Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (48 page)

“At least make them go up in front,” Chuck grumbled, as they began to ascend the stairs. “This is going to give Margaret a bloody heart attack. You do realise that, don’t you?”

Up on the top floor, Amy sh
owed her patients to the door of their flat.

“Brace yourselves for a bit of a shock,” she called out to those within, as she
pushed open the door.

“Oh, my Lord,” Margaret screamed
on seeing the two strange strangers in the hallway, dropping the tray of buns she had just pulled out of the oven.

Jay leapt to his feet from the sofa in response to the elderly lady’s startled cry. Seeing the two inhuman men, he grabbed his baseball bat from where it was leant against the wall and jumped in front of Margaret.

“It’s okay, calm down. They’re harmless,” Muz told him hastily, motioning for him to put the bat down.

“Harmless?” Margaret asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Amy assured her.

“No,” Chuck disagreed.

“Yes,” Muz said.

“Tom?” Margaret asked the Pole for his opinion.

The squat stocky man shrugged, as though the whole thing had nothing to do with him. “She is nurse, not me. If Amy say okay, I guess is okay.”

“Whoa, look at his eyes. Dat is some scary shit, bruv,” Jay gasped, still standing aggressively in
the hall in Margaret’s defence.

Raj’s eyes were locked on the bat. Though his outward appearance was that of calm composure, he readied himself to strike with a counter attack
, should the boy come at him.

“Is dat one of dem flid people?” Jay then asked, looking the second newcomer up and down.

“A thalidomide? No,” Amy said.

“Then why is its arm like dat?”

“He had it ripped off,” Muz told the youth.

“Whoa. You sayin’ dat ting’
s growing back?”

“Just put the bat down,” Muz said.

“Why have you brought them up here?” Margaret wanted to know.

“I’m still asking the same thing,” Chuck told her.

“They’re different,” Amy continued to reassure her. “They’re safe. They appear to have recovered somehow.”

“Is dat zombie growing itself a baby arm?” Jay said.

“Would that really be any stranger than the rest of the weirder than weird shit we’ve seen this past week?” Muz asked him.

“A little bit, yeah.”

“You still haven’t explained why you’ve brought them up here,” Margaret said, backing up hastily into the living room, as Amy ushered the two men in and Muz snatched the bat out of Jay’s hands.

“They could hold a cure,” Amy told her and went on to explain her reasoning, as she gestured for the men to sit on the sofa.

Raj accepted the seat, sniffing in disgust at the myriad of foul odours in the fusty air. Seeing the Indian man sit down gave the other deformed male the confidence to do the same.

“W
e should at least lock them in a separate flat,” Chuck said.

“Would
you get a couple of glasses of water, please, Jay,” Amy asked.

Though he was reluctant to take his eyes off the two men and leave the room for even such a short time, the youth did as he was told.

“What if they take a turn for the worst again?” Chuck demanded to know, annoyed at being ignored.

“We could tie them up,” Jay said, hurriedly returning with two full glasses.

“We’re not doing that,” Amy stated firmly. “These men are injured victims and they don’t mean us any harm.”

“I’m not happy with letting them just sit there,” Chuck shouted. “I’d rather kill them than risk our lives.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, give it a rest,” Amy bellowed back, turning on him and squaring up to the big man, never having looked more diminutive than she did right then. “If you so much as touch either of these men, I swear I’ll… I’ll… Well, I don’t know what, but you’d better not.”

The paramedic then took a glass from Jay and passed it to Raj. The inhuman man took it, eying it warily and took a sip. Satisfied that there was no odd taste to the liquid, he then guzzled the rest down in two gulps.

The second newcomer took his glass from Amy and attempted to pour the contents into the obscene hole in his face. The water spilled everywhere, drenching his filthy tattered shirt.

“Hang on,” Jay said, racing back into the kitchen.

He returned a few seconds later with a pink plastic curly straw and dropped it into the glass. Amy assisted the injured man in feeding the tip of it into the mess of a hole at the top of his neck. Though it was almost hidden from view, she was able to see the tip of his tongue curl around the plastic tube. Water then drew up the straw, twirling around all the bends, before entering the man’s mouth. He swallowed repeatedly without spilling another drop and Amy smiled at him.

Chuck continued to stand over the two ex-zombies, assessing them. The Indian man, though he was trying to appear relaxed, was clearly a coiled spring. He had an air
of restrained energy and those eyes of his had a look the big man had only seen before on the faces of predatory animals, such as sharks or lions.

Raj felt extremely uncomfortable
, but it wasn’t the black man’s scrutiny that was bothering him. Though he still felt wary at being in an enclosed space with these nervous people, it wasn’t any of them that were the cause of his discomfort. It was his own company he didn’t like. The terrible images of his wife’s death continued to replay themselves over and over in his mind. She had been the first of his victims. There had been many more since. His own humanity lost to him, his burning hunger had driven him to kill again and again. Though he now felt had held a level of control over his own mind again and his hunger had diminished considerably, he still feared the possibility of losing control and killing again.

He didn’t blame the big African man for glaring at him that way. Looking back up at him, he put his wrists together and extended his arms.

“See, he’s okay with being tied up,” Chuck said, jumping on the gesture and immediately starting to look around for something with which to bind him.

“It’s not happening,” Amy said adamantly.

“Fine. See what happens,” Chuck spat out, and mumbling obscenities, stomped off out onto the balcony for a smoke.

Amy dug out some yellow marigolds from one of the boxes of goodies they had brought from the other flats. Putting them on, she then continued to examine the two men.

“This really is incredible,” she said to herself, as she shone a small torch into Raj’s eyes.

Turning to do the same to the other man, she saw the open fear he was still feeling. Other than Chuck, the rest of the group were still stood over them, gathered around the sofa. Even Digby’s wedge of a head, pushing between people’s legs, was watching on with quizzical concern.

“Will you all stop staring?” Amy asked protectively. “Put the telly on or something.”

Only now realising how they had been behaving, the other
s jolted and milled around, looking for something else to do, to take their attention away from the fascinating men. Muz picked up the remote and turned on the TV, flicking it back to the news channel.

“We have with us,” the station’s anchor man said, “Doctor Tun-Hou Lee, Professor of Virology, currently heading studies at the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, and arguably the world’s foremost specialist in the study of the historical spread of pandemics.
Good afternoon, Doctor.”

“Good afternoon,” the aging Chinese man nodded.

“May I first ask you the question at the forefront of everyone’s minds?” the perfectly groomed anchorman continued. “In your expert opinion, what is the likelihood of the continued success in containing the spread of the north London epidemic?”

“Despite the Government’s and the Military’s assurances that they have everything in hand,” Doctor Lee replied
, “it would be foolish to become complacent regarding the control of such a remarkably virulent organism.

“It is my opinion that the only
reason the authorities were fortunate enough to contain this at all was because the initial outbreak of the voracious infection took place in the early hours of the morning, when most people were still in their beds and there was therefore minimal commuter travel.”

“Fortunate?” Muz growled angrily at the TV. “Yeah, I feel very bleeding fortunate.”

“The inherent problem with an event such as this taking place in modern times,” the Doctor went on, “is that the world has become a very small place indeed. We are extremely lucky that this outbreak did not occur in a more central borough of London.

“Had that been the case, commuters may have spread the problem much further afield before anyone would have even been aware of its existence. Infected people could have boarded planes at City and Heathrow airports, the ramifications of which would have been catastrophic.

“As it stands, because the outbreak took place in a more rural outer borough with a relatively low population density, successful containment is entirely possible.”

“That’s comforting to know,” the
anchorman said.

“But it shouldn’t be taken for granted,” Doctor Lee added.

“And what can you tell us at this time about the cause of this horrific affliction?”

“What we know,” Doctor Lee answered, “is that no known bacteriophage, other virus or any adaptation thereof, could cause the bizarre and dramatic cellular transformations we’re seeing in infected specimens. Other than that, we cannot at this stage of our studies say what it is.”

“They know,” Raj said.

The sound of the man suddenly speaking caused Amy actually
to leap up off the sofa with fright. Everyone else in the room stopped what they were doing to look at him, surprised to find that even an ex-zombie was able to talk. Even the man without a jaw, his eyebrows rising in surprise, turned his head to face the Indian man sat beside him. Raj too was just as shocked by the two words that had escaped his throat. It was the first time he had spoken in the eight days since the amoeboid cells had taken control of him.

“How do you know they know what it is?” Muz asked him.

Raj however simply looked at the TV blankly.

“What do
you know?” Muz now asked louder, an element of anger creeping into his voice.

Raj’s mental lucidity however had once again fallen from his control for the time being
, and though he stared at the images of the news room on the TV, it was his own memories of torture and gore that played out in front of his eyes.

“If you know anything at all, please tell us,” Amy implored but it was no use. All further attempts to coerce any more words out of him were pointless. “I don’t know what’s going on in his head right now
, but his eyes have glazed over.”

After that, the group left the two men to sit
looking uncomfortable and out of place on the sofa, while they went about the domestic tasks they had managed to settle into, despite the chaos of the world outside.

“Are you sure they can be trusted?” Margaret asked, as she and Jay washed and dried the pots. She was still extremely unsettled at having infected people in their flat.

“They haven’t shown any aggression at all, even when Chuck threatened them,” Amy told her, as she squatted beside the other woman, feeding a pile of clothes into the washing machine. She felt guilty at putting the elderly woman through this, but the two men were just too important to let go.

“I suppose we should feed them,” Margaret suggested. “We wouldn’t want them getting hungry.”

Having finished the washing up, she took the tea towel from Jay and dried her hands. Calming herself with a deep breath, she then walked through to the living room. Jay followed. Since the new arrivals had entered their place of safety, he refused to leave the woman’s side.

“I have to tell you that our rations are quite limited in their variety
, but is there anything in particular that you gentlemen would like to eat?” Margaret asked the two men. She spoke loudly and slowly, as though they were hard of hearing or foreigners.

“Kate,” Raj mumbled, still trapped in his own thoughts.

“Who’s Kate,” Jay asked Margaret.

The woman shrugged.

“She… was my wife,” Raj stammered. “I… I… I ate her.”

“Oh Lord,” Margaret gasped, clasping her hands over her mouth.

Tom, who was at the booze again, leant forward in his armchair.

“Take,” he said to Raj, offering him his bottle. “Drink enough and pain of body and in head go away.”

Raj looked at the bottle in his hand but ignored the man. The other male beside him however snatched the bottle from the Polish man’s fist. He put the neck into his face cavity and began to pour the contents down his throat. After no more than a couple of swigs though, he started coughing, having almost drowned himself. Vodka and spit sprayed everywhere.

Amy rushed from the kitchen to his aid, standing him up and slapping him on the back.

“You okay?” she asked when his spluttering subsided.