The mutants cheer again, but the humans only stare in bewilderment. Most of them are weeping openly. ‘Please!’ one of the men begs. ‘Spare us! We’re not . . . we won’t . . . anything you ask of us . . .’
‘Hush,’ the mutant frowns. ‘Mr Dowling did not come here to entertain futile pleas. He came to party!’
‘Party! ’ the mutants holler, shaking their fists and weapons over their heads.
When they’re silent again, Mr Dowling points a long, bony finger at the woman with the baby and makes a shrill squeaking noise. The mutant next to him listens carefully, then crooks a finger at the woman and beckons her forward.
‘No!’ a man next to her shouts. ‘Take me, not the baby!’
‘As you wish,’ the mutant shrugs. He blows his whistle and a pair of zombies lurch into action, grab the man and drag him to the ground. His screams ring loud around the square, but not for long.
‘Now,’ the mutant says pleasantly, crooking his finger at the woman again.
She stumbles forward, shaking her head, crying, clutching the baby to her chest. ‘Please,’ she whispers. ‘Please. Please. Please.’
The mutant makes a soothing, tutting noise, then prises the baby from her and hands it to Mr Dowling. The clown takes the child with surprising gentleness and rocks it in his arms. The baby gurgles happily, unaware of the danger it’s in. Mr Dowling makes another sharp, questioning noise.
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ the mutant asks politely.
‘A guh-guh-guh-girl,’ the woman gasps, eyes on her child, fingers clasped in silent prayer, rooted to the spot, helpless and terrified.
The clown nods slowly and squeals again.
‘Mr Dowling says that he’s glad,’ the mutant translates. ‘He’s not in a boyish mood today. If it had been a boy, he would have dashed its head open and fed its brain to our zombies. But since it’s a girl, he’s inclined to be merciful.’
‘He . . . he’s not going to hurt her?’ the woman croaks, tearing her eyes away from the baby and looking to the mutant with the slightest glimmer of hope.
‘That depends on the choice you make,’ the mutant says.
‘Choose . . .’ the other mutants murmur. The word sounds obscene on their scabby, twisted tongues.
‘I don’t understand,’ the woman frowns.
‘It’s very simple,’ the mutant grins. ‘The ever-generous Mr Dowling is giving you a choice. You can choose to spare your baby or your colleagues.’ He nods at the other humans in the square.
‘You mean . . .’ She gulps, eyes widening.
‘You got it, sweet thing,’ the mutant chuckles obscenely. ‘We butcher the baby or we kill everybody else. Your call. Now — choose.’
‘Choose . . .’ the others repeat again, their pale yellow eyes alive with repulsive yearning.
As the woman struggles with her choice, someone squats next to me and says, ‘As distasteful as this is, it should be intriguing. Mr Dowling always puts on a memorable show.’
I look around in a daze. The man is tall and thin, but with a pot belly. He’s wearing a striped suit with a pink shirt. He has white hair and pale skin, long fingers and unbelievably large eyes, twice the size of any normal person’s, almost fully white, but with a tiny dark pupil burning fiercely at the centre of each.
‘Owl Man,’ I moan.
TWENTY-THREE
‘You remember me,’ the man with the owl-like eyes beams. ‘How sweet.’ He winks, then blows me a mocking kiss.
‘This can’t be real,’ I mutter. ‘I must be dreaming.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Owl Man tuts. ‘You cannot sleep, so it follows that you cannot dream. Therefore this must be real.’
‘It could be a hallucination.’
‘Possibly,’ he concedes. ‘But it isn’t. Now tell me, are you hurt? Can I help you?’
He reaches out a hand. I push myself away from his creepy-looking fingers and wipe dirt and blood from my forehead. ‘How are you here?’ I ask. ‘The last time I saw you was in my bedroom.’
‘There’s no telling who you might run into these days,’ he smiles. ‘The world was always a small place, but now it’s positively box-like. So few of us left with our senses intact. Our paths cannot fail to cross.’
Owl Man stands and stretches. I frown as I study him.
‘What are you? I can hear your heartbeat, so you’re not a zombie. But you’re not a mutant either, are you?’
‘Certainly not,’ he says, sniffing as if offended. ‘I am . . .’ He pauses, thinks for a moment, then shrugs. ‘I am, as you so poetically put it, Owl Man. That is all you need to know about me for now.’
My mind is whirring. There are so many questions I want to put to him, about the mutants, Mr Dowling, why certain zombies revitalise. I’ve a feeling that if anyone can answer those questions, it’s him.
But before I can ask Owl Man anything, the mutant with the whistle shouts at the woman faced with the impossible choice. ‘Time’s up. Choose or we slaughter them all, baby, adults, the lot.’
Owl Man grimaces. ‘Kinslow is a nasty piece of work, but he keeps things interesting, and that’s what Mr Dowling demands of his followers.’
I get the sense that Owl Man doesn’t approve of what’s going on. But he doesn’t try to stop it, just observes the sick show with a neutral expression.
‘Hurry!’ the mutant called Kinslow croaks. ‘Choose now or . . .’ He produces a knife and passes it to Mr Dowling. The clown laughs as he takes it, then slides the blade up beneath the baby’s chin.
‘Them! ’ the woman howls, falling to the ground with horror. ‘Take them! Spare my child!’
The other people scream with fear and outrage, but their cries are cut short when Kinslow blows his whistle again, three long toots. At his command the living dead surge forward and tuck into the hapless humans, survivors no longer, just zombie fodder now.
‘This is awful,’ I groan, turning my gaze away.
‘Yes,’ Owl Man says morosely. ‘But it’s about to get even worse. Look.’
Mr Dowling hasn’t handed back the baby. As the zombies finish off the last of the humans and tuck into fresh, warm brains, the clown strides among them, still clasping the infant. Kinslow and the woman trail after him, the mutant snickering, the woman distraught.
‘My girl,’ she whimpers, reaching for the baby.
‘In a minute,’ Kinslow snaps, pulling her back. ‘You don’t want to disturb Mr Dowling when he’s preoccupied. You wouldn’t like him if he lost his temper.’
The clown comes to a halt over a thin, male zombie who is digging into the open head of the boy who wasn’t much younger than me. He watches the zombie for a while, then sticks his left index finger into a hole in the man’s throat, where he was bitten when still alive. His finger comes out wet and red. With a soft, choking noise, he puts the finger into the baby’s mouth and the little girl’s lips close on it trustingly.
‘No! ’ the girl’s mother screams, sensing the threat too late to prevent it. She tries to throw herself at the clown, but Kinslow kicks her legs out from beneath her and she collapses.
‘No! No! No!’ she screeches, covering her ears with her hands as the baby’s brittle bones extend and snap through the skin of her fingers and toes. ‘You told me you’d spare her! You promised!’
‘We did spare her,’ Kinslow says, taking the zombie baby from Mr Dowling and holding her out to the woman who was once her mother. ‘She still lives, in a fashion. She’s as wriggly and alert as ever. Just a little less . . . breathy. Now take her. She’s yours to do with as you wish.’
Kinslow presses the baby into her mother’s arms. Her tiny sharp teeth, newly sprouted, snap together as she stares at the woman whose brain smells so good and tempting, even to one as young as this.
The woman gazes down on her ruined child for a full minute in horrified silence, the clown and Kinslow waiting to see what she’ll do next, everybody watching with wretched fascination except for the feasting zombies. Then, like a pers
on sleepwalking, she undoes the buttons on her shirt and frees a breast. She presses her daughter to it and lets the undead baby bite and feed, murmuring softly to her, stroking her hair, vowing to care for her even in death.
‘A touching scene,’ Owl Man murmurs.
‘Bastard,’ I snarl at him.
‘There’s no point blaming me,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t responsible.’
‘You didn’t do anything to stop it though, did you?’ I challenge him.
‘That’s not my role,’ he says. ‘We all have a role to play in life, and unlike many unfortunate souls, I am all too aware of what the universe demands of me. I simply follow the path that destiny demands, as we all must.’
‘Even if it means letting babies be sacrificed?’ I sneer.
‘Yes,’ Owl Man whispers and a sad look crosses his oversized eyes. ‘You may find this hard to believe, but I have done even worse than that in my time. I fear that you might too, over the course of the grim days and nights to come.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I snap.
‘Remember when you could dream? Remember the babies on the plane?’
I shiver at the memory. Owl Man also asked me about my dreams the last time we met. ‘What about the bloody nightmares?’ I growl.
‘They marked you, Becky,’ he says. ‘I was sure you would survive and regain your senses, just as I was certain we would meet again. You are a creature of the darkness, the same as myself and Mr Dowling. Like us, I fear that you too will end up destined to play a cruel, vicious part in the shaping of the future. Some of us cannot escape the damnable reach of fate.’
Before I can ask Owl Man what that means, he stands and calls to Kinslow and Mr Dowling. ‘I have someone here I think you might be interested in.’
The clown bounds across, Kinslow racing to keep up. Mr Dowling stops in front of me and beams as if to welcome an old friend.
‘You made it out,’ Kinslow grunts, pulling up beside his master. ‘Mr Dowling said that you would. You caught his eye underground. He told me you were the cream of the crop.’
‘See, Becky?’ Owl Man mutters. ‘Marked.’
Kinslow glares at the tall man with the owlish eyes, but says nothing.
Mr Dowling bends over until his face is in front of mine. The last time he did that, he spat a shower of spiders over me. But today I can’t see anything in his mouth, only a long, black tongue.
The clown smells worse than an open sewer. My nose wrinkles and I try to turn my face away, but he grabs my chin and forces me to maintain eye contact. As he stares into my soul with his beady, twitching eyes, he squeals a few times, softly.
‘He wants to know if you’re ready to come with us,’ Kinslow says. ‘He knows that you disapprove of many of the things we do. But he’s willing to teach you, spend time with you, show you the way forward, share his power with you.’
‘He’s out of his tiny mind if he thinks I’ll ever have anything to do with you lot,’ I jeer. ‘You’re freaks, every last damn one of you. I wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire, even if I could spit.’
The clown tilts his head sideways and frowns.
‘You should kill her for saying a thing like that,’ Kinslow growls.
‘Mr Dowling decides who to kill and who to spare,’ Owl Man thunders, his smooth voice dropping several octaves in the space of a heartbeat, his eyes flaring. ‘Don’t ever forget that or speak out of turn again. He makes the calls, not you.’
‘Of course,’ Kinslow says quickly, fear mixed in with his apology. ‘I meant no disrespect. I was merely –’
‘Shut up if you want to live,’ Owl Man says lazily, then looks to the clown. ‘I told you she would not come with us. Do you want to crack her skull open or let her go?’
The clown stares at me for a few seconds. Then he makes a chuckling, wheezy sound, turns and sets off across the square, Kinslow hurrying to keep up with him.
Owl Man winks at me, all smiles again. ‘He said we’ll probably end up killing you, but not today. He’s in a good mood after the game with the baby. Go with his blessing, but bear this in mind — no matter where you go, no matter what you do, he knows you’re out there and he can find you any time he likes. You haven’t seen the last of Mr Dowling, Becky, not by a long shot.’
Owl Man peels away and follows the mutants and their master. I watch numbly as the clown gathers his posse and leads them from the square. Someone starts to sing an old ballad about murder and revenge, and by the time they pass from sight, they’ve all joined in, one big, happy party, heading off in search of fresh pickings, leaving me to fester in the square, surrounded by the wreckage of the helicopters and the cooling bodies of the dead.
TWENTY-FOUR
I remain in Trafalgar Square overnight, barely moving, staring at nothing, wishing somebody would come along and free me from this unholy hell of an existence. Zombies trail through the square over the course of the night, scraping dry the skulls of the corpses, ridding them of every last scrap of brain. Some come sniffing to make sure I’m not edible too. I ignore them and focus on the empty feeling inside, remembering the baby, the mutants, Owl Man, the clown, the bloodshed.
In the morning, as the sun rises and the carnage is revealed in all its gory glory once again, I push myself to my feet, pick up my trusty Australian hat which is lying nearby, dusty but undented, and turn my back on the grisly scene. I’m in a universe of pain, and limp badly as I shuffle away, but my wounds aren’t fatal. I’ll survive, worse luck.
In a numb daze, I start down Whitehall. It’s not an especially long road, but it takes me ages to get to the end, hobbling and limping, dripping occasional drops of thick, gooey blood from wounds I don’t even begin to explore.
I pass Downing Street, once home to the Prime Minister. I know he didn’t make it out of London alive — the news programmes mentioned his loss a few times. He hasn’t been missed. His cabinet neither. The army runs the country these days.
I wonder if the PM is still inside Number Ten, a zombie like so many of his voters, resting until dark. I could check – the gate is open and unguarded – and probably would any other time. But I’m too weary to care about such trivialities. This country has fallen. Babies are being turned into zombies and feeding on their mothers. Who cares about stuffy politicians now?
Big Ben comes into view. I pause and stare glumly at the clock tower. The hands have stopped at just before a quarter to five. It doesn’t chime any more. I doubt it ever will again. A dead clock at the heart of a dead city.
As I edge past the Houses of Parliament, I spot a large red z sprayed near the base of Big Ben, an arrow underneath pointing towards Westminster Bridge. I had planned to turn left and crawl along the riverbank, heading back east to more familiar territory, to see out my time on home turf. But the arrow intrigues me. I’ve seen others like it during my march west. I think they might be the work of Mr Dowling – he sketched a blood-red z on my cheek when he visited me in my cell in the underground bunker – but I’m not sure. Maybe they were sprayed by humans, survivors hoping to guide others to their hideout. If so, they might be more interested in my offer of assistance than the soldiers were.
Silly old B! Still keen to help the living. Will I never learn?
I move forward, wincing, dragging my left leg, half-blind and itching like crazy. I should have found new clothes and glasses before I came out on to an exposed bridge, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. No matter. I push on regardless. I won’t be in the sun for long. There will be plenty of shadowy corners for me to rest in on the south side of the river.
I’m surprised, as I advance, to note that the London Eye is still revolving. At first I think it’s a trick of the light, so I stop and watch it for a minute. But no, the capsules are moving slowly, just as they did in the old days when every tourist in London made a beeline for its most popular attraction. Today, though, the capsules are deserted. The Eye might be open for business, but it doesn’t have any takers.
As I drag myself
off Westminster Bridge, I think about the London Dungeon, a place I visited several times when I was alive. I passed its original home earlier in my journey, and now here I am at its subsequent location in County Hall. Maybe that’s the place for me. I’d fit in perfectly among all the waxwork monsters.
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘You’re too grisly. You’d give the rest of the freaks a bad name.’
Shuffling on, I come to the turning for Belvedere Road, which separates the buildings of County Hall, and spot another red z with an arrow beneath, pointing up the road.
I stare wearily at the arrow. I need to feed. It’s been a long time since I last ate. I can feel my stomach tightening, my senses beginning to loosen. If I don’t tuck into some brains soon, I’ll regress and become a mindless revived. If I’m going to follow these damn arrows, I need to make sure I’m in good shape to deal with living humans if I run into any.
St Thomas’s Hospital is just behind me, so I turn slowly and make for it. I assumed a hospital would offer rich pickings, but as I work my way through the wards, I find that isn’t the case. Others have been here before me and scraped the remains of the corpses dry.
But I’ve got a bit more up top than your average zombie. As far as I know, any hospital this size has a morgue. And I’m guessing they were normally situated on one of the lower floors, so the staff didn’t have to wheel corpses through the rest of the hospital, spooking the life out of everybody.
I find the morgue after a short search but it’s locked. It takes me far longer to track down keys for the door, but eventually I find a set in a nurses’ cabinet and let myself in. It’s brighter and cleaner than I anticipated, no stench of death at all.
The morgue is refrigerated and the electricity is still working. I don’t find as many corpses as I thought I might, but four are lying on slabs, ready and waiting, and there are probably a few more tucked away out of sight. If I don’t stray from this area in the near future, I can come back and search again. But right now I have more than I need. Time to dine.