Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] (21 page)

Copyright November 2011 by Ian Woodhead

Revised and edited October 2014 by Linda Tooch

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

Please don't forget to leave a review on Amazon, kind reader! Independent authors rely on your feedback and comments to help us find our audience. After all, without you, we're just a bunch of crazy people locked in rooms, muttering to ourselves.

Prologue

James Darwin watched in exasperation as his two best friends scurried up that rusty metal ladder bolted to the sewer wall. The comparison of their frantic movements to that huge rat that landed on Adam’s shoulder wasn’t lost on him. It wouldn’t be all that surprised if they started to squeak like that fucker as well.

“You’re both a set of cowards!” he shouted. “It’s gone now; your pathetic bleating scared it away.”

The curved sewer wall amplified his shouts, making his voice sound twice as loud. Adam and Oliver both paused on the ladder but they didn’t turn back. James tutted in disgust as they climbed out onto the surface, leaving him alone.

Were they still up there? Hanging around to see if he’d follow them up? Well, if the yellow twats were intending to wait then they’d be hanging around for a long fucking time; James had no intention of joining them.

He pulled out a crushed packet of cigarettes from his inside jacket pocket and dug around, looking for one still unbroken. He gave that disk of blue sky one final look before turning away. This was just like Adam, exploring the sewers under the school had been his fucking idea. Trust that gobby little shit to chicken out.

He lit the cig and filled his lungs with hot smoke; he nodded, that was so much better. The fumes helped to block out the eye-watering stench drifting up from the brackish water by his boots.

“Fucking cowards,” he muttered.

James switched on his torch and played the beam along the crumbling brickwork, smiling when the light illuminated the small furry body of a rat; it squealed before leaping onto the top of a large ceramic pipe. Those things were more scared of him than vise versa. The horrible animal shot away. He couldn’t wait to tell the rest of the class that Adam had shat his pants at the sight of a rat. James giggled. Bugger it, he’d tell them that it was a mouse or a hamster or something. He’d make sure that Adam would remember this day forever.

He walked along the narrow ledge, being careful not to brush his blazer against the green slime coating the bricks. Rats he could deal with, but his mum was another matter. She’d tear him a new fucking arsehole if he buggered up his school uniform. James glanced at the sleeve. There were a couple of stains, but the new washing machine that his mum’s last boyfriend had bought would easily take care of them.

James chucked the tab end into the water and checked the pack for another unbroken cig. He grinned when he discovered just one more left; it was a bit crumpled up but no splits, which was the main thing.

This pack had come from his mum’s latest shag-piece. Some scrote called Dave; apparently his mum had gone to school with him. He’d just been released from prison, not that James held that against him. He may be as rough as a badger’s arse and a bit shouty when pissed, but at least he wasn’t one of those cunts who spoke with his fists once they’d had a skinful, unlike the horrible twat that his mum had been seeing a few months back. James shuddered, reliving the painful nights alone with that evil bastard. He was so glad that he was out of their life.

Dave didn’t mind James smoking, which was a bonus. He’d thrown this pack at him this morning and told him he’d sat on it whilst in the pub last night.

James gazed up towards the open sewer cover, just daring them to show their faces. He lit his cig and waved it from side to side. “Well, fuck the pair of you!” he shouted, “I did say I’d crash my fags but as you two have lost your spines, you can both suck my knob.”

That would well piss them off. Getting their hands on the old cancer sticks had been proving well hard since the pigs had cracked down on the local offies and corner shops. James found it a little ironic that it was far easier to buy weed nowadays than a packet of fags.

He continued on his way along the ledge. The idea had been to walk to the next exit; apparently that one came out directly under the girl’s changing rooms in the sports block. Oliver had told Adam that he was full of shit, but somehow James thought there might be a grain of truth in the rumour. Adam may be yellower than a wagon full of dead chinks, but he wasn’t known for his bullshitting skills. Whatever the truth, James intended to find out.

He shined his torch across the far wall, wondering just how far the next exit was. He attempted to go through the surface journey in his mind but gave up when he realised the idea was bollocks, he wouldn’t be able to do that unless he could walk through walls. Still, it couldn’t be that far.

Something further down the sewer fell into the water with a huge splash. James spun around and pointed the beam in front of him.

“Who the fuck is there?” he shouted. James looked up toward the open grate. It dawned on him what was going on; those turds up there were lobbing bricks down. “Just you two fucking wait,” he growled. “You’re both gonna get a total bitch slap, see if I don’t.”

He turned back and hurried along the ledge, eager to get to the next set of ladders. He began to feel a little uneasy; James couldn’t put his finger on as to why, he just felt spooked, as if someone was down here with him. Of course, the idea was just plain stupid, he was getting as queer as those two useless fucks.

He laughed out loud, startled when his voice cracked. James skidded to a halt when something else splashed into the water not far behind him. The opening was almost out of sight, so that couldn’t have come from the surface.

Could it have been a rat? He shook his head, no way, not unless it was the size of a fucking dog. He flattened his back against the damp wall. Well, fuck the blazer. James shone the beam directly into the black water. The frightened features of his face stared back at him.

It was time to get the fuck out of here, something here wasn’t right. He ran along the ledge, keeping his eyes fixed on the water. He heard something else, it sounded like moaning. He stopped and burst out laughing.

“Oh bloody hell, you stupid pair of tossers. It’s you two ain’t it, trying to shit me up. You set of fuckers; you nearly had me going too.”

He swung the torch around, trying to locate them. James then heard another moan coming from the other direction. “How the fuck are they doing that?” he whispered.

He looked up and saw two faces staring down at him.

“Who are you talking to?” Adam’s voice sounded tiny.

James shrieked and jumped back when a blast of fetid air hit him in the face, followed be the sound of a phlegm-filled cough. He made out the shape of a huge body beside him. James brought up the torch and screamed again as the harsh white light illuminated a tattered dark jacket barely covering a set of slimy rib bones. James staggered back, not believing this was happening. The dead thing shambled towards him, its moaning increased in volume.

His feet strayed close to the edge as James backed away from the approaching monster as a blackened arm shot out of the water and fastened around his ankle. Before he could react, a flesh-shrunken head followed the arm. The jaw opened and ragged chisel like teeth bit through his school trousers and into his flesh.

The intense pain shot through him like fire. He felt his mind close to locking up, and James was vaguely aware of the other one reaching out towards him, its excitable groans were the only sound that he could hear. Suddenly, the one in the water pulled and James slipped, his head cracked against the concrete. The dead thing slowly dragged him into the freezing water; it lunged once more and bit into his inner thigh. The sewer water filled his open mouth before he could cry out.

Chapter One

It resembled morning dew. His droplet of thrown sweat had managed to land on the single green spiky leaf. George Kasnovski decided against calculating the chances of his brow wipe finding the only remaining nettle left alive in his garden.

He straightened his back, listening to his bones creak and those overused muscles complain; he’d need a good soak tonight, the last thing he needed was to be as stiff as a board in the morning. George had done way too much in his garden today; it surprised him that he hadn’t already seized up.

A terrible thought crept up and pushed aside that need to jump in the bath. What if that leaf wasn’t alone, what if the bloody thing had a friend or even a few dozen? This could be the onset of yet another bloody invasion. That was the last thing he needed right now. George placed his red handled trowel next to the offending plant and carefully walked across his large back garden toward the open back door. He stopped and glared at the nettle leaf.

“This garden isn’t big enough for the both of us. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, if you leave of your own accord, then we’ll forget all about it. You’ve got two minutes to make yourself scarce, and there won’t be anymore warnings.”

As he stepped over his two rows of King Edward potatoes, he gazed up into the hot afternoon July sky. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen, three days without rain was having a huge toll on his plants; there was only so much a hosepipe could do.

“You lot need a bloody good soak.”

George shuddered; a downpour would also bring up the rest of the weeds. The thought of having to dig all those buggers out brought fresh pains to his poor back. Back when Madison was still with him, she’d get him to lie on his front and massage the pain away.

“I do miss those hands,” he muttered.

George wondered what his darling wife would have said about him talking to the garden. He suspected that she’d be more upset about him digging up her manicured lawn, tearing up her flowerbeds, and transforming it into a vegetable plot.

“She’d probably have my guts for garters,” he said, whilst shaking his head.

It had been two years this month since he lost the light of his life. Her loss had left a gaping chasm in his heart. A hole he knew that would never be filled. George let out a heavy sigh. He gazed down at the row of cabbages underneath the kitchen window.

Converting the garden had helped a great deal, but that ache, although it wasn’t so intense, still ate into him like the vile cancer that took away his beloved Madison. He had his friends of course; they had all been supportive and helped him get through the darker patches. Anne in particular had been so helpful, perhaps because she lost her partner in similar circumstances.

He padded over to the treble row of pea pods next to the cabbages and pinched off two large pods. He couldn’t believe how well these had grown; these peas grew faster than the nettles. After a moment’s hesitation, he collected a large handful. Anne would love these as a gift.

George entered his kitchen, the cool air made him shiver; he threw the pods into the sink. Would Madison have had his guts if she knew that George and her best friend were getting on rather too well, or would Madison be happy for him? He sighed again, crouched down, and opened the cupboard door under the draining board.

After a few seconds of pushing past a bottle of bleach, some washing up liquid, and a bottle of detergent, he finally grasped an old spray bottle, half-full of industrial weed-killer. When he came to the historic decision of growing his own produce, he’d been told by all the self-proclaimed experts in the village that organic was the way to go. Use nature itself to fight the pests and the weeds, they’d told him. He had, of course listened and taken their advice, with disastrous results. He had lost most of his crops to slugs and other horrible pests, and invasive plants had covered the garden and choked the rest.

George placed the bottle on his work surface and pushed everything back into the cupboard, and reminding himself to set aside a good hour tomorrow afternoon to clean this cupboard out. 

He decided to use chemicals this year; he just didn’t tell any of his new gardening friends. It satisfied everybody, except for the weeds. He grinned, picked up the spray bottle, and pointed it towards his trowel, gunslinger style.

“If you ain’t gone when I get back out there, Mr. Nettle, you and any other of your chums will get dead.”

Tom Maryland, the young lad who owned the local butchers shop, would have a seizure if he saw George with weed killer. He’d spent over half an hour chatting about the benefits of nettle soup last August and how industrial chemicals were wrecking the countryside. George had been happy to listen to him at the time; besides the man had given him a nice piece of skirt beef for half price plus a big bone for his dog.

Before George could return to the garden to dispense death to that offending plant, he heard his doorbell ring twice. He wasn’t expecting anyone. Could it be yet another one of those annoying salespeople trying to convince him to part with his money? He padded into the hall. If it was, he intended to set Gruff on them. George glanced around and located the dog. The Alsatian was fast asleep under the table.