“Okay,” he whispered as loudly as he dare, tapping on the window with his fingertips.
The second person to climb through was Chuck. He tried his damnedest not to groan and hiss with pain, forcing himself through the tight gap, the catch of the lock pressing deep into his bulging belly as he dragged himself over it. As soon as he slumped to the ground, Carl deftly followed with the ease a burglar would have been proud of.
“Oh good God,” Muz gasped, as next there appeared through the opening the bewildered face of the dog. It had to be Tom still inside, rather than either of the two women that was supporting the majority of the ten stone dog’s weight.
Muz, Carl, and the resentful and fearful-looking Chuck, grabbed Digby’s front legs and eased them over the lip. With the furry lump wide eyed and grumbling, but miraculously showing no signs of aggression, they had to turn him over onto one side in order to fit his huge chest through the gap. Eventually, the dog spilled out on top of the men, knocking them to the ground. Excited by this unusual game, Digby stood over them threatening to lick, tail wagging furiously.
“Get it off,” Chuck growled.
They got back to their feet just in time to assist the slim lady, while Digby lumbered around, sniffing everything in his path. Though Margaret was elderly, she was still quite able and performed the task of climbing through the window with far greater ease than Chuck had managed. Even Amy, who was next to slide through, found it more difficult than the other woman had. Taking up the rear, came Tom. He too struggled with the gap, due to his huge shoulders and chest. The alcohol in his system didn’t help much either.
Following the train line, Muz had been quite happy for Chuck to take the lead. Back out on the streets now though, he again took point. He knew these roads, his patrol ground, far better than any of the others.
Station Road, normally a busy high street, seemed so devoid of life now. He had only ever seen it so empty before in the early hours. Looking rapidly all around him as he scurried forward, he saw that most of the shops had been looted. Their windows and the tall glass panes that secured the entrance to the shopping arcade had been smashed. Their stocks, items of all kinds, were strewn around the pavements.
Among the cars and vans cluttering the road, there stood a convoy of three drab-green military troop transport vehicles. With caterpillar tracks rather than wheels, they had managed to make their way up the jammed high street by driving over a number of cars. They had not been able to make any further progress however, when they had come to the point where two buses blocked the road. They had thus been abandoned, just like the rest of the vehicles around them. They had been left in a hurry as well, Chuck noted, as belts of ammunition still hung from the machine guns mounted by the cupolas in their roofs.
A vividly red double decker bus remained in the road mid-turn. It had been leaving the station but had failed to get very far at all, having immediately hit the side of another bus. The driver, Muz saw to his despair, was still slumped at the wheel, apparently completely dead. What had the world come to when a person’s deadness could be measured in varying degrees?
Gripping the rail spike in his hand as though it were a dagger, Muz scuttled, bent double, out onto the road and along the side of the rank of taxis parked in their bays in the centre of the road, between the two lanes of other cars. He made his way to and paused in the central pedestrian island, protected as it was by iron railings, and waited for those at the rear to catch up. After performing a silent head count, he moved on.
As stealthy as he was trying to be, almost directly in front of the bus now, he slid on a pile of counterfeit DVDs that had spilled into the road from an open suitcase. In reaction to the sudden noise of the disks skidding off along the ground, the driver of the bus stirred, jostling in his seat slightly. Muz and the others froze, expecting him to clamber out of the vehicle and come running at them, but he remained slumped at the wheel.
Instead, a fox, who had been gnawing and tugging on the driver’s legs, jumped up onto the dash. She gave the surviving humans a quick and furtive sideways glance then jumped out the broken windscreen, scurried past Muz and was lost amid the cars. Well, Muz thought, having fed on that driver, the animal had to be infected and it probably wouldn’t be long before it began to turn.
Having clambered through the open doors of a Smart car, the group reached the other side of the road. While the others were concerned only with keeping in cover and making as rapid progress as possible, Carl suddenly stopped in his tracks and stood erect. Seeing this, Amy gave a ‘psst’ to Muz, alerting him.
Looking back down their line, Muz saw the man standing upright and facing the opposite direction. Still keeping bent low, he made his way back to Carl.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, daring to stand up. “What have you seen?”
Carl gave a single word response. “Starbucks.”
“What?” Muz asked, looking over at the coffee shop and scanning for any infected people that might have caught Carl’s attention, but it was one of the few places that hadn’t been broken into and looted.
“I could murder a coffee,” Carl clarified.
“Are you completely insane?” Muz asked him, having to stop himself from shouting the words.
“It wouldn’t take long.”
“Are you serious? You would have to break in without making any noise,” Muz told him. He couldn’t believe what Carl was thinking. “You’d then have to figure out how to work the machines and wait for the water to boil. It would take ages, putting us all at risk, all for a sodding coffee.”
“It feels like months since I last had a frap’,” Carl said, staring sulkily at Muz.
The copper desperately had to calm himself down, telling himself that it had to be the stress. The man just needed some simple creature comfort from the normal routine of his life in order to forget, for a few minutes at least, the horror of what he was going through. Despite his understanding and empathy, he couldn’t resist spitting an insult at the man.
“You’re an idiot,” Muz said, crouched down again and headed off up to the front of the line.
They made their way westward along the row of shop fronts. Still staring at the coffee shop, Carl was almost left behind. When he at last noticed the others were a way off up the road, with a reluctant moan and a stomp of his foot, he hurried after them.
They reached a junction to their right, leading onto the residential streets north of Station Road. Picking the shortest possible route to the Stonegrove estate, Muz first led them round the arc of Manor Park Crescent and then took the third junction to their right onto Green Lane. The tower blocks could now be seen comfortingly close above the line of semi-detached houses.
Strangely, these roads too were deserted. Not a single person was to be seen and the group found themselves wondering silently, as they plodded along, where all the cannibal hordes had gone. They had made their way a considerable distance along this long straight road before they came across the reason for the complete absence of violent madmen.
It was as they passed through some road width restriction barriers and approached the junction on their left with Oakleigh Gardens that they heard the ominous sound. At first, they stood looking puzzled at one another, unable to work out what was making the odd clattering noise. Then the answer dawned across Muz’s face; it was the sound of hooves walking along the road.
“Horses,” Muz alerted the others, terror written across his face. “We need to hide.”
“So is horses. What is need to hide?” Tom asked, looking at Muz with confusion.
“Zombie horses,” Chuck said fearfully, remembering the story Muz had told him.
Everyone wore the same expression as Muz now, and they frantically looked around them for the best place to hide. Muz and Chuck ran into the front garden of one house, Amy, Margaret and Digby into another, and hid behind the privet hedges. Tom threw himself into a wheelie bin, while Carl dropped to the ground and slid under a car. All took cover without as much as a
second to spare.
Muz risked a glance around the hedge before Chuck yanked him back and he saw, from the junction, there appeared a herd of no less than twenty man-eating cows. From the crazed looks in their usually blank eyes and the dried dirty red stains around their mouths, they were cleared infected and hungry for meat.
One of their number lurched along unnaturally, one of its rear legs missing, having been chewed through at the knee. Though each and every one of them bore injuries of some degree, one was by far the worst. The black and white heifer had been eaten alive. Her stomach was completely missing from the ribs down to her pelvic bowl. The remains of entrails, now beginning to dry and wither, dangled beneath her from the gruesome cavity. Unlike the others, the skin of her nose and around her eyes was a dull grey, rather than the usual pink and black, as she decomposed at a more rapid rate, unable as she was to acquire sustenance.
The herd, having been attacked by infected humans and thus become crazed themselves, in desperate need of meat, had broken free of their fields to the north of the Stonegrove, just the other side of the A41. They had since been wandering the streets of Edgware. Moving as a hunting pack and being bigger, stronger and faster than humans, even the infected people they had come across had stood no chance against them. They had devoured almost everyone they had found, infected and uninfected alike.
One of the beasts was carrying the struggling cadaver of an unfortunate victim in its mouth, tossing its head this way and that to prevent its sisters from stealing the prize. The man struggled wildly, clawing and biting feverishly at the heifer’s face, but he could not escape, the cow’s teeth having sunk deep into his shoulder, burying into the joint between the bones of his humorous and clavicle.
The hooves of the starving beasts clattered loudly directly by Carl’s head, as he lay under the car and he found himself praying for the abominations to pass him by. Suddenly, one of the foul Friesians let out an almighty deep-throated bellow and slammed into the car, causing it to rock violently inches above Carl’s face. Though he thought they had found him and he was about to pay the ultimate price for all the steaks he had eaten in his life, no second bellow came. The cow had simply been responding to her ear being bitten off by one of her sister’s.
Carl dared to unscrew his eyes and could now see, directly beside the car, the hugely bulging belly of one of the carnivorous cud-chewers. Pressing out against the skin from within one of the animal’s massively swollen stomachs, he saw the unmistakable shape of a human face contorted in a scream.
Digby began to whine with nervous agitation. Amy frantically rubbed at his chest and put a hand over his muzzle, silently mouthing at him to be quiet.
The two cows either side of the one carrying the man seized their opportunity then, and simultaneously tried to rip him free of her bite. The cow with the thrashing afflicted man in her teeth bellowed with rage and rose up onto her hind legs briefly, kicking at the others. A fight then ensued, as more and more of the cows tried to snatch the dangling man for themselves. His arms and legs were all bitten into and he was tugged mercilessly this way and that. With the horrible sound of ripping flesh that cut over even the din of his screaming, he was torn apart.
The man’s upper torso, head and one arm still attached, slapped onto the tarmac of the road, forgotten momentarily, as the demented beasts fought over the other pieces of his body.
Desperately needing to know what was going on, Muz dared to steel a glance around the hedge again. It was at exactly the wrong moment. What remained of the half-eaten man saw him before he ducked back into cover.
Though there was virtually nothing left of him, the man’s overruling concern was still his terrible hunger. He hissed and began to drag himself as best he could with his one arm across the road to where Muz was hiding.
“Oh shit,” Muz whispered, having snatched yet another look around the hedge. “There’s half of a man coming this way. He’s going to draw those cows over to us.”
“Are you fucking stupid?” Chuck snarled back in the loudest whisper he dared. “Stop fucking looking.”
The remains of the man continued laboriously to drag himself towards the hedge line, oblivious to the crunching sounds of the bones of his own limbs being eaten around him. Then he saw, under the car he passed by, Carl’s terrified wide-eyed face staring out at him. He growled fiercely and coughed up a lump of clotted blood, then reached under the car to grab at Carl.
Trying his hardest not to whimper too loudly, Carl kicked back defiantly at the grasping arm. He flicked his legs too and fro, praying that grasping hand wouldn’t take hold of him, but it was too much to hope for. The half-dead man’s vice-like grip locked onto the bottom of one leg of Carl’s jogging bottoms and he dragged himself forward under the car.
Just as Carl was thinking he couldn’t hold in his scream any longer, a huge slobbering muzzle appeared in the gap between the car and the road and bit into the other man’s head. The cranium cracked under the force, causing the afflicted male’s eyes to bulge. He screamed, losing his grip on Carl’s leg, and was dragged away. As the remains of the man were lifted up out of Cal’s line of sight, he heard him still wailing in pain for a moment, before the sound was cut off with the snapping of bone.
With the meal now fully consumed, the cows ceased their fighting among one another and, after what seemed like forever, the terrible herd headed off down the road in the direction the group had come. The repugnant stink of their rotting hides trailed behind them.
With the threat gone, ever so cautiously, the group re-emerged from their hiding places.
“Is okay?” Tom asked, peering out from under the bin lid.
“Yes, mate,” Muz responded and helped the man out.
Carl slid from his cover under the car and began to dust down his cheap police custody clothes, looking with a sense of trepidation in the direction the cows had gone.
As he was doing so, a tiny ball of fluff no bigger than a cocktail sausage, having been disturbed by the humans, came running out from the nearby hedge. Amy screamed as it darted past her. She instinctively tried to stamp on it and Digby made an effort to bite it. It was far too fast for either of them however and Digby instead butted the paving slab beneath him with the end of his muzzle. Everyone now joined in the dance, trying to stomp the life out of the lightning fast miniscule creature but it evaded them all, dodging this way and that between their steps.
With a high pitched squeak, it launched itself at Carl and ran up the leg of his jogging bottoms. The man couldn’t have been more grateful that the hems were elasticated and the little monster therefore remained on the outside. Halfway up his thigh, it stopped and began to chew its way through the cloth in effort to get at his skin beneath.
Carl began to hop around frantically on one leg while shaking the other wildly.
“Get it off. Get it off,” he begged.
“Stand still then,” Chuck told him and then kicked him square in the balls.
Carl dropped to the floor like a sack of spuds, clutching his groin and groaning.
“Sorry but I did say stand still,” Chuck said and kicked him again.
This time he hit him hard in the thigh, causing Carl to cry out in pain again, but it had the desired effect. He crushed the furry ball with the tread of his heavy boots and it dropped to the ground. While Carl continued to writhe around beside it, the others gathered around to examine little lump. Squashed as it was, it no longer posed any threat.
“Is still alive,” Tom said, seeing it twitch, and stamped on it again.
Now it was little more than a mess of guts, yet still, its tiny broken limbs continued to thrash.
“What the hell is it?” Carl wheezed.
“I think it was a vole,” Muz replied.
“A zombie vole,” Chuck added, full of seriousness.
“A what?” Carl asked, making a show of struggling to get to his feet.
“Like a mouse but even smaller,” Muz explained.
“I was almost bi
tten and infected by a mouse? That would have been a shit way to go,” Carl grumbled.
“Ha! You funny man,” Tom said cheerfully. He tried to slap Carl hard on the back but he saw it coming and despite still limping, leapt out of the way.
The epidemic had spread rapidly through the human population, the inherent survival instincts of man having been dramatically dulled by living in a world without the fear of attack from predators. It had spread just as fast through the domesticated animals, horses, cows, dogs, whose own survival instincts had been weaned out of them by thousands of years of husbandry, creating creatures more and more cowed and placid in nature.
The wild animals inhabiting this urban landscape, having learned to live alongside man while barely being seen, had initially fared better, so much more adept were they at hiding from and evading danger. But the madness was now even beginning to spread among their hidden populations, as that tiny rodent had proven.
Muz led the group first down Oakleigh Gardens then turned onto Kings Drive, weaving through the neighbourhood, heading for the tallest of the nearby blocks.
It was as they trotted along this road that they saw easily the saddest victim of the epidemic so far. The cows not having found him and torn him apart yet had to be down to nothing but luck. Bad luck. At least being eaten by the herd would have put an end to his obvious suffering.
The white man in his mid-thirties, as best could be judged given his state, came staggering out of the open doorway of one of the houses directly in front of the group. He was no threat to the band of survivors. He had no eyes in his sockets with which to see them. His nose had been bitten off, the remaining cavity blocked with clotted and scabbed blood, so he could not track them by their body odour either. The muscles of both his arms had been eaten completely away, causing them to flap utterly useless at his side. Even if he had been somehow able to catch them, he would still have posed no threat, as his lower jaw has been completely torn away, leaving his tongue to loll and lick at his neck. The only sense at all he had to go on vainly to track his prey, was his hearing. His head flicked this way and that, as he responded to every little sound the group made as they passed him by.
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 27