Necropolis Rising (6 page)

“
It’s hard to believe such a thing is possible.” Carpenter’s skepticism kicked in for a while.

“
Click onto the video link at the bottom of the page,” Shipman instructed. “This clip was taken from CCTV footage thirty minutes after the explosion at Whittington’s apartment.”

Carpenter did just that, and couldn’t believe what he was watching. It was footage of Broad Street, the entertainment hub for over a million visitors a year. But there wasn’t any bustle or signs of revelry. As with Brindley place, the bar fronts were dark and uninviting. But there was some movement. A lone figure ambling in the middle of the road: a middle-aged man. His legs were bowed, as though they wouldn’t be able to support his weight, and his right arm was missing above the elbow. The camera suddenly zoomed in on the man’s face and Whittington had seen enough death in his lifetime to recognize it immediately. This was, without question, a dead man walking.

“
My God, did Whittington actually do it?” Carpenter muttered in awe.

“
Not with our money,” Shipman said coldly

“
Meaning?”

“
We can assume that Phoenix Industries have funded Whittington’s research. Now the experiment has escaped from the Petri dish.”

“
So what are we saying here, Major?”

“
Birmingham is infected with the offshoot of Whittington’s Lazarus Initiative,” Shipman explained. “So we can only presume that those inside its radius are infected. The way the Initiative works is academic but the symptoms are a painful, agonizing death. And then -” the Major stopped as though he couldn’t quite bring himself to air his thoughts.

“
Then, what?” Carpenter asked looking at the screen as the dismembered man bumped into a lamp post.

“
Re-birth,” the Major whispered.

***

The Mastiff slowed before coming to a complete stop; its big engine growling. From his position in the back of the truck O’Connell sensed that this was pre-emptive. He talked into his headset.

“
Update, Kunaka?”

“
Road block: four hundred metres. Instructions?”

“
Let’s go and say ‘hi’,” O’Connell said. “Good luck, people.”

His hands closed upon the SA80 sitting across his lap.

“
I thought
that
was just for show?” said Clarke, his voice trembling slightly.

O’Connell didn’t reply.

***

7

There, my darling. Do you feel my touch? Do you feel my love?”

Crispin Miller’s hand trembled as it moved over Heather Monaghan’s soft linen night dress, his fingers tracing small circles on the milky white skin of her exposed sternum, before nestling under the gown’s neckline and cupping her small breast.

“
I love you so much,” Crispin whispered into her ear, his fingers stroking the pert nipple of her left breast; a nipple that was not so much stiff and erect in response to his adept touch, as the fact that Heather Monaghan had been as dead as a nail since the day Crispin Miller had first met her.

She wasn’t as beautiful then as she was now, of course. Then she had been
damaged
, the result of soft, yielding tissue meeting the harsh plastic of a dash board at sixty miles per hour. Her death had been as instant as his love for her, when he saw the photograph Heather’s grief-stricken husband had brought into Miller’s Funeral Home Ltd several days ago.

Mr. Monaghan was wheel-chair bound; an added penance for driving slightly over the limit on the night of the accident that turned his good natured, fun loving spouse into the rag doll that had hit the windshield with such force twenty of her teeth had exploded. Monaghan’s melancholy - his guilt - was a palpable entity, and he wore his grief like fragile armour.

“
Make my lass handsome again,” Monaghan had wept, handing Miller a 4x4 glossy picture of his very beautiful, very dead wife.

It was a portrait, taken during better times; times when she’d been living and breathing and enjoying what life often gave those who embraced it without question. Heather was facing camera, her green eyes framed by doe-lashes, her smile accentuated by white teeth and her skin, flawless porcelain.

Oh yes, Heather Monaghan was a sight to behold, but when the linen covers were thrown back revealing her ballooned black and blue face and eyes pulled into slits by terrible, swollen eyelids, lesser men would have wept along with her grieving spouse.

But Crispin Miller could see beyond the dreadful wounds. He had seen Heather’s
potential
, vowing to give her back her beauty.

And enjoy a few intimate moments along the way.

Crispin was used to his oddness. When he questioned it (which wasn’t that often) he used the cliché that the blame lay with his parents.

Miller’s mother and father were in their late forties when he came along. As the only son of older parents, his values were often traditional and by default obsolete. This was to become worse when Miller was six years old and his father died of a stroke. His mother’s grief morphed into over protection and dependence. In Georgina Miller’s need for emotional equilibrium, she blunted her son’s emotional and social development

As such, he was always targeted by the local dimwits. His mother laughed off his complaints telling him it would be God’s retribution that such people would ultimately face.

His earliest recollection of bullies was running headlong through a wood in an attempt to evade the three boys who wanted to pass some time by kicking the shit out of him. The memory was still very clear. Because it was the same afternoon that Crispin Miller became fascinated with death.

In those woods, he’d stumbled and fallen, just missing the carcass of a dead badger. It had been there a while, its snout frozen in an endless grimace, its paws pulled taut by rigor mortis. There was little sign as to why the animal lay dead in the wood; there wasn’t any blood or indication of trauma. But the serenity he found in the scene would stay with him for the rest of his life, and somewhere along the way Miller lost the ability to differentiate the desire for life over death.

He was an awkward child, an outsider and as such his relationships with others were often superficial, if they existed at all. Where there were opportunities, Georgina Miller would snuff them out lest it lead to her son leaving her alone. Should Crispin attract any female attention, his mother would place little doubts in his mind.

“
Careful, Crispin, that one’s got her eye on you!”

And she would follow this with stories of how no matter how much time, how much love you gave out, people would always leave you alone and desperate in the end.. By the time he went to college, this had become Crispin’s doctrine.

With no inclination to forge relationships, Crispin’s real passion was sculpture, and in his hands clay was under his command. He excelled at creating figures frozen in time, burlesque images of those he often revered but found, in reality, difficult to connect with. All he needed was a photograph, and this is what he often did. But being caught taking clandestine photographs of young women didn’t go down too well at Art College. People just didn’t understand his rationale, not helped by his aloof nature. And after a while he gave up trying, accepting his expulsion as another example of how the world had failed him.

He bummed around for a few years until the death of his mother gave rise to a chance meeting and a subsequent new sense of direction.

He was devastated at her death, this being another reminder at how people always bailed out in the end. It was a skewed view, born from selfish ends, but with no other perspective, Miller lived by its injunction.

Miller had spoken with George Hedges, the funeral director, to fill in the awkward silences often associated with funeral parlors; where grief and remorse ferment with the sickly stench of funeral wreaths. He spoke of loss and his desire to rebuild life from death and Hedges, a reedy man with a kind demeanor that extended beyond his fee, smiled and asked Crispin how he intended to do such a thing.

So Miller told the funeral director of his talent for sculpture, and the potential to marry his skills and the funeral trade began to take shape as easily as a piece of inert clay under Miller’s deft finger tips.

Under Hedge’s tuition, Miller learned the trade. When he saw his first corpse - that of a woman in her mid-thirties who had come off second best when she collided with a garbage truck - this fledgling mortician was overcome with the same sense of peace that had befallen him in the wood near his home, all those years ago. And from that point on, Miller fell in love with death.

It was only a matter of time before this was to develop into something far more sinister.

Mr. Hedges passed away two years ago, but not before imparting his wisdom and knowledge, and Miller had set up his own establishment with his old mentor’s endorsement.

Now Miller was alone with another creation, another lover upon which to lavish his affections. Heather had been painstakingly rebuilt, crafted into the beautiful creature she was in life.

Miller had positioned her in his office, sitting at a table, the flowing nightdress she wore belonged to his mother. Sometimes he wore it himself, on the anniversary of his mother’s death: just to honour her memory.

Miller increased the urgency in his hand, his delicate fingers squeezing Heather’s cold, embalmed breast, feeling her nipple against his palm.

‘
You’re so beautiful, my sweet,’ Miller breathed as his free hand unzipped his trousers and fondled himself. He longed to look into her eyes, but the glass wasn’t quite good enough and the illusion would be spoilt, and Miller would not be able to maintain his perverse fantasy.

His breath was fast and heavy, and he rested his cheek on Heather’s firm shoulder calling her name over and over until he came hot and wet against her hip.

The usual emotions followed the release, ecstasy, and the pangs of guilt and self loathing; the latter squashed under a heavy layer of faux, distorted conviction. And just to make sure such notions remained buried, Miller covered Heather with the table cloth, turning her into a gingham ghost, sitting at the now bare office table.

After a few moments, his mind turned to his final job of the evening: the embalming of Mr. Charles Richardson, ready for his long walk in the morning. It was an hour’s work, draining the body of blood and replacing it with formaldehyde solution. Then he would pay his Heather another visit, where the love making would become more
intimate
.

Miller went through to the preparation room, where Mr. Richardson lay, covered with a plain white sheet.

“
Hope we weren’t too noisy, Charles,” Miller said cheerily. “She’s a little vixen, that one!”

Charles Richardson moaned in response.

Miller froze, his mind immediately telling him that a dead person could not possibly do such a thing. Just like a dead person couldn’t bring a gnarled hand out from underneath the crisp sheet and begin clawing at the material until it fell upon the tiled floor with a whispering hiss.

And then, as Charles Richardson sat upright, naked and exposing the livid purple, post mortem “Y” carved into his chest and abdomen, there could be no denial. Richardson’s mouth opened and his dentures collapsed with a loud click. The cry that came from his long dead vocal cords was low and pitiful and his neck creaked as it turned, jerking like some malfunctioning robot in a ropey 50’s sci-fi movie.

As Richardson brought his eyes to bear, Crispin Miller wet his pants. He wasn’t aware of it, he just wished that he’d finished the embalming process and removed
those eyes
.

Miller backed away as the reanimated corpse slid its legs over the side of the surgical table, inched forwards and then planted both feet on the floor. As he stood, Richardson’s innards could be heard slopping around in his abdomen.

Gravity always wins
.

Miller fell back into his office as Richardson began lurching towards him. Slamming the door, the undertaker fumbled with the key in the lock, turning it with such force the shaft snapped in the tumbler. Then he drew the deadbolt across the top and bottom of the door.

Richardson could be heard outside, slapping twin palms against the other side of the door. Miller continued to stare incredulously at the two inch thick barrier keeping him safe from his unlikely assailant.

How was this possible? Was this his penance for his kind of love? God’s retribution, just as mother had said?

So many questions, but they were all cut short by a sudden small noise behind him.

The sound of movement. The sound of material slipping onto the floor.

A gingham table cloth for instance
.

Miller turned slowly, his heart pumping, the muscles of his arms and legs shivering and reluctant.

He shouldn’t have been surprised to see Heather Monaghan standing and facing away from him, her hair tied up exposing the nape of her exquisite, delicate neck. But he allowed a gasp of pure horror to escape from his lips, and her head jolted towards the sound, the sudden movement dislodging one of her prosthetic eyes; launching it across the table where it bounced against the far wall before skittering across the plush carpet to stop at his feet.