Frank Wasdale- First Mission

  Frank Wasdale: First Mission

  By Chris Lee Jones

  Chapter 1 - Trial by Fire

  Chapter 2 - Up and Away

  Chapter 3 - Cheasley High

  Chapter 4 - The trouble with Wayne

  Chapter 5 - Bodily Fluids

  Chapter 6 - The Mission

  Chapter 7 - Back to Alaska

  Chapter 8 - My atoms, your atoms

  Chapter 9 - Debrief

  Chapter 10 - Requiem, of sorts

  Chapter 11 - Crossing Point

  Chapter 1 - Trial by Fire

  They shouldn’t make boys do what I’m about to do. That’s what Dr Babbage says. Not that he ever does anything about it. But he’s a clever man, and he tries to be kind. He’s looked after me ever since I became me, and he’s the one that makes sure I get my magic juice, every single day.

  Dr Babbage is standing beside me now, out on the practise range, the other side of the barracks. He’s rubbing his beard and staring out through the barbed wire perimeter fence towards the snow-capped mountains. Next to Dr Babbage, and standing about a foot shorter, is Colonel Stump. I don’t like Colonel Stump. He hits me with things, and when he’s not hitting me, he’s shooting at me, or dropping me from cranes, or immersing me in vats of stinking, bubbling fluid. You get the picture. Today, Colonel Stump has organised yet another trial for me. He’s promised me the recovery time won’t be too long.

  There’s a low thumping in my ears. A helicopter. Twin rotors. Appearing from nowhere, flattening the grass and sweeping over the burning tank that’s been set up for me in the middle of the range. A dark figure appears from the hatch near the gun turret, flames flicking at him like serpents’ tongues. The figure flaps about, then struggles and slips, bouncing off the panels and falling with a bump to the scorched ground. Colonel Stump takes a few paces forwards.

  “Are you still up for this?” asks Dr Babbage, out of the Colonel’s earshot. I nod, then remember the promise he gave me before we set out this morning: a double helping of his blueberry crumble and a few days’ rest. The man who fell from the tank has picked himself up now, and is hurtling towards us, his silver suit alive with the reflection of flames. He’s holding one of the red batons. God how I hate those things. The soldier reaches us, pulls off his mask and cylinder, and throws the baton to the ground. His breaths are short and laboured. “How did I do?” he asks the Colonel.

  “Three minutes and ten seconds,” says the Colonel. “Could have been better."

  Colonel Stump tells the soldier to go take a shower, and we all watch him stroll across the range towards the barracks. When he’s out of sight, the squint on the Colonel’s little red face transforms into a sneering grimace as he turns towards me. “Now it’s your turn,” he says.

  Underneath my tattered combat gear, I’m wearing just a T-shirt and shorts. On my feet are a scuffed pair of trainers that are three sizes too big for me. I don’t have a mask, breathing apparatus, or shiny suit like the soldier had on. And I’m about half his size.

  The colonel looks across the range to where a solitary figure is standing, as still as an Easter Island statue, and just as forbidding. I can tell it’s the Mannequin, even from this distance, her slender form silhouetted against the blue-grey sky. The Mannequin is always present during my trials - she and Colonel Stump never lose sight of each other.

  Stump gives me a countdown, and I’m off.

  Despite by lumbering gait, I reach the tank quickly, and begin to climb up its metal skirt, pushing through the flames. I can’t see a thing; my world becomes a disorientating swirl of colours; yellows and reds and blues. I reach the turret, feeling around with my fingers, probing the bolts and panels, searching for the hatch. The soldier left it open. With as much caution as my time limit allows, I push myself head first into the cramped bowels of the tank. Squirming, I find my way into the gunner’s seat. The visibility is slightly better in here, as if the flames are afraid to enter. Scanning the dials and knobs and handles, some of which are beginning to melt, I begin my search for my baton. Where would someone as sick and twisted as Colonel Stump hide such a thing? The minutes tick by. I don’t want to fail this task, because I know that would make Stump and the Mannequin angry, and they’d take their anger out not only on me but on Dr Babbage as well. That wouldn’t be fair.

  The skin on my knuckles is beginning to tighten. My eyes have dried out and I can’t seem to blink, which explains why my vision is starting to fog up. This happened once before, during the exploding barrels trial. It took me ages to get over that - I had to have bandages over my eyes for a week. Hopefully I can get through this one quicker. There’s a great tightness in my chest, as if my lungs are filled with hot sand. If I don’t find the baton soon, I’m in trouble.

  I stretch out my legs beneath the instrumentation, kicking around for anything loose at my feet. There are levers and wires, big rivets and peddles, but nothing’s rolling around. I try reaching my hands down into the narrow gaps at the sides of the seat. Nothing. Panicking, I kneel up on the seat and reach over the back, and at last I find the baton, wedged between a couple of bolted canisters. In one swift move I tug on the baton and heave upwards, out of the hatch. My vision is still fuzzy and narrowed by eyelids that are stuck as if by glue. As I jump from the turret, I try to shout out, just to see if I can. Nothing comes out. My only thought now is to get away from the flames and back towards where Dr Babbage and Stump are standing. To see if I have passed this test.

  “Two minutes fifty!” shouts Colonel Stump as I stumble and fall over at his feet, gasping for air. “And a saving of twenty thousand dollars on gear! Goddammit, Babbage, he’s outperformed our regulars in all the tasks. Just imagine the money we could make selling a whole platoon of these freaks. If this doesn’t convince our friends in high places, then nothing will. The least you could do is look enthusiastic!”

  Dr Babbage looks far from enthusiastic. In fact, I don’t think he’s even listening to Colonel Stump. Instead, he’s kneeling next to me, prodding my face and my arms and my neck. “Give me some noise, Frank,” he says, but I can’t. All that comes out is a gassy croak. Dr Babbage puts a hand on my forehead and reaches into his pocket for a handkerchief.

  “Don’t you go soft on me, Babbage!” barks the Colonel. “Just pick the boy up and get the hell out of here. Take a few days off if you need. Leave me to finish the negotiations with...her...”

  Dr Babbage pushes his hands under my back and lifts me off the ground with some difficulty, almost toppling in the process. “A stretcher would be nice,” he barks at Colonel Stump, but the little man is already walking away, striding towards the Mannequin.

  Dr Babbage grumbles as he carries me across the range, muttering through his thick grey beard about the pains in his back, and how he’s too old for all this. In an effort to stay conscious and alert, I try to count the spruces that line the edge of the parade ground. I get to twelve, but then the darkness comes, and I feel my world shutting down.

  *

  I wake up in my room. It takes a while for me to come around, to piece together what has happened to me. My curtains are open and through the window I can see the camp’s perimeter fence in the distance, spider-black against a reddening sky. At least my eyes are working properly again - I can be thankful for that. After an hour or so, Dr Babbage comes in and sits by my bedside. His face looks older than ever.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  I lean across to where my pen and notepad are lying on my bedside table. “A bit stiff,” I write, almost illegibly.

  “Would you like something to eat?”

  I can smell roast beef, so I write that I’d like some of that, and for a while he looks all pondero
us and confused. But then he says:

  “Ahh. That’s not beef you can smell, it’s your skin. You got a bit charred yesterday morning, remember?”

  I do remember. But yesterday morning? I must have had one hell of a sleep. The smell has sparked my appetite, though, but perhaps not enough to eat my own cooked flesh.

  “I’ll bring you some blueberry crumble, like I promised. Cream or custard?”

  “Both,” I scribble, and a little grin creeps across Dr Babbage’s face. “Your eyes look better than I thought they would,” he says. “We won’t have to bandage them up this time. And we’ll soon have your skin as moist as a new-born’s. It’ll take a lot of cream, but we’ll do it. Here, let me put the TV on for you...”

  He hands me the remote control on his way out, and I flick through the channels, settling on an old black and white show where two fat men are hitting each other with saucepans. It’s not as funny as a wildlife documentary, but it still makes me laugh.

  *

  Now seems as good a time as any to tell you a little about myself. Or, to put it another way, tell you what I’ve learned about myself, mainly from snippets of conversations I’ve overheard around the base together with the occasional lapse in Dr Babbage’s secretive demeanour.

  My name is Frank Wasdale, and I died five years ago. My parents were from England, and they came over here to Alaska, on holiday. Their plan was to spend a month touring in a hired van, taking in some national parks and cities, and generally having a nice time. It didn’t quite work out that way. Their van hit a fallen tree, at high speed. My father was driving. I was in the front, next to my Mum. None of us stood a chance.

  If I’d been taken to some big city hospital, I would have been pronounced dead on arrival, sealed in a bag, flown back to England, and you wouldn’t be reading this story. But as it happened my parents were touring a seriously remote part of Alaska. And this is where things get seriously weird. The woman we call the Mannequin stumbled upon the wreck of our van before our bodies had succumbed completely to the bite of the wind and snow. From what I’ve heard, I’d been dead for several hours when she found me. My heart had stopped pumping, by brain stopped thinking. I was a goner. But the Mannequin brought me back to life. Fixed my injuries and brought me back to life. Don’t ask me how, or why, because I remember nothing of it. I couldn’t have been conscious, for if I was, I would have begged her to bring my parents back too. I don’t know why she didn’t.

  I was only six years old at the time.

  My rebirth was not without its complications. It left me with what Dr Babbage calls a “very peculiar physiology”. It would be an understatement to say that I’m not like other boys. Other boys, let’s be honest, don’t have grey skin that seeps a sticky, pungent sweat; they don’t have eyeballs that occasionally pop from their sockets; they don’t vomit quite as copiously as I do. In short, they’re not zombies.

  I bet you didn’t know that zombies were for real, did you? That they exist outside the realms of horror fiction? After all, you don’t hear mothers in the park saying to their toddlers Oh look! There’s a zombie. I wonder what he’s up to. But it’s true. I have been brought back from a seriously dead state. I’m a zombie and I exist; therefore zombies must exist. It’s logical. I’m not, however, a mindless automaton like the zombies you see in the movies. I have emotions, I feel remorse. I’m capable of following instructions. I don’t eat brains, although I do eat an enormous amount - I need about five times the average carbohydrate intake, just to stay conscious. And I need my magic juice and my balms, to keep me looking feasibly human.

  I do share one important characteristic with fictional zombies: I cannot feel pain. And that’s why Stump is so interested in me. It’s why he’s been ‘training’ me, and why he pays Dr Babbage to look after me. I’m Stump’s experiment; his investment; his passport to a rich and early retirement. Quite how I ended up in the hands of Colonel Stump after the Mannequin saved me is a mystery. I have loads of questions I would like to ask the Mannequin, but Stump won’t let me anywhere near her. Dr Babbage says that it would complicate matters if we met. Anyway, here I am, holed up in the Camp Tiger military base, a remote army outpost, a blemish on the untamed plain between the forests and the mountains.

  Like all zombies, I also suffer from very slow speech. If I were saying this sentence out loud, you could take a hike and a picnic in the park and still be back before I reached the end. It takes me a long time to say anything sensible, so I usually write stuff down, in my pad. The upside of this is that I’ve become quite good at writing and reading; Dr Babbage has taught me over the last few years and reckons I’m way ahead of most kids my age.

  One other thing. According to Dr Babbage I’m the first zombie ever created. That’s EVER. There’s no others like me. At least not for now. But Stump has plans. He’s made some deal with the Mannequin to make a little army of people like me. I’m the prototype; if I turn out to be useful, the Mannequin will make more of me. The thought of that seriously creeps me out.

  *

  Dr Babbage returns with my steaming bowl of crumble, which he sets on the bedside table. I’m so ravenous I shovel it down in seconds. It’s very tasty, very hot, and - like a lot of my foods - very blue. Once I’m done with it, Dr Babbage begins to pace back and forth along my bedside. He clears his throat theatrically, like he’s about to say something important.

  “I’ve got some good news for you, Frank. I received this in the morning post.”

  For illustration, he waves an official-looking letter in front of my face but pulls it away before I get chance to read it. “To cut a long story short,” he continues, “Stump’s client seems happy at last. That means your training’s over, Frank. You’re ready for your first mission!”

  Mission? Well, I suppose I knew, deep down, that it would always come to this.

  “Our destination is London,” he says. “We’re leaving Thursday morning. Stump has already found a place for us to live, until your job is done. London, Frank. How exciting is that?”

  My mind goes into a funny whirl and fills with lots of questions. I grab my note pad and scribble frantically, handing the following to Dr Babbage:

  What mission?

  Will I be able to say goodbye to Benny before we go?

  What about my magic juice, and all the balms?

  Dr Babbage reads my scrawled questions, rubbing his beard thoughtfully.

  “No, you won’t be able to say goodbye to Benny; Stump insists that we leave quickly and quietly, without speaking to anyone. Don’t worry, though; you’ll see Benny again when we get back. Your medicines won’t be a problem - the Mannequin will provide enough for our stay in London. As to the mission itself, I honestly don’t know. Stump is planning to fly over and join us, once we’ve settled. I guess he’ll fill us in then.”

  Dr Babbage slaps both his knees and stands up, obviously wishing to put an end to the discussion. “Now,” he says, “Any more crumble?”

  I nod enthusiastically. He picks up my bowl, and heads out of my room, leaving me alone with a chaotic jumble of thoughts.

  Chapter 2 - Up and Away

  It’s early Thursday morning, three days since my trial with the burning tank. In those three days, I’ve had enough balm slapped on my skin to sink a ship, and I’ve cleared the kitchen cupboards of porridge, pasta, rice and semolina. I feel better for it - my skin is more supple, and my eyes are moist enough for my lids to open and close easily. Dr Babbage has doubled my dose of magic juice, squirting it liberally into my food and drink. He has also suggested that I take some diarrhoea tablets.

  “We don’t want you pooping all over the place, do we? Not on the way to the airport.”

  I shake my head.

  “OK,” he says, pacing up and down the hallway and rummaging through our luggage one last time, “I think we’re all set. Let’s get you into the car.”

  Although he hasn’t said as much out loud, I’m guessing that if Stump’s promises to make a rich man out of
Dr Babbage come true, one of the first things he’ll do is buy a new car, perhaps a big silver Cadillac. For now, he must make do with the tiny old rusty wheels he’s been driving for years.

  This is only the second time I’ve been in Dr Babbage’s car. The first time was just over a year ago, when he drove out of the base as a treat for my birthday. We ended up in an old barn. It took us about half an hour to get there. There weren’t many people in the barn - just me and Dr Babbage, little Benny and his slightly scary Mum (who left half way through the meal). We all ate burgers and fries, delivered by a man on a motorbike who I wasn’t allowed to see. I had a nice time, and there were even a few balloons to pop at the end of the party. I haven’t been out of the base since.

  I’m kind of hoping we’ll catch a glimpse of Benny this morning, before we finally leave. I like him a lot, and Dr Babbage lets me go around to his house on Saturdays to play. It’s often the highlight of the week for me, the only time when I can have fun and feel relaxed. Benny doesn’t expect anything from me. He’s only six years old, but we have a wild time when I’m there, playing with his cars and trains, and laughing at his collection of wildlife documentaries. He’s got bookcases full of the things. Last week we watched one about baboons and saw their crazy purple bottoms. The baboons were fighting and playing and doing all sorts of stuff to each other, and we laughed like hyenas. And believe me, we know what hyenas laugh like.

  But there’s no sign of Benny this morning. Not even his Mum peering out between the gap in the curtains. Everything is still and quiet. Dawn is just breaking, although it’s a slightly pathetic sunrise, smeared out by low rolling clouds. Feeling slightly nervous, I strap myself in to the passenger seat, and gaze out of the window.

  Dr Babbage drives us to the guardhouse, the only point of exit around the camp’s perimeter fence. The guardhouse is manned around the clock, and on the road leading up to it and away to it, they have rumble strips and some of those things which can make spikes come up from the road at a push of a button, ripping your tyres to shreds.