Apocalypse Cow (22 page)

‘Anicca vata sankhara, uppadavayadhammino. Uppajjitva nirujjhanti tesam vupasamo sukho,’ James repeated, this time with a bit more emphasis.

‘I’m not sure I can pronounce that,’ Terry said. ‘Can we do it in English? I think Fanny would understand.’

‘That might be a problem,’ James replied, his voice losing its significant tone.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know what it means. I got it out of one of Fanny’s books. I think it helps.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘This was more her thing.’

‘So you have no clue what you’re doing,’ David stated.

James looked at each one of them in turn, his eyes full of sorrow. ‘No.’

‘I don’t know how much more of this I can take,’ David said.

‘You’ll take as much as you have to,’ Terry snapped at him.

Lesley pinched David’s palm hard – Terry had told her what
had
really happened in the store – and was gratified to hear him let out a girlish yelp.

‘Don’t worry, James,’ she said. ‘Just say whatever you think will help and we’ll all try and will her soul onward.’

The gratitude that flooded James’s face was so pathetic Lesley could not look at him. He cleared his throat and addressed the statue. ‘Fanny. I hope you can hear me. Er, you’re dead. Sorry. It’s a total bummer. Geldof and me, we’re completely freaked out. And sad, too.’

Geldof nodded in agreement.

‘But dead’s dead, you know? You need to face it and move on.’

He fell silent. Lesley tried her hardest to will Fanny on to her next life. All she could conjure up was an image of body parts being slowly digested and compressed into pig pellets.

‘Is that it?’ David asked.

‘Yes,’ James responded. ‘Now we need to burn the statue.’

He pulled out a lighter.

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ Lesley said, seized with images of fleeing a burning house only to be confronted by an array of zombie wildlife rushing to pig out on the human barbecue.

‘It’s part of the ritual.’

Lesley moved to stop him, but Terry tightened his grip on her hand.

‘Leave him be,’ he whispered. ‘He’ll never get it on fire with that.’

The words had barely died on Terry’s lips when James whipped out a can of lighter fluid, sprayed the statue and lit up his Zippo in one fluid motion. Flames spewed up from the god, lapping eagerly at the ceiling and wall. Burning lighter
fluid
dripped from the end of the god’s penis. The carpet promptly ignited.

‘Fucking hell!’ Terry shouted and leapt forward. He stamped on the flames, succeeding only in setting fire to his sock. ‘Somebody get some water!’

Lesley dashed for the kitchen, knocking aside David, who landed heavily on the professor. She grabbed the first pot she could get her hands on and chucked it under the tap. When she dashed back out, Terry was hopping around, beating at his foot with a cushion. The twins were staring at the spectacle with obvious glee. James was curled up in a ball in the corner, while David was still sprawled across the professor, his chest pressed hard across her mouth and nose, preventing her from breathing. Lesley slapped him on the top of the head as she ran past. Constance took a shuddering breath as he shifted.

‘Get some water,’ Lesley told him.

Three minutes and ten pots of water later, the fire was out. The only physical damage was a black hole in the carpet, soot marks up the wall and a charred statue. James, however, was a mess.

‘There must be some in the shed,’ he was repeating as he rocked back and forth in the corner.

Geldof stood over him, tentatively trying to console him. James sprang to his feet and pushed past his son.

‘There is,’ James said. ‘I left it under a plant pot!’

He threw back the curtains and disappeared out through the patio door, letting in a light breeze that set the smoke swirling around the room.

‘Should we go after him?’ Lesley asked the room.

Geldof answered by pointing to the fence. A grey squirrel had appeared. As they watched, another one popped up, then
another
, then another, until there were at least a dozen lined up.

‘They’re back,’ he said.

‘So?’ Lesley said. ‘They’re only squirrels.’

The largest squirrel scrabbled down the fence and charged at the patio door. Terry hauled the door shut just as it leapt. It thumped off the glass and rebounded at least two feet, leaving behind a little red smear. It got up immediately and came charging back, this time followed by its pals. They thudded off the patio door like large furry raindrops. Terry pulled the curtain closed. The thuds carried on.

‘Do you think Dad will be OK out there?’ Geldof asked.

‘As long as he stays in the shed and keeps quiet, he’ll be fine,’ Lesley replied.

A flurry of crashes and bangs emanated from the shed as James’s search for his stash became more frantic. There was a brief pause, followed by a loud wail. The thudding against the glass stopped.

Lesley and Terry looked at each other.

‘We should go get him,’ Terry said.

‘We need some weapons,’ Lesley responded.

Geldof sprinted to the cupboard under the stairs. His head disappeared inside for a few seconds, before he emerged with two wooden tennis racquets, both of them missing strings. Another wail sounded from outside, this time one of pain.

‘Oh, fuck it,’ Terry said. ‘Good enough.’

He grabbed the racquets and handed one to Lesley.

Terry slid open the door and they stepped outside. James had emerged from the shed and was staggering around the garden, knocking over the approach ramp of his assault course. A squirrel hung from each earlobe as others spiralled
around
his body. One of the squirrels that had yet to mount James saw the two of them and scampered over. Three feet away it flung itself into the air. Lesley didn’t think, just swung her arm up in a powerful arc Serena Williams would have been proud of and caught the squirrel flush with the centre of the racquet. The squirrel sailed over the fence, performing cartwheels as it went.

Lesley laughed out loud, emboldened by the savage thrill thrumming up her arm. They advanced on James and his mono-coloured squirrel nightmare coat. It took three sturdy thwacks – the blows accompanied by enraged squeaks and grunts of pain from both James and the rodents – to knock each squirrel off. The one attached to James’s left ear came away with a piece of lobe still held between its teeth. When James was desquirrelled, Terry gave the wounded animals writhing on the ground the tennis-racquet equivalent of a single bullet to the head. When he was done, the strings were spattered with gore.

They helped James indoors, locking the patio door behind them, and sat him at the bottom of the stairs. While his face was smeared with blood, the wounds were superficial. The worst injury was to his ear, but even that was only oozing. He allowed Mary to tend to his wounds and then let Terry lead him up to his room, with Geldof in close attendance.

‘That was truly weird,’ Lesley said.

‘So what do we do now?’ David asked.

‘We go to bed. I don’t think I could take any more insanity today.’

‘I mean what do we do about Squirrel-boy?’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘What if he gets what they have?’

Lesley thought for a minute. ‘I haven’t seen any humans behaving like that. Have you?’

‘No. But can you be sure?’

‘No,’ she said grudgingly.

‘I think we should tie him to the bed.’

‘Don’t you think the poor man has been through enough?’ Mary asked.

‘Do you want him to tear you to pieces in the middle of the night? Or rip out the twins’ throats?’

Mary harrumphed, but did not respond.

‘I’ll talk to Terry,’ Lesley said, and hauled herself to her feet.

As she climbed the stairs, she wondered how she was going to persuade Geldof to allow his father, who in one day had lost his wife, almost set fire to the house and then been mauled by squirrels, to be tied to the bed in case he turned into a slavering, homicidal zombie.

I’ll never, ever complain about having a bad day again
, she thought.

13

Letting the cat out of the bag

James presented no objection to being lashed to the bed, having lapsed into a coma-like state. Geldof was also amenable to the idea of tying up a potential zombie, father or not, since he was sleeping in the same room. To make matters even easier, Lesley found four short lengths of rope stashed beneath the marital bed, each with an easy-tighten noose. She passed the tying-up duty to Terry. An ex-boyfriend had persuaded her to try bondage a few times, and while she had no strong feelings for or against, she knew how easy it was for bodily fluids to contaminate the equipment.

As Terry tightly lashed a compliant James to the bedposts, Lesley watched Geldof, who was sitting in the corner hugging his knees.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine,’ he replied, although he didn’t really look it.

Lesley felt a flush of sympathy for the boy, and found herself volunteering to sleep in the room as well. Terry looked as
though
he was going to object at first, then just nodded. Geldof seemed indifferent.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Geldof crawled into his makeshift bed. Before too long he was breathing deeply. Lesley lay awake, staring at the crack in the curtains and longing for a cigarette. She imagined Brown, glasses glinting in the moonlight, heels click-clacking on the pavement as he stalked the streets with a gun dangling from his hand. Sometimes he slipped unseen through a herd of infected cows, other times he blasted his way through just for the sheer sport of it. He peered through keyholes and listened at windows; he clambered onto rooftops to survey the horizon; he crawled through sewers and up narrow pipes to emerge from toilet bowls, his head swivelling like a periscope before slowly descending again. Through it all, his suit stayed immaculately pressed, his handkerchief pert and pristine, his eyes dead. On he came, relentless, unforgiving, invulnerable, until he stood beneath the window and softly called out Lesley’s name.

She woke with a start. The only illumination came from a shaft of moonlight that fell onto the bottom of the bed. Even though she knew she had been dreaming, she was too scared to crawl to the window and look out. She instantly forgot the dream, however, when a throaty moan emanated from somewhere in the gloom.

Lesley sat bolt upright. The moan came again, this time longer and higher in pitch. She had seen enough zombie films to know what that moan meant and patted the floor frantically until she remembered she had left the tennis racquet downstairs. Not that it would have made much difference: it would need more than an amateur forehand to kill an adult human zombie. She was about to break into a
fast
crawl for the door when the moan came again. It was between her and the exit. James had freed himself and was feasting on his son’s flesh. Lesley panted like a forty-a-day man on a treadmill and pressed her back against the wall, waiting for a shambling figure to materialize and rip her throat out.

If only I’d acted like a real journalist and got the story out, I wouldn’t be stuck in this room about to be munched up by the ultimate oxymoron, a vegan zombie
, she thought.

The moan came again. Only this time there was something distinctly non-zombielike about it.

It sounds like someone having sex
, she thought. Then it hit her exactly what was going on. It was almost as bad as being eaten alive.

‘Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Mary!’ Geldof moaned.

‘I don’t believe this,’ Lesley said through clenched teeth.

The teenage libido was amazing. The kid’s mother had just died and his father had been mauled by zombie squirrels, yet he could still have a wet dream. Lesley lay back on the floor with one ear pressed into the carpet and a hand over the other.

‘Of course you can, Lesley,’ Geldof called out. ‘There’s plenty to go round.’

‘Right, that’s it.’

Lesley rooted around in the gloom until her hand closed on her dead mobile phone, which she kept near her out of habit. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she took aim at the sleeping, moaning lump. The phone bounced off Geldof’s head in mid-groan.

‘Ow!’ he said and sat up, rubbing his skull.

She waited twenty seconds before letting out a soft snore.
Geldof’s
silhouette stayed upright for a while, probably checking if his father was still tied to the bed. Then he lay down again.

That’ll teach you, little pervert
, Lesley thought, and was almost immediately struck by guilt. The kid had been in a happy, if disgusting, place and she had woken him up to a reality in which his mother had just died.

She didn’t feel bad for long though: a few minutes later, the moans were back in full swing. Lesley pulled the jacket she had been using as a pillow over her head. If she was lucky, maybe it would suffocate her.

When Lesley woke again, James was still tied to the bed, while Geldof was fast asleep. As she stepped over the kid, she resisted the urge to kick him for including her in his fantasy. The twins were asleep on the floor in the living room when she went down for some water. She wondered if they too were fantasizing about her. Having one adolescent male creaming his pants over her was more than enough. She was just about to walk over and give them both a kick, just in case, when she spotted Terry draped across the armchair near the patio window, watching her. A poker lay on one arm of the seat and a kitchen knife on the other.