Zom-B Angels (10 page)

After a couple of games – I finish last the first time, but fourth in the next game, ahead of a disgusted Shane – we spill out of the arcade. Night has fallen and dark clouds drift
across the sky. I suggest the Dungeon again, but the others say they want to go on the London Eye. I’m curious to see what the city looks like now from up high, so I don’t argue.

We step into one of the pods and rise. I turn slowly as we ascend, taking in the three hundred and sixty degree view. As I’m turning, I spot an Angel sitting on the bench in the middle of
a pod on the opposite side of the big wheel, staring solemnly out over the river.

‘What’s up with that guy?’ I ask.

‘He’s a lookout,’ Carl says. ‘There’s always an Angel on duty in the Eye, in touch with a guard inside County Hall, in case we get attacked by Mr Dowling and his
mutant army. They use walkie-talkies — mobile phones don’t work any more.’

‘I noticed that,’ I frown. ‘Any idea why not?’

‘It’s the end of the world,’ Carl says. ‘Lots of things don’t work.’

‘I know, but I thought mobiles would be all right, since they operate through satellites.’

‘You thought wrong,’ Carl sniffs. ‘That’s why we rely on the walkie-talkies. You’ll be posted to a pod once you settle in. We all have to take our turn, even the
twins and those who don’t come on missions.’

‘Except for One-eyed Pete,’ Ashtat says.

‘Obviously,’ Carl replies.

I whistle, impressed. ‘There’s really an Angel called One-eyed Pete?’

Carl and Ashtat gaze at me serenely and I realise I’ve taken the bait, hook, line and sinker.

‘All right,’ I growl as they burst out laughing. ‘I’m an idiot. I admit it. Just throw me off this thing when we get to the top and have done with me.’

We chat away as the pod glides upwards, admiring the view over County Hall, looking down on the roof and into the courtyards. I try to spot the room where the Groove Tubes are, but it’s
hard to be sure.

‘I came up here a few times with my mum and dad when I was younger,’ I mumble, remembering happier days when the world wasn’t a nightmarish place.

‘What happened to them?’ Ashtat asks quietly.

‘I don’t know. I think Dad might have made it out. Mum . . .’ I shake my head, wondering again about her, hoping she’s alive, but not able to believe that she is. And
Dad? Well, it’s kind of the opposite with him. I’m pretty sure he slipped away, but part of me hopes he didn’t, that he paid for what he made me do to Tyler. But I don’t
want
to feel that way. He’s my dad, and as much as I hate him for what he is – what he always was – I love him too.

‘How about the rest of you?’ I ask. ‘Did you all lose family?’

‘Yes,’ Ashtat says. ‘Parents, brothers, sisters . . .’

‘A girlfriend,’ Shane adds morosely.

‘A boyfriend,’ Carl sighs, then winks at a startled Shane. ‘Only joking.’

‘You’d better be,’ Shane huffs. ‘I’m not sharing a room with you if not.’

Carl fakes a gasp. ‘Hark at the homophobe! Just for that, I’m going to convert. Come here, you big sap, and give me a kiss.’

They wrestle and stumble around the pod, Carl laughing, Shane cursing. The rest of us look on wearily.

‘Boys never change, do they?’ I note.

‘Sadly, no,’ Ashtat murmurs. ‘They might have lost their carnal appetites, but that won’t stop them being bothersome little pests.’

‘Lost their . . .? Oh yeah, I forgot about that.’

Apparently zombies can’t get down and dirty — none of the necessary equipment is in working order. Apart from snogging – which probably isn’t much fun with a dry tongue
and cold lips – there’s not much we can do.

Shane and Carl break apart. Both are grinning. Then Carl’s expression darkens as he recalls what we were talking about.

‘I went to the offices where my father used to work once I’d revitalised. I found him there. He’s a revived now. I thought about killing him but I didn’t dare, just in
case anyone ever discovered a cure for them.’

‘You know that won’t happen,’ Ashtat says sympathetically.

‘Yeah, but still . . .’

‘Your dad might revitalise,’ I say, trying to cheer him up.

Carl squints at me. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, we recovered our senses, so maybe he will too.’

‘He can’t,’ Carl says. ‘He wasn’t vaccinated.’

‘What?’ I frown.

‘Leave it.’ Ashtat stops Carl before he can continue. ‘Dr Oystein will explain it when he returns.’

‘I’m getting sick of hearing that,’ I growl. ‘What is he, the bloody keeper of all secrets? Are you afraid the world will go up in flames if you tell me something behind
his back?’

‘It’s just simpler if he tells you,’ Ashtat says calmly. ‘He’s used to explaining. If we tried, we might confuse you.’

‘At least you admit that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ I mutter, then cast an eye over Jakob who, as usual, is standing silently by the rest of us.
‘What about you, skeleton boy? Did zombies eat your nearest and dearest, or did they leave Ma and Pa Addams alone?’

Jakob stares at me uncertainly, then gets the reference. ‘Oh. I see. I look like one of the Addams Family. Very funny.’

‘You bitch,’ Ashtat snarls.

‘What?’ I snap. ‘Aren’t we allowed to have a go at skinheads any more?’

‘You don’t think he shaved himself, do you?’ she asks.

‘Well, yeah, of course. I mean why else . . .?’

I stop and wince. How dumb am I? Pale skin. Bald. Dark circles under his eyes. Skinny in an unhealthy way.

‘You’ve got cancer, haven’t you?’ I groan.

‘Yes,’ Jakob says softly. ‘It was terminal. I was close to the end. I had maybe a few weeks left to live. Then I was bitten. Now I’m going to be like this
forever.’

‘Is the cancer still active?’ I ask. ‘Will it carry on eating you up?’

‘No,’ he sighs. ‘But it hasn’t gone away. It still hurts. I can ignore the pain and function normally when I focus, which is why I’m allowed to go on missions, but
the rest of the time I feel weak, tired and disoriented. It’s why I often seem spaced out.’

‘I’m sorry. Really. I wouldn’t have had a go at you if I’d known.’

He waves away my apology. ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing that you said could hurt me. Nobody could. Not after . . .’

He stops and I think he’s going to clam up again. But then he continues, his voice the barest of whispers, so that even with my sharp ears I have to strain to catch every word.

‘I’d come to London with my parents and younger sister. One last visit. Nobody phrased it that way but we all knew. Our final day out together. Mum and Dad took time off work, even
though they couldn’t afford to — they were struggling to make ends meet, having spent so much on me over the last few years.

‘We got delayed on our way down, so we had to cut out some of the things we’d planned to do. In the end we went to Trafalgar Square first. I loved the lions, the fountains, looking
up at the National Gallery.’

I consider telling him what happened the last time I was in Trafalgar Square, but I don’t dare interrupt him in case he goes silent again.

‘We had lunch in the crypt in St Martin-in-the-Fields. I had a Scotch egg. I knew it would make me sick – my stomach couldn’t handle rich food – but I didn’t care.
It was sort of my last supper. I wanted it to be special.’ He smiles fleetingly. ‘That’s how bad things get when you’re that close to death. A Scotch egg becomes something
special.’

Jakob retreats from the window and sits on the bench. Rests his hands on his knees and carries on talking. No one else makes a sound. If we could hold our breath – if we had breath to hold
– we would.

‘I was one of the first to be attacked when zombies spilled into the crypt. In a way that was a mercy. I didn’t have to witness the madness and terror which must have surely
followed.

‘I was still in the crypt when I regained my senses weeks later. I’d made a base there, along with dozens of others. I’d fashioned a cot out of a few of the corpses. I suppose
it was a bed cum larder, as I’d eaten from them too. I know that because I was eating when I revitalised, digging my fingers into a skull, scraping out a few dry, tasteless scraps of
brain.

‘It was my sister’s skull,’ he says, and the most horrible thing about it is that his tone doesn’t change. It’s like he’s telling us the time. ‘My mum
and dad were there too. Well, in my dad’s case it was just his head. I couldn’t find his body. I did search for it but . . .’

Jakob pauses, then decides to stop. He lowers his head and starts to massage his neck. Nobody says anything.

Without discussing it, we spread out around the pod, giving Jakob some privacy. We stare at the river and the buildings, smoke rising into the air from a number of places, corpses strewn
everywhere, abandoned boats and cars, paths and roads stained with blood, black in the dim night light.

I think about asking Ashtat if I can borrow her cross. But I don’t. And it’s not because I don’t want to be a hypocrite and say a prayer to a God I barely believe in.
It’s because I figure what’s the point in saying any prayers for this broken, bloodied city of the ungodly dead?

Carl wasn’t joking about training being boring. Over the next three days I perform the same routines over and over — swim (having carefully plugged up my nose and
ears), work out in the gym and get thrown around the hollow conference room by the stone-faced Master Zhang.

‘It is important that you learn how to fall correctly,’ he says when I complain after being slammed down hard on the floorboards for the hundredth time. ‘In a fight, you will
often be thrown or knocked over. If you can cushion your landing, you will be in a better position to carry on.’

‘How long will I have to do this?’ I grumble, rubbing my bruised shoulders. I’m beginning to wish he’d ruled me unfit for active service.

‘Until I am satisfied,’ he says and hurls me over his shoulder again.

I’m keen to learn all sorts of cool moves, and disgusted by what I consider a waste of my time, so I leave the sessions with a face like thunder, but Ashtat tells me I have to be patient.
They all had to endure this to begin with.

‘Master Zhang wants to turn you into a fighting machine,’ she explains. ‘That isn’t a simple task. You should be thankful he’s spending so much time on you, even if
it is only to throw you around. If he didn’t consider you worthy, he would not be proceeding so diligently with you.’

I know she’s right, but it’s hard to maintain my interest and temper. I was never the most patient of girls. Maybe that’s why I didn’t have a boyfriend — I
couldn’t be bothered putting in all the time and effort required.

If I’d come to Master Zhang when I was human, I doubt I’d have stuck with him more than a day. I definitely wouldn’t have made it past the second. But things are different now.
It’s not like I have more attractive options. If I don’t play ball here, I can go off by myself, regress and become a shambling revived, or maybe hook up with Mr Dowling and his merry
band of mutants. Hardly the sort of career prospects that young girls around the world dream about.

At least I get on pretty well with my room-mates. They’re not the sort I would have been friends with in my previous life, but they’re not a bad bunch. They do their best to help me
find my feet, show me round County Hall, give me tips like how to groom the bones sticking out of my fingers and toes.

I haven’t spoken to many of the other Angels. I’ve picked up names here and there, and I know a few to nod to in the gym and pool – such as Ingrid and her crew – but I
haven’t tried to bond with any of them. I’m still not sure if this place is for me, and won’t know for certain until I’ve had a chance to chat with Dr Oystein again. If I
don’t like what I hear, and decide that I’m better off out of it, I don’t want the added aggro of having to leave friends behind.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, after lunch, when I have free time on my hands, I head down to the lab with the Groove Tubes to catch up with Reilly, something I’ve been meaning to do
since our first reunion.

The soldier isn’t in the lab, nor is Rage, who must have been fished out not long after I was. I get an angry feeling in my gut when I spot the empty Tube, recalling the way Rage threw the
rest of the zom heads to the lions, how he killed Dr Cerveris. I’m uneasy too — I don’t trust Rage. It wouldn’t surprise me if he popped up behind me and dug a knife into
the back of my skull.

I ask around and track down Reilly to the kitchen where Ciara works. Reilly and the dinner lady are talking while she washes up. As far as I’m aware, they’re the only two humans
here, so I guess they feel closer to one another than to the cannibalistic zombies they serve.

‘Hey,’ Reilly says when he spots me. ‘I was wondering when you’d come looking for me.’

‘What made you think I would?’ I snort.

‘I’ve always known you had a crush on me,’ he grins.

‘Not if you were the last guy in the world,’ I jeer, hopping up on to a table across from the pair and letting my legs dangle. ‘Isn’t there a dishwasher for that?’
I ask Ciara as she scrubs another plate.

‘I prefer washing by hand,’ she says cheerfully. ‘It passes the time and it keeps my mind off . . . other matters.’

Her shoulders shudder slightly and I don’t ask any more questions. I’m sure, like any other survivor in this post-apocalyptic city, that she has memories she’d rather not dwell
on.

‘Go on then,’ I say to Reilly. ‘Tell me how you came to be here.’

He shrugs. ‘There’s no big story. Josh and the others who hadn’t been killed by the clown and his mutants pulled out of the underground complex in the wake of the assault.
I’d had doubts about the place from the beginning. What I saw that day – the way the reviveds and revitaliseds were executed like rabid animals – helped make up my mind. I wanted
out, so I walked away while they were evacuating. I doubt if anyone missed me. If they did, they probably assumed I was killed or converted by a stray zombie.’

‘Took you long enough to see them for what they were,’ I sniff.

Reilly sighs. ‘Things aren’t black and white any more. They never were, I suppose, but there used to be law and order, right and wrong. Now it’s all chaos. I don’t think
Josh or Dr Cerveris were bad guys. They were trying to uncover answers, to figure out a way to put the world back on track. I didn’t approve of how they went about it, but if they’d
cracked the zombie gene and come up with a way to rid the world of the living dead . . .’