By the time he got to the junction where he had last seen his colleague, he was already out of breath. Looking into Bittacy Rise now, he could not believe what he was seeing. Kieran was attempting to fight off three other police officers, who were rapidly overwhelming him. He swung wildly at them with the baton he held in one hand, while clutching tightly at a wound in his neck that was readily pouring copious amounts of blood down his yellow jacket and pooling around his feet.
Was this really happening, Muz asked himself, standing there in momentary stunned immobility. What was going on? Why were those other officers attacking Kieran? Though both his common sense and training told him not to rush into a situation that he didn’t understand, he knew he had to help his oppo’.
The three men, all Herts police officers, were actually growling, as they repeatedly lunged at Kieran, who was still managing to put up a valiant though failing fight. Every time one of the men got near enough, he smacked him hard round the head with the bulbous metal tip of his baton, with a sickening crack. In a normal situation, a blow to the head like that would instantly drop any man, possibly permanently. But, though this caused the Herts officers to stagger back momentarily and shake their head, unfazed by what should have been debilitating pain, they instantly returned to their savage attack.
Kieran’s legs were beginning to buckle now, as the rapid loss of blood gushing from the bite wound in his neck was beginning to take effect.
Muz ran over. He hoped that the attacking officers would keep their attentions focused on Kieran and not realise he was behind them, long enough for him to get in a few hits from the rear with his own baton.
Before he reached the small group though, Kieran’s knees trembled and he collapsed. Though their attack was uncoordinated, this was all the opportunity the other men needed. They were on him with the speed and ferocity of a pack of hyenas on a floundering deer. Pinned to the ground, Kieran could no longer put up any fight, as all three men began to feed on him. Snarling and snapping at each other, with the vicious eyes of half-starved wild dogs, they furiously tore chunks from the exposed skin of his face, while ripping at his clothes to reveal more of his flesh. One of the men grabbed Kieran’s hand and gnawed on the fingers, teeth crunching against the bones of the digits.
Muz stopped running to his colleague’s aid now, terrified by the brutality of the men’s attack. He had been to many violent incidents in his time, some involving people with mental health issues, who when they attacked, did so with an animal-like strength and ferocity. Despite this, never had he imagined men could behave in this way, greedily feeding on the raw flesh of another living human.
His mind went completely numb and he was rooted to the ground, a rabbit caught in headlights. His eyes were locked on Kieran’s, who was staring back at him with a silent plea. There was nothing he could do for him now though. His wounds were too grievous to survive and Muz knew he had little hope of beating back the deranged men. If he even tried, he would surely end up as dead as Kieran soon would be.
He remained standing there, watching in horror, the panic coursing through his mind making even the simple decision to turn and run impossible to formulate. As he failed to react, one of the Herts officers noticed his presence.
Looking over his shoulder, the officer glared at Muz with open malice and uttered a low, guttural growl. The only thing that saved Muz from the man then launching at him was the sudden wafting smell of Kieran’s hot intestines, which another of the men had now exposed, tearing open the police officer’s abdominal wall with his bare hands. Deciding that Muz posed no threat to him enjoying his meal, the man turned back to Kieran’s juddering body, hunkered over him, and bit into the writhing, wet entrails.
With a badly trembling hand, Muz popped open the holster attached to his belt and pulled out the cylinder of CS spray. He had no intention of attacking the mad men, but he wanted the canister in hand as a defence, just in case. His hand was shaking so badly however that he fumbled and dropped the CS, causing it to clatter on the road.
The blood racing through his veins suddenly ran cold with fear, as he thought the men would react to the sound and come at him. Thankfully, they didn’t. It seemed that nothing was about to distract them, so long as they were feeding.
Muz snatched up the canister and began treading backwards now, increasing the distance between himself and the unbelievable carnage. He walked backwards all the way up to the junction with Engel Park, too scared to take his eyes off the demented coppers.
As he was still witnessing the murder, two of the men got in each other’s way, as they frenziedly fed, face down in Kieran’s open stomach. The two officers immediately began to fight each other, while the third simply ignored them and continued to eat.
It was like no fight Muz had ever seen. There was no posturing, no bravado, no insulting or antagonising words, no pacing around as they weighed each other up. The men instead attacked with the obvious sole intention of killing. They clawed at each other so violently that they tore their own nails from their fingers. One sunk his teeth into the other officer’s throat and biting down hard, tugged back with his entire bodyweight repeatedly. Despite the effort involved, he didn’t tire until the man’s trachea and larynx tore away from the rest of the neck.
Muz ducked around the hedge at the end of the road. His chest was rising and falling in rapid succession and he felt dizzy with the amount of oxygen in his blood. He had been so transfixed and horrified by what he had seen, that he had he neglected to perform such a basic bodily function as swallowing, and now a thick trail of saliva slid from his chin and down his met-vest.
He took control of his breathing, wiped his face, and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now. Along Engel Park, to his left, there was the cordon he was meant to be controlling. He really didn’t see that he could manage that though, not without some serious backup. The injured man who Kieran had tried to help was now nowhere to be seen. Where he had dragged himself off to, Muz had no idea. To his right was the quickest route back to the nick, to safety.
He was already beginning to jog to the right, as he switched his PR to the IBO channel. There was no use in even attempting to transmit on Despatch One, or even the Support channel. There was just too much constant radio traffic. He was dismayed to hear that the IBO channel was just the same. Cursing, he pressed his emergency button again, cutting over the man who was already speaking.
“Ops, I need help,” he said. It was almost a plea.
“Go on. Where are you? What have you got?”
“Engel Park. Kieran, Two Four Five, is dead. He... he was attacked by three Herts officers,” Muz told the man.
There was a long pause of radio silence. Muz was about to call up again and check the IBO officer had received him, when the man at last responded.
“We’ve got no units to assist you at this time,” was all the officer said.
“What?” Muz almost choked out. “Did you not hear me? Kieran is dead.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry. There’s nobody,” the IBO officer said with resignation and fatigue in his voice.
Was he crying, Muz wondered.
“Muz, it’s Sam,” a female voice now spoke over the radio.
She was a core team officer but also worked in the IBO sometimes. Unlike her colleague, she seemed still to be managing to maintain a level of professionalism and control.
“We’ve got more units running to assist from south of the river but they’re a while off yet,” she told him.
“Shit,” Muz replied. “Well, I can’t control this cordon. I’m on foot, returning back to the nick.”
“I know you really don’t want to hear this, but orders are that you are to stay where you are and maintain the cordons.”
“What? Are you kidding me?” Muz snapped back at the woman.
“Straight from the top,” Sam replied, sounding apologetic. “The Commissioner has ordered that no one leaves the cordon points; the situation has to be contained
at all costs.”
“Fuck that!” Muz bellowed. “There are people eating each other out here. You can tell the Commissioner from me, he can come down here and stand on the cordon himself if he’s that fucking bothered.”
“I’m just passing on what I’m told,” Sam said defensively. “But, to be honest, if I was in your shoes, I’d be getting out of there as quick as I could as well.”
“I’m glad you agree,” Muz replied bitterly.
Muz continued to head in the direction of the police station. As the road began to slope downhill, the two opposing lanes split around a small area of grass and trees, which gave the residential street a more rural look than most in the area.
Tearing up the hill towards him now, lights flashing and sirens blaring, Muz saw an ambulance. Despite them being on a blue light run, Muz hoped that, given the current chaos, they would stop and pick him up. He ran out into the grassy area in the middle of the road, so he was directly in their line of sight, and waved his arms wildly.
The ambulance drew closer and showing no signs of having seen him, was actually gathering speed up the steep incline. Approaching the point where the road split, the vehicle began to swerve from side to side and Muz now realised that the driver was not in full control. He managed to glimpse the woman at the wheel, struggling desperately with another figure who was leaning over her.
The emergency vehicle clipped several parked cars, then veered back across the road and mounted the grass directly in front of him. Muz dived out of its path just in time, as it smashed hard into a tree directly behind where he had been stood.
With the realisation that he had been mere inches from death ringing alarm bells in his head, Muz scrambled back to his feet. The blue lights on top of the emergency vehicle were still pulsing but the noise the sirens were now making sounded like the last pitiful wail of a dying cat. He stumbled up to the front of the vehicle and looked in through the driver’s window.
“Oh, Jesus,” he gasped.
The driver’s airbag had deployed but it hadn’t saved her. A thick, low-lying tree branch had first pierced the windscreen and then plunged through her skull, causing the woman’s face to implode around it. Muz staggered back, retching in disgust.
The ambulance rocked slightly and there came a clattering crash from inside the back. There was someone alive in there, Muz realised. He ran round to the rear of the vehicle and opened the back door. Instantly, a man, wearing nothing but a pair of shabby underpants, burst out past him and landed in a heap of limbs on the grass.
“You alright, mate?” Muz asked, approaching him.
Despite the crash and having all but fallen out of the back of the ambulance, the man was getting to his feet. He seemed completely unconcerned that his right ankle was clearly broken, causing his foot to point outward at an unnaturally wayward and sickening angle. He also had a deep, four-fingered scratch across his chest that had bled profusely.
“Don’t try to get up,” Muz advised him.
The barely dressed man lifted his head and stared with terrible eyes at the police officer in front of him. Muz immediately recognised the inhuman glare as bearing the same madness as the Herts officers had displayed. It was a look that meant in no uncertain terms that the man was about to attack. Remembering the savagery of the other men, Muz didn’t fancy his chances in a one-on-one fight.
He held out the tiny canister of CS spray, as the man took a step towards him, and fired the noxious liquid directly into his eyes and mouth. Normally, the CS would reduce a person to a blind choking mess in seconds, but it had no effect whatsoever on the injured man. He had been warned back at training school that the spray rarely had any effect on either animals or the insane. After a couple of seconds, the canister spluttered out its last few drops. The copper launched it at the madman and it bounced uselessly off the bridge of his nose.
Muz then turned and leapt into the back of the ambulance, barely even noticing the woman in her nightdress, strapped to the gurney, or the male paramedic collapsed in one corner with a badly twisted, broken neck. He tried to pull the rear door closed, but the almost naked madman was too quick, thrusting himself in the way. Muz pulled on the handle anyway, slamming the man’s head repeatedly between the metal frame and the heavy swinging door. Only when he heard the man’s head crack did he instinctively stop, shocked by what he had done.
He’d fractured the man’s orbit. A shard of curving bone surrounding the eye had snapped off and pierced the gelatine orb. The man shrieked horribly in pain, but still, his attempts to reach Muz didn’t stop. As he struggled with the coordination necessary to drag himself up into the ambulance, Muz backed off towards the front of the vehicle, looking frantically all around him for a weapon of some kind.
His eyes fell upon a small fire extinguisher, clipped to a wall and he snatched it from its mounting. As the man in the stained underwear at last managed to pull himself up and into the ambulance, Muz swung the heavy metal cylinder at his head, deliberately aiming for the already broken eye socket.
The man responded to the blow by uttering a bizarre squealing sound, like a kettle venting steam, shook his badly wounded head, then lunged again at Muz. The copper beat him repeatedly and mercilessly with the heavy extinguisher, feeling its solid weight in his hand breaking bone. Only when the man’s cranium had been reduced to shattered fragments, stabbing into mulched grey brain tissue, did his attack on Muz come to a stop. His eyes rolled up into the top of his head and he slumped over.
Muz was so knackered by the fight that he collapsed back against the gurney, completely spent of all energy. Each exaggerated breath he drew was so laboured that it came with a rasping snarl. He continued to watch the madman warily. Although he should be completely dead, his hands still clawed slowly and pathetically at the floor of the ambulance and his jaw continued to weakly masticate.
Something was far from right, Muz thought, as he lay there, struggling to feed his brain with oxygen. He had inflicted horrible injuries on his assailant and the man should have dropped dead, or at least unconscious, long before he actually did. How could a man, even someone as clearly demented as he had been, sustain such wounds and still continue to fight? Muz had never seen anything like it before. It should have been impossible.
Pulling himself together and looking around, he became fully aware for the first time of the presence of the two other people in the back of the ambulance. The paramedic was clearly dead, his head twisted so far around that he was facing over the back of his right shoulder. His neck had probably snapped as a result of being thrown across the interior of the ambulance as it had crashed, Muz thought.
The woman in her nightdress, which had a urine stain in the crotch, was strapped down, lying motionless on the gurney. Her eyes were open and she was regarding him with a complete absence of all expression or emotion. She had probably been conscious and had witnessed the whole terrible fight, Muz thought. For her not to have attempted to wriggle free of her bonds, or even react with a single cry, meant only one thing in Muz’s mind. She was suffering from severe shock.
Her hair was matted with blood. Muz couldn’t actually see a wound amid the mess of knots and clots, but judging from the amount of her blood alone, had to guess it was quite bad.
“Are you okay?” Muz asked. It was a stupid question, he knew, considering what she had been through, but it was all he could think to say.
The woman simply looked back at him with wide doe-like eyes.
“Okay, let’s get you on your feet and out of here,” Muz said to her.
Still the woman did not respond. As shaken as he was by everything that had happened, it was only when Muz began to unclip her straps that he noticed the huge bulge of her stomach and the breaks in the tibias and fibulas of both her lower legs.
“Oh God, no,” he moaned, feeling utterly deflated. “How far gone are you?”
Still the woman didn’t respond. She seemed completely undisturbed by her badly broken limbs, as though she hadn’t noticed he
r misshapen legs and wasn’t even feeling the pain anymore. She was almost catatonic, her eyes glazed over.
Muz was reluctant to move her now but could hear, somewhere within the vehicle, a canister filled with compressed gas leaking from its nozzle. He had no idea what the gas was and therefore whether it was flammable or noxious, and so he had no choice but to get the woman out of the ambulance.
Scooping her up into his arms, her head lolling against his neck, he staggered precariously down the folding steps and out of the back. He could hear her legs cracking, as the broken ends of bone rubbed against each other, and he tried not to think of the additional injuries moving her in this way might be causing. He wasn’t confident he had time to figure out how to operate the ambulance’s hydraulic ramp and lower her out still on the gurney, so carrying her was his only option.
Only when he felt they were a safe distance from the ambulance, should it go up in flames, did he lower the woman to the ground, seating her on the curb and leaning her against some metal railings at the side of the road.
Looking up at him with those blank eyes, seeming to comprehend her surroundings momentarily, the woman reached up weakly with one of her hands and attempted to pull Muz’s head down to her mouth. Muz pulled back against her feeble grip. In his experience, it was common for women whom he had rescued from car wrecks or other dangers to want to kiss him but it just wasn’t appropriate.
“You’re going to be okay. I’m going to take care of you,” he assured her.
Leaving her sitting beside the road for a moment, he paced franticly up and down, trying to gather his thoughts. What the hell was going on? What had caused all those people suddenly to start behaving like animals? There was no point pondering those questions, he thought. He had to concentrate on his more immediate concerns. Getting himself back to the nick, through all this madness, would have been difficult enough by himself. Now there was the added problem of the duty of care he had to this woman.
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 6