Dead Stop (8 page)

I walked up a few flights then stopped at the fifth floor, holding on to the handrail and looking out across the complex. From up there I could see dozens of zombies milling around. They didn’t seem interested in other zombies, bumping off each other and changing direction as they did so, like a demonstration of particles interacting.

‘There are a lot of them down there,’ I said to Melissa, who was standing behind me. I could feel her impatience. We had had our moment, but it was past now.

‘How many people worked here?’ I asked.

‘A lot. But most of those zombies aren’t staff, they’re test subjects.’

‘Test subjects?’

‘Yes, test subjects. You don’t think they just happened to create some zombie-making potion by accident and also accidentally let it loose? The outbreak is an accident, but they’ve been working on these zombies for years.’

Mike had said it too, hadn’t he? Asked who would make zombies. I’d skipped over the question because I didn’t know, and I suppose on some level as a person who saw ghosts all the time I’d just written off the zombies as another form of undeath I had to deal with, and not questioned how they came into being.

Of course they weren’t a natural phenomenon. If zombies were naturally occurring, even rare, there would be incidents reported. Unlike ghosts, you didn’t have to have the sight—or whatever it was I had—to see them. They were pretty hard to miss.

The thought that this wasn’t entirely an accident, but that the company had been
trying
to make these things, and had been experimenting on... on what? On corpses? Or on living people?

I asked Melissa.

‘You don’t want to know,’ she said, and continued to walk up the fire escape.

The living, then. Fuck.

For an accountant, Melissa certainly knew a lot of what had been going on. And, judging by the route we were taking across the site, she was either a closet parkour fanatic or had set up and mapped out her own security-evading routes.

I didn’t know whether to be comforted or alarmed by the fact that Melissa, the person I was depending on to get me through this alive, was obviously more qualified to be dealing with a situation like this than either I first thought or she had admitted.

I
’LL SKIM OVER
most of our on-high traversal of the lab complex site, as not only was it uneventful but any account of, say, my crossing of a sky-bridge via the copper, curved roof would involve far too many usages of undignified phrases like ‘eyes closed’ and ‘trying not to cry’.

So let’s skip to the part where we were descending a glass-enclosed stairwell in a building not far from the main entrance gates. The building we were aiming for was apparently at the centre of the site, a short dash from the fire door at the bottom of the stairwell, but there were a lot of zombies between us and our destination.

‘Let me scout ahead,’ Melissa said as we reached the bottom. While she had cautioned against entering the buildings themselves, the zombies had failed to bash their way into this stairwell. Nonetheless, I felt exposed in an area where three of the four walls were mostly glass, and retreated into a dark corner as Melissa walked out through one of the full-length windows.

Crouched down in the shadows, I could hear my own breathing and, muffled by the glass, the moans from outside. In the distance, I could hear the occasional crack of a gunshot.

How much gunfire had there been, when this outbreak started? Up at the diner, and walking up the road having abandoned my broken down car, I hadn’t heard a single thing, just the wind through the trees.

The company had chosen the location for this lab well, secreted away so that even in the event of a disaster, only an unlucky traveller and a couple of poachers would stumble across what was going on.

If the company were as efficient as Melissa seemed to think they were, they could have the whole mess cleaned up without the outside world ever knowing.

What story would they tell to explain the deaths? A gas leak? A chemical explosion?

A footnote in the newspapers, some bland corporate statements about health and safety, and then back to business as usual, dabbling with the undead for fun and profit, although who would want to buy a make-your-own-zombies kit I have no idea.

Melissa walked straight through the window. Even though she must have been approaching in plain sight, I jumped. I’d allowed my attention to drift and my mind to wander.

‘Get ready to go,’ she said. ‘Security at the gate are having their last stand, and that’s the distraction we need.’

Following her lead, I walked over to the fire door and gently squeezed the release bar. The door opened with a low click.

‘There’s bushes outside,’ Melissa said. ‘Take cover and wait for it.’

Wait for what? I guessed I’d find out. As Melissa had suggested, I pushed the door open, and ducked down as I slid out, moving as quietly as I could into position behind the kind of ornamental bushes that were planted around sites like this to make them seem more pleasant. I took the shotgun off my back and held it two handed, as Mike had quickly drilled me to do. He’d also explained that if I needed to use it I should raise it to my shoulder, one hand steady on the butt, finger on the trigger, the other holding the barrel. Brace, point, shoot down the sights.

Thanks, Mike. I hope you gave the ones that bit you a good big electric shock from your twitching body.

With that tutorial given, I was sure I could do this. A human being, even a dead twitchy one, was a much larger target than a clay pigeon, and would be a lot closer, too, if I needed to shoot it. I was sure I’d hit something, even with my lack of ability in this area.

My main concern was what happened after the shot, when every zombie in the vicinity was drawn towards the very loud
bang
.

A demonstration of how the zombies responded to loud noises came a few seconds later, when there was a tremendous sound of something collapsing, and the gunfire became louder, accompanied by very human shouts and screams.

‘They’ve got into the security hut,’ said Melissa, appearing at my side. ‘Stay low and start moving that way.’

I nodded, and started to move towards the admin block, staying low behind the bushes. Looking through the foliage, I caught glimpses of shuffling figures moving in the opposite direction, drawn by the sounds of screams and gunfire.

Then the gunfire stopped, and there were just screams, rising in intensity, turning into cries of pain.

I was scuttling around the edge of a central square, with a dull water feature in the middle, and could hear the sploshing of zombies wading through the pool. The majority of footsteps were further away from me, though, the pack mentality dragging them in the same direction.

I don’t know what was worse, those last screams from the people at the gate, or the collective hungry moans of the zombies as they all moved towards their victims. There wouldn’t be much left for the stragglers, yet still they moved
en masse
. It was pitiful, yet terrifying, a very human hunger tied to inhuman savagery, a bestial stupidity.

I was rapidly running out of bushes, but I had sight of the double doors I was heading towards. Unfortunately, one zombie hadn’t got the memo about the tasty treats at the gate, and was still shuffling around. It was a young man, shambling between the corpses strewn across the open area—clearly the zombies didn’t feed on the bodies once they got cold—and every time its shoes hit a body, stopping it in its path, it changed direction.

I was going to have to get rid of it, quickly, without raising attention. I turned the shotgun around in my grip, so that I was aiming the butt rather than the barrel in the direction of the zombie. Then I waited for the thing to turn around so that it was facing the other way.

When it had its back to me, I ran, closing the space between me and it as fast as possible. My footsteps were light on the soft tarmac surface, and it—he, not too long ago—didn’t even turn around as I slammed the butt of the shotgun into the back of its head.

It went down hard. The jolt of the blow shook through my body, and I worried that I’d dislocate my shoulder if I had to take another swing like that again. Before I even had time to see if it was going to get up again I slammed the butt two, three, four times into the back of the zombie’s skull.

The back of its head caved right in, and it stopped moving. Under the harsh light, I saw more than I wanted to.

I looked down at the butt of the shotgun, covered in... well, covered in brain matter. I didn’t want to touch it. As far as I knew, it was infectious material. But I couldn’t get rid of the shotgun just yet, it was the only weapon I had.

Holding the gun by the barrel, I ran towards the doors of the admin block.

I grabbed a handle, and pulled. Locked.

‘Here,’ said Melissa, who had remained silent as I dispatched the zombie. I think she was holding her breath, even though she didn’t have any. ‘I can handle...’ she said, trailing off as she reached down to belt level, then froze.

‘Seriously?’ I said.

‘You need a pass,’ she said, bewildered. ‘I don’t know what I was thi—’

‘Don’t go senile old ghost on me now,’ I hissed. ‘Concentrate. Where do I get a pass?’

‘Anybody that’s recently been killed,’ she said. ‘The entrance is low security, and the admin block doesn’t lock down like the high level labs.’

‘Okay. You hold it together, I’ll find a pass.’

I could see it in Melissa now, the vagueness that all the other ghosts I’d ever met had, the confusion. I needed to keep her from going completely gaga until she’d finished helping me, or I really would be screwed.

There were a lot of bodies, but the most promising was one that looked like it was wearing a security guard’s uniform.

I turned the body over, glancing towards the gates. There seemed to be a hundred zombies milling around there. How long until the new bodies were cold and they lost interest and started drifting back towards me to hunt for fresher prey?

I winced at the corpse. It was the body of a woman, heavy set, virtually decapitated. The uniform was soaked with rainwater and blood, and a baton was hanging from one hand, the leather loop still caught around the woman’s wrist.

Should have gone for something more powerful, I thought, and then saw that she had a gun holstered at the waist, a pistol. There was also a staff pass with an unflattering photograph clipped to her belt.

‘Thanks, Sandy,’ I whispered, gently lowering my brain-stained shotgun to the ground, then taking the pass and pistol. ‘I’m sorry.’

It seemed the thing to say. It seemed stupid that a trained security guard had died, and I was still alive.

Towards the gate, I heard a bellow, and looked across to see movement.

Fuck. One of them had spotted me, and the rest were following as it shambled towards me. The same hungry moan, that battle cry of the dead, rang out across the square as the horde as a whole began to stumble back in my direction.

‘Get over here,’ snapped Melissa, who seemed to have regained her senses.

I ran over to the double doors.

‘Is it safe in there?’ I asked, nodding to the admin block.

‘Probably not,’ she said. ‘Show me your gun.’

She hurriedly talked me through taking the safety off—it was harder to move than I expected—and how to aim when entering a building.

Accountant,
right
. Even as a white collar embezzler, she should have no reason to know half the shit she did.

Firearms lesson two of the evening done, I swiped the card in the reader and it beeped, a green light flashing.

Sod it, the zombies were coming already. I pulled the door open fast, not caring what noise I made, and entered the admin block, pistol raised.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
HURRIED INTO
a dimly-lit reception area, checking both ways, gun raised, to make sure nothing lunged at me as I entered.

Deserted. The whole place was a mess, but it was open and bright enough to give clear line of sight in all directions.

I pushed the door closed behind me and it shut with a reassuringly heavy
click
. For the moment, I was safe enough.