“Took that corner a bit too fast, did we?” Muz asked.
“I’m not sure I like your attitude, PC 621SX,” the man said, making a point of reading out Muz’s shoulder numbers.
“I’m sorry about that, but it’s been a bit of a rough shift,” Muz countered with blatant sarcasm. “You know, you might have seen that board of black and white chevrons marking that as a tight bend if you hadn’t been driving like a complete twat.”
“Okay, that’s it,” the man said, his face becoming furious. “I assure you I will be filing a complaint just as soon…”
“Oh will you fucking shut up?” Muz spat out venomously, having long since lost all concern for portraying a professional image. “I couldn’t give a stinking shit what you’re going to do.”
“I have a witness…” the man said meekly, pointing at Jenna who had been stood in silence, watching the confrontation.
“I’m not getting involved,” she replied, immensely grateful to Muz for saving her life on several occasions now.
“So, what happened to your nice, shiny BMW?” Muz asked.
“I was car jacked. What are you going to do about that?”
Muz looked up from where he had been examining the damage to the Astra’s front axle.
“I’ll make it my priority to create a report just as soon as I get back to the nick,” he responded with acidity.
Muz walked away, motioning for Jenna to follow him, cutting through a gap in the privet to the park. The mist was thinning and beginning to lift from the mown fields that stretched out before them.
“Wait, where are you going?” the man complained.
Muz ignored him and carried on walking.
“I need assistance. People have gone crazy. You have to call your colleagues to come get me,” the man went on.
“Do you think, if I could arrange for a lift, I would be walking these streets myself?” Muz replied.
“So, where are you going?” the man shouted after him, following them through the gap in the hedge.
“Colindale police station,” the copper said.
Jenna looked back at the man. He looked afraid and despite his arrogant attitude, she felt sorry for him.
“You should come with us,” she advised him.
The man didn’t wait for a second offer and came running to catch them up.
“I’m Jenna.”
“I’m Carl,” the man said, sliding his hands back over his greying hair, trying to get it to lay flat in its usually well-groomed manner. “And what’s your name, officer?” Carl asked.
“PC Dogan,” Muz growled, pointing to his name badge. Was this idiot really trying to be nice now? Was he bipolar or something? “You’ve already got my shoulder number.”
“Where’s your colleague?” Carl asked without considering what the likely answer would be.
“Dead,” Muz informed him curtly.
Midway through the park, by the tennis courts, they came across a red Mini Cooper, abandoned on the footpath that led down towards the A1. As they approached, they could hear its radio still blaring away to itself. That had to mean the keys were still in the ignition. Looking all around, the three of them couldn’t see anyone in the whole of the park.
Examining the car, they saw the driver’s side window had been smashed and blood trailed down the door. Small pieces of the rubber that coated the steering wheel had been torn away, as the driver had clung to it for dear life but had been wrenched out away.
“In an interview,” the radio said, “the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police stated that containment had proven nearly impossible and resources had been stretched beyond breaking point. Consequently, the mayor of London has handed over immediate control of the city to the military and has stated that…”
Muz turned the keys in the ignition, trying to turn the engine over, causing the radio to die. It must have been playing for hours on end without the engine running, draining the battery. Muz tried to start the car again and again and again, until turning the key gave virtually no response at all. He smacked the steering wheel hard with the palm of his hand.
“We could try bumping it,” Carl suggested.
“We could,” Muz said, considering it, “but if we got it going, we would have to pretty much stick to the roads where there’s likely to be people and sod’s law, it would cut out on us at the worst possible time. The window’s smashed, so anyone can reach in. We’re probably better off without it and the nick’s not far off now.”
He climbed out and began walking again. Carl followed, swayed by his logical reasoning but Jenna paused, looking yearningly at the car.
“We should give it a go,” she pleaded.
“Forget it. It’s a death trap,” Muz called back over his shoulder.
Only when the two men had left her well behind did she kick a wheel and break into a gangly sprint after them.
The three of them reached the end of the park, and climbing a steep embankment, found themselves looking at the scene of utter carnage that was the A1. Cars filled every lane, pretty much bumper to bumper, in both directions. None were moving or even appeared to be occupied.
A white transit van had had its bodywork destroyed on both sides, as the driver had clearly tried to force it forward, between the crash barrier on the central reservation and the other vehicles in the outside lane, shunting them over into the middle lane, where they had collided with the cars there.
In desperation, the cab of a truck had literally mounted the rear of the car in front and driven over it. The car was so badly crushed that its make and model could not easily be determined. The truck cab was now just hanging there, its drive wheels suspended impotently off the ground.
The path the three of them had followed through the park continued under the major road, through a pedestrian underpass. Access to the tunnel however was completely denied by two cars that had been forced off the road above and now lay one on top of the other.
Despite the disarray and damage, there had to be some serviceable vehicles with the keys still in the ignition, Muz decided. But, even if this were true, there would be no way of driving them free of the pile up.
“Bad, isn’t it?” Carl said to Jenna, in a huge understatement.
“Are all the main roads like this?” she asked him.
“All the one’s I’ve seen,” he told her. “That’s why I was trying to make my way up the back roads, before that stupid car lost control.”
Muz looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault, officer,” Carl said adamantly.
“I didn’t say a word,” Muz replied.
“My 3 Series would have made that bend easily.”
“Whatever you say,” Muz said dismissively, returning his eyes to the pile-up in front of them. “I really don’t like the look of this.”
“What? Why? What’s wrong,” Jenna asked urgently, suddenly unnerved by Muz’s apprehension. She was learning fast to respond to his intuition.
“Look at it,” Muz told her. “There could be anyone crawling around in among all those cars.”
Jenna automatically took a nervous step back from the road.
“But the police station is over that way, right?” Carl asked.
“Yep,” Muz said, scrutinizing all the vehicles and crouching to look underneath them.
“So, we’ve got to get across,” Carl concluded.
“Yep.”
Despite the obvious necessity, the three just stood there for at least a minute, before Muz finally took the initiative and stepped out into the road. They squeezed between the vehicles and clambered over their bonnets and boots.
Muz couldn’t help but think how they could not be more than six hundred metres south of The Broadway and Mill Hill Circus, where on TV he had seen the sprawling crowd of demented people. If he and his two followers were suddenly to find themselves under attack right now, they would have great difficulty in making a break for it.
Squeezing between the
front bumper of a car and the back of a van, Carl found the rear doors of the latter to be open. Inside, there were boxes of numerous tools.
“Well, well, well. Look what I’ve found,” he said, delving around inside the back of the van and pulling out a crowbar. “You going to arrest me for theft if I take it, officer?”
“Under the circumstances, I suppose not,” Muz replied. Though if I was the Dickhead Police, you’d be in real trouble, he thought.
As Jenna edged her way down the gap between the sides of two cars, she saw an old man slumped dead at the wheel. He had deep bloody scratches down his face and two sets of teeth marks in his forehead. Several pints of blood had spilled from a bite wound in his neck and down his woollen jump. His last act appeared to have been to phone a loved one, as the mobile was lying on the seat between his legs. The window was open. Trying not to look at the man’s face, Jenna reached in for the phone.
Suddenly, the pensioner’s hand grabbed at her with lightning speed, taking a firm hold of the dirty white arm of her hooded top. She screamed loudly and with a pitch that was painful to Muz and Carl’s ears.
The two men came clambering back to where Jenna was fighting the man, who was trying forcibly to drag her in through the car window. The woman could feel the ice cold of his clawing hand, even through the material of her sleeve.
Having been sat there in the driver’s seat, with the windows open and exposed to the elements the whole night, the thin wrinkled man was as freezing to the touch as any of the cars crammed along the road. He was very elderly, easily in his eighties, and should have exhibited the frailty that came with such an age. He was far from weak however.
Muz and Carl grabbed Jenna’s free arm and tried to wrench her from his grip. The copper wracked his extendable baton and savagely beat the old man’s arm with it, but he didn’t respond to the pain, other than growling with more venom. The woman flopped around like a rag doll between the three men, until Muz and Carl’s combined strength managed to break the old geezer’s grip.
“Did you have to scream?” Carl said angrily.
The old man in the car was gnashing his teeth at them, his spit flying everywhere. He was frantically trying to pull himself through the open car window, to get at them, but his seatbelt was on and he clearly no longer possessed the basic intellect necessary to undo it.
“Did I have to scream?” Jenna repeated incredulously. “Is this guy for real? That old giffer was trying to shagging eat me.”
“We can’t afford to make any sound,” Carl told her. “I’ve seen how those crazies respond to noise. You’ll bring them running.”
“He’s right,” Muz agreed, staring at the mad old man and trying to gather as much information as he could about his mental state.
The saggy skin of the pensioner’s leathery face had a drained white-yellow hue to it, a bloodless complexion that Muz had only ever seen before on the dead.
Jenna scowled and stomped off. Carl went after her and eventually so did Muz, managing to break his fixation with the old man’s enraged and uncoordinated thrashing. Standing on the roof of a four-by-four, they pulled themselves up the seven-foot fence that ran the length of the central reservation.
As Muz was straddling the barrier, he caught sight of movement up the road. To his utmost despair, he saw a crowd of people making their way towards them through the car cluttered dual carriageway. Jenna’s fearful cry had attracted them, just as Carl had warned. Weaving around and climbing over the abandoned cars, they were reacting as any predators would, having heard an animal in distress.
On seeing Muz, standing out like a sore thumb sat high on the fence, as one, the crowd broke into a run towards him, literally tripping over one another to reach him.
The cannibals were prone to eating the fleshier parts of those they attacked and consequently, many in the advancing crowd had had the flesh of their buttocks almost completely eaten away. Having been stripped of the necessary muscles to do so, they found it impossible to stand upright and instead scurried forward on all fours. Their broken and bleeding knuckles left trails of blood on the car bonnets and roofs, as they leapt from one to the next. Rather than slowing them down, their disability that forced them to propel themselves along on both arms and legs, actually made them faster and they left the bipeds of the murderous horde behind.
Muz tore his eyes from the crowd and looked over at the far side of the dual carriageway. A wall, about nine feet high and comprised of vertical metal risers with horizontal concrete slabs slotted between them, stood between the road and the next stretch of green parkland.
Both Jenna and Carl had also seen the onrushing mass of hungry madmen and were wasting no time in jumping from one car to the next in a desperate effort to cross the remainder of the road.
As he jumped onto a car roof, Muz heard a frenzied banging from within the vehicle. The sudden noise, so close as it was, startled him so badly he faltered mid-stride and fell into the gap between this and the next car, cracking his head hard on the ground. Trying to shrug off the pain and get back up, he could hear the snarling and growls of the crazies, as they drew rapidly nearer. Climbing over the remaining vehicles that blocked his way, he reached the wall.
Carl was already sat on top of it, reaching down to Jenna, who was failing badly in jumping high enough to reach his offered hand. Muz bent and hugged her around the hips, lifting her off the ground. She grabbed at Carl’s hand, almost pulling him off balance. Though he pulled at her with all the strength he had in him, Carl couldn’t lift her high enough for her to grab the top of the wall. He looked nervously over his shoulder at the racing crowd that were snapping at each other with uncontrollable blood lust. They had ten more seconds at best, before the massing attackers were on them, he hastily estimated.
“Bugger this,” he said angrily and dropped back down to the ground on the road side of the wall.
“What are you doing?” Muz asked.
“Just grab her sodding leg,” Carl told him.
Muz copied the man in wrapping his arms around her upper thigh and, together, they hoisted her up with ease. Jenna at last managed to grab the top of the wall. The two men didn’t wait for her to pull herself up; there was no time. Instead, they jumped and simultaneously pushed her up by her buttocks, causing her to sail clean over the wall, and they heard her land with a thud on the other side.
As the raging madmen were practically on top of them, Muz and Carl took a few long strides back from the wall, then ran at it as fast as they could. Knowing they would not be given a second attempt, they grabbed the top and pulled themselves up, kicking frantically with their feet to assist their labouring arms.
Carl was nearest the onrushing crowd and, as he had almost pulled himself over, the fastest of the crawlers with no arse cheeks stretched up and grabbed him by the foot with a grip so strong it almost tore the ligaments in his ankle. He screamed with both pain and terror.
Still struggling to get over the wall himself and wishing he’d had time to shed the weight of his stab vest, Muz glanced over at Carl and saw his predicament. Swinging his legs sideways, he delivered a size ten Magnum work boot to the face of the half-eaten attacker, sending a tooth clattering across the road and dislodging the madman’s grip.
Finally, the two of them dragged themselves over the wall and collapsed in the bushes on the other side. As exhausted as he was, Carl began laughing hysterically and tears of relief welled in his eyes.
“Thanks,” Jenna said, standing over them, and handing Carl the crowbar he had already thrown over.
They could hear the enraged horde gathering mere inches away but felt relatively safe, with them on the other side of the solid concrete barrier. As Jenna was helping Muz to his feet however, several grasping hands reached through a bush and frenziedly pulled at the police officer’s clothes. Wrenching himself free and staggering away from the wall, he now saw that one of the horizontal slabs had a large section missing, allowing the snatching hands to reach through. Though the crazies w
ere doing their upmost to push their way through the hole, it was thankfully too small.
The head of a young blonde woman managed to poke through, among the arms however. Staring into wild inhuman eyes of the demented woman, Muz’s fatigue, hunger and fear finally got the better of him.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he screamed at her.
The bedraggled woman continued to snap her jaws in the fantasy of masticating on him. Her failing to respond to his question had nothing to do with her lips having almost been torn from her face, now flapping uselessly around her chin. It also had nothing to do with her having had her tongue ripped out of her mouth and eaten.
“Can you even understand a word I’m saying?” Muz asked her.
“Apparently not,” Carl answered in lieu of the woman responding.
He walked up to the protruding head and bent over, daring himself to get as close as possible, in order to scrutinise her. His tantalising proximity drove the crazy woman to struggle harder, trying to worm her way through the hole.
“Don’t antagonise her,” Jenna warned Carl nervously. “Let’s just get moving.”
“It’s okay,” Carl replied. “She can’t get through.”
As he said this, the broken concrete on either side of the hole gave way with the weight of the crowd on the other side. The two pieces of broken slab fell out of position and for a second it looked as though the woman was going to fall through with it. With nothing to support them now though, the rest of the slabs above suddenly dropped down, filling the gap and decapitating the woman.
“Holy…” Carl shouted, jumping back in shock.
The severed head tumbled onto the grass and Jenna turned away, holding a hand tight against her mouth. To Muz and Carl’s utter disbelief, the head continued to look at them, eyes flicking from one man to the other. Her teeth were still gnashing violently, though now she was silent, her snarls having been cut short with the crushing of her larynx.
As disgusted as he was, Muz could not look away. He had heard somewhere that a disembodied head could live and remain conscious for up to twenty seconds, but knowing it and seeing it for himself were two very different things.
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 12