‘Having a party, are you?’ he asked as we drove along.
‘Not as such,’ I told him. ‘It’s more a sort of council of war kind of thing. But I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details.’
‘No worries there,’ said the fellow. ‘We live ones have to look after each other as best we can. I’m sure you agree.’
‘I don’t know exactly what you mean,’ I said.
‘Ah,’ said the fellow. ‘Perhaps I have spoken out of turn. Perhaps you accept the official explanation.’
‘I never accept those,’ I said, ‘as a matter of principle.’
‘Splendid. It’s a ludicrous explanation anyway.’
‘Please tell me all about it,’ I said. ‘I have been out of circulation for a while and I’m not exactly in tune with what is going on at the present time.’
‘But you know about the undead?’
‘I know all about them, yes. But does everyone else know?’
‘Not the kind of secret you can keep for ever. A man dies in a car accident. The coroner’s report says that he’s been dead for five years. A murderer is executed. He gets up out of the electric chair and walks away. It’s funny how much of it came to light because of crime. A wife murders her husband in the night, but he’s down for breakfast the next day. Because he was actually dead for years before. People are alive. Then people are dead. But they’re still alive, although clinically they are dead. A great mystery, eh? The greatest mystery, you would think. And the greatest threat to the future of Mankind. So what is the official explanation?’
‘Enlighten me,’ I said.
‘Mass hysteria,’ said the fellow, ‘symptomatic of the increasingly stressful times that we live in. Word on the street, as it were, is that the CIA controls all the media now and composes all the news items. And it was the CIA that passed the Panic Law.’
‘Tell me about the Panic Law,’ I said.
‘It is a brand-new law designed to “enforce common sense and right thinking and stop the spread of panic, dead”. To whit, and I also quote, “Anyone propagating the myth of the walking dead in any manner, way, shape or form will be subject to arrest without trial and immediate execution.” ’
‘Nasty,’ I said. ‘Although I do see a bit of a flaw in this law, walking-dead-wise. ’
‘Immediate execution by complete incineration,’ said the fellow. ‘They don’t come wandering back after that like they used to after they had been secretly interrogated, saying that they’d changed their minds and it was all a mistake.’
‘You mean after they had been secretly killed in custody? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘That is what I’m saying. So now everyone lives in a state of total fear, afraid to voice concerns to their closest friend in case that friend might be either dead, or an informer.’
‘Surely you’re taking a chance speaking to me of these matters,’ I said. ‘I might be dead, or an informer.’
‘Fella,’ said my driver, ‘I think you’re safe enough. Even the dead don’t smell as bad as you. And informers always wear suits.’
‘Yes they do, don’t they,’ I said. ‘I wonder why that is?’
‘I think they just like the suits. But then again, who doesn’t?’
‘You’re wearing a suit,’ I observed. ‘And a black one – are you Jewish?’
‘No,’ said the fellow. ‘A tree fell on me.’
And oh how we laughed.
Together.
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ I asked.
And we laughed again.
Such jollity.
For no good reason whatsoever.
But perhaps to lighten the tension.
And tension there certainly was. And when we reached Mornington Crescent East (discontinued usage), I sat in the car for a bit longer, chatting with the fellow, with all the windows open. And I let the fellow choose one of the pizzas and we shared it.
‘I hate all this stuff,’ said the fellow.
‘I think it tastes rather interesting,’ I said. ‘Cheese and chocolate and chitlings and chips, an alliterative combination.’
‘I didn’t mean the pizza,’ said the fellow. ‘I too am enjoying the pizza. I mean this stuff. I mean, I suppose, life. I never expected that the whole world would fall all to pieces like this. Nuclear war, perhaps. I imagined that when I was young. And later there was AIDS, and everyone thought we’d all die of that. Then it went all ecological and we were all going to die because of global warming and climate change. But this stuff, this undead stuff – I wasn’t expecting this. No one was expecting this.’
‘Some were,’ I said. ‘Some were planning it. One at least.’
‘Ah,’ said the fellow. ‘I’ve heard that theory, too – that this is all the work of a single criminal mastermind, an insane evil fiend of the Moriarty or Count Otto Black persuasion.’
‘I think he tops both of those,’ I said.
‘But surely Count Otto Black was the most evil man who ever lived?’
‘This fellow’s worse,’ I said. ‘Far worse. And that theory is true. The fellow exists – I have met him.’
My driver stuffed further pizza into his mouth. ‘If you really know who he is,’ he said, between munchings, ‘then you should kill him. You know that? You should, you really should.’
‘And I will,’ I said. ‘It is my reason for being alive. He and another man have blighted my existence. I will have my revenge upon at least one of them.’
‘You’re surely not thinking to go at it alone?’
‘I have, shall we say, a taskforce. Hence the pizzas. And as I have already mentioned to them that an army marches on its stomach, I must deliver my pizzas to them before they all grow cold.’
‘Is this your home?’ asked the fellow, gazing about.
‘We are camped out in the Subway station.’ And with this I thanked my driver and climbed from his car, taking my pizzas and drinks and garlic breads. ‘Thanks for the ride,’ I said. ‘And if everything works out, I’m sure you’ll learn about it from an uncensored media broadcast.’
‘Good luck then,’ said the fellow and he drove off.
And I entered Mornington Crescent East (discontinued usage), whistling. And I entered, I noticed, by a rather larger opening than the one I had left by. And as I screwed up my eyes and wandered across the station concourse, I noticed that it was now a somewhat lighted concourse. There were flares all around and about, spitting sparks, dying.
‘Oh no!’ I cried, and I dropped my pizzas and drinks and garlic breads and took off down the stairway at the hurry-up.
And when I reached the platform I came upon a scene of doom and desolation. Torches still burned and the remnants of flares did also. And there was a bad smell in the air now, a bitter, acrid smell, and it was the smell of CS gas. And there on the platform lay bodies. Two bodies. One of them was a golden girlie. The other was the high priest. And he groaned in a fatally wounded kind of fashion.
And I approached his golden body and I gazed down upon it and all I could think to say was, ‘I am so sorry.’
And I kneeled low to catch a word. And touch the dying brow.
‘Men came,’ the high priest whispered. ‘Men from above. With magical weapons. We fought bravely, but they overwhelmed us. We failed you, sire, forgive us.’
‘I am so so sorry,’ I said. ‘And you didn’t fail me. You did your best. I am sorry that I brought you here to this evil place. Can you forgive me?’
The high priest reached out a bloodstained hand to me. It was clear that there was something important that he needed to say.
‘The P… The P…’
‘The “P”?’ I said. ‘The prophecy, do you mean?’
‘The p… The p… The pizza. What flavour did you get?’
