Mute

It’s the end of the world but not as we know it.

I once wrote a short story called Apocalypse Soup Kitchen. It was about a guy who’s been out on a massive drink and drug binge and finds that the world’s suddenly been taken over by zombies.

It was a black comedy, and the comedy mostly stemmed from the fact that the zombies didn’t act all like they do in TV and movies; they could talk, although most of their conversation was about their desire to eat the guy.

It ended up with him trapped inside a morgue with a small group of zombies outside. He’s got bodies inside the morgue, in those drawers that you see in cop shows when the detective visits the pathologist. To buy himself some time he slices up the bodies and rations them out to the zombies through a hatch at the side. The story has an Italian-Job style ending where it’s left for the reader to imagine what might have happened. I was very happy with the last line:

I have two bodies left, including my own…

Years later I was trying out some ideas and found myself writing a character called Georgie. Georgie was very straight-laced, very organised, but most of all extremely competent. It occurred to me that she would make a really interesting action hero. And I thought, “what if she saved that guy who I left trapped in that morgue surrounded by zombies?”

So I had Georgie do that. And Mute is the result.

I very much hope you enjoy it.