CHAPTER TWO

 

 

THEY DROVE IN silence out of central London's narrowly clustered maze of streets, a tangible sense of relief flooding through the interior of the car as the roads became wider, the buildings sparser, and they headed into the outskirts. Davis and Hewitt sat in the back reloading their weapons, the former breathing a little hard, Gabe noticed. He hoped it was merely the weight of the body armour coupled with the frantic return to the vehicle that was the cause of his exhaustion, but he'd caught, out of the corner of his eye, the former policeman wiping his brow with a trembling hand, and wondered if the pressures of their situation were starting to catch up with him. Gabe had seen it happen to sterner stuff than Davis, and you could never predict how those nearing breakdown could affect future outings like tonight's.

If the last few years had taught him anything - if the plague had taught humanity anything - it was the importance of reliance on comrades, on knowing there's somebody with you to cover your back. Strange that it should be a crisis of this magnitude to deliver such a lesson, but its simplicity did not diminish its truth - operate as a tight unit, and you'll survive. Allow it to unravel a touch and you put everybody's lives at risk.

For all Flowers' failings - and he pushed those in his organisation hard in his pursuit of power, there was no question of that - Harry understood that a machine could only perform at its best if the individual parts were all working together. One loose screw could bring it crashing down, as previous experience has shown. Gabe mused that he would have to have a word with the boss about Davis, maybe recommend him for evaluation with the docs. Better to catch these things early.

He supposed he ought to have a whisper too about Hewitt's increasing belligerence and refusal to toe the line, but knew he would think better of it once they reached base. The idiot found favour in Flowers' court for some reason, and Gabe would undoubtedly be seen as making waves if he criticised Hewitt's conduct, no matter how obliquely. He couldn't quite ascertain what it was that Harry saw in the kid, but he clearly sparked something in him - some nascent paternal feelings, perhaps - that brought forth the highly rare qualities of indulgence and forgiveness from the old man. Flowers evidently looked upon him as quasi-family. Judging by Hewitt's outburst in the jeweller's, the appreciation was hardly mutual; the youngster clearly saw Harry's scheme as a sign that their employer was losing it, and probably spent many an evening dreaming what he would do with the outfit if it had him at its head. Flowers had seen off leadership challenges before, but this one could strike him close and deep if it wasn't nipped in the bud. Trouble was always brewing, Gabe thought, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

The zombies were less of a nuisance once they got out of the city, scattered mostly in groups of fours and fives in parks and residential districts, staggering between the privet hedges seeking living flesh to feast upon. Another primal instinct that seemed to be still blipping in their brains was a herding nature: the stiffs appeared to be naturally aware that, with supplies so close to hand, most human survivors were found hiding in the big concrete tangles of the major conurbations ('cementeries', Gabe had heard one wit dub these overrun metropolises). Therefore, concentrated numbers of the dead gravitated there like predators drawn to a watering hole, hoping to chance upon something warm and tender, leaving the sprawling suburbs relatively empty and easier to traverse.

Ali guided the Escort with little effort through the smouldering, garbage-strewn streets of Catford and Bromley, casually avoiding the few cadavers that stumbled into their path. Watching the deserted semi-detached houses pass by - front doors standing wide open, children's toys left scattered in gardens, the odd splash of red on a window - Gabe felt tears prick his eyes. He pinched them closed for a moment. The dark, charnel terrors of the city he could cope with (he had long been inured to the day-to-day bloodshed by now) but it was the quiet reminders of life before the dead rose that tugged at his heart. What was once comforting familiarity now looked like a blackened shell with all the life, all the goodness, ripped out of it. These routes through suburbia never failed to affect him in this way, but while he could stem the tears from flowing he couldn't turn off his emotions entirely. Everything he'd taken for granted, everything normal, now looked alien without the context of the people who'd once lived here. They'd breathed life into it, and without them it merely became a place fit for the dead.

He'd like to think that what he told Hewitt earlier was true; that this was a phase they were travelling through, a footnote in history. He imagined the fourteenth-century peasants sprouting boils and seeing entire towns and villages decimated thought much the same about the Black Death - that their situation was surely going to get better, that this couldn't be the end for mankind. They had been facing species extinction, to be wiped from the surface of the earth, and humanity, resilient as ever, crawled through it, clinging tenaciously to life as it always had. Now it was staring down into the abyss once more, and the optimistic embraced the notion that there had to be an escape. Flowers was one such idealist, fervently having faith that it was only a matter of time before society would start to rebuild itself (of course, Harry had his own ideas of what that society would be, including instating him as its lord and master).

"All outbreaks have a shelf-life," he'd told Gabe once. "They ravage through an unprepared populace, laying waste to everything they touch. But they also consume themselves eventually, all that energy and greed directed inwards."

Gabe had thought that much the same could be said about humanity.

Flowers was waiting for the virus to burn itself out, when it could no longer sustain the corpses it had reanimated. Gabe wanted to believe that would happen, and he couldn't deny there were signs that the zombies were disintegrating - the bacteria that bubbled away inside each ghoul's cranium, that had awakened its motor functions, was no match for time and tide, after all. But could things ever really return to what they had once been? Could these homes ever be filled again without being a pale imitation of the life they had once contained? He wondered if he'd grown so used to the emptiness that the sight of people walking freely again might seem equally unreal, a simulacrum of civilization recreated from memory but with its soul indelibly bruised.

The streetlamps and boxy buildings of the suburbs faded away as the car picked its way through the Kent countryside. Gabe marvelled at the way nature still ran its course, unaware of the cataclysmic events that had taken place around it. If it wasn't for the quiet - even in the densest of forests, it was rare to hear birdsong - out here it was possible to believe that nothing was wrong. The woodlands and emerald fields were mostly untainted by the dead, though the odd lost shambling figure could sometimes be discerned on a remote path, looking from a distance as dangerous as a rambler. Even then, any ghouls you encountered within these environs had more than likely been released by a local farm for sport rather than being on the prowl; it had become a popular country pastime to take potshots at captured deadheads, occasionally even riding them down. Flowers had aspirations to get in with the horsy set, and had been on several of these hunts, though Gabe guessed that as a quarry they offered little challenge and not much of a satisfying kill. As with any of these shindigs, it was a social gathering with a touch of carnage thrown in. Harry had told him - typically eyes a-gleam like it was a barometer of a man of his stature - that one of the squires that had invited him for such a get-together had scores of stiffs locked in a converted stable, ready for whenever his friends fancied some target practice of a weekend. The resurrected had been rounded up in the city and carted back in cattle trucks.

This kind of attitude was symptomatic of the way some had adapted to living with the dead, Gabe thought as Ali turned the Escort off the winding lane and onto a narrow, conifer-lined track. Once the initial shock had dissipated, once it became clear that the authorities were not going to be able to solve it - indeed, once it was apparent that there was no authority left at all - people resorted to different methods of coping with the crisis. The immediate, predictable response for many was to go on a looting rampage, positively embracing the breakdown of order, reverting to turn-of-the-century outlaws; a few survived this way, living on the road, smashing and grabbing what they could, but most underestimated the numbers of the dead that were growing daily, and especially did not take them seriously as a threat. Stupidity was the chief cause of death within the first few months. For your average Joe, once they realised that there was nowhere to run to, that the plague was everywhere, they hunkered down like refugees in a war-torn state, waiting for somebody to tell them what to do. They were still there now, years later, living in tribes in cellars and boarded-up tenements, scrabbling for scraps, still hoping to be rescued.

But for a few, he mused, as the track widened, the foliage cleared and the vehicle slowly approached the gates of Flowers' mansion, it's been a matter of staying in control. The ruling elite has always tackled disaster in its own fashion, far removed from the epicentre, and the emergence of the undead had been no different for them than any other form of social unrest. They used it for their own advantage, whether for recreation - in the case of the ghoul hunts, and any manner of unsavoury antics the aristocrats got up to within their lodges - or for consolidating their already powerful position. For Harry, it was the latter; once he saw past the ravenous zombies, the outbreak was a fortuitous means to an end. He'd always lived outside governmental authority anyway, and so the breakdown of the police and the strictures of the law courts were to him of little consequence; on the contrary, their collapse was to be rejoiced.

"What," he'd say, sweeping his arms about his opulent study, "I'm supposed to be crying because I don't have to pay tax anymore? That there's no longer some snoop from Customs and Excise investigating my affairs? That I'm going to miss my phones being tapped?"

Flowers viewed it as a golden opportunity, ripe for the plucking. His regular business shrank once the plague took hold - he gradually lost contact with his associates overseas, as Russia, Syria, Pakistan and the US all seemingly suffered similar fates, descending into chaos, and unsurprisingly the takings from his clubs and bars went through the floor in the space of twenty-four hours - but the boss man had always prided himself on seeing the bigger picture. He had no need for profit in the interim, and money was as worthless as the paper it was printed on. So he drew himself back, planned out his strategy and prepared for his own personal and financial resurrection once the virus was played out. He built himself a regular army to protect him and enforce his will, sent scouts into the city to uncover vital supplies, had scientists kidnapped from Ministry of Defence laboratories to conduct research into the epidemic to gain an understanding of how to destroy the dead more efficiently. This was a chance that had been handed to him, and he couldn't afford to fuck it up; never, in his twenty years as head of his firm, could he imagine a time when he might be able to legitimately call the whole of London his domain. What had once been carved up by various crimelords all angling for more territory was now there for the taking in its entirety, and he was determined it was going to be his. And of course, with the capital established, he could spread his tentacles north, east, west and south, engulf a country that had fallen into anarchy. Whenever Harry talked about such an eventuality with Gabe, he hugged himself, his excitement contagious.

"The possibilities," he would whisper, "the possibilities that have been presented to me..."

As Ali pulled up to the main gates, a guard opened a padlocked door set into the chainlink fence and strode across, a flashlight bobbing in hand, an M16 weighted in the other. He stopped at the passenger side, Gabe rolling down the window to greet him.

"Patricks."

"Hey, O'Connell," the guard replied, shining the light into the car. "Any problems?"

"No, went fine." Gabe winced at the glare of the torch. Patricks crouched and swept it left and right, pausing momentarily to rest the beam on each occupant's face, then gave the outside of the vehicle a casual perusal. "Stiffs seem to be falling apart more than ever."

The other man nodded curtly. "Tell me about it. Couple got through the perimeter out by the woods earlier on." He blithely motioned behind him to the dense wall of shadow to the rear of the great house. "Tripped a landmine and the remains been stinking out the gardens ever since. Poor old Sanderson has been burying that shit since sundown. Even the dogs won't touch it."

"Can't say I blame them. They've been known to refuse Barrett's fried breakfasts."

Patricks barked a laugh in agreement. "Oh, by the way, the old man wants to see you. Said you were to call in on him when you got back."

He slapped the Escort's roof and indicated for them to continue. He slung his rifle over his shoulder, unhooked a two-way from his belt, and spoke briefly into it. Seconds later, the gates swung open. Gabe gave the guard the thumbs-up, and Ali edged the car through the opening and onto the main driveway, tyres crunching on the gravel that curled round in a semi-circle to the front of the mansion. Almost immediately, the gates clanged shut as soon as they were through.

Positioned just inside them on either side of the driveway were two sentry posts, an armed guard stationed on each, equipped with infrared nightsights and high-calibre automatic weapons. The lawns that surrounded the house were a cat's cradle of tripwires - themselves interspersed with warning signs for the benefit of the living - triggering small bundles of dynamite. The perimeter fence could be electrified if necessary, and dog-handlers patrolled its length constantly, the animals particularly good at sniffing out approaching ghouls. It was the most well-defended building that Gabe had seen since the advent of the outbreak, and that included governmental offices: one of the many testaments to Harry's organisational skills as well as his wealth.

The mansion's ivy-choked eighteenth-century facade belied the modern interior, Flowers having gutted much of the original fixtures and fittings to make way for the operations centre he required: libraries and studies were stripped to accommodate research labs, armouries and workshops. For an old geezer, he didn't seem to care for tradition or nostalgia; business in his opinion was all about staying one step ahead. To that end he was something of a gadget freak, and loved to drop in on the tech-boys, who would regale him with their latest developments.

Ali pulled the car up alongside several others outside the garages. Gabe stepped out and opened the boot, removing the holdalls and passing them to Davis and Hewitt, who appeared at his side.

"I'm going to see what Harry wants," he told the two men. "Take that lot down to the treasury. And make sure you get an inventory, OK?" Gabe locked stares with Hewitt, who grumpily spun away and trudged towards the house, before turning his attention to the ex-cop. "Keep an eye on him," he murmured. "Ensure everything's tagged and bagged." Davis nodded his assent and followed his colleague.

Gabe turned to see Ali emerge from the vehicle; she locked it up and threw him the keys. He smiled in gratitude, but her hangdog expression didn't change.

"There's about a quarter tank in there," she told him. "Might want to fill her up, in case you need to get somewhere in a hurry."

"I'll do it in the morning, thanks."

"You worried about him?" she asked, leaning against the side of the Escort and nodding towards the small figure of Hewitt climbing the stone steps to the front door.

"I guess. A bit." He shrugged. "He's too reckless, and doesn't account for the consequences. I think he sees this all as one big videogame."

"He'll never listen to advice. Take that from someone who's raised a pair of teenage boys." Gabe vaguely remembered her mentioning her children before, but had always refrained from enquiring what had happened to them. "The only time he'll take stock of his actions is if he puts himself in danger. If he nearly gets himself killed, then you might see a different side to him."

"Wishful thinking," he replied, half joking.

"Could be the best lesson he'll ever get," she answered, and strolled away towards the garages, leaving Gabe wondering exactly what kind of mother she'd been.

 

 

HE NODDED TO the two bored-looking guys standing guard just inside the entrance, and made his way through the stone-flagged reception hall, a cavernous space dominated by the huge carpeted staircase that swept up to the first floor. Despite the lateness of the hour, sounds of activity still echoed from the many corridors branching off the foyer; indeed, the headquarters of Flowers' outfit never really slept, the men working in shifts on various tasks, from the upkeep of the house to zombie procurement. Harry himself only caught a few zeds when it was unavoidable, feeling that he'd be missing something important otherwise. Gabe considered dropping in on the kitchen after he'd reported to the boss, which ticked over twenty-four seven for the benefit of those toiling through the night. He could do with a cup of tea and a chance to put his feet up; it was easy to forget how important these simple pleasures were when you spent much of your time putting bullets through the heads of decaying cadavers.

He spotted a familiar face emerge from one of antechambers, twirling a dog lead in his hand.

"Yo, Hendricks," Gabe called, smiling. "Taking your lady friend out tonight?"

"Oh yes," he replied, glancing down at the chain with affection. "A chance to get away from you animals and spend an evening with someone a tad more civilised."

"I'm sure her conversation's a blast."

"Ella listens, that's the main thing. It's an underrated quality."

Ella was his tawny German Shepherd, one of the handful of dogs kept in the kennels for patrol purposes. Hendricks had a particular affinity with all of them, but she was his favourite, and she was remarkably well trained. Affable and docile for much of the time, as soon as she caught whiff of a Returner her wolfen nature emerged. It surprised Gabe to learn that even the dogs hated the ghouls, without even knowing what they truly were, which made the stiffs something quite unique - a common enemy that bonded man and beast.

"You want to try it some time, O'Connell," he continued. "You don't know how refreshing it is just to have a quiet few moments, just enjoying each other's company."

"Hey, sounds beautiful. Me, I think I'll stick with the human race."

"That's always been your problem: misplaced loyalty."

"Talking of which, you seen the old man tonight?"

"Yeah, he's with the boffins," Hendricks answered, swinging the lead towards an annexe behind the staircase. "Ashberry's there too. Harry seems quite excited about something the colonel picked up on the airwaves."

"No shit?"

"You know how he is; always got some bit between his teeth. Listen, I hear the call of the wild, so I better go."

"Don't want to keep your canine chums waiting."

"Fuck you, you're just jealous," he said, laughing as he headed towards the front gardens.

Gabe strode down the dark, bare passage towards the lab complex, smiling to himself. He'd known Hendricks since he first joined Flowers' organisation and he hadn't changed in that time; a big, soft-hearted lug of a man, perhaps too generous of spirit for a professional thief and enforcer. He was defiantly old school, a generation and world away from the likes of Hewitt, and took no pleasure in violence, using it as a last resort and only under the specific orders of the boss. He was a natural to be in charge of the dogs, and seemed to genuinely prefer their company to that of his colleagues. Gabe often wondered what had led him to falling in with Harry and choosing a life outside the law when he appeared to exhibit none of the qualities one would expect, but Hendricks would not be drawn, merely stating that it was impossible for anyone to predict where they will end up. Instead he would turn the questioning onto Gabe, asking whether he could explain what he was doing being part of the firm, and Gabe could only shake his head, unable to answer. It was a bizarre situation to be in, but ever since the outbreak he'd known he'd made the right choice. If he hadn't joined the outfit, he'd no doubt be just another survivor at best, scratching out an existence amongst the ruins.

The corridor opened out into the research facility, and he spotted Flowers and Colonel Ashberry watching the scientists through an observation window. Beyond the glass was the lab area, where a number of whitecoats were flitting between half a dozen morgue slabs upon which zombie subjects were strapped. Gabe paused in the doorway and cleared his throat. The two men glanced over their shoulders and raised their eyebrows in recognition, Harry immediately returning his gaze to the work being done before him.

"Gabriel, my boy," his employer said. "All back in one piece?"

"Safe and sound," Gabe replied, walking forward, nodding a greeting to the military man. "We didn't encounter any problems."

"What about Michaelson's info? Was it accurate?"

"On the money, so to speak. Store hadn't been touched since the deadheads rose. I think we came away with between fifty and hundred k's worth of merchandise."

Harry finally turned to face him. "Impressive." The boss was an imposing figure in the flesh; lean and wiry with a grizzled, sandblasted complexion and a few white hairs still fighting the good fight on his crown. The watery blue eyes that peered out from the craggy folds of his face, however, indicated the intelligence that lay within that pensionable frame. Once you found yourself fixed in their glare, it seemed he was capable of sensing the slightest untruth. His mood too was never easy to judge at any given time, and that kept those around him nervous, a wrong-footedness he often used to his advantage. Gabe had never seen anyone who could switch from a beaming smile to a look of murderous rage with nary an expression in between. "But then you've always been one of my best thieves, Gabriel."

"I just go where I'm pointed."

"Indeed. What have you stolen for me over the years - guns? Money? Computer equipment? You've even kidnapped the odd rival, if memory serves."

"On your orders."

"Without question. But my point remains that you can be relied upon to get the job done with the minimum of fuss." Without taking his eyes off Gabe, Flowers motioned towards the lab with a swift nod of the head. "Do you ever consider yourself a remote-control creature, O'Connell?"

Gabe flicked his gaze through the glass then back to his boss. "You mean, do I think I'm not much better than them? One of the mindless majority?"

Harry's face bisected into a grin. "I'm pulling your chain, boy. Of course you're working towards the greater good, like everybody here. But similarly, they," he tapped the partition with a knuckle, "could be useful to us, could be directed by us."

"We're trying to ascertain how the virus is working on the cadavers," Ashberry piped up. He was a stiff-backed, humourless goon in his forties that had decided, without a great deal of prevarication, to abandon his middle-ranking post amongst the governmental forces and defect to Flowers' outfit. The colonel believed that the power base had shifted to those with the vision to take back the city - in other words, Harry. Ashberry's military knowledge had proved invaluable in planning operations and procuring weaponry from army installations. He clearly hoped that if the old man's coup ever came off, he could grab himself a slice of the action and claim a position that his previous career had never afforded him. Gabe was sceptical that Harry would ever be that grateful; he could see the uniformed prick being hung out to dry once his usefulness had expired. "We have a theory that the bacteria is evolving inside the brain, slowly changing how the zombies behave. Their instincts are becoming less random, and they're showing signs of memory retention."

By 'we', he meant the small team of researchers that had been removed at gunpoint from the secret MoD labs - the details of their whereabouts provided by Ashberry - and forced to work for Flowers. They were essentially doing the same work, but the difference was they were unable to leave the mansion and their findings were to be delivered directly to the boss. Gabe watched a whitecoat peel the top of a skull off a still-struggling stiff, careful to keep the organ inside intact. It was a horrorshow in there, a mix of butchery and experimentation that he couldn't stomach for long. Harry, naturally, seemed to revel in it.

"If we could determine how the virus controls the dead," the colonel continued, "then there's a chance we could modify it ourselves, get it to fire up some of the neural connections that enable speech, the understanding of language, the basic implementation of tools. And most importantly, make them not want to eat us."

"Turn them into your puppets, you mean," Gabe said.

"Oh, Gabriel," Flowers murmured, "much more than that. We're giving life back to these poor wretches. Why do you think they moan and cry so? They hate their condition, hate what they've become, jealous of the sound of beating hearts and the touch of warm breath. They consume us to try to claw it back, to feel blood rushing in their veins once more. But it always leaves them unsatisfied."

Gabe felt that had more to do with the fact that the dead's digestive tracts were unable to process what they ate, but bit his tongue. Harry was evidently in a poetic mood tonight. "And of course, unzombiefying makes them much less of a threat when it comes to taking London."

"Better to win round enemies than tackle them head-on, that's always been my motto."

Gabe could think of more than one occasion when he'd done just the opposite.

"Our problem," Ashberry said, trying to steer the conversation back to the matter at hand, "has been isolating the virus from the brain samples we're examining. Once it gets into the nervous system, it embeds itself totally, essentially taking over the host. It's hard to see where what was once human ends and the thing the disease has turned it into begins."

"What these backroom boys need is untainted cultures of the original virus to work from," Flowers said. "By reverse-engineering that, they might be able to get somewhere. And we've just had a stroke of rather good luck."

"Which is?"

"I was monitoring a line of encrypted military radio traffic earlier," the colonel told him. "Government forces are transporting a portion of their stock from their stronghold at St Thomas' Hospital to an MoD complex beneath Westminster. Obviously, they're desperately trying to look for an antidote too - but they want to find a way of defeating the plague and make the zombies fall down dead permanently, rather than our solution, which is to turn them into something else."

"So what do you want me to do?" Gabe asked, knowing the answer even as the words left his lips.

"Why, you're going to do what you do best, son," Harry said, putting an arm round the younger man's shoulders. "You're going to hijack it."