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Dead City

By

Lee J Isserow

Copyright © 2016 Lee Isserow
All rights reserved.

1

It had been forty-six years since the release of George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, and forty-six years since the dead stopped dying. Some people said the movie was a hypersigil, an accidental magick that turned fantasy into reality. Others with limited vocabulary and a lower IQ blamed free love, homosexuality, and as time went on, gay marriage.

After twenty years of mounting fear, the governments of the world did what they always do when they don't have a legitimate solution to a problem. They built a wall. Forty foot high by ten foot thick, brick or concrete at either side with a centre lining of steel two foot deep, to prevent tunnelling through. The only entrance to each Dead City was a single gate operated from the outside, by the living for the dead. The walls were manned by armed guards every half-mile. Not that guns were necessarily effective, other than to remove limbs or ventilate the skull. The latter worked insomuch as a pulse-lacking foe missing chunks of brain might momentarily forget their innate lust for flesh. But despite guns not being able to keep the dead down, they made the living feel safe, and governments were almost exclusively made of and for the living.
Whereas in days of olde, towns would have walls surrounding them, these days every major city had walls at its heart. The undead – or 'unliving', as they preferred to be called – were rounded up upon being born into unlife, and placed inside the walls, where they were to spend the rest of their supernaturally reanimated post-lives.

As the moon hung in the sky, glimpsed through clouds of dusk reds and twilight purples, the walls of the London Dead City stood proud beyond the South Bank of the Thames, a monolithic silhouette in the night. Stretching out from Waterloo, the walls followed the train bridges east and south, turning in at London Bridge and Brixton respectively to meet at Deptford. Five square miles of abandoned London, reserved exclusively for those returned from the grave, with almost eleven miles of wall to keep them in. As the clock struck nine, the guards at the Southwark outpost swapped shifts, shared a smoke and exchanged small talk, unaware of the skinny hooded shadow running towards the wall just a quarter mile away. The figure held her breath, in case she be spotted from the mere movement of her lungs. Blonde hair under black hoodie, skin ivory white in the moonlight, Sarah closed her eyes and thought of her father. His kind ocean blue eyes and wrinkle-etched forehead. He needed her to do this, even though she knew he would never approve if he were to find out what she was about to do. Reaching into a scruffy backpack, she withdrew the grappling hook that had been provided to her by her informant.

She called him her 'informant', even though 'guy she met at the pub' was probably more accurate. Sarah had worked there for two years, and he was a new face, mouthing off about how he jumped the walls all the time 'for larks'. As she asked him about it, he revealed he'd done more than just broken in. He had contacts on the inside that were willing to break the rules for the right price.

Checking one final time for observers, she swung the hook high into the sky, praying for a near-silent impact. The clang was louder than hoped, and she dropped to the ground, hiding in the shadow of the wall. After moments in fear, waiting for guards to rain down upon her, she stood back up and began ascending. Her thin, pale hands held to the rope for dear life. Despite knots tied for hand and footholds, the sheer height of the drop below was making her porcelain palms sweaty, and grip on the rope weaker. Reaching the top, she crawled up and lay flat on the peak, just as instructed by her informant. He had physically taken her through the routine and position to lie in, with only a small amount of groping. He cupped unnecessarily as he told her to put her bottom flat, and breath from the diaphragm, not from the lungs. She could forgive his wandering hands, she'd definitely had worse, and it was certainly a small sacrifice. After waiting again, in case her presence had been spotted, she hoisted the rope up slowly, placed the grapple on the other side of the wall, and after testing its integrity,  began her descent into the borough of the life-impaired.

The roads of Dead City were not cared for as those outside the wall. Trash piled up, detritus escaping from the mounds on the wind and whistling along unkempt roads. Buildings long forgotten by living hands looked down on her with sad cracked-window eyes, like abandoned geriatrics in an old age home, hoping the next face that passes might be familiar, and yet it never would be. The street lighting flickered, a sickly neon yellow glow cast over her, as Sarah began a steady, purposeful walk. Reaching back into her bag, she withdrew a hand-drawn map, a line taking her from the point of arrival to her destination, sticking to main roads, avoiding alleyways where God-knows-what might be lying in wait.

As she passed boarded up buildings and side streets her stride hastened, the sound of unknown fiends echoing around her. Growls and mutters, whispers and whimpers, she couldn't imagine what savage monsters lay beyond her line of sight, and didn't wish to find out.

Finally, her destination was in view. An old casino, abandoned before the walls were built. Bold signage in a rainbow of colours, faux-velvet curtains withered by time and moths hung over the windows. Whatever lay beyond them was not for the view of casual passers-by.
Approaching the entrance, a behemoth of an unman emerged from the shadows of the doorway, his face half decayed, a worm nonchalantly weaving its way through his septum like a slimy living nose ring.

“What have we got here?” said the brute, his voice scratching, wheezy breath through lungs long ago worn through.

“I have an appointment.” she replied, trying to hide the quiver on her lips, the intense fear riding through her body.

“Right this way.” he gestured for her to enter, a smile crawling its way up what was left of his putrefying face.

She entered, followed by the slowly decomposing ogre, past rusting slot machines and dust covered roulette tables, to a room at the back with a sign marking it as 'private'.
She turned to the bouncer, who gestured with a giant, festering hand for her to continue onwards.

The room deep in the heart of the casino was vastly different to everything else she had seen in Dead City, a tasteless opulence of velvet flocked wallpaper, furniture carved of oak, mahogany and pine all nestled together, unscathed by time and neglect, but mismatching nonetheless. At the centre of the room, behind a large wooden desk, sat the Necromancer.

Older – he would often tell people – than London itself. His long, unkempt hair had centuries earlier taken a life of its own, weaving its way under his skin, burrowing deep and continuing to grow out, over (or perhaps though) his eyes, burying itself back in at his jaw and out again at the neck, where it rested on his shoulders. His vision appeared all but obscured. “But I still see everything.” he would say, when some fool would query it. Not long before the Necromancer had his bouncer tear off a limb and insert it into the fool where an entire limb should not fit under normal circumstances.

He offered her a seat and Sarah took it, silent, unsure how to word her request. Her heart was beating so hard in her chest, she wondered if she could talk at all if she tried.

“What do you wish of me?” he hissed, a sickly smile crawling up his atrophying cheeks.

“It's my father” Sarah replied. “He's sick.”

“Mine is not to heal the sick.” hissed the creature. “But to return the life.”

“He's dying. Nobody can help him.” she paused, hoping she didn't cause offence. “Nobody alive, that is.” she tried to maintain eye contact with where she thought his eyes might be.

“Nobody alive indeed.” another smile. “You have what I asked?” his fingers rapped on the table one by one in anticipation of the gift she had for him.
The young girl reached into her bag and withdrew a  jar. A thick red stain washed up against the glass, trickling back down slowly as she rested it on the table. He took it, twisting off the lid and inhaled deeply.

“Aah, it's so hard to acquire fresh menstrual blood these days.” he said, sealing the jar and placing it in a drawer of the desk, opening another to find her purchase, taking a vial of luminescent yellow liquid and placing it in her hand.

“This will ward off your progenitor's death... for now.” he said, as she stuffed it into the bag, and turned to leave.

“Thank you” she muttered, hurrying herself out of the door.
The streets away from the casino were still empty as she strode back to her point of arrival, but the presence of those that lay beyond the shadows had grown. The rumours of fresh meat seemed to have spread amongst the unliving, and the ravenous creatures were lusting from their coves in alleys and behind window panes.

Her walk became hurried, as she looked around, feeling eyes from the darkness watching her from every angle. She saw nothing, but imagined everything, every nightmare, every possible monster under the bed, every demon or devil she had ever seen in a movie.

The click-clack of her tiny feet on the pavement drew them out, beckoned them forth, and without thinking, she broke into a run.
The map in her hands, she turned a corner, speeding straight, then another corner, looking behind her at every possible moment, in case she were followed. Dropping the map as she came to the last turn, the girl rounded the corner, as ice cold skeletal hands grabbed her. She tried to scream, but there was no voice in her throat, an inhuman, decaying beast stood over her. His back hunched, yet still he stood almost two feet taller than her, jaw hanging loose as if dislocated and never put back into place. It looked like it was holding on for dear life at the base of its skull by threads of fragile skin that, like the rest of his epidermis, was practically translucent, useless grey veins etched along it as if drawn in pencil. The living nightmare gasped at her with breath whistling through holes in his chest, guttural sounds with the scent of rotting eggs that she heard as:

“Freeeeesh meeeeaaaat!”
She struggled for freedom, as he lunged his head towards her, useless jaw flapping as he arched his neck. She felt his dry tongue scrape up the side of her face like sandpaper, and a gust of gentle, stinking wind as he inhaled her. Sarah's limbs went limp and she began to lose consciousness. Her mind started going blank, the fear dissipating, every feeling vanishing, and she wondered with her last thoughts if this experience was her soul being sucked from her body.

Then from nowhere, a flash, and a unholy crunch. The beast's grip on her loosened and all she could feel was falling, then nothingness.

When she came to, she didn't know how much time had passed. The ghoul's body was crawling around in the road in search of its moaning head, which was lodged in a drain farther down the street. Looking up, a silhouette stood over her. The rim of a trilby obscured her rescuer's face, long coat trailing in the wind, his right hand clutched a baton with electricity dancing on the tip. He reached down for her hand and helped her up, his grip strong and warm. She looked into his eyes and saw life.

“I don't know what you're doing here, or whether that's contraband...” he said, referring to the vial of luminescent liquid, which had fallen out of her bag during the assault. “Now get yourself back over the wall, and don't ever come back here again.”
His face showed no signs of comfort or care, as if he wasn't helping her because it was the right thing to do, but because it was his job. He looked around to the darkness, to the creatures massing beyond it. The sounds of the unseen demons faded as they withdrew, as if knowing she was under his protection. He didn't make an introduction, nor did he attempt conversation as he lead her to her point of entry and watched her climb back up, until she disappeared over the top of the wall followed by the rope.
“Same thing every night...” he said under his breath, as he turned from the wall resumed his rounds.

* * * *

After the walls first went up, it soon became apparent that the unliving could not be left to their own devices. New York's Dead City collapsed almost as soon as it was up and running, as former Mafia Dons created pulse-deficient crime families on the inside, their living heirs supporting them from the outside.

The result was all out war, but a war unlike any other, in which none of the combatants could die. Edward Koch, who had been Mayor for only a few years, had dedicated himself to cleaning up the city and city-within-the-city. His campaign banners declared 'Respecting Americans, Pulse Or Not', which was a great tagline, but in practice was more challenging to uphold.

When the turf war deep in the NYDC threatened to take the walls down, he was told he had only one decision; burn it down and start again. The city was napalmed, every unliving who inhabited the walls had the flesh melted from their bones, the army entering shortly after to literally crush them all to dust.

“Dust don't start wars!” one general said to the news cameras, after the city was locked down.

Everyone decided he was an asshole, and should not be allowed to talk to the public ever again.

The result of NYDC's fall was the unanimous decision that someone with no agenda should keep the peace, someone with a pulse. A liaison between the living and unliving. And although volunteers were far and few between, there was a noticeable decrease in uprisings and incidents since the program had been initiated.

* * * *

Jon Gilligan was the living liaison for London's Dead City. He strutted the streets in his long overcoat and trilby, playing the character of a noir detective, as he had done for as long as he could remember. It started as a game, a fantasy to while away the hours, but soon it became who he was. Philip Marlowe meets Van Helsing was how he pictured himself, Sam Spade crossed with Solomon Kane. Or when he was having a bad day, Scooby Doo stapled to The Ghostbusters. When not coming up with pop culture comparisons, he narrated internally to pass the time.

'The dame safe, he knew his work for the night wasn't done – there were always more dames in danger, crooks round every corner...'

There were neither. The next few hours passed as they always did, walking the circumference of the City, a stretch of almost eleven miles with barely any interactions other than passing the occasional walking corpse who invariably nodded politely, as Jon looked for potential squabbles between unliving that he might diffuse.
When his circuit for the night was finally complete, Jon returned to the office the government had provided for him, the window on the door painted with his name and title.

Jon Gilligan
Living Liaison

Not that he needed a sign on the door, everyone in Dead City knew who he was and where he worked, but this was etched on the glass at his insistence, part of his fictional alter-ego, the private dick.

As he walked into the reception, his secretary Sheila turned with a start.

“Oh! Mr G, you scared the bejezzus out of me!”
The deteriorating Irish woman adjusted her dress and pushed up what remained of her breasts. These days it was mostly silicon bags held aloft by scant remaining layers of decaying skin that struggled not to fall apart under the weight of the implants.

* * * *

In her living days, Sheila had been a model, or at least that's what she told everyone who asked, and often those who didn't. She skipped over the more sordid elements of her 'career', having neither been represented nor published, but willing to do anything requested of her to perhaps propel her forward. This often meant a variety of debasing acts for people who claimed to be her doorway to success.

After spending her teens and twenties being naively used by anyone with a camera, she finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and was offered representation by a small time glamour agency.

Unfortunately, shortly after catching her break, she fell down the stairs of their office and caught a much bigger break, albeit this one to her neck.

* * * *

“Had a good night, boss?” she said with a smile, and what would have been a wink, if she still had eyelids.

“Another climb-over. Sent her packing.” he said, hanging his trilby and coat on a hook, revealing a shirt that at some point used to be white, and rainbow suspenders. Dead Cities weren't known for their boutiques and shopping experiences, thus the clothing options to complete his noir persona were somewhat limited.

“Good work, boss. Want me to get y'a coffee while you go do some paperwork?”

“Why the rush?” he said eyeing her and her desk with suspicion.
Despite her head being twisted at a ninety degree angle to the rest of her body, she was generally a good secretary to Jon. That is, when she wasn't distracted by a myriad of suitors, which he was aware happened more often than not.

“Who y'got down there”. He asked.

“No-one!” said a man's voice from under the desk.
Jon sighed, looking at his secretary disapprovingly.

“What have I told you about having friends come round to play?” he asked with a sigh, as if talking to a child.

“That I shouldn't do it in front of you! That's why he's under the desk!”

“Get your bean licked on your own time, toots.” he said, walking through the reception into his office.
The lights were off, moonlight gleaming through the windows. Jon stopped in his tracks. Something didn't feel right. Looking through the glass of the half-open door he saw a figure silhouetted by ambient light coming off the street. Reaching to his belt, he pulled one of his two extendable batons from its holster, flicking it to its full length, and pressing a button on the handle that caused the end of it to come to life, sparks jumping on the tip.

* * * *

Not many conventional weapons were able to put the unliving down for good. However, a severe beating, accompanied by tens of thousands of volts shocking the heart into restarting tended to at least stun them for a short while. At least enough time to run away if you were smart. If you were less smart, you'd use that time to tie them up, or take them apart until they promised they wouldn't do whatever awful thing they just did again.

Whether they'd keep that promise is another matter entirely. Most Living Liaisons learnt that the hard, and often painful way.

* * * *

The figure behind the door chomped its teeth, the clatter-click a familiar sound for Jon – a zombie – its jaw spasming as it entered a feeding cycle, the lust for brains taking control of motor functions. Jon took a breath, steadied himself, then flung the door fully open, revealing an obese zombie lunging for him. Jon turned on the spot, slamming the baton against the base of the zombie's neck, throwing him head-first into the plasterboard of the wall, denting it with a satisfying crunch. He held him there whilst the creature flailed.

“Need help!” it rasped.

Jon peered round the side of the fat dead man's head, and found himself looking through a hole in his skull.

“I keep telling you, Dildo. I can't help you.”
He eased up, taking the baton away, collapsing it and returning it to the holster on his belt. The zombie turned around as Jon sat at his desk and put his feet up.

“Need know who killed me!” the corpse said.
Jon rolled his eyes.

“Do we really have to go through this again?

* * * *

Dildo, as Jon affectionately called him, was originally a clerk in a sex shop named Paul. Paul loved his job, from alphabetising the DVDs and VHS tapes, to dusting the shelves upon shelves of paraphernalia and sex toys.

Unfortunately, as a rotund gentleman, he was not as quick on his feet as a more slender man might be, and one day whilst up a ladder replenishing a stock of urethra play-kits, Paul found himself off-balance, and as he fell, grabbed at the shelves, taking them down with him.

When the EMTs found his body, they discovered Paul had a gold-plated vibrator embedded in one temple, the tip of the shiny cock poking out of the other side of his head.

* * * *

Due to his condition, Dildo had a fair amount of brains missing, and couldn't form new memories.

“I'm writing it down this time, so you don't have an excuse to forget, okay?”

“Need know who killed me!” said the undeadling idiot.

“I know buddy, I know.” Jon sighed, as he finished scrawling Dildo's death story, folded it up, and put it in the zombie's pocket.

“Brains?” asked Dildo.

“No brains, that's kind of your problem... Now how about a coffee?”

“Coffeeee!” said the zombie, enthusiastically. He wandered back into the reception, and Jon returned to his chair, putting his feet back up on the desk, leaning back and closing his eyes.

“Know who kill me?” Dildo asked from the door.

“Coffee...” Jon reminded him, without opening his eyes.

“Coffee!” he said, leaving again, before returning one last time to shout for brains, which resulted in Jon throwing a stapler at his head.

'Every night was the same.' Jon narrated. 'And yet, he knew that some time soon, things were gonna change. Complications come when y'least expect it. And up until now, He'd surely been expecting it...'

2

The corridor seemed to go on forever in either direction, as did the line of people standing patiently along the left hand wall. The surfaces were an unnatural white, that despite having the texture of standard plasterboard construction, appeared to glow.  There were no bulbs, lamps or strips in the hallway, and yet floor to ceiling was gleaming, radiating a vibrant bright light.

The man stood in line, unaware of how he got there, or what exactly he was queuing for. It seemed right to queue, and wrong to question it, as if unspoken rules had been whispered to him before he got in line. How long he had been there, he didn't know.

“How long have we been here?” he asked the woman behind him.
She shushed him, and he turned back, annoyed.
There was shuffling up ahead. Everyone took a step forward, and so did he, partaking in a Mexican wave of single footsteps.

“What are we waiting for?” he asked the man in front of him, to another shush.

Deep down, he knew that speaking was frowned upon, another rule instilled in him by some silent power, and yet he felt the need to speak because it was a stupid rule. Whatever they were waiting for couldn't be worth infinite patience, and he certainly wasn't in possession of such a virtue. Surely, he reasoned, if the inhabitants of the queue were expected to shut the fuck up and step forward only on command, whoever was in charge might bestow them with that gift. At the very least there could be a coffee table with some magazines, perhaps a newspaper, or book of crosswords.

More shuffling up ahead, this time backwards, and he found himself being knocked over as the man in front took two steps back.

“What the shit?” he said from the floor, looking up at the line.
Getting back to his feet, he attempted to rejoin the queue only to discover that there was no longer a space for him between the man and woman.

“Let me in!” he said, to no response. Looking at the people to his left and right, the line stretched out as far as the eye could see.

“Ahem.” said a voice from further back down the corridor.
The man walked over to the source of the voice to discover a new space had been reserved for him between two new strangers, both staring directly ahead, trying to ignore the insolent out-of-liner.

“What, am I getting pushed back for talking?”
The space disappeared as ten people all took a step forward, yet another a new place waiting for him even further back in the never-ending line of bodies.

“Oh, this is bullshit...” he said, resulting in another twenty people taking a step forward, his new place being set even farther in the distance.

“Fuck this.” he said, as twenty more footsteps shuffled forward.

He turned his back from the queue, looking around for a way out. As he faced the wall on the right hand side of the hallway, he discovered a door standing directly in front of him.

“Has this always been here?” he asked the queue.
Once again, several feet shuffled forward, as his place in line moved another five people back. He rolled his eyes and grabbed the door handle, believing that whatever lay beyond could only be less stupid than the purgatory of politeness he was currently forced to inhabit.

As the door swung open, and he stepped through the threshold, there was a blinding light. The man realised he couldn't feel his body, as if the part of him that could experience tactile sensation were being left behind. He was still himself, but now he felt nothing. Nothing, and yet he had the knowledge that he was falling.

For what seemed like an eternity, he plummeted downwards though blinding white. Despite not being able to feel the wind rushing by on his skin, the rapid descent continued, a subtle texture in the light around him rushing upwards and away from him, the white fading to greys and then hues of pale blue.

In an instant, the shine and glare around him was gone, replaced by fog. The plummet continued and more visual cues to indicate his vertical direction were in sight, as he emerged through the haze to be faced with darkness speckled by blinking lights – a city. A city he was speedily approaching from above. The ground seemed to hurtle towards him, faster and faster, closer and closer, the dots became street lights and windows and headlights, until he landed with a gigantic THUD in an alleyway.

“Ow.” he said, unnecessarily, as he couldn't actually feel any pain. It seemed like the right thing to say, given the fall and inelegant crash landing.
After rising to his feet, he realised that for the first time since he found himself in the corridor, he could finally remember who he was.

3

Ashley was exhausted. It had gone three, and knew she had to be up soon, but that didn't seem to matter. Her tired, slender body was wired, and she lay in bed begging her brain to shut up so she could sleep. Insomnia had been plaguing her for years, and she had run out of Ambien days ago. Part of her was relieved. As much as she appreciated her Ambien-aided naps, she'd invariably wake up the next morning to find that at some point in the night she had alphabetised all of her books by height, and shat on the neighbour's dog.

So she lay there, in the silence of the house she used to love, formerly shared with the man she used to love. The man she still loved. Ashley tried to stop herself shedding a tear for him. She had told all her friends that she was done with crying, done with mourning. It had been three years, more than three years, and if he wasn't coming back, then maybe he's lost for good. She still kept in touch with his mother, who had in many ways become a proxy for her own. She didn't like to admit it, but the old woman was a much-preferred maternal figure. Every week they would talk on the phone or go out for coffee, each of them grieving, but trying to be strong for themselves and the other, discussing anything other than what was actually on their mind.

She closed her eyes, took deep breaths, and tried to clear her head. Pushing all thoughts aside, paying attention to her breathing, focussing on attaining the stillness that was constantly mentioned in all the 'help you sleep' tapes she had listened to, and self-hypnosis YouTube videos she had watched. Eventually, and without her even noticing, a wave of fatigue washed over her, until she was brought back to the realm of consciousness by a thud.

Her eyes burst open, wide and alert. The fatigue vanished in an instant, as if it were never there. She sat up in bed and looked around in the darkness for the source of the sound.

Thud.

Ashley reached for the bedside lamp and flicked it on. Everything was as it had been in the room before she lay her head down, but she was certain the sound wasn't in her imagination.

Thud . Thud.

It was coming from downstairs. She reached for her dressing gown and tried to find a blunt instrument. She had heard stories on the news of people opening their doors and being mauled by new unliving that hadn't been rounded up yet.

“If only they had the foresight to prepare...” the reporters always seemed to say.

Thud. Thud.

'I'm going to be one of those stories...' Ashley said to herself, as she made her way down the stairs, cautiously approaching the door. She flipped open the mail slot and looked out, expecting to find a creature of the night lurking in her garden. There was nothing, just gnomes amidst the grass, and they were carved of stone and solely invested in fishing, which was hardly threatening behaviour.

Thud.

She jumped. The door was vibrating from the sound, but there wasn't anyone outside to be causing it. Slowly, and fully aware it was a terrible idea, she flicked the latch off and pulled at the door. It reluctantly opened with a soft squeak and she prepared herself to look out, expecting to be mauled by a monster at any second.
Peeking her head through the gap in the door, Ashley discovered that the garden was empty of undead foes. She tried to push back the internal narration of the emphatic news anchors she imagined reporting her story

'If only she hadn't stuck her head out the door, the creature wouldn't have bitten right through her dainty, fragile neck. She only had herself to blame, presenting it like an all-you-can-eat buffet.'

Contrary to her running commentary, her dainty neck was not bitten as she looked around outside, and she closed the door, relieved. She returned to her bedroom, adrenaline subsiding, and hoped that the momentary excitement would wear her out and make the journey into slumber easy and swift.

Removing her dressing gown, Ashley returned to bed. She tried to clear her mind and started her deep breathing again. Finding stillness. Finding silence.  Thoughts pushed away, she grabbed hold of fatigue and followed it, drifting off bit-by-bit. She barely felt the icy arm wrap around hers. A cold body bringing itself closer, spooning, nuzzling into her.

“You're cold...” she said, half-asleep.
There was no response. Then the adrenaline was back, her eyes open, she rolled out of bed leaving a figure under the sheets.

“Who the fuck?” she screamed at the thing lying in the covers.
There was no response. The figure sat up, and as it did, seemed to lose corporeal form, the sheets falling through it, as if nothing was ever there.

She reached on the dresser for something to hit her intruder with, turning back with a hand mirror, batting it through the air impotently.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she asked, but the thing had no mouth from which to respond, let alone a body to hit.

* * * *

Ashley had never sat through a whole documentary about the many varieties of unliving, and obviously not one about poltergeists.

If she had, she would know that poltergeists had no mouth, no voice, and when threatened would almost always respond the only way they knew how.

* * * *

One by one, her books flew off the shelves, throwing themselves at the wall opposite in kamikaze leaps. Her cupboard doors swung open and closed, rat-a-tating a drumbeat that matched her increasing heart rate. She ran out of the room, the floating and falling objects following her path down the stairs. She grabbed a coat and car keys as she bolted through the door, and drove off into the night, the front door left open in the cool night air.

The poltergeist didn't seem to be following her, and as she looked back at the house in the rear view mirror, the door slammed shut. She didn't know where she was headed, but as far as her intruder seemed to be concerned, the house belonged to him now.

4

'The sun raised itself wearily over the walls of his city, rays creeping in, long shadows of the decaying buildings sprawling forth like remedial shadow puppets formed by hands with too many fingers.'

Jon had been up since long before dawn, and his narration wasn't at its best. Dead Cities didn't let you sleep much. The constant moaning and groaning, gnarling and gnawing from the denizens had left Jon with a routine of three to five hours of slumber if he was lucky, often broken up into fifteen to twenty minute chunks.

For the last hour, he had been attempting to keep the peace, as two wights argued over a kitten.

* * * *

Wights, from ye olde Middle English word 'whit', were bottom-feeders of the unliving world. They were sentient to some degree, and usually died of natural causes, but had suffered from some degenerative ailment before their passing, usually dementia or Alzheimer's.

This led to conversations not unlike those Jon had been having with Dildo since he arrived three weeks ago, but much more repetitive.

* * * *`

“S'mine!” said the first wight, for the hundred and sixteenth time.
Jon had been counting.

“S'mine!!” said the second. For the hundred and fifty-sixth time.

The second's pre-death dementia was, Jon reasoned, further along than that of the first. About a third of this argument had been the second wight shouting at his own reflection.
The kitten did not seem phased by any of this. It had curled up in Jon's lap whilst the disagreement continued in front of them.

“S'mine!”  said the first again.
Jon looked at the kitten, resting softly on his knees.

“You're very calm for a little guy who's being argued over as a snack.” he said.

The kitten looked up at him and mewed in agreement.

“Yeah, you're right.” said Jon, standing up.

Kitten in hand, he sighed as he glanced back and forth between the two unlivings before walking out. The wights didn't seem to notice.

“S'mine!” said the second. He looked down and spotted his reflection in a puddle again “S'mine!” he shouted at the floor, kicking the water. The third wight was vanquished.

“S'mine!” he said triumphantly, forgetting that the first wight was still there and turning to claim his prize, but Jon and the kitten had gone.

5

Since the dead stopped dying, there had been a resurgence in mediums and exorcists. Where once the yellow pages was full of exterminators for rodents and vermin, now there was a whole section devoted to ridding oneself of pesky unliving, in whatever form they may return.

* * * *

Ashley had never known of anyone who had been haunted, so having no referral, picked the  biggest advert on the first page. She glossed over the many companies named 'AAA111 Exorcism incorporated' and their kin, figuring it was better to have an exorcist who can afford a large box with a picture, rather than a less affluent sole trader who had used their mighty single brain cell to work out that the book was alphabetised.

She had spent the night sleeping in her car, parked up in the lot of a Toys 'R' Us, and had been woken unceremoniously by the squealing of a gaggle of children, which to her sleeping brain sounded like an army of ghouls screaming to steal her soul.

Having rung the exorcist, she sat in the car impatiently outside of her own house, still in her night clothes, waiting for them to arrive. At twelve-thirty, two hours later than expected, a large black van finally parked up outside the house, 'ExorSisters' airbrushed on the doors.

The two eponymous women emerged from either side, and Ashley left the safety of her car to introduce herself. They were younger than she expected, but looked exactly how she pictured them; skinny, long black hair, naturally pale to the point of essentially being goth without trying. They were wearing white t-shirts and black overalls with name tags sewn on the lapels.

“You're Ash?” the first sister asked.

“Yeah, you're...”

“I'm Hannah, she's Anna”
Ashley was confused.

“Your name tag said Anna.” she said.

“Shit.” said Hannah, turning to Anna. “We did it again...”

“Fucksticks. This shouldn't happen so often. We should sew our names on them or something!”
The ExorSisters laughed, Ashley smiled politely, not finding her situation funny.

“This the house?” said Hannah, indicating to the building they had parked up in front of.
Ashley looked up at the house and nodded. The curtains were drawn at all the windows, and she found herself feeling uncomfortable, trapped outside the home she once loved.

“Keys?” asked Anna.

She handed them over and watched as the two dainty women opened up the doors of their van, pulling out flight cases that looked heavier than the two of them put together. Once all the gear was out, they pushed the cases to the door and Anna inserted the key.

“You coming in with us?” asked Hannah.
Ashley shook her head, remaining by the van.

“Here we go...” said Anna, turning the key and pushing the door open.
A soft squeal whined out as the hinges reticently stretched their mouths wide.

“Looks good so far...” said Hannah, giving a smile back to Ashley, who still wasn't convinced.
Anna took a step towards the threshold of the door and was rewarded with it slamming into her face, her nose exploding with blood.

“Jesus!” shrieked Ashley, as Anna took some steps back, hand at her nose.

The ExorSister turned, decorating the garden with a rain of bright crimson.

“S'fine!” said Anna, putting her head back. “Happens all the time.”

“Told you we should've worn crash helmets on this one.” said Hannah.

“Little late for that now...” muffled her sister, blood snaking its way down through her fingers as it heeded the call of gravity.
She reached back for the key and turned it again, the door squealing as it opened inwards, and took a step beyond the threshold. Again, the door came for her, but this time she blocked its path with a steadfast boot.

“Nice try, Casper.” she said, wiping her hands on her overalls and turning to Hannah. “See, this is why black is a good colour for overalls – clients never see how much you bleed.”

“Apart from when you're actually bleeding in front of them...” said Hannah.

“Apart from then, obviously.”

Anna pushed the door open and held it as Hannah started wheeling the cases inside. When they were all done, Hannah beckoned Ashley to join them as her ExorSister set up the instruments. She refused, but the woman insisted on at least fetching her some clothes and letting her change in the back of their van whilst she waited for them to get the lay of the land inside her former home.

Half an hour later they were up and running, spectre-scopes and EVP detectors in every room sending signals back to the base-camp they had set up in the hallway.

Ashley watched from the garden, kicking at the dried blood on the path, wondering if it would stain and lower the price of the house, then wondering if she cared. The ExorSisters walked out and joined her in the garden to give her a summation of their findings thusfar.

“Well, we have good news and bad news...” said Anna.

“Both are kinda bad, but there's good sides to one.” added Hannah, swiftly being nudged by her sister to shut up.

“So what is it?” Ashley asked.
The ExorSisters looked at one another.

“It's a poltergeist alright, but not your average poltergeist.” said Anna. “Usually poltergeists are multiform, in a bunch of places around your house at once, like they'll knock every book off your shelf in one go. Usually they're incorporeal but can affect the corporal, our world. Usually you just suck them up into a spirit orb and you're done.”

“You're saying 'usually' a lot...” noted Ashley, as a sickly feeling started bubbling in her stomach.

“Yeah...” said Hannah “That's the small problem we're having. Your guy isn't all over one room, he's isolated to one area, then moves to the next. You said he pulled books off the shelf one at a time – that's not how poltergeists roll.”

“But he is a poltergeist?”

“Probably.”

“Yeah.” asserted Anna. “Totally probably. We're just going to need some more time to work out how to deal with this fucker.”

“How much time?”

“Can you find somewhere to stay for the rest of the week?” she asked.

Ashley looked up at the house, the curtains in their bedroom were wide open, and even though there was nobody visibly standing there, she knew she was being watched.

“Yeah.  I'll find somewhere.”

6

'He was covered in blood. So much blood. It might not have been his, but that only made him angrier.'

The narration was also making Jon angrier. He was staring down the three aptrgangrs that had just snatched the kitten from his hands and proceeded to rip the delicate little thing apart in front of his very eyes, showering him with its entrails.

* * * *

Aptrgangrs, or 'monoliths' as Jon called them, based on their sheer size and his lack of confidence about the pronunciation of the old Norse word, were one of the largest unliving sub-species. Standing at least seven foot tall, they preferred destruction over sating the hunger-lust that afflicted the corporeal undead.

Monoliths were often juicers and steroid abusers in their living state, and something in the course of their transition into unlife had accelerated the effect of the drugs coursing through their systems, hulking them out to the size of giant, decaying bears, with the aggressive attitude to match.

* * * *

“You shouldn't have done that.” he said to them, hands at his baton holsters, like an old west gun-slinger.
Jon didn't know the three aptrgangrs by (rotting) face, nor by name, but knew he'd met them before and who they would likely answer to. He recognised them mostly for their sheer size, each of them standing at least two feet taller than him.

“What'cha gonna do 'bout it, law-man?” scoffed the first monolith “Ain't we all got a fleshparty to be at?”.
Jon might not have known their names, but decided he'd call them Denty, Legless and  Eletrotwat.  Withdrawing the two batons from his holsters, he extended them with a flick of his wrists, sparking them to life.
Denty smiled a decaying grin, his green teeth lined with blackened gums. Before the three giants knew what hit him, Denty was on the floor, spitting out pieces of his smashed cheekbone.

“Who's next?” asked Jon.
Legless rushed at him, only to have Jon sidestep, whipping both batons into the front of his kneecaps, one leg cracking as the knee folded forwards, the other ankle detaching completely, left standing straight up on its own, as if posed for a grisly still-life painting. Jon decided the monolith's new name was Hoppy.
Electrotwat growled a fearsome roar, which swiftly became a girlish scream, as two batons impacted with his microscopic testicles, inflicting tens of thousands of volts on impact.

Jon walked away from the three corpses left in various states of injury. He had a meatdrop to be at.

* * * *

The meatdrops were scheduled twice a week in London's Dead City. They barely lasted a day, let alone two to three, but Jon's request for more regular deliveries were denied on every occasion. He arrived just in time for the crane to swing its beak over the walls, pallets laden with meat in its grasp, donated from every supermarket and butcher within the M25.
It navigated to the allotted drop-off point, and hung in the air, awaiting instruction to let its cargo loose. Jon checked his watch and stood well back, the unliving all coming out from their shadows in case the package happened to break upon landing, throwing raw meat across the street, allowing them to nab extra flesh to be had outside of their regular rations.

As the clock struck one, the package fell, dropping through the air gracefully and landing with a thud in the middle of the road, completely in-tact.
Jon could see the creatures of the City were ravenous, and got in front of the pallets before they could pounce.

“Stand back folks, you know the score.”
A small army of unliving grunted and growled around him, angered by his presence.

“Come on now, calm down, you're all going to get your share.”

“We gets a share, but we don't gets equal, do we?” said an unusually eloquent spectre.

“You don't even have a body...” responded Jon, calmly. “How are you going to digest?”

“I likes to look at it, push it about a bit.” said the spectre, in a huff.

“Anyone who can actually eat got a complaint?”
Hands raised up. More hands than Jon was happy with.

“Alright then, I'll sort this out. Can I trust you all not to eat this shipment? You won't have a fleshparty whilst I'm gone?”
The growls and grunts tempered to moans and groans, as Jon went to do some more liaising.

* * * *

The Monolith at the door of the casino didn't have a chance to ask if Jon had an appointment, his face hitting the ground before his lips could part to relay a witticism. Jon stormed into the Necromancer's lair, emptying a bag of rotting meat down on his desk, knocking a series of vials of florescent liquid to the floor.

“For me?” the creature hissed with a sickly smile. “You're too kind.”

“What have I told you about sharing?” Jon asked, not in the mood for bullshit.

“Oh Jonathan, you know how things are...”

“I know there's dead out there who aren't getting enough meat in them, and that's pissing them off some.” said Jon.

“The boys must have miss-weighed, an accident, I assure you.” insisted the Necromancer.

“Right, your boys... get those pricks in line.”

“They barely know basic English, let alone rudimentary two dimensional shapes!” he cackled to himself.

Jon flicked his coat back and rested his hand on his holster

“Come now, Jonathan.” the Necromancer said, in a calm tone. “You know that's not how you and I operate.”

Jon's hand didn't waver as he stared down the creature he was forced to accommodate.

“You tell them who's boss.” said Jon. “I tell them to back off, lie down, roll over, they better fucking listen.”

“I'll do what I can.” the Necromancer replied, the decaying smile that accompanied his words didn't even appear slightly genuine.

“You dropped some shit...” Jon said, bending down to pick up the vials, throwing them on top of the stinking flesh he dumped on the desk.

“When your bouncer wakes up, tell them he can peel your boys off Borough Road.”
Jon turned to leave, confident his message had been received. As he left the casino, he felt increasingly more unsure, something in his gut telling him he'd given the message before, maybe more than once, and each time it had been ignored.

'There was a lot he couldn't remember. But what he did know was that he couldn't trust the Necromancer. When he picked up the vials that cascaded on to the floor, he was sly enough to palm one, and would stop at nothing to work out what was going down behind his back in the shadows of the City.'

7

“More wine?” asked Laura, already pouring before Ashley had the chance to decline.
She had taken sanctuary in her friend's spare room  since the ExorSisters started their work. Laura's husband, Steve, was in the kitchen whilst the two women were decompressing with a second bottle of merlot.

“You'll be back before you know it.” said Laura, emptying the last drops into her already-full glass.

“Yeah.” said Ashley, unsure whether she actually wanted to go return to the house.

“Don't be like that.” Laura said, nudging her. “You've loved that house ever since you first laid eyes on it.”

“Past tense relevant right now...” Ashley said, her words trailing off as she looked away.

“Um, ladies?” said Steve, backing out of the kitchen slowly.

“Yes?”

“Dinner is...” he turned to them, then took another glance at the kitchen counter. “Dinner is dancing on the worktop.”
The two women poked their heads round the corner and watched with an unfamiliar combination of amusement and terror as a large salmon danced the lambada with a head of broccoli.

“Have you maybe thought about going to the Spectre Advice Bureau?” asked Steve.

“I guess that's my next stop.” replied Ashley, watching uncomfortably as the salmon switched the dance up to a tango and leaned over to the dish resting on the stove, returning with a sprig of parsley in its mouth.

* * * *

The next morning Ashley walked up the steps to the angular, angry-looking building that had become The Spectre Advice Bureau, a plaque by the entrance proudly stating:

Established October 15th 1977
Opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth.

Ashley walked in, not convinced that the declaration was something the building and its occupants required a plaque to commemorate, even if the Queen did drop by for five minutes to cut a ribbon.

The inside was as drab as the exterior, as if the seventies had nested, laid eggs, then crawled up and died. She approached the drab off-white reception desk, the clerk interrupting as she opened her mouth, before Ashley could even get a single consonant out.

“Possession, haunting, reanimation or miscellaneous?” he asked, in a monotone drawl.

“Haunting.” Ashley replied.

“Apparition, spook, spectre, poltergeist, ghost or miscellaneous?”

“Poltergeist.”

“That's a P-O-6-4-6 you need then.” the clerk said, leafing through a drawer and pulling out the relevant form.  He slid it over to her.

“It's not a normal poltergeist.” she said. “At least, that's what the exorcists said.”

“Were they government licensed exorcists?”

“I don't know?”

“You'll need to see a specialist then.” he said, snatching the form back. “You'll need a P-O-6-4-7.”  after a further rummage through the drawer, he slid a new form across the counter.

Ashley took a seat and filled the form in, taking it back to the clerk and proceeded to wait three hours for her appointment. Everyone else around her who was waiting seemed to get seen almost instantly.  Eventually her name was called, and she walked along dull grey corridors, into a dark room with a crystal ball at the centre of the table. A large Caribbean woman was sitting behind it.

“Am I in the right place?” Ashley asked.

“Yes y'are.” said the woman. “Got a spirit I see.” she was looking over Ashley's shoulder.

“Is it here?” she asked, turning and seeing nothing behind her. “Is he here?  Is it a he?”

“It is. But not f'long.” The woman's long, plump fingers waved around the ball, and it started to glow.
The light shone into the room, and as Ashley turned her head to hide her eyes from the light, she saw a figure standing behind her.

“Ash!” it said, in a voice like the wind.

“Yes?” she replied, trying to make out the details of the spirit, who mostly looked like a faceless silhouette in the glare of the light.

“It's me, Ash. Can you see me?”

“Who are you?”

“I was trapped for God knows how long, it was so fucking boring! But I'm back! It's going to be okay no--”
His words were cut off as the light reached a crescendo, and in an instant, the apparition was  gone. The orb at the centre of the table now had a faint glow, indicating that the spirit was trapped within the confines of its spherical glass walls.

“There we go, deary.  All done.” she said, pulling a lever by her chair. A chute opened under the orb and it hurtled down a tube hidden beneath the table, speeding through a network of tunnels deep in the bowels of the city.

“But wait!” said Ashley, confused at the spectre's swift departure. “Who was haunting me?”

“Don't cha know, girl?” said the medium, placing a new orb at the centre of the table. “That be y'husband.”

8

The Dead City visitor's centre hadn't been invested in since 1993, and it showed. The paint had peeled itself into intricate networks of patterns, that if one was to look at absent-mindedly, might be mistaken for an old map of the London Underground. Damp, rot and various moulds underneath the cracks bled through with the rainbow colours of the different tube lines.

Jon traced his way from Pimlico to Mornington Crescent as he waited for the Minister to arrive. The old man was late, as always. Jon knew better than to expect him on time, but still insisted on being prompt each and every week.

'He didn't have much routine in his life, but what little there was he appreciated. The job was hard, the life was harder, but it was the only job he ever knew, and the only life he was ever gonna have.'

Finally, after trips from Hendon Central to Cheshunt, Mile End to Shadwell and navigating all the way round the Circle Line, the Minister arrived. The two of them were separated by an inch of bullet proof glass with quarter-inch wide holes drilled for sound, and occasionally contraband, to pass through.

George Grant had been the Minister For Unliving Affairs since the crisis began. Despite changes in parties over the decades, they always insisted on giving him the position. He was there when it started, and if some Members of Parliament had their way, he'd have the job for long after he died. Over forty years on from the day the dead rose, the man was no longer the slender blonde of his formative years, no longer looked as confident and suave as when he was first given the position. The stress was getting to him, hair thinning, gut attempting to burst forth from his shirt, and he knew he wasn't looking his best.

“You're looking good. Lost some weight?” asked Jon.
He hadn't.

“Are you covered in blood?” asked the Minister.

“It's not mine.” said Jon.

“I don't know whether that's a good thing or not...”

“Found a kitten. Poor little fucker didn't last long.”
The old man was concerned for his liaison.

'The government man looked at him with big ol' kind eyes, but he knew better, knew better than to take anyone in charge of this whole mess at face value. It was clear something going down, chances are this guy was in on it, but this was his only man on the outside, so he had to at least feign trust in him.'

George broke the silence left as Jon narrated to himself. “You doing okay in there?” he said, with a smile that appeared genuine.

“Yeah.” Jon said, as he looked into the Minister's kind, fatigued eyes and felt the need to back-peddle. “No, fuck it, no. It's getting worse.”

“How much worse?” asked the old man.

“People breaking in, ghouls getting soul-boners, monolith's killing anything they can get their hands on. It's like a tide of unrest washing up against the shore, and some day soon there's gonna be a wave so big that takes the whole place down.”

“So what's to do?” asked the Minister.

“I think I know the guy kicking the dog...” said Jon. “But I need to know for sure.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the stolen vial, putting it up to one of the holes in the glass.

“That doesn't look like it's going to fit, old chap.” the Minister said.
Jon lined it up with the hole and slotted it through.  The vial fit perfectly in the gap.

“Well I'll be...” said the old man, taking the vial.  He pulled the stopper out and sniffed it, a foul odour filling the air. He plugged it back up and put it in his pocket.

“You'll tell me when you get a report back, right?” Jon said, knowing he shouldn't have to ask.

“Soon as I know, you'll know.” the Minister said, wishing Jon a good week as he got up to leave.

'He turned his back on the elder statesman, the closest thing he had to a boss, and marched on outta there. Despite the coffin-dodger's words of support, he still didn't know if the old bastard could be trusted, and even if he could, he was a senior citizen on the other side of the wall, what use could he really be to someone down on the ground, knee-deep in the shit?'

9

The man without a body was trapped. The light surrounding him was gripping tight, and although he had no physical sensations, he had the impression that whatever little form he had was curled up, surrounded by warmth, as if returned to the womb.

Beyond the light, the orb rushed through the tubes under the city, speeding past abandoned underground stations and sewers until the border of the Dead City was up ahead. Under the walls, the City limits were marked out by a man-made subterranean river leading back to the Thames.

* * * *

The dead, it was often believed, could not cross running water. Whether that was actually true had only been briefly tested in the seventies.

Margaret Thatcher went to the trouble of having the river re-routed nonetheless, because that was the kind of woman she was.

* * * *

Crossing the stream, the orb flew towards the end of the tunnel, emerging out of a sewer in Dead City, careening straight into a building, and smashing on impact, the particles of glass falling to the floor to join the remnants of previously shattered spheres. He burst forth from the light, which swiftly dissipated, and found himself in unfamiliar surroundings. The clean and bright buildings and streets of living London were gone, and all that resided in this new place were vistas of decay and death.
A loudspeaker installed in front of his arrival point squealed at him.

“New arrival, you have a visitor. Please make your way to the visitor's centre.”
The route was signposted, albeit by rusted signs that were barely legible. As he made his way through the city, he was terrified of all those he passed, as zombies, ghouls, and various other sub-species of unliving walked by. Their rotting flesh was unlike anything he had ever witnessed in his life, or post-life for that matter.

When he saw the visitor's centre up ahead he was grateful to find a sanctuary, if only for a short time, and after all his experiences since death, couldn't wait to see Ashley again. Walking straight through the door, he saw her waiting behind the glass.

“Ash!” he cried.
She didn't respond, looking around as she waited anxiously for him to make his appearance. He moved closer to the glass, intending to go straight through it, when inches from its surface he discovered he could move no further. The river running below was doing its job, keeping the dead things in.
He watched her, unable to get nearer, when bulbs above the glass burst to life, illuminating him.

“Oh God.” she said, as the light filled the room, arcing out around what was left of the man she loved, finally giving him form.
He stood before her, no face she could make out, but he was there. A silhouette that felt so familiar, leaning right up against the glass.

“Ashley.” he said, a longing in his whisper of a voice.

“I thought you were--“ she interrupted herself. She thought he was dead, and after all this time, it turned out he was.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Have you been okay?” he had no idea how much time had passed since they had last been together.

“I am. I have.” she replied. “Where have you been all this time?”

“How long has it been?”

“Three years, almost four.”

“Jesus.” he said. “I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault. How could it be your fault?”

“How did I...” he trailed off, couldn't bring himself to say 'die'.

“I don't know...” she said, looking at his undefined, ghostly face. Trying to find the features of the man she loved.
They stared at one another in silence. Neither knowing what to say to the other. Then the light went out, and in an instant, he was gone.

“Where are you?” she asked.

Without the aid of the light, she could no longer see or hear him. The door opened, and she was ushered out by a guard who informed her that their time was up.

“I'll be back next week.” she cried back at him.

There was no response, but she knew he heard her. He watched her leave, and went through the wall back out to the streets of Dead City.

As Ashley left the visitor's centre she passed a stout, balding man, who gave her a polite smile. She turned and watched as he entered, the guard giving him a respectful nod as he ushered him inside. She'd seen him before, but couldn't put her finger on where.

* * * *

The Minister returned to the visiting room and waited patiently. He wasn't a patient man, but the second of his weekly meetings forced patience upon him. As he sat there, charting the cracks in the paint, following the journey from Highbury & Islington to Ruislip, he felt a knot in his gut. The same knot he felt at the same time every week.

After twenty minutes of rapping his fingers on the glass, his foot tapping unconsciously on the floor, the door on the other side of the glass opened. The Necromancer shuffled himself in. Slowly, he took a seat and smiled at the Minister with a rotting grin, the scent of decaying meat on his breath wafting through the holes in the glass.

“Your boy wants to redistribute wealth...” said the creature, taking the lead in the conversation, as he always did. “He's got quite a red streak, it seems.  Didn't think he'd swing that way.”

“That doesn't matter.” said the Minister. “We have bigger problems. Your separation appears to have failed.”

10

Since the brief meeting with his wife, the disembodied spirit was lost, literally and figuratively. He cursed himself for not having inherited his father's gift for memory, fondly recalling how the old man could recall directions and street names, plan routes around the city with the speed and skill of a cab driver. His father used to say he had 'The Knowledge', or at least an abridged version, given that there were entire square miles of the city that were completely blocked off.

Seeking shelter, the spirit had attempted to enter several buildings, only to discover that each of them was populated, and whether they be ghouls or deadites, spectres or wights, each had claimed their domain and did not appear to take kindly to strangers.

As the sun began to set, he settled by a dumpster in an alley, just about giving up finding somewhere to call his own. He knew he didn't actually need a physical shelter. It wasn't like he could feel cold, and rain would pass right through him, but the thought having a roof over his head might give him the subconscious veneer of having some remaining thread of humanity. The shadows of the city stretched out as night drew forth, and the nocturnal creatures began to stir.

Hidden behind the dumpster he hoped and prayed he wouldn't have to see anything hideous. If he could just last a week he would get to see Ashley again, and if only for a short while, could pretend that things were normal.

His prayers were not to be answered. The dumpster began to shake as something inside it started to wake. The hatch flew open with an almighty clang and bursting forth to tower over him was what he could only describe as a monster. Its flesh was melted charcoal-black, fingertips of raw bone carved into jagged points. It loomed above him and unlocked its jaws with a clack, swinging them wide like a snake, revealing cracked, sharpened teeth as it twisted and turned its head towards him, eye sockets hollow, but still seeing somehow.

“Ssssssoul!” it said, lifting long, spindly legs over its shoulders, as if it were performing in a disgusting circus act.

All four appendages clutching on to the lip of the dumpster, it stretched its body towards him, and started sucking deep at his essence. The spirit felt like he was being ripped apart atom by atom, consciousness draining, thoughts slowing. He was unable to move or act. Darkness cascaded around his field of vision and he could hear his last thoughts echoing through his disembodied mind.

'Three years after I die and I'm actually going to be gone...'

From somewhere beyond the shadows, a series of loud fleshy thwacks rang out. The darkness steadily subsided, and slowly, the alley came back into view. He looked around at the teyollocuani, the soul-eater that was formerly standing over him, to discover it was now in several pieces across the alley. Its head was lying across the road from the dumpster, desperately trying to suck at his spirit, but failing elegantly.

He looked up at a shadow standing over him. A man in a trilby and overcoat, extendable batons in each hand.

“What the fuck?” asked the spirit.

“I just saved you from... well, more death than you're unliving right now.” said Jon, steely pride in his voice.

“I meant what the fuck are you doing in my Goddamn body?!”

11

Mary Gilligan was reading by the fire. It wasn't cold, but she had always liked the way the light and shadows danced around the room. The mantle above the flames was laden with photos of her long departed husband and their still-missing son. Having been retired for some time, she now found solace leafing through the library of over a thousand books her partner of over five decades had left her.

The doorbell rang, and the warmth of the fire proved itself only skin-deep, as a chill ran through her weary old bones. It was after dark, and she was expecting nobody. She recalled the stories that were often on the news, of old ladies answering the door at night, only to be snacked upon by some unspeakable fiend. She dared not think of it further, for fear of her blood pressure.

Another ring, followed by a rat-a-tat on the door. Whoever it was didn't seem to be going away, and they definitely wanted her attention. Cautiously, she walked to the door, as another knock of knuckles rapped on the old wood.

“Who is it?” she asked with a tremor in her voice, trying to contain her fear.

“It's me.” said the voice on the other side. “It's Ashley.”
The pensioner breathed a sigh of relief, unbolting the door, pulling back deadbolts and finally the latch. As the door swung open, Ashley was greeted by a warm smile inviting her embrace. She held back her combination of joy and sadness and simply hugged the old woman.

Mary insisted on boiling the kettle, even though Ashley declined tea, and put out a selection of biscuits that had been waiting for someone to eat them since long before the two even met.

“Mary, will you sit down?” she asked, taking the woman's frail hand.

“Oh, hush girl, I'm not that old.”

“No, please.” she led her mother-in-law to the chair by the fire, and pulled up another opposite her. “It's about Jon.” she continued.

“He loved you, you know that?” she said, her big old eyes becoming glassy.

“I know.” said Ashley, trying to talk over a lump in her throat. “Now, you've got to listen to me, okay?”

“Of course, dear.”

“I saw him today.”
The old woman said nothing, her eyes thick with tears, a smile of false teeth wide on her face.

“He's...” Ashley didn't want to say it, saying it would only hurt the elderly woman she adored. “When he left, when he disappeared, he didn't do that on purpose.”

“You spoke to him?” Mary asked.

“He, he doesn't remember what happened. But somehow, he...” again, she couldn't use the d-word. She held her mother-in-law's hand tight and looked into her eyes, both knowing what she was going to say, and both on the verge of tears.

“He passed away.”

The two women cried by the fireside, their tears glistening as the warm light pirouetted shadows around the room. Ashley stayed with Mary until the old woman was too exhausted to cry any longer. She put the fire out and helped her out of her chair, stopping as her eyes met the mantle.

“I knew I'd seen him...” she said to herself.

“What's that dear?”
Ashley was staring at the photos. In one of them, alongside Mary, between her husband and a younger Jon was the Minister.

“Who's he?” she asked, pointing at the man.  The photo was taken at a time when he was thinner, his hair still mostly in-tact, but it was unmistakably the same person she saw earlier at the visitor's centre.

“That's George.” said Mary. “He was Mike's best friend back since they were at the ministry together. Best of friends through to the end.” she smiled, lingering on happier memories.

“George? But I've seen him somewhere else.”

“On the telly maybe, he does something in government still, although I don't know what these days. Don't like to watch the news too much, there's never anything cheery happening.”

Ashley offered to help her mother-in-law up to bed, but she refused. As she wished the old lady goodnight, she realised she was walking away with more questions to be asked about Jon's disappearance than she had arrived with. But finally, after almost four years, she had someone to address them to.

12

'It was just another ghost, another apparition haunting him like all the others. He knew that, but he didn't like the feeling he got when the thing talked to him. He knew it was just another mad, fucked up spirit, a lost soul trying to mess with his head, but it was starting to make him question –'

“Would you stop for a second?” asked the disembodied spirit, as he chased after Jon.
Jon was mid-strut and trying to get an good internal narration going, but every time he hit a flow, his pursuer interrupted.

'It was making him ask questions; how come he could see ghosts? What was it about him that was special, when most people couldn't see the damned bastards? Was it--'

“Hold up, we need talk about this!”

“There's nothing to talk about.” said Jon, hastening his stride at the sound of groaning up ahead.

'Was it why he was given the job? That question only made him ask more questions. How long had he had the job? He couldn't remember, there was so much he couldn't remember and –'

The narration was stopped once again, but it wasn't due to the spirit haunting him. He turned the corner to find six zombies trawling the streets.

“Hey!” he yelled to them. “You know the Goddamn rules...”

* * * *

The rules of Dead City, few as they were, stated that zombies weren't allowed to roam in groups larger than three. They had a habit of herding, and once that started, one man alone had no chance stopping a stampede.

The Dead City in Shanghai once had to bring the army in to stop a herd, after a thousand zombies grouped together in a matter of minutes. After four days of walking in circles, the creatures finally found their way to the wall, climbing on top of one another to reach the peak, falling over the top and exploding on to the streets below like water balloons of organs and viscera. One by one they burst on the street until there were enough bodies and entrails to cushion the fall of the others, at which point they started stalking the streets of Living Shanghai.

Of course, a liaison keeping zombie groupings down was easier said than done. They had a hard time remembering rules, let alone counting to three.

* * * *

The zombies were not pleased at Jon's request, and lunged at him. A few flicks of his wrist, and half of them were on the ground, the remaining three looking at their fallen comrades, confused.

“That's three.” explained Jon. “Three on the ground.” he indicated to their fallen brethren. “And three of you standing, you understand?”
They grunted in acceptance. Whether they actually understood was another matter entirely.

“What are you, some kind of fix-it man for the pulse-retarded? Presenting Sesame Street for the undead?” asked the spirit.

“I'm the living liaison.”said Jon.

“How'd we get that shitty job?”

“There is no 'we'.” Jon insisted. “There's just me. I don't know who the fuck you are, but you're not me, we're not an 'us'.”

“Well how'd you end up in this shitty job?”

“I...” Jon faltered. “It's my job, It's been my job for as long as I can remember.”

“And how long can you remember?”
Jon didn't answer. He didn't know. He started his walk back up with a swift stride, in the hope of avoiding further questions, and their source.

“You know I don't breath, right?” said the spirit. “You're going to get winded before I will...”
Ignoring his stalker, Jon continued his walk trying not to listen to his unwanted companion.

Distracted from the job at hand, he didn't see or hear the teyollocuani with its recently reattached head standing in the shadow of the doorway. It reached out with a bony hand, dislocated jaw hanging, ready to suck the life from his body. Whilst Jon was distracted, his ghost was not, and as he saw the monster lunge for his body, cried out as he tried to push himself out of the way.

The push never happened. As he impacted with his corporeal form, he found himself sucked into his former body, finally able to feel, to move with muscle and bone. The momentum of the collision between the two pushed Jon's body out of the grasp of the creature, it caught air and turned to try again. Jon didn't know what to do. He didn't have the memories of the man who had walked in his skin whilst he was in the corridor. So he ran.

'There were no dames to rescue, but there's always some kind of trouble out on the streets...'

The narration played out in his head like a voice-over, whilst Jon's feet hammered on the pavement.

'What the hell is this?' his own thought chimed in, over the top of the narration.

'The big bad city needed someone to stand up for it, needed someone who was willing to do what it took to keep it safe.'

'Seriously, what the fuck?'

Jon stopped running, lungs aching, heart punching him in the chest. He relished every ache, all the pains. He had no idea how much he missed having a body, and as he felt a tickle in his nose, looked forward to the impending nasal explosion. He sneezed and found himself thrown out of the body, like a giant sentient germ.

“What the actual, genuine fuck was that?”

“I remember!” said Jon. “I remember  everything!”

Jon's pace was fast, but he let his spirit keep up with the strut. This time he had no need for a fictional life of narration. The memories were fading, but he still held on to pieces that were most important.

“She needs us.” he said to his ghost.

“Ashley?  Yeah, she's needed us for almost four years.”

“Four years? Has it been four years?” their combined memories were still missing a chunk of time.

“Yeah, tell me about it... Where are we going?”

“We've got to get out of here, and only one person knows how.”
They turned the corner and walked towards the casino. The bouncer was raring for a fight, having been beaten down earlier in the day without the chance to throw a punch. Jon had him knocked to the floor, swallowing his own teeth before he had a chance to raise his fist.

“I don't remember being so violent.” said the ghost, raising an ethereal eyebrow.

“Yeah, we've learnt a few things since you went out for a stroll...”
Kicking open the door of the Necromancer's lair, the creature smiled, welcoming them in despite the intrusion.

“Always a pleasure, my dear Jonathan, and who's your friend?”

“He's me. I need a favour.”

“Straight to the chase, aren't you? I'm always happy to lend a hand, as well you know.”

“Quid pro quo, no doubt.” said the ghost.

“Not for my favourite liaison!” hissed the creature. “What can I do for you, dear boy?”

“I need a way out.” he said.

“Nobody leaves a Dead City, you know that.”

“There are ways out.” said Jon. “There are always ways out.”

“Well,” the beast said, feigning rumination. “I've heard of tunnels underground, but if you believe the stories, only the living may pass over the rivers that run beneath...”

“Where's the entrance?” asked the Jons.

* * * *

Before they could leave, there were affairs that had to be put in order. Jon returned to the office and instructed Dildo to take his place and do his rounds whilst he was gone.

“You understand what you need to do?” Jon asked Dildo.

“Know who killed me?” asked Dildo.

“Dildo, you know how you died.” Jon indicated to the note in his pocket.

“Paper kill me?”

“Pay attention.” he said, tapping Dildo on the forehead. “You must protect the city while I am gone. Do you understand?”

“He doesn't understand.” said the apparition.

“He does.” Jon insisted.

“Coffee?” Dildo inquired.

“Jesus, give me a second.” the ghost said, jumping straight at Dildo, the impact pulling him inside the zombie.

“I real dumb. Hole in head break brain.” he said, followed by a sneeze, releasing the spirit.

“Dildo protect city.” he said, this time of his own volition.

“Good. We'll be back soon.” said Jon, putting his trilby on Dildo's head and making for the door.

“Mr. G, y'aint introduced me to your sexy spirit friend.” whined Sheila, with a eyelidless wink at the ghost.

“He's me, and even if he had a body, he's not going to sleep with you.” said Jon as they left the office.

* * * *

Until they entered the sewer, Jon had never been envious of a ghost before. The spook happily trundled through the tunnels, whilst his corporeal counterpart tried to quell his natural desire to vomit copiously and repeatedly. Despite being entertained by his living-half's suffering, the ghost thought it best to try and distract him.

“What's you last memory?” he asked.

“Before the sewer stench started melting every cell in my brain?”

“Before all this. What do you remember now?”

“My dad.”

“Our dad.” the spirit corrected.

“He was sick.” said Jon

“I think he was just old.” said the ghost.

“He was in bed, attached to a thousand machines, that seems like sickness, not age.” said Jon.

“You'd think we'd remember that...” said his ghost.

“You'd think we'd remember a lot of things.” Jon said, hearing something up ahead. “Hold up.”

“What?”

“I'm almost definitely going to have to vomit. And I'm going to aim it right where you're haunting.”

“You could just say 'standing'.”
Up ahead, amidst a tower of shit, was a Shitite.

* * * *

Some people die of old age, others die of sickness, and then there are those who die drowning in a toilet full of shit. Jon compared it to something he half-recalled Freud saying, that your first sexual experience digs in to your mind and sows seeds for your future fetishes and kinks.

The Shitite, as rare as it was, was the unliving version of that. It lived in shit, it bathed in shit, and it ate shit.

* * * *

“I'm really glad I don't have a nose.” said the ghost.

“I'm pretty close to cutting mine off.” said Jon.

“Wouldn't that just act like larger, bloodier nostrils?”

“Maybe I could punch myself in the face until I seal it shut.” Jon said,  reaching to his holsters as the Shitite raised its head.

“Lay-zon?” it said, its malformed mouth teeming with excrement. “Liaison!” it said again, excitedly, after swallowing the mouthful.

“You!” said Jon, with a smile and faux recognition. He turned to his ghost and shrugged, then looked back at the shit-beast, feigning a memory of the creature.

“This'a good man here.” said the Shitite, indicating Jon to the ghost. “Save me from'a monsta'!”
Jon couldn't recall, but was happy to accept the credit, assuming the thing didn't touch him.

“He'sa good man.” the Shitite said again, slapping Jon on the back.
Jon shivered, and felt a little bit of vomit crawl up his throat. He wondered if he'd ever be able to get the smell out of his coat.

“Seen a river round here?” Jon asked, trying not to throw up in the friendly dead thing's face.

“I gots'a river right ova'there.” it said, pointing beyond the mountain of crap.

“Great. Let's go!” said the ghost, with enthusiasm that Jon wanted to stab in the face repeatedly.
Whilst his ghost floated through the shit, unfazed, Jon tried to walk around the pile, but found himself wading deeper and deeper. The filth was soon coming up beyond his knees, then beyond his thighs, and soon nestling up to his crotch with every further step.

“What's taking so long?” the ghost asked, prancing around in front of him, mocking his body with its incorporeal form.
Jon grabbed his spirit, and the ghost found himself possessing his own body again.

“Oh God I'm going to die of this smell!” said Jon.

'At least if you shit yourself after you die, nobody will notice.' thought the voice inside his head.

“I hate you so much.” he said to himself, as he waded to the bank of the river, throwing up repeatedly, trying not to have to walk through his own vomit on top of the shit.

When they arrived at the river, self-possessed Jon put his legs in, trying to soak off the shit, but the stench remained.

“We should have brought some spare clothes.” he said.
There was no response. He wasn't listening to himself.

“Hey! Other me! Pay attention!”
Corporeal Jon was alert again, and unable to control his mouth, replied inside his own head.

'What?'

“Where'd you go?  We're about to cross.”

'I was in our memories, trying to work out what happened to our dad.'

“Well pay attention. This is going to work, right? It's not going to make me explode or anything?”

'One way to find out.'

“This best not fucking vaporise me.” the ghost said to himself.

Still possessing his own body, he dipped into the river and started to wade across.

Both Jons were still in tact when they clambered up on the river bank.

'It worked?!'

“Don't sound so surprised.” said Jon's possessor, before suddenly being sneezed out directly at the river. Unable to pass through the invisible barrier, he hit it with a resounding thwack that entertained Jon to no end.

13

The streets of living London were like a walking through a half-remembered dream, a distant memory made flesh that despite having physical form, didn't seem real for Jon. The buildings and roads were all so clean, so alive compared to everything back behind the wall. The pre-dusk light was gleaming off windows that had actually been maintained, washed and shined, rather than left to decay like the creatures that stalked the streets back in the City they left behind.

He fought the urge to narrate. The crutch, the fantasy, had kept him distracted for too long. He needed to be in reality, let his identity sink in, now that it had finally been returned to him.

It was too late in the day for public transport, the last trains and buses having arrived at their destinations before the sun began to set. Curfew was in effect, albeit poorly policed, so the two Jons had the streets of London to themselves.

The walk was going to take hours, but corporeal-Jon was used to long walks. His daily circumference of the wall was around eleven miles, so the four from where they emerged at Tower Bridge was barely a stretch. His ghost was not enjoying the journey, the two of them spent most of the time bickering about which route would be faster.  As much as Jon wanted to see Ashley, he also wanted to absorb the living, breathing side of the city again. It was a revelation to see the monuments and architecture that had, until recently, been nothing more than a haze buried in a vault of memory. He navigated the two of them along the banks of the Thames, then up Shaftesbury Avenue to Piccadilly Circus. It all felt so familiar, and yet somehow didn't. As if the years in the decay and filth of Dead City had become more a part of him than the world he actually belonged – or at least the world he thought he belonged until he started being haunted by himself. Even though he had a pulse he wondered, 'Does having a disembodied ghost of myself mean I'm nothing but yet another citizen of the walls?'

Looping around for Trafalgar Square, they cut through Soho and Fitzrovia, eventually finding the familiar streets of Camden, leading up to Chalk Farm.

“Are you taking us on the scenic route to sight-see, or to put off the inevitable?” his ghost asked, speaking the very thoughts he was trying to ignore.
Jon didn't respond. They were close now, and his stride slowed as they drew nearer to their destination. His borough became his neighbourhood, his neighbourhood became his road, his road became his house. They stared at the home they had lived in for years with the woman they loved.

“What if she moved?” asked Jon.

“She hasn't.” said his ghost. “I... checked.”

Jon turned his head to his disembodied self, eyebrows raised.

“Checked?” he asked.

“I may have accidentally haunted her when I first got back. But I apologised after!”

“Great. So she knows we're... she thinks we're fucking dead?”

“Probably should have mentioned that, huh?”
Jon rolled his eyes and approached the door. He took a deep breath, fought the urge to walk away, and tentatively lifted his finger to the doorbell, getting momentarily distracted by a nose-shaped dent in the wood, paint chipped from an impact. He turned back to his ghost, who shrugged.

Ashley was taking her single plate, single knife and single fork to the sink. This is how it had been for the last three years, and having discovered that Jon had passed away, it was how it would continue to be until she could find a way to move on. Perhaps she'd have just a few more visits with him, she thought, for catharsis. Then the healing could begin.

The doorbell rang, and the plate hit the floor before Ashley knew she dropped it, smashing into pieces by her feet. She jumped back narrowly missing a shard, reaching for the kitchen table for stability, only to lean on a chair, which she took down with her. The falling and caterwauling concluded and she sat up, laughing at herself. She was surrounded by the chair and smashed crockery, the knife within sight, and hidden somewhere was the fork she would knew she would inevitably step on. Whenever she discovered it – or whenever it discovered the sole of her foot – she'd laugh about it all over again. The laughter, as real and spontaneous as it was, soon gave in to tears, as she recalled how much Jon would have laughed at and with her. The tears were brought to a stop when she heard a crash at the front door. As adrenaline started pumping and instinct took over, she grabbed the knife and was on her feet. A single pair of footsteps were rushing towards to the kitchen, and she prepared herself to lunge.

'Aim at the brain.' she told herself 'That's what they always say. Whatever manner of dead thing, they always like having their brains in-tact. It wouldn't kill the thing, but it would slow it down.'

She hid behind the door and could feel her heart pounding in her chest as a hand came round the corner, a head following, seeing the smashed plate, kneeling down to investigate. She lifted the knife above her head and crept behind the figure, preparing to stab. Then she felt her knife-wielding arm drop to her side. Her body was no longer responding to commands, consciousness locked in the back of her mind, watching through her eyes as she put the knife down on the counter, unable to pick it back up.

'Sorry about this.' Jon's voice said, echoing in her head.

Jon turned to see her.

“Ash...” he said, standing up.

“Not quite.” said the ghost, speaking through Ashley's mouth.

“Fuck's sake. Stop possessing our wife.”

“She was going to stab us!”

“Get out of her. Now.” he ordered.
Ashley sneezed, and the spirit escaped. She stared at Jon, reaching for the knife again.

“It's me, Ash.” he said.

“You're dead!”

“Yes and no...”

“But you're a ghost.”

“And I'm also not a ghost. It's a long story.”

“And we don't have all the pieces.” added the disembodied spirit.

“Right.” he said.

“What?”

“She can't hear me.” the ghost said.

“Of course.  You can't see him - the ghost me. He said we don't have all the pieces.”

“So you're alive, and you're dead, you haunted me, hit a woman in the face with a door and made a fish dance with broccoli?”
He turned to his ghost.

“Missed some of that out, huh?” he said

“Do you know how difficult it is to be creative at haunting?” his ghost replied.
He turned back to Ashley.

“I annoy the hell out of me. How did you put up with us?”
She smiled and took a step towards him, screaming as her foot became impaled on a fork.
All three of them laughed harder than they'd laughed in a long time.

14

Dildo was patrolling the City walls. He was ready for anything, but also likely to forget what he was doing at any given moment. It had been a quiet night, and nobody seemed to need saving. He trundled through the streets until coming across the top half of a fellow zombie.

“Need help!” said the zombie.
Dildo looked at him, cocking his head with a quizzical expression on his face as he tried to remember what he was meant to do.

“Me help?” he said, as some vague memories returned, reaching into the hole in his head and pulling out a bloody notepad and pen.

“Need help!” said the zombie.
Dildo scrawled this down in the pad, as he had seen Jon do countless times.

“Me help!” he replied.

“Need help!”
He continued writing.

“Me help?” he asked, with intense concentration in his scribblings.

“Need help!” replied the half-zombie.
Dildo showed him his notes; a stickman with a hole in his head, and a half-stickman with a smile on his face.

“Me helped!” said Dildo, handing his half-friend the picture and walking away, triumphantly stuffing the notepad and pen in his cranial cavity. Unfortunately, he poked the bit of brain that was holding on to the memory of any of that interaction, and forgot it instantly.
He continued to walk through the streets, returning as best he could to the office. Passing the casino, he watched as monoliths from all over the city entered.

“Keep walking, pig.” the bouncer said to Dildo, as he waited for the last of the giants to walk in.

He followed them inside, closing the door behind, leaving Dildo out on the street.

The Necromancer emerged from his lair to the address the assembled creatures.

“Nice to see you all so prompt.” he hissed, as the bouncer locked the door and crossed the room to stand by the side of his superior. “We've got the liaison out the way for a short while, so it's time we stepped up our game, and reminded everyone in town who's in charge.”
He walked over to a slot machine standing against the wall, and signalled for the bouncer to push it out the way, revealing a room full of meat.

“One for everyone, tell them it's a gift to apologise for the liaison's errors in rationing these past months.”
The monoliths entered and started taking meat by the handful, a luminescent yellow residue left on the shelves. The Necromancer smiled to himself, and began to cackle as his minions departed. Soon, the city would be his, and not just the Dead City, but the whole of London.

15

Ashley and the Jons had spent all night talking, catching up on their lives since his disappearance, and remembering the better times. Enjoying each other's company so much, they didn't even notice the sun had come up. Ashley's alarm rang from up in the bedroom, informing them it was 7am, and she darted to her feet.

“Shit, I've got to get ready...” she said.

“What for?” the Jons said.

“I've got a meeting with the Minister For Unliving Affairs.”

“George?” he asked.

“You remember him?”

“Of course, I see him every week...” said Jon.

“Do you remember him before that? When he was friends with your father?” she asked.
He didn't. Neither of the Jons did.

“Then you're coming with me.” she said. “Shoving you in his face outside of the City walls is sure to rattle him, right?”

“Yeah.” said Jon.

“But have a shower first.” she said. “There's no nice way to say this, but you smell like someone shat on your pants, after you shat in your pants.”

The journey to The Ministry For Unliving Affairs was swifter than the Jons' walk the previous night, as daytime brought with it the option of public transport. They took the train from Chalk Farm straight to Charing Cross and walked through the sea of people to Whitehall. The Houses Of Parliament were standing proud on the horizon as they approached The Ministry. The former War Office had been repurposed in the eighties, given that as the crisis moved into its second decade, wars were less of a concern than the return of the deceased.

As they turned into Horse Guard's Avenue, a statue of Spencer Compton stared ahead at the Household Cavalry Museum with a steely gaze. He was draped in a long flowing cloak, a hand resting on the knife at his hip, a pose Jon was embarrassed he had adopted so many times when playing his noir-cum-action-hero persona.
They entered and the Jons held back as Ashley approached the desk to talk to the man on the reception. He checked with the Minister's secretary, then led them up an ornate staircase, lit from above by a skylight at the centre of a stone dome. They walked through corridors that seemed to span longer than the length of the building.

“There's over two and a half miles of corridors here,” he proudly and cheerfully informed, spouting off facts about the building to pass the time. “These were renovated when the building became The Ministry,” he added. “As you can tell, they don't quite match the elegance of the original 1906 features of the entrance and the facade.”

They smiled politely, but he could tell they weren't interested. He turned a corner and gestured to the Minister's office. Ashley took the lead as the Jons waited behind the door, they wanted the Minister to be at ease before revealing their presence.

“Miss Gilligan!” said the Minister, rising from his desk to greet her. He approached her and gave her a bear hug, which she was not expecting. “Such a pleasure to see you after all these years!”
He pulled a chair out and smiled as he waited for her to take a seat. She did so, noting how the chair was significantly lower than his own, and watched as he returned to his side of the desk.
The large man towered over her, arms resting on the old mahogany, fingers interlinked, with a warm smile on his face that she presumed was forced.

“I heard of young Jon's passing and relocation to The Walls, I'm so very sorry.”

“Are you now?” said Jon as he walked into the room, finally revealing himself.

“Jesus fuck!” said the Minister, as Jon took a seat next to his wife.

“Do the voters know you use that kind of language?” asked Ashley.

“How can you be here?” asked the Minister. “What are you doing here? You can't be here!”

“City's not as locked up tight as you thought it was.” said Jon.

“But you can't leave! If you leave then there's no-one to keep him in line...” he trailed off.

“Who?” asked the ghost.

“Who?” reiterated Jon.

“You've got to understand...” said the Minister. He was flustered, and beginning to perspire. “We only wanted what was best...”
The ghost was getting bored, and threw the Minister's papers from his desk, blowing them across the room as if in a gust of wind.

“Best not piss off my husband's ghost.” said Ashley. “He can be a bit of a dick.”
The ghost nodded in agreement, and Jon did the same. The Minister looked around the room for the spectre he could not see, and composed himself.

“It wasn't our fault. Jon's father and I had the best of intentions... two thousand of our boys were over there, not to mention all the yanks.”

“Over where?” asked Jon.

“Vietnam... You've got to understand, we couldn't officially do anything... our chaps were switching nationalities, signing up with the Kiwis and Ozzies to fight Communism, but we were chairs of The Geneva Convention! We had to be neutral.”

“What are you saying?” said Ashley.

“They were losing tens of thousands to the conflict, we had to do something...” he trailed off, trying to find the words. “We had reports from our boys in Malaysia. They had met a man who claimed to be able to help, keep the troops fighting --”

“-- by stopping them being able to die.” Jon interrupted.
The Minister was pale, sweating profusely. He tried to swallow with a dry throat, and went to his mantle, pouring himself a whisky from a crystal decanter. Without offering the others a glass, he knocked it back and attempted to compose himself.

“At first it worked a trick, our boys, the yanks' boys, they'd get gunned down and jump straight back up... but then Charlie – sorry – the Vietnamese started getting back up too. Before we knew it, there were reports in our back yard about hospital patients being pronounced dead and walking straight out of the morgue, then the reports were coming in from all over the world...”
He sat back in his chair and slumped down, staring at the floor.

“We didn't know...” he said, running out of steam, the confession exhausting him.

“But why me?” asked Jon. “Why did you put me in charge of the city?”

“And what about me?” asked his ghost.

“Yeah, what about him?” Jon added, indicating to his disembodied self.

“Sins of the father...” said the Minister. “He kept it to himself for all those years... through the chemo and the surgeries, but when he finally gave in to the inevitable, when he signed the forms to have his body destroyed and spirit exorcised, and lay there on his deathbed, he confessed it all to you. Confessed his part in the return – my part in it all – and your first reaction was to make it public.”

He looked at their faces, the guilt driving a dagger into his gut, drying his whisky-lubricated throat as he tried to continue.

“He told me there was a way to fix it... a way to make you forget, not kill you, I never wanted that. We'd just repurpose you, put you to use elsewhere. It was a simple ritual in the end, barely took us twenty minutes...”

“You separated him from his spirit?” Ashley asked.

“Who?” asked Jon. “Who told you?”
The Minister looked like he was either going to pass out or throw up, or perhaps a combination of the two. He breathed deeply, and coughed up the words.

“The Necromancer.”

16

Sitting in his lair, the Necromancer smiled to himself. After his years of scheming, waiting, and minor hiccups along the way, his plan was finally coming to fruition.

“Would you and the chaps be so kind as to run down to the sewers...” he said to the bouncer. “It's almost time to stop that pesky river from running.”
As the monolith left, he watched the clock on his desk as the seconds ticked towards twelve. His tainted meat would have been delivered and devoured by now, and he withdrew a luminescent yellow candle from his desk draw, striking a match and melting the base, placing it upright in front of him.

As the seconds continued to tick away, he lit the wick and began to laugh.

Throughout the city the unliving rose, attention rapt by unknown forces. Their wills revoked one by one, and whether they normally acted with sentient minds or gut instincts, both were pushed to the back of their minds. They were locked in a glass box in which they could see through their own eyes, but their bodies were wiped clean of self-determinism. An army of tabula rasa, completely at his command.

* * * *

Outside the walls, Sarah sat at her father's bedside in the hospital, watching daytime television with the old man she had saved by means she would never reveal. She held his hand tightly, so grateful to have him in her life for more than the few days the doctors advised.

His grip on her hand weakened, and the wails of the flatline screamed out across the room. She got up to find a doctor, but before she could call out for attention, he had grabbed her, pulled her close, and taken a deep bite out of her neck. Blood sprayed across the room as he devoured his daughter, and by the time the resuscitation team were alerted and entered, she too had risen, and the pair were upon them.

* * * *

In a train leaving Baker Street, passengers tried to look away and ignore three of their fellow commuters dropping to the ground. As reluctant volunteers left their precious seats to offer assistance, they swiftly regretted it, as chunks were taken out of their arms and faces.

When the train arrived at Regents Park station four minutes later, the windows were thick with blood. The crowds on the platform took steps back as the doors lingered shut, moans and groans echoing beyond the threshold. With a mechanical sigh the doors parted, and the dead burst forth from the carriage, devouring everyone they came in contact with.

* * * *

All over London, those seemingly gifted with extra days of life from a friend or relative who had been so bold as to venture over the walls passed away. When they returned to unlife moments later, they were hungry for flesh, intent on spreading their condition as far and wide as they could.

* * * *

The Minister's confession had been over for minutes, and silence settled over the room. The Jons and Ashley had run out of questions, and were contemplating what to do with the information when their quiet was interrupted by the Minister's phone ringing, which he answered reluctantly.

“Yes?” he croaked with a parched throat. “What?”

The speaker only had time to say a few words before the old man was on his feet, grabbing his coat and making his way to the door.

“What's happened?” asked Jon.

“I'll be back. I've just got to... I'll fix this and I'll be back.”
He rushed out, leaving the three clueless in his wake.
Ashley went to the window and looked out over Whitehall. A man walked out of the neighbouring Department Of Energy covered in blood, and lunged across the street towards a group of tourists. He exploded in a mist of blood as an armoured police van descended the street at speed, careening straight through him, presumably en route to secure Parliament.

“Contraband.” said Jon. “He's been having people break into the City, desperate people, and I overlooked it. Thought it was just about money or influence... but it was for this...”

“So he's been helping people?” asked Ashley.

“Until it was time to London into an all-you-can-eat buffet...”

“How's the Minister going to 'fix' this?” she said. “Round them all up? Is that even going to work?”

“Round them up and then open the gates...” added Jon's ghost.

“And when the gates open...” said Jon. “He's going to be waiting.”

17

The undead had begun herding, but the early warning alarms were doing their job. The living population had migrated to shelters in public buildings, rammed into panic rooms under libraries and hospitals, offices and council departments. They had been assigned two guards and two guards only. Each had been instructed to stop any unliving that might enter, stop the living from leaving before the sirens stopped their cries, and take the other guard out should they be bitten.

The police had run regular training regimes for an unliving uprising, and had cascaded on to the streets covered head to toe in riot gear. No skin was left bare, every point water-tight in case fluids started flying.  And fluids were bound to fly.

The team at Regent's Park had stormed the train tunnels from either end, forcing the herd out onto the street, where an 18-wheeler ice truck was waiting for them. Riot shields at either side from the door to the ramp, they were pushed into the back of the truck and sealed up inside. Armed escorts took them through the empty streets of living London, across to Waterloo Bridge, where they were joined by other trucks, honking horns to one another in celebration of their successful captures. The run had gone as smoothly as any drill they had ever carried out.

As the trucks rumbled under the bridge to Waterloo East station, they stopped at the intersection of Waterloo Road and The Cut. The buildings nearby had long since been flattened, and at the former site of The Old Vic Theatre lay the gates to The Wall. The trucks lined up, awaiting orders to back up towards the gate one-by-one and deposit their volatile cargo. The Minister stood behind a wall of police, operating a walkie talkie with one hand and loud-hailer with the other.

“No word from inside sir.” said an officer. “And the cameras seem to be down.”

“When were they last checked?” the Minister inquired.

“No idea sir.”

“Just great... Is there a bird in the air? Get me eyes.” he said, lifting the loud-hailer. “Citizens of Dead City,” he said, his words amplified with a squawk of interference. “Please step back from the gates, we are about to induct new occupants.”
He waited a minute for his orders to be obeyed and turned to the officer who was communicating on the radio.

“Where are my eyes?” he bellowed.

“Flying over now, sir.”
A helicopter flew over the wall, despite the no-fly-zone that had been established for decades. Times like these meant rules were going to be bent. There was chatter from the radio, and the officer passed the messages on.

“We've got eyes on one occupant, but he's well back from the wall.”

“Excellent.” said the Minister, bringing the walkie to his lips. “Give the knock.” he said, using the code phrase he and Jon's father had come up with years earlier.

From stations on either end of the living side of the gate, two guards inserted keys into slots and turned them. A further two men approached keypads and typed in six digit codes. The gate began to murmur and rumble, internal locks buried deep behind the rusting metal facade whined and twisted open, as did two cabins on either side of the gate. A further two guards entered each of the cabins, grabbing levers and waiting for the order.

“Lower the drawbridge.” he said, the code phrase that the gate operators hated to hear. The levers were pulled, and the gate screamed mechanically as its cogs turned, begging for oil. Reluctant metal grated at itself whilst it struggled to hoist the gate aloft. Deep below the city, the opposite was happening, steel walls extending from the ceiling of the tunnels, a dam coming down to stop the flow of the re-directed Thames, halting its progress for the duration of the induction of new residents of the City. Above ground, as the steel began to lift into the air, a figure walked towards the opening, its cloak brushing against the ground behind every step.

“We've got movement.” said the officer, relaying the helicopter's observation.

“Is it still just one?” asked the Minister.
The officer confirmed. The Minister bent himself down to look under the gate and saw the Necromancer's decrepit face beaming back at him from within the City.

“Nice to see you, old chap.” hissed the monster as he slowly walked towards the gate.

“Got a delivery for you. Might want to stand back.” said the Minister, coldly.

“Oh I do hope it's something nice!” said the Necromancer. “I've been meaning to put in a requisition form for a new toaster.” he cackled, continuing to edge closer to the entrance to the City.

“I said stand back!” he ordered, the words clogging in his throat as the Necromancer disobeyed him, passing the walls and standing proud in the city of the living.
He looked around, surveying the spectacle, surrounded by police with riot gear, who were in turn surrounded by trucks full of unliving.

“Oh, the time for orders is over, as adorable as they were.” he sneered, looking at the armed police surrounding him. “Hope all that training pays off, chaps...”
With a flourish of his hands, the rear doors of the trucks burst open, police overrun by the undead lunging at them from behind. Taken by surprise, many of them had their helmets ripped off, and before they had time to react, were listening to the sounds of their own screams as teeth gorged on their necks and faces.

“And now, the rest of the orchestra joins the movement!” he said, waving his arms, signalling the population of the walls to bound from their shadows.

“Drop the gate! Get the river flowing!” the Minister shouted, but the gate officers weren't able to push the levers, as deep underneath them the monoliths held the dam in place with their giant, inhuman hands.

The rabid horde trawled past the Necromancer, taking on the officers who weren't already engaged in combat, those that hesitated to fire at their friends and colleagues who were being mauled.

“Oh, you did make this so easy, didn't you George!” he cackled.

“Send in the army!” George shrieked into his radio, taking a baton from an officer and climbing inelegantly on to the roof of a police car, swiping at anything without a pulse that came near him.
Bullets flew impotently, taking handfuls of unliving down momentarily, but most wounding them ineffectively or missing altogether.

“Remember your training!” screamed the Minister. “Take the arms and legs out, and move on to the next one!”
Even with the loud-hailer, his squawking voice was drowned out by the screams of his officers.

The Jons and Ashley arrived to the scene as the army were rolling in. Tanks fired indiscriminately at large groups, dirt and entrails exploding across the scene, whilst the Necromancer stood surveying the death and destruction around him, laughing manically at the chaos.

“We've got to do something.” said Ashley.

“I've got to do something.” corrected Jon, as he pulled his batons from their holsters, whipping them to their full extension.
He fought through the crowd of police and unliving, beating the pulseless down and running thousands of volts through them to keep them there. The Minister watched him make his way through the crowd.

“Nobody shoot the man heading towards the wall.” he screamed over the radio, before beating a bloodthirsty creature across the bonnet of the car.

“Who is he?” asked a tank commander.

“He's my liaison.” said the Minister, as he electrocuted the walking corpse at his feet.
The Necromancer saw Jon heading in his direction and put his hands to his hips, mockingly.

“Now where do you think you're going?” he asked. “Does it look like there's any liaising to be done here?”
Jon beat down another zombie and walked over his unconscious body towards his nemesis.

“How about you let me try?” he shouted back. “I've got pretty good at it over the years.”
The two stared at one another across the battlefield.  Jon stony faced as the Necromancer grinned a slimy smile and nodded. He arched his fingers out, his gesture quelling the unliving. The Minister watched on as a call came across the radio.

“What should we do, sir?”

“Cease fire. Let's see what he can do.”
Jon eyed the Necromancer suspiciously, then turned to the horde of unliving, putting his batons back in their holsters.

“Citizens of Dead City! You all know me. You also all hate me most of the time. But when each and every one of you came through those walls, I helped you. Whether it be finding you housing, or stopping you from having your soul sucked out. I've helped diffuse your arguments, and arranged food when rations were short... I've helped you all in one way or another. I know this situation is far from perfect, but together, we can make it better! We can help each other make this Dead City a place worth unliving in!”
He surveyed the crowd of undead surrounding him.  They didn't seem phased by his words.

“Oh a rousing speech, Liaison, I am truly moved to tears.” said the Necromancer, as he mimed wiping away a tear. “Alas, your words fall on deaf ears.”

“Is that right?” said Jon, as he saw Dildo passing the gates, walking the circumference as instructed. “Dildo!”
The zombie turned and smiled.

“Me help!” he said.

“Dildo, do you see what's happening here?” asked Jon.

“Know who kill me?”
The Necromancer chuckled as he watched Jon converse with the brain-damaged idiot.

“I do, Dildo.” Jon said, with a smile. “He's right over there...” Before Jon had the chance to point at the Necromancer, Dildo had pounced on him, teeth deep in his flesh, ripping his body to shreds.
The unliving outside the walls watched as their master was torn to pieces, his spell broken with every bite and tear taken from his ancient body.

“You don't have to live under his tyranny!” Jon shouted to the horde surrounding him. “We can find a new way to live together, a new way to make the City work. Where everyone is equal, everyone gets fed and housed and clothed. We can be the first truly free city of the dead! But I can't do it alone! Will you do this with me?”

He looked across all the corpses, new and old, holding his breath as he hoped for the right answer. One by one, they stood up, looked at each another, and with a unanimous unspoken decision, walked back though the gates.
Looking around the surviving armed forces, he caught the Minister's eye, and they exchanged a smile. He continued looking around the scene, trying to find Ashley, and saw her stumbling past a truck, holding her gut. He rushed over as she fell to the floor.

“Ash, are you okay?” he asked, pleading for a response.

“She passed out a while back.” said a voice from her lips. “A ways back, I had to possess her to bring her to you.”

“I need a medic!” shouted Jon, as he held his dying wife.

“She's gone.” his ghost said, in her voice. “She's gone, and I can't get out.”

“What do you mean 'you can't get out'? Get the fuck out, and SOMEBODY GET ME A MEDIC!”

“She's dead!” said the spirit trapped in Ashley.

“I'm so sorry.” said the Minister, as he came down off the police car.
Jon grabbed him and slammed him against the hood of the vehicle.

“You bring her back.” said Jon. “You bring her the fuck back like you did me.”

“There's nothing I can do!” he squealed.

“You fucking bring her back right this instant!”
He brandished a baton, holding it up to the minister's eye, where he could see nice and close as the sparks pirouetted on the tip.

The Minister ordered the medics to take her body into the back of an ambulance, and requested he be left alone.

“I can't promise this will work.” he said.

“You fucking can, and you fucking will.” Jon replied, slamming the ambulance door in the Minister's face.

Jon sat on the pavement and cried, hoping and praying and hoping some more.

18

Jon stood on the roof of the former Public Carriage Office in Southwark, the whole of Dead City laid out before him as the sun began to set. His hat reclaimed from Dildo, his noir silhouette was etched against pink and blue clouds.

“I used to say this was my City.” he narrated, out loud. “Even though the pulse running though my veins meant I wasn't a part of it, it was a part of me. And more than I knew.” he took a deep breath. “I gave it everything I had, not knowing I had so much more to lose outside the walls. But now I knew who I was, why I'm here. And I'm going to do whatever it takes to make this City better.”

“You mean we're going to do whatever it takes.” declared a voice from behind, as Ashley joined him at the corner of the roof. “It's our city now.  And we're going to make it a place worth dying for.”
She kissed him and the two held one another close, whilst their disembodied spirits watched on.

“We're gonna get bored of this real fast” said Ashley's ghost.

“So fucking fast.” said Jon's.
The two separated liaisons held hands as they walked to the stairs, ready for the night's patrol.

“You coming?” Jon asked their spirits.

“We'll leave you two fuckbirds to walk down by yourselves...” said Ashley's spirit. “Watching all the smooching makes my stomach turn.”

“You don't have a stomach...” Ashley said to her ghost, with a giggle.

“Get to work, or we're gonna haunt the fuck out of you.” said Jon's ghost.
The couple held each other tight and as they began to descend into the building, down towards the City. The sprawl of night and neon coming closer with every step, every floor that passed them by.

They smiled at one another, knowing that they were about to make some big fucking changes.

About ABAM.INFO

ABAM, or 'A Book A Month', is a terrible experiment to see how long a former screenwriter can produce a original novella every month before he goes insane.

Alternating between dramatic and comedic prose, the books will be released on on the first Monday of every month in print, audiobook and as ebooks.

If you've enjoyed this book in any capacity, do please review it on Amazon and Goodreads – I read them all and will no doubt veer towards writing more of what you like.

Please visit the links below for more information and forthcoming releases.

http://amazon.com/author/leeisserow

http://ABAM.info

Thank you kindly for being an observer to my mental deterioration.

Next month on ABAM:

NLI-10

synopsis

Sarah was a burn-out. A former addict trying to stay sober. When offered, she jumps at the chance to go on a clinical trial and be taken away from temptation for three months.

As the trial gets underway, the subjects become aware that they're not part of an average medical test.

Paranoia flows as weird experiments are carried out on their waking and sleeping bodies.

They start to realise that the trial is changing them, programming them, installing false memories and taking away their emotions one by one.

If they don't do something about it before their tenure ends, when they're done, they might not be human any more.

NLI-10

sample chapter

The woman gestured for Sarah to take a seat, and introduced herself.

“Marion Whark.” she said, with a smile that was anything but genuine, the lack of lines accompanying the curvature of her lips made it seem like a rare experience for her face.

“Nice to meet you.” said Sarah, attempting to be genial and mask finding the woman off-putting.

“Could you tell me a little about yourself?” asked Whark, as she leafed through Sarah's file.

“Well, I'm 27.” said Sarah. “I work as a volunteer for a homeless shelter and asylum seeker support.”

“More specifically, about your drug use.” said Whark, not even attempting to hide her disinterest in Sarah's occupation.

“Well...” Sarah started, hesitantly “I mostly used psychedelics, or psychoactives, whatever you want to call them...”

“Which drugs specifically?” asked Whark, the  smile creeping back up her face, as if warming to the girl who's life she had only just made no bones about having no interest in.

“LSD, mushrooms, mescaline, peyote, DMT, 2CB, uh...” she struggled to recall others. “Does marijuana count? I did Ayahuasca once or twice --”

“You can stop there, that's a fabulous selection.” said Whark, almost sounding impressed.

“I wouldn't call it fabulous...” said Sarah.

“Oh, but it is for our requirements in this study, you're exactly the type of candidate we're after.”

“It is? I am?” said Sarah, confused.

“Very much so. And you're in great health, have you ever done a clinical trial like this before?”

“I'm sorry...” said Sarah, backtracking. “What makes me a great subject?”

“For this particular testing regime, we're after subjects that have had experience with psychoactive substances, who's neural pathways have been altered. You know that LSD was used medically for a time, to help patients with schizophrenia? We're trying something along those lines, albeit with normal patients in this round, rather than lock up a group of crazies together!”

She appeared to think she was making a joke. Sarah smiled politely.

“We have a new three-month study starting in just two weeks, is that enough time to put your affairs in order?”

It sounded to Sarah like Whark was implying she wouldn't be coming out of the experiment alive – but she quashed those feelings – this was a multinational corporation after all, they wouldn't advertise on the tube and then kill subjects. Probably.

Sarah told her it was plenty of time, it wasn't like she had any actual life waiting for her when she returned. Whark made her sign a consent form and an initial Non Disclosure Agreement before giving her more information about the study. It would be taking place just outside of Dundee, they'd provide her with a ticket for the train and collect her from the station. She only needed clothes for arrival and departure, they'd be providing her things to wear whilst she was there – albeit unflattering cuts – which seemed important to Whark. She was to be reimbursed with twelve thousand pounds for her time, which would be deposited on the final day of the trial.

Sarah feigned interest in the information that was being imparted, caring less for the cash lump sum, and more focused on imagining the final day of her emergence from the depths of the APEX machine.

* * * *

Seventeen weeks and one day ago, Sarah didn't know or care much about APEX, other than it being the company her parents had worked for before their deaths. She had been gallivanting around their old house in a mushroom daze, and other than having relocated their books, it was pretty much exactly as they had left it. She had recently taking to tripping there amongst their belongings, it was giving her a feeling of closeness to them she hadn't had for a long time.

Whilst going through her father's desk, she came across a USB pen drive which she put in her laptop, hoping it wasn't a secret stash of porn. As she started going through the thousands of documents on the drive, the visuals of her trip dissipated, the high diminished, and for the first time in ten years she felt something close to sober.

She would sign up to NA later that day to keep that feeling, keep her focus for the task ahead. What she had in front of her was blowing her mind, and making her question whether her parents' death was an accident as she had been led to believe. There were confessions from her mother and father, and files upon files to back up their claims.

They had been inspired by the young girl who blew the lid off APEX's exchange of personal information, backdoors, passwords and metadata unanimously shared with the government in exchange for tax relief. They were going to whistleblow on their employers, take their stash of documents stolen from the company and hand it over to WikiLeaks. There was proof of hidden accounts, illegal experiments, arms deals, black budgets and more. She had thought about sending their data off and wrapping up their mission, but it was all at least a decade old now and would likely be shrugged off by the multinational demon, blamed on former executives and disgraced employees. This trial, however, might make that data worth something. She'd be in the belly of the beast. A testing facility probably had records of patients past, and if the current experiment wasn't above board, it might implicate the company with recent proof that would only emphasise the content in the archive her parents had amassed.

She wished she had been more industrious ten years ago. That would have been the perfect time to strike, but now she had a chance to finish what her parents started.
Sarah thought again of Whark's question about “putting her affairs in order”, and recalled an experiment in which the paperwork declared all the subjects were deemed 'unsuitable for return to society'. The account of the trial continued to talk about the results of the experiment itself, with no explanation of what happened to the subjects, and they weren't spoken of in any of the other documentation. She tried to put it out of her mind, concentrating on her task ahead and the day, three months and two weeks away, when she'd emerge from their testing facility with a smoking gun and complete what her parents didn't have a chance to before their unceremonious 'departure' from the company.

Sarah tried to shrug off the fact that she didn't have a plan beyond sending the documents to WikiLeaks, and knew her quest for vengeance was a tall order, and possibly out of a sense of psychedelically enhanced Batman-style justice, but she had literally nothing else do dedicate her life to, so why not this.

* * * *

NLI-10 will be available from
ABAM.Info and Amazon
from March 7th 2016.

About The Author

Lee Isserow is an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, with over fifteen years spent trawling the back streets and dark alleys of the entertainment industry.

He's pretty sure he has some traits of autism, because he's been constantly working and obscenely prolific for the entire duration, writing over a hundred screenplays, many of which he's adapting into forthcoming ABAMs, because very few people are willing to turn them into movies.  For now.

He lives in Liverpool, England because he accidentally bought a house there.  He's not quite sure how that happened – but assumes part of that is because he used to drink a lot.

If you'd like to watch the pretty things he makes, you may find them at LeeIsserow.com.

You may also interact, call him names, and read his awful jokes and observations on Twitter; @Lee_Isserow.

Other Books By The Author

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Before she knows it, the lives of her family and friends hang in the balance, and she’s racing against the clock to discover who’s pulling her strings.