Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (57 page)

“We run now?” Tom suggested.

Thankfully though, the engine finally conceded and coughed into life, rattling and hissing in distaste at being brought back from the dead. Muz stepped hard on the accelerator pedal and the tyres span rapidly in the rain-soaked soft dirt, digging little trenches.

“Slow,” Tom shouted at him.

As the whipping tendrils drew dangerously close, Muz forced himself to be gentle with the pedal and the truck edged forward. Looking nervously back in his wing mirrors at the closing sopping mess, he kept the speed low until he dropped over the kerb and hit the road. He then accelerated as much as he dared, fighting with the steering wheel. He took off along Kings Drive, in the opposite direction to the way they had previously tried, heading for Green Lane.

As he rounded a sharp
ninety-degree bend in the narrow road, he was confronted by that hunting pack of decaying cows. There was a dishevelled horse among them too, apparently having joined their number for the benefits of hunting as a group. Compared to those that remained of the human victims, the animals for the most part still looked fairly fresh. Being physically dominant and acting as a unified pack, they must still have been managing to catch enough food to stave off the majority of their cellular decay, Raj found himself musing.

“Seriously?” Muz whispered forlornly to himself, unable to believe their bad luck.

The beasts that were blocking the road turned their heads and lifted their ears at the sounds of the busted truck. Those that still had eyes stared the length of the road, right at Muz, predatory confidence evident in their stances, as they prepared to charge.

“Brace yourselves,” the copper
called back over his shoulder.

He was starting to feel groggy and distant from all that was happening. Shaking his head, he tried to focus.

As the hellish heifers broke into a headlong sprint, Muz drove at them, white-hot sparks spraying up in his wake. Picking up more and more speed, the truck began to weave out of his control. Crashing repeatedly against the lines of parked cars on either side of the road kept him heading in roughly the right direction though.

Muz slammed into the heavy beasts with such momentum that the bull bars actually buckled. Raj at his side
, and those huddled in the rear were bounced around violently, the lengths of their seatbelts constricting against their chest and cutting into their neck. Cows’ heads slammed against the bonnet and they wailed, as they were thrown aside or crushed between the racing truck and the parked cars.

To Muz’s
right, the head of the nightmarish horse butted his window, attempting to break the glass to chew on him. He ignored its wild eyes and pushed onward. Intestinal fluids and congealed blood splashed and spattered up the windscreen, and Muz had to pull at the screen wash lever furiously to try to clear a line of sight.

With the weight of so many large animals blocking their way, the truck slowed dramatically with each impact and the engine growled more angrily. Just as Muz lost hope and thought they were about to be brought to a standstill by the enveloping mass of bovine bodies, the truck burst out the other side of the crowd. He actually laughed aloud with relief. Though the cows continued to come after them, the half-dead animals were
no competition for the speeding truck.

Green Lane was completely
blocked with cars and Muz had to drive cautiously along the grass at the front of the blocks of flats. Several times the wheels span beneath him, losing all traction, and he had to ease off the speed, while watching the carnivorous cows in his mirrors.

Finally reaching the roundabout that brought them to the A41, Edgware Way, Muz wove between the jammed vehicles, having to use the truck’s superior weight to slam many aside. Driving straight over the major junction, he continued north up the wrong side of the dual carriageway. He didn’t get m
uch farther though.

Stinger strips had been laid out and actually fixed in place by bolt
s that had been driven into the tarmac. Just beyond them, several rows of waist high concrete barriers blocked the road. Some two hundred metres further north up the road, Muz could see the taller barriers and the coils of razor wire that formed the cordon perimeter. The forward command compound lay off across the fields to their right however.

The group jumped out of the truck and stood at the side of the road, staring out at the land that
stretched between them and that potential haven. The ploughed fields were soft and muddy with the recent heavy rains. Even with its huge chunky tyres, its four-wheel drive and its high chassis clearance, there was no way the truck would make it over such sodden terrain, not in its current condition. They would have to make their way on foot.

Tom was the first to step off the verge and he sunk shin deep into the sludge. It was not going to be easy going.

“Is this really our best option?” Amy asked.

As though in reply to the question, there came the bellows of several hungry mad cows from back by the roundabout
, and the beasts could be seen trampling over cars in their desperation to catch up to their prey.

Without another word, the others followed Tom out into the field. Amy fell forward instantly, her hands slapping into the mud. The impact brought tears to her eyes, as her shoulder throbbed with burning pain. The cold sludge that coated her hands actually felt soothing though, cooling her burns. Digby struggled the most. Having such short legs and limping badly, each step was a leap that caused him to sink almost up to his chest.

“We’ll never outrun them,” Amy wailed, hearing the cows drawing nearer.

“What choice have we got?” Muz shouted back at her, his head beginning to spin
woozily. “Just keep moving.”

They couldn’t have been more than two hundred metres into the expansive fields when Raj looked back over his shoulder. Spreading his weight over four limbs, he was making fair progress and was some distance ahead of the others.
Only Sam was managing to keep up. Looking back past the group, he saw the crazed herd leaving the road, still in chase. The rotting horse reared up on its hind legs and cried out in pain at having being caught around the throat by a tendril. Oozing over the jammed cars and vans, the blob was just behind the beasts.

“I’m not sure that they’re actually chasing us,” Raj called back to the others. “It seems they’re running from the creature.”

“Is maybe bit of both,” Tom shouted back, sounding badly out of breath.

Raj made it his task to try
to avoid the more boggy rain-soaked low areas and scout out a relatively firm route for the others to follow. As though the footing wasn’t appalling enough, it began to rain again.

“Are you kidding me?” Amy yelled up at the slate grey sky, her tears lost in the downpour.

She looked back at Digby who was lagging slightly behind her. His eyes, filled with desperate determination, were locked on hers. The woman waited for him to catch up.

Thankfully, the heavy cows seemed to be struggling too, sinking deep into the dirt. Their mindless psychotic drive pushed them on relentlessly
however, and they were gaining on the group.

Seeing the starving herd gaining on the woman and the dog, Tom turned and lurched his way back to her. Taking the remaining two bottles of alcohol from his backpack, he stood by her side, struggling to light them. As the cows bounded nearer, he had to bend double, using his body to shelter the fabric wicks from the now driving rain.

With them lit, he tossed the first as hard as he could at the advancing animals. It dropped into the dirt just short of the beasts without breaking and the wick went out. Waiting a few seconds for the beasts to come closer, he threw the second. This time the bottle hit a cow square in the face and shattered. Burning liquid splashed over the massing bovine bodies. To the man’s dismay, they didn’t even seem to notice, so driven were they by their raging hunger.

One of the animals, looking somewhat fresher and more physically able than her
decrepit sisters, was making better headway and was dangerously close to catching up with the woman, the stocky man and the dog. Realising that the feeble-bodied humans couldn’t hope to outrun the mad beast, Raj grumbled to himself and sped back to them.

Putting himself midway between the floundering people and the lead cow, he stopped and dropped to lie in the mud. As he remained sprawled there, playing dead, the murderous animal thundered up to him. As the crazed cow stopped and bent to rip a chunk out of his torso, Raj again sprang to life.

He grabbed the heifer around the throat and swung himself up onto her back. Wrapping his feet tight behind the tops of her front legs for support, he pulled back on her stubby horns, until her huge wedge of a head was pointing skyward. The cow bellowed furiously. Though she reared and bucked wildly, she could not dislodge the man. Raj continued to pull, the muscles in his back and arms writhing under his thin skin. He possessed an incredible degree of wiry strength that surpassed his slender appearance, as though the fibres of his muscles were now made of steel cables. Straining with everything he had, he leaned back, feeling the connective tissue of his joints beginning to pull away from bone. Then, with a loud sickening crack, the cow’s head slumped all the way back into his lap. Her legs gave way and she dropped into the mud, pinning one of Raj’s legs beneath her.

Having watched the whole fight in transfixed terror and disbelief, Amy scrambled
back to Raj, despite the still onrushing flaming herd. As the cooking cows floundered through the mud, drawing closer, she remained by the Indian man’s side, tugging at him. Though he wanted to run, Tom came to help, and together, they managed to slide Raj free.

“Now pick up the pace,” the inhuman ex-zombie chastised the others.

Muz had no hope of increasing his efforts though. His feet dragged through the sludge and his head lolled forward, as he felt more and more groggy. Though he was fighting valiantly against the effects of the sleeping tablets, the world around him continued to grow distant and surreal. His mind seemed to be slipping away from him and he wasn’t sure it was entirely due to the pills.

“Hey, stay focused,” Raj told him, matching the man’s pace.

Muz took several deep breaths and rubbed at his eyes.

“I think I’m meant to be on early turn tomorrow,” he told the doctor, struggling to concentrate and recall where he was in his shift pattern. “But they can bollocks if they think I’m coming in for seven after all this.”

Though Muz laughed a little at his own humour, Raj didn’t laugh back. The man’s flippant remark showed that he was slipping into a state of denial regarding the severity of his predicament.

They reached a particularly low lying area in the fields then. A large section of the ground was flooded and it was far too wide to go around with the cows on their heels. They had no choice but to swim. Throwing themselves headlong into the filthy water, they splashed furiously. Digby seemed to pick up, grateful for the weight to be lifted from his injured leg. Sam, with only one good arm and no lips to stop the water
from rushing down his throat, struggled the most. As he thrashed against the surface, choking and spluttering, Tom came to his aid and helped to keep his head above the water.

The group
emerged back onto sloppy mud, looking pitiful and spent of all energy. They still had some distance to go however, before they reached the compound that was drawing nearer at a painfully slow pace.

With a level of relief that inspired them to keep moving, they saw that the cows were struggling more with the expanse of boggy water than they had. Being far heavier, the massive animals had sunk deeper into the cloying mud beneath.

As they fought to free their thrashing legs, the blob caught up with them, sliding into the water. It seemed like a completely different animal once submerged, undulating its sloppy body like a leach, to swim with almost graceful ease and efficiency. Its tendrils snaked across the water’s surface, catching the cows by their legs and necks and drawing them into itself.

“Have you any idea how much writing I’m going to have
to do for all this?” Muz moaned to himself, as he pressed forward.

With the coiled razor wire of the cordon line and the walls of the compound no more than a hundred metres ahead, the group then came across the bodies of five young adolescents lying dead in the dirt. They were the same youths that had challenged the group outside their tower a few days ago. Each had been shot through the head. The tall fat lad, being the easiest target and therefore the first that all the soldiers had aimed at, was literally riddled with holes. Yellow-white globs of fat pushed their way out the entry wounds in his expose
d gut. The survivors did their best to ignore their blank staring eyes. It was a gruesome sight, but at least they had been spared a fate worse than death.

Laying in the sludge beside the youths was a ladder.
Clearly, the now dead gang had brought it with them, in the hope of scaling the wall of the compound. Tom picked up one end and Raj the other.

The Pole
still didn’t like that they were heading for the cordon, especially now that they were carrying the ladder, their intent had to be clear to anyone watching them. Were the mud covered bodies at their feet, and they themselves having already been shot at by Marines, not enough to prove that it was a stupid idea?