The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1) (27 page)

54

I advanced into the darkness, holding the pointy end of my sword straight out in front. There was no way left but straight ahead. The glow strips highlighted glass cells, bare walls, and finally a light switch, which I toggled on and off to no effect.

The shifting darkness ahead began to take shape into two distinct shambling forms. Both were withered and skeletal, two souls stuck in a special and unfair form of hell. Both sniffed the air as they shuffled, although they had no noses with which to do so. I stood my ground, thinking. As they drew closer, I pulled back my sword in readiness and waited.

A sharp kick to the left shoved the closest back down the corridor. It coasted into the dark, sliding on its back. The remaining creature shuffled towards me, slow enough that I could line up the sword against its neck. I swung it hard. The sword snicker-snacked into its neck.

Where it should have decapitated the creature. Instead the sword stuck halfway through. The zombie’s fingers scrabbled at my plastic-covered chest.
Thank God for geeky ex-boyfriends.
I tried to pull the sword out without pulling the undead thing closer to me.

Finally, I pushed my foot against its groin and the sword pulled free. The zombie crumpled to the floor on its back, limbs waggling.

I hacked at its neck and decapitated it with two strokes. The limbs didn’t stop scrabbling, and the jaw didn’t stop snapping, but it didn’t come after me, which was ultimately the real goal. I peered back towards the remaining creature, feeling a little smug about my swordmanship.

Further away, the remaining creature was still struggling to turn itself around. Something glinted as it twisted—a gold necklace around its neck. Gunk covered the broken locket, any photographs within long since rotted away. The smugness faded.
Who were you?

‘I’m sorry,’ I said aloud.

I left them behind me in the darkness and carried on. The glow strips illuminated the metal of my sword, and I shuffled along with it in front of me as if I were playing some first person RPG.

Even at my snail’s pace, it only took a few minutes for me to reach the end of the corridor and a fire door. I reached for my key just in case, but nothing changed.
Damnit.

I stood outside it for a minute first, listening. Nothing but silence from within.

I turned the handle and stepped into the dark. I could only see a few feet ahead in the pale light: nothing but institutional floor tiles and darkness. I shuffled forward slowly. The door clicked shut behind me.

And of course that’s when I heard it: a dry slithery sound that echoed in the darkness. No, not an echo. A duplication. A sound coming from all sides at once. I stepped back quickly and pulled at the door handle. Nothing gave. The door had locked behind me. I pulled at it again, but it was solidly shut, a thick steel security door made to withstand a ravening horde. I wouldn’t be able to just force it open.

And then I saw it, high above: a single fluttering fluorescent light. I was in the pit.

Cold fear washed over me. It wasn’t possible. You couldn’t just open a door and walk into the pit. You had to be lowered through one of the cells. There were no damn doors into the pit. At least in the living world.
It wasn’t bloody possible.

The darkness moved all around me. There was none of that telltale dead man’s moan. These creatures had been dead too long—even if they’d remembered what their voices were for, their throats and voice boxes had long since rotted away.

Think, Vivia! There was a way in. There has to be a way out.
But all I could think was
damn
Sigrid for running away and leaving me with just a Stormtrooper costume and a sword I didn’t know how to use properly.

My eyes adjusted slowly to the murk, and the moving darkness became a wall of leathery skulls, all looking at me. How could they see me when their eyes were long rotted away? I shook the thought out my head. It wasn’t the best time for zombie philosophising. There were hundreds of them, all pushing against each other to get to me first. As I watched, the front row collapsed under the weight of the creatures behind, who simply crawled over their broken remains. To my advantage, it was slow going. None of them had the muscles left to run or walk. Each step was wobbly, each movement unsure and trembling, but they were still getting closer. The zombie wall shuffled in a decreasing semi-circle towards me.

I did the only thing I could. I ran straight at them, shoving them down as I went. The things toppled backwards onto their fellows, who collapsed under them. My boots crunched as their bones, brittle with the years, broke under my feet.

Hands like claws scrabbled at my ankles but didn’t find purchase on the smooth plastic. Every step, my feet faltered on some uneven surface of rib cage or skull or wriggling pelvis. There was no end to them. I waved my sword around in a circle and felt a satisfying thwack as I hit something. Behind me something grabbed hold of my foot, and I hopped on the other as I tried to pull away. I fell forward and just managed to stop myself from falling face first into a snapping maw.

In the kerfuffle, the thing behind me managed to pull my boot off. I stood on one leg and held my socked foot off the floor away from hungry mouths. I couldn’t hop my way out. I was having enough trouble on two feet. I slammed my foot down and felt a stabbing pain as a sharp piece of bone spiked through it. A fresh shot of fear ran through me. Maybe the ancient, dry bone no longer carried the infection. Maybe.

I shoved the thought away and waded faster, slamming down first with my right-booted foot as I went.

There was an end. About six feet ahead, I could see a blank space not filled with pale nightmares. And beyond that was another door, a wooden door surrounded by a softly glowing nimbus.

‘That better bloody well not be locked,’ I muttered.

I kicked a snapping skull in the face. It splintered backwards.

I ran forward and put my socked foot right into a dead man’s jaw, which clamped down immediately. I screamed and pulled my foot away, but the skull simply snapped off the remainder of its neck and came with, firmly locked down on my foot. I could swear it was making happy little maw-maw noises even if I knew that was impossible.

That’s it. Bitten. Might as well stay here.
The thoughts were fleeting, but somewhere in the back of my mind part of me was screaming and didn’t know how to stop.

Two percent.
Rotting death deferred, if not evaded. It was a shred of hope to cling to. I swallowed my fear. I’d run free of the slithering masses, but the tide was turning slowly back towards me. There wasn’t time to stop and pry the head free. Instead, I made for the door, crunching the skull against the floor as I ran. 

I reached it and pushed down on the handle, praying that it would give. It did. I pushed it open, ran through and slammed it shut behind me, putting all my weight against it. I didn’t think the things in the pit had the strength or brainpower to open it from the other side, but the sheer weight of them might be enough to push it open.

But that wasn’t what was occupying my mind. I’d been bitten.

55

Everything was burnt. The door out of the pit had deposited me into the charred remains of an apocalypse—an urban wasteland of blackened brick and soot. Neat black squares lined with rubble indicated the spaces where buildings had stood, with only the skeletons of dead trees to break up the monotony. Multiple human-like harpy faces watched me expressionlessly.

I sat heavily and leaned against the door. Ash wafted up into my nose, and I sneezed. Pain washed over my foot in waves. The skull was still happily chewing.

I pressed my foot and the skull with it against the ground and pushed at it with my boot until the teeth gave way and the disembodied head rolled off, jaws still grinding.

Slowly, I peeled back my sock and winced. My foot looked like it had made it halfway through a meat grinder. All my toes were intact, but I could see a lot more of my own stringy sinew than I’d ever thought I would. On the whole I’d prefer it if all of my insides stayed, well, inside. Nausea bubbled up, and I swallowed heavily.

The chattering skull on the dusty ground looked for all the world like some cheap wind-up toy, not something that might end my life.

Two percent.
I said it to myself silently over and over. It wasn’t much, but it was the only hope I had. Not enough.

Anger began to build. I looked around for something to smash the thing with. Suitable material littered the ground. I picked up a blackened brick, hopped over, and raised it high. The skull chattered and snapped with excitement at my proximity. How did it even know I was there?

Only the tiniest scraps of flesh clung to the ancient bone. Somewhere in those empty eye sockets was someone’s soul. It crunched its teeth at me, and I sighed. Trying to reason with the dead was pointless. I lowered the brick.

‘You’re dead, little soul,’ I said. ‘Dead. Dead. Dead. You don’t have to be a zombie anymore.’

I hopped out of biting range and inspected my foot again. The damage wasn’t deep, but it was wide and broad. Most of the skin on the arch was, if not gone, then mangled beyond recognition. I gave a hollow laugh. On the upside, the likelihood of infection meant I wouldn’t be worrying about it in a couple of days.

High above, the sun shone hot through clouds of smoke. A trickle of sweat rolled down my cheek. I looked around: there was no one in sight. Except for the harpies, the whole area appeared abandoned.

I pulled off the Stormtrooper’s helmet, and the burning stink hit my nostrils. I pulled off the rest of it. I wasn’t sure why I was here or what here was, but there were no zombies to be seen under the smoky sky. I left the outfit in a pile. My jeans would be too tough to rip for a bandage, so I tried my shirt. I don’t think I have particularly weak fingers, but it, too, was rip-resistant. I pulled it over my head and used the whole thing to wrap my foot. Bright red blood seeped through the makeshift bandage within seconds.

Behind me I heard my sister say, ‘Oh, there you are.’

I turned around, ‘And where the... ack!’

Sigrid was lucky she’d spoken first because if she hadn’t I would have cut her damn head off.
How
she spoke was another question. She’d dressed for the occasion in her best burnt-out skeleton suit, so she was nothing but blackened bones. Only her voice told me it was her and not some other random skeleton.

‘That is really creepy.’

The skeleton nodded in agreement. ‘I can be the living dead if you like.’

‘No, that’s creepy too,’ I said. ‘And smelly. Can’t you just be you?’

‘Which one?’

She had a point. Should she be the fourteen-year-old girl who’d died or the woman who wasn’t really there?

‘Be you as you should have been,’ I said, and she became, as if the skeleton had never existed, just a slim, bright-haired woman in a strappy sundress.

‘You’re a strange old bird,’ she said. ‘It’s always me.’

‘I know.’ I said, taking her hand and using it to pull myself up. ‘Let me lean on you. I’m a bit hobbly at the moment due to Mr Bitey over there.’

Sigrid leaned over and picked up the skull, fingers through the eye sockets—not how I would have done it.

‘You were talking to him,’ she said. ‘What was it? Oh, yes.’ Then she repeated back to it in my voice, ‘You’re dead, little soul. Dead. Dead. Dead. You don’t have to be a zombie anymore.’

It was weird hearing your voice come out of someone else’s mouth. It was even weirder when the skull swivelled on her fingers and turned towards me. I could swear it nodded of its own accord.

Sig put it down, and it swivelled further, round and round and round, gathering flesh as it did so. It swivelled upwards, growing teeth, skin, tissue in two easy turns.

And not a Mister after all. A Miss or possibly a Ms or Mrs. The skull was an elderly woman in a green knit dress, with beautiful long grey hair that reached to the bottom of her knees.

‘What a relief. That does feel much better,’ said the ex-zombie.

‘Good,’ I said. It didn’t quite feel adequate, but I didn’t know what else to say.

She gave no sign that she’d heard. Instead she pulled a
London A–Z
out of a fringed handbag, flipped to the back section, and flickered out of sight.

‘How did you do that?’ I put my weight on my right leg and leaned against Sigrid heavily.

‘They’re supposed to listen to you, you know. I just used your voice.’

I didn’t answer. It seemed pointless. I knew what I was. Hag. Death witch. Whatever. I hadn’t had any training. It was all very well for Charon and Sigrid to tell me what I was supposed to be able to do. I knew
what
I was. I just didn’t know
how
to be it.

Instead, I stared out at the ashen landscape. Something about it seemed familiar. And then it clicked—the shape of the road, the black stump where an oak tree should be, and the rusty corrugated iron of an old double gate.

I’d found myself back at Malcolm Brannick’s house, but a version that I was sure had never existed in the living world, and one bereft of people—living dead or just plain dead.

With Sigrid’s help, I hobbled across the road and stood in front of the space where Neil Brannick’s house had been. There were a few half walls and piles of broken brick, blackened beams, and other debris, but not much else. The house next door had fared worse—there was almost nothing left—not even the walls remained.

I knew there’d been a fire, but this wasn’t only a fire. Whatever had happened here had had a strong enough impact to blast a whole other reality into the underworld.