Dead City (2 page)

* * * *

Jon Gilligan was the living liaison for London's Dead City. He strutted the streets in his long overcoat and trilby, playing the character of a noir detective, as he had done for as long as he could remember. It started as a game, a fantasy to while away the hours, but soon it became who he was. Philip Marlowe meets Van Helsing was how he pictured himself, Sam Spade crossed with Solomon Kane. Or when he was having a bad day, Scooby Doo stapled to The Ghostbusters. When not coming up with pop culture comparisons, he narrated internally to pass the time.

'The dame safe, he knew his work for the night wasn't done – there were always more dames in danger, crooks round every corner...'

There were neither. The next few hours passed as they always did, walking the circumference of the City, a stretch of almost eleven miles with barely any interactions other than passing the occasional walking corpse who invariably nodded politely, as Jon looked for potential squabbles between unliving that he might diffuse.
When his circuit for the night was finally complete, Jon returned to the office the government had provided for him, the window on the door painted with his name and title.

Jon Gilligan
Living Liaison

Not that he needed a sign on the door, everyone in Dead City knew who he was and where he worked, but this was etched on the glass at his insistence, part of his fictional alter-ego, the private dick.

As he walked into the reception, his secretary Sheila turned with a start.

“Oh! Mr G, you scared the bejezzus out of me!”
The deteriorating Irish woman adjusted her dress and pushed up what remained of her breasts. These days it was mostly silicon bags held aloft by scant remaining layers of decaying skin that struggled not to fall apart under the weight of the implants.

* * * *

In her living days, Sheila had been a model, or at least that's what she told everyone who asked, and often those who didn't. She skipped over the more sordid elements of her 'career', having neither been represented nor published, but willing to do anything requested of her to perhaps propel her forward. This often meant a variety of debasing acts for people who claimed to be her doorway to success.

After spending her teens and twenties being naively used by anyone with a camera, she finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and was offered representation by a small time glamour agency.

Unfortunately, shortly after catching her break, she fell down the stairs of their office and caught a much bigger break, albeit this one to her neck.

* * * *

“Had a good night, boss?” she said with a smile, and what would have been a wink, if she still had eyelids.

“Another climb-over. Sent her packing.” he said, hanging his trilby and coat on a hook, revealing a shirt that at some point used to be white, and rainbow suspenders. Dead Cities weren't known for their boutiques and shopping experiences, thus the clothing options to complete his noir persona were somewhat limited.

“Good work, boss. Want me to get y'a coffee while you go do some paperwork?”

“Why the rush?” he said eyeing her and her desk with suspicion.
Despite her head being twisted at a ninety degree angle to the rest of her body, she was generally a good secretary to Jon. That is, when she wasn't distracted by a myriad of suitors, which he was aware happened more often than not.

“Who y'got down there”. He asked.

“No-one!” said a man's voice from under the desk.
Jon sighed, looking at his secretary disapprovingly.

“What have I told you about having friends come round to play?” he asked with a sigh, as if talking to a child.

“That I shouldn't do it in front of you! That's why he's under the desk!”

“Get your bean licked on your own time, toots.” he said, walking through the reception into his office.
The lights were off, moonlight gleaming through the windows. Jon stopped in his tracks. Something didn't feel right. Looking through the glass of the half-open door he saw a figure silhouetted by ambient light coming off the street. Reaching to his belt, he pulled one of his two extendable batons from its holster, flicking it to its full length, and pressing a button on the handle that caused the end of it to come to life, sparks jumping on the tip.

* * * *

Not many conventional weapons were able to put the unliving down for good. However, a severe beating, accompanied by tens of thousands of volts shocking the heart into restarting tended to at least stun them for a short while. At least enough time to run away if you were smart. If you were less smart, you'd use that time to tie them up, or take them apart until they promised they wouldn't do whatever awful thing they just did again.

Whether they'd keep that promise is another matter entirely. Most Living Liaisons learnt that the hard, and often painful way.

* * * *

The figure behind the door chomped its teeth, the
clatter-click
a familiar sound for Jon – a zombie – its jaw spasming as it entered a feeding cycle, the lust for brains taking control of motor functions. Jon took a breath, steadied himself, then flung the door fully open, revealing an obese zombie lunging for him. Jon turned on the spot, slamming the baton against the base of the zombie's neck, throwing him head-first into the plasterboard of the wall, denting it with a satisfying
crunch
. He held him there whilst the creature flailed.

“Need help!” it rasped.

Jon peered round the side of the fat dead man's head, and found himself looking through a hole in his skull.

“I keep telling you, Dildo. I can't help you.”
He eased up, taking the baton away, collapsing it and returning it to the holster on his belt. The zombie turned around as Jon sat at his desk and put his feet up.

“Need know who killed me!” the corpse said.
Jon rolled his eyes.

“Do we really have to go through this again?

* * * *

Dildo, as Jon affectionately called him, was originally a clerk in a sex shop named Paul. Paul loved his job, from alphabetising the DVDs and VHS tapes, to dusting the shelves upon shelves of paraphernalia and sex toys.

Unfortunately, as a rotund gentleman, he was not as quick on his feet as a more slender man might be, and one day whilst up a ladder replenishing a stock of urethra play-kits, Paul found himself off-balance, and as he fell, grabbed at the shelves, taking them down with him.

When the EMTs found his body, they discovered Paul had a gold-plated vibrator embedded in one temple, the tip of the shiny cock poking out of the other side of his head.

* * * *

Due to his condition, Dildo had a fair amount of brains missing, and couldn't form new memories.

“I'm writing it down this time, so you don't have an excuse to forget, okay?”

“Need know who killed me!” said the undeadling idiot.

“I know buddy, I know.” Jon sighed, as he finished scrawling Dildo's death story, folded it up, and put it in the zombie's pocket.

“Brains?” asked Dildo.

“No brains, that's kind of your problem... Now how about a coffee?”

“Coffeeee!” said the zombie, enthusiastically. He wandered back into the reception, and Jon returned to his chair, putting his feet back up on the desk, leaning back and closing his eyes.

“Know who kill me?” Dildo asked from the door.

“Coffee...” Jon reminded him, without opening his eyes.

“Coffee!” he said, leaving again, before returning one last time to shout for brains, which resulted in Jon throwing a stapler at his head.

'Every night was the same.'
Jon narrated.
'And yet, he knew that some time soon, things were gonna change. Complications come when y'least expect it. And up until now, He'd surely been expecting it...'

The corridor seemed to go on forever in either direction, as did the line of people standing patiently along the left hand wall. The surfaces were an unnatural white, that despite having the texture of standard plasterboard construction, appeared to glow.  There were no bulbs, lamps or strips in the hallway, and yet floor to ceiling was gleaming, radiating a vibrant bright light.

The man stood in line, unaware of how he got there, or what exactly he was queuing for. It seemed right to queue, and wrong to question it, as if unspoken rules had been whispered to him before he got in line. How long he had been there, he didn't know.

“How long have we been here?” he asked the woman behind him.
She shushed him, and he turned back, annoyed.
There was shuffling up ahead. Everyone took a step forward, and so did he, partaking in a Mexican wave of single footsteps.

“What are we waiting for?” he asked the man in front of him, to another shush.

Deep down, he knew that speaking was frowned upon, another rule instilled in him by some silent power, and yet he felt the need to speak because it was a stupid rule. Whatever they were waiting for couldn't be worth infinite patience, and he certainly wasn't in possession of such a virtue. Surely, he reasoned, if the inhabitants of the queue were expected to shut the fuck up and step forward only on command, whoever was in charge might bestow them with that gift. At the very least there could be a coffee table with some magazines, perhaps a newspaper, or book of crosswords.

More shuffling up ahead, this time backwards, and he found himself being knocked over as the man in front took two steps back.

“What the shit?” he said from the floor, looking up at the line.
Getting back to his feet, he attempted to rejoin the queue only to discover that there was no longer a space for him between the man and woman.

“Let me in!” he said, to no response. Looking at the people to his left and right, the line stretched out as far as the eye could see.

“Ahem.” said a voice from further back down the corridor.
The man walked over to the source of the voice to discover a new space had been reserved for him between two new strangers, both staring directly ahead, trying to ignore the insolent out-of-liner.

“What, am I getting pushed back for talking?”
The space disappeared as ten people all took a step forward, yet another a new place waiting for him even further back in the never-ending line of bodies.

“Oh, this is bullshit...” he said, resulting in another twenty people taking a step forward, his new place being set even farther in the distance.

“Fuck this.” he said, as twenty more footsteps shuffled forward.

He turned his back from the queue, looking around for a way out. As he faced the wall on the right hand side of the hallway, he discovered a door standing directly in front of him.

“Has this always been here?” he asked the queue.
Once again, several feet shuffled forward, as his place in line moved another five people back. He rolled his eyes and grabbed the door handle, believing that whatever lay beyond could only be less stupid than the purgatory of politeness he was currently forced to inhabit.

As the door swung open, and he stepped through the threshold, there was a blinding light. The man realised he couldn't feel his body, as if the part of him that could experience tactile sensation were being left behind. He was still himself, but now he felt nothing. Nothing, and yet he had the knowledge that he was falling.

For what seemed like an eternity, he plummeted downwards though blinding white. Despite not being able to feel the wind rushing by on his skin, the rapid descent continued, a subtle texture in the light around him rushing upwards and away from him, the white fading to greys and then hues of pale blue.

In an instant, the shine and glare around him was gone, replaced by fog. The plummet continued and more visual cues to indicate his vertical direction were in sight, as he emerged through the haze to be faced with darkness speckled by blinking lights – a city. A city he was speedily approaching from above. The ground seemed to hurtle towards him, faster and faster, closer and closer, the dots became street lights and windows and headlights, until he landed with a gigantic
THUD
in an alleyway.

“Ow.” he said, unnecessarily, as he couldn't actually feel any pain. It seemed like the right thing to say, given the fall and inelegant crash landing.
After rising to his feet, he realised that for the first time since he found himself in the corridor, he could finally remember who he was.
 

Ashley was exhausted. It had gone three, and knew she had to be up soon, but that didn't seem to matter. Her tired, slender body was wired, and she lay in bed begging her brain to shut up so she could sleep. Insomnia had been plaguing her for years, and she had run out of Ambien days ago. Part of her was relieved. As much as she appreciated her Ambien-aided naps, she'd invariably wake up the next morning to find that at some point in the night she had alphabetised all of her books by height, and shat on the neighbour's dog.

So she lay there, in the silence of the house she used to love, formerly shared with the man she used to love. The man she still loved. Ashley tried to stop herself shedding a tear for him. She had told all her friends that she was done with crying, done with mourning. It had been three years, more than three years, and if he wasn't coming back, then maybe he's lost for good. She still kept in touch with his mother, who had in many ways become a proxy for her own. She didn't like to admit it, but the old woman was a much-preferred maternal figure. Every week they would talk on the phone or go out for coffee, each of them grieving, but trying to be strong for themselves and the other, discussing anything other than what was actually on their mind.

She closed her eyes, took deep breaths, and tried to clear her head. Pushing all thoughts aside, paying attention to her breathing, focussing on attaining the stillness that was constantly mentioned in all the 'help you sleep' tapes she had listened to, and self-hypnosis YouTube videos she had watched. Eventually, and without her even noticing, a wave of fatigue washed over her, until she was brought back to the realm of consciousness by a
thud.

Her eyes burst open, wide and alert. The fatigue vanished in an instant, as if it were never there. She sat up in bed and looked around in the darkness for the source of the sound.

Thud
.

Ashley reached for the bedside lamp and flicked it on. Everything was as it had been in the room before she lay her head down, but she was certain the sound wasn't in her imagination.

Thud . Thud
.

It was coming from downstairs. She reached for her dressing gown and tried to find a blunt instrument. She had heard stories on the news of people opening their doors and being mauled by new unliving that hadn't been rounded up yet.

“If only they had the foresight to prepare...” the reporters always seemed to say.

Thud. Thud.

'I'm going to be one of those stories...' Ashley said to herself, as she made her way down the stairs, cautiously approaching the door. She flipped open the mail slot and looked out, expecting to find a creature of the night lurking in her garden. There was nothing, just gnomes amidst the grass, and they were carved of stone and solely invested in fishing, which was hardly threatening behaviour.

Thud
.

She jumped. The door was vibrating from the sound, but there wasn't anyone outside to be causing it.
Slowly, and fully aware it was a terrible idea, she flicked the latch off and pulled at the door. It reluctantly opened with a soft
squeak
and she prepared herself to look out, expecting to be mauled by a monster at any second.
Peeking her head through the gap in the door, Ashley discovered that the garden was empty of undead foes. She tried to push back the internal narration of the emphatic news anchors she imagined reporting her story

'If only she hadn't stuck her head out the door, the creature wouldn't have bitten right through her dainty, fragile neck. She only had herself to blame, presenting it like an all-you-can-eat buffet.'

Contrary to her running commentary, her dainty neck was not bitten as she looked around outside, and she closed the door, relieved. She returned to her bedroom, adrenaline subsiding, and hoped that the momentary excitement would wear her out and make the journey into slumber easy and swift.

Removing her dressing gown, Ashley returned to bed. She tried to clear her mind and started her deep breathing again. Finding stillness. Finding silence.  Thoughts pushed away, she grabbed hold of fatigue and followed it, drifting off bit-by-bit. She barely felt the icy arm wrap around hers. A cold body bringing itself closer, spooning, nuzzling into her.

“You're cold...” she said, half-asleep.
There was no response. Then the adrenaline was back, her eyes open, she rolled out of bed leaving a figure under the sheets.

“Who the fuck?” she screamed at the thing lying in the covers.
There was no response. The figure sat up, and as it did, seemed to lose corporeal form, the sheets falling through it, as if nothing was ever there.

She reached on the dresser for something to hit her intruder with, turning back with a hand mirror, batting it through the air impotently.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she asked, but the thing had no mouth from which to respond, let alone a body to hit.

* * * *

Ashley had never sat through a whole documentary about the many varieties of unliving, and obviously not one about poltergeists.

If she had, she would know that poltergeists had no mouth, no voice, and when threatened would almost always respond the only way they knew how.

* * * *

One by one, her books flew off the shelves, throwing themselves at the wall opposite in kamikaze leaps. Her cupboard doors swung open and closed,
rat-a-tating
a drumbeat that matched her increasing heart rate. She ran out of the room, the floating and falling objects following her path down the stairs. She grabbed a coat and car keys as she bolted through the door, and drove off into the night, the front door left open in the cool night air.

The poltergeist didn't seem to be following her, and as she looked back at the house in the rear view mirror, the door slammed shut. She didn't know where she was headed, but as far as her intruder seemed to be concerned, the house belonged to him now.