“Oh shit,” Jay gasped.
“What?” Muz asked.
“It’s Happy Larry,” the youth yelled.
“The clown?” Chuck clarified, as he held onto the handle of the door to the kitchen.
“Yeah. And he ain’t fuckin’ happy.”
“We’ve got zombie kids back here,” Chuck shouted back.
He could hear them snarling and banging into things, as they leapt over the service counter. Then there came a forceful thud that rattled the door. He held the handle in place even tighter, the huge knuckles of his dark brown hands turning almost white.
At the very same moment, there was a loud boom against the door at the far end of the corridor, which Jay was leaning his meagre weight against. The youth came flying forward and from that single impact alone, the frame of the door was already beginning to come away from the wall. Then there was a second powerful impact against that far door, and in a shower of plaster and splinters, the frame fell away from the wall and the door with it.
Standing in the cavity of the doorway, amid a cloud of masonry and plaster dust was Happy Larry, or at least the man this particular branch of the food chain had employed to play him. He was at least six foot four and profoundly fat with it. Weighing easily twenty-four stone, and that was being kind, he was a huge bull of a man and had a look in his eyes as though he were staring at a red rag. Judging by the healthy look of his complexion, just visible under the badly smeared white paint on his face, he too was a fresh kill. His red and white checked costume was far more red than white now, stained as it was with spatters of blood. He held in one hand the remaining head, rib cage and one arm of a little girl.
“Holy Christ,” both Muz and Chuck said in unison.
“Leg it,” Jay yelled, his legs flailing wildly, as he scrambled back to his feet.
Jay and Margaret ran towards Muz and Chuck and they all sprinted for the door to the drive-thru room. Muz was the first to reach it and rattled the handle desperately. The door refused to move.
Larry growled, a sound that seemed to belong more to a bear than man, and dropped the remains of his last feeding at his side.
Muz continued to fight with the handle but still the door didn’t give so much as an inch. Looking through the slim glass panel in the door, he saw the broom on the floor. When it had fallen, it had landed in such a position that it was wedged against the door, holding it shut. Chuck saw it too.
“Fuck,” the big man barked. “We’re trapped.”
The monstrous Larry roared and began to thunder down the passage towards them. Margaret screamed.
Refusing to accept that he couldn’t get into the little room, Muz continued to rattle the door handle. His eyes, looking through the window of the door, were fixed on the open rear doors of the Jankel, standing just the other side of the serving hatch.
Chuck grabbed him by the neck of his stab vest and yanked him backwards with incredible force. Jay opened a door on the opposite wall and the four of them fell through, just as the raging Larry stormed past.
The mad clown reached out, snatching at them, but his incredible body mass continued to carry him forward down the corridor, until he lost his stride and slammed face first onto the floor tiles. His round red nose squeaked and flew off across the floor, as did several of his teeth. He seemed barely to notice though and was straight back up onto his feet.
Jay threw the door into its frame and pressed the little lock button in the handle. He knew it wouldn’t hold for long though, not against that fat bastard.
Turning, they saw that they were at the foot of a staircase up to the first floor. They ran up as fast as their fear-weakened legs could carry them, Jay hanging back and helping Margaret, whose nerves seemed to be getting the better of her.
“Come on,” he said to her, fear for the old woman causing his chin to tremble. “You can’t quit.”
At the top of the flight, there stood another door, which they again slammed closed and locked. As they all leant against it, breathing heavily, they heard the sounds of the not so happy Larry splintering the door below.
“What now?” Muz demanded, his voice trembling.
Chuck ran over to a window on the opposite wall of what appeared to be the manager’s office. It was locked and had bars on the inside. There was no getting through.
“We’re trapped up here,” he said.
“Get back here,” Margaret hissed at him.
He was the biggest and heaviest of them all and they would need him to help them reinforce the door when that killer clown reached it. Instead though, he ran to another door in the room and flung it open. It revealed another short corridor and he disappeared off along it.
Just as they were contemplating running after him, the other three heard big Larry crash through the downstairs door and come thumping up the stairs.
“Shit,” Muz said. “There’s no point running. We’ve got to hold the door.”
He, the skinny youth and the slim old lady leant all their weight against the door, digging their heels into the carpet.
There came the expected loud bang and the door rattled so forcefully against him that Muz actually felt his teeth loosen a little. The carpet at his feet began to slide away from the wall.
“We can’t possibly hold it,” Margaret said.
She stood back and pulled the two kitchen knives from her beltline, facing the door and holding them out in readiness. With each successive juddering bang, the wood of the frame surrounding the lock splintered more and more until, with one last forceful shove, it broke and the door came flying inward.
Both Muz and Jay were flung across the room so hard that they went head first over the manager’s desk, leaving Margaret to stand alone in their defence.
As the giant of a man burst into the room, the trembling elderly woman stepped towards him. Without hesitation, she thrust one of her knives into his bellowing open mouth and the other handle-deep into the side of his neck. The knife in the man’s mouth went so far in that Margaret’s fist went with it and he bit down hard on her knuckles. Hearing her own delicate bones crack, she cried out in pain and wrenched her hand free.
“Mum,” Jay yelled, hurriedly getting back to his feet, not even realising what he had said.
Margaret looked down at her hand, holding it protectively in the other. Deep teeth marks had punctured the skin and she could briefly see the white of bone within, before the welling blood quickly obscured it and began to piss down her forearm.
Larry still stood there in the doorway, blinking with an idiotic expression, stunned by the sensation of the cold steel in his neck. Then he gathered himself and let out another raging roar. Little lumps of his own clotted blood tumbled along the handle of the knife in his mouth with the force of the air expelled from his lungs. The clown clenched his fists, shaking with anger.
As he came at Margaret, Muz leapt from atop the desk he had been climbing over and, struck the knife handle with the heel of his palm, thrusting it even deeper into the giant’s mouth. The blow caused the tip of the blade to penetrate and push between two of the vertebrae in Larry’s neck, severing his spinal cord.
Larry dropped with a thud that rattled the floorboards. Though his body lay limp, his eyes still glowered at those stood above him and his remaining teeth continued to gnash against the knife handle.
Margaret reached down and slid the other knife from the side of his neck, leaving a gaping slit of a wound. Muz looked at her injured hand and her eyes were wide with fear, as she stared back at him.
“Nah man, dis ain’t happenin’,” Jay said, steeling a glance through the door and down the stairs. “There’s, like, a load of nippers down there.”
He tried to slam the door back in its frame but it wouldn’t close properly, due to the damaged lock. As he did so, he heard the stampede of multiple tiny feet racing up the stairs.
The three of them pressed their combined weight against the door again, just as young small fingers began to protrude through the gap be
tween the door and its frame, clawing at the wood. The hissing and growls of the cannibal class told the survivors that they were still desperately hungry. Though the kids couldn’t have been more than seven years old, the weight of their superior numbers against the damaged door was too much for the three adults to hold off indefinitely.
Pushing with all his strength back against the door, Muz found himself looking at the far wall. Mounted there in a frame was a motivational poster, depicting a cat hanging from a branch by its paws with a comically worried expression on its face. The writing at the bottom read, ‘hang in there.’
As a slender fresh-skinned arm pushed its way through the widening gap, Muz pulled out his Taser. He had already used the one probe cartridge he had found with it, but he could still use it at point blank range. Without the probes, it wouldn’t lock up the muscles of a person’s body, but it would cause them a shit load of pain, equivalent to that of being stabbed. He pressed the weapon against the grasping arm and pulled the trigger. The nails of the protruding hand just dug deeper into the wood, causing a couple of them to tear free and hang from their cuticles. Muz pulled the trigger again and again, until he smelled the child’s skin burning. Still, it had no effect.
“Piece of crap,” he shouted, tossing it across the room and knocking the framed poster to the floor.
More young arms began to worm their way through. Then the gap became wide enough for a head to appear right next to where Jay was stood. A big shiny badge pinned to the child’s T-shirt read, ‘birthday boy.’ The boy’s wild eyes and masticating teeth caused the youth to yelp with fear, but he didn’t run, knowing that as soon as he let go of the door the pre-teen horde would come rushing through.
Margaret, even now, couldn’t bear to stab a child in the face. Instead, she reached out and picked up a ball cactus by its pot from the nearby desk. Turning and leaning over Jay, she repeatedly stuffed it into the young boy’s face. When she stopped, though the boy’s forehead, nose and cheeks were covered with tiny red holes, he continued to fight his way through.
Bracing the door with one foot, Jay then spun and hit the boy in the head so hard and fast with his baseball bat that a piece of young soft skull flew away. Though the terrible blow had exposed his brains, he still continued to push through unabated, without even so much as a pause. Straw-coloured cranial fluid spilled from the open cavity and dribbled down the wood of the door.
Though the others thought by now that he had left them to die, Chuck came piling back into the room.
“Down this way,” he yelled. “I’ve found an open window.”
Not requiring any further prompt, Muz, Margaret and Jay let go of the door and ran towards Chuck. The door flung inward and a river of insane children rushed in, falling over each other with the sudden motion.
The adults managed to reach the corridor and Chuck, and slam the door there in place before the young horde caught them. Again, they felt the force of the kids throwing themselves at it full pelt from the other side.
“Where’s the lock? Where’s the lock?” Muz asked frantically.
“There isn’t one,” Margaret told him.
“Don’t you go anywhere,” Muz said to Chuck, as the bigger man looked as though he were about to run off again. “We need you to help us brace the door.”
“You’ve been bitten, haven’t you?” Chuck asked Margaret, as he saw the blood coursing down her arm.
“Yes, I’m afraid I have,” the woman told him solemnly.
“You’re infected then,” Chuck added.
“We don’t know that,” Muz said.
“Nah man, dat don’t mean she’s infected,” Jay said, jumping to the woman’s defence.
“I’m not willing to take the risk,” Chuck told the youth.
“Yeah? Try it, blood. Test me.”
Even with Chuck’s considerable body mass helping to hold this new door in place, it was already beginning to weaken. The room at the far end of the corridor looked a long way off, baring in mind that as soon as they let go of the door, it would come crashing in. Those kids, possessing the lightning speed of the freshly infected, would easily run them down before they managed to get to that other room.
“We need to run for it. Those little shits are going to break through,” Muz declared.
“The open window is in the far wall of that room,” Chuck told the others. “Don’t waste any time. Just dive straight through it. There’s a low sloping roof on the other side that should break our fall. It looks like it ends about seven feet above the ground.”
“I feel… strange,” Margaret said woozily.
She had indeed been infected, the foreign amoeboid cells already coursing through her bloodstream. Her age-depleted biological defences and racing heart rate allowed the cells to multiply and spread within her at an incredible rate.
Chuck immediately backed away from the door. As he did so, the constant thumping against it caused a long crack to appear in the plaster of the wall beside it.
“Get back here,” Muz yelled at him.
“I told you she was infected,” Chuck said.
“No. She’s just tired,” Jay shouted, refusing to accept it.
“I’m sorry, Jay,” Margaret said, turning to face the boy bracing the door at her side. “But it would seem they’re right.”
“No,” Jay said again in sheer denial, tears beginning to well up in his eyes.
“The three of you should make a run for it,” Margaret said in resignation. “I’ll try to despatch as many as I can and afford you a few seconds.”
“No,” Jay yelled at her. “I’m not goin’ wivout you.”
Chuck was already heading off down the corridor.
“If you don’t leave right this second, young man..., you’re going to make me… very angry,” Margaret told him as sternly as she could manage. Her speech was slow and beginning to slur a little.
“I’m stayin’,” Jay replied adamantly.
“You’re fifteen. Go now.”
“Come on,” Muz said to him.
He tried to take Jay by the arm but the youth just shrugged him off.
“I’m gonna take care of you,” Jay told Margaret.
“Jay, you can’t,” the elderly woman replied, tears spilling from her eyes. “I’m infected. It won’t be long now.”
“No, I mean I’m goin’ to take care of you,” Jay explained. “We’ll fight dem togeva as long as we can. Then I’ll take care of you. I won’t let you become one of dem tings.”
The next crash against the door was a big one, several of the children having by coincidence hit it at exactly the same moment. It caused a split to run the centre of its length.
“You’re not afraid of dying?” Muz asked, astounded by the boy’s fearless resolve.
“Yeah, course I am, but I ain’t stupid eiva,” Jay told him. “Yous lot fink you can still survive dis, get outa da quarantine. It ain’t gonna happen, cuz. Dem government people will keep de barriers up ’til every last person is dead an’ rotten. Believe. Ain’t no one eva getting’ out.”
“We’ve got to keep fighting,” Muz told him, trying to talk some sense into the youth.
“I’d prefer to go out makin’ a stand, innit,” Jay replied.
“You’re a noble and brave man, Jay,” Margaret told him.
“Yeah, woteva.”
The crack running up the centre of the door splintered further still and it began to bulge inward.
“Last chance,” Muz said nervously.
“Go,” Jay told him.
Muz looked deep into the youth’s eyes; he wasn’t about to allow him to change his mind. Without another word, Muz turned and ran.
“You ready for dis?” Jay asked Margaret.
The woman leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.
“Let’s merc’ them,” she said with grim determination, stepping away from the door. “Is that how you say it?”
“Yeah. Let’s fuck ’em up.”
The door snapped in half a
nd the two pieces came crashing inward. Crazed children swarmed through the door and Margaret and Jay laid into them. Working together, the old woman and the teenage boy put up a good fight. Margaret slashed away at anything that came near her, while Jay bounced the end of his bat off every head that came within range. Numerous young cannibals dropped before them, forming a pile of small twitching bodies at their feet.
One of the children, a freckled red-headed girl, had a severed arm. The broken ends of the exposed radius and ulna bones of her forearm had tooth marks in them, from where her classmates had gnawed at them, attempting to draw out the marrow. The way the bones had snapped left them sharp.
Eying up her prey, she leapt with a gymnastic lunge over the growing pile. Slamming into Jay, she stabbed him with the tips of her bones in his shoulder. He screamed and pushed her off, as Margaret cut her throat right through to the spine and worked the blade between the bones.
The two of them continued to drop anyone who came at them, with practiced proficiency, gradually thinning the numbers of the children more and more. Eventually, there were only two kids left, clambering up the far side of the six-foot tall pile of dead children that barred the doorway.
“Hey, we’re actually doin’ okay,” Jay said surprised, doing his damnedest to ignore the hot pain in his shoulder.
As he glanced across at Margaret, he saw her just standing there, glaring at him, teeth bared.
“Oh fuck.”
As the woman sprang at him, Jay smacked her round the side of the head as hard as he could. The knife flew from her hand and he caught it. Turning it over in his hand, he stabbed at her neck, his eyes red with tears. He screamed like he never had before, the very act of what he was doing causing his mind to break. He stabbed at her faster and faster, until her head was almost completely severed. His face took on an abstracted emotionless expression and he began to giggle. Dropping the knife and looking at the blood coating his hands, his odd laughter grew louder.
With the two remaining children on top, the pile of bodies then spilled over onto him. Though he was pinned from the waist down under the weight of the kids he had killed, his arms were still free. He could have attempted to defend himself, as the two children pounced on him, but he didn’t. As they held him down and tore into his skinny body with their milk teeth, he continued to giggle. Only when one of them bit down into the carotid artery of his neck and drank thirstily, did the expression of mirth fade from his face.
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 41