With a practised air, Gwen returned her attention to her computer, completed Brenden’s form, printed it off and handed the boy two copies. Brenden glanced over the form, which included the rather glum looking image Gwen had just taken of him, looking only for where he had to sign. As soon as Brenden had added his signature to the second copy, Gwen whisked one of the slips of paper away to a filing cabinet, which was promptly locked after the boy’s form was safely tucked away.
“So, I’m afraid we’ve come to the end of my line of duty,” said Gwen. “Daniel will guide you through a few of the facilities here and then take you to your plot. Just wait here a moment and I’ll fetch him for you.”
Gwen breezed out of the office and, only a few minutes later, returned with the shrunken form of a man that Brenden assumed must have been Daniel. The man was more than half a foot shorter than Brenden, dressed in a herringbone jacket and of an indeterminable age. Indeed, though many of Daniel’s features were still clearly youthful, his pale, grey and fragile skin had clearly been worn for decades, while his eyes suggested he was only just in the room.
“Daniel,” said Gwen deliberately. “This is Brenden. Take him on the usual tour, then get him to his new home.”
While she said this to Daniel, Gwen kept one bony hand on the man’s shoulder. The hand remained there until a nod of a response finally escaped from Daniel, enabling her to presume that enough of the message had got through.
“Well, Brenden,” exclaimed the zombie, “it was good to meet you. Best of luck in there and, who knows, maybe I’ll see you again soon.”
As Gwen said these words, Daniel was already starting to shuffle out of the office. This resulted in Brenden feeling a little more rushed than he really was and he responded to Gwen with a mumbled farewell even though he had many questions he still wanted to ask about the strange and unfamiliar world he had entered. Brenden then found himself left with an awkward few moments in the middle of the office as Daniel continued to block the way out with his dawdling exit. When Daniel finally cleared the door, Brenden overtook the man to return to the tunnel outside, giving up on any chance he had of seizing the opportunity of his guide’s slow progression to address his concerns with Gwen.
Once Daniel got going, he managed to shuffle up to a speed that was nearly a normal walking pace, something which allayed Brenden’s fears that he may have been in for a host of hours of slow dull progression through the concrete tunnels that were now his home. It did not cross Brenden’s mind that it made little difference if the man took his time, as there was nowhere really to go. Nevertheless, when Daniel began to slow down once more, Brenden’s impatience returned. The reason for Daniel’s slowing pace was down to the fact he was approaching a doorway at the end of the tunnel, one that sat a good hundred feet away from the silent patchwork figure that kept his quiet vigil near the steel gateway to the Tunnels. A habit of decades induced Daniel to fumble for a set of keys that dangled from the side of his trousers before he eventually pushed open the already unlocked door.
It came as no surprise to Brenden, after following Daniel into the next room, that he then found himself under another arched length of concrete. However, he was taken a little aback by the dull yellow light that permeated the space and the extent to which it contrasted with the brightness of illumination from the room behind. Indeed, the light from the entrance tunnel behind him was such that he could see his own shadow stretching along the cement floor.
Brenden examined the back of his slow-moving guide and wondered whether the man was another vampire just like himself. The man clearly was not a zombie, nor a ghost, and so it seemed likely that the man was vampire, even though he had aged in a way he had not seen in anyone he had met before. The boy asked a question of Daniel to inquire if his assumption was right, but if the man heard him he did not want to respond. Instead, Daniel just continued to plod on, shuffling his way along to a gap in the concrete wall.
When he went through the gap himself, Brenden moved into a space that looked to his eyes to resemble the sort of ancient brick-lined sewer that inhabited any number of the first-person shooters he had played on the odd occasions when he had visited his dad. This memory brought a smile to Brenden’s lips, one that managed to linger a little longer when he further recollected how his father had always instructed his son, whenever the man was turning on his X-box, not to tell mum. “She’ll gut you, you know,” he said with his Mancunian twang, “but she’ll kill me first.”
“Come on,” announced a scratchy, high-pitched voice that not only pulled Brenden back from a place he had half forgotten but puzzled the boy as the sound seemed so incongruous with the figure of Daniel. But as there was no one else in the vicinity, and though it was possible that a ghost or another mysterious creature could have been responsible, Brenden was fairly sure the words must have emanated from the man.
The next room was a large, rectangular space, which was decked with a brick vaulted ceiling and filled with row upon row of sturdy-looking metal lockers. Without having to be told, Brenden realised that what he saw before him must have been the
