ZOM-B Baby (9 page)

The baby keeps squealing, the same word repeated without even a pause for breath, calling for its
mummy
. The high-pitched noise cuts through me, making me wince and grind my teeth. Timothy is staring slack-jawed at the whining, red-eyed child.

‘Make it stop,’ I bark, covering my ears with my hands.

‘How?’ Timothy asks.

‘Stick the spike back in its head.’

‘No,’ he says, face turning a shade paler at the thought. ‘We can’t do that. Let’s find it a dummy.’

He lurches to a shelf stacked with baby stuff. He roots through the neat pile until he finds one. He hurries back and leans over the cot, cooing to the hellish baby, ‘There, there. It’s all right. We’ll take care of you. No need to cry. Does it hurt? We’ll make the pain go away. You’re our little baby, aren’t you?’

‘Less of that crap,’ I snort, shuddering at the thought of being mother to such an unearthly creature. ‘Just shut the damn thing up.’

‘Be nice, B,’ Timothy tuts, then yelps and takes a quick step away from the cot. ‘It tried to bite me!’

‘Oh, give it to me,’ I snap, nudging him aside and taking the dummy from him. I bend over, fingers of my left hand extended to widen the baby’s mouth if necessary. Before I can touch its lips, the tiny creature’s head shoots forward and its fangs snap shut on the bones sticking out of my middle and index fingers.

‘Let go!’ I roar with fright and try to pull my hand free. The baby rises with my arm, dangling from the bones, fangs locked into them, chewing furiously, head jerking left and right.

I wheel away from the cot, shaking my arm, trying to dislodge the monstrous infant. Timothy is yelling at me to be careful, not to drop the child. I swear loudly and try to hurl the baby loose.

I lose my balance, crash into the inflatable dinosaur and stumble to my knees. As I push myself to my feet again, the baby chews through the bones, drops to the floor and collapses on its back. It immediately resumes screaming for its mummy.

‘Bloody hell!’ I pant, retreating swiftly. My hand is trembling.

‘I told you it wasn’t a good idea,’ Timothy says smugly. ‘It obviously doesn’t want a dummy, and with teeth like that, who are we to argue?’

‘Sod what it wants,’ I snarl. ‘We have to shut it up.’

‘You can try again if you wish,’ Timothy chuckles. ‘Personally I like my fingers the way they are. Those teeth are amazing. I wonder what they’re made of?’

‘You go on wondering,’ I growl, crossing the room to pick up the spike. ‘I’m putting a stop to this.’

‘No,’ Timothy says sternly. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘I bloody well can,’ I huff, advancing on the wailing baby.

Timothy steps in my way and crosses his arms.

‘Move it, painter-boy. I’m not playing games.’

‘Neither am I,’ he says. ‘You’re not sticking that into the baby’s head. You might kill it.’

‘Do I look like I care?’

‘No. That’s why I can’t let you proceed. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re upset and alarmed, understandably so. But when you calm down, you’ll see that I’m right. This is a living baby, calling for its mother. It’s afraid and lonely, probably in pain and shock. We have to comfort it, not treat it like a rabid animal that needs to be exterminated.’

‘Didn’t you see what it did with those teeth?’ I roar, waving my gnawed fingerbones at him.

‘Yes, but to be fair, you were attacking it. I would have bitten in self-defence too if you’d come at me like that.’

‘But you wouldn’t have been able to chew through my bones,’ I note angrily.

‘So its teeth are tougher than ours,’ he shrugs.
‘What of it? That’s no reason to risk the poor thing’s life. I can’t let you stick that spike in again.’

‘How are you going to stop me?’ I challenge him.

‘Just by standing here,’ he says. ‘You’ll have to wrestle me out of the way to get to the baby. If you do that, you’ll almost certainly scratch me. That would mean my death. I don’t think you’d kill me so recklessly.’

‘I’m a zombie,’ I say softly, moving closer, going up on my toes to give him the evil eye. ‘You don’t know how my mind works, what I’d do if pushed.’

‘Perhaps,’ he says. ‘But I’m willing to take that chance. This baby needs our help and love. It’s our duty to study it, protect it, nurse it back to health. It can talk, so perhaps it can answer our questions when it recovers, tell us where it came from, what it is.’

‘The babies never wanted to discuss much in my dreams,’ I sniff. ‘They only wanted to slaughter me.’

‘But this isn’t a dream,’ Timothy says. ‘The baby simply reacted the way any cornered creature would. Look at it lying there now, helpless as a … well, as a
baby
. It doesn’t pose a threat to us.’

I shake my head stubbornly. ‘It’s a monster. Of course it poses a threat.’

‘You’re a monster too,’ Timothy smiles. ‘But I’m not afraid of you and I’m not afraid of the baby either. We can be its foster parents.’

I stare at him oddly. ‘What, become a couple?’

‘Of course not,’ he smiles. ‘But we could be partners and raise it together.’

‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘Salvation,’ he says softly, stepping aside when he sees me hesitate. ‘My paintings have kept me busy, and I plan to carry on doing them for as long as I can. But I lost a lot that defined me as a human when the world fell. Maybe this baby is a way for me to retrieve some of my humanity, and for you too.

‘I haven’t been truly happy since the zombies took control. Content, yes, with my artistic output, but happy? No. I don’t think you’re happy either. This is a chance for us to put the darkness behind us for a while.’

‘What if you’re wrong?’ I croak. ‘What if the baby’s
as monstrous as it looks and only drags us further into trouble?’

Timothy shrugs. ‘Isn’t it worth taking that risk?’

I have a clear line of attack now. If I darted at the baby, Timothy wouldn’t be able to stop me. I could smash its skull with the spike, crush its throat, rip it to pieces.

But how could I live with myself if I did that to a baby? I’ve sunk lower than I ever dreamt I could, murdered, scraped heads bare of their brains, lived among the fetid and the damned. But to butcher a baby just because I’m afraid of it, because I had nightmares about things like it when I was younger …

‘That freak will be the ruin of us both,’ I pout.

‘Perhaps,’ Timothy grins, understanding from my expression that I can’t follow through on my threat. ‘But we have to take that chance. Now let’s see what we can do to help this poor lamb. Maybe it will stop screaming if we put it back in its cot, tend to its wound and show that we mean no harm. I’m sure that with a little TLC it will respond to our ministrations and –’

Timothy stops. He had started to bend to pick up the baby, but now he turns and stares at the doorway, into the gloom of the large room beyond. He cocks his head and frowns.

‘Do you hear that?’ he whispers.

‘What?’

I step up beside him, trying to focus. The screams of the baby –
‘mummy. mummy. mummy.’ –
fill my head and I find it hard to tune them out.

Timothy moves through the doorway as if sleepwalking, eyes wide, a slight tic in his left cheek. I follow and close the door behind me, muffling the sounds of the baby.

I zone in on the new noises. They’re coming from outside the building. Loud, scratching sounds, similar to a nail being dragged across a blackboard, only much sharper, and not one nail but dozens at the same time.

‘What is it?’ I ask softly, although part of me has already guessed. I’m not stupid. As I’ve stated proudly on more than one occasion in the past, I can put two and two together.

‘Zombies,’ Timothy says and his expression never alters. ‘They’ve heard the baby. They’re climbing the walls.’ He points to the boarded-over windows with a surprisingly steady finger. Unlike the thick boards nailed over the windows on the ground floor, those up here were designed primarily to keep in the light, not keep out the ranks of the living dead. With all the oversized windows in this place, that would be impossible. This is a gallery, not a fortress. Anonymity was its only real defence.

‘They know that we’re here,’ Timothy says. ‘They’re going to break in.’

And with those few calm words he pronounces his death sentence.

‘We have to get out of here!’ I roar. ‘Where are the exits?’

Timothy shakes his head wordlessly. He’s staring at the boards covering the windows. He looks more thoughtful than scared.

‘Timothy!’ I scream, wanting to grab and shake him, but afraid of piercing his skin with my bones.

‘The roof,’ he murmurs.

‘No good,’ I grunt. ‘They’re climbing the walls. They can get to us in seconds on the roof. We have to go down to the ground floor, escape out the back, try to lose them on the streets.’

The first zombies start pounding on the glass and
it shatters. They tear into the boards, ripping them loose. I catch glimpses of bones, fingers, faces, fangs.

Windows run the whole length of this room. The boards on pretty much all of them begin to crack and snap beneath the strain. There must be dozens of zombies out there, maybe more.

‘Come on,’ I shout, heading for the stairs.

‘The baby,’ Timothy says.

‘You’ve got to be bloody joking!’

‘The baby,’ he says, stubbornly this time. ‘I won’t leave it to them.’

‘You can’t save it,’ I growl. ‘Its cries are what’s drawing them. If we take it with us, they’ll follow the noise.’

‘But it’s a baby …’ he says miserably.

‘No baby of our world,’ I snort, then run with a wild idea. ‘Maybe one of the zombies is its mother. That might explain why it looks so strange. She might have been pregnant when she was turned. Maybe it was born after she died.’

‘That sounds feasible,’ Timothy nods.

‘If that’s the case, they might accept it as their own. It might find a home with them.’

‘Or they might rip it to shreds,’ Timothy notes glumly. ‘Maybe zombies stuck the spike through its head in the first place.’

I roll my eyes. ‘Either way, the baby’s going to be theirs in a minute. We can’t stop them. We can put up a pointless fight and get torn apart or focus on our own necks and maybe make it out of here. Your choice, Timothy. I already died once. If they kill me again, it’s not that big a deal.’

I wait for him to make up his mind. I’ll stick by him no matter what he decides. He’s my friend and I want to do whatever I can to protect him, even though I know I can’t.

Timothy licks his lips, torn between wanting to be a hero and knowing his limits. There’s a loud snapping noise and the first of the zombies tumbles through the broken boards.

‘God forgive us!’ Timothy cries and races for the stairs, leaving the screeching baby to whatever fate has in store for it.

We pound down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. I’m in agony, my broken ribs digging
into my flesh and organs with every lurching movement. I ignore the pain as best I can, trying to focus on Timothy and getting him out of here before the zombies catch up.

We race through the room of blank canvases and supplies, the sound of the snapping boards above following us like the beat of tom-toms.

‘Almost there,’ Timothy pants, overtaking me as I stumble. ‘There’s a door at the rear of the building which I earmarked for an eventuality such as this. It opens quickly and quietly. If we can get outside, there’s a good chance we can –’

He stops.

‘Keep going,’ I snap. ‘This is no time to –’

I stop too.

We’ve come to a short set of steps. They lead to the main downstairs room, a huge, open space. The windows at this level were boarded over professionally to keep out zombies. This should be the safest room in the entire building.

It’s not.

The boards have held. So has the front door. But
there are other doors. I’m sure that Timothy and the people who occupied this building before he came here did all that they could to secure those entrances. But there must have been a weak link somewhere, a chain that snapped, a lock that broke, hinges that crumbled.

Because the room is thick with zombies.

They stand silently, an army of them, motionless, faces raised to the ceiling, as if trying to determine exactly where the shriek of the baby is coming from.

Timothy trembles, losing his cool at last.

‘Easy,’ I whisper. ‘They’re not moving. They look like they’re in some kind of a trance. We might be able to slip through them.’

I take a step down.

No response.

Another step.

Not a single zombie moves.

A couple more, then I stretch out my right foot to take the final step.

As soon as my toes touch the ground, the neck of every zombie snaps down as they lower their heads in perfect timing. They bare their teeth and snarl, then surge towards us without breaking ranks.

‘Bugger!’ I scream, turning to start back up the stairs. ‘Come on!’ I roar at Timothy. ‘We’ve got to try for the roof.’

‘We’ll never make it,’ he sobs but tears along after me.

We hurry through the room of supplies. Timothy is praying aloud, his words coming fast and furious, sounding like gibberish. We reach the stairs to the main gallery. They’re clear. No sign of any zombies. I silently thank God and ask Him for another minute, sixty seconds, that’s all we need. If we can make it to the roof, Timothy can cling to my back and I can either leap to another roof or all the way to the ground. My legs should be able to take a drop like that. I might break a few bones but it won’t scramble my brain. Even if I can’t carry on, Timothy can escape by himself. The zombies won’t harm me once he’s gone. He can return for me later. A minute. That’s all we need. That’s not too much to ask for, is it?

Apparently it is.

We’re not even halfway up the stairs when the zombies from the upper floor come spilling towards us. They’ve made it through the windows and boards. They stagger down the steps, arms outstretched, leering hungrily.

Timothy screams and turns to flee, but more zombies are coming up the steps, having tracked us from the room below.

We’re screwed.

I reach out to grab Timothy and pull him in tight, meaning to bite his neck, figuring the best I can do for him now is to end it quickly and maybe give him a chance of revitalising. I was injected with Dr Oystein’s vaccine when I was a child. That’s why I recovered my wits when I was turned into a zombie. Maybe I can pass some of my revitalising genes on to Timothy. I doubt he stands much of a chance but it’s better than none at all.

But I’m too late. A zombie tackles me before I can strike and I fall to the steps, driven down by the weight of my assailant. Others throw themselves on top of me, burying me at the bottom of a pile of bodies.

‘Timothy!’ I shriek.

‘Goodbye, B,’ he says sadly as the first of the zombies pins him to the wall and scrapes at his stomach. Others swarm around him, digging into the flesh of his arms and legs with their bony fingers. Timothy screams, a cry of pure agony and loss. He screams again as zombies rip chunks of flesh from his body with their teeth. They’re not concerned about converting him — they want to finish him off.

Madness fills Timothy’s eyes, but with a supreme effort he shrugs it off for one last instant and locks gazes with me as I stare at him helplessly from my position on the floor.

‘Take care of my paintings,’ he wheezes pleadingly.

Then a zombie digs its fingers through Timothy’s eyes. He has time to scream once more before the zombie breaks through to his brain and starts scraping it out and cramming pieces into its foul, eager mouth.

There’s no more screaming after that. Timothy Jackson is dead and gone. And all I can do is wait for the zombies to rip me apart and maybe send my soul to join Timothy’s in the peaceful, welcome realms beyond.