Jack Strange - Zomcats!

“This is disgusting,” he said. “I’m fed up of eating rats. When are we going to get any real food?”

Bits of chewed rat head flew from his mouth as he spoke.

The tunnel he and his companions were in was part of a maze which seemed to go on forever, and they could find no way out of it. They’d been down there for months, and the batteries in their torch had long since run out of charge, obliging them to stumble along as best they could in pitch blackness. They’d all lost weight, and were all three of them ravenous even for zombies, who are almost always ravenous.

There was an ominous noise, like an animal in pain.

“What was that?” Kat asked in her husky voice.

“It was my stomach groaning,” Fletcher replied. “I can’t go on like this for much longer. I need food. I could just go for a bit of prime rump, how about you?”

“I’d love a bit of rump. I’d like it sliced about an inch thick and flash-fried in olive oil with onions and garlic. I’d want the blood to be runny. I hate it when it’s overdone. And I’d like it to be sliced from something young, so it’s nice and tender.”

“You mean like a juicy twenty-year-old student, or something like that?” Fletcher asked, licking his lips.

“Yes, something like that,” said Kat. “A student or an apprentice mechanic. I’m quite partial to mechanics.”

“I’ll tell you another thing,” said Fletcher. “I’m gagging for a shag.”

“Oh, so am I.”

Just then, Rampant stopped.

“Feel that?” He asked.

“What?” Fletcher and Kat asked together.

“That breeze, you silly things,” said Rampant in his deceptively effete voice. “We must be near an opening of some kind.”

“There’s only one opening I want to be near, right now,” Fletcher replied, and Kat giggled.

“This is no time for your coarse jokes, Gary,” said Rampant. “Now you two concentrate, and follow me.”

Rampant felt his way along the wall and turned a corner. The breeze got stronger. He followed the sensation of wind against his face and turned another corner. The ceiling dropped dramatically lower, but he could see light at last. He dropped on all fours and began to crawl. Seconds later, he emerged from under a rock, blinking into the daylight, closely followed by his companions.

They all looked around. They were on the side of a hill. Above them was Stonker Edge, one of the highest points in Huddersfield; and below them was the town itself, sprawled out across the valley, the heart of it a mass of rubble, with tiny people moving amongst the rubble like ants on an anthill.

“Good news,” said Rampant. “We’re back in Huddersfield, and the British army has gone home. Look, there’s a road down into town over there. We’ll get onto it and find a place to hide. Then we’ll get hold of some decent two-legged food and do some serious cooking.”

President Doughnut was standing on an elevated wooden platform that was so huge it resembled the deck of a cruise liner. Along its length there was a bandstand, a stage, an al fresco restaurant, and a catering kitchen.

The platform had been erected exactly in the middle of a wall that was sixty-foot-high and nineteen hundred miles long. It was missing one concrete block. Two workers, both of them undocumented — the American term for what the British would call ‘illegal immigrants’ — held the missing block aloft and the President applied some mortar to the gap it was meant to occupy, and the illegal, sorry, undocumented workers carefully positioned it and tapped it into place.

Doughnut turned around. In the distance, he noticed a black car travelling rapidly along the desert road generating clouds of dust in its wake.

On the ground far below, there was a huge crowd of cheering admirers. He grinned at them. He was wearing a grey suit, white shirt, red tie, and his trademark red baseball cap with the words ‘The Doughnut’ written across the front. He removed his baseball cap and waved it in the air at the crowd. The crowd was so big that most of the people in it couldn’t see him, but they were able to watch him on the giant screens which were strategically positioned at either end of the wooden platform, and they applauded loudly.

Still grinning, Doughnut spoke to his aide from the corner of his mouth, a gentle Texan breeze disturbing the carefully glued-down strands of his comb-over.

“See that, Tyler?” He said, his words almost drowned out in the noise being generated by the wild applause, “I reckon that’s good enough to guarantee me a second term, maybe even a third.”

Tyler looked closely at the people below. Many of them were wearing military fatigues, some looked like survivalists, and a small number were dressed in white gowns and pointed hats which resembled the dunce’s hats that were, in less enlightened times, forced upon the heads of errant schoolchildren. Here and there, a fiery cross could be seen burning amongst the throng of Doughnut’s ecstatic admirers.

“I’m not so sure sir,” said the Aide. “I’m not convinced that this represents a true cross-section of the American voting demographic.”

“For God’s sakes Tyler, can’t you be happy for me just for once?” Doughnut demanded. “Look at them. Those people love me.”

A small group of black protesters appeared on the fringes of the crowd. Doughnut watched as they were hustled away by men in white robes, no-one knows where. He glanced at his watch. “They’ve been applauding me for one and a half minutes now, and they’re still going strong.”

After nearly an hour, the applause finally died down. This was the cue for the band that was on the platform with Doughnut to strike up the song “I wish I was in Dixie”, and for the famous singer Ratt Butler to sing it in his fine baritone voice.

As Butler sang the refrain “Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland”, Doughnut and his Aide walked along the platform to the dining area. Doughnut struggled to keep up with his Aide. He was the shortest, fattest president in American history. He was every bit as round as one of the billions of doughnuts sold in his fast food outlets every day, and he was doing his level best to make the entire American nation go the same way.

Their every move was being recorded by a major TV company known as DTV. It was broadcasting the event with a ten-minute time lapse to allow for editing, in case the President made a gaff. The other TV companies had been barred because they all had female reporters whom Doughnut had fallen out with at some time or other.

DTV had cameras set up along the platform with lighting and sound crews. The cameras swivelled to follow Doughnut’s progress. He and his Aide took their places at the seats that were reserved for them.

The tables were already occupied by dignitaries who included congressmen from the Republican Party and a large number of world leaders. The Queen of England had been invited, but had cried off, citing a prior engagement as the reason, and had sent an obscure relative in her place. At least he was wearing a crown. Doughnut had insisted that any royals who attended the event should wear their crowns, and in the case of the British royals, their ermine as well. Bertie Windsor, the queen’s tenth cousin twice removed, was sweating profusely beneath his ermine. At the president’s insistence, he was sitting at the top table with him. Everyone else at the table, other than for the British foreign minister and president’s Aide Tyler, was a C.I.A. security man. The security men were all wearing dark glasses, dark suits, and earpieces with a springy cables attached to them. Not one of them so much as cracked a smile.

The British Prime Minister Camemblert had been invited to the event but he’d pulled rank and sent his Foreign Minister instead, somewhat to the President’s chagrin.