Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (50 page)

“I don’t know,” Muz whispered. “Just pass them out and hurry up.”

“Dat’s de last of dem,” Jay said eventually.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” Muz said thankfully.

“Hang on, hang on,” Chuck said. “We should check out the kitchen and the main counter area.”

“Why?” Muz asked. “We’ve got what we came for. What are we going to find in there that we haven’t already got?”

Chuck remembered the cabinet display that sto
od on the counter of every Mackie D’s he had ever been to, tempting him with goodies he knew he shouldn’t be eating on top of his usual triple stack bacon cheeseburger meal.

“Donuts, muffins, cookies,” the man said with awe in his voice.

Muz’s eyes widened. He could murder a glazed donut himself right now. “No, we should just go,” he said instead.

“Oh, come
on, bruv,” Jay protested. “Mackie D’s rings are proper sick.”

Muz looked at Margaret and the woman just shrugged back at him.

“Okay,” he conceded a little too readily.

Jay pulled the door
to the pick-up counter closed. As he did so, they heard the broom within the room slap loudly against the tiled floor. Wincing at the loud noise, they waited for it to cause a response from someone lurking in the building. After a minute or two of no sounds from elsewhere within the restaurant, the group relaxed a little.

“Chuck and I’ll go left,” Muz said, the serving hatch in the little room having shown that that door must lead to the kitchen. “You two try the doors to the right. See what else you can find.”

Margaret and J
ay nodded and headed off.

“Be back here in five minutes max’,” Chuck whispered loudly after them.

Muz opened the door to the kitchen area, tentatively scanning the brilliantly lit room. Chuck however, shoved past him eagerly.

“Just be quick,” Muz said.

With all the excitement of a child, Chuck bounded past all the metal ovens, deep fat fryers and worktops. As he reached the clear plastic display cabinet, housing the shiny sticky donuts and other sweets, a movement in the corner of his eye distracted him from those colourful beauties and he stopped in his tracks. Seeing that the big man had stopped suddenly, Muz froze too, his heart already beginning to race.

“What’s wrong?” the copper dared to whisper as faintly as possible.

Chuck thrust out the flat palm of a hand back at him, gesturing for him not to come any closer. He himself then began slowly to back up.

At the far end of the seating area, on the other side of the main counter, about fifty chil
dren wearing pointy little Mackie D’s party hats were gathered around an adult female, who was sprawled on her back over one of the tables. Though she still appeared to be conscious, she wasn’t putting up much of a fight against her tiny assailants, as they had already almost eaten her down to the bone. So absorbed were the children by their feast that they hadn’t even noticed Chuck’s presence yet.

Other adults, parents or teachers maybe, were slumped in their seats or lying twitching on the floor. They were all nothing more than rags and bones, having suffered the same fate as the other woman. The few of them had clearly been no match for the overwhelming number of children, who had, through some primitive instinct, banded together against their larger foes. It was a scene of utter carnage. Blood was sprayed everywhere, across the floor, over the tables, up the walls and windows. With all the meat of the adults not having been enough of a
meal for them, the strongest of the children were now turning to feed on the weaker.

The kids looked fresh, Chuck saw, as he continued to edge
away, one slow step after another. They showed no signs whatsoever of decomposition and therefore couldn’t have turned too long ago. They and the adults must have managed to remain alive all this time, holed up in here. They had obviously thought themselves to be safe but clearly, some afflicted cannibal had found a way in.

Just as Chuck was daring to hope that he might make it back out of the kitchen without being spotted, the head of the woman being torn apart on the table lolled to one side and she saw him. She feebly reached out an arm in his direction and howled. Chuck’s blood ran ice cold through his body, as he feared the others would be alerted to him watching them. Instead, a skinny girl with blonde pigtails bit down into the woman’s throat, cutting off her cry.

Chuck forced himself to breathe and continued to back up. As he was doing so, one hand brushed along a metal preparation surface. The limb nudged against a pair of serving tongs and, before he could catch them, they fell to the floor. His bladder went weak in response to the loud clattering the metal cutlery made.

The blood-soaked heads of the children suddenly lifted and snapped
around to stare at Chuck, their faces alert. These were not the shambling messes most of the undead had by now become. Their eyes burned ferociously with rage, pain and hunger, forcing Chuck to recall how terrifying the undead had been when this had all first happened.

“Run,” he shouted at Muz. “Get out.”

The copper didn’t need telling twice. He was on his heels and back out the door before Chuck could catch up to him. As Chuck burst through after him, slamming the door in place behind himself, they saw Margaret and Jay lunge hastily out from another room. They appeared just as panicked as the two men did.

“Oh shit,” Jay gasped.

“What?” Muz asked.

“It’s Happy Larry,” the youth yelled.

“The clown?” Chuck clarified, as he held onto the handle of the door to the kitchen.

“Yeah. And he ain’t fuckin’ happy.”

“We’ve got zombie kids back here,” Chuck shouted back.

He could hear them snarling and banging into things, as they leapt over the service counter. Then there came a forceful thud that rattled the door. He held the handle in place even tighter, the huge knuckles of his dark brown hands turning almost white.

At the very same moment, there was a loud boom against the door at the far end of the corridor, which Jay was leaning his meagre weight against. The youth came flying forward and from that single impact alone, the frame of the door was already beginning to come away from the wall. Then there was a second powerful impact against that far door, and in a shower of plaster and splinters, the frame fell away from the wall and the door with it.

Standing in the cavity of the doorway, amid a cloud of masonry and plaster dust was Happy Larry, or at least the man this particular branch of the food chain had employed to play him. He was at least six foot four and profoundl
y fat with it. Weighing easily twenty-four stone, and that was being kind, he was a huge bull of a man and had a look in his eyes as though he were staring at a red rag. Judging by the healthy look of his complexion, just visible under the badly smeared white paint on his face, he too was a fresh kill. His red and white checked costume was far more red than white now, stained as it was with spatters of blood. He held in one hand the remaining head, rib cage and one arm of a little girl.

“Holy Christ,” both Muz and Chuck said in unison.

“Leg it,” Jay yelled, his legs flailing wildly, as he scrambled back to his feet.

Jay and Margaret
ran towards Muz and Chuck and they all sprinted for the door to the drive-thru room. Muz was the first to reach it and rattled the handle desperately. The door refused to move.

Larry growled, a sound that seemed to belong more to a bear than man, and dropped the remains
of his last feeding at his side.

Muz continued to fight with the handle but still the door didn’t give so much as an inch.
Looking through the slim glass panel in the door, he saw the broom on the floor. When it had fallen, it had landed in such a position that it was wedged against the door, holding it shut. Chuck saw it too.

“Fuck,” the big man barked. “We’re trapped.”

The monstrous Larry roared and began to thunder down the passage towards them. Margaret screamed.

Refusing to accept that he couldn’t get into the little room, Muz continued to rattle the door handle. His eyes, looking through the window of the door, were fixed on the open rear doors of the Jankel, standing just the other side of the serving hatch.

Chuck grabbed him by the neck of his stab vest and yanked him backwards with incredible force. Jay opened a door on the opposite wall and the four of them fell through, just as the raging Larry stormed past.

The mad clown reached out, snatching at them, but his incredible body mass continued to carry him forward down the corridor, until he lost his stride and slammed face first onto the floor tiles. His round red nose squeaked and flew off across the floor, as did several of his teeth. He seemed barely
to notice though and was straight back up onto his feet.

Jay threw the door into its frame and pressed the little lock button in the handle. He knew it wouldn’t hold for long though, not against that fat bastard.

Turning, they saw that they were at the foot of a staircase up to the first floor. They ran up as fast as their fear-weakened legs could carry them, Jay hanging back and helping Margaret, whose nerves seemed to be getting the better of her.

“Come on,” he said to her, fear for the old woman causing his chin to tremble. “You can’t quit.”

At the top of the flight, there stood another door, which they again slammed closed and locked. As they all leant against it, breathing heavily, they heard the sounds of the not so happy Larry splintering the door below.

“What now?” Muz demanded, his voice trembling.

Chuck ran over to a window on the opposite wall of what appeared to be the manager’s office. It was locked and had bars on the inside. There was no getting through.

“We’re trapped up here,” he said.

“Get back here,” Margaret hissed at him.

He was the biggest and heaviest of them all and they would need him to help them reinforce the door when that killer clown reached it. Instead though, he ran to another door in the room and flung it open. It revealed another short corridor and he disappeared off along it.

Just as they were contemplating running after him, the other three heard big Larry crash through the downstairs door and come thumping up the stairs.

“Shit,” Muz said. “There’s no point running. We’ve got to hold the door.”

He, the skinny youth and the slim old lady leant all their weight against the door, digging their heels into the carpet.

There came the expected loud bang and the door rattled so forcefully against him that Muz actually felt his teeth loosen a little.
The carpet at his feet began to slide away from the wall.

“We can’t possibly hold it,” Margaret said.

She stood back and pulled the two kitchen knives from her beltline, facing the door and holding them out in readiness. With each successive juddering bang, the wood of the frame surrounding the lock splintered more and more until, with one last forceful shove, it broke and the door came flying inward.

Both Muz and Jay were flung across the room so hard that they went head first over the manager’s desk, leaving Margaret to stand alone in their defence.

As the giant of a man burst into the room, the trembling elderly woman stepped towards him. Without hesitation, she thrust one of her knives into his bellowing open mouth and the other handle-deep into the side of his neck. The knife in the man’s mouth went so far in that Margaret’s fist went with it and he bit down hard on her knuckles. Hearing her own delicate bones crack, she cried out in pain and wrenched her hand free.

“Mum,” Jay yelled, hurriedly getting back to his feet, not even realising what he had said.

Margaret looked down at her hand, holding it protectively in the other. Deep teeth marks had punctured the skin and she could briefly see the white of bone within, before the welling blood quickly obscured it and began to piss down her forearm.

Larry still stood there in the doorway, blinking with an idiotic expression, stunned by the sensation of the cold steel in his neck. Then he gathered himself and let out another raging roar. Little lumps of his own clotted blood tumbled along the handle of the knife in his mouth with the force of the air expelled from his lungs. The clown clenched his fists, shaking with anger.

As he came at Margaret, Muz leapt from atop the desk he had been climbing over and, struck the knife handle with the heel of his palm, thrusting it even deeper into the giant’s mouth. The blow caused the tip of the blade to penetrate and push between two of the vertebrae in Larry’s neck, severing his spinal cord.

Larry dropped with a thud t
hat rattled the floorboards. Though his body lay limp, his eyes still glowered at those stood above him and his remaining teeth continued to gnash against the knife handle.

Margaret reached down and slid the other knife from the side of his neck, leaving a gaping slit of a wound. Muz looked at her injured hand and her eyes were wide with fear, as she stared back at him.

“Nah man, dis ain’t happenin’,” Jay said, steeling a glance through the door and down the stairs. “There’s, like, a load of nippers down there.”