Year of the Zombie [Anthology] Read online

  He took a deep, shuddering breath and stood up.

  ‘Let’s do this.’

  She led him to the bedroom. The bed draped in polythene. Surgical instruments were laid out on a table.

  Elize held open a garbage bag as he stripped out of his clothes. Sneakers, socks, Nike tracksuit, balled and binned. He sat on the end of the bed in his underpants. He breathed fast like he was trying to psych himself for a high-dive. He leant back. Plastic crackled as he lay flat.

  Elize said:

  ‘No. This is wrong.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There has to be another way to hit the target. Maybe we could wait outside his apartment, try to shoot him as he comes out the door.’

  Reverse psychology. Prompt the kid to reinforce his commitment to the mission, allay his own doubts.

  ‘These men are evil,’ said Sanjeev. ‘Russians. Kaffirs. They must be driven from this country.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to cost your life.’

  ‘I want this.’

  She nodded acquiescence.

  Elize loaded a hypodermic. Diacetylmorphine.

  ‘This will help you relax.’

  She pressed the plunger and emptied the reservoir. Sanjeev’s eyes fluttered. The opioid took effect.

  ‘Good?’

  Woozy nod.

  She sank a cannula in his arm and secured it with micropore tape. She removed a picture from the wall and hung Ringer’s Lactate on the nail. She unsnarled translucent feed, plugged it into Sanjeev’s arm and made sure there was a steady drip-flow.

  ‘Just rest there a moment.’

  She opened the bedroom door and beckoned Ben. Ben sat beside Sanjeev and clasped his hand, awkward like he didn’t know what to say in the presence of a man about to kill himself.

  ‘I’m going to give you a series of injections,’ said Elize, pitching her voice low, soothing, maternal. ‘There will be a little pain at first, but then you’ll feel nothing but numbness.’

  Sanjeev nodded.

  She sprayed his belly and upper groin with lidocaine. He flinched as cold moisture settled on his skin. She loaded a hypodermic. Lidocaine laced with 2% epinephrine to promote vasoconstriction. She delivered a series of subcutaneous shots at regular intervals across his stomach.

  ‘Ten minutes for the full effect.’

  A muffled thump from the bathroom. Ben got up to investigate.

  ◆◆◆

  Daniel thrashed in the bath. His chest was heaving. His skin was grey. Ben knelt beside the bath. He pulled back tape and removed a foam plug from Daniel’s ear.

  ‘I’m going to release your mouth so you can breathe better, okay? I’d prefer to keep you alive. But if you make a racket I’ll waste you, understand?’

  Daniel nodded. Ben tore tape from the man’s mouth. Daniel whooped for breath.

  ‘Asthma?’ asked Ben.

  He nodded.

  ‘I didn’t see your faces,’ said Daniel. ‘Happened too quick. I didn’t see anyone’s face.’

  Plenty of home invasions in Mogadishu. One of the reasons Daniel paid extra for a top floor apartment. Thieves were too lazy to climb twelve flights of stairs. But Americans? He’d heard computers boot up. He’d glimpsed a fresh-out-the-box firearm before the girl taped his eyes. He was in deep shit.

  ‘Rest easy,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t care about you. I don’t care about this shithole country. One hour. Two at the most. Then we’re gone, and you’ll be free.’

  ◆◆◆

  Ben returned to the bedroom. He sat beside Sanjeev and took the man’s hand once more.

  ‘How you feeling?’ asked Elize. Sanjeev smiled a sick, giddy smile:

  ‘Can’t feel my middle. Feels like I’m hollowed out.’

  Elize double-gloved and put on a surgical mask. She selected a scalpel from the instruments laid out on the table and lifted the blade with a trembling hand. She had practised the procedure once before at Langley. She had operated on an anaesthetised pig. The pig bled out and died.

  She leant over Sanjeev and sank the scalpel into flesh. Bubbling blood. She drew the blade down sharp and created a three inch incision. The vaginal gash pouted yellow globules of subcutaneous bodyfat. She sopped blood then spread the wound with forceps.

  She hummed to put him at ease. A deep, breathy hum of maternal reassurance.

  A white nylon zip pack on the table. FIRST AID. She opened it, worked the zip with blood-smeared gloves. A thin, grey strip of putty. One-point-five kilos of PETN with a thumb-sized detonation circuit. The package was sheathed in cellophane.

  She leant over the wound and slowly fed the thin strip of explosive into Sanjeev’s belly. His stomach bulged as she methodically worked the slab inside, pushed it between the skin of the abdominal wall and sheathed muscle.

  A suture kit. A length of nylon thread and a curved needle. She began to sew the wound closed.

  ‘Almost finished.’

  She snipped lose thread. She patted a Mepore dressing over the wound.

  ‘Done.’

  Sanjeev lifted his head and looked down at his blood-smeared torso. He lay back, panting. Elize stroked his hair. His breathing settled.

  ‘Let’s get you up.’

  She and Ben helped Sanjeev to his feet.

  ‘Here.’ Elize gave him water.

  ‘Let’s get you clean,’ said Ben. He helped Sanjeev hobble to the kitchen. He sponged blood from the man’s body and helped him step into fresh underpants.

  Elize probed Sanjeev’s belly. She could feel the explosive patty if she sunk her fingers into his flesh, but the oblong package was deep enough in his abdominal cavity to be invisible to the naked eye.

  The uniform of the Mogadishu police lay folded on a kitchen chair. Blue camo BDU, sand boots, green beret and fucked up AK with a split stock lashed together by tape. There were plenty of Indian expats in Mogadishu. He wouldn’t get a second glance.

  Ben helped Sanjeev step into trousers. Sanjeev sat on a kitchen chair while Ben knelt, wriggled socks and laced his boots.

  Sanjeev stood. T-shirt. BDU jacket. Beret. Elize tucked a laminate card in his breast pocket. His photo affixed to a police ID.

  She opened a padded envelope and spilled the contents onto the kitchen table. A carefully curated selection of pocket detritus. Coins. Crappy Velcro wallet with a few crumpled shilling notes. A half-smoked soft-pack of Sportsman cigarettes. A half-struck matchbook (Inter-Continental Hotel – Nairobi). Couple of keys with a bottle-opener fob. A notebook and pencil stub.

  Sanjeev filled his pockets.

  Ben set a laptop on the kitchen table. He took a hearing aid from his pocket. He hooked it over Sanjeev’s left ear and gently pressed the plug into his ear canal. Caucasian flesh-tone. Aged to look like it was bought from the Bakara market, bought from a stall selling artificial arms and legs, the kind of prosthetics that were almost currency in this eternal warzone. The hearing aid was cracked and patched with scotch tape.

  Ben put on a headset.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Levels? Too loud? Too quiet?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Talk. Let me hear you.’

  ‘God is merciful, God is great...’

  Sanjeev’s voice relayed by the headset. Breathy, intimate, but with a metallic edge of digitisation.

  Ben returned to the laptop. He opened the camera feed. A crack in the casing of the hearing aid above Sanjeev’s ear was the aperture for a micro-camera. The lens relayed Sanjeev’s POV to the laptop.

  ‘Stand up. Look around.’

  Sanjeev looked left and right, swung his head like an automaton.

  Ben watched the laptop image. Sanjeev’s POV swept the room.

  ‘Look up. Good. Look down.’

  Glimpse of ceiling. Glimpse of boots.

  ‘Look at her.’

  Focus-blur as the POV swung and trained on Elize’s face. Signal-glitch: for a moment her features dissolved to a kaleidoscopic pixel grid then the image
cleared.

  ‘That’s it. You’re set.’

  ‘Roll your sleeve,’ said Elize.

  She taped two capped hypodermics to his right forearm. She taped another two to his left. She stood close to get his full eye-line. She spoke slow to make sure the traumatised man understood.

  ‘Your left arm: morphine, for pain. Your right: epinephrine. It’ll give you a boost, keep you going. Understand?’

  He nodded. She gave him an epinephrine shot.

  ‘To get you going.’

  He perked and straightened up. She took a watch from her pocket. A cheap Casio with a resin strap. She buckled the watch to his wrist.

  ‘The light function. Detonator. Press it twice in quick succession. It will be instantaneous. No pain.’

  He got to his feet. Elize handed him the AK. He slung it over his shoulder. She opened the door.

  ‘God bless, Sanjeev.’

  He took a deep, shuddering breath. Then he marched across the hall and down the stairs without looking back.

  She closed the door.

  ‘Smart,’ said Ben. ‘Trying to talk him out of it.’

  ‘There are no firm rules handling these kind of assets,’ she said. ‘You have to fly by instinct.’

  She burned Sanjeev’s letter in the sink. She felt sick. She’d just killed a man as sure as if she put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

  Ben opened one of his suitcases. A half pint of bourbon. He took a long swig.

  ‘Tooth playing up?’ asked Elize.

  ‘Something like that.’

  He drank deep then handed her the bottle.

  A muffled voice from the bathroom:

  ‘Please. I can’t breathe.’

  ◆◆◆

  Ben checked the bathroom. He sat on the edge of the tub and tore Daniel’s blindfold aside.

  ‘Open your eyes.’

  Daniel kept his eyes screwed shut. Ben slapped him.

  ‘Look at me. Hey, look at me. I’m not going to kill you.’

  Daniel opened his eyes and pointed towards the bathroom cabinet. Ben opened the cabinet. An inhaler. He leant over Daniel and gave him a shot of Ventolin.

  ‘Again,’ gasped Daniel.

  Ben gave him another shot.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ said Daniel. ‘All of us. The infected were quarantined east of the city. The radio says they’ve broken out. The army are useless. They won’t be able to hold them back.’

  ‘Makes no difference to me,’ said Ben. ‘I’m on a plane in a couple of hours. This shithole can burn for all I care.’

  ◆◆◆

  Ben returned to the living room. A coffee table swept clean of magazines and coasters. Two laptops scrolled data. Cables snaked to back-up battery packs in case of local power outage. Internal fans at full rev, processors already running hot. The room smelled of ozone and stale sweat.

  Elize sat at the Toughbook screen. Ben sat beside her.

  ‘Do we have eyes–on-target?’ asked Ben. ‘Tell me we have a sat-feed at least.’

  Elize enlarged a graphic window. A monochrome street grid. The mortar-pocked rooftops of Mogadishu relayed by a KH-11 mil-sat in geostationary over the Horn of Africa.

  ‘JSOC are giving us the southern district in real-time.’

  Streets jammed with cars, bikes, pedestrians. Locals fleeing the city.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Ben, leaning close. ‘Look at that.’

  A street blocked by a wall of bulldozed rubble. Troops on one side, a seething, clawing crowd on the other.

  ‘The perimeter,’ said Elize.

  ‘Hundreds of them.’

  ‘Thousands. Army won’t be able to hold them off much longer.’

  ‘Let’s finish the job and get the fuck out of Dodge. That noonday plane is probably the last transport out of here before the city falls. I intend to be on it, no matter what.’

  ‘Got to hold our nerve. Folks are relying on us.’

  ‘So who’s the target?’ asked Ben.

  Elize handed him pictures.

  Aden Adde International. Surveillance pics shot through chain-link fence. The sequence showed a Slavic guy descending the steps of a Turkish Airlines 737 to a waiting Mitsubishi Pajero bearing the red Corps Diplomatique plate-stripes of the Sudanese Embassy.

  ‘Doctor Viktor Teplov. Russian surgical specialist working out of an annex of the Medina Hospital. Lives in the diplomatic compound near the airport.’

  ‘Why hit him at the hospital? Why not take him in the street?’

  ‘Chauffeured to-and-from in an armoured limo. We could zap him with a TOW from a rooftop but it wouldn’t be a guaranteed kill.’

  ‘Lot of manpower, lot of effort to whack a doctor.’

  ‘High priority target. Highest in this theatre of operation.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Classified,’ said Elize. ‘Keep it Playstation. Just help me steer the asset. Put the warhead on the forehead, that’s all you got to do.’

  ‘Who’s the spotter?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Local kid. Clan militia. He’ll finger the target. ID Teplov’s Mercedes as it leaves the compound. Give us the heads-up.’

  Elize positioned a headset. She adjusted the earpiece and mike. She enlarged Sanjeev’s POV and shared his sensorium. He was looking down. Feet descending a stairwell, a hand gripping an iron balustrade. Open audio channel: she heard bootfalls, laboured breathing.

  The cave-dark of the apartment lobby. Brass mailboxes hung open, long since levered and ransacked. He headed out through the main door into sunlight. Whiteout. It took two seconds for the camera to adjust. He walked down the gravel path towards the fortified gatehouse.

  Boots crunched gravel as he walked the path towards the compound entrance. Sandbags and rubble-filled Hesco barriers. Couple of Ugandan AMISOM troops huddled round a radio, probably debating whether to abandon their post, hijack a pick-up and head out of town while the roads were still open.

  ‘Light a cigarette,’ advised Elize.

  Hands fumbled a breast pocket. He shook a cigarette from the pack and raised it to his lips. Sanjeev held the matchbook in cupped hands and scratched a flame. He took a drag. His fingers trembled.

  ‘Keep it casual. Give them a nod. Look them in the eye.’

  Sanjeev complied. A nod of greeting to the AMISOM guys. Out the other side. He found himself on the edge of a busy road.

  ‘Turn left.’

  He turned the corner and tossed the cigarette.

  ‘You got a two kilometre straight run up Jidka Madina. How are you holding up?’

  Sanjeev masked his mouth by scratching his nose.

  ‘Feeling pretty rough.’

  ‘Flag a taxi.’

  He flagged a taxi, one of the blue and yellow Toyotas that worked the western quarter. He climbed inside and laid his AK on the seat next to him. Thumping reggae. Prayer beads swung from the rearview.

  Elize:

  ‘Ask him to drop you at the K4 junction.’

  ‘K4,’ said Sanjeev. The driver nodded and the car pulled out.

  ‘Amazed there are taxis still running,’ said Ben.

  ‘These folks are survivors. Armageddon is just another day in The Mog.’

  Sanjeev took the notebook from his pocket and scribbled a message.

  I AM IN PAIN

  ‘We need to save the morphine,’ said Elize. ‘If you shoot it all now, it’ll peak and wear off. You’ll be unable to function.’

  He triple underlined I AM IN PAIN.

  ‘Alright. One shot.’

  Sanjeev checked out the driver in the rearview. The guy was hitting the horn. He was focused on a couple of Vespas blocking the road. Each bike was balanced with three passengers, motors grinding, exhausts venting black.

  Sanjeev peeled back the sleeve of his BDU. A couple of hypos secured by tape. He uncapped and sunk a needle into a vein. Slow press of the plunger. He dropped the spent syringe on the floor and kicked it beneath the passenger seat.

  He checked the rearview
. The driver was still preoccupied with the Vespas up ahead.

  ‘The morphine shouldn’t take long to hit. Count to twenty or something.’

  Sanjeev looked out the window. Hindi hoardings advertising Bollywood action flicks playing at local picture halls. Guns, babes, mirror shades and a backdrop of flame. Scratched, sprocket-jumping 35mm prints projected on taut bedsheets in front of a cheering, wolf-whistling crowd. Saturday night, Mogadishu-style.

  A door slam from the hallway.

  ‘Check it out,’ said Elize.

  Ben was already out of his seat, pistol drawn.

  Eye to the peephole. An empty hallway. The sudden thud of dance music. Someone had returned to 12B.

  Ben crouched by a suitcase and rummaged inside.

  ‘What’s going on out there?’ called Elize.

  ‘The neighbours are home.’

  Ben took an ADCelco oil filter from his bag. An improvised suppressor. He screwed it on to the threaded barrel of his Glock using an adaptor ring.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Hope not.’

  Ben and Elize sat side-by-side staring at the screen. Sanjeev was looking out the taxi window at a succession of bullet-pocked storefronts. Most of the Somali population was illiterate. Each bombed-out store bore pictograms of stuff they used to sell. Butchered meat. Fabric. TVs.

  ‘Tell me about our kamikaze,’ said Ben.

  ‘British. Second generation Bangladeshi. No father. Low IQ. Fucks up at school. Falls in with the local Mo Money Gunz. Runs with them a while, gets busted for packing a knife. Gets recruited by Islamicists during a four month stretch. Grows a beard, swaps his bling for a thawb and a kufi cap. MI5 clocks him hanging with a bunch of converts at the Brick Lane mosque, manning a da’wah stall at the local market, shouting through a megaphone calling for the establishment of an Islamic state. Street soldier for Hizb ut-Tahir. They send him here with a head full of Jihad. Him and two other guys. Intercepted them coming over the border from Kenya. His buddies got whacked. Sanjeev got winged and picked up. We’ve been running him ever since.’

  ‘I couldn’t do it. Nothing you could say to me would make me volunteer to be a human bomb.’

  ‘Like I said, dumb. Guy’s a blank sheet. You can write whatever narrative you want on the dude. One minute he’s filling buckets at KFC. Spat on, sworn at, lowest of the low. Then some intense dude from the mosque tells him he’s Luke Skywalker. He’s destined to kill kaffirs to please an angry god, strike a blow against the evil empire and get fast-tracked to paradise. Who wouldn’t be seduced by that story?’