A Plagiarist's Purgatory

Right. So, a few things to note about publishing a book: first, don’t steal manuscripts off dead bodies that you find by the side of the motorway. Second, when reading through said manuscripts, check to make sure that none of the scientific formulas included are in any way, shape, or form capable of producing a chemical substance that, when ingested, turns people into zombies. Third, keep in touch with the graphic designer in charge of the cover art, because otherwise you’ll end up with something you don’t like and it will be too late to change it. You know, standard stuff. 

I closed my laptop, putting it in its case, and folded the newspaper that I’d propped up as a sort of shield on the small, round table. I left a £10 note in payment for the small cup of coffee and blackcurrant scone--coffee shops were bloody expensive nowadays, but at least they still had free internet--and, holding the folded newspaper over my face, I scooted out onto the street. The more I could do to avoid drawing attention, the better. 

I turned a corner and found myself in the middle of a group of people standing around a pudgy old man standing atop an overturned orange crate and wearing a handmade cardboard sign that read “The End Of The World Is Neye!” 

Crap. The man was busy proclaiming that terrible events would precede the end times, and that only a select few would be chosen for the oncoming Rapture. I hurried my walk. 

“EYYYY TERRY!” Too late, I’d been spotted.

I turned around sheepishly. “Heya Frank,” I said. Frank beamed down at me, and called to the crowd (most of whom, I suspected, were just there for the spectacle).

“Now this man,” he cried jubilantly, “has done more to bring about the end of the world than the rest of humanity put together! Everyone give a hand to mister Terrence Matthews!” 

I shot him a weak smile and a thumbs-up.

A handful of people were clapping, but almost as soon as Frank finished speaking one of the spectators cried out, “THAT’S THE BLITHERING IDIOT THAT STARTED ALL THIS! QUICK LADS, GET HIM!”

...And that was my cue. 

I took off down the street, an assortment of pedestrians following in close pursuit. Fortunately, I was tall and skinny, and faster than most, and I reached my apartment block just as the crowd was catching up to me. Once I got to the lift, I would be home free, since you couldn’t get beyond the ground floor without a key. I could see the rabid faces draw near as I reached the blasted metal contraption, but my repeated jamming of the “close door” button seemed to have paid off, and the doors sealed shut just as one man reached out to grab me. A slow whirring sound started as the lift inched upstairs. The machine was devastatingly slow. I could hear the crowd banging on the outer doors, but it was no use; I was safe. I heaved a sigh of relief and sunk down in the corner.

Almost five minutes later, the lift dinged to let me know that it had arrived on the second floor. I got out and knocked on the door of Flat No. 7. I saw little need for keys, since Mum was always home. 

The door pried open an inch, the latch left on. I sighed. “It’s just me, Mum,” I said. 

“Oh Terry, thanks be to God! I was worried sick! You didn’t leave a note or anything!” She removed the latch and opened the door. “Quick now,” she said, shooing me in, “you never know what’s about nowadays. You leave the door open for one second too long, and bam! Before the Lord’s name can cross your lips, you’re someone else’s breakfast!”

I smiled wearily at her. She was a short, squat Irish woman, in her early sixties, with curly greying hair, and a penchant for 1980s fashion. “Don’t worry, Mum,” I said, looking around at the illegal armaments that littered our tiny hallway, which included two shotguns (one bent), a crowbar, a rusty hammer, and a chainsaw that neither of us had ever tested. “They’d have a hard time getting through you.”

“That’s what we’d all like to think, love,” she said, patting me on the back. “Come on, I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

I meandered into the living room, trying to decide on my next course of action. The news was playing on the TV. I read the headline (“Local Author in League with the Chinese?”) and switched it off.

 “So, where exactly were you all afternoon, Terry?” Mum called from the kitchen. 

“Just at the little cafe on Market Street, the one that does those nice blackcurrant scones. I was doing some research.”

Mum grunted slightly. “I just wish you’d told me where you were going, that’s all,” she said, “it’s a dangerous world we’re living in.”

I said nothing. I knew all too well about the world we lived in. I had been a best-selling author for all of three months before someone replicated the experiment in my book and created the world’s first real-life zombie. The infection spread from there. Even the smallest bite, the teensiest contact between zombie saliva and human blood, spelled imminent doom, and as of right now there was no cure. We were still in the early days, of course. It had only been six weeks since that first infection, but even in that time the number of cases in England had grown to nearly 100,000, and more were being infected every day. 

I’d never have imagined that so much chaos could come from a stolen manuscript. I’d thought it was a novel, a work of pure science-fiction. I mean, it was written like a novel, albeit a highly-detailed one. I never thought that the experiment that created a zombie apocalypse in the world of the book could be replicated in real life, but given my luck, I guess I should have known that something like this would happen.

Right now I had to focus. As far as I could tell, the only person who knew anything about the science behind the disease was the man whose dead body I’d stolen the manuscript off of. It was him I’d been researching in the coffee shop that afternoon. After scrolling through pages and pages of newspaper articles and obituaries from the last year or so, I finally found him. Michael McAvoy, aged forty-three, found dead on the side of the M25 last September, cause of death: suicide. A few more google searches and I had an address, and it was there that I’d be heading this evening, in search of something, anything, that could help the scientific community arrive at a cure. It was the least I could do.

Mum came into the living room holding two cups of tea. I took one. 

“I was going to have supper ready for eight. Does that sound good to you?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about me, Mum, I think I’m actually going to get an early night,” I said, kissing her on the cheek and heading for my bedroom. It was five o’clock. I had seven hours.

***

Preparation took less time than I thought. I wore dark trousers, a black turtleneck sweater (that I got back when I was trying to impress a French girl), gloves, and one of Mum’s black stockings over my head. I grimaced slightly as I put it on-- it was one of the fancy, sheer ones that Mum only wore when she went to nightclubs with friends. I didn’t want to imagine what it had been exposed to. I also grabbed the crowbar from the hallway on my way out.

Michael McAvoy’s house was only about fifteen kilometers away, but the underground had been closed down since the infection broke out, so I had to bike. The house had been left to the dead man’s sister, according to a newspaper article, but a google search revealed that she lived on the other side of the city, so I had reason to hope that the place was unoccupied. The door was locked, so I smashed one of the front windows with the crowbar and clambered into the front room. Apart from a thick layer of dust, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I searched the rest of the house. Nothing. I checked the kitchen last. There was a note on the table, covered with dust. Finally, some sort of clue! I picked it up and shook it around before reading it. It was a to-do list.

“Clean House

Disinfect Basement, 

Neutralize Samples, 

Text Susan, 

Destroy Manuscript”

Everything was crossed off except the last item, “Destroy Manuscript.” I read the list again. “Disinfect Basement.” So there was a basement. That must be where the “samples” were kept, and if there was anything that could be used to produce a cure, presumably that would be there too. I scanned the house again, looking for a door or hatch that would lead downstairs. No such luck. 

An hour later, I was on the brink of giving up. However, there was an office at the back of the house, with a couple of bookcases along the back wall. Desperate, I wondered if Michael McAvoy had hidden some sort of map or instruction page in one of the books. I began to tear them off the bookshelves and shake them open. After emptying two or three shelves this way, I came across a book that seemed stuck to the bookcase. I pulled it, a lever clicked, and the bookcase swung away from the wall, revealing a large metal door behind it. 

“YESSSS!” I cried out, dancing around the room like a lunatic, “I KNEW IT!” I tried the door. It was locked. I banged it a few times with my crowbar, but nothing happened. “Bugger,” I said, heaving a loud sigh. 

Suddenly I heard a loud crash and a groan come from the front of the house. Crap. I must have attracted zombies with all the commotion. Crap, crap, crap. I bolted towards the back-door, unlocked it as fast as my shaking hands would let me, and dashed out into the garden. At least four zombies surrounded the house. I smashed one’s skull in with my crowbar as I ran past it, narrowly avoiding its grasp. Another one was standing next to my bike, fiddling with the bell. I kicked it in the shins just hard enough for it to topple over, and then leaped onto my bike, cycling as fast as I could. Zombies aren’t as slow as the movies make out, but they aren’t fast either. They followed close behind me for a good two kilometers or more, their groans a helpful reminder that slowing down meant death, but fortunately, they got tired quickly. After the last zombie had given up and dropped off my tail, I finally slowed down, panting and wheezing from the exertion. I couldn’t afford another close call like that

***

I woke up early the next morning, despite only a few hours of sleep. I needed a way to get into Michael McAvoy’s basement. The metal door was locked, but there had been a keyhole next to the handle, so presumably someone must have the key. I guessed that someone was probably the sister Michael had left the house to-- a young widow named Susan Fletchley. I left while Mum was getting ready, and biked the six kilometers to Susan’s house. 

Susan Fletchley’s house was small, like her brother’s, but it seemed more homely. I rang the doorbell. A frazzled, mousy-haired woman in her mid-thirties opened the door. 

“Susan Fletchley?” I asked.

“That’s me,” she said, “what do you want?”

“My name’s Terry... uh, Terry Matthews,” I said, “I was wondering if I could talk to you about your brother, Michael McAvoy.”

High-pitched screams emanated from some corner of the house. “MIKEY! DAVID!” She cried, “YOU LEAVE YOUR SISTER ALONE, OR I’LL COME BACK THERE AND MAKE YOU WISH YOU’D NEVER STEPPED FOOT ON THIS EARTH!”

“Sorry,” Susan said, turning to me and waving me inside, “You’ve no idea what it’s been like having the kids at home all the time since the infection broke out. What do you want to talk about Michael for?”

“I believe he was working on a project before he died. I was wondering if you knew anything about it?”

“Yeah, he was working on some kind of science-fiction book, about zombies and such.” She chuckled. “Kind of prophetic now that I think about it.”

“Well,” I said, “about that...” I explained my story to her. 

Susan was horrified. “So, you took his manuscript,” she said, “passed it off as your own, and when it turned out it wasn’t fiction after all, instead of admitting that it wasn’t yours and you didn’t know how the science worked, you just decided to take the fall for it?” 

“I had a reputation to maintain!” I exclaimed, “Do you think anyone would ever publish me again if I admitted to intellectual property theft?”

“DO YOU THINK THAT MATTERS IF EVERYONE’S EATEN BY ZOMBIES?” she cried.

“Fair point,” I mumbled.

“Right,” she said, “if Michael’s the one who’s really responsible for all this, and you think that he’s still got all of his research in his basement, then let’s go and find it. DAVID! LOOK AFTER YOUR SIBLINGS! MUMMY’S GOING OUT FOR A LITTLE WHILE!” She grabbed some keys from a drawer and pulled me out the door, towards her car. 

***

The zombies had dispersed since the previous night, but I suspected they wouldn’t be far away. We both tried to stay quiet as we entered through the back-door and made our way to the office. Susan tried several of the keys on the metal door. 

“Come on, come on,” I urged.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” she said. Finally, the lock clicked, and the door swung open, revealing a narrow staircase. Susan went first, and I followed her down. 

The basement was small, and smelled mainly of bleach. The worktops had all been cleared, but dozens of small cupboards lined the walls. 

“You take the left side, I’ll take the right,” Susan said. The little cupboards were filled with chemistry instruments, empty containers, small plastic packets containing different colored powders, and bottles of various sizes. After a few minutes, I opened several cupboards filled with uniformly-sized vials, each marked with a hand-written label. 

“Aha!” I cried, “Susan, come here, I think we might find something among these!” 

Suddenly there came a loud bang and a clatter from upstairs, like a door being kicked in. 

“What was that?” Susan asked, her eyes wide.

I didn’t answer.

Lacking any real weapons, I grabbed a bottle of hydrofluoric acid, and walked cautiously up the stairs and out into the hallway. I turned towards the back-door, expecting a zombie to jump out at me, but what actually jumped out at me was Mum, with two shotguns in her arms.

“WHAT ON EARTH?” I cried.

“Ooh, sorry love,” Mum said, pulling back, “I thought you might be one of them things.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I used that phone app to get your location. I hadn’t seen you since yesterday evening, and I was worried.”

“Blimey Mum, please never do that again.”

I heard Susan suddenly call out from the basement, “I’VE GOT IT!” followed by a loud crash and a series of curse words. Mum and I rushed down to the basement.

“It wasn’t a zombie then, I take it?” Susan asked, the floor covered with the little vials, some of them broken. 

“No, just my Mum,” I replied. “But we need to hurry up. I imagine zombies will be here soon, given all the racket we’ve just made.”

“Right,” said Susan, “Well, I found three vials labeled “ANTIDOTE” but then I knocked most of the vials onto the floor, and dropped the three I was holding, so I’m having a bit of a shit time to be honest. I don’t think they all broke though, I just need to find them amongst this mess.”

Mum and I kneeled down next to the assortment of vials, doing our best to sort through them despite the broken glass. I began to hear groaning from outside. 

“Come on, come on,” I said under my breath. The groaning grew louder. 

“GOT ONE!” Susan exclaimed.

“Let’s go then!” I cried.

The three of us ran up the stairs and down the hallway to the back-door, Mum at the forefront with her shotguns. Zombies had surrounded the house-- more zombies than I had ever seen in one place before. I glanced around, recognizing a pudgy one wearing a cardboard sign. Oh no, I thought, not Frank. I guess there’d be no Rapture for him after all.

We plowed through the swarm of zombies, Mum shooting the ones nearest to us. 

“Get into my car!” she called, “there’s more weapons in the back!”

Mum threw open the driver’s door for Susan, then ran around to the passenger’s seat. I clambered in the back and Susan tossed me the vial. 

“DRIVE!” Mum cried, as zombies started closing in on the car 

Susan gave what sounded like a battle-cry, and stepped on the accelerator, plowing down several zombies in front of us and speeding out of the neighborhood. However, four or five zombies had grabbed onto the car. Mum leaned out the window and shot three of them in the head. I eyed a chainsaw on the seat next to me. It was now or never. I revved the chainsaw, and by some miracle, it worked. I threw it out the window at the zombies near me, and in an explosion of black goo, they were gone. Thank God, I thought, sighing deeply as we sped towards the city. It was finally over.