10

 

 

Suzie Hanks found Kevin O’Connell to be a man of surprises. This notion came very early on in their relationship where the man who had promised to kill her abusive father, pulled up in an Aston Marten, James Bond style. He invited her out on an impromptu date. She half expected a grand casino to be waiting at the end of their car journey, but instead there was a Learjet.

“Where are we going?” she’d asked incredulously.

“I told you: on a date,” he’d replied smiling broadly.

They were in the air for two hours and ten minutes before landing at Madrid Barajas International Airport; clearing passport control in five minutes flat.

O’Connell hailed a cab and told the driver to head for the Museo del Prado; Madrid’s prestigious museum and art gallery, where the world’s finest collection of European art stood for the admiring public. The taxi had covered the 15 kilometers within ten minutes and Suzie gasped at the museum’s ornate facade, with its multiple archways and expansive courtyards.

Here they sauntered through high white halls and galleries, exploring ancient works of beauty, exploring each other’s likes and dislikes and finding that by the end of the afternoon, their world had become one; united and indistinguishable.

It was in one of the galleries that Suzie found “The Triumph of Death” painted in 1562 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. She stared at the painting’s themes of Death culling mankind with macabre fascination; the way one feels guilty watching someone’s misery at a distance: the dazed people standing by their over turned car, the woman crying on a park bench. Bruegel’s oil-on-panel rendition showed flames and bodies and Death on a killing spree, but she found its colours and texture beautiful.

“Do you like it?” O’Connell had asked, placing his arm about her delicate waist.

“I love it,” she’d replied.

“Do you want it?”

This had taken Suzie by surprise and she’d looked up at him with a wry smile. She could see by his face that he meant it.

“Yes,” she breathed, almost intoxicated by those damned eyes of his. “But I want you more.”

“You have me,” he replied and her stomach churned and her heart missed a beat and she felt a yearning to have him touch her, have him inside her; and she didn’t feel revulsion or guilt - the legacy of her father’s kind of love - she felt only the purity of O’Connell’s total commitment to her. And a need return it in kind.

“I want you to make love to me,” she’d whispered beneath the Bruegel painting.

“And I will,” he said gently. “Once you have this painting on the wall of your apartment; we will make love under it.”

“Why wait?”

“Because: I want you to be sure. I want to prove that you’re not making a mistake; not taking a chance with me.”

“I know that now,” she said.

“You think you know,” he urged. “But people wear masks, Suzie. I wear a mask to do what I do. But, not for you - never for you. I need you to know this for sure.”

And so she waited. The painting arrived two months later, secreted behind a print of a white orchid - her favourite flower, of course - and no matter how many news channels she searched, she found no report of it being stolen. But she knew it was the real thing. She knew because O’Connell had told her he would get it.

That evening he came to her apartment and, true to his word, he had made love to her, gently, a lover consumed by his passion for her, and under the shadow of the The Triumph of Death they learned about the Triumph of Life; their bodies cavorting, hungry to share each other, explore each other, their wants and desires encapsulated by their caresses and their utterances of pleasure beneath the canvas landscape above.

And in the post-coitus calm that followed, they lay huddled together, thanking parapets and fate for bringing them together.

 

***

Three years later, Suzie Hanks was looking at an image that reminded her not of love-making and the soft speech of lovers; it was more like the Bruegel painting languishing on the wall of her apartment all those years ago.

“It’s like a scene from Hell,” Suzie whispered into her headset as she squinted through her portal. There was sadness in her voice. And no one inside the truck disputed her assessment.

Kunaka was moving through the blasted street, the Mastiff’s armour plating illuminated by the flames all about it, although the blaze had lost most of its intensity. Several tenements were now sheathed in dancing flame, palls of smoke rising into the night sky.

The detonation of the tanker had stopped the exodus in its tracks. Suzie counted the blaze-blackened carcasses of ten cars and three larger trucks. Most of the vehicles had been cast aside by the explosion, lying on their sides or on their roofs. Those that remained in the road were carefully nudged aside by the Mastiff’s powerful shell.

“What the fuck is going on, O’Connell?” Clarke said peering through his own observation slit. “Are we at war, or something?”

“We’re on a job,” O’Connell said gruffly. “Let’s not get side tracked.”

“Side tracked? Are you blind?” Clarke said in disbelief. “We nearly got ourselves totaled.”

O’Connell’s arm snaked out, his fist wrapping around a swatch of material just below Clark’s throat. He dragged the youth towards him, their visors almost touching.

“You want out?” O’Connell growled. “Well how about we kick you out here and you can explain to an army patrol how you’re roaming around an exclusion zone in a stolen uniform. Or maybe you can explain to The Consortium why they shouldn’t put a bullet in your head.”

O’Connell’s rage simmered below the surface. He hadn’t lost it yet, hadn’t let the beast consume him as it had once, the last time he’d allowed it to take control, the time he killed someone with his bare hands. No he hadn’t lost it yet, but he was close.

He felt a hand close over his upper arm, the gentle squeeze upon his taut muscle, a comforting hand. Suzie’s hand.

“Easy, babe,” she whispered. “Easy.”

With these three words Suzie Hanks tamed the beast, sending it back to the dark place, where it would skulk in shadow until roused once again.

O’Connell released Clarke and the youth slumped back in his seat, panting with fear and exertion.

Suzie rubbed O’Connell’s arm, her eyes on his, the message clear. Keep it together, O’Connell; the job’s relying on you. I’m relying on you. He nodded, giving her a watery smile.

Atonement.

O’Connell turned back to Clarke, the younger man’s sulky demeanor belying his age.

“Look, Clarke,” O’Connell said, his voice now soft and persuasive. “This job is reliant on us all doing what we’re here to do. What we’re being paid a fortune to achieve. You’re an integral part of this and I need you to hold it together, okay?”

Clarke’s face remained surly, but O’Connell saw something surface in the youth’s eyes: the sense of pride that O’Connell had stripped away had returned. Clarke blinked a few times and then nodded an accord. After a few more seconds he asked,

“Now do I get a rifle?”

Just as O’Connell began to chuckle, the Mastiff stopped with a sudden jolt and pitched everyone sideways.

O’Connell’s head hit the overhead racks hard enough for him to see stars; Amir landed heavily on the floor jarring his right shoulder.

Suzie managed to grab hold of some webbing for support, unlike Clarke who missed it completely and fell on top of Amir in a tangle of arms and legs.

Just as the curses began to rise from his displaced, disgruntled passengers, Stu Kunaka’s distressed voice flooded the truck.

“Boss! Boss! Get loaded; we got some strange shit happenin’ outside.”

Still groggy from the blow to his head, O’Connell went to his observation portal.

What he saw there cleared his battered brain in an instant.

 

***

At first O’Connell thought he was suffering from a vile hallucination, a result of post head injury trauma. But his colleagues confirmed what he already knew: what he saw through the window was as real as sin.

There were people milling around the streets, too many to count. But there was something wrong in the way the crowd behaved; the way it shambled through the stark streets as one aimless mass, mouths yawning, heads tilted as though neck muscles had just given in for the night.

But it was the eyes that gave him shivers that no living person had ever given him. Because in an instant he knew that these people weren’t living at all.

“You seein’ this, O’Connell?” Stu said shakily.

“Yes,” O’Connell replied as the crowd turned its many heads towards the Mastiff. “And I guess we’ve just been seen too.”

“What the fuck’s the matter with them?” Clarke said. Suzie noted that his hands were trembling against the wall of the truck.

“Who knows?” Amir said, sounding amazed. “But this is why the place is locked down. They look like a bunch of zombies.”

“They are zombies,” Stu confirmed over a burst of static.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Clarke muttered. “Don’t go all supernatural on us now, Stu. There’s no such thing as zombies. Believe me, I love zombies; but that ain’t going to make ’em real.”

“Take a good look at ’em and tell me there are people out there that shouldn’t be breathin’ let alone walkin’ around,” Kunaka retorted.

Clarke examined the crowd again, easier to make out now it was shuffling towards their vehicle.

It was when he saw a man wearing only pajama trousers with an autopsy “Y” stitched into his abdomen that it really hit home.

“Okay, this is some seriously freaky shit now,” he hissed. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

“Get us moving, Stu,” O’Connell said. “The NICDD building is still a click north east.”

“You don’t mean that this is still going ahead?” Clarke whimpered. “Are you out of your mind?”

Something struck the side of the truck; something heavy but yielding.

“These guys want in,” Amir said.

“Of course they do,” Stu muttered through the static. “The Devil’s hungry tonight.”

“You need to work on your damage limitation skills, Stu,” Suzie said sourly.

Another zombie rammed the truck with a sickening thud.

“Let’s get going, Stu,” O’Connell ordered. But the truck remained stationary, allowing the zombie crowd to thicken around it; an armoured island in a sea of the starving undead.

The truck began to sway under the weight of them. Even through the dense steel plating, O’Connell could hear their desperate, frenzied groans.

“Stu! I said get us out of here!” O’Connell yelled.

But all that came through the head set was the discordant sound of static.

 

***

Stu Kunaka stared out of the wind shield, his face a mask of incredulity and fear. He could face any man - any enemy - but what lay beyond the glass was the image of his childhood fears.

Zombies were real and he knew this to be true. Grandpa Joe had told him stories about them when he was younger; stories that kept him awake for three nights in a row until Momma and Poppa had forced Grandpa to retract his story.

But Stu had never forgotten the tale and simply refused to believe it as anything but a statement of fact, despite the scorn from his parents. This continued until well into his teens when he decided to go to a voodoo ritual where a zombie was raised. Why he’d done this was simple enough, he needed to purge the images conjured up by his Grandpa. He thought it would help, but it hadn’t.

Not at all.

He’d kept his ear to the ground and waited for the next rumblings of a gathering. It was easy to find out if you knew where to listen. And Grandpa Joe had certainly taught him to do that. And it didn’t matter that in the interim he’d researched the process, reading that the ritual involved not so much ancient magic as modern science; the introduction of a powder containing tetrodoxin from a puffer fish, secretions from the Haitian Bufo Marinus - or tree toad - were administered to a victim by the Bokor, the voodoo sorcerer. Each element was complicit in paralyzing a person and putting them into a trance-like, suggestible state by administering the compound datura stramonium when they “woke from the dead”.

He’d snuck into the event, following the procession until it had stopped in a woodland clearing. Here he’d hidden behind a piece of brush and watched the ceremony, devoid of the pomp depicted by Hollywood, but he’d felt a chill. Sure, the Bokor (a large woman with eyes fogged by cataracts) had made incantations under her breath, but overall the ceremony was a sedate, albeit grisly, affair. The man who was to be made undead was a local pedophile, his penance for violating the daughter of a renowned family. The man was forced to drink a concoction containing the potion that would render him immobile and rob him of free will. He was placed in a coffin and buried in a pit for half an hour before the family raised him and allowed him out of the coffin. And there he stood for all to see, a family slave for as long as his body could endure. His terrible punishment for his terrible crime.

But Stu had questioned it all; concluding that perhaps this was mere hokum and superstitious nonsense. But he saw the Bokor staring at him as though the brush wasn’t there, as though reading his thoughts, reading his very soul.

And she merely smiled and said words that had remained with him to this very day.

“If you do not see death here then be glad of it. For one day it will visit the unbelievers many times over.”

And it seemed that day was upon him, the look on the zombie’s face during the ceremony was there in everyone outside. They had been caught up in bad magic, and they were about to pay the price.

“Stu! Get back in the zone, that’s an order!”

It was O’Connell in his ear. His boss. His friend. But it wasn’t enough to suppress years of tradition and superstition now bubbling through Kunaka’s psyche. These feelings came as a raw and primordial flood, paralyzing Kunaka with the most potent substance known to man.

Fear.

***

 

“We’ve got to do something or we’re dead,” Amir said.

“It’ll mean going outside!” Clarke shuddered.

“Stu! Will you snap out of it, man?” O’Connell yelled, but Suzie recognized resignation on his face. “He’s gone for a while,” he said shaking his head.

“Fuckin’ fat lot of good that’s gonna do us!” Clarke bleated heatedly.

“I have to get to the cab,” O’Connell said firmly. “I need you guys to cover me.”

“Oh, man!” Clarke whined.

O’Connell grabbed hold of the youth for a second time; and now there wasn’t any holding back the beast. “Yes, that’s right! And I need you to be a man, Clarke - you got that?” He shoved a SA80 into Clarke’s hands. “Now point that at anything that looks dead and pull the fuckin’ trigger. Or so help me I’ll feed you to ’em myself!”

“Okay! Okay!” Clarke said grabbing the weapon. “You made your point.”

“I hope so,” O’Connell said sternly. “Because I’m through with your bullshit.”

O’Connell made for a hatch in the roof of the Mastiff, pausing only when Suzie caught his arm.

“You up for this, O’Connell?” she asked. He could see the worry in her eyes.

“You just watch my back, Suzie,” he said with a grim smile. “Just make sure that Young Rambo there doesn’t shoot me.”

“I got you, no worries,” she said softly.

“You got that right,” he winked. “Turning out to be a helluva night, isn’t it?”

With that he reached up and popped the hatch; a loud thunk filled the cabin. He flipped the safety off his Browning automatic pistol and threw back the latch, letting in thick smoke.

“Aim for the head,” Clarke shouted after him.

“What?” Suzie asked over the hideous din emanating from outside.

“Shoot ’em in the head - it kills ’em outright,” Clarke explained to Suzie’s quizzed expression. “Ain’t you ever watched a George A. Romero movie?”

“Just get your ass on the roof, Clarke,” Suzie said, finally losing patience. “We got work to do.”

 

***

In the remnants of room 409 of Hilton Towers, Thom Everett was not having the best of evenings. He was still very much the focus of attention to the things that were on the other side of his front door. They continued to thump and crash against the wood whilst making that God-awful groaning noise.

He had tried being quiet, hoping that they would grow bored; he’d tried yelling and thumping the door back. But the response was the same relentless, mindless din.

As he sat propped up in the chair, Thom was just wondering if his predicament could get any worse when he heard something sizzle nearby.

Scanning the room, his mind trying to tame his expounding sense of panic, Thom couldn’t see anything untoward.

But what he couldn’t see he could feel. Despite the wind buffeting the room, Thom realised that the temperature had risen a few degrees. At first he thought it was his imagination but then he heard the fizzing again followed this time by a loud cracking sound that pulled his eyes to the ceiling.

To his horror the white paint work was blistering and fast becoming a web of rents and fissures.

Dr. Whittington’s apartment was directly above him. Thom had been in that apartment, witnessed the makeshift lab in one corner of the room and the unmarked bottles of liquid kept in there. Dr. Whittington’s apartment was now ablaze and the heat of it was eating its way through the infrastructure; eating its way towards him!

“Christ on a bike,” he muttered woefully as a loud pop signaled the overhead bulb giving in to the heat.

He had to get out of here. And he had to get out of here now.

The thuds against the door told him that this wasn’t going to be easy. But then again, he’d learned a while ago that surviving a life full of shit seldom was.

***

No sooner was O’Connell on the roof of the Mastiff he was overloaded with the scale of the adversity all about him.

Smoke mingled with rain, fogging his vision, but he could see that many of the taller buildings about him: the Rotunda at Digbeth and the bubble wrap blisters of the Bullring Shopping Centre were burning. Even in the few seconds that he assessed his surroundings three explosions rocked the city.

Then he was back in the here and now, the Browning in his hand. He ducked low, moving forwards towards the roof of the cab.

“Stu?” he called into his com-link. “Stu, I’m on the roof. Hang in there! I’m coming to get you.”

O’Connell waited for a response but nothing came. He checked behind him and saw Suzie climbing from the hatch and steadying herself against the sway by dropping to one knee.

“Clarke,” she said into the hole. “Get out here you chicken shit!”

“Suzie, look out!” O’Connell yelled.

Suzie turned to see two hands appearing over the edge of the roof; dead fingers probing for purchase finally latching onto a series of rivets and using these to haul up their deceased owner. In moments a large, balding head came into view, dead eyes seeing only fresh, living meat to quell its terrible hunger.

Suzie’s eyes widened as the face of this creature rose like a dreadful sun, its mouth a cavern, oozing purple goo, its tongue lolling and writhing like a seperate, living thing.

O’Connell raised his pistol but felt something grabbing hold of his leg. He looked down to see a fly blown hand clutching his fatigues. He beat at it with the Browning as the corpse of a young man dressed in a moldering University of Birmingham sweatshirt tried to drag him over the roof edge.

Suzie, meanwhile, observed with disgust as the bald zombie crawled ever closer, its quivering lips raising a terrible memory: her father leering over her, probing, hurting, violating, his head bouncing off of the My Little Pony mobile hanging over her bed, telling her to be quiet, be quiet, because that’s how little secrets escape. And flash forward twenty years, to the place where she’d nearly ended it all, a three tier car park, midnight and deserted save for her father kneeling at her feet with O’Connell’s berretta rammed into his temple; begging her to forgive him, not to put him down like the dangerous animal he was. And O’Connell had cocked the weapon, moving his feet slightly to avoid the pool of piss spreading out from Toby Hank’s knees; waiting for his lover to say the word.

But as much as she wanted to, as much as Suzie thought that she needed to, she never gave consent; she never put an end to her fathers miserable existence, because in the space between life and death there is the power to do the right thing and in that instance she harnessed that power and did what was right for her. And though part of her craved for his death, she gave him mercy.

The bald zombie was close enough to reach out and grab her, his hand curled his fingers, each one a hook of dead flesh, mere inches from her purloined army boot, but all she could see was that face - that leer - and suddenly instinct took over. Suzie raised her SA80 and discharged half the magazine into that open, dribbling mouth.

The head came apart above the upper jaw, a pomegranate purple plume splattering the roof of the truck. Speckles landed on her visor and she pawed them away with her sleeve.

Then she was free, the trance-like state shattered by the cathartic sound of her gunfire. She brought the gun to bear, the BCU sweatshirt zombie clambering towards O’Connell took several bullets to the shoulders before one shattered its skull; popping one eye from its socket en route. The corpse fell backwards into the throng below. And a great melancholy moan filled the night air.

Suddenly Amir was with Suzie, a shot gun at the ready. He braced his shoulder against its kick and ripped off two rounds in quick succession, the 12 gauge opening the chest of a zombie wearing a West Mercia police officers’ uniform, the force knocking it back for a few steps before it retraced them again. Amir took aim at PC Zombie’s head and disintegrated with his next shot.

“Do what you have to, O’Connell!” Suzie screamed above the clamoring moans. “We’ve got your back!”

“Didn’t doubt it for a second, babe,” he replied warmly.

O’Connell turned back to cab, and began to crawl.

 

***

“You hearing that, Sir?” Connors shouted at the sound of gunfire nearby. Not even the rushing noise of the wind could mute it.

“I hear it,” Shipman confirmed. “SA80’s and a Benelli M4 trench gun; standard tactical issue.”

“We going to check it out?” Keene asked. “Probably some of our lads in deep shit.”

“No doubt,” Shipman conceded. “But we stay on mission. There’s more at stake here.”

They all knew it, and despite their instinctive reservations at leaving their own behind, they didn’t argue with the Major. They swallowed it and kept focused.

The Jackal approached the town centre, heading for the luxury apartments situated near the Symphony Hall and the National Indoor Arena. To access the site Connors would have to veer off road and head through a pedestrianised zone. There were far more direct routes but that would lead them into potential dead ends, loading bays and multi-storey car parks for example, which was nothing short of strategic folly. They needed open spaces, places that would allow them to move - and fight - at speed.

Since their encounter with the jumpers at Clydesdale Tower, the unit had kept up their speed. They had seen plenty of zombies en route, and it would have been so easy to become ensnared in the cramped Birmingham streets by the sheer numbers alone.

“ETA to target zone?” Shipman asked Connors.

“Ten minutes,” the driver said. “I’d like to get as close to the entrance as possible.”

“Hey, Connors, save your chat up lines for the ladies,” Honeyman mused.

“Stow it,” Shipman said sternly. “We lose focus here and we lose a lot more than the mission.”

“Sorry, Sir,” Honeyman grumbled. But had Shipman looked there was something in Honeyman’s eyes that said that he wasn’t sorry at all.

***