Dead City (6 page)

“Hey! Other me! Pay attention!”
Corporeal Jon was alert again, and unable to control his mouth, replied inside his own head.

'What?'

“Where'd you go?  We're about to cross.”

'I was in our memories, trying to work out what happened to our dad.'

“Well pay attention. This is going to work, right? It's not going to make me explode or anything?”

'One way to find out.'

“This best not fucking vaporise me.” the ghost said to himself.

Still possessing his own body, he dipped into the river and started to wade across.

Both Jons were still in tact when they clambered up on the river bank.

'It worked?!'

“Don't sound so surprised.” said Jon's possessor, before suddenly being sneezed out directly at the river. Unable to pass through the invisible barrier, he hit it with a resounding
thwack
that
entertained Jon to no end.

The streets of living London were like a walking through a half-remembered dream, a distant memory made flesh that despite having physical form, didn't seem real for Jon. The buildings and roads were all so clean, so alive compared to everything back behind the wall. The pre-dusk light was gleaming off windows that had actually been maintained, washed and shined, rather than left to decay like the creatures that stalked the streets back in the City they left behind.

He fought the urge to narrate. The crutch, the fantasy, had kept him distracted for too long. He needed to be in reality, let his identity sink in, now that it had finally been returned to him.

It was too late in the day for public transport, the last trains and buses having arrived at their destinations before the sun began to set. Curfew was in effect, albeit poorly policed, so the two Jons had the streets of London to themselves.

The walk was going to take hours, but corporeal-Jon was used to long walks. His daily circumference of the wall was around eleven miles, so the four from where they emerged at Tower Bridge was barely a stretch. His ghost was not enjoying the journey, the two of them spent most of the time bickering about which route would be faster.  As much as Jon wanted to see Ashley, he also wanted to absorb the living, breathing side of the city again. It was a revelation to see the monuments and architecture that had, until recently, been nothing more than a haze buried in a vault of memory. He navigated the two of them along the banks of the Thames, then up Shaftesbury Avenue to Piccadilly Circus. It all felt so familiar, and yet somehow didn't. As if the years in the decay and filth of Dead City had become more a part of him than the world he actually belonged – or at least the world he thought he belonged until he started being haunted by himself. Even though he had a pulse he wondered,
'Does having a disembodied ghost of myself mean I'm nothing but yet another citizen of the walls?'

Looping around for Trafalgar Square, they cut through Soho and Fitzrovia, eventually finding the familiar streets of Camden, leading up to Chalk Farm.

“Are you taking us on the scenic route to sight-see, or to put off the inevitable?” his ghost asked, speaking the very thoughts he was trying to ignore.
Jon didn't respond. They were close now, and his stride slowed as they drew nearer to their destination. His borough became his neighbourhood, his neighbourhood became his road, his road became his house. They stared at the home they had lived in for years with the woman they loved.

“What if she moved?” asked Jon.

“She hasn't.” said his ghost. “I... checked.”

Jon turned his head to his disembodied self, eyebrows raised.

“Checked?” he asked.

“I may have accidentally haunted her when I first got back. But I apologised after!”

“Great. So she knows we're... she thinks we're fucking dead?”

“Probably should have mentioned that, huh?”
Jon rolled his eyes and approached the door. He took a deep breath, fought the urge to walk away, and tentatively lifted his finger to the doorbell, getting momentarily distracted by a nose-shaped dent in the wood, paint chipped from an impact. He turned back to his ghost, who shrugged.

Ashley was taking her single plate, single knife and single fork to the sink. This is how it had been for the last three years, and having discovered that Jon had passed away, it was how it would continue to be until she could find a way to move on. Perhaps she'd have just a few more visits with him, she thought, for catharsis. Then the healing could begin.

The doorbell rang, and the plate hit the floor before Ashley knew she dropped it, smashing into pieces by her feet. She jumped back narrowly missing a shard, reaching for the kitchen table for stability, only to lean on a chair, which she took down with her. The falling and caterwauling concluded and she sat up, laughing at herself. She was surrounded by the chair and smashed crockery, the knife within sight, and hidden somewhere was the fork she would knew she would inevitably step on. Whenever she discovered it – or whenever it discovered the sole of her foot – she'd laugh about it all over again. The laughter, as real and spontaneous as it was, soon gave in to tears, as she recalled how much Jon would have laughed at and with her. The tears were brought to a stop when she heard a
crash
at the front door. As adrenaline started pumping and instinct took over, she grabbed the knife and was on her feet. A single pair of footsteps were rushing towards to the kitchen, and she prepared herself to lunge.

'Aim at the brain.'
she told herself
'That's what they always say. Whatever manner of dead thing, they always like having their brains in-tact. It wouldn't kill the thing, but it would slow it down.'

She hid behind the door and could feel her heart pounding in her chest as a hand came round the corner, a head following, seeing the smashed plate, kneeling down to investigate. She lifted the knife above her head and crept behind the figure, preparing to stab. Then she felt her knife-wielding arm drop to her side. Her body was no longer responding to commands, consciousness locked in the back of her mind, watching through her eyes as she put the knife down on the counter, unable to pick it back up.

'Sorry about this.'
Jon's voice said, echoing in her head.

Jon turned to see her.

“Ash...” he said, standing up.

“Not quite.” said the ghost, speaking through Ashley's mouth.

“Fuck's sake. Stop possessing our wife.”

“She was going to stab us!”

“Get out of her. Now.” he ordered.
Ashley sneezed, and the spirit escaped. She stared at Jon, reaching for the knife again.

“It's me, Ash.” he said.

“You're dead!”

“Yes and no...”

“But you're a ghost.”

“
And I'm also
not
a ghost. It's a long story.”

“And we don't have all the pieces.” added the disembodied spirit.

“Right.” he said. 

“What?”

“She can't hear me.” the ghost said.

“Of course.  You can't see him - the ghost me. He said we don't have all the pieces.”

“So you're alive, and you're dead, you haunted me, hit a woman in the face with a door and made a fish dance with broccoli?”
He turned to his ghost.

“Missed some of that out, huh?” he said

“Do you know how difficult it is to be creative at haunting?” his ghost replied.
He turned back to Ashley.

“I annoy the hell out of me. How did you put up with us?”
She smiled and took a step towards him, screaming as her foot became impaled on a fork.
All three of them laughed harder than they'd laughed in a long time.

Dildo was patrolling the City walls. He was ready for anything, but also likely to forget what he was doing at any given moment. It had been a quiet night, and nobody seemed to need saving. He trundled through the streets until coming across the top half of a fellow zombie.

“Need help!” said the zombie.
Dildo looked at him, cocking his head with a quizzical expression on his face as he tried to remember what he was meant to do.

“Me help?” he said, as some vague memories returned, reaching into the hole in his head and pulling out a bloody notepad and pen.

“Need help!” said the zombie.
Dildo scrawled this down in the pad, as he had seen Jon do countless times.

“Me help!” he replied.

“Need help!”
He continued writing.

“Me help?” he asked, with intense concentration in his scribblings.

“Need help!” replied the half-zombie.
Dildo showed him his notes; a stickman with a hole in his head, and a half-stickman with a smile on his face.

“Me helped!” said Dildo, handing his half-friend the picture and walking away, triumphantly stuffing the notepad and pen in his cranial cavity. Unfortunately, he poked the bit of brain that was holding on to the memory of any of that interaction, and forgot it instantly.
He continued to walk through the streets, returning as best he could to the office. Passing the casino, he watched as monoliths from all over the city entered.

“Keep walking, pig.” the bouncer said to Dildo, as he waited for the last of the giants to walk in.

He followed them inside, closing the door behind, leaving Dildo out on the street.

The Necromancer emerged from his lair to the address the assembled creatures.

“Nice to see you all so prompt.” he hissed, as the bouncer locked the door and crossed the room to stand by the side of his superior. “We've got the liaison out the way for a short while, so it's time we stepped up our game, and reminded everyone in town who's in charge.”
He walked over to a slot machine standing against the wall, and signalled for the bouncer to push it out the way, revealing a room full of meat.

“One for everyone, tell them it's a gift to apologise for the liaison's errors in rationing these past months.”
The monoliths entered and started taking meat by the handful, a luminescent yellow residue left on the shelves. The Necromancer smiled to himself, and began to cackle as his minions departed. Soon, the city would be his, and not just the Dead City, but the whole of London.

Ashley and the Jons had spent all night talking, catching up on their lives since his disappearance, and remembering the better times. Enjoying each other's company so much, they didn't even notice the sun had come up. Ashley's alarm rang from up in the bedroom, informing them it was 7am, and she darted to her feet.

“Shit, I've got to get ready...” she said.

“What for?” the Jons said.

“I've got a meeting with the Minister For Unliving Affairs.”

“George?” he asked.

“You remember him?”

“Of course, I see him every week...” said Jon.

“Do you remember him before that? When he was friends with your father?” she asked.
He didn't. Neither of the Jons did.

“Then you're coming with me.” she said. “Shoving you in his face outside of the City walls is sure to rattle him, right?”

“Yeah.” said Jon.

“But have a shower first.” she said. “There's no nice way to say this, but you smell like someone shat
on
your pants, after you shat
in
your pants.”

The journey to The Ministry For Unliving Affairs was swifter than the Jons' walk the previous night, as daytime brought with it the option of public transport. They took the train from Chalk Farm straight to Charing Cross and walked through the sea of people to Whitehall. The Houses Of Parliament were standing proud on the horizon as they approached The Ministry. The former War Office had been repurposed in the eighties, given that as the crisis moved into its second decade, wars were less of a concern than the return of the deceased.

As they turned into Horse Guard's Avenue, a statue of Spencer Compton stared ahead at the Household Cavalry Museum with a steely gaze. He was draped in a long flowing cloak, a hand resting on the knife at his hip, a pose Jon was embarrassed he had adopted so many times when playing his noir-cum-action-hero persona.
They entered and the Jons held back as Ashley approached the desk to talk to the man on the reception. He checked with the Minister's secretary, then led them up an ornate staircase, lit from above by a skylight at the centre of a stone dome. They walked through corridors that seemed to span longer than the length of the building.

“There's over two and a half miles of corridors here,” he proudly and cheerfully informed, spouting off facts about the building to pass the time. “These were renovated when the building became The Ministry,” he added. “As you can tell, they don't quite match the elegance of the original 1906 features of the entrance and the facade.”

They smiled politely, but he could tell they weren't interested. He turned a corner and gestured to the Minister's office. Ashley took the lead as the Jons waited behind the door, they wanted the Minister to be at ease before revealing their presence.

“Miss Gilligan!” said the Minister, rising from his desk to greet her. He approached her and gave her a bear hug, which she was not expecting. “Such a pleasure to see you after all these years!”
He pulled a chair out and smiled as he waited for her to take a seat. She did so, noting how the chair was significantly lower than his own, and watched as he returned to his side of the desk.
The large man towered over her, arms resting on the old mahogany, fingers interlinked, with a warm smile on his face that she presumed was forced.

“I heard of young Jon's passing and relocation to The Walls, I'm so very sorry.”

“Are you now?” said Jon as he walked into the room, finally revealing himself.

“Jesus fuck!” said the Minister, as Jon took a seat next to his wife.

“Do the voters know you use that kind of language?” asked Ashley.

“How can you be here?” asked the Minister. “What are you doing here? You can't be here!”

“City's not as locked up tight as you thought it was.” said Jon.

“But you can't leave! If you leave then there's no-one to keep him in line...” he trailed off.

“Who?” asked the ghost.

“Who?” reiterated Jon.

“You've got to understand...” said the Minister. He was flustered, and beginning to perspire. “We only wanted what was best...”
The ghost was getting bored, and threw the Minister's papers from his desk, blowing them across the room as if in a gust of wind.

“Best not piss off my husband's ghost.” said Ashley. “He can be a bit of a dick.”
The ghost nodded in agreement, and Jon did the same. The Minister looked around the room for the spectre he could not see, and composed himself.

“It wasn't our fault. Jon's father and I had the best of intentions... two thousand of our boys were over there, not to mention all the yanks.”

“Over where?” asked Jon.

“Vietnam... You've got to understand, we couldn't officially do anything... our chaps were switching nationalities, signing up with the Kiwis and Ozzies to fight Communism, but we were chairs of The Geneva Convention! We had to be neutral.”

“What are you saying?” said Ashley.

“They were losing tens of thousands to the conflict, we had to do something...” he trailed off, trying to find the words. “We had reports from our boys in Malaysia. They had met a man who claimed to be able to help, keep the troops fighting --”

“-- by stopping them being able to die.” Jon interrupted.
The Minister was pale, sweating profusely. He tried to swallow with a dry throat, and went to his mantle, pouring himself a whisky from a crystal decanter. Without offering the others a glass, he knocked it back and attempted to compose himself.

“At first it worked a trick, our boys, the yanks' boys, they'd get gunned down and jump straight back up... but then Charlie – sorry – the Vietnamese started getting back up too. Before we knew it, there were reports in our back yard about hospital patients being pronounced dead and walking straight out of the morgue, then the reports were coming in from all over the world...”
He sat back in his chair and slumped down, staring at the floor.

“We didn't know...” he said, running out of steam, the confession exhausting him.

“But why me?” asked Jon. “Why did you put me in charge of the city?”

“And what about me?” asked his ghost.

“Yeah, what about him?” Jon added, indicating to his disembodied self.

“Sins of the father...” said the Minister. “He kept it to himself for all those years... through the chemo and the surgeries, but when he finally gave in to the inevitable, when he signed the forms to have his body destroyed and spirit exorcised, and lay there on his deathbed, he confessed it all to you. Confessed his part in the return – my part in it all – and your first reaction was to make it public.”

He looked at their faces, the guilt driving a dagger into his gut, drying his whisky-lubricated throat as he tried to continue.

“He told me there was a way to fix it... a way to make you forget, not kill you, I never wanted that. We'd just repurpose you, put you to use elsewhere. It was a simple ritual in the end, barely took us twenty minutes...”

“
You
separated him from his spirit?” Ashley asked.

“Who?” asked Jon. “Who told you?”
The Minister looked like he was either going to pass out or throw up, or perhaps a combination of the two. He breathed deeply, and coughed up the words.

“The Necromancer.”