzzer at the main door. A secretary opened it and Robbins flashed his ID. They were taken through to an office where the headmaster of the school greeted them with a worried frown. “We’ve never had an incident like this before,” he assured them, “we pride ourselves on keeping the pupils safe.”

The headmaster gave a nod of understanding, taking them through the school where lessons were carrying on as normal that afternoon. “We’ve put him in the quiet room,” the headmaster told them. When Beth and Robbins looked puzzled, he explained, “Oh, it’s where the children go if they want to read alone or have some time to themselves.”

Inside this quiet room, which was much smaller than the other classrooms they’d seen, a little boy with tousled hair was sitting at a desk. He had a toy car in his hands, turning it over and over. The scene was like Robbins’ first encounter with the man back at the station, only in miniature. The boy seemed to have the same mannerisms, even had a look of the man they were pursuing. Robbins crouched down beside him. “Hello…” He looked back over his shoulder at the headmaster.

The doctor walked to the desk and pulled out a little chair, sitting down opposite. “Hi Jason, my name’s Beth. It’s very important that we talk to the man who gave you this. Do you know where he went?”

Jason shook his head. “He didn’t say, but I’m going to see him again. He told me that.”

Robbins gave Beth a worried look.

“Let me through. Where’s my son!” A commotion at the door to the ‘quiet’ room drew their attention and they turned to see a woman with short black hair pushing her way in, past the headmaster.

“Mrs. Hill, you got the call––” he began, but she ran to Jason and hugged him tightly, checking every inch of him over with her eyes. It was only then that she seemed aware of the other people there. “Who are you two? What were you doing with my son?”

“Please calm down, madam,” said Robbins.

“No,
you
calm down. I’ll calm down when I find out just what in God’s name is going on.”

All the color drained from the woman’s face. She brushed a hair out of her son’s eyes. “Sweetheart, that’s… that’s just not possible. Remember, we talked about this before. Your real father… he’s not with us anymore.”

~

The dead man had watched from a distance. Watched as Robbins and the doctor arrived, accompanied by two uniforms––one of them the black man who’d come for him at the house.

Then he’d seen her arrive on foot. Caroline. Her hair was much shorter than he remembered, but still that raven black, still framing the pretty face he could recall cupping in his hands––so vividly they
had
to be his memories. He couldn’t stop the recollections then; they came with a vengeance and he closed his eyes to savor them. The first time they’d met at that café one Saturday afternoon, and he’d looked up from his drink to see her walk in with one of her old girlfriends. They’d exchanged quick glances the whole way through their coffees––he’d actually made his last much longer than usual––until eventually the friend, Sally, noticed and came over to him because it looked like neither of them were going to do a thing about it.

The inevitable first date complete with nerves, the ‘getting to know you’ conversations, the first time he’d walked her to her flat, and kissed her lips.

The first time they’d shared a bed, after a party when they’d drunk more than they should have, but not so much they couldn’t do anything about it when they got back to her place.

He could feel the movement of her beneath him even now, her hips arching, legs hooking around him as she often did, urging him on with her moans.

Their wedding day, her standing there in that white dress, looking almost… almost like an angel. And when he’d danced with her and looked into those deep blue eyes, he’d known he would love her forever.

Then suddenly he saw the other images again, felt the pain this time––heard the scream, cracking of bone, the blood… saw the light, saw the tunnel…

Snapping his eyes open he noticed Caroline emerge from the school, holding Jason’s hand. He almost went to her then, just as he’d been compelled to do before. But for one thing she was crying, and for another she was getting into the back of the squad car, the police about to escort her home.

It wasn’t the right time yet. He knew that.

But soon, as he’d told Jason, he’d see them again.

~

“So where do we go from here?” asked Beth as they stood by the car and watched Valentine drive off.

“My superiors will want to try and contain this,” Robbins said, not really answering her question.

“That’s going to be a bit difficult.” Beth leaned on the top of the car. “For starters, we don’t know where he is. We don’t really know
what
he is.”

“He’s a problem,” said Robbins. “They’ll bring in… outsiders. I’ve seen it happen before.”

Beth raised an eyebrow. “You’ve seen
this
happen before?”

“Not this exactly, but other situations just as serious. I once saw a whole crime squad get muscled out when there was all that terrorism stuff.”

“With the best will in the world, Steve, this is not a terrorist threat situation.”

“You’re right. It’s much, much worse. There isn’t a handbook about what to do when a dead man comes back and wants to talk to his family.”

“So you’re accepting the possibility that this could be Matthew Daley now?”

Robbins rubbed his face with his hands. “Oh, I don’t know what to think anymore. But I do know we need to find him.” He thought for a few moments, then said. “When we get back to the station, I think the best thing you can do is head to the hospital. Do those DNA tests before they bring in a bunch of government scientists I don’t know. Get me some answers.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“My job,” he told her. “I’m the detective, remember?”

Chapter Nine

Caroline Hills poured herself a brandy.

Jason was upstairs in his bedroom, TV blaring. Today hadn’t really fazed him at all, but that was kids for you. He spent half his time in a fantasyland anyway. She, however, was still trying to get her head around what she’d been told. It wasn’t everyday you found out someone was impersonating your dead husband. Although, hadn’t there been something in the Chief Inspector’s voice, something in the looks that doctor kept giving him? Like they were holding things back from her. Then she’d pushed for it; pushed for answers which they’d given, eventually. Told her what they knew, told her what had happened over the last couple of days. And it was then that she wished they’d simply kept lying to her. It was then that she felt as if she was losing her mind.

It was like that scene from
Dallas
when Bobby Ewing had turned up in the shower and the previous season had been a dream. Had her life for the last seven years been a dream too? Had the tears she’d cried for months been just a nightmare, had facing life as a single parent just been a hallucination? Had finding someone else, when she thought she’d never love again, been just––

Jesus, what was she going to say to Rob? What could she say when she didn’t even understand herself? The words they’d spoken, she’d thought they were a joke at first––kept expecting them all to start laughing at any moment, for a presenter to come out and tell her where the hidden cameras were. In poor taste, but a joke all the same. Yet when she put it together with what Jason had said, that’s when it really hit home.

“Why wasn’t I told about this before?” she screamed through the tears (though would she have believed it––did she even now?). “I’m still his widow, aren’t I?”

But was she? Was she still his widow now that he might be out there somewhere, back from the grave? Caroline gulped the brandy, the fiery liquid scorching her throat, and poured herself another.

She carried it to the window and looked out through the net curtains. The police car was still out front, down the street, in case the man should try to make contact with Jason again. Caroline’s hand shook at the very thought of it. If he should come here, if she was to see him...

Forget the fact that he was meant to be at rest––how
would
she feel seeing someone she never thought she’d see again… at least not here on Earth? But even that, what faith she’d boasted had gone, along with her husband, while his mother had been exactly the opposite: her belief was strengthened by the loss of her boy. While Irene had taken comfort in the fact that Matthew would be with God now, Caroline had railed against a deity that would snatch away the man she loved (still loved?) so casually, so cruelly. She would have rung the woman, save for the fact that they’d parted on such bad terms. And as for the fact that Caroline had remarried…