Barney Thomson, Zombie Killer: A Barney Thomson Novella Read online

  Barney Thomson, Zombie Killer

  a Barney Thomson novella

  Douglas Lindsay

  Published by Blasted Heath, 2013

  copyright 2013 Douglas Lindsay

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  Douglas Lindsay has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Blasted Heath

  Visit Douglas Lindsay at:

  www.blastedheath.com

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-908688-53-8

  Version 2-1-3

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Barney Thomson, Zombie Killer

  Millport, Isle of Cumbrae

  Later That Day, Millport, Isle of Cumbrae

  6 Months Earlier, Somewhere in Afghanistan

  Millport, Isle of Cumbrae

  10 Downing Street, London, England

  The Next Day, Millport Golf Course, Isle of Cumbrae

  That Evening, England

  The Next Day, London, England

  Palace of Westminster, London, England

  The Next Day, Somewhere in Oxfordshire, England

  10 Downing Street, London, England

  Somewhere in Oxfordshire, England

  The House of Commons, London, England

  Somewhere in Oxfordshire, England

  The Next Morning, The Premier Inn, County Hall, London, England

  10 Downing Street, London, England

  House of Commons, London, England

  Hyde Park, London, England

  Late That Night, Swindon, England

  10 Downing Street, London, England

  Later That Day, England

  The Next Day, 10 Downing Street, London, England

  The London Eye, London, England

  The A303, England

  Salisbury Plain, England

  One Week Later, The Democratic Republic of Mesotoland

  London, England

  Later That Day

  Tuesday, Westminster, London, England

  A Plane, Somewhere Over The Sahara

  Later That Day, Africa

  Westminster, London, England

  A Prison Cell Somewhere in London, England

  10 Downing Street, London, England

  The House of Commons London, England

  That Evening, Somewhere in London, England

  10 Downing Street, London England

  That Night, The World

  10 Downing Street, London, England

  Across Three Continents

  The Next Morning, Somewhere in England, England

  Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport, England

  Hyde Park, London, England

  Two Days Later, Heathrow Airport, England

  Cabinet Offices, Whitehall, London, England

  A Travelodge Somewhere Just off The M25, England

  10 Downing Street, London, England

  The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson

  About Blasted Heath

  About Barney Thomson, Zombie Killer

  The coalition government is in crisis, limping from one disaster to the next. The Prime Minister has a plan. Get the world's finest barber in to give him a new haircut. His defence minister, however, has an entirely different and more compelling plan. Using the all-new zombie-control gene developed by British scientists, the government will harvest an army of the living dead and use it to take over the world.

  As a series of gruesome murders takes place in London, and the restless ranks of the Conservative party start to close in on a beleaguered Prime Minister, the zombie contagion is unleashed upon Planet Earth, the British Empire begins to expand, and Queen Victoria can at last stop turning in her grave. What could possibly go wrong?

  Featuring barbershop legend Barney Thomson, murder, political intrigue, scenes of gratuitous flesh-eating, Humphrey Bogart, Satan, and the return of femme fatale Harlequin Sweetlips, Barney Thomson, Zombie Killer is this year's must-read zombie political satire crime thriller comedy thing.

  Barney Thomson, Zombie Killer is a 29,000-word novella.

  Millport, Isle of Cumbrae

  Low cloud, a grey calm. No sound. A strange, melancholic serenity hung over the bay. A few gulls circled high in the sky above the water, but even they seemed wrapped up in the mournful quiet of early morning. The sea barely made a sound on the shore. The only cars on the road were those that had been parked overnight. Away to the west, the isle of Bute blended into the sky, the hills of Arran lost in cloud.

  'Ketchup?'

  'Thanks.'

  Barney Thomson, the sole survivor of the Scottish Barbershop Enlightenment movement that had rocked the foundations of hairdressing in the early days of the new millennium, handed the small sachet of Heinz tomato ketchup to the woman beside him on the bench. They were sitting by the old boating pond on the east side of Kames Bay, having come out to enjoy the still of early morning while they ate breakfast.

  Coffee, orange juice, muesli and a bacon sandwich, the bacon kept warm in a small food flask.

  'I predict a riot,' said Sgt Daniella Monk, as she looked across the bay to the town of Millport.

  They could see two other people on the move. Old Man McGuire, out for his morning stroll, and a woman walking her dog.

  'You think?' said Barney. 'When do you suppose it'll start?'

  'The next couple of days,' she said. 'It's been quiet around here for too long. Something's got to happen eventually. There must be some sort of Law of Inevitability.'

  Barney bit into his bacon roll. He had fried the bacon to such perfection that it had easily withstood twenty minutes in a flask while they'd eaten muesli.

  Monk held her bacon roll up and made a gesture of satisfaction.

  'Thanks,' said Barney.

  The riot, if it was to come, was looking elusive at this point. The dog walker disappeared from view, and now Old Man McGuire was the only person in sight.

  'We did have a series of brutal murders a couple of years ago,' said Barney.

  'Old news,' said Monk.

  'Then there was the Holy Grail in the cathedral.'

  'You're sworn to secrecy on that,' said Monk, and Barney nodded.

  'But, you know, they qualify as stuff happening,' he said. 'In fact, mass murder and the Holy Grail being discovered in the town is a pretty potent combination for a small place. That surely surpasses your Law of Inevitability. That's some kind of Law of Weird Shit.'

  'You have your own personal Law of Weird Shit,' she said.

  Barney nodded again. He couldn't argue with that.

  A seagull let out a mournful cry as it flew low overhead, heading away from the bay, over the hill at the back. A wave made a small splash on the rocks down in front of them. A car drove past behind and continued on around the bay. It was what passed for action on a cold, grey, spring morning in Millport.

  'I still predict a riot,' said Monk after a while. 'Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But soon...'

  '... and for the rest of your life?'

  'Riots never last that long.'

  'Unless you die in the riot.'

  They drank coffee and watched the morning come in on the land.

  Later That Day, Millport, Isle of Cumbrae

  The barbershop was buzzing. Barney Thomson, renegade barbershop legend, was cutting hair
; Keanu MacPherson – Luke to Barney's Yoda – was also cutting hair; Igor, the deaf mute hunchbacked barbershop assistant, was sweeping up; and three customers were waiting. Inane conversation filled the air, as the men discussed the great issues of our times.

  Across the road, Barney's usual seagull of impending doom was watching them, but Barney had learned to live with the seagull of impending doom and generally ignored it, apart from when he offered it the occasional piece of leftover fish supper. Sometimes he even wondered if perhaps it wasn't a seagull of impending doom at all, but just an everyday seagull of no more impending doom than any other seagull. Yet, deep down, he knew this particular gull foreshadowed doom in a way that regular seagulls rarely did.

  'According to this,' said the middle customer of the three in a row, holding up the Daily Mail, 'the reason that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair never got along was because one time in early 1996, Blair caught Brown knobbing Cherie with a loofah.'

  'Holy shit!' said Keanu. 'Really?'

  Igor offered a desultory ear to the conversation, then turned his back. As an oppressed minority he had suffered enough at the hands of Blair and Brown, and wanted to hear no more about them.

  'They're making that shit up,' said one of the others. 'That's all the newspapers do, make shit up.'

  'It quotes sources,' said the first bloke indignantly. 'Look. Sources.'

  'Who's the source?' asked Barney's customer.

  'Two sources,' said the bloke.

  'All right, two sources. Who are the bleedin' sources?'

  He ruffled the paper a little more and said, 'An insider and a friend of Cherie's. See? Proof.'

  'The only thing that's proof of is that they made that shit up!'

  'What d'you expect?' barked the first bloke, as the discussion began to get heated. 'Some bloke knows intimate details of the weird sexual fetishist love trysts of Cherie Blair and Gordon Brown and you think he's going to give his name to the paper? He'd have the security services up his arse quicker than one of they enemas they talk about on Hollywood Makeover Tragedies on BBC3.'

  'You know what they say,' said Keanu, who was frequently first to fall on the loose ball of cliché. 'There's no smoke without fire. The papers, they may exaggerate, they may emphasise aspects of a story to suit their own narrative, while de-emphasising facts which contradict their story, but they don't just plain make shit up. There's an underlying truth to every story.'

  There were a few grudging nods around the shop. The argument had been quashed. Silence once more came upon them. Scissors clicked and hair fell noiselessly to the floor.

  'Barney,' said Keanu, 'what d'you think?'

  Barney glanced over at Keanu, then returned to the head of hair before him. He was giving an old fellow an Amalgamated Take That, and was aware that at Keanu's words a particular expectation had fallen over the shop. These days Barney didn't say much in the midst of the general barbershop banter, but when he spoke, others listened. He didn't think he was as perceptive as everyone else seemed to think.

  The word around town was that Barney was the go-to guy for all your philosophical and lifestyle needs. Talk to the barber, they said to each other, he'll know what to do. Barney the Sage. The only thing separating Barney from Yoda was that Barney knew how to words correctly place in a sentence.

  'I think,' he began, because he always gave Keanu the benefit of his opinion when asked, 'that the newspapers play mercilessly on what you just said. The no smoke without fire thing. They make shit up, and they think, well people might be a little sceptical that Tom Cruise is a woman or that Colin Firth was arrested for urinating on a sheep on a transatlantic flight, but they know that the public still think, hmm, that was in a newspaper, so there must be some element of truth about it.'

  'Colin Firth pished on a sheep?'

  Barney stopped cutting for a second and turned and looked at him.

  'I made that up,' he said, 'as an example. Colin Firth did not urinate on a sheep.'

  'Barber Denies Firth In Sheep Urination Shock,' said one of the customers from the back, and the others laughed.

  Barney smiled.

  'Yep,' he said, 'that's how it works. They make shit up, they attribute quotes to people who don't exist, then for a real quote they go to a real person and get a denial, and as soon as someone denies something, the ever sceptical British public think, Aha, he denied pishing on the sheep, he must have done it.'

  There were a few sage nods around the room. Barney hits the nail on the head once again, they all thought. Barney returned to cutting hair, thinking that stating the obvious wasn't really all that sage at all.

  'So,' said Keanu, 'did Colin Firth pish on the sheep or not?'

  'You can't blame the papers,' said Barney, ignoring the Colin Firth remark, as he worked his way calmly around the left ear with a razor.

  'Just serving the public need,' said the middle customer.

  'Exactly,' said Barney. 'Market forces control everything. It's what people want. They don't want to know about starvation on the Horn of Africa or crumbling economies or people trafficking. They want to know who shagged who, and who got drunk and which celebrity or politician it is that they need to be morally outraged at today. The tabloids just give them what they want. They print shit, because society demands it. Newspapers full of shit for a society that's full of shit.'

  'We get the press we deserve,' trumpeted one of the customers glumly.

  The two barbers continued to cut hair, but a peculiar sadness had fallen over the shop as the eight men contemplated the bloody awfulness of British society. Yes, there were good things – although just at that moment none of them could think of any – but the good was far outweighed by the completely rubbish.

  'I can't believe that about Colin Firth,' said Keanu. 'I mean, you just associate him with being Mr. D'Arcy and all that, don't you? Now he's pishing on sheep. Shame. Must be the booze.'

  'Colin Firth's an alcoholic?'

  6 Months Earlier, Somewhere in Afghanistan

  From the outside the house looked quiet. Deserted. With slight evidence of war-damage, it could have been any plain white house in the country – a door and a couple of windows that had never known glass – deserted years earlier, as the Taliban moved through and the Americans followed in their wake.

  The four soldiers had no real idea why they were sent to inspect it. Their commander was acting on information extracted by MI6 from an Al Qaeda source in north-west Pakistan. The Americans had not been informed, and neither would they be.

  Second Lieutenant Lawson crouched in plain sight of the house. There was no cover other than the pitch darkness of the dead of night.

  He was hesitating before ordering the final move. The men were spread out, thirty yards apart, in an arc at the front. They could all feel it. Sense that there was something wrong. There was a reason this house had been deserted, and why no one – indeed, nothing – lived within several miles of it.

  None of the others questioned the hesitation. They were all tough men. They had all fought and killed, they had seen their colleagues die, they had infiltrated the inner workings of the enemy, they had faced death. Yet whatever was in that house, whatever was going to meet them when they got through the door, was something they had never encountered before. Something macabre. Something grotesque.

  'It'll be getting light in thirty minutes, sir,' the voice crackled in Lawson's ear. The corporal who'd said it had had to force himself. He no more wanted to go in than any of them.

  'Thunderbirds are go,' said Lawson, giving the code.

  Then together, with the precision of their world famous band, the four Royal Marines advanced quickly on the small white building that housed the most devastating secret in the history of mankind.

  Millport, Isle of Cumbrae

  'It's the celebration of the individual,' said Keanu. 'Life has been levelled out, everyone is equal, everyone has the same voice as everyone else. There are no leaders anymore, just a community of seven billion individuals. It
's rockin'.'

  Barney and Igor were standing at the window of the shop, looking out at the darkening sky. Barney's mind was far away. Haunted. The grey, flat-calm day had found itself in late afternoon. The sun, which had not shone all day, was sinking out of sight behind the hills of Bute. The last customer of the day, Old Man McGuire, was settled in beneath Keanu's scissors, the beneficiary of a splendid JLS vs. Adele.

  'And that,' said McGuire grumpily, 'is why society will fall and we'll all die. No' before time, 'n' all.'

  Keanu, a poster child for the Twitter generation, had taken over from Barney as the man with whom the old fellas could have an edgy conversation. Barney was more detached these days, they noticed, although he obviously still tossed the occasional word of wisdom into the salad of conversation.

  'We all have a voice,' said Keanu, 'we can all be heard. Isn't that the greatest thing that society can offer us today? We can all communicate, we can shout across the continents, we can have conversations that span the globe. We can start revolutions, we can bring down governments, we can make movies take off, we can create stars, we can....' He waved the scissors in the air as he thought of all the other things that society can do now that it has social media. '... we can do all sorts of shit, and we're not reliant on them, you know, Them, to tell us what we should be listening to or what we should be doing.'

  'Trouble is, when I don't have someone telling me what I should be listening to, I end up listening to you,' grumbled McGuire. 'Load of pish.'

  Keanu laughed.

  'The times they are a' changin',' he said.

  'They're always fuckin' changing,' muttered McGuire. 'I just wish to fuck they'd get around to changing back to the way they were sixty year ago. I blame that fat cunt Elvis.'

  Barney turned back to face the shop, the small space in which he spent more than ten hours a day. Three barber's chairs, although there were only ever two barbers, three large mirrors, a sink at the rear next to the door into the backroom, a long bench on the wall opposite the chairs, a few pictures of young men with hair on the wall. The front wall was mostly glass, split between the panoramic window and the door.