His Name Was Jack, Parts 1 to 3

The bloody thing wouldn’t open. That was the initial problem. Of course, it was only minor really, he realised that he had much more pressing matters to attend to when a flesh eating former father of three ripped the cars wing mirror off and tried to have his hand as a starter.

It hadn’t always been like this, Jack’s day started pretty normally really. He struggled to get up, slipped into his pants backwards, fell down half a flight of stairs and accidently forgot to boil the kettle for his morning beverage. Still, at the time he had thought to himself, so far so good.

Now, staring into the glazed over eyes of what has used to be a neighbour, he had begun to let his mind wander to the possibility that today might not be that good after all.

The zombie made a sort of half arsed growling noise. It was probably hungry. Actually, it was hungry, Jack was sure of that. If it hadn’t been feeling like a snack the thing that used to be the guy he occasionally waved to on a Sunday would not be trying to eat his face off right now.

Ok, he thought, time to get my game on, or something. He moved backwards a bit more, so as to allow himself more room for the roundhouse kick he was secretly storing up. Even though he wasn’t in any was a martial arts expert, Jack was sure the zombie would least expect a flying kick to the neck.

Suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, a piercing shriek broke the silence. Well, it at least made things a bit more interesting than the slight grunts from the first zombie anyway.

Shit, it’s Dorothy.

Dorothy, good old Dorothy. Jesus, she’s got a knife. His next door-but-one neighbour, a young seventy at least, ran forwards and stabbed what used to be Jack’s other neighbour in between the eyes. The zombie seemed rather startled by this. Better than my idea of a kick I guess, thought Jack. The zombie slumped forward onto the Micra’s bonnet.

‘Where did you come from?’ Jack said, in a nonchalant way really, considering that he had just come very close to being eating face first by a member of the living dead.

‘Quick, there is no time, get the heck in that car and start it!’

The woman was obeyed. Perhaps the other, rather larger knife, she had withdrawn from her dress was the catalyst.

So there they were, two unlikely heroes, speeding very slowly away in a battered purple Micra, amidst a rather unlikely zombie outbreak.


Part 2: 72 Hours Prior to Outbreak


Life wasn’t fair.

Neither were these onions. No one ever added them to their hotdogs anyway, it was always mustard, bloody American mustard. The sort of stuff so tasteless you could bury your head in the stuff, breathe in, and still believe you were respiring. Putrid stuff.

Jack slammed the knife down onto the cutting board. He grabbed a nearby dish cloth and brought it to his face. Realising that it was probably already covered in enough germs to kill half the population of Europe, he moved the towel away and scurried towards the other end of the tiny bowling alley grill kitchen to fetch some tissues.

Onions made him cry, like they did to quite a lot of people. For him it was worse though, because in ten minutes his shift actually serving people was coming up and although Jack would agree his job wasn’t the best thing going for him at that moment, he had to at least show he wasn’t completely crumbling inside. Damn onions.

The one sixth of an hour passed without event. Well, without anything happening that wasn’t something expected, such as the kitchen nearly burning down and Jack trapping his finger in the freezer door. He didn’t like to think of himself as clumsy though, partly because he had encountered the word clumsy often enough to even know what it meant precisely. Instead, he considered himself to have a problem with some basic motor functions, namely walking, and, well, moving in general. These problems tended to become exaggerated when he was nervous.

And now he was nervous. Taking off the kitchen apron and donning the hat of Mack’s Fast Bowl meant that he was now representing the complex. With ten lanes and a tiny bar and grill, Mack’s was well known for its ability to force complete strangers together, usually in the tight corridors leading to the toilets.

Things were going well for him until he saw her. The brunette. Not just any brunette though, no, this was one he had seen quite often. Her name was Sophie. For some reason she regularly bowled at Mack’s. Maybe she knew him, Jack didn’t think so though, Mack spent most of his time trying to win the pink bunny on dodgy machines he had had installed a few months previously. No, this girl seemed genuine. And, until that night anyway, she seemed to not be too fond of American mustard either.

‘Oh, hi there Jack,’ she smiled broadly. To her right, in very close proximity, and not because of the walls, was her latest squeeze. His name was Andy or something. Not much of a talker, Andy preferred to grunt at people. In this encounter he merely nodded towards Jack.

‘Hi Sophie, err, what can I get you tonight?’ Jack’s reply was quite good. He could breath again. Although he had seen Sophie quite a lot, and had spoken on many occasions, and possibly loved her, it was still a relief when he was able to speak a sentence without accidently spitting in her eye.

‘Just a hot dog please, oh and a cheese burger for Ay En De Why here.’

Oh how much he would love to be referred to as Jay Ay See Kay one day. With a nod he opened the door to the kitchen and shouted the order.

After about five minutes of complete silence, the order was complete and Jack had garnished Sophie’s hotdog with the filthy mustard.

‘Well there you go then, enjoy it,’ he said, smiling as best he could. It probably looked more like a plunger had been inserted sideways into his rectum, especially when Sophie’s expression was one of concern for the moment he was able to hold it.

‘I will,’ she said gleefully, before wandering over to a table for two with her boyfriend.

And that was that, that was him, that over there playing footsie with a guy who looked like he needed medication was the girl he really fancied, and yet somehow life went on, oblivious to Jack’s desires, ignoring the passion he felt for the girl with the heart tattoo on her left arm and the quirky dress sense.

That would all change though. Jack had a plan. Tomorrow, regardless of her current marital status, he would ask her out for a drink, a friendly drink.


Part 3: There they are, over there… wearing bright colours


Massive balls. Huge, hulking things. Wet, hulking balls. Bowling balls. Jack sighed.

‘I really have no idea how they got there.’

The old lady, resembling a zombie herself in many ways, barely acknowledged that he had spoken. Jack was sure that it wouldn’t be long before the woman passed the threshold of life and turned into one of those creatures.

The creatures, the undead, the big fucking rotting things that had attacked him in the underground car-park. Outside they had encountered chaos. Roads were blocked, people were fleeing in every direction. Well, some roads were blocked, and he was sure he had seen at least one person fleeing. The only odd thing had been that there didn’t appear to be any zombies about. Jack was initially puzzled by this. Given that it was a piece of writing, he didn’t believe that the fiction’s budget had got in the way of putting some place-holder flesh eaters in place. It was unexplainable.

They were in the middle of a dual carriageway, staring into the boot of his ellbend coloured Micra at the five giant bowling balls inside. Jack honestly didn’t know how they had gotten there. Around them the occasional scream glared out, or a person would shuffle by looking anxious. It was getting unclear what the hell was going on. In fact, it was possible the mass-hysteria was all in his head and the person waddling past just had a bad case of piles.

No, I saw them, Jack thought, slamming the boot. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the day looking at balls. Balls reminded him of the bowling alley he worked at. Balls reminded him of Sophie. Oh, dear Sophie. Was she okay? Had she survived the outbreak of possible panic about an imaginary set of walking dead people? It was pretty likely. Even the radio suggested nothing had happened, in that it continued to play the same boring shit it always did.

‘The traffic is starting to move now,’ the quivering, frail voice of Dorothy broke his train of thought. It was true too, too true in fact, that the traffic had begun moving again. Only now he could see the flashing lights of an ambulance and police car. Further down from this he could make out the details of what looked like a crumpled car.

‘Oh.’

So it was a car crash? What about the zombies? Shit! What about Dorothy stabbing that zombie in the eye!? Jack allowed his gaze to drift to Dorothy, who was shuffling back into the Micra. She didn’t appear to have a knife. In fact, the only thing that resembled a weapon on her person was a black umbrella.

Hmm. Oh no, the funeral, the dead… the undead. It began to make some sort of sense now. Jack recalled the conversation he had the night before with Dorothy. She had to get to a funeral in the morning, her friend had passed away. What happened in the car-park then? Chavs happened, scallys, one-piece-tracksuit wearing mongoloids had reverse moonwalked towards Jack and attempted to nick his car keys. Why they wanted his car he didn’t know. There weren’t that many of them, and when Dorothy appeared waving the pointy end of the umbrella they had fled like pigeons fleeing a malicious toddler.

Well, the blurring of fantasy and reality had provided him with a little excitement, so Jack was rather pleased by his own brain’s muddledness as he squeezed back into the Micra and started the engine.

Next stop, the funeral.

He lifted his foot off the clutch and slammed down onto the accelerator. The aging cars began to move forward. After what seemed like a week, it reached 30.

If there was a real zombie outbreak, Jack was about to find out.