King of the Natives: Book 1

By Clayton Black

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, King of the Natives is the first in a series of books following Detective Stuckler as he wages war against the “natives”- humans that have been battered into monsters by a virus – armed only with his gun, knife and foul language. After veering from his mission to learn what happened to his family, he finds himself facing a mutable world as the natives’ behaviour changes for the worse and he is tugged into a quest to find out what is to blame – but getting to the truth proves his greatest challenge yet. Stuckler is uncompromising when it comes to the natives, but sentimental at heart; he yearns for a better world in which he can relax and find love, although it remains to be seen whether he can escape the wilderness with his body, and mind, intact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clayton Black
• Release date: Jan 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370125357

Clayton Black

Full-time editor with dreams of word domination. I live in Yorkshire where the King of the Natives series is set. Avid reader. The other me is helping to spread the infection too with his first published children's book ZombieGerm. Publish a lot of fiction for free on Instagram: brmwrites

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King of the Natives

Book One

Copyright © Clayton Black 2014

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means - electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise - without the prior permission of the owner. You must not circulate this book without the authority to do so.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely accidental.

British English is employed throughout.

Cover design by Sophie Major

http://sophiemajor.co.uk/

Time-worn skin hung on his face and his hands shook, vibrating the table. His breath was what bothered me the most – it hummed, like he’d let a dick rot in his mouth.

‘It’s your move,’ I said, holding my breath as I leaned forward to stare into his milky eyes, little restive orbs that wouldn’t hold my gaze.

‘You’re a crazy fool Stuckler.’

‘It’s Detective Stuckler to you. Are you fried?’

‘Course not. Do I look like a monster?’ He almost choked on the words. I could hear the phlegm cooking in his lungs.

‘I would’ve worked that out by now if you’d answered my questions.’

There was no rubric when dealing with the more human-like natives, especially when balls-deep in the zone, I just had a sharpened mind to spot the giveaway signs – tremors, phlegm, loss of concentration, flights of fancy, short fingernails, hubris, anger, hunger – and no matter what faculties the infected had left, I could always see through their bullshit.

‘I won’t ask you again old man.’

‘Fine,’ he said, looking around the room, distracted. ‘I didn’t kill the man. I didn’t. It was like I said, he came stomping over so fast I thought he was gonna hurt my daughters, they are everything to me sir. I’m an old man, what am I gonna do against a beast?’

‘Where’s his body?’ I asked, scratching my chin, the stubble was getting long (it was always getting long), but seldom did I find the peace to shave, given the wilderness I was trapped in. Shit, there weren’t any ladies around to impress. Bad thing to think about out there, lonely as it was.

‘His body? How should I know? Wasn’t my main priority, I had to look after my daughters!’

‘Hector was it? Look, I’m trying to restore some kind of order to this mess we’ve created, this chaos you see around you, all the dying and disease; it’s not pretty what I do, damn, most of it’s ugly as sin, but I’d rather die than let madmen rule the country, killing, raping, cannibalising, all the nightmare things we thought we were safe from. Now tell me, where’s the body?’

After a few moments I could tell his resolve was strengthening again so I said: ‘Don’t play games with me Hector, this isn’t going to end well for you if you do. Do you know why? Cause I’m a fucking detective.’

The old man twitched and snorted, rearranging his limbs on and under the table. When he jumped up, I leant back for better access to my pistol, but he sat back down again, a groan emanating from his cracked lips.

‘I think it’s gone detective,’ he said.

‘Where?’

‘It walked away.’

I laughed out loud. It was more of a snort; I think I could have tossed a bit of spit on him. Jokes didn’t appear so often in the wilderness, and that tickled me good.

‘Isn’t that something? A dead man just walked away?’

‘Yes sir, up and left.’

‘That’s fucking amazing,’ I said and stood up, taking him by surprise. I dashed forward and grabbed him by the neck, pushing him over in the chair, his face contorted with shock and then anger. He landed with a thud, the back of the chair cracking with the impact. I didn’t let up, I held him firmly in place, despite his snapping hands and clawing jaws, until I’d nearly choked the life out of him. When I let go, he spluttered and gasped, so I knocked him out cold with the butt of my pistol, it was easier than trying to talk sense into him.

Stupid bastard didn’t even know only the living could be infected. Once we’re dead, we’re dead. There was only one second coming, and even that was dubious.

The kitchen was a quagmire; flies perforated the view. The sink was chocked with grime-laden pans stacked taller than me, and the carpet was a festering wound of blood and guts with knots of hair growing from the gore. A well-worn path led to the back door. I followed it, waving the flies out of my eyes and nose, the stench was something I’d gotten used to – the rot was ubiquitous in the wilderness – so I ambled through, always alert to any bottom-feeders that might have been attracted by the smell, it was easy to trip over them in tight spaces.

And there he was. Mr Up and Left, cut up into little bite-sized chunks in the pantry. Yummy. Someone was preparing for a barbecue.

What about the girls?

Without hesitation I backtracked and clambered up the stairs, knowing the house was probably empty. The natives usually lived alone, something to do with their bad-ass mood swings, so I took the steps two at a time, dodging the mess of clothes and knick-knacks and spills of secretions and excretions on the floor, and saw a door with a picture on it. Something like sunshine or a nuclear explosion was drawn around a family. Its cuteness failed to assuage the dread in my stomach.

I pushed the door open. The curtains were closed, but the two silhouettes on the bed were unmistakable. Perhaps it would’ve been better if I’d left? Some things just shouldn’t be seen. But who was I kidding? These were the children of the damned, and it was my duty to offer them some kind of semblance of comfort, or put them out of their misery.

Slowly, I edged closer, the shadows blunting the edges of things. ‘It’s ok,’ I said, ‘I’m Detective Stuckler, I’m here to help.’ A guttural sound grew in intensity. Eyes glinted towards me, and then disappeared. Trying not to reach for my gun, I carried on, even though the situation was becoming too menacing for my liking. If there was an uninfected child, I wanted her to know I could be trusted. Then it became clear – the two girls were bound to the bed, tied to the posts. But one of them was leaning towards the other, her mouth chomping on a shoulder, a bone glinting through the flesh. A gnawing, dribbling sound assaulted me as I neared and added an impetus to my steps. The horror had to stop. The uninfected girl was groggy, her eyes rolled back and she was slumped over, as if she was unaware of being eaten alive. How’d the world end up this shafted?

Post-haste I grabbed the infected by its hair and tugged it off the girl - sister or not, she had to go – and, before it could take a chunk out of my arm, slammed its head into the bed post once, twice, three times before its skull cracked and it died with a gargle, gusts of blood escaping from the wound and redecorating a chair.

The girl was motionless. It worried me. Quickly, I pulled out my knife and sawed through the rope. I cautiously scooped her up, listening to her breathing and flicking one of her eyelids open. Everything seemed fine, apart from her bloody shoulder, so I made for the door, careful not to trip over anything on the way down the stairs.

After placing her on the settee, I went to see my old friend who was mumbling to himself on the floor. It was incoherent babble, and probably nothing I wanted to hear. Usually it was about food. The hunger tore them up, made them animals. Back in civilisation a doctor or whatever told me it was the virus making them hungry, it increased their metabolism to such an extent they always needed to feed. I just knew it was FUBAR.

‘Get up,’ I said, kicking him in his side. When that didn’t work, I kicked him harder and then harder until he roused. ‘Look dickhead,’ I continued when he was muttering at me, ‘I’ve seen evidence of at least one murder and the wilful neglect of minors, you piece of shit. Also, as of this moment, you’re classified as an infected person, and therefore must be terminated. Do you have anything to say?’

‘You think you have all the world at your feet! They know you’re here, detective.’

‘Good.’ I put a bullet in his brain and he crumpled into a mess. And that was that. However, his news disturbed me, and as I lifted the girl out of the shit hole he called a home, I mulled it over.

The girl twitched and groaned in my arms while I carried her along a sun-dappled street. It looked similar to all the other roads, overrun with weeds and wild flowers. It could have been beautiful in another time and place. There sure wasn’t any beauty left in a world in which people ate one another. All that thinking got me questioning my place in the mess.

The sun accentuated the girl’s pallid skin, cut her out of the world like she was an alien.

Despite my bulk, I was a proficient sprinter and able to jog while carrying the girl, just as well because nature ate anything that wasn’t able-bodied and spat it out in a pool of blood. That wasn’t happening to me. I retraced the steps I took to the old native’s house, cutting through an overgrown alley between decrepit properties, branches slapping my face, and jogged down a street littered with cars, keeping my body hidden behind the rusted bones of civilisation. I was starting to sweat when I saw a creature move up ahead, behind the vestiges of a fence, so I darted into cover, using a frail garage as safety.

My hideout wasn’t far, only around the corner, I’d scoped out the area about a week ago so I knew it like the tip of my penis. A stable, safe base was part of my remit – and this damn bottom-feeder was encroaching on my patch. On all fours, it emerged into sight, its head twitching this way and that, scouring the ground for anything to eat – and I meant anything – to satiate its appetite. Slowly, I laid the girl in the shade away from the worst of the mulch and debris and picked my way across the street, concealing myself behind cars. The creature’s breath rasped in and out as it hoovered the ground, following no discernible pattern.

I reached for my knife and with it firmly gripped I waited for the creature to crawl into range and, as it was scurrying past me, jumped out of cover and plunged it straight into the bottom-feeder’s neck. I only just managed to yank it free before the thing howled and darted about, blood spitting from the wound. It engaged me with its putrid eyes, and there was nothing in them that translated as human. When it lunged forward, I easily stepped aside and kicked it in the face. Before it tried to rise I stamped on its skull and it crumbled underneath my weight, the sole of my boot getting bathed in gore. It was always nice to hear them die.

Crouching down, I listened for any signs that the kerfuffle had been heard or seen by a hostile. It had been quiet around these parts for a while now, hell it was so peaceful one could be forgiven for thinking nature was convalescing, that the worst was behind us, but we were still fed reports about tragic happenings all across this goddamned country. This bottom-feeder was desperate enough to scavenge during the middle of the day, a rare sight indeed.

I went back to the girl, the crumb of heaven and hope, and picked her up the same way I would pick up a baby, all bunched and cautious, and slowly carried her through another dead suburb to my safe house.

After passing a large, burned-out detached property, I cut through the neighbouring garden right down to the back of it and pulled aside a portion of fence to gain access to the adjacent land. The terraced buildings on that strip of street provided me with cover as I lumbered to the end of them and to my destination. It was the long way round and worked to deceive any inimical eyes, even those owned by my fellow men.

The house stood glumly in the sunshine, its skin blotted and wrinkled, cracked and sore. I had to put the girl aside once more as I moved bags of rubbish and boxes out of the way of the door and opened it, making sure the house was empty before taking the child inside. I placed bottles against the door as a crude alarm and dug deeper into the gloom with the girl, taking her to the first floor where I could keep her hidden, safe and warm.

The med-kit I had was rudimentary and despite the whims of hope I knew she was infected, so I tried to focus my