The Restless Dead: A Zombie Novel

The Restless Dead

By Jenny Thomson

The Restless Dead
, Text Copyright © 2014 Jenny Thomson

All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or book reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidences are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover image courtesy Zombies outside a window

Courtesy of © Ron Sumners | Dreamstime.com

Cover design courtesy of Pixel Studios (Dizajn Studios)

This book is dedicated to my brother Jamie who shares my love of zombies and to my Walking Dead family with whom I also share a zombie obsession. 

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Jenny Thomson has been obsessed with zombies since she first watched Night of the Living Dead and thought it would be fun to have a zombie novel set in Scotland, where there’s very few guns.

She also thought it would make a change reading about the zombie outbreak happening in the snow. And, she had a lot of fun with the weather. Check out the snowman section. Of all the scenes she wrote, that was one of the most fun to do.

The one thing you’re not meant to do when writing a horror novel is to date it by having people of that time in the book. 

So, why did she break that golden rule by having British Prime Minister David Cameron being eaten right at the start? It’s all about the comedy.

Cameron’s the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK (also known as the Tories) who are very unpopular in Scotland. So, I thought it would add some comedy by having him been eating live on TV and people watching and re-watching and thinking to themselves – Is this really happening? – instead of dealing with the problem in hand. The restless dead.

There’s a lot of comedy in The Restless Dead and that’s in keeping with the way Scottish people would deal with an outbreak like the one in the book.  Scottish people have an often dark sense of humour and you could say we could look into the bowels of hell and still find something to laugh about.

This is the first time the book has appeared as a paperback and I would like to thank Terry Wright of TWB Press for first publishing this novel as an eBook (under the title Dead Bastards) and for his meticulous editing.

This is the unabridged version of the novel with some bonus material, including a guide to Scottish words, an alternative ending (for all of the optimists amongst us) and a zombie short story for your entertainment.

Have fun reading it and remember, if the zombies come, we will be prepared:)

Jenny Thomson

P.S. If you’d like to contact me especially if it’s to tell ne the zombie apocalypse has started in your corner of the world, you can contact me at [email protected]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jenny Thomson is an award-winning crime writer who lives on a Scottish island with her rescue dog Benjy and her partner. Jenny’s been obsessed with zombies since she first watched Night of the Living Dead and decided to write a zombie novel set in Scotland.

She has five self-help titles to her name, and her revenge thrillers Hell to Pay (the first in a series of books dubbed Die Hard for Girls) and Throwaways (the second Die Hard for Girls book) are out now.

How Kirsty Gets Her Kicks will be published by Snubnose Press.

She blogs about her writing at http://ramblingsofafrustratedcrimewriter.blogspot.co.uk   and in her spare time she prepares for the zombie apocalypse and spends her time looking for suitable weapons and strongholds to hole up in.

The Restless Dead  is a work of fiction and not her story:)

Acknowledgements

At a funeral in the book, they recite one poem and sing one sing.

Futility, Wilfred Owen, 1918

Scots Wha Hae, Robert Burns 1793

He said what? - A Guide to Scottish words in the Restless Dead

That's no  - Scottish people talk really fast and we have an economy of words so whatever we say rolls of the tongue.

How to use it - In sentences where you would say not i.e. Instead of "that's not fair," we would say "that's no fair."

Dunderheid (this can also be dunderhead – heid means head) - This is a term of abuse and means someone who is an idiot.

How to use it - "That guy is a total dunderheid."

Puke – vomit.

Wrang – As in Doyle choose “the wrang day.”

Wrang means wrong.

Numpty – another word for idiot. Can also be interchanged with dunderheid.

Can also be used as a plural i.e. “You’re a bunch of numpties.”

Wean or bairn – This means baby or child.

Wummin – women.

Sleekit – Sly and devious.

Bin lorry – refuge truck.

Tatties – potatoes

Lugs – ears

Yi – you.

Cannae – can’t.

Irn Bru - the unofficial national drink of Scotland made by Barrs, this is the number 1 selling soft drink in the country. It's also known as a great hangover cure.

If there are any words used in the book that aren’t featured here, please feel free to contact me on Twitter at @RestlessDeadZ or by email at [email protected]

1 HOW IT ALL BEGAN

The thing about the zombie apocalypse is that none of us saw it coming. Not the people going about their daily business of working and sleeping and buying genetically modified foods, with no questions asked about why their carrots were the size of tree trunks and junk food was as addictive as crystal meth. Not even the scientists who spent their time trying to manipulate creation and bring two-headed, glow-in-the-dark mice into the world for reasons no one could quite discern. As for the politicians, they were too busy debating the wisdom of bombing the hell out of Iran or whatever country was bugging them that week.

Fitting then, that the first high-profile zombie attack came when British Prime Minister David Cameron, who for some reason no one could understand is permanently tanned (in Britain, in winter), was answering a question in parliament, when the ill-looking member of the opposition (well, he had been killed by a man high on crystal meth the day before) lunged at him, ripped off his Cameron’s arm, and gorged on the limb as though it was prime rib, while blood sprayed all over the nodding dogs in the front row.

Even politicians, who trousered millions in taxpayers' cash whilst people went to food banks, had never seen such gluttony.

Round about this time, I was in bed with Scott, oblivious to the end of civilisation, as we knew it. We were talking about whether we should jump up, get dressed, and hotfoot it to the nearest family planning clinic or chemist because the condom we'd used last night had split (and I’m not on the pill), or snuggle up and pretend it didn’t happen because it was freezing outside. And it was snowing. I preferred Scott’s embrace, because it was warm.

The buzz of our intercom changed the topic of conversation from a potentially life-changing decision of parenthood to whose turn it was to answer the door. I won by virtue of the fact that I was half-naked, and I warned Scott that if he ever wanted to have sex again, he’d better answer the door.

I heard the padding of his bare feet as he scampered down the hall, followed by a gasp that made me jump out of bed, fearing bad news.

When I first saw Scott’s pal, Archie, my initial impression was that he’d been savaged by a pack of wild dogs. His face was covered in blood that was already beginning to congeal, and his clothes were ripped to shreds as though they’d been serrated by canine teeth and claws. The state of his eye made me think that humans had done it: it was opened up as if it’d been smashed by a fist and had turned an ugly shade of purple and yellow. Someone had battered him.

Ever the compassionate one, Scott couldn’t resist a dig. “Christ, mate, hard night was it?”

“Some bastards jumped me,” Archie says. “They fucking bit me. Can you believe that? Gonnae need a fucking AIDS test now.”

Those words will be ingrained in my memory forever, because seconds later, a noise like a burp erupted from Archie’s throat, and he toppled to the floor. That’s when we noticed some of his intestines were hanging out. They’d been pulled through a gaping hole in his side. It was spaghetti junction down there.

With Archie lying there, as pale as a corpse in a mortuary drawer, his guts leaking out onto the rug, we tried to save him by pushing the stuff back in. But it was as tricky as scooping up a bowl of spaghetti that’d fallen onto the floor after the sauce had been added.

It was no use anyway. He was already dead.

We tried to call an ambulance. The lines were busy. Same story with the medical helpline.

We called the police. Ditto. Our doctor’s surgery. We got the same grating engaged tone. We couldn’t even get through to the pizza place; we only tried because we were desperate to hear another person’s voice that wasn’t automated.

Same story when I called Fiona, my reclusive sister who had first aid training. Her phone endlessly rang out, which worried me because she never left the house.

Our Internet wouldn’t go on. Our mobiles were useless lumps of plastic. We realised it was because there were too many people trying to do the same thing as us, trying to find out what the hell was going on. How could the phone lines all be engaged, at once?

We turned on the telly, and that’s when we saw David Cameron being eaten by the opposition leader. We were cheering because Cameron’s Tory party are more hated in Glasgow than al-Qaeda because they'd ruined our country, until we realised what the carnage meant. It wasn't just Archie. Reports were flooding in of more attacks. A constant ticker tape of updates scrolled by at the bottom of the screen like football scores. Attacks as far afield as Paris, New York, Melbourne and Beijing. There was even a report from North Korea.

We watched footage of a glazed-eyed mob of drooling shoppers with their arms held out in front of them chasing other shoppers down Oxford Street, trying to grab them. Those poor people didn’t stand a chance against the horde bearing down on them.

The sight of a strapping man in his thirties tripping and falling, and a well dressed woman, maybe his wife, in her stocking feet and carrying her high-heeled shoes in one hand, going back to help him up, only to be pounced upon by those hideous creatures who ripped and tore into them until all that was left was blood and guts, made me want to weep. But I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Not even when the sickening realisation skelped me in the face that there in that footage I might be witnessing my own future and the future of everyone I know and love. That was way too much me to comprehend.

Experts explained events on the different channels. One scientist blamed the attacks on a brain disease, claiming there was a virus that killed off all functions of the brain and the body. It made victims appear dead, but after some time the virus kick started the nervous system, and primitive functions like the need to eat were restarted. Victims effectively become The Waking Dead. He had no explanation for the waker’s cannibalism.

Another boffin with a boyish face, claimed government research had gone wrong, probably because animal rights activists broke into a lab and unleashed infected lab animals on the country. When the interviewer pointed out that there were no reports of people being bitten by animals, but countless tales of dead people waking up and biting humans, the boffin offered no explanation.

Desperate to glean as much information as we could, we channel surfed and came across yet another expert. This one was in complete denial about the whole thing, but whilst we listened to him pompously reassuring us that nothing was as it appeared, we felt better even although we knew we were kidding ourselves. This wasn’t Jackass: the apocalyptic version.

A woman with over-sprayed bouffant hair was interviewing one expert and she played the zombie card on him.

“The dead coming back to life and biting people,” she said, unable to rein in a smirk, “are we dealing with zombies, professor, like the ones in the hit TV show The Walking Dead?”

The professor shot her a withering stare. His message was clear: that he’s a genius and everybody else is a total dunderheid.

“Zombies,” he swallowed, the word laden with derision, “are nothing but a fictional creation. The stuff of books and bad movies. They’re not real. They merely exist in the minds of the highly suggestible such as the mentally ill, for instance.”

The newsreader’s lips tightened. “Are you saying that what happened to the Prime Minister was not a zombie attack?”

“Precisely.”

She flashed him a toothy smile. “But after Ed Milliband attacked David Cameron, police shot Milliband a number of times in the chest, but he got back up again and resumed his attack. The footage was very clear on that, professor. It was only when a volley of bullets was fired into his head that he finally fell down dead. You expect us to believe that attack and numerous other reports of similar attacks by what some are calling the waking dead, are some kind of mass public hallucination?”

A smile spread across the professor’s face. The kind I wished I could wipe right off with my fist. “Oh these monsters exist all right.” He licked his lips. “But as I have already stated, only in the minds of the mentally ill. I can assure you, there is no such thing as dead people coming back to life. And there’s certainly no such thing as zombies.”

As arrogant as he was, I wanted him to be right, but the evidence of what we’d seen on TV and Archie’s body lying in our flat told us different. Muggers grabbed people’s wallets, not their innards.

We turned the TV off because all it was doing was terrifying us. There was no useful information; it was all just a regurgitation of speculation and chilling footage with one underlying message: this is how you will die. The possibility of zombies no longer sounded ridiculous.

We couldn’t handle Archie staring back at us with accusing eyes, and he stank, so I covered him up with a duvet. A pink one with polka dots, which is the only spare one we have.

Scott spotted what he called the girly duvet and screwed up his face. “He’s my mate. We need to show him some respect.”

I’m irritated his pal has bled all over the new rug, yet I’m the one getting all the agro for using a pink duvet.

Instead of coming up with an alternative to cover up his friend, Scott stood there with a stern expression on his face and shook his head. “It’s just no right.” Then his eyes grew wide and staring as he gawped at the duvet. “I think it moved.”

I snorted and shook my head. “How can it have moved? He’s deid. His stomach’s on our carpet.”

Just because Scott didn’t consider the duvet manly enough for his pal, didn’t give him the right to try to freak me out. But I looked down anyway.

At first, I didn’t see any movement, but I carried on watching. Then Archie’s feet started moving, making a tapping motion as if dancing in time to music. Before I’d seen it for myself, I thought that what happened to all those others on TV was not the same as what happened to Archie, because making that connection would open a whole Pandora’s Box of trouble.

Denial is after all a way of shielding myself from the truth. But eventually realisation dawns, especially when Archie started doing a tap dance on my living room floor. “Fuck, he’s no deid.”

While he’s doing this I realised there’s one last thing we can do for him: cave in his head.

Scott gives me his teacher-doesn’t-approve stare. “Wish you wouldn’t swear, Emma. It makes you ugly.”

As if my swearing was our biggest problem right now.

I wanted to give him an earful for chastising me like I was one of his pupils, but I’m too busy watching as dead Archie takes a hacking breath and tries to get up.

I don’t say anything. I couldn’t breathe. I simply held out my finger and pointed as if auditioning for the National Lottery’s It Could Be You ad. But this was one lottery I sure as hell didn’t want to win.

Archie flung the duvet asunder. His ash-grey face was set in a grimace that reminded me of a Mayan death mask. He looked like hell, which was no surprise considering his innards were spread out all over our carpet. But it’s his eyes that were the real giveaway that Archie wasn’t Archie anymore. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, but now those eyes were gone, replaced by dead orbs, as black as coal. They lacked that spark of humanity and self-awareness, whatever it is that makes us human.

Something clicked in that brain of his. He stared at us like a starving dog eyeing someone's dinner. His mouth dropped open and rancid black sludge spilt out. Then he howled.

I thought I was going to puke.

He grabbed for my arm, his blackened teeth as sharp as knives snapping at me. I managed to sidestep his reach.

A scream shrieked out of my throat before I could stop it.