Zom-B Mission

TWO

"Aren't you surprised to see me?" Rage asks when I continue to ignore him.

"Nothing about you surprises me," I sniff.

"Don't you want to know how I found you?" he presses.

"I'm guessing you followed me from County Hall."

Rage chuckles and scratches the hole in his left cheek where he was bitten by a zombie when he was turned. Wisps of green moss sprout from it, like the world's worst designer beard.

"Don't flatter yourself," Rage says. "I wouldn't waste my time following the likes of you."

"Yet here you are…" I purr.

"I'm not alone," he says. "My partner wanted to check this place out."

"What poor sap is lonely and desperate enough to hang out with you?" I sneer as someone else comes up the stairs behind Rage. Then I spot who it is and wince. "Mr. Burke. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you."

Billy Burke waves away my apology. "If I'd known you were here, I wouldn't have disturbed you. But we were passing and I remembered you telling me about this place. I was keen to see the paintings. We can leave if you'd prefer to be alone."

"No, that's OK, come in. I'll give you the grand tour."

Burke used to be my biology teacher. He was the best we had in our school, one of the few teachers I respected. He also saw the real me long before I did. He told me I was heading down the same racist path as my dad, warned me that I needed to change. I ignored him. Back then I thought I knew myself better than anybody else did.

I've often wondered how things might have turned out if I'd listened to him. Maybe I wouldn't have thrown poor Tyler Bayor to the zombies. Maybe I'd have survived the zombie apocalypse. Maybe I wouldn't be spending my nights staring at the ceiling, thinking about the blood I have on my hands, wishing I was truly dead.

Burke hooked up with Dr. Oystein after London fell and worked as a spy in the underground complex where I was being held when I recovered my senses. That's where we met again. He convinced the soldiers to feed me brains to keep my senses intact. I'd be a mindless killer zombie if not for his help. He saw something in me worth fighting for. Even though I thought I was worthless, he didn't agree, and he did all that he could to save me and steer me right.

In an ideal world, if we were able to choose our parents, I'd pick Billy Burke for my father without a second's hesitation. Not that I'll ever tell him that, or even hint at it. I don't want him thinking I'm a soppy bugger.

I show Burke round the gallery. He's fascinated by the paintings, though he finds some of them hard to look at—the living are far more sensitive about these things than the undead. Rage is less impressed and keeps yawning behind Burke's back, trying to wind me up. I treat him with the contempt he deserves and don't even reward him with another flash of my finger.

"There are so many," Burke murmurs after a while, shaking his head at the piles of paintings resting against the walls. "He must have painted like a machine."

"Yeah," I nod. "It was his entire life. He knew his time would probably be cut short, so he crammed in as much as he could."

"Have you looked at them all?" Burke asks.

"Most of them, though there are still a few buried away in places that I haven't got to yet."

"And did he arrange the paintings on the walls or have you hung them?"

I fight a proud smile. "He hung a lot of them, but I've been switching them and alternating the display."

"Are you looking to get a job as a curator?" Rage asks sweetly.

"Get stuffed," I snap.

Burke makes a shushing gesture. "This collection is quite something, B," he says. "Thank you for sharing it with us."

"Any time," I tell him happily. "But what were you doing out this way in the first place? And with Rage, of all people."

"What's wrong with me?" Rage barks, taking a step towards me, his beady eyes glinting in the dim light.

"Easy," Burke soothes him. "I'd have thought that the pair of you would have settled your differences by now."

"It's hard to settle your differences with a guy who pushes you off the London Eye," I snarl.

Rage cackles. "You're not still sore about that, are you?"

"I'll return the favor sometime," I jeer. "See how long it takes you to forget."

Rage fakes a sigh and makes a wounded expression. "See how she baits me, sir? Some people just can't find forgiveness within themselves."

"Grow up, Michael," Burke says witheringly, using Rage's real name to show his annoyance. Then he stares at me. "I thought you fell off the Eye."

I wince, remembering I hadn't told anyone what really happened up there. It's no big secret. I just didn't want people thinking I was a snitch. I can deal with my own problems.

"That's right," I mumble. "I did fall."

Burke frowns and starts to ask a question. Then he shakes his head. "Not my business," he says, and goes back down the stairs. Rage scowls at me, then trails after Burke. I follow.

There's a cart on the ground floor, stacked high with folders and files. Burke nods at them. "That's why we were passing. I've been researching something. The records I'm interested in don't seem to have ever been transferred to computer, so I've had to track down hard copies. I finally found them in a building north of here. It's a place where a secretive branch of the army used to keep their paperwork, one of a number of hiding-holes scattered around the city. I got the addresses when I was working for Josh Massoglia and I've been checking them out. Most of the buildings have been gutted, but this one seems to have been overlooked. I spent a few days gathering the documents I was after and asked Rage to help me transport them back to County Hall, so that I could go through them in my spare time."

"You should have asked me," I frown. "I'd have helped."

"I know," Burke smiles. "But the files are heavy. I needed a brute with lots of muscles."

"And they don't come more brute than me," Rage says, puffing himself up.

"What are you looking for?" I ask.

"Probably nothing important," Burke says. "I just have an itch I need to scratch. You know what it's like when something bugs you and you can't let it drop?"

"Yeah. Do you want a hand going through the files?"

"It's kind of you to offer, but no, I'd rather do it myself. As I said, I doubt it's important, so I don't want to waste anybody's time other than my own."

"It'll take you months to plow through that lot," I note.

"No," he says. "I know what I'm looking for. I'll be able to skim through the pages pretty quickly. But maybe you can help push the cart. Rage was starting to struggle."

"No I wasn't," Rage shouts, then catches Burke's grin and relaxes.

Burke turns to leave, then spots a painting hanging on a nearby wall and stalls. It's one of the most disturbing pictures in the gallery. I gave it a wall to itself, even though it's not a large canvas.

The crazed clown, Mr. Dowling, dominates the painting. Timothy captured him in all his finery, the v