"Why not?" asked Billy, who was standing near Tommy.
"Look at them! They ain"t in control of themselves," he replied. "It"s like they"ve been brainwashed. Somebody else is pulling the strings the coppers are just their puppets."
The policemen began marching towards the mobsters, all repeating the same meaningless mantra, over and over.
Tommy ran forward and punched the leading policeman in the face. He staggered before the blow but then came forwards again. Tommy smashed the policeman over the head with the hilt of his sword, then drove his knee into the crumpled constable"s stomach. Still the policeman tried to stagger onwards.
All around the same scene was being played out as Tommy"s men attacked the policemen. Brick smashed the heads of two constables together, knocking them unconscious. He went to Tommy"s aid, clouting the constable with the b.u.t.t of a shotgun.
The policeman finally fell to the ground.
"Thanks Brick, I appreciate it."
A shot rang out as Billy blew a hole through the head of a sergeant who ignored all attempts to subdue him. The headless corpse lunged at Billy and locked its hands around his throat in a deadly grip. Charlie came to his brother"s rescue, tearing the fingers away from Billy"s neck. Charlie smashed his rifle down on the back of the headless corpse"s legs, breaking its knee joints.
The dead sergeant collapsed on to the road, its hands still clutching at the air. The effect would have been comical were it not so macabre.
Tommy realised the stricken policemen were getting up again too soon. The two Brick had knocked out were clambering back to their feet. His own attacker was trying to get up once more. "What"s happening? These plods should be out for the count!"
"I killed one and it kept on coming!" Billy shouted.
It was Brick who first realised what was happening. "They"re already dead. These policemen they"re already dead!"
Tommy knew Brick was right. The policemen didn"t have gla.s.sy eyes they had lifeless eyes. They were already dead, somehow brought back to a sort of life and sent in to quell any resistance from local residents.
"Fire at will!" Tommy shouted. "These things aren"t the old bill they"re walking corpses! Take them out any way you can!"
He lashed out with his sword, slicing the head from his own attacker. Two more flashes of the blade severed the zombie"s arms. They lay twitching on the road, grasping and grabbing at anything within reach.
Tommy"s men turned their guns on the advancing policemen, blowing holes through the walking corpses. But several of the mobsters were too slow to react. They fell beneath the feet of the zombies. The screams of the dying men chilled the hearts of their friends. Tommy"s men were holding their own but the oncoming policemen were slowly driving them back. A second van filled with reinforcements pulled up behind the first.
Tommy recognised that his men were slowly losing the battle. He yelled for everyone to retreat to the house and stood guard while the others ran back down Tabernacle Street. When the last of his men had pa.s.sed him, Tommy ran after his men, back towards number 15. He wondered how the others were doing.
Page soon realised the horrific nature of the foe his men were facing. "Give "em both barrels, boys! It"s the only way to put them down!" He unloaded his shotgun into the chest of a sergeant but the lifeless body kept lumbering towards him.
Norman tried to slot new cartridges into the shotgun but the sergeant was on him before he could snap it shut again. Norman lashed out with the heavy b.u.t.t, knocking the zombie sideways.
The others were faring just as badly. Two men had been overrun by the policemen, others were blasting away with their guns but making no impression on the slow advance. Norman realised they had to get away from this relentless enemy.
"Fall back! Everybody, fall back to the house!" he shouted.
He turned and began running back towards number 15. But someone was coming out of the smog towards him. "Tommy, thank G.o.d it"s you " Norman began. Then he realised the figure emerging from the mist was another policeman. Norman and his men had been outflanked.
"They must have come along Epworth Street, got in behind us," he said. But no-one was listening. The mobsters were caught between two advancing lines of lifeless policemen, with no side street to escape into. Norman tried banging on the front doors of several houses but n.o.body would open up.
He snapped shut the shotgun and took aim at the nearest policeman. "Come on then! Come and get me! Come on!"
Tommy got back to his front door to find the Doctor waiting for him with the rest of the men. "What are you doing here? How did you get here?"
"I came up a side street. This place is crawling with police patrols," the Doctor replied. "It took me more than an hour to get here from St Luke"s. I"ve been banging on the front door but n.o.body answers it."
Tommy unlocked the front door and let everyone inside.
Once in, he bolted the front door and stationed two men in the hallway to stand guard. "Jack, you still here?" he yelled up the stairs.
The young man appeared at the top of the flight. "You"re back quickly! What was all that shooting about?"
Tommy ran up the stairs, pursued by Brick and the Doctor.
"Change of plan. Those monsters are using dead coppers against us. They keep getting up again, no matter how many times we shoot them!"
"But that"s impossible!"
"So"s nearly everything that"s been going on! I want you downstairs guarding the front door. n.o.body gets in without my say so got that? Good. Jump to it!"
Jack went downstairs to join the rest of the men on guard duty. The Doctor and Brick followed Tommy into the dining room. Mrs Ramsey was sitting in her favourite chair, knitting happily.
"Mum! Am I glad you got back home safe it"s madness out there!" Tommy said. He glanced around the room. "Where"s Sarah?"
The Doctor looked alarmed at this. "She"s not here with you?"
"She went with Mum to a special service at St Luke"s this morning," Tommy explained. "Where"s Sarah, Mum?"
"I don"t know, dear," the little old lady replied. "We must have been separated in the fog on our way back."
"What happened at the service?" the Doctor asked, concern in his voice.
"Father Simmons never turned up. We waited a few minutes and then decided to come back home," Mrs Ramsey said with a smile. "Silly me, I forgot to take my knitting along."
Tommy rolled the rug away from the floor at one corner, revealing the floorboards underneath. He pushed one of them and it pivoted upwards, revealing a secret compartment beneath the floor. "I imagine you"ve got something to tell me, Doctor,"
Tommy said as he reached under the floor.
"You don"t seem very surprised to see me here."
"No. Sarah and me had a little chat last night. She explained a few things, about you two being travellers if you know what I mean." Tommy pulled out a sawn-off shotgun and threw it to Brick. "Fixing watches ain"t the only kind of time problems you repair."
The Doctor stroked his chin thoughtfully. "An interesting way of putting it. Yes, what she told you is true. We came here to stop a tragedy. I need your help."
Tommy fished another shotgun out from under the floorboards and threw it to Brick. "You"ve got it. But right now, I"m not sure how much use I can be. Looks like those coppers have taken out half my men already. So whatever you"re planning, you better make it snappy."
"I have a weapon that may stop these creatures, the Xhinn.
But I need to get close enough to them to use it," the Doctor explained.
Tommy got two boxes of ammunition from the hidden compartment before putting the floorboard back into place.
"This weapon, it better be more use than our shotguns."
"Bullets are no use against these beings." The Doctor patted the satchel slung over his shoulder. "But what"s in this bag should do the trick."
"Should do the trick? You mean you don"t know?" Tommy asked, his voice incredulous.
"It"s not something you can easily test, I"m afraid," the Doctor replied.
Someone was banging against the front door. Tommy peered out through a gap in the curtains. "No time like the present, then. The police are outside our front door."
Mary Mills jumped at the sound of banging on her front door.
She got up to open it then remembered Sarah"s warning from the previous night. Mary went to the front window and peered out through a gap in the curtains.
A young constable was knocking on the door. He seemed perfectly normal to Mary. She was about to tell Jean to let him in when the constable looked directly at her. Mary could not stop herself from screaming. He was missing half his face, the half which had been turned away from the window. Gunpowder burns were visible on the edges of the ma.s.sive wound. The head had been blasted at point blank range. Yet the young constable was still standing. He walked to the window and began banging against it.
"We"re evacuating everyone from the local area..." the policeman slurred through what remained of its mouth.
Mary closed the curtains so Jean could not see the horror outside. "Who is it, Mummy?" the girl asked.
"It"s a policeman. He wants to take me away for a few hours,"
Mary replied, a plan already forming in her thoughts.
"Can we come too?"
"No, you have to stay here and look after Rita. She"s too sick to go anywhere right now."
"Oh, Mummy..."
"No, Jean it has to be this way. You"ll be safe here."
The banging continued on the window, joined by a second person banging on the front door. Mary knew the flimsy wood would not keep the lifeless policemen out for long. They knew someone was inside. It was only a matter of time before they broke in. But there was still some hope...
Jack was starting to worry. He had four men jammed up to the front door, keeping it shut. The other eight men stood ready for action on the staircase. The police were hammering against the front door but without success so far. Then Jack heard gla.s.s smashing. He opened the door into the ground-floor parlour to see two policemen climbing through the shattered windows.
"h.e.l.l"s teeth!" Jack pulled the door shut and shouted for two men to keep hold of the handle. He ran back through the house to the kitchen and opened the back door, almost expecting to see a lifeless constable waiting outside. The back alleyway was empty. Jack summoned another two men and told them to stand guard in the alleyway.
"This is our escape route. It"s our only way out of here. You see any sign of the police, yell your b.l.o.o.d.y heads off got that?"
Mary picked Rita up, mattress and all. She carried her stricken daughter into the hallway. "Jean! Open the door to the understairs cupboard, quick!"
Mary"s eldest daughter pulled back the door to reveal the cramped, cluttered s.p.a.ce beneath the stairs. There was just room for Mary to lay Rita down on the floor. "Jean, you get in there with her."
"But I don"t want to, Mummy. I want to be with you," the ten-year-old girl protested. "Why can"t I be with you?"
"Because I have to go with the policemen. You can see how sick your sister is. If she goes outside now she"ll die, just like Bette. You don"t want that, do you, love?" Mary stroked Jean"s hair, trying to persuade the child.
"No, Mummy."
"Good. Now do as I tell you, there"s a good girl."
"But why do we have to be inside the cupboard? It"s warmer in front of the fire," Jean said.
"It"s like a game of hide and seek," Mary replied, trying to keep the terror from her voice. The hammering on the front door was becoming ever more impatient. The policemen could be through it at any moment. "You hide in here and later on, when it"s safe, you can come out."
"But how will I know when it"s safe?"
"When it"s all been very quiet for a long, long time." Mary gently pushed Jean into the cupboard. As a child Mary had spent many unhappy hours underneath the stairs. Her father would beat her, then lock the sobbing child inside the cupboard. She had sworn never to be so cruel to her own children. Now it was probably their only hope of survival. "Remember, you have to be as quiet as mice in there."
"But no squeaking," Jean volunteered.
"But no squeaking," Mary agreed, forcing herself to smile. She gently closed the cupboard door. "Goodbye, my loves."
The front door began to splinter from the constant hammering. Mary slid home the bolt locking the cupboard door and walked into the kitchen. She pulled back the sheet from her dead daughter"s face.
In the hallway, the front door buckled and then collapsed inwards. Three policemen shuffled into the house, searching each room with their lifeless eyes. They found Mary standing in the kitchen, holding Bette"s cold body in her arms. "I"m ready for you now. It"s just me and my daughter. Please be careful she"s asleep and I don"t want to wake her."
"This smog, it"s not natural," the Doctor said. "The weather is being controlled by the Xhinn. They are using it as a weapon against the people of London. Unless the Xhinn are stopped, it will poison everyone in the city by Tuesday."
"That thing Callum turned into there"s more than one?"
Tommy asked.
"At least three, maybe more. They have three leaders. Stop them and all this will cease."
Tommy watched through the windows as his neighbours were dragged out into the street by the zombie policemen. "What about the old bill? Why are they helping these monsters?"
The Doctor pointed at a plate of bread and b.u.t.ter on the dining room table. "The Bread of Life. I believe it contains a powerful psychotropic drug."
"Psycho what?"
"Mind control, brainwashing call it what you like. It makes humans susceptible to telepathic prompting. The drug builds up in the human body, until it reaches a critical density. Put enough of the drug into a person and they will carry on following orders, even after their brain is clinically dead."
Brick had been listening intently to all this. "That means the priest "
"Father Simmons is working for them. He may even be one of them. He told me that Bread of Life was supplying its product to the local police canteens," the Doctor said.
"That d.a.m.ned priest! Jack said he was trouble." Tommy cursed himself for not taking Simmons more seriously as a threat. Now so many were suffering for that mistake.
Jack burst into the dining room. "Tommy, we"ve got trouble."
"You don"t say."
"The police are coming in through the windows. The street"s swarming with them now. We can still get out the back alley, but we have to go now!"
"Send four men up here. Keep two on the front door, the rest of you are going out the back," Tommy commanded, checking his shotgun was fully loaded. He shoved boxes of spare ammunition into his jacket pockets.