Searching For Summer: A Zombie Novel Read online

  Although Danny was now off the pay-role, due to there being nobody left alive to pay him, he still wore his policeman’s uniform. It symbolised order in a time of chaos, and he still liked to think of himself as a public servant. He had also retained his police ethics and was suspicious of everyone. “Sent by whom?” he said.

  “May I come in?” the stranger leant forward and narrowed his eyes behind his thick lenses to read the name badge on Danny’s shirt. “Sergeant Danny Weston?” He looked over his shoulder at the next zombie swaggering towards the gate. “Those twitchers are getting awfully close.”

  Danny stepped aside and let the shorter man into his house. He closed the door, engaged all four deadbolts and followed the stranger into the living room. He still had his gun trained on him when he said, “You do realise that those creatures, which you’ve brought to my door will never go away and that we’ll have to flee our home because of you?”

  The visitor appeared not to have heard him and sat down on the brown leather sofa. “I have just left P.C. Longman. He asked me to ask you if you’re all still okay.”

  “Steven’s alive?” Danny said, holstering his gun and dropping down into the armchair, facing the settee. “That’s great news. We went through police academy together. How are his family? My daughter and his used to play together, you know. I still hope that one day they will again.

  “I’m sorry, I’m rambling. Let’s get back to your official business.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely truthful with you, Sergeant Weston.” The stranger hauled himself off the sofa and walked towards the bay window overlooking the garden, rapidly filling up with zombies. When he turned back to face Danny, he was holding a Glock of his own. “I am here on my own unofficial business. I’m taking your daughter.”

  Danny’s right hand dropped to the holster he wore, awkwardly angled in his sitting position.

  “Ah-ah-ah,” the stranger said. “If you’re thinking of going for your piece, I’ll put a bullet in your heart before you can say ‘Quickdraw Mcgraw’. Now, ever so slowly, put your hands on the armrests and listen. I have a confession to make.”

  Danny complied and frantically tried to think of a way out of his hopeless situation.

  “I have just left your buddy, Steven Longman, that much is true, but he was a walking corpse. He was hobbling around near the infant school, in shit-stained pants and dragging along a severed arm. Perhaps he thought it was his truncheon.” He tittered and put a hand over his mouth, his sloping shoulders bobbing up and down. Danny imagined taking hold of them and head-butting him in the face. “This is his gun, by the way. I snuck up on him, yanked it out of his holster and used it to blow his fucking brains out.” He looked down the barrel at Danny. “Now, let’s get back to your daughter. I want you to know it’s nothing personal, but I am a collector of children, I bring certain people what they want. You can buy anything nowadays, a lot of things you would never see on supermarket shelves or, God rest its soul, eBay and I know people who will reward me well for young flesh.

  “And if you’re wondering how I knew about you having a daughter here, I didn’t. I was cruising around, looking for children to take and spotted the pink bike outside your house. I noticed the bedroom curtains twitch and here we are.”

  “What do they pay you with?” Danny said. “Money’s worthless nowadays.”

  “Are you stalling for time, Officer Dibble? Because if you are,”—Danny sprang out of the chair, pushing off the armrests to propel himself forward. He was barely upright before the stranger shot him in the stomach— “I’ll shoot you, is what I was going to say.”

  Danny staggered backwards against the chair, struggling to stay on is feet, and upstairs, his wife screamed. He fumbled for his gun, and the stranger shot him in the right-hand side of the chest, knocking him back into the sitting position with enough force to tilt the chair backwards. This time, the scream came from his daughter, and the stranger smiled. “Later, Danny-Boy.” He fired a third shot directly over his heart. Danny roared, a combination of agony and frustration and the chair tipped over. When the backrest hit the floor, Danny was silent.

  A pretty, black-haired woman ran halfway down the stairs and stopped when she saw her husband’s feet, sticking up from behind the overturned chair. The stranger had no interest in her and shot her in the neck. She clasped a hand to her throat, let out a watery squawk and fell the rest of the way down the stairs.

  A girl who appeared to be in her early teens ran downstairs and stopped on the same step as her mother had done, seconds earlier. Her blonde ponytail danced around as she thrashed her head from side to side, looking at her dead parents. Eventually, her terrified eyes settled on the stranger. “Hi there, little lady,” he said. “You’re coming with me.”

  Summer burst into tears and ran to her mother, curled up at the foot of the stairs. “Mummy,” she wailed. “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.”

  The stranger feigned impatience by looking at his watch. “Okay, now say goodbye to your daddy. I haven’t got all day.”

  She left her mother’s side and ran across the room to the upturned chair. Her dad had retained an inverted sitting position but had slipped down the backrest until his head touched the floor. His arms were stretched out like a crucifixion, and his eyes were closed. She counted three bullet holes in his shirt and cried louder. She held his head in her hands and pressed her cheek against his. When the stranger coughed, she drew her head back, looked at the work-worn face of her father one last time and kissed him on the lips.

  “Right, blondie, time’s up. Let’s go.”

  Summer leapt to her feet and ran to the back door, but it was locked, and the key was in her dad’s pocket. The door also had four large barrel bolts and Summer couldn’t reach the top one; there was no way out. She expected her parents’ murderer to appear behind her, but instead, she heard the front door open. Was he leaving her?

  She heard him run back into the living room, chuckling, followed by several shuffling footsteps and a cacophony of moaning and groaning. The stranger had let the undead into her home. Summer screamed and ran into the living room. Although she hated it, she knew that the man who had shot her parents was also the only person who could protect her. “Save us, mister, please,” she said.

  “I think I’ll wait a while,” the stranger said. “There is a lesson to be learned here.”

  The zombie of a lanky teenager in a silver tracksuit lurched towards them. Summer could just make out ‘Chicago Bears’ on its blood-smeared baseball cap. It came within touching distance of her before the stranger calmly raised his gun and shot it just below the cap’s peak. Next in line was a reanimated old lady with a blue rinse, its face covered in the contents of the teenager’s head. It fell over its predecessor and grabbed hold of the stranger’s ankle. He shot it in the back of the head, and the thing released its grip.

  From the bottom of the stairs, Lydia made a liquid screeching noise.

  “Well, well, well,” her shooter said. “It appears your mummy is still alive. Although, I doubt she’s going to need next year’s calendar.”

  “Help her, mister, please.”

  “She’s in somebody else’s hands now, little lady, and by that, I mean the hands of those walking corpses heading for your stairs.”

  Seven zombies tried to fit onto the kite-winder tread where Lydia had come to rest. A huge, bearded man in a blue boiler suit was the first to reach her and took a bite out of her forearm. Her dying cries were silenced by their former postman, as he sank his teeth into her throat. Between them, the other five twitchers grabbed Lydia’s legs and dragged her down the bottom three stairs into the living room, her head thudded on every step. She was now accessible to the whole pack, and they set about her, like wolves on a crippled fawn.

  The last thing Summer saw of her mother was a flash of her maroon bra when the boiler-suited giant ripped off her sweater. After that, she was swamped by the twitchers. Summer screamed, but the creatures ignored her cry, tempo
rarily transfixed by their latest meal.

  “Have you seen enough, dear?”

  Summer nodded her head and sobbed.

  “Then, as Shania Twain once said, let’s go, girl.”

  The stranger took hold of her wrist and yanked her out the front door; Summer pulled it closed behind her through force of habit. As they were going out, a pair of zombie schoolboys were walking down the garden path. The stranger shot them both in the head and Summer had to jump over their bodies to keep up with him. He stopped beside his van and slid the side door open. “Get in,” he said.

  Summer shook her head, and the stranger slapped her across the face, hard enough to make her ears ring. “We seem to have gotten off to a bad start,” he said. “What’s your name, girly?”

  “Summer,” she replied, through sobs as she rubbed her cheek.

  “And you can call me Piper – short for Pied Piper because I’m a taker of children. Just how long I keep them depends on how well they behave. From now on, Summer, you belong to me, understand? But if you piss me off, I’ll throw you onto the streets, and you’ll belong to them.” He cocked a thumb over his shoulder at her house. “Mummy was starters. Daddy will be mains. Do you want to be dessert?”

  She shook her head and looked at the floor.

  “Then get in the van, I won’t tell you again.”

  Summer stepped inside, and Piper slammed the door, leaving her in mineshaft darkness.

  As Piper drove away in the early morning sun of June, the Harlequin figure on the side of his van played his instrument in a permanent display of joviality, but if the notes could be heard, the tune would be ‘The Death March’.

  2: A Burial and a Promise

  Danny’s eyes flickered open, and his instant disorientation made him feel nauseous; it took him a while to work out where he was and what he was seeing. Eventually, he realised he was looking at his living room light fitting through his splayed feet, from his upturned armchair. Regardless of his confusion, there could be no mistaking what he heard: the stomach-churning sounds of the undead feasting. The wet smacking noises the creatures made as they chewed on body parts never failed to repulse him.

  He had to be quiet. They were close, and if they were alerted to his presence, he would be their next meal. He bent his legs at the knees to move his feet down the seat cushion, out of the potential sightline of the feasting zombies. He slid his body backwards out of the overturned chair and edged back onto the carpet. The movement sent a bolt of pain so intense through his upper body that he cried out. He clutched his hands to his chest and felt the punctured heavy padding of his bullet-proof vest and the events of the morning came back to him in a flash. “Summer, Lydia,” he said.

  A range of grunts and hisses, preceded the appearance of a big bearded zombie in a boiler suit, glaring down at him from the base of the chair. Blood covered his profuse facial hair and lines of sinew dangled from his chin, like ungodly beard extensions. He snarled and grabbed Danny’s trouser leg. Danny drew back his free leg and stomped upwards into the ghoul’s face, but the blow had no effect. The thing grabbed the offending foot and sank its teeth into the end of his boot.

  Danny thanked God for steel toecaps and grabbed the handle of his gun. He couldn’t free it from its holster for lack of manoeuvrability, so he angled the leather pouch between his feet and pulled the trigger. The bottom of the holster blew out in a leather star, and top of the thing’s head disintegrated. It let go of Danny and fell out of sight. Danny did a backwards somersault out of the chair and was on his feet, shaky but standing, and he drew his gun. When he saw what lay at the foot of the stairs, his legs almost buckled.

  Five zombies knelt around the remains of his wife, and a sixth was crawling towards him. Danny shot the crawler through the top of its head while his eyes remained fixed on Lydia. Three of the feasting ghouls had their faces buried inside her torn-open ribcage. Another was lapping blood out of a hole in her exposed thigh, and the fifth one chewed on her left foot. Danny shot the two at her legs and stepped around the upturned armchair. The remaining three withdrew from his wife’s chest cavity and hissed at him as he approached. He dispatched them with another three headshots and stood over the body of the woman he’d vowed to love forever.

  He focused on her face, as pretty as ever and surprisingly undamaged by the barbaric attack. She looked like she was sleeping and that’s how she would remain. People only turned into zombies if they survived an attack by one. Once bitten, the casualty would become instantly infected with a metamorphic virus. The victim usually died within two hours and would be back on their feet, with an insatiable hunger for human flesh within three. But if the victim died in an attack, they stayed dead and thankfully for Lydia, there would be no return. Just to be sure, he fired a single shot into his wife’s forehead.

  Danny used the once-white rug she had died on to drag his wife into the back garden. It was fully enclosed by the house and a timber-panelled fence he had erected last spring, and although he had faith in his carpentry, he was alarmed by the boards to his left. They creaked and bowed under the weight of the zombies pushing against it. They knew he was on the other side of the fence and if the zombies couldn’t go around it or over it, they would try to go through it.

  The job was rushed, and the grave was shallow, but nevertheless, Danny had buried his wife beneath the flower bed she had loved so much. Two bamboo canes, tied in a cross with garden twine, marked her final resting place. As Danny knelt beside her grave, praying to a god he was rapidly losing faith in, a fist punched through the fence behind him. It was time to go, to stay any longer would be suicide.

  “I’m sorry, Lydia, I thought we’d be safe here. How naïve was I? But I will find Summer, Lydia. I swear on the life we shared together that I will find our daughter. And I will kill that bastard who destroyed our family.” He kissed his hand and touched the mound of earth that covered the body of his wife. “Rest in peace now, angel, and I’ll see you on the other side.”

  He went through the back door of the garage and got into his police patrol car. The key was already in the ignition, in anticipation of a quick getaway and he used the fob to raise the garage door. As the door was rising, he started the engine and floored the accelerator. He sped down the short driveway onto the road, knocking down and driving over four zombies limping towards his car. He turned left, assuming that was the way the kidnapper had gone, simply because his van had been facing in that direction.

  At the end of the road T-junction, Danny stopped the car to retrieve a hand-held monitor from the boot. He held down the power button, and the screen turned white. Once the loading phase was complete, a map of the local area replaced the manufacturer's logo. In the top right-hand corner of the screen was a flashing red dot with a breadcrumb trail leading back to where Danny was parked. “Yes,” Danny said.

  At the outbreak of the zombie epidemic, Danny had predicted a catastrophe of world-ending proportions, based on what he witnessed on the front line of defence against these creatures. They multiplied quicker than bacteria and became unstoppable as their numbers skyrocketed. The reason for the instant and unpredicted surge in the zombie population was the government’s underestimation of the power of love.

  From day one, the government enforced a curfew and took control of the media by replacing all television and radio programmes with public information bulletins and survival guides which changed by the hour. Eventually, the powers-that-be decided the best way to deal with the zombie outbreak was to keep the public indoors and have them put their infected relatives outside, ready for military collection. The government issued every household with removal tongs – a pair of long metal poles with a gripping claw at one end and a lever to operate it at the other – designed to usher the infected relative out of the house from a safe distance.

  Most of the public obliged and for the first couple of days, the infected were taken away to be disposed of, but after that, the army drove around shooting them in the head. When their numbers b
ecame too many, the police were called in to help with the cull.

  Of course, the majority of families were reluctant to put their immediate relatives outdoors to be shot and opted to quarantine them in garages, sheds or spare bedrooms until a cure arrived. Predictably, the results were disastrous. How many mothers could listen to their children groaning all night and banging on a locked door? Countless numbers of parents were infected while attempting to give their undead children one final cuddle.

  Picture the scene: It’s two-thirty in the morning, Dad snores beside Mum in bed. She has lain awake all night listening to seven-year-old Gemma grunting and constantly head-butting the spare bedroom door like the world’s slowest woodpecker. Mum’s tear-filled eyes stare at the ceiling, she can neither accept nor comprehend what has happened to her little girl. Finally, she can take no more and slowly gets out of bed, so she doesn’t wake the sleeping father, Alan. She tip-toes across the landing and stops outside the locked door. Alan fitted the lock yesterday, and the shiny key sticks out from the escutcheon. “Gemma, honey, it’s Mummy. Can you hear me?”

  The banging on the door stops for the first time in the thirteen hours since Alan locked her away and the silence gives Mum hope. She turns the key in the lock and gently pushes the door inwards. Little Gemma stands just inside the room with her head bowed. As she raises it, the moonlight illuminates her features through the horizontal slats of the blind and Mum begins to cry. The child’s eyes are matt white and bloodshot inside an alabaster face that looks false and doll-like. The nocturnal lighting makes her lips look black. “Oh, darling,” she says, reaching out her arms and dropping to her knees. “Come to Mummy. Mummy will make it all better.”

  Little Gemma runs into her mother’s arms and sinks her milk teeth into her jugular. Mum screams and pushes her child away, but the vice-like grip of Gemma’s bite tears a clump of her neck away. Blood gushes through Mum’s fingers as she tries to compress the wound and she stares in disbelief as the child she gave birth to chews on her severed flesh. With a monumental effort, Gemma swallows the grisly mouthful and bares her teeth at her mother. They are stained dark red and remnants of skin fill the gaps between them.