Dead End Job (Book One of the 'Zombino' series)

  Chapter Twenty-Five. 08:35pm

  NO BEARS.

  "It makes sense to hide somewhere over night," Susan said, "Total, absolute, sensible sense. The building isn't badly damaged and the fire isn't spreading much. It's going out if anything. Even the fire alarm has stopped. Amount of zombies has thinned too, and the ones still around aren't up to much."

  "There's still that big feller from before. Don't know where he's gone, or what he bloody was," Stuart said. "Some sort of mega-zombie."

  "Zombeast," Susan corrected him.

  "I've got the rocket launcher though," Nelson reminded us, as if we might forget.

  "Well, okay, if it comes running around the corner, feel free to blow another floor off the building whilst it pounds us all to mush."

  "Shut up everyone," I said, trading diplomacy for results. "Stop bickering. Susan, I agree that hiding is a good plan, but we should at least investigate the possibility of escape first."

  Stuart took a slight step back and flicked his eyes wide open; the international symbol for 'What are you talking about?'

  "I'm not going into those woods in the dark. There's bears! And foxes! You can't shoot a bear with a rocket, it's probably illegal. And...oh god do you think bears can be zombies? Zombears!" he spluttered.

  "There are no bears in the woods, Stu, zombie or otherwise. And I'm sure everything we've done so far has been on the shady side of the law. Having a rocket to potentially shoot at anything, never mind bears, is illegal. We're probably terrorists by now."

  Nelson glared at the launcher peeking from the hold-all. His facial expression was a battlefield for fear, respect and 'How could you do this to me?' angst, like he blamed the weapon for being against the law.

  "And I don't mean we wander blindly into the woods. I mean we see if the shuttle train is still there. If it is, we can maybe get it going or camp out there. If the train is gone, we can at least rule it out. Or find a way to call it, to contact someone on the other end of the tracks. There must be SOMETHING. It's the twenty-first bastard century! How can anyone stay trapped anywhere for this long?"

  "What if we get there and the train, the platform, everything, is swarming in zombies? Swarming with them," Susan asked, picking at a long fingernail with her teeth.

  "Then we come back. Or, well..."

  I patted the gun.

  Literally, I took my hand and I patted it like a puppy dog. I'd never felt more like an action hero. My instinct said to cock it, but it wasn't a shotgun and therefore lacked that feature.

  'Hello,' I wanted to say, 'This is my pet gun, Gunny. He will shoot everything you hold dear, right in its face, if you cross me. I am an action hero.'

  I wanted those exact words printed on a stack of business cards or, failing that, tattooed on to my soul.