A horror story

The result of a silly Facebook 'would you survive a zombie apocalypse?' quiz (short answer: no) and a challenge from a well-respected local author to take a walk on the dark side.  No spoilers if you aren't familiar with the Solent Welfare Rights Project team, Severe Discomfort or the sequels. 

 

Until they heard the woman's screams from the corridor, Martin Connolly and Toby Novak had been enjoying an unusually quiet afternoon in the Solent Welfare Rights Project's cluttered office, catching up on routine paperwork while listening to Radio 1.  Martin had won the toss and retuned from Radio 4.  Toby had wanted 6 Music, but decided he was still young and cool enough to tolerate his colleague's choice.

Martin was first to his feet and the door.  Immediately outside, one of the housing officers from the office opposite, a middle-aged woman whose name he had never taken the trouble to learn, was sprawled across the floor.

 Toby knelt beside her. 

 'It's okay,' he said, checking her wrist for a pulse.  'She's only fainted.'

 'I can see why...' Martin said slowly.

Standing where the door from the waiting room had been, until something had reduced it to scattered splinters, was a ghastly figure.  Its straggling hair was matted with blood and dirt, there was a rotted look about the greyish flesh of its battered face and one gory socket was missing an eyeball.  It lurched clumsily towards the advisers, dragging its festering feet across the carpet tiles, its left arm swinging limply at its side.  As they looked on, momentarily immobilised in terror, it lurched to a halt and swung its right arm forward. 

Clutched awkwardly in its filthy, gnarled hand was a brown envelope.

'What the...?'  Martin was too stunned even to swear.  He stepped back beyond the prone housing officer.   

Toby rose slowly to his feet and, to Martin's surprise, advanced cautiously until he was almost within reach of the creature's outstretched arm. 

'It looks like a DWP envelope,' he said. 

'Not that!'  Martin exclaimed.  'That!' 

He levelled a shaking arm to point in the creature's direction.

'I reckon he's a zombie,' Toby answered. 

'But zombies aren't real!'

'Of course they are!  Didn't you see the ones abstaining on the second reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill?'  Toby warily accepted the envelope from their visitor and stepped back quickly out of reach, drawing the letter out from within surprisingly calmly. 

'We need weapons!' cried Martin.

He glanced back into the office.  He saw only standard office furniture, computers, cardboard folders, notepads and paper.  While it might have counted as such in their usual battles with the dehumanising bureaucracy of the DWP, when it came to zombie-slaying, his trusty CPAG Welfare Rights Handbook didn't really cut it as a weapon.  The only sharp-edged object within easy reach was a staple remover.

'Don't you ever watch horror movies?' Martin demanded, as Toby nonchalantly perused the letter.  'We've got to cut its head off!'

'We can't do that.'

'Why not?'

'He's come here for help.'  Toby offered the letter to Martin.  'He's been found fit for work!'

'What?'

'His Employment and Support Allowance claim has been turned down.  He only got nine points at his medical.  They've allowed him occasionally has uncontrollable episodes of aggressive or disinhibited behaviour that would be unacceptable in any workplace.  No points for anything else.'

'He should be exempt from the Work Capability Assessment, though, shouldn't he?’ Martin argued.  ‘He's terminally ill!'

'Technically he's not, if he's already dead,' Toby suggested.  

'But there must be loads of other descriptors that fit him.'  Martin's keen legal instincts were conquering his fear.  He stepped over the housing officer and got as close as he dared to the creature.  'The way he walked up to us, I don't reckon he'd get more than a hundred metres without stopping or significant discomfort.  That's another nine points straight off.  He only needs six extra to pass.  Hey, zombie!' 

The creature grunted, but had turned away after handing over the envelope and seemed more interested in a fly crawling up his left leg.  Martin noticed that suddenly there were several drowsy flies buzzing about the room.  With a lurch in his stomach, he realised they were hatching out from somewhere near the zombie's left knee.

'He's called Ernest.  Ernest Simpson.'  Toby said evenly.  'It's on the letter.'

'Thanks.  Hey, Ernie!' 

Martin caught the monster's attention this time.  It stood with its head lolling to one side, watching him mutely. 

'Can you do this - with either arm?'  Martin raised his hands to the top of his head in turn. 

Ernest Simpson attempted to copy him, but his arms swung down to his sides before his hands were higher than the level of his chest. 

'Nine more points,' Martin said. 'Cannot raise either arm to top of head as if to put on a hat.'

The effort of lifting both arms seemed to have winded the zombie.  He gave a low groan and his left hand dropped off, falling to the floor and landing with a dull squelch.

'Looks like we can count 4c as well.'  Toby said.

'Cannot transfer a light but bulky object, such as an empty cardboard box.'  Martin recited from memory.  'Six points.  But that wouldn't have applied when he had his medical assessment.'

'Fair point.  Still, he's got to be home and dry – we’ve got more than fifteen already and we haven't touched on communication, or his mental health.' 

'Or continence..?'  

Although Martin didn't like to be judgmental, the guy smelt terrible.

Toby checked the letter again,  'He's in time to challenge the decision.  This isn't a month old yet.  I'll get him our usual paperwork to request a mandatory reconsideration.'

Martin didn't fancy being left alone to watch Ernie the zombie.  'Shouldn't we take him into the office?' he asked.

'Better not.  Hilary will give us both hell if he decomposes near her workstation.'

Toby turned to step back over the housing officer, but even as he noticed that the woman was no longer lying behind them, she emerged from her office, angry, wild-eyed and armed with a fearsome sickle-shaped blade.  She rushed straight at the startled zombie, howling as she hacked his head from his shoulders in a single mighty blow.

'It's the blade from the paper guillotine,' she explained, fastidiously wiping the gore off on the dead zombie's ragged clothing.  'I'd better see if there are any more of them about!  There usually are, aren't there?  No point leaving it to you pair of useless do-gooders, obviously!'

The advisers stood speechless as she strode away, looking down solemnly on the body of their decapitated client.

'Poor old Ernie,' said Toby.

    'Yeah,' said Martin.  'I had high hopes of getting him into the Support Group on Regulation 35 too.'

I've started, so I'll finish.

 

With the Tories on the brink of introducing yet more anti-union legislation, threatening the few remaining rights to dissent and protest the conventionally employed still possess, I find myself facing the kind of situation guaranteed to bring organised labour onto the streets with another unilateral change in terms and conditions from Amazon. 

As well as being able to buy ebooks (or download mine free, if you have patience and follow the timetable), it is also possible for 'Kindle Unlimited' subscribers to 'borrow' them.  As a staunchly Kindleless Luddite, I have no idea how this works - does the file disappear from your screen at the end of the 'loan'?  Are there fines for late return? - but what has changed for me is how I earn vanishingly small amounts of money from the process.  Payments used to be per book borrowed; we are now to be paid instead by pages read.

Since I do not have vast numbers of readers borrowing my books at any given time, this has the potential to give me an unexpected insight into where my stories grip their readers, and where they might flag.  This week, via the 'reports' tools Amazon provide, I have been able to follow the progress of one anonymous reader through Grand Union: cover-to-cover in four days with a gentle start, a good binge to the middle of the story, another light day and finally a sprint to the finish.  It will be interesting to see if that is typical.  I hope so; GU has apparently gripped this particular reader all the way to its conclusion, which is good news for the Beverage Fund.  Where I probably stand to lose is with those readers lured into Continual Supervision by the mildly racy second scene, only to be turned off by the politics in the third.  (Daily Mail readers, the lot of them!)
This in turn set me thinking about how we read books, and whether we have a tendency to see them through to the end, even if we aren't enjoying them very much, or give up and move on to something more engaging.  I do tend to stick with a book once I'm a chapter or two into it - probably a habit instilled in my schooldays when 'set books' had to be read and 'appreciated', even if I found them utterly tedious and longed to be brave enough to say so.  No more exams; no more Jane-bloody-Austen!  I know some people will regard that a heresy, but I prefer my classic literature without a soundtrack of tinkling harpsichords.

If I get into a book with a forward-moving plot, I am inclined to speed-read to find out what happens next, only to feel guilty at the end of many a fine novel that I didn't give the writer more respect and take it at a pace to better appreciate their craft.  On the plus side, it does reduce the number of hours of your life you'll never get back from a highly disappointing book.  I'm reluctant to name names, though as an enthusiast for all things medieval and architectural feel a moral obligation to 'dis' Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth as a long-winded, pretentious and deeply unpleasant piece of melodrama, which I should never have started, let alone bothered finishing.  I had almost put it out of my mind until it turned up as a recommend on Goodreads.  Seriously, people - no!

However, I digress.  Much as I might question the motives of the Amazon loans policy, it favours writers of long sagas as long as we have engaged our readers with our cast of characters, so even if I could, I don't think I'd be taking industrial action over this!