Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (28 page)

Muz picked up the half-filled rucksack and now ran for the front door. Emerging into the street, he saw Chuck was no longer there.
In his place, converging on where Muz was stood, a number of people regarded him with hungry eyes. Where they had all come from Muz did not know, and did not care. His only concern was that they were coming at him from all directions; they had him surrounded. Looking over to his left, up the rise of the road, he was just in time to see Chuck’s fat arse running out of sight, over the brow of the hill.

Panic welling within him, Muz desperately looked for a gap in the gathering masses, a route between them through which to escape. There had to be at least thirty men, women
, and children though, and already they were gathered so close that there was no hope of dodging his way past them. The loud rattling of the door behind him, in the back of the shop, served as a reminder that there was no safety to be found in running back inside. If he were to pull down the metal barrier between him and the crowd though, that would leave him with only one mad man to contend with. He would however potentially be trapped, unless he could find an escape route out the back.

As his mind franticly raced through his poor selection of options, the crowd pressed tighter towards him, the people beginning to attack each other now, fighting for the chance to be the first to sink their teeth into his warm meat.
The sour sink of death began to clog the air.

Realising dejectedly that he had left the crowbar inside the shop, Muz reached into the bag and pulled out a can of beans. It wasn’t much
of a weapon, but it and the others like it was all he had. The bar wouldn’t have been much use against the crowd anyway. He would have only managed to get in a couple of good swings before he was overwhelmed. Assessing the weight of the can in his hand, he then pitched it at the nearest person.

It was a good throw, striking the man square in the temple. The impact of the m
issile’s edge left a dent in the mad man’s head and the insane hunger immediately fell from the man’s eyes. With a now tragically blank expression, he wobbled on his feet, staggering this way and that, bumping into others of the crowd, until he eventually fell over.

As he was pulling a second can from the rucksack, M
uz saw, at the rear of the crowd, people were being tossed aside like rag dolls, lifted clean off their feet and slammed violently into cars. He was unable to see who, or what, possessed such strength as to hurl these people aside with ease. They were however rapidly working their way forward through the densely gathered numbers.

At that very
moment, two of the people closest to Muz lunged for him and he cowered back against the shop window. Before the two men reached him however, both were caught around the neck by a wedge of a fist. The eyes of both men bulged in their sockets, as the huge fingers of the spade-like hands tightened around their throats. The heads of the two men were then flung together again and again, cracking their skulls. Hanging limp now, the bodies were tossed aside, revealing the owner of those huge fists and Muz’s saviour.

Before Muz now, elbowing and punching at the cannibals who came too near, there stood a man no more than five feet seven inches tall. He had clearly been an avid bodybuild
er though, weighing at least twenty stone of lean muscle. A deep scratch down the right side of his face had left one eye ruptured and useless. The other one regarded Muz with a crazed rage.

Opening his mouth wide,
revealing tiny yellow teeth, the muscled man roared with a ferocity that caused Muz’s knees to buckle. He gave out the bellowing cry with such intensity that every muscle in his huge mass tightened hard, the bulging lumps threatening to tear through the tight white bloodied T-shirt he wore. His fists tightened in a challenge that caused his knuckles to crack.

Knowing that this was the end, as the monster of a man came at him, Muz closed his eyes in fear and resignation.
For the moment, death did not come however, and hearing the hefty man cry out in pain, Muz again opened his eyes.

The
bodybuilder was stood directly over him, but his attention was no longer directed at Muz. Instead, he was focused on dislodging the man who was clinging to his back, legs wrapped around his waist and riding him like a bucking mule. Though this second man was a little taller than the bodybuilder, he had to be almost half his weight. Despite this, he put up a good fight, refusing to torn free of his unwilling mount, while biting deep into the man’s sinuous thick neck.

As the two men wrestled wildly, Muz scuttled back from underneath them, just in time to escape being crushed by their combined weight, as the muscular man’s legs went suddenly limp and he hit the ground. The
man on top of him continued to bite into his neck, swallowing lump after lump of muscle. In seconds, Muz was able to see the exposed vertebrae of the bigger man’s neck. With the numerous nerves that served as communication between the brain and the rest of the body severed, the obscenely muscled man was unable to put up any further fight and his body simply floundered now without any conscious control.

Only now did the skinny attacker lift his head from the deep cavity in the other’s neck to look at Muz. It was the man from the crossroads by the church, the copper realised, the same man who had seemed incapable of any further violence.

Another of the crowd now took his opportunity and came running on all fours at Muz, peeled teeth biting at the air. The gaunt Indian man again came to his aid however, leaping from the bodybuilder’s prostrate form and throwing himself on top of the new attacker. Raj fought with a wild strength but so too did the disabled quadruped who managed to pull him close and bite deep between his neck and shoulder.

Struggling to comprehend what was happening, Muz got to his feet. Seeing this, the afflicted man, who was apparently not like the others, ceased his beating and biting of the wailing man beneath him and threw
himself at the crowd in front of Muz. The force of Raj’s forward motion caused three of those he slammed into to fall back against the others of the crowd. Trying not to question this unlikely good fortune, Muz ran through the gap his rescuer had created.

His legs were weak with fear and he stumbled several times, running a weaving path up the car-littered road. Only when he was a considerable distance from the shop he had looted
, did he dare to glance back over his shoulder. Those of the massing people the Indian man had bowled over were now back on their feet and chasing after Muz. Still, his unlikely saviour was fighting his corner, pulling the others back and dragging them off their feet.

Turning
his attention again to his front, Muz now saw a straggler ahead of him, a boy of about fifteen years, whose nose had been bitten clean off, leaving nothing but a hole in the centre of his young face. Muz snatched up a traffic cone from where it lay at the side of the road and continued to sprint headlong at the boy. At the moment the teenager lunged for him, he thrust the cone down over his head and used his own superior bodyweight to thrust him aside.

Lungs protesting pathetically, he crested the hill and now saw ahead of him
, Chuck, beating furiously at the doors of the church. Seconds later, he joined him, his legs trembling like jelly as he climbed the stone steps.

“Prick,” Muz simply said, as he joined the big man in thumping at the door.

“I thought you were behind me,” Chuck said, himself still out of breath. “If you can’t keep up, that’s not my problem.”

“Why aren’t they opening the door?” Muz asked.

The first of the crowd, who had managed to evade Raj’s efforts at holding them back, came racing over the hump of the road now. Seeing this, the two men beat harder at the large wooden doors.

“Let us in,” Chuck bellowed.

In response to this demand, they heard the clunk of the bolts being pulled aside and the door edged open. Muz and Chuck wasted no time in squeezing through the crack and slammed the door back into place behind them.

“What the fuck?” Chuck shouted angrily at Amy and Carl.

Neither of them responded, as they hastily reapplied the bolts. Only when the door was once again secure, did Amy turn guiltily to face the large man who was glaring angrily at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “About five minutes ago
, I had my ear pressed to the door and was sure I could hear someone just outside. They were moaning. When you banged on the door, I wasn’t sure it was you until I heard you shout.”

“You had one simple job..
.,” Chuck shouted back in her face, causing the woman to wince.

“Leave her alone,” Muz told the man in passing, as he walked over to and
collapsed on one of the pews.

“We were beginning to get worried,” Carl said to him.

“You were right to,” Muz responded, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling.

“Where’s my crowbar,
officer,” Carl asked.

“Lost it. Sorry,” Muz replied.

Though he was upset by this, having grown quite attached to the iron shaft, he didn’t say anything, not wanting to sound ungrateful for what both Muz and Chuck had done.

After a brief rest, Muz and Chuck set about emptying their bags, while Carl and Amy watched avidly. Muz place
d the several bottles of water and cans of food on the bench beside him.

Picking one of the latter up, Carl read the label. “Beans and sausage. Excellent,” he said excitedly.

“You didn’t forget my things, did you?” Amy asked.

Muz rooted around in the bottom of the bag and produced a small box, which he passed to
her. Amy eyed her present. The tampons were not the right ones for her but they would do.

“Thank you,” she said sheepishly and hurried off to the toilets.

Muz’s concerned eyes followed her. He remembered all too vividly, what had happened to poor Jenna.

“Er… tin opener?” Carl asked Muz, leaning over and peering into the rucksack.

Muz froze for a moment then slumped forward, cradling his head in his hands with despair.

“Idiot,” th
e copper said, as he repeatedly hit himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand.

“Here,” Chuck said, shaking his head in disbelief at Muz and throwing the required item at Carl. While Muz’s thieving spree had been mainly limited to food and water, Chuck had thought to ste
al both these and a variety of other items. Things a person might need in a survival situation: matches, lighters, a cheap-looking Swiss Army knife, a bottle of Savlon, a roll of strong tape, a tube of super-glue, a mini sewing kit, et cetera - and an inordinate number of boxes of cigarettes.

As Carl was coaxing the last few beans from the bottom of the upturned can into his mouth, Amy returned from the toilets. There was a dark damp
watermark running down the inside of one of her thighs from where she had done her best to scrub out the blood. She came over and sat with the others, looking through the selection of food and choosing a can of mixed fruit salad.

“So, how do you suppose this is all spreading?” Carl asked her, passing her the can opener and pretending not to notice the damp patch between her legs.

“I’m really not qualified to answer that,” Amy replied.

“You’re more qualified than the rest of us. Give it your best guess,” Muz asked.

“Well,” the little paramedic began to postulate, “if I had to guess, I would say that such a rapid spread of violent psychosis is most likely caused by a virus, bacteria, or some other pathogen.”

“So how do we catch it?” Carl asked with concern.

“It’s definitely not airborne,” Amy told him. “Otherwise, we’d all be infected, unless we represent the immune minority. Same goes for food and water supplies. From what I’ve seen, a person only develops the symptoms having been attacked by someone who themselves is infected. I think it’s therefore safe to say that, whatever it is, it’s passed on by direct body fluid contact.”

“When we were out there just now, one of the
m didn’t behave like the others,” Muz told Amy. “He didn’t attack us.”

“Really?” Both Amy and Carl responded in unison.

“He was easily close enough, but he just stood there,” Muz elaborated.

“And he was definitely infected?” Amy asked, more than a little dubious of what Muz was saying.

“You saw him, Chuck. Tell her,” Muz said.

“He must have had a blow to the head,” was all the fat man said in return.

“No, he was different,” Muz protested.

Chuck shook his head dismissively.

“When you ran off and left me, he came and saved me from the other people.”

“He did what?” Chuck blurted back, laughing aloud at the very idea.

“He did,” Muz insisted. “He fought off the others so that I could escape.”

“You really think that?”
Chuck asked, smirking.

“It’s what I saw.”

“I’ve seen those dead bastards fight each other too,” Chuck told him, his laughter now replaced by a cold seriousness. “He just wanted you all for himself. Keep it together, man, or you’ll end up believing in voodoo and films, like that idiot.” He nodded over at Carl who scowled back.