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

  'I am posh,' said the PM, and then, bored with the rugby he got to his feet, paced around the room, looked out the window without seeing anything, turned and addressed his troops once more. As well as Logan, there was chief speech writer, Pryce, and crack barbershop superhero, Barney Thomson.

  'You feel the wolves at the door?' said Barney, looking up from the Sunday Times. The Prime Minister still had an exclusive deal with News International for papers to be delivered to his office, although he was wondering whether he ought to extricate himself from it before the rest of the media found out.

  The PM looked angrily at him, raised a finger as if he was about to object, and then snarled and began to pace once more.

  'Let's make one thing absolutely clear. We need to regain the moral high ground. We need to start setting the agenda; we need to be proactive, not reactive. We can't be letting the Pointless Adenoidal Little Prick act as if he's the fucking... I don't know... the fucking arbiter of what's right and wrong in this damned country. He's not leading the charge. They're still saying he's leading the charge. What's he led? What? He's not the story? He's not the news. The point I'd make is this: he's an annoying, self-righteous little wanker...'

  The door burst open. The Defence Secretary stormed into the room, looking ruddy faced and unexpectedly cheery under the circumstances.

  'There's news!' he barked. 'We need to get to Salisbury Plain.'

  Barney Thomson buried his head in the paper and once again returned to the latest stories of how the economy was being held together by sticking plaster, and was in fact about to descend into the kind of oblivion that would make the positions of Greece and Spain look like Oblivion-Lite.

  Nevertheless, when the intrepid team dashed out of Number 10 Downing Street at the insistence of the Defence Secretary, Barney was ordered to go with them.

  The London Eye, London, England

  They had agreed to meet on the London Eye as a result of mutual suspicion. A very public place, a small space packed with tourists, there was little chance of murder being committed. Nevertheless, the second of the three junior Defence Ministers was about to buy a one way ticket to Deathsville.

  When Reginald Mackay had taken up his ministerial post, the job title had been Armed Forces Minister. A year later and the job had been renamed Alternative Options To The Armed Forces Minister. As far as he knew the woman he was meeting in the small bubble creeping round the London Eye on a grey London afternoon worked for a shadowy news organisation that had been in the newspapers a lot for the previous couple of years.

  They sat with their backs to a window, both of them making a poor show of being interested in the passing London skyscape. They sipped coffee. He was nervous; she was confident. He was waiting for her to start the conversation, but she had no intention. When they talked, he would be first and she would be in control.

  'Is everything in place?' he said eventually, fifteen minutes into the ride, as the bubble reached its apex.

  She looked at him and smiled.

  'Doesn't matter,' she said casually.

  'Why not?' He looked nervously at her. 'What do you mean?'

  She smiled again. She had delicious lips. She had been in London before, and she had murdered in London before. She wasn't known as Sweetlips for nothing.

  'What do you mean?' he said again, his voice rising.

  A couple of people turned and looked. Mackay glanced at them and then stared at the floor.

  'What do you mean?' he repeated, his voice low.

  She said nothing. The bubble moved inexorably on. Mackay began to panic, feeling he had to get off. Suddenly he had the thought that if he didn't manage to escape this place then he would die. It was absurd, but he was going to be murdered if he didn't get out of this stupid contraption passing helplessly and so desperately slowly through the grim London afternoon.

  'Tell me,' he said.

  She still didn't say anything. When she had spiked his coffee a few minutes prior to boarding, she had intended some glib remark at his expense, but now she knew there was no need.

  When the bubble arrived back at the disembarkation point, Sweetlips rose quickly, walked down the stairs and did not look back. By the time anyone had noticed the man slumped in a seat, leaning back against the glass, a line of drool running down his chin, she had long since disappeared.

  The A303, England

  Barney was sinking slowly into what seemed like his normal depressive state.

  It's not about me, he thought. This time it's not about me. There's all sorts of weird shit going on, but I'm on the periphery. I don't know why someone's been murdered, although I don't doubt more people will get sucked into it. But it's not about me. So why, in the name of God, am I here? Why can't they leave me alone? Why can't they all just fuck off and leave me alone?

  He stared out the window of the car as the green countryside passed by.

  Maybe this was it, this was the time that he was here to die. That wouldn't be so bad. It didn't matter that he'd died before. One of these days, one of these stupid adventures, he was going to get finished off and this bloody awful life would be over.

  Man Lies Bleeding. That was the headline of his life. He just wished that one day he could bleed to death.

  Salisbury Plain, England

  'Behold the future!' said the Defence Secretary with some aplomb.

  The team from Number 10 were standing on a small platform overlooking a fenced-off area in the heart of the plain. The fence wasn't particularly high or threatening, but it was enough to keep the horde of the living dead trapped within.

  They had been swept up from Swindon and moved to the centre of the plain in what was left of the Army's 8T truck fleet. In all, just under three thousand zombies had been crammed into the pen. A few of them had tried to escape and had impaled themselves on the barbed wire. They had lost limbs and heads and various other body parts. Those that seemed to have rendered themselves completely useless were blasted with a cluster munitions shot to the torso.

  From the mob came a general moaning and clawing at the sky.

  The Prime Minister looked appalled, although for the first time in a couple of weeks he wasn't thinking about the economy. Pryce looked like he was about to be sick. Barney Thomson had seen a lot of weird shit in his life, but he had to admit that this was the weirdest shit he'd ever seen. Logan looked like Mr. Burns.

  'Using this force,' said the Defence Secretary, 'we can overcome any foe. Any foe. Do you hear that, Prime Minister?'

  The Defence Secretary was still talking with the tone of a deranged psychopath telling Bond his plan to rule the world. He knew that the plans to oust the PM from power were well advanced, and that soon the job would be his.

  The PM was barely listening to him. The howl of the horde was insinuating itself into his system.

  'How can we control them?' he asked. 'How can we possibly control them?'

  At that moment, as if to underline the PM's point, one of the living dead managed to break free from the pen and started limping aggressively across the grass. The audience on the platform watched uncomfortably as the zombie took a soldier by surprise, knocked him over with a swing of his arm – a blow that actually took the lower half of the zombie's arm with it – and then fell on top of him, biting into his cheek and ripping away a pound of flesh. The soldier screamed, but it was too late. One of his colleagues was soon on top of them, unloading a clusterfuck of death into the zombie's head. He backed off, however, before killing his comrade, as he knew that the solider could be harvested for the new fighting force.

  'I call it the New Model Army,' said the Defence Secretary. 'Got a nice ring to it, eh?'

  The recently created zombie, still howling into the late afternoon at this sudden and unfortunate reversal of fortune, was herded into the pen with his new teammates. The Prime Minister could not take the look of distaste from his face. Logan rubbed his hands together in pleasure. The Defence Secretary beamed.

  Barney Thomson, the weight o
f depression resting heavily on his shoulders, turned and walked disconsolately back down the ladder.

  'It'll end in tears,' he muttered. 'Wankers.'

  One Week Later, The Democratic Republic of Mesotoland

  The Prime Minister was not running away from the government's economic woes. He had faked a trip to southern Africa, throwing in a couple of business meetings to cover the real purpose of the trip: to oversee the test run of the new zombie fighting force.

  The world was in flux. The USA was in decline, debt-ridden, overweight and crippled by religious conservatism and political bickering; China was rising fast on the back of worker exploitation, but with much of their money sunk in America, they too would be sunk when America sank, which would only add to their misery when their entire nation was submerged beneath the flooding of the Yangtze River due to the total buggeration of the environment caused by Three Gorges; Japan was already fucked; Europe was crippled by the collapse of the Euro-dream; the Arab world was too busy either frittering away the oil money on expensive cars and indoor ski slopes and golf courses in the middle of the desert, or imploding beneath the weight of disastrous in-fighting; and the entire Russian nation was the Godfather Part 4, and wouldn't end happily for anyone.

  Which left one great former imperial power, the nation that all other countries wanted to reclaim its spot as World Leader. Great Britain. And by 'wanted to reclaim its spot as World Leader,' obviously it was something that they wouldn't know they wanted until they had it, and so Britain was going to have to impose itself on the world just so they knew how cool it would be to have the world map covered in pink again.

  They were going to start with the tiny southern African country of The Democratic Republic of Mesotoland, a nation state noticeable for the fact that it had the third smallest national population in the world, and that they'd once beaten Scotland 3-0 in a friendly at Hampden.

  'Talk me through it again,' said the Prime Minister.

  They were travelling in a helicopter, flying over the capital city Mogadhaku.

  The Defence Minister shared a glance with the Chief of the Army. They were in it together – albeit the Chief of the Army was not yet aware that the Defence Minister intended more or less feeding the regular Army to the wolves – and they both considered the Prime Minister to be a bit of a lightweight.

  'The 1st Regiment of the Living Dead are about to be dropped into the city centre. They run through the city causing carnage and mayhem....'

  'No,' said the Prime Minister, 'how exactly is it we parlay this into controlling the entire world? There's the small issue of nuclear weapons.'

  'That's in hand, Prime Minister,' said the Chief of the Army. 'An orchestrated living dead strike on every nuclear weapons facility in the world. The US, Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, Ukraine, France, North Korea, Malta...'

  'That's going to take some planning.'

  'We have the best of the best, Prime Minister,' said the Chief of the Army. 'People are in total awe of our shit.'

  The PM nodded. At that moment, as they looked down, the first zombie fighting force to be unleashed in anger upon the world was let loose. The team from the British government looked down open-mouthed.

  *

  There aren't many places on earth ready for the full force of a zombie attack. With the exception of a variety of towns in middle America, raised on movies and comic books and always on the lookout for alien invasion, serial killers, vampires, zombies, werewolves and goofy romantic comedy situations, there are few places ready to withstand the crushing power of the living dead.

  The elite zombie force moved quickly and brutally. They grabbed men, women and children. They tore at limbs, they ripped flesh from faces, they ate body parts, they feasted on viscera.

  Our old friend Virgil from Swindon, was a natural. He ripped through shop after shop, house after house. Grabbing, chomping and biting. A police officer confronted him brandishing a small hand gun. He dumped six rounds of brutal firepower from a range of two feet into the zombie's chest. Virgil from Swindon barely seemed to notice. He reached forward, grabbed the policeman's gun hand, bit massively into his arm and then, as the policeman screamed, chomped deliciously into the middle of his head, ripping all kinds of shit out of his face and frankly, scarring him for life.

  A lot of blood was spilled. Out of the elite force of seven hundred living dead, only three were permanently terminated, but this was against the creation of over three thousand brand new zombie recruits.

  Conquering the world had begun. And given how rubbish the world is, was the fact that it was being conquered by an army of the living dead really going to be all that much worse?

  London, England

  Barney Thomson, renegade barbershop superhero, had not been taken to Africa with the Prime Minister. The PM deemed that he had hair of such exceptional quality that it would not require daily pruning.

  Barney was sitting on a bench opposite the London Eye, looking out on the grey river. He was eating a sandwich – spotted Peruvian lamb meat with Colombian rocket on rye – and drinking freshly squeezed raspberry, guava, Monogolian horse testicle and cucumber juice, a drink which in itself made up about eight of his five a day.

  He'd been joined by Detective Chief Inspector Frank Frankenstein of Scotland Yard, and his sidekick, Detective Sergeant Hewitt, the men charged with investigating the murders of the two junior defence ministers. (News of the murder of two junior defence ministers had not reached the papers as neither man had been particularly photogenic or had been on Facebook or Twitter, and were therefore of little interest to the public.)

  The three men were kicking back, enjoying the chilly grey quiet of a London morning in early spring.

  'It's like weird that everyone was talking about a drought last spring,' said Hewitt. 'There was all this apocalyptic talk in the papers about a baking summer and there'd be no water and, like, lots of old people were going to die. Then it rained for nine months.'

  'That's cause the papers are complete shit,' said Frankenstein.

  'Talking of which,' said Barney, 'how come none of them have picked up the fact that you're investigating the murder of two government ministers?'

  Frankenstein bit into a surf 'n' turf bagel-lite with extra salami.

  'Too much other shit going on,' said Frankenstein.

  'Any clues so far?' asked Barney.

  'The first murder was grotesque,' said Frankenstein. 'A deranged hatchet job.'

  'Really cool,' said Hewitt. 'I loved it. Lots of blood. Lots. It was like, you know... think of like the sickest piece of gaming shit you can get, then double it.'

  He laughed.

  Frankenstein gave him a quick glance, then looked back at the river. An old homeless woman walked past with a notice round her neck stating: Pension fucked. Care home shut down. Looking for job. Can work 6am 'til midnight.

  'The second murder was calculating, smooth, a beautifully executed poisoning.'

  'Yeah, really dull,' said Hewitt. 'Like some sort of Agatha Christie shit.'

  'Two different killers?' said Barney.

  'Possibly,' said Frankenstein. 'But you know what, I think it was the same person and they're skilled in a variety of assassination methods. If you can call that first murder skillful.'

  'Fuck, yeah you can!' said Hewitt. 'It was totally awesome.'

  'Any suspects?' asked Barney.

  There was a pause. All three men bit into their sandwiches. A strange melancholy settled over them. The world was drifting by, as grey and slow-moving as the Thames. And life was like the river. Sometimes there were whales, and sometimes they would die.

  'Ah,' said Barney.

  'Yep, my friend,' said Frankenstein. 'I know you didn't do it, and you know you didn't do it, and even Justin Beiber here knows you didn't do it...'

  'Like totally!'

  '... but we have to take you in for questioning.'

  Barney nodded.

  'Perhaps I could make a break for it a
nd you could gun me down in cold blood?' he said.

  'Can't,' said Frankenstein.

  'Sure you can, you lot do it all the time,' said Barney.

  'No, really, I can't. I haven't done the Met's Shooting In Cold Blood course. There's a waiting list.'

  Barney nodded again. In custody, not in custody, in London, in Millport, dead, alive... on and on and on, he didn't care.

  He held out his hands and pressed his wrists together.

  'All right, go on, cuff me,' he said.

  Frankenstein laughed.

  'Like, do we still do that shit?' asked Hewitt.

  Later That Day

  What with the Democratic Republic of Mesotoland being the African equivalent of Liechtenstein, it was not long before the zombie force had taken over the country. Those of the population who hadn't been absorbed into the army of the Living Dead or otherwise slaughtered and eaten, had surrendered and the paperwork was being finalised to absorb the country into the new British Empire. World domination loomed.

  As the Prime Minister drank wine and shared a laugh with his confederates in the media, unaware that his future was bleak and that plans were afoot to have him swiftly removed from power, Barney Thomson spent a long evening under the interrogation of three officers of the Metropolitan police force.

  There had been murder. There was police corruption. There was a narcissistic media frenzy. The government was in meltdown. A zombie army was on the march.

  Once again real life was turning into an episode of Casualty.

  Tuesday, Westminster, London, England

  Barney Thomson, renegade barbershop legend, had been summonsed to appear before the Parliamentary Select Committee on Haircutting and Murder. There were eight men and two women seated in an arc before him. Barney was sitting alone at a long desk. Behind him were two police officers, making sure that he didn't do an OJ Simpson.