ZOM-B 11 (8 page)

It takes even longer than I anticipated to cross the river and complete the short march to Brick Lane. The twins are shocked when they see how hard I find it to drag one leg after the other.
Awnya suggests I stop before Brick Lane and rest up in the Tower of London or Aldgate. But I have the Truman Brewery in my head now, and the lure of it keeps me going. I want to lie back
somewhere familiar, study Timothy’s paintings, reflect on all that has happened. I’ll feel safe there. I’d be uneasy anywhere else.

The twins are wearing hats, sunglasses and jackets to protect them from the daylight. They offer to find the same for me, but I barely notice the discomfort that walking around in the sunshine
usually causes. I have far more painful crosses to bear.

Eventually we get to the turning for Brick Lane and I smile painfully. ‘Home sweet home. You can leave me here. No need to come all the way.’

‘Are you sure?’ Awnya asks.

‘What if you’re attacked?’ Cian says.

‘And what if a meteor falls on me?’ I respond tetchily. ‘Look, even if I collapse, I won’t fall far short, so you’ll know where to find me. By the time I get there,
you’ll be halfway to Bow. Coming any further with me would be a waste of time.’

‘In that case we shouldn’t have bothered bringing you this far,’ Cian says and I feel like giving him a slap. But then he sticks out his tongue and laughs, and I forgive
him.

‘Take care, B,’ Cian says.

‘I will.’

‘You’re sure you don’t want one of us to stay with you?’ Awnya asks.

‘I’m sure.’

The twins shrug and turn to leave.

‘Hey.’ I stop them. ‘Thanks. You saved me. I won’t forget it.’

‘You’d have been fine,’ Cian snorts.

I shake my head slowly. He catches my dark look and his grin fades.

‘You guys hurry on back,’ I mutter.

They wave at me and set off, fast as hares now that they don’t have me to slow them down. I watch them depart, feeling lonely again, but nowhere near as lost as I did before they linked up
with me and told me hope was still alive. Then I turn into Brick Lane and start hobbling.

I pass the first of the legions of curry houses which this street was once famous for, and remember a conversation with Timothy, when he offered to cook me a meal. The artist was as loony
as Mr Dowling in his own way, but sweet with it. I still miss him, even though I didn’t get to know him that well.

I spot a few zombies lurking in the shadows of the restaurants. They can tell with a glance that I’m one of them, so they pay me no mind.

It’s only as I draw close to my goal that I recall the last time I was here, the day that Mr Burke tried to kill Dr Oystein. My old teacher had found me in the Brewery, acting as a
makeshift curator, taking care of Timothy’s paintings. Rage was with him, helping cart a trolley full of folders across the city from wherever they’d dug them up. Rage and I left Burke
there, poring over the paperwork.

The next time I saw him, he was insane. He tried to shoot the doc. While subduing Burke, I accidentally infected him and he turned into a zombie. We knew that Mr Dowling must have got hold
of him and fried his brain, because the very last thing he wheezed to me before he lost his humanity was the clown’s name.

Dr Oystein was keeping the undead Billy Burke in County Hall at my request, on the off chance that he might revitalise. I wonder if he brought the zombie teacher with him when they moved base, or if he left Burke behind, or set him free. I must ask him when we’ve finished discussing our other business. I liked Burke and feel
guilty for robbing him of his life. I want to do right by him.

The front door of the building is open. There are several zombies on the ground floor, standing or sitting, staring off blankly into space, waiting for night to fall. I could shoo them out,
but they’re not bothering me, so I leave them be.

I shuffle forward, meaning to crawl up the stairs to check that Timothy’s paintings are in good condition. The artist loved his drawings. They gave his life meaning. I hope Mr
Dowling’s mutants didn’t destroy or disfigure any of them when they found Burke here and went to work on him.

Then I spot a few folders lying open on the floor and pause. They’re some of the files from the trolley that Burke and Rage were lugging through the streets on that awful day. I
don’t know what my ex-teacher was hoping to find in them, and I don’t really care, but the sight of the folders distresses me. They remind me of my history with Mr Burke, his grisly conversion, the role I played in it. I decide to tidy the place up, return the folders to the trolley, maybe push it out of here if I have
the strength. At least that way I won’t have to be forcibly reminded of the good friend that I lost.

With a groan, I bend and pick up the nearest folder. I stare at it sadly. Perhaps these were the pages Burke was looking at when Mr Dowling snuck up on him and struck. The final words he read as
a living human, unaware that the end was so close.

Curious, I flick through the pages, trying to put myself in Burke’s shoes, to imagine what he might have been thinking about. The pages are densely packed with small print, lots of
paragraphs crammed in, technical jargon. I can’t understand most of it and I start to lay the folder aside.

Then I spot a name that stops me —
Dowling
.

I raise the folder again and try reading the paragraph from the first line, but it doesn’t make sense taken out of context, so I flick back to the beginning of the chapter and start
from there.

I’m not a quick reader. Normally it takes me a long time to plough through a chunk of text. But, as the significance of what I’m reading sinks in, I find myself flying through the
pages.

After a while, I put the folder down and numbly pick up one of the others. Again I find the name of Dowling. It appears often on the pages. If I’d been putting these dossiers together,
I’d have been more cautious. I wouldn’t have plastered names across them. But the people compiling these reports were confident that they would never be read by the general public. They
knew that if all went according to plan, there soon wouldn’t even
be
a general public.

Because these are the blueprints for the end of mankind, records of the build-up to the release of the zombie virus. They chart all sorts of activities that were going on worldwide in the months
and years before that apocalyptic day. I knew that the virus had been spread on purpose, that corrupt, powerful people had used it to cement their stranglehold on the world. But I had no idea it
was this convoluted or that the players involved were so numerous or devious.

In a hollow daze I pick up another folder to find more of the same. Details of the main participants, politicians, soldiers, scientists, engineers, media moguls. Drawings of complexes like the
one I was housed in as a zom head, along with plans for the development of zombie-free islands. Lists of the building materials that they sourced, supplies of food, drink and ammunition that they
stockpiled.

The files show how the virus was replicated, samples being delivered to major cities and towns, how the global release was coordinated, in many cases using stooges who had no idea what they
were unleashing. The pages explain how lines of communication were brought crashing down, to make it harder for the survivors to get in contact with one another and organise a fightback.

There are figures outlining payments made. Those who were corrupt were bribed. Those who wouldn’t play ball were discredited, humiliated, financially crippled. In certain cases assassins
were hired to execute those with a conscience who were considered a problem.

I don’t know where Burke found these folders, but they’re dynamite. Maybe they were stored in a military safe house that had fallen to Mr Dowling’s mutants or a surprise
zombie attack. He might have learnt of the whereabouts of such places when he was working with the army as a spy for Dr Oystein. I bet Burke didn’t realise what he’d laid his hands on
until he started reading. His mind must have boggled.

What did he feel when he saw the names and started piecing it all together? Terror? Disgust? Panic? I’m not sure, but I know by what happened in County Hall what he felt in the end —
hatred, fury and madness.

I haven’t got to that stage yet. I’m still in shock, unable to believe what I’m reading, even though it’s all laid out clearly. I want to be wrong. I want this to be a
smokescreen, something cooked up by vile, merciless individuals, a web of discrediting lies to entrap those who would oppose them.

But I’m not
that
dumb. I can recognise the truth when it’s put before me. Even though I wish to all the gods that I couldn’t.

Names. It all comes back to names. Thousands of people are listed in the files. Most of them mean nothing to me, but some are familiar — Justin Bazini, Daniel and Luca Wood, Vicky Wedge.
World leaders. Men and women who owned newspapers and TV stations. Heads of major companies.

One name in particular keeps cropping up.
Dowling
. It’s linked with everyone of substance who played a crucial part in the downfall of the human race. The sinister and secretive
Dowling seems to have been everywhere at once, pulling strings, manipulating anyone who might be of benefit to his foul cause, setting mankind up for its greatest fall. He got balls rolling, pulled
in the main instigators of the unholy assault, organised and distributed funds to anyone who could help him.

Dowling involved Justin Bazini and the rest of the Board. It was Dowling who flew across the world, meeting presidents, generals and religious gurus, asking for their support, demanding it,
extracting it. Dowling who organised the early experiments, who decided the schedule, who set the date.

I never thought one man could wield so much power, so cunningly, so wickedly, so destructively. Or that such a man could keep beneath the radar, unknown to the masses, hidden by his underlings
even while he swept across the globe like an undead tsunami.

If these files had surfaced before the zombie uprising, they would have provided all the proof needed to blow Dowling’s cover, to expose him to the world for the foul-hearted fiend that he
was. But I’m not sure it would have made any real difference. He had so much support from those at the highest levels that I think he could have shrugged off the controversy and pushed ahead
regardless. Who could have stopped him when the people loyal to him controlled such massive swathes of government, the military, the media, the major religions?

I know now why Burke’s last word was
Dowling
. These files would have tipped any sane person over the edge. I was wrong to assume that my old teacher had run into Mr Dowling and that his brain had been messed with by the clown. It simply went into overload when he read these papers and
absorbed so much crushing information all at once.

I also realise that when I held Burke in my arms, and he croaked the word with his last living breath, I misunderstood his intentions. He was trying to warn me, yes, but of a far greater danger
than the one I imagined.

I thought I knew the name of my greatest enemy, but I only had it half right. These folders have shown me that the architect of humanity’s downfall wasn’t my husband, Mr Albrecht
Dowling, lunatic clown and all-round psycho killer.

It was his brother . . .

Dr Oystein Dowling.

I sit hunched over the folders, staring at the words, slowly flicking through the pages now. I feel sick, numb, betrayed.

There was only one person in this world that I believed in. One constant in my life that I clung to. No matter what else happened, I was sure I could put my faith in Dr Oystein, that he would
always stand by those who had pledged themselves to his noble cause, that he – maybe he alone among all the adults I’d ever known – was truly good.

How could I have been so wrong? How could he have fooled so many of us for all this time?

I must be mistaken. The folders have to be crammed with lies. The doc can’t be the bad guy. He
can’t
. Nobody that caring and loving could be evil at his core. A vicious
criminal mastermind couldn’t maintain a warm, considerate front, not for that long, not so artfully.

I need to ignore the files, the overwhelming evidence they present, the horrible documented neatness of it all. Look for flaws, discrepancies, forgeries. This is probably the work of
Mr Dowling’s mutants, or Owl Man, or the Board, someone who wants to turn Dr Oystein’s supporters against him. I have to mull this over and proceed cautiously, not make any rash
decisions until I’ve spoken with . . .

‘B?’

. . . Dr Oystein in the flesh.

I look up and he’s there. Standing before me, beaming, eyes filled with hope, love and concern.

‘I was so worried you wouldn’t be here,’ he cries, striding forward, extending his arms wide to hug me. ‘I was angry with the twins. One of them should have stayed with you. I had a sick feeling in my stomach all the way here. I was sure Mr Dowling’s men would find you and take
you from us again. I think I broke some records as I was racing across from Bow. I didn’t know I could run so . . .’