Till You Drop

By Mat Coward

Suppose all the monsters in the world went on strike ...
Fear is an essential part of human life, and for centuries it's been provided by vampires, werewolves, zombies and ghouls. But what happens when the monsters take to the picket line? What happens to society when real terrors take over from imaginary ones? A novella about zombie capitalism, written by one of the most praised short story writers of his generation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mat Coward
• Release date: Aug 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476171500

Mat Coward

Mat Coward is a British writer of crime fiction, SF, humour and children's fiction. He is also gardening columnist on the Morning Star newspaper. His short stories have been nominated for the Edgar and shortlisted for the Dagger, published on four continents, translated into several languages, and broadcast on BBC Radio. Over the years he has also published novels, books about radio comedy, and collections of funny press cuttings, and written columns for dozens of magazines and newspapers.

Book preview

Till You Drop

by Mat Coward

Published by Alia Mondo Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Mat Coward

Cover by Dean Harkness

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please buy an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not buy it, or it was not bought for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and buy your own copy.

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

About the author

Other books by Mat Coward

***

Chapter One

They’re calling it ‘ropetirement’ on Twitter, said the sergeant, looking down on the body dangling from the bannisters.

Ropetirement? Yeah, not bad. That could catch on. Detective Inspector Pipe watched as the medic confirmed that the dead man was dead. You’d need a special name for it, Pipe thought, now that they were getting so many of them. This was the fourth he’d been called out to in the last week. Three men in their seventies, and a woman of ninety-two.

The Commissioner retired, though, didn’t he? The uniformed sergeant spoke through a mouthful of crisps. How come chief constables can retire, if retirement’s been abolished?

Executive stress. Pipe kept his voice as straight as his face. Politics was none of his business, not when he was on duty. That was a basic rule for him, always had been. Police should be above politics, and that included not making sarky chitchat in the hearing of civilian staff. The Commissioner retired on doctor's orders. That’s perfectly lawful.

Which it was. As part of austerity’s second phase, retirement from work had been made illegal. But the rich, the powerful and the well-connected still seemed to manage a well-earned rest.

None of Pipe’s business. Not when he was on duty.

Apparently, the sergeant didn’t share his code. Oh, yeah, I was forgetting, sir. You see, my brother-in-law’s a bus driver, he’s seventy-one, and he had a total nervous breakdown last year, and evidently the best cure for that sort of thing is the work cure. He finished his crisps, and crumpled the bag into his trouser pocket. But of course, it’s been clinically proven, hasn’t it? Executive stress is a different illness, different remedy. Can only be treated with complete rest.

DI Pipe took a folding knife from his pocket and held it out, handle first. You can cut the poor sod down now, Sergeant.

***

Definite beginnings do not exist; everything is the heir to something else. Turning points, however, are a different matter - often visible, especially in retrospect. And in retrospect, most informed opinion would agree that one of the greatest turning points in the history of the Great Monster Strike occurred on a warm autumn night, on a Saturday, in the West End of London.

Its central player was a dark-haired man, dressed well but not ostentatiously, a man who carried with him an air of restraint. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and had done so for more than a century. His name was Lanto.

If you know the night, there are many ways of moving through a city. There are short-cuts and long-cuts, and there are places which seem to have been designed for the purpose of being loitered in.

In one such - a slim, shadowed passage connecting Leicester Square with the Charing Cross Road - Lanto duly loitered. This had proved a good hunting ground in the past, but the qualities which made it so suitable for Lanto's purposes - its seclusion, its darkness, its lack of human traffic - also meant that those who fished here needed patience.

But then, patience - the ability to absorb boredom and turn it into serenity - was a birthright to Lanto's kind, and so it was with no sense of weariness that, as he finished his third cigarette, he finally heard the uneven trundling sound which told him that his next appointment was ready to see him.

Do you have a light, friend? Lanto's voice was darker than the night, but lighter than his hair.

Oh, Jesus! cried the man; drunk-eyed, unshaven for a week, in his fifties, sitting in a wheelchair that looked as if its previous owner had been run over by a minibus. You scared the stuff out of me, like that!

So sorry, said Lanto, with a smile which appeared reassuring but wasn't, and wasn't intended to be. He waved an unlit cigarette in the air in front of the man's face, while moving his feet, quickly, easily, so as to stand between the stranger and his freedom. I was just wondering if you had a light?

The stranger was merely drunk, not senseless. He'd seen the business with the feet; fast and smooth it'd been, like Fred Astaire. He could see, even in this vague light, that the man standing before him - a striking, commanding man, calm and confident, who looked taller than he was, and made you somehow, whatever your fears, want to please him - was not the sort who spent Saturday nights in alleyways, asking strangers for lights.

He could tell, certainly, that this charming man, with his understated, gentlemanly manliness, his smart, timeless clothes, did not mean him well. But what could he do? It is hard to meet charm with aggression; if you find it easy, you're a psychopath.

I've got a light, sure, he said, his voice as strong with defiance as it was shaky with despair; he knew what the inevitable looked like, all right, when it sat on his face. No problem, pal - but shall we take it into the Square where we can see what we're doing?

No, said Lanto. The stranger knew; didn't know what he knew, almost certainly, but he knew that something out of the ordinary was happening, and that it was bad. So: it was time for the stranger to become a victim. No, said Lanto again, simply but not curtly, and the man sagged in his chair, in relief and resignation.

Lanto threw his unlit cigarette to one side. I think here will do fine. His hands moved as elegantly and as speedily as had his feet, and the victim was unconscious within a second or two at the most.

Only a few seconds more, and Lanto was out of the alley, onto the Charing Cross Road - thinking A falafel in pitta? With hot chilli sauce? Or straight home? - when a noise from behind him sent him running back towards the alley, his long black coat flying to keep up.

"Hey, you! What the hell do you think you're doing - leave that man alone!"

Three young men and one younger woman (business suits, expensive haircuts, vodka and cologne, camera-phones in hand) looked up at Lanto's yell, and saw him framed in the entrance to the passageway: a shadowman, a darkness visible against the dark.

Lanto’s erstwhile victim was lying on the ground, foetal, his chair upside down on top of him.

Two men began to edge towards the nearer, Leicester Square end of the short, brick tunnel. The woman was slower; she struggled to hoist her tights, and to persuade her heels to move in the right direction. The third man, with a glance behind to see how near he was to light and safety, found time for one more boot in the prone body’s gut, and some career advice: Get a job, you dirty scrounger!

Any further words died in his stomach, as Lanto - suddenly, impossibly upon them, and them with just inches to go before they reached their neon sanctuary - ripped his fingers backwards across the faces of the two stragglers. It was done in one motion: swift, smooth, casual. With a single seamless, throwaway movement, he scarred both deeply, and left one of them half-blind for life.

They tried to scream, but couldn't. It was not until they'd been running for fifteen minutes - flat out, running wherever the streets led, just running - that they were finally free of the feeling that they were drowning in their own breath, and could at last make a noise other than a gurgle.

If you've come back for my wallet, matey, said the man on the ground, painfully hauling himself into his chair, you're too late. He accepted a cigarette from Lanto. I see your lighter's fixed, then? That's good. He smiled through bleeding lips.

Are you hurt? said Lanto. Do you need an ambulance?

I’ll be all right. I’ve had worse. He brought a handful of jacket up to his nose and sniffed. "Just blood and dirt, I think. You saved me from that fate worse than death, anyway. There again, I’m sure there’s blokes in this town’d pay well to be pissed on by a posh bitch." As he smoked, he studied Lanto through the smoke, candidly and with a wry expression. No longer afraid: he was no longer this man's victim, at any rate.

They took your wallet? said Lanto.

"That's right. Though I carry such an item purely for affectation, you understand. Paid my rent this afternoon, had a good drink