With that one brutal, defensive blow, the fight was finished. The crazed attacker went immediately limp, his remaining eye staring blankly at Muz and his lips hanging limp, drool threatening to drip from them onto Muz’s face. With all the energy he possessed, Muz heaved the man off him and lie there, looking up at the woman, who had been watching tearfully through the loft hatch.
The man beside him was not dead. His arms and legs twitched violently and his head spasmodically beat against the floor. The knife’s handle repeatedly thudded on the bare boards.
Muz clambered wearily to his feet and climbed back into the loft, the woman above helping to drag him up.
“Oh God. What have I done?” he cried. “I’ve killed him.”
The skinny woman just stared back at him through the gloom.
“You’re a copper,” she eventually said with obvious distaste for the word. “Why are you hiding in here? Why aren’t you out there doing something?”
Muz glared back at her now, unable to comprehend her lack of gratitude.
“What? What am I meant to do?” he demanded to know. “There’s probably hundreds of people like him out there.”
“But you’ve got to do something,” the woman blubbered, snot again tickling onto her lip, her eyes red and sore from crying. She just wanted all this not to be happening. “Someone has to do something.”
“Hey,” Muz snapped back angrily, nursing his swollen, throbbing ear and rubbing at the scratches the woman had given him while climbing up his torso. “I watched my mate get eviscerated today because he got involved in whatever madness is going on out there.”
“Eviscerated?” the woman repeated sulkily. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means he got his guts ripped out and eaten while he watched,” Muz explained coldly.
There was a long tense silence in the darkness of the loft after that. The only sound to be heard, other than the whispering of Muz’s muted radio, was the constant banging of the man’s head and limbs beating against the floor beneath them.
“What has happened?” the woman eventually asked meekly, almost apologetically. “Why are all those people behaving like that?”
“I don’t know,” Muz sighed.
The skinny woman’s chin began to tremble.
“Do you have a phone?” Muz asked her.
“No,” she replied. “I ain’t got no credit, so I threw it at some crazy bitch.”
“You do realise you can still make emergency calls even with no credit, don’t you?” Muz asked her.
Realisation dawned then on the woman’s face and she began to cry again. Muz felt sad for her but couldn’t think of a single thing to say to try to console her and so just left her to it. She cried for hours without another word being said between them.
It took a long while but the spasmodic shuddering of the man on the landing, who by all rights should have been dead, dwindled to no more than the occasional twitch, marked by the thump of his foot knocking against the skirting board. The dull, soft sound was enough constantly to remind Muz of what he had done. He was going to be up on a murder charge, he thought worriedly.
Partly to disguise the guilt-inflicting sound and partly to find out what the police were doing to try to get on top of all this, he dared to turn up his personal radio just a little.
“Gold Commander receiving?” he heard the IBoss calling up.
“He’s busy,” another voice responded. “This is Chief Superintendent Durant. Is it important? We’re about to give a media briefing.”
“COBRA have taken up their role of Platinum,” the IBO skipper continued. “I’ve got them on the phone. A Brigadier from the Joint Task Force Headquarters is requesting a conflab.”
“Okay. Give him my mobile number,” the Chief Super’ replied curtly.
COBRA, was the government’s tactical command office. This was big, Muz thought. If the government was taking direct control, whatever was happening was massive.
Through the dusty darkness, Muz looked over at where the woman was huddled. Even in this very poor light, he could see she was still shaking, as she had been since he had first seen her. He had initially not thought twice about it, just passing it off as a very natural response to what she had gone through, but now he was beginning to worry.
“Are you alright?” he asked her.
The woman lifted her head to look over at him, bitterness in her eyes, but she did not respond.
“Are you cold?”
“I’m in agony,” the woman murmured through gritted teeth.
“Are you injured?” Muz asked, alarmed now, not just for the woman’s welfare but also worried that, if she had been bitten, she might be contaminated, if the spreading madness could be caught that way.
“I need to score,” the woman spat back at him.
Of course. Muz reprimanded himself for not having seen it sooner but blamed his lack of observation on all that had happened weighing on his mind. The woman’s skin and bones physique, her sunken eyes, cracked lips, those retracted gums revealing the roots of her yellow teeth, her scraped back unwashed hair all said one thing – junkie. Groaning in self-pity and pain, she crawled over to the hatch and sat on its edge, legs dangling, looking beneath her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Muz asked.
“I need to go score.”
“Are you being serious?” Muz asked again incredulously. “You want to go back out there?”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” the woman said with acidity.
“No, I don’t,” Muz came back at her, “but what I do know is, whatever pain you’re in right now, I can guarantee it’s nothing compared to what you’ll experience if you bump into even one of those nutters.”
“I can take care of myself,” the woman replied.
“What? You’re as mad as those people running around in the streets if you believe that,” Muz said. “Those crazies fight like nothing I’ve ever seen before and unlike you, they don’t seem too bothered by pain.”
The woman continued to sit on the edge of the hatch for a few moments, torn as to what to do, then crawled back to her chosen position by the wall.
Muz’s radio gave out a double chirp, warning him that it was running low on charge. He waited for it to run completely flat then pulled out a spare battery from his trouser pocket, exchanging it for the dead one.
Borough policy was that you didn’t take two batteries out on patrol. If everyone did, there just wouldn’t be enough of them to go around and the Senior Management Team were adamant that there was no money in the local budget to buy more. The problem was though that most of the rechargeable batteries were now quite old and it was rare for one to last an entire shift. This meant that, if you were too busy to get back to the nick and change it halfway through your shift, you could find yourself in a sticky situation with no radio. This had happened to at least three officers that Muz knew.
“So, what do we do then?” the woman asked.
“We sit tight until help comes,” the copper told her.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Muz heard her mumbling obscenities to herself, while he returned his attention to the street, beyond his hole in the roof. He heard the sounds of a man whimpering and a dog wining, both nearby but, from what he could tell, off in different directions. Despite positioning his head at all angles around the small hole, he was unable to see either the man or the dog.
He knew that from the noise they were making, both would soon be found. He wasn’t wrong. It was the man that was discovered first, his woeful sobbing turning suddenly to a shrill shriek. This was shortly followed by what sounded similar to the honking of a goose, as someone chewed on his larynx, then silence. Soon after, the dog’s cries became a growl and finally a lengthy series of pained yelps, before it too fell deathly quiet.
Muz turned away in despair from the aperture and became aware that the woman was staring at him.
“Don’t judge me,”
she said out of the blue, convinced that Muz was eying the track marks along her forearms.
“I wasn’t. I was looking outside, listening to…”
“I know what you people think of me,” the woman went on, continuing her line of paranoia. “I’ve seen the inside of enough cells and met enough coppers to know what you all think. I’ve made some bad choices in my life, but I’m getting myself back on track now. I don’t take nearly as much of that that shit as I used to and I haven’t been shoplifting in ages. I’m on the straight and narrow.”
Muz stared back at her, having no idea why she had just decided to tell him all that. He’d heard the same thing over and over again through many a cell door. He didn’t believe her, but more to the point, he didn’t care. Addicts always seemed to blame the world and everyone in it for their own lives being such a mess, never willing to accept that they themselves might be to blame. At least this woman though, had admitted that becoming a user had been her own choice.
“Do you know me?” she asked, trying to ignore the painful cramps she was suffering.
“I don’t recognise your face,” Muz answered. “What’s your name?”
“Jenna Talia,” she replied.
“Wow,” Muz blurted out, actually managed a short dry laugh, despite all he had been through.
Her parents must have really hated her as a baby, to give her a name like that. Or maybe they had been so dumb that they had been oblivious to the names, when put together, sounding like ‘genitalia.’
“What?” Jenna asked defensively.
“Nothing,” Muz said, taking control of himself. “No, I’ve not heard of you.”
“You must be new,” Jenna decided, as though she were in some way proud that most police officers knew of her.
“I’ve got five years in,” Muz replied. It was in truth barely four and a half, but he had learnt that presenting an image of confidence and experience was everything in this job.
“Yeah, thought as much. All the old sweats know me though,” Jenna said. “A few years ago, I was in and out of Colindale nick every other day. Like I said though, I’ve been managing to keep myself out of trouble for a while. I’ve even got a job. I work in a supermarket now, instead of nicking from them. Stacking shelves on nights. It’s shit but it’s a step in the right direction, as my parole officer used to say.”
Muz zoned out. He desperately wished he hadn’t broken his mobile phone. He needed to call his family and let them know he was alright. This event had to be all over the news by now and they would be terrified for him.
Jenna ended her self-absorbed monologue and rested her head on her knees. Muz, not wanting to be caught up in further conversation with the woman, turned again to look out of his hole.
The two of them sat there for the remainder of the day, barely talking. Despite Muz intently listening out for the sound of sirens and looking for any unaffected police officers, he saw no one that might be able to get him out of this situation.
All too soon, the natural light began to dim and the streets lights flickered into life. Before long, it was dark, and the yellow glow of the lights cast through the hole into the blackness of the loft, eerily illuminating Muz’s worried and weary face. The night dragged on. Sounds of screaming could still be heard both near and far off, but gradually became less and less frequent.
The intermittent double chirp of Muz’s second battery dying annoyed Jenna but Muz was reluctant to turn off the radio, should he miss an important transmission he might need to be aware of. Eventually, the radio died completely and with it, Muz’s despair sank even deeper, as he now felt truly abandoned and alone.
“I’m hungry,” Jenna said, breaking the empty silence.
Though she disturbed Muz from his miserable, guilty thoughts, he didn’t respond, didn’t even look at her.
“No one’s coming for us, are they, officer Dogan,” she meekly asked, reading the name badge on his stab vest.
“My name’s Muz.”
“Help’s not coming, is it?” Jenna persisted in asking.
“No.”
Jenna began to sob again. The sounds of her self-pity went on for a considerable time until, to Muz’s great relief, she stopped crying. Muz relished the silence briefly before, all too soon, she began snoring. How she could sleep, given the situation, Muz had no idea. He himself, though he felt thoroughly exhausted, remained alert throughout the night.
When morning came, it was grey and bleak. And silent. No longer could he hear any cries of despair or pain and still there was no wail of sirens. The only sounds to disturb Muz’s melancholy were that of Jenna’s snoring and her releasing the occasional unconscious fart.
While the veiled sunlight grew, Muz continued to observe the street from his vantage point. Having not heard the sounds of a single person being attacked in hours, he decided things had calmed down enough for him to risk getting mobile and attempting again to get back to the nick.
“Hey,” he whispered, as loud as he dare, to the sleeping Jenna.
When she failed to respond, he reached into a box beside him and pulled out a shiny Christmas bauble. He tossed the ball over at her and it bounced off her head. Jenna woke grumpily, wondering what had just happened.
“You awake?” Muz asked.
“I am now,” Jenna responded testily.
“I’m getting out of here,” the copper told her.
“What?” Jenna asked, rubbing her crusty eyes. “I thought you said we should stay put until help came.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t sit here any longer, wondering if anyone’s going to come, and it seems to be a lot quieter out there now.”
“Okay,” Jenna nodded groggily.
“I think it’s best if you stay here and I’ll come back for you once I get to the nick and get a car,” Muz said. He really didn’t like the idea of dragging her along in tow.
“No chance,” Jenna said, immediately awake now at the thought of being left here alone.
Muz hadn’t thought she’d go for his suggestion but it had been worth a try. They crouched over the lip of the hatch for a few minutes, listening for any sounds from the house below. If Jenna had managed to get inside without making a sound, it was possible someone else had too.
As satisfied as he could be that there was no one waiting for them down there, Muz lowered himself down, almost stepping on the cadaver he had left on the landing. He tried so hard not to look at the man he’d killed, but his eyes were drawn to him, as though they wanted to punish Muz for what he’d done.
Jenna’s scrawny legs dangled down in front of him then and he distracted himself by taking her weight and lowering her down.
“Oh God,” she said, covering her mouth and nose with one hand.
The sight of the knife handle protruding from the man’s eye socket, along with the stench of the man having defecated in his death throws, made her wretch.
Cautiously Muz trod down the stairs, stooping to get the best view of the hallway through the bannister, Jenna close behind him. As they walked through to the living room and Muz was closing the curtains, with nervous glances outside, Jenna broke their silence.
“What did you say your name was, officer?” she asked.
“Muz,” he responded curtly.
He wished she’d shut up. She was talking far too loudly for his liking.
“That’s a strange name.”
“Keep your voice down,” Muz reprimanded her. “It’s short for Mustafa.”
“Where are you from?” Jenna whispered.
“I live in Herts, but I’m originally from Hackney.”
“Where are your parents from?”
“Hackney,” Muz sighed.
Jenna looked a little confused by this.
“My grandparents originate from Turkey,” Muz said, finally conceding to give her the answer she’d been digging for.
“Exotic,” Jenna said with a smile and a lingering look.
Muz regarded her with disbelief. Was this walking skeleton actual
ly flirting with him?
He found the remote control and turned on the TV. As it burst into life, the volume was set far too high and he fumbled, in sudden panic, to turn it down to all but a whisper. He switched the channel over to BBC News and was instantly presented with aerial images of the streets he had patrolled for so long.
“A large area of Barnet Borough is now a cordoned off containment zone,” said the voice of a disembodied reporter.
“Holy shit,” Muz responded.
In the top right corner of the screen were the words ‘live images’, as the helicopter-bourn camera swept over the streets of Mill Hill. There was complete disarray everywhere. Cars had been abandoned in the roads, left where they had crashed or become blocked in by other abandoned vehicles. Even police cars, ambulances, and the occasional fire truck could be seen littering the streets.
All around, there laid the remains of cannibalised people, stripped of their flesh. It was a sickening sight. There were a large number of people down there on the streets, simply standing around or wandering aimlessly, even though they too looked as though they should have been lying with the dead. Many had suffered horrific injuries but appeared unconcerned by their mutilations.
“We again apologise for the disturbing nature of these images,” the reporter went on. “The authorities have still not disclosed the initial cause of this atrocity. This may be because, at this time, no one knows.”
The camera swept over buildings to focus on someone running out of a café on The Broadway. He had probably taken refuge in there overnight, Muz guessed. Immediately, all the other people in the crowded high street began to converge on him, sprinting around and clambering over the various vehicles that cluttered the road and pavements.
Muz realised that his heart was racing, as he willed the man on, tensing further every time a grasping hand almost took hold of the desperate runner. The man managed to get a fair distance, before finding himself trapped amid the mess of cars blocking Mill Hill Circus. He was soon surrounded and the deranged horde set upon him. Though there was no sound to accompany the images Muz was watching, the copper imagined he could hear the man’s screams. He looked away from the screen in disgust.
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 9