Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Meadows, Carl (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📖

reader, this guy used to wear these things that looked like solid wooden clogs with hammered metal on the bottom, so they made this really distinct sound on the hard tile floor of the wood shop. Metal on ceramic tiles. Clickety click, clickety clack. Pretty sure he made them himself.

As I creaked open the door… clickety clack. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that zombie Emerson was shuffling round the wood shop. That certainty was confirmed by the death stench that wafted through the door crack as I heard the undead Riverdance. Zombies fucking stink, man. Once the human dies they piss and shit themselves as everything relaxes. It’s gross as all hell, but they have this… this… aura. Their smell isn’t just natural odour; it’s like some brimstone kind of shit. I don’t know what brimstone smells like, but it’s always associated with evil. That’s what they smell like. Pure, absolute corruption. Hard to articulate.

When the apocalypse wasn’t a reality, every kid would dream of getting the chance to brain an asshole teacher without fear of reprisal, but when the end of the world is real, and that asshole teacher can equally just kill and eat you, well… that’s a whole different set of rules. Plus, as I had discovered earlier, smashing the brains out of someone—dead or alive—is no fucking joke. It’s brutal, it’s messy, it’s sickening. This isn’t Shaun of the Dead where hilarity ensues. Putting someone down up close and personal is gross as all hell. I imagine our friends across the pond have things a bit easier, as there’s probably a certain amount of detachment popping the melon of a zed with a nine-mil from thirty feet away. We don’t have a gun culture though, so the report of a gunshot is super rare. Having to do the job nose-to-nose with something that smells like a rotting colon, with full on head splash in your face? Nope. Fucking awful. Everything about it is shit.

So here I was, about to have a gladiatorial battle to the death with a short, fat wanker that would no doubt be even surlier in undeath than he was in life. Marvellous.

Well, me creaking that door meant that little flash of sound was like an airhorn to Emmy. He scuttled and bobbed over like a fat shrivelled skeksis towards the door and I could hear him coming in his clickety clackety way. The door opened inwards so I waited and waited for him to weave and stumble his way round the workbenches until he was heading towards the door and—as he got up close—I full on kicked that door like Bruce Lee, right into his kisser.

There was a satisfying crunch and crack and he went arse over tit, bounced off a workbench and collapsed flat on his face. Well, I say flat. As I said, he was a rotund fellow, so he bobbed, rolled and flailed on his big belly as he tried to climb to his feet again. It would probably have been hilarious had I not been so desperate to get past him and find a weapon. After kerb-stomping Skeletor the other night and remembering how rank it felt to do that—feeling a skull splinter under your boot as you stamp repeatedly on it—I had no desire to do it again. All I wanted for Christmas right then was something big, blunt and traumatic, so I could end this shit-show with a single blow.

Of course, with my luck, I couldn’t see a single tool to hand and Zombie Riverdance didn’t take long to wobble to his clacky feet, all while my head was on a swivel looking for something I could brain him with.

So, it was time to get creative. There are some big ass vices in that room and one of them had wide gaping jaws fully opened, a real industrial width. A quick estimation of Emmy’s melon and the gap between the jaws…

Remember my parkour nimbleness? Mr Emerson couldn’t get near me as he shuffled and bumped his way around, while I jumped up and over the benches. Every time he got near though, that same silent snarl appeared I keep seeing on every one of these things when they’re just a pounce away. No growl, hiss or even gurgle. Just a twisted expression of hate as it screamed in silence at me and accelerated like it had just been given a shot of zombie adrenalin. Gives me shivers every time.

Once in position, I slid across a bench to strike from the rear, planted my foot full in his back and pushed him face first towards the vice. He didn’t go flush in. Nope, first I had to gag back vomit as I heard him go teeth-first into one of the vice’s jaws.

Blurgh. That sound.

I remember a kid I used to know when I was ten named Timmy. We used to crack golf balls off the top of a hill across a big stretch of earthy wasteland, seeing how far we could hit them, and obviously the boys couldn’t get beat by a girl, so they were super competitive. We only had one club, passing this iron between us as we took turns. Timmy had taken his turn but hadn’t moved far back away from this other kid we used to hang with, Nick.

Nick brought the club back, swung, smacked the ball clean and the club continued to sweep up. Timmy was too close.

There was a weird sound like a mix of metallic chink and dull thunk with a shuddering ceramic splinter as that club’s iron head met Timmy’s front teeth.

I’ll never forget that sound. Never.

It was brought to stark life once again as Emerson took an involuntary bite of the metal vice at speed.

The crack and shatter of teeth against solid metal, dear reader, is hard to describe. I’m no prizewinning writer to capture the sound in words, but I felt that shit shudder through my fucking soul. My eye is twitching just