The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (6 page)

"Oh, Sarah, you're
so melodramatic," Miss Dunce's Cap of the Year told me.

"One in three,"
I warned her. "The statistics say one in three murders isn't a
domestic. The two in three are the ones that don't get on the news.
The open-and-shut cases. Phone call to the police, confession,
arrest. Is that how you want to end up?"

"Now I think you're
just being mean. Because if you're a woman too, really you're only
jealous," Shithead snapped. "Don't deny it. Every girl I
see is secretly eyeing him up. You could never handle a bad boy.
You're going to end up a lonely old spinster, with a room full of
eyeballs in jars. Whereas I've been designing my wedding dress,
Googling honeymoon locations, and planning baby names."

"Really?" I
asked, not feeling the slightest inclination to prove my gender to
her current state of mind. Which seems to include the fantasy that
every other woman around fancies a bit of assault and battery. "What
did you name the one you had sucked out at the clinic this morning,
because your Mr. Perfect was about to cut off your ears and nose and
feed them to you for forgetting to take the Pill?"

* * * * *

Maybe I was a bit harsh
on her. But seriously, the guy doesn't even deserve the honour of
ending up pinned out as an actual anatomical diagram on the Body
Farm. If something happens to him, I hope it comes with the label
Body Never Recovered
. Maybe I'll ask Ace Bumgang whether they
have one of those things that crushes cars into a small cube at the
breaker's yard. Then Miss Fucktard could get herself referred to a
hostel or refuge, or for counselling (instead of the morgue) by the
police or her doctor or whatever – to stop her hooking up with
the next optimistic slimeball psycho who stalks her with the best
intention of adding her to the notches on his shovel-handle. They
must think all their Christmases have come at once when she stumbles
half-deliberately into their laps, having spiked her own drink to
make it that bit easier for them. I'd have to get another housemate,
but the way things are going in Super-Twat's life, that eventuality
doesn't look too far off anyway.

Hmm. Crispin Dry is
taking a while. I can see a nurse and a receptionist at the far end
of
Accident & Emergency
, but otherwise it's strangely
quiet. What on Earth could there be to take up a zombie's time in a
hospital?

I slide off the slippery
chair and decide to have a stretch, and a wander around. I do feel a
bit of vertigo as I stand. Yeah – one drink and then fall
asleep, always a sign of a crap night. I lurch slightly as I aim for
the nearest door into the corridor, and follow the
EXIT
signs,
meaning to get a nip of fresh air.

The doors are still open,
as the Emergency department is 24-hour here, what with the plethora
of brain-dead hopeless romantics getting methodically dismembered by
their choice of partners these days. So it's a relief to step outside
into the front car-park, and feel the cool night air blow away the
cobwebs between my own ears, taking my housemate's idiotic illusions
with them.

The breeze also brings
the sound of a distant piano from across the main road. Feeling in
need of a musical ear-worm (to remove the remaining irritating echoes
of Douchebag's recital of gross sexual perversions she chooses to
list as her boyfriend's 'good points') I head over there, to get a
better listen.

It's
Hookah's
, the
Cypriot restaurant. The waiters are just starting to clear and
re-dress tables for the next day, while one couple still sit at the
bar, finishing their coffee.

And in the corner,
through the window, I see the grand piano. My breath stops altogether
as I see the pianist is none other than my new zombie acquaintance,
Crispin Dry.

I push the door timidly,
and bells tinkle to announce my entrance. He stops playing abruptly,
and turns.

"No, it was good,"
I say, encouragingly. "I love Franz Ferdinand…"

A takeaway box is by his
feet, and I see him nudge it under the piano, embarrassed. As I get
closer, I think I see a restaurant logo I'm not familiar with…
Yuman Tisseus
, or something exotic like that.

"I came back
earlier, but you were asleep, Sarah
Bellummm
," he says,
reproachfully. "They took your friend to surgery…"

"I guessed as much,"
I nod. "Budge up. More music, Maestro, please."

He fondles the piano keys
lovingly, as I park my still decidedly dizzy butt on the tapestry
seat beside him.

"I remember…
learning," he ponders aloud. "While I was alive. But it's
so hard to tell now. Memories after death are not the same as living
memories. They are mixed up with the total memory of Universal life.
So they may not be my memories at all."

"I agree. I think
you may be channelling
Blade Runner
right now, in fact,"
I remark.

"I was worried that
you might not be happy, after the elevator thing earlier," he
says sadly, not meeting my gaze.

"What?" I
reply, amazed. "No! You give great elevator thing. No complaints
there." I'm secretly relieved, as I'd been worrying about the
same. My advantage in handling corpses regularly, seems to have made
up for my lack of relationship experience in that department. I
mentally notch another one up on my list of skills. I decide to push
for yet one more, while the mood is right. "Do you think the
waiters would mind if we make out on this piano?"

The strains of
Do Ya
Wanna
hesitate slightly, as his prehensile gray fingers seem to
lose track of the keys.

"I think perhaps it
would be an idea if we close the lid first, Miss
Bellummm
,"
he nods, eventually. "No point tempting Fate…"

CHAPTER
SIX
:

SCAR WARS

I gaze helplessly into
the dark stars of his eyes, as Crispin closes the piano-lid softly
down over the keys. The final few bars of his piece are still fading
away. Is he going to make the first move?

But before either of us
can make that idea a reality, through the windows of the restaurant I
see the lights of Cramps University Hospital suddenly flicker, and
then go out.

"Oh no!" I cry.
"A power-cut!"

Crispin turns to look.
After a few seconds, it is evident that there is no emergency power
to save the day. Even the street-lighting over the car-park starts to
fizzle out, one by one.

"My housemate!"
I gibber. "Whatsername… Cock-hazard… she's in
surgery!"

"We must go back,
Sarah
Bellummm
," Crispin groans sympathetically. "To
ensure that all is well."

He grabs his take-out box
from under the piano, and helps me to my feet. The waiters barely
take notice, as we hurry out of
Hookah's
Restaurant.

We shamble as quickly as
we can across the road, back into the hospital grounds. They are
eerie and forbidding, without the phosphorescent lights.

The electronic doors are
no longer functioning. But no matter – the glass in them has
already been smashed – into a million pieces.

"What the f…?"
I begin to say, thoughts of a siege appearing, uninvited. Crispin's
hand on my arm stops me.

"Emergency shatter,"
he remarks – pointing to a device in the doorframe.

"What does it do?"

"It fires
high-velocity metal ball-bearings into each panel of glass, from
inside the double-glazed unit," he shrugs. "It is old
technology now, but effective, in corporate building fire safety."

Aha. Clever. I seem to
recall something like that having been patented, on
Tomorrow's
World
…

We step through the empty
frames, feet crunching on the shattered fragments. I take another
piece of old technology – by Trevor Baylis – out of my
pocket, kept attached to my keyring. Wind it up with its tiny handle
for a few seconds to charge the battery, and switch it on. The bright
LED torch beam illuminates the pale walls of the hospital corridor.

We head for the Emergency
Room. Distant cries, and groans of distressed patients echo in the
building. I wonder how many life-support systems have just been
abruptly cut off.

More torchlight greets
us, as we find the Reception desk, exactly where we left it.

"My housemate,"
I pant, my nerves making me breathless. "Er… you know…
looks like she lost a fight with a bulldozer. Bad taste in men. Talks
like she still reads too much
Brothers Grimm
for her age. Miss
Fuck-Knows. Went to have her thumb reattached…"

"Oh, yes," the
receptionist nods, her spectacles reflecting the torchlight. "The
psychiatric biohazard case. Her bloods and swabs came back as
positive for syphilis, gonnorrhea, chlamydia, T-parasites, ringworm,
impetigo, herpes, HPV, and HIV – so she's been put in the
Isolation Ward following her surgery."

"What?" I make
a mental note to keep my toothbrush and toothpaste separate from hers
in the bathroom, from now on. Preferably locked in a strongbox,
somewhere else. Like Switzerland. "How on Earth could she have
EVERYTHING?"

"Well, apparently,
she never went to the GUM clinic, and always just took her
boyfriend's word for it when he said he didn't have anything
infectious, before having unprotected sex with him. Including the
boyfriends who admitted to paying for sex, and to group sex in the
past," the receptionist shrugs, with an expression of 'what a
stupid twat' that I fully understand. "You can go and check up
on her – it's at the far end of the hospital, lower ground
floor, next to the morgue. You'll have to use the stairs."

Of course. Corpses aren't
at risk of catching anything. Makes sense to put the biohazard cases
down there.

"Will you be all
right on your own here, ladies?" Crispin asks, his voice
concerned. The receptionist, and uniformed HCA on duty, look at each
other and smirk.

"Sure," says
the receptionist. "Any trouble comes looking for us, they'll be
met with the almighty force of this armed and fully operational
nursing station."

The assistant twangs the
fingertips of her latex gloves meaningfully.
Ouch
.

I think they'll be just
fine.

* * * * *

We avoid the
WET FLOOR
warning signs and head through the swing doors, down the stairwell.
High above us, I can hear shuffling and groaning, about three floors
up.

"Maybe a
sleepwalker?" I suggest in a whisper.

"One can only hope,"
Crispin admits, hugging his take-out box close to his chest.

We emerge next to the
elevators – I blush in the darkness at the memory, glad that
no-one can see – and follow the markers directing us past the
morgue.

Crispin stops abruptly in
front of me, so that I nearly bump straight into him. His head turns,
angles questingly, and he sniffs the air.

"Not now, Crispy!"
I hiss, startling myself at my own disapproving tone. As if I'm
talking to a giant, upright, shaggy dog. "Stop thinking with
your stomach!"

"It is not my
stomach we need to worry about," he remarks, still in his
beautiful, resonating monotone. "They are on the move…"

"Who are on the
move?" I ask, my heart trying to join my tongue, at the back of
my mouth.

He raises the box
briefly.

"Perhaps they
objected to my carry-out," he sighs.

I shine the torch beam on
the box's logo.

Human Tissues!

Fuck! I am SO stupid!

Even my housemate
Shithead can read! At least, read juvenile stuff, like
Beauty and
the Beast
…

"You didn't go to
research the vending machines here?" I explode. "You went
stealing actual parts of other people? What the fuck for? Are you
Dr
Frankenstein
or something, as well as a zombie?"

He hangs his head, a
little more than usual.

"They will only look
for replacements," he says. "The nearest."

He glances towards the
darkness at the end of the corridor, after the morgue.