Best New Zombie [3] - Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 3 Page 8

  Then as he rose he saw the toy car on the bedside table. He stood stock still, staring at it.

  Jason rolled over in the bed, and said something, his dream broken. The man withdrew from beside him, just as the boy opened one eye a crack.

  Jason thought he saw movement in the corner of the room, thought he'd heard someone talking to him. Not his mum or his 'dad' (his other dad, not his real one). But must have been mistaken; there was nobody here now. Except... except hadn't the TV been on when he'd dropped to sleep?

  With tired eyes, he rolled over to the bedside table and reached out for the car that had been given him that afternoon. It was gone. His hand searched the table, fingers like spider's legs on the surface. Jason turned on the bedside light, squinting at its brightness.

  His room was empty. Nobody in sight.

  With a puzzled frown he sat back against his pillow. And although he wondered where his new toy had gone, it wasn't too long before his eyelids felt heavy again.

  Then he settled back down in the bed where he fell back into a long, deep sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Douglas Knowles was nowhere near drunk enough yet.

  But he'd run out of money some time ago, nursing his last short for at least twenty minutes. And the more kindly patrons of The Bull's Head would only stand you so many rounds without seeing any bought back in return. Sometimes Phyllis the barmaid would let him finish off the last dregs of drinks that had been left by punters, but not tonight. Tonight she was being watched very closely by the landlord after he'd found a fiver missing out of the till.

  (It had actually dropped down the side when she'd been putting it in the register, but neither of them would find it until the following morning when the cleaner came in. That didn't help Phyllis right now. And it didn't help Douglas either.)

  So he had no choice but to return home, or the dingy little one bedroom flat he called home. He kidded himself that maybe he'd find a bottle or two of unopened spirits in there somewhere, but he knew he'd finished off whatever he'd had in the flat when his benefits had first gone in.

  He hadn't resorted to drinking that bottle of meths yet. The one he'd bought originally to clean his brushes when he'd thought about redecorating. That had been after the last time he'd gone to AA, turned over a new leaf----yet again----in an effort to encourage Jane to let him see his two daughters. It hadn't worked, neither coming off the booze, nor convincing his estranged spouse. Tonight might just be the night he tried that meths. It depended on how desperate he was when he got back in. He looked at his watch, a cheap digital one with fading numbers.

  Christ, it was only just turned ten. He'd be home by ten thirty, and then what? A night of not being able to sleep ahead of him, a night of remembrance when all he wanted to do was get completely smashed and forget everything. Not have to deal with reality.

  It hadn't always been like this. He could remember the better days, the great days----when he had a good job working for an insurance firm, when Jane had looked up to him and the kids weren't ashamed to be seen with Daddy. He'd had a career with flexible hours, a nice car----

  But then the problem had slowly crept up on him. At first it was only social drinking when he met up with clients. It was okay, he told himself, he'd gone out and got hammered most nights when he was younger, before Jane had come along, so he could handle a few every so often now. The only thing was that 'every so often' became more and more frequent. Slowly but surely the drinking started to take over his life. He began to crave that fix, the warm tingling you got whenever you were getting nicely merry. Some of his friends in the trade even slipped him soft drugs now and again; nothing hard, he insisted on that, just some coke or cannabis. What could it hurt? What harm could it do?

  Plenty.

  Especially that one night, the night he'd been at a late dinner with a couple of colleagues. Jane was at her folks with the kids that week for the holidays so he was in no rush to get back, not that it would have bothered him anyway. So it ended up being gone twelve when he'd climbed into the car, more than a little the worse for wear after two bottles of wine between them, some cocktails, and a few trips to the bathroom. One of the men had suggested taxis, but the other insisted that taxis were for suckers and why should he pay twenty quid to get back home when he had a perfectly good Audi sitting in the all night multi-storey across the road.

  Sadly, Douglas had sided with him.

  They'd said goodnight and gone their separate ways, Douglas climbing into the front seat of his souped-up maroon Sierra. Once out of the city, he'd taken the dark and lonely back roads to avoid any police traps that might be waiting for him----he wasn't that stupid! He'd enjoyed the drive, slipping in one of his favorite CDs and just cruising along the country roads that would skirt the town where he lived and take him into the suburbs. Take him home. He'd opened her up a little then, singing along to the rock tracks and pretending he was in one of those adverts where he had the whole road to himself.

  Then it had happened. He'd just about negotiated a hard bend and skidded inside, skidding almost into the wall of the tunnel he'd entered. Douglas fought hard to control the steering, but his reactions were terrible. And then...

  Douglas shook his head as he'd done so often in the intervening years. It never did any good; the memories always came back to him. He remembered making it back home, putting the car away in his garage. He locked up and staggered around the side of the house, then just about made it inside to the bathroom to throw up, before carrying a bottle of vodka to bed with him for comfort. It had taken most of the bottle to put him out and when he woke the next morning, he'd thrown up again on the floor. Not all of it down to the drink. It was as he'd been straining that the events of the previous night came back to him. Afterwards he realized he had a decision to make; there wasn't the luxury of time on his side. Now he was sober Douglas considered doing the right thing, but then he'd lose everything he'd spent so long building up over the years. The fact that he was on the verge of losing it anyway didn't really register. Then he thought about the people he knew in the trade, some less law-abiding than others. People he'd done favors for, fixed claim forms for. They owed him, and if ever he needed to cash in those favors it was now.

  He'd picked up the phone and made a few calls.

  By the time everything was splashed over the papers he was in the clear. The car was put to rights quickly and sold on through some disreputable dealer using fake documents. It wasn't unusual for him to swap his car as often as his underpants, not in his line of work, so no one blinked twice when he acquired a new one.

  But when Jane returned with the kids nothing was the same. She'd started nagging him even more about the booze, the restless nights.

  "What's got into you these days?" she shouted at him that final evening when the girls were in bed.

  "Leave me alone," he said as he turned his attention back to the drinks cabinet. "Just leave me alone."

  "Not until you answer my question," she'd persisted, grabbing his arm.

  He'd only meant to shrug her off, but she'd tumbled backwards and almost banged her head on the coffee table.

  Douglas made a move towards her, to help her up. "Jane, I'm----"

  She slapped his hand away, eyes filled with hatred. Jane rose and stormed off to the bedroom, calling back, "I'll leave you alone all right!" Then he heard the door slam and knew that she'd locked it from the inside.

  The next day she left and took the kids with her. Her solicitor demanded that the house be sold and that she get most of the profits. He hadn't argued. Most----if not all----of the fight had gone out of him. Problem was, that meant he'd lost his edge at work as well. Within nine months he went from virtually running the place to losing his job completely.

  The government forced him to look for jobs, but he always screwed something up and was sacked. In the end they stopped hassling him, realizing that he was, over time, building up a resumé that made him virtually unemployable. Now he just went down, signed on,
did the courses they sent him to----the last one was something about spreadsheets----and he drew his money, most of which went to Jane and the kids, the rest on the essentials of life. Or his life at any rate.

  Which was how he came to be there, climbing the steps of the block of flats because the lift wasn't working (and someone had taken a shit inside it anyway). How he came to open the door and find someone waiting for him. Someone he recognized, but his brain told him that the man couldn't----shouldn't----be sitting in his torn second-hand chair with the wooden arms, so when Douglas turned on the light the man almost frightened him senseless.

  "You... you..." said Douglas, his hand outstretched and quivering.

  "Yes," said the man. "Me."

  "I-I'm imagining this. It's the drink."

  "Always the drink," said the man in the chair.

  Douglas rubbed his eyes, scrubbed at them, in fact. The apparition was still there. He looked slightly different, that was true----hair a bit longer and more unkempt----but there was no mistaking that face. It was the one Douglas saw every night when he woke up in a cold sweat; the face his mind had recorded that night as he'd swerved to avoid hitting the wall of the tunnel, only to hit something, someone instead.

  It was the face of the man he'd killed seven years ago.

  ~

  "I still don't understand. How do you know where to go?" Beth asked again. Robbins had answered the first time with a "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

  "I got a tip-off," said the DCI at last, letting the wheel slip through his fingers as he turned into a side road.

  "From who?"

  "That's not important, but... I believe what he said." Robbins had considered telling her about the conversation he'd had with his dead predecessor, but decided against it. If he began to go through it, he might just start to believe it wasn't just some bizarre dream. You could sleepwalk, why not sleep-smoke? The fact that he hadn't had any cigarettes on his person didn't come into it. "Just go through it again, what happened back at the hospital," he urged her.

  She patiently explained about how 'Matthew' had been waiting for her when she got back, how they'd talked about the night of his accident and his hazy recollections. Then she related the incident in the Casualty Department. "I think something about the biker must have jolted his memory. They were in similar states."

  "But you say he brought the man back to life?"

  "That's what it looked like, at least. Davison, the doctor in charge, had called it. They'd given up the ghost."

  Robbins pressed his foot down on the accelerator and they shot forward over a roundabout. "They might just have made a mistake."

  "It's possible," Beth admitted. "But you had to have been there."

  "I would have been if you'd called me."

  "I was bringing him to you. He would have bolted if I'd rung you first."

  "As opposed to what he did anyway?"

  Beth hugged herself. "I did what I thought was right, Steve."

  He looked over at her briefly, then returned his eyes to the road.

  Beth waited for the apology she knew would never come. Instead he said, "So what's the conclusion about him then? Any more theories?"

  "Plenty, but all crazy. Right now I'm thinking, what if Matthew's got some kind of virus."

  "What, you mean he's sick? I thought you said he had a high immunity."

  "What if that's part of the disease? Something that makes you well. Better than well, in fact. What if it can bring you back from the dead?" Robbins gave a half laugh and before he could dismiss what she was saying, she continued: "It would explain the weird results from his blood test. Think about it, a disease that can regenerate dead tissue. That can restart a dead person's heart, make the blood flow again in their veins."

  Robbins' eyes narrowed. "That's just----"

  "Ludicrous? More ludicrous than a man who's been dead for seven years turning up on his own mother's doorstep? More ludicrous than opening his coffin and----"

  "All right, all right. I get the picture," said Robbins. "If what you're saying turns out to be true----"

  "And we won't know that until more tests are done," she broke in.

  "Right, but if it is... it really will be the discovery of the century, the millennium."

  "Ah, so now you do care." She smirked. "Steve, it'll be the discovery of the last two millennia," said Beth, looking over at him. "Not that I'm going to get into the whole science versus religion thing, but you do realize what time of year it is, don't you?" He caught her eye for a moment, then they broke it off. They drove the rest of the way in silence, the inference hanging heavy in the air. And with the question still unanswered: who had passed this condition on to Matthew in the first place?

  ~

  "Why don't you come inside and shut the door?" said the dead man. "We have things to talk about, you and me."

  Douglas Knowles was freeze-framed in the entranceway. The words broke whatever spell was holding him there and for a second he found himself doing as he was bid, walking slowly inside. Then he stopped again.

  Douglas was still staring at the man, unable to properly take in what was happening----or to grasp that it might be real. The last time he'd seen that face it had been through his windscreen, cracking the glass, panicked and bloody. (A scene his mind had recorded especially for him to play back the highlights.) Then as a dark lump in his rearview mirror after he'd finally screeched to a halt. Douglas had been breathing heavily, eyes flicking up to his mirror, then back down at the white knuckles clenching the wheel, his wedding ring digging into the third finger on his left hand. Rock music was belting out from the speakers, the soundtrack of this particular nightmare... and many more to come. Part of him had wanted to get out of the car and go back to see if the man was all right, but a larger part told him he didn't need to see that----if he drove away he might just get away with it. So before he knew what he was doing, he'd put the engine, still idling, into gear. He was bringing his foot off the clutch, finding the biting point; moving off, away from the scene.

  There were no other cars around, no houses, just a road that led up to the chemical plant where the man must have been walking from, facing oncoming traffic just like you were supposed to do. But Jesus, how was Douglas supposed to see him in a pitch black tunnel like that? Even if he hadn't been trying to swerve to avoid the wall he might still have hit him. It had been an accident, that's all. An----

  "Accident?" said the man, now rising. "An accident!"

  "Y-Y-Yes," said Douglas, although there was hardly any conviction in his voice.

  "You didn't even bother to report your 'accident.'" His tone was unforgiving. "I had to wait to be found. There might have been a chance if----"

  "Get out of my head," said Douglas, closing his eyes and backing away.

  "You still don't understand, do you?"

  When Douglas opened his eyes again the dead man was standing inches away, grabbing him by the wrists.

  "I'm real, Doug. This isn't one of your guilt dreams. I'm not the Ghost of Christmas Past. I'm here, in the flesh."

  Douglas shook his head. "No, no!"

  "I lost everything that night. Missed seeing my son grow up. And now my wife, she's..." He let the sentence tail off. "All because of you and your accident."

  Douglas tried to wrestle out of his grip but couldn't manage it. "I-I didn't mean to----"

  "You had a choice that night; I had none," said the dead man. "See... feel what I felt!" The dead man shoved something into Douglas's hand, a toy. A small child's car.

  Suddenly Douglas experienced that night in a way he never had before. He was the one who'd set out to walk home after his shift, who'd been in that tunnel when he'd seen the light. Who'd felt the force of the car, doing almost 50 miles an hour on that bend, ploughing into him. His legs no match for the metal of the bonnet. He felt the agonizing pain as the bones broke in several places, as his hip cracked and he went tumbling over that same bonnet. Heard the music coming from inside, the loud thu
mping of the stereo. Saw the knuckles on the steering wheel, looking up to gaze into his own shocked face behind the wheel----the pair of them becoming intertwined in that moment. Then the rest of the 'accident' was filled in for him, spinning over the roof, his shoulder coming out of its socket, then back down onto the boot and finally colliding with the rough concrete of the road, raking his skin, shredding his thighs, blood pouring from him freely, nose breaking and splintering with the fall. He blinked once, his vision blurred, then again. Everything was black but he couldn't tell whether it was the darkness of the tunnel or that he was losing consciousness. And it hurt so much. He couldn't move a muscle. It hurt so much he actually prayed for death to come because then it would end. But he still managed to mutter one thing: "You'll... you'll see me again."

  "Do you understand?" shouted the dead man, pressing him up against the balcony wall.

  Douglas was crying now, and spit ran from his mouth. "Please... please... stop."

  "You took my life away from me. Now----"

  "Now," he blurted through the tears. "Now what? Now you're here to do the same, to take it away from me?" Douglas found hidden reserves from somewhere, his voice becoming stronger. "So do it. What do I have to live for now anyway?"

  The dead man looked him squarely in the eyes, those tired eyes desperate for sleep. A sleep denied him by the drink. He looked back over his shoulder at the place where Douglas now lived. Was it enough, this punishment? How could he weigh it against what he had been through?