Zombie Business

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I come to a room that looks the same as the others. I would have passed through at any other time and thought nothing of it. But I know from Mr Dow ling's stolen memories that there's a hidden door here, so I stop, treat myself to a short looking for it. pause, then go

I shuffle to the wall on my right and lift down the upper half of a woman's carcass from where it hangs on a hook. The wall behind her is caked with dried blood and dung. The babies bit off some of my arti ficial finger bones, but several remain intact. I use them to chip away at the mess. After a while, it starts to fall off in chunks and the outline of a door is revealed.

There's a small, old-fashioned combination lock in the centre, the type where you roll the tumblers one at a time until they click into place. I prised the num bers from Mr Alfie's memory and they're somehow still clear in my mind - it's like I have per fect recall. I start entering the digits until they read 528614592. Then I push down on the slim handle and the door opens.

I stare suspiciously into the gloom of the tunnel on the other side. I still don't know how I wrung so much information out of Mr Alfie. I hadn't planned to squeeze his secrets from him. I didn't think that I could. Something happened in the bridal suite that I had no control over, and it unnerved me. I don't like the fact that I operated on auto-pilot like a cold, calculating, experienced spy.

But what are my options? I can't go back. Mr Alfie will s*******r me on sight if I don't get out of here. I might be his beloved, but he can't let me live, knowing what I know. I've got to press ahead as fast as I can. It doesn't matter how I came by this knowledge. need to cash in on it, and quickly, before the mutants lock down the complex and come hunting for me.

I enter the tunnel and push the door closed behind me - there's no way of operating the lock from this side, so I just have to hope that Mr Alfie's mutants don't spot the disturbance and investigate.

Then I press on through the gloom. This area isn't brightly lit, just the occasional light. But that's OK. I know the way. I could find it blindfolded if I had to.

The tunnel forks and I take the left turn. Then a right, another right, a left. These tunnels are roughly carved. Mr Alfie only used a few of his mutants when creating them, in secret, away from the his other followers. All of the workers were killed * gaze of once they'd finished, like the slaves who built the tombs for the pharaohs in ancient Egypt. He didn't want anyone to know about this hidden network. It was created for his personal use only.

More twists and turns. I take them without think ing, following the map which was clear as crystal inside Mr Alfie's brain. He often comes here to check on his deadly prize, standing before it in ecstatic but horrified awe, like a worshipper at the shrine of some all-destructive god. There are several entrances and routes. He tests them all out on a reg ular basis, making sure the doors work, that the paths are clear of cave-ins, that no one has been sniffing around his toxic treasure.

It's not a long journey but I make poor time. I'm incapable of rushing. Still, as slow as I am, I'm dogged, and eventually I draw to a halt at another locked door. This one is protected by four combina tion locks, each requiring a twelve-digit code, and you'd need a serious stash of dynamite to make an impression on the door or wall. It would take a c***k team a lot of time and hassle to break through. Even Ivor Bolton, an Angel who can open almost any lock, would have to admit defeat if confronted with these devilish beauties.

But I have the inside scoop, the elaborate string of numbers flashing in my mind's eye if highlighted as on a neon billboard. I start spinning the tumblers and soon I've set all forty-eight windows correctly. I grasp the round handle and twist. There's a sighing sound and the door opens inwards, widening the more I turn the handle, like a giant opening its mouth.

I step into a small, steel-lined room. There's a single light hanging from the centre of the ceiling. It switched on automatically as the door opened.

A safe sits in the middle of the room, bolted to the floor. The code for this lock is simpler than a any of the others. Mr Alfie figured that if someone made it this far, the game was up. He set the code out of a sense of irony more than anything else, aware of the things that Dr Quinn has said about him over the I chuckle weakly as I spin the tumblers to years. the most diabolical of numbers 666.

The safe opens and I sink to my knees. I reach in and pull out a clear tube, no more than twenty centimetres long. It's sealed with what looks like a plain rubber cork, but I know the cork is made from a special material and is absolutely airtight. It will never shrink or shake loose. And, although the tube appears to be just glass, again it's been carefully manufactured from a far tougher sub stance. You could put it on the floor and whack it with a sledgehammer, over and over, without even cracking it.

Just to be safe, there's a second clear, corked tube nestled within the first, every bit as indestructible as the outer container. And then, snuggled within that, is a vial, maybe fifteen centimetres long, filled with a milky-white liquid. There's no label on any of the containers, but I don't need one.