Chapter 20
The stinging in Miles’ burnt hand was getting worse. He left Felix to take care of the two zombies, then returned to the house and went straight for the bathroom.
He ran his hand under the cold water tap for a couple of minutes, then rifled through the medicine cabinet. He found a tube of balm that was labelled arthritis relief. He didn’t know if it would do anything for burns, but by now he was willing to give anything a shot. He squeezed out a generous amount and rubbed it into his hand, then wrapped it with a bandage from the first aid kit. The balm proved to be mildly effective and made the pain slightly more bearable.
He carefully replaced the tube back in the medicine cabinet and noticed there were about two dozen pill bottles inside. The labels were old and yellowed, and had names like Exelon, Actonel, Claritin, Flomax, Voltaren, Zyloprim, Protonix, and many more that were too faded to read. Miles had no idea what most of these were, but he assumed they were the kinds of pills the old lady needed to keep her body going; blood pressure tablets, vitamin supplements, antihistamines, anti-Alzheimer’s medication. He couldn’t see any painkillers, which was what he really wanted.
His snooping may have been an invasion of privacy, not to mention a breach of company policy, but he pushed those thoughts to one side and kept on searching.
He opened a drawer and found something even better than painkillers: a blister pack of Ambien with about ten pills remaining.
He had taken Ambien on just the one occasion, about four or five months back. He was having difficulty sleeping one night when he stumbled into the bathroom and discovered Amoeba’s stash of pharmaceuticals next to the basin, left out in the open for anyone to help themselves to. Included among this were a couple of Ambien pills. He swallowed one and returned to his room, where he enjoyed almost nine blissful hours of uninterrupted slumber. He awoke the next morning feeling better than he ever had, like he’d been completely reborn. He later regretted not swiping more of the pills, since they were only available on prescription.
Miles did a quick check to make sure Felix wasn’t lurking nearby, then shoved the pills into his pocket. The label indicated that they were almost two years out of date, but that was just a general guide. And even though he had technically stolen from the recently undead, he wasn’t really hurting anyone. This was essentially a victimless crime, like jaywalking or interfering with a corpse. No real harm was done. It wasn’t like what Z-Pro did; they were known to pilfer cash, credit cards, jewellery, digital devices – basically anything that would fit in their pockets. Those pills would have eventually been disposed of, so it wasn’t even really stealing.
Steve eventually called everyone in at around 6:00 p.m. They could have kept going since it didn’t get dark until around eight at this time of year, but there was little point in staying any longer. The day had been a huge disappointment, and everyone just wanted to go home.
They had severely miscalculated the degree of difficulty for this job. Yesterday, when Steve and Adam were evaluating whether or not to take the job on, they’d estimated that they could collect about three hundred zombies, or four busloads, per day. If they could manage that, it would take about six or seven days to reach their target. That now appeared to be wildly optimistic. By day’s end, they had only managed one hundred and seventeen.
Nothing had gone the way they’d planned. They assumed that because they were dealing with zombies of an advanced age they would be easier to handle. They soon found this not to be the case. These zombies were actually harder to control. Maybe it was because they were so stuck in their ways that they refused to leave their habitat, or maybe it was because old people were just more stubborn and belligerent in general. Whatever the reason, coaxing an elderly zombie away from its home was like trying to drag a pit bull away from its food.
If that wasn’t bad enough, there was the debacle at the service station where Erin and Marcus had somehow managed to set both a zombie and the minibus on fire. Those two were conclusive proof that if you built something idiot-proof, nature just builds bigger idiots. Despite sustaining some serious fire damage the minibus was still drivable, although it now looked like something salvaged from an Eastern European war zone.
But the minibus was the least of Steve’s worries. If the authorities found out about them inadvertently cremating a zombie, God only knows what sort of charges they’d be facing – on top of every other rule and regulation that had been broken today.
All this and more was running through Steve’s mind as he drove back into town. He was alone, behind the wheel of the school bus, transporting the remaining forty-odd zombies to the processing centre. This gave him time to think, and he had some big decisions to make. Should they come back tomorrow and keep going? Was it all worth the risk? If today was anything to go by, it would be weeks before they brought in enough zombies to pay off their debts. The longer they stayed out there, the greater their chances of getting caught. Then again, what choice did he have? It was either this or bankruptcy.
Steve let out a lungful of air. It would be an understatement to say that nothing had gone the way he thought it would. And while many laws may have been violated in Graves End today, it appeared that Murphy’s Law was still being strictly enforced.
He consoled himself with the fact that his day from hell had finally come to an end, and nothing more could go wrong from here.
He was proven wrong a few minutes later when he learned that Adam and the staff had been pulled over in the minibus. They were given a ticket for speeding, followed by a second one for driving an unroadworthy vehicle.
Steve drove on and silently contemplated his next move, as his list of problems grew slightly longer.
Tariq the Anarchist may have abandoned his chemistry degree six months shy of graduation, but he was still able to put his knowledge and skills to good use. He and Amoeba had constructed a makeshift laboratory in Miles’ kitchen out of nothing more than the utensils and equipment found in the cupboards. Pots filled with dark brown gloop bubbled away on the stove, while tumblers and coffee mugs were used to measure out what appeared to be hazardous chemicals. Tariq and Amoeba both wore surgical masks to stop from breathing in the toxic fumes.
An open box, labelled ammonium sulphide, sat on the kitchen table. Inside was a plastic tub of crystalised white powder. It was the box that Amoeba had delivered to the house the day before.
When Miles saw this, shortly after returning home from a tough day at work, he realised he probably wouldn’t be cooking any dinner in here tonight.
“Careful, bro,” Tariq said to him as he poured some of the hot liquid into an empty Coke bottle. “You don’t wanna get none of this stuff on your skin.”
Like so many young men of his generation, Tariq deliberately dumbed-down his language in an attempt to hide his private school education.
“What’s going on?” Miles asked, instantly gagging on the stench emanating from the pots.
“It’s just a little science experiment,” Amoeba replied with a mischievous grin.
Miles pulled the collar of his t-shirt up over his mouth and nose. “Please tell me this isn’t a meth lab,” he said.
He didn’t really know what a meth lab looked like, but he figured it must be something like what Tariq and Amoeba had assembled here.
“Relax, bro,” Tariq said. “It ain’t nothin’ like that.”
“So what is it?”
“Okay, so Marlowe’s havin’ this campaign rally tomorrow, and we really wanna send a message–”
“Hey!” Amoeba said, cutting him off. “What did Fabian say about keeping this quiet from anyone not directly involved?”
Amoeba made a zip-your-lip gesture, and Tariq immediately fell silent.
Miles snatched a pizza menu from the refrigerator and headed for the sanctuary of his bedroom. He figured that whatever Tariq and Amoeba had planned, it was probably in his best interests that he remained ignorant (for legal reasons).
Walking down the hallway, he noticed the back door was halfway open. He went to close it, and heard Fabian outside with a small gathering of his disciples.
“This is just the beginning,” Fabian said, speaking in hushed tones. “That footage from the processing centre was great for our cause, but now we have to take it further. We need to make a bold statement, one that’ll make everyone sit up and take notice of what’s going on in this world. Because if you’re not on our side, you’re with the enemy. Anyone who stands by and does nothing while all this abuse and torture is done in our name is as culpable as Marlowe and Devereaux, or those fascists working for Z-Pro and Dead Rite. It’s us verses them, and it’s time to pick a side, yeah? Because after tomorrow, there’s no turning back.”
Fabian stopped talking when he sensed Miles loitering nearby. One of his lackeys reached over and pulled the door closed.
Miles went to his room and collapsed onto his bed. At least there was still one place in his house where he could find some peace and quiet, even if this was only because he’d put locks on the door. He had them installed a few months after Clea moved in, after coming home one night and finding three unwashed Zeroes sleeping in his bed. That was the moment he decided clear boundaries needed to be established, and certain areas of the house declared off-limits.
It troubled him somewhat that his childhood home had now become headquarters for a group of activists in the process of planning what sounded very much like a terrorist attack and creating what looked very much like homemade explosives. Individually the Zeroes were probably all quite harmless, but as a collective who knew what they were capable of? Fabian was his biggest concern. A month ago he was just another ineffectual dread-head in search of a cause to rebel against. Now he actually seemed like he might be capable of attempting something extreme.
Miles put this down to two factors. The first was the celebrity and notoriety Fabian experienced after the incident at the processing centre. That stunt had thrust him into the limelight, and was far more successful than he could have possibly dreamed. But that also meant the pressure was on to follow it up with something even bigger. His desire for change and social justice had been surpassed by his desire for fame.
The second factor in Fabian’s recent metamorphosis was the arrival of Neil, who had quickly become one of the most popular Zeroes – especially among the women. Neil would regale everyone with stories of his life as a daredevilish eco-warrior, from chaining himself to Scottish nuclear reactors to sabotaging Japanese whaling vessels. He was confident, charismatic, handsome and a natural leader; in short, he was everything Fabian wasn’t.
Fabian didn’t even try to hide his intense dislike of Neil. He hated the way Neil had become something of a de facto leader of the Zeroes without having done anything to earn it, and he was jealous of the way the female Zeroes – Clea in particular – had fallen under his spell. Fabian’s reaction to Neil’s presence was to take things further than anyone else. His views had become more dogmatic, and he was hellbent on achieving further notoriety.
A kind of power struggle had emerged between and Neil and Fabian, which had created a minor rift within the Tribe of Zeroes. The group had basically split into two factions: the traditionalists, led by Clea and Neil, were made up of those that enjoyed and getting stoned and complaining about the world’s problems but doing little about it. Then there was Fabian’s splinter group, which contained all the hardcore anarchists and nihilists determined to do whatever it took to achieve their goals, consequences be damned.
Miles wondered if he should do something about all of this before it got out of hand. He could ask Clea to try talking some sense into Fabian, or perhaps tip off the police about what the group might have planned. That would be the sane, responsible thing to do.
But before any of that, he had more pressing issues to deal with. So he phoned up his local pizza joint and ordered a large pepperoni with extra cheese.