Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] (39 page)

He stormed past the dining set, heading towards the open kitchen door, making sure that he made as much noise as possible. Gavin needed to know that the defiant blonde twatting bitch knew that her husband was coming in there to have words. He pictured her in there, huddled in a corner, shaking her tiny tits off, whimpering like a scared puppy, and desperately looking for somewhere to hide.

“Don’t you fret, my clenched fists, you’ll soon be pressed against her skin.” He just needed to eat something first. The notion that Sarah hadn’t even made him anything had crossed his mind; if that was the case then he’d use her housekeeping and order a takeaway, and then he’d beat the shit out of her.

The thought of watching her scared bunny eyes darting from mouth to spoon as he ate helped to calm his foul mood.

The man walked into the tiny kitchen, his snarl fell off his face, and he slowly lowered his arms when Gavin saw that his wife wasn’t even in here.

“What the fuck?”

He hadn’t expected that, where the hell was the bitch?

Sarah may be nowhere to be seen, but his food wasn’t. He spotted the white oval dinner plate sat on the counter top next to the draining board.  Only the edge of the plate was visible. This was fantastic; Sarah had really piled the food on.

“It’s a grub hill,” he said, grinning. “It gets better; I do believe that I can see pie crust underneath the mushy peas.”

This was a pleasant surprise. Gavin loved Sarah’s homemade pie. The woman’s cooking skills were the envy of the village. There wasn’t much that she couldn’t bake, roast, boil, or grill. Her kitchen accomplishments were one of the reasons why he’d married her.

He took his favourite spoon out of the cutlery drawer. Gavin had never seen the point of using a fork, any food that the spoon had difficulty with, he just used his fingers.  He picked up the plate and carried it out of the kitchen. After buying the table set, he might as well use the twatting thing.

His love of home-cooked food only ignited after his first stay-over at his Uncle Ken’s farmhouse. Gavin had never realised that food could taste so good until he sampled the delights of his Aunty Dorothy’s steak pie, followed by blueberry crumble. Gavin’s mum had brought him up on the suspicious delights of tinned food and cheap meals from the local freezer shop.

Gavin’s mouth underwent orgasmic glee as he stuffed it full of pie, chips, and mushy peas. The meat in the pie tasted like lamb and chicken. There was never a shortage of fresh meat in their fridge. Tom always looked after his two oldest friends. Then again, the butcher owed him big time for fixing up Tom’s knackered old Land Rover a few weeks ago. He’d put in a lot of time and effort into sorting out that motor. It was only fair that Gavin should have his pick of the occasional choice cut of meat, along with the odd bird thrown in for good measure.

“This is incredible!” he shouted, looking towards the kitchen. “You really have surpassed yourself, lass. I’ll tell you what, what say I nip down to the village first thing in the morning and pick you up a new telly?”

He wouldn’t go to that rip off Roger either. Tom told him the other day that creepy Clarence wanted to sell his for a reasonable price. Gavin then slowly put the spoon back on the plate. Why the hell was he shouting into the twatting kitchen? For crying out loud, he’d just come out of there, and unless the bitch had squeezed herself in the fridge, Sarah wasn’t in there.

“Where the fuck is she?”

Gavin left the table, intending to finish his meal once he’d found his woman. He could not scoff another gob-full until he’d resolved this twatting mystery. Could she have gone upstairs to the bog? Yeah, that made sense. The bitch was always running up and down the stairs with that bladder of hers.

Sarah was always whining on about her waterworks, suggesting that these troubles hadn’t started until he’d married her; there had been no direct implication, but he knew the bitch blamed him. Admittedly, his fist family had been a little over enthusiastic with her down below bits in the early days of their marriage. Even so, it wasn’t his fault that she’d been born with frail insides.

Gavin stood at the foot of the stairs and heaved a frustrated sigh at the sight of the open toilet door directly above him. She couldn’t be in there. Sarah always shut and bolted the door whenever she paid a visit. Fuck knows why, considering there were only two of them in the twatting house. There had been talk of bringing a baby Ellis into the world, but he soon knocked that idea out of her silly head.

“Oh, come on, you silly bitch, where the fuck are you? This has now gone beyond annoying.”

He then heard something hit the floor right above his head. Gavin laughed, “So that’s where you’ve been hiding!” 

Gavin slowly climbed the stairs. “You are so going to regret fucking me off!” he shouted.

It had been a while since her behaviour demanded the full works, but this incident was too serious to ignore. After the fist family had finished their dance, their downstairs neighbour would then be called out to play. If the bitch was still capable of moving, he’d get her to make him up another dinner.

He reached the top of the stairs and peered into the bathroom just to make sure. Gavin then padded across to the spare room and placed his ear against the door.

“Sarah, come out right now and I promise that I’ll go easy on you.”

Gavin stepped back. He had no intention of going easy on her, but she wasn’t to know that. She’d do as he ordered, though, of that he was sure.

Something thudded against the door on the other side.

“So, that’s your reply is it?” He pictured the woman crouched in the corner of the room, surrounded by a collection of small objects. She’d gone through a moment of madness only once since they’d been married. After a rather vicious episode with Gavin’s fist family, she’d run into the kitchen screaming her silly little head off. When he’d followed the hysterical bitch, she assaulted him with an assortment of flying kitchen utensils.

Something else thudded against the door. Gavin folded his arms. The stupid bitch had chosen the wrong room to pull this damn fool stunt. She’d be shit out of luck for decent ammunition in there. Apart from his collection of bike mags, the only other items of significant quantity were her large collection of soft toys. He figured that was what he was hearing hitting the door.

“This is your last warning, bitch.”

Another noise caught the man’s ear. This one came from right outside the house. Oh, fuck! Some twatter was inside his beloved garage! He’d recognize the distinctive sound of his creaking garage door anywhere.

“I’ll deal with you in a minute,” he growled.

Gavin raced into the main bedroom and gazed out of the window, and he was just in time to see his wife emerge from the garage, stop, then look up to the window. She saw him and waved.

He backed away from the window. “What the fuck is going on here?” Gavin grabbed the baseball ball that he kept beside his bed and crept towards the spare bedroom. He raised the bat above his head, then slowly counted to three.

Once he’d reached his desired number, the man raised his foot and slammed his boot against the handle. The door swung open and a silent cloud of black and grey feathers flew through the doorway and engulfed the shrieking man.

Gavin staggered back, he dropped the bat and fell against the wall. Dozens of tiny pointed beaks belonging to some of Seeton’s missing bird population drilled into the man’s exposed skin surface, transforming his flesh into something that resembled tenderized beef steak.

The man’s cries abruptly ceased when a sparrow flew into his open mouth and lodged itself deep in his throat.

Chapter Twenty-four

Alison had been through way too much weird shit today to be fazed by this short-arsed bastard. Some psycho butcher threatening with a tiny cleaver didn’t even get into her top ten.

“You should have stayed away, Dean, you and your plague.”

“You ain’t making sense, Tom. Look, move out of my way and let us through. I’m in no mood for games.”

“This is no game!” screamed the butcher. “You’ve killed our village with your filthy disease.”

Alison couldn’t take this anymore, what the fuck was up with these people? She ran towards the idiot, screaming at the top of her voice. Alison had dropped the bat in the alley, but its absence didn’t make a difference, Tom must have dismissed her as some inconsequential teenage nobody. His eyes turned to saucers, and he turned and ran back up the stairs.

“Fucking coward,” she grinned.

“Jesus, he could have stuck that in your head!”

Alison shook her head, “Who him? The action man of Seeton? Give over. Our Sarah told me all about him, he talks big, but he’s just a big pudding.”

She watched the man scurry back towards the window.

“What are you doing?” she hissed. For all Tom’s cowardice, it wouldn’t take him long to figure that he could just finish them both off by standing at the top of his stairs and fling his knives at them. She just hoped that he hadn’t thought of that one yet. Alison gazed up the stone steps; he’d yet to make a reappearance. Alison jumped when Dean tapped her on the shoulder.

When she spun around, he pressed the cricket bat into her hands. 

“Now we can go,” he said.

Alison kissed his grinning face and raced up the steps, just aching for that butcher to attempt another confrontation. They both reached the top without seeing him.

“Where’s he gone?”

Dean shrugged. “Who cares? Look, we have to get to my dad’s house. I need to get this stopped.”

Alison leaned against the back wall and blinked, “Wait, what he said just then about you bringing this to Seeton.  Are you telling me that all this madness is your fault?”

The man shook his head. “Of course, it isn’t my fault. I worked on the project, but I didn’t release the fucking stuff.” The man started to cry. “Do you think I wanted this to fucking happen? Jesus, you have no fucking idea what stress I’m under here. Millions, maybe billions, of people are going through torture because of what I’ve helped to create.” Dean ran up to her and grabbed both her hands. “I can stop this from spreading, maybe even reverse, it but I sure as fuck can’t do it in here.”

She didn’t know what to believe anymore. Then Alison took one look at that agonized expression and saw that he believed what he was saying. Even if there was just one grain of truth in his words, Alison realised that she had no other choice. She had to help him.

“Where does your dad live?”

The look of relief on the strange man’s face was tangible. Did he honestly think that she’d abandon him? It’s not as if she had anywhere else to go.

Dean took her hand in his and pulled Alison towards the door that she guessed would lead to the shop.

“What about Tom?” she asked. “He’ll be waiting for us, and this time that nutter would have his metal friends with him.”

“I used to have a mate called Gavin back in the old days. Always starting fights he was. Have a guess where Tom was when stuff kicked off.”

Alison shrugged, not sure where he was going with this.

Dean smiled. “He hid under tables or behind a wall.” Dean grabbed the door handle; he then stared at the girl. “I’ll bet you a tenner that the yellow bozo hasn’t changed. He’s all mouth. He always has been.”

Alison sighed and followed him into the back of the shop. She hoped he was right about him not changing. Dean was betting both their lives on it. He stopped before the closed door, tapped the cricket bat with one hand, then grabbed the handle with the other one.

“You were the one who called him a big pudding,” he whispered. “If he hasn’t run off, bop him one.”

Alison grinned. “Bet on it.”

“Are you ready?”

Dean pulled the door open and rushed through, Alison followed close behind, she had no intention of losing him in the darkness.

“I can’t see shit,” she muttered.

“Christ on a bike, he’s boarded up the shop. No wonder it’s dark in here.”

Alison looked over the man’s shoulder and saw glimpses of starlight leaking through the gaps in the boards. “What’s he done that for?”

“Hush,” he hissed. “I think I can hear him.”

Her eyes were slowly getting used to the dark room. She found that the stairs had led them directly to the preparation area behind the counter. She put her hand out and felt another wooden door frame next to this one. She guessed that the other door either led to the butcher’s meat freezers or to his living room. Could he be hiding in there? Alison hoped so, she wanted to get out of this spooky shop as quickly as possible without bumping into him again.

The customer’s view of the butchers shop formed in her mind. Her mum used to bring Alison in here every Saturday. She remembered gazing in fascination at the butcher’s assorted collection of silver instruments hung up at the back of the shop. She turned and walked forward two paces. The butcher always hung the largest knife at the end. To the eyes of a seven year old, that knife was huge, more like a weapon that a medieval knight would use to cut down his enemies.

She raised her arm and moved closer to the back wall until her hand made contact with the cold tiles. It didn’t take her probing fingers long to encounter the razor sharp steel blade.