Jack Strange - Zomcats!

Camemblert was waiting on the steps of number 10. Doughnut paused just before he got there and turned to face the press.

“This is just a regular state visit to cement relations between our two great countries!” He shouted. “It’s nothing to get excited about!”

Then he grinned and waived again, and shook hands with the PM for the cameras. The two men jostled with each other, each one wanting the other to enter first. They both knew that the first to enter is seen as being less important than the second to enter. The PM had height on his side, but the President had weight on his side. After a savage contest lasting well over a minute, they both got stuck in the doorway for a moment, then somehow got free of it and staggered through into the entrance hall at the same time.

Tyler followed closely behind.

Johnson was waiting inside, and he swiftly closed the door behind them.

“Are you satisfied, Prime Minister?” He asked under his breath.

“What? What was that?” The PM wheezed crossly. He was red-faced and out of breath, as was the President.

“Nothing, Prime Minister.”

“Right then” said the PM turning to Doughnut, who was mopping his sweating brow with a white handkerchief, “Let’s go through to the drawing room, shall we? Follow me.”

He led Doughnut and Tyler along the hall, past the many portraits of glorious former Prime Ministers such as Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron and Tony Blair, which lined the walls, and through a door into an impressive lounge. Johnson followed them in.

“Take a seat,” said the PM.

Doughnut collapsed into a chair, which groaned with the effort of supporting his weight. Johnson shuddered. Then Doughnut wrung out his sweaty handkerchief onto the expensive carpet, and Johnson shuddered again. Doughnut thrust the handkerchief back in his pocket and he looked around the room, frowning.

“The stuff in here looks like it went out with the Ark,” he said.

Johnson raised an eyebrow.

“It’s got history,” said the PM. “I suppose you don’t appreciate that, because you don’t have much of that sort of thing in America.”

“History is bunk. Anyway, that’s enough of the small talk. Let’s talk about my problem, that is, er, my situation.”

The PM smiled.

“Let’s have some drinks, shall we?” He replied. “It’s a bit early for gin and tonic, how about a tea or coffee?”

“I’ll have a large Cappuccino,” Said Doughnut.

“I’ll have an Americano please,” said Tyler.

“Johnson, did you hear that? Get the American President a large Cappuccino whatever that is, and get me my usual tea.”

“Very good Prime Minister.”

Johnson left the room.

Doughnut glared at Tyler.

“Don’t just sit there, make yourself useful, that’s what you get paid for. Go and help the man make some coffee,” he said. “That way I might get it done the way I actually like it.”

Tyler reddened and followed Johnson into the kitchen.

“Where’s your Gaggia?” He asked.

“My what?” Said Johnson.

“Sorry, I meant: where’s your coffee espresso machine.”

“We don’t have one,” said Johnson. “We have this instead.”

He opened a battered-looking cupboard and took out a catering-sized tin of Nescafe coffee powder.

“Cutbacks, you know,” he explained.

Tyler stared at it in disgust.

“You mean; you don’t grind your own coffee from coffee beans?”

“No,” said Johnson. “We get the kindly people at the Nescafe factory to do it for us.”

“Your boss the Prime Minister seems okay. Can’t you persuade him to get a decent coffee machine to entertain his guests with?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. The Prime Minister is a capital fellow, but at times he’s a bit of an arse. What’s your chap like? The President I mean?”

“Doughnut? He’s pretty much a full-on ass-hole all the time.”

While this conversation was taking place, the P.M. and Doughnut were continuing with their Summit Meeting in the lounge.

“Now, where were we? Oh yes, your little problem,” said the PM.

“Situation,” said Doughnut. “My situation . It’s not a problem. I’m dealing with it. I’ve got zombies in my country and I’ve got an exterminator on their case. But it won’t hurt me to hear how you got rid of yours.”

The PM smiled again.

“Oh, you mean you yanks might be able to learn something useful from us brits, do you? That makes a change.”

“Why don’t you just cut the crap and get on with telling me what I crossed the Atlantic to hear?” Doughnut growled.

“With pleasure,” said the PM, making his pleasure all too evident. “The zombies are pretty hard to kill, as you may have found out. I’m told you can take them out with a head shot if you have the firepower, but that takes time, as you have to track them down and deal with them carefully one-by-one, and time isn’t on your side. Apart from that, the only solution seems to be high explosive, but that causes collateral damage, and people don’t like that, not if they’re your own people who’re suffering the collateral damage. It’s bad for the ratings. If you were to do that, you might not get elected for a second term”

“So? What’s the answer?”

“Well, what I did was this: I got in touch with their leader. I told him we were willing to live side-by-side with the zombies as long as they didn’t try to take over, and that we’d let them have a town they could call their own. I gave them a place that’s not very important in the scheme of things. It’s called Huddersfield, and I gave them an incentive to go there by laying on a supply of fresh food for them.”

“Fresh food?”

“The two-legged variety. I got some dangerous prisoners released from gaol and I had them bussed in to Huddersfield. The zombies loved it. Then I arranged an air-strike and wiped them all out.”

“What about your own people? Didn’t the bombing kill a lot of them, too?”

“I managed to get most of them evacuated, so it was mainly zombies that were killed. And anyway, it was only Huddersfield. We chose it because it’s a place that doesn’t really matter. The really important thing you need to know is that I’ve thought of a way of buttering up the survivors. I’m holding a zombie clog-dancing festival in the town, or what’s left of it.”

Doughnut’s eyes widened.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He asked.

Just then the door to the lounge opened and Johnson came in carrying a silver tray with tea, coffee, milk and sugar on it. He set it down on an occasional table in front of the PM and handed a mug each to Doughnut and Johnson, and a delicate bone china cup on a saucer to the PM, who took a sip from the cup.

“Let me explain,” he said with a sigh, putting his cup on the saucer and placing it carefully back on the tray. “After we bombed Huddersfield, the residents could have been a little peeved. Some of them might have decided not to vote for me at the next election, not that I would have been bothered because most of them didn’t vote for me anyway. But the point is, we couldn’t blow the town up without putting in place measures to rebuild it. The trouble is, that sort of thing costs money. So I’ve come up with a way of doing it on the cheap.”

The P.M. paused for dramatic effect. He could see that Doughnut and Tyler were hanging on his every word, and he intended to keep them dangling to make the most of it.

“What way?” Doughnut asked after a while.

The P.M. smiled. It was a smile that was calculated to irritate, and it did. Doughnut scowled.

“I’m going to hold a festival there to commemorate our great victory in the war against the zombies. That’ll attract inward investment, get money spent in the shops — well, those shops that’re still standing, anyway — and generate revenue to enable the townsfolk to rebuild their town. And just to make sure that everyone gets the message, and most of them get out to vote for me at the next election, I’m staging these festivals all over the country.