Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 3 Page 5

  Beth had heard the commotion but was crouching by the gravestone itself, reading the inscription there.

  MATTHEW KEVIN DALEY

  Devoted son, husband, and father.

  Taken from us early.

  Sleep well, Angel.

  There were a couple of stems from long dead flowers that had been left there possibly weeks or even months ago. When Robbins returned from his encounter with Lilley, chewing more of his tablets, he gave the order for the exhumation to begin. Beth stepped back to allow the police to start digging. It took them the best part of two hours to reach the coffin, though even then it was only because of their numbers.

  She watched as the men in white suits fed straps under the coffin, signaling for it to be lifted out slowly and carefully. Like a huge wooden baby, it was cradled back down again to the earth.

  “Are you sure about this, about being here?” said Robbins, now at the side of her. “It’s not going to be pleasant.”

  “Steve, I’m a Doctor for Christ’s sake. And I’m a big girl.”

  Robbins gave the order for the coffin to be opened, which the men did, again with the utmost professionalism, care, and respect. Beth and Robbins drew closer as the final nail was removed and the lid heaved off.

  ~

  Irene Daley lay in bed, unable to move.

  She knew what they were doing that morning. Father Lilley had broken the news to her as gently as he could. They’d obtained an order to exhume Matthew, earthly laws obviously carrying more weight than religious ones. She’d run the gamut of emotions then: surprise, fear, anger, resentment. But hadn’t there been something else at the back of her mind, a little voice telling her that at least they’d know for sure when it was done? At least she’d be able to get the picture of that person out of her head, the man who’d sat in Matthew’s chair, who’d looked around his old bedroom and found the forgotten toy car in the wardrobe. The man who’d told her that his father––no, Matthew’s father––would have believed him.

  Irene’s eyes were dry that morning. There were no more tears left. In the past two days she’d cried so much she thought her eyeballs would simply float out of her head. But now, on the morning they were digging up her son’s coffin, and opening it, she found she couldn’t cry at all. She felt numb; she might as well have been in that coffin herself.

  Yet as the hands on the clock next to her bed reached midday, Irene did feel something. At that precise moment she knew the lid was being taken off… and she knew what they would find inside.

  She knew more positively than she had ever known anything in her life.

  That was when she started crying again.

  ~

  “So what happens now?”

  “I honestly wish I knew,” Robbins, still clearly stunned, told Beth.

  “We need to talk to him again.”

  “We?”

  “We,” she repeated.

  Robbins rubbed the back of his neck. “Heavens knows what I’m going to tell my bosses. This is growing way beyond a simple cold case now.”

  “I think it was before.” She tentatively placed a hand on his shoulder. “You did the right thing, Steve.”

  “I doubt the priest back there sees it that way. Did you know we’re all going to burn in Hell for this, Beth?”

  “Been there, bought the t-shirt.”

  “None of this makes any sense.”

  “No it doesn’t.”

  They began walking away from the grave again, back towards the church. Robbins marched past Valentine and Lilley without meeting their gaze. Neither Robbins nor Beth spoke again until they reached the police cars parked on the road. Then one of the women police officers there––Adams, Beth had heard him call her––took Robbins to one side. Beth shifted her weight from one foot to the other and waited as the WPC whispered something to him.

  “What?” she heard Robbins say, raising his voice. “He can’t be… Well how did…?” Robbins listened some more, then shook his head violently.

  Beth rushed over, but waited until Robbins had dismissed the junior officer before asking what had happened.

  “He’s gone,” the detective told her bluntly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean, Beth, he’s fucking gone!”

  She recoiled as if slapped.

  “‘I’m sorry,” he said, but his voice was still hard.

  “I don’t understand… how can he just be gone?”

  “One of the duty officers found Wilson in there, sitting in the corner of the cell. They can’t get much sense out of him, he’s talking nonsense.”

  “Didn’t anyone see anything?”

  “Apparently not. And there’s nothing on the bloody CCTV cameras either.” Robbins broke away from her and started towards his car.

  “Wait a minute, where are you going?”

  “Where do you think? Back to the station, I’m going to try and work out where our boy is… before anything else happens.”

  Chapter Seven

  Jason loved dinner hour.

  All morning long he’d been stuck in a fusty classroom working first on math problems, then looking at a book where the principal character traveled back in time to visit some of the most famous historical events, like the Roman era and the middle ages when knights battled it out with big swords. Jason didn’t want to read about such things. He wanted to be in the sunshine, acting them out, just like he would be in the holidays.

  So, after a dinner of what was supposed to be some sort of stew, followed by a dessert that was part sponge, part custard, and part something else he hadn’t been able to distinguish, Jason had raced out onto the playground attached to the small school, swinging his imaginary sword and chopping away at an imaginary black knight. A surge of boys and girls came behind him, breaking off into smaller fragments: some going into corners to trade cards from the latest Japanese cartoon series; some kicking around a small tennis ball on the floor; some playing chase; others simply racing around and around, screaming at the top of their voices, as if trying to release all the energy that had been building for the last few hours.

  Jason had now dispatched his evil opponent and was looking for any dragons to tackle––although, as his teacher Miss Bellamy had tried to drive home to them all that morning, dragons didn’t strictly exist during that era. Didn’t exist at all, in actual fact.

  “What about St. George?” asked one little girl near the front, Mary Hodgkins.

  “Ah, well, the tale of St. George and the dragon is what we call a fable, children. Like Sleeping Beauty. In this case the dragon just represents a form of evil.”

  “Did they have talking lions in the middle ages, Miss?” asked Leon Keogh.

  She’d sighed wearily. “No Leon, it wasn’t Narnia. This was real.”

  But Jason, like Leon, wasn’t too fond of the real. Real was boring, and dragons breathed fire and had scales and were, when all was said and done, pretty damned cool. In his imagination, he found the dragon he’d been looking for: a bright red one that flapped its wings on approach and was guarding a cave full of treasure. He ran at the beast, swinging his sword left and right, dodging the fire that came his way. And running straight into the path of one of the school helpers, Mrs. Shaw, a woman who could, in her own way, also lay claim to the title of dragon.

  She towered over Jason, holding the youngster by the arm. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?” said Mrs. Shaw in that rasping voice of hers. She was one of the old crowd, one of the small handful of helpers and teachers who still thought it had been a bad idea to get rid of corporal punishment, because a smack or several hadn’t done them any harm when they were little––apart from giving them the impression it was okay to do that to others later on. Mrs. Shaw would never openly strike any of the kids there, but every now and again she liked to put the fear of God into one, just to keep the rest in line.

  Jason hoped today wasn’t his turn to be on the receiving end.

  “I’m�
� I’m sorry,” he said. He wondered about telling her what he’d been doing, but thought better of it. Mrs. Shaw wasn’t the kind of person you told about your imaginary fights with fantasy creatures. Mrs. Shaw wasn’t the kind of person you told anything to really.

  “Come here,” she said, pulling Jason into a small corner of the playground, away from the windows of the school. Away from prying eyes.

  “Please, I didn’t mean to––”

  “Don’t give me any of that sniveling,” she rasped again. “I get enough of it from my husband.”

  Mrs. Shaw bent, bringing Jason closer as she did so. “If I ever catch you running about like that, swinging your arms again, I’ll––”

  “You’ll let him go,” said a voice from behind them. It was even and soft, but had a harder edge to it underneath.

  Mrs. Shaw rose slowly. Jason had never seen this look on her face before, a look you get only when you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t be. She immediately let go of Jason’s arm, turning round to see who had spoken.

  Jason saw the man a few seconds after her, as she moved aside, allowing him a clearer view. He was about average height, with dark tousled hair, and he was wearing a shirt and trousers. As Jason looked down, though, he saw the man was barefoot.

  When Mrs. Shaw realized he wasn’t a member of staff, nor did he look like anyone in any kind of authority––more like a tramp who’d wandered in through the gate––she shouted, “And who the hell are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he told her.

  “Some kind of pervert, eh? Come to spy on the kids at playtime?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we’ll just see what the headmaster has to say about that one, shall we? You do realize that you’re trespassing?”

  He said nothing, merely stared at her.

  Mrs. Shaw took a step towards him. “What’s the matter with you anyway? You on drugs or something? And where are your shoes?” She took two more steps, then paused, and took another.

  The man saved her the trouble of coming any closer and covered the remaining distance himself. He grabbed her arm, just as she had done with Jason in the playground. She didn’t have time to get away. Mrs. Shaw was about to scream when he said, “Do you ever think about him anymore, Jean? Do you ever think about Oliver?”

  “What… what are you talking about?”

  “You can tell yourself that what happened to him was an accident, that you had nothing to do with it, but you made his life a misery. And for what? All because he was a bit overweight?”

  “Who are you? How… how could you know…?”

  “How did you feel when you heard the news, Jean? When you heard how he’d died? You can keep moving, but it follows you wherever you go, doesn’t it?”

  Mrs. Shaw wrestled herself out of his grip and backed away, pointing at him. “You… you stay away from me!” She gave him one last look, then turned tail and ran away in the opposite direction.

  Which left Jason alone with the man.

  “Hello, Jason,” said the older of the two.

  Jason didn’t reply. He’d been told often enough not to speak to strangers. But wasn’t there something about this man, something he recognized, however vaguely? And hadn’t he just helped Jason escape from Mrs. Shaw’s clutches?

  “You’ve grown so much since the last time I saw you.”

  Jason wanted to run­––should be running away, just like Mrs. Shaw had done. But something was keeping him here.

  “You’re not afraid of me, are you?” asked the man, coming nearer.

  The nod Jason gave was barely a tremble of the head.

  “Don’t be, I’ve come such a long way to see you. Probably can’t remember me, can you?”

  Jason half shook his head, half nodded.

  “I’m not surprised. It’s been a while. You were still a toddler when I… when I left.”

  “W-Who are you?” asked Jason.

  This time the man gave an answer. “I’m your Dad, Jason. I’m your Dad.”

  ~

  When a very shaken Mrs. Shaw returned, with the headmaster in tow (he’d already had some harsh words to say to her about abandoning one of their pupils to an intruder) the man had vanished.

  Jason was standing in the same spot he had been when she’d run off, but now he had his back to them and was looking down at something.

  “Jason?” said, the headmaster, reaching out a hand and pulling it back again.

  Jason didn’t look; he was concentrating on whatever he had in his hands.

  “Jason, are you all right? Did… did that man do anything to you?”

  Jason shook his head.

  “What’s that you’ve got there?” asked the headmaster, walking around to the front of the boy.

  Jason finally looked up, then showed him the object that was in the palm of his hand. “It’s a present.”

  The headmaster picked up the tiny red car and examined it.

  “He gave it to me,” Jason said. “Said to keep it safe. And he said he would see me again very soon…”

  Chapter Eight

  Constable Bernard Wilson was lying down on the cot in the cell when they arrived back. A policewoman was trying, unsuccessfully, to get him to take a sip of water. His face was the color of spilt milk.

  Robbins indicated with a wrench of the neck that she should leave them alone, which she promptly did.

  “Wilson?” asked the DCI. “Care to tell me what happened here?”

  Beth pushed past him to check on the PC, feeling his pulse first, then his brow. “His heart’s racing, and he’s quite hot.”

  “My heart’s racing as well,” snapped the detective. “There’s a man out there on the loose who’s…” He let the sentence evaporate.

  “What happened?” asked Beth this time. “Where did your… prisoner go?” She hated using that word, but couldn’t think of anything else to call the man. They’d been keeping him here against his will, after all.

  Wilson looked at her, his eyes large. “He… he told me things,” was all he would say.

  “I don’t suppose he told you where he was going by any chance? After you let him out.” Robbins’ voice had lost none of its harshness.

  Beth scowled at him. “Steve, can’t you see he’s still in a state of shock?”

  “Aren’t we all? But we need to find this man and we need to find him right now!”

  “You think I don’t know that? But this isn’t help––”

  “He… he told me my aunty and uncle were safe and well. Told me he’d seen them,” Wilson interrupted.

  “And you let him go because of that? Because he told you he knows your family? Jesus Christ!”

  “My aunty died in 1985 of cancer, my uncle ten years later. T-They brought me up.” Now it was Wilson’s turn to snap. He sat up and his voice had a chilling edge. “T-Told me things only they could know.”

  Both Beth and Robbins were silent.

  “What did you find in the coffin?” asked Wilson. “He wasn’t there, was he?”

  Robbins ignored the question, and repeated his own. “Where is he now, Wilson? Do you have any idea?”

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” said the policeman, but Robbins still didn’t answer him. Wilson turned again to Beth. “Who is he, doctor? What is he?”

  “Right now, he’s missing,” she replied. “And we need to find him if we’re to answer any of those questions.”

  “Sir?” came a voice from behind. It was the WPC again. “You’re wanted on the phone.”

  “Can’t it wait? I’m busy here.” Robbins flapped at a fly that was buzzing around his head, making its bid for freedom through the open door.

  “It’s about the man from this cell,” she told him. “There’s been a sighting.”

  ~

  “I should have seen this coming. Why didn’t I send a uniform to keep an eye on the place as soon as I knew he was free?” Robbins banged the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

 
Beth, in the passenger seat, stared out the window at the small school they were approaching. The red brick of the building, and gray-slated roof, looked remarkably like her old primary school. “No wonder your stomach is always playing up. Which, by the way, I’ve told you to get looked at... Listen, you weren’t to know this would happen.”

  “You read the gravestone same as I did: ‘Devoted son, husband and father’. He’d already visited Mrs. Daley. There was a huge probability he’d try to get in touch with his… with the son again. Shit!”

  Robbins was still reluctant to recognize the man as Matthew Daley, even after what he’d seen. She recalled the conversation they’d had on the way to the station when he’d asked her for theories. “How about this: Matthew Daley dies, is pronounced, then buried. But he’s not really dead.”

  Robbins grimaced. “What do you mean, not really dead? How can he not be dead when he’s had a fucking autopsy?”

  “Happens more often than you think,” she replied. “Patients even wake up in the middle of autopsies sometimes. Or when they’ve been buried prematurely. The medical term for it is Catalepsy, where the patient suffers from a form of temporary paralysis and appears dead.” Sleep well, it had said on the gravestone––and perhaps that’s all he had been doing, just sleeping. “The latest thing now is to put a web-cam in the coffin so you can keep checking on the deceased.”