Jack Strange - Zomcats!

The PM could see that there were cats — zomcats he now realised — heading their way from the grass at the side of them. But he could also see an escape route. Directly ahead there was a large patch of bare earth. On the other side of the patch there were zomcats which, by rights, should have been crossing the bare earth to attack them. Instead they carefully walked through the grass at the edges of the bare earth, taking the long way around in order to get into position to attack.

It was as if they were somehow frightened of crossing the patch of bare earth.

The PM realised that if only he could reach the bare earth before the zomcats got to him, he’d be safe.

He suddenly became aware of a vile smell. It was like the smell of silage, or manure, but rather worse. Still, this was hardly the time to worry about bad smells.

He accelerated, as did Johnson. They were side-by-side, arms pumping and chests heaving.

He was only five yards away from the safe patch of bare earth.

Four yards.

Three yards.

Two yards.

One big stride.

He’d made it.

Then a curious and most unexpected thing happened.

The ground seemed to open up and swallow him.

Too late, he realised that he was up to his neck in shit.

Behind them, a TV crew saw what had happened and tried to stop, but the people behind them rushed forward and pushed them in. The President, when he got there, could see that there was a pool of shit right in front of him, but as the last of his CIA protectors went down covered in zomcats, he felt he had no choice. He took the plunge, with Tyler at his side, and began to flail around desperately.

“Help!” He called out at the top of his voice. “I’m drowning in shit!”

This was typical of the reaction of most of those who made it to the cesspool.

The P.M. wasn’t at all worried about it though. Like most British Prime Ministers, he seemed to have an instinctive knack for swimming in shit. It was as if he’d born to swim in it. He doggy-paddled around in it quite happily, barking orders to his Aide.

“Johnson, take out your mobile and call Whitehall. Get them to send a fleet of Chinook helicopters over here right away equipped with rescue facilities. Tell them to get the army up here while they’re at it.”

Of the two hundred plus people who’d ventured up to Stonker Edge, only twenty-four survived to jump into the cess-pit. The rest were taken down by the zomcats before they got anywhere near it.

The twenty-four survivors now paddled around calling for help. The cess-pit was circular, with zomcats perched all around the perimeter of it, watching the proceedings. Occasionally someone would think to paddle near to the edge, hoping to cling to the shore for support, but would soon change his mind when confronted by a snarling zomcat.

After what seemed like a very long wait, the Chinook helicopters arrived. They’d been summoned from RAF Oldham, and they were manned by teams of rescue specialists. They winched everyone on board and took them to the Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.

Unfortunately, due to the PM’s policies, the Accident and Casualty department had been closed at the Huddersfield Royal infirmary, and after an annoying delay while the P.M. remonstrated with the medics for their refusal to treat him on the grounds that they lacked the facilities, the Chinooks took off again and landed in the car park of the Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax, which had the only accident department for miles around.

An airman ran into the hospital and organised a porter with a hosepipe to hose down the casualties with jets of cold water. Due to the fact that they were caked in smelly stuff from head to toe, which had got right into their clothing, the medics insisted that they all had to strip off their clothes for the hosing session, before being allowed to enter the hospital. Once in casualty, they were all sent to triage, where it was determined that none of them was a priority for treatment. Doughnut discovered to his dismay that this meant that he had to wait for over six hours before an NHS doctor would see him.

“God-damned limey medics,” he snarled. “What kind of a cockamamie set-up is this? I would’ve got treated more quickly if I’d flown back to the states and got admitted to a hospital there.”

He, the PM and the rest were given white hospital gowns to wear while they waited for their treatment. They were told to sit in the waiting room with the rest of the patients. These included a group of drunken Halifax Town football supporters who were proudly sporting various injuries from a fight they’d been in; a man who’d self-medicated with LSD, and was intermittently charging around the room on all fours, while snarling like a dog, and a young man who’d got his penis stuck in a bottle. Doughnut heard the young man offering up an explanation for his condition to the doctor. He could tell by the look on his face that the doctor found it as implausible as he did.

“What kind of an operation are you running here, Tarquin?” Doughnut asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s far too slow and the place is full of god-damned lunatics.”

A football supporter overheard Doughnut and glared at him.

“Are you fuckin’ startin’ pal?” He asked.

Doughnut shook his head and turned away.

“Hey, ball-brain, I asked you a fucking question. Don’t you fucking ignore me. Are you fucking starting, pal?”

“Gentlemen,” said Johnson in his patrician tones. “There is no need for any unpleasantness. The American president was simply being….er….rather American.”

The football supporter stood up, and this time he glared at Johnson.

“Are you a puff?” He demanded.

“I don’t think so,” said Johnson. “But what exactly is a puff? Do kindly tell me, and I’ll let you know.”

“Oh,” said the football supporter. “Fucking clever bastard, are we? Fucking clever bastard, eh? Well, we’ll see how clever you are when I get me fucking hands on yer.”

He raised his fists and started hopping towards Johnson, a mode of locomotion necessitated by the fact that he’d broken his ankle in the fracas he’d been in. As he was drunk, he soon fell over and concussed himself on a low table covered in old magazines that had been provided as entertainment for the patients. He opened his eyes briefly and looked at the table.

“That table shouldn’t ’ave been there,” he said. “Ah’m gonna fucking sue this place for every penny it’s got.”

Then he passed out.

“It’s probably best to speak Soto voce,” Johnson said to Doughnut.

“What the hell do you mean?” Doughnut asked.

Tyler leaned close to Doughnut and whispered in his ear.

“He means you should speak quietly so as to avoid trouble, Mr President. Just remember we don’t have the CIA with us and it’s like downtown Baghdad in here.”

“You mean we’re in a war zone?”

“We might as well be, Mr President.”

Doughnut turned to the P.M. again.

“What were those things that attacked us Tarquin? Were they pumas or something? Because I didn’t know you had things like that in England.”

The PM wasn’t sure how to respond. He didn’t want to admit that they were zombie-related.

“They were,” said the PM. “They were…er...let me see..”

He turned to his aide.

“What do you think they were, Johnson?”

There was a long and embarrassing silence as Johnson racked his brains.

“They were beasts, Mr President,” he said at last.

“Beasts?”

“You’ve heard of the Beast of Bodmin Moor?”

“No, what the hell’s that?”

“It’s a modern English legend Mr President,” said Tyler. “There’s this place in England called Bodmin Moor. The legend has it that there’s a beast that lives there which resembles a large cat. It’s known as the Beast of Bodmin Moor.”