‘Erm, is this some kind of wind up?’ said the smaller of the two men.
The small man shrunk visibly in his chair and lowered his gaze to the floor. ‘I’m sorry sir’ he said quietly ‘but you’ve got to admit that what you’re asking is pretty unusual.’
The fatter of the two shifted forward in his chair, the weak aluminium frame creaking under the strain of his bulk. ‘Well George, that’s where you have me wrong.’
‘Sorry sir?’
‘Well, you have me wrong on two counts. First of all, I don’t have to admit anything to you and second of all I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.’
Leaning back in his chair smirking, the fat man fixed George with watery eyes and awaited his reply.
‘Of course, erm, I wouldn’t ever mean to presume sir. That’s not what I meant. Sorry I’m not putting myself across very well, it’s just the zombie thing came as a bit of a shock.’
‘Yes, well I suppose it would George. It is a little unconventional but the fact remains - you are to formulate Rulton City Council’s official zombie preparedness response.’
‘But zombies don’t exist sir, so I’m not sure why the Council needs to erm, respond to them?’
George’s response seemed to amuse the fat man. He issued a guffaw that wouldn’t have seemed out of place at a Tory MP’s dinner party.
‘Lots of things don’t exist George. The Afghani shoplifting gang mentioned in our press release last week didn’t exist but nevertheless; despite the gang’s non-existence, we managed to secure a rather handsome amount of funding off of the back of it.’
As George listened to the fat man he thought - not for the first time - about what an absolute waste of space the Chief Executive was. As he considered this he felt a growing irritation build in his stomach. He knew he should say something, but as was so typically George, he said nothing. Instead George added his annoyance to the angry little ball inside his gut, where it joined the rest of his frustrations and waited patiently until it could manifest itself as erectile dysfunction or a peptic ulcer in years to come.
George was dragged back to reality by the sound of a phone ringing.
The fat man reached out a bloated hand to the ringing phone, stopping just short of picking it up as he remembered George sitting there. ‘Be a good lad and run along now eh George?’ he said in a condescending manner before picking up the phone and engaging the caller in an over friendly, bullshitty, how’s your family conversation.
George got to his feet slowly and turned to his boss. For a moment he thought about saying something, but on balance George decided that it probably wasn’t worth bothering. Opening the door very slowly, he stepped out from the office into the corridor beyond.
As he wandered down the corridor George formulated a plan. He realised that to get to the bottom of this very unusual situation he would require only two things. A cup of coffee and a chat with the Council’s resident know it all Tim Bernard.
* * * *
George returned from the vending machine - cradling two cups of what could barely be described as coffee - and headed towards a tall, slightly dishevelled looking man who seemed to be waiting for him in one of the darker looking corners of the dirty canteen.
‘I appreciate you letting me know what’s going on Tim’ uttered George in a hushed voice, offering the coffee to his companion.
‘No problemo man’ replied Tim ‘Let’s cut to the chase. Walls have ears and all that.’
Tim hunched closer to George, making a dramatic display of covering his mouth with his hand in a bizarre attempt to ward off lip readers. ‘Well it’s like this. The Council gets these requests from the public about shit like how much money we spend on brushes, or what expenses get paid out to officers and that sort of thing, but occasionally we get something a bit more interesting.’
George replied with a nod.
‘This one bloke right, sent in an information request about what plans the council might have to deal with a zombie apocalypse.’ Tim illustrated the words “zombie apocalypse” with a frantic waving of his arms.
‘Anyway’ Tim continued ‘the law says that we have to take these requests seriously, so the bloke gets a letter back saying “The authority does not have a plan at this time to deal with this eventuality” or something like that.’
George took a sip of the coffee like liquid. ‘Erm, OK Tim, but how does that relate to the extremely strange job that I’ve just been given?’
Tim fixed George with his best attempt at a steely gaze. ‘I haven’t got to the best bit yet dude. This request got picked up by a civil service type. He for whatever reason decided that if people are asking about this kind of shit, then we should probably have a plan to deal with it. Crazy eh?’
‘I’m no psychologist Tim, but yeah, that seems like a pretty good description of crazy to me.’
‘So bish, bash, bosh, a quick phone call to a certain big, fat Chief Exec we all know and hate, and this civil service geezer orders the immediate setup of a zombie preparedness plan. As a bonus, to help grease the wheels of local government, he also transfers a nice fat grant into the Council’s coffers to be spent specifically on putting the plan together.’
George raised an eyebrow. ‘The chief didn’t mention anything about any kind of budget assigned to the project?’
Tim laughed. ‘Well he wouldn’t fella. According to my mate in finance, the project budget went straight into his personal pension pot. It looks like you’re the only resource assigned.’
George shouldn’t have been surprised. He had worked in local government for longer than was healthy for him and he should have been used to this, but somehow, each and every time somebody did something stupid, selfish or corrupt it hit him right where it hurt.
So what? George had been given a job to do. A stupid job perhaps, but when George thought about it, most of the jobs he had been given within Rulton City Council had been pretty stupid. The important thing was that George always did his job to the best of his ability and he was damned if this would be any different.
From now until his superiors sacked him or found somebody better he would be George Denton - Zombie Preparedness Project Lead.
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