MY BROTHER IS A ZOMBIE CHILD

by

JONATHAN HARRIS

Copyright © 2021 Jonathan Harris

All rights reserved.

1

Cheap Manual Labour

Archibald Quinn had heard some strange things in his fifteen years as an Adoption Officer, but this was a new one on him.

‘Let me get this straight,’ said Quinn. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, covering his smirk with his hand.

‘You already have one child, who you describe as, not much use around the house, and now you want a big strong boy who you think could be useful in landscaping the garden. However, you don’t like the hassle that comes with a baby, so you’ve decided to adopt. In other words, you want us to assign you a child, so you can exploit them for cheap manual labour? Is that correct, Mr Cribbens?’

‘Sounds about right, I’d say!’ said Joshua Cribbens, flashing a toothy grin. ‘Sign the paperwork and we’ll be on our way!’

Joshua Cribbens was a rather unfortunate looking man. He was tall and skinny, with thin spindly limbs, and a very large head that was as smooth and round as a bowling ball. Quinn stared at him and wondered how he kept himself upright.

‘Oh yes. Please let’s get on with it,’ interjected Mr Cribbens’ wife, Imelda. Imelda was a glamorous blonde who’d been a model at one time and looked a mismatch with the scrawny Joshua. Today she’d come dressed for the occasion and was head to toe in pink leopard-print. You never see them that colour in the wild, thought Quinn.

Imelda continued, ‘We need a big, strong boy who can help with the heavy lifting. And they need to be a bit rough, so they can toughen little Ralph up. He’s, err, you know, well… weak. And pathetic. Yes, he’s weak and pathetic,’ she said with a smile, like this was a normal way for a mother to describe her only child.

She couldn’t have noticed the smirk on Quinn’s face, as she carried on, pressing her point further.

‘One with chubby cheeks would be good,’ she continued, puckering her lips and making a pinching gesture with her forefinger and thumb. This was, of course, the internationally recognised gesture for chubby cheeks. She had a thing about chubby boys and desired one, in the same way a 9-year-old girl might desire a kitten.

‘Right,’ said Quinn. He adjusted his spectacles again. ‘The thing is, we tend not to be in favour of child slavery. In fact, we’re rather strict about it. I’m afraid I cannot possibly recommend you as potential foster parents.’

‘But, I don’t understand,’ insisted Mr Cribbens, his grin turning down ever so slightly at the corners of his mouth. ‘Your poster said: Can you spare a bed for a needy child? We have a lovely bed up in the attic; it would be just the thing.’

‘Mr Cribbens, you said on your form that your own son, Ralph, sleeps in your attic bedroom. What will you do with him when the new child arrives?’

‘He can sleep on the sofa until we finish the garden and then he can bed down in the summerhouse!’ exclaimed Mr Cribbens, sensing he might be onto something. ‘Or they can share. Two boys together up amongst the rafters, what could be more fun?’

‘Yes, and Ralph could learn a thing or two from a boy with a decent work ethic!’ added Mrs Cribbens. ‘He just sits around reading comics all day. What use is he?’

‘Why does a child need to have a use?’ said Quinn, who was getting irritated. ‘Your ideas about adoption are rather inappropriate, and you seem to have a total disregard for your own son’s well-being. You would make terrible parents for any child we have on our books.’

‘No, no, no,’ said Mrs Cribbens, bursting into tears that smeared her pink eyeliner. ‘My chubby boy! There must be some mistake!’ she spun on her husband with her eyes blazing. ‘Joshua! Tell him!’

‘My wife is quite right,’ said Mr Cribbens, putting his long, skinny arms around her. ‘We can get a man in to do the garden. And we can put bunk beds in the attic for the boys. Please, just give us a chance!’

‘I’m afraid that’s not possible.’ replied Quinn. ‘I’ve made my mind up and you don’t meet the criteria.’

Archibald Quinn pulled a large rubber stamp from his desk, firmly pressed it into a tray of red ink, and brought it crashing down onto the Cribbens application form with a dramatic thump. Sometimes he loved his job.

APPLICATION REJECTED.

‘Now good day to you both.’

* * *

In the newsagents around the corner from the Adoption Office, Ralph Cribbens kneeled behind the sweet section, flicking through a comic. Ralph was trying to keep a low profile. The proprietor of the newsagent, Mr Ronnie Rosebud, knew Ralph well and considered him a persona non grata. A person unwelcome in Mr Rosebud’s establishment. Mr Rosebud had identified Ralph as someone who was always loitering around his shop reading comics for which he had not paid and never would. Mr Rosebud had seen him enough times, working his way through the comic-book shelf, covering the comics with his greasy fingerprints and getting the edges all tatty so that no paying customer would even consider buying them. Whenever Mr Rosebud spotted Ralph lurking in his shop, he would pick up his broom and rustle Ralph out through the door, pushing him with the bristly end as if sweeping out an enormous crisp packet blown in by the wind.

Ralph was well aware of Mr Rosebud’s opinion of him, and he didn’t disagree with it. In fact, it was a dream of his to one day run his own comic book store and should that dream ever come to pass, Ralph intended to display his own comic books in cellophane sheaths to discourage any unwanted thumbing. Nor would Ralph have read his comics in this fashion had he any other choice. He loved comics; he had done ever since he’d first picked up a discarded copy of Spiderman in the doctor’s waiting room, and he felt compelled to read them. To consume them, in fact. He loved everything about them, even the smell. He always thought they should taste delicious too, but he’d tried a few times and they didn’t live up to expectations on that front.

Unfortunately for Ralph, his father, Joshua Cribbens, did not share Ralph’s passion for comics. He never gave Ralph pocket money anyway, but even if he had done so, he regarded comics as pointless fantasy and would never have agreed to Ralph wasting money on them. So Ralph’s adventures between the pages became an illicit pursuit; something secret. He read his comics at night by torchlight huddled under his duvet. He had a few comics that he’d picked up here and there, and he kept them stashed in his room in an old sea chest that he’d found between the beams of his attic bedroom.

Ralph’s lived at number 1, Bushy Lane, in the town of Great Merritt, which was slap-bang in the middle of what Ralph thought must be the least interesting part of England. The most remarkable thing about Great Merritt was that, despite its name, it was a place of very little merit. This contrasted with the nearby village of Little Merritt, which had been named Britain’s Neatest Village on no less than four separate occasions.

Number 1, Bushy Lane was a rather small house with only one bedroom. There was a small box room, but Ralph’s Mother had set up a home gym in there with a rowing machine and a skiing simulator. Ralph slept in the attic on a rickety old iron bedstead. Ralph’s parents had not bothered to move the old junk out of the attic when they moved him in, so Ralph lived amongst the piles of old bric-à-brac and dusty books.

There were no floorboards throughout most of the room. His parents considered these an ‘unnecessary expense’. They didn’t need lighting either, as the Cribbens’s didn’t go up there much.

More than once, Ralph had almost come crashing down through the ceiling when he’d lost his footing while working his way through the criss-cross of beams. It was on one of these occasions, while on his way for a late-night visit to the bathroom, when he’d found the battered old sea chest. He’d lost his footing and caught himself on the beams just in time to stop himself falling through the plaster into his parent’s bedroom below. When he looked up he’d spotted the chest in front of him. It had been under the eaves so he’d never noticed it before, but it was the perfect place to stash his comics. Especially as his parents rarely made the effort to climb the ladder to his room.

It was difficult to lose yourself in the story when you were reading in the newsagent. That was the trouble. Ralph needed to remain on high alert for Mr Rosebud’s traditional bellow of this is not a library!. If he didn’t, he’d come back to reality with a bump when he felt the spiny bristles of Mr Rosebud’s brush scratching at his face.

When he was in his attic bedroom, the stories would transport him to another world where life was less dull. Where Ralph, instead of being a pathetic nobody with embarrassingly weird parents, could put himself into the shoes of a superhero or a vampire hunter.

On this occasion, though, Ralph was glad that he had his wits about him. He’d just got to a bit in the story where the hero had found out that the British Prime Minister was a secret werewolf, when he noticed somebody looming over him.

‘What are you reading there, Cribbens?’ Ralph’s heart sank. He recognized the gravelly voice as belonging to Breezeblock. If there was someone you didn’t want to find you squatting in a shop reading comics, it was Breezeblock. Despite being Ralph’s age, he was bigger than most men and wasn’t afraid to throw his weight around with the other kids. As usual Breezebock was with his two hangers-on, a short girl with a sharp mouth called Parsnip and a large rotund boy called Plomp. They liked to call themselves the Wrecking Crew and would scrawl the name of their gang on bathroom stalls and benches around the town.

‘Didn’t know you could read Cribbens,’ said Parsnip. ‘I’m actually quite impressed. Though that is exactly the sort of weirdo magazine I’d expect you to like.’

‘He’s probably just looking at the pictures Parsnip,’ said Breezeblock, snatching the comic out of Ralph’s hands. ‘Look at it, it’s a picture book for thick kids who never learned their alphabet.’

Bit of a cheek coming from you three, thought Ralph. They were rarely at school. When they were, all they did was mess around, winding up the teachers or intimidating kids out of their lunch money.

‘I err, I’m not reading it, I’m