The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1) (26 page)

52

I sat on Malcolm’s front step and dialled Per’s number. It rang six times then went to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. I rang again, and this time he answered.

‘What?’

Gracious way to answer the phone. ‘It’s Vivia. I wanted to ask you some more questions.’

‘I know who it is. That’s why I didn’t answer the first time.’

My turn: ‘What?’

‘You set the police on me. They’ve confiscated half my equipment.’

‘That’s not my fault. They’d have found out you knew Ben sooner or later. I did. Anyway, I know they’re not looking at you seriously. I’ve got a few contacts. I’ll see if I can get them to give you your stuff back.’

‘Gee, thanks.’ The tone was sarcastic, but I thought he sounded mollified.

‘I wanted to ask about your dad.’

There was silence. For a minute I thought he was going to pretend he didn’t know what I was talking about, but then he said, ‘Everything’s in the police report. Since you lot are such buddies, you can ask them.’

‘I wanted to ask you.’

‘Ask him. He’s always more than happy to talk about it.’

‘I have. Now I want to know what you have to say about it.’

A loud sigh sounded in my ear. ‘I was sleeping over at a friend’s house when the fire started. I don’t know anything about it. It was a horrible time. My dad went to prison. I went into foster care. I really don’t have anything to add.’

I thanked him and said goodbye.

I sat on the step in the cold and played with the scraps of wood that had once been part of the door while I thought. Jillie had already lied to me once, when she’d said she hadn’t seen Berenice, so I didn’t think she would mind lying to me again. Samson would stand by anything Jillie said. Neil, being a known soul practitioner, was my prime suspect. Adam was already hiding something from me.

There was one person left who did know what happened who I hadn’t spoken to. That was Rosa. Her spirit was either still stuck in the living world attached to some scrap of flesh, or she had passed on to the underworld.

The more traumatic the death, the longer a spirit lingers in the mirror of its death place in the underworld, reliving its death over and over until it can make sense of it. For Rosa, that was probably going to be the pit. I’d never visited the underworld version of the ZDC. I’d never had any reason to. The question was, if I was bitten by a ghost zombie, would I get infected?

Of course, I had no intention of actually going into the pit if it was chocka full of ravenous ghost zombies. That would be stupid. But it couldn’t hurt to take a look into the pit and see who was there, and if they were still sentient.

I needed to draw up a plan of action. My usual plan went something like this: die, find dead person, speak to dead person, stop being dead. I could probably add ‘don’t get beaten up by harpies’ to the list, but even so, heading into a pit full of the living dead required a little more preparation.

I don’t know all the rules of the underworld. I’ve never had anyone to ask. I know I can get hurt—it’s happened often enough. The scratch on my cheek wasn’t healing as well as I’d have liked, but it was nothing a little more antiseptic wouldn’t cure.

My mind turned to every bad zombie movie I’d ever seen. They might not be the most realistic way to research fighting off the living dead, but I didn’t have any other ideas.

First point: zombies always hide somewhere they can bite ankles. Either that or lunge out from somewhere unexpected. I knew decapitation wouldn’t kill them, but it would at least buy me some time.

There shouldn’t be any ghost zombies out and about in the underworld, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I needed some sort of protective clothing and a weapon.

53

The crusaders fought swarms of the living dead in full armour; the troops outside Auckland wore Z-suits. I didn’t have either. Nor did I have a broad sword or a military issue Zed-class bayonet.

I did have a
Star Wars
Stormtrooper outfit in a box in the attic, courtesy of the Australian boyfriend who’d bought it one Comic Con then left it behind when it didn’t fit in his luggage.

I hauled the cardboard box down the stairs, ignoring Stanley’s call of, ‘Hey, watcha doing?’

I fingered the flimsy white plastic. It wasn’t exactly a Z-suit, but then I wasn’t planning on fighting any zombies. I was just going to look into the pit and see if anyone had regained their senses post-death. It was only sensible to take precautions. All I needed was something to protect me from any initial bites, and that would only be in the unlikely scenario any zombie managed to catch me by surprise. I had no intention of letting any get close enough to even see me. At the first glimpse of any zombies on the loose, I fully intended to turn tail and run very fast in the opposite direction.

And if I did have to do any fighting? I had a more conventional weapon for that in the form of a gift from a former client—a samurai sword which looked much better than the Stormtrooper outfit, even if it did have a small tag on the scabbard that read ‘Ornamental use only. May cause death or injury if used negligently.’

Precautions only, I told myself. It would be stupid to do anything else.

I checked on my sister before I died. She was in bed and asleep, her face slack and relaxed in the dark room. I checked her nappy, kissed her cheek, and left her to sleep. Light shone down the stairs from the attic. I went into my bedroom, closed the door, and dressed in the outfit and a pair of wellies. I made sure the sword was tightly gripped in my hand and began the dying ritual.

I woke under the heavy weight of the harpies. I pushed them off and got to my feet. The outfit chafed.

I exited the house awkwardly and flagged down the Boatman. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of me and burst out laughing. ‘And this?’

I explained briefly. He stopped laughing, but his lips turned up with amusement.

‘Vivia, you don’t need the outfit. I’ve seen hags tell worse things than ghost zombies to bugger off.’

‘Like that works,’ I said, thinking of the harpies.

‘You just need to be more authoritative.’

‘Hmm.’ Easier said than done.

The boat stopped outside the ZDC, and reality shimmered to allow it into the too-small parking lot. I climbed down the ladder at the side then jumped onto the dry pavement, and the death ship continued without me.

I looked around. There was no one to be seen anywhere: no boats moving on the Thames, no swooping fliers above me. The death world was completely deserted. But the Power Station looked exactly the same as it did in real life. It didn’t even flicker.

The reception area was the same—no flickering, or soft edges. Everything looked hard and real.

A copy of the
Evening Standard
was stuffed between two of the metal chairs. Something on it caught my eye. I pulled it out and straightened the crumpled front page. It was the same blurry picture of Ben in flight that the BBC had gone with, but it wasn’t quite right. It was definitely him, soaring above the rooftops, but there were no wings. There was some serious mojo going down in the place to make it as solid as it was, and somewhere in that mojo, the photo had updated to Ben as he likely was now. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

I tore the front sheet off the paper, folded it, and stuffed it under the plastic on my forearm. It helped a little with the chafing, but not much. Then I clumped over to the reception window and pressed the buzzer. I wasn’t sure who was going to answer. No one did. The steel door slid upward.

A single fluorescent light flickered overhead, but the others were all out; the door beyond to the inner carpeted reception area was wide open, but it was a perfect rectangle of darkness. ‘How many zombies does it take to change a light bulb?’ I whispered.

This wasn’t right. It wasn’t too late to turn back. I shut my eyes tight and breathed deeply.

Don’t be a wuss, Vivia. Go slow, and if there are any loose zombies, turn and run like hell.

I stepped through. The door to the outside shut behind me with a clang.

Somewhere beyond in the darkness, something shifted, and over the sound of my own breathing, I became aware of a slithery, scrapy sort of sound.

And turn and run like hell. Stupid idea.

I twirled awkwardly in the white plastic and reached for a door handle or exit button or anything that could get me out. I felt nothing but smooth, cold steel.

I tugged at the key around my neck, but nothing changed. The door stayed closed, stayed steel, stayed smooth and handleless.

I turned back to the murk. Through the door, the darkness lengthened and became a long skeletal creature pulling itself along on withered forearms, jaw snapping. Its sex would have been unidentifiable except for a pristine pair of pink high-heeled shoes at the end of its shrivelled legs. Or, I corrected myself, it could have been a male who had a preference for such things. Whatever it was, the thing slowly pulling itself towards me was beyond worrying about its footwear.

And it was not where it was supposed to be. This was the safe zone. A horrible realisation came to me. This was the ZDC without anyone to maintain it. No one who hadn’t zombified would ever come here after death. This was a ZDC where the living dead were in charge.

I took a deep breath.
You just need to be more authoritative. I’ve seen hags tell worse things than ghost zombies to bugger off
.

I put my best school teacher face on and said as authoritatively as I knew how, ‘Go away!’

The creature, not in the least discouraged, kept coming. I poked at it with the flat of the sword. ‘Shoo!’

It ignored that too. I pointed my sword at it and waited for it to come closer, trying to figure out the best way to dispatch it. Head first and then limbs seemed like the best bet, but this wasn’t a real zombie. It was a soul that thought it was a zombie. The thought crossed my mind that it might just slither back together again.

But I couldn’t think of anything worse than being trapped, confused and hungry, in a decomposing body until there was no scrap of flesh left for the soul to cling to. Some of the spirits in the building had likely been trapped in their bodies for decades before true death had claimed them. If I chopped it up and left it here, some poor sod’s soul might be stuck here in rotting pieces forever. It felt like a mean thing to do.

So in the end, I did an undignified little hop over the thing on the floor and raced towards the door in my wellies.

Glow strips along the walls provided just enough light to see a few paces ahead but no more than that. Both steel doors on either side of the reception window were open. Neither would fit the key around my neck. I needed to find another way out. The zombies arrived via a different door, one that opened up for the containment van. That was at the lowest and deepest part of the building. I peered into the darkness of the door to my left. It stayed steady, and the only noise was of the crawling creature behind me as it tried to about turn and that of my beating heart, which had taken on a drum-like tempo.

I walked slowly but steadily, the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up. At the end of the corridor, I turned right again, following the path I had earlier towards the containment cells where I’d last seen Malcolm. The cells were black hollows against the wall, but the thick glass was still in place, and occasionally something shifted and groaned in the darkness. I walked quicker, unwilling to stop and investigate the thumps and lumps behind me as bodies threw themselves against the glass.

All I needed was the right damn door. I wasn’t even going to start thinking how I could be daft enough to come here in the first place.

I whispered over and over again, ‘Go away. Go away,’ but it had no effect.

And then there was a cell with no glass. Something launched out of the darkness and enveloped me in its arms. Both my arms were pinned to my sides; I struggled to raise my sword, struggled to get any momentum to get a thrust in.

The zombie kissed me, gently, on the cheek and stepped back. ‘Hello, hello, hello,’ it said.

My heart stopped trying to run away all on its own and returned to a calmer rhythm in relief.

‘Hello, Sigrid.’ She’d blended in. Her blond hair hung in strings and clumps from her scalp, and my skin was slimy where she had kissed me. She grinned, showing brown teeth. ‘You look disturbing, Siggie,’ I said, but it was good to have her there, even if it wasn’t good to
see
her. She could be my watch zombie.

She nodded, thoughtfully. The movement of her head made a glutinous sound. ‘It isn’t quite right being the dead living.’

‘It’s the other way round...’ I started to say but broke off. She was right. She wasn’t the living dead. She was the dead living. Her body was in the living world, but her soul was here. The living dead were the other way round, a dead and decomposing body with a soul firmly stuck within.

‘Can you take me to Rosa Brannick?’ I was very, very aware that the darkness was starting to shift at either end of the corridor. Something was coming closer. I turned and peered into the black.

‘You never come just to visit me,’ she said plaintively.

‘Siggie?’ I turned back, but she was gone. Blinked out as if she had never been there. It was just me and a dark building crammed with the living dead.