Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] (29 page)

He double-checked his gun then unlocked the door.

“Please be careful, sir.  That thing in there bears no resemblance to that snivelling little cunt we brought in.”

Billy nodded, still not believing their implausible story. He wouldn’t forget Marigold Drake’s face, though, when he and Jacob arrived at the camera shop where he worked. Billy honestly thought the little kid was going to have a seizure right there and then. He did throw up when Jacob grabbed the boy’s arm and dragged him over to Billy’s black van. Somehow the very idea that a skinny, seven-stone, chicken-livered bag of shit could affect his boys just seemed impossible.

He raised his pistol and opened the door. Billy looked past the gore-streaked walls. He gazed over the metal table bolted to the floor and still littered with Craig’s favourite torture toys and stared aghast at the shaking, meowing, bloodied, wreck huddled in the far corner.

Behind that swollen mask of crimson mess, Billy could still make out the features of the arrogant little shit who had the audacity to believe that he could steal money from him. The fucker actually believed he would get away with it too.

He gazed back at his two minders. How the fuck did this man reduce his two best torturers into mounds of jelly? The wreck in the corner sensed that another person had joined him in the room. The change in his posture was almost dreamlike. He transformed from a snivelling coward into something that was almost feral.

“Shut the fucking door!” screamed Craig. “Don’t let it get close to you, that thing won’t die.”

He dismissed his minder’s pathetic pleading; the idiot had obviously taken leave of his senses. The idea of those two helping themselves to some of his pharmaceutical products, before they began to work on this sad excuse for a man stuck in his mind and refused to leave.

He then turned back around and watched him crawl closer. As he slowly moved across the wet floor, Billy saw just how much damage his boys had inflicted upon his body.

The missing fingers and the two splintered ribs pushing through his torn skin were the obvious signs. Then, as he crawled closer, Billy noticed the wet trail of steaming guts the man left behind. He had a gaping hole cut out of his stomach.

“Oh, dear Lord,” he muttered.

The minders had hollowed him out and yet he still moved. His minders hadn’t been lying, this travesty really was dead. The boy’s hand reached out to grab Billy’s bare foot.

“Get the fuck away!” he shouted, jumping back. Billy brought the pistol up and fired a single shot at the boy’s forehead. Fragments of skull and pieces of brain sprayed out of the back of his head, and what remained of the body just collapsed like a de-boned fillet of fish.

“Did you two spastics not think of bashing in the cunt’s brains?” Billy gazed at his two trained killers, shivering like babies.

“Is he dead?”

Billy stood back, “Of course he’s fucking dead, Craig. Now get cleaned up, and then meet me upstairs in ten minutes time. I want to see a bucket of cold water in one hand, Craig. Jacob, you can bring a stiff bristled brush.”

Craig looked at him with confusion etched into his ugly features. “I’m sorry, sir. Did I hear that correctly?”

Billy sighed. “You two fuckwits have dripped all over my expensive carpet. I expect you to clean it.”

The last of the military vehicles rumbled past the entrance to the alleyway. When he and his colleagues drove through the deserted city streets earlier, Billy watched a dozen uniformed men setting up checkpoints near the railway station and close to The Bull Ring. Thankfully, their route took them away from any of the main shopping areas, so they didn’t have to stop. Looking back, it may have been difficult to explain why three men were tooled up with hardware more sophisticated than what the soldiers had.

He guessed that the army would start clearing the moving dead people from the centre and spreading out from there. There was little doubt in his mind that the chances of them returning to the club anytime soon would be next to remote. He kept this vital piece of information to himself. If his men knew he had no intentions of retreating to the safety of the club, their actions may be unpredictable. Usually, he wouldn’t give two fucks about how his employees felt. His word was law and that was that, but the rules had changed. He had adapted to this fucked up state of affairs, but they still needed time to acclimatise.

“Sir, we have company. Oh, fuck, it’s another one of them.”

Billy followed Craig’s trembling finger. He watched a young teenage girl stumble into the alley. She stopped in the middle, turned towards them, and took a single step towards the three men. Even without his previous contact with Marigold, he would have been able to deduce that this lady should not be moving about. Her naked body displayed the unmistakable ‘Y’ shaped stitching of a mortician’s assistant.

Jacob unleashed a sound reminiscent to an angry bear as he stumbled past Billy whilst reaching into the inside of his jacket pocket. “A shot to the head? I can do that,” he muttered.

Despite applauding the man’s eagerness to make amends, there was no way Billy could allow this. He padded up to Jacob who was already attempting to draw a bead on the approaching corpse. Billy placed his hand on Jacob’s wrist and pushed his arm down.

“The time to exterminate these abominations with bullets will come later. I don’t want any gunshots in here, though. Look around you, we’re in an alley, the buildings will amplify the noise; do you wish to advertise our presence to Birmingham’s myriad dead? Unless of course, you intend to battle with a few hundred of the things.” Billy grinned. “Besides, I want this one intact. This bitch has a role to play.”

He ran back over to Glen’s body. He found it unfortunate that the dealer had chosen to fall in the only area in this alley that wasn’t covered in litter. Around his sprawled body were piles of discarded bin bags, and another inch to the left or right and the rubbish would have cushioned his impact.

Billy glanced behind him and saw that the girl was getting dangerously close, and his two minders still had their guns drawn, but he didn’t think they’d fire unless they believed their lives were in danger. A cursory examination of the crap piled up around the body resulted in nothing he could use. Billy ripped open one of the bin bags and almost whooped with joy when a supermarket carrier bag fell through the hole.

“Just fucking perfect,” he said. He emptied the contents out, watching as a lump of mouldy teabags bounced off Glen’s face.

“Sir? Can we shoot this fucker yet?”

Billy sighed. He ran past his minders, turned the bag upside down, and pulled it over the girl’s head. Then he ducked under her flailing arms and tied the bag’s handles around her neck.

“Come on, don’t just stand there fucking staring, get this thing secured.” Billy pushed the dead girl towards the two men and strode out of the alley towards his van. The occupant tied up in the back still hadn’t answered his questions. Billy turned and watched the minders each grab an arm. He felt that close contact with one of these things would help them both to adapt to the new situation.

Glen had been involved in rather a lot of activities not authorised by Billy. He’d allowed these indiscretions to continue because the dealer was the best he had. It was reasonable to assume that if Billy reined in Glen’s rather vile pleasures then his productivity would be affected. In retrospect, perhaps paying more attention to the dealer’s contemptible traits may have avoided the silly fucker’s needless death.

He grabbed the van’s rear doors. Even so, Glen was still family so consequently, his death needed to be avenged. 

The terrified girl’s face altered from blind hope to dread in the space of a second when Billy opened the rear doors. Just who did the silly bitch expect to open the door? Perhaps she heard the rumble of those army vehicles and thought some handsome soldier would stop his truck, rush over to the van, and rescue her.

He climbed in and took a seat opposite the girl. Billy left the doors open, he wished to give this girl just a slight hope that escape may be possible.

“Hello, Maggie.”

It pleased him when her eyes opened just a little wider; she hadn’t expected him to know her name. Her eyes were rather pretty considering the state of the rest of her; they were probably her best feature.

“I imagine that not too long ago, there would have been lots of handsome young men just dying to take you out to the cinema or for a meal.”

She tried to cringe away when Billy placed one of his large hands on her thigh. “I’m guessing that you’ve forgotten what it was like to normal.”

Her eyes darted over to those wide open doors. The prospect of freedom must be so tantalisingly close for the poor girl, she must even be able to taste it. He squeezed her thigh tight. She groaned behind her gag.

“You only have to tell me where Alison has gone. That’s all you need to do. Just a few harmless words and that’ll be it; you can be on your way.” He pulled out a small plastic bag from his pocket and placed it on the bench beside him. Her eyes immediately shifted down to it. He decided not to inform her that the contents were just washing powder. “I’ll even give you a gift for being so cooperative.” He released his grip on the leg and then removed the gag. “Do we have a deal, Maggie?”

The girl slowly shook her head, “No way,” she whispered. “I ain’t betraying Alison. She’s well out of it and good, too.”

He had expected a little resistance, hence, the carrot on the stick prop, but this was ridiculous. Billy sighed, and he untied the knot in the bag and emptied the contents out of the rear of his van. It pleased him to hear the little bitch let out a tiny moan. “Craig, bring in our guest.”

Billy jumped out and stood to one side while the minders brought the struggling corpse up to the van’s rear. He carefully removed the bag from around her neck. “Maggie, this is your last chance. Tell me where she’s gone right now, or I’ll put this monster in the back of the van with you.”

The girl shuffled back, mumbling and groaning, her raw fear was there, visible for all to see, and yet she still shook her head.

“Move that thing away,” he ordered. Billy jumped into the back, grabbed Maggie’s wrist, and dragged the girl out into the open. She tried to get away, seemingly forgetting that she was still trussed up like an oven ready chicken. He moved back a few steps and drew his own pistol. “Okay boys, throw that thing at the bitch.”

“Okay, I’ll tell, I’ll tell! She’s gone back home to where she was born.”

Billy nodded and smiled. “Thank you, Maggie, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” He pointed his pistol at the dead girl. Maggie couldn’t take her eyes off the trigger. “Oh, wait on. Where exactly was she born?”

The girl shook her head, tears streamed down her filthy cheeks. “I’ve no idea,” she whispered. “Alison never told me.”

“Let it go.”

The minders released her arms and jumped back. The dead girl took no notice of her previous captors and lunged for the girl on the ground. Maggie shrieked in agony when it bit into her outstretched arm. Billy heard the collective moaning of a dozen more of the dead slowly walking towards the van. Maggie’s screams must have attracted their attention.

“Get in the van, it’s time to finish this.”

“But she didn’t tell you where the girl was born.”

Billy shrugged. “I already had that information; I just needed confirmation before I went on a wild goose chase.

Chapter Eleven

It must have cost an absolute fortune. Somehow she doubted that his family would have coughed up the cash either. Oh no, the caring community would have bought this for the deceiving, evil son of a bitch.

“The village won’t be the same without him.” Alison choked back a bitter sob as she carefully re-read the inscription cut into the stone. “Karl Hudson will be sadly missed by all who knew him.” She wanted to scream out at the top of her lungs. Alison saw all her imagined acts of retribution flushing down the sewer because of one careless driver not looking where they were going.

“Those idiots wouldn’t miss the bastard if they knew what he’d really been like.”

Alison sincerely hoped the teacher had not been killed outright. She wanted him to suffer, to lie there all alone in the middle of the road, staining the tarmac crimson, his body broken like a smashed doll and suffering an unendurable agonizing death.

She spat on the gravestone and watched her phlegm slide down the black marble, leaving a green slime trail. “You’re going to burn for eternity for what you did to me, you evil cunt,” she spat. She dropped to her knees, unable to contain her torrent of emotions from sweeping through her. Alison stayed in that position for what seemed like hours. The sudden noise of the huge cemetery gates being pushed open filtered through her misery, and she raised her head, aware that she was no longer alone. Her desire to remain inconspicuous overrode her need to unleash the bottled in emotions. Alison wiped her eyes and watched the figure slowly walk along the leaf covered gravel path. For the moment, Alison saw it was safe to stare; the woman had her eyes trained at her feet. In her hands was a small bunch of pink roses.

Something about the colour of the flowers and that woman seemed to trigger a memory from her childhood. The other woman suddenly stopped beside an old tree and placed the flowers down next to a grey gravestone.