by Adam Millard
Shane took a deep breath and turned the key.
The engine turned over as he pumped the pedal, and then there was an almighty roar as the bus came to life.
'Oh yeah!' Marla screeched from her seat. 'See, I told you she'd go.'
Shane fist-pumped the air before turning his attention back to the control-panel. 'Where are the wipers for this thing?' He played with a few levers and switches before he found the one he was searching for.
The snow on the windscreen pushed aside and fell off onto bonnet.
Through the frosty glass, though, was a face staring back at them.
Shane gasped as he realised who the man standing in front of the bus was; dripping with blood, missing an arm, an eye hanging down his cheek and flailing in the howling wind...
Victor Lord looked more pissed off then ever before.
*
The Captain shambled forward a few steps and launched himself onto the bonnet. The bus rocked and creaked as Victor tried to drag himself up to the windscreen, but he was like a fish out of water and flailed aimlessly around on the snow-covered bonnet before slipping back down and hitting the ground with a thud.
Marla was on her feet, now. 'Drive over him!' she screeched.
Shane tried to find the gearstick; when he found there was nothing to his right, he realised that the bus was lever-controlled, the gears were on the dashboard.
'He's getting up!' Terry said, glancing through the side door. 'And he does not look happy.'
Of course he didn't loo happy; he'd been a miserable prick when he was alive. Now that he had an eye hanging out and a missing arm, he was hardly going to be the life and soul of the party.
Shane rammed the bus into first gear with a crunch and stuck his foot down on the accelerator. The bus moved, only an inch or so, but it was enough to knock the lurker formerly known as Victor Lord back onto his ass.
'Did I get him?' Shane said, trying to peer over the bonnet. He couldn't see a thing, so his reliance on Terry's vision was paramount. 'Talk to me, Terry.'
Terry could see a broken and torn hand, reaching up to the wing-mirror. 'No,' he said. 'He's still down there.'
Shane needed no further encouragement and began to roll forward and back. The bus was relatively simple to control now that he had discovered the gears, and he was surprised at just how responsive it was, despite the inches of snow and frost beneath the wheels.
At the side of the bus, Victor's hand disappeared. 'I think you got the bastard,' Terry said, alternating his gaze between Shane and the exterior.
'Don't suppose you want to take a closer look?' Shane said, already knowing the answer.
'Let's just get the fuck out of here,' Marla said.
Shane put the bus into Reverse and was about to hit the pedal when the door in front slammed open.
Victor had been a problem; the steady swarm of costumed children piling from the rear-entrance, slavering maws and bloodied garments, would prove to be something else entirely.
Shane hit the pedal and the wheels began to turn. The only trouble was, the bus didn't move.
'Take it steady!' Terry said, clinging onto the centre-rail as if Shane was Sandra Bullock and they were about to hit a ramp. 'They can't get in, so just take your time.'
Terry's words of advice did very little in the way of comforting the driver. If anything, Shane panicked further as he realised two winged monkeys were making their way around to the rear of the bus, where there was, due to safety regulations, probably a fucking emergency exit.
'What are they?!' Marla gasped, wiping the window to her left with the sleeve of her coat. It made no difference; the frost on the outside prevented her from getting a good look.
'You ever see The Wizard Of Oz?' Terry said. Of course she had, everybody had seen it. Every Christmas for the past fifty years, some channel would bang it on, next to It's a Wonderful Life or Mary fucking Poppins.
'The one with all the midgets?' Marla said, the confusion in her voice palpable.
'That's the one,' Terry replied. He began to make his way down the aisle of the bus. 'Only, they were munchkins, not midgets.'
'Whatever,' Marla said. 'That doesn't explain what they're doing trying to cannibalise us.'
Shane gave the order to hold tight, and this time the bus did move. Something thumped the underside as the bus rolled steadily backwards. The tyres met something, which lifted them a few inches into the air.
'Fucking winged monkey!' Terry said, and then realised the preposterousness of his words. He had never, in all of his days, expected to use the words Fucking Winged Monkey in a serious sentence. It was all he could do not to burst out laughing.
Shane couldn't see out of the windows, so the wing-mirrors were rendered obsolete. He was relying on Terry to tell him if he was about to hit anything, although the visibility out the rear of the bus was just as limited.
A female lurker, dressed in a pink frock and a tiara, had clambered up onto the side-step and was clawing at the window. Her tongue trailed across the glass, leaving a snail-trail of black goo in its wake. She was, by far, the least fair princess in all the land.
Marla switched sides so that she didn't have to look into the creature's listless eyes anymore. 'Freaks me out,' she said, feigning a shudder.
The bus was picking up speed, now, and the prom-dress wearing lurker was clinging on as if her life depended on it. Shane paid no attention to its ceaseless scratching, and instead occupied himself with getting the bus out onto the unlit road.
'Keep going!' Terry called from the rear of the bus. 'I can see the gate.'
Shane turned back just in time to see the female lurker drop off the side, do a few rolls in the snow, and come to a grinding halt.
'I thought she'd never take the hint,' Marla said, rubbing her eyes as if a few hours sleep were not unwelcome.
Shane smiled. 'How'm I doing Terry? I can't see a thing.'
'Okay,' Terry said, straining to see through the tiniest hole in the frost in the rear-window. 'Slow her down, now. You can spin it round here, and we're out on the road.'
Shane discovered that he could breathe again; he'd spent the last few minutes doing very little of it.
He brought the bus around slowly, still unsure of the controls and more than wary of the poor road-conditions. Just ahead, the female lurker was on her feet and shambling towards the bus. Just behind her, lying inert on the driveway, were several twitching shapes, their paper-mache wings flapping in the wind. Some of them were trying to get up, but they were too broken to make it and fell back down into the snow.
Shane lugged the massive steering-wheel all the way to the left as he reversed. He kept expecting a robotic voice to announce the the vehicle he was operating was reversing, but there was nothing. Apparently, safety regulations had come a long way, but not far enough.
'That little fucker just won't quit,' Marla said as she noticed the approaching lurker in the pretty pink dress. 'She'd have been a real catch in a few years time.'
There was something inappropriate about Marla's sense of humour, but Shane remained silent; it was all he could do to keep his concentration on the job in hand.
'You're good to go,' Terry said, giving a thumbs-up at the rear of the bus. 'Just take her steady, Shane. It's slippery as fuck out there, and we can hardly hope for clear roads the farther we get.'
Shane slipped the bus into first and began to crawl forward. Through his side-window – which was now relatively free of collected snow – he gave the female lurker one last look before she started to get smaller and smaller.
The road was, as Terry put it, slippery as fuck, but it was a lot safer than the schoolyard, and a helluva lot more appealing than seeing the night through in a building filled with enough costumed freaks to throw a decent Halloween party.
'Right,' Marla said, turning to Terry. 'Do you mind explaining what just happened?'
Terry ambled up through the centre-aisle and sat a few seats behind Marla.
'I'll tell you w
hat I know,' he said.
And the bus rolled on.
TWENTY-SIX
She took a deep breath and pushed the door slowly open. Her heart was racing so fast that she thought, despite her age, she was about to have a heart-attack.
They were gone; the creatures, all of them, had left the dinosaur-room. The scary thing was – and she had to keep reminding herself of this – they were probably not far, maybe in the next room, perhaps destroying some ancient Roman artefacts or bleeding all over a priceless tome.
It didn't matter.
What mattered was she was out of the cupboard, her machete ready. She had begun to think she might die in there, cowering like a mouse behind a skirting-board, hiding from an inexorably patient cat.
She moved across the room, slowly, listening for any movements. If they were nearby, they were certainly being quiet about it.
She couldn't hear anything other than her own heartbeat, which in itself was pretty unnerving.
The storm rattled the windows, as it had done all night long. She could determine the difference now, however, between the howl of the wind and the moaning creatures.
The creatures usually growled at the end, whereas the wind simply trailed off.
She knew that she was no longer safe in the museum, that she had to get out before the place was crawling with the undead. The night was almost at an end, though; was it possible to bug out at first light?
Could she last that long?
She was terrified to move, just in case they heard her and came back. If she were to accidentally knock something – or god forbid she should sneeze or cough – then there would only be one outcome, and it was something that she didn't want to think about.
She slipped behind a display-cabinet and crouched; if one of them came into the room now, they wouldn't immediately see her.
Still, she wasn't comfortable with the thought that they would find her within a few seconds of shambling around. She stood, once again, and exhaled with frustration.
She might as well crawl back into the store-cupboard with the mop-bucket and cleaning products; being free from the place simply gave her a hundred new things to worry about. At least in there she only had the problem of starving to death.
No.
She wouldn't go down like that. She had made a promise to herself, and she would fight, just as she had sworn, to the very end.
She swung the machete and strode across the room, ignoring the gigantic skeletal remains of some long-extinct creature. As if they could smell her determination, a trio of zombies came crashing through the door, falling over each other to get to her.
Adrenaline, she hoped, would be enough to get her through. They were slow, impossibly awkward, and easy to finish, provided she didn't get cocky, provided she didn't find herself outnumbered.
There were three; she had fought more than that at once before, but that had been outside. The dinosaur-room was cramped, claustrophobic. Outside she had the freedom to run in any direction that wasn't blocked by creatures. Inside the museum, she was caged, trapped with the zombies. If she was forced against a wall, she would be royally fucked, and she knew it.
The creatures all went for her at once, as if they hadn't eaten in weeks – maybe they hadn't.
She dived to the right, using her free hand to send a pillar crashing to keep them at bay. The pillar she thought was made of stone was, in fact, nothing more than polystyrene, and landed harmlessly a few feet away, where it began to roll back and forth, silently.
She pushed herself back onto her haunches and stepped behind another pillar. This one had a scale-replica Pterodactyl egg balancing on it; she knew that because she had read the gilt plaque upon which it sat several times earlier whilst she was bored shitless.
'Come on!' she screamed using her best war-cry. Her face was contorted, just like William Wallace she thought, and her eyes bulged from her sockets as if she was ready to be measured for her special white jacket now.
She picked up the fake dinosaur egg and pitched it as hard as she could at the closest creature. It connected with the thing's temple and sent loose flesh flying through the air. The creature – a woman in life, but the farthest thing away from one now – hardly responded. If anything, it spurred the thing on, and she ran a few steps forward, her momentum doing most of the work.
Raising the machete, she whipped it through the air in front of the thing. The creature didn't flinch, not immediately, but then it stopped entirely. It was almost as if it had something very important to say, the way its mouth opened and shut. As thick, black drool strung down from its mouth, its glassy eyes rolled up, and then the head – or most of it – slipped off the body.
She had been lucky with that one; if it hadn't have lunged at the precise moment, it would have probably been on top of her right now, chowing down.
The other two creatures were unsure of what the best approach was. One of them was staggering around the side of the room, but she didn't think that was intentional. It was simply the direction its feet had taken it.
The other one – who looked a lot like one of her old schoolteachers, Mr Daniels – lunged, growled, and basically fell to the ground all at once. She jumped back, evading its flailing arms, and managed to bring the machete down into the back of its head.
If it was Mr Daniels, she thought, then that's what he deserves for all those boring Science lessons.
She twisted the machete; there was an audible crunch, and then a sound like a wet surface being rubbed down with a dry towel. The back of its head erupted upwards, like a terrible geyser. It twitched spasmodically for a few seconds, but as she yanked the machete out it fell still.
She was still trying to figure out if the creature on the floor in front of her had once worn a baseball-cap to school, just to fit in, when she felt the cold, putrid breath of the third creature on the back of her neck.
She was mid-turn when a hand grabbed her shoulder, and now it was her turn to moan. The snapping jaws of the thing were so close, so very real, that she could feel its beard running up and down the side of her face. She managed to put an elbow between the creature and herself, which just about kept those terrifying teeth from biting her ear off.
She felt sick. All of a sudden, her stomach decided to somersault and a pang of pain ripped through her entire body. Maybe it was a combination of the attacking putrescence and too many sodas. Whatever, the thing was on her, forcing her downwards.
She had no choice; she couldn't hold it off all day.
The creature's face was only an inch in front of hers. Warm, dark spittle dripped from its chin and landed on her shoulder, but she tried not to think about that.
The way in which they were tangled made it impossible to get enough of a swing with the machete, so instead of doing what she hoped for, the blade merely poked and prodded the creature's side, as if it were nothing but a recalcitrant pet and she was the wielder of a rolled-up newspaper.
She felt a claw – talon? It sure felt like one – try to tear through her coat, but she had prepared for such an attack, and her layers were enough to keep a pack of wolves from ripping her to shreds.
They landed on the floor with a thud, together, as one, and the creature made what was, ultimately, the worst move it could possibly have made.
It dropped down, tearing at her coat, trying to get to the meaty goodness inside. The sound its nails made as they scratched away at the material was horrific, the kind of noise that sets your teeth on edge, like nails down a blackboard or cutlery scratching a plate.
She knew that she had very little time, and so managed to get the machete beneath the creature's chin as quickly as possible. She sliced, pulling the blade to the right so fast that her arm almost fell from its socket. The gargled moan that came from the thing was enough proof that she had managed to slit its throat, the explosion of putrid liquid as it fell down onto her coat merely confirmed it further.
The creature flapped its tongue around, aimlessly, as she pulled the blade t
hrough to the left, and this time she heard a loud thump as its head came off and rolled onto the priceless rug beneath them.
The full weight of the thing came down on top of her, and she felt the air rush from her lungs to accommodate it. After a moment of struggling, she managed to crawl out from beneath it. For the first time in days she had actually broken into a sweat, and it was not unwelcome.
She wiped her coat down with what she had available – it just happened to be a piece of ancient tapestry that nobody would ever be able to appreciate again – and when she was satisfied that she wasn't going to become infected by her own clothes, she began to breathe again.
It didn't occur to her that there were others – lots of them – roaming the museum like bored attendants at a thimble-convention.
But there were; she could hear them, scratching, moaning, trying to figure out where that wonderful stench of death was coming from.
Her options were limited, and for once she realised that she had made a massive mistake in choosing the museum. Sure, with its bright lights and constant heating it was attractive, but they knew that, they must have known it for so many of them to wander off the beaten track.
Another mistake that she suddenly became aware of was escape-routes, and her lack of them. She had never, not once in the last month, entered a building without scoping for each and every door, window, skylight. Never. Yet the museum had tricked her, somehow, with its magic and awe, and the fact that she had access to whatever junk-food she could raid from the vending-machine.
Stupid. She had been very stupid, indeed.
She shouldered her backpack after filling it with as much vending-machine rubbish that she could. The severe cramps in her stomach would eventually wane, and the sugar-content of the junk-food seemed to be keeping her fully-alert, which was very useful indeed when it came to fighting members of the undead.
She stood in front of the splintered door and took a deep breath.
The dinosaur-room, and the adjoining store-cupboard, had been her home for only a fraction of time she had intended, but she still felt remorseful, knowing that the warmth it had offered, and the momentary respite, would soon be a thing of the past, relegated to memory.